Marie-Claude’s routine on the table, performed to a sugary but voluptuous tune from a French musical, was certainly less exuberant but its effect, as her smile became sleepier, her velvet eyes more specific in their promise, was staggering.
‘Then just for a moment, if he is not too drunk, I come and sit on the knees of the Minister,’ said Marie-Claude, sliding down to bestow a cursory hug on the bolster. ‘But before he can do anything, there is a fanfare on the trumpets and — bang — the lights go out! I have arranged a signal for this with Mr Parker — it is when I raise my right arm so it can happen earlier if there is any unpleasantness. And when they can see again, I am back in the cake blowing kisses and being wheeled away!’
They rehearsed several times and would have gone on longer had it not been for a mineral prospector from Iquitos who had been trying to have a siesta in the room beneath them and who came up to complain.
‘We’ll try it again tomorrow, but I think it will be all right, hein?’ enquired Marie-Claude.
Her friends reassured her. Harriet, however, was forced to express a reservation.
‘Only I’m afraid, Marie-Claude, that the gentlemen will get overexcited, whether you permit it or not. I don’t see how they can fail to!’
‘Ah, well,’ said Marie-Claude philosophically, ‘it is for the restaurant,’ — and removed her garters.
Rom disliked the Manaus Sports Club and visited it as rarely as possible. Built at the beginning of the rubber boom, it was a colonial-style mansion on the edge of the town which combined all the things he had disliked most in Europe: snobbery, reactionary politics and a leering ‘Oh là là’ attitude to women, who were excluded from virtually all its functions. The heavy red plush furniture was disastrous for the tropics; the food was indifferent. There were even two old gentlemen straight out of a Punch cartoon who sat in the bar reading aloud the obituary columns from the five-week-old Times.
The day after his return from Ombidos, however, Rom drove his Cadillac up the drive to discuss with Harry Parker the dinner for Alvarez in two days’ time. He had never hoped to avoid the occasion; Alvarez, a connoisseur of food and women, was also a connoisseur of plants and had visited Follina. The Minister had particularly asked for his presence and Rom had no intention of snubbing him. He had hoped, however, to be involved as little as possible. Now he had changed his mind.
‘Verney!’ said Harry Parker, coming out to greet him. ‘I heard you’d been away and I don’t mind telling you I was terrified in case you didn’t make it for Saturday! The thing is, we have agreed that someone ought to make a speech in the Minister’s honour, just a short one before the toasts. It must be in Portuguese, of course, and everyone suggested you.’
‘Yes, all right. I’ll do it.’
‘I say, that’s terribly decent of you,’ said Parker, surprised and greatly relieved. ‘Everyone’s coming! De Silva, the Mayor, Count Sternov… I’m putting you on the right of Alvarez with the Mayor opposite. I’ll show you the seating plan.’
They walked together past the tennis courts, the swimming-pool, the new one-storey wooden building which Parker had had built in the grounds to provide acommodation for visitors defeated by the Golden City’s inexplicably ghastly hotels. Rom cared little for Parker’s views, but he had to admit that the young man — brought out from England to run the club on ‘British’ lines — was doing a good job.
‘Actually there’s been a bit of a fuss,’ said Parker. ‘We’ve just heard that Alvarez travels everywhere with his own chef — got a delicate stomach or something. Some high-up French fellow… He intends to bring him here to supervise his own dishes for the banquet. You can imagine how my kitchen staff’s taken it! I hope there won’t be any bloodshed.’
He led Rom through into his office and showed him the plans.
‘That seems all right,’ said Rom. ‘I shall want to speak to Alvarez privately before the dinner. Tell him I want to brush up on his new honours before my speech. Can you clear the smoking-room and give us drinks in there?’
‘Of course. No trouble. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’re helping us out. You know the fellow, don’t you?’
‘Yes, he’s been out to Follina once. He is a keen gardener.’
‘I’ve laid on a bit of… you know… afterwards,’ said Parker, and over his sharp-featured face there spread a middle-aged leer. ‘A surprise. The old man likes women, I gather?’
‘Yes.’
But if Parker had hoped to be asked more about the ‘surprise’ he was destined to be disappointed. Odd fellow, Verney, the secretary thought. A devil with the women, they said, and certainly that singer two years ago had been the most staggering female he had ever seen. Yet when men stayed behind to tell a certain kind of story or compare notes of their conquests, Verney always seemed to melt away.
‘Come and have a drink, anyway, before you go,’ he suggested.
In the bar Carstairs and Phillips were where they always were: one on either side of an overstuffed sofa, beneath a portrait of King Edward VII at Sandringham despatching grouse. Carstairs’s bald pink pate was bent over the slightly yellowed pages of the five-week-old Times and he was reading out the current crop of deaths to the wheezing Phillips, who sat with one hand cupped round his whiskery ear.
‘Arbuthnot’s gone!’ he yelled across to his friend. ‘Remember him? Andy Arbuthnot. Seventy-three, he was. Pity when they go young like that.’
Phillips shook his wispy head. ‘Don’t remember him. What about Barchester? Peregrine Barchester. Been waiting for him to go these ten years. Always had a dicky heart.’
Carstairs peered at the paper with his bloodshot eyes. ‘No. No Barchester here. Berkely… Bellers… Birt-Chesterfield! That must be the widow — the old man went years ago. Yes, that’s right — Mabel Birt-Chesterfield. Ninety-eight, she was.’
‘She’ll cut up nicely — oh, very nicely.’ Phillips’s head bobbed sagely on its withered stalk.
‘Well, I should hope so; they’ve waited long enough. Always in straits, the Birt-Chesterfields. Someone here’s going to be cremated: Borkmann.’
‘Don’t hold with that. Womanish business, cremation. Still, I daresay he’ll be foreign.’
‘There’s a very young fellow here. Brandon. Henry Brandon. Never heard of him. Only thirty-eight.’
‘Hunting accident, I suppose?’
‘Can’t be. Died in Toulouse. Henry Brandon of Stavely Hall, Suffolk. They don’t hunt in Toulouse, do they?’
‘There was a General Brandon in the Indian Army. My brother knew him. Might be his son, I suppose.’
‘Excuse me, but might I look at your paper for a moment?’
A look of incredulity and outrage spread over the old gentleman’s face. He would have been less shocked if the man had come into his bathroom and asked to look at his wife. As a matter of fact it would have been easier to hand over Florence while she lived. And it wasn’t as though the man was an outsider. He was a well-thought-of chap: Verney, a member of the Club.
‘It’s The Times, you know,’ he said, thinking that Verney had not understood. ‘It’s just come off the boat.’
‘I know. I won’t be a moment. You mentioned a name I thought I knew.’
‘Ah.’ Well, if the fellow had suffered a bereavement that wasn’t quite so bad. He handed over the paper, pointing with his rheumatic finger at the obituary column.