Jon Cleary - Mask of the Andes

She had left off her own see-through blouses in favour of the only modest dress she owned, a black Givenchy that was her all-purpose model. She saw her brother looking approvingly at her and she moved to join him. ‘It’s my papal audience dress.’

‘Did you get to see him?’

‘No. Mother wanted me to go with her last year, but it seemed too hypocritical. I haven’t been to Mass in, oh, I don’t know how long.’

‘How about coming tomorrow morning? I’m saying early Mass at the cathedral.’

‘I’ll see. What time?’

‘Six o’clock.’

‘Oh my God, you’re joking! If I’m ever up at six, it’s only because I haven’t been to bed the night before.’ Then she saw the disappointment, which he had tried to hide, in his face. She pressed his arm. ‘All right, darling. I’ll try to be there. I’ve never heard you say Mass. I don’t think Mother has forgiven me for that.’

‘I’m not the best of performers,’ he said, trying to get rid of the shadow of their mother. ‘Some fellers are real showmen. Don’t expect a spectacular.’

Then a woman, a year or two older than Carmel, came through the swirl of guests towards them. She was not strictly beautiful, except for her eyes which were dark and had extraordinarily long lashes, but there was something about her that held one’s attention while more beautiful women in the room passed by. This one would never need a see-through blouse, thought Carmel. She was not sure what the other woman had: perhaps it was her air of serenity, but it was a serenity that suggested control rather than the passivity that some of the older women in the room had. Hidden in the woman was some passion, for love or truth or justice, for something. She would not take life for granted and that, too, set her apart from so many of the other women at the reception.

‘Carmel, this is Dolores Schiller.’ McKenna’s face had lit up as the woman had approached them. Carmel noticed it, but put it down to her brother’s relief at being interrupted; she knew now that their mother was always going to be a difficult subject between them. ‘She is the mission’s biggest supporter.’

‘What I give the mission is a pittance.’ Her voice was so soft that Carmel, in the hubbub of other voices, had to lean forward to hear her.

‘I meant your moral support,’ said McKenna. ‘Everyone else here thinks I’m wasting my time or I’m just a nuisance.’

‘Are you a newcomer like me?’ Carmel asked.

Dolores Schiller smiled. ‘One side of the family has been here as long as the Ruiz. But my grandfather interrupted the sequence – he was a German and a rather lowly one, I’m afraid. He was a socialist journalist, something the family did not discover till after he and my grandmother were married. They had eloped, which no one ever did in San Sebastian society, not in those days.’

Then Taber, looking uncomfortable in a black tie and dinner jacket, loomed up beside them. His red hair had been slicked down with water when he arrived, but now it was once again beginning to rebel against its combing.

‘You look absolutely elegant,’ said Carmel. ‘But where’s your tweed cap?’

‘If you think I look elegant, you’re either astigmatic or you have no taste,’ said Taber with a grin. ‘When I approach Savile Row back home, they throw up the barricades. I’m on their black list.’

McKenna introduced him to Dolores Schiller, who said, ‘I’ve heard about you, Senor Taber, from Hernando Ruiz. He admired your remark the other day, about the Indians’ patient tolerance of us criollos.’

‘I’m surprised he did,’ said Taber. ‘It was an unintentional insult to all the Ruiz. Fact is, I’m surprised I was asked to come this evening.’

‘The Ruiz have a certain tolerance of their own. Mainly because of Senora Romola.’

An elderly couple drifted by, the man tall and straight-backed, white-haired and with a military moustache, the woman with blue-rinsed grey hair and an expression of such superiority that Carmel wondered if she spoke even to her husband. They bowed to Dolores Schiller, who put out a hand to them.

‘Doctor and Senora Partridge—’ She introduced them to the McKennas and Taber.

‘Howdyoudo.’ It was all one word the way Dr Partridge said it. ‘Absolutely splendid party, what? Lots of dashed pretty gels. Always make for a jolly show.’

I’m hearing things, thought Carmel.

‘My husband is always looking at the gels,’ said Senora Partridge. ‘Still thinks he is a medical student, you know. Silly old dear, aren’t you, Bunty?’

They can’t be real, Carmel thought. These were people right out of those old British movies of the nineteen thirties that one saw on the Late Late Late Show; the Partridges belonged with Clive Brook and Constance Collier and the country cottage in the Home Counties. ‘Have you been out here long?’ she said.

The Partridges looked offended. ‘We belong here. Well, not here , actually. We came up here – when was it, old gel?’

‘Never remember years,’ said Senora Partridge, and laughed a horse’s laugh straight out of the pages of The Tatler: Dr and Senora Partridge enjoy a gay joke at the Hunt Ball. ‘Never pays at my age, you know.’

They moved on, vice-regally, and Carmel, slightly stupefied, looked at her brother. ‘Are they for real?’

‘They’re Anglo-Brazilians. They’ve never seen England, except for a three weeks’ honeymoon God knows how long ago. They still talk about the Royal garden party that they went to and how King George the Fifth shook hands with the doc.’

‘They’re more British than the British!’

‘You find them all over South America,’ said Taber. ‘Still whistling Land of Hope and Glory in the bathroom, celebrating the Queen’s Birthday, cursing Harold Wilson and the Socialists – you can’t laugh at them, you have to feel sorry for them. They are born here, they live here all their lives, yet they can never bring themselves to call it home. Home is where their father or their grandfather came from.’

‘Oh, my God, how sad!’

McKenna said to Taber, ‘I want to thank you for getting Carmel out of that trouble this morning. You’re making a habit of helping out the McKennas.’

‘What trouble was that?’ said Dolores Schiller. ‘When the guerrillas blew up the bank?’

‘We were just across the plaza,’ said Carmel; then glanced at Taber, looking at him with a new eye tonight. ‘Did your friend the police chief come back?’

‘He’s coming back now,’ said Taber. ‘Who’s the bloke with him, Terry?’

McKenna had only time to say, ‘Karl Obermaier. He’s an ex-Nazi. Or maybe not so ex.’

Condoris, the police chief, and the short muscular man with him paused in front of Dolores Schiller, both bowing and clicking their heels. This is an unreal, three-o’clock-in-the-morning night, Carmel thought: where is Conrad Veidt?

‘Senorita Schiller, how was the ski-ing?’ Condoris asked in Spanish, ignoring the three foreigners.

‘I go ski-ing in Chile every winter,’ Dolores explained to Carmel; then still speaking English she introduced Carmel and Taber to the German. Her snub of the police chief was as blunt as a blow to his long sharp nose. But he did not flush or blink an eye; he was obviously accustomed to being snubbed in company like this. But he must know how necessary he is, to put up with it, thought Taber; and looked with sharper interest at Condoris. The man knew where the bodies were buried; or, worse still, knew where they were going to be buried.

Obermaier, having bowed and clicked his heels, now stood with his hands behind his back. He had a strong emperor’s face, the sort one saw on Roman coins; Taber wondered what empire he ran here. Obermaier was not the first ex-Nazi he had met in South America, but he was certainly the cockiest. He looked Taber up and down like a Storm Trooper colonel inspecting a new recruit.