John Masters (37 page)

"Is there not to be a dog show, too, for the prince and princess?"

"Is there? Oh yes, I recall now, I asked Pablo Larios to be judge. I have a pedigree fox terrier bitch that will win that class. I didn't think it was quite cricket to enter her, but H. E. said, 'No, no, let the best dog win.' Ha ha."

He waved his hand around the magnificence of her drawing room. "I've only had the honor of visiting you four times, m'dear, but you intrigue me. Such ... splendor! Dare I ask, how did you achieve it? By what path did you attain these rarefied if, ah, a trifle
scandalous
heights?"

She looked surreptitiously at the grandfather clock in the corner. She'd give him the half-hour story. She dabbed a small handkerchief to her eyes and began:

"I was bora..."

One of the mirrors on one wall of the bedrooms was not a true mirror but a glass through which one could watch the next room without people in there knowing they were under observation. She stood in front of that mirror now, naked, her breasts cushioning the back of the head and neck of the client, who sat, also naked, in an upright chair close to the mirror. He was Don Pedro de Santangel y Barrachina, twenty-eighth Count of Grazalema, a grandee of Spain with a tremendous lineage and a tiny penis.

In the next room a man and woman performed acts of sexuality with slow deliberation, always ensuring that an observer behind the false mirror would get a good view of their sexual organs and the details of each act. The man was a powerfully built young fellow, available for any service Dolores would pay for; the girl was Juana's daughter, plump, large-breasted, and large-eyed.

Dolores raised a hand to her hair. From concealment Juana would see the sign and whisper the word to the couple next door—"Go to it now."

The young man half rose, pushed the girl's other leg aside, and rammed into her. The count began to breathe deeply. Dolores guided him quickly to the bed and pulled him down on top of her. After a few rapid, trembling jerks, he burst into tears, and that, she knew, was the sign. She patted his head and murmured, "There, there! Lie still.... You have exhausted me." With the count there was no sense of hurry, for on a day when he was to visit her he required that she see no one else.

Later, he took coffee in her big drawing room. Through a gap in the curtains they could see the lights of Gibraltar. The count pointed. "Do you see those lights, Senorita Falcon? Not the town—in the bay. Those are twelve British battleships. Twelve! Spain owns three, altogether. No, we shall never regain our Rock by force, but by generosity I think we might. That is what I shall try to achieve in London."

"You are going to London, Count?"

"As ambassador, I hope." He was quite tall, slender, rather dark-skinned, with large sad, black eyes, the classical long Spanish face, and long hair going gray.

"Do you pay to become an ambassador?"

"After," he said, smiling slightly. "Not usually before. A man of no family might have to buy the place. But many noblemen have had to pay considerable sums, under some other pretext of course, to persuade the king
not
to send them to such places as Siam or Paraguay or Ethiopia." He shuddered delicately. "I for one cannot tolerate heat, or black men, or brown men—or Jews for that matter, but there is no Jewish capital, God be praised.... In this matter of the ambassadorship—well, I will tell you—Don Alfonso has asked me to produce some spectacular success against the smuggling from Gibraltar. As you know, many agents of the Tobacco Monopoly and the police and customs are involved in it, so to achieve success one must go outside them. I am particularly interested in some fast steam vessels recently built for the trade. I believe I am a member of the syndicate owning them, but of course it would not do to make any direct inquiries in that capacity, so I have approached an important English officer to obtain precise information about their proposed activities for me. Then, with a little threatening and bribery on my part—we shall strike. There will be a great success, just as Don Alfonso asked, and I shall go to London...

"More coffee, Count? A cake? ... Have I not seen your daughter riding through La Linea with Miss Kingsley, the daughter of the governor's military assistant, and a groom from the Calpe Hunt stables?"

The count's eyes flickered in recognition of her subtie method of indicating that she could guess who the "important English officer" was.

"Yes," he said. "Kitty is staying with Lord and Lady Howard for a week or two to hunt with the Calpe. My wife is not entirely happy about it."

"Lady Howard Kingsley is not as discreet as she might be."

"Precisely. She will set Kitty a strange example ... but I do need Lord Howard's help, so we could not refuse the invitation."

Pleasantly the talk drifted on. The count's occasional visits were always oases of calm for her. His yellow Daimler in the driveway, the chauffeur and postilion sitting outside a nearby tavern, guaranteed that there would be no interruptions.

The hands of the clock came back to twelve, the pages of the calendar to one. It began again ... Paco her lover, a drunken
juerga
with a half a dozen gypsies clapping and singing and herself dancing on the table, no drawers under her flaring skirt, and finally Paco taking her there, on the table, in front of all of them ... Tomas Lopez, the dockyard laborer ... Carlos Firpo, the contraband crewman ... Private Tamlyn of the 49th ... George Torrenti, Esquire, importer ... Lieutenant Colonel Lord Howard Kingsley of the Guards ... Don Pedro de Santangel y Barrachina, Count of Grazalema...

The hands of the clock came back to twelve, the pages of the calendar to one....

"I've been staying with the count," Lord Howard said. "Very pleasant, except that it was unseasonably hot. The count can't stand heat, y'know. But that was the only fly in the ointment. Excellent partridge shooting, though not up to Yorkshire grouse, of course ... good riding ... came down for a day with the Calpe once ... rattling good day, too, with a five-mile point, which is rare in this country. Kitty Santangel fell into a ditch. That gypsy groom, Paco, was up with the second horses for her and Clara, that's my daughter, and pulled her out."

"It was fortunate he was there," she said.

"Fortunate for him, too—the count gave him a hundred pesetas."

He was silent, puffing on his cigar.

She opened a newspaper she had kept on the escritoire and handed it to him. The headline was
British Smuggling Steamer Sunk. Captain killed, 2 crewmen wounded, 4 tons tobacco seized.
She said, "How did you get the information?"

"Just asked Torrenti. The reward to be a place at the royal dinner."

"It was a great success then, just as the count needed." Lord Howard did not seem very cheerful. "Not really, I fear. No one was supposed to open fire, but the Spanish had artillery ready and sank the ship. Some tobacco she had already landed was seized, the rest went down with her, not far off shore. But too many people have been offended. The success may have been too spectacular. The Spanish politicians are crowing, but our admiral is threatening to bombard Malaga. And the count has had to spend a vast sum of money in bribes...."

"I feel sorry for the wife of the poor man who was killed," she said.

"Great pity, that, because the gutter press in England's taken it up.... The ship should never have been lost, either. That was the captain's fault, backing off when he was holed instead of running her farther ashore. Then we could have got her back."

"Even though she was caught in the act of smuggling?"

"Good heavens, yes, m'dear. We just send a strong note demanding the return of our ship and have a battleship steam out of harbor. And the owners see that a suitable sum is passed to whoever's responsible for releasing the ship...

She listened, thinking, perhaps I could hire two
maricons
to do it to each other in the little room and get Lord Howard to watch through the secret mirror. If at the time he could be drunk, or could pretend to be drunk, then he could tell himself he was not responsible for what followed when the two men came in to join them. There'd be an orgy of sodomy. She would have to be there at the beginning, then she could leave, and Lord Howard could discover his true love.

"... Pablo Larios wants me to get Aboab into the royal dinner because of the hounds he gave, but I can't squeeze him in unless I squeeze someone else out."

Yes, there'd be a fine bout of buggery. Lord Howard would be deliriously happy, and the next day he'd shoot himself, and everyone would say he'd just discovered he had cancer. The English acted as though the fat writer Wilde had invented
mariconeria.

She looked surreptitiously at the clock, keeping her smile alert and interested.

"It was insured!" George Torrenti shouted.

"Against theft? Oh, you mean the ship, not your dog."

"Of course! But the particulars weren't correct. You can't get insurance if you say what the ship's really going to be used for, and now..."

"A man killed," she said.

"... Lloyd's won't pay. Do you realize how much we'll each lose? Thirty thousand pounds! And do you know who the papers say was behind the whole thing? The Count of Grazalema!"

"He is a great lord here," she said.

"Yes, but I've also just found out that the 'Pedro Perez' who's a member of our syndicate, and who we all thought was the cover name for a group of officers in the Tabacalera headquarters in Madrid, is not other than the Count of Grazalema! The rotten, lying intrigue of the Spaniards!"

"And the man killed," she said.

"But Lord Howard Kingsley's the one who's responsible for the loss of the ship and cargo as far as I'm concerned. Worming confidential information out of me and then passing it to the Spanish! Oh God, I should have stayed in the customs house side.... And he promised he would get the ship back, but she's sunk!"

"And the man killed."

"Well, I'm sleeping with Lady Howard! That'll teach him. I approached her the next day. He was still up in Ronda with the count I was terrified, because, well, she is a duke's sister-in-law, but I was so angry that I could do it"

"Does she—punish you?" Dolores asked.

"She'll do anything as long as I make love to her, too.... And I'm getting half a dozen of us together, the most important merchants in Gibraltar, and we're going to write an official letter to the Admiralty in England, hinting that Lord Howard gave away British naval secrets to the Spanish. And we'll send a copy to the
Times.
The scandal will break while the prince and princess are here. He'll never be made comptroller at Buckingham Palace."

"And you'll never be invited to the Convent," she said. "Oh God, I suppose not," he said, relapsing into uncertainty. "It's a... a
damned bad show
all round."

"Especially for the man killed," she said.

Today her caning of him served as a release for a sudden venomous hatred of men in general and George Torrenti in particular. Further, she felt physically queasy. So she whipped with tight-lipped, precise force, the cane whistling, the livid welts springing up exactly superimposed. She broke a cane and took another. Torrenti's moans and prayers for release grew louder. She aimed carefully low and hit his testicles twice as he was ejaculating. He began to writhe and scream like a trapped animal then, but she took another cane and kept up the savage, whistling cuts until his buttocks were purple and white and dripping blood all the way across. Then she flung the cane away, rushed into the bathroom, and vomited.

Dolores Falcon was not looking well, the deputy chief of police thought. That young Paco Santangel had been beating her, probably. And her request was an unusual one. Still, it was not for him to inquire into the secret life of high-class courtesans, and on general grounds her request should be granted. She had been good to the police—paid well and punctually, given extra presents when there was sickness or a new baby, never caused scandal or noise except sometimes when Paco took his friends to the house.

"As long as it is no important official of the British government who could make trouble for us in his turn…" he said.

"No. It's a merchant, very rich," she said. "But that must be forgotten."

"Perfectly. We shall hear from you?"

"In a week or so."

The police officer smiled, pocketed the envelope—it was a good deal thicker than usual—and bowed out.

Private Tamlyn came half an hour later, and Juana brought beer. "I've asked for my discharge," he said, almost before he had sat down. "The colonel says he wouldn't stand in my way even if he could. I've done me time, and nobbut a week to go before I could sign on again, but I won't. An' the colonel says he'll recommend me for policeman in the dockyard. They like old soldiers there. They can't hire the Gibraltar folk because they'd never arrest each other. I saw the officer in charge of the police, and he said if I applied when I was discharged, he'd take me on if the colonel recommended me."

"So it's all arranged. When are you getting married?" His long face set into a remote hardness. "Next month," he said.

"Did the colonel give you his blessing?"

"Lor' no! He called me everything but 'darling,' miss.

Offered to send me back to Blighty sick. Said these Gibraltar women were useless to man or beast. But I said I had to stay. He thought it was to do right by Luisa and shook my hand and said I was only a private soldier but a natural gentleman." His voice softened. "But it's to be near you I'm staying, that's the only truth on it."

She thought, that poor woman he marries is going to have a really dreadful life. She had partly brought it on herself, but still...

"I was telling you about Tofrek last time," he said. "About the fuzzie-wuzzies and how they couldn't break our square...."

"When was this?" she asked, a little dazed.

"I don't know, miss. Not long, 'cos there's plenty of long service men now was there. But it's the Frogs
I'd
like to fight. Wish I'd a few in front of my bayonet right now, that I do. I'd teach 'em to stick out their dirty tongues at England, and the king and queen, and..."