The Dud Avocado (27 page)

It was unmade for her a few seconds later, when they let off some fireworks, and Angela, whose nerves are understandably jumpy about such noises, leaped ten feet in the air every time one went off.

That made Robin’s evening.

So, then we drove to another mountaintop, a place called Béhobie. It’s really one of the most beautiful old villages I’ve ever seen, and under most circumstances I would have been moved to tears, but as I say, it was one of those evenings.

Bax’s spirits, however, soared like an eagle at the sight of all that texture on the old walls and doors and steep winding streets, and by the time we’d found a picturesque little bar in which to have a nightcap he was his old affable, co-operative, smiling self. It was nice to have him back. It made me realize that he was probably the only genuinely nice person in the whole group. Amongst us all he stands out like a good deed in a bad world, as they say.

Missy was bored and sulky and sleepy. No one was paying any attention to her, not even Larry, who was trying so hard to put himself across with the Directors it hurt.

Angela was flinging back her nightcaps fast and furiously.

“Ouch!” she shrieked, suddenly executing another one of her leaps. “Goddammit, don’t do that!” Stefan, in a fit of abstraction, had absent-mindedly pinched her.

“What is it?” he asked, surprised. I don’t think he even realized what he’d done.

“You pinched me,” said Angela contemptuously. She turned to Bax. “I do hate being pinched so much, it’s not
true
, don’t you agree? One doesn’t mind being slapped or punched, I quite enjoy it as a matter of fact. But pinching, ugh! It’s so
piddling
” All at once she became very coy, opening her eyes wide and saying in the voice of an excited child, “I adore violence. I think the
spectacle of two strong men pounding each other around the ring is the most picturesque and alluring thing in the world. Do you box? I hope so, you’d be magnificent.”

She’s a handful, that babe. Bax just goggled at her. She really baffles him. He can’t figure out if she’s kidding or what. I thought I’d better come to his rescue. Besides, I don’t trust old Angela.

“Let’s dance,” I whispered to Bax. The bartender had put on some dreamy French records and I love dancing with Bax. He’s much taller than I am but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. He sort of folds himself around me and we dance so well together I don’t talk at all.

We went out on the terrace and looked down at the lights of towns far, far below, and he kissed me.

At first I couldn’t seem to keep my mind on it, but then I thought of what a picturesque and alluring spectacle we must be making, locked in each others’ arms high on a mountaintop in the moonlight, and how furious Angela would be if she could see us, and how I might be kissing a future famous
movie star
, and it just worked wonders. I’m a real celebrity-hound.

Just before the party broke up, Plinn-Jones gave us the name of the hotel that the Bullfighter was staying at and told us to be there by 6:30 the following Monday. “Till then,” he called out as the four of us climbed into the old Citroen for the long drive home. It passed in unbroken silence, each of us heavy with his own thoughts.

I’ll bet the only thing we were unanimously agreed upon was to stay out of their way till then.

May 28
Tuesday

M
ANUELO SANCHEZ, “EL WHEERO”
(that may not be spelled right; it’s the first time I’ve tried) was waiting for us in the lobby of his vast hotel. The first thing that struck me about him, sitting there so gravely in the middle of his Quadrille, was the air of tragic solemnity surrounding him. The second thing was how he gleamed. He was the cleanest person I’ve ever seen. He had the cleanest ears and the cleanest hairline and his teeth matched his shirt in whiteness. His skin was burnished brown and his hair water-black.

We all shook hands, Bax, Larry and I, Wheero and his gang, and the next thing I knew I was in the chair beside him, an enormous Cadillac brochure across my knees from which I was supposed to choose the one I liked best. There must have been about five hundred cars. They all had names like horses. I finally chose Sand and Sable. El Wheero looked at it for a minute and then flipped over to the one he preferred. He asked me what I liked better about mine and I said “It’s bigger.” We laughed.

From that moment on everything changed. His tragedy vanished and my nervousness with it. He began laughing at me and I began laughing at him laughing at me and it went on like that until we reached the stage where practically everything is unbearably funny, especially if it isn’t.

“Me gustan mucho los Chestairs!” he announced, triumphantly producing a pack of American cigarettes and offering me one. We sobbed with glee. Then, as if that wasn’t funny enough he added, “Me gusta mucho whiskey.” That destroyed us.

It occurred to me vaguely that he was being quite unlike my
preconceived idea of a bullfighter, but I couldn’t even remember what that was. I know I’d been worried about the language barrier. I hadn’t dreamed it would be so easy to get over. He had a vocabulary of about eighty English words and I had a Spanish vocabulary of none. But we got along like a house on fire.

Dinner was a riot. We threw pellets of bread across the table at each other and made airplanes out of the menus and sent them sailing around the dining room. Then we had a really great idea. We were going to put a pat of butter on the end of a knife and use the knife as a catapult to see if the butter would stick to the ceiling. But Larry stopped us, so we flipped water at each other with our spoons instead.

Bax and Larry thought we’d gone crazy. I don’t know what the Quadrille thought, except it was clear that anything old Wheero wanted to do was O.K. with them. They were all twice his age, but if he’d been the King of the Underworld, they couldn’t have been more under his thumb. Unwritten law of the bullring.

We drove off to Béhobie in the lavender Cadillac with the hood down, Wheero and I sitting on top, our feet on the back seat, waving to the cars that passed and nearly falling off at every corner.

We found the little bar we’d been to the other night and started playing some more games. We took the labels off beer-bottles and put them on everybody’s wallets, sticky side up, and threw them at the ceiling so that the labels stuck there and the wallets came clattering down all over the drinks on the table.

El Wheero suddenly asked me if I liked ice and I said yes and he took a piece out of his whisky glass and dropped it down the front of my dress.

So I gave him a hot-foot.

Then I had to try to teach him how to do it on one of his Quadrille, a gnarled monkey-faced old man of infinite patience who held his foot politely in position while Wheero kept putting the match in his shoe the wrong way round.

Then we sang that song about the Sinking of the Ship Titanic
(Wheero had learned it from students in Mexico) and after that we started dancing. Then I told him how I’d run away from school when I was thirteen to become a bullfighter and he said he’d loan me one of his bullfighter’s costumes so I could have a picture taken of me wearing it. We measured each other to see if we were near enough the same size for it to fit me and were laughing so hard we had to sit down.

Suddenly, from nowhere, Stefan and Les Anglais appeared.

They sailed over to our table in formation, so to speak, spearheaded by Angela, undulating like the prow of a ship, pouring in and out of her dress, which was showing a great deal of arms and breasts, Rubensquely pink from her few days in the sun. Her expression was prouder and angrier and more disconsolate than ever.

It was quite a sight, come to think of it, though nothing compared to the sight of the Spaniards reacting to it.

She started a chain of emotion, beginning with Wheero and going around the Quadrille in ever-increasing circles of intensity, that made the air positively ring with cries of Wappa! and Wappissima! (when I was able to hold the monkey man’s attention long enough I made him write it down for me and he spelled out ¡guapa! on the tablecloth). Anyway the air was ringing with cries of ¡guapa! and ¡guapissima! for quite some time.

Boy, they were really galvanized. Inflamed. Stirred to the roots.

And what’s even harder to believe—and hardest of all to admit —is that: from that second on, I became invisible.

Angela spoke Spanish, which was a help, but that had nothing to do with it. They just went for her, that’s all. Every inch of her. They couldn’t believe their luck. They poked and prodded and patted her; they filled her with champagne; they nudged each other, shaking their heads in wonder. The few words they addressed to anyone else were merely to thank us for their great good fortune.

Angela herself was less pleased than surprised. “I simply don’t understand it. Christ, what a racket they’re making,” she said to me in what could hardly be called an aside. And, sniffing con
temptuously three times, she re-inclined her head toward El Wheero, pouring out his heart in rapid Spanish to her other ear.

“It’s
too
funny,” she said to me after a while, again in her normal tones, which are a lot louder than most. “He keeps breathing ‘que barbaridad’ passionately all over me. Don’t you just adore ‘que barbaridad’? Imagine hoping to flatter one by calling one an
outrage!
”

I maintained a dignified silence.

From then on she kept me well briefed with the progress of his infatuation.

“He’s invited me to dine with him every night this week.…”

“He’s invited me to the next bullfight. He says he’ll dedicate a bull to me.…”

“He’s just asked me to the Feria at Malaga.…”

“He’s just asked me down to his bull-ranch outside Seville. Goodness! He’ll expect me to meet his mother next.…”

“He says I’ll adore Spain. Apparently everyone in Spain is mad about large women. That’s something, anyway. Still, rather you than me. Now for God’s sake don’t desert me!” she said, suddenly clutching at my arm.

The Spaniards, unable to control themselves any longer, were determined to bear her off to some other Spaniards who owned a night club in Biarritz.

Angela and I got into the lavender Cadillac with them. The rest followed on.

It was a long drive. Even in the car they all kept trying to talk to her at once. I let the language flow around me, understanding nothing. The top was still down, the night was still warm, and as I looked up at the endless stars I tried to tell myself that my life wasn’t completely over; that there were other things in the world besides a small, faithless bullfighter. There was nature, for instance. There were the snails in our garden in the sunshine. I tried to think of some other nice things, but I couldn’t. There would be other bullfighters, I said to myself. But I want
this
one, I replied. I was just making up my mind to learn Spanish as quickly as possible when I realized with a jolt that one part
of my brain was following along their conversation exactly as if it were in English.

To Angela: “Marida?”

Angela: “Divorciada.”

“Y los chicos?”

“Ningunos.”

What happened next is astonishing. Although I can’t remember ever really hearing Spanish before last night, in the highly technical discussion of Birth Control that followed, I caught every word. I mean it. Every single word. Angela, who was still shouting bulletins at me, started to bring me up to date, but I told her not to bother. Boy! I really surprised myself. Then they got: on to another subject and I was lost again.

“He’s got a point there, you know,” Angela roared suddenly.

“Who? Where?” I’d completely switched off.

“The one in the corner.
You
know. The one who isn’t a
complete
idiot.”

I winced with my whole body.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Have I done anything wrong? Do tell me, I’ve
such
an inferiority complex about offending people.”

“Stop talking about them like that,” I whispered fiercely. “They do understand English, you know.”

Angela looked at me as if I’d suggested they were the boys behind the Oxford Dictionary. “They’re Spaniards,” she said, dismissing the whole fantasy. “Of course they can’t understand. Incidentally their Spanish is quite good for gypsies. I suppose they
are
gypsies, aren’t they?”

I just groaned.

We arrived at the night club and Angela created her usual Spanish riot—too pointless and painful to describe—all over again.

Then the Flamencos came over to our table and started singing at us.

“Good gracious,” said Angela, “they’re singing about me.”

“What are they singing about you?” I asked between clenched teeth.

“Well … it’s something about the beautiful Angela has come all the way to France and we hope she enjoys herself and stays
a long time and.… Oh really, it’s too ridiculous—they’re hopeless, aren’t they? I say, do look at that one! Hasn’t he got the sexiest bottom you’ve ever seen? But still not one of them looks
anything
as good as your friend Bix, do they?”

“Bax,” I spat at her. “
Ax, ax, ax
,” I added insanely.

Stefan was baffled. “I don’t understand it. I simply don’t understand it,” he kept saying in amazement, over and over again.

“They like
fat
women, that’s all,” I snapped.

He was thunderstruck. “But of course. Of course they do!” He hit his forehead with his fist. “I’d forgotten all about that. Well, Angela can coach him in English then. Sorry it lets you out, but it saves us money, eh Basil?”

“I say, steady on,” murmured Plinn-Jones.

“What’s that? What do you mean?” I asked indignantly. “I don’t want to coach him in English!”

Stefan looked quickly at Larry, who frowned back.

“Just a minute,” I said slowly. “Who said anything about teaching him English?” It was coming back to me now. Larry at the door of the office and Plinn-Jones saying to him, “Well, if she wants to do it we’re delighted,” and Larry answering, “Of course she will. Just let me handle it.”

I rose. “Bax, I’m going. Will you take me home please?”