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Obediently I pulled the huge warm woolly garment over my head. Then I watched him dip his hand into his trouser pocket and extract the oiled silk envelope of first aid kit which, because of the risk of infection, we’re all supposed to carry everywhere. He broke the seal.

‘I don’t suppose you brought yours, did you?’

I shook my head. It would not fit in my handbag and it would have bulged the pocket of my suit. It seemed such a foolish vanity—as if James Fitzgerald would have noticed.

He gave me a funny little smile, half reproving, half tender because he was sorry for me, not just because I was hurt, but for other things. ‘If you promise not to yell,’ he said, treating me deliberately, it seemed, like a child or a younger sister, ‘I’ll buy you an extra drink on the aircraft.’ Then he dabbed the ugly graze of my hand with yellow liquid from the tiny plastic phial. He stopped suddenly, puzzled by the weak silly tears that sprang into my eyes.

‘Does it hurt that much?' he asked gently.

I shook my head. I had suddenly discovered another pain, deeper and unhealable. And that pain hurt like hell.

The grazed hand, but not the deep inner hurt, healed rapidly. Within a week there was only a blurred pink scar on my wrist, like some faded rose petal, to remind me of an ill-fated day out. I kept my eyes averted from it as my fingers flew over the typewriter, as I averted them from James Fitzgerald. I was conscious that time flew past too. The days, and now the weeks, of my secondment, were dwindling. Soon I would be back in the sobriety of my London office. There would be no handsome Don Ramón to sweep me literally off my feet with an unforgettable kiss, no stern Head of Chancery to bring me firmly back to earth. No dizzy altitude, no scorching sun. No romantic Charaguayans to perpetuate their myths of romance and reckless love. No magic.

For sad though I would be to leave this enchanting country, it was the therapy of London and the small cubicle of an office where I worked, that I needed. I had become enchanted, like Charaguay itself. I had become a person of vast contradictions, split in two. That night, at the Hacienda del Ortega, I had, for a few brief seconds, tasted a love which I had never thought would come my way, exciting, and all-embracing, a love for story books, and little Inca princesses, a love that made me weak and helpless and compliant. I had known then what it was like to touch the height of a romantic attraction that must be love. And yet on the mountainside at Belanga, lying on the pine needles with my head aching, my pride hurt and my hand grazed, I had felt such a comfort in, such a feeling of protection from my tough Head of Chancery, that I was conscious of a feeling equally tender, equally sure. And even more impossible.

And though I saw less of James Fitzgerald now that H.E. was back in command, he was a constant reminder to my contradictory heart. I think he must have perceived my pain. In typical style, he took what he considered the necessary action and decided to cauterise the wound, to be cruel to be kind.

He summoned me into Chancery exactly one week after our Belanga trip. The day for once was overcast. A fine grey curtain of cloud covered the sky. The sun glowed like an orange in a gauze bag. The air was heavy and thundery.

‘Sit down, Miss Bradley,’ he waved me to the chair opposite. I was glad that I wasn’t sitting beside him, glad too that my face was in shadow. He smiled gently, ‘How’s the hand?’

‘Fine, thank you.’ I held it up to him. I tried to smile gaily back. ‘I don’t think I’ll be scarred for life.’ But that was so inept and so untrue that I stopped smiling.

He frowned slightly, as though he too thought it a foolish remark. Perhaps he was reminded of Eve, who’d had a
really
serious accident and yet remained brave and smiling and untearful.

‘The M.O.’s given you the O.K. too, I hear?’

‘Yes.’ I shrugged. ‘It was nothing really.’ I was lying again. It had been everything. The damage done that day was irrevocable. ‘You did a good job, thank you,’ I added stiltedly.

‘Oh, they train us for every occasion,’ he replied in a jocular voice, that was somehow not like him at all. And then to himself, ‘Or at least almost every occasion.’ He didn’t elaborate.

I said nothing.

‘We certainly wouldn’t have wanted another secretary casualty.’ I could sense we were coming round to a subject near to his supposedly locked heart. I was depressingly right. 'First Eve, and then you.’ He grinned as if he felt himself on firmer ground.

I forced myself to smile back.

‘How is Eve?’

‘Getting along well. The doctors tell me they’ve rarely seen a fracture mend so well.’

‘Good.’

A bitter comment sprang to my lips, but I bit it back, shocked at my own heartlessness. ‘She’ll be back soon then?’

‘Oh, it’ll be a little while yet,’ he glanced over one of the drawers in his desk and brought out an envelope. ‘But she’s really beginning to sit up and take notice. She wants to know everything that’s going on.’

I nodded.

‘There are some letters here from various people, and some new directives she’d like to see. I thought now is the time you might run along and say hello—this afternoon. I’ve cleared it with H.E.’ He paused. ‘She’ll be able to give you a few tips, now that she’s feeling up to it.’

A subtle expression momentarily altered his face as he said those last words. I had realised early on that he was a man of utter integrity. There was more to this visit than to cheer Eve, or for me to gather useful tips. Perhaps Eve had requested to see this inept girl who had stepped into her seven-league boots. Or most likely of all, James Fitzgerald had sensed this dawning unwelcome attachment in me, and had decided with all possible speed to nip it in the bud, by making me meet the woman with whom he was really in love.

One of H.E.’s favourite proverbs—and he had many— was to the effect that hope springs eternal in the human breast. Against all logic, it sprang that afternoon in mine.

Weighed down, more in spirit than physically, by messages of tender sympathy from the staff, by a large box of chocolates from H.E., and an interesting-looking parcel from James Fitzgerald, I left the Embassy at four o’clock, early because, as the Head of Chancery euphemistically said, it was business as well as pleasure. Therapy too, though he didn’t say that aloud.

A light wind had sprung up, and the sky was clearing. The sun shone fitfully but bright. I bought a bunch of the same golden roses I’d seen Mr. Fitzgerald buy outside the Embassy, and decided to walk the short distance to the Clinic. It is a downhill slope and the street is lined with sweet-scented heavily-blossomed trees. Then across the park and past the children playing, past the cafe where Don Ramon and I had met, and then to the tall new buildings that faced the park, and the gleaming glass front of the Clinic in the middle. I was tormented by this foolish upspringing hope all the way. I kept thinking maybe Eve would be less beautiful, less attractive, less perfect than people had told me. After all, Mr. Fitzgerald had pointed out that no one was perfect. And though he had gone on depressingly to say that one loved people for their faults, the fact remained, no one was. And beauty, as H.E. sometimes said, was in the eye of the beholder.

I pushed open the wide glass doors of the American- style Clinic. Behind the reception desk, a smart middle- aged Charaguayan lady in a little white starched cap bade me
Buenos dias
, and enquired, '
Que desea?’

Her smile widened when I said, ‘Senorita Eve Trent,
por favor.'

I would find the
senorita
on the first floor, Room Seven. She would be out on the balcony, and if I went up in the lift immediately I would be in time to partake with her of English tea.

A black and chrome lift quietly wafted me with all due speed up to the first floor. Room Seven was directly opposite. I crossed the rubber-floored landing and knocked.

A silvery voice, faint but sweet, bade me enter.

I closed the door quietly behind me and stood uncertainly for a moment. The room was of clinical comfort. There was a hospital bed with a white cover neatly made up, but the floor and the rest of the furniture were of polished pine. There were masses of flowers everywhere. The far wall was an entire sliding window, open now on to the tiled balcony beyond.

Out on the balcony, head turned towards the park, a figure reclined in a chair, one plastered leg supported by a footrest. A dark shapely head was inclined towards the park. I heard the tinkle of a tea cup being replaced. The silvery voice called gaily, ‘I’m out here, darling. I’ll ring for another cup. I didn’t see you coming.’ Then as I cleared my throat, the silvery voice acquired a slightly frosty edge. ‘Who is it?’

I walked quickly across the intervening polished floor, but before I’d time to announce myself she turned. Any frail hopes that I might have nourished that Miss Trent would be less attractive than I’d heard were immediately dashed. I looked down into a face whose beauty would be apparent to any eye. The face was delicately heart-shaped, the eyes almond, dark-fringed and emerald green. The nose was classic and chiselled, the mouth small and a perfect cupid’s bow. Those lips moved now into an amused smile, I glimpsed small white even teeth. ‘Oh, it’s
you’
she said.

‘I’m Madeleine Bradley,’ I said.

‘I know.’ The green eyes scanned me with frank interest from head to foot. I felt conscious that my hair, with its irrepressible wave, must look unruly beside her smooth black shining fringe and elegantly cut bob.

I handed her the flowers and the chocolates, and the envelope, and the interesting-looking parcel. I asked her if she was feeling better.

‘Much better, thank you.’ The way she said it made me think her inspection of me had improved her spirits enormously. ‘You’re quite different from what I expected,’ she volunteered.

I said nothing, simply because that is the sort of remark to which there is no real reply.

‘Different from the way James described you,’ she added.

Foolishly I asked, ‘How did he describe me?’

‘Amusingly.’

I was cut to the quick. I asked her in a muffled voice if she’d like me to put the flowers in water, but she said, ‘Oh, no, one of the staff will be in in a moment. I don’t even know where there’s room to put them. They’re very nice, though. My favourite. James must have told you. Now do sit down and let’s talk.’

She waved me to a chair, placed there no doubt ready for Mr. Fitzgerald’s evening visit. There was a pair of binoculars on the seat of the chair. ‘Oh, just dump those on the table. I amuse myself occasionally by watching the people in the park.’ The pretty lips smiled. ‘You’d be surprised how far you can see.’

So it had after all been Eve who had told Mr. Fitzgerald about my lunch-time meeting in the park with Don Ramón? But, if so, why? And why if not for that, had Hester apologised?

‘I hear you’ve also been in the wars,’ Eve said, when I had recounted the messages from the rest of the Embassy staff, and I’d exhausted my repertoire of Embassy anecdotes, including her favourites, those in which I appeared in an inept and unflattering light.

‘Mr. Fitzgerald told you, did he?’ I asked, staring down at that rose-petal scar on my wrist with embarrassment.

‘James? Yes, he tells me most of what goes on.'

‘He was very kind,’ I said.

‘He would be. He’s a hard taskmaster, but kind.’ Her beautiful eyes narrowed. ‘But if you want a little advice from me .. .'

I didn’t. Oh, how I didn’t! But I knew irrevocably that I was going to get it.

‘Don’t get any ideas.'

‘What sort of ideas?’ I asked, staring back, my face flushing.

‘Ideas of confusing kindness with ...'

‘With what?’

‘Anything else.'

‘For instance?’

‘Love, for instance. James is very much James. His heart is …' She tossed the little paper parcel in her hand.

‘Locked like his precious Chancery,' I replied bitterly and angrily. I got to my feet.

She looked at me in cool amusement. She opened her pretty lips to make a perfect retort, but I was spared. Another knock came on her door, a perfunctory one, as of someone entering by right. Mr. Fitzgerald, I was sure, blushing deeper in anticipation.

A tall gangly man in a white coat walked in. He appeared in the balcony doorway. He looked through me as though I were the invisible woman herself, or made of the same material as the windows. ‘We-ell,’ he asked the ever-popular, ever-sought-after Eve in a drawling Canadian voice, ‘and how’s my little patient this p.m.?'

I made my unseen escape, uncalled-after, unfarewelled. I dashed the tears from my eyes in the silent, too swift-moving lift. I was determinedly dry-eyed and composed as I bade goodbye to the smiling receptionist.
‘Hasta la vista'
she bade me. ‘Come back soon.’

Never, I thought, never. I had been to the Clinic. The wound had been cauterised. But never would I return. Never would I feel even a little in love again. I might have added with equal certainty, and never would the man I loved be in love with me.

‘Never is a word which never appears in the Charaguayan vocabulary,’ Don Ramón teased in reply to my murmured, ‘I thought you never came here these days?’

The occasion was the Residence reception the following Saturday. Don Ramón had just been received, kissed Mrs. Mallenport’s hand, clicked his heels to H.E., bowed low over Hester’s hand and not quite kissed it in the strictest manner of Charaguayans towards unmarried girls, or maybe because they disliked each other. Then he had come over to where I stood helping Chico to hand out the glasses. He had laughed that I was surprised to see him.

‘Even you level-headed British,’ Don Ramón went on, ‘say, not till pigs fly instead of never. And now, pouff, pigs fly every day. So if it can happen in sensible Britain, it can happen here in magic Charaguay.’ He raised the glass I handed him. ‘Nothing is changeless, so even the impossible is possible.’ He smiled, but his eyes were nervously bright, as if this evening was in some way very important to him.