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‘We keep them in all the visitors’ rooms,’ Mrs. Mallenport said, sitting herself on my bed while I washed and tidied myself. ‘But in no time you’ll find you get as used to the altitude as Hester and James. Ah, I can see them. They’re just coming from the courts. Hester is waving. She’s giving me the thumbs up. They’ve won—how nice! Hester likes to win.’

I came through from the bathroom. Tactfully I nodded, but did not say I had already formed that opinion myself.

‘And now come along, my dear, and meet some of our other nice friends.’

Mrs. Mallenport led the way down the polished staircase, across the hall and through a sparsely furnished but elegant room, ‘Where we receive, dear, when it’s a formal do. Usually people stand, so we don’t have too much furniture, and if it’s fine, which it usually is, we spill out on to the terrace.’ She opened the glass doors, in demonstration, and stepped out into the sunlight.

Immediately we were the cynosure of every eye. The buzz of conversation diminished. Cups seemed to pause in mid-air.

‘Don’t worry, dear,’ Mrs. Mallenport reassured me softly. ‘Everyone is just a tiny bit homesick, though they wouldn’t admit it for worlds. So the arrival of anyone from the U>K. is always interesting.’

‘Even me?’ I asked, used to almost total anonymity at the Foreign Office.

‘Oh, especially you, dear.’ Regally and unhurriedly she walked down the flight of shallow steps that led from the terrace to the lawn.

Mrs. Mallenport was not a diplomat’s wife for nothing. She did not tell me why,
especially
me. But I guessed from my brief conversation with James Fitzgerald and Hester.

Because Eve Trent was such a paragon of virtue that they all wondered how on earth I was going to live up to her.

‘Frankly, I wouldn’t give it a thought,’ said the man in the deck chair beside me, whom Mrs. Mallenport had introduced as Alex Ashford, Aid, Third Embassy Secretary. ‘Eve is Eve, and no one could be like her.’ He himself had brought up the subject by saying when we shook hands, ‘So you’re Eve’s replacement! Well, well. Poor you!’

I taxed him with that remark after he’d waved me to his chair at the edge of a group of people watching the tennis—James and Hester had gone on to the next round—and pulled up another for himself.

Mr. Ashford asked me if I minded a pipe and took several unhurried puffs at it before answering. I looked at him speculatively. He seemed a kindly, easy-going sort of chap, a little above medium height, sandyhaired, raw-boned, freckled. A few years older than James Fitzgerald, perhaps, and certainly wiser. The kind of man who’d be good to show a newcomer the ropes— as Mrs. Mallenport had obviously thought when she left me in his care.

‘I reckon it’s always rough,’ Alex Ashford spoke at last, ‘to follow someone who never puts a foot wrong.’

I looked down at my own feet, now nervously planted on the Residence’s razored lawn. From the moment I had landed in Charaguay they had managed to put themselves wrong.

‘What he really means,’ a rather extraordinary-looking girl, who wore her hair in a mass of little corkscrew curls, leaned forward—I think Mrs. Mallenport had said she was Morag Cameron, the V.S.O., but she didn’t look old and responsible enough to be doing the work I knew she had done among the shoeshine boys, ‘is that she’s also got the face of an angel and wits of the devil.’ The girl spoke with a soft sweet Highland lilt that scarcely fitted the trenchancy of her words.

‘No, I most certainly did not mean anything of the kind, Morag!’

‘He’s too diplomatic to say it, but it is so.’

The girl winked at me. She had a broad face with a snub nose and a long determined upper lip. Her face was without make-up and she wore a long skirt and a loose smock blouse of a kind I’d have expected to see more along the King’s Road than at a Residence At Home. My heart warmed to her.

‘You’re spending too long, Morag,’ Alex Ashford eyed her fondly, ‘with those lying, thieving, romancing little brats of yours. You’re getting to exaggerate like the Charaguayans.’ And turning to me, ‘Morag runs a hostel for the shoeshine boys.’

I nodded. ‘So I’ve heard. The second steward on our aircraft today used to be one.’

Morag looked pleased. ‘Did he manage to talk with you? These lads don’t have much English.’

‘No, I was told it by another passenger—a man who sat beside me. A Charaguayan.’

‘Gould he by any chance have been tall, dark and disgracefully handsome?’ She winked at Ashford Aid, who looked straight ahead, puffing contentedly at his pipe.

I smiled and nodded.

‘Was he also charming, flattering and high-handed?’

‘He was charming and flattering,’ I said. ‘And no more high-handed,’ I thought bitterly of Mr. Fitzgerald, ‘than some other men.’

‘But in a word, he was Don Ramon de Carradedas?'

I nodded. I told them of the circumstances of our meeting. But I omitted, because it was still raw, my new boss’s reaction to that meeting.

‘I’d heard that Don Ramón was returning,’ Morag said slowly.

‘Has he been away long?’ I asked.

‘Just a few weeks. He was supposed to have had an unhappy love affair . . .'

‘Gossip, Morag, pure gossip!' Ashford Aid took his pipe out of his mouth.

‘It would seem he’s recovered, and is looking around for new distractions.’

Mr. Ashford clicked his tongue reprovingly, ‘Morag, Morag! Don’t tell me that what Don Ramón is up to has taken precedence over your latest mystery?’

Morag laughed and shook her curly head. She winked at me again.

‘What mystery?’ I asked her.

‘The latest triangle.' She smiled. ‘And speak of the devil, they’ve finished their game.’

‘Who?’

‘Hester and James Fitzgerald.’ Morag stood up to her full five feet nothing and shaded her eyes with her hand. ‘They’ve won again. That was the final. Good for them! Gould it be,’ she rested her hand on Mr. Ashford’s shoulder, ‘an omen?’

‘Morag,’ Mr. Ashford said, turning to me as if acting as an interpreter, ‘is very curious to know who will win another sort of game. You girls are always very inquisitive and romantic. But out here in Charaguay, trebly so.’

‘What game?’

‘The love game,' Morag answered, sitting down and spreading her voluminous skirt around her. ‘Hester’s had a good rally, but I fear she’s going to lose the next set.' She jerked her curly head towards three figures on the other side of the lawn. James Fitzgerald was walking over to Mrs. Mallenport, manifestly about to take his leave. Hester was lagging behind, digging her racquet into the smooth turf, her whole posture rebelliously angry.

‘He’s going back, I bet you. To the Clinic,' Morag said. ‘To hold Eve’s wee hand.'

‘Very laudable of him,' said Mr. Ashford. ‘No fun for Eve being laid up for weeks on end. He’s been most conscientious.’

‘It’s not that at all,' Morag laughed. ‘He’s always popping in to see her. Our hostel’s just by the Clinic. I’ve seen him often. He’s in love with Eve, and Hester makes it only too clear that she’s in love with him. I’m just curious to see who wins.’

When the last of the tennis guests had gone home, Mrs. Mallenport packed me, not unwillingly, off to an early bed.

‘You’ll be tired after your journey,' she said. ‘You’ll have a number of late nights while you’re here. The Charaguayans are great night birds. I should rest while you can. Chico will bring you up supper on a tray.’ So I retired to my little room to bath and unpack. Darkness had descended with a swiftness I had never before witnessed. A great unclouded moon shone just past its full. It hung just above the feathery tops of the banana trees, far brighter and far closer than it had ever done at home. I changed into my housecoat, opened my window and walked on to the small balcony. Bullfrogs croaked in the dark garden over by the lily pond and the little statued fountain. Huge moths fluttered round the security lights that flanked the drive. Something, a bird or some tropical animal, scuffled and squeaked among, the dry palm leaves.

Beyond the Residence walls I could hear the shuffle of feet and laughter as Quicha came alive for the second half of the day. The shops, Mrs. Mallenport had told me, stay open till midnight, and Charaguayans rarely retire before the small hours. Cars were out in force too, talking to each other with their horns, shouting insults or laughing or playing little tunes. Lights shone everywhere, shimmering against the dark flank of the mountain.

I could even smell the roasted chestnuts from the street stalls and the hot seafood delicacies of which Charaguayans are apparently so fond. It seemed a lifetime, I thought nostalgically, thinking of all the complications I seemed to have arrived to since I’d had lunch aboard the aircraft with that most charming of all Charaguayans, Don Ramón.

When the knock sounded on my door, it was not his compatriot Chico, but Hester herself.

‘I thought I’d save Chico’s legs,’ she said, depositing the tray and then sitting herself down on my dressing- table stool. ‘Besides, there’s a message from James.'

She pointed. There was an envelope resting beside the plate which held a dainty concoction that looked like prawns in aspic. The writing on it was neat and bold and clearly legible, and the sight of it quite removed my appetite. I wondered what other enormity I had committed. Perhaps Ashford Aid was an undesirable person with a highly coloured reputation. Or Morag’s comments had reached his ears. Or the Military Attache had objected to something I’d said.

‘I can’t think what he wants to say to you that’s so private he couldn’t tell
me
,’ Hester said, tossing her head and then picking up my file and attending to her nails. The expression on her face said clearly, ‘But I mean to find out.’

I opened the envelope. An errant hope suddenly uplifted my morale. Mr. Fitzgerald might consider that he had spoken over-harshly to me considering the circumstances. Maybe he had talked over my arrival with Eve Trent and she had put in a good word for me of womanly explanation. Or Eve Trent was now much better and my services would not be required. I could go back to the safety (and something inside me told me I was going to need that safety) of my quiet life at home.

‘Well?’ Hester prompted after a moment. ‘Is it anything to do with Eve?’

‘No.’

‘Is it an invitation from James Fitzgerald, then?’

‘If,’ I said drily, ‘you can call a summons to Chancery to meet him at nine sharp tomorrow an invitation, then an invitation it is.’

Hester gave a little trill of laughter. She relaxed. She seemed to warm to me, perhaps as an ally, against the perfect Miss Trent. ‘I told you he was a tyrant, didn’t I?’ She looked at her reflection in the mirror. ‘He’s terribly sweet underneath, though.’

Drily I asked, ‘How far underneath?’ which I shouldn’t have done. She let out another trill of mischievous laughter. If she repeated that remark to Mr. Fitzgerald I would certainly not get that one hundred per cent for loyalty and tact.

‘Seriously, though ' She lifted my comb and ran it through a strand of that coppery hair, ‘How did you get off to such a bad start with James? He was in a frightful bait, though being James he doesn’t show it.’

‘He gave me some slight indication,’ I said.

She laughed at the dryness of my tone again, but she looked surprised. ‘Did he say
why
?’

‘Yes, he did,’ I tied the sash of my housecoat in a fierce knot. ‘In no uncertain terms.’

‘Well, go on,’ she prompted impatiently.

‘I met a certain Charaguayan gentleman on the aircraft to whom your Mr. Fitzgerald took exception.’ Hester drew in a deep breath, and flicked her fiery hair behind her shoulders. ‘So,’ she said, ‘you met Don Ramón. James told me he’d returned, but he didn’t tell me you’d already made his acquaintance. Or should I say, knowing him,’ she avoided my eyes in the mirror, ‘he made yours?’

‘You’ve met him, have you?'

‘A few times. Didn’t he mention me?’

‘I don’t think I asked him,’ I replied. ‘I asked if he knew your parents.’

‘But he didn’t think it worthwhile to mention me?’ She laughed angrily. I studied her reflection. She seemed as put out as James Fitzgerald at my chance meeting with Don Ramón, though she expressed herself in quite a different manner.

‘Don’t you like him?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘I really haven’t given my opinion a thought. He doesn’t remember I exist. The same applies to me. I don’t know he exists.'

‘He’s kind, though,’ I said.

She laughed scornfully, ‘But compare him to James.'

‘I am doing,’ I said drily.

Hester laughed.

‘You’ve taken a dislike to James,’ she wagged her finger, half reproving, half condescending.

‘Or he has to me,’ I replied.

She didn’t deny it. ‘People don’t realise how very kind James is.’

‘That I can well understand.'

She laughed mischievously. ‘Simply because he doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve?’

I was tempted to ask if the Head of Chancery had, in fact, got a heart to wear. But I realised it was no way to talk to Hester Mallenport about her father’s deputy, so I kept my mouth shut.

‘Mother in her romantic moments has a theory,' Hester rested her elbows on the dressing-table and cupped her chin in her hands, ‘that James’ heart is rather like his precious Chancery.’

In spite of myself I smiled at the aptness of Mrs. Mallenport’s theory. ‘Full of important secrets,’ I said, ‘and always kept tightly locked.’

‘Exactly,’ Hester replied.

‘And with only one master key,’ I added.

‘My dear mother’s idea is that only one girl will ever hold that key. But when she does, it will be for ever. She reckons that girl is Eve Trent.' Hester paused, smiling to herself. ‘But believe me, I know better.’

She got up then and said she’d leave me in peace to eat my supper and get an early night.

‘If you really must go to the Embassy tomorrow, how about us meeting for lunch afterwards? There’s a park in front of the Embassy square, Central Park West, and there’s a cafe in the centre. Walk straight down from the Embassy square and turn left. You won’t be able to miss it.’