Tango
Authors: Alan Judd
Also by Alan Judd
Fiction
A Breed of Heroes
The Noonday Devil
Short of Glory
The Devil’s Own Work
Legacy
Non-fiction
Ford Madox Ford
The Quest for C
First published in Great Britain by Century Hutchinson, 1989
This eBook edition first published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014
Copyright © Alan Judd 1989
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Alan Judd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eBook ISBN: 978-1-47113-434-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
To
Nick Langman
and with thanks to
Anthony and Caroline Rowell
Chapter 1
In appearance, at least, she was so dramatically, so extravagantly concupiscent that for his first six months in the city William ignored her. He believed himself susceptible
only to subtlety and indirection, and therefore impervious to such shameless blazing beauty.
He only ever saw her from a distance. Once, in the old quarter of quiet squares and crumbling government buildings, the tall faded doors of the treasury opened for her, narrowly and
inexplicably. Twice he saw her in the streets where the traders from the country had their stalls, once coming out of a bar near the cathedral. On a brisk afternoon in an avenue that led to the sea
she was talking to some other girls when the wind flung her dark hair across her face and harried her skirt about her thighs. All the girls tottered and laughed, clutching at their clothes. She
wore red gloves.
By then it was winter, his first in South America. Many of the women huddled in needless furs, the men in sheepskin jackets and berets, but for William it was like a cool summer’s day in
England. The sky was blue and white, the sun pleasantly warm and there were welcome sea breezes. During his evening walk home across the golf course he could view the sea on one side and the angled
red roofs of the city on the other. It was a small city, tolerant of trees and green spaces, its wide unhurried avenues fed by winding cobbled streets and alleyways. Often in the early evening
there would be black clouds over the sombre tranquil sea, their undersides reddened by the sun. He would linger by the stunted trees before taking the coast road home. He could easily have driven
to and from work, but saving time wasn’t the point; he was in no hurry either way.
That morning he left the office for lunch earlier than usual; there was little point in remaining. For the third day running there was no post; the telephone was still out of order; there had
been no customers in the shop below and no response from any of the potential clients he had contacted. Ricardo, the young man he had been obliged to employ as his assistant, had not returned since
taking some parcel orders to the post office two hours before. He would be at home drinking coffee with his mother, or with one of his married sisters, or drinking brandy with his father, or with
some girl.
There was an anticipatory bustle in the streets as the lunch interval approached. Cars pulled up and parked anywhere, people walked with a shade more purpose, waiters laid tables rather than
taking trays of brandies and coffees to the civil servants in their offices. William ambled, clutching his latest week-old copy of the
Telegraph.
It was a good city in which to amble; in
London you felt in the way, but here there were things that kept pace with you – horses and carts, street traders pushing their barrows, even some of the cars. These were mostly of 1930s and
40s vintage, the results of a few decades of prosperity and international competitiveness, but years of cannibalising meant that many were of an age and type indeterminate to any but the
enthusiast. There was nothing like an MOT system and no one paid any road tax. It seemed a tolerant and sensible system. William strolled among the decrepit and dignified beasts, ignoring –
as they appeared to – the intrusion of a few Mercedes and BMWs, and a rather larger number of Japanese cars.
Beneath plane trees in a small square fruit traders spread oranges, apples, bananas and lemons. The traders were short, wizened, cheerful people who at this time of the year huddled beneath
scarves and sheepskins. Most of them were drinking maté, a green tea which was sipped through tubes stuck in gourds. The gourds were topped up with hot water from flasks clutched in mittened
hands. There was a universal and – judging by the nasal evidence – wholly unfounded belief that maté prevented colds. William had meant to try it but Sally, his wife, was very
keen on hygiene.
It was not with any thought of seeing the girl that he went to the covered market that day. He thought no more about her than he thought about the sun; when it was there he felt it, when it
wasn’t he didn’t think about it. Buried deep in his mind, though, there was perhaps a connection between her and the market. It was the city’s great meeting place, particularly
during the lunch interval which occupied the middle third of daylight hours. Ricardo said that everyone went there – lawyers, bankers, businessmen, prostitutes, even the new president and his
generals. Being Ricardo, he had of course implied that there was an intimate connection between presidents and prostitutes, and William knew him well enough now to know that the other three
categories were simply the next in his list of most important persons. Nevertheless, like many of Ricardo’s assertions and exaggerations, this had taken root.
It did so because buried even deeper in William’s mind was the connection between beauty and prostitution. It was not that his experience suggested any correlation – indeed, casual
observation in Shepherds Market and around Kings Cross station in London had suggested the reverse – but there was an unconscious assumption that beauty so startling could not be freely
available. It was too marketable.
The covered market was actually a British Victorian railway station minus trains, platforms and rails. It was a small Liverpool Street with the same massive girders and towering pillars and in
the middle a clock tower that looked like an iron Big Ben and always said ten past four. It had been built near the docks in 1901, having been destined for Paraguay or somewhere – Ricardo was
always vague about places – but a revolution in Paraguay or somewhere meant that it never got there. The building was now given over to the national obsession: eating. Steaks fit for giants
were barbecued on great wooden charcoal fires tended by loud happy fat men. They poured red wine from old whisky bottles, splashed coffee into tiny cups, expertly slid huge sizzling steaks on to
huge plates, threw salads, sheep intestines, tomatoes, thyroids, mushrooms, sausages and bull’s penises on top, shouted, smoked cigars, drank and knew everybody. Each fire was surrounded by a
wooden bar at which customers sat elbow to elbow on high stools. Between the barbecues were tobacconists’ kiosks and tiny places selling just drinks or coffee. Frequent power cuts cast the
building into a cavernous gloom, lit only by the fires. Smoke coiled around the clock face and among the high girders. In London, William reflected, it would have been condemned as a fire risk.
He eased himself on to a stool. The weight problem, already established in London, had increased alarmingly during the past six months. The abundance and cheapness of red meat and wine had
caused a sudden shrinkage of clothes, chairs and even doors. The trouble was, he felt more comfortable like that; and Sally seemed to have given up complaining.
He sat watching the sweating, busy men. They were fatter than he and with less excuse since most of them looked younger. William was 35 which meant – if the days of the week were to be
accorded with the seven ages of man – that he was at Thursday lunch-time. The weekend was not far ahead. By Thursday lunch-time a man had a right to a little expansion. Anyway, the
padrón
was considerably fatter than he was and looked as if he might only be on Thursday afternoon, evening at most. The only irritant was the two men seated on either side of him.
They ate and drank hugely while talking to their neighbours in prolonged bursts; they were almost unforgivably thin. But this was a place in which to eat and drink, to meet and talk. That was what
it meant to be alive in this city, unlike London where being alive meant working and hurrying. William forgave them.
His order was scribbled on a piece of paper which disappeared. Orders were always written, but later always paid for without any reference to paper. He had to shout above the noise. It had been
good for his Spanish, all this competitive shouting in recent months, not because it increased his vocabulary but because shouting the language had given him confidence. He did not order wine this
time, since red wine at lunch meant a heavy afternoon in which he could neither work nor sleep. Despite this, a glass was banged down before him and abruptly filled from an old Johnnie Walker
bottle. Perhaps they remembered his earlier visits? A different hand pushed bread across the counter; he broke it resignedly and dipped it in the wine.
It was in fact her friend he noticed first, a big girl with big white teeth and bushy red hair. She was laughing at him. Embarrassed, he looked up and down so quickly that he noticed nothing
apart from that; he did not even see that she was not alone. A woman’s voice shouted something and he glanced up again, this time seeing her companion. The big girl was shouting at the
padrón
but she – her – was looking at him. She was dark, watchful, poised. They were seated across the other side of the fire and she had moved her stool back, perhaps
to keep out of the smoke. She looked away from him, smiling slightly, and spoke to the other girl who laughed and looked directly across, shouting something he still couldn’t catch.
The
padrón
was before him, bald and grinning.
‘They want to know,
señor
, are you a priest?’
‘No, I am English.’
The
padrón
shouted the information and another question was shouted back.
‘They want to know, is it English custom to take mass in the market?’
They all laughed and William smiled. He nearly essayed a reply on the some-men-live-by-bread-alone theme, but was not sure how it would translate.
‘You wait for your food?’ asked the
padrón
, his eyes glistening.
‘Yes, but I am in no hurry.’
‘It is ready.’
‘Good.’
‘There.’ The
padrón
pointed to a place which had been cleared next to the two girls; a plate of steak filled it. Other steaks were put before the girls.
William took his wine and sat next to the big girl. Her smile enveloped him.
‘You come from England to join us?’
‘Especially for this.’
‘You speak Spanish very well.’