The Centre of the Green (18 page)

The telephone rang. It was Mrs. Baker. “Mother!” he said, and then—realizing with surprise that the words were true—” I was just going to ring you. Hold on a moment while I light the fire.”

*

At least he had something to tell the Group on
Tuesday
. “Well,” Ethel said, “it was about time something happened to you.”

It was surprising how pleased they all seemed to be about it.

CHAPTER SIX

A Holiday Abroad

C
olonel Baker sat on the terrace of an hotel in Palma de Mallorca. Away from the old town, the hotels spread out towards the west in a wide curve along the bay, with the promenade and the sea below them, and the road to Terreno above; they are modern—indeed, recent—in shape and colour, and do not much resemble the buildings of Palma itself. The hotel at which the Colonel and Julian were staying was placed towards the middle of the curve, and had been recommended to them by the Tourist Office. It was of the second class, but it had a swimming pool.

The swimming pool could be reached by a stairway from the terrace, or by a door from the reception hall of the hotel, but not from the road, because it was exclusive. Wicker chairs were set on the concrete around it, and in the corner of the wall and the stairway was a small bar, from which a record-player was operated; there were only six records, because the hotel had not yet been in use for two years, and to build a record library takes time. The pool itself was small and blue, and
kidney-shaped
, and for most of the time it was occupied by a German. When the German was in it, there was not much room for anybody else. He was a blond, tanned German with the build of a boxer, and a disconcerting
oeillade
, which he directed liberally at anyone over the age of fifty, irrespective of sex. The Colonel was
embarrassed
by him, and preferred to sit on the terrace and gaze at the sea, rather than to rest in comfort beneath a striped umbrella in a wicker chair by the pool.

Julian had taken the bus to the beach at Terreno after lunch, and the Colonel had been to sleep. It would have been neither wise nor practical to go for his usual
afternoon
walk in this heat and glare, so he had taken up again an older habit, acquired in India, the nap after tiffin. Now it was the tea-time hour. He sat on the terrace, wearing his old tweed hat against the sun, sipped
citron pressé
, and gazed at the sea. At the next table an Englishwoman, the only other person on the terrace, tried to order tea from an uncomprehending waiter.

“And do you think I might have some thin bread and butter?” she said. “And perhaps some jam.
Confiture
, you know.”

But the waiter did not know.

“Bread.
Pain
.
Pan
.”

“
Pan?
”

“And butter.”

Confusion.

“Oh dear!” the Englishwoman said to Colonel Baker. “Excuse me, but do
you
know the word for butter?”

“
Mantequilla
.”

“Thank you so much.”

“
Mantequilla?
”

The Colonel said, “I’m afraid all you’re likely to get is bits of old bread in a basket, and butter in a separate dish. Is that what you want?”

“I thought … bread and butter…. Perhaps if you were to tell him?”

“Don’t think it would do any real good, you know. My Spanish isn’t really any better than yours. Sorry.
Wouldn’t you rather have cake? I’ve got a book here somewhere. I could look it up. Bread and butter’s rather a foreign idea to these chaps.”

“Perhaps just tea would be better. It isn’t really the weather for bread and butter.”

Below them, with a splash and a flurry of lithe brown legs, the German dived into the pool. “That man
winked
at me this morning when I arrived,” the Englishwoman said. “I can’t think why. Is he Spanish, would you say?”

The Colonel grinned, and said, “No. He winks at everyone. He winks at me.”

“An affliction?”

“I suppose so.”

“Have you been here long? It’s all very strange to me, I’m afraid. There aren’t any shades on the lights
upstairs
, and the water——”

“It doesn’t run all day.”

“I’ve never been abroad before. I was so determined I wouldn’t be a tourist, and now here I am, asking for afternoon tea and complaining about the plumbing. What must you think of me?”

The Colonel, who had not exchanged a word in the way of friendship with anyone except Julian since their arrival the day before, said quite seriously, “I think you’re very nice indeed.”

“Goodness! Perhaps you’d like some tea?”

*

Later that evening, the Colonel said to Julian, “Met rather a nice woman today, and we got talking. She’s a bit lonely, you know. Thought we might ask her to sit with us. Hope you don’t mind.” He had not yet
discovered
how to get a bath in the hotel, and was standing on one foot in a basin he had placed on the concrete floor of their room, squeezing water over his naked body with a sponge. Julian, who did not like to see his father
naked, sat on the bed with his back to the Colonel, and wrote in a black exercise book with a ball-point pen.

“No, I don’t mind,” he said.

“Good.” The Colonel stepped out of the basin on to a piece of the
Continental Daily Mail
, and began to dry himself with one of the hand-towels provided by the hotel “What are you writing?” he said.

“Diary.”

“Chronicle of the Grand Tour, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t know people did that sort of thing nowadays?”

“Well, I’m doing it.”

Must remember
, the Colonel thought. He must
remember
never to be hurt, because that would make him more clumsy than he was already, and above all he must remember not to ask questions, not to trespass. During the short sea voyage, during their holiday so far, there had been periods of calm when he had thought Julian was beginning to accept him, and always they had been broken by some act of spite and rudeness performed only as if to show the Colonel that he must not presume too far.
Must be patient
, the Colonel thought. You had to be patient, and take no notice, just keep your hand there with the lump of sugar in it, and after a while the sugar would be taken, and you could go on to the next small step. Good when that happened. And so now Julian
surprised
his father by saying, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude. I don’t know why I’m keeping it really, except to see whether I can, like a New Year’s Resolution. Sort of discipline, if you like. Besides, it might come in useful for a travel article or something, if Majorca hasn’t been overdone. I thought I’d stick in some snapshots, and really do the thing in style. Only I don’t want anyone to see it yet. I’ll show you some day.”

“I’d like that. Very much.”

Julian smiled, “You might be surprised when you see it,” he said. “I’m putting in all sorts of stuff. What’s your nice woman’s name?”

“Miss Plumstead. She runs a sort of hostel for
theological
students in Finchley, but she seems a very sensible woman. Easy to get on with; we had quite a palaver on the terrace. I thought we might—sort of show her the town or something later on after dinner.”

“That sounds rather fast, Father.”

“Well, you know, wander round a bit. Stop off for a drink at one of the local places. Take a look at the cathedral by moonlight. Visit the harbour. Look at the sea. That sort of thing. She might like it.”

“The fleet’s in. You might find a lot of drunk
Americans
doing the same thing.”

The Colonel knotted his tie seriously. “We won’t go anywhere off the beaten track,” he said.

“You don’t mind if I don’t come with you? I feel a bit dopey with the sun. I thought I’d just have a drink at the open-air place on the road above, and then go to bed.”

Although the Colonel was disappointed, he did not show it; he supposed it would have been rather dull for Julian; they had done much the same sort of thing the night before. Palma was not really the Colonel’s type of place; perhaps the Colonel’s type of place no longer existed outside the moor and his own garden. It seemed to the Colonel that, in spite of the hotels spread out on the promenade, there was little to do in Palma if you were too old for the beach and did not care to dawdle the hours away at a café table.

Nevertheless, that evening the Colonel and Miss
Plumstead
looked at the cathedral by moonlight. They walked about the cobbled streets of the old town and beneath the dusty trees in the Paseo del Generalismo. After a while, Miss Plumstead complained that the backs of her legs
were aching, so they sat at one of the two outside tables at a little bar near the harbour, and shared a carafe of red wine. The moon was full, and the bar had no outside lighting, so that the wine looked black. Miss Plumstead gazed at the moon, and at the dust in the street which seemed to absorb the moonlight like blotting-paper, and at the cathedral which dominated the harbour like a fort, and said doubtfully, “It’s all very beautiful, isn’t it? But you know——”

As she spoke, an American sailor appeared from a little side alley that joined the street beside the bar. He had lost his hat, and there was dust on the front of his white uniform. He held his arms stiffly away from his sides, and his head was thrust forward; the moonlight glittered on the whites of his eyes. His sudden appearance startled Miss Plumstead, and she gave a little cry. The sailor turned his gaze towards her, focused with
difficulty
, walked forward so that he was within three paces of the table, and stood there swaying. “What’s the matter with you, lady?” he said. “You sick or something?”

Neither the Colonel nor Miss Plumstead replied;
instead
their posture and expression became unnaturally stiff. The sailor continued to speak to them. “Am I a leper or something?” he said. His diction was indistinct, but now that he had made the effort to communicate, there seemed to be no reason why he should stop. “
Someone
asks you a civil question about your health, you can’t give him a civil answer?” he said. “What’s the matter with you, lady? A guy can’t even ask a question
nowadays
. A guy can’t live nowadays. A guy can’t breathe, you know that? What’s the matter with you? Do you spurn—spurn—spurn sailors, lady? Do you spurn the fleet? You anti-American or something? Here am I, talking to you civil, and you just sit there like—like fishes. Well, I can make like a fish too, you know. Maybe
you spurn me because I never finished high school, but I can make like a fish.”

The sailor leaned dangerously forward to bring his face closer to them, and pouted like a fish, going, “
P!
p!
p!
” at them in fishy imitation. Miss Plumstead put one hand on the Colonel’s arm, and the Colonel said, “Look here——”

“Look heah! Eaoh rahlly!” the sailor said in a very poor approximation of standard English. “F——ing limey! You think I’m looking for a fight. Well, I’ll tell you something; I am not looking for a fight. Everybody else in the whole town is looking for a fight but me, as it so happens. Everybody in the whole goddam fleet. I am the sailor who is not looking for a fight. Some of the greatest sweetest bunch of guys in this world is looking for a fight at
this
moment not far from here, but me, I don’t wanna fight, and I’m not gonna fight, because I am a man of peace, and not a man of war. Get it? I am
not
looking for a fight.”

The Colonel said, “No, but I expect you’re looking for a drink, aren’t you? You’ll find one in there.” The sailor steadied himself, hesitated, and then went through the bead curtain into the bar at a lumbering run as if his legs were trying to keep up with his trunk. There was a confused noise from inside. The Colonel took a ten-peseta note from his pocket, and put it under the carafe. “I think we’d better be going,” he said.

As they walked back along the promenade in the moonlight, Miss Plumstead began to laugh. “Those poor people!” she said. “They’ll never understand. All he wants is to avoid a fight.”

The Colonel grinned, and said, “Perhaps he’ll do his fish imitations for them.”

“
P!
p!
p!
Oh dear! I was really quite frightened at the time, and now I can’t stop laughing.”

“
You
were frightened. I thought I was going to have to play Galahad, and I’m not the age for it. He’d have made mincemeat of me.”

“You defeated him t—
tactically
,” Miss Plumstead said, going into a gale of giggles so that she had to hold on to the wall of the promenade. “It was just like C—Captain Hornblower or somebody. You lured him into an
ambush
. Of Spanish g—guerillas.” Her laughter was infectious, and the Colonel was in any case beginning to feel the bathetic after effects of tension. He began to laugh as well. “Come to that, he was a bit of gorilla himself,” he said. “As well as a fish.”

“Really we shouldn’t be laughing like this; it’s not at all funny. But you were so—controlled. The awful silence when he went through that curtain! And then they all started shouting at once.”

“Perhaps it was inconsiderate of me. I couldn’t think of anything else to do with him.”

Miss Plumstead managed to stop laughing. “It was resourceful,” she said. “I’m very grateful to you.” As they resumed their walk, she said, “Colonel, do you
like
staying here? At the hotel. I mean, would you and your son find it dull to be somewhere—quieter?”