I Like It Here

Perries or something.”
“If you can’t stand it when it’s like this I warn you you’re in for a tough time.”
“Ask this chap where there’s a phone.”
“Dad.”
“Yes?”
“Isn’t this Portugal, where we are?”
“So they tell me.”
“David says it isn’t. And he keeps kicking me.”
“Tell him it is and kick him back.”
Turning away, Bowen saw Barbara in conversation with a couple of people. She grinned joyfully at him and nodded. The saturated solution of doubt, horror and despair that had filled his veins was replaced in an instant by rich, oxygenated blood. Disembarkation bum was over—as if it had never been? But who could say what scars were left upon the spirit by such prolonged, grave nastinesses?
“Mr. Oates? How good of you to come and meet us.”
“Not at all, Mr. Bowen, I’m only sorry I’m late. These boats don’t usually dock until about now, you see. May I present my wife? I hope you had a pleasant voyage?”
These and other amiabilities were uttered in a native English accent and with a not unattractive formality. Oates had a beaky, narrow face and hair shrivelling back from a freckled, deeply-lined forehead. Apart from a pair of large tan-and-white shoes, he looked in his neat dark grey suit like any young London office worker. His wife, olive-skinned and with other things about her that Bowen took to be typically Portuguese, seemed nice too. If she could have been compressed to about three-quarters of her actual width, she would have been very attractive.
The children were now introduced, Sandra from a distance because of having done what children of her age so often do. Oates, his comedian’s shoes creaking like mad, led the Bowens away from the little area that, in their different ways, they had come to know so well. In the cobbled yard beyond the Customs sheds where the car was parked, he turned to Bowen. “If you’ll follow, Mr. Bowen,” he said, “I’ll lead the way.” When this plan had been approved he moved off again with the slightly hostile purposefulness, like a hotel manager advancing on a drunken guest, that Bowen soon saw was habitual to him. Frowning to himself, he put on a pair of sunglasses and mounted a shiny, ginger-coloured, small-wheeled motorbike. His wife got up behind him. Was he going to want him, Bowen, to do that too some time? (He was.)
Oates piloted them through the traffic—which moved remarkably fast—with a hint of the exaggerated choreographic swaying Bowen had seen gone in for by transatlantic despatch-riders during the war. It was affecting to see how much he adored riding his bike. After a time they reached the coast road, the estuary of the Tagus on their left. Everything looked cheerful, expensive and brand-new, even vaguely important. Perhaps it was all to do with the sun and how bright it was. It was a pity that such terrible people said that colours were brighter in the South, because they were right. Oh well, they talked so much that they were bound to be right occasionally, just by accident. Bowen looked nervously about for peasants. It would be unendurable if they all turned out to be full of instinctive wisdom and natural good manners and unself-conscious grace and a deep, inarticulate understanding of death. But surely they couldn’t, could they? No peasants were on hand to offer themselves as evidence. He had an uneasy feeling, though, that this state of affairs was not going to last.
“Oh, doesn’t it all look lovely?” Barbara said.
It was no good. He had to admit it did. He felt suddenly almost mad with cheerfulness. He would be able to relax completely when the children were off his neck and at a distance and when he had satisfied himself that the accommodation was going to be all right. It ought to be, considering what they were paying for it: £185 for two months. It certainly seemed a lot, but then they had no idea of the market, and it covered full board for the five of them, and Seixas Peres, Olivia’s in-laws’ Lisbon pal, knew the Oateses personally. So it was going to be all right. Two bedrooms, own sitting-room, one maid living in, another maid by the day. Oh, smashing, boy. He was going to enjoy himself. He might even make a real, non-token start on that play. The only trouble was that he had so little to write about: the nefariousness of persons who made a living out of culture (but not enough of them were really nefarious enough), the difficulties of married life (but there were not enough of these, either, and he understood the whole idea very imperfectly), the momentous scope and variety of ways of being horrible worked out over the years by his mother-in-law (but imperfectly as he understood married life he could divine that that would not do. And the details of Mrs. Knowles’s behaviour were so finely discriminated that to change anything in the interests of camouflage would bring about a fatal dilution. Better just go on adding to his sequence of rhymes about her.)
At that point in his ruminations they reached an intersection where a traffic policeman stood on his little rostrum under an umbrella. He was another cashiered general, but wore a sun-helmet and was more than reconciled to his lot. Smiling, he blew his whistle at the converging stream and beckoned the Bowens on. Bowen cheered up again wonderfully and began planning the letters he would write on his return:
“Dear Dr. Salazar, I feel I must write and thank you for the courtesy, the kindness, the hospitality …”

6
“YOU’VE PUT HER down now, have you?”
Barbara looked up from one of the women’s magazines her mother had recently sent her. It was the kind that had pictures of rich people’s houses in it, and Mrs. Knowles’s self-deprecation for reading such stuff would freeze the blood. She had the opposite effect on Bowen when she lauded the book reviews. Her daughter now answered his question: “Yes, but I don’t know