I Like It Here

of which the best bit was an announcer shouting with angry emphasis in a vibrated echo-chamber about a thing called Ideal Ginger Beer (and very good, in due time, Bowen found it to be). “Ee-dee-owowowowowowl,” the chap fumed, “Jeenjer Beeyeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyeer … Casawawawawawa Ee … dee … owowowowowowl … Alcantarawawawawawa …” Later they had Three Coins in the Fountain, a song—taken from an American film about some place in Italy—which handled abroad-sentiment on what Bowen considered to be a rather lower level, though much more succinctly, than the average travel-writer; it was a favourite of Oates’s. They also had A Pulha or whatever it was; anyway Bowen had noticed it was a favourite of Rosie’s and had gathered from Oates that it had something to do with a flea. Rosie laughed gaily at it. It’s all right for you, Bowen thought to himself.
Oates took exception, as always, to his wife’s enjoyment of A Pulha. He said it was the sort of song which only awful people liked. Awful people came into his world-view a good deal. They formed the bulk of the audience at Lisbon’s cinemas, it was hard to avoid them when finding a spot for a picnic on a Sunday, they attended football matches, he encountered many of them on his shooting expeditions, they put money on the table at meal-times. He felt strongly on this last point, mainly but not solely for hygienic reasons. Bowen tried hard to imagine an awful person’s lavatory. Oates now turned the wireless down, with a scowl that suggested indignant rebuke of whoever had turned it up. He said to Bowen in his gentle voice: “Will you take some more wine?”
“Thank you very much.”
“You mustn’t wait to be asked, you know. I hope you appreciate these Portuguese wines?”
“Yes, I like them a lot,” Bowen said, remembering in time that this “appreciate” was one of the other’s few straightforwardly non-English usages.
“Well, I certainly hope so.” Oates smiled diffidently and engagingly. “You must forgive me for keeping on asking you whether you appreciate this or that. You see, I don’t know you so well yet.”
“Of course, I quite understand. But you mustn’t worry, really. Everything’s fine.”
Bowen avoided his wife’s eye as he said this. But, he asked himself, what could he say? To point out to Oates the deficiencies in his establishment would have meant deeply hurting his feelings, or demanding an intolerably radical change in domestic procedures, or—in the case of the overcrowding problem—exhorting him to run up an annexe, lean-to, etc., within the next twenty-four hours. Then, yielding top priority only to the lavatory question, there was the matter of Rosie and the children’s food. The language difficulty was not so great as to have prevented her from understanding the Bowens’ pleas for less fat-content, less seasoning, more variety and so on. It was just that, with the obstinacy of the really amorphous character, she knew better. Was it then to be suggested to Oates that he force her, if need be at the point of his gun, to go easy on the oilcan? Even this spectacle would not have relieved Bowen’s feelings altogether; but then only an hour of swearing could do that. And he could hear Barbara’s voice saying “You’ll just have to decide whose feelings are more important to you, ours or the Oateses’” so distinctly in his mind’s ear that he could hardly believe she had yet to say it in fact.
“Well, and how do you like Portugal ?” Oates asked. “Very much,” Bowen replied, adding silently “for abroad”, but otherwise sincerely enough.
“I hope you find enough in the way of amenities and everything?”
“Oh yes, it’s all very good like that.”
“I’m glad you find it so. Of course, this isn’t a rich country. That’s what visitors so often forget. Though it’s a good deal richer than it was before this chap Salazar came along.”
“Oh, he’s, er … improved things, has he?”
“Undoubtedly. You should see what he’s done for Lisbon. The place has doubled in size since the war— yes, really. There’s been a lot of slum clearance and so on. Now somebody like yourself coming from England, the Welfare State and everything, you might find plenty of things that would shock you. But that’s not really the point. You’ve got to compare the place, you see, with what it was before.”
“And it was pretty bad, was it?”
“What? My God, it was terrible. Do you know— perhaps you won’t believe this, but in the Thirties there were lepers walking the streets of Lisbon? I can swear to that because I saw one once when I was out with my nurse. Appalling. Only the rich people ever got any medical attention or went to hospital—well, there were no hospitals to speak of. All manner of epidemics running riot. There was a most frightful T.B. thing as well, and, er,”—he glanced over at Barbara—”a lot of other unpleasant business too.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Yes. Well, this chap Salazar has got hospitals and clinics and convalescent homes going, and schools and orphanages—there’s one just this side of Estoril on the coast road, you’ve probably seen it. All that sort of thing’s expanding very quickly now. It’s got to, by law. Salazar’s seen to that.”
“Really?” Bowen rather liked what he had heard about Portuguese laws. One extra good one said that any restaurant meal that included meat must also include free wine. Another one said that you could eat one course at a restaurant and then validly plead hunger in your defence when the time came to reveal that you had no money. These were measures that no British Government could hope to get through, unless perhaps they were drafted to exclude from their provisions all poets, painters and sculptors, both supposed and real.
Oates was going on: “And Salazar, he’s a professor, perhaps you knew that, he manages to make the budget balance. Don’t ask me how he does it, but he does. That was unheard-of, too. The fellows who were running the show