I Like It Here

him a small garage, also built in under the veranda floor, with its door open and an aged car on view. Doing something to one of its headlamps was a young man who might have been a chauffeur. He was strikingly handsome and winked at Bowen as he went by. Oho, Bowen thought to himself. A far from whole-hearted devotion to the pursuit of girls had sometimes struck him as a kind of selection-board requirement for writers and artists. (Musicians showed up in a different light whenever they were sober enough.) This clearly had some sort of bearing on Buckmaster’s claim, but just what particular sort was less clear.
Bowen and Barbara shook hands with the old boy. David and Mark did their stuff well and Mark added as an extra: “What lovely drinks you gave us.” Sandra waved and produced one of her best grins. Buckmaster’s face twitched about as he tried to conceal some of his delight. Bowen said as warmly as he knew: ”This really has been a great privilege, sir.” Saying it didn’t make him feel terrible at all.
When they had driven away, Bowen’s attempts to sort something out of the last hour’s welter were interrupted by Barbara: “That was jolly interesting, wasn’t it? He was an absolute dear, didn’t you think?”
“Yes, I did in a way, but he was pretty full of himself as well, you know.”
“Was he? He didn’t strike me like that at all.”
“Well, you weren’t there for that bit.”
“No, I know, I was minding the creature. Next time we really must see if we can’t park her with Rosie and the maids. Still, I did see a bit of him. I’m going to enjoy telling Olivia all about it. See her eyes pop. He’s a great hero of hers.”
Bowen winced. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to do that, dear.”
“Why ever not? Is there something secret going on?”
“Bennie Hyman doesn’t want us to spread the word around at all until he says it’s time.”
“Oh, damn and blast Bennie Hyman. What’s it got to do with him?”
“Well, they are publishing this book of his, dear, old Buckmaster’s, I mean old Strether’s …”
“Look here, Garnet, there’s something fishy going on, I know. I could tell from the way you and Bennie were muttering together the day we sailed. What’s it all about?”
It always came to this in the end, and Bowen always thought at the start that it wouldn’t. He told her the story, omitting only his hopes of a job with Hiscock & Weinstein and their contribution to his budget.
“What a revolting idea, spying on the old chap like that. Just the sort of thing I’d expect from Bennie. But I should have thought you’d have had a bit more integrity. I know you always laugh at me when I go on about integrity. Yes you do. But this time I’m right, and you know it. Don’t you?”
“I suppose I do.”
“Well then. And what’s the use of knowing what’s right unless you act on it? You write to Bennie and tell him you can’t help.”
“I can’t anyway.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, there just isn’t any way of knowing about this business either way. Not from anything that’ll come in my direction.”
“Never mind, you just contract out of it all. And I don’t think you ought to go and see Strether again until you’ve made up your mind you are contracting out. Really, Garnet, how squalid.”
A lunatic shouting came from Bowen’s stomach, the product of hunger mingled with fear. He hated opposition, not, he believed, because he liked his own way more than the next man, but because it made him feel so terrible, too terrible to sort out what he really thought. To decide whether, and if so how far, self-interest conflicted with decency over this issue meant using his conscience as a precision instrument. How could he do that with Barbara jogging his arm about integrity? Perhaps he’d feel better after lunch—roast sardines were promised for today—and a sleep. At least all this business meant he couldn’t be expected to get on with his play for a bit.

8
AFTER A MORNING’S brain-pummelling about his conscience or his play (accompanied by fly-fighting), a hard afternoon on the beach (accompanied by wasp-evading and Sandra-chasing), and a dinner that featured a couple of pounds of pork a head, Bowen was often past his best when it got to half-past nine or so. But the advent, actual or predicted, of de Sousa and Bachixa was enough to drive him out of the room, which meant in practice (short of going to bed or curling up with a book in the lavatory) being driven out of the house. He had nothing against either de Sousa—the little grinning lemur-faced one—or Bachixa —the stout dignified good-looking one. But de Sousa spoke almost no English and Bachixa, though he spoke some, obviously spoke far more Portuguese. The Bowens were therefore reduced either to sitting there while Portuguese was talked, or to making de Sousa and Bachixa sit there while English was talked.
It was this situation, rather than any hope of getting in touch with local life, which took the Bowens out one evening soon after the Buckmaster lunch. They were bound for the café in Estoril, a seaside resort which Bowen considered could lay a very fair claim to being dubbed the Blackpool of the South but for its smallness and lack of amenities. They avoided the casino, the only other evening attraction, reasoning that they could light their cigarettes with a 1,000-escudo note any time they felt like it and have the rest of the evening to themselves. At least that was how they put it to each other. What they liked was sitting in the arcade of the café drinking excellent local gin-and-tonic at not much over half the English price, plus the equally excellent local liqueurs at ninepence the large tot. It would be very easy, cheap and pleasant, Bowen often reflected, to drink oneself to death in Portugal.