The Honorary Consul

  "The police think that Córdoba is a blind and he may be in Rosario—or even here by this time."

  "We ought to have retired him six months ago and then none of this would have happened."

  "The police say the kidnapping was a mistake, sir. They wanted the American Ambassador. If that's right surely the Americans ought to be grateful to us and do something."

  "Wilbur," Sir Henry Belfrage said, "—the Ambassador insists that I call him Wilbur—refuses to admit he was the intended victim. He says the U. S. A. is very popular in Paraguay—Nelson Rockefeller's tour proved that. No one threw stones in Paraguay or set fire to any offices. It was as quiet as it was in Haiti. He calls Rockefeller Nelson—it had me confused for a moment. Do you know I really thought for a moment he was going to invite me to call Rockefeller Nelson too?"

  "I can't help being sorry for the poor devil."

  "I don't think Wilbur needs any of our sympathy, Crichton."

  "I didn't mean him—I meant—"

  "Oh, Mason? Damnation, my wife has started calling him Mason and now I'm doing the same. If Mason gets into an official telegram, God knows where it will end up in London. They'll think it has something to do with the Mason-Dixon line. I shall have to say to myself Fortnum, Fortnum, Fortnum, like that raven which said Nevermore."

  "You don't think they will really kill him, sir?"

  "Of course I don't, Crichton. They didn't even kill that Paraguayan Consul they took a few years back. The General said he wasn't interested, and they let the fellow go. This isn't Uruguay or Colombia—or Brazil, for that matter. Or Bolivia. Or Venezuela. Or even Peru," he added apprehensively as the field of hope narrowed.

  "We are in South America, though, aren't we?" Crichton said with incontestable logic.

  A few tiresome telegrams came in during the morning. Somebody had started another Falkland Islands scare: the islands cropped up, like Gibraltar, whenever there was nothing else to worry about. The Foreign Secretary wanted to know as a consequence how Argentina was likely to vote in the latest African issue before the United Nations. The Chief Clerk had issued a new directive about entertainment expenses, and Sir Henry Belfrage could see the time rapidly approaching when he too might have to serve Argentinian wine. There was also a question about the British entry at the Mar del Plata film festival—a Conservative member of Parliament had described the British entry by some man called Russell as pornographic. There had been no directive at all about Fortnum since the previous day when Belfrage had been ordered to see the Foreign Minister and afterward to act in concert with the American Ambassador—the British Ambassador in Asunción had received the same instruction, and Sir Henry hoped he had an American to deal with who was a little more dynamic than Wilbur.

  After lunch his secretary told him that a Doctor Plarr was asking to see him.

  "Who's Plarr?"

  "He comes from the north. I think he wants to see you about the Fortnum case."

  "Oh bring him in, bring him in," Sir Henry Belfrage said, "let them all come." He was vexed at losing his siesta—it was the only time of day when he could feel a private person. There was a new Agatha Christie waiting by his bed, fresh from his bookshop in Curzon Street.

  "We've met before somewhere," he said to Doctor Plarr, and he looked at Plarr with suspicion—everyone in B. A. except the Army people seemed to have the title of Doctor. A thin lawyer's face, he thought; he never felt at ease with lawyers; he found himself shocked by the heartlessness of legal jokes—a convicted murderer was no more to them than a patient with incurable cancer to a surgeon.

  "Yes—here at the Embassy," Doctor Plarr reminded him. "A cocktail party. I rescued your wife from a poet."

  "Of course, of course, I remember now, my dear chap. You live up there. We talked about Fortnum, didn't we?"

  "That's right. I'm looking after his wife. She's having a baby, you know."

  "Oh, you are that kind of doctor, are you?"

  "Yes."

  "Thank God! One never knows here, does one? And you really are British too. Not like the O'Briens and the Higginses. Well, well, it must be an awful anxiety for poor Mrs. Fortnum. You must tell her we are doing everything in our power..."

  "Yes," Doctor Plarr said, "of course, she realizes that, but I thought I'd like to know a little of how things are going. I flew down to B. A. this morning, because I felt I had to see you and learn a little, and I'm flying back tonight. If there were some definite news I could take back with me... to comfort Mrs. Fortnum..."

  "It's an awfully difficult situation, Plarr. You see, something which is everybody's responsibility is always nobody's responsibility. The General is down here in the south fishing and refuses to discuss the matter while he's on holiday. The Foreign Minister says it's a purely Paraguayan affair, and the President can't be expected to bring pressure on the General, when he's a guest of the nation. Of course the police are doing their best, but they've probably been told to act as discreetly as possible. For Fortnum's own sake."

  "But the Americans... Surely they can bring pressure on the General. He wouldn't exist twenty-four hours in Paraguay without their help."

  "I know all that, but it makes it the more awkward, Plarr. You see the Americans take the sensible view that these kidnappings have to be discouraged—even if it means, well, how shall I put it? a certain danger to life. Like that German Ambassador they killed—where was it? Guatemala? In this case, to be quite frank... well, an Honorary Consul is not an Ambassador. They feel it would be a bad principle if they interfered. The English are not very popular with the General. Of course if Fortnum were an American he would probably take a different view."

  "The kidnappers thought he was. So the police say. They think the kidnappers were looking for a diplomatic car in the dark and CC is awfully like CD."

  "Yes, how often we've told the damned fool not to fly a flag or show CC plates. An Honorary Consul hasn't the right to use them."

  "Still a death sentence seems a bit severe."

  "What more can I do, Plarr? I've been twice to the Foreign Ministry. Last night I spoke unofficially to the Minister of the Interior. He was having dinner with Wilbur—I mean the American Ambassador. I can't do a thing more without instructions from London, and London has a remarkable sense of—well—unurgency. By the way how is your mother? It all comes back to me now. You are 'that' Plarr. Your mother often has tea with my wife. They both like sweet cakes and those things with 'dulce de leche'."

  "'Alfajores'."

  "That's the name. Can't stand them myself."

  Doctor Plarr said, "I know what a nuisance I must seem to you, Sir Henry, but my father is in one of the General's jails if he's still alive. Perhaps this kidnapping is his last chance. That makes me suspect to the police, so I feel personally concerned. And besides there's Fortnum. I can't help feeling responsible a bit for him. He's not a patient of mine, but Mrs. Fortnum is."

  "Wasn't there something odd about that marriage? I got a letter from up there, from some old busybody called Jeffries."

  "Humphries."

  "Yes. That was the name. He wrote to me that Fortnum had married an 'undesirable' woman. Lucky man! I've reached the age when I never meet anyone of that sort."

  "It did occur to me," Doctor Plarr said, "that I might be able to make contact with the kidnappers. They may telephone Mrs. Fortnum if they find they are getting nowhere with the authorities."

  "A bit improbable, my dear chap."

  "But not impossible, sir. If something like that did happen and I had some hope to offer them... Perhaps I could persuade them to extend their time limit—say for a week. In that case surely there might be a chance to negotiate?"

  "If you want my honest opinion you would only be extending the agony—for Fortnum and Mrs. Fortnum. If I were Fortnum I'd prefer a quick death."

  "But surely something could be done?"

  "I'm sure of this, Plarr, I've seen Wilbur twice and the Americans won't budge. If they can discourage kidnapping by letting an Honor
ary British Consul, in an obscure province, take the rap, they'll be very satisfied. Wilbur says Fortnum is an alcoholic—he brought two bottles of whisky to their picnic at the ruins and the Ambassador only drinks Coca-Cola. I looked up our file on him, but there wasn't anything very definite about alcoholism, though one or two of his reports... well, they did sort of ramble. There was a letter too from that man—Humphries?—saying he had flown the Union Jack upside down. But you don't need to be an alcoholic to do that."

  "All the same, Sir Henry, if the kidnappers could be persuaded to delay only a little..."

  Sir Henry Belfrage knew the time for his siesta was irrevocably lost—the new Agatha Christie would have to wait. He was a kind man and a conscientious one, and he was modest into the bargain. He told himself that in Doctor Plarr'o situation he would have been unlikely to fly in the November heat to Buenos Aires to help the husband of a patient. He said, "There is something you might try to do. I very much doubt if you would be successful, but all the same..."

  He hesitated. With a pen in his hand he was a master of compression: his reports were admirably short and lucid, and a telegram never presented him with the least difficulty. He was at home in his Embassy as he had been at home in his nursery. The chandeliers glittered like the glass fruit on a Christmas tree. In the nursery he could remember building neatly and quickly with his colored bricks. "Master Henry is a clever boy," his nurse always said, but sometimes when he was let out on the vast green spaces of Kensington Gardens he strayed wildly. There were moments with strangers—just as there still were at his annual cocktail party—when he nearly panicked.

  "Yes, Sir Henry?"

  "I'm so sorry, my dear chap. My mind was wandering. I've got a terrible head this morning. That wine from Mendoza... Cooperatives! What can a Cooperative know about wine?"

  "You were saying..."

  "Yes, yes." He put his hand into his breast pocket and touched his ballpoint pen. It was like a talisman. He said, "A delay would be only useful if we could get people sufficiently interested... I've been doing all I can, but nobody at home knows Fortnum. Nobody cares about an Honorary Consul. He doesn't belong to the Service. And to tell you the truth I advised getting rid of him six months ago. 'That' letter will certainly be on the files. So everyone at home will be relieved when the dateline is passed and there are no more minutes to write—and he's released as I believe."

  "And if he's killed?"

  "I'm afraid the P. O. will take the credit for that too. It will be a sign of firmness; it will show they won't treat with blackmailers. You know the kind of words they'll use in the Commons. Law and order. No Danegeld. They'll quote Kipling. Even the Opposition will applaud."

  "It's not only Charles Fortnum. There's his wife... she's having a baby. Suppose the press took it up..."

  "Yes. I see what you mean. The woman who waits, etcetera. But from what that man Humphries wrote I don't think the kind of wife Fortnum has married will arouse the right sort of sentiment in the English press. Not family reading. 'The Sun' might use the real story of course or the 'News of the World', but it would hardly have the effect we want."

  "What do you suggest, Sir Henry?"

  "You must never, never quote me on this, Plarr. The F. O. would put me out to grass if they knew I had suggested anything of the kind. And I don't suppose for a moment my idea would do any good. Mason is not the right material."

  "Mason?"

  "I'm sorry. I meant Fortnum."

  "You haven't suggested anything yet, Sir Henry."

  "Well, what I was getting at... There's nothing a civil servant hates more than a yelp in respectable papers. Sometimes the only way to get action is the right publicity. If you could organize some reaction in your city... Even a telegraphed appeal from the English Club to 'The Times'. Tribute to his..." He touched his pen again as though he might draw from it the correct official jargon. ".... his untiring pursuit of British interests."

  "But there is no English Club, sir. I don't think there are any other English in the city except Humphries and me."

  Sir Henry Belfrage took a quick look at his fingernails (he had mislaid his nail brush). He said something so rapidly that Doctor Plarr couldn't catch a word.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't hear..."

  "My dear chap, I don't have to spell it out to 'you'. Form an English Club immediately and telegraph your tribute to 'The Times' and 'Telegraph'."

  "Do you think it would do any good?"

  "No, I don't, but there's no harm in trying. There's always some Opposition M. P. who will take it up whatever his leaders say. At least it might give the Parliamentary Secretary 'un mauvais quart d'heure'. And then there are the American papers. It's just possible they might copy. 'The New York Times' can be quite virulent. 'Fighting Latin-American independence to the last Englishman.' You know the kind of line the antiwar chaps might take. It's rather a forlorn hope, of course. If he'd been a business tycoon everybody would be a great deal more interested. The trouble is, Plarr, Fortnum is such pitiably small beer."

  There was no plane by which he could return north before the evening, and Doctor Plarr could think of no excuse with which to ease his conscience if he failed to meet his mother. He knew very well what would please her most, and he made a rendezvous by telephone for tea at the Richmond in the Calle Florida—she had no liking for inescapable family conversations in her apartment which she kept almost as airless as the dome over the wax flowers she had bought at an antique shop near Harrods. He always had the impression in her flat that there were secrets from him lying about everywhere, on shelves and on tables, even pushed away under the sofa, secrets she didn't want him to see—perhaps only tiny extravagances on which she had spent the money he sent her. Cream cakes were food, but a china parrot was an extravagance.

  He had to move at a snail's pace through the crowd that filled the narrow 'calle' every afternoon when it was closed to traffic. He was not displeased, for every minute he lost before meeting his mother was pure gain.

  He saw her at the far end of the crowded tea room, sitting in unrelieved black before a plate of sweet cakes. She said, "You are ten minutes late, Eduardo." From his early childhood they had always spoken Spanish together. Only with his father had he spoken English, and his father was a man of few words.

  "I am sorry, mother. You should have begun." When he bent to kiss her cheek he could smell the hot chocolate in her cup like a sweet breath from a tomb.

  "Call the waiter, dear, if there is not a cake here that pleases you."

  "I don't really want to eat anything, mother. I'll just have a cup of coffee."

  She had heavy pouches below her eyes, but they were not, Doctor Plarr knew, the pouches of grief, but of constipation. He had an impression that if they were squeezed they would squirt cream like an éclair. It is terrible what time can do to a beautiful woman. A man's looks often improve with age, seldom a woman's. He thought: a man should never love a woman less than twenty years younger than himself. In that way he can die before the vision fades. Had Fortnum insured himself against disillusion when he married Clara, who was more than forty years younger than himself? Doctor Plarr thought, I'm not so wise, I shall outlive her attraction by many years.

  "Why the mourning, mother?" he asked. "I have never seen you in black before."

  "I am mourning for your father," Señora Plarr said and wiped the chocolate off her fingers with a paper napkin.

  "Have you had news then?"

  "No, but Father Galvão has been speaking to me very seriously. He says that for the sake of my health I must give up vain hopes. Do you know what day it is, Eduardo?"

  He searched his mind without success—he was even uncertain of the day of the month. "The fourteenth?" he asked.

  "It is the day we said goodbye to your father in the port of Asunción."

  He wondered whether his father, if he were to walk into the tea room now, could possibly recognize the stout and pouchy woman who had a smear of cream at the corner of the mouth. In our
memories people we no longer see age gracefully. Señora Plarr said, "Father Galvão held a Mass this morning for the repose of his soul." She scrutinized the plate of cakes and picked a particular éclair, not noticeably different from the others. Yet when he searched his memory he could still just remember a lovely woman who lay and wept in her cabin. Tears at the age she had been then enhanced the brilliance of her eyes. There were no pouches to mar them.

  He said, "I still have hope, mother. You know the kidnappers have named him on the list of prisoners they want released?"

  "What kidnappers?" He had forgotten she never read the papers.

  "Oh well," he said, "it's too long a story to tell you now." He added politely, "What a very nice black dress."

  "I am glad you like it. I had it made specially for the Mass this morning. The material was quite inexpensive, and I had it run up by a little woman... You must not think I am extravagant."

  "No, of course not, mother."

  "If only your father had been less obstinate... What was the use of staying on the estancia to be murdered? He could have sold it for a good price, and we could have been happy here together."

  "He was an idealist," Doctor Plarr said.

  "Ideals are all very well, but it was very wrong of him and very selfish of him not to put his family first."

  He wondered what kind of bitter and reproachful prayers she had muttered that morning at Father Galvão's Mass. Father Galvão was a Portuguese Jesuit who for some reason had been transferred from Rio de Janeiro. He was very popular with women—perhaps they were more ready to confide in him because he had come from a long way off.

  All around him in the Richmond he heard the chatter of women's voices. He could hardly distinguish a single phrase. He might have been in an aviary, listening to a babel of birds from many different regions. There were those who twittered in English, others in German, he even heard a French phrase which his mother would appreciate, "'George est très coupable'." He looked at her as she tipped her mouth toward the chocolate. Had she ever felt any love for his father or himself, or had she just played the comedy of love like Clara? He had grown up, during the years he spent alone with his mother in Buenos Aires, to despise comedy. There were no sentimental relics in his apartment—not even a photograph. It was as bare and truthful—almost—as a police station cell. Even during his affairs with women he had always tried to avoid that phrase of the theater, "I love you." He had been accused often enough of cruelty, though he preferred to think of himself as a painstaking and accurate diagnostician. If for once he had been aware of a sickness he could describe in no other terms, he would have unhesitatingly used the phrase "I love," but he had always been able to attribute the emotion he felt to a quite different malady—to loneliness, pride, physical desire, or even a simple sense of curiosity.