The Peacock Emporium(115)

I’ll be here.





25


The passengers emerging through the arrivals gate from flight BA7902 from Buenos Aires were a conspicuously handsome lot. Not that the Argentinians weren’t a good-looking nation generally, Jorge de Marenas observed afterward (especially when compared to those Spanish Gallegos), but it was perhaps inevitable that a hundred and fifty attendees of a plastic surgeons’ convention—and their wives—would be a little more aesthetically pleasing than most: tanned Amazonian women with hourglass figures and hair the color of expensive handbags, men with uniformly thick dark hair and unnaturally firm jawlines. Jorge de Marenas was one of the few whose appearance related to his biological age.

“Martin Sergio and I played a little game,” he told Alejandro, as they sat in the back of the taxi, speeding toward London. “You look around and work out who’s had what. The women, it’s easy.” He held an imaginary pair of footballs to his chest, and pouted. “It’s too much of everything. They start off with a little nip and tuck here, then they want to look like Barbie. But the men . . . We were trying to start a rumor that the plane had run out of fuel to see who could still form frown lines. Most of them were like . . .” He mimed a frozen expression of benign acquiescence: “‘Are you sure? But that’s terrible. We’re going to die!’” He laughed heartily and slapped a hand on his son’s thigh.

The plane journey, and the prospect of seeing his beloved Alejandro, had made him garrulous, and he had talked so much since their embrace in the echoing arrivals hall that it wasn’t until they reached the outskirts of Chiswick, and the taxi slowed on the motorway, that he realized his son had said barely anything. “So, how long do you have off work?” he said. “Are we still on for our fishing trip?”

“All booked, Papa.”

“Where are we going?”

“A place about an hour’s drive from the hospital. I’ve booked it for Thursday. You said you’d be finishing your conference Wednesday, right?”

“Perfect. Buenisimo. And what will we be catching?”

“Salmon trout,” Alejandro said. “I bought some flies in Dere Hampton, the place where I’m living. And I’ve borrowed a couple of rods from one of the doctors. You need nothing apart from your hat and your waders.”

“All packed,” said Jorge, motioning toward the trunk. “Salmon trout, eh? Let’s see if they’ll give us a bit of a fight.” He sat, heedless of the flat west London sprawl that was building in density through the window, his mind already thinking of clear English rivers, the whir of the line as it flew through the air and landed a length of water in front of him.

“How’s Mama?”

Jorge regretfully left the bubbling waters behind. He had wondered for much of the plane journey how much to tell him. “You know your mama,” he said carefully.

“Has she been anywhere lately? Will she go out of the house with you?”

“She . . . she’s still a little worried about all the crime. I cannot persuade her that things are improving. She watches too much Crónica, reads El Guardian, Noticias, that kind of thing. It’s not good for her nerves. Milagros has been living with us full time—did I tell you?”

“No.”

“I think your mother likes to have someone else in the house when I’m not around. It makes her . . . more easy in herself.”

“She didn’t want to come here with you?” His son was staring out of the taxi window, and it was hard to tell from his voice whether he was regretful or glad.

“She’s not so keen on airplanes these days. Don’t worry, son. She and Milagros rub along quite well together.”

The truth was, he was glad to have a little break from her. She had become obsessed with the idea of the supposed affair he was having with Agostina, his secretary, while simultaneously berating him for his lack of interest in her. If he would only agree to tighten her waist, lift her cheeks, he might find her more attractive. He tended to avoid denial—years of experience had shown him that this often made her worse. Nor could he articulate the truth: with age, he no longer felt the intense need for physical reassurance he once had, but the years of slicing these young girls open, of reshaping them, of padding them out and hauling them in, of carefully sculpting their most intimate parts, meant that he no longer had much more than a detached, artist’s appetite for female flesh.

“She misses you,” he said. “I’m not telling you this because I want you to feel guilty. God knows, you should have some fun as a young man, see the world a little. But she misses you. She’s packed you some Mate in my bag, and some new shirts, and a couple of things she thought you might want to read.” He paused. “I think she would like it if you wrote a little more often.”

“I know,” said Alejandro. “Sorry. It’s been . . . a strange time.”

Jorge looked sharply at his son. He was going to probe further, but changed his mind. They had four days together, and if Alejandro had something on his mind, he would find out soon enough. “So, London, eh? You’ll like the Lansdowne Hotel. Your mother and I came here in the 1960s when we were first married, and we had a ball. This time I have booked us a twin room. No point in being separated, not after all these months. Me and my boy, eh?”