She turned away. She supposed that she could always ask Rodrigo. He ought to be able to get her some. His brother worked in the hotel kitchens.
She did not look back until she reached the door. Wilson was still sitting at the piano, and she could see from the angle of his head that he was confused.
She smiled across the room at him. ‘Come to lunch the day after tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’ll cook some steak for you.’
Chapter 15
Early the next morning Wilson was leaving the Hotel La Playa when he heard somebody call his name. He turned to see Monsieur Valence striding towards him, dressed in his usual black frock-coat, with his usual white umbrella hoisted in the air above his head. Less usual was the pair of cracked and dusty riding boots that he was wearing.
‘Good morning, Monsieur,’ the Frenchman said.
Wilson returned the greeting, and then stood back and allowed himself a smile. ‘I see you’ve developed some more practical footwear.’
Valence surveyed his feet with faint embarrassment. It was as if he had been caught in fancy-dress.
‘Soon you’ll be wearing spurs,’ Wilson said.
‘Spurs?’ The reference was lost on Valence. Then he understood, and shook his head. ‘Ah yes. The Mexican.’ A smile crossed his face, but only remotely, like a man on a horse seen from a distance, traversing a stretch of open prairie. He looked up, some as yet unrevealed weight behind his steady gaze. ‘I thought, perhaps, that you might join me for a drink,’ he said, ‘if there is a bar in the vicinity.’
The only bar in the vicinity, Wilson told him, was the Bar El Fandango where, if you did not drink with the greatest caution, you were liable to lose consciousness and wake up in the bed of a woman you had never seen before.
‘Perhaps a coffee then,’ said Monsieur Valence.
Wilson led him down the street towards the waterfront, which was where he had been intending to go in the first place. They walked side by side with the ease of men who knew each other’s measure and did not feel the need to stamp their own authority upon the silence. It was only when they drew close to the pale-brown wall of Mama Vum Buá’s establishment that Valence stopped short, his face twisted out of shape by something that resembled dismay — or stronger than dismay, maybe, more like alarm.
‘I cannot go here,’ he announced.
When Wilson asked him the reason, he explained that he had been poisoned during his last visit to Señora Vum Buá’s place and that he no longer trusted anything that she produced.
‘A coffee.’ Wilson spread one hand in the air. ‘Surely a coffee cannot hurt.’
Some private war was being waged inside the Frenchman; his face had stiffened with the conflict. At last he took a deep breath and sighed. ‘I suppose not,’ he said.
Wilson sat down at the table beneath the tree. Valence settled gingerly beside him, as if he feared the chair itself might infect him with some terrible disease. The Señora was standing in the doorway with her arms folded. Her face had darkened, and she had bound her hair in three tight braids which jutted from her head like weapons. Wilson wished her good morning and ordered two cups of coffee.
Arms still folded, the Señora seemed to grow in size and stature before his eyes. Then she spoke:
‘No.’
He stared at her. The Yaqui Indians were often named after their physical characteristics. Vum Buá meant ‘high rock’, but it could also be used to refer to a mountain. It was certainly appropriate this morning.
‘I’m not serving that man.’ She would not even look at Monsieur Valence. Instead, she rolled her head to one side and spat on the ground.
‘Why not?’ Wilson asked.
‘He insulted my food.’
So that was it. Wilson thought it best to improvise.
‘It was a mistake. He’s come here today to make amends,’ Wilson said, ‘by drinking a cup of your good coffee.’
He sensed a lessening of tension in her stance.
‘Señora,’ he pleaded. ‘Two cups of coffee.’
At last she withdrew into the dark interior. He could see her twelve rings moving supernaturally about.
‘She is very proud,’ Monsieur Valence observed.
Wilson was not sure how much of the exchange Valence had understood, if indeed he had understood anything at all. He decided not to enlighten him. Ignorance might be a happier state.
‘They’re a proud people,’ he said. ‘They work, but they don’t like to serve. Service is not in their nature.’
Monsieur Valence did not appear to be listening. He held his left hand in his right, and was pressing his thumb into the palm. A fly landed on his shoulder and became invisible.
At last he spoke. ‘You have not known my wife for very long, but I believe you are a friend to her.’
‘Yes,’ Wilson said, ‘that’s correct.’
‘Has she said something to you? Has she expressed,’ and the Frenchman looked up quickly, then looked down again, ‘any dissatisfaction?’
It was Wilson’s turn to hesitate. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not that I can think of.’ And it was, in some sense, true. He was too surprised at the bluntness of the questioning to apply his mind properly to the answer.
Valence continued to massage the palm of his left hand with his thumb.
Mama Vum Buá brought their coffee in two buckled tin mugs. It was the grey colour of certain rivers in the winter; grounds swirled in a sluggish spiral on the surface. It provoked in Wilson a curious and unexpected nostalgia for the north — or perhaps it was just the sudden desire to be far away, to be somewhere else.
‘Two coffees,’ the Señora said. ‘You want eggs?’
Wilson felt the Frenchman shudder. ‘No eggs,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’
‘Something wrong with my eggs?’ Her blue eyes glinted in her heavy copper face.
‘First we’ve got to talk some business,’ Wilson said, ‘then I’ll have some eggs.’
‘Business?’ She ambled away, cackling. ‘Business.’
Monsieur Valence put one finger through the handle of his mug, but did not lift it to his lips. ‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that she is losing her mind.’
For a moment Wilson thought he was referring to the Señora and was about to smile, then he understood. He felt his heart drop in his chest like a dead weight; it was like watching a sack of flour being heaved off the back of a cart. He could not speak.
Monseiur Valence had been watching him, and now seemed reassured to see that he was taking the matter seriously. Valence pushed his tin mug to the centre of the table.
‘How is your ankle?’
‘It’s still weak.’
‘Good.’
Wilson stared at the Frenchman, but the Frenchman did not even notice. He was one of those people who are incapable of seeing the world from outside of themselves, and are therefore denied a share in much of its humour.
‘Since you must stay here in town,’ Valence continued, ‘I would be grateful if you could watch my wife.’
‘Watch her?’
‘Yes.’
‘You make it sound like work for a policeman,’ Wilson said, ‘or a jailer.’
‘Forgive me. It’s my English. Sometimes it escapes me.’ Monsieur Valence let out a sigh. And looked, just for a moment, like an ordinary person, with ordinary measures of weakness and fatigue.
He leaned forwards, hands on the table, shirt-cuffs resting against the edge. ‘All that I am talking about is friendship,’ he said. ‘Do you understand me?’
‘I understand.’
‘I would be very grateful.’ Without lifting his wrists off the table, the Frenchman spread his hands.
Wilson watched the Frenchman as he rose to his feet. ‘As it happens,’ he said, ‘I’m having lunch with her tomorrow.’