He remained silent for longer this time and fixed his gaze on his beloved painting of the retreating horsemen and the one man turning round, dressed in red and possibly one-eyed, in order to cast a final, stern backward glance at the fallen he was leaving behind and whose deaths he and his men had probably caused: ‘At least remember me.’
‘And what happened then?’ I didn’t want to give him time to have second thoughts, to regret telling me about something that was still no business of mine.
‘She moved here when she was about eighteen, to live with her aunt and uncle, who thought of her almost as a daughter. I’m afraid I was the reason for that move, so that she could be close to me. Or, rather, she reversed the order of her visits, going to Massachusetts once a year to spend two or three months with her father, her solitary, disastrous father, and look after him a little. During those visits, we would write to each other — well, phoning was just unthinkable then, we’re talking about 1959 or 1960 remember. No one could afford it. Then, about six or seven months before the wedding (she had just turned twenty-one, I think), she had to go to America urgently, some serious incident, some grave problem. Her father … I don’t know how much I should tell you about him, Juan, it’s not really up to me …’ He gave a sigh of annoyance, drummed his fingers on his eyepatch, pondered for a few seconds, then opted for indiscretion. ‘Her father was a homosexual. There you are, I’ve said it. He may always have been, and it may not have been a belated discovery, as Beatriz at first believed. Perhaps that’s why his wife left him shortly after Beatriz was born and chose not to accompany him into exile. That may have been part of the reason why he chose exile, who knows? He was a Republican by conviction, but hadn’t done anything very significant during the War and wasn’t, therefore, at risk of being persecuted. But for a man with that problem (and it was an enormous problem then, your generation has no idea) and with a child to take care of, you can imagine what it would have been like for him in Franco’s ultra-religious Spain, with the Church having been given carte blanche. If he’d been found out, they would, for a start, have taken his daughter from him. So he went first to France, then to Mexico and ended up teaching in Massachusetts, thanks to some contacts he had there; he had a thorough knowledge of Spanish literature and was a pretty decent translator from German and English, in fact, you can still find some of his translations in second-hand bookshops. Not that there was much, if any, tolerance of homosexuality in 1940s or 50s America or even in the mid-60s, but it wasn’t like it was here, where all queers were sent to prison — no, almost anywhere was more civilized than here. I don’t know how he coped. A lot of self-imposed abstinence, I suppose, and a few weekend escapes to Boston or New York, where he wouldn’t be noticed (on a campus it was impossible), to visit the odd clandestine or semi-clandestine club and have some fun. There would have been bars like the one Don Murray goes to in Advise and Consent, with men dancing with each other, you’ve seen it, haven’t you?’ I shook my head. ‘You haven’t? You’re mad. What are you waiting for? It’s wonderful. It was made in 1962 and is based on fact, so there must have been something of the sort at the time. Whatever the truth of the matter, poor Ernesto Noguera would have had a much harder time of it having a bit of modest fun in America than Towers did setting up his prostitution racket in the headquarters of the United Nations, because that coincided more or less with the final part of her father’s life.’ He raised one hand to his chin, stroked it repeatedly with his thumb and smiled: despite his humiliating dismissal from the Towers film, and given his excitement about his new project with Palance and hopefully Widmark, his most furious fury must have passed. ‘Harry’s a nasty piece of work, isn’t he? I’m sure what Lom told us is true, about the worst of his dirty tricks, I mean. What did you think?’
‘Yes, I felt he knew more than he was telling us. But then it’s only normal that he should tread rather carefully, always allowing for a degree of indiscretion. After all, he’s often worked with him.’ Muriel shook his head, amused by the memory of that conversation, distracted. Yes, he had probably forgiven Towers, just as he had completely forgiven Van Vechten, without knowing exactly what he was forgiving, which always makes things easier, and without wanting to know either. If he wasn’t a man to bear a grudge, or to pass judgement on matters that didn’t affect him, and was even playing down the importance of having a film taken away from him, then his gross behaviour towards Beatriz for all those years was utterly inexplicable. But he had been about to explain and had got diverted. I grew impatient, afraid again that, at any moment, he might think better of it. I decided to lead him back to the matter in hand. ‘But you were saying that just months before your wedding, some grave incident occurred, some serious problem. I presume involving her father.’
He raised his head a little to look at me more directly. I had a sense that he was enjoying keeping me hanging on: now that he had agreed to tell me the story, he would do so at his own pace and in his own way. That is the prerogative of the one doing the telling, and the person listening has none at all, or only that of getting up and leaving. But I was not going to leave just yet.
‘I don’t know what could have got into the man. By this time, he was in his late forties, so hardly in the first flush of youth, but ardour takes a long time to fade. Or perhaps he just got fed up and lowered his guard. Anyway, after all those years of moderation, a university colleague caught him in Boston giving a blow-job to a man in some public toilets or maybe it was a cinema toilet, I’m not sure. Like any good liberal, this colleague didn’t rush off and report him to the police, but to the Board of Professors or whatever it’s called, or to the Chairman, although now I think they call him, absurdly enough, the Chairperson, so as not to seem sexist. Those New England colleges are so proud of their moral rectitude they end up being positively inquisitorial. You can imagine the scandal. Not that it was leaked to the press or anything, college rectitude wouldn’t allow that, and, besides, they didn’t want to frighten off any future students. But in those isolated places, in their little bubbles of lakes and woods, everyone knows everything. Not only was he dismissed, other universities in the area were warned about him, making it impossible for him to find a similar post. He was left without a job and without an income, depressed and stuck at home, shunned by most of his friends. And so Beatriz flew there urgently to see what she could do, not quite knowing what had happened. The telegram she received left her no choice; I can remember it clearly: ‘Dismissed from university. Situation desperate. Long story. Don’t phone. Come quickly.’ Her aunt and uncle helped her out with the air ticket, I couldn’t help much at the time because I still hadn’t come into the family money and lived more or less from day to day. She didn’t find out the details until she got there, and the people at the college had no alternative but to explain what had happened and her father had no alternative but to own up to her about his sexual proclivities, and about the fact that her mother wasn’t dead, although we’ve never found out anything more than that, because Beatriz never wanted to go looking for her. The lady, who would be in her sixties now, is probably out there somewhere, perhaps having had more children. Beatriz told me all this by letter, because, at first, we wrote to each other almost every day, or she did anyway. Her father was in a dreadful situation: either he had to move to the other side of the country, to some insignificant university that his colleagues had failed to notify, or … in short, disaster. We even discussed bringing him to Spain to live with us when we got married. Not the ideal start to married life, but we had to consider it as a possibility. Her aunt and uncle, her father’s sister and brother-in-law, who were both loyal franquistas, were outraged when they learned the nature of the offence. They made some comment that included the word “incorrigible”, so they must have known about him before, about his tastes, I mean. Anyway, probably as a result of the shame and the shock, Noguera had a heart attack about a week or so after Beatriz arrived. He survived, but was left very weak and in need of care. She stayed by his side, well, she was always a devoted daughter and continued to be, as daughters brought up solely by their father tend to be, regardless of how that father may have behaved. At least they weren’t in dire financial straits initially: they drew on the savings Noguera had accumulated during years of earning good American wages and making only modest expenditures, and hoped he would recover sufficiently for him to try his luck in Michigan or Oklahoma or New Mexico, or to return to Spain; no firm decision was made, and, besides, he was in no fit state to travel. Months passed. Her father was very slowly and gradually recovering, but he was still very frail, and Beatriz’s return continued to be postponed. Hand me a cigarette, will you, and an ashtray.’