of fun. The meeting broke up gaily.
What followed was not so amusing – a dull lunch at a landowner’s house with a lot of boring women who clustered around the General where he lay in his inevitable hammock and we were served with almost uneatable pieces of pork and quite uneatable yucca (which I now realized was what I called cassava) with only a choice of water or Pepsi to drink. Oh, for a whisky or a glass of rum, but this was not a Sunday. Even the General drank water. I was at my wits’ end until Chuchu, who was standing guard at the door, caught my eye and winked. I went outside. He had found me a drink in a room out of sight of the party.
After the plane had deposited the General at Rio Hato Chuchu and I drove back to Panama. We stopped at the Haunted House and had a drink in the bar next door, for Chuchu seemed in my company to be developing the European habit of drinking all days of the week.
I had told the General about our first visit, and he remembered having heard of the ghost even as a child. It was said to be that of a headless white woman. The owner must be nearly eighty by now, so when the haunting began he was a man in his thirties. I became convinced that he had killed the woman in his house, her screams had been heard, and so the story of the haunting was invented. She was probably buried under the floor. I suggested to the General that he hold an exercise by the Wild Pigs. They would break into the house after a notional siege and perhaps do a bit of digging. But the General didn’t approve the idea. Any search, he said, would have to be legal.
Chuchu and I took another prowl around. We asked the barman if he had seen the owner. Oh yes, he had mentioned our visit, but there was nothing to be done without speaking to him. He was always there on a Sunday. Well, we would return the next Sunday, we said.
In Panama City Chuchu suggested that he ask for dinner ‘the rich woman’ (so it was that he always described her to distinguish her from all the others, but I don’t think she was very wealthy). He had planned to spend the night with her anyway – in a hotel because of the child. She would have to get up at six to go home. What about the girl he was living with at the moment, I asked?
Oh, she was all right. She made no demands on him. Women, Chuchu admitted, seemed to like him. ‘You are a good lover?’ Oh, it wasn’t exactly that, he said. He wasn’t concerned with sexual positions and that sort of nonsense, nor did he think that women were really interested in such unimportant details. What they liked in him, he believed, was the tenderness which he always showed them after making love. This particular ‘wife’, as he called her, was beautiful.
We each drank three rum punches at the excellent bar of the Señorial and they were made for us by an attractive young woman called Flor. She was obviously fond of Chuchu, but he was strangely reluctant to court her (‘She’s a good woman. The affair might turn too serious’). Afterwards we went off to meet the poet. Chuchu was already a little drunk.
He became a good deal more drunk over dinner, continually demanding that I admire the beauty of his friend. She was certainly a good-looking and intelligent woman in her late forties or early fifties, but it was difficult to carry on a conversation when every few moments Chuchu would say, ‘Look at her, Graham, look at her, isn’t she lovely?’ She showed, I thought, great patience. He drove me rather erratically back to the hotel, and then they went away together. It seemed to me that his chances of a satisfactory night with her were small.
How wrong I was. He turned up next day to meet me, very happy and still a little drunk. (He had had half a bottle of wine for his breakfast before she left him at six.) It was a ‘wonderful night’, he said. I told him that I was surprised after the way he had treated her at dinner.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You kept on telling me to look at her
What followed was not so amusing – a dull lunch at a landowner’s house with a lot of boring women who clustered around the General where he lay in his inevitable hammock and we were served with almost uneatable pieces of pork and quite uneatable yucca (which I now realized was what I called cassava) with only a choice of water or Pepsi to drink. Oh, for a whisky or a glass of rum, but this was not a Sunday. Even the General drank water. I was at my wits’ end until Chuchu, who was standing guard at the door, caught my eye and winked. I went outside. He had found me a drink in a room out of sight of the party.
After the plane had deposited the General at Rio Hato Chuchu and I drove back to Panama. We stopped at the Haunted House and had a drink in the bar next door, for Chuchu seemed in my company to be developing the European habit of drinking all days of the week.
I had told the General about our first visit, and he remembered having heard of the ghost even as a child. It was said to be that of a headless white woman. The owner must be nearly eighty by now, so when the haunting began he was a man in his thirties. I became convinced that he had killed the woman in his house, her screams had been heard, and so the story of the haunting was invented. She was probably buried under the floor. I suggested to the General that he hold an exercise by the Wild Pigs. They would break into the house after a notional siege and perhaps do a bit of digging. But the General didn’t approve the idea. Any search, he said, would have to be legal.
Chuchu and I took another prowl around. We asked the barman if he had seen the owner. Oh yes, he had mentioned our visit, but there was nothing to be done without speaking to him. He was always there on a Sunday. Well, we would return the next Sunday, we said.
In Panama City Chuchu suggested that he ask for dinner ‘the rich woman’ (so it was that he always described her to distinguish her from all the others, but I don’t think she was very wealthy). He had planned to spend the night with her anyway – in a hotel because of the child. She would have to get up at six to go home. What about the girl he was living with at the moment, I asked?
Oh, she was all right. She made no demands on him. Women, Chuchu admitted, seemed to like him. ‘You are a good lover?’ Oh, it wasn’t exactly that, he said. He wasn’t concerned with sexual positions and that sort of nonsense, nor did he think that women were really interested in such unimportant details. What they liked in him, he believed, was the tenderness which he always showed them after making love. This particular ‘wife’, as he called her, was beautiful.
We each drank three rum punches at the excellent bar of the Señorial and they were made for us by an attractive young woman called Flor. She was obviously fond of Chuchu, but he was strangely reluctant to court her (‘She’s a good woman. The affair might turn too serious’). Afterwards we went off to meet the poet. Chuchu was already a little drunk.
He became a good deal more drunk over dinner, continually demanding that I admire the beauty of his friend. She was certainly a good-looking and intelligent woman in her late forties or early fifties, but it was difficult to carry on a conversation when every few moments Chuchu would say, ‘Look at her, Graham, look at her, isn’t she lovely?’ She showed, I thought, great patience. He drove me rather erratically back to the hotel, and then they went away together. It seemed to me that his chances of a satisfactory night with her were small.
How wrong I was. He turned up next day to meet me, very happy and still a little drunk. (He had had half a bottle of wine for his breakfast before she left him at six.) It was a ‘wonderful night’, he said. I told him that I was surprised after the way he had treated her at dinner.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You kept on telling me to look at her
Similar Books
