The Whispering Land, Page 2

  ‘Gerry? Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning,’ I said, with a strong premonition that it was going to turn out to be anything but a good morning.

  ‘I’m afraid Mama says you will have to move Claudius,’ said Marie.

  ‘What’s he done now?’ I asked in exasperation.

  ‘Well,’ said Marie, with the faintest tremor of mirth in her voice, ‘Mama gave a dinner party last night. Just as we had all sat down there was a terrible noise in the garden. Claudius had managed to get his chain loose from the railings, I don’t know how. Anyway, before we could do anything sensible he burst in through the French windows, dragging his chain behind him.’

  ‘Good God!’ I said, startled.

  ‘Yes,’ said Marie, starting to giggle helplessly, ‘it was so funny. All the guests leaping about, quite terrified, while Claudius ran round and round the table, clanking his chain like a spectre. Then he got frightened at all the noise and did a … you know … a decoration on the floor.’

  ‘Dear Heaven,’ I groaned, for I knew what Claudius could do in the way of ‘decoration’ when he put his mind to it.

  ‘So Mama’s dinner was ruined, and she says she is very sorry, but could you move him. She feels that he is not happy in the garden, and that anyway, he’s not a very simpatico animal.’

  ‘Your mother is, I presume, upstairs having a headache?’

  ‘I think it’s a bit more than a headache,’ said Marie judiciously.

  ‘O.K.’ I sighed, ‘leave it to me. I’ll think of something.’

  This, however, appeared to be the last of a series of bedevilments we had suffered, for suddenly everything seemed to go right. The Customs released my equipment, and, more important still, I suddenly found not only a home for Claudius, but the rest of the animals as well: a small house on the outskirts of Buenos Aires had been lent to use to keep our collection in as a temporary measure.

  So, with our problems solved, at least for the moment, we got out the maps and planned our route to the south, to the Patagonian coastline where the fur seals and elephant seals gambolled in the icy waters.

  At first sight everything seemed to be quite straightforward. Marie had managed to obtain leave from her job, and was to come with us to act as interpreter. Our route was planned with the minute detail that only people who have never been to an area indulge in. The equipment was checked and double-checked, and carefully packed. After all the weeks of frustration and boredom in Buenos Aires we began to feel that at last we were on our way. Then, at our last council of war (in the little café on the corner), Marie produced an argument that she had obviously been brooding upon for some considerable time.

  ‘I think it would be a good idea if we take someone who knows the roads, Gerry,’ she said, engulfing what appeared to be a large loaf of bread stuffed with an exceptionally giant ox’s tongue, a concoction that passed for a sandwich in Argentina.

  ‘Whatever for?’ I asked. ‘We’ve got maps, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes, but you have never driven on those Patagonian roads, and they are quite different from anywhere else in the world, you know.’

  ‘How, different?’ I inquired.

  ‘Worse,’ said Marie, who did not believe in wasting words.

  ‘I’m inclined to agree,’ said Jacquie. ‘We’ve heard the most awful reports of those roads from everyone.’

  ‘Darling, you know as well as I do that you always hear those sorts of reports about roads, or mosquitoes, or savage tribes, wherever you go in the world, and they are generally a lot of nonsense.’

  ‘Anyway, I think Marie’s suggestion is a good one. If we could get someone who knows the roads to drive us down, then you know what to expect on the way back.’

  ‘But there is no one,’ I said irritably, ‘Rafael is in college, Carlos is up in the North, Brian is studying …’

  ‘There is Dicky,’ said Marie.

  I stared at her.

  ‘Who is Dicky?’ I asked at length.

  ‘A friend of mine,’ she said carelessly, ‘he is a very good driver, he knows Patagonia, and he is a very nice person. He is quite used to going on hunting trips, so he does not mind suffering.’

  ‘By “suffering” do you mean roughing it, or are you insinuating that our company might be offensive to his delicate nature?’

  ‘Oh, stop being facetious,’ said Jacquie. ‘Would this chap come with us, Marie?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘He said he would like it very much.’

  ‘Good,’ said Jacquie, ‘when can he come and see us?’

  ‘Well, I told him to meet us here in about ten minutes’ time,’ said Marie. ‘I thought Gerry would want to see him in case he did not like him.’

  I gazed at them all speechlessly.

  ‘I think that’s a very good idea, don’t you?’ asked Jacquie.

  ‘Are you asking my opinion?’ I inquired. ‘I thought you had settled it all between you.’

  ‘I am sure you will like Dicky …’ began Marie, and at that moment Dicky arrived.

  At first glance I decided that I did not like Dicky at all. He did not look to me the sort of person who had ever suffered, or, indeed, was capable of suffering. He was exquisitely dressed, too exquisitely dressed. He had a round, plump face, with boot-button eyes, a rather frail-looking moustache like a brown moth decorated his upper lip, and his dark hair was plastered down to his head with such care that it looked as if it had been painted on to his scalp.

  ‘This is Dicky de Sola,’ said Marie, in some trepidation.

  Dicky smiled at me, a smile that transformed his whole face.

  ‘Marie have told you?’ he said, dusting his chair fastidiously with his handkerchief before sitting down at the table. ‘I am delight to come with you if you are happy. I am delight to go to Patagonia, whom I love.’

  I began to warm to him.

  ‘If I am no useful, I will not come, but I can advise if you will allow, for I know the roads. You have a map? Ah, good, now let me explanation to you.’

  Together we pored over the map, and within half an hour Dicky had won me over completely. Not only did he have an intimate knowledge of the country we were to pass through, but his own brand of English, his charm and infectious humour had decided me.

  ‘Well,’ I said, as we folded the maps away, ‘if you can really spare the time, we’d like you to come very much.’

  ‘Overwhelmingly,’ said Dicky, holding out his hand.

  And on this rather cryptic utterance the bargain was sealed.

  1.

  The Whispering Land

  The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely passable, and hence unknown; they bear the stamp of having lasted, as they are now, for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time.

  CHARLES DARWIN: THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. BEAGLE

  We set off for the south in the pearly grey dawn light of what promised to be a perfect day. The streets were empty and echoing, and the dew-drenched parks and squares had their edges frothed with great piles of fallen blooms from the palo borracho and jacaranda trees, heaps of glittering flowers in blue, yellow and pink.

  On the outskirts of the city we rounded a corner and came upon the first sign of life we had seen since we had started, a covey of dustmen indulging in their early morning ballet. This was such an extraordinary sight that we drove slowly behind them for some way in order to watch. The great dustcart rumbled down the centre of the road at a steady five miles an hour, and standing in the back, up to his knees in rubbish, stood the emptier. Four other men loped alongside the cart like wolves, darting off suddenly into dark doorways to reappear with dustbins full of trash balanced on their shoulders. They would run up alongside the cart and throw the dustbin effortlessly into the air, and the man on the cart would catch it and empty it and throw it back, all in one fluid movement. The timing of this was superb, for as the empty dustbin was hurtling downwards a full one would be sailing up. They would pass in mid air, and the ful
l bin would be caught and emptied. Sometimes there would be four dustbins in the air at once. The whole action was performed in silence and with incredible speed.

  Soon we left the edge of the city, just stirring to wakefulness, and sped out into the open countryside, golden in the rising sun. The early morning air was chilly, and Dicky had dressed for the occasion. He was wearing a long tweed overcoat and white gloves, and his dark, bland eyes and neat, butterfly-shaped moustache peered out from under a ridiculous deer-stalker hat which he wore, he explained to me, in order to ‘keep the ears heated’. Sophie and Marie crouched in strange prenatal postures in the back of the Land-Rover, on top of our mountainous pile of equipment, most of which, they insisted, had been packed in boxes with knife-like edges. Jacquie and I sat next to Dicky in the front seat, a map spread out across our laps, our heads nodding, as we endeavoured to work out our route. Some of the places we had to pass through were delightful: Chascomus, Dolores, Necochea, Tres Arroyos, and similar delicious names that slid enticingly off the tongue. At one point we passed through two villages, within a few miles of each other, one called ‘The Dead Christian’ and the other ‘The Rich Indian’. Marie’s explanation of this strange nomenclature was that the Indian was rich because he killed the Christian, and had stolen all his money, but attractive though this story was, I felt it could not be the right one.

  For two days we sped through the typical landscape of the Pampa, flat golden grassland in which the cattle grazed knee-deep; occasional clumps of eucalyptus trees, with their bleached and peeling trunks like leprous limbs; small, neat estancias, gleaming white in the shade of huge, carunculated ombú trees, that stood massively and grimly on their enormous squat trunks. In places the neat fences that lined the road were almost obliterated under a thick cloak of convolvulus, hung with electric-blue flowers the size of saucers, and every third or fourth fence-post would have balanced upon it the strange, football-like nest of an ovenbird. It was a lush, prosperous and well-fed-looking landscape that only just escaped being monotonous. Eventually, in the evening of the third day, we lost our way, and so we pulled in to the side of the road and argued over the map. Our destination was a town called Carmen de Patagones, on the north bank of the Rio Negro. I particularly wanted to spend the night here, because it was a town that Darwin had stayed in for some time during the voyage of the Beagle, and I was interested to see how it had changed in the last hundred years. So, in spite of near-mutiny on the part of the rest of the expedition, who wanted to stop at the first suitable place we came to, we drove on. As it turned out it was all we could have done anyway, for we did not pass a single habitation until we saw gleaming ahead of us a tiny cluster of feeble lights. Within ten minutes we were driving cautiously through the cobbled streets of Carmen de Patagones, lit by pale, trembling street-lights. It was two o’clock in the morning, and every house was blank-faced and tightly shuttered. Our chances of finding anyone who could direct us to a hostelry were remote, and we certainly needed direction, for each house looked exactly like the ones on each side of it, and there was no indication as to whether it was a hotel or a private habitation. We stopped in the main square of the town and were arguing tiredly and irritably over this problem when suddenly, under one of the street-lights, appeared an angel of mercy, in the shape of a tall, slim policeman clad in an immaculate uniform, his belt and boots gleaming. He saluted smartly, bowed to the female members of the party, and with old-world courtesy directed us up some side-roads to where he said we should find a hotel. We came to a great gloomy house, heavily shuttered, with a massive front door that would have done justice to a cathedral. We beat a sharp tattoo on its weather-beaten surface and awaited results patiently. Ten minutes later there was still no response from the inhabitants, and so Dicky, in desperation, launched an assault on the door that would, if it had succeeded, have awakened the dead. But as he lashed out at the door it swung mysteriously open under his assault, and displayed a long, dimly lit passageway, with doors along each side, and a marble staircase leading to the upper floors. Dead tired and extremely hungry we were in no mood to consider other people’s property, so we marched into the echoing hall like an invading army. We stood there and shouted ‘¡Holà!’ until the hotel rang with our shouts, but there was no response.

  ‘I think, Gerry, that sometime they are all deceased,’ said Dicky gravely.

  ‘Well, if they are I suggest we spread out and find ourselves some beds,’ I said.

  So we climbed the marble staircase and found ourselves three bedrooms, with beds made up, by the simple expedient of opening every door in sight. Eventually, having found a place to sleep, Dicky and I went downstairs to see if the hotel boasted of any sanitary arrangements. The first door we threw open in our search led us into a dim bedroom in which was an enormous double-bed hung with an old-fashioned canopy. Before we could back out of the room a huge figure surged out from under the bedclothes like a surfacing whale, and waddled towards us. It turned out to be a colossal woman, clad in a flowing flannel nightie, who must have weighed somewhere in the neighbourhood of fifteen stone. She came out, blinking into the hallway, pulling on a flowing kimono of bright green covered with huge pink roses, so the effect was rather as if one of the more exotic floral displays of the Chelsea Flower Show had suddenly taken on a life of its own. Over her ample bosoms spread two long streamers of grey hair which she flicked deftly over her shoulder as she did up her kimono, smiling at us with sleepy goodwill.

  ‘Buenas noches,’ she said politely.

  ‘Buenas noches, señora,’ we replied, not to be outdone in good manners at that hour of the morning.

  ‘¿Hablo con la patrona?’ inquired Dicky.

  ‘Si, si, señor,’ she said, smiling broadly, ‘¿que quieres?’

  Dicky apologized for our late arrival, but la patrona waved away our apologies. Was it possible, Dicky asked, for us to have some sandwiches and coffee? Why not? inquired la patrona. Further, said Dicky, we were in urgent need of a lavatory, and could she be so kind as to direct us to it. With great good humour she led us to a small tiled room, showed us how to pull the plug, and stood there chatting amiably while Dicky and I relieved the pangs of nature. Then she puffed and undulated her way down to the kitchen and cut us a huge pile of sandwiches and made a steaming mug of coffee. Having assured herself that there was nothing further she could do for our comfort, she waddled off to bed.

  The next morning, having breakfasted, we did a rapid tour of the town. As far as I could see, apart from the introduction of electricity, it had changed very little since Darwin’s day, and so we left and sped down a hill and across the wide iron bridge that spanned the rusty red waters of the Rio Negro. We rattled across the bridge from the Province of Buenos Aires to the Province of Chubut, and by that simple action of crossing a river we entered a different world.

  Gone were the lush green plains of the Pampa, and in their place was an arid waste stretching away as far as the eye could see on each side of the dusty road, a uniform pelt of grey-green scrub composed of plants about three feet high, each armed with a formidable array of thorns and spikes. Nothing appeared to live in this dry scrub, for when we stopped there was no bird or insect song, only the whispering of the wind through the thorn scrub in this monochromatic Martian landscape, and the only moving thing apart from ourselves was the giant plume of dust we trailed behind the vehicle. This was terribly tiring country to drive in. The road, deeply rutted and potholed, unrolled straight ahead to the horizon, and after a few hours this monotony of scene numbed one’s brain, and one would suddenly drop off to sleep, to be awoken by the vicious scrunch of the wheels as the Land-Rover swerved off into the brittle scrub.

  The evening before we were due to reach Deseado this happened on a stretch of road which, unfortunately, had recently been rained upon, so that the surface had turned into something resembling high-grade glue. Dicky, who had been driving for a long time, suddenly nodded off behind the wheel, and before anyone could do anything sensible, both La
nd-Rover and trailer had skidded violently into the churned-up mud at the side of the road, and settled there snugly, wheels spinning like mad. Reluctantly we got out into the bitter chill of the evening wind, and in the dim sunset light set to work to unhitch the trailer and then push it and the Land-Rover separately out of the mud. Then, our feet and hands frozen, the five of us crouched in the shelter of the Land-Rover and watched the sunset, passing from hand to hand a bottle of Scotch which I had been keeping for just such an emergency.

  On every side of us the scrubland stretched away, dark and flat, so that you got the impression of being in the centre of a gigantic plate. The sky had become suffused with green as the sun sank, and then, unexpectedly, turned to a very pale powder-blue. A tattered mass of clouds on the western horizon suddenly turned black, edged delicately with flame-red, and resembled a great armada of Spanish galleons waging a fierce sea-battle across the sky, drifting towards each other, turned into black silhouette by the fierce glare from their cannons. As the sun sank lower and lower the black of the clouds became shot and mottled with grey, and the sky behind them became striped with green, blue and pale red. Suddenly our fleet of galleons disappeared, and in its place was a perfect archipelago of islands strung out across the sky in what appeared to be a placid, sunset-coloured sea. The illusion was perfect: you could pick out the tiny, white rimmed coves in the rocky, indented shoreline, the occasional long, white beach; the dangerous shoal of rocks formed by a wisp of cloud at the entrance to a safe anchorage; the curiously-shaped mountains inland covered with a tattered pelt of evening-dark forest. We sat there, the whisky warming our bodies, watching enraptured the geography of this archipelago unfold. We each of us chose an island which appealed to us, on which we would like to spend a holiday, and stipulated what the hotel on each of our islands would have to provide in the way of civilized amenities.