Free Face to the Sun by Geoffrey Household Page A

possessions but a swimsuit. I
myself could pass as a peasant proprietor.
    ‘I think we shall have to use your experience as a thief,’ she said.
    ‘On whom, Doña Teresa?’
    ‘The woman from the cottage down there has just gone to work.’
    Burglary she was recommending. Well, at least I could pay for whatever I took. My captors had been ordered by the major to return my money. The notes had stuck together but were now dry.
    I went down to the cottage, skulking from bush to bush like a fox. The door was open, for the normal inhabitants of Malpelo were as honest in peace as they were predatory in war. I hunted
through the few clothes and decided on a flounced confection of white lace in payment for which I left – at a guess – about ten times what it had cost and sneaked with my loot back to
the hillside where I was received with laughter, the first I had heard from Teresa. She told me I had pinched the lady’s wedding dress, carefully preserved, and asked me how much money I had
left in payment.
    ‘Ah, well,’ she said when I told her. ‘She’ll cry tonight and tomorrow but she’ll probably keep quiet about her loss unless she is broke – which they usually
are, the poor dears – in which case she will put down the loss to the intervention of the Mother of God.’
    She slipped the frock on over her swimsuit. It was, of course, far too large but she created a tolerable fit by rolling up the bra to form a belt. ‘And now how do we reach Puerto Santa
Maria?’ she asked.
    ‘Have you friends there?’
    ‘Of course. The police so far have nothing against me.’
    ‘Well, there must be a road from here to Santa Maria.’
    ‘What shall we say?’
    ‘We are going to be married in the Cathedral. You are already dressed for it. My clothes are in Santa Maria.’
    We spent another night fighting mosquitos – thank God it was the last – walking till we were clear of the village and in open fields. Soon after sunrise a car bumped along the road,
putting on speed when it saw us. I waved a handful of peso notes at him which persuaded the driver to stop. Yes, we had trusted to a friend to drive us to Santa Maria but he had never turned up.
The driver told us to jump in and wouldn’t take our money. I was now growing accustomed to arrest and hourly expected it, but nobody interfered with us. Teresa was dropped at the house of a
relative where she was received with tears of surprise and joy. The car then went on to my hotel where I was greeted as one returned from the dead and had food and drink pressed upon me. All my
possessions were still in my room. Among strangers of Spanish birth and culture one becomes a friend in a surprisingly short time.
    As soon as my arrival was known, I was summoned to the palace. Heredia was most courteous and thanked me for my attention to his wife. Naturally she had not said a word of the theft of the
Punchao in London. As for me, I had been carried off by the raid of the Retadores and escaped. Heredia knew very well that I was omitting inconvenient parts of the truth but left it at that. Teresa
was not mentioned by either of us.
    ‘Have you heard of the Punchao del Dia?’ Heredia asked.
    ‘Of course. But I know no more of it than your son-in-law has told me.’
    ‘At what point did you escape from the Retadores?’
    ‘I don’t know. But I could possibly show you on the map.’
    He pulled out a large-scale map of Malpelo.
    ‘There you are.’
    ‘I don’t know the country, so it is hard to tell, Your Excellency. I hid in the sea during a battle and when all was quiet again I swam along the coast until I hit a possible landing
place. There I dried myself when the sun rose and hit a road – this one, I think – and was picked up by a passing car.’
    He let it go at that, for which I was thankful. The chap I wanted to see before I talked any more was Sir Hector.
    Hector turned up in the evening at my hotel and I ordered drinks for us in the privacy of my room, where I