The power and the glory Read Free

money. It wouldn't surprise me if the wife had married again. Her mother would like it-the old sour bitch: she never cared for me."

The stranger said in a low voice: "It is awful."

Mr. Tench examined his companion again with surprise. He sat there like a black question mark, ready to go, ready to stay, poised on his chair. He looked disreputable in his grey three days' beard, and weak: somebody you could command to do anything. He said: "I mean the world. The way things happen."

"You drink up your brandy."

He sipped at it. It was like an indulgence. He said: "You remember this place before-before the Red Shirts came?"

"I suppose I do."

"How happy it was then."

"Was it? I didn't notice."

"They had at any rate-God."

"There's no difference in the teeth," Mr. Tench said. He gave himself some more of the stranger's brandy. "It was always an awful place. Lonely. My God. People at home would have said romance. I thought: five years here, and then I'll go. There was plenty of work. Gold teeth. But then the peso dropped. And now I can't get out. One day I will." He said: "I'll retire. Go home. Live as a gentleman ought to live. This" he gestured at the bare base room-"I'll forget all this. Oh, it won't be long now. I'm an optimist," Mr. Tench said.

The stranger said suddenly: "How long will she take to Vera Cruz?"

"Who?"

"The boat."

Mr. Tench said gloomily: "Forty hours from now and we'd be there. The Diligencia. A good hotel. Dance places too. A gay town."

"It makes it seem close," the stranger said. "And a ticket, how much would that be?"

"You'd have to ask Lopez," Mr. Tench said. "He's the agent."

"But Lopez..."

"Oh, yes, I forgot. They shot him."

Somebody knocked on the door. The stranger slipped the attaché case under his chair, and Mr. Tench went cautiously up towards the window. "Can't be too careful," he said. "Any dentist who's worth the name has enemies."

A faint voice implored them: "A friend," and Mr. Tench opened up. Immediately the sun came in like a white-hot bar.

A child stood in the doorway asking for a doctor. He wore a big hat and had stupid brown eyes. Beyond him two mules stamped and whistled on the hot beaten road. Mr. Tench said he was not a doctor: he was a dentist. Looking round he saw the stranger crouched in the rocking-chair, gazing with an effect of prayer, entreaty.... The child said there was a new doctor in town: the old one had fever and wouldn't stir. It was his mother who was sick.

A vague memory stirred in Mr. Tench's brain. He said with an air of discovery: "Why, you're a doctor, aren't you?"

"No, no. I've got to catch that boat."

"I thought you said..."

"I've changed my mind."

"Oh, well, it won't leave for hours yet," Mr. Tench said. "They're never on time." He asked the child how far. The child said it was six leagues away.

"Too far," Mr. Tench said. "Go away. Find someone else." He said to the stranger: "How things get around. Everyone must know you are in town."

"I could do no good," the stranger said anxiously: he seemed to be asking Mr. Tench's opinion, humbly.

"Go away," Mr. Tench said. The child did not stir. He stood in the hard sunlight looking in with infinite patience. He said his mother was dying. The brown eyes expressed no emotion: it was a fact. You were born, your parents died, you grew old, you died yourself.

"If she's dying," Mr. Tench said, "there's no point in a doctor seeing her."

But the stranger had got up: unwillingly he had been summoned to an occasion he couldn't pass by. He said sadly: "It always seems to happen. Like this."

"You'll have a job not to miss the boat."

"I shall miss it," he said. "I am meant to miss it." He was shaken by a tiny rage. "Give me my brandy." He took a long pull at it, with his eyes on the impassive child, the baked street, the buzzards moving in the sky like indigestion spots.

"But if she's dying..." Mr. Tench said.

"I know these people. She will be no more dying than I am."

"You can do no good."

The child