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gold?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘The shoeshine boys are all Dick Whittingtons. They are very young. They come from the Indian villages in the mountains to Quicha to make their fortunes. They have a wooden box, and enough pennies to buy a brush and some shoe polish. And that is their life. They don’t know that in the city it is not as in a village. They will have nowhere to live. Until the British hostel was started they slept on the pavements. Now volunteers come from all over the world. They teach the boys a little. And though they do not become Lord Mayors of London, some become better things than shoeshine boys. Our second steward, for instance, has made a little progress— though not enough.’
    ‘And do you help with them, Don Ramon?'
    ‘I help a little and I hinder much—or so your British helpers say. But then the British are very level-headed, are they not?’
    Aware that the second steward was watching anxiously to see our reaction to the delicious-smelling savoury pastries, the shellfish salad and an extravagant concoction of chocolate and bananas, I admitted that we were, and began to eat. •
    ‘Though even the British change once they come to Charaguay.' He smiled knowingly.
    ‘How?' I asked.
    ‘They discover new heights and depths. They begin to be a little less serious.’
    ‘Do you know many of the British?'
    ‘A few.’
    ‘Do you know the Ambassador and Mrs. Mallenport?'
    Don Ramon dabbed his lips with his napkin before answering, and when he did so his voice was neutral. ‘Not quite as well as I would like. But His Excellency and Mrs. Mallenport are very popular, so I do not think you have to fear.’
    I wasn’t really fearing. I wouldn’t be meeting the Ambassador immediately as he was going to the Washington conference. But I was just slightly apprehensive about the job. I had never worked in an Embassy before, so I wondered how I’d fit in, whether I’d be able to do the work the way they liked it done. There’s a good deal of social life too, at an Embassy and, ridiculous though it may seem at twenty-five, I’m rather shy. Perhaps I had, as Don Ramon said, spent too long in my stuffy London office. Well, I was out of it now. I wondered what he’d say if he knew I’d come simply because I was the only one of the available personal secretaries who hadn’t either a holiday booked, or a dishy new boy-friend. My friendship with the Executive Officer in Registry had just ended. Because of my mother really. Not because she was possessive—she was quite the reverse. It was because I knew I could never marry anyone until I felt as lit up, as certain, as she so obviously was with my new Australian stepfather.
    ‘And now we are descending, senorita ,’ Don Ramon said. ‘In a little while the air may get bumpy again,' as we go through the mountain range. Unlike your life up to now, Senorita Madruga, your life in Charaguay is never allowed to continue long on what you British call an even keel.'
    To emphasise his warning, Don Ramón pointed through the porthole window. ‘See, senorita , turn your head a little, you will notice something far down below, beyond the wing tip. There—a great gash that runs down through the mountain range. Do you see it?’
    ‘Yes. Just like the cut of a knife.'
    ‘Exactly. That is the great earthquake fault. It runs from the Gulf of Panama down to the Cape. Some say it crosses the oceans of the world and comes back here again.'
    I shuddered. ‘Have you ever been in an earthquake?'
    ‘Yes, senorita , I have been in many, some severe, some not so severe, some just little shivers at the earth's crust. But we learn to live with the country as it is.' He leaned forward, so that his cheek accidentally brushed my hair. ‘See too now those great gorges and waterfalls. How impassable they make the country. Till aircraft were used, the valleys were quite cut off. Many villages are still a thousand years behind the times. Now notice that slender thread shining across the