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disappearing towards the small terminal building. When I tried to struggle to my feet, Don Ramón pressed my shoulder and, seriousfaced, lifted my wrist and took my pulse.
    ‘Ah, you feel better now, senorita ?’ He relinquished my wrist gently. ‘You are simply suffering from the effect of altitude. Soroche , we call it. Your office should have warned you. We Charaguayans become acclimatised. But the stranger is, as you say, bowled over. You have not, senorita , the lungs of a mountaineer.’
    ‘I was warned—but I’m always fit. I didn’t think it would affect me.’
    ‘No one ever does. I have seen strapping young engineers keel over like you, but far less gracefully.’
    I stood up gingerly. Don Ramon offered me his arm. ‘You will allow me to escort you to the terminal building? Even if no young man,’ he smiled, ‘awaits you, the Embassy will send a car.’
    ‘I was told their Land-Rover would pick me up.’
    ‘How very British,’ he sighed, and lifting my right hand slid it through his arm. ‘In Charaguay, a lady must always be properly escorted, even if it is to the back of the British Land-Rover. Lean on me, senorita . It is my honour.'
    I was surprisingly grateful for his support. Altitude made my legs boneless jelly. But at the same time I had a strange exalted feeling of floating without substance, as if I’d drunk a glass of very potent champagne.
    ‘If you do everything slowly soon your body will become used to the rarefied air.' He patted my hand which rested on his arm. ‘You must take our enchantment with caution. Especially coming from your down-to-earth Britain.’
    Slowly we walked across the concrete.
    On the observation platform a group of people waved down at our disembarking passengers. Ready for business, Indians had draped their multi-coloured ponchos and scarves over the rail. And leaning over the rail were six or seven little Indian boys, all carrying what looked like brightly painted orange-boxes.
    They set up a great commotion as we approached the barrier, waving their arms, jumping up and down and calling on a shrill piercing note, the object of their excitement unmistakably Don Ramón.
    Laughingly in answer to them, he shook his head and pulled down the corners of his mouth. ‘Forgive them, senorita , they are asking if it is my bride I am bringing back. They think it is to your honeymoon that you come.’
    Certainly the little Indian boys could not have been more wrong—for at the barrier the enchantment ended. The handsome Don Ramon and I were abruptly parted, he by the little Indian boys who pelted down the reception steps, quarrelling as to who should have the privilege of cleaning Don Ramon’s shoes, and I, for my part, by a firm hand that gripped my arm, and a crisp voice in my ear. Both down-to-earth and both unmistakably British.
    ‘You Miss Bradley?’
    The hand that held my arm took my answer for granted and propelled me forward towards Immigration. I drew myself up to my full height and turned to regard my captor with something of Don Ramon’s hauteur. My eyes had to travel a long way up. I saw a tall thick-set man of about thirty. He had a square unarguable-with chin, short thick brown hair, and cool grey eyes startlingly noticeable in his sunburned face. He wore faded blue jeans, a white short-sleeved cotton shirt open at the neck. No cravat or tie, and his chest and arms were as sunburned as his face. So were his feet, visible in leather sandals, marching me inexorably through the gateway marked ‘Immigration’.
    ‘Diplomatique,’ he said crisply to the officer, bundling me and my baggage in front of him as if he couldn’t wait to get me out of the hall and into the vehicle.
    Outside in the burning sunlight, an old Land-Rover waited. It had a G.D. plate on the back and the Lion and Unicorn painted on the driver’s door. It sported a small Union Jack above the windscreen.
    The man slung my case in the back. He looked neither like an Embassy driver nor an