‘Teddy, fabled scribe and keeper of reputations. Give life a pause, sir. Rest our weary soul.’
And hot on their heels comes Philip, sometime Health Minister under Noriega – or was it Education? ‘Marta, a glass for His Excellency! And a morning suit, please, also for His Excellency – one last fitting and I think we’re home.’ He drops his voice. ‘And my congratulations, Philip. I hear she’s highly mischievous, very beautiful and adores you,’ he murmurs in a graceful reference to Philip’s newest chiquilla.
These and other brave men pass blithely in and out of Pendel’s emporium on the last Happy Friday in human history. And Pendel, as he moves nimbly among them, laughing, selling, quoting the wise words of dear old Arthur Braithwaite, borrows their delight and honours them.
CHAPTER THREE
It was entirely appropriate, in Pendel’s later opinion, that Osnard’s arrival at P&B should have been accompanied by a clap of thunder and what Uncle Benny would have called the trimmings. It had been a sparkly Panamanian afternoon in the wet season till then with a nice splash of sunshine and two pretty girls peering into the window of Sally’s Giftique across the road. And the Bougainvilia in next door’s garden so lovely you wanted to bite it. Then at three minutes to five – Pendel had somehow never doubted that Osnard would be punctual – along comes a brown Ford hatchback with an Avis sticker on the back window and pulls into the space reserved for customers. And this easy-going face with a cap of black hair on top of it, planted like a Hallowe’en pumpkin in the windscreen. Why on earth Pendel should have thought Hallowe’en he couldn’t fathom but he thought it. It must have been the round black eyes, he told himself afterwards.
At which moment the lights go out on Panama.
And all it is, it’s this one perfectly defined raincloud no bigger than Hannah’s hand getting in front of the sun. And the next second it’s your six-inch raindrops pumping up and down like bobbins on the front steps and the thunder and lightning setting off every car alarm in the street and the drain covers bursting their housings and slithering like discuses down the road in the brown current and the palm fronds and trash-cans adding their unlovely contribution, and the black fellows in capes who always appear out of nowhere whenever there’s a down-pour, flogging you golf umbrellas through your car window or offering to push you to higher ground for a dollar so that you don’t get your distributor wet.
And one of these fellows is already putting the hard word on pumpkin-face as he sits inside his car fifteen yards from the steps waiting for Armageddon to blow over. But Armageddon takes its time on account of there being very little wind. Pumpkin-face tries to ignore black fellow. Black fellow doesn’t budge. Pumpkin-face relents, delves inside his jacket – he’s wearing one, not usual for Panama unless you’re somebody or a bodyguard – extracts his wallet, extracts a banknote from said wallet, restores said wallet to inside pocket left, lowers window enough for black fellow to poke brolly into car and pumpkin-face to exchange pleasantries and give him ten bucks without getting soaked. Manoeuvre completed. Note for the record: pumpkin-face speaks Spanish although he’s only just arrived here.
And Pendel smiles. Actually smiles in anticipation, beyond the smile that is always written on his face.
‘Younger than I thought,’ he calls aloud to Marta’s shapely back as she crouches in her glass box anxiously checking through her lottery tickets for the winning numbers that she never has.
Approvingly. As if he were gazing upon extra years of selling suits to Osnard and enjoying Osnard’s friendship instead of recognising him at once for what he was: a customer from hell.
And having ventured this observation to Marta and received no reply beyond an empathetic lifting of the dark head, Pendel arranged himself, as always for a new account, in the attitude in which he wished to be discovered.
For just as life had trained him to rely on first impressions, so he set a similar value on the first impression he made on other people. Nobody, for instance, expects a tailor to be sitting down. But Pendel had long ago determined that P&B should be an oasis of tranquillity in a bustling world. Therefore he made a point of being discovered in his old porter’s chair, most likely with a copy of the day-before-yesterday’s Times spread on his lap.