Ramón Rudd took off his spectacles and breathed on them, then polished each lens in turn with a piece of chamois leather from the top pocket of his Pendel & Braithwaite suit. Then settled the gold loops behind his shiny little ears.
‘Why don’t you bribe someone at the Ministry of Agricultural Development?’ he suggested, with a superior forbearance.
‘We did try, Ramón, but they’re high-minded, you see. They say the other side has already bribed them and it wouldn’t be ethical for them to switch allegiance.’
‘Couldn’t your farm manager arrange something? You pay him a big salary. Why doesn’t he involve himself?’
‘Well now, Angel’s a bit lapsadaisy, frankly, Ramón,’ said Pendel, who sometimes chose unconsciously to improve on the English language. ‘I think he may be more use not being there, not to put too fine a point on it. I’m going to have to screw myself up to say something, if I’m not mistaken.’
Ramón Rudd’s jacket was still pinching him under the armpits. They stood at the big window face-to-face while he folded his arms across his chest, then lowered them to his sides, then linked his hands behind his back while Pendel attentively tugged with his fingertips at the seams, waiting like a doctor to know what hurt.
‘It’s only a tad, Ramón, if it’s anything at all,’ he pronounced at last. ‘I’m not unpicking the sleeves unnecessarily because it’s bad for the jacket. But if you drop it in next time we’ll see.’
They sat down again.
‘Is the farm producing any rice?’ Rudd asked.
‘A little, Ramón, I’ll put it that way. We’re competing with the globalisation, I’m told, which is the cheap rice that’s imported from other countries where there’s subsidisation from the government. I was hasty. We both were.’
‘You and Louisa?’
‘Well, you and me, really, Ramón.’
Ramón Rudd frowned and looked at his watch, which was what he did with clients who had no money.
‘It’s a pity you didn’t make the farm a separate company while you had the chance, Harry. Pledging a good shop as surety for a rice farm that has run out of water makes no sense at all.’
‘But Ramón – it was what you insisted on at the time,’ Pendel objected. But his shame already undermined his indignation. ‘You said that unless we jointly accounted the businesses you couldn’t take the risk on the rice farm. That was a condition of the loan. All right, it was my fault, I should never have listened to you. But I did. I think you were representing the bank that day, not Harry Pendel.’
They talked racehorses. Ramón owned a couple. They talked property. Ramón owned a chunk of coast on the Atlantic side. Maybe Harry would drive out one week-end, buy a plot perhaps, even if he didn’t build on it for a year or two, Ramón’s bank would provide a mortgage. But Ramón didn’t say bring Louisa and the kids although Ramón’s daughter went to the Maria Inmaculada and the two girls were friendly. Neither, to Pendel’s immense relief, did he find it appropriate to refer to the two hundred thousand dollars Louisa had inherited from her late father and handed to Pendel to invest in something sound.
‘Have you been trying to shift your account to a different bank?’ Ramón Rudd asked, when everything unsayable had been left thoroughly unsaid.
‘I don’t think there’s a lot would have me at this particular moment, Ramón. Why?’
‘One of the merchant banks called me. Wanted to know all about you. Your credit-standing, commitments, turn-over. A lot of things I don’t tell anybody. Naturally.’
‘They’re daft. They’re talking about someone else. What merchant bank was that?’
‘A British one. From London.’
‘From London? They called you? About me? Who? Which one? I thought they were all broke.’
Ramón Rudd regretted he could not be more precise. He had told them nothing, naturally. Inducements didn’t interest him.
‘What inducements, for Heaven’s sake?’ Pendel exclaimed.
But Rudd seemed almost to have forgotten them. Introductions, he said vaguely. Recommendations. It was immaterial. Harry was a friend.
‘I’ve been thinking about a blazer,’ Ramón Rudd said as they shook hands. ‘Navy blue.’