And Harry from the first moment they sat down had been determined to talk about the Canal, first picking on Delgado who responded with dignified patrician platitudes, then pressing everybody else into the discussion whether or not they had anything to contribute. His questions of Delgado were so crude she was embarrassed. Only Rafi’s roaming foot and the recognition that she was a tad over-sedated prevented her from telling him: Harry, Mr Delgado is my fucking boss not yours. So why are you making such a horse’s ass of yourself, you prick? But that was Whore Emily talking, not Virtuous Louisa who never swore, or not in front of the children and never when she was sober.
No, Delgado replied politely to Harry’s bombardment, nothing had been agreed during the presidential tour, but some interesting ideas had been put forward, Harry, there was a general spirit of cooperation, goodwill was of the essence.
Well done, Ernesto, thought Louisa, tell him where he gets off.
‘Still I mean everyone knows those Japs are after the Canal, don’t they, Ernie?’ said Harry, branching into inane generalisations that he hadn’t the knowledge to sustain. ‘The only question is which way they’re going to come at us, I don’t know what you think, Rafi, at all?’
Rafi’s silk stocking toes were jammed into the flesh of Louisa’s knee joint and Donna’s cleavage was opening like a barn door.
‘I tell you what I think about Japs, Harry. You want to know what I think about Japs?’ said Rafi in his rattly, auctioneer’s voice, as he gathered in his audience.
‘I would indeed,’ said Harry unctuously.
But Rafi needed everyone.
‘Ernesto, you want to know what I think about Japs?’
Delgado graciously expressed an interest in hearing what Rafi thought about the Japanese.
‘Donna, you want to hear what I think about the Japs?’
‘Just say it, for Christ’s sake, Rafi,’ Oakley said irritably.
But Rafi was still gathering them in.
‘Louisa?’ he asked wiggling his toes behind her knee.
‘I guess we’re all hanging on your words, Rafi,’ said Louisa in her rôle of charming hostess and whore-sister.
So Rafi finally delivered himself of his opinion of the Japanese:
‘I think those Jap bastards inject my horse Dolce Vita a double dose valium before the big race last week!’ he cried, and laughed so loudly at his own joke, to the glint of so many gold teeth, that his audience of necessity laughed with him, Louisa loudest and Donna after her by a short head.
But Harry was not put off. Instead, he launched himself on the subject that he knew upset his wife more than any other: the disposal of the former Canal Zone itself.
‘I mean we’ve got to face it, Ernie, it’s a nice little piece of real estate that you boys are carving up. Five hundred square miles of garden America, mown and watered like Central Park, more swimming pools than in the whole of the rest of Panama – it does make you wonder, doesn’t it? I don’t know whether the City of Knowledge idea is still a starter, Ernie? Some of my customers seem to think it’s a bit of a dead duck, frankly, a university in the middle of a jungle. It’s hard to imagine a learned professor seeing that as the summit of his career, I don’t know if they’re right.’
He was running low but nobody helped him out, so he forged on:
‘I suppose it all depends on how many US military bases are going to be left vacant at the end of the day, doesn’t it? Which requires the assistance of a crystal ball by all accounts. We’d have to tap the highly secret wires to the Pentagon, I dare say, to know the answer to that little conundrum.’
‘It’s bullshit,’ said Kevin loudly. ‘The smart boys have had the land all carved up among themselves for years, right, Ernie?’
A frightful emptiness set in. Delgado’s fine face turned pale and stony. Nobody could think of anything to say except for Rafi who, indifferent to all atmosphere, was cheerfully interrogating Donna about the make-up she was wearing so that he could have his wife buy some. He was also trying to get his foot between Louisa’s legs, which she had crossed in self-defence. Then suddenly Emily the Shrew found the words that Louisa the Immaculate was piously holding back and they came spilling out of her, first in a series of jerky statements of record, then in an unstoppable, alcohol-induced rush.