‘I’m so proud for you, Louisa. I’m proud you’re all healthy, and the kids are progressing, and you love each other, and that God is kind to you and Harry appreciates what he has. And I’m very proud that I knew right off that what Letti Hortensas just told me about Harry could not possibly be true.’
Louisa remained frozen to the telephone, too scared to speak or ring off. Letti Hortensas, heiress and slut, wife of Alfonso. Alfonso Hortensas, Letti’s husband, brothel owner, P&B customer and crook.
‘Sure,’ Louisa said, not knowing what she was agreeing to, except that by assenting to anything at all she was saying ‘go on’.
‘You and I know very well, Louisa, that Harry is not a person to visit some seedy downtown hotel where you pay by the hour. “Letti, dear,” I said. “I think it’s time you bought yourself a new pair of eye-glasses. Louisa is my friend. Harry and I have a long platonic friendship going way back which Louisa has always known about and understood. That marriage is built on rock,” I told her. “It makes no difference your husband owns the Hotel Paraiso or you were sitting in the lobby waiting for him when Harry stepped out of the elevator with a bunch of whores. A lot of Panamanian women look like whores. A lot of whores do their business at the Paraiso. Harry has many customers from many walks of life.” I want you to know I was loyal to you, Louisa. I supported you. I scotched the rumour. “Shifty?” I said to her. “Harry never looks shifty. He wouldn’t know how. Have you ever seen Harry looking shifty? Of course you haven’t.” ‘
It took a long while for the feeling to return to Louisa’s body. She was into serious denial. Her outburst at the dinner party had scared her stiff.
‘Bitch!’ she screamed through her tears.
But not till she had rung off and poured herself a large vodka from Harry’s newly instated hospitality chest.
It was the new clubroom that had started it, she was convinced. The top floor of P&B had for years been the subject of Harry’s most visionary fantasies.
I’m going to put the fitting room under the balcony, Lou, he used to say. I’m putting the Sportsman’s Corner next to the boutique. Or: maybe I’ll leave the fitting room where it is and put up an outside staircase. Or: I’ve got it, Lou! Listen. I’m going to throw out a cantilevered extension at the back, install a health club and sauna, open a small restaurant, P&B customers only, soup and catch of the day, how’s that?
Harry had even had a model made and done the initial costing by the time that plan too was shelved. Thus the top floor had till now been a perennial armchair voyage that was enjoyed only in the planning. And anyway – where would the fitting room go? The answer, it turned out, was nowhere. The fitting room would stay right where it was. But the Sportsman’s Corner, Harry’s pride, would be squashed into Marta’s glass box.
‘So where will Marta go?’ Louisa asked, half-hoping with the shameful side of her that go meant just that, because there were things about Marta’s injuries that Louisa had never understood. Harry’s sense of being responsible for them for instance, but then Harry felt responsible for everyone, it was part of what she loved about him. Things he let slip. Things he knew about. Radical students and how the poor lived in El Chorrillo. And there was something about the power Marta could exert over him that was a little too like Louisa’s own.
I’m jealous of everyone, she thought, fixing herself an essential dry martini cocktail to get her off the vodka. I’m jealous of Harry, I’m jealous of my sister and of my children. I’m practically jealous of myself.
And now the books. On China. On Japan. On the Tigers, as he called them. Nine volumes in all. She counted. They had arrived without warning by night on the table in his den, and stayed there ever since, a silent, sinister, occupying army. Japan down the ages. Its economy. The rise and rise of the yen. From Empire to Imperial Democracy. South Korea. Its demography, economy and constitution. Malaysia, its past and future role in world affairs, collected essays of great scholars. Its traditions, language, lifestyle, destiny, cautious marriage of industrial convenience with China. China, whither Communism? The corruption of the Chinese oligarchy after Mao, human rights, the population time bomb, What’s to be done? It’s time I educated myself, Lou. I feel stuck. Old Braithwaite was right as usual. I should have gone to university. In Kuala Lumpur? In Tokyo? In Seoul? They’re the coming places, Lou. They’re the next century’s superpowers, you’ll see. Ten years from now, they’ll be my only customers.