Sira, page 17
“Some good diamonds, my dear, would be the perfect accessory.”
I never wore jewelry. I’d owned some magnificent pieces during one brief period of my life. They’d belonged to my paternal grandmother, the great Doña Carlota, whom I never met—the one who’d ended my parents’ relationship in one stroke after her son, the promising young pup of a wealthy and respectable family, started seeing my mother, Dolores Quiroga, a simple dressmaker. But those valuable pieces soon left my life, swiped by Ramiro Arribas, the rat who changed my future forever. Since then, I hadn’t the slightest bit of interest in jewelry.
After a short journey through almost empty streets, we arrived outside a row of elegant houses plastered in white stucco, with porticos and great balconies spanning their fronts. The invitation was from a family who’d been friends with the Bonnards for decades. One of the sons had been a school friend of Marcus’s. Now high up in the colonial administration of Kenya, he was spending a few days in London and had suggested getting together.
An ancient butler announced us in a metallic voice. Through double doors, the warm opulence of the reception room appeared before us: pleasant lighting, polished wood furniture, curtains, upholstery, and thick carpets. I saw, distributed around the room, a group of refined humans, some standing by the fireplace, others seated on sofas and armchairs. A beautiful woman sat on the arm of one chair, her slender legs crossed under folds of chiffon. The conversations sounded light and agreeable. The same butler began to make his way around the room, one gloved hand holding a tray of appetizers, the other behind his back. For a few seconds, the memory of my sorely missed friend Rosalinda Fox fluttered inside my head. This is how the British upper crust live, my dear, she would’ve said with an ironic wink, when their bank accounts, jewelry cases, and strongboxes aren’t full of cobwebs.
Our hosts greeted us with genuine affection; Olivia hadn’t lied when she mentioned the long friendship between the two families. The gentleman was a stooped, skeletal old man quite a bit shorter than his wife, a well-built lady with blue eyes and a prominent bust. The Hodson couple and Olivia were the only people there who’d been born before the turn of the century. The rest were in their late thirties or early forties—the men, elegant in dinner jackets, the women stylish in evening dresses, some chosen with more success than others. Wellborn, well bred, all of them, that much was obvious. Well fed, well served, well spoken, well educated, well traveled, well read. Members of the same class and way of life, with their parameters and measuring sticks, their conventions, standards, and manners.
As the sherry, gin, and whiskey flowed, I became the center of attention without intending it: everyone was longing to meet the widow of their old friend, dearest Mark Bonnard. The greetings swung with graceful poise between the perfect compliment and the most heartfelt condolences. And among these guests, as had happened so many times before, I also detected a certain curiosity at my incongruous foreignness—as if they were trying to find out what the devil their dear friend had seen in a woman like me that would cause him to do something so outrageous as marry and have a child with her.
The butler announced that we could go through to the dining room. With a quick count, I confirmed that there were exactly a dozen of us sitting down for dinner. In addition to our hosts, there were three other couples. One was Fiona, the daughter of the house—talkative and somewhat strident, dressed in lavender silk and wearing a string of sapphires around her neck—and her husband, a man named Evan. There were two other couples: beautiful Alexia and quiet Adrian, and agitated Harriet and her husband, Bruce. And two single—or at least temporarily unpaired—men who, I knew from Marcus, had been his close friends when they were young. Raymond was a self-assured financier for the city, and Dominic, the Hodsons’ son, was the instigator of the gathering.
It was between these two that I found myself sitting. The dinner began with smoked salmon and conversation with my table neighbors. The Hodsons were hardly extravagant, but the grim postwar frugality and troubles were less acutely evident in this Belgravia residence than they were at my mother-in-law’s home. Raymond spoke at length about the state of the stock market, and Dominic, who was less talkative, mentioned that he’d only been in London for a few days and planned to return to Nairobi once he’d finished tending to some arrangements. Other equally innocuous conversations flowed around the table: the recent rise of the Thames, Mountbatten’s appointment as Viceroy of India, complaints against the Labour government and its tax hikes.
The dinner continued smoothly, with voices kept at an appropriate volume. Next we were served duck in a berry sauce. Over the delicate glassware and candles, I noticed the butler filling the glass belonging to Fiona—our hosts’ daughter—at a faster rate than the rest.
She had emptied it four or five times when her exclamation broke through the quiet.
“I propose a toast!”
Her husband let out a ridiculous guffaw, and her mother, from the head of the table, gave her a piercing look. Fiona had flouted the rules of etiquette: toasts must be proposed by the host and were reserved for the end of the dinner. Out of the corner of my eye, to my left, I saw her brother grip his cutlery, clearly uncomfortable. The patriarch, at the opposite end of the table, carried on eating like a little bird, as if he hadn’t heard her. The rest of our voices were left suspended in the air, our faces wavering between expressions of shock and humor.
“I propose a toast in memory of our dearest friend Mark Bonnard!”
With varying amounts of zeal, we all ended up obeying her. But Fiona didn’t seem prepared to settle for that.
“I propose, also, that we remember him! Dominic! Raymond! Bruce! Adrian! Tell us a story from your time with Mark at Harrow!”
Obligingly at first, and then with growing enthusiasm, the men recalled moments from their childhood and youth: pranks, exploits, and incidents. Between anecdotes, Fiona continued to empty her glass.
The guests reacted to the stories with smiles, approval, the occasional exclamation or burst of laughter. However, those entertaining tales of the Old Harrovians, masters and school friends, celebrations, sport, holidays at country houses, and double-barreled surnames meant nothing to me and simply sounded like rain on asphalt. I’d met Marcus in Tétouan when he was thirty or so, and our life together had been so rushed, so secretive—so rocky, complex, and uncertain—that we’d always focused on the now, barely allowing ourselves to detach from the present. The portraits the others were painting of him seemed, on the face of it, like stories about a stranger, someone remote to me.
I looked at Olivia, some distance from me at the table. In her magnificent, completely out-of-fashion crystal-embroidered dress, with her bony features and great head of white hair, she looked splendid in the candlelight.
“I suppose the Marcus Logan you knew was nothing like this one.”
I turned at once toward Dominic. Marcus Logan, I thought I’d heard. He’d said Marcus Logan.
“Don’t be surprised I know his other name,” he added. “Life made us drift apart for a few years, but at one point we got back in touch.”
Dominic had a warm voice, was mild mannered and polite, but his attractiveness ended there. Apart from that, he was an ugly man in the strictest sense of the word. Bulging, watery eyes, with virtually no eyelashes and with premature bags under them; sparse hair styled with more effort than success; a fleshy nose, reddish skin, and large ears—all on a head that was both too small and too round.
Dessert had been served, and our glasses had been filled with port. Fiona continued to absorb wine like a sponge. Her complexion, meanwhile, was taking on an increasingly blushed hue as her voice gained in speed and power.
“And now! And now! Attention, everyone!”
The conversations stopped once more, and we turned to her again.
“Now! Now let’s talk about Mark and his loves!”
I noticed that Dominic, to my left, was about to stop her.
“Be quiet, Dominic!” she howled, cutting him off. “Don’t be a spoilsport!”
All eyes remained fixed on her flushed face, expectant, questioning.
“Tonight we’ve met the mysterious foreigner who ended up stealing our most handsome boy’s heart. But tell us, Alexia Burke-Landon, née Durbin . . .”
She was addressing the person before her, seated on the same side of the table as me and so outside my field of vision. I’d noticed the woman when I arrived. In a butter-colored gauze dress, with mahogany hair and delicate features, she was undoubtedly the most beautiful woman there.
“Tell us, tell us, dear, how did you feel when Mark confessed to you that he’d given his heart to another woman and broke off your engagement?”
A dense silence slithered over the table, slipping between the silver candelabras and the plums in syrup. The next thing we heard was a chair falling to the floor. Alexia Burke-Landon had gotten up to rush out of the dining room.
It was Dominic who immediately took control.
“Coffee in the living room,” he announced, plopping his napkin down on the table.
While everyone began to stand in silence, relieved that the embarrassing scene was finally over, he turned to me and whispered a sober and sincere “I’m sorry.”
25
The workroom where Ángel Ara received me was very different from the Colombian director’s office, both in size and degree of elegance. The place was a bit of a shambles: piles of books, librettos, records, notepads. Still, he managed to clear two armchairs, offered me one, and sat opposite.
“Please excuse the mess. At the start of the war, to get away from the bombings, much of the Latin American Service was moved along with other sections to the countryside, to Wood Norton Hall, the Duke of Orléans’s country house in Evesham, northeast of London. Now we’re being reunited with the rest of the foreign-language services. Almost all the BBC’s Overseas Services are now here at Bush House. What used to be called the BBC’s Empire Service changed its name once the range of broadcasting languages went beyond the confines of the empire.”
We were in fact at that moment in Bush House, a building at the end of Kingsway in Aldwych that appeared less damaged, at first glance, than Broadcasting House. An entrance supported by two massive columns led to a large marble lobby; the splendor ended there, however. The inside was a functional labyrinth of corridors, offices, and studios.
“I’m delighted you’re joining us, truly,” he added. “We’re badly in need of women contributors in our language. There are some female announcers, but few of them bring their own stories to the microphone.”
“It’s only going to be three appearances,” I reminded him.
“Even so . . . Well, first off, so I can take note of it, will you use a nom de plume or jump into the arena as yourself?”
A nom de plume. I was reminded of Fran Nash, and our hybrid name for Télam: Frances Quiroga.
“Think about it,” he insisted. “Almost all of us here have one.”
“May I know yours?”
He smiled at my spontaneous request. He was thin, not very tall, with a pointed face and nervous mannerisms. He must have tried to tame his curly hair before he left home; no doubt he’d used a good dollop of cream to keep it tidy. At midmorning, however, his efforts were beginning to unravel, and this gave him a somewhat youthful appearance.
“My pseudonym couldn’t be more obvious or generic: Juan Español.”
I looked at him wordlessly, waiting for more.
“What is it you are asking, my friend, with those big, lovely, inscrutable eyes with which you’re staring at me? The reason for my disguise?”
I was the one who smiled now. He wasn’t trying to flirt with me, despite the compliment. He was simply a friendly fellow.
“If you don’t mind me asking . . .”
“If that’s your question, you should know that, behind such a common name, there’s simply a lawyer with a soul that belongs to the former republic. A man who, like so many others, was swept off his country’s map by a pitiful war. Now I earn a living as a programmer for this blessed corporation’s Latin American Service, and when I say blessed, don’t mistake that for sarcasm. Many of us Spaniards who came to this island with one hand behind our back and the other held out are now filling our stomachs thanks to its coffers. After years as an occasional contributor, I’m proud to say I now have a very decent permanent contract, which is why many Spanish friends with less luck and too much wit have taken to calling me the ‘Prince of the Airwaves.’”
His final sentences were punctuated by a clattering in the corridor that grew nearer. We heard a singsong voice through the open door and turned our heads at the same time. I saw a young woman behind a metal trolley loaded with tin teapots.
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
I declined. He said goodbye to the girl in his rather awkward English. The clattering resumed, and I assumed the employee’s role was to offer her mobile service to all the staff.
“Please, no more tea, for the love of God . . . ,” he whispered sarcastically.
I was about to burst out laughing when he leaned forward and drew closer as if to share a secret with me.
“Wouldn’t you love a nice coffee with milk like we have back home, the ones we had before the war? The coffee freshly roasted and filtered, lovely and black. The milk creamy and hot, a couple of sugar cubes . . . and to go with it, a good magdalena,” he said, referencing Spain’s traditional lemon-flavored cupcakes. “Or no, perhaps not. Perhaps a couple of rosquillas, fried in oil.” Fluffy Spanish doughnuts.
He threw his hand in the air, as if his nostalgic thought was a fly he wanted to bat away.
“Anyway, as I was saying, I’m going to mentor you all through this process. From now on—”
But there was something I had been curious about since the tea trolley interrupted us, and I wanted an answer before we continued.
“And why does Juan Español work in the Latin American Service and not on the broadcasts for his own country?”
“And where have you been, my señora, that you haven’t heard about the censorship suffered by those of us who oppose our Generalísimo’s regime?”
His question could’ve seemed brusque—rude, even—had it not been asked with an expression of exaggerated astonishment and concluded with a burst of laughter. Though they resembled each other neither physically nor in manner, for a moment he reminded me of my old friend Félix Aranda from Tétouan: witty, sharp, and quick tongued; equally well educated; both grimly defiant, with a touch of wryness that was completely forgivable.
“I’m sure you know the objectives that this blessed—yes, I will say it again, blessed—radio broadcasting corporation aims to meet . . .”
He held up four fingers and made them dance in front of me.
“To accurately inform, to stimulate new interests among listeners, to educate, and to entertain. These, in theory, are its cornerstones.”
He added a thumb and showed me his empty hand.
“But in the overseas services we have another powerful raison d’être. And it’s none other than—”
I finished the sentence for him.
“Propaganda.”
He nodded with satisfaction, as if I were a brilliant student.
“That was why these foreign-language services were created in the years leading up to the war, to build support for the British cause. And they couldn’t have found a better medium than radio. It goes beyond borders; leapfrogs battlefronts, rearguards, and trenches; penetrates the privacy of homes and human brains . . . a sure bet.”
“I know this is the case in European countries, but how is that the case for the Latin American Service?”
“Well, both Germany and Italy have had effective radio propaganda networks throughout the South American continent since the midthirties. The Nazis, you may know, were fanatical about radio and used it as an extremely powerful weapon both to indoctrinate and to arouse passions within Germany and to intoxicate people outside it. And the Italians, albeit without the same vigor, were also using radio to gain sympathizers for the fascist cause. That is, until the BBC arrived with broadcasts in Spanish, with all the service’s know-how and good reputation, and became the most respectable voice during the conflict, especially among the educated and well-off classes. Since then, the Latin American Service has become iconic. Last year, our director, Camacho, went on a tour of several countries, giving talks, and wherever he went he was hailed as a victorious general. The main national newspapers put his visit on the front page, as if he’d won the Battle of Normandy with his own blood and sweat.”
He let out another burst of natural, contagious laughter. Ángel Ara seemed a genuinely nice man. I was even grateful for his talkativeness—the more he talked, the less I would have to lie about myself.
“Though officially it’s an independent corporation, the BBC was created, as you know, under the direct, effective, and careful control of the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Information, and their intelligence services. And because these British don’t do anything for nothing, the results have been fabulous from the start. Their admirers now include tens of thousands of listeners across the pond.”
He checked the time, frowning.
“It’s still early for lunch if you ask our Iberian stomachs, but I’m afraid we must yield to the ways of the locals. May I invite you to eat in our formidable canteen?”
I accepted without knowing whether the adjective “formidable” was just more of his irony. As we negotiated the warren of galleries and corridors, Ara continued to speak, unfiltered, shrewd, and convincing.
“The service for Spain, however, works with its hands infinitely more tied than does the service that broadcasts for Latin America. In Spain, it’s not about sowing seeds to harvest later, because the BBC has always had a peremptory, urgent political mission there. During the world war, the essential task was to firm up Franco’s neutrality at all costs so he didn’t side with Germany.”
We’d reached an elevator and were waiting for it.
