‘A Christian!’ He whistled slowly. ‘The priests at my Catholic school used to tell the story of Christ expelling the money changers from the temple with audible lip-smacking. But then they were jealous. They couldn’t have sex or money, poor suckers. And a man needs both. Don’t you agree?’ He was watching Caroline closely. She remained expressionless, ice-blue eyes on his own face. He changed the subject.
‘You know the story of Graciela Marquez, don’t you? The Spanish teacher?’
‘I have heard the name, but I’m afraid she was before my time.’
‘Well…’ Anderson looked as if he had reluctantly to impart some bad news. ‘She was here when Castro came to power in Cuba. At a school meeting, with hundreds of parents present, decent people, mind, who paid good money for a sooperior education, she yelled out, ‘Viva Fidel! Viva la Revolucion! Abajo los Yanquis!’ He shook his head, feigning shock. ‘She didn’t last long. In fact, she was gone the next day. She was poisoning impressionable young minds. A terrible thing to do, no?’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t follow. Is this relevant?’
Anderson raised his eyebrows in mock disbelief. ‘Oh, yes, it is. We know the quality of the work you have done for us at Escuela Inglesa. Speaking only for myself, I would hate to run the risk of losing such an exceptional administrator on account of her predilection for… social experiments… of a Marxist kind.’
‘Is that a threat, Sr. Anderson?’
‘Good heavens, no. Perish the thought, as the English say. Think of it as a warning. We live in this country as on a volcano. People here need to carry fire extinguishers, not incendiary devices. Foreigners…’ he sniffed, ‘don’t always understand that.’
‘Thank you for your time, Sr. Anderson.’
‘Not at all. Any time. Sebastiano, please show the lady out.’
Teddy Anderson’s warm feelings of self-congratulation at what he took to be the upstart teacher’s humiliation proved to be premature, for not long after this he discovered certain pressing matters of a domestic and personal nature that required his immediate presence in Switzerland with his son and mistress. Their flight left Corazon de Amor International Airport only minutes before a detachment of the Guardia Civil under the command of a certain Inspector-General Gutierrez came calling, purely coincidentally, at his house with a search warrant.
While Anderson was thus preoccupied, and his place taken in the interim by a visiting professor of education from Sarasota at the Universidad de Los Andes, an unexpectedly compliant committee of the school voted in favour of Caroline’s experiment. Their decision was narrowly ratified a few weeks later by the governing council with certain amendments to which Miss Judge agreed. If, and only if, the new student passed a battery of academic aptitude tests, he would be provisionally admitted as the subject of a one-year study, his progress to be monitored daily by a trainee teacher at the university. The study was to be funded by a philanthropic foundation with impeccable egalitarian principles. To the relief of a skeptical staff, the boy would not be placed in a regular classroom until the headmistress herself determined that he was in possession of the requisite social skills to function in such a setting.
