Corduroy Mansions Page 0,117

the strip there was a jeep—two jeeps, in fact—one with two or three men carrying small machine guns. That did not surprise me all that much—I had become used to seeing machine guns in Colombia. People had to have them to protect themselves against attack from all sorts of quarters. It would have been surprising, in fact, if my hosts had not had any machine guns—it would have been a reason to be suspicious.

“My hostess was waiting to greet me up at the main house. I had met her once before at the school when she had come to discuss her son’s progress, and I had quite liked her. She had the bearing that the South American rich have—a sort of imperious confidence that comes from knowing just what their wealth confers upon them, which is immunity from the lot of everybody else, whatever that may be. And they don’t hesitate to let you know that they have a lot of money. In this country the rich are discreet: ‘Rich? Not us! Oh no!’ In South America it’s very different.

“Apolinar, their son, was standing with his mother on the veranda when I arrived. He was thirteen or thereabouts, and he hadn’t made a particular impression on me at the school. I remembered his name, of course, as it was Spanish for Apollo. In fact, I found myself thinking of him as Apollo rather than Apolinar, which made things rather comic. Has Apollo done his homework yet? is rather a strange thing to ask yourself, don’t you think?”

Barbara laughed but then stopped herself, remembering that she had promised not to. But Hugh was laughing too. Then he became grave again.

“I had no idea at the time,” he said. “None.”

82. Poisonous Snakes

“MY HOSTESS,” Hugh continued, “left Apollo to show me round. His manner was rather shy at first, which was understandable I suppose, in view of the fact that I was one of his teachers—even though there were probably only six years between us. Such a gap may be nothing later on, but at that age it seems like a whole generation.

“The house was vast, rambling off in every direction from a central courtyard, but with the comfortable intimacy that you find in Spanish colonial architecture. We don’t go in for courtyards in this country, do we? I wish we did.”

Barbara frowned. Did we really have no courtyards? Hugh saw the effect of his question and pressed her on it. “Well, just think: how many people do you know who have a courtyard in their house?”

She thought there must be some, but when she tried to list them …

“You see?” said Hugh. “We’re deprived of courtyards.”

“Well, so many people live in flats. You can’t expect them to have a courtyard.”

Hugh was quick to contradict her. “Yes, you can. If you go to a French or Italian city you’ll see flats arranged around a courtyard. And there are some in Scotland. In some of those small fishing villages in Fife, quite modest houses have little courtyards. There are very few courtyards in England. Some, but not many.”

Barbara thought that there must be a reason for this. “The weather?” she wondered. “Why have courtyards if you have weather like ours? And space too. We don’t have much room, do we?”

Hugh was not convinced. “A courtyard is actually rather a good thing to have in bad, blustery weather. You’re sheltered from the winds. And as far as space is concerned, look at the room that is taken up by gardens. People insist on a little strip of grass and a flowerbed—but how much use do they get out of that? They would use the space much more if they had a courtyard and grew plants in tubs and troughs. I really think that.

“And there’s another thing,” he went on. “There’s a book you should read. It’s called A Pattern Language and it’s by a group of architects. I think the main author’s called Christopher Alexander, something like that. Anyway, they set out a whole lot of principles for humane architecture—for making rooms and houses in which people will feel comfortable. Rooms, for instance, should have light from two sources. Houses should not be built in long rows along the side of roads—that’s why so much of urban Britain has been rendered sterile, you know, because people just don’t feel comfortable living in long lines. They can’t relate to the other people on the line. It’s that simple. The same goes for American strip malls—they’ve killed