Read Tango for Free Online Page B

except what they tell him.’
    ‘Why is he so frightened?’
    ‘Because the union will beat him up and the police will do nothing.’
    William stared through the latest clean window-pane. The orange man still stood alongside his barrow, muffled and solitary. ‘I’ll go out to the factory myself.’
    ‘What can you do? You can do nothing. You do not have authority.’
    ‘I’ll talk to Miguel. It might be possible to work out something. Then at least we can report to London.’
    Ricardo gestured impatiently. ‘London, what can London do? You must plant something on them and get rid of them, I told you. It is now the only way.’
    Ricardo’s face was intelligent and fine-featured. He smiled with treacherous charm. ‘You are a reasonable man, William, very English, very nice. It is because of men like you that
your country has always been popular here. Without you we would not have become a country. But because you are reasonable you are also blind. You cannot see that others are not reasonable. Because
you have no nastiness you do not see it in others. But you must fight them with their own weapons or they will win.’
    ‘We must also try to do what is right.’
    ‘It does not work any more.’ Ricardo had been half-sitting, half-lying on his desk. He slid gracefully off it. ‘
Chau
, William.’
    ‘
Chau.
’
    That was probably Ricardo’s appearance for the day. He might come back in the afternoon if he ran out of people to see. More likely, he would find a girl. William looked once more at the
quarterly returns, at the list of questions London had sent, at the incomprehensible local tax demand. This was the sort of thing that Ricardo was supposed to help with. Perhaps he had been too
reasonable with Ricardo, reasonable to the point of weakness, but it was easier in the end to do things himself. At least they got done.
    The factory was a worry, though. It produced paper products mainly for the wholesale trade but a small amount was retailed through the shop. Because trade was slack they had wholesale stocks for
four to six weeks but if the trouble were prolonged they would be out of business. There was enough competition to see to that. Neither the mill nor the shop would survive without the factory; it
was the engine that kept the operation afloat, in so far as anything did, yet in London they seemed to think that the shop was the main thing. Indeed, the job had been sold to William on that basis
and he had been trying since his first weeks to correct London’s view. But they would not accept it, any more than they accepted that although he was formally responsible for the factory he
had authority neither in it nor over it. He had responsibility without power, the worst of all worlds.
    The idea of planting things on trouble-makers stuck in his throat. It was not the sort of thing one should do, even if it were done. One might pay them off, perhaps – bribe them to go
– but wrongful arrest was another matter. Catching them doing something illegal would be best of all. That was what he would talk to Miguel about. It was important to try to be reasonable
even if no one else did. Perhaps particularly important then. After all, the world was fundamentally reasonable. No matter how badly people behaved they tried to justify themselves, to make
themselves seem reasonable; and no matter how far and wide the aberrations, everyone in the end had to adjust. It was a condition of existence.
    The orange-seller had a customer, a man as short as himself but wearing a flat hat rather than a beret. They were negotiating over an orange. It was a protracted business involving argument,
shaking heads, gesticulations and a prolonged searching of pockets. The seller appeared to be insisting on the sale of more than one orange, indicating that he had no change, while the buyer
appeared willing to spend the rest of the morning searching his pockets rather than pay for more than he needed. Eventually a coin fell from the