“I think that’s a very good idea,” he said. “She’ll learn at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, but Mrs. Howell can tell her Pamela Mallín is handling everything. I’ll have a word with Mrs. Howell.”
“I’d be grateful,” Claudia said, then added, “For other good news, Alicia’s young diplomat friend will be here for the weekend. I didn’t know how to tell her no, either. My cup runneth over.”
“There’s nothing you can do about that, Claudia, except be grateful that he seems to be a fine young man. I like him.”
“If he were an Argentine, I think I would, too,” she said, then asked, “You wouldn’t be willing to talk to her?”
“It would do absolutely no good,” he said. “Haven’t you seen the way she looks at him?”
“I don’t want to have to arrange another hurried wedding,” she said.
“You think it’s gone that far?”
“Haven’t you seen the way she looks at him?” she quoted him, bitterly.
“If you like, Claudia, I will talk with her,” Welner said.
“Now?”
“Let me deal with Cletus first. Am I invited to spend the night?”
“Of course you are,” she said.
“In that case, I will see you later this afternoon.”
She nodded.
“And of course, Claudia, you could pray,” he said.
“What makes you think I haven’t been?”
“More often, then,” he said.
She shook her head and walked away.
When Father Welner got behind the wheel of his black 1940 Packard 280 convertible coupe to drive to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, he remembered—as he often did—the not entirely good-willed ribbing he had taken from Jorge Guillermo Frade when he’d been given the car by another wealthy family in appreciation of his pastoral services.
Frade (the best friend he had ever had in his life) had asked him, smiling wickedly, “purely as a matter of curiosity, you understand, Kurt,” how he reconciled the Packard, his custom-tailored suits, and his well-furnished apartment in the expensive Recoleta district of Buenos Aires with his Jesuit vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
With a straight face Welner had explained that since he readily admitted to being a weak man and a sinner, keeping two out of three of his vows wasn’t bad. Frade had laughed heartily.
It took Welner forty-five minutes to drive the sixty kilometers of two-lane macadam roads between the main house (actually a complex of seven buildings) of Estancia Santo Catalina to the main house (a complex of nine buildings) of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. His route never took him off the property of the adjoining ranches. The terrain was the pampas, gently rolling hills extending to the horizon in all directions, broken here and there by clumps of trees and spotted all over by grazing cattle.
He saw the trees planted as a windbreak around the main house of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo long before he reached the complex.
Protected by the trees was the big house itself, a rambling structure surrounded on three sides by wide porches; a small church, La Capilla Nuestra Señora de los Milagros; several houses for the servants and the senior managers of the estancia; a large stable; a polo field; the main garage; el Coronel’s garage; and an aircraft hangar, around which were clustered three Piper Cub airplanes and a large twin-engine aircraft, a Lockheed Lodestar airliner, painted bright red.
In 1935, an enterprising Piper salesman had shipped two of the small, two-seater, high-wing monoplanes to Argentina and demonstrated their usefulness to cattle-raising operations on large ranches. He had almost lost the sale to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo when he told the owner how useful they had proved to be on Texas’s King Ranch; but Frade had been so impressed with the potential of the airplanes that he swallowed his dislike for anything Texan and ordered two Cubs on the spot, and later ordered two more.
Within six months of their arrival, he was flying one of them himself, first around Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, and then to visit Señora Claudia de Carzino-Cormano at Estancia Santo Catalina. Within a year, there had been at least one Piper Cub at each of his four estancias, and landing strips had been built at both of his vineyards.
When Frade learned he was being appointed Deputy Commander of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment at Santo Tomé in Corrientes Province, he had ordered a larger six-place Beechcraft biplane, known as the “Staggerwing,” its upper wing being placed to the rear of the lower.
As soon as he took command at Santo Tomé, Frade had put his cavalrymen to work turning one of its pastures into a landing field for the Staggerwing.
It was an overnight trip by rail from Santo Tomé to Buenos Aires, and there was only one train a day. In the Staggerwing, he could fly to Buenos Aires after the morning parade, spend several hours conducting the army’s—and his own—business, and then fly back to Santo Tomé in time to take the salute of the regiment at evening parade.
El Coronel Frade had quickly become an advocate for the use of light aircraft in the army, and during the 1941 annual maneuvers (he had become by then Commanding Officer of the Húsares de Pueyrredón Cavalry Regiment, following in the steps of his father and his grandfather, who had founded the regiment), he had used Piper Cubs for reconnaissance and for message delivery.