'Still, you'd think it would be Braithwaite & Pendel, wouldn't you? Old Braithwaite, senior partner after all. Ought to be first, even if he's dead.'

Pendel was already shaking his head. 'No, sir. Not so. It was Arthur Braithwaite's express wish at the time. "Harry, my son, it's youth before age. From now on we're P&B, and that way we won't be mistaken for a certain oil company."'

'So who are these royals you've been dressing? "Tailors to Royalty." Saw it on your sign. Busting to ask.'

Pendel allowed his smile to cool a little.

'Well, sir, I'll put it this way, and I'm afraid that's as far as I'm allowed to go, owing to laze majesty. Certain gentlemen not a great distance from a certain royal throne have seen fit to honour us in the past, and up to the present day. Alas, we are not at liberty to divulge further details.'

'Why not?'

'Partly by reason of the Guild of Tailors' code of conduct, which guarantees every customer his confidentiality, be he high or low. And partly I'm afraid these days for reasons of security.'

'Throne of England?'

'There you press me too hard, Mr Osnard.'

'h.e.l.l's the crest o' the Prince of Wales hanging outside for then? Thought you were a pub for a moment.'

'Thank you, Mr Osnard. You have noticed what few have noticed here in Panama, but further than that my lips are sealed. Sit yourself down, sir. Marta's sandwiches are cuc.u.mber if you're interested. I don't know whether her renown has reached you. And there's a very nice light white I can recommend. Chilean, which one of my customers imports and has the grace to send me a case of now and then. What can I tempt you with?'

For by now it was becoming important to Pendel that Osnard should be tempted.

Osnard had not sat down but he had accepted a sandwich. Which is to say he had helped himself to three from the plate, one to keep him going and two to balance in the ample cushions of his left palm while he stood shoulder to shoulder with Pendel at the applewood table.

'Now these aren't us at all, sir,' Pendel confided, dismissing at one gesture a swatch of lightweight tweeds, which was what he always did. 'Can't be doing with these either - not for what I call the mature figure - all right for your beardless boy or your beanstalk but not for the likes of a you or a me, I'll put it that way.' Another flip. 'Now we're getting somewhere.'

'Prime alpaca.'

'It is indeed, sir,' said Pendel, much surprised. 'From the Andean Highlands of South Peru, appreciated for its soft touch and variety of natural shades, to quote Wool Record, if I may make so bold. Well, I'm blessed, you are a dark horse, Mr Osnard.'

But he only said this because your average customer didn't know the first thing about cloth.

'My dad's favourite. Swore by it. Used to. Alpaca or bust.'

'Used to, sir? Oh dear.'

'Dead. Up there with Braithwaite.'

'Well, all I can say is, Mr Osnard, with no disrespect intended, your esteemed father knew whereof he spoke,' Pendel exclaimed, launching upon a favourite subject. 'Because alpaca cloth is in my fairly informed judgment the finest lightweight in the world bar none. Ever was and ever shall be, if you'll pardon me. You can have all your mohair-and-worsted mixes in the world, I don't care. Alpaca is dyed in the thread, hence your variety of colour, hence your richness. Alpaca is pure, it's resilient, it breathes. Your most sensitive skin is not bothered by it.' He laid a confiding finger on Osnard's upper arm. 'And what did our Savile Row tailor use it for, Mr Osnard, to his eternal and everlasting shame until the scarcity prevented him, I wonder?'

'Try me.'

'Linings,' Pendel declared with disgust. 'Common linings. Vandalism, that's what it is.'

'Old Braithwaite would have boiled over.'

'He did, sir, and I'm not ashamed to quote him. "Harry," he said to me - it took him nine years to call me Harry - "Harry, what they're doing to the alpaca, I wouldn't do to a dog." His words and I can hear them to this day.'

'Me too.'

'I beg your pardon, sir?'

If Pendel was all alertness, Osnard was the reverse. He seemed unaware of the impact of his words and was studiously turning over samples.

'I don't think I quite got your meaning there, Mr Osnard.'

'Old Braithwaite dressed m'dad. Long ago, mind. I was just a nipper.'

Pendel appeared too moved to speak. A rigidity came over him and his shoulders lifted in the manner of an old soldier at the Cenotaph. His words, when he found them, lacked breath. 'Well I never, sir. Excuse me. This is a turn-up for the book.' He rallied a little. 'It's a first, I don't mind admitting. Father to son. The two generations both, here at P&B. We've not had that, not in Panama. Not yet. Not since we left the Row.'

'Thought you'd be surprised.'

For a moment Pendel could have sworn the quick brown fox's eyes had lost their twinkle and become circular and smoky-dark, with only a splinter of light glowing in the centre of each pupil. And in his later imagination the splinter was not gold, but red. But the twinkle was quickly there again.

'Something wrong?' Osnard enquired.

'I think I was marvelling, Mr Osnard. "A defining moment" I believe is the expression these days. I must have been having one.'

'Great wheel o'time, eh?'

'Indeed, sir. The one that spins and grinds and tramples all before it, they say,' Pendel agreed, and turned back to the samples book like one who seeks consolation in labour.

But Osnard had first to eat another cuc.u.mber sandwich, which he did in one swallow, then brushed the crumbs off his palms by bringing them together in a slow slapping movement several times until he was satisfied.

There was a well-oiled procedure at P&B for the reception of new customers. Select cloth from samples book, admire same cloth in the piece - since Pendel was careful never to display a sample unless he had the cloth in stock - repair to fitting room for measurement, inspect Gentleman's Boutique and Sportsman's Corner, tour rear corridor, say hullo to Marta, open account, pay deposit unless otherwise agreed, come back in ten days for first fitting. For Osnard, however, Pendel decided on a variation. From the samples desk he marched him to the rear corridor, somewhat to the consternation of Marta who had retreated to the kitchen and was deep in a book called Ecology on Loan, being a history of the wholesale decimation of the jungles of South America with the hearty encouragement of the World Bank.

'Meet the real brains of P&B, Mr Osnard, though she'll kill me for saying it. Marta, shake hands with Mr Osnard. O-S-N then A-R-D. Make a card for him, dear, and mark it old customer because Mr Braithwaite made for his father. And the first name, sir?'

'Andrew,' said Osnard, and Pendel saw Marta's eyes lift to him, and study him, as if she had heard something other than his name, then turn to Pendel in enquiry.

'Andrew?' she repeated.

Pendel hastened to explain: 'Temporarily of the El Panama Hotel, Marta, but shortly to be moving, courtesy of our fabled Panamanian builders, to -?'

'Punta Paitilla.'

'Of course,' said Pendel with a pious smile, as if Osnard had ordered caviar.

And Marta, having very deliberately marked the place in her tome and pushed the tome aside, grimly noted these particulars from within the walls of her black hair.

'h.e.l.l happened to that woman?' Osnard demanded in a low voice as soon as they were safely back in the corridor.

'An accident, I'm afraid, sir. And some rather summary medical attention after it.'

'Surprised you keep her on. Must give your customers the w.i.l.l.i.e.s.'

'Quite the reverse, I'm pleased to say, sir,' Pendel replied stoutly. 'Marta is by way of being a favourite among my customers. And her sandwiches are to die for, as they say.'

After which, to head off further questioning about Marta, and expunge her disapproval, Pendel launched himself immediately upon his standard lecture on the tagua nut, grown in the rainforest and now, he a.s.sured Osnard earnestly, recognised throughout the feeling world as an acceptable subst.i.tute for ivory.

'My question being, Mr Osnard, what are the current uses of your tagua today?' he demanded with even more than his customary vigour. 'Ornamental chess sets? I'll give you chess sets. Carved artefacts? Right, again. Our earrings, our costume jewellery, we're getting warm - but what else? What possible other use is there which is traditional, which is totally forgotten in our modern age, and which we here at P&B have at some cost to ourselves revived for the benefit of our valued clients and the posterity of future generations?'

'b.u.t.tons,' Osnard suggested.

'Answer, of course, our b.u.t.tons. Thank you,' said Pendel, drawing to a halt before another door. 'Indian ladies,' he warned, dropping his voice. 'Cunas. Very sensitive, if you don't mind.'

He knocked, opened the door, stepped reverently inside and beckoned his guest to follow. Three Indian women of indeterminate age sat st.i.tching jackets under the beam of angled lamps.

'Meet our finishing hands, Mr Osnard,' he murmured, as if fearful of disturbing their concentration.

But the women did not seem half as sensitive as Pendel was, for they at once looked up cheerfully from their work and gave Osnard broad, appraising grins.

'Our b.u.t.tonhole to our tailormade suit, Mr Osnard, is as our ruby to our turban, sir,' Pendel p.r.o.nounced, still at a murmur. 'It's where the eye falls, it's the detail that speaks for the whole. A good b.u.t.tonhole doesn't make a good suit. But a bad b.u.t.tonhole makes a bad suit.'

'To quote dear old Arthur Braithwaite,' Osnard suggested, copying Pendel's low tone.

'Indeed, sir, yes. And your tagua b.u.t.ton, which prior to the regrettable invention of plastic was in wide use across the continents of America and Europe and never bettered in my opinion is, thanks to P&B, back in service as the crowning glory of our fully tailored suit.'

'That Braithwaite's idea too?'

'The concept was Braithwaite's, Mr Osnard,' said Pendel, pa.s.sing the closed door of the Chinese jacket-makers and deciding for no reason except panic to leave them undisturbed. 'The putting it into effect, there I claim the credit.'

But while Pendel was at pains to keep the movement going, Osnard evidently preferred a slower pace for he had leaned a bulky arm against the wall, blocking Pendel's progress.

'Heard you dressed Noriega in his day. True?'

Pendel hesitated, and his gaze slipped instinctively down the corridor towards the door to Marta's kitchen.

'What if I did?' he said. And for a moment his face stiffened with mistrust, and his voice became sullen and toneless. 'What was I supposed to do? Put up the shutters? Go home?'

'What did you make for him?'

'The General was never what I call a natural suit-wearer, Mr Osnard. Uniforms, he could fritter away whole days pondering his variations. Boots and caps the same. But resist it how he would, there were times when he couldn't escape a suit.'

He turned, trying to will Osnard into continuing their progress down the corridor. But Osnard did not remove his arm.

'What sort o' times?'

'Well, sir, there was the occasion when the General was invited to deliver a celebrated speech at Harvard University, you may remember, even if Harvard would prefer you didn't. Quite a challenge he was. Very restless when it came to his fittings.'

'Won't be needing suits where he is now, I dare say, will he?'

'Indeed not, Mr Osnard. It's all provided, I'm told. There was also the occasion when France awarded him its highest honour and appointed him a Legionnaire.'

'h.e.l.l did they give him that for?'

The lighting in the corridor was all overhead, making bullet holes of Osnard's eyes.

'A number of explanations come to mind, Mr Osnard. The most favoured is that, for a cash consideration, the General permitted the French Airforce to use Panama as a staging point when they were causing their unpopular nuclear explosions in the South Pacific.'

'Who says?'

'There was a lot of loose talk around the General sometimes. Not all his hangers-on were as discreet as he was.'

'Dress the hangers-on too?'

'And still do, sir, still do,' Pendel replied, once more his cheerful self. 'We did endure what you might call a slight low directly after the US invasion when some of the General's higher officials felt obliged to take the air abroad for a time, but they soon came back. n.o.body loses his reputation in Panama, not for long, and Panamanian gentlemen don't care to spend their own money in exile. The tendency is more to recycle your politician rather than disgrace him. That way, n.o.body gets left out too long.'

'Weren't branded a collaborator or whatever?'

'There weren't a lot left to point the finger, frankly, Mr Osnard. I dressed the General a few times, it's true. Most of my customers did slightly more than that, didn't they?'

'What about the protest strikes? Join in?'

Another nervous glance towards the kitchen where Marta was by now presumably back at her studies.

'I'll put it this way, Mr Osnard. We closed the front of the shop. We didn't always close the back.'

'Wise man.'

Pendel grabbed the nearest doorhandle and shoved it. Two elderly Italian trouser-makers in white ap.r.o.ns and gold-rimmed spectacles peered up from their labours. Osnard bestowed a royal wave on them and stepped back into the corridor. Pendel followed him.

'Dress the new chap too, don't you?' Osnard asked carelessly.

'Yes, sir, I'm proud to say, the President of the Republic of Panama numbers today among our customers. And a more agreeable gentleman you couldn't wish to meet.'

'Where d'you do it?'

'I beg your pardon, sir?'

'He come here, you go there?'

Pendel adopted a slightly superior manner. 'The summons is always to the Palace, Mr Osnard. People go to the President. He doesn't go to them.'

'Know your way around up there, do you?'

'Well, sir, he's my third president. Bonds are formed.'

'With his flunkeys?'

'Yes. Them too.'

'How about Himself? Pres?'

Pendel again paused, as he had done before when rules of professional confidence came under strain.

'Your great statesman of today, sir, he's under stress, he's a lonely man, cut off from what I call the common pleasures that make our lives worth living. A few minutes alone with his tailor can be a blessed truce amid the fray.'