Timeline 102762 Main 20 Changing of the Guard by James Philip

Author:James Philip [Philip, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30

Sunday 8th March

Palermo, Buenos Aires

The scrum of reporters in the street, nowadays pushed back so far they could hardly see who was coming and going into and out of the Bonham Garcia residence to attend Donna Elena’s - rapidly becoming legendary - ‘political’ dinners, had diminished in its numbers but not the fervour with which its members greeted each arriving guest. The media – particularly the foreign press corps, especially from neighbouring countries – had latched onto the Bonham Garcias as the ‘star’ family, possibly the key emergent dynasty of the new age of Argentine politics, and Elena, much to her chagrin had come to be painted as its wise and graceful matriarch.

Perhaps, it was the fact that the whole family, even Lucia spoke English, the lingua-franca of the recent enemy, Great Britain, and the Argentine’s now closest ally, the United States. Or that Elena was also fluent in French and spoke more than a smattering of Italian, had made her an instant hit with women’s magazine editors around the world. What was beyond doubt was that the family, with its warrior head, the handsome, courageous sons who had both played unimpeachable parts in the recent war, young Lucia and her elegant, somehow effortlessly regal mother, just happened to be exactly what so many ordinary Argentines expected their new Republic’s leading family to be…

As far as the Bonham Garcia clan was concerned, it was all a little mystifying; and none of them were overly comfortable to be under so much scrutiny, all the time!

Not least because to be objects of adoration was also to be the principal object of the angst and anger of the men, the families and the privileged land-owning and business cliques whose wealth and prestige had depended on the writs of now displaced and disgraced Juntas of the recent years. Moreover, it was impossible not to be aware that it was far too early for anybody to claim that they spoke for the Argentine people; principally because the ‘people’ had not actually worked out what they wanted, or expected of the Provisional Government of Arturo Frondizi, nor could any meaningful consensus be established other than by the ballot box, free elections, a thing the rump of the Republic’s judiciary – the same men who had collaborated with every Junta since 1943 – was desperately attempting to delay.

The crowds in the street, even casual readers of the papers, and anybody who listened to the more hysterical radio or television pundits, would have been astonished to discover that Donna Elena did not approve of, and strongly discouraged talk of politics around her dinner table; mainly on the grounds that her husband had to put up with far too much of that sort of talk the rest of the time!

Today’s guests were not, in the main, household names in the Republic, although one, admittedly had attracted more than a little attention with his recently promulgated appointment as Director of the newly formed Joint Services Combat Engineering School (JSCES)

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