When the British took San Carlos we should have known, but the ex-general was emphatic that our soldiers were still on the island and were ready to ambush and harass the British on rough terrain which we were used to and they were not. His son, he told us one night, was preparing to fight, he had received a special blessing from a bishop.

There was some anti-English feeling in the city. The Plaza Británica had its name changed and its tower defaced, but the students of English at the Instituto San Martín still turned up for class, and things went back to normal in the classroom. At night, there were more people on the street, and the atmosphere was friendlier. A few times, when I brought a man home, everything between us lacked the usual nervous, furtive atmosphere. Things were more casual.

Soon, it was clear to us that we were going to lose the war, even though no one spelled it out. After the sinking of the Belgrano, the ex-general stopped coming to the house, and that was a sign. Later, Jorge told me that his son had flown safely and came back home shortly after the war. I was glad about that, because he was the only person I knew who fought and I did not want to think of him being captured or injured or killed. It was bad enough when we thought of all those young conscripts, some of whom must have been cheering in the square the first night I went there, all of them innocent, going down on a big ship. I thought of the English sailors and soldiers as thin-faced and ugly; I wanted us to defeat them, it would not have bothered me if we had sunk one of their ships. In the last days of the war there were conflicting reports and the men who came to Señor Canetto’s house were confident right up to the end and even after the end that our forces were superior.