Love is for Ever (18 page)

Dominic noticed the pat, and his lips set a little closely. Once again he put Jacqueline into the front seat of the car, while Martine seemed quite happy to subside on to the back seat with Neville. This afternoon, however, he found it difficult to drive, because of the excited crowds making their way to the bull-ring. When at last they arrived, Senor Montez was waiting for them with a party of his own guests, and they were all provided with excellent seats in the shade, where their view would be quite unobscured.

This rearrangement caused Jacqueline to find herself sitting next to the Senor, with a very smart middle-aged woman beside her on her other hand who was obviously looking forward to the entertainment. Several seats removed from them were Martine and Dominic and Neville, all three sitting together. Jacqueline looked along at Dominic before the fight started, and saw him watching her, and there was a little smile in his eyes which made her feel slightly more happy than she had hitherto done.

She wondered what it was like at a really big bullfight, but here, with only a make-shift arena, and seating accommodation for the audience, fortunately in the shade of a good many trees, the atmosphere was rather like that at a matinee before the curtain rolled up. There were young girls peeping into mirrors and making up their faces, plainly waiting for the moment when the ‘greatest
matador
in Spain’ should make his appearance. Cigarettes and chocolate were being sold, and bottles of cooling drinks with which were supplied straws. Looking about her Jacqueline decided that there couldn’t be anything unusually revolting about a bull-fight—‘unbearably’ revolting was the word she used to herself—seeing how happy and anticipatory everyone looked, and she began to feel a trifle more at her ease, waiting for the moment when a fanfare of trumpets announced the commencement of the contest.

For the first few minutes—even the first quarter of an hour—Jacqueline found that she was fascinated by the splendor of the
matadores
gold-embroidered jackets, their knee-breeches and curiously folded hats, their swinging magenta cloaks, and the way in which they placed themselves and preened themselves in various corners of the arena. Senor Montez, who was anxious that she should miss none of the thrills of the entertainment as a result of being English and unfamiliar with the routine, explained to her all that should happen if everything went according to plan, and it was when she realized that the
banderilleros
were there for the sole purpose of sticking darts into the unfortunate bulls to make them really angry, and the
picadores
to draw blood by lancing the bulls in the neck, that all her earlier apprehensions returned, and she began to feel both revolted and slightly sick.

After half-an-hour she was feeling much more than sick. Even in the shade it was almost overpoweringly hot, and that half-hour seemed like an eternity. The first bull was killed quickly, and the audience shrieked their delight, rising to their feet and fluttering handkerchiefs and throwing flowers at the
matador,
like a trained actor, stood bowing and posturing with drawn sword beside the body of the fallen bull. There was a good deal of blood seeping across the sandy floor of the arena, and it looked very bright in the sunshine, and the word which left the crowd’s lips was
Ole
!
Ole
!
Ole
!

It sounded like a heathen chant to Jacqueline.

When the doors were opened for the second bull she gripped the edge of her seat. Somewhere along the row of seats she felt that Dominic was watching her, and not the bull-ring, and Martine also was stealing her occasional openly amused glances. But Dominic’s were not amused.

She knew that she was turning gradually paler and paler, and that it was only a question of time before the whole thing overcame her. The question which caused her mental agony, however, was whether she should get up and disturb the party with whom she was with, and other members of the audience as well, by attempting to force her way out and past them to the comparative sanctuary of the space beyond the main gates, or whether she should just simply allow herself to faint dead away where she sat.

She had never fainted before in her life, but she knew she was going to now, and in desperation she put out a hand to clutch at Senor Montez’s arm. But even as she did so the world blackened out around her, and an arm which was not Senor Montez’s caught at her and prevented her falling flat on her face, while another arm came round her and lifted her, and she was carried past all the people in the seats the organizer of the party had selected with such care, and out into the space beyond the bull-ring and the main gates.

She had not even returned to consciousness when she was lifted into a car and placed carefully against the back of a hot seat, while Dominic slid into his driving seat beside her and started up the car with such little loss of time that in a matter of seconds the air was fanning past her cheek and lifting the soft curls from her brow, and they were making for the open cliff above the sea.

Then, when Dominic stopped the car, she was lying looking at him with a bewildered gaze, and she was still so pale that he inserted an arm beneath her and drew her protectively up against him.

“You are feeling better now?” he asked, his voice full of concern. “It is cooler here, and I think it was the heat that upset you more than anything.”

But Jacqueline knew she could never agree with him over that, although he was probably merely attempting to spare her feelings. And the heat had undoubtedly been intense, but ... She turned away her face as a wave of revulsion rushed up over her, and she said to herself that never again
—never again
!...

“I have some brandy here in the car,” Dominic told her.

“Would you like some?”

“No, thank you.” Her voice was faint and far away, a mere whisper in the stillness of the afternoon, but her conscience was beginning to prick her badly, and she managed in rather a stronger tone: “But I’ve spoilt your afternoon for you—I’m afraid I may have spoilt it for Senor Montez and the rest... ”

“Nonsense,” he replied, very softly, looking directly down at her. “It is your own afternoon that has been spoilt, because I should have realized that you were not in the least keen to see one of our bullfights, and that you are not like Martine... ” He paused. “But there will never be any need to repeat the experiment.”

“No,” she agreed, still barely above a whisper, and she thought he was referring to the possibility that she would be leaving Sansegovia soon, and that once she said goodbye to Sansegovia such things as bull-fights would have little place in her life.

“I must ask you to forgive me for causing you to endure a very unpleasant half-hour.”

“Was that all it was?—half-an-hour?” she asked, and still felt inclined to shudder.

“Yes. But as the experience was so bad it probably seemed much longer.”

“It did.” She half turned her face into his shoulder, and then suddenly realized what she was doing and checked herself. She made an attempt to sit up and free herself from his arm, but the arm actually tightened about her and she found she had to relax again.

“Lie still,” he urged, his voice very soft, and so gentle that it was like a caress. “There is no reason why you should move yet, and this air from the sea will revive you. You fainted, you know—you actually fainted dead away!”

“I’m so sorry,” she breathed. “I’ve never done such a thing before in my life.”

“Ah, but then you’ve never lived amongst barbaric Spaniards before, have you?” There was a laugh in his voice, and she knew he was teasing her, but she felt extraordinarily content just then, and if this was the result of her fainting, and the horror that went before it, then she didn’t regret it in the slightest. “And I suppose you do think we’re very barbaric, don’t you? You’re gentle, and feminine, and very English yourself, and you feel that our way of life is barely civilized?”

“Of course I don’t think anything of the kind.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. I’ve never known such kindness as your grandmother showed me, and
Tia
Lola is so kind, too. The way of life at the Villa Cortina is extremely civilized, I think, and extremely humane.”

“And that includes me, does it?—Since the Villa Cortina now belongs to me!”

“You,” she reminded him, not daring to move her head by so much as a fraction of an inch because that might enable her to see the expression in his eyes, “are only half Spanish.”

“True,” he agreed, and picked up one of her hands that was lying limply in her lap and examined the delicate pink nails as if they interested him. “One of these days,” he added quietly, after a moment, “I will go to England and remake the acquaintance of my father’s relatives.”

“Then you haven’t kept in touch with them throughout the years?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t. But I have a certain amount of property over there which it is only fitting I should visit occasionally, and when I do perhaps you, too, will be in England? I have a house on the Sussex coast which I would very much like you to see, because I think you would approve of it. Do you think we might arrange to meet, and that I might show you it, little Jacqueline. It is the sort of house you would fit into very well!”

But Jacqueline felt the first chill breath of reality blowing upon that luxurious state of contentment in which she had been wallowing, and she also felt as if she had been brought up rather short by a highly necessary reminder of the kind of friendship between them. They
were
only friends—and yet she was lying with her ear pressed to the silk of his shirt so that the strong beats of his heart were actually vibrating under her cheek, and one of her curls was brushing against his cheek, and he could hardly be unaware of it. Also his long, firm fingers were gently squeezing her fingers, and the scent of his shaving cream was in her nostrils, and the fragrant odor of cigarette smoke which clung about him.

Gently but determinedly she freed her fingers, and just as gently and determinedly she drew herself away from him, and he let her go.

“Well?” he asked, watching her curiously as she patted mechanically her disordered hair.

She looked away from him as she answered: “But what about your grandmother’s plans for you? Don’t you think that—when you do find time to visit England—it will be your wife who will wish to see your house? And although, of course, I shall be delighted to see it some time, it might not be quite— quite ...”

“Quite what?” with the same waiting, interested look on his face.

She fumbled with the clasp of her handbag, which he had rescued with her from the bull-ring, and managing to extract a comb ran it quickly and nervously through her curls.

“Oh, it’s—it’s not very important, is it? And I’m not quite sure what I was going to say! But I do think the others will be wondering what has become of us if we don’t rejoin them soon, don’t you? I’m quite all right again now.”

“Then in that case perhaps we had better return.” But his expression was slightly mask-like as he stared at the wheel. “And I really am sorry for spoiling your afternoon.”

“Don’t mention it,” he replied, in polite, polished tones. Then just before he started up the car he looked at her and said: “We’ll forget about my grandmother’s plans today, shall we? Today is a day for
fiesta
—for forgetting everything but gaiety and light-heartedness, and there are many hours to go yet before it is all over. I am looking forward to the rest of today— if you really
are
feeling better?” studying her face keenly. “All the unpleasantness forgotten?”

“Yes—yes,” she assured him.

“And you wouldn’t prefer to go home and rest for a while before rejoining the others?”

“No.” She smiled, with just a suggestion of something tremulous and uncertain about the smile, and he smiled back, not quite in the way she liked to see him smile. It was too cool,

too full of a kind of brittle amusement, too almost cynically prepared to go forth and encounter enjoyment. And the almost soothing gentleness, the rather tender solicitude, of a few minutes before, seemed to have deserted him altogether.

Jacqueline felt as if something had occurred to place them miles apart, although just those few minutes before she had been lying relaxed in his arms. And the rest of the day loomed for her without any prospect of pleasure, and as something she would have to live through whilst keeping a careful guard on all her emotions.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When they arrived at Senor Montez’s villa, where a tea-party was taking place under the shady trees in his garden, everyone overwhelmed Jacqueline with expressions of concern. Senor Montez himself expressed so much concern that she felt more than ever ashamed of the weakness she had displayed during the afternoon, and a little inclined to regard that weakness as something she ought not to be capable of whilst living amongst such well-intentioned friends as these. But a faint twinkle in the senor’s eyes when he asked why Dominic had considered it more in the interests of her health to take her for a drive instead of taking her home to rest for a while discomposed her for a few moments, especially as Dominic ignored the question and went across to pay some attention to Martine, who was looking contemptuously at Jacqueline.