A Promise Is for Keeping (21 page)

Mr. Oliver's villa—the Villa Inglesa as it was known locally—was on one of the higher terraces commanding a magnificent view over the rooftops and the vineyards to the sea. The Mediterranean was doing its best just then to live up to its reputation and was unbelievably blue by day and silver under the light of the moon.

The terrace was lined with peach trees—as plane trees might border an English road, and Fay understood Mr. Oliver's raptures about Lamontella in the spring when the fruit trees would be a frothy mass of pink blossom. But even now at the end of the summer Lamontella provided all that Fay needed. Rest and quiet—she had not realised just how much she was in need of those things, nor how tired she had been. Tired not so much with physical work, though she had had plenty of that, but tired as a result of the emotional strain under which she had been living.

Now that she was no longer under the necessity of spending days filled with activity, Fay found herself becoming positively indolent, and for the first few days she was content to do little more than sit on the spacious loggia of the Pietros' bungalow and watch the changing effects of sun and sea and sky.

The bungalow, built in the gardens of the villa, was modern and comfortable, and as clean as a new pin. The wide loggias which surrounded it on all sides made it possible to sit out of doors at all times of the day, choosing the shade or the sun, whichever she preferred. The Pietros were kindness itself, delighted it seemed to have a visit from anyone who knew their dear "Patrone", and on Rose's part the added pleasure of being able to converse in her native tongue. In spite of her lack of Italian Fay had found no language difficulty—her own fairly fluent French and the fact that most of the villagers had at least a smattering of American English made the ordinary necessary intercourse of the everyday quite easy.

Life was so pleasant away from St. Edith's and a new question began to creep into Fay's mind. Why should she

ever return there? Would it not be better to cut right adrift from the hospital and the bitter-sweet torment it must hold for her all the time Mark was there? She could return at any time to the Commemoration Hospital, she knew without a shadow of doubt. But she felt a kind of moral obligation to Matron and St. Edith's. They had been good to her there, and although she had given no written undertaking she did feel some sense of obligation to give them a longer service.

"I won't think about it now," she told herself. "I won't make up my mind yet. I must concentrate on that letter to Geoff."

But somehow the idle days passed and the letter did not get written. It was with a shock that she looked at the calendar one day and discovered that the Wentworths would already have landed at Marseilles and have started their overland journey back to Dover.

It became a matter of urgency then to get the letter written, and Fay sat late on the loggia trying desperately to write what had to be written without hurting Geoff too much. It was not easy, and long after Rose had switched on the lantern light over her head Fay sat with a blank sheet of paper before her. She forced herself to take up the pen and write something—anything. Perhaps it would be easier if she once made a start.

"Dear Geoff," she wrote, "I expect you will be surprised to see from the address where I am. Matron insisted that I should take some leave which was due to me and as I had no time to make any other plans I decided to accept dear old Mr. Oliver's invitation to come to his villa—"

It was easier to start with the commonplace, the trivial, but she must not delay too long—it would only hurt Geoff more.

"...I am not staying in the villa itself but in the gardener's bungalow which is in the grounds. I can't tell you how beautiful it all is here—"

For a while that beauty of the night, the warm air scented with the mingled perfume of a hundred different flowers acted like a narcotic, causing her fingers to fall idle and her

heart to swell with sadness so that even breathing seemed an effort.

Far below on the coast road she could hear the sound of an occasional car, and nearer the sound of a man's footsteps. Soon there would be more footsteps—the villagers returning from the inn. The realisation of the passing of time drove her back to her letter.

"All this beauty," she wrote, "somehow makes what I have to tell you all the harder—"

She was concentrating hard now, intent on her task, so that she had not realised that the footsteps had come right up to the loggia until a man's voice spoke almost at her elbow.

"Hullo, Fay darling—"

"Geoff !
" she cried in utter amazement, scattering her papers as she jumped to her feet.

He moved quickly, without sticks now, up on to the loggia, and had her in his arms kissing her as once she and Mark had kissed under the mistletoe at Beechcroft, only now the passion was all on one side.

She broke away, knowing that she should not have let him kiss her like that, but afraid to end it too abruptly, because even now she had a great tenderness for him.

"How on earth did you—"

He anticipated the question and seemed eager to talk. "Mr. Oliver wired the ship and told me that you were here. He didn't actually tell me to come and find you, but I know he thought and hoped that I would. Oh, Fay, it's good to see you again! You don't know how long these last weeks have been. And even now I'm horribly pushed for time. The parents have made so many plans and I couldn't bear to upset them. But I managed to get away for tonight and half of tomorrow. Just long enough to come and bring you the final chapters. I had to come," he finished.

"Tell me about your trip," she said breathlessly.

But he brushed that suggestion aside. "I've told you plenty about that in my letters. I want to hear about you—and I want most of all to read you the last chapters. Is it too late? Are you tired? Can I read to you now?"

"It is late," Fay tried to find some excuse. "Won't it do tomorrow?"

"I would much rather tonight," he pleaded. "It's terribly hot—too hot for sleep, and they say there's going to be a storm. Can't I, please?"

He was pleading like a small boy, and she could not deny him.

He read well—and he had written well. His last chapters far excelled the beginning of his book, even. His understanding, almost uncanny at times, seemed to have grown as he lived with his characters. His treatment of the plight of his heroine, who cannot have the man she loves and who does not love her, but finds eventual fulfilment and happiness with another, lifted the story out of the hackneyed and into the realms of real life. The girl's pain was real pain—how real to Fay !—and the solution part of the common-sense acceptance of everyday life. It was not exaggerated, not idealised. It was real—all too real.

When he had finished reading Geoff looked up—slowly and almost reluctantly.

Fay knew what he wanted her to say, but she could not speak. The air seemed to have become unbearably hot, almost unbreatheable, and there was a rumble which was distant thunder above the heavy beating of her own heart.

"You're crying, Fay !"

She put a hand up to her cheek and found what he said was true.

"Why?" he asked gently.

She jumped up, not heeding her wet cheeks, trying to break free from some imprisonment which held her in a gigantic pressure. "It's all wrong, Geoff—it can't end like that ! I'm sorry—I'm sorry, but it can't !"

Now she was sobbing, great choking sobs that she could not hold back. When at last she checked them the hot, heavy air on the loggia hung silent.

She turned to Geoff and saw that he had picked up the sheet of notepaper which she had scattered when he first came.

"What were you going to tell me, Fay?" he asked in a dull, flat voice.

"This—" she said, her voice breaking. "This—that it can't be as you wish—that there isn't any happy ending for you and me."

"But you said—you said I could hope—"

"I know. I know, Geoff, and I was terribly wrong to let you think that. But I hoped it might come true—I hoped I could make you happy—but I can't," she finished in a whisper, and then out of her great pity she forced herself to go on. "I wouldn't have done this to you, Geoff—I didn't want to hurt you—and I know how much it hurts! I daren't ask you to forgive me now. But please believe me, Geoff, that it would have hurt you far more in the end if I hadn't told you now."

"But why?" he asked, and his voice was tired and bleak. "Why? He's married."

"I know," she agreed dully. "I know I can never have any part in his life—just as I know I shall belong to him for always—no, Geoff, not that," she said quickly as she saw the anger flash in his eyes, "but I made a promise once—a promise I can't keep but which won't let me ever belong to any other man. That promise did something to me ... how can I make you understand? Only a woman could feel what I felt for him—in my heart, in my mind—and in my body—I belong to him."

There was a silence between them in which the rumbling thunder became a little louder. "He cannot understand," she thought. "How should he? Only another woman could understand."

"Don't you see, Geoff, that feeling like that I can't marry anyone, especially you, because I care for you so much. I can't be any man's wife. I should be no better than your mistress—and that would degrade us both."

He did not make any reply. She heard the rasp of paper being viciously torn and she saw the pieces of her letter scatter over the loggia.

"Shall I see you again?" he asked in a voice she hardly recognised.

"Only—only when it doesn't hurt you any more," she told him, full of pity, and yet unable to help him.

"Then it's goodbye," he said, and she did not reply.

She stood motionless while his footsteps echoed away into the night silence, for by now it was very late and there was no traffic even on the coast road.

A little time after he had gone it seemed that the storm gathered force suddenly. Great drops of rain began to fall, at first singly and then in a cascade hissing on the hot earth and sending sulphurous vapour into her nostrils. A great fork of lightning cleft the sky, followed by a clap of thunder which seemed to rock the very earth. It sent her to the refuge of her room, but there was no peace there either.

THE storm lasted for hours, and Fay did not think she slept at all. Suddenly, though, it was daylight, and Rose, after a tap at the door, was entering with a tray of morning tea.

"I let you sleep on a bit, miss," she said. "After that dreadful night I thought you'd need it."

Prompted by those words, Fay glanced at her clock. It was half past eight—and Rose usually brought the tea at seven.

"I'd no idea I'd slept at all," Fay admitted. "Certainly I had no idea of the time. You look awfully tired, Rose—I think I ought to be taking tea to you, not the other way round."

"I'm a dreadful coward, miss," Rose admitted. "When we get storms like that all I can do is to get under the bedclothes and lie there shaking until it's over. Last night was the worst I ever remember. But I'm so ashamed, miss, at not coming to see if you were all right."

"Well, I must admit I didn't sleep much. But I'm not really worried by storms—"

"Pietro reckons there must have been an earthquake or landslide somewhere or other. Did you feel the whole place rock with that first thunderclap, miss?"

"Yes, I did." Fay remembered now, though she had not been analytical at the time. "He could well be right. Was there anything in the news this morning?"

Rose looked even more worried. "Our radio wasn't working, and there's no papers come through yet, miss. Pietro's gone down to the village now—we'll know more when he

comes back. I do hope your friend got away before it really broke. The lightning was terrible. I could see it even with my eyes closed under the sheet!"

So Pietro and Rose had been aware of Geoff's arrival. But Fay had nothing to hide. "Mr. Wentworth shared Mr. Oliver's room in my hospital," she told Rose. "And as he was at Marseilles he dropped over to see me. He walked up from the inn. I should think he was back there before the storm really started."

"Oh yes, I daresay he would be—and that's a good thing. I'm afraid we can't ring up to find out, though, because the phone's dead too."

Fay dismissed Rose, telling her that she would not want any breakfast that morning. Then she drank the tea—three cups of it one after the other, in an attempt to clear her tired brain. She had never felt so exhausted in her life, and she knew that the cause was not the storm nor her lack of sleep, but purely emotional. She did not like that; she did not approve of it. But the fact remained—her feelings were stronger than her will, and it was the battle between them which had exhausted her.

The tea did at least have the effect of making her a little less lethargic, and immediately she had finished drinking it she jumped out of bed, bathed and dressed as though she had a train to catch instead of a quiet day with nothing in particular with which to fill it.

By the time she had finished she could hear voices from the kitchen regions. Presumably Pietro was back from his trip to the village and she went along to see what news he had brought.

Pietro was almost in tears and excitedly voluble. "Have you seen, Mees Gabrielle," he gesticulated wildly, "have you seen my lovely garden? All ruined! And my waterfall—I make it especially for the patrone, and he has never seen it yet. Ah !—it is tragedy." He propelled Fay on to the loggia, and she saw what he meant. The garden was a shambles. Branches had been blown off the trees, many of the smaller ornamental ones had been uprooted, and everywhere there was water. The little stream which Pietro had turned into his waterfall had become a sizeable river, its muddy water