At the Villa Massina (7 page)

“Yet you have not seen my brother’s cabin, which is the largest of all and delightfully modern.” She paused, palpably preoccupied with something else. “At functions such as this you feel strange, do you not? It would be so much better for you if you had an English companion.”

“I don’t really mind, senora.”

“But it is a pity to be lonely. Did my brother mention that I would have been happy to welcome your friend here tonight?”

Juliet said stoically, “There’s no one I’d care to ask.”

“Then you are not on such terms with the Englishman who called on you yesterday, as I was leaving?”

There was something ominous about this probing. Juliet said, “He’s a naturalized Spaniard, senora, and I don’t know him well enough to call him a friend.”

Inez was smiling gently. “I thought he looked interesting. I have always thought so, since the first time I saw him some weeks ago.”

Juliet’s fingertips turned clammily into her palms; she hadn’t foreseen a situation of this sort. “Then perhaps,” she said non-committally, “you know him better than I do. When the Senor Conde said that I might bring a friend, I gathered that you didn’t know him at all.”

Inez shrugged. “Ramiro is not here often, and this is his longest stay for many years. He is well acquainted with the people of San Federigo, but has little reason to become intimate with others who live in the Bahia de Manca. Mr. Whitman has a house at Cortana, I believe?”

The cold dampness of Juliet’s hands was communicating itself to her shoulders and spine. She was sure that sweat stood out on the bare skin below her nape.

She answered briefly, “Yes, he has.”

“He is in business?”

“No, he’s a writer.”

Lights showed in the usually uncommunicative eyes. “We have a writer among us? But I must certainly meet him! Juliet, you will ask him to take tea at the Castillo. Both of you, of course. Tomorrow.”

Juliet floundered. “I’ve no means of getting in touch with him. Senora, I’d much rather have nothing to do with it at all. I really believe it would be better to ignore him. He’s not such a good writer—he said himself that...”

“But that is the way of writers,” replied Inez with animation. “He speaks ill of himself so that one will be all the more astounded by his books! I insist on meeting this Englishman turned Spaniard,” her tones lowered, “but it would be as well for the occasion to have a casual appearance, and not to tell my brother about it at once. Yes, that is best. You will arrive at the Castillo at four-thirty with Mr. Whitman, and we three shall be alone for only a short while. As for getting in touch with him,” she sounded almost gay, “there is not a man anywhere who will not respond to a note from a pretty girl. You are English, you will think of what to write to him.”

“I can’t do it, senora.”

Inez looked at her dispassionately, unsmilingly. “That is a peculiar attitude, is it not? You have acquaintance with this man, and I feel he is unusual enough to be worth at least one small meeting; no one else need know of it. It is nothing, Juliet—but you will not do this small thing.”

“I’m afraid it’s impossible,” said Juliet desperately. “You see...”

“And what if I tell you it has a very special meaning for me?”

Juliet was hot now, and wretchedly woolly. What on earth could Inez de Vedro, sister of the Conde de Vallos, want with the dissipated Lyle Whitman? And how would Ramiro react if he were told about it? As for Norma ... Juliet shivered.

“I’d like to think more about it,” she said.

The other’s voice softened. “You are cautious, which is a quality I admire in any girl. But I am much older than you are and I am always very sure of my actions. This encounter with Mr. Whitman will be in the nature of an experiment for me; there is something I wish to prove, and I believe he can help me.”

“But the Senor Conde...” said Juliet drowningly.

“Ramiro knows my sense of propriety—he would not object, I assure you, and I have chosen tomorrow because he will be away all day and it may not be necessary to tell him. Will you bring Mr. Whitman to the Castillo for tea tomorrow?”

“I’ll try,” despondently, “but I can’t promise he’ll come.”

“He will come,” Inez stated confidently. “I have no doubt at all about that. I will look forward to it, Juliet, and you must not worry. I have demanded this, so it is my responsibility.”

But what about Norma, thought Juliet wildly. How in the world had all this muddle come about? It didn’t seem possible that one could live quietly in a villa and have so many bricks tumble about one. It was just as though the posting of that little packet of Norma’s had knocked away a stanchion, and she had to sit tight under the battering that followed.

Inez already had the cabin door open. She turned and did something Juliet would never have imagined her doing to any woman; she slipped a cool hand round Juliet’s elbow and gave it a faint squeeze.

“Let us now enjoy the night. Here is Mario, hoping very ardently that you will dance with him.”

But Juliet had no urge to dance. All she wished was that she could dive overboard and swim as far from San Federigo as her strength would take her.

CHAPTER FOUR

DANCING on deck can be an ecstatic experience. If one is not in love the partner does not matter very much because there is the magic of the star-coined sea, the salt breeze, the perfume of massed flowers which are conveniently tethered where they will provide half-sheltered spaces for pausing and gazing, and the music blending with the wash of waves below the rail. But to savour such rapture even impersonally, it is necessary to have peace of mind. Juliet’s mental equipment that evening was by no means peaceful.

However, she danced with Mario and with several other young men, and she was drawn aside by the diplomat, Don Manuel Verrar, who no doubt considered it wise to be attentive towards the least of foreigners in Spain. Later, she noticed the man dancing sedately with Inez de Vedro, and she wished, despairingly, that he would waft the woman away somewhere for a long, long time. Long enough, at any rate, for Juliet Darrell to be on her way to England before the senora could show up again.

But nothing of the kind happened. Two o’clock came, and the first contingent was taken ashore. Eight more of the guests were escorted down the steps to the second launch and wished goodnight by the Conde. From her position at the rail, Juliet saw him touch his lips to the wrists of the serene Elena de Mendoza and her mother, of the lively Lupita. She saw their brilliant smiles and Ramiro bending towards them as if each in her turn were, for that moment, the only women on earth.

At Juliet’s side, the youngest of the three, Carmen Perez, drew a long sigh, and said something softly in Spanish. Juliet nodded, as if she understood, as in a way she did. She watched the launch zoom away, and Ramiro mount the steps. He came to the last of his guests, Juliet and the Perez family.

“I think we will all go over together,” he said in English, and then he changed to Spanish for a minute or two, before turning politely to Juliet, and explaining for her benefit: “Senor and Senora Perez with Carmen will go home in Mario’s car. Inez and I will take you to the Villa.”

As the launch moved away from the yacht, Juliet looked up at him in the near-darkness. Perhaps it was a trick of the night that made him look like some enigmatic
conqueror
who has plans for his subjects. Certainly by the time they came alongside the jetty he was again the wholly agreeable host.

He put the Perez family into Mario’s car, raised a hand as it moved away. Then he saw his sister and Juliet seated in the back of his own car, and set it moving along the waterfront, which even at this hour was not entirely deserted. Juliet had never quite believed Luisa’s assertion that the Spanish people lived by night, but here was proof. There was even a family making its way home, a young father with a drowsy child on his shoulder and his wife holding the hands of two more ninos whose feet dragged as though they were sleep-walking.

The car swept up the hill and round the high sea road, turned on to the drive of the Villa Massina, where a light hung in the porch. Ramiro got out and opened the door. Juliet said goodnight to Inez, caught the woman’s gaze for a second and read its smiling message. Then she went up into the porch and placed the door-key in the hand he held out.

They entered the hall and he switched on the lights and glanced about him. “I will go up first and look at those children,” he said.

“It isn’t necessary, senor. Luisa is sleeping upstairs tonight.”

“Bueno.” He paused, looking down at her without expression, except that the dark eyes were a fraction narrower than usual. “I was talking with Mario Perez in the smoking-room of the yacht this evening. He was vaguely ligero ... what you call, in the clouds. I do not blame him for that,” though to Juliet he looked as if he did, “but there was a thing he said which stayed with me. We spoke of the marriage of my estate manager, which I shall attend for an hour tomorrow in Cadiz, and in jest he mentioned that I might soon attend my own wedding. He is young, and it is unlike him to speak of what does not concern him, but he had taken an unusual quantity of champagne.”

The stole Juliet was holding crumpled into her hand, and tension was audible in her voice. “Yes, senor?”

“He recounted part of a conversation with you. You asked him, it seems, what would happen if I fell in love with the daughter of a fisherman.”

A nerve throbbed visibly in Juliet’s throat. She knew that flippancy wouldn’t come off at this hour and in these circumstances, yet how else could one handle this? Bother Mario!

“Well, it’s a point, isn’t it?” she answered reasonably. “Not for you, particularly, but for any man in your position. I know I shouldn’t have discussed you with Mario, and I apologize. I won’t do it again.”

“I am glad of that. It is not that I mind your thinking these things, you understand? But, please, if you are truly interested, bring such questions to me yourself. I will answer them.”

Her eyes widened. “Really? Without getting furious?”

He smiled, with a trace of cynicism. “I cannot promise that, because you have a way of using words that occasionally reminds one of a small knife plunging about without direction but unconsciously seeking a sensitive spot. But whatever you ask, you shall have your explanation.”

“Even of that particular question—the one Mario repeated?”

“Yes, but not tonight. It cannot be compressed into a sentence.” He lifted a hand and for an insane couple of seconds she thought he was going to brush her cheek with it; her skin actually quivered and tensed. But he let the hand fall negligently to his side. “You must be very sleepy, my child. You look ten years old and hardly able to prop open those large grey eyes. That is what comes of ignoring the siesta. Go to bed.” Then brusquely, as he drew the door wide open, “One last word. It is unlikely that Mario Perez is falling in love with you. He is merely bewitched for the first time in his life—which is something that happens to every young man. I tell you this, senora, so that you will guard your own heart. Buenos noches.”

He was gone. The lock snicked, and a minute later the car started up and slid away from the Villa Massina. Juliet switched off the lights and crawled upstairs to bed.

“Jolly good,” chanted Tony next morning as he performed a laborious somersault on his bedroom floor. “Jolly, jolly, snipping, snapping good.” He sat up and watched Rina primly tidying his bookshelf. “I bet you’ll be seasick.”

“I shan’t. I wasn’t seasick on the boat from England.”

“But this will be a cockleshell, and it’ll smell of fish. Juliet!” he called. “You didn’t tell us what sort of boat we’re going in.”

“I don’t know yet,” came the answer from the next room. “Luisa’s arranging for her son to take us.”

“Then it will be a motor-boat. Goody, golly, goody.”

Tony’s was by no means a complex personality. Nothing worried him very much and at the smallest sign of impending pleasure he let off steam, so that he was never strung up and seldom more than mildly excited. He had attended Rina’s private school for a few months and emerged untouched, and his mother had once commented with a laugh that Tony would never need to learn very much: he was going to grow into one of those engaging youths who ride roughshod over everybody, and as a man he would probably sit back and direct some enterprise which others carried for him.

Rina was more finely keyed, like her father. She had been born with a sense of fitness which, at her early age, showed itself in extreme tidiness and an anxiety not to offend. Even indulgence during her illness had not blunted her desire to please whenever she could, and she never missed an opportunity of showing her brother how he should behave, though in this her methods were surprisingly adult. She never nagged, but persuaded by example.

This morning, she finished lining up his books, straightened the bedspread which he had boisterously rumpled, and found a clean handkerchief for his pocket. Then she went out and knocked politely on Juliet’s door.

“Come in, darling. I’m quite ready.” Juliet smiled at her. “You can take charge of my bag, if you like. By the way we mustn’t forget your jersey, in case it's cool on the sea.”

“I took them both downstairs,” said Rina. “Tony’s and mine. Shall I get books?”

“No, we’ll save reading for another rainy day. We’ll look for shells.”

“I’d like that.” She stood gravely regarding Juliet’s white pique blouse, stared up at her face. “You’re sort of washy, like I was when I first came. Your eyes are like Bitty’s.” Bitty was Uncle George’s spaniel.

“Well, thanks,” laughed Juliet. “I was too late to bed last night, and I couldn’t sleep when I got there. Today, I’m going to make up for it, and I’ve made up my mind not to care, whatever happens. Come on, sweetie, we’ll go and see what Luisa’s prepared for us in the way of a picnic. Call Tony, will you?”

Juliet did, in fact, feel washed-out this morning, but she had also reached that state of indifference which was necessary for the sort of day she had to face. During the night she had repeatedly told herself that none of the circumstances in which she had become involved were her own fault, that whatever turned up she had to do what she thought was best in Norma’s interests, and hope no lasting trouble came of it. It had taken until dawn to convince herself, and then she had dozed, to be awakened by the sun and to find that the convictions arrived at during the night had not budged.

At breakfast, Luisa had been dubious about the proposed picnic. The senorita, she thought, should rest after having had a long evening on the yacht. However, she was won round by the suggestion that a few hours at sea were a tonic for anyone.

Now, she brought the picnic basket out to the porch and stood there, a veritable duenna in her funereal black with a scarf over her head, waiting till they were all ready to move off.

“Is Luisa coming with us?” demanded Tony.

“No. I do not come, senorita,” Luisa told him in her hard old voice. “I accompany you only to the beach and there hand you to my son.”

“We’ll find him Luisa,” said Juliet. “You can't want to walk there and back in the sun.”

The old servant made a hissing sound. “Would I let you carry the basket? And what is the sun to me? I have worked in the fields ten hours a day! Come, let us find Juan.”

They came upon him about fifteen minutes later, a man who had rough curly hair under a stocking cap, and a white smile for “madre mia.” He indicated his boat, a small one at the edge of the sea, put an arm about Luisa and was pushed away with a spate of Spanish.

“Always,” said Luisa with rough worship in her tone, “this one makes love to me. But he is worthless, does not even live at the cottage with me. Look at him! Holes in the cap, no button to the collar, gold earrings like a gitano! But you can trust him in the boat, for that is something to which he gives all his attention. You speak English with the senorita, Juan—you understand?”

He took the basket, blew her a kiss and bowed respectfully to Juliet. “Please to come, senorita. My mother sent a message and the boat is ready. Just a cruise in the Bahia, is it not?”

“Well, we might like to land somewhere for lunch. May we go that way first?” She pointed left, at the headland. “Keep close to the land so that we can see the villages.”

Considering the way he had greeted his mother, this seaman son of Luisa’s was quite staid as he took them to sea. Obviously he regarded himself as an employee and Juliet as someone from an entirely different world, which she was. The boat chugged round the headland with Juan near the motor, a child on each side dangling fingers into the sunny blue sea and Juliet sitting central on a faded camp-stool. San Federigo disappeared suddenly, cut off by the cliff, and in front of them stretched the green coast spattered with the buildings and pink cottages of the port of Manca, beaches where fishermen were working, the curly white tideline and limitless ocean where hardly another craft was in sight.

Juliet asked the names of the villages.
San Martin, Porterro, Coroz, Manez.
Another headland, and then a deep but tiny bay which had a narrow mouth and a village at its heart.

“Cortana,” said Juan. “You do not wish to enter the bay, senorita?”

In spite of her nocturnal decisions, Juliet’s pulses quickened defensively. “But isn’t this where they make the lovely lace?” she said casually. “I’d rather like to see some of it.”

It was all the same to Juan. There was no jetty, so he nosed the boat towards the beach and as soon as it touched sand he leapt out into the sea and dragged with all his swarthy strength till he could lift the children out on to dry sand. Politely, he gave one hand to Juliet and looked away while she jumped. The situation might have been amusing had she not been preoccupied.

“It looks a very tiny village,” she said to him, “so we shan’t be long.”

With her bag over her shoulder and a small hand in each of her own, she trudged up the beach and climbed the stone wall. They crossed to the pink-washed shops, which numbered no more than a dozen, and looked in the tiny windows at the reels of hand-made lace, the table mats and blouses, the piles of espadrilles, pottery and trinkets. There were little plaster shrines and cheap rosaries, miniatures framed in intricately woven wire and grasses which were brightly painted and beribboned, but none of it, Julie thought, was tourist-bait. Cortana was pretty, with its small old shops and cottages, the thatches warm and dark in the sunshine, but it was shut in by the headlands, forgotten.

“I like those funny little dolls,” said Rina, “but their clothes are dusty.”

“Why not buy one, clean it up and make it new frocks,” Juliet suggested, opening her bag. “Take Tony in with you, and let him choose something as well. I’ll wait here for you.”

Perhaps it was a good omen, she thought hopefully, as the children marched into the shop. She had been nerving herself to send them in, but Rina had spoken first; perhaps other things would turn out as well. She moved quickly to where a woman sat sewing in the doorway of a cottage.

“Buenos dias, senora,” she said, and at once showed the letter she had taken from her pocket. “You know this house—Los Pinos?”

The woman was large and ponderous and not very bright. It took two repetitions of the question and some gesturing to elicit an affirmative smile, for she knew no English. The rest was even more difficult. Apparently this woman of Cortana could not understand why, when the house of Senor Lyle Whitman was only at the top of the hill—just there among the pines on the cliff—someone should be found to convey this letter to him. After all, the senorita must have come to Cortana for this purpose and it was hardly any more trouble to go up there and see the senor; quite certainly he was at home, because if one looked closely there was the shine of his car between the trees. Oh, yes, she could send it with the greatest pleasure but...

Juliet hurriedly put a fifty-peseta note into the rough palm. “Give this to the messenger for me, please. There is no reply. You will do it?”

The money and letter were examined, the woman nodded and held out the money, shaking her head. Juliet took it that the money wasn’t necessary, but she pressed the hand away.

“Please take it,” she said urgently.
“And muchas gracias, senora. Muchas gracias.”

She wasn’t able to notice how soon the errand was attended to. The children came out of the shop, Rina clasping one of the dolls and Tony interested in a small wooden musical box. They talked as they trailed back to the boat, but Juliet found herself incapable of answering them till there was sea between the little craft and the village of Cortana.

Juliet dabbed her temples with a handkerchief and let the breeze flow over her. She would let Juan choose the spot for a picnic.

And a good picnic it turned out to be. The children paddled and ate sandwiches, snoozed and paddled again. Tony sat down absentmindedly in the sea and thought it mighty funny to wear his jersey as a skirt while the shorts were dried. The three of them found shells and sponges, scarlet seaweeds and pieces of driftwood washed by time into incredible shapes. At two, Juliet said it was time to return to San Federigo. Juan was already late for his siesta.

Heading for home, he cut straight across the Bahia de Manca, and they were back at the familiar beach by three. Juliet thanked and paid him, allowed the children to carry the empty basket between them, and led the way back to the villa. When the hall clock chimed the half-hour the two were already stripped and in their beds, while Juliet washed feverishly and got into a printed silk frock.

She was tired but determined. Seemingly, no miracle had spirited Inez de Vedro away from the Castillo, so one’s only course was to go through with the introduction and thereafter stay out of the business.

She made up with care, set a pink straw hat on her golden head, took gloves and bag for formality, and, after telling the recumbent Luisa that she would be back by five-thirty and receiving an admonishment in return, she went out and down the steep cobbled road to the town.