Doctor at Villa Ronda (24 page)

There was also a screw of paper.

“You can have this, Nicola. Diamonds are more in my
line.”

Nicola stood there with the little brooch in her hand. So Lisa had been steadily and stealthily transferring her possessions elsewhere. No doubt this was the job, the professional assignment that Lisa had meant when she spoke of her efforts to make a livelihood.

Nicola turned the scrap of paper and found a few words on the other side.

“
I’m sorry about green vase. I did smash it deliberately because I was so angry with you, but I’ll make
amends some day with a piece of real jade
.”

Nicola hurried from the room, unable to contain her grief mixed with contempt, her resentment mingled with pity. Lisa’s ruthlessness might not eventually bring her the rewards she so longed for, yet Nicola could only hope that her restless, covetous sister would ultimately succeed in her ambitions.

Patrick had evidently heard vaguely of Lisa’s new hopes, for when Nicola met him at the Cafe Zurich, he sighed his relief.

“
This tycoon that she’s picked up through Ramon is probably the best thing that ever happened to her,” he said. “Also, she told me that having such a good address as the Villa Ronda and being a guest of the Montals was a great help.” Patrick gave her a quizzical glance. “You don’t seem to have made the most of your opportunities, Nicola.”

“Perhaps I don’t see the same things as opportunities,” she replied. She had already decided when this meeting with Patrick was arranged that she would tell him of her impending return to England.

H
e seemed astounded. “But why on earth should you throw away the good life like that? What are you afraid of?”

“
Nothing.”

“
D’you think Lisa will saddle you with another load of bills? Is that why you think it might be safer to be in England?”

N
icola smiled. “The thought may have crossed my mind.”

“
Oh, don’t meet troubles more than halfway,” he said impatiently. “What does the doctor think of your backing out of your year’s contract like this?”

“
The contract is being broken mutually,” she said. “Probably Lisa didn’t tell you this, but she ordered a lot of clothes, no doubt to impress the American yacht
-
owner, but she sent the bills to me. I managed to return some of the articles, but the others I’ve paid for.”

“
All right, then, so you’ve nothing to fear.”

“
No, it wasn’t all right. Lisa made a scene in the doctor’s study, he came in, thought the bills were mine and that we’d both been having a high old time on the generous salary he paid me. He still believes that I knew where Lisa was all the time and that as far as I’m concerned she wasn’t missing at all.”

“
I see,” said Patrick thoughtfully. “So you’ve both decided to end the contract. That doesn’t grieve me, but you’re a fool not to stay here. A reference from him and you’d get a job anywhere.”

“
Possibly.” Nicola looked into space.

“
Then why go?”

“
Maybe there’s nothing to keep me in Spain.”

“
Nothing? Don’t I count?” he demanded hotly.

“
Well, yes. I’ve enjoyed your company. I always do. But you’ll be going home soon.”

“
I’m not so sure. The firm I work for have offered to renew my contract on better terms.”

“
Good,” she commented. “Then you’ll be able to marry Maureen and bring her here.”

H
e shook his head. “You haven’t got the situation really
weighed up properly. Maureen would never leave her family to come and live in a foreign country.”

N
icola’s eyes opened wide. “Foreign? But Spain is a charming country. Its very foreignness is part of its attraction. Besides, you can fly to England in two or three hours. Distance doesn’t count so much nowadays.”

“I know. We’ve been over all this scores of times, Maureen and I. But she’s a girl who’s used to visiting her relatives frequently. She has a couple of married sisters, one brother, a dozen aunts and uncles, apart from a sort of pattern of friends in the neighbourhood.”

“But she’d soon make friends here. Even in your firm there are a lot of English people.”

Patrick frowned. “That would make no difference. Every time a problem or small difficulty arose, Maureen would go to her mother for advice and by-pass me.”

Nicola was silent. She understood from her own experience how many girls were reluctant to loosen the bonds between mother and daughter. But was Patrick telling her this to strengthen his own case for not returning to England?

He leaned back in his chair and smiled at her, a slow, quiet smile that said more than words. “Oh, well, let me know when you leave and we’ll have a farewell dinner the night before. Unless, of course, you change your mind. You can always stay—and marry me.”

Nicola smiled in return. “No, Patrick. You know how I feel about that.”

He suddenly leaned towards her. “But what good reason can you give me? You like me, don’t you?”

“Yes, but I don’t love you.”

Nicola said the words lightly, for she felt that Patrick was not entirely seriously inclined. There was a mutual attraction between them, and had they met elsewhere, in England, say
at the local tennis club or a dance, they might easily have found more than mere companionship. But Nicola had irrevocably given her heart to Sebastian, and there was nothing for it but to put a thousand miles between her and the doctor.

CHAPTER X

The
last few days of Nicola’s final month at the Villa Ronda became sultry and oppressive with heat. Everyone went about sighing and muttering that thunder was on the way, but no storm came.

Suddenly, with the impact of an emotional thunderclap, Adrienne’s father, Eduardo, returned from his long exile in South America.

Nicola was in Sebastian’s study when she was conscious of someone standing by the arched window. At first she thought it was Sebastian returning early from his clinic.

“
Buenos tardes, senorita
.”
The man’s voice sounded much older than Sebastian’s.

“
Buenas tardes, senor
,”
she returned, standing up ready to find out what he wanted. It was unusual for strangers to approach the Villa through Sebastian’s study windows. Then she saw the likeness. “Senor Montal?”

He nodded and asked in Spanish where his brother Sebastian could be found.

“
No aqui
,”
she replied. “Not here. At the clinic.”

She pulled out a chair for him, for he looked tired, his face was grey with fatigue; his almost white hair prematurely aged him so that he looked more like Sebastian’s father than brother.

Nicola rang the bell and immediately a maid appeared. Nicola told her to fetch Rosana, the elderly housekeeper. She would certainly know what to do.

“Adrienne is out somewhere,” Nicola told Don Eduardo, “but she will return to lunch.”

Rosana came bustling in, her arms outstretched. She ran to Eduardo, folded him in her arms and crooned broken phrases as though he were a child lost and now found again.

After that, pandemonium raged through the Villa. Maids were sent scurrying about like feathers out of a ripped bolster. Menservants brought wine, dozens of bottles for Eduardo to make a choice. Food was set before him, with Rosana sitting beside him to tempt him to this morsel or that. Telephone calls were made to every possible place where Adrienne might be and to the clinic where Sebastian could not leave his patients unattended.

Nicola effaced herself again in the study. This was a family matter in which she had no part, yet she was delighted for Adrienne’s sake that the girl’s father had returned.

Adrienne did not return until early evening, and as Nicola saw her come across the patio, she ran out to warn her.

“My father? Oh, what happiness!” she exclaimed, rushing indoors, seeking Eduardo.

Dinner was a reunion at which Nicola felt she had no right to be present. Father and daughter smiled and gazed at each other, Dona Elena and Ramon had been hurriedly invited, Sebastian quietly surveyed the others. Was it Nicola’s fancy that he was less cordial in his welcome to his brother, or was it merely that he was less demonstrative of his emotions?

“My faith was justified!” cried Adrienne excitedly. “I knew you could not be lost in the jungle,”

“No, I was never lost.”

“But you never communicated with us for more than two years,” Sebastian pointed out.

Eduardo shrugged his frail shoulders. “It was difficult.
I was in a remote village on a river bank. I set up my headquarters there and treated the natives as well as I could in a simple way.”

“But your supplies must have come to you,
”
Dona Elena said. “Could you not have had your letters also sent out?”

“Oh, I did, but pieces of paper with words written on them do not seem important to such practical tribes. What supplies I could get from the nearest settlement I had to sketch, to indicate what part of the body they
were for.”

Eduardo retired to his room immediately after dinner and Adrienne accompanied him, for she needed to talk
with him.

Nicola again decided that she was
de trop
in this family celebration and went to the balcony of her room. A few more days and then she would never again see the gardens, the patios, the innumerable curves and arches and red-tiled roofs of the Villa Ronda.

Tonight the sky seemed dark and opaque with few stars and the trees were motionless. Somewhere below voices floated up.

“
...
that was why Eduardo stayed away so long.” Dona Elena was speaking in Spanish, but Nicola understood.

The listener replied, and now Nicola caught the tones of Ramon’s voice. He and his sister were discussing Eduardo. Nicola could not avoid hearing fragments and isolated words that she could translate
...
forgiveness ... Sebastian ... Heloise ...”

Surely Heloise was the name of Adrienne’s French mother? Or had Nicola heard some other word that sounded like the name?

Next day Nicola made a sudden decision to leave quickly, without fuss or farewell. Sebastian’s book was completely finished. She had fulfilled that part of the contract.

Ramon and Adrienne were now on the best of terms and ready to announce their betrothal. As Adrienne had confided to Nicola only a day or two ago, “Your sister Lisa made me so furious about Ramon that I found I
did not want her—or anyone else—to put hooks into him.”

“Poor Ramon! You make him sound like a fish that you want to land.”

“Well, Ramon is
my
fish!” Adrienne declared possessively. “We shall be most happy. We love each other.”

The entire household was so involved with Eduardo that Nicola’s departure would never be noticed. She would leave letters for Sebastian and Adrienne, explaining her action in going away a couple of days before the due date.

She would have to wait until after dinner before she could slip away unobserved and during the day she packed her suitcase. She included the terra-cotta water jug that Adrienne had given her and hesitated over the few pictures she had painted. The only one she wanted to take home with her was that of the Villa, and Sebastian had asked for that. She propped the canvas on her dressing table and set the note for Sebastian by the side. It was not a very good picture, she thought critically, and probably later on he would laugh at it. The paint was not dry, anyway, and would only smudge.

After dinner, she managed to slip out of the Villa gates and hoped no car would reveal her in its headlights. Suddenly, as she was halfway down the hill towards the village and the station, rain which had been threatening all day now began to fall in great drops, then in a curtain of such tropical intensity that Nicola was taken by surprise. Her
thin
nylon raincoat which she had brought from England and never worn while she was here was now in the bottom of her suitcase, and she was already soaked to the skin before she could even begin to unlock the case.

Lightning illuminated the road in a blinding mauve flash and thunder roared overhead. A figure bent almost double hurried past her as Nicola cowered against the wall of a house.

A voice shouted
“
Venga aqui
!”
and in the next lightning flash she saw someone beckoning her towards a
house a few yards away. Nicola ran, glad of any shelter. Downpours as violent as this never lasted long, she thought.

The woman pulled Nicola into the house and banged the door shut, standing against it for a moment to get her breath back. In the dim light of a lamp, Nicola now saw that the girl was Micaela, Barto’s sister.

Barto’s mother, Se
n
ora Gallito, rose to help Nicola out of her soaked clothes, talking rapidly about the bad storm. Nicola gathered that Micaela had been down to the harbour to try to persuade Barto not to go out this evening with the fishing fleet, but he was obstinate and had gone.