The Dragon's Cave (16 page)

Then suddenly the doors were opened and the people came flooding into the hall, their coats hitched over their shoulders, and their evening sandals wet from the unexpected puddles outside. The women exclaimed shrilly, gasping with horror at the drenched hems of their long skirts; the men, in lower key, grumbled good-naturedly as the thunder rumbled overhead, finding themselves a table and settling their parties in congenial groups.

Tony came up to the platform, swinging himself up
onto it with a single athletic stride.

‘Good
evening, ladies and gentlemen! Does anyone here not understand English? No? Good! Then we can get going with the old favourites and get into the swing of things. We have a surprise for you tonight. Have I caught your interest? Well, she’ll catch your hearts, ladies and gen
tl
emen, in a special appearance, by very special request—Miss Megan Meredith
!
’

Short, sporadic applause greeted the announcement. Megan frowned at him. She knew that many of the people there thought that they ought to have heard of her and were applauding accordingly. It was a confidence trick, Megan thought indignantly. She would have preferred the applause to have come after she had sung, when she had earned it, but Tony only winked at her, grasped her hand and pulled her to the edge of the platform.

‘What are you going to sing?’ he asked in an undertone.

Megan swallowed. What was she going to sing? She couldn’t think of a single song. Worse still, the faces upturned to look at her dissolved into blobs, and all of them looked angry, annoyed at being kept waiting when they had come there to dance. Tony’s grip on her wrist tightened.
‘
Hurry up
!’
he warned her.

Megan tried to pull herself together. ‘They want to dance,’ she whispered back.

‘They won’t. Not once you open your mouth!! What are you going to sing, Megan?’

She swallowed again. ‘I’d like to sing a traditional song,’ she heard herself say in a quietly confident voice that was so foreign to her actual feelings as to be ridiculous. ‘Perhaps you know it. It
’
s an old Scottish, or some say Irish, air, called “I know where I’m going ”.’

The desultory applause came again, stiffening Megan’s pride in her own ability. She nodded to the
band and waited, almost placidly, while they began to play, lost the melody and found it again. Then, at exactly the right moment, she opened her mouth and began to sing, holding the microphone very close to her lips so that her quiet, intimate style would be heard right at the back of the hall.

The lilting sound rose and fell until all else had fallen away. The band behind her had gained confidence now and they made fewer mistakes, not that anyone there cared much whether they played or not. They were carried away by the soft, liquid notes of Megan’s voice that suited the music exactly.

‘I know where I’m going,

And I know who’s going with me,

I know who I love
—

But the dear knows who I’ll marry’

Her voice died away and there was complete silence in the hall for a long, devastating second, and then the applause came thundering, bringing the colour into her cheeks and a pleasurable light into her eyes.

‘What
did I tell you?’ Tony whispered triumphantly.
‘
We’ll get them dancing now
!
Mustn’t give them too much of a good thing
!
We’ll wait for them to ask for you again.’

Megan nodded quietly. She went to the side of the platform and waited for the band to break into a
modern
dance rhythm that crashed resoundingly about her and then slipped anonymously into the crowd below. Inez was still sitting at the same table at the far end of the hall and Megan hurried across to join her. But Inez was no longer alone. Megan came to a full stop several feet away from the table, wondering how best she could escape, but she was already too late. Carlos looked up and saw her and rose leisurely to his feet.

‘Won’t you join us?’ he said pleasantly enough.

Completely tongue-tied, Megan sat as quickly as she
could in the chair that was the furthest away from him.

‘Carlos heard you sing,’ said Inez.

Megan’s eyes widened. She cast a quick look at Carlos, to find him studying her thoughtfully, and she could feel the hot, uncomfortable colour sliding up her cheeks.

‘You look guilty,’ he observed. ‘I wonder why?’

Megan had no intention of telling him. She wished that her heart wouldn’t beat faster every time she set eyes on him, giving her a breathless feeling of frustration that she could very well do without. When he was out of sight, she was able to forget how attractive he was to her. It was unkind, she thought, that he should have such an effect on her, when she apparently had no effect on him whatsoever.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, at her most unwelcoming. She knew that she sounded childish and tears of chagrin flooded into her eyes. She didn’t want him to think of her as young and brash, or, worse still,
gauche.
She wished urgently that she was stunningly beautiful and as sophisticated as any of the other women he knew and admired.

His eyes scarcely blinked as he regarded her. ‘I heard you were here,’ he answered quietly.

‘
But who could have told you?’ Inez put in. She put out a possessive hand and stroked the sleeve of Carlos’ coat.
‘
Surely you were not worried about us?’

Carlos shrugged her away. ‘About you? Certainly not.’

Inez pouted, looking so completely crestfallen that Megan would have laughed, if she had not been so frightened at the same time.

‘You’d better get your coats,’ Carlos went on. ‘I am taking you both home.’

‘Thank you,’ said Megan,
‘
but I’ve agreed to sing again. Tony—’

‘Ah yes,
Tony
!
I thought you might find out that
he was here and that you wouldn’t be able to resist seeing him again. How much is he paying you, Megan?’

‘Paying me?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘I—I don’t think he is,’ she stammered.

‘Then you are singing for him for love?’ he suggested.

She stared at him, stricken.
‘
Margot told you
!’
she said.

‘Yes,’ he agreed unpleasantly,
‘
Margot told me, as you might have known that she would. Get your coat, Megan, you’re going home. And don’t argue any more!
Dios mio!
Do you think my patience is inexhaustible?’

Megan stood up unsteadily.
‘
I’m not going with you,’
she said. ‘I can’t! I promised—’

‘
Then it looks as if you will find yourself forsworn, doesn’t it?’

She might have argued further, even then, but the gleam of sudden amusement in his eyes prevented her. Her heart hammered against her ribs and she was afraid that he would guess at her feelings if she stayed there another moment. Without a word, she picked up her coat and rested it on her shoulders, following him meekly across the hall and out into the damp night.

CHAPTER IX

It had stopped raining, but the floodlighting picked out the moisture in the drive, making it glisten like diamonds in amongst the pebbles. Megan tried to pretend to herself that she was not nervous and that she had only given in to Carlos because of Inez. If it wasn’t quite true, it helped her to think that it was, and she was smiling as they approached Carlos’ car.

‘You will come with me, Inez,’ Carlos directed, his voice stem and hard.
‘
Megan will have to drive Margot’s car home.’

‘
Oh, but—’ Megan protested.

Carlos glared at her. ‘The traffic will not be so heavy now. It is your own fault, however. I told you not to drive the car until I have seen how well you drive
!’

‘
I drive very adequately,’ Megan retorted.

‘Yes, she does, she does,’ Inez put in, licking her lips with sheer nervousness as Carlos’ uncompromising expression was shown up by a nearby light.

‘She had better,’ he said. ‘You may go first, Megan, leading the way, and I shall follow. I shall be watching you the whole way.’

Megan’s heart sank.
‘
Couldn’t Inez come with me?’

‘
No, she will be safer with me.’

He was as good as his word. He held the door of the tiny Seat open for her and shut it firmly on her as soon as she had got in. Megan took a deep breath, bitterly aware that her hands were trembling. Why did he have to be so unkind? Why shouldn’t she sing if she wanted to?

She tried to start the engine without turning the ignition key. She didn’t dare look at Carlos. The engine started at a touch once she had turned the key, but she stalled it by letting in the clutch with a jerk
that she had never done before, at least not since the very earliest days of her driving lessons. It was
his
fault! She clenched her jaw and started the engine again. She felt sick with nerves, and that was his fault too!

Carlos wrenched open the door again, his eyes glittering in the beam from the floodlighting.

‘Get out,’ he said briefly.

Megan was not Welsh for nothing. In complete silence she pulled the door shut again, let in the clutch and drove off without a backward look. Sheer fury made her blind to everything else but the one object of wiping that superior expression off Carlos’ face. If he thought she couldn’t drive, she would show him that she could—that she could drive
magnificently
!

She barely hesitated at the entrance, turning into the road with a panache that made her hope he was close enough behind to see. She even remembered to stay on the right-hand side of the road, pushing the little car into a speed that made the bodywork rattle. A bicycle, without any lights, appeared suddenly in front of her, and she was obliged to swerve to avoid it. Its closeness to her wheels made her gasp and slow down a little. Some of her anger left her, allowing the nervous fright that Carlos inspired in her to reassert itself. She took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on what she was doing, but, at that moment, Carlos’ car flashed past her and drew in in front of her, making it impossible for her to go on. She came to a reluctant stop and braced herself to meet his anger.

He got out of his car almost languidly. Megan had a horrid feeling that she was going to cry, but she bit her lip until it hurt, and waited. He stood for a long moment, looking down at her.

‘
Well, go on, say it
!’
she dared him, breaking the unbearable silence.

‘
I think from here it would be better if you were to follow me,’ he said quite gently.

‘
I won’t
!
’ she snapped.

He raised his eyebrows.
‘
Just as you like, but you can scarcely sit by the side of the road all night.’

‘
I shall go back to the farmhouse
!
’ she threatened.

H
e shrugged his shoulders. ‘At least, this time, you
will not have Inez with you
!’

The tears gushed into Megan’s eyes, blinding her for a moment.
‘
That’s all you care about, isn’t it? Well, let me tell you, Inez would have been quite all right with me! I know what she means to you
!
I would have looked after her
!’

‘
I know you would, if you could,’ he said.

Megan stared at him, forgetting that she hadn’t
wanted him to see her tears.

‘I wasn’t doing any harm. The band isn’t anything if I don’t sing with them. I thought I owed them that much.’

‘
We’ll talk about it later,’ Carlos answered. He sounded quite kind and that upset Megan more than ever.

‘I don’t think I can see to drive
!’
she complained,
and sniffed.

Silently, he took a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her.

S
he blew her nose violen
tl
y. ‘Doesn’t Inez drive?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Doesn’t she do
anything
?’

He smiled slowly. ‘She expects to have a man around her to do it for her most of the time.’

‘How—how restful
!’
Megan said nastily.

‘You would do well to learn from her,’ he answered sternly. ‘She doesn’t rush from scrape to scrape, getting herself talked about.’

‘How dull
!
’ Megan objected, but his words hurt all the same. ‘She is older than I am,’ she excused herself.

‘Is she?’ He sounded surprised. He was silent for a moment. ‘Feel better?’ he asked her. She nodded bleakly. ‘And you will follow me to Palma?’ Again she nodded. If she did go back to the farmhouse, she thought, she would only have to explain her absence to Tony, and that was impossible. He wouldn’t understand any more than she did. Live your own life, pet, he would say, and he would be right. Only how did one live one’s own life when faced with the whole weight of Carlos’ disapproval? That might not matter to Tony, but it mattered to her
!
It mattered to her more than she would have believed possible.

‘
Muy bien,’
Carlos rapped out, making her jump.
‘I
shall take you to the Calle Morey first. You can be putting the car away while I take Inez home.’

‘
I should have thought you’d do that for me
!’
Megan sighed.

He laughed suddenly. ‘Another time,’ he said.
‘
This time it is important to get you home as quickly as possible.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

His laughter vanished.
‘
I prefer not to have either you or Inez discussed by my stepmother and her friends.’

‘No,’ Megan admitted sadly. ‘She is no friend of mine, or she wouldn’t have told you where I was going tonight.’

Carlos jerked himself upright. ‘Don’t hold that against her,
pequena.
I would have found you anyway.’

He went back to his own car, swinging it easily back on to the road, travelling at a sober pace along the road to Palma. Megan followed, glad of the red lights ahead of her, guiding her through first the suburbs and then the complicated, cobbled streets of Palma.

When they approached the place where the Valloris parked their cars, he flashed his lights and drove away with Inez, leaving her to put Margot’s car away and to go back to the house by herself. She did so quickly, hoping to get into the house and escape to her room
before Margot realised that she was back. She was not, she told herself, ready to see Margot yet. Her anger with Carlos had died in her need to please him, but her anger with his stepmother still burned within her, for there was one thing she simply couldn’t understand. If Margot had not wished them to go to the barbecue, why hadn’t she said so? Why had she encouraged them to go and then told tales behind their backs?