The Stars of San Cecilio (3 page)

She shook her head, and he thought that the dazed look in her eyes — so large and steady and English — was a trifle excessive.

‘No. I would love to stay, but ... you know nothing about me,’ she reminded him. ‘How could you offer me a position with your own daughter when you know nothing about me?’

‘True,’ he agreed, in a common-sense tone that was like a douche of clear cold water on her eager wonder. All at once everything was reduced to its proper perspective, and if her ego had been a bubble that could be pricked it could not have collapsed or become shrivelled more quickly. ‘But I can find out. You can supply me with the address of the parents of the child who was ill, and I can get in touch with them—also, perhaps, your most recent employer. But do not be afraid that I shall be influenced very much by anything she says, although I do feel it will be as well if I do make contact with her. For the sake of my daughter’s welfare, you understand?’ he ended in grave, quiet tones.

‘ Of course. ’

But there was just one moment when she wondered whether she did want to remain in Spain. He was charming and kind and courteous, this man — this doctor from Madrid — but beneath his kindness there was a thread of something inflexible, something that made her think of steel, and just about as unbending.

He could be adamant, if he chose, and his charm was the unfailing charm of his race. It resulted from his Latin blood, and put that suggestion of warm fires into eyes that could no doubt also look as bleak as ice.

He sensed that she was hesitating.

‘Well,’ he said softly, ‘it is up to you. If you wish to stay, and my inquiries are satisfactory, then there is a position that I can offer you, here in San Cecilio. And in the meantime you can remain at your hotel a few days longer at my expense. Is that as you would wish it, senorita?’

‘I can afford to stay on a few days longer myself,’ she told him.

He rose politely, as if an interview was ended.

‘ Nevertheless, I think it will be at my expense. ’

When he left her in the entrance to the hotel she was hardly aware how she said goodnight to him. She went up in the lift to her room, and then out on to her balcony, where she looked upwards at the stars blazing like diamonds scattered broadcast across a pall of velvet tight-stretched above San Cecilio.

The stars of San Cecilio! . . . She would remember them always, whatever happened to her, wherever she went!

C H A P T E R T H R E E

But it seemed that for a time, at least, San Cecilio was to claim her.

Three days later she found herself having lunch in the Hotel Carabela with Dr. Fernandez and his daughter Gia. Gia was plainer than ever at close quarters, and this caused Lisa to wonder what her partly English mother must have been like, since there was no doubt about it, Dr. Fernandez was extraordinarily handsome. The only striking feature possessed by her father that the child had inherited was his thick black eyelashes, and between them her greenish-hazel eyes twinkled constantly. They were alert to everything that was going on around her, and although otherwise she was puny the eyes indicated a mental health and vigor that would be difficult to quench.

‘You don’t speak English like Miss Grimthorpe,’ she said, studying Lisa with interest across the lunch table. ‘She doesn’t like me to call her Nannie, because she says that makes her feel old, so I call her Grimmie. Will you expect me to call you Miss Waring?’

‘You can call me what you like,’ Lisa responded, smiling at her in the way she reserved for young people.

It was a smile that seldom failed.

‘You don’t look like Grimmie,’ Gia told her, crinkling up her eyes as she went on studying her. ‘You’re pretty

— isn’t she, Papa?’ appealing to her father.

He looked down dryly at the grapefruit she was engaged in spooning rather carelessly up to her mouth.

‘It is extremely rude to make comments on anyone’s appearance while they can overhear those comments,’ he reminded her, and then added: ‘Ah, I was afraid that would happen! ’ as a segment of grapefruit landed in her candy-pink-striped cotton lap, and she instantly looked extraordinarily guilty. ‘However Grimmie behaves, and however she looks, she doesn’t seem to have improved your table manners! ’

‘I’m sorry, Papa,’ she whispered, and to Lisa she sounded abject. ‘Lo siento mucho,’ she added in Spanish.

But his austere face did not relax, and for a few moments Lisa was not merely surprised, but indignant on Gianetta’s behalf. She was so openly anxious to do everything she could to please her father, but on the whole she met with a surprising lack of appreciation, and very little encouragement. Perhaps it was his nature to be critical with young people, even a motherless only daughter.

‘It’s nothing very much to worry about,’ she remarked, as she leaned forward to deal with the stain on the cotton frock with her own table napkin. ‘There! There’s hardly a mark!’ after rubbing very hard for a second or so. ‘And, in any case,’ smiling into the small, downcast face,

‘ worse things happen at sea! ’

‘Do they?’ Gia inquired gravely.

‘Much worse.’ With a few neat movements with her fingers Lisa had Gia’s napkin securely tucked into the front of her dress, so that for the remainder of the meal it would be safe. ‘That’s an English saying—a colloquialism. I expect you have lots of them in Spanish. ’ Rising like a small fish to the bait, Gia tried to remember as many proverbs and quotations as she could, and while her nimble mind was thus employed her temporary gloom left her, and although her father did not join in the lighthearted conversation that followed this did not seem to worry her. He sat watching them and smoking a cigarette until the coffee arrived, and then he said quietly to Lisa:

‘I am having another look at the cottage I have all but decided to rent this afternoon, so would you care to come along and have a look at it, too?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lisa answered at once. And then she added a trifle more diffidently: ‘At least, I’d like to if — if you think it is likely to become in any way my concern? I mean, if you are still thinking seriously of employing me?’

‘ I have received a reply to my telegraphed request for information concerning you,’ he told her, in a level tone, ‘ and it is quite satisfactory. It only remains for you to be convinced that I am a suitable employer, and we must think up some way of providing you with this satisfaction. I can put you in touch with my solicitor, or something of the sort, in Madrid—’

‘Oh, but that isn’t necessary,’ she assured him softly. His eyebrows ascended in the way that made her feel young and inexperienced, and also perhaps a trifle gauche.

‘It is as important for you to have no doubt about me as a man who will pay your salary, and be in a sense responsible for you and your well-being so long as you remain in Spain, as it is for me to feel certain that my child will be safe in your keeping, ’ he pointed out, and for no rhyme or reason she colored. Be in a sense responsible for you! ... It sounded so odd when she had watched him night after night for a fortnight and more, and never expected even to get to know him! ‘You see that?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes—yes,’ she assured him earnestly, ‘I do see it!’ ‘That is as well,’ he returned dryly. ‘In your

unprotected position you cannot afford to neglect any precaution that safeguards your welfare. ’

And she wondered whether he was rebuking her for her casual English method of picking up acquaintances.

His car was huge and white, with maroon upholstery, and in it they were soon driving at considerable speed along the coast. Gia sat on the back seat, where her father had ordered her to dispose of herself, and Lisa sat beside him at the wheel. A tentative suggestion that there was plenty of room for Gia to share the front seat with them, or that she should sit on Lisa’s own lap, had met with an instant rebuff.

‘I want to talk to you,’ he told her. ‘And little pitchers

— to quote another of your English proverbs — have long ears,’ with that note of dryness in his voice she was getting to know so well.

But although he had said he wanted to talk to her they did not talk on the outward drive to the villa. Occasionally he pointed out to her a feature of interest; a lighthouse on a promontory jutting out into the peacock-blue sea, some rocks that had received a name which suited them, and about which stories were told, a torrent of brilliant growth that trespassed on to the highway. He told her the names of the flowers, and likened them to a less flamboyant specimen to be found in England, and when asked whether he knew England admitted that he did.

‘Well?’ Lisa couldn’t refrain from asking.

‘Quite well,’ he assented, but his reply suggested that he did not wish to pursue the subject.

For the most part she lay back against the luxuriously well-sprung seat and watched his slim, tanned hands on the wheel, realizing that although the high-powered car was being more or less put on its mettle he was driving superbly on a road that grew steadily steeper and more difficult to negotiate. The afternoon was full of heat and languor around them; the Pyrenees inland were dark as a violet sky save where the winter snows lingered on the peaks like caps of sugar icing, and fields of lavender and linseed were bright against that sombre wall. And always on one side of them was the sea, sparkling with every tone of blue from turquoise to the most vivid kingfisher, and the white beach fell farther and farther away below them until the people on it were mere specks, and so were the orange and scarlet sun-umbrellas.

They sped through sleepy. villages and past white huddled cottages, and encountered little traffic at that hour of siesta. The aromatic scent of pines floated in the air, and pines seemed to crown every knoll and rise.

When at last they drew up outside the villa it was after penetrating a thicket of pines, and they seemed to rise in a guardian wall around them as they sat in the sudden silence which followed the switching off of the car engine.

Gia, on the back seat, was too used to white-walled buildings and green-tiled roofs and tassels of flaming blossoms that dripped like flame against the windows to be excited by what she saw, but Lisa felt as if the breath actually caught in her throat with pleasure and admiration. There were green-painted curly wrought-iron grilles to the balconies, a damask rose twined itself about one of them, and the front door was solid dark oak like the door of a church, and banded with iron also like the door of a church.

Inside there was a black and white tiled hall, and a baroque staircase curving up to the bedrooms. The staircase also overflowed into a kind of gallery, and the walls were hung with portraits, which seemed very impressive for a holiday villa. The furnishings were not precisely holiday furnishings, either, for they had been chosen with care, and were mostly period pieces, while the rugs and the silken curtains, the cushions and the ornaments made Lisa wonder what would happen if they were damaged in any way. She had no knowledge — no real knowledge, that is — of works of art, but she thought she recognized a Tintoretto in the library, and there was an exquisite Greek bronze on a pedestal that aroused all her admiration.

Dr. Fernandez watched her looking about her in a slightly awed fashion, and explained:

‘ This house belongs to a friend of mine, and actually I have already agreed to take it for a period of at least a year. It will be left exactly as it is, and there is a housekeeper to look after the place, and her husband attends to the outside. At the moment they are on holiday, but they can be recalled almost immediately. Could you move in here in a couple of days?’

Lisa looked a little surprised, and then answered:

‘Yes, of course.’ She hesitated a moment, and then asked: ‘Will Miss Grimthorpe be coming here, too?’

‘No, I have decided to pay her a month’s wages and send her back to England. Her accent is not good, and Gia is too old, I think, for a nurse now. She must learn to look after herself more, and you will act the part of a governess-companion to her. ’

‘I see,’ Lisa said.

Actually she was thinking—So that was how he did it! Just sent people about their business, when he no longer had any use for them, and paid them a month’s salary to salve any hurt feelings!... Was that what would happen to her one day?

She felt that he was watching her rather closely, in the dimness of the hall.

‘You think that you will be lonely? Just you and Gia?’ ‘Oh, no,’ she denied instantly. ‘And there will be the housekeeper and her husband. ’

‘Precisely. And I shall come here myself sometimes — and perhaps bring friends. ’

‘I see,’ she said again.

They passed out from the dimness into the vivid tangle of the garden, and Lisa thought that although it really was rather a wilderness

— proof, perhaps, that the housekeeper’s husband was old — it was the most beautiful wilderness she had ever seen. There were roses so huge and so darkly exotic that she seldom remembered seeing any like them before, and the high white walls were overhung by pale mauve growth like clematis, and starry jasmine flowers. There were green tunnels of cypress, almond and orange trees, crazy-paved walks, and a huge patio on to which the main rooms opened, and where the light would linger after the sun had gone down. There was also a way down to the beach, which Julio Fernandez pointed out to her, smiling in the way that suddenly lighted up his dark face when he

suggested that she might teach Gianetta to swim.

‘That is, of course, if you swim yourself,’ he said.

‘Yes, I do,’ she answered.

He glanced at her for an instant, and perhaps in that instant he saw her denuded of her crisp linen dress and clothed only in a brief swim-suit, her almost childishly slender figure tanned to gold by the kiss of his Spanish sun. Then he looked away, and presently he wandered away by himself, and Gia and Lisa wandered alone in the Sleeping-Beauty wilderness.

Gia’s eyes were not too certain as she gazed about her. ‘Will it not seem strange,’ she suggested, ‘just the two of us in this big house, and my Papa not here?’

‘But he will come sometimes,’ Lisa reminded her. ‘You heard him say so.’