The Stars of San Cecilio (8 page)

Just before lunch-time Peter Hamilton-Tracey made his appearance, and Lisa wished he hadn’t. He said he wanted to be sure she hadn’t been fired on the spot as the result of what had happened before breakfast the day before, and expressed his opinion that an enormous amount of fuss had been made about nothing at all.

‘If you need me to support you on any occasion just call upon me when, and at any time, you please, ’ he said, looking at her as if he found doing so a most pleasing occupation. ‘If you ask me, looking after other people’s children is a thankless task, and that goes for my brother’s offspring as well. You must have had a brute of a time with them, particularly as my sister-in-law isn’t the easiest type in the world to get on with. ’

‘Your brother was very kind,’ Lisa admitted, realizing at this distance of time that he had been extremely kind on occasion. ‘I never found him difficult to get on with. ’

Peter smiled.

‘I shouldn’t think many men would find it possible to be anything other than kind in their dealings with you,’ he told her, thinking that she looked like a delicate sprite in her pastel-tinted sun-suit, the most modest sun-suit he had ever seen any young woman wear, and with her hair of palest wedding-ring gold, and her large, clear, slightly wistful eyes. Looking into them he decided that they were the grey of the fires that burned in English woodlands in the autumn, and her mouth was positively flower-like. He wondered why she had made so little impression on him when they had met before, and then came to the conclusion that it was because she had kept so skilfully out of his way. She was not the type to thrust herself on anybody’s vision. ‘ Even that doctor chappie you work for now looked the least little bit irritated when his lovely lady friend — and, by Jove, she is lovely, isn’t she? — kept sailing into you for neglecting your charge. And of course you weren’t neglecting your charge!’

He repeated this when the others drove up, and Dona Beatrice looked at him with a peculiar kind of half-inviting smile in her eyes.

‘I came to inquire how Gia was doing today,’ he said, as Gia’s father looked at him without a suspicion of a smile in his eyes. ‘I understand she’s more or less fully recovered.’ And as Gia’s laughter reached them from the other side of the house, where she was helping Senora Cortina’s elderly husband sweep out the patio with a stiff birch broom, it was impossible for anyone to deny this.

‘Children recover quickly from upsets,’ was all the doctor

remarked.

‘Stomach upsets, yes,’ Peter agreed. ‘But not frights like getting out of their depth, or anything of that sort,’ looking Fernandez straight in the eyes, as if he at least had not forgotten Lisa’s humiliation of the day before. ‘And as Gia can’t swim a foot without being supported there was never any question of her getting out of her depth, and certainly no question of Lisa neglecting her.’

‘We are reasonably convinced now that Gia had been eating too many chocolates of a rather too excellent quality,’ Dona Beatriz informed him, a little dryly.

Peter looked relieved.

‘Well, that lets you out, Lisa!’ he exclaimed. ‘And, incidentally, me, as well! ’ he added. ‘I don’t like being accused of permitting a small kid to run into danger.’ He sounded the least little bit aggressive.

Dona Beatriz smiled at him this time as if it was her particular aim to soothe him.

‘In the heat of the moment one is apt to be unjust, perhaps, ’ she admitted, ‘ and naturally Dr. Fernandez has a great deal of concern for an only child. It should not be too difficult to understand. ’

But the Englishman didn’t look impressed.

‘I was just commiserating with Lisa on being forced continually to look after other people’s children,’ he confessed, ‘my own brother’s amongst them! It must be a pretty thankless task sometimes. ’

‘No doubt,’ Dona Beatriz agreed. ‘But, in that case, the answer surely is that Miss Waring must get married and have some of her own?’ with an archness that brought a flame of color to Lisa’s cheeks, and caused Peter to look amused. ‘If you are a friend of Miss Waring’s, Mr. Hamilton-Tracey,’ the Spanish woman went on, as if an idea had only just occurred to her, ‘you must come and have lunch with us sometimes, or perhaps dinner one night would suit you better? Don’t you agree with me, Julio, that if Miss Waring and Mr. Hamilton-Tracey are old friends they simply must see something of one another sometimes, apart from odd meetings on the beach?’

Dr. Fernandez said formally that he understood that Miss Waring and Mr. Hamilton-Tracey scarcely knew one another, but no doubt when two people of the same nationality met abroad they experienced a desire to pursue the acquaintance. It was fairly easily understood. And then he added, even more formally, that he had no objection to Mr. Hamilton-Tracey lunching, or dining, at the villa; and Dona Beatriz seized upon this permission to issue an invitation to lunch for that very day.

But because he could not possibly have failed to sense the cool and quite definite reluctance behind the doctor’s seconding of Dona Beatriz’s invitation, Peter declined — with thanks, however, and a particularly attractive smile for the Spanish woman, who said that in that case he simply must come to dinner one evening. And then she vanished into the house to prepare herself for lunch, and the doctor followed her, and Lisa made it clear, by means of a slightly agonized look, that she wished Peter to execute a prompt disappearance also. He smiled at her — a much more warm and understanding smile than the one he had directed at Dona Beatriz — and waved a hand, and turned on his heel.

‘But you’ll be seeing me!’ he promised. ‘For, after all, we are two people of the same nationality abroad, and I, for one, definitely wish to pursue the acquaintance! ’

And with a still more impish smile he climbed into a decrepit sports car he had left outside the gate, and roared off in it.

The following morning Dr. Fernandez drove Dona Beatriz, Gia, and Lisa into San Cecilio. Dona Beatriz slipped gracefully into the seat beside the driving-seat as if it was hers by right, and Gia and Lisa were relegated to the back. The outing was because Dona Beatriz had decided that Gia needed new sandals for the beach, and apparently it was a selfimposed task for her to see to it that the child’s wardrobe was constantly replenished. (Hence, Lisa thought, the lovely almost too-smart outfits the doctor’s plain little daughter possessed)!

She herself had no idea of accompanying them until the doctor saw her waiting at the side of the white, dusty road, within a few yards of the villa, for the bus that would presently make its leisurely appearance and deposit her also in San Cecilio. The big white car drew in towards the verge and pulled up with rather a sudden application of brakes, and Julio Fernandez leaned frowningly from his window.

‘Why are you waiting there, Miss Waring?’ he asked.

‘I’m waiting for the bus,’ she explained. ‘I have some shopping to do for Senora Cortina— at least,’ she added, rather hurriedly, ‘ something was suddenly discovered to be in rather short supply, and I offered to fetch it. ’

He reached in behind him and held open the rear door.

‘Get in,’ he said curtly.

She hesitated, aware that Dona Beatriz was biting her scarlet lower lip, as if the temporary halt — or more probably the cause! — annoyed her.

‘It’s quite all right,’ she said, with nervous diffidence.

‘ The bus will be along in a minute, and-- ‘

‘Get in! ’ the doctor repeated, his voice not merely curt this time, but impatient.

Lisa clambered in, assisted by Gia’s eager hands, and the child’s shrill voice declared delightedly: ‘We’ll have ice creams at Antonio’s Parlour! I was simply hating not having you, and now it’s going to be fun! ’ Dr. Fernandez asked over his shoulder:

‘Do you normally do Senora Cortina’s shopping for her, Miss Waring?’

‘Oh, no,’ she answered at once. ‘Only sometimes — if she runs out of something. Normally everything’s delivered. ’

‘I see.’ But she thought that the ‘I see’ was sceptical, as if he doubted the smooth running of his holiday household while he was away, and surmised that there might be a considerable amount of wasted time — or, worse still, neglected duty! — when he was not there to keep an eye on things, with Senora Cortina making use of his highly-paid governess to fetch and carry for her, and the highly-paid governess, looking upon visits to the little local town as a respite from governing.

She felt so guilty because she had involved Senora Cortina

— it didn’t matter that she herself was to be so frequently suspect! — that she was very quiet and anxious to escape as quickly as possible when they reached the town, and Gia’s insistence that they should visit Antonio’s Parlour before they did anything else met with discouragement from her as well as Dona Beatriz.

‘No, darling, you’re going to have some new shoes bought for you, and Dona Beatriz is waiting to take you to the shoe-shop,’ she said hurriedly, before Dona Beatriz herself could interpose a few rather clipped remarks. ‘There’ll be heaps of other times when we can visit Antonio’s Parlour. ’

‘If you want ice cream, we’ll have it at the hotel,’ Dona Beatriz took her firmly by the hand, and started to lead her from the parking-place. Lisa remembered her shopping basket, and recovered it hastily from the back of the car, and Dr. Fernandez stood watching her with rather an odd — even a quizzical — expression on his face.

‘And now where exactly are you making for?’ he asked.

She told him what it was she had to collect, and he slipped his ignition key into his pocket and turned to walk beside her.

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘You might lose your way. Some of these narrow streets are not precisely the streets you ought to traverse, and I’ve no interest in children’s shoes, anyway. ’ He walked with an easy grace at her side — much as she remembered him walking on the first and only night they had been alone together — and although it was almost painfully pleasant to have him doing so, it also filled her with a great deal of agitation. She thought of Dona Beatriz, and the annoyance such an attention would undoubtedly fill her with, and the various ways in which she might seek to put Lisa in her place afterwards. She also felt concerned because, although it was probably true that he had no interest in children’s shoes, there were almost certainly other ways in which the doctor might have passed his morning, which would have been much more to his taste than making certain she didn’t get side-tracked down a wrong turning.

She felt all this so strongly that there was a little frown of anxiety between her brows as they made their way to the shop where she was to execute several purchases, and although he talked to her casually, her answers were abstracted. When she reached the shop she simply tore in and was successful in getting someone to attend to her immediately — a most unusual happening in a country where everybody believed that there was little point in hurrying over anything — and returned to the sidewalk with the anxious expression still on her face, and the words of apology on her lips.

‘I do hope I didn’t keep you waiting! . . . Although there wasn’t the slightest need for you to wait for me. ’

He smiled, his velvety dark eyes surveying her upturned face rather carefully.

‘You sound as if you’re anxious to get rid of me,’ he said. And then enlightenment dawned on him. ‘You weren’t proposing to meet someone in San Cecilio, were you?’

They both knew he meant Peter Hamilton-Tracey, but the suggestion filled Lisa with honest surprise.

‘Of course I wasn’t.’ She sounded indignant. ‘I don’t arrange to meet people in your time, Dr. Fernandez! ’

‘No?’ It was almost as if the light, and exquisitely delicate flush that rose to her cheeks intrigued him, or the spark of indignation in her grey eyes fascinated him for some odd reason. He went on gazing down at her, while they stood within a foot of one another on the pavement. ‘ Then why would you have preferred that I didn’t accompany you here? Why have you been so silent, with a little forbidding frown between your brows, as if you were trying to think up some excuse for sending me about my business?’ She was silent for a moment, and then she answered truthfully:

‘I was thinking of Dona Beatriz — that she would no doubt have preferred it if you had accompanied her! And I was also thinking that you must be bored, and it was a pity you saw me waiting for the bus. ’

He took her by the arm and turned her back along the street. ‘I am not in the least bored,’ he told her, in a quiet voice that was completely uninformative, ‘and any time I can give you a lift and save you waiting for the bus I will willingly do so! As for Dona Beatriz’ — he paused — ‘it was her idea that Gia wanted new shoes, and she knows my views on shopping expeditions very well.’ Apparently shopping in a grocer’s in a side street of the quaint little town didn’t come into the same category! ‘And she’s probably enjoying herself, anyway, adding all sorts of unwanted items to Gia’s wardrobe.’

Suddenly he smiled down at her, and it was a smile that caused her heart to knock, just as the fact that he retained a light hold of her arm, and insisted on carrying her shopping basket for her, made something deep inside her feel light and grateful, and at the same time unstable.

‘Let’s stop here, shall we?’ he suggested, and she saw that they had come to a halt beside an open-air cafe. This isn’t ‘Antonio’s Parlour’

—    apparently the Mecca of my daughter’s life when she comes to San Cecilio! — but we can have some coffee, unless you really would prefer ice cream? Have you, like Gia, an insatiable appetite for ice cream?’

She laughed, a little uncertainly.

‘Of course not! Although I’ll admit that, on the few occasions that we’ve come here, we have been inclined to make tracks for Antonio’s. But that’s probably because he does serve excellent ice cream. ’

‘And you’re not very much older — in spirit, shall we say?

—    than Gia, in some ways,’ he remarked, a trifle obscurely, and pulled forward a gaily painted chair for her, at a table with a check cloth.

The coffee was excellent, and Lisa enjoyed it— particularly as the outlook was across an open square shaded by green trees overhanging sharply contrasting high white walls. There was a narrow gap in one of the walls, and she could see at the end of a little tunnel-like passageway a dazzling blob of blue sea, and right in the middle of it was the graceful white curve of a yacht’s sail.