Summer Lightning

by Jill Tahourdin

  Chloe gave him a smile of dreamy pleasure. She was pretending hard to herself, making the most of this blissful interlude. She leaned out and trailed a hand in the water.

  “Ugh! How cold it is!”

  “Didn’t you know the Mediterranean is really a chilly sea? That hot blue look doesn’t mean a thing,” Dominic told her. He still wore his relaxed, contented look. She hadn’t known him like this. He seemed younger far less serious. She wished the day could go on forever.

  Now he was studying the cliffs through his binoculars.

  “Look up there, Chloe. See the beginning of our digging?”

  He handed her the glasses and she looked through them and nodded, giving them back to him.

  “We’re just about opposite the entrance to the sanctuary now,” he said a short time later.

  He said something in Maltese to Pauli, who at once changed direction and rowed in toward the base of the cliffs. There were the usual shallow ledges of rock at the base. Above them the rocks rose, smooth and perpendicular, for about thirty feet. There were several openings in them, low down, which looked as if they might lead to caves. Dominic was studying these through his binoculars.

  “We’ll have a look at that one,” he decided, pointing to a roughly oblong gap on their left. “It’s just about in the right spot I’d say.”

  The right spot for what? He didn’t explain. He was talking to Pauli again, gesturing with a hand. The boatman nodded and began to propel them slowly and carefully nearer to the rocks.

  “I want him to take us right inside the cave, if it’s big enough,” Dominic said.

  Quietly the high-prowed boat nosed its way to the opening, which seemed a good deal bigger now they were near it. At least fifteen feet across and over half as high.

  They slid easily through it into a very large, roughly circular cave. Some small birds, swallows or swifts, fluttered out above their heads from nests clinging to the inside walls near the entrance, tucked against some small stalactites.

  “Go on, Pauli, right in,” Dominic urged, switching his flashlight on as they moved further from the outside light, and playing its beam around. Chloe saw walls shining with damp and quite smooth, without hand-or footholds. Like the cliffs outside they looked unscalable, perpendicular, even overhanging in places.

  The light dimmed the farther they went, till they were almost in darkness except that the water, which seemed to cover the entire floor of the cave, had an intense, magical blue luminosity. The oars, dipping gently into it, came up dripping with phosphorescent bubbles.

  Dominic took an oar from Pauli and used it to test the depth of the water. Pauli sculled him around and around, but nowhere could he touch bottom.

  “It’s deep everywhere—can’t tell how deep exactly, I’d need a lead. It’s icy cold, too. Feel it.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  At one side, that farthest from the opening, they came on a series of shallow ledges like those outside. They seemed to go up and up.

  “Like a primitive staircase,” Dominic said. “That’s interesting. I wonder...”

  “Listen,” Chloe said.

  She became aware of a high squeaking, coming from above.

  “What can it be?”

  “Bats, I think,” he said carelessly. Just then a couple detached themselves from wherever they had been hanging and went blundering out toward the light. Chloe suppressed a shudder; she had always dreaded bats. She would never forget a hair-raising battle between herself, armed with a tennis racket, and a vampire bat one night in the West Indies. Dominic didn’t seem to mind them at all.

  “Pull close in, Pauli.”

  Pauli plied an oar and they drifted up against the lowest shelf. Dominic fended the boat off with one hand, and with the other shone his flashlight upward.

  “Look, take this and shine it just ahead of me. I’m going up,” he said. “This all agrees with my theory.” He added perfunctorily, “You don’t mind?”

  “No. I’ll shout if an octopus or a bat or whatever attacks us,” she said more amiably then she felt.

  “Good girl. I won’t be long.”

  She hoped he wouldn’t, but kept quiet; he was so obviously enjoying himself.

  She played the beam of the flashlight for him as he scrambled agilely up from ledge to ledge. She could see that the ledges got steeper farther up. More bats, alarmed at this invasion of their privacy, flew toward the opening, squeaking shrilly. Pauli muttered something and crossed himself. I don’t like this much, either, Chloe thought, and wondered if sinister sea creatures lurked below the strange luminosity of the water.

  She was beginning to feel irritable; at last Dominic called down with annoying cheerfulness, “All right. I can’t get any farther. Shine the flashlight straight up.”

  She did so. Its beam seemed to disappear in the shadows. She couldn’t see what he was peering at, up there among those loathsome bats. Her arms began to ache. She and Pauli had to wait quite a while in the eerie dimness before his cheerful hail reached them.

  “Coming down now. Guide me, please.”

  He made short work of scrambling down to the boat.

  “Gosh, thousands of bats up there,” he said. “The staircase is merely a natural phenomenon. It peters out up there. I hoped it might go right up. But it helped. I found what I expected. Guess what.”

  “No idea. Tell me.”

  “Remember that trick step in the flight leading down to the treasure chambers? I found its mechanism. A primitive system of counter-weights—but effective, as you say. It’s right there overhead.”

  Chloe stared upward in dawning horror.

  “You mean anyone treading on that step would fall down here?”

  “And drown. That was the idea. Cold, deep water, unclimbable walls, perpendicular cliffs, a deserted coast. Pretty!”

  “Horrible,” Chloe said, shivering uncontrollably. Afterward she was to wonder if it had been some premonition that had set her limbs trembling.

  “You’re cold,” Dominic said, suddenly aware of her. “I ought to be shot, keeping you here so long in this chilly dampness. Damned thoughtless of me—I’m afraid I got carried away. We’ll get out at once. Come on, Pauli, row.”

  Once out of the shadow of the cliffs they were in full sunshine again. It struck hot and gratefully on their chilled bodies. Chloe stopped trembling and began to wonder what had frightened her. The boat glided swiftly over the glassy sea toward the dock in the little port.

  When it touched there, Dominic jumped out and held out a hand to her.

  “Still cold,” he said, and kept her hand in his, warmly enfolded, all the way up to the car. Chloe felt suddenly glowing and happy again. The chill sense of foreboding she had experienced in the cave quite disappeared.

  Dominic talked about other traps to catch intruders, in other prehistoric ruins, all the way across country to Mdina. He was far more interested in that, she saw, than in her. Would it always be like that? Would archaeology always come first? It seemed a dreary prospect.

  The sun had set when they crossed the drawbridge. Its rosy afterglow made a fairy-tale magic of the domes and towers, palaces and romantic rooftops of the Silent City.

  “Well, did you enjoy your outing, Chloe?”

  “So very much, Dominic.”

  “I’m glad. I did, too.”

  He put his hand over hers and gave it a squeeze—but it was the friendly squeeze of a fellow conspirator, not in the least a lover’s caress. “My mother’s going to love hearing you tell her all about it,” he said.

  She murmured something, but he was tooting his horn outside the gates of Santa Clara and paid no attention. He slipped from the car in the courtyard and came around to open her door.

  Something in her expression—a touch of sadness or frustration—seemed to strike him. He put one finger under her chin, tilted her face up and dropped a light kiss one the corner of her mouth. She stayed very still—but that was all. He stood aside while she got out of the
car.

  “Not to worry—about anything,” he told her with kind firmness. “Leave all the worrying to me.”

  “All right. I won’t—and I will,” she agreed at her brightest.

  He watched her thoughtfully, a little puzzled, unaccountably a little disturbed, as she walked with her light, graceful step into the house. Women, he thought irritably as he followed her in.

  In her room Chloe changed quickly, did her hair and face and put on the pearls again. She noticed how golden her skin looked against their milky paleness. How lovely they were! She mustn’t get attached to them. Naturally she would have to hand them back to Dominic when ... if...

  She shut off her thoughts, not wanting to believe, any longer, that it could be true that the contessa was going to die but not wanting, either, to face the question of what would happen if she lived.

  She was going to visit her in a moment, when she had dealt with a fingernail that had chipped. It was a thing she had set herself to do—partly out of that insistent sense of guilt, partly to please Dominic—to spend an hour with the contessa every evening before dinner. That was the time, Dominic had said, that his mother found most tedious if she were alone.

  She had clipped the nail and was smoothing it with an emery board when someone tapped on the door.

  “Come in.” Lotta?

  Not Lotta. Louise, in a short, very smart black cocktail dress, carrying her mink cape. Wearing her most engaging smile.

  “Oh, hello, Mrs. Carlyon,” Chloe said warily.

  “Come off it, ducky. Louise is the name,” the visitor said gaily. “Now we’re to be cousins by marriage, shouldn’t we be a bit less formal—Chloe?”

  “Yes, I suppose we should.” Chloe was polite but not enthusiastic. She mistrusted this sudden volte face. She couldn’t believe it was genuine.

  To her surprise and confusion Louise leaned forward and kissed her on both cheeks.

  “My congratulations. You’ve certainly given us all the surprise of our lives, sweetie. None of us dreamed...”

  Liar, Chloe thought dispassionately. Aloud she said, “Neither did I—Louise.”

  Louise shot up her eyebrows disbelievingly. She picked up Chloe’s perfume from her dressing table and squirted its precious contents onto her wrist.

  “Mm.” She sniffed voluptuously. “ ‘L’Heure Bleu,’ isn’t it? Very, very seductive.”

  She sprayed herself behind the ears with it and smiled meaningfully.

  “Clever little thing, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t think so, especially.”

  “Modest, too. But look at you. So cool and composed. So detached and unforthcoming. And see what you’ve quietly pulled off. The catch of many seasons. Nice work, my dear.”

  “Thank you.”

  Cool and composed Chloe might look, but she was boiling. She would have liked to slap Louse, well and truly.

  Instead she forced herself to smile politely and offer her a chair. Hold everything, she said to herself. This is no place for a shouting match.

  Louise sank down gracefully, stretched out her legs and looked at them with satisfaction and lit one of her Turkish cigarettes.

  “We must get together more, you and I,” she announced. “Now that you’ve got Dominic where you want him you can relax—mm? Less of this single-minded devotion to his boring old tombs and ruins—though it was a good line, I admit.”

  “Yes, wasn’t it? It worked, anyway,” Chloe said pleasantly. And now put that in your long amber cigarette holder and smoke it, she thought.

  Louise looked quite startled for a moment. Then she grinned. “Even score,” she said. “But you really mustn’t go on encouraging Dominic in this dreary archaeological nonsense. It’s ruining him.”

  “I don’t encourage him. I simply do the job I’m paid for. And I’ll go on doing it, I suppose, till it’s finished.”

  “My sweet Iamb, you’re engaged to the man now. You must make him behave normally. He must throw Santa Clara open. But of course he knows that. He knows what’ll be expected—by the scores of Valmontez relations, if by nobody else. Gosh, the parties we’ll have to throw! Thank heaven I’ll at last be able to return some of the marvelous hospitality I’ve had on the island.”

  “I doubt if there’ll be many parties at Santa Clara while Mrs. Vining is so ill.”

  “My poor innocent, Aunt Olivia has been enjoying bad health ever since I jilted Dominic. She’ll stage a rapid recovery now she’s got what she wanted, you’ll see.”

  Chloe gave her a straight look.

  “Well, won’t it be splendid if she does? Look, I’m due to visit her now—she’ll be expecting me. Do you mind?”

  “Not at all—” airily “—I’ll come with you.”

  “But she—you—”

  “Oh, she’ll be pleased to see me now,” Louise said, still airily. “My sting’s drawn, as it were—so why shouldn’t she?”

  Chloe had no answer to that. She could only tell herself again that she was no match for Louise—even though to Louise it must seem that for the moment, in the matter of Dominic, she had won. But did Louise mean to let it stay that way? Somehow she could hardly believe it...

  Louise was right about the contessa, though. For a moment, when her niece by marriage went into her room ahead of Chloe, and ran impulsively to her bedside and kissed her warmly, she did seem to flinch away. But Louise gave her no chance to speak.

  “Dear Aunt Olivia,” she cried spontaneously, “I just had to come and tell you how delighted I am. You don’t know how guilty I’ve been about Dominic all these years. It’s too wonderful he’s going to be happy at last—and with a girl like Chloe!”

  “It is indeed, Louise,” Mrs. Vining agreed uncertainly, her eyes on Louise’s face. But its warm sincerity would have convinced a more skeptical woman than the contessa, Chloe thought.

  “What fun it’s going to be,” Louise went on. “When the announcement appears in the Times of Malta you’re going to be overwhelmed with congratulations. You’ll want somebody to cope with the letters, telegrams, telephone calls, from everybody who matters in the island. As Chloe insists she’s got to go on working at the dig, it’d better be me, Aunt Olivia.”

  “Thank you, dear. The announcement will appear tomorrow. I suppose all the relations will call.”

  “In their hundreds, darling,” Louise said gaily. “Literally hundred, Chloe, you’ve no idea of the ramifications of the family. You must get well, Aunt Olivia. We must get you up in time for the reception.”

  “Reception?” the contessa asked, beginning to be fascinated against her will.

  “Of course. To celebrate and to let them all see Chloe.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Louise flashed her wicked grin at Chloe. What did I tell you, it seemed to say.

  But she was clever enough not to overdo it.

  “I must go now, darling.” she said. “Chloe will stay and talk to you. And tomorrow, if you feel well enough, we’ll begin thinking about the list of guests.”

  She kissed Mrs. Vining again, and with an airy wave left the bedroom.

  “I wonder—have I perhaps misjudged her? I thought she’d be angry, jealous. But she seems really delighted. She’s very vivacious, isn’t she? What do you think of her, Chloe, dear?”

  “I—actually I’ve seen awfully little of her, contessa.”

  “There was that dreadful affair of the balcony...”

  “Perhaps Lotta imagined that. Don’t think of it any more, contessa.”

  “No. Lotta loves drama—it’s her Italian blood. Perhaps you and Louise may become friends. Poor Louise. I wish she could have news of Dick. Such a tragedy. Perhaps under that bright facade she is really very unhappy. I wonder. I’m afraid I have never trusted her. I must try to like her better.”

  Chloe murmured agreement and guided the conversation into other channels. She began to talk about the day’s adventures. The contessa listened absorbedly. Chloe felt again that sudden tenderness. She was beginning
to be truly fond of her.

  As for Louise, she would play the game her way. If she really wanted to be friendly, Chloe would try to respond. It was her weakness, perhaps, she would always go out of her way to avoid unpleasantness...

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The announcement of the engagement between Dominic Valmontez Vining, of Santa Clara, Mdina and Vining Court, Sussex, England, and Chloe Margaret Linden, of London, England, duly appeared in the Times of Malta and caused a sensation.

  Young ladies of the Fishing Fleet told each other regretfully that there was one of the best chances of all gone—and to a girl none of them had even heard of till she appeared at the polo match that Saturday. Who was she, anyway?

  Robert Tenby saw the announcement and gritted his teeth. He had been feeling he wanted Chloe more than ever, now he had lost her to another man. He dashed over to the Soameses for sympathy. They, knowing the truth but under oath not to reveal it, did the best they could. Alaric suggested that probably it wouldn’t work out, Dominic was older than Chloe and wedded to his archaeology, perhaps Robert would come back from his cruise and find it had already been broken off.

  Robert was willing to believe that. He cheered up and after several pink gins felt sufficiently restored to accompany the Soameses to a cocktail party at the artillery mess in Tigne. He was a volatile young man, easily up, easily down. The Soameses, kindly but clear-sighted, didn’t take his heartbreak too seriously.

  It was the Valmontez relations who were most excited—Louise had been right there, too. Who was this girl? They must telephone dear Olivia and find out immediately. They must visit her at Santa Clara—if she was well enough to receive them. At least they must leave cards. Soon there would be the wedding present to think of. The ceremony. A Valmontez wedding. That was something to look forward to indeed.

  So—again as Louise had prophesied—the telephone began to ring and went on all day. Messages of congratulation poured in. When Chloe came back from the dig that evening, she could see that the contessa was pleased and stimulated. She was already talking about the reception. She looked better—noticeably better.

  “You see?” Louise said later in the living room, with cynical amusement. “She’ll be up and about for that reception. As Eliza Doolittle said—just you wite!”