by Jane Arbor
‘For them all? Soon there’ll be a thinning-out, an exodus. They’ll go off on their own.’
‘Without any chaperons? Where do they go?’
Gil shrugged. ‘Where do courting couples go? Along the playa. The boys with mo-peds can get as far as the woods. Use your imagination. Haven’t you ever made al fresco love yourself?’
‘Not,’ said Fran demurely, ‘in a white lace dress and a mantilla,’ and they both laughed. Gil said,
‘As for chaperoning, they’re strictly timed. An hour to themselves, then they are recalled by tocsin, which also acts as the gong for supper, and after a bit more ritual everyone sits down and falls to.’ He glanced at Fran’s empty glass and stood. ‘What about taking an hour off ourselves?’ he invited.
They drove out along the front in the opposite direction from the building site, climbed a headland by a hairpin road, dipped down to where the coast encircled a tiny bay like a curving, protective arm, and inland again, up a narrow valley tunnelled by overhanging trees which the headlights picked out, threw into sharp relief and abandoned them to the dark once more. Afterwards Fran could not remember feeling even drowsy. Sleep must have hit her with the impact of a knuckleduster, for when she woke the car was at rest, her head was on Gil’s shoulder and his arm was round her.
‘Gosh! What’s happened? What time is it?’ She made to sit up, but he held her firm. ‘Lie still,’ he ordered. ‘My mother always said it was bad for one to start suddenly from sleep. And believe it or not, you’ve only been out for about twenty minutes, though when you began to nod and then to nestle, I thought you were going to make a night of it, so I stopped the car.’
‘I’d no idea—I’d have sworn I was wide awake.’ She pulled free, knuckled her eyes and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘What on earth must I look like?’
She was merely fussing aloud, not asking him. But he took the question literally and looked her over.
‘Not as trim as you’d like,’ was his judgment. ‘Quite attractively flushed—ruffled, rather as if, in the stress of circumstances, your mantilla had slipped—’ As he started the car he added, ‘Odd, isn’t it, how defenceless people are when they’re asleep? For instance just now, if you’d been my worst enemy I’d have felt I ought to pummel you awake before I really hit you!’
Fran laughed. ‘Well, thanks for all that self-restraint! But meanwhile, just for the record, perhaps you’d tell me what might rouse you to pummelling point?’
‘Try hitting me where it hurts, and you could find out.’
‘But where would it hurt? You’re so confident, so sure of yourself that I doubt if you’ve got an Achilles heel,’ she said.
‘Do you? You’d be surprised. But don’t lose a snore or a snuffle over it, please. If ever you loom as my worst enemy, you can be very sure I’ll take steps to head you off.’
‘Steps? What sort of steps?’
‘Oh—steps,’ he countered darkly, still on a note of banter which, however, evoked no responding flash from Fran.
For suddenly the fiction of their enmity over anything that mattered deeply to Gil had turned serious, gone sour. What did he care most about? ‘All Canaria. All my country.’ His de Matteor inheritance. Those, even more than Elena Merced? Fran found herself remembering—‘Could be you could find the estate left to you’—Rendle Jervis’s empty gossip to which she oughtn’t to have listened, though she had. But surely, surely Gil couldn’t suspect that could ever happen ... couldn’t fear it—Could he?’
They were a little late in regaining the plaza. The long supper-tables were almost full and they were just in time for the evening’s last bit of ceremonial. Encouraged by cheers and clapping, the suited couples stood up, each boy presented his rosette to his girl with a flourish, kissed her enthusiastically on both cheeks and all sat down again.
The meal consisted of an hors d’oeuvre of novel ingredients, steaks of swordfish and spit-roasted veal, followed by little tortillas wrapped round slices of banana and dusted with sugar. The wine was a local vintage, not well matured, but a great deal of it was drunk and at the end of the meal Gil proposed in it the health of the host and of all the new novios and novias, evoking easy laughter at jokes which everyone seemed to see coming and which Fran suspected they had heard countless times before.
The party broke up to busy speculations as to how many weddings might be expected next Easter; Gil had a private word with Senor Bolero and money passed which Gil told Fran was Don Diego’s usual contribution to such junketings; then they drove back to the Quinta, where he garaged the car with a finality which told that this time he was home for the night.
In the house he asked Fran, ‘One for the road to your bed?’
‘Good heavens, no. I’m nearly lightheaded already!’
‘You’re lucky. I had to remember who’d be driving. Also, as we were on an educational stint for you, I must see that you didn’t miss anything.’
‘Which I’m sure I didn’t either.’
‘I hope not. Unless you’d have liked to sample the marketing bit at first hand, and even that can be remedied.’
At the foot of the wide staircase there was a floor-vase of glowing poinsettia. As he spoke he snapped off a scarlet-leaved bract, tucked it into his lapel, warned Fran, ‘Mind that mantilla!’ and kissed her long and purposefully on the mouth.
Beneath his lips her own resisted, quivered a little, then yielded their softness ... responded. He stood back from her. He was laughing. ‘I declare, you liked it!’ he said.
‘Didn’t you mean me to?’ She covered her confusion with the slick retort and made to take the poinsettia from his lapel. ‘Don't you offer me this now?’ she asked.
His hand clamped over it, guarding it. ‘Oh no! That was just a trial run. You’d only get this if and when we’d agreed, you’d say in England, to go steady.’
‘I see.’ Dropping the badinage, she smiled at him. ‘Well, thanks for the evening, Gil—all of it. It was nice of you to take me. Good-night.’
She turned on the stair and went up. He didn’t follow, but called to her when she reached the landing. A flick of his fingers and the scarlet bract arrived at her feet. ‘On second thoughts, take it,’ he said. ‘One of these days when I’m riding by on my Arab steed, you could throw it down to me from your reja!’
She picked it up and twirled the stem. Since he meant to keep the joke going! —‘So what would that mean? What would you do if I did throw it to you?’
‘It would mean you were—willing. And I should take it in my teeth and ride away.’
‘Dear me—anti-climax!’ mocked Fran. ‘If that’s all that happened, where would that get me?’
‘Why, up behind me! You’d have invited me to abduct you. Have you ever ridden tandem on a horse?’ Laughing again, he crossed the hall to the salon, and Fran heard the chink of wineglass and decanter.
While she undressed the bract lay on her dressing-table. It hadn’t wilted yet, but it would before morning. She had always felt a silly, childish pity for flowers idly plucked and then discarded. Which was the only reason, she told herself, why she fetched water for it from the bathroom and left it to glow unseen in the darkness after she put out the light.
CHAPTER IV
While their letters from England told Raquel and Fran of the coldest pre-Christmas spell within memory, on the island the year was dying in golden tranquillity, the short days clear and windless and the nights bespangled with stars.
In the estate office or in his study at the Quinta Don Diego lifted the telephone, dictated memos and gauged markets. Gil air-freighted cargoes of tomatoes and shipped refrigerated loads of the lemons and oranges that would be sucked on northern hockey-fields and would fill the toes of Christmas stockings. As Raquel became stronger she was less on the defensive from Lucia. The two began to grow closer, picking up the threads they had dropped over the years, Lucia now sharing household problems with Raquel and Raquel volunteering advice and taking over certain tasks as her right.
For Fran
this was all to the good. As Raquel did more, that gave Fran more free time for her own work. She finished and sent off her designs for the commissioned medals and had begun to brood on some novel ideas, which weren’t yet at the drawing-board stage, though she hoped to get them there in the New Year.
She was still taking driving lessons. But they were rather expensive and she was in two minds about continuing them. Besides, there was less time now for daylight lessons and Raquel did not care for her driving after dusk. However, she had not decided one way or the other on the day she arrived at the garage to find her kindly, elderly instructor had gone sick.
The proprietor was ready with apologies. ‘But we have another—new with us, but well recommended.’ So if the Senorita would take this lesson with him, Vicente should be back again in time for her next.
Fran agreed, though diffidently, and from the outset did not care much for the younger man (‘Call me Tomas’). He paid scant attention to her driving and was too chatty, launching on his personal history while her attention was torn between concentrating on driving and making her rather absent replies sound polite.
At a point where she wished to take a certain road he directed her to another. Fran demurred, ‘This way there are some awkward corners that I ought to practise.’ But Tomas said, ‘That way, more difficult corners. Also the road mounts sharply—even better practice for you, senorita. You will see—’ and she gave in.
Certainly the road ‘mounted’. It climbed almost vertically, calling for all Fran’s skill in controlling the car. Meanwhile Tomas described scenery for which she couldn’t spare a glance until they reached a summit affording so fine a view that it might well have been one of the lower roofs of the world. Fran braked and relaxed and Tomas offered his first praise.
‘That was good, senorita. You do well. And it is as I promised you—magnificent, no? Making it pleasant for you to wait here a little for me, senorita? A very short while?’
‘Wait for you? Why, where are you going?’
He was getting out of the car and looked aggrieved. ‘But I have told you, senorita! My cabin down there ’—indicating a path leading steeply downhill from the roadside where a thin smoke wisped up into the still air. ‘And my wife and the little one, not twelve hours old. A difficult birth and only my mother there to help. All this I’ve told you, senorita!’
Fran shook her head bewilderedly. ‘Yes, well—perhaps I wasn’t listening properly. You mean you want to go and see your wife?’
‘If you please, senorita. Though for no time at all, I promise you. Just long enough to see the baby and that my Ana wants for nothing I could bring her when I come home tonight—’
Fran watched him leap down the path and disappear among the trees. Then she gave the handbrake an extra precautionary tug and alighted herself, strolling forward a little way in order to get the full scope of the breathtaking panorama.
She spread her coat on crisp pine-needles and sat down. Headily below was the sea; far out on the horizon the twin volcanic islands of San Luis and San Pedro. The ravine which dropped seaward was dark and mysterious with trees, but short of the shore the land levelled out to a shelf on which stood a cluster of luxury villas known as Las Rocas. On one of their flat roofs Fran could discern sun umbrellas and bright mattresses. People taking their siesta there, she supposed.
She brooded happily for a while and when she judged she had given Tomas time enough she returned to the car, finding him there before her, seated at the wheel.
He made no move to alight. ‘I shall turn the car for you, senorita,’ he said.
‘I can do it—’
‘No. The road is narrow and it is too difficult for you.’ He made a very bad job of it himself, still did not move over when he had done it and to Fran’s dismay she realized he had found time for other pleasures than seeing his Ana and her newborn baby.
‘I will drive now. It is I who am having a driving lesson,’ she reminded him. But he stubbornly refused to give way and short of hauling him from the driving-seat by force she had no choice but to get in beside him.
So he had been well recommended, had he? she fumed, rehearsing the few trenchant words she meant to have with the garage manager on the subject of Tomas. For his driving was as reckless as his three-point turn had been bad, and as the car lurched drunkenly downhill only her indignation saved her from sheer, stark terror.
He met his Waterloo at a corner Fran remembered and was dreading. He swung over too far, failed to straighten the wheel and fetched up on the wrong side of the road, only saved from overturning by the tree-trunk which partially stove in his side of the car.
Fran surprised herself by the fund of Spanish she found with which to berate him. Shocked and slightly stunned by the impact of her head on the windscreen, she told him what she thought of his driving and his alleged tuition, until she realized that the immediate problem was all hers. Tomas, untouched himself, was already drowsing at the wheel of the wrecked car, still several kilometres from the town, while the short day was beginning to close in.
Fran alighted, anxious to be ready to stop the first car which came by, and fortunately did not have to wait long. Round the same corner sleeked a long car driven by a woman whom Fran recognized as soon as she had flagged her down. Though she could have wished it had been anyone else, she saw that Elena Merced had recognized her too.
Elena remained seated. ‘You are in trouble?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Fran explained and Elena opened the car door for her. ‘You’d better get in,’ she said.
Fran hesitated. ‘What about him?’ She indicated the sleeping Tomas, but Elena threw him the merest glance. ‘Leave him,’ she advised. ‘You can telephone his garage from my apartment.’
It was her first intimation that she was not putting herself out so far as to drive Fran back to the Quinta, and on their way she explained she had been lunching with friends at one of the Las Rocas villas, was flying to Casablanca that evening and therefore had no time for ferrying Fran home.
‘But’—an appraising glance—‘you would like to freshen up, I expect, and you must have some coffee. I have to leave in an hour, but I’m not taking my maid. And as Gil will be seeing me off at the airport, I’ll tell him to call for you on his way back.’
Fran said, ‘You're very kind, senorita. But I can easily take a taxi home.’
Another measuring glance. ‘I’d wait for Gil if I were you,’ Elena advised drily. ‘You could need him to help you to explain to your people just how you came to be in the company of that drunken good- for-nothing.’
Fran flushed. ‘My mother will understand that I couldn’t guess he would behave like that!’
‘But will Don Diego? If I know him, he’ll blame you first and listen to your excuses later. Anyway, how did Rodriguez at the garage come to send him out with you as your instructor? He should know better.’
‘It wasn’t Rodriguez’s fault. My usual instructor had gone sick and in order not to disappoint me of a lesson, he sent me with this new man whom he’d only just taken on. I was pretty indignant myself, but I’m beginning to see that Rodriguez meant well. As I did too,’ Fran added ruefully, ‘when I let Tomas go and visit his wife and his newborn baby.’
‘You’re very new to the island or you’d have known he was bound to make it an occasion for breaking a bottle of wine—and more than one. You shouldn’t defend Rodriguez either. When you ring him about collecting his car and its so-called driver, I hope you’ll tell him you don’t wish for any more lessons.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ admitted Fran. ‘That is, I shan’t make an issue of it today. But I’ve known for some time that I oughtn’t to take any more, as I can’t really afford them.’
‘You can’t afford them? But that is absurd! Don Diego de Matteor is rich enough to afford anything for you!’
‘Perhaps. But I shouldn’t dream of asking him to pay for my driving lessons.’
‘Your own grandfather—who doesn’t bother to count pesetas excep
t by the million? Or Gil—does he know the straits you are in?’
‘I wouldn’t appeal to him either. And really I’m not in any “straits”. It’s just that while I’m not earning as much as I was in England, I have to be rather careful, that’s all.’
Her companion’s only reply to that was a shrug as she drew up at the entrance to her apartment.
On the first floor a trim maid opened to them and was subjected to several questions as to her progress with her mistress’s packing before Elena disappeared into her bedroom and Fran was shown into one of the flat’s two bathrooms.
When she came out the maid served coffee and sweet cakes in the white-and-gold salon and Elena, exquisite in a pale grey travelling suit and trailing a silver mink stole, came to join Fran.
As she sat—‘Here, you’d better have this,’ she said, and flicked something into Fran’s lap.
Fran looked down at brightness ... stared, then gasped. The flexible bracelet draped over her fingers took up every facet of light there was, turned it to scintillating colour as only diamonds could. The setting was platinum. Fran could only guess at its worth.
‘Take it? What do you mean? I couldn’t possibly,’ she told Elena, handing it back.
Elena dangled it as carelessly as she had treated the mink. ‘Nonsense. I mean you can have it to sell. You need the money, don’t you?’
‘Not that kind of money—’ As she caught the cold gleam in Elena’s eye Fran quickly corrected that to—‘I’m sorry. That was—offensive. I meant, not that amount of money. It—it’s very kind of you to offer it. But I really, really couldn’t!’
‘Oh, very well.’ Elena slipped the bracelet over her own wrist and left it there. Without another glance at it or another word about it she made conversation about other things and presently said it was time for her to leave.
She calculated, ‘Gil should be here for you in less than an hour. Meanwhile, do your telephoning, won’t you? To the garage, and to the Quinta if you want to tell them you’ll be back with Gil. Lila will get the numbers for you and do anything else that you care to ask of her. When Gil comes I expect he will want a drink, but he knows all about getting them for himself here—’ Then with a perfunctory ‘Adios’ she was gone.
