by Jane Arbor
‘And the brother’s name? He is still alive? He had children?’
‘Roland. No, he and—his wife, Caroline, were both killed by a direct hit from a bomb during the war. And they had—Fran swallowed on the dryness of her throat—‘one child, a—daughter.’
‘Ah, your only first cousin on your father’s side. Well, I think we needn’t branch further out beyond that girl. She is still alive, I expect? About your own age, perhaps? Married?’
‘She is alive. But she isn’t married.’
‘So—-just her Christian name, then?’
But as that pit yawned for Fran something strange and sinister was happening to Don Diego.
He had pushed aside the chart and was bent over the desk, writing Fran’s replies in rough on a sheet of paper. But as she watched, his back suddenly straightened, almost arched, as if drawn by some terrible elastic. There was one moment when he appeared to stare sightlessly at the ceiling; in the same moment his silver pencil fell from his hand. Then the invisible elastic gave ... He slumped forward, his arms widespread on the desk, the fingers of one hand scrabbling for a hold on its edge, the other hand limp and still. His magnificent head moved once pitifully and then too was still.
‘Grandfather! Oh no—!’ Fran leapt to him, lifted the inert head, the lifeless hand, heard the almost animal roar of his breathing and knew there was nothing she could do for him alone.
Yet how could she leave him? Only that convulsive hold on the desk-edge supported him and he was in danger of slipping, a dead weight, to the floor. Thankfully Fran saw the old-fashioned embroidered bell pull and dragged desperately at it twice before she braced her own body against his while she managed to loosen the knot of the white silk cravat which he wore for dinner on informal evenings.
While she waited for the bell to be answered she prayed that Gil hadn’t gone out, as he usually did after dinner when they did not have guests. When Pepita answered the bell Fran gave her orders. ‘As you see, Don Diego de Matteor has collapsed. Find Senor Gil and ask him to come here at once, and tell Senorita Lucia. Hurry!’
‘Si, senorita—’ Pepita ran and Fran waited. Then Gil was there, Lucia, white-faced and shaking behind him, and between them they lifted and turned Don Diego and Gil took his full weight to support him to a wing-chair. His bared throat and his face were suffused purple and his face was oddly twisted on one side. While Lucia rang for his doctor Fran whispered to Gil, ‘It happened terribly suddenly. He had just asked me something and—It’s a partial stroke, isn’t it?’
Gil nodded. ‘It looks like it, though I’ve never seen one. We oughtn’t to move him until Doctor Gonzalez comes. Get them to bring blankets, will you?’ He bent over the old man. ‘Abuelo, can you hear me? Gil—’ But there was no flicker of response in the wide-staring eyes.
Doctor Gonzalez came, and the ambulance he had ordered came close behind him. But Gil refused to put Don Diego into hospital.
‘He would certainly refuse for himself and I speak for him. He must be nursed here,’ Gil said.
‘It may be a long time, and he could be constantly observed in hospital,’ demurred the doctor.
‘He can be observed day and night here, if you lay on enough nurses,’ was Gil’s crisp reply.
So Don Diego was carried to his own bed and Gil elected to spend the night in his room. A night-nurse arrived and a day-nurse was to relieve her in the morning. Doctor Gonzalez stayed for an hour and when he left the rest of the household settled down, powerless and ill at ease.
Only Fran and Raquel had their sorrow and anxiety tempered by a relief of which they were both ashamed.
CHAPTER VII
For many days Don Diego lay in a coma with no movement of nerve or limb on one side of his body. When he came round at last he had lost his powers of speech and only his fine eyes were alive to the comings and goings of those about him.
There was no more talk between Raquel and Fran about their leaving for England. For it was as if, almost overnight, the older sister and the younger had changed ro1es. Her father’s seizure had snapped a taut thread in Lucia. Wiry, capable and house-proud in his service, she now crumpled for lack of his dominance. And by contrast Raquel gained stature and resilience. Through Lucia’s new dependence on her she had come into a self-reliance which her husband’s and Fran’s care had never asked of her.
There were changes for Gil too, though not in him.
He assumed Don Diego’s authority and wore it, without question of his right to it. If he had misgivings he admitted to none. And if the machinery of his command creaked under his hand, he ignored the fact. For all practical purposes where the estate was concerned he became Don Diego, issuing orders on existing projects and ready to frame the policy of new ones. Summoned to a conference as imperiously by Gil as by Don Diego, even Rendle Jervis told Fran afterwards,
‘To coin a phrase, he’s certainly making hay while the sun shines, not to mention bricks, whether he has straw for them or not. But one must hand it to him. He knows he’s got leadership-potential and he means to use it while he has the chance.’
‘Which doesn’t, I suppose, make him too easy to work under?’ queried Fran shrewdly.
Rendle shrugged. ‘Nothing to choose between him and his grandfather. They both expect the impossible and somehow get it. For instance, this estate of theirs designed to catch the oil boys. You saw it six months ago and I daresay you’ve seen how it’s come on since. A lot of it will be ready for occupation in months, rather than years, and that’s thanks to the de Matteor “drive” or slave-drive—what’s in a word?’
Fran changed the subject. ‘So you may be going back to England yourself in a matter of months, when your job on the estate is finished? You’ll be glad of that?’
‘Of leaving this alleged paradise? Shall I! You too?’
‘Going back to England?’ Fran shook her head. ‘I must, some time. There’s my job. But I can’t quite foresee when, now this has happened to Grandfather.’
Rendle said easily, ‘Well, we’ve time before us. I’m not exactly booked on the first outgoing aircraft myself. Meanwhile I hope we can have some more evenings together—if our new overlord approves!’
For Gil the new order of things meant that he was working almost all the hours there were. How much he was seeing of Elena, Fran did not know. Elena had telephoned her sympathy for Don Diego’s illness, but she had not been to the Quinta since the family party. For Fran herself, as the days passed, her dread of Elena’s threats faded a little as she guessed Elena would not waste her revelation while it could make no direct impact on Don Diego. True, she might gossip, might throw out hints to Gil. But while Gil made no sign Fran felt Elena must be holding her fire and in consequence she relaxed.
Two specialists had been called from Madrid and had agreed in their diagnosis on Don Diego. If he held his own for a fortnight there was a fifty-fifty chance of at least a partial recovery and though his vital powers would be impaired, he might fully regain his speech and the lost use of his limbs. Beyond the limit of fourteen days there was the added and increasing risk of congestion and pneumonia with their consequent strain on the heart. Meanwhile there was hope for his hitherto exceptionally active brain and the constitution of a much younger man.
But many more than fourteen days were to unroll behind Don Diego without much change in his condition. His heart weakened slightly and his breath became shallower. But he had recognition for everyone and his obedience to what was asked of him showed he still had both reasoning and hearing. Lucia, Raquel and Fran in turn relieved the day-nurse’s hours of duty and, driven though he was by work, Gil spent some time of every day in the sickroom.
Then, more than three weeks after his seizure, there was a night which Don Diego passed restlessly and he had some fever. The next day he was under sedation and though on the next day he seemed to be holding ground, there was growing alarm that at last he had come to his downward-turning crisis.
There was nursing busyness about him all that day and Gil did not
visit him until late in the evening when Raquel had already gone to bed, leaving Lucia and Fran in the salon, worriedly talking in snatches and unable to settle to anything. Lucia had just said she thought she would go up too and Fran was about to join her when Gil came in.
They both looked the same question at him—what news? Gil said, ‘A shade better, if anything. We’ve been talking a bit.’
‘Talking?’ Their echo came in one voice.
Gil nodded. ‘We manage. I talk, he listens, and there’s a turn of his eye which doesn’t mince what he’d like to say if he could,’ he said drily, and then to Fran, ‘You were going to bed? Don’t go yet. I want to talk to you.’
‘To me?’
‘Please. Now.’ His tone made an order of it.
Lucia said, ‘Yes, well, I’m going, Gil. Nurse will call me in the night—call all of us, won’t she, if—if—?’ She broke off, her lip quivering.
Gil kissed her cheek. ‘She’ll call all of us, if there’s any major change. But there shouldn’t be tonight. Not that way. I tell you he’s better.’
When Lucia had gone, ‘Not strictly true, that,’ Gil added to Fran. ‘He does seem to have rallied a bit, but it could be that flicker of the candle you hear about.’
‘You think he could be—dying?’ breathed Fran.
‘Well, he is way past the limit the medicos gave him, though they can be wrong. But in case he is, that’s why I have to talk to you. You’ve got to come with me to him, Fran.’
‘Now? Why, of course I will, if—’
‘Yes, now. When I go back Nurse will go to her dinner and we can be alone with him. But no, wait—’ Gil’s gesture kept Fran seated. ‘You’ve got to know first why we’re going together. I’m afraid you’re going to have to swallow all those dire threats you choked over, chica. Because I’m taking you to Grandfather as my novia tonight, whether you like it or not.’
‘Claim that we’re engaged? Gil, you can’t! How dare you suggest playing a cruel joke like that on Grandfather now?’
Gil’s eyes sparked with fury. ‘And how dare you suggest I’m playing a joke?’ he demanded.
‘You thought it up as a joke—to pay him out, you said.’
‘Well, it isn’t one any longer. If it’s the one thing he wants, it’s the one thing I mean to do for him before he dies. If he doesn’t die, which, please God, he won’t, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Meanwhile, while he can hear and understand, I’m going to make him happy in the only way I can.’
‘But not this way, Gil,’ Fran pleaded. ‘It’s deliberately deceiving him, acting a lie. I can’t go along with it ... I won’t!’
His answer was to take her by the shoulders and force her to her feet. ‘You won’t? You can’t? Well, listen, chica mia’—it was no endearment—‘if I can, you can. Do you suppose it doesn’t make a lot worse problems for me than for you?’
For instance, convincing Elena Merced that it was only a ruse to comfort Grandfather? thought Fran as he went on, ‘So if I’m prepared to take the consequences, I’m afraid you must. However, I haven’t faced or even foreseen them all yet. Getting it through to Grandfather is enough for one night. This night. For, with you or without you, I’m going to tell him. Now, are you coming with me or not?’
Fran hung back. ‘Gil, please—!’
His grip went round her wrist like a shackle.
‘With you or without you,’ he repeated. ‘If you won’t come, I'll go alone. And I shall still tell him, and see that he believes me.’
‘How do you know he still has his heart set on it?’
‘I told you, didn’t I—we’ve been talking. Well?’ He had released her, giving her the choice. But loving him as she did, his reliance on her help drew her like a magnet. ‘I’ll come,’ she said in a whisper she hardly heard herself.
Outside Don Diego’s room Gil paused and took from his little finger a ring Fran had never seen him wear before. It was a square emerald set in chips of amber and gold, old-fashioned and ornate. Taking Fran’s hand, he selected her third finger and slipped the ring on it.
‘Simpler to present him with a fait accompli. He’ll recognize this—it was my mother’s engagement ring,’ Gil said.
Inside the room he asked the nurse if they could be alone with her patient. When she had gone, still hand-in-hand with Fran he approached the bed.
‘Abuelo—’ He continued in rapid Spanish, waited for the response in the bright eyes, then went on again while Fran, straining to catch what he said, realized she was understanding only a word here and there. This was the dialecto Spanish which the island people talked amongst themselves and which, though hearing and speaking the language came easily to her now, had as yet defeated her.
But bereft as it left her, evidently it carried meaning for Don Diego. A hand moved, the eyes travelled from Gil to her, came to rest on her face and at one corner of his mouth there was the merest lift which passed for his smile.
Gil said, ‘He understands and—approves, you see.’ Then, with a gesture of offering her to the old man, he thrust her forward and pointed to the flamboyant ring.
That was understood too. Again the pathetic grimace came and went and the fingers of the ‘live’ hand crept across the bedclothes to touch the ring. Fran’s eyes filled suddenly with hot tears of compassion. If Gil were right, and this was something which would make Don Diego happy, then she would act this second lie to its limit, as she was still condemned to acting the first. If he lived she would have to answer to him for both. But for now she would let Gil know best.
Gil was acting too ... Stepping up to join her he told her in English, ‘I’ve promised him a whale of a betrothal kiss—do you mind?’ before turning her into his arms and making the pressure of his mouth on hers last a very long time.
There was a sigh from the bed and Don Diego’s lips shaped for the sound he used for ‘Good’. But Fran sensed that Gil, beside her, was waiting ... waiting for her to carry through the charade, to do and say the natural things a newly engaged girl would.
But what? They would all be lies! And yet need they be? Gil didn’t have to believe her and wouldn’t, but there was one thing she could say that she had never expected to speak aloud in his hearing—
She bent over Don Diego and took his hand. ‘I’m happy that you’re happy about it, Grandfather,’ she told him in Spanish. ‘And I—love Gil so much ... with all my heart.’
She heard Gil’s sharply drawn breath and his small murmur of ‘Good girl’, before he edged her towards the door with him, promising his grandfather that he would come back.
He turned to her. ‘Thank you. That was gallant of you,’ he said.
(Gallant!) ‘But, Gil, what now? Where do we go from here? We’ve got to talk about the—the consequences,’ she urged in distress.
He nodded. ‘Yes. But not tonight. I need to think. Go to bed now and you won’t have to face anyone. We’ll talk in the morning—early. Right?
She gestured in dumb agreement and he went back to the sickroom.
She slept only in snatches and was fully awake before dawn. Gil had promised early, so she rose and dressed. But she was not ready to go down when there was a knock at her door and he was there.
He walked past her without ceremony and opened the shutters on to her tiny balcony. ‘Out here,’ he said. ‘Aunt Raquel isn’t awake, is she? She won’t hear us?’
‘I don't think so. I’ve been very quiet.’
There was only just room for them to lean elbow to elbow on the balcony rail. It was a typical island morning—blue mist wreathing up from the valley and a necklace of thin cloud linked round the mountain peaks. But there was little warmth yet and when Fran shivered Gil reached back into the room for a sweater which he threw over her shoulders.
‘Thanks.’ As she pulled forward its sleeves and tied them round her neck he glanced at her hands. ‘That ring I gave you—keep it,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t have to mean anything now, but I’ve no better use for it.’
&nb
sp; Fran stared at his set profile and read the worst into his reluctance to meet her eyes.
‘He—? Grandfather is dead?’ she whispered.
Gil shook his head. ‘No. But when I went back to him last night he had drifted off somewhere; I doubt if he knew I was there. I persuaded Nurse Gabriela to let me spend the night in his dressing-room, and this morning it all seems to have gone from him as if it had been swept out of his brain.’
‘All about—us, you mean? How can you tell?’
‘I’m pretty sure. He was more alert again this morning, so when Nurse went for her bath and to have her breakfast, I probed a bit—reminded him about my bringing you to him to tell him we were engaged—and he didn’t give a flicker of response. None of it has registered with him, I’m sure. I might have been talking in Greek. It was all—wasted, Fran.’
‘Oh, Gil!’
What to say to him Fran did not know, realizing there was still enough of the small boy in him to be hurt beyond measure by such failure of a gesture which had cost him so much to make. She ventured at last, ‘I can guess a little how you feel, Gil. You thought it was the right thing to do for Grandfather, and you are appalled that you have nothing to show for it. But if he has lost all memory of that, he may also have forgotten the rest—that he ever wanted us to marry. You can’t know. And you didn’t fail last night. Between us, for a little while we made him happy—didn’t we?’
‘I don’t know. I’d like to hope we did.’
‘Last night, weren’t you sure? I don’t know what you told him—you were using dialect. But you seemed to convince him. What did you say, Gil?’
‘Much the same as you did, only more so.’
‘Not just that you’d come round to falling in with his plans for us? You told him you—?’ The rest stuck in Fran’s throat.
‘That I’d found I was in love with you? Yes.’
‘You were so determined he should believe you?’ Fran paused. ‘You know, you must care for Grandfather far more than you admit.’
‘Well, of course I care for him—what do you think?’ Gil’s tone held surprise that the fact should be in doubt.
