'Yes,' Carol replied in a small voice.
'Good. Then I'll say goodnight.' They rose together.
About to move off, Gray Barrett turned back for a moment to add, 'I have, of course, left my Venice address at the desk should you wish to contact me at any time....'
He left the remark hanging, but as far as Carol was concerned he didn't have to continue. As she watched his brusque frowning departure she could almost hear him saying that he was a busy man and he would rather not be bothered. With a last curt nod he preceded her out of the lounge and disappeared.
Carol walked slowly out herself and took the lift up to the apartment. All was in darkness. As she stole past Stephanie's bedroom she saw the dim shape of her in bed. Though Carol too was ready for sleep she went to sit out on one of the balconies. She felt she needed a few moments to accustom herself to the enormity of her task. For the truth of the matter was that now that her work had really started she was assailed by all kinds of misgivings.
She had never been abroad in her life. Now here she was abandoned on her first night in Italy, with the niece of a very strict uncle, in her total care.
She swallowed worriedly and looked out to where the stars winked over the gardens. She only hoped she could do justice to the job.
A sound on the lamplit road below caught her attention. Outside the entrance to the hotel a porter was carrying luggage out to a waiting car. Carol was in time to see the shadowy figure of Gray Barrett striding out behind it. She watched him settle his bulk into the car and close the door after him. As it pulled slowly away from the kerb a sudden feeling of dejection swept over her.
It was strange. She had had to suffer his bombastic orders and irritableness ever since they had started out. She ought to have been only too glad to see the back of him. And yet as she watched him disappear into the night she felt oddly alone, almost desolate.
CHAPTER SIX
MORNING came with the tumultuous sound of traffic on the road alongside the Albany. Motor-scooters tore by. Taxis whooshed along in both directions. The chugging of motor-cycle delivery vans swinging into the smaller hotels intermingled with the tinkle of bells and steady clip-clop of horse-drawn tourist conveyances. All was gaiety and bustle, as though someone had pressed a switch and the world had suddenly sprung to life.
Away from the road on the other side of the hotel, smudges of snowy white cloud were pasted to a vivid blue sky, and the sea, beyond the tropical greenery of the gardens, was white-capped and boisterous. Even at this hour the faint laughing crescendo of sound could be heard from the miles of beach.
Standing on the balcony, a cotton negligee thrown round her, Carol inhaled deliciously, smitten already by this Italian zest for living. She couldn't think now why she had been seized by worry last night. This was a job in a million. So long as they were here, all that she and Stephanie had to do was enjoy themselves. What could be simpler, or more agreeable, than that? In high spirits she went off to dress.
As the morning promised to be hot she donned her vivid yellow slacks and a brief white sun top. Stephanie followed her into the bathroom to shower and dress, choosing violent pink trousers and a brilliantly flowered sun top.
They took their time adding the finishing touches. There was no watching the clock this morning, no precise time by which they must present themselves downstairs. Carol found it rather fun, being able to please herself.
After preening on and off before their mirrors, and experimenting with different types of footwear, they finally decided that they were ready, and locking the door of the apartment behind them took the lift downstairs.
The outdoors appeared even more scintillating from ground level. The black and white umbrellas looked as fresh as new paint against the blue of the sky. The leaves of the slender chestnut trees lining the dining terrace shimmered in the sparkling air. Both girls agreed that it would be pleasant to breakfast outside.
At a table overlooking the gardens they were served with coffee and rolls and lemon-flower jam. The sun was warm on their shoulders as they attacked the crisp golden twists of bread with the specially shaped knives. Stephanie seemed in a cheerful frame of mind. Apparently she had got over her disappointment of last night when she had unsuccessfully begged her uncle to stay.
During the meal Carol decided that the best way to keep up this happy state of affairs was simply to fall in with the younger girl's wishes as far as it was possible to do so.
After breakfast they explored the gardens and the hotel. They found the tennis courts and toured the pool and flicked a ball back and forth in the table tennis rooms. From the foyer posters they discovered that there was a weekly candlelight gala dinner, and dancing two evenings a week in the space adjoining the main lounge.
In the afternoon Stephanie chose to go to the beach. They put on their gayest bathing outfits, packed their beach bags and scuffed along the sun-dappled paths towards that rising murmur of sound.
The sea had settled down a lot since the morning. Ruffled only at the edge now, the sun caught the crystal sparkle of its gently lapping waves. The hotel section of the beach was fairly well populated. Stephanie chose a couple of sun beds on a vacant patch of sand. They dumped their things, discarded their sandals and prepared to enjoy the sun.
Part of the time they spent splashing and swimming in the water, the rest they sat or stretched out and watched the life around them. For Carol it could have been a perfect afternoon but for one thing.
On this their first day together, she noticed with a mild sense of shock that Stephanie seemed to have quite an eye for the boys. Carol could well remember her own giggly first stirrings as a fifteen-year-old, but Stephanie's approach was almost frighteningly grown up. With her neat little figure, already turning gold, her cascading dark hair and liquid brown eyes, she was quite lovely in a girlish way. And she made the most of it.
Her glances at the bronze-skinned youths and young men who happened to be near at the time had open invitation in them. Her laughter, when her small white teeth showed to perfection, was always aimed at them.
Fortunately the clientele at the Albany was made up mostly of cultured Italian families. The young men therefore were very mindful of their position in life and seemed in no way inclined to look further than their own aristocratic group.
Thankful for this, Carol turned a blind eye to Stephanie's flirtatious mood. Luckily she could afford to be more amused by it than concerned.
Towards seven o'clock they made their way back to the hotel. They were ravenous, and after bathing and changing they went down to dinner, enjoying the best in Italian cooking on the tastefully-lit dining terrace.
The day had been a pleasurable one, Carol liked to think. She and Stephanie seemed to get on well together. The only moment of discord between them had been an incident during the morning.
Realising that she would first of all need Italian money, Carol had gone to see the receptionist at the desk as Gray Barrett had instructed her to. She was amazed at the amount she was handed, for she had already learned the value of the lire by comparing prices ih the hotel shops. She was sure that such a large quantity of money would cover their expenses for a month, rather than a week.
When she had stuffed the notes into her handbag her first thoughts had been for her family and the postcards that would let them know she had arrived in Italy safe and sound. She bought half a dozen colourful scenes of the Venice Lido at the foyer kiosk and stopped to write them at the little desk provided.
While she was scribbling, Stephanie stood over her watching the flying pen. The younger girl noted the numbers of cards and with cool offhandedness she asked, 'Do you have many brothers and sisters?'
'Dozens,' Carol laughed. Though she had meant it only as a joke because of the pile of cards she had to wade through, Stephanie's face pinched up small and tight and she carped, 'Well, there's no need to be so smug about it!'
Carol was immediately contrite. She smiled and said pleasantly, 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to soun
d smug.'
The incident passed off, and thinking about it now as they sipped their coffee together under the stars Carol shelved it as something she could forget. But this didn't prove to be the case with Stephanie. Later, when they were upstairs in the apartment, the girl found a way to edge round to the subject again.
They had changed into their night attire and Carol was fiddling with her hair before her mirror. Stephanie, looking dark and pretty in a short broderie anglaise nightgown patterned with strawberries, had drifted in to, finger Carol's possessions around the room before flopping idly on to her bed. She lay on her tummy swinging her legs, watching the performance before the mirror for long enough. Then she said casually, 'Who's the oldest in your family?'
'I am,' Carol replied, remembering not to be facetious this time. 'Clive is my twin brother, but I was born three minutes before he was,' she added with impish satisfaction.
Stephanie digested this in silence. She swung her brown gaze away from Carol and studied the border of the counterpane in her fingers. Then she let herself - A ask, 'And what about the others?'
'Well,' Carol went on chattily, only too happy to encourage any kind of conversation, 'there's Peter. He's two years younger than us. Sandra's fourteen, and Steve's twelve. Then there's my two younger sisters, Deborah and Sue.'
'How old are they?' Stephanie tried to give the appearance of being only mildly interested, but it was obvious that she was soaking up the information avidly.
'Debbie's nine and Sue's six.' Carol twisted another smooth coil of hair into an elastic band.
'That makes seven of you,' the voice was figuring behind her. 'Then there's your mother and father.'
'Nine in all,' Carol winced laughingly. 'You should see us when we're all sat down at the table together!'
Stephanie made no comment to this. She seemed to have retired behind that air of frigidity which sometimes came over her. A little while later she said goodnight and went to her room.
The following afternoon they walked in the locality around the hotel. The long straight main road which ran through the centre of the island was lined with souvenir shops, cafes, boutiques, raffia and jewellery stalls and endless ice cream bars which displayed all kinds of wonderful concoctions in glass cases.
Though everything was comparatively quiet in the heat of the day, there was fun to be had. The girls were fascinated by the rows of colourful canopied swing seats outsidfc every cafe. They kept on buying drinks just so that they could sink down and kick the dust from their shoes and rock back and forth dreamily in the drowsiness of the afternoon.
They.learned to ask for caffd latte, coffee with milk, and limonata, lemonade, and learned how to tip without paying too much.
In the evening at their table on the terrace, Stephanie ordered a bottle of wine to go with their meal. With that childishly imperious manner of hers, which she could summon up at a moment's notice, she caught the waiter as he was passing and calmly told him to bring a bottle of bordolino.
Carol was taken unawares. She watched as Stephanie poured the light ruby red liquid into her glass, and asked, 'Do you think your uncle would approve?'
'Gray isn't here,' Stephanie said simply.
On Tuesday night there was dancing at the hotel. Stephanie had spent most of the day preparing for it. When they went down at a lateish hour to where the strains of the music drifted out across the foyer, she was looking her best in an expensively tailored pastel- coloured dress. Her dark hair was wavy and silken. Swept back from her face in a pale hairband, it showed to perfection her honey-toned classic features.
Carol was too conscious of her responsibilities as chaperon to bother much about her own appearance. She wore a simple linen dress and her hair was pale on her shoulders. She couldn't think what harm there would be in Stephanie dancing in their own hotel, but she felt easier taking a back seat away from the dance floor so that she could keep her eye on things unobtrusively.
Stephanie, completely at ease, drifted where the lights were brighter and soon she had a partner, the first of many throughout the evening.
The chandeliers above the dance area were heavy and golden. The orchestra was dressed formally in white tie and cherry-suited tails. The various young men who danced with Stephanie moved with aristocratic grace and held her in a proper, aloof way.
In the shadows Carol sat back and relaxed smilingly.
While they were at the Hotel Albany, what did she have to worry about?
Time passed. The days took on a rhythm—swimming, sunbathing. Dining on the terrace when the weather was warm. Shopping in the nearby tourist area, and occasionally hiring racquets for a game of tennis.
After the long hours out of doors the late evenings became the time for gossip. Stephanie, her hair washed and coiled in a towel or some new skin cream pasted on her face, would drift in and claim Carol's bed and ask her what she thought of this colour nail varnish, or that new brand of shampoo. With Carol idly brushing her hair before the mirror, or smoothing her lashes, they would air their opinions in this field before moving on to discussing the events of the day, or their plans for the morrow. But these were just the preliminaries. Nearly always Stephanie would manage to steer the conversation round to her pet subject—Carol's family.
One evening, lying in her favourite position, her elbows propping up her chin and her feet circulating the air, she asked out of the blue, 'Would your brother Clive like me, do you think?'
'Clive?' Carol swung her surprised smile up from the press stud she was re-stitching on her nightdress case. 'He hasn't shown much interest in girls up to now,' she replied truthfully, and with a rueful grimace. 'He's mad on anything mechanical.'
'What does he do?' Stephanie asked dreamily.
'He works at the aircraft factory with my father,' Carol turned her smile down at the corners again, 'but he says he'd rather fly planes than make them.'
'Is he like you?' The question was asked musingly.
'Not very much. He's quite a bit taller.'
'I expect Peter's nice, isn't he?' the voice mused on from the bed.
'For a brother I suppose he'll do,' Carol twinkled.
To the query, 'Is he going to work in the aircraft factory too?' she replied, 'I doubt it. He likes school. I think he's trying to get to university.'
'Peter's seventeen, isn't he? He would like me. I would be just right for him. I'm fifteen and he's seventeen.' Dreamily Stephanie turned on her back and gazed at the ceiling, lost in her own thoughts.
Another evening when she had spent the time asking questions about Carol's younger brothers and sisters, and listening to the antics they got up to, Stephanie, who seemed to revert to her frigid mood, asked suddenly, 'What's your mother like?'
'Oh, small and plump,' Carol shrugged with an affectionate gleam. 'I'm more like my father. He's fair and on the lean side.'
'My mother's beautiful.' Stephanie rose from the bed and floated around with a superior air. 'She and my father run a nightclub in Beirut. She wears fabulous gowns and she dances all the time. I expect when I've finished school she'll take me out there and I'll dance all the time at their nightclub!' This said, she tilted her well scrubbed little features and made an airy exit.
It was two weeks before Gray Barrett put in an appearance at the hotel. He turned up one evening when the girls were returning from the beach.
It had been a particularly merry afternoon with Stephanie in one of her carefree moods, and the girls had taunted each other playfully in and out of the sea. At last Carol had showered off carefully ready for going back to the hotel to dress for dinner. Just when she was free of sand, Stephanie had grabbed a handful and tossed it over her. To get her own back Carol had turned the shower head full on her tormentor and then fled for her life.
Her legs were longer than Stephanie's and she was soon halfway through the gardens. But gasping laughingly, and feeling far from safe, she kept glancing back breathlessly to catch sight of her pursuer.
The path wound through clum
ps of dwarf palms, star-shaped cactus, crowds of trailing green trees and flowers all overlooked by giant chestnuts and pines. „ The evening sun was slanting away, leaving the gardens in dappled gloom. Intent on one thing, getting to the hotel first, Carol crashed on. With her glance behind her most of the time, and her own laughter drowning out the sound of footsteps, it was inevitable that she should collide headlong with the big shape rounding the leathery leaves of a ficus tree.
Winded and weak with the giggles, Carol could do nothing at first except teeter in the arms of the man who had caught her. That was until she saw who it was. As recognition slowly dawned on her whirling senses... those heavy frowning features, the big shoulders ... she plucked herself away from him hastily. Her laughter died in her throat behind a furious rush of colour as she stammered, 'I'm ... terribly sorry... I was—I didn't see you coming.'
She looked apologetically at where her wet sandy frame had left its damp imprint on his dark grey suit.
'It might help if you were to look where you were going.' Gray Barrett brushed himself off with a sour smile. In that moment Stephanie came hurtling round the bend.
'Gray I' Her eyes shining at the sight of him, she pulled herself up to gasp delightedly, 'When did you arrive?'
'About half an hour ago,' her uncle replied drily amidst a fresh spray of sand and sea water. 'You were nowhere in the hotel, so I gathered you were still out here somewhere.'
Across the Lagoon Page 8
