Francie Again: Adventures in Portugal

by Emily Hahn

“I’ll write to Penny,” she suddenly resolved. It would take her mind off her uneasiness. She would tell Penny funny little things that would amuse her. Penny, her English friend, was studying drama production in New York, on a scholarship.

  Once started on the letter, Francie forgot the time. Her pen raced on as she touched lightly on one harmless frivolity after another. There had been an evening’s marvelous dancing, she said, at the Casino, where she had gone with Phyllis, Derek and David. She had worn a long dress, blue net over pink, which was dreamy.

  “On Sunday afternoon we went to the beach at Cascaes, six of us. Cascaes is the most fashionable place to bathe. You can guess how fashionable when I tell you I bagged two kings in one hour, unless you want to argue (as David did) that Don Jaime isn’t a genuine king, but only a pretender. We collect royalties; it’s like playing Beaver. There are so many kings and queens around here that I hardly notice them any more.”

  Francie paused, doubtful for a minute as she thought of Jefferson’s comments if she had written like this to anyone there. But Penny would understand and laugh with her.

  “The same day, later on, we went to a place called Machado’s, which you’d love. We went to hear the fado because it’s supposed to be especially good there, and I hadn’t heard any. Machado’s is a little café, not at all posh, and I was crazy about it. There are paintings on the wall, up under the ceiling—portraits of popular bullfighters and fado singers. Ruy da Souza once told me bullfighting and fado always go together, the people are so fond of them both.

  “In case you haven’t figured it out for yourself, the word means ‘fate’ literally, but actually it’s a particular kind of folk song. I always used to think of folk songs as jolly tunes, but it seems I was quite wrong. Ruy says they are sad, usually—all folk songs, I mean. There’s no ‘usually’ about fado, which is always sad, and pretty much the same all the time, a long, wailing, droning tune with words that simply drool. Every time I ask anybody to translate one it turns out to be something like, ‘I’m a poor young man and I haven’t enough to eat, and I’m hopelessly in love with the girl across the street.’ Only I’m afraid even that’s too sensible to be typical. Ruy says—”

  Here Francie paused thoughtfully, then scratched out the last two words and started a fresh paragraph.

  “The da Souzas have left Estoril and gone back to town. Maria took me home yesterday and I had tea with them,” she wrote. She paused again, looking rather blankly out of the window.

  It wasn’t any use, trying to put everything down in a letter. It would take too long and Penny might be bored. “I’ll tell her all about it when I see her,” Francie decided at last. She went on sitting at the desk, nevertheless, thinking of the letter she might have written.

  It had been a queer afternoon with the da Souzas. Francie was eager to see Dom Rodrigo, after having heard so much about him. She had a feeling that his children were rather in awe of him, and when she met him she could understand why this was so. Dom Rodrigo looked like an older Ruy, but he was not as willowy as his son, and his facial expression was very different. Ruy looked severe sometimes, and imperturbable, but Dom Rodrigo actually seemed fierce.

  He wasn’t fierce in his speech, however. He was polite to Francie—not charming, but perfectly polite. “I’ll bet he has a terrible temper, though, when he thinks it’s necessary,” she thought. They had all been like wooden dolls, sitting upright in the tall, cool drawing room, sipping at their tea and eating one cake apiece. All the ease Francie had formerly felt with the young people was gone. Dom Rodrigo talked about the parks of New York, and Long Island. He asked about Francie’s father. Francie thought there was a shade of unbending in his manner when she told him the position Pop held in the company. He asked Francie if she had been to Paris, and Rome, and Madrid, and he told her something about these places. It was all very courteous and chilly.

  Dona Gracia had not joined in the talk, but confined her remarks to purely utilitarian matters. “Maria, ring the bell for more hot water,” she said, and “Do take a little honey.”

  Francie came home with a general impression that everyone had behaved most properly, and that nothing at all had been done or said that mattered in the slightest. She felt frozen out of Portugal.

  “It was very nice,” she wrote, “and of course I was interested because it was the first time I had ever seen a Portuguese home. It was beautifully furnished, with lovely sharp accents of black and white and gleaming dark wood, and in the most exquisite order. But I think Ruy and Maria are more fun when they’re on their own.”

  She might have added, but didn’t, that she had felt a heavy atmosphere of disapproval in the air—disapproval of herself. “I don’t know why Dom Rodrigo should think I’m so awful,” thought Francie mournfully, “but I’m sure he does.”

  She was equally sure she would not see very much more of Ruy and Maria. “I suppose Dom Rodrigo’s old-fashioned and doesn’t like American ways,” she decided. “It must be true, what Phyllis told me—the Portuguese don’t really open up to foreigners. They’re too formal.”

  Well, it was a pity, but it couldn’t be helped. And certainly it couldn’t be put into a letter, even to an understanding friend like Penny. Penny would laugh at her for being sensitive. Francie was just bringing the letter to a close when the telephone rang. It was Maria.

  “I have just been thinking,” said Maria, in her ordinary friendly manner, “about the promise we made to take you shopping. Unfortunately, Ruy cannot come, but my mother would be glad to take us around this afternoon, if you have no other plans. All right? Good. We shall meet you at the station, as usual. At four o’clock.”

  So much for her imaginary troubles, thought light-hearted Francie as she sealed the letter. Miraculously, Dom Rodrigo had ceased to be an ogre. He was merely formal, that was all. It was a different manner than she was used to, but it didn’t mean unfriendliness.

  That afternoon they started out in the banking quarter of the city, because the jewelry shops, according to Dona Gracia, were the most amusing for foreigners. Francie went delightedly from one window to another, fascinated by the many little objects in gold and silver filigree.

  “Do look at that little cart and bull, Maria,” she said. “Look, it’s got a barrel on it!”

  “Yes, that is supposed to be wine,” said Maria. “See, that silver ship is carrying barrels, too.”

  Francie went to the next window, where she fell into raptures over the necklaces displayed there, and the little silver-gilt caravels. “But I suppose this must bore you, Dona Gracia,” she said. “It is always the same, I suppose, for people who live here. You must be awfully tired of filigree.”

  “It is pretty,” said Dona Gracia indulgently. “Now what else would you like to see?”

  Francie thought it over. “Do you need to do any shopping for the house?” she asked. “I mean groceries or anything like that? I’d like to see the way food is sold here.”

  “Yes, that is always interesting,” said Maria, and Dona Gracia seemed pleased. She did have a few housekeeping errands, she admitted, and Francie was welcome to come along if she liked. So off they went to the provision shop, and Francie wandered about among sausages and great barrels of rice and tins of olive oil, sniffing and peering, until Dona Gracia had finished her shopping.

  “Now,” said Maria, “we can show you the clothes shops. But you must remember, we don’t buy our dresses already made. You’ll only see cloth on sale, and perhaps some pretty embroidery.”

  They were not far from the grocer’s, off the main street, when Francie saw a wide-open door into a shop where glimpses of the stock made her curious. She asked Maria to step inside with her for a look around. Maria hesitated. “It’s nothing very interesting,” she said. “Only the kind of cotton that our poorer people buy for their clothes, and rough blankets and rugs. Still, if you would like—” She looked inquiringly at her mother, who nodded.

  Francie made her way to the bolts of material on the counter,
whose brilliant colors caught her eye. “They’re lovely,” she said. “They’re the prettiest things I’ve seen here. Look, this is almost like paisley. Don’t you like them, Maria?”

  “Oh yes, I like them,” said Maria, “but they are very coarse material, you know—harsh and thick.”

  “But the patterns!”

  “They are very pretty,” agreed Dona Gracia. “I use them myself sometimes. Not for clothes, of course”—Francie smiled at the idea of the quietly elegant Dona Gracia in such gay, intricate designs—“but for cushion covers in a country house. Even, sometimes, for curtains. They are not bad at all.”

  “They are beautiful,” Francie insisted. She felt strongly drawn to the patterns; she would have liked to buy some. But Maria was so patronizing about them that she resolved to come back alone some other day and examine them further. For the time being, she contented herself with a short tour of more conventional places. She bought nylons and a few lace handkerchiefs in a French shop. The handkerchiefs were expensive. Dona Gracia looked surprised that Francie had so much money with her.

  Francie came back to Estoril smiling. “It was terribly interesting. I wish you could have come along,” she reported to Mrs. Barclay. “The peasant things were best. You and I will have to go to that handicraft museum as soon as you’re better. Dona Gracia says that’s where they have all the best products from everywhere—embroidery and weaving and so forth, arranged according to the district that specializes in it. I wish this hotel would use the lovely stripy stuff I saw instead of this tiresome chintz. It is almost like our Navaho blankets, but the colors are more delicate. Oh, and then we had tea at that place Maria likes so much, where you can get ice-cream sodas. Ruy met us there. I asked him again about his art school and he says he’ll take me to see the teacher.”

  “And did Dom Rodrigo meet you, too?” asked Mrs. Barclay.

  “Goodness, no. He wouldn’t have time for such frivolity, I shouldn’t think,” said Francie. “Everybody else in the family turned up sooner or later, though. At least it looked like it. Relatives kept stopping at our table to talk to Dona Gracia, and it was all lots of fun.”

  She went off humming to take her bath.

  CHAPTER 5

  I wouldn’t have known you,” said Mark.

  Francie grimaced at him. “I don’t quite know how to take that,” she said.

  “Changed, has she?” asked Mr. Wilkinson, their host.

  “The last time I saw her, sir,” said Mark,” she was a scruffy little schoolgirl with a hockey stick in her hand.”

  “And now look at her,” said Derek. “Quite a change.”

  “Mark Turnbull, you know that’s not true!” cried Francie. “I wasn’t scruffy, and you never saw me playing hockey in your life. I don’t see how you can tell such whoppers.”

  Mark insisted that she had been frightfully scruffy, and continued to talk like an indulgent uncle until Francie turned the tables on him, and told a few hastily fabricated stories of her own about his habits as an Oxford undergraduate. Then Mark behaved himself.

  Even if it had been true, if she had changed very much, reflected Francie—but of course that was only Mark’s nonsense—he most certainly hadn’t. He brought with him such an atmosphere of England that it was a shock to look around the large, cool rooms and remember that now they were both in Portugal. And how easily one slipped back into the old moods! Francie almost laughed aloud, recalling her scorn of that particular kind of boy-and-girl teasing when she first heard it going on between Mark and Jennifer at the Tennisons’ country home. Kindergarten stuff, she had called it, when the boys pulled Jennifer’s hair, and she had pretended to be furious.

  “Now I’m doing it myself,” Francie thought. “And Mark really is cute. He always was, of course.” She sighed. “He’s not quite the answer to a maiden’s prayer I used to think, all the same,” she warned herself. “It was my state of mind that made him look so wonderful. In those days I was just naturally starved for dates. And then, of course, Jennifer wanted him …”

  In England she had been crammed back into childhood like an oversized genie in a very small bottle. It was different now. Dates were once more a commonplace, thank goodness. And so they should be, she thought, for any right-minded, right-living American girl.

  “Seriously,” said Mark, under cover of the dinner-table talk, “you’ve come on quite a bit, Francie. I mean to say, you have, you know. Putting all joking aside.”

  “Is that good?” she asked cheerfully. Not accustomed to the phrase, he gaped at her. She altered it to, “Changed, I mean, for better or for worse?”

  Mark hesitated. “I’d want notice on that question,” he said at last, and turned to his other partner.

  On the whole, she thought she knew the answer. Her self-confidence, which had been taking a beating lately, began to revive. Good old Mark for appreciating her! Familiar old Mark! Nice old Mark, pulling her leg the way he’d done in the old days. It all made her feel quite travel-worn and world-weary, but it was enjoyable. She hoped he would have to stay in Lisbon a good long time.

  “That depends on my company,” said Mark when she asked him what his plans were. “Officially I’m on a job up north near Oporto, and I daresay they’ll be telling me soon to report there again. But at present my old man has told me to stay here, in touch with some of the Portuguese chaps who are working with us. You ought to come north yourself, you know. You can’t say you’ve seen Portugal unless you’ve visited Oporto. We’ll give you a good time. Lisbon’s very well, but there are other places.”

  “I know. I do want to get around,” said Francie. “I don’t do too badly as it is, though, considering Mrs. Barclay’s laid up so much of the time.”

  “I rather expected to find you all entangled with the American colony.”

  “There aren’t so many of them in my age group. Aunt Lolly goes to their lunches and so forth, but there’s a shortage of young people. I see more of these.” She nodded toward her friends at the table. “We golf a little and we play tennis at Cascaes or the Casino. You’ll like the courts here—they’re super. But after all I’m in a foreign country. I’m trying to do more things I wouldn’t be doing at home.”

  “Well, yes,” said Mark rather doubtfully, “but you don’t want to overdo it.”

  “You can’t overdo it,” said Francie.

  Mark said, “Oh, come now. You mean to say you want to go native and all that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You wouldn’t want to be a Portuguese girl really,” he said, “with chaperones following you wherever you go. That wouldn’t suit your style at all.”

  “It most decidedly would not,” put in Phyllis, overhearing their talk. “Francie’s the very opposite of Portuguese. She goes around all alone in the most independent manner, at all times of the day and night.”

  She spoke in a spirit of good-natured raillery, but Mark took it seriously. “Is that true?” he asked Francie.

  “Why shouldn’t I? The conventions here are simply ridiculous,” said Francie. “I think it’s just silly trying to live up to them. After all, I’m American. It’s not the way I was brought up. Why be hypocritical?” She paused, but as Mark still looked unconvinced she added, “Phyllis is getting at me just because I went to the movies by myself the other afternoon and she happened to meet me coming out.”

  Phyllis laughed. “Happened to meet her! The awed populace did everything to call my attention. They even cleared a space for her. There was no chance of missing Francie in that crowd. It was after dark,” she said in explanation.

  “It’s quite all right really,” Francie assured Mark, who was frowning. “Nothing ever happens to me.”

  “No, of course not, and I don’t suppose anything will,” he said. “They’re a law-abiding people on the whole. But you don’t want to overdo it. I’m not thinking of danger, but it just doesn’t look well.”

  “Oh, pooh,” said Francie.

  Maria and Ruy had taken Fr
ancie to her first bullfight, to watch a celebrated matador making his first appearance of the season. It was seven o’clock on Sunday evening when they brought her back to Estoril, and they came in for a farewell cup of coffee. Aunt Lolly was waiting. The hotel lounge was brilliant, crowded with holiday-makers. Motorists or residents, they were gaily dressed and having fun in their decorous way. There was never anything Sundaylike, as Francie knew it, on that day of the week in Portugal.

  “What was it like?” asked Mrs. Barclay, after they had ordered their coffee and cakes.

  Francie said, “Well … I feel all mixed up.”

  “She really is mixed up,” Maria assured Mrs. Barclay. “She was torn two ways, all through the show.”

  “I was afraid she might faint,” said Ruy gravely. “English ladies do now and then. I cannot understand why they come to see it in the first place.”

  Francie said, “I wasn’t near fainting, truly. It didn’t seem that bad. The pageantry was marvelous! I kept wishing Penny could be with us because she loves the theater in great gobs, and that is what a bullfight is. But—well, I don’t know if I’d ever want to go again.”

  “If you were to go only once again,” said Ruy, “you would become addicted.”

  “Then I won’t,” said Francie definitely. “Still, I had to see it once, to discover what all the talk is about. The thing is, you simply mustn’t begin to think about the bull. I know I should simply hate a Spanish fight. They’re much more cruel, with all the horses, and really killing the bull.”

  “So, now you have done your duty,” said Ruy. “You have not come to Portugal in vain.”

  Francie looked at him suspiciously. She didn’t know how serious he might be. “I think on the whole I’ll go back to ballet,” she said. “I can enjoy that with a clear conscience.”

  “Oh, how lucky you are! I would give anything,” said Maria, “for a whole season of ballet in New York. Some day I can do it again, perhaps.”

  Mrs. Barclay said, “Let’s hope you can visit Francie in New York soon, and have your fill of theater.”