Relatively Dangerous

by Roderic Jeffries

  She pressed the bell to tell Catalina to clear the table, opened the French window and stepped out on to the patio which ran round three sides of the house. The slightest of breezes ruffled the curls on her head as it brought the tang of the sea. She crossed to the swing seat, with wide overhead awning, and sat. A slight suntan was chic, a heavy one antipodean. In any case, too much sun stripped out the natural oils and replaced them with years. Several of her friends looked very much older than she.

  There was the sound of another car approaching and this time it turned into the drive. If this was Archie, the time was eleven o’clock. There were moments when she wondered about his strict regard for time; was there, hidden away in his family tree, a rather serious mesalliance?

  Catalina stepped out on to the patio. ‘Señora, is Señor Wheeldon.’

  ‘Tell him I am at home.’

  Archibald Devreux Peregrine Wheeldon was large, cheerful, and boyishly handsome; the tight, curly hair which topped his oval face had been handed on through at least ten generations. His nose had been broken in a school boxing match and had not been properly set, the triangular scar to the right of his mouth marked where another ‘gentleman’ had kicked him in an inter-house rugger match. The two blemishes prevented his handsomeness being at all feminine. In deference to Muriel’s wishes that he should dress decently and not like the average expatriate, he wore a silk shirt and square and a pair of fawn linen trousers with knife-edge creases.

  ‘Good morning, Muriel.’ He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, knowing better than to kiss her on the lips when they were in a situation where one of the servants might see them. ‘You’re looking lovelier than ever.’

  He was not, she thought regretfully, an original lover, but he was sincere, which was a compensation.

  He looked round for a chair and picked up one of the wrought-iron ones set about a very ornate wrought-iron table.

  ‘You can’t sit on that, Archie, it’s far too uncomfortable: that’s for people I don’t want hanging about the place. Call Catalina and tell her to bring out one of the comfortable ones.’

  ‘It’s not worth bothering her . . .’

  ‘She’s paid to be bothered. In any case, she should have had the sense to put it out before you came.’

  He went over to the small speaking grille on the wall of the house, pressed the call button, and spoke in fluent Spanish.

  As he returned, Muriel said: ‘Have you seen Genevieve since Saturday?’

  ‘I don’t think I have.’

  ‘Tony says that she and Henry have had a row and he’s gone back to England. I wonder if that’s true.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘She has seen rather a lot of Mark recently. Why, I can’t imagine. Mark’s so very swarthy.’

  ‘His mother was Italian.’

  ‘I would presume that she came from a long way south of Italy.’

  ‘Wherever, he’s a nice enough chap.’

  ‘Archie, you’re in one of your difficult moods.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are. You’re doing nothing but argue.’

  Catalina came out of the house with an aluminium-framed patio chair which she found difficulty in carrying, because of its size and shape. He hurried over and took it from her;

  she thanked him, smiled, returned to the house.

  He set the chair down in front of the swing seat.

  ‘What was she saying?’ asked Muriel.

  ‘That she hoped it would take my weight.’

  ‘How dare she be so insolent!’

  ‘Steady on, she was only joking.’

  ‘My servants do not joke with my guests.’

  ‘What do you mean, guest?’

  ‘How else do you suggest I refer to you?’

  ‘Forget it,’ he said, with sudden, sad bitterness.

  She said fretfully: ‘You’re not going to start that again, I hope. Not today of all days.’

  ‘What’s so special about today?’

  ‘Have you forgotten? I’ve got to go to that beastly luncheon—you’re coming with me—and be polite to all the people I normally take such trouble to avoid.’

  ‘Some of them are very nice. You’d like them if you’d give yourself the chance.’

  ‘That is very cruel of you.’

  ‘Cruel?’

  ‘Very, very cruel. What on earth has happened to upset you so terribly?’

  ‘Nothing has.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re being horribly prickly and that always means something has happened. Now, what is the matter?’

  ‘It’s just something I read in the Bulletin.’

  ‘If you will not stick to The Times . . . What have you read?’

  ‘They’ve identified the man who died in the car crash up in the mountains last Wednesday.’

  ‘Why should that matter? Surely it’s not anyone we know?’

  ‘Steven Thompson.’

  ‘Christ!’

  He was surprised by her violent reaction.

  ‘I need a drink.’

  He opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘And if you’re going to start talking about the bloody yardarm, shut up.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to. I wanted to say that I didn’t think you liked him or I wouldn’t have told you so starkly.’

  ‘God, you can be a bloody fool!’

  He stared out to sea, an expression of bitterness furrowing his face. He couldn’t think why she was so perturbed by the news; he only knew that he had cause enough.

  CHAPTER 6

  Robert Reading-Smith had been born plain Smith; he’d added the Reading when he’d made his first million. His father had been imprisoned in Reading jail.

  He turned over on the bed and smacked the bare bottom of the woman by his side. ‘Come on, move. You’ll never get rich lying in bed all morning.’

  ‘Suppose I don’t want to?’ she asked in a muffled voice.

  ‘Then you’re a fool.’

  She rolled over on to her side. She was a natural blonde —normally this would not have been self-evident—and she had the soft, regular, svelte beauty made familiar by Hollywood.

  He prodded her.

  ‘That hurt!’

  ‘You loved it.’

  ‘I think you’re a bit of a bastard.’

  ‘So my mother told me.’

  She giggled. Then wondered if she ought not to have done in case he had been telling the truth under the guise of a joke. She’d known him for six days, yet still couldn’t begin to keep pace with him. He could be laughing and smiling one moment, coldly vicious the next, with no discernible reason for the change.

  He rolled off the bed, crossed to the nearest window, undipped the shutters and in turn swung them open and back until they were held by the wall catches. Sunshine flooded in.

  She stared at the long scar just above his right hip. It was ridiculous, but that scar had come to mean so much. A person of tactless curiosity, the first time she’d seen it she’d asked him how it had happened. He’d answered with a long and involved story which he patently had not expected her to believe. Unable to take the hint, she’d asked again, that night. The second story had been no less lengthy or involved, but it had been totally different. Why was he so secretive about the scar’s true origin? Over the next few days, she had allowed that scar to become both a symbol and an indicator. If he continued to conceal the truth, their relationship would be, for him, no more than passing; if he told her the truth, their relationship would have come to mean as much to him as to her . . . In eight days, her holiday ended. The flight back to cloud and rain, the dreary street in east Hounslow, the grotty semi, her dad forever rowing with her mum, her sister acting like a tart . . . ‘Where did you get that scar?’

  He turned and stared at her in a way that almost frightened her. ‘A knife.’

  ‘What d’you mean, a knife?’ It was going to be another ridiculous story.

  ‘Two heavies with knives tried
to turn me into a soprano, one of ’em nearly succeeded.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I’d been smarter than them.’

  She realized that this might, at last, be the truth. But she still couldn’t be certain. Very wealthy people didn’t usually get into that sort of trouble. Or had he been in some high-powered racket? That wasn’t such an absurd thought.

  He was smooth, but there was no missing the inner toughness. So had he finally told her the truth? Was she going to be able to miss that plane? Would she never again have to see 34, Grassington Crescent . . .

  ‘We’ll spend the day on the boat,’ he said. He walked past the bed and went through to the bathroom.

  They’d been out on the motor-cruiser three times already. Each time, she’d seen the envy on the faces of the people who’d watched them sail. God, if only she could be certain she’d see that envy week after week . . .

  In the bathroom, he stood in the shower cabinet beyond the marble-surrounded bath and enjoyed the tingling force of the cold water. When he’d been young, he’d bathed in a tin tub in front of the kitchen range; very D. H. Lawrence. It was a memory which chuckled in his mind every time one of the women ceased to be overawed by her surroundings and began to visualize herself as mistress of them. Silly bitches. Hadn’t they learned that life was never so generous?

  He turned off the shower, slid back the curtain, and reached for a towel. They’d sail to Cala Nona, anchor, and drink champagne. Cala Nona could only be reached by boat and so was not besieged by hordes of tourists.

  He returned to the bedroom. She was lying in a provocative pose, but he ignored her, crossed to one of the built-in cupboards and brought out a clean shirt, pants, and trousers.

  ‘Are you reckoning on spending all day in bed?’ he asked, as he pulled the shirt over his shoulders.

  ‘What’s the rush?’

  ‘I told you, you’ll never get rich lying in bed.’ He pulled on his pants, then his trousers.

  ‘Come and kiss me.’

  He left the bedroom and went out on to the landing. Casa Resta was far larger than he needed—five bedrooms, each with an en-suite bathroom, two with dressing-rooms—but that was one reason why he’d bought it. It was obviously a rich man’s house. He crossed to the stairs and went down and through to the kitchen. Rosa was emptying the washing-up machine. ‘Is it OK for breakfast?’ he asked, in a jumbled mixture of English and Spanish.

  ‘Yes, señor. I bought some ensaïmadas on my way here.’

  ‘That’s great. We’ll be going out on the boat, so will you prepare a picnic lunch?’

  He admired Rosa. She’d lived a hard life, but never moaned about it and was always smiling. And if she had any thoughts about the endless stream of women who warmed his bed, she kept them to herself and always showed respect to his current companion.

  He left the kitchen, crossed the hall, entered the large sitting-room and went out on to the patio. The urbanizacion stretched up the lower slopes of a hill some six kilometres back from the sea and his house was at the highest level. Because of the steep slope, beyond the edge of the patio there was a sheer drop of five metres. The sea was clearly visible.

  He sat at the bamboo and glass table, the sun hot on the left-hand side of his face. Many years ago, when schoolmasters had still freely turned to the cane, he’d received a thrashing for failing to learn a piece of poetry; ironically, he could still remember the lines which, when it had been important, he’d forgotten. ‘I am monarch of all I survey . . .’ That was how he felt on his patio, looking out over the other and smaller houses of the urbanizacion to the distant sea.

  Rosa came out of the house, a tray in her hands. ‘Is the señorita not ready?’

  ‘She won’t be long.’

  ‘I will make some fresh coffee when she arrives.’

  ‘Don’t bother. She’ll have it as she finds it.’

  Rosa put the tray down and set everything out. Finally, she handed him a copy of the Majorca Daily Bulletin.

  He pulled off a piece of one of the ensaïmadas, buttered it, added jam, and ate. He read the headlines and leading article on the front page. More financial troubles back home, with the pound in retreat, the balance of payments adverse, and the gold and dollar reserves dropping. None of that affected him. He wasn’t a fool, so he’d moved all his money out of Britain. He turned the page. He skimmed through several small items of news, came to an article headed ‘Mystery victim identified’. The man killed in the crash on Wednesday afternoon was now known to have been Steven Thompson, an Englishman.

  As Pat, dressed in cotton frock because he didn’t like women dressed in jeans, stepped out on to the patio, she was shocked by his expression of fierce anger.

  David Swinnerton had been a highly emotional, very shy man, who’d suffered from asthma from the age of five. The asthma had so interrupted his education that by the time he was eighteen he had possessed no paper qualifications and lacking these it had been very difficult to find a job, even at a time of relatively full employment; in the end, he’d worked in a local estate agent. Being an honest man, he’d disliked the work and had been thankful when one of the partners had suggested that perhaps, in view of his frequent illness, it would be best if he sought a less stressful occupation. He had immediately agreed and left. Thereafter, he’d stayed at home, writing poetry and keeping his widowed mother company.

  His mother had died some years later, as the wind screamed up the valley and buffeted the slate-roofed house as if to demolish it into a funeral pyre. That night, he had written a memorial ode which for years afterwards had had the power to bring tears to his eyes.

  Despite the very high level of death duties, he’d still inherited enough from his mother not to need to have to work. Six months later, he’d married. His few friends and acquaintances had, among themselves, expressed considerable surprise that he should ever have contemplated such a step, especially with Valerie Pope. She had no claims to beauty, was completely careless about appearances, and had firm opinions on most things which she seldom hesitated to express. What all of them had failed to understand was that he needed support as well as love and she needed to support as well as to love.

  After several years of marriage, spent in the isolated farmhouse to the east of Snowdon, his asthma had suddenly worsened. He’d seen several specialists, the last of whom had put the situation very bluntly; if he wished to go on living, he must move to a better climate.

  He and Valerie had consulted maps and read books, then applied for an extra allowance of foreign currency on medical grounds—it was one of those periods when the British were being denied the liberty of spending their own money abroad —and when this was reluctantly granted, they’d set off for the Mediterranean coast of Spain, the south of France being too expensive.

  In Barcelona they’d met an Irishman—a bit of a rogue, but amusing—who’d told them that Nirvana was an island called Mallorca. They’d sailed there on the ferry. They’d arrived on an island which was not yet tainted by tourism, except in a few places, and where there was beauty around every corner. But not the solitude he needed. No matter how deserted a coast might appear to be, or how isolated a house among the almond trees, a closer examination would disclose other houses nearby and even a short acquaintance had shown that the Mallorquins were a gregarious people who believed everyone else to be the same. (Had he foreseen what would overtake so many of these beautiful coastlines he had admired, but regretfully discarded because of nearby houses, he would have fled the island.) So he’d turned his eyes to the mountains and in an old and incredibly decrepit Fiat, in parts literally held together with string, they’d climbed up into that harsh, often threatening world so alien to the soft, cultivated plains below.

  They’d found the old house completely by chance. They’d stopped for a picnic and had decided to have a short walk afterwards, looking at the wild flowers, and during this they’d suddenly come in sight of the house half way up a slope (shades of that home in Wales), littl
e more than a ruin, backed by terraces whose walls were crumbling and whose land was neglected.

  It had taken them two days to identify the owner and when they’d asked him how much he wanted for it, he’d stared at them in perplexity. Of what possible use was this abandoned, isolated place to two foreigners? No matter. He’d named a price that was, to him, astronomical. Translated into pounds, the sum had been so little that Swinnerton had immediately agreed. In the eyes of the owner, this had confirmed the fact that all foreigners were simple-minded.

  Their currency allowance did not permit the purchase of a house, as cheap as that was, so Swinnerton had done something which had amazed him even as he did it, since never before had he knowingly and willingly broken the law. He’d returned to the UK, drawn fifteen hundred pounds in cash, stowed the banknotes in his suitcase, and told the hard-faced official at the airport that the only currency he was taking out of the country was the legal twenty-five pounds.

  It had taken them six months to have the house rebuilt. The workers had come from Estruig, a village at the foot of the mountains, travelling to and fro in a vehicle that was half motorbike and half car. He’d paid them four pesetas an hour and they’d eaten lunch—a hunk of bread coated with olive oil and air-dried tomatoes—in their own time. They’d often sung as they’d worked, sad, wailing songs whose Moorish ancestry was unmistakable. They’d chatted to the Swinnertons in a jumbled mixture of Spanish and Mallorquin and laughed uproariously, but without the slightest meanness, when there’d been obvious misunderstandings. For the first time he could remember, he had not been frightened by people whom he did not know well.

  When the house had been finished, the well had been deepened. The foreman had said that the señor was lucky, it was a good, sweet well that would flow all the year round so that he would never be short of water. Coming from the Welsh mountains, it had never occurred to either of them that they might be. After the well had been lined with sandstone blocks, and the manual pump installed and tested, the men had repaired the walls of the terracing. When he’d asked, somewhat diffidently as he remembered conditions back home, if they’d mind very much clearing the land at the same time, they had not replied that they were builders, not gardeners, but had willingly cleared the land. Then the Swinnertons had found two men willing to work as gardeners, also paid four pesetas an hour, and in a very short time the terraces had become filled with colour,