The Fields of Heaven

by Anne Weale

  Imelda nodded, and took one. “I’m rapidly becoming an addict. But the bread is my most serious weakness. I’m putting on pounds.”

  “If you are, it’s entirely becoming,” said Charles, with a glint in his eyes.

  She remembered the manner of their parting, and said rather breathlessly, “Will you have your salad on the terrace?”

  Presently, eating his lunch, he said, “You haven’t asked how they’re getting on at the shop.”

  Victoriana, Imelda realised, had hardly entered her head since her arrival, and certainly not since he had appeared on the scene.

  She said lightly, “I expect you would have mentioned it if the shop had burned down or anything.”

  “I have a couple of notes for you from your caretakers. They’re in my grip.” He went to fetch them.

  When he returned, Imelda said, “Now that you’re here, there’s no need for me to stay on.”

  “Do you want to hurry home?”

  “No, but-”

  “Then why do so?”

  “For one thing, there isn’t room for me. Where are you going to sleep?”

  “On the camp bed out here, which is where I should sleep from choice at this time of year even if Na Vell were empty.” He turned his head, listening to the clatter of hooves coming up the stony lane. “We have visitors.”

  But it was only Mrs. Wingfield and Maria, coming home in the two-seater mule cart with its folding, perambulator-style hood.

  At the sight of Charles, Maria gave a screech of pleasure, and launched into a voluble conversation.

  “Such fun, Imelda,” said Mrs. Wingfield. “I’ve always wanted to ride in one of these carts and the embroideries were what I hoped. Two beautiful eighteenth-century men’s waistcoats and an early Georgian silk apron. By some miracle they’ve been carefully looked after all these years. There’s no sign of damage from the mildew which Charles tells me is such a problem here in the winter months.”

  It was only when Maria had departed that Mrs. Wingfield was able to question her grandson about his unexpected arrival.

  “That’s splendid,” she said, at the end of his brief explanation. “Now Imelda will be able to see something of the island’s night life. Her first week here has been far too dull and quiet for what’s supposed to be a holiday.”

  “I haven’t been bored,” Imelda protested.

  “No, I know you haven’t, my dear. You’re too intelligent to be bored anywhere,” said the older woman warmly. “But that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have enjoyed yourself more had there been someone to take you about in the evenings. Now that Charles is here you can see some flamenco dancing at the open-air night club at San Luis. I forget the name of it” - with an interrogative glance at her grandson.

  “Sa Tanca.” It was impossible to judge from his expression what he thought about this suggestion.

  “I expect Charles has a long list of Spanish girls with far better claims to his company than I have,” Imelda remarked, hoping she sounded pleasantly off-hand.

  At that his eyes narrowed mockingly. “Spanish girls are still comparatively sheltered, particularly from Englishmen who have the reputation of being most dangerous escorts for well-brought-up senoritas,” he said sardonically. “If I want to take a girl to Sa Tanca, I must find one of my own nationality who will either welcome my advances or at least know how to repel them.”

  “I’m afraid there’s some truth in what Charles says,” agreed his grandmother. “The English do have rather a bad reputation here. The retired people of my generation are reputed to drink far too much - as indeed some of them do - and the young girls who come on cheap package holidays are a magnet for the island youths who’ve read about our permissive society, and who hope to behave in a way which would never enter their heads with a Spanish girl.”

  “No doubt it enters their heads,” said Charles dryly. The sound of an approaching motor made him add, “That sounds like Paco bringing the kids home.” He drained his wineglass, and went to meet the car, whistling softly.

  “Charles seems pleased with life,” said Mrs. Wingfield. “He’s always been rather self-contained and it’s difficult to read his mind, but I think he has been depressed lately. Perhaps the political situation worries him. But today he looks altogether more cheerful even after that long, hot walk from the highway. It will do him good to have a rest from all the bills and Ministry forms. There was never all this wretched paperwork in my husband’s time. Sometimes it keeps Charles at his desk until midnight, you know.”

  Presently Imelda went to her room to read the two letters Charles had brought from England.

  “We’re managing very nicely, so there’s no need for you to worry,” Mrs. Walsham had written.

  Reading Sam’s letter reminded Imelda of the incident in her car the night she had gone to his house. He made no reference to what had happened, but it troubled her to realise that she had not given it a thought since leaving England. Charles’s casual kiss at the airport had erased Sam’s embrace from her mind, and she felt ashamed of allowing her own emotional problems to obsess her to the point of forgetting the man who had been so good to her, and without whose help she would not be here on this idyllic island.

  That night, leaving Maria to baby-sit, Charles took Mrs. Wingfield and Imelda to dine at a waterfront restaurant in Villacarlos, a small town on the brink of the huge, hill-sheltered harbour at the eastern end of the island

  The restaurant did not cater to tourists but to local people, and the adjoining bar was crowded with young Spanish soldiers from the nearby barracks. For the first time since her arrival Imelda found herself the target for a dozen or more fiery stares.

  Mrs. Wingfield was walking ahead of her, and Charles was behind because he had held open the door. But he must have guessed that Imelda was taken aback by the barrage of attention focussed on her.

  “You’ll get used to it,” he murmured in her ear.

  The restaurant was a long narrow room with a paved floor, old bentwood chairs and painted walls decorated with advertisements for Xorigeur gin, San Miguel beer and Soberano brandy. But the food made up for the lack of elegance, although Imelda’s enjoyment of her canelones was not enhanced by the stares of the four young men at the next table. She tried not to take any notice, but it was difficult to ignore such blatant attention. Anyone would think they had never seen a girl before, she thought, feeling more irked than flattered. Even when the centre of

  their table was occupied by a large bowl of glistening purple-black mussels, they continued to shoot burning looks at her.

  After dinner, they strolled along the moonlit quay, and Charles said, “Do you dislike the Spanish approach to women? I noticed you seemed rather restless during dinner. But if I’d told those four boys not to stare, they would have been surprised and affronted. Spanish girls are accustomed to being ogled. They think nothing of it.”

  “Well, I realise it doesn’t mean anything. But I do think it’s rather uncomfortable if one can’t ever catch a male eye without receiving a leer like ... like a flame-thrower!” she answered. “I’m glad it’s not the custom in England.”

  Charles laughed. “I spent last night with some Spanish friends of mine who live in London. Their daughter was complaining to me that Englishmen look uninterested, and then suddenly something like this happens ...”

  He slid his hand around her waist and she felt his mouth brush her neck.

  “... which a Spaniard would never dream of doing without considerable encouragement,” he added blandly, as his grandmother, some yards ahead, turned to remark that the waterfront cats seemed uncommonly nervous little creatures.

  Later, sitting in the back of the car on the drive back to Na Veil, Imelda wondered how long it would be before Charles kissed her properly. She felt certain he intended to do so sooner or later. What she could not tell was whether he was playing with her, or serious.

  In the days that followed, although he had several opportunities to do so, he did not to
uch her except in the most casual fashion.

  He took them to picnic on Monte Toro, and while they

  were scrambling about with the children he pulled her up a steep pitch of rockface. One morning, on a trip to Ciudadela, the city at the western end of the island, he grabbed her elbow to stop her jay-walking. And when she slipped playing badminton, and grazed her knee, Charles cleaned out the grit and dressed the place.

  But as the warm silver nights followed the blue and gold days, he made no attempt to make love to her, although they were quite often alone together.

  On the fourth day after his arrival, it was decided that they would all go to Mahon, the island’s capital. Mrs. Wingfield wanted to buy shoes. The children wanted sweets, and postcards to send home to Mr. and Mrs. Betts. Charles wanted to visit the fish and provision markets, and the bodega where he bought wine.

  “Would you care to look at the local junk shop while we’re in Mahon?” he asked Imelda.

  “Oh, is there one? I thought in Spain there were two extremes only; the very grand shop selling almost priceless art treasures, and tourist traps full of plastic armour and repro thumbscrews.”

  “There’s some truth in that on the mainland, and the island has its share of plastic rubbish in the tourist season. But as in England, or anywhere, the best hunting grounds are tucked away in side-streets or villages. The place where I’ve picked up most of my things is not found by many holidaymakers.”

  “You didn’t buy that in Menorca, surely?” She looked at a wall plate with a border of flowers, and the legend - Himmlisch lachelt mir die Au, denk ich dich als meine Frau.

  “No, that was given to me in Switzerland.”

  “What do the words mean?”

  They were momentarily alone in the living-room. Without looking at the plate, his eyes fixed on her face, he said, “They mean ‘The meadows seem like the fields of heaven when I think that you may be my wife’.”

  If she had been in any doubt about her feelings for him, the effect of his translation would have convinced her.

  But as Charles was about to say something else, Henry came into the room, followed by Maria who had something to say to Charles in Spanish.

  As matters turned out, they did not go to the junk shop. They were on their way there when Charles met a man who insisted that they all had a drink with him in a pavement cafe on the Explanada, and who also invited Charles and Imelda to a party he was giving that night.

  By the time the adults had finished chatting, and the children had been summoned from the swings in the Explanada gardens, everyone had had enough of the city — even a city in miniature such as Mahon - and were eager to get back to the beach.

  It was after nine o’clock that night when Charles and Imelda set out for the party which was being held at a former farmhouse, now a country club on one of the new urbanizations in which their host had an interest.

  Charles did not talk much on the way, and Imelda was content to share his silence. The lights of isolated farms showed here and there in the folds of the starlit hills, and even on the main highway there was very little traffic. By the time they returned there would be less, and none on the byroad to Na Vell. When Charles had to stop to open the cattle gate, would he ...?

  She felt her throat tighten, and quickly switched her thoughts to the party, hoping her dress would be suitable. She had bought it in Ciudadela to set off her tan. It was white, with a narrow emerald belt.

  From the moment they entered the club house the evening began to go wrong. At Na Vell, Charles had a tape recorder on which he played cassettes of Spanish guitar music, and the haunting cante jondo of Andalusia. Here, at the club, the music was a tuneless blare of pop. It was crowded and most people were smoking, which soon made Imelda’s eyes smart. This was one of the reasons why, later, when Felix suggested a stroll to the era and back, she agreed.

  The era was a circular threshing floor. She had noticed several about the countryside. Felix planned to convert this one to a dance floor. While he was telling her his plans for other improvements, he began to fondle her shoulders. Imelda was dumbfounded. He was old enough to be her father and surely he couldn’t imagine that he was capable of cutting Charles out? Not that Charles had taken much notice of her in the past hour, she thought forlornly. He had been annexed - not unwillingly, it seemed - by a tall Nordic blonde who had shrieked with joy at the sight of him, and kissed him on both cheeks. They were evidently old friends, possibly more than friends, Imelda had thought, watching them dance together.

  Had Felix been a contemporary, she would have rebuffed him unequivocally. Because he was middle-aged, she tried to deal with him tactfully. It was an error of judgment which resulted in an embarrassing tussle from which she emerged more exasperated than angry.

  When, tidied and composed, she came out of the cloakroom to look for Charles, he and Birgitta seemed to have gone for a stroll.

  Imelda had no intention of looking lost till he came back. When a Spaniard asked her to dance she pinned on

  a smile and was smiling with undiminished brightness when Charles reappeared.

  “Oh hello, Charles. Have you met Jaime?” she asked, as he came to her side. Birgitta was no longer with him.

  He responded to the introduction civilly enough, but then, taking the glass of wine from her hand and placing it firmly on the nearest horizontal surface, he said, “You must excuse us, senor. We have to leave early.”

  Gripping Imelda by the elbow, he marched her outside to where the car was parked.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THEY were half way back to Na Veil before, unable to bear the silence a moment longer, she said, “I really don’t see why you should look like a thundercloud. It may interest you to know that while you were chatting up your Swede, or whatever she is. I was fending off your horrible friend Felix.”

  She felt him ease off the throttle, and thought he was going to stop the car. But he changed his mind, and the needle crept back to his cruising speed. “If you were as skittish with Felix as you were with Jaime, I’m not surprised,” said Charles, in an arctic tone.

  “I was not being skittish with either of them,” Imelda retorted furiously. “If anyone was being skittish, it was your friend Birgitta. No doubt she enjoys being taken to see the era.”

  He said nothing to this, but after some moments he gave a rather harsh laugh, and she sensed that his anger was cooling. Nevertheless he said nothing else until they reached Na Vell, and Imelda was not prepared to break the silence a second time.

  When the car came to a standstill, she did not wait for Charles to come round to her side, but climbed out unaided. However, the handle of the door was an awkward one, and by the time she had opened it and was on her feet, Charles was there, one hand on the top of the door the other on the roof of the car so that, short of ducking under his arm, she was trapped between him and the Renault.

  “So you were jealous of Birgitta.” There was no mistaking his amusement. The moonlight fell full on his face revealing the laughter in his eyes, the smile on his lips. “You had no need to be.”

  “No!” Imelda’s exclamation was an involuntary reaction to his movement to take her in his arms.

  Ignoring her objection, Charles drew her firmly against him.

  It was not until some time later, when she was lying on her bed staring at the pattern of silver bars made by the moonlight slanting through the slats of the shutters, that Imelda began to regret wrenching free from his arms and running indoors.

  Her flight from him had been instinctive. She had felt that he could only be playing with her, and when her own emotions were so much more deeply engaged, she could not bear to be kissed merely as a diversion.

  The following day was a nightmare of constraint. It began when Mrs. Wingfield asked at breakfast, “Was it a good party?”

  “Yes ... very,” Imelda answered hollowly.

  “Unforgettable,” Charles added sardonically.

  Fortunately neither his grandmother nor the childr
en seemed to notice any difference in his manner. But Imelda was continually aware of the derision in his eyes, and of the studied way he stepped back much further than was necessary if they happened to meet in a doorway or going up and down the beach path.

  He spent the evening immersed in a book while his grandmother did her embroidery and chatted to Imelda who, at Mrs. Wingfield’s suggestion, was trying her hand at some stitches on a spare scrap of canvas.

  “I think I might adapt the motifs on that wall plate for use on a cloth and a set of napkins,” said Mrs. Wingfield, after a discourse on design to which Imelda had listened with less than her usual attention.

  Imelda glanced at the Swiss plate, and the meaning of the words and the tone in which Charles had translated them made her regret even more bitterly her hasty action the night before. All day there had been growing in her the feeling that perhaps she had misjudged him and, in doing so, had blighted something irreplaceable. But if she had mistaken his motive, how was she to retrieve her error? There seemed no way at all.

  “Charles is very badly off for decent table linen here,” his grandmother went on, pursuing her very different train of thought.

  The mention of his name made Charles look up from his book, first at his grandmother whose attention was now engaged on the threading of her needle, and then at Imelda who did not have time to switch her gaze from his face.

  For a long moment, their eyes met. In hers, she hoped, he would read an appeal for the resumption of the easy relationship they had enjoyed before the party. In his she could see nothing but indifference.

  “I - I have a slight headache. I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll go to bed early,” she said, in a low voice to Mrs. Wingfield.

  “Yes, I should. Have you some aspirins with you? If not-”

  “I have some, thank you. Goodnight.” For the benefit of Mrs. Wingfield, she added, “Goodnight, Charles.”

  To her surprise he was already on his feet. As he opened the door for her he said, “Imelda—”

  “Yes?” She kept her eyes down so that he should not see the foolish tears in them.