Unless, Madeline reflected, it wasn’t important to every woman to need love.
Lilane was shrewd. She read the question in Madeline’s eyes. “It’s knowing what you want that counts in this life, honey,” she said. “If it’s love, then you’ll never be happy without it. If it’s money, the same goes. Nothing’s bad if you want it enough and you hurt nobody getting it. I’ve given Greg a son he’s at college proving blue blood can mix with Bronx-ville red and produce brains and Greg would still have been a drinker whoever he married. He’s weak, but he had what I wanted, and I wouldn’t change things.”
She tapped ash into a brass tray embossed with a sword-fish and gave Madeline a long, considering look. “It’s different for you, honey, isn’t that so? Love first, material things second?”
Madeline nodded, and fingered the crisp turn-up of her blue shorts. Love was important to her. She wanted it above all things from the right man.
“Needing love can be a darned sight more complicated than wanting money,” Lilane drawled. “Got doubts with regard to Brooke?”
Madeline tautened. “Does it show?” she asked quietly.
“At the moment it’s showing, sweetie. He’s hooked, but I think you’re struggling on the line. Does it worry you that he’s been a bit of a wolf ?”
“Not particularly.”
“Attagirl ! Inexperienced men make poor lovers.”
Was that all love was about? Madeline wondered, but Lilane wouldn’t have the answer, for she had just admitted that she had never loved. Madeline rose restlessly and went to the rail to gaze at the swallows skimming across the waves. They, it seemed, held the secret. They did not pause to question the mates they took. It was a natural coming together which they did not analyse or fight, while human beings, for all their humanity, blundered about in search of heaven and took so many substitutes in its place.
She heard the pad of rope-soled shoes and turned to see Greg Annderson strolling along the deck in Madras shirt and shorts. “Hi, kiddo !” he grinned, his reckless dark eyes flickering over the blue-and-honey picture she made there against the rail of the yacht, the ocean surging in silver crests behind her. “That guy of yours has just taken me for twenty dollars in a hand of poker. He seems to have a lucky streak and how !”
His voice sank down on those last two words, and Madeline neatly avoided having his hand on hers on the rail. She gave him a faint smile and went in search of Brooke, reflecting that there could be nothing worse than a marriage like the Anndersons’. Lilane might talk complacently about her life of luxury, but it was that her husband sought elsewhere for affection.
And he didn’t even bother to seek it behind Lilane’s shapely back.
The Swordfish was fitted out in every detail, and each evening they dined by electric candlelight in the saloon, whose wide glass doors opened on to the moon-flooded deck. Here they danced to records. Paula Harrington was a fan of the fabulous Tony Bennett, and it was certainly romance-making to have him singing ‘When Joanna Loved Me’ to the silken whisper of the sea.
Madeline couldn’t always avoid getting Greg for a partner.
He was a smooth and experienced dancer, with quite a line in compliments. She could well imagine the devastating effect he would have on the long-legged cigarette girls and bit-part actresses he no doubt romanced back in New York, but he soon realized there was nothing doing with Amalia’s English secretary, and once he accepted this he was quite an amusing person to know.
They anchored off the south coast of Spain on a glittering morning and went ashore. This was Andalusia, and Lilane had said it didn’t do to wear low-necked dresses or shorts, for the local inhabitants didn’t approve. Madeline had dressed in a swirl-skirt print with a belt, and beside Lilane in a spiced-wine raw-silk suit worn with a cartwheel hat in crystal straw, she looked extra young.
She had been looking forward to seeing Spain and had closed her mind to everything but the enjoyment of the movement. Bunting was being hung in the narrow streets, and they soon discovered that a fiesta was taking place the following day, when people would ride in from the mountains and the villages to dance and make merry.
“Oh, we must stay over for it, Harman,” Paula Harrington said excitedly.
“Would everyone like that?” he asked.
Agreement was unanimous. “What a bit of luck!” said Greg.
“Some of those gypsy flamenco dancers are really something.”
“Come off it, Greg,” his wife scoffed. “A good few of them are well over forty with grown-up families.”
“Honey, leave me a few illusions,” he said dryly, giving her a look that sent distress through Madeline. She had grown to rather like this big, dark, dissipated man, who might have been different had he not been trapped for his money. She thought it possible that he had once loved Lilane, but he had long since discarded that illusion. They stayed married, she thought, for the sake of their son.
After lunch at an inn balanced on a hillside, where they ate a delicious Spanish olla, the Harringtons wanted to visit a nearby bull-breeding estancia. Amalia was going with them, and Madeline said at once that she would prefer that to the sherry bodega Greg wanted to visit.
The party broke up, going their separate ways for the afternoon. Harman Harrington had met the owner of the big estancia when he had been on a visit to America, and he welcomed them with the courtesy for which the people of Spain were renowned. Don Carlos Larrieta y Fernandez must have been sixty, for he had sons in their thirties, but he still had the slender figure of a much younger man. His wife, Josefina, was stout and merry-eyed, with the contentment of a happy marriage written all over her. The estancia itself was like the big, sprawling haciendas depicted in films about the American west, with magenta bougainvillea splashing its white walls, and dragon trees standing like sentinels at the black-iron gates through which a station-wagon drove the Don’s guests to see some of his bulls being trained.
This was being done in a fenced compound. One of the Don’s sons, with all the grace of a torero, was enticing the charge of a heavily-muscled heifer with a cloak that flickered like a tongue of flame in the sunshine. The animal tossed its head in a growing fury, then rushed pell-mell at the slender Spaniard, who side-stepped as neatly as a cat at the rush of a dog. Madeline saw the flash of white teeth, the red cloak stood like a shield between the young Spaniard and the heifer, and the men standing on steps above the compound broke into spontaneous applause.
“Federico is good with the cape,” Don Carlos proudly murmured. “He has taken part in corridas at Barcelona and in Madrid, but an injury to his leg during boyhood makes it impossible that he could ever become a great torero. Ah, I would have you meet my other son, Jorge ! ”
After bowing over the hands of Amalia and Paula, the young man turned to Madeline. She felt her heart turn over as she looked into a sun-bitten, haughty face … saw again that imperious, free look that survives in men of Southern lands.
She felt Brooke’s sharp glance as she stared at the incredibly handsome Spaniard, but back at the house Brooke relaxed when they met Jorge’s wife and his two children, one a pert little girl of three with tiny gold rings in the lobes of her ears, and a baby boy. Jorge held the handsome baby with that un-selfconsciousness Madeline had noticed in Victor. How they loved children, these big, virile Southern men ! She smiled irresistibly as the baby’s dimpled fist caught a hank of his father’s black hair and gave it a tug.
“Ah, did you see that, mi mujer?” Jorge laughed across at his wife. “This one is going to be a tigre. That is so, eh, my little tigre?”
“Do not encourage him to be spiteful, Jorge.” Ana, his wife, looked at Madeline as if to say that men were really big children themselves.
Like her husband’s family Ana also spoke English. She was a golden-skinned, rather plump girl who would gradually put on more weight as the years went by, while her husband would retain his lean, hard figure and virile good looks. As in the animal world the human male was of
ten far more splendid than the female. Southern men showed this in abundance, maybe because they were closer to fundamental living than the men of modern cities. That their women were happy to be loved by them, contented to bear their splendid children, was obvious. Ana’s dark eyes sparkled as they dwelt on her family, while for Madeline it was both a secret delight and a torment to watch the young Spaniard teasing his son that was how Victor would look, and she would never see it !
They stayed to tea at the estancia, a big meal, because Spanish people rarely took dinner before ten o’clock. This meal was called the merienda, and spread on a long table out on the patio which was coolly shaded by eucalyptus and palm There was also the murmuring of doves on the rim of a foun-trees, whose pineate leaves fluttered like a seńorita’s lazy fan.
tain, and rising in the distance the pink and olive loveliness of the Andalusian hills.
Madeline would not have missed this afternoon fot anything. The friendliness of it wrapped her in its warmth as Dona Josefina sliced a loaf while her maids bustled out with silver pots of tea and chocolate, great platters of sun-cured mountain ham and cold sausage, along with heaped bowls of salad. Everyone chatted as they took their places at the table, the deep bass Spanish voices mingling with the American drawl as the men compared the merits of the hard, fast pelota with Yankee baseball. The women talked children, clothes, and cosmetics.
Savarin cake and petits fours with a deliciously crisp chocolate icing followed the first course, then helpings of vanilla ice-cream, the inside filled with a maraschino-flavoured mousse, and dices of fresh fruit. Brooke, who had a sweet tooth, didn’t refuse this, but the other men were served with a strong-looking cheese, olives, and Valdepthas, probably the finest red wine produced in Spain.
Federico, the son they had watched down in the compound, had changed into a smart light grey suit. He was unmarried, and after tea he was soon at Madeline’s side, eager to tell her all she cared to hear about the art of bullfighting. He had placed a chair for her in the shade of a giant magnolia tree, and he lounged beside her, gesturing with the dark cigarette he had rolled, his dark eyes fixed upon her as he talked. Brooke finally broke away from a discussion across the patio and strolled to Madeline. With an air of proprietorship he brushed a small fly from her supple hair and gave Federico a glance that plainly said, “You can look, my friend, but you can’t touch.”
In a while shadows were spreading like black shawls, while that beautiful flower, dama de noche, lady of the night, gave out its intoxicating scent. The glass wind chimes hanging in the patio played music in the breeze that came with twilight, and it was with a twinge of melancholy that Madeline rose from her chair when Paula Harrington said they must be getting back to the yacht.
“You will be at the feria tomorrow, senorita?” Federico asked softly as they walked out to the car Harman Harrington had hired.
She smiled and nodded.
“Then I, too, will be there.” He shot an impudent glance in Brooke’s direction. “You could not arrange to lose your Americano friend for a few hours, no?”
“No, senor!”
“What a very great pity, muchacha de ojos azules.” He took her hand and bowed over it, looking as though he would have liked to kiss it, but not daring to scandalize propriety with the eye of his father upon him. “Hasta la vista, senorita!”
“Hasta la vista, senor,” she smiled.
CHAPTER X
THEY left Spain behind them, and Madeline took with her an unforgettable memory of merienda with the handsome Fernandez family, followed the next day by the gaiety and charm of the feria.
There had been dancing in the street, deep-voiced flamenco singing, and small, delicious, sugar-coated torrijas to eat.
Gaily decorated horse carriages had come into town, bells jingling on the harness, the skirts of the bold-eyed girls froth-ing with frills as their escorts in broad-brimmed hats and tight black suits lifted them to the ground, their dark hand’s linger-ing on the lacing of seductive waists.
Brooke and Federico had fought duels with their eyes above Madeline’s golden head, and remembering she smiled and wished the light heartedness could have gone on forever.
Brooke had bought her a hand-painted fan at the fair. Rico
he had insisted she call him that had pressed upon her a vanity-case in tortoiseshell. “So you will remember Rico when you powder your nose, pequena,” he had murmured.
It had all been bueno, she thought, as she lay in her berth and felt the motion of the yacht and heard the wash of the sea against its hull. They were on their way to Morocco and tomorrow they would anchor in the harbour at Casablanca.
Madeline gave way to a tremor and rolled over in her berth, her face pressing into her pillows. Once again she would be under the sun that shone down upon Victor … Victor. Her slender body was racked for a moment by her longing for him, and though she knew it was madness to let herself think about him in this way, especially at night when darkness released the inhibitions, she couldn’t stop. Thoughts of him were all she had … they had the memory of a kiss on the inside of her wrist.
It was no use telling herself that what she felt for him was merely an infatuation. She loved him ! Utterly ! From the very beginning she had looked and loved !
The yacht ran into a squall only a few miles from Casablanca and arrived in harbour in a blustery downpour. The ensign was hoisted, for they decided to remain on board until the weather brightened. Despite the rain it was sultry, and the men played cards in shorts and little else, long iced drinks beside them. The three older women settled down to some canasta. Lilane and Madeline were reading.
Madeline, cool in a lemon cotton shift, noticed that Lilane’s book was about psychology, and she wondered if this shapely mother of a twenty-year-old son was a puzzle to herself. Why did she hold back from loving her husband? What was she afraid of? Surely complete identification with one’s husband was the most basically satisfying experience a woman could, know, even transcending having a child?
The stateroom was quiet but for an occasional grunt of satisfaction from the card tables, then suddenly Lilane tossed aside her book. “Why doesn’t it stop raining !” she grimaced. “I hate the sound of it ! It’s melancholy, like a great crying jag up there where heaven’s supposed to be.”
Madeline cradled her soft drink, feeling the coldness of the ice-cubes through the glass. “I love it in England when it rains,” she murmured. “The fields and hedges smell so fresh, while everything looks cool and green.”
Lilane’s lighter spurted flame at her cigarette. Her nostrils narrowed as she drew hard on the smoke. “I’ve noticed that you’ve been looking rather lost, honey. You’re homesick, aren’t you?”
Madeline could only nod her head. She didn’t want Lilane to pursue the subject, and was relieved when a steward tapped at the door of the stateroom and entered with a wad of newspapers. Lilane swooped on the copy of France-Soir before her husband could ask for it. He had business connections in France, but his wife’s interest in the affairs of the country was purely social, and he regarded her with impatient eyes as she flicked the pages for matrimonial items, fashion snippets, and news regarding the French elite.
“Amalia,” Lilane suddenly glanced up from the spread pages, “you’re acquainted with that French eye-surgeon who works in Marrakesh, aren’t you? Victor Tourelle?”
Madeline sat like stone and stared at Lilane. Alarm ran through her. She wanted to snatch the France-Soir from those pampered hands, certain in her mind that something had happened to Victor while she and these wealthy pleasure-seekers had been cruising from port to port. Her eyes were tortured and anyone looking at her in that moment would have guessed how she felt about the doctor, but all attention was concentrated upon Lilane.
“Victor is a neighbour of mine,” Amalia replied. “I do hope he hasn’t come to some sort of harm in the desert? He goes among the wildest sort of people and sees no danger in it…”
“No, he’s all right,�
�� Lilane said, reading from the printed item to get her facts right. “It’s his grandfather, the Comte de Tourelle. He collapsed with a heart attack at his chateau last Wednesday and Dr. Tourelle was summoned at once to his bedside. According to what it says here there had been a family difference, but the grandson was in time to speak a few words with him. Well, Amalia, you’ll have a Comte for a neighbour if he decides to remain in Marrakesh. How exciting! Is he terribly distinguished and all that?”
“Our Victor Tourelle is as haughty as the devil,” Brooke drawled, and it was with a start that Madeline realized he was lounging in a low cane chair beside her, his curious eyes upon her tense profile. “If my cousin Donette has her way, we’ll have the new Comte in the family circle.”
“Is that a fact?” Lilane exclaimed.
“If you’ve finished, Lil?” Greg flipped the France-Soir out of her hands and strolled away with it.
Amalia sat plucking at the pearl rope about her throat.
“Poor Victor !” she murmured. “I believe he really wanted to be friends with his grandfather, but both of them were too proud to bridge the gap with a real effort. Major Tourelle, Victor’s father, married the most stunning girl, but she wasn’t blue-blooded enough for the Comte I believe the family is a very old one, and you know how obstinate some of these elderly aristocrats can be. They deplore the spread of democ-racy, which may or may not be a good thing. Anyway, Victor never forgave his grandfather for adopting such a harsh attitude towards his mother … under that aloof air of his that young man is full of feeling.”
Brooke gave a rather derisive grunt and ran a finger along Madeline’s smooth, tanned arm. She pulled sharply away from him before she could control herself. At once he swung to his feet and strolled across the room to take a look at the weather, a lean, sun-darkened figure, his hands clenched beside his gay shorts.
“The rain’s easing,” he said. “I think I’ll dress and go ashore. Anyone interested in lunch at the Continental?”
Desert Doctor Page 16
