Anne Weale

by Terrace in the Sun [HR-1067] (epub)

  "No, I didn't know—how interesting," he said impassively. Perhaps he had already forgotten his jibe about her earlier.

  But Julien had not. Glancing at him, she saw the corners of his mouth twitch.

  He said, "I do not understand. Of what use are these pictures from the air, mademoiselle?"

  "They sometimes show the rough outlines of buried buildings, especially where the land is being farmed," she explained. "In a cornfield, for instance, the corn will grow taller on top of an old ditch because the soil is deeper. Where there's a buried wall, the corn may be rather poor."

  "But can't this be seen from the ground?" he asked.

  "Yes, occasionally, in certain lights, you can see crop-marks. But not nearly as clearly as from the air."

  "And your pictures of Pisano have shown you the right place to dig?" Julien asked, with seeming genuine interest

  "No, but they did show certain irregularities which my father thought worth investigating. We used another method to decide where to start digging. But it's rather technical, so I won't try to explain it"

  During the main course—wild boar meat cooked in wine, with a chestnut sauce—Julien made several polite remarks to her. In spite of his good looks and charm, she found him much less intimidating than the older man.

  The meal ended with creamy brocciu cheese and dried figs, and then they returned to the salon for coffee and liqueurs. Now that the evening was nearly over, Justine relaxed slightly. She wondered if David Cassano would be staying in the villa overnight, or if he would sleep on board his yacht

  About half an hour after their return to the salon, she felt it would be permissible for, her to excuse herself. But, before she could do so, Madame di Rostini forestalled her.

  "I am sure you will forgive me if I retire rather early, Monsieur Cassano," the old lady said, in her gracious manner. "Julien, will you help me to my room, please? Miss Field will entertain our guest in your absence. Goodnight Miss Field." She turned to Cassano again. "It is a pleasure and a privilege to offer you our hospitality, m'sieur. I shall see you again tomorrow."

  Trying not to show her dismay, Justine murmured her thanks for the evening's entertainment, and bade her hostess goodnight David Cassano walked with Madame to the door, where he bowed and kissed her thin veined hand.

  As the others passed into the hall, and he closed the doors behind them, Justine braced herself for this unexpected and unwelcome têtê-à-têtê. She was puzzled by Madame's use of the word privilege. Was it merely an expression of flowery old-world courtesy? Or had she meant it literally? Who was this man? . . . and why had he come to Pisano?

  As he strolled towards her, some of her apprehension at finding herself alone with him must have shown in her face.

  He said dryly, "There is no need to be nervous, Miss Field. I will not bite you, you know."

  With a cigar in one hand, and a glass of fine in the other, he seated himself in the chair nearest to hers, and said, "Madame must have been a very handsome woman when she was young."

  "Yes," she agreed stiltedly.

  There was a long nerve-straining pause in which she tried to think of something else to say, but found her mind a complete vacuum. How long would Julien be away? Not more than a few minutes, surely?

  Her companion crossed his long legs and idly swung one well-shod foot. He was perfectly at ease.

  "Allow me to compliment you, Miss Field," he said suddenly.

  She flashed a wary glance at him. "For what reason, m'sieur?"

  "For your unusual, indeed rare, ability to keep silent when you have nothing of moment to say," he explained smoothly. "I also find nothing more tiresome than an exchange of banalities between people who have no basis for a proper conversation."

  She bit her lip, hating him for pretending to be gallant while inwardly, he was laughing at her. If only she had the wit to think of some clever riposte which would puncture his insufferable conceit. She reached for her glass of Myrte, a Corsican liqueur made from myrtle berries, which stood on the little table between their chairs. But her hand was unsteady and, to her horror, she knocked the glass over and sent it flying.

  With incredibly swift reaction, Cassano caught the glass before it could hit the floor and shatter. But it had been half full, and some of the liquid splashed on the valuable carpet and on his trouser legs.

  "Oh, no!" Justine gave a cry of dismay, and sat staring in paralysed mortification at the result of her clumsiness.

  "Don't panic. There's no great harm done." Cassano produced a handkerchief, and mopped first the carpet and then the floor. He then took a second handkerchief from his breast pocket, wetted it with a spurt of soda water from a siphon, and used it to sponge any stickyness out of the carpet.

  "I'm m-most terribly sorry. Th-thank goodness you caught the glass," she stammered wretchedly. "But your I handkerchiefs . . . and your suit . . ."

  He glanced down at the spots on his trousers. "They can be removed easily enough, and the handkerchiefs don't matter." He spoke as if expensive linen handkerchiefs were as expendable as tissues. "Don't look so upset, Miss Field Everyone has accidents." He sat down, and took up his cigar again.

  'I'm not usually so clumsy," she said huskily.

  "I'm sure you aren't. It was not your fault. It was mine."

  "Yours?" she said blankly.

  He turned his head to look directly at her, and this time he did not veil the amusement in his strange grey eyes.

  "You were on edge, were you not? Your hand was shaking."

  She remembered his remark on the terrace. The erudite English female is never at ease in male company. She suffers from the curious delusion that, if she relaxes her guard, improper advances will be made to her . . .

  The anger which had blazed inside her a few hours earlier flared up again, almost as fiercely. To stop herself blurting out something she might regret, she jumped up from her chair and walked quickly away to the glass doors. She knew it made her look even more foolish, but at least it saved her from abusing Madame's hospitality by telling him what she thought of him.

  Her clenched hands thrust deep into her pockets, she stood staring out at the moonlit terrace, willing Julien to come back and let her escape.

  She heard Cassano leave his chair, and come towards her. Her nails dug into her palms.

  "Shall we go outside?" He opened the door and held it for her.

  Justine stepped through it without looking at him. She walked across to the parapet. It was a perfect Mediterranean night. The calm sea shimmered under the moon, the warm still air was heady with the scent of the maquis, and the only sound was the soft, lapping of water against the rocks fifty feet below them.

  He said, "Perhaps I was mistaken, but I felt you were being a little evasive when we were discussing your work at dinner. You mentioned a method you had used to decide where to dig. Is it something your father has devised? Something you prefer to keep to yourselves?"

  "There's nothing secret about it. I wasn't being evasive. I simply felt it wasn't a very scintillating subject for conversation," she answered shortly.

  "Perhaps not—but I think it might interest me. Or do you doubt my capacity to grasp the technicalities?" he asked mockingly.

  Justine gave a small shrug. "Very well—if you insist. We used the electrical resistivity method." She paused for a moment Then in a deliberately flat monotonous tone, she went on, "Soil resists an electrical current. Shallow dry soil has greater resistence. Deep damp soil has less. We inserted steel probs into the earth and passed a current between them. The resistance was recorded on a meter, and then transferred to a graph. After we'd made a series of traverses, the graph showed a pattern which appeared to be the outline of a building."

  He said, "But surely this is revolutionary? It must cut your labour costs by half."

  "Yes, it does reduce them considerably," she agreed. "Of course, until quite recently, the gear was much too heavy to use on this sort of site. We'd have had to import a generator, and a lorry to c
arry it. But, since transistors came out, a much simpler portable apparatus has been developed."

  Against her will, a note of enthusiasm had crept into her voice. She said hurriedly, "Monsieur di Rostini seems to have been delayed. But we get up early, so I'll have to leave you, m'sieur. Goodnight."

  As she turned to go back to the salon, he caught her hand and stayed her. Her instinctive reaction was to jerk free, but somehow she managed to check it.

  Rigid with indignation at his effrontery, she waited for him to explain himself. "It's not late . . . only ten o'clock," he told her lazily.

  "It's late for me," she retorted.

  There was a faint tinkle as something fell on the flagstones at their feet. Still holding her hand, Cassano bent to retrieve it.

  "A pin from your hair," he said, giving it to her.

  "Thank you." She slipped it into her pocket. Pointedly, she repeated, "Goodnight, m'sieur."

  He shrugged and smiled. "As you wish."

  Then he lifted her hand, and kissed it—not as Julien had done, on the knuckles, but on the back of her palm.

  Justine did snatch her hand free then, and almost ran back to the salon. In the hall, she met Julien coming to join them. With a mumbled "Goodnight," she hurried up the stairs to her room.

  A few moments later, as she was leaning against the bedroom door, breathing as hard as if she had run a hundred yards, she heard Julien emerge on to the terrace.

  He said, in French, "What is the matter with Miss Field? She rushed by me just now as if she had seen a mazzero"— using a Corsican word she did not understand.

  Holding her breath, Justine waited for Cassano's answer, and heard him say, "I expect she is agitated because I kissed her hand when we said goodnight."

  "Surely that would not upset her? One can see she is very shy, but not to that degree. I also have kissed her hand. She wasn't distressed. It is a commonplace."

  Justine heard David Cassano laugh. He said, "The circumstances were different. You were not alone with her. She is remarkably inhibited. At the moment I daresay she is feeling as outraged as if I had tried to make love to her, poor girl. She'll get over it. There's a bar in the village, isn't there? Let's walk down for a drink. I need some exercise after that excellent dinner."

  Early the following morning, before it was light, Justine crept out of her room and stole through the silent house to the terrace, and the rock-cut stairway leading down to the beach.

  As she took off her cotton dressing-gown, and dropped it on the fine white sand, she was tempted to shed her bathing suit and go into the water without it. The air was relatively chilly first thing in the morning, but the sea was always warm during the summer months, even on the rare dull days.

  For a moment, she hesitated. There was not the slightest chance of anyone seeing her. David Cassano's yacht was lying on the other side of the headland, and there had been no sign of life on board when she had paused to look down at the vessel on her way across the terrace?

  Nevertheless, she knew that her father would be markedly displeased if he ever found out that she had bathed in her skin. He had strong views on the subject of modesty, a quality which he considered deplorably lacking in most of his daughter's contemporaries. Justine had never dared to argue with him; she herself could see no harm in scanty sun-suits or even bikinis. Her own bathing suit was a decorous black wool garment which she had had for so long that it had become felted and rather scratchy. She would have liked to replace it with a nylon suit, and had looked at some on her last visit to London. But they were all too clinging and low-cut to pass muster with Professor Field, besides being too expensive.

  There'll be no one about for at least an hour yet. I'll be dressed again long before then, she thought. And, in a sudden fit of recklessness, she pushed the broad straps off her shoulders and wriggled out of the suit.

  By the time she had been swimming for about twenty minutes, the eastern sky was streaked with pearl and rose light, and the last faint stars had flickered out. She rolled on to her back, and propelled herself leisurely shorewards, kicking up a fountain of spray.

  She was about fifty yards from the beach, and still well out of her depth, when a sound made her jack-knife into a crouching position, unwilling to believe her ears. She had thought she heard someone shouting to her.

  Treading water, she paddled herself round to face the island. And what she saw made her set her teeth in dismay. For she was no longer alone and unobserved. Julien di Rostini was standing at the sea's edge, waving to her.

  "Good morning, Miss Field. May I join you?" he called. And, before she could reply, he stripped off a terry towel robe and came bounding through the shallows towards her.

  Justine experienced a moment of petrified panic in which the only escape from her predicament seemed to be to sink quietly under the surface and never come up again.

  At the point where the beach shelved, Julien took a standing header and disappeared for some seconds. He came up about twenty-five feet away, shaking his head like a dog, and grinning at her.

  "Good morning," he said again. "Do you always rise so early?"

  Justine recovered her wits. She saw that, at any moment, he would start to swim closer. She said briskly — and with a composure which astonished her—"Good morning. Would you please turn your back for a few minutes? I'm not wearing a bathing suit."

  She saw his jaw drop in surprise. He said, "Oh ... yes . . . yes, certainly, mademoiselle," and began to swim away towards the groyne of rocks on the other side of the bay.

  There was a changing cabin at the foot of the cliffs. Emerging from the water, Justine did a fast sprint across the sand, snatched up her things, and ran on to the sanctuary of the cabin. She had brought her clothes down with her. Ten minutes later, she was dry and dressed, with her towel wound round her wet head. Peering out of the window, she saw that Julien was still over by the far rocks, and showed no sign of returning to the beach. Her first thought was to hurry back to the villa and hope he would have the decency to forget the incident. But then she felt sure he would not be able to resist mentioning what had happened to David Cassano.

  As she visualised them laughing at her expense, Justine knew that if she ran away now she would never be able to face them again. It was even possible that David Cassano would take a sadistic delight in twitting her about it—and that would be unendurable!

  It took all her moral courage to stroll out of the cabin, and sit down on the sand to wait for Julien to finish his bathe. If she had had to wait long, her resolution might have failed her. But, fortunately, he looked in the direction of the beach a few moments after she sat down, and she forced herself to wave to him. He waved back, and started swimming for the shore.

  The sun had risen above the horizon by now, and the colour of the sea was changing from amethyst to vivid blue-green. Normally, this was Justine's favourite time of day. As the sun rose, and the dew on the hillside brushwood began to evaporate, the salt air became fragrant with the delectable scent of the maquis. The aroma of lavender and thyme, cistus and arbutus, and a dozen other sweet-smelling shrubs, was always present But it was especially pervasive at sunrise and sunset. Napoleon, ingloriously exiled on St Helena, had said he would recognise Corsica blindfolded by the unique perfume of the maquis. The same could be said of Pisano.

  This morning, however, Justine was only aware of the bronzed and handsome young man coming out of the sea to join her.

  "Ah, that was good!" he exclaimed, picking up his towel and giving himself a cursory rub down. "Me, I do not like to get up early—but it is good on such a morning as this. I feel—what is the expression?—like a million dollars?"

  With what she hoped was a nonchalant smile, Justine said, "Sophia tells me you've been in Paris for a year. Didn't you miss all this ... the sun, and the sea and everything?"

  "Miss it?" He threw back his head and laughed. "No, I did not miss it, Miss Field. I could not wait to get away from it." He spread his robe on the sand, and sat down. "What i
s there for one to do here? Nothing!"

  "But it's so beautiful... and it's your home."

  "It is where I was born," he corrected. "It is not where I wish to live. I must come back to visit my grandmother sometimes—but I have no other reason to return here. Paris is my home now."

  "But surely when you are older . . . when you marry —" she began.

  "I shall never come back to Pisano," he said with conviction.

  "What do you do in Paris? I mean what is your work?" she asked.

  He shrugged, and made a wry grimace. "I am a student of law," he told her. "It is not what I would wish to be, but it was my father's profession, and it pleases Grand'-mere that I — how d'you say? — follow his footsteps."

  "What would you have preferred to do?" she asked.

  He leaned back on his elbows, and gave her his wide, charming grin. "Nothing," he said candidly. "You know what I would like? To have much money, and to do nothing but enjoy myself."

  "Wouldn't that become rather boring after a time?" she suggested.

  He chuckled. "That is what David tells me, but I do not believe it."

  At the mention of the other man, Justine stiffened slightly. She unwound the towel from about her head, draped it over her shoulders, and began to unplait her braid so that her hair would dry more quickly.

  "Do you mind if I say something personal, mademoiselle?" Julien asked, as she spread her hair out over the towel.

  "No—what is it?" she asked curiously.

  He said, "It changes you when your hair is loose in this way. It is more becoming. A chignon is too severe for you."

  "I can't have it loose when I'm working. It would get in my way," she replied.

  He cocked his head on one side, and studied her for a few moments. To her surprise, she did not blush under his scrutiny. Indeed, analysing her feelings, she discovered that she was no longer pretending to be at ease—she was! In the space of a few minutes her agitation had completely dissipated. She was even beginning to see that what had happened was really rather funny.