by Anne Weale
Today she was wearing a black skirt with an inexpensive white blouse found on the racks at Tienda Corty, the new supermarket-style store which had replaced the city-centre branch of El Corte Inglés, one of Spain’s two best known department-store chains. The blouse, an import from India, had cost less than Isa Sanchez probably spent on her tights, and it was no longer as crisp as it had been when the day had started. But there wasn’t time to rush back to the Albaicín and put on something more appropriate for dinner in the hotel’s most expensive suite.
Not that she owned anything to match the luxurious elegance of the suite.
As she waited for the Marqués to answer the door she wondered what Señor Alvarez and the others would think about her having dinner with Simón de Mondragón. They would soon find out. The waiter who served the meal would be sure to report her presence, and in no time at all the news would be buzzing round the staff grapevine.
The door opened. The Marqués stood looking down at her, his hair freshly washed and smoothly brushed. He was wearing a dark brown linen open-necked shirt and pale grey trousers, with a dark brown braided leather belt slotted through the loops. He wore no jewellery, nor did he smell of the strong cologne favoured by most Spanish men. But his cheeks and chin were a lighter shade than they had been when he’d returned to the hotel, indicating that he had shaved.
He stepped back for her to enter the spacious sitting room. This was the first time that she had been inside one of the top-floor suites, although she had had them described to her by the maids responsible for keeping them immaculate.
Even so, she was unprepared for the exuberant colour and richness of the room, with its three massive sofas grouped round a huge coffee-table made from a slab of darkly veined, rose-coloured marble, on which were stacked old and new books about the history of Spain as well as the current issues of all the Spanish glossies.
‘What would you like to drink?’ her host asked. ‘Shall we share this champagne?’ he went on, with a gesture to the bottle in the ice-bucket which must have arrived shortly before she had. ‘Or would you prefer a soft drink?’
If his object was seduction, it seemed odd that he should offer the alternative.
‘Champagne would be lovely,’ she said. ‘What a beautiful room. I’ve never been in here before.’
‘It has more character than many hotel rooms,’ he agreed. ‘Most of my friends who ski here prefer to stay at the parador on the Sierra Nevada, to save driving up and down every day. But if I were staying up there I wouldn’t have met you—a meeting which could prove opportune for both of us.’
Wondering what he meant by that, Cassia continued to survey her surroundings while he dealt with the champagne. Above a carved and gilded side-table was a painting she had seen being carried through the lobby at mid-morning. It was a temporary replacement, on loan from a local art gallery, for the valuable mirror that Isa Sanchez had broken.
Perhaps, having sent her packing, the Marqués considered it opportune that he had already made the acquaintance of another girl who took his fugitive fancy.
‘Was the skiing good today?’ she asked, hoping that he couldn’t tell how nervous she was.
‘Excellent this morning. As usual, less good after lunch. Today I was skiing on the longest pista, the Aguila. Here you are.’ He came to where she was standing and put a glass in her hand. ‘Salud.‘
‘Salud,’ she echoed, before sipping the wine.
‘First things first. Come and sit down and decide what you’d like to eat,’ he said, with a gesture giving her the choice of the three huge sofas piled with cushions covered in antique velvets and pieces of needlework.
She was far too strung-up to feel like eating anything. She hoped that the champagne would act as a tranquiliser. Seating herself at one end of the sofa facing the massive fireplace in which a clever simulation of a log fire was creating an illusion of leaping flames, she took the folder he handed her before seating himself in the centre of the adjoining sofa.
In the angles formed by the arms, the end-tables held large, silk-shaded lamps and arrangements of flowers. Each sofa had a fine oriental rug in front of it, laid over a floor of huge terracotta tiles, polished to a soft sheen. The room’s real heat came from electric elements embedded in the floor—a form of heating used throughout the hotel during the winter months.
The folder contained details in four languages of all the à la carte dishes that the kitchens offered, preceded by the statement that if what a guest desired was not included in the menu the chef would exert himself to satisfy their wishes.
Eager to learn everything she could about the hotel business, Cassia had long since familiarised herself with everything on the menu. Some dishes she had tried. Some had been explained to her.
She said, ‘You must be ravenous after skiing for five or six hours, but I normally have a big lunch and eat lightly in the evening. If you don’t mind, I’ll just have soup and a salad.’
‘As you wish.’
He ordered the meal for eight o’clock, which was when the dining room opened for the benefit of short-stay foreigners accustomed to eating at earlier times than the Spanish. Cassia couldn’t help wondering if tonight he was eating early to precipitate the main purpose of the evening—seducing her.
But then, in a businesslike tone, he said, ‘Before we dine I want to explain the proposition I mentioned to you. Is your mind fixed on going to England? Or would you be interested in seeing another part of Spain?’
‘I might. It depends…’ she said cautiously.
He rose to top up her glass. She wondered if he was going to sit down beside her.
To her relief he returned to the other sofa. ‘A long time ago, when resorts like Marbella and Benidorm were still undiscovered fishing villages, one of my aunts married a man whose family had a beach house near a small seaport called Jávea. It’s midway between Valencia and Alicante on what, since tourism started, has been called the Costa Blanca. As a small boy I often stayed there with my cousins. There was also a house in the mountains behind the coast, belonging to my family. It hadn’t been used for years but there was an ancient caretaker living in the servants’ quarters. Sometimes we picnicked in the garden.’
He paused, his expression abstracted. She wondered what he had looked like when he was a child. Tall for his age, no doubt, and perhaps rather thin and gangly, as big men often were in early childhood.
‘I went back there recently,’ he continued. ‘The whole coast is scarcely recognisable. It’s been colonised by retired expats from northern Europe and North America. Even inland it’s changed. The mules have gone, replaced by tractors and cultivators. In the villages a few old women still use the communal wash-house, mainly to have a gossip, but the younger ones all have washing machines. Only my house and garden are still in a timewarp. The caretaker I remember was succeeded by his son. Now he wants to give up and live with his married daughter at Callosa de Ensarriá. I have to decide what to do with the place.’
‘How large is the house?’ asked Cassia.
Surely he couldn’t see her as a replacement caretaker? It was so far removed from what she had thought he might have in mind that she had to suppress an upsurge of slightly hysterical amusement.
‘It has eight bedrooms, but only one primitive bathroom. It needs drastic modernisation to make it habitable and comfortable, but I don’t envisage ever living there myself. On the other hand, it’s ideally situated for a project I’m organising. What, if anything, do you know about the so-called Mozarabic trails?’
‘Not much. Only that they were a network of tracks and stairways used by mule-trains in previous centuries.’
‘Not very much more is known,’ said the Marqués. ‘Their origins are lost in the past. Now that they’re no longer the main routes between remote mountain villages and over the passes between valleys, the trails themselves are in danger of being destroyed by neglect. It was actually an American professor who brought them to my attention.’
Ha
ving crossed his long legs a few moments earlier, he now drew the ankle of one onto the knee of the other—a relaxed posture which reminded her of her father, who had often sat in the same position.
‘The professor and his wife are amateur botanists who spend their holidays mountain-walking,’ the Marqués continued. ‘While they were staying with his brother—an ex-Navy yachtsman who’s chosen the Costa Blanca as his base for sailing the Mediterranean—they discovered and walked some of the old trails. They were concerned to see them in danger of disappearing.’
‘But if they’re not used any more how can they be preserved? In the past, presumably, the people who used them did running repairs as and when they were necessary.’
‘I imagine so. Clearly, now times have changed, they can’t all be maintained in good order. But if only a few are kept up it’ll be better than letting part of our national heritage be lost. One of Spain’s problems is that advances which have taken centuries to evolve in other parts of Europe have happened to us in a few decades. As recently as thirty years ago great tracts of this country were still in the Middle Ages. Some parts are still fairly backward.’
‘Even Granada lags behind the times in some ways,’ said Cassia. ‘Only the other day I heard two Americans discussing the fact that the street sweepers use brooms made of twigs, and that they’d seen a man with three panniered donkeys stopping the traffic in the Gran Vía while he led them across it.’
‘That’s one of Spain’s charms—that it isn’t all of a piece. I don’t think the next generation will see donkeys in city streets, but we can keep some of the ancient trails and, I hope, combine their preservation with another rescue operation.’
The Marqués’s expression was different from any of his that she had seen before as he leaned towards her, saying seriously, ‘Our most valuable resource is the youth of this country. At present thousands of teenagers are unemployed. Even those who aren’t out of work are exposed to damaging influences, notably drugs. I want to set up a hostel where youths and girls from the cities can spend a few weeks in a totally different environment from the poor barrios they come from. It won’t be a holiday for them. They’ll be expected to work…work very hard.’
‘Clearing the trails?’
‘Exactly. Doing something useful for the community and in the process, I hope, achieving a self-esteem they may never have experienced before.’
This was so totally at variance with what she had been expecting, and threw such an unexpected and different light on Simón de Mondragón’s character, that she was lost for words.
‘By a lucky chance, the last time I was in England I happened to hear of a man who seems the ideal person to be an instructor-cum-taskmaster,’ he continued. ‘Like you, he’s British by birth, but has knocked about the world and picked up several languages, including fluent if ungrammatical Spanish. Although he isn’t Scottish, the Scots word “dour” is a good description of Jack Locke.
‘He grew up in circumstances as tough and disadvantaged as those of the youngsters he’ll be dealing with. I suspect it was touch-and-go whether he turned to crime or lived on the right side of the law. So he’ll be on their wavelength. I doubt if you’ll like him, but you needn’t have much to do with him. Your role, if you take the job, will be administration.’
‘But I have no experience of that sort of thing.’
‘That can be an advantage. Any intelligent person, given a project to tackle, can quickly pick up the necessary expertise. The whole thing is an experiment, which may or may not come off. We’ll start small and, I hope, build up.
‘Have some more champagne. If you’ll excuse me, I have a couple of telephone calls to make. While I’m making them, you can be thinking it over…making a note of questions you want to ask.’
Having replenished her glass and handed her the pad and pencil provided for the sitting-room extension, he then opened a marquetry cabinet containing a large television and cassette player. A few seconds later, orchestral music began. The Marqués closed the cabinet and disappeared into the next room.
He was gone for nearly twenty minutes. In his absence Cassia relaxed for the first time since he had summoned her here.
It was a huge relief to have her misgivings allayed. Now it seemed foolishly alarmist ever to have imagined that he would look lustfully at her.
And with this thought came another, quickly suppressed—a faint flicker of regret that she wasn’t the sort of girl for whom he would feel desire.
When he came back, he switched off the music. ‘I expect your first question is what salary am I offering. What do you earn at the moment?’
She told him, explaining the hours required for her basic pay, and the overtime rate.
‘Right. I’ll raise that by fifty per cent, with bed and board provided, and we’ll review the situation in six months’ time. At this stage it’s hard to say what your hours will be. Fairly long, but not always very taxing, I should imagine. Next question.’
‘You mentioned administration. Can you be more explicit?’
‘You’ll be responsible for paying the bills, organising and supervising the cleaners, controlling all household supplies, liaising with contractors. Anything which isn’t the cook’s responsibility, or the instructor’s, will fall on your shoulders.’
‘When are you planning to start this operation? I can’t leave without giving Señor Alvarez adequate notice.’
‘I’ll be coming to Granada for more skiing next month. If you’ve accepted the job and finalised your affairs here, I’ll drive you to the village, Castell de los Torres. If you have a lot of belongings you want to take with you, some may have to be sent by carrier. My car has limited luggage space.’
‘Perhaps it might be better if I went there by coach. How far is Castell de los Torres from the nearest bus station?’
‘About fifteen miles, and the coach trip will take you all day. With me you’ll be there in a few hours. But first you must make up your mind if you want the job. You won’t see any jet-set people, only peasants and uncouth teenagers.’
‘Some jet-set people can be surprisingly uncouth,’ she said drily.
‘No doubt, but you know what I mean. Life in a mountain village of four hundred people is very different from life in a five-star hotel. When the fish van comes it’s a major event.’
‘I wonder if your peasants will mind having city teenagers inflicted on them by an absentee aristocrat.’
A gleam of sardonic mockery came into his shrewd dark eyes.
‘You don’t like my calling them peasants?’
‘Possibly they might not like it.’
‘It’s not a derogatory description. A peasant is someone who makes his living by agricultural labour. I respect such a man. The people of Castell de los Torres aren’t “my” peasants. If they were ever exploited by a large landowner it was a long time ago, and not by one of my forebears. I inherited the house and its garden. Nothing else. The surrounding vineyards and almond groves are smallholdings. I expect you’re right—at first they’ll be watchful and wary. That’s where the skills you’ve learned here will come in useful. Instead of being charming to hotel guests, you can calm and reassure the village people.’
‘Don’t they view all outsiders with some suspicion?’
‘We aren’t an insular race like the British,’ he said, with a teasing gleam. ‘Spaniards are naturally hospitable. You have till the morning I leave to make up your mind. In the meantime, if there’s anything you want to know you have only to ask.’
Soon after they finished dining he drove her home, leaving his car at the top of the street for a few minutes while he saw her to her door.
Already there was no doubt in Cassia’s mind that she would take the job. The money was good. She would have more responsibility. It would be interesting to live and work in a different part of Spain. She could go to England next year. A reference from a Spanish marqués would be an impressive addition to her CV.
* * *
Not
unexpectedly, after his morning tour of the hotel the next day the manager called her into his office and told her to close the door.
‘What’s this I hear about you having dinner in the Mirador suite last night, Cassia?’
‘The Marqués has offered me a job, Señor Alvarez.’ Anticipating his next question, she explained the nature of the post.
The manager gestured for her to sit down. ‘As you have no family to guide you, I regard myself in some measure as in loco parentis. What I’m about to say to you is strictly confidential. It’s not our place to judge the manners and morals of the guests, but I should have thought your own powers of observation would have told you the Marqués is not—how shall I put it?—a pillar of rectitude.’
‘I realise that, but I’m quite sure he hasn’t any designs of that nature on me. Once he’s set up this project, I don’t expect we’ll see much of him.’
After questioning her more closely, the manager said, ‘In my opinion, you’re too young for the job. It needs someone more mature. You’re a sensible, conscientious girl, but not old enough to impose discipline on youths and girls who have no respect for authority.’
‘They’ll be kept in order by the Englishman. He’s a tough nut who won’t stand any nonsense.’
‘Not a congenial companion for someone as refined as yourself,’ Señor Alvarez said disapprovingly. ‘I advise you to stay here. If you feel some embarrassment about turning down the Marqués’s offer, would you like me to speak to him for you?’
‘He’s given me until he leaves to make up my mind. I haven’t done that yet. I appreciate your advice, and your offer, but I shan’t be afraid to tell him if I decide to turn the job down,’ Cassia said, politely but firmly.
* * *
For the rest of his stay the Marqués acknowledged her presence with friendly courtesy whenever she was in the lobby when he passed through it. But they had no conversation, and the curiosity aroused by her visit to his suite soon died down when it was seen that he was spending his evenings alone or with other skiing guests.
As she had feared, the manager was very put out when, the night before Simón de Mondragón’s departure, Cassia gave in her notice.
