by Anne Mather
Pepe was a different proposition. A rather morose Jason had introduced the thin young man as Estelita’s brother, and watching them together, Alexandra could see the resemblance. Both were very dark-skinned, although their features were predominantly Spanish, but Pepe’s features were not quite so refined as his sister’s. She was the older, too, possibly twenty-nine or thirty, Alexandra estimated, while Pepe was hardly more than her own age. He spoke little throughout the meal, and it was left to Estelita to question Jason about his journey, and Ricardo to make jokes at the housekeeper’s expense.
All in all supper had not been a comfortable meal. Miss Holland had not joined them, after all, and Alexandra was very conscious of her own alienation among these people. She spent her time studying the relationships between them, avoiding the most obvious one between the man who persistently parried all questions, and the woman he called his housekeeper. Although from time to time, she sensed Pepe’s eyes upon her, they dropped as soon as she lifted her head, and she came to the conclusion that he was intrigued by her pale skin. She had seen few pale-skinned people since coming to South America, but contrarily she admired the brown skins she had seen, envying them their immunity to the sun’s rays.
Ricardo spoke to her once or twice, asking her about her father, and revealing that he, too, had known Charles Durham. It was reassuring to hear that her father was not forgotten by these men, but although she would have liked to have asked him questions, she was all too conscious of Estelita’s cold dark eyes upon her.
The meal itself was rather too rich for her palate. A casserole of meat and vegetables, very highly spiced and hot with peppers, was an assault to a stomach still not attuned to the change of latitude, and Alexandra contented herself with crumbling the bread which accompanied it, and spreading it thinly with butter that tasted slightly rancid.
‘You are not eating, señorita,’ Estelita remarked once, her lips twisting contemptuously. ‘She will never lose that boyish figure if she does not put some flesh on her bones, eh, Jason?’
Ricardo made a comment to this which seemed to amuse him greatly, and which caused the housekeeper’s eyes to flash angrily. Her response was a vituperative tirade in their own language, which Jason silenced with a curt admonishment. But Ricardo was unrepentant, and turning to Alexandra, he explained:
‘I tell Estelita she does not need any more flesh on her bones, no? I think perhaps she could afford to spare you some, hmm?’
‘Ricardo!’ Jason’s impatient interjection gave Alexandra the chance to avoid an embarrassing answer, but Estelita was not appeased. She spent the remainder of the meal in sullen silence, only responding when Jason suggested she should serve the coffee.
Alexandra, apprehensive of Jason’s censure, was glad when, after the meal was over, he disappeared, and making the excuse of seeing how Miss Holland was faring, she left the room. The hall was a silent cavern, and the lamp standing on the chest cast pools of darkness in shadowy corners. The remoteness of their situation was suddenly a tangible presence, and shivering slightly she crossed the tiled floor to the stairs. A shaft of light from an open doorway caught her gaze as she ascended the stairs and dipping slightly to peer into the room, she saw Jason standing behind a square desk. The desk was strewn with papers, and he was presently engrossed in the sheet he held in his hand, a brooding expression marring his lean features. His indifference to the isolation was reassuring somehow, but she went on her way, aware that for tonight at least, Jason’s company was barred to her.
In her room, she turned out the light and stepped out on to the balcony. The scent from the passion-flower vine below her windows rose tantalisingly to her nostrils, and she tried to relax. But the starlit darkness was like a wall between her and the life she had known, and succumbing to a ridiculous sense of unease, she closed the shutters and went to find Miss Holland.
Morning had displaced the shadows of the night, and although it was early, even for her, Alexandra was up soon after six. Her system was still adjusting to the time change, and besides, she was eager to dispel her first impressions. She was sure her anxieties of the previous evening had been exaggerated, and the prospect of seeing more of the estancia lifted her spirits. She was even prepared to believe that that scene with Jason had never happened, that it had been some figment of her imagination, and she determined to show him that her feelings towards him had not changed. Exactly what those feelings were, she was not quite sure. She felt a sense of gratitude towards him, of course, but it was more than that that made her senses tingle when he was near her. He was much older than she was, even if he was much younger than her father had been, but not old enough to regard in that light. She only knew she liked being with him, better than with anyone she had ever known before, except perhaps her father, but even in her innocence she sensed that the relationship she wanted with Jason was much different from the relationship she had wanted with her father. It was all most disturbing. She had sent herself to sleep trying to imagine how she would feel if Jason treated her as the sheik had treated his fair prisoner, but her inexperienced imagination had been unable to provide any satisfactory answer.
After checking that Miss Holland was still sleeping, she went downstairs for breakfast. It was still barely seven, and she was glad of the warmth of cream cords and a matching long-sleeved sweater. Her extreme fairness was accentuated by the light-coloured clothes, and Pepe, encountering her in the hall, stared with open eyes.
‘Good morning,’ she greeted him smilingly, but his mumbled response was scarcely audible and she hurried after him, saying: ‘Where is everyone? Where’s Jason? Is he up?’
‘Por favor?’
Pepe was obviously finding it difficult to follow her, and Alexandra nodded her head, repeating slowly: ‘Ja-son. Er—donde es tá Jason?’
‘Jason was up and out an hour ago,’ remarked a supercilious voice behind her, and turning, Alexandra found Estelita standing in the shadow of the stairs. ‘You will need to rise a little earlier to find him here, señorita.’
‘I see.’ Alexandra glanced back at Pepe and found him shrugging as he went on his way.
‘I did not know you spoke our language, señorita,’ murmured the housekeeper mockingly. ‘Deseaba usted algo? Tiene usted hambre, acaso…’
Alexandra controlled her temper with admirable restraint. ‘You must know I do not speak Spanish, señora,’ she insisted quietly, but Estelita was not so willing to abandon such a provocative subject.
‘But you spoke in Spanish with my brother.’
A word or two, only. I—well, I’ve heard Jason use those words—when he asked about our luggage at the airport, that’s all.’
‘Ah!’ Estelita folded her arms across her ample bosom. ‘You are very—what would you say?—sharp, no? I shall have to be careful what I say when you are around, señorita.’
Alexandra forced a smile, determining not to be provoked, and as if her reaction was not what she had hoped, Estelita’s breath hissed a trifle impatiently as she swung about and disappeared down a passage leading to the back of the house. Giving herself a moment to school her features, Alexandra followed her, and saw with interest that the arched hallway overlooked the inner courtyard. A door at the end of the passage was Estelita’s destination, and without giving herself time to have second thoughts, Alexandra went through the door after the housekeeper.
She found herself in a huge, old-fashioned kitchen that was unpleasantly hot from the heat that emanated from an enormous open grate. Despite an open door on to a yard where chickens strutted, the temperature in the room was suffocating, but Estelita seemed not to notice it. She scarcely glanced at the girl who had followed her, before going to the oven beside the fire and drawing out a tray of loaves, golden brown and smelling deliciously. She set the tray on the scrubbed pine table that occupied the centre of the room, and then swung the oven door closed again with her elbow.
Alexandra made another attempt to be civil. ‘You make all your own bread?’ she asked, and the hou
sekeeper bestowed on her a scornful stare.
‘We have no shops here, señorita. We cannot—how do you say?—go to the supermarket, every time we want a loaf, no?’
Alexandra pushed her hands into the hip pockets of her cords. ‘At the convent, we used to bake our own bread, too,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t afford the supermarket.’
‘Convento?’ Estelita echoed curiously. ‘You were a novicio?’
‘Oh, no.’ Alexandra’s laugh was rueful. ‘I just lived there. I suppose it was a kind of boarding school. My father—my father sent me there when I was very young.’
‘Your father!’ Estelita’s moment of interest was gone. ‘The man who made Jason responsible for his son!’
‘No.’ Alexandra shifted uncomfortably. ‘No, actually, that was me.’
‘You?’
Estelita’s lip curled, and Alexandra half wished she hadn’t been so honest. But it was too late now. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You see, my father always wanted a son, so he called me Alex. I—well, I naturally used that name…’
‘To trick Jason!’ Estelita’s eyes flashed. ‘So you can come here, so you can make the nursemaid out of him!’
‘No!’ Alexandra was indignant. ‘I’m not a child exactly.’
‘No, you are not. So why are you not taking care of yourself?’
Alexandra heaved a sigh, looking about her helplessly, wishing Pepe would make a reappearance. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘oughtn’t you to take your complaints up with—with your employer?’ She refused to say Jason to her! ‘I—well, I’m hungry, as it happens. May I try some of your delicious-looking bread?’
Silently, Estelita supplied her with bread and butter, and a conserve made with peaches, which satisfactorily disguised the taste—which privately Alexandra thought had to be acquired—of the butter. There was coffee, too, strong and black, and highly aromatic, that completed a meal which, eaten in more congenial company, would have been very enjoyable.
Ricardo Goya appeared as she was finishing her second cup of coffee, and immediately Alexandra sensed the antagonism between these two. Ricardo greeted the housekeeper with a playful slap to her rump, as she bent over the basket of logs that fed the blaze, but her response was another of the vitriolic outbursts which had so marred supper the evening before.
Unrepentant, Ricardo turned to Alexandra, saying: ‘So—and how is our visitor today? You did not sleep well, that you should be about so early?’
Alexandra rose to her feet. ‘I expect it’s because back in England the time would be ten or eleven o’clock,’ she explained, rather awkwardly. ‘I—er—I gather you’ve all been up for hours already.’
‘Is that what she said?’ Ricardo jerked his thumb in the housekeeper’s direction, and then followed it with a dismissing motion. ‘You do not think I would leave the comfort of my bed so early if I did not have to, do you?’ He shook his head. ‘No, but it is true. Jason and I were down at the stockyards by five-thirty. We are—how do you say?—putting the mark on the beef, no?’
‘Branding?’ asked Alexandra doubtfully, and Ricardo laughed and nodded.
‘Si,’ he said. ‘Like this!’ and he thrust a poker into the fire and brought it out smoking to lay across Estelita’s back. The housekeeper jumped back angrily, and Alexandra’s hand went to her lips in horror, but the foreman was only joking, and his amusement rang out once more.
‘Qué, Estelita,’ he exclaimed mockingly, ‘you did not think I would brand you, mi incendiaria?’
Alexandra did not need a knowledge of the language to understand his meaning, and she was glad when he turned to her again and said:
‘Bueno, if you are ready, señorita, my orders are to put myself at your disposal, si?’
‘At my disposal?’
Alexandra, still scarcely recovered from his playful attack on Estelita, was taken aback, but Ricardo lounged against the table and said: ‘Si. You wish to see something of the estancia, do you not? Do you ride? If not, Jason says I must teach you.’
‘You?’
Remembering what Jason had said, Alexandra ought not to have been surprised, but this man was so—overpowering. In leather leggings, and a sheepskin waistcoat over a brilliantly woven scarlet shirt, he was more like a gipsy than a rancher, and she wasn’t at all sure she liked him any more than Estelita this morning.
‘Come!’ he said, and the housekeeper remarked: ‘Yes, go, señorita. I do not like the smell of pigs in here.’
Ricardo’s laughter had accompanied them outside, but once out of earshot of the house, he sobered and said apologetically: ‘Do not take any notice of Estelita, señorita. She and I are old adversaries, no? Her husband was my best friend, but she never liked me. I think perhaps because I always could see the kind of woman she was.’
‘Estelita is married?’ exclaimed Alexandra, interested in her surroundings, but intrigued by his words.
‘Not now, señorita,’ he denied regretfully. ‘Enrique is dead. She killed him. Oh, not actually…’ This as Alexandra turned horrified eyes in his direction. ‘But she is ambitious, señorita. She wanted money. And Enrique, poor fool, worked himself to death to keep her.’
Deciding this conversation had gone far enough, Alexandra pointed to the long wooden building ahead of them. ‘I suppose that is where the men sleep, is it?’
Ricardo shrugged, and his good humour was restored. ‘Si,’ he agreed. ‘That is the bunkhouse, no? Come, I will introduce you to Chan.’
‘Chan?’
‘The cook. You did not think Estelita fed the men, too? No. They have their own cook, and a very fine one he is, too. My son lives with the men, and he vouches for his ability.’
He kissed the tips of his fingers as he spoke, and Alexandra felt herself relaxing. He could be so charming when he chose, and it was good to be out in the open air after the stifling heat of the kitchen.
They were crossing the yard that was bounded on two sides by outbuildings, but away to their left the pasture sloped towards the river. Stands of willow and poplar trees grew in clumps along the river bank, and Alexandra could see two riders on the far bank just sitting their horses, apparently lazing in the early morning sun. Beyond, the mist was slowly rising from the hills that circled the valley, and the sky was shading from apricot to palest yellow.
She was unaware of how expressive her features were until Ricardo bent his curly head to hers, and said, ‘Is beautiful, no?’ emotion for once overcoming his mastery of her language. But when Alexandra smiled, he realised his weakness and clapped a hand on her shoulder, almost causing her to jump out of her skin. ‘A hat,’ he declared gruffly, indicating her bare head. ‘With such pale skin, you must always wear a hat. I will get you one.’
Adjoining the long bunkhouse, which lay beyond the storehouses, was the cookhouse. It was a squarer building, built of logs, notched at the corners and painted with creosote for waterproofing; it provided cooking and eating facilities for the men who worked on the estancia, with plenty of room for casual workers when they were hired. Most of the cooking was done on a huge, log-fired range, but there was a gas cooker for emergency use. Long wooden tables were lined with benches, and empty now, it smelled of the burnt steaks the men had had for breakfast. It was not an unpleasant smell, mingling as it did with coffee and tobacco smoke, and Alexandra really felt as if she was learning something about her new surroundings.
Chan, as she had expected, was Chinese, but she guessed his parentage had been mixed. He was taller than the average Chinese, and his eyes were not as narrow. Like Ricardo, he had an ample girth, which said much for his own food, and his smile was seldom long absent from his olive-skinned features.
‘Miss Tarrant,’ he said politely, when she was introduced to him, which evoked another of Ricardo’s hearty laughs.
‘She is not Jason’s daughter, Chan!’ he exclaimed with humour. ‘Does she look like him, I ask you? No, her father was the good friend to the patrón, si?’
‘Ah!’ Chan nodded. ‘Well, I am happy to meet
you, señorita,’ he added, with a distinctly American intonation. ‘You think you will like it here?’
‘I hope so,’ Alexandra smiled. ‘I like what I’ve seen so far.’
‘That includes you, Chan,’ jeered Ricardo, with his usual humour, but the Chinese cook took it in good part.
‘You’d like to stay for coffee?’ he suggested, indicating the pot on the polished range, but Ricardo shook his head now.
‘The señorita is going to show me if she can ride,’ he declared, and Alexandra wasn’t sure whether he was mocking her or not. ‘You can come and watch, Chan. You know a good gaucho when you see one.’
‘Oh, but…’ Alexandra licked her lips doubtfully, sure she would make a fool of herself on any horse Ricardo chose to produce, and Chan shook his head.
‘Some other time, Rico,’ he promised, and with a chuckle, the foreman followed her outside again.
The stables were nearby, and here Alexandra was introduced to the elderly Indian whose job it was to keep the stalls clean and the brasses polished. There were saddles hanging on the walls, big, cumbersome saddles, which she hadn’t the first idea how to fasten, but Ricardo ignored them.
The little mare he produced for her was a docile creature, much different from the stallion in the adjoining stall, who whinnied protestingly when they ignored him. The mare’s name was Placida, and Alexandra could see why, although she felt her first misgivings when Ricardo threw only a sheepskin fleece across the mare’s back before leading her outside. Hanging by the door were several of the broad-brimmed sombreros she had seen men wearing in Valvedra, and Ricardo planted one of these on her head before she emerged into the sunlight.
