The Paper Marriage

by Flora Kidd

  “I’ve been worried,” she said in English which like Owen’s had

  the suspicion of a Welsh lilt to it. “I thought something awful had happened to you. Owen, you’re late, and you’re never late as a rule.”

  “I know. We stopped at the racecourse. Brooke hadn’t been there. On the way out we were delayed. Where’s Diego?”

  “On the patio, fuming because he can’t start lunch until you come,” said Eva with a laugh which made her eyes sparkle. Sobering abruptly, she glanced rather shyly at Brooke. “Owen, your manners are getting worse. Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  “Oh yes,” he said carelessly. “This is Brooke. Brooke, meet Eva, the chatterbox. I hope Diego has some beer. I’m as dry as dust after the drive up here.”

  He sprang up the steps and went into the house and through the screen door. They could hear him calling in Spanish to his brother-in-law.

  Sensing that her hostess’s shyness was greater than her own, Brooke smiled and held out her hand.

  “I didn’t know Owen had a sister until to-day,” she said.

  Eva took the outstretched hand in a firm warm clasp and her shyness disappeared as she laughed again.

  “Then I’m one up on you. I had a letter from Aunt Daisy telling me about you. You live up to her description. I’ d have come to visit you in Caracas, but I thought I’d better wait until Owen brought you here or invited us to meet you. Sometimes it’s diplomatic to wait for him to move first. He isn’t fond of family interference in his affairs.”

  “I can imagine,” murmured Brooke dryly. “It seems to me he often doesn’t like his right hand to know what his left hand is doing.”

  This time when Eva laughed she threw back her head and showed her fine white teeth.

  “Oh, welcome, Brooke,” she said. “A thousand times welcome. You’ve no idea what a relief you are to me. I was afraid ... we were all afraid, when we heard that Owen had made another....” She paused suddenly, remembering the listening child leaning against Brooke. Squatting down, she put her arms round her little niece. “Welcome to you too, chiquita. It’s good to see you walking a little

  by yourself. Come into the house now.”

  “I want to see the horses,” said Megan.

  “You shall, later, but first we have to feed those hungry men, and Tomas is waiting to meet you. He’s been asking for you all morning, wanting to know if you’ll play with him and whether you can speak Spanish.”

  “Who is Tomas?” lisped Megan.

  “My little boy. He’s almost five years old. And then there’s Bonita, the baby. She’s only six months old, but I think you’ll like her. She’s round and cuddly and she smiles nearly all the time.” Reassured by her aunt’s friendliness, Megan went willingly into the house which had cool low-ceilinged rooms furnished with dark heavy furniture and bright scattered Indian rugs. Local clay pottery rubbed shoulders with fine specimens of antique Spanish silver and pewter on shelves and dressers, and original paintings by Venezuelan artists hung beside prints of horses and English hunting scenes.

  Lunch was served on the shaded pleasant patio and putting aside once again the jarring scene which had taken place at the racecourse, Brooke relaxed and let herself be absorbed into a happy family atmosphere.

  Diego was a short tough-looking man, a little younger than Owen. His mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry showed in his nut-coloured skin, partly bronzed by the sun and partly inherited, and in his high-bridged, slightly flattened nose and high cheekbones. Tomas, the little boy, resembled him, although his features were finer, more like his mother’s, and he possessed a twinkle in his clear, brandy-coloured eyes which Brooke was inclined to ascribe to a touch of mischief inherited from his Welsh forebears.

  It was Bonita who really captured her heart. The baby had a gold-bloomed skin and a froth of dark curls and showed one new tooth when she smiled. Unaware of the longing which showed on her face, Brooke helped to spoon sieved vegetables into the tiny mouth and was delighted when Eva let her nurse the baby and feed her with milk from a bottle.

  After lunch Eva, who had a madonna-like calm and a way of organizing people without them realizing they were being organized, insisted that Brooke and Megan take a siesta, which was her own custom. She took them to a pleasant guest room which was furnished with twin beds covered with brightly woven Indian blankets and which was shuttered against the hot afternoon sun. Where Owen had his siesta or even if he had one, Brooke did not know, but she found him waiting for her and Megan when, refreshed from their nap, they went out on to the verandah.

  Eva had produced a push-chair which had been used by Tomas. It was big enough for the tiny thin Megan to sit in so that they were able to wheel her to the stables to see the horses in which her father had a share. For the next hour they admired the lovely spirited animals and Megan’s day was made when, after giving in to her pleas, Owen placed her on the back of one of the mares which Diego used for breeding purposes and led her round the paddock.

  Afterwards Eva made tea in deference to her guest from England and she and Brooke drank it together in the long, cool living room while Megan and Tomas sat on the shining wooden floor and played with his toys and Bonita kicked and gurgled on a rug nearby. The two men had excused themselves, retiring to Diego’s study to discuss plans for racing their horses.

  “I can hardly believe that Megan is eight,” said Eva, watching her niece affectionately. “I can hardly believe that this time last year the doctors said that she might not live after that terrible crash. Owen says that you’ve worked a miracle for her. I hope you can work one for him too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not really sure,” said Eva with a little laugh at herself. “He’s very reserved about his personal feelings, in that way he’s very like my father, very British, but I’ve often had the impression that the past few years have not been particularly happy for him. Has he told you anything about Glynis?”

  “Nothing. His silence on personal matters is icy and impenetrable. All I know about her I learned from Daisy Meredith. She told me that Glynis was beautiful and that Owen and she were head over heels in love with each other.”

  “I suppose that’s how it must have looked to the Merediths in Britain,” murmured Eva reflectively. “You see, he met her while he was visiting them and they went about together a lot. Owen likes to have a good time when he’s on holiday and Glynis was only too willing to help him have one, but I think that when he returned to Caracas he forgot her. She was only a holiday affair.”

  “Then how did he come to marry her?”

  “She used to write to him, every week - reams and reams of words. I guess he had attracted her because he was big and strong and impetuous. He also spelt security with a big ‘S’.” Eva’s pleasantly deep voice had a dry sound to it now and her mouth twisted a little wryly. “Owen isn’t exactly poor and one day he’ll be wealthier than he is now. I guess she romanticized about him and about coming to live here. Distance, as we know, often lends enchantment. Anyway, the letters must have made an impression on him because within a few months of his return to Caracas he announced his intention of going back to England to marry her. And he did, without inviting any of us to the wedding.”

  I usually act fast in a crisis. Owen’s self-mocking comment made only that morning at the racecourse to Stella Cordoba echoed through Brooke’s mind.

  “He brought her home,” continued Eva. “She was pretty, not beautiful. She was small and fair, almost doll-like, with big baby blue eyes. She looked frail and helpless. Possibly it was that air of helplessness which appealed initially to Owen and awoke some deeply-buried feeling of chivalry. I think he married her because he was sorry for her, which isn’t a good basis for marriage, as you can probably guess.”

  Eva paused to pour more tea and then continued slowly and reflectively.

  “They moved into a luxury apartment in Caracas and very soon it was announced that Glynis was expecting a baby. We weren’t really surpr
ised, and my mother was very pleased because she loves children and she thought that once the baby was born Glynis would settle down and be a good wife to Owen. But it soon became obvious that Glynis was having problems. After Megan was born she became very neurotic. She resented Owen’s deep affection for the child and disliked him going away, which he has always done in the course of his work. Then the rumours started.”

  “What about?”

  “About Glynis’s strange behaviour, her jealous and possessive attitude towards Owen. People began to say she drank too much at parties. And then she began to go about with other men.”

  “What did Owen do?”

  “He stuck by her. He said she was homesick for her parents. He arranged for her to fly to England taking Megan with her. The plan was for them both to stay there six months and then he would go over, have a holiday with them and bring them back. He did go, but he came back without them - he never told us why. It was then that he met and became very friendly with a dancer. My parents are patrons of the arts, particularly music in which my father, being Welsh, is very interested. They often entertain performers in their home.”

  “Was the dancer’s name Stella Cordoba?” asked Brooke.

  “Yes. How do you know?” said Eva, opening her golden eyes wide.

  “We met her this morning at the racecourse. She seemed shocked when he introduced me and she mentioned something about a man called Julius having died recently.”

  “Her husband. He was a very fine man, much older than she. He was a politician in the government here. Unfortunately he developed an incurable disease and spent the last two years of his life in hospital,” explained Eva. Then she added softly, “I’ll give you three guesses why Stella was shocked when Owen introduced his second wife to her.”

  Brooke thought and could come up with only one guess as she remembered the stricken look in Stella’s eyes and the almost proprietorial way the dancer had looked and spoken to Owen.

  “I suppose she hoped that one day she and Owen might marry, when her husband died,” she murmured reluctantly.

  Eva nodded.

  “My guess too. Although as far as I know Owen has never given her any reason to hope. He tried hard to patch up his marriage to Glynis for Megan’s sake. He flew back again to England to persuade her to come back and I know he was seriously thinking of leaving the company and going to live in England if she wouldn’t come back, much to my father’s annoyance and disgust. But he and Glynis never met again. She crashed the car when she was running away from her parents’ home, having heard that Owen was on his way.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that,” exclaimed Brooke, going cold with shock.

  “It wasn’t very pleasant for Owen. He had to leave Megan there in hospital and come back here because my father was taken ill and everything was topsy-turvy in the company for a while. He used to see Stella often during that time. I think they used to comfort each other a little. He had lost his wife and she was losing her husband. Then she went away to stay with Julius. Owen went to see Megan as often as he could. It wasn’t an easy time for him. Then a few weeks ago he told me he’d thought of a way of bringing her back here. Off he went to England again. He met you, Megan is here and I’m hoping that everything will turn out well for you all.”

  “Thank you. You realize that it’s a marriage of convenience, on paper only?” said Brooke cautiously. She did not want Owen’s family to expect more from her than Owen himself had asked her to give.

  “You mean that you’re not madly in love with each other?” queried Eva with a laugh. “I guessed that was the case, and when I heard that Owen had married in haste for the second time, I admit I was afraid you might turn out to be like Glynis, helpless and silly, trapping him into another unequal relationship. But you’re not like her and from what I’ve seen to-day I’d guess that you’ll be a far better mother to Megan than Glynis was capable of being. As for love,” she shrugged her shoulders and held out her hands in a totally Latin gesture, “quien sabe? Isn’t it possible that a marriage has a better chance of survival if the partners haven’t been head over heels in love with each other at the beginning? Then there’s less chance of them becoming disillusioned, which is what happened to Owen.”

  “And to Glynis, but not to you,” remarked Brooke, her glance straying rather enviously to the chuckling baby and the slender black-haired boy, evidences of Eva’s and Diego’s love for each other.

  “Oh, no, not a chance of it happening,” said Eva. “Diego and I were friends before we were lovers. He taught me to ride when I was younger. He’s also taught me that real love grows slowly and has to be nurtured and tended just as if it’s a coffee plant. If you look after it, water it and give it the right amount of shade it goes on growing. If you don’t, it dies.”

  The sound of men’s voices coming nearer meant that the time for confidences was over. Bonita let out a little squeal and as Eva lifted the baby Brooke said quickly,

  “Thank you for telling me about Glynis.”

  “I’ve only told you the bare outline so that you’ll perhaps understand why Owen is a little cautious where the emotions are involved. Why she behaved as she did and how he really felt about her I can’t tell you. As I’ve said, he doesn’t like interference in his affairs, and sometimes my mother—”

  Eva broke off suddenly and said in a different tone of voice, “I hope you’ll stay the night with us.”

  “You ... you’ll have to ask Owen,” said Brooke, slightly confused by the change of subject.

  “Spoken like a dutiful and obedient wife,” Owen’s deep voice teased her, and she turned to see him entering the room. “What is it you have to ask me, Eva?”

  “Will you stay the night, please? It’s such a long time since we’ve seen anything of you and I’d like to hear all about our cousins in England.”

  “Would you like to stay, Brooke?” he surprised her by asking her.

  “Ooh, yes! Can I sleep in the same room as Tomas?” squealed Megan, as if sure her father would do anything she asked.

  “I wasn’t talking to you, little one,” Owen rebuked her gently. “This time Brooke has the last word.”

  Brooke met his slightly mocking glance across the room and thought of the twin beds in the guest room. Would Eva offer him a separate room for the night, or would she expect him to sleep in the same one as his wife?

  “Yes, I would like to stay,” she said quietly, and wondered at the way her pulse leapt and raced at the sudden blaze in Owen’s eyes.

  Later, after the children had been settled for the night, Brooke and Eva joined the two men on the verandah where they were smoking cigars and sipping rum. The countryside had been blanketed by the deep purple night. All that could be seen were the lights of the village twinkling in the valley and the faint outline of the mountains above which the stars hung big and brilliant like lamps. Somewhere on the hacienda someone was plucking at the strings of a cuatro and the continuous chirping of the cicadas in the bushes made a melancholy accompaniment to the wistful twanging music.

  Only half listening to the family gossip going on between the other three, Brooke rocked slowly back and forth in a rocking chair and let the peacefulness of the dark warm night seep into her. Beyond that barrier of mountains lay the rest of the big country. Huge rivers whose banks were clothed by dense jungle and whose waters tumbled over the edge of sheer precipices in shining thunderous waterfalls; high snowy peaks of rock where winter was perpetual; endless dusty plains, the llanos, baked by the sun during the dry months and flooded during the rains; a vast country of contrasts and extremes.

  Far south in the Gran Sabana, where spectacular mountains with flat tops and steep sides rose up out of the plains, her father had flown in a helicopter. He had gone like many before him to search for potential wealth hidden in the ground. Into that wilderness of rock, river and rain forest he had disappeared. Was it possible that he was still there wandering about, searching for some way back to civilization?

  The mus
ic of the cuatro changed subtly. A voice was singing. The melody was romantic. Brooke could distinguish one word - amor. Love. A song of love sung passionately by a man’s tenor voice to a great deal of throbbing accompaniment.

  “That is Jose Vincente serenading Anna-Maria Matos,” said Eva. “He must sing at least three songs below his beloved’s window. Then her father will invite him and his friends to enter the home and drink with him.”

  “I don’t ever remember you serenading Eva, Diego,” murmured Owen. “Seems to me my father gave you the run of the house without you ever having to sing for your supper.”

  “I cannot sing well,” replied Diego with mock seriousness. “That is why I chose to court the daughter of someone who is not Venezuelan.”

  “You can mock, you two, but I think it’s a lovely custom,” retorted Eva. “In these days when so many of the old ways are being swept away I’m glad that there are still people living in the haciendas and the farms who continue to practise them. Listen, he’s beginning his second song.”

  Heard in warm starlit night the message of the serenades came through powerfully. Strange longings began to tease Brooke. She glanced at the Franciscos. By the light of the outdoor candle flickering in its bowl on the small table she could see Eva, who was sitting on a small stool at her husband’s feet, leaning her head back against his knees, a dreamy expression on her face. And as her gaze lingered on that perfectly oval, madonna-like face she saw Diego begin to caress his wife’s hair, smoothing it back from behind one of her ears.

  Real love grows slowly, Eva had said that afternoon, and there was no doubt that her and Diego’s love was a flourishing sturdy plant.

  The sight of them so quietly contented, so confidently trusting in each other became unbearable to Brooke and she glanced away and caught sight of Owen’s face. He was lounging in the chair beside her, his feet on the verandah rail seemingly relaxed and contented also as he listened to the music. But the expression on his face was grim as it had been when he had driven away from the racecourse.