“You’d better bring one for the sake of politeness. I have to call on a man who fits together pieces of pottery and tiles for me. He’s so clever at it that you can hardly detect the joins, and you might like to come into his workshop.”
“All right. I won’t be a minute.”
Wings seemed to take her up the stairs and down again, and her eyes were bright and happy as she went out with him and waited while he made sure the door was locked. He put her into the capacious front seat of the car and himself got behind the wheel. They slid down the road into Montelisa and into a narrow street where they had to wait while a sleepy donkey boy persuaded his reluctant steed to take refuge on the pavement so that the car could pass. It was only four o’clock and presumably the senoritas and their young men were still occupied with their toilet, for the streets running out of town were’ deserted except for a stray dog or a boy on a rickety bike.
The country was the grey-green of olives, then the new green of vines threaded on an endless eight-foot framework. There were small gardens full of roses and lavender and carnations, groves of almonds, followed by currant bushes ran halfway up the mountainside. The car had to negotiate the narrow dusty mountain road which switched back on itself a hundred times, and at moments they seemed suspended above chasms of immeasurable depth and greenness, with here and there the riotous red blossom of a camellia tree. Once they met a mule cart on one of these precipitous roads; the driver was asleep in the cart while the mule ambled along on the correct side of the road. It was common sight, but on that dangerous mountain pass it made Linda shudder.
“Don’t worry,” said Philip easily. “They’ll get home all right. Mule sense is incredible.”
They hadn’t talked very much since leaving Montelisa. For some reason Linda had felt shy and careful, and by the time she had shed the sensation they were negotiating hairpin bends and she hadn’t dared to speak, partly because she was afraid of diverting his attention, and partly through an unaccountable decision not to expect too much from this jaunt with Philip. She did not analyze what she meant by “too much”; she only knew a peculiar but desperate uncertainty, a restlessness which was poised between happiness and unhappiness. All very extraordinary, for Linda Braden.
On one of the long downward gradients they had a comprehensive view of Valdez. The old houses were built on a slope of a hill and overlooked by a cathedral of ancient architecture. Philip stopped the car and pointed out the river, which meandered under a bridge whose foundations were Roman, and then he showed her where the old town ended and the new began.
“Years ago I did some digging in this district,” he said. “I’ve always liked delving into the history of the Mediterranean area, but that was my baptism.”
“Did you find any skulls?” she asked demurely.
“Not one.” He smiled. “The odds and ends we got were disappointing, not nearly so good as those discovered in Britain, but I was still studying and the very fact of turning the stuff over oneself was headier than champagne. If we have time I’ll show you the diggings. They’re overgrown now and courting couples make use of the Roman kitchens, but you can still see some of the earthwork.”
The car slid on towards the small town. At each side the twisted trunks of cork trees were magenta below the tender green of new foliage, and farther on women with their heads tied up in colored handkerchiefs snipped great armfuls of white heather for the Barcelona market. The heather was like a drift of summer snow, its perfume delicate on the breeze. Afterwards, Linda never thought back to that afternoon without remembering the white carpets between the trees and the spring of heather which someone threw, with a gay laugh, into the car as they passed. White heather for luck, she had thought. But was it, this time?
CHAPTER SIX
THE streets of old Yaldez were steep and cobbled in a painful fashion with fiat circular stones laid edge upwards. They wound tortuously, growing narrower and narrower, till the car came to a stop in a small square which was crowded at the center with stalls selling everything from beeswax to tortillas, and round its edges with the gay Saturday throng. The sun had dipped behind the balconied buildings leaving a sky of hyacinth blue shot with gold, and it was obvious that later this evening Yaldez would come even more violently alive, as did the larger towns.
“We’ll have to leave the car here and walk,” Philip said. “It isn’t far.”
Linda gazed rapturously up a side street teeming with children and gossiping adults. “It’s lovely to see it like this, but I must come here again, during siesta. It reminds you of a Cornish fishing village, except that it’s much more so!” He smiled as he locked the car door. “You’re a tourist at heart.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
He took her elbow, guiding her away from a man who shouted the virtues of the strings of onions which hung from a pole that rested across his shoulder. As they walked, Philip shrugged. “I suppose it’s an outlook you’re bound to have if you live in one country ail your life. In a way you’re to be envied.”
She looked at him curiously. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s a sad and incontrovertible fact,” he told her, “that anyone who makes a home away from their own country never really finds home again. Didn’t you know that?”
The sensation of being rallied by Philip was exhilarating. “No, I didn’t. Tell me more.”
“That’s all there is; the mere fact of settling elsewhere for only a few months alters one, if only slightly, and the home you go back to isn’t quite the same, because your values have changed. Once you’ve made the wrench from England, you can live anywhere, but you never again have that deep feeling for a home.”
“That sounds depressing. I don’t think I quite believe it.”
“It’s true enough, and it isn’t particularly sad, either, so long as you accept it philosophically. People and one’s work become more important, that’s all.”
“But you said that those people who stay at home are to be envied.”
“I said in a way! And certainly not by me. I can always rent a quiet cottage when I need one!” He indicated an offshoot from the square. “This is where we find Pedro’s establishment. He’s a great chap and a marvel with his hands. He’s done some miraculous jobs for me.”
Linda would have liked to pursue the other topic but Philip, apparently, had already forgotten it, and there was, besides, the chancy business of going up the street, when everybody else was bent on reaching the square in the shortest possible time. Linda was goodhumoredly jostled, and she felt Philip’s hand leave her elbow and slide firmly round her waist. For a second she had the startling and rather frightening impulse to lay her hand over his and keep it there; involuntarily she looked at him, and her heart fell a little because he was no different. The grey eyes were as impenetrable as ever, the jaw as inflexible and his smile as aloof. A trifle vexedly she wondered whether he had ever throbbed at the feel of a woman’s waist under his hand; then she was appalled at her own thoughts. What in the world was happening to her!
Pedro’s shop was one of those fascinating emporiums in which one could browse for an hour and come out with a genuine seed-pearl brooch, a beautiful lady constructed of exquisite handmade lace, or a hundred and one other articles all fashioned in the town of Yaldez and many of them by Pedro himself. Most of his stuff was bought from him at wholesale prices and sold in the tourist shops of Barcelona and elsewhere, but Valdez, too, had a small share in the tourist trade, and Pedro augmented his income by doing tricky repairs to china and delicate furniture; he even repaired dolls and other toys.
The only person in the shop when Philip and Linda entered it was a massive woman in black who overflowed a small carved chair of Pedro’s making. Philip addressed her in Spanish with a mixture of courtesy and camaraderie. The woman’s face creased into a fat smile and she got up. Quite what she said Linda could not fathom, but her last sentence was addressed to them both, as she indicated a chair and used the word “eposa.”
&nb
sp; Why Linda should have caught that word and translated it so swiftly is one of the mysteries that govern the behavior of young women. She colored. The woman chuckled softly and withdrew, promising that she would send Pedro to see the senor. Philip made no sign at all that he had even noticed the woman call Linda his wife.
He picked up a queer little figure made from painted almonds and hard red berries. “Cute, isn’t it? I suppose one day it will gather dust on someone’s mantelpiece in England or America. If you’re buying mementoes to take home get them here in Valdez; they’re half the price of those in Barcelona and nearer their place of origin.” He moved closer to her, examining over her shoulder the velvet-covered board scattered with dress ornaments at which she was gazing. “Do you like the spray of seed-pearl flowers? Or the miniature set in jade?”
She was saved an answer by the appearance of Pedro, who was short and swarthy, and had patently got into his best jacket in a hurry, for his trousers were of workaday velveteen and grey at the knees. His hands, Linda saw at once, were really beautiful: the fingers small and bony, the whole hand fine and compact.
“Ah, senor!” he exclaimed. And he evidently knew more about Philip than his wife had, for he added, “Buenos dias, senorita. Please be seated.”
After removing a basket of colored balls, a couple of unframed etchings, a roll of bright rugs and an assortment of baskets, he revealed a deep drawer, which he opened. From its depths he lifted, one by one, several faience tiles, all of which except one looked perfect. From his pocket Philip took a magnifying glass, which he applied to the patterned, glazed surfaces. Pedro looked on, anxiously.
“They’re an expert job,” Philip pronounced. “This one,” pointing to a tile patterned in blue-green leaves on white, “was in nearly a hundred pieces. You have some patience, Pedro.”
The Spaniard shrugged and smiled his thanks for the compliment. “It comes easy to one who has always worked with small things, senor. They were artists, those Arabians of bygone days. These tiles go to England?”
Philip nodded. “They’ll have to be well packed.”
“I will pack them for the senor.” He indicated the single incomplete tile. “It was a pity about this because the design is perfect, but perhaps next year the rest of it will be found.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Philip. “The others are fine examples.”
“If the senor will excuse me I will take these for packing. I have boxes and shavings at the back.”
“The things are so precious that I think I’ll go with you, and help.” He looked at Linda and seemed to give her the suspicion of a wink. “Choose something while I’m gone, so that when you’re back in England you’ll be able to say, “That came from a place called Valdez; I went there with a chap who digs in the Middle East, and if you’ll give me a minute or two I’ll remember his name’.”
She smiled back and her heart gave a short sharp pull. When he had gone the cluttered walls and counter in the tiny shop seemed to press in and smother, and driven by a need for mental air she wandered to the door and up the stone step on to the cobbles. The street was so narrow that women sitting on opposing balconies overhead could hold normal conversation; indeed they could have shaken hands. The one-way pedestrian traffic continued, women and their husbands and trails of children from hovels at the end of the town, a group of young men, singing or strumming, and a bevy of peasant girls so strikingly beautiful without make-up that Linda was annoyed with the male element for taking them for granted.
A diversion appeared. This time it was a much larger group of both men and girls, all of them well-dressed and more hilarious than any who had gone before. Students, guessed Linda. Possibly one of them was the son of a local hidalgo, who had brought a crowd of friends in from Barcelona for the weekend. They were approaching in a double line strung out across the street and hooking into their ranks anyone who got in the way. Linda, smiling at their noise and gaiety, would have stepped back into the shop had she had time. But a young man of much daring swept her round between himself and his friend.
“Tourista!” he cried, and followed this up with a spate of merry but courteous badinage in his own tongue.
Linda’s reaction, of course, was typically English. Not for anything would she have offended the young Spaniards, so she laughed and protested and tried to break through their ranks. Unfortunately they were tailed by doughty duennas, and for several minutes she had no option but to move with the mass down to the square. Once there, she thought, it would be easy to disentangle herself and run back to Pedro’s shop.
It was almost dark, and lanterns illumined the seething square. To the music of a barrel-organ a number of children danced the traditional Catalan Sardana and shouted for centesimos while they performed. The balconies were crammed with all sorts of people drinking manzanilla and eating sausages and torta, and the vendors of food and trinkets, the shoe-blacks and newsboys yelled above the music and the clatter. Saturday night in Valdez was obviously bedlam.
Linda was halfway round the square before she could turn back. She had a sudden vision of Philip finding her gone and growing coldly angry, and the vision was so horrid that instead of making her way by the long route, round the outside edge of the square, she fought through the throng. Then she met a complication—a donkey cart loaded with green maize cobs for roasting at one of the braziers.
Quite how it happened she could never afterwards have said. At one moment she could smell the fresh green cobs and see the silky brown tassels like a pattern in the lantern-light, and the next she was numb and stilled, with a most dreadful pain stealing all over her foot. It didn’t seem possible that the toes of her left foot had been run over by the iron-clad wheel of the laden cart.
For a minute she panicked. She called, “Philip! Philip!” sharply and in breaking tones, but no one took the slightest notice of her, and she thought, almost hysterically, that if one fell dead they would bustle on with their evening’s enjoyment over one’s prone body.
To walk was stark agony, but she could not remain where she was. By degrees she reached the rim of the square, and there in the shadows she rested back against a wall, with her eyes closed and a dew at her temples. When at last she could look down at her foot it was not nearly the appalling mess she had imagined. The straps of the white sandal were distorted and dirty and the skin of her toes had broken to show a scattering of blood, but it was still a foot, and whole. She ought to be able to walk.
By now it was quite dark and the side streets fairly empty. She hobbled from the square with overwhelming relief, but almost at once she knew this was not the street she sought, because the single shop was festooned with cheap clothing. The very thought of casting around till she did reach Pedro’s caused a sickening lurch of the heart. Philip would know by now that she was missing. He would look for her. Where? In a well-lit thoroughfare her white frock might have been conspicuous among the brilliant reds and greens and the black of the older women. In Valdez she was anonymous.
The car, she thought suddenly. Yes, that was it. She would go to the car, and eventually Philip would go there, too. She had only to return to the square, and, staying close to the wall, move round till she came to the wider road by which they had entered the town. The car had been left there, against the curb. It should be easy.
Necessarily, her movements were slow and painful. The square was small, yet it took Linda all of twenty minutes to reach the other side of it. And when she did, she stared stupidly at the space where the car had stood. A charm-seller was there now, setting out his wares on a paper-covered orange box.
She felt witless, bereft. No car, no Philip ... But both must be somewhere. On the point of putting a question to the charm-seller, she checked herself. He wouldn’t understand her English. No one did, properly. The visitor could buy all he wished because the language of money is universal; he could also find his way about by spelling out the name of the street or building he wanted; but a query upon something more obscure would cause raised s
houlders, a shaken head, and regrets. “Lo siento, senorita.”
So Linda stood there, forlornly, one hand on the wall behind her while she looked sometimes up the road and occasionally at the milling people. Earlier, she had promised herself a second trip to Yaldez; now, she knew she would never come here again for fear of recapturing this feeling of sick frustration and the hot pain which had possession of almost the whole of her foot.
When the car did glide down the road and stop only a yard away, she stared, unbelieving. But Philip’s blazing eyes were real enough, so was the hand with which he roughly pushed her into her seat.
“What the hell do you think you’re up to!” he demanded through closed teeth. Without waiting for her reply he let in the clutch. “I’ve never been so scared in my life. It was a crazy way to behave!”
She didn’t speak. Something slipped on the back seat and she guessed it was the box of precious tiles, flung there because he wouldn’t give himself time to stow it properly. If anything happened to the beastly things he would blame her. They were moving at speed.’ Chickens scattered from the roadside and a mule rested in his shafts and looked surprised. Then Valdez was behind them and darkness closed in.
His face was set, his glance on the road ahead, and he spoke with taut anger. “What made you clear off like that?” Not very clearly she explained about the students and the way they had dragged her to the square. Her sensitive nerves felt him relent just slightly as he comprehended her difficulty.
Still very cool, he said, “You shouldn’t have gone outside the shop. There was plenty in there to interest you and I wasn’t gone ten minutes.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
After a moment he gave her a keen sideways glance. “Did you get frightened?”
“Not really. I knew you’d find me, some time.”
“I scoured the town. I was so afraid you’d been hooked into some...” He let it rest there. At length he added, “Rather taken the shine off, hasn’t it?”
A Cottage in Spain Page 9
