Flame of Diablo (22 page)

great care, and placed it neatly at the

foot of the bed. She would not be

wearing it again, she thought.

She dressed quickly and went out into

the courtyard. A clothes line had been

rigged up, and she saw her own things

drying in the sunshine, along with

garments that clearly belonged to the

children. As she stood there hesitating,

feeling the heat of the day beating down

upon her head, Maria appeared carrying

a clothes basket. Her eyes lit up when

she saw Rachel and she set the basket

down.

'Buenos dias, senorita,' she greeted her

cheerfully. 'Como esta usted?'

'Muy bien, gracias.'
It was the

conventional response, but not altogether

true, Rachel reflected as she walked

forward.

'Er—donde esta el senor?'

Maria's plump face took on a surprised

expression. She obviously expected that

Rachel would already know the answer

to that, and her reply, accompanied by

some excited gestures, was almost

incomprehensible, but Rachel thought

she was saying that he was not here, but

had gone somewhere with Ramon.

She frowned a little. She had expected

he would at least be saddling the horses

in preparation for the final stage of their

journey. She had told him how urgent it

was that she should reach Diablo. What

could have happened?

She became aware that Maria was

offering her breakfast, and made herself

smile and nod. She went into the living

area of the house and sat at the table

while Maria bustled around, preparing a

fluffy omelette. It was delicious, and so

were the crisp golden balls of maize

flour and cheese which accompanied it,

which Maria told her were
bunuelos.

Rachel drank two cups of strong black

coffee with her meal and gradually

decided she felt more human. In a way,

she was relieved that she did not have to

face Vitas immediately, for she had no

idea what she would say, or how he

would react when they did come face to

face again. The previous night had been

another humiliation, she thought bitterly.

So, he hadn't expected to find her

covered from throat to ankle in

voluminous white linen. Well, she hadn't

expected it either, but she couldn't

believe that she had looked so repulsive.

Clearly the packaging hadn't been exotic

enough to appeal to his sophisticated

tastes, she told herself. Probably he

preferred transparent black lace, which

veiled without concealing, and the

thought

made

her

feel

oddly

disappointed.

She saw Maria was watching her

furtively, and schooled her features. The

older woman was probably attributing

her rather wan appearance and heavy

eyes to a very different cause, she

realised wryly.

She glanced at her watch, and saw with

a start of horror that it was almost noon.

They should have set out hours before,

she fretted. Where was Vitas? What was

he doing? In spite of everything that had

passed between them, his primary

obligation was to take her to Diablo as

he had promised.

She wandered out on to the verandah and

stood staring up and down the dusty

track, but there was no sign of him.

Maria had followed her and stood

watching, her face creased with anxiety.

Rachel gave her a reassuring smile and

stole another look at her watch.

She spent much of the next few hours

wandering restlessly from room to room,

and out into the open air. The time

dragged, and her tentative offers of help

to Maria were, rejected with smiling

courtesy. She even tried at one point to

rest on her bed, but she tossed so much

that she decided it would be better if she

got up.

The aggravating part about it was that

Maria did not seem worried or even

vaguely concerned about the men's

absence, and her reply to all Rachel's

stumbling questions was a smiling shrug.

In the end, she went and sat on the.

verandah, rocking herself into a bigger

and better temper with every endless

minute that passed. It was about four

o'clock in the afternoon when it first

occurred to her that he might not be

coming back.

She put down the fan she had been

desultorily using to keep the flies away

and sat bolt upright.

My God, she thought, it can't be true. He

couldn't—he wouldn't just abandon me

here. Would he?

The fact that he had become almost as

necessary to her as the air she breathed

didn't disguise the other fact that she

hardly knew him. She gripped her hands

together to stop them trembling, and took

a deep breath of humid air.

Perhaps this was how it was with him.

So far and no further. Perhaps the

foothills of the eastern
cordillera
were

littered with his leavings, all sitting like

Patience on a monument and smiling at

very little.

Perhaps after a decent interval, Maria

would come and break the bad news to

her in sign language.

Oh, stop it, she admonished herself.

You're being ridiculous. If he was going

to leave you somewhere, it wouldn't be

with friends of his, especially one who

idolises him as Maria obviously does.

But nothing could alter the fact that he

had vanished without an explanation, she

argued. And his disappearance meant

their arrival in Diablo would be delayed

by at least a day.

She felt herself flush slightly. Perhaps he

had merely decided that he didn't want

her any more, and this withdrawal was

simply a tacit way of telling her so.

She got up restlessly and went back into

the house. Maria was sitting at the table,

a battered cardboard box in front of her,

and in the face of her tranquil smile,

Rachel felt ashamed of her own

agitation. After all, Ramon was missing

as well, and Maria clearly regarded it as

an everyday and acceptable occurrence,

and not the end of the world.

Maria beckoned and patted the bench

beside her invitingly. She was being

asked to go and view whatever Maria

had in that box. She felt guilty and

ashamed that Maria should deem it

necessary to have to provide some sort

of entertainment for her, but there was no

way in which she could convey these

sentiments to her hostess, so all she

could do was sit down and pretend to be

interested in whatever it was she was

being asked to see.

In the event, she did not have to pretend

the interest, because the box contained

photographs. She was shown Vitas as a

baby, Vitas as a strikingly handsome

small boy, and Vitas as an adolescent,

wearing his new disfigurement with an

arrogant courage which tugged at her

heart. The contrast between the carefree

child smiling at the camera, and the

disillusion of the young man, his face

already marked by responsibility and

suffering, was a bitter one.

There were other photographs too, many

of them family groups, and with Maria's

help she had little difficulty in picking

out his handsome dark-eyed mother and

pretty sister. The picture of his late

father affected her most deeply. She felt

she was looking at Vitas himself in

twenty years' time. There was a picture

of them together, Vitas on the back of a

pony and his father standing beside him,

with a protective hand on the bridle.

Rachel saw that Maria's eyes had filled

with tears as she handed it over, and

guessed it had been taken just before the

little family had suffered its harrowing

and frightening tragedy.

But it was the photographs of Vitas

which occupied her attention fully, and

she could not maintain the same interest

in the pictures of his sister that Maria

displayed with such pride—Juanita's

first communion, Juanita's wedding, the

baptism of her first child. But she had to

admit that she was a pretty girl with soft

smiling eyes, and no trace of the cynical,

sardonic expression which characterised

her brother.

At last Maria, sighing gustily, begun to

gather her treasured relics together again

to replace them in the box. Rachel was

helping her to collect them up when she

noticed a large manilla envelope lying

underneath them. As she picked it up to

replace it in the box, she saw the corner

of a large coloured photograph jutting

out a little way which she didn't

remember seeing. It was clearly an

oversight, she thought, as Maria had

shown her everything else her precious

box contained, and she began to pull it

out of the envelope.

'No, senorita, por favor!'
Maria

sounded incredibly agitated suddenly,

and she made an attempt to grab the

photograph out of Rachel's hands.

Instinctively Rachel recoiled, and as she

did so, she saw what Maria had not

wanted her to see. It was a big glossy

enlargement that had obviously been

taken just outside the
finca
itself, and it

was inevitably another picture of Vitas.

Clad in his usual sombre black, he

stared coolly and unsmilingly into the

camera. But he was not alone. There

was a woman with him, blonde and

petite, with the expensively well-

groomed chic of the rich American

woman. But she wasn't looking at the

camera with the normal tourist smile.

She was looking at Vitas, and if the

camera did not lie, it did not pity either,

for the expression of naked hunger on

her face was unequivocally revealed.

'Ay de mi, senorita!'
Maria wrested the

photograph out of her suddenly nerveless

fingers, and stuffed it back in the

envelope. She looked flushed and

unhappy, and guilty as if she had

revealed a secret that was not her own to

tell.

Rachel was oddly glad that she and

Maria did not share a common language,

and that there could be no apologies or

attempted

explanations

or

other

recriminations. It also meant she could

not be tempted to degrade herself by

asking Maria about the woman.

She knew all that she needed to know

already, she thought. Ramirez had given

her the outlines of the whole sordid little

episode back in Asuncion. And she

could fill in the rest of the details from

the photograph itself which, even in the

brief glimpse she had had of it, seemed

to have etched itself irrevocably on her

memory.

So Vitas had brought his American lover

here. Well, it made a kind of sense, and

explained why Maria had seemed

neither

shocked

nor

particularly

surprised by her own arrival. Perhaps

she was used to acting as lady's maid for

his women, she thought desolately, and

kept a selection of nightwear for their

use.

She rose abruptly and went to the door,

staring out at the dusty sunlight with

unseeing eyes. There was a tightness in

her throat and a burning sensation behind

her eyelids. She wanted to throw herself

down on the rough boards of the

verandah and scream and drum her

heels, because the thought of Vitas with

another woman, holding her, caressing

her, brought a surge of bitter jealousy in

its wake.

She had not known she could feel such

pain, or care so deeply.

But I'm not the first to feel like this, she

told

herself,

her

mind

returning

remorselessly to the photograph. It had

not been taken to mark the beginning of

their relationship, but the end, she knew.

And if she allowed herself to love him,