Marianna (37 page)

‘And you? Oh, it is so wonderful to see you, Marianna.’

She stumbled out a few incoherent phrases about Dick living here now, that she was visiting him.

‘But you, Jacinto?’ she pressed. ‘Whatever has brought you to England?’ Then, glancing towards the house from which he had just emerged, at the polished brass plate affixed to its entrance, she suddenly understood. ‘You have been seeking medical advice. What is wrong with you?’

After a brief moment of hesitation Jacinto began to explain, but his words were drowned by the barrel organ which had been trundled to a new position and was grinding out a strident tune just a few yards away. Taking Marianna’s arm, he said into her ear, ‘Let us go somewhere quiet where we can talk, a restaurant, perhaps?’

‘My hotel,’ she suggested. ‘The Savoy. I have a sitting room there.’

Jacinto nodded and handed her into the cab, gave orders to the cabman and took his place beside her. Sitting together on the leather seat they held hands tightly and did not speak. For the moment the sheer happiness of being with him was all the emotion Marianna could contain. But anxiety came thrusting through again, and she asked, ‘Why have you consulted a doctor?’

Looking ill-at-ease, Jacinto muttered, ‘Oh ... it’s to do with my eyesight.’

‘You mean you need spectacles?’

‘That is a possibility, I suppose. Though...’ He broke off, and said dismissively, ‘I’ll know more when I’ve had various tests. Enough about me, tell me about yourself,
querida.’

‘About myself? What would you expect? My life has been bleak and empty since we parted. I even lost Dick, too. He could not forgive me for what had happened, and he couldn’t bear the uncertainty of not knowing who had fathered him. The thought that he had fallen in love with a girl who could well be his own sister was a torment to the boy. So he made up his mind to come to London and join Ralph Penfold in the firm — almost as if by the very act of doing so he could prove to himself that he was truly of Penfold blood.’

‘As though it were something to take pride in,’ said Jacinto bitterly.

‘Dick realizes that now, he is utterly disillusioned about the Penfolds. He has discovered a great deal to the discredit of Ralph, and as for William ... he recently learned things about the nature of the man whose name he bears which I could never have told him myself.’ Marianna briefly recounted her conversation with Cedric Kendall, and went on, ‘So now Dick is going to make a final break with Ralph. He is seeing him about it this very morning.’

‘That must be a profound relief to you,
cara.’

‘Indeed, yes!’ They turned from Bond Street into the thicker traffic of Piccadilly, their cabby adroitly nipping into a space ahead of a laden omnibus. ‘Tell me, Jacinto, how is Lucia? I know through your father that she is married now.’

‘To an admirable young man. He is Brazilian, like her grandfather was.’

‘And she is happy?’

‘Yes, for which I thank Providence. For some months I feared that she would never again know the meaning of happiness. She had withdrawn completely into herself, and kept begging me to let her enter a convent. I insisted that she should wait a while before taking such a step, and against every inclination of Lucia’s I took her about in local society. Then, shortly after Easter, she began to respond to the attentions of a young man of our acquaintance who had recently returned home after his law studies to set up in partnership with his father. When Felipo Cortes approached me and asked permission to pay his addresses to my daughter, I gave every encouragement to the match. I felt sure he would make Lucia an excellent husband and allow her to put the unhappy past behind her. They have been married now for nearly four months, and just before I left for London she informed me that she was to bear a child. This, I think, will set the seal upon Lucia’s contentment.’

‘I rejoice for her, poor girl,’ said Marianna. ‘It has lain heavily on my conscience that I encouraged the friendship between her and Dick ... that I was to blame for the tragic events which followed.’

‘The blame was equally mine,’ Jacinto insisted. ‘But we should not condemn ourselves too harshly when fate has been so cruel to us. Twice before I have come back into your life, and twice my coming brought disaster. And now this time...’

‘This time?’ She was frightened by the weight of sadness in Jacinto’s voice. ‘Nothing must be allowed to separate us again, my darling. Surely, as things are now, Dick and Lucia could accept our being united without too much censure?’

‘It is not our children’s feelings which concern me,’ he said.

‘Then what?’ When he did not reply, Marianna turned her head sharply to look at him. His eyes seemed clouded, evasive. In a rush of urgency, she said, ‘It is something the doctor told you, isn’t it? Something dreadful?’

Jacinto nodded, and said simply, ‘I am going blind.’

‘Oh no!’ The shock seemed to rob Marianna of her own sight. She was enveloped in a dense red mist.

‘It is a parasitic infection that I must have picked up from the sugar canes,’ Jacinto explained. ‘Sir Archibald holds out no hope of a cure.’

‘Then you must go elsewhere, my dearest. A more eminent specialist...’

‘There is no one more eminent. That is why I came to London.’

Her voice was husky, dry. ‘How ... how long before...’

Jacinto shrugged. ‘A matter of months. Sir Archibald said. Already my sight is much affected. That is why I failed to recognize you just now.’

They were sitting close together with their fingers linked, but this contact was not enough for Marianna. She turned and clung to him with a sense of desperation.

‘Thank God we met again, thank God! It was mere chance that took me to see Hilda, my old maid, this morning. Mere chance that led my footsteps along Wimpole Street. I might so easily have chosen another time to visit her, or wandered in a different direction. Oh, Jacinto...’

‘It might have been better if our paths had not crossed,’ he said dispiritedly.

Marianna gasped with dismay. ‘You cannot really  mean that.   We belong together, you and I.’

He shook his head. ‘I have nothing to offer you.’

‘Why are you so foolish?’ she chided. ‘Where is the fierce pride which I always exulted to see in you? When you were just a peasant lad in Madeira, did you believe then that you had nothing to offer me?’

‘I was not going blind then.’

‘Oh Jacinto, you are truly blind already if you imagine that such a thought would deter me. On the contrary —’

‘From pity?’ he demanded. ‘From compassion?’

‘No!’ she said, with a flash of anger. ‘From love! From an utterly selfish love that
needs
you.’

Jacinto did not answer.

The clock of St Martin-in-the-Fields struck the hour of one as they traversed Trafalgar Square and turned into the Strand. Three minutes later they reached the Savoy.

Up in Marianna’s sitting room, a coal fire was burning brightly and sunlight poured in through the windows, glowing warmly on the chrysanthemum wallpaper. Yet between Jacinto and herself a chilling constraint had developed. Laying down his hat and coat on a chair, he went to stand at a window and stared out morosely, though she knew he could see little of the river scene below.

At length, when Marianna could bear the waiting no longer, she said in an unsteady voice, ‘Must I beg from you, Jacinto? Must I beg you to tell me that you still love me?’

He spun round, and there was pain on every line of his face.

‘Oh God, of course I do, you know I do! I have never for a single moment ceased to love you from the time we were both children.’

‘Then if you love me,’ she said, ‘you will not fail me now. In the year since you left Madeira, my life has been a desert. To have seen you again like this, and to lose you yet once more ... I could not bear it.’

Jacinto came towards her uncertainly, as if still disbelieving. Then slowly he reached out and held her, drawing her close against him. She laid her head upon his shoulder and let the warm joy flood through her.

‘For what little I am,
querida,’
he whispered into her hair, ‘will you have me?’

‘For
everything
that you are, Jacinto, my own dearest love. You are all that I want, all that I shall ever need,’

But their embrace was interrupted by a tap on the door, and they hastily stepped apart.

‘It is Dick, I expect,’ Marianna said. ‘You had better leave me to explain the situation. This may not be the best moment to tell him everything.’

However, when she crossed the room and opened the door, it was not Dick, but a hotel page boy.

‘Genneman to see you, madam. Mr Penfold. He asked to be shown straight...’

‘That’s all right, young fellow-my-lad.’ Ralph Penfold, flicking a silver coin for the boy to catch, strode boldly into the room. ‘Well now, Marianna, I’ve come to —’ He broke off as he caught sight of Jacinto standing by the fireplace. ‘So you already have a visitor?’

She closed her eyes in protest against this cruelly ill-timed confrontation. What to tell Ralph? To offer him other than a plausible and satisfactory explanation would immediately sharpen his suspicions. The answer all at once came to her.

‘This is Senhor Dom Joao Carreiro,’ she said, with feigned casualness. ‘You may remember, Ralph, he was visiting Madeira on the occasion of your own last visit.’

His eyebrows went up. ‘The sugar planter fellow from Guiana?’

‘That’s right.’ Marianna concluded the introduction by saying, ‘Dom Joao, this is Mr Ralph Penfold — my late husband’s son.’

With dismay she watched the expression that spread across Ralph’s florid features, not so much surprise as gratified astonishment.

‘Well, well, well! You’re a dark horse, Marianna, and no mistake! Young Dick hadn’t an inkling, I’m sure, that it was this which brought his mother post-haste to London.’

She refused to be riled by the unpleasant innuendo. ‘Of course Dick knew nothing about Dom Joao being in London, because I didn’t know it myself. He and I met, quite by chance, only this morning.’

‘It was in Wimpole Street,’ Jacinto confirmed, stepping forward with his hand extended. ‘I had just summoned a cab when Mrs Penfold spotted me. An amazing coincidence.’

‘Amazing!’ echoed Ralph derisively. Then his eyes hardened. ‘You’re damned well mistaken if you think I’m going to shake the hand of my father’s murderer!’

Marianna caught her breath. As Jacinto began to speak, she put out a hand to check him.

‘You don’t know what you’re saying. Ralph.’

‘It’s pointless trying to deny it, my dear. I was given the clue by your own beloved son.’ He turned to Jacinto and made an ironic bow.
‘Your
son also, it would appear.’

‘What has Dick been saying?’ asked Marianna faintly, her hands clenched tightly together.

‘Oh, a great many things. He confronted me this morning like an avenging angel. He abused me roundly for being a man of business rather than a do-gooding saint. The boy grew very excited, I’m afraid, and in the end he burst out that he’d prefer to be the bastard son of a man he could respect than have to call
me
his brother.’

Marianna choked back the gasp that rose to her lips. Glancing swiftly at Jacinto she saw his look of dismay and knew that her own face must be equally revealing. Oh Dick, you foolish, headstrong boy, her heart cried out. What have you done?

‘Naturally,’ Ralph went on, ‘I was most intrigued to know where and when Dick could have met this lover of yours, Marianna — the man who had so effectively escaped the clutches of the police and apparently vanished from the face of the earth. Young Dick was in no condition to watch his words. It soon emerged that the elusive Jacinto Teixeiro and Senhor Dom Joao Carreiro, sugar planter from Guiana., were one and the same person! I came round here hotfoot, Marianna, I confess. I couldn’t wait to see your expression when I broke the news that your ugly little secret was a secret no longer. But as things have turned out, my dear stepmama, it is almost as if Divine Providence itself led me here this morning and delivered my father’s murderer into my hands.’

Again Marianna checked Jacinto from speaking by putting a hand on his arm.

‘Since you know so much, Ralph, you had better know everything. Yes, this is Jacinto Teixeiro and I am not ashamed to admit that we were lovers. But your father’s death was entirely accidental. He burst in upon us in the boathouse that afternoon like a man possessed, swearing he would kill us both, and laid about him violently with a riding whip. We did not intend his death, but during the struggle he fell and struck his head.’

‘You might just as well save the sordid details for the police,’ Ralph retorted.

‘But ... but how can you go to the police after all this time?’ ‘

His lips curled into an unpleasant smile. ‘The police will be delighted to have a satisfactory conclusion to this long unsolved case.’

‘Nothing whatever could be proved,’ Marianna pointed out. ‘There is no evidence of any connection between Jacinto and myself at the time we were both in England.’

‘Oh yes, there is! I myself saw you together, through the telescope. You were standing on the rustic bridge, and you were in a passionate embrace. I was most intrigued, and when my father arrived home that afternoon — a day earlier than expected — I told him what I had seen. It was no more than my filial duty, was it not? The pater paused only long enough to snatch up a riding whip before storming out in search of you, to catch you
in flagrante delicto.’

This was just as Marianna had always assumed, but she adopted an air of astonishment.

‘How could you expect anyone to believe that, Ralph, when always before you only claimed to have seen one person on the bridge — a man? You never made any reference to seeing me there.’

‘Surely a forgivable omission, for the sake of our family honour? The police will be very understanding.’

‘But what would you achieve, by revealing all this now?’ she asked.

‘Oh, a very great deal. The pleasure of seeing you two in the dock, where you belong.’

Jacinto interposed quickly, ‘Marianna, I myself will go to the police. There is no need for you to be implicated in any way.’ He glanced at Ralph. ‘Will that satisfy you?’