Red Lotus (21 page)

"But you will stay, surely, for something to eat?" Isabella rang a bell for cooling drinks, and a platter of sun-warmed fruit was brought with them and placed on the low table in the patio. "Conchita has also been to say 'thank you,' but I persuaded her to ride back again before it became too hot. Sebastian has gone with her."

Felicity smiled her relief. Isabella had packed Conchita off home again with a suitable escort in the shape of an old and trusted family retainer.

But where was Rafael? He did not seem to be anywhere about the grounds or he would undoubtedly have joined them when he heard the car.

"Rafael has not yet returned from Santa Cruz," Isabella said, sensing the unspoken question. "No doubt he has business to do there this morning."

For the first time Felicity recognized the gentleness in Isabella. It was the quality she had sought to put a name to so often, the reason for Isabella's patience and her belief in the future. Because suddenly Felicity realized that the woman sitting facing her across the narrow table had such

a belief. This was her life. Somewhere, somehow, and at some time, there would be something to be made of it.

It was hardly an easy philosophy to accept and one that could only be made possible by Isabella's strong religious convictions, but was it also one that would work out in the end? Isabella de Barrios believed so.

Looking into the dark, calm eyes Felicity was humbly aware of her own shortcomings, her own doubt. She had doubted Philip and she had doubted Isabella, but unless she were set free from her marriage by the dispensation of Divine Providence, Isabella de Barrios would continue to honour it until she died.

Such was her way. Such had been her training all through life, and with it had come a tranquillity which was not often disturbed.

It was hardly ruffled now as she waited for her husband to return from the capital and Conchita to reach San Lozaro in safety.

"We won't stay for a meal, Isabella, if you don't mind," Felicity said when they had refreshed themselves. "Philip has gone to Lozaro Alto, but he may return and want the car."

"For the first time Isabella frowned and the fleeting shadow which Felicity had seen so often behind the lovely eyes was there again.

"I wish he would not go to Lozaro Alto alone," she said. "He is only reviving a memory which would be best allowed to die."

"You mean Maria?" Felicity had made sure that Sisa was far enough away not to hear. "You think that he goes there because of Maria?"

"Yes. He blames himself needlessly for her death."

"The rumours were so cruel," Felicity said sharply. "How can he be expected to live them down—to forget so easily?"

"Philip is not affected by the rumours," Isabella said slowly. "These he can--and does—discount. Rumour is a thing to be treated with contempt when one is innocent. It is the people who feed the rumours who strangle themselves spiritually in the end. No, Philip is not unhappy about what is said of him in some quarters," she continued thoughtfully. "He does not need to care about that. When a man is at peace with his own conscience he has no fear.

Philip's whole reaction is one of overwhelming regret, I'm afraid."

Because he had ceased to care for Maria before she died? Again the bitter question rose in Felicity's mind, and although she sought to thrust it away, it persisted. Neither could she ask Isabella to share Philip's secret regret with her. Somehow she knew that Isabella had given Philip some sort of promise and that it must remain binding. Yet, if Isabella knew that Philip had asked her to marry him

No, she could not presume that the woman who looked at her so earnestly across the table would betray Philip's trust on any account. All she wanted was to know the truth, not to be kept shut out from Philip's confidences.

Jealousy had no part in the promptings of her heart now. She wanted to be loved completely, to be trusted and given her full share in the life of the man she loved.

Was that impossible?

"I wish you would come to San Lozaro more often, Isabella," she found herself saying as they shook hands. "I promised my uncle to stay there for a while, and now Philip wants me to stay. He believes that I can help him to make a home for Conchita and Julio."

"They are the difficult ones," Isabella agreed. "You will have no trouble with Sisa. She is too like her father—your uncle. Conchita and Julio are Spanish—and the Guanche strain is noticeable in Julio."

It was a repeated warning, a pointer to the fact that the greatest trouble might come through Julio in the end.

Felicity sat back in the car and allowed Sabino to drive home to San Lozaro much faster than Philip would have liked. There was an urgency about their return for which she could not account, and when they reached the hacienda to find that Conchita had not yet arrived, somehow she was not surprised.

Half an hour later the man, Sebastian, who had been sent with Conchita from Zamora, arrived leading Conchita's pony and his own mule. He looked ashamed and apologetic as he tried to give her an explanation.

"The señorita commanded me to return her horse," he said haltingly, and then broke into a flood of rapid Spanish, liberally interspersed with the local idiom, which Felicity was completely unable to understand.

"What does he say, Sisa?" she asked, but the sight of Sisa's face was enough.

"He says that Conchita has gone. He says that she met someone who has taken her to Santa Cruz."

"Does he—say who it is?"

The tears were very near Sisa's eyes as she hesitated, thinking perhaps to shield her sister, and then she seemed to decide that prevarication could not possibly help and would only confuse the issue.

"She has gone with the freight—in the plantation lorry with the bananas," she admitted.

"But Conchita wouldn't dare—"

"Oh, yes! If she wanted to go very much," Sisa said, "she would go—even that way."

"But the lorry will go straight to the docks!" Felicity protested. "And how will she get back before Philip comes home?"

"She can't get back. The lorry will not return until tomorrow. But perhaps someone will bring her home," Sisa suggested. "Conchita would not have gone unless she was very sure that Rafael was still in Santa Cruz, or at La Laguna. There is only one way he will come back—only one road. If he has already left Santa Cruz, Conchita will meet him on the way."

"But it's madness!" Felicity cried. "Anything might happen." Then quickly her lips set. "Sisa," she commanded, "tell Sabino not to put away the car. Tell him to wait. We are going to Santa Cruz."

As quickly she gave her orders to Sebastian. He was to return to Zamora and say nothing of his interrupted journey to his mistress. Felicity explained that she would tell the Marquesa herself when next they met. He had fulfilled his task to the best of his ability. He could do no more. Accustomed to receiving orders all his life, he would not even have thought of protesting to Conchita when she had changed them so dramatically half-way to San Lozaro, and now Felicity thanked him and told him to seek some refreshment in the kitchens and return to Zamora before the hour of siesta was fully upon them.

For herself and for Sisa there would be no siesta.

"Don't leave me behind, Felicity!" Sisa pleaded. "I may be able to help you. Conchita has told me much about her

dreams. It is in her heart to dance for a living and she believes that Rafael is the one to help her."

"Not in this way, Sisa," Felicity said, her heart pounding as she mounted the stairs to change swiftly into a cooler dress and find a shady hat for the long drive across the island. "The right way is to approach Philip."

"Conchita fears that Philip would not permit such a thing," Sisa informed her gravely. "It would be against my father's wishes."

That was sufficient for Felicity. She felt that her hurried journey to Santa Cruz was completely justified now, and they were on their way within half an hour.

As the little towns and villages along the coast dropped away behind them she had thoughts for nothing but the road ahead. Fields of asphodels and patches of wild lilies spread prodigiously on either hand, covering the land like snow, but she had no time to pause even at the sight of beauty. Walls clustered thickly with bougainvillaea flashed past unnoticed, and the wild broom flared arrogantly against the stone-crested peaks unseen by her anxious eyes.

Lean, brown-skinned men stood in the fields, reminding her of Julio, and women with crammed flower baskets on their heads stood waiting for the local buses that would carry them and their fragrant burdens to market. Children laughed, tossing bunches of camellias into the roadway, shouting "Peni? Peni!", a cry, she supposed, that they were taught from earliest childhood, and high up on the ledges and crevices of the barrancos wild cineraria in every shade of lilac stained the grey face of the rock.

The elements of a patriarchal world still lingered here and poverty was without too harsh a sting. There was always the sun and the blue sky and the ancient, strong, enduring root of peasant life firmly fixed in the good red earth. Yet Conchita was prepared to thrust it all aside, to discount it and change it for a life of gaiety in some city club.

Subconsciously Felicity began to look into all the lorries they passed on the way, but Conchita had had a good start.

"We will see my father's name on the lorry when we come up with it," Sisa reminded her.

A proud name. A good name. A name which Philip was determined to protect. Felicity's anger with Conchita

increased with every mile they covered, but she was more angry still with Rafael de Barrios. Angry because of Conchita and because of Isabella, and in some subtle, inexplicable way, angry also because of Philip.

They passed four of the plantation lorries on the way to Santa Cruz, each with Robert Hallam's name painted clearly on the back, but in none of them was there any sign of her cousin. Could Conchita have changed her mind and returned by some other way?

There was no other way, Felicity reminded herself. Short of Rafael de Barrios' Mercedes passing them going in the opposite direction, with Conchita as a passenger, her cousin must by now be in Santa Cruz.

When they climbed on to the high moorland surrounding La Laguna a wind met them, bringing relief from the heat. They began to pass parked lorries by the roadside, their drivers lying beneath them in the shade sleeping through the siesta hour in the dust, and Felicity closed her eyes before each one, hoping that she would not read the familiar name of Hallam as she passed.

Conchita, of course, would have the necessary authority to command a plantation driver to press on to Santa Cruz without a rest. She would not want to spend the siesta hour perched on a lorry in the sun.

They began to drop down again towards the sea. Santa Cruz lay before them, stretching round the wide curve of its unbelievably blue bay, its yellow-washed houses with their red rooftops clustered thickly together over the arid slopes of the mountain behind it. Out to sea there was unlimited space. It was a town, Felicity thought, that seemed to stretch eager hands towards the sea.

They drove straight to the waterfront, and she bit her lip as she saw the groups of swarthy loafers on the quay. They had gathered in whatever shade they could find, true sons of a southern race, handsome, black-eyed, idle, whiling the time away and working only when it was necessary to earn a few pesetas for their daily bread.

Felicity's heart turned over as she looked at them, but there was no sign of the plantation lorry on the quay.

Sabino drove slowly at Sisa's command. They passed sturdy country women loading their donkeys and lines of bullock carts strung out along the cobbles, but still there was no sign of the vehicle they sought. The harbour was

full of ships, loading and unloading, and mostly the cargoes were bananas for the lands of the northern hemisphere which knew so little about the sun. Crate upon crate of them stood stacked high in hold or on deck and jostled each other on the quay itself. No wonder, then, that a single lorry might easily disappear!

Sisa leaned forward and spoke to Sabino, who turned the car towards the town.

"I think I know where to go," she said when she sat back beside Felicity. "We have come here before—with Rafael."

Felicity was silent. She did not know what she was going to do if they should meet Rafael de Barrios here in Santa Cruz, but certainly she meant to take Conchita home to San Lozaro with her.

They crossed the wide Plaza de la Constitución with its high cross symbolizing the name of the port and turned into a broad avenue bordered by magnificent trees. Sabino seemed to know his way and very soon they had pulled up before a large, secluded hotel set in a well-laid-out garden.

Sisa was beginning to look nervous.

"Perhaps I am wrong" she said. "But it is here that we have come before."

Felicity did not hesitate.

"We will have something to eat here, anyway," she said. "Show me the way, Sisa."

There was no need. A commissionaire in a white uniform was at her elbow, ushering them into a spacious reception hall, and almost immediately she became aware of Conchita.