Sleeping Tiger (22 page)

“I was pretty amazed too, but of course it's wonderful what a pretty smile can do, even in Spain.”

“But what steps are we going to take?”

“Well, now you ask me, I would suggest that you go and get into that taxi and go back to London, and leave Selina here with me … No,” he halted Rodney's infuriated protests, “I really think this is the best plan. You can possibly pull some strings at your end and between us we ought to be able to keep her out of prison. And don't worry too much about the conventions, old boy. After all, I'm probably Selina's nearest relative, and I'm perfectly prepared to take responsibility for her.…”

“Responsibility? You?” He made a final appeal to Selina. “Surely you don't
want
to stay here?” Rodney nearly exploded at the thought.

“Well…” Her very hesitation was enough to convince him.

“You amaze me! Your selfishness amazes me! You don't seem to realise that it isn't just your good name. I have a certain reputation to keep up as well, and I find your attitude incredible! What Mr. Arthurstone will have to say, I dread to think.”

“But you'll be able to explain to Mr. Arthurstone, Rodney. I'm sure you'll be able to explain. And I think … while you're explaining, you'd better tell him that he won't have to give me away after all. I really am awfully sorry, but I'm sure, in a way, it's a relief to you. After all, you wouldn't want to be saddled with me, not after what's happened. And … here's your ring.…”

She held it out in her palm, the winking diamonds and the deep blue sapphire that he had imagined would bind her to him for ever. He longed to be able to make the grand gesture to take the ring, and fling it out over the terrace wall and into the sea beyond, but it had cost him a great deal of money, so he swallowed his pride and took it back.

“I am sorry, Rodney.”

It seemed most dignified to maintain a manly silence. Rodney turned on his heel and made for the door, but George was there first, holding it open for him. “A shame you've had such an unproductive visit. You should come to Cala Fuerte later on in the year when there's more going on. I'm sure you'd enjoy the water-skiing and the aqua-lunging and the spear-fishing. It was good of you to come.”

“Please don't imagine, Mr. Dyer, that I or my partners will let you get away with this.”

“I don't imagine so for a moment. I'm sure Mr. Arthurstone will have some bright ideas up his sleeve, and in due course I shall be on the receiving end of a stiff letter. Sure I can't run you to the village?”

“Thank you, I prefer to walk.”

“Oh well,
chacun à son gout.
It's been splendid meeting you. Good-bye.”

But Rodney did not reply, merely marched in silent fury from the house. George saw him safely on his way up the hill, and then closed the door behind him.

He turned. Selina stood, still in the middle of the room where Rodney had left her. She looked as if she were expecting another violent scene, but he only said, in his most reasonable of tones, “You ought to get your head examined, thinking you'd ever marry a man like that. You'd spend half your time changing for dinner, and the other half looking up all those long words in the dictionary. And who's Mr. Arthurstone, anyway?”

“He's the senior partner of the firm Rodney works for. He's very old and he's got arthritis in his knees.”

“And he was going to give you away?”

“There wasn't anyone else.”

It was a forlorn admission. George said, “Are you talking about Mr. Arthurstone, or are you talking about Rodney?”

“Both, I suppose.”

“Perhaps,” said George gently, “perhaps you were suffering from a bad attack of father-fixation.”

“Yes. Perhaps I was.”

“And now?”

“Not any more.”

She shivered again, and he smiled. “You know, Selina, I would never have believed it possible how much you can learn about another person in such a ridiculously short time. For instance, I know that when you lie, which is sadly frequent, your eyes get so wide and so big that the blue bits are almost entirely surrounded by white. Like islands. And when you're trying not to laugh at some outrageous thing I've said, you turn down the corners of your mouth and somehow conjure up a very unexpected dimple. And when you're nervous you shiver. You're nervous now.”

“I'm not nervous. I'm cold from swimming.”

“Then go and put some clothes on.”

“But I must tell you something first.…”

“It can keep. Run along and get dressed.”

*   *   *

He went out on to the terrace to wait for her. He lit a cigarette and the sun was hot on his shoulders, burning through the thin cotton of his shirt. Rodney Ackland had gone, away from the Casa Barco, out of Selina's life. Just as Jenny had gone, her ghost laid for ever, the unhappy affair exorcised for ever by the simple act of telling Selina about her. Jenny and Rodney were both in the past, and the present felt gay and good, and the future as hopeful and as filled with pleasant surprises as a Christmas package.

Below him, in the garden, Juanita was pegging out sheets, still singing happily to herself and apparently unaware of the drama that had taken place while she tackled the morning laundry. He was filled with a sudden surge of affection for her. No one knew better than himself that George's own personal road to hell had always been paved with good intentions, but now he promised himself that when the new book was published he would give her, not merely a presentation copy to sit on a lace doily, but something more. Something that she wanted badly, that she would never be able to buy for herself. A silk dress, or a jewel, or a fine new gas stove.

Selina's footstep behind him made him turn. She wore a sleeveless linen dress the colour of apricots, and sandals with little heels that made her almost as tall as he, and it astounded him that it had taken so long to realise that she was beautiful. He said, “This is the first time I've seen you properly dressed. I'm glad you got your luggage back.”

Selina took a keep breath. She said, “George, I have to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“My passport.”

“What about your passport?”

“Well. You see. It isn't lost at all.”

He started, and frowned in enormous surprise. “It
isn't
?”

“No. You see … well, yesterday afternoon, before I went off with Pepe … I hid it.”

“Selina.” He sounded deeply shocked. “Why did you do a dreadful thing like that?”

“I know it was dreadful, but I didn't want to go. I didn't want to leave you with Mrs. Dongen. I knew she didn't want you to write that second book. She wanted you to go off to Australia or the Gobi desert or somewhere. With her. So when I went to the kitchen to get the soda water out of the refrigerator, I…” she swallowed. “I hid my passport in the bread jar.”

“What an extraordinary thing to do!”

“Yes, I know. But I was only thinking of you, and what I'm trying to say is that there's no reason now why I shouldn't go back to London with Rodney. I mean, I shan't get married to him, of course. I see how stupid I was even to imagine that I could. But I can't stay here indefinitely.” Her voice began to tail away. George was being absolutely no help at all. “You do see that, don't you?”

“Well, of course I do.” He assumed the expression of a man who would go to any lengths to see fair play. “And we must do the right thing.”

“Yes … yes; that's what I thought.”

“Well,” he went on bracingly, glancing at his watch, “if you're going with Rodney, you'd better get your skates on, otherwise he'll be in his taxi and away before you've even reached the Cala Fuerte Hotel.…”

And before her incredulous eyes, he stood up, dusted the whitewash from the seat of his jeans, and the next moment was back at his typewriter, working away as though his life depended upon it.

It was not exactly the reaction Selina had hoped for. She waited for some sort of reprieve, but none came, and so, trying to swallow the lump in her throat and blink away a ridiculous burning suspicion of tears, she went to the kitchen, and took out the bread jar and emptied it, loaf by loaf on to the counter, eventually removing the sheet of paper under which she had slipped her passport.

It was not there. Tears, disappointment, everything was drowned in a wave of sheer panic. Her passport was really lost.

“George!” He was typing so hard that he did not hear her. “George, I've …
I've lost my passport.”

He stopped typing and raised polite eyebrows. “Again?”

“It's not here! I put it at the very bottom, and it's not here! I've lost it!”

“Good lord!” said George.

“What could have happened?” Her voice rose to a wail. “Could Juanita have found it? Or perhaps she cleaned out the jar and she's burned it. Or thrown it away! Perhaps it's been stolen. Oh, what will happen to me?”

“I don't like to imagine.…”

“I wish I'd never put it there in the first place!”

“You've been hoist with your own petard,” said George in sanctimonious tones, and returned to his typing.

Suspicion nudged at Selina at last, and she frowned. Surely he was behaving in an unnaturally calm fashion? And there had been a gleam in his dark eyes that she had learned not to trust. Had he found the passport? Had he found it, and hidden it, and never told her? Leaving the empty bread jar, she moved around the room, casually searching for clues, lifting the corner of the magazine, peering behind a cushion, as though she were playing a game of Hunt the Thimble.

She finished up behind him. He wore his worn, salt-stained jeans, and the back pocket on the right hip looked curiously square and stiff, as though it contained a small book, or a large card.… He was still typing full blast, but, when Selina reached out her hand to investigate the pocket, his own hand came round and slapped it away.

The panic was over. She laughed, in relief; in happiness; in love. She put her arms around his neck and nearly strangled him in her embrace and she said, “You've got it! You found it! You had it all the time, you brute!”

“Do you want it back?”

“Not unless you want me to go to London with Rodney.”

“I don't,” said George.

She kissed him, rubbing her own soft cheek against his rough, bristly one, and it was not smooth and scented with after-shave, but creased and sun-browned and netted with lines, as worn and familiar as one of his own rough-dried cotton work shirts. She said, “I don't want to go either.” He had written a full page of typescript. Selina rested her chin on the top of his head and said, “What are you writing?”

“A synopsis.”

“For the new book? What's it about?”

“The cruise to the Aegean.”

“What's it going to be called?”

“I haven't the faintest idea, but I'll dedicate it to you.”

“Is it going to be good?”

“I hope so. But in fact, I've already got an idea for a third book. Fiction this time.…” He took her hand, and pulled her around so that she was sitting on the edge of his desk, facing him. “I thought it could be about this chap, living in some quiet little spot, not doing a living soul a mite of harm, minding his own business. And then, along comes this tramp of a girl. She has an obsession about him. Won't leave him alone. Alienates all his friends, spends all his money, drives him to drink. He becomes a derelict, a social outcast.”

“What happens in the end?”

“He marries her, of course. She tricks him into it. There's no escape. It's tragic.”

“It doesn't sound tragic to me.”

“Well, it ought to.”

“George, are you, by any chance, asking me to marry you?”

“I suppose, in my warped, twisted way, I am; I'm sorry about last night. And I do love you.”

“I know you do.” She leaned forward to kiss his mouth. “I'm glad you do.” She kissed him again, and he pushed his typewriter out of the way, and stood up to gather her into his arms. Later, Selina said, “We'll have to let Agnes know.”

“She won't come out here and try to throw a spanner in the works?”

“Of course not. She'll love you.”

“We'll have to send her a cable. From San Antonio. This afternoon, if it's to get to her before Rodney Ackland does. And while we're in town, we'll go and pay our respects to the English padre and find out what the delay is. And we'll ask Rudolfo to be my best man.…”

“I wish I could have Juanita as a bridesmaid.”

Juanita. They had forgotten Juanita. Now, still laughing, hand in hand, they went out to find her, to lean over the wall of the terrace and call her name. But Juanita was not as simple as she sometimes appeared. Her peasant instincts seldom let her down, and already she was on her way up from the garden, erect as ever and beaming with pleasure, and with her arms outstretched as though to embrace them both.

 

ST. MARTIN'S PAPERBACKS TITLES BY ROSAMUNDE PILCHER

WINTER SOLSTICE

SLEEPING TIGER

ANOTHER VIEW

SNOW IN APRIL

THE END OF SUMMER

THE EMPTY HOUSE

THE DAY OF THE STORM

FLOWERS IN THE RAIN AND OTHER STORIES

UNDER GEMINI

WILD MOUNTAIN THYME

VOICES IN SUMMER

THE BLUE BEDROOM AND OTHER STORIES

THE CAROUSEL

THE SHELL SEEKERS

SEPTEMBER