The Runaway Visitors (15 page)

When she opened her eyes again—after how long a time she had no idea—she had the feeling usual to such incidents, of not knowing for appreciable seconds where she was or what had happened to her; and when she did realise, that she was in Charles’s arms, held securely against him, she promptly closed her eyes again, for she did not feel strong enough at the moment to be parted from him. She rested in his arms with the most complete sensation of comfort and content.

‘Victoria,’ he said anxiously. ‘Victoria.’ And she knew he had seen her open her eyes and knew she could delay no longer. She opened them again, trying to smile reassurance.

‘Are you all right, Victoria?’ he asked. ‘God, what a clot I am! Letting you stand all that time. Are you all right?’

‘Of course I am,’ she said uncertainly.

‘You look terribly pale.’

‘What happened? Did I faint?’

‘Yes, you fainted. And I, stupid fool that I am, was the cause of it. I should have remembered that you aren’t used to posing.’ He was carrying her to a big armchair, for there was no couch up here in what was so essentially a workroom; and he set her down very gently in it, standing beside her and looking down at her with concern. And in that moment, Victoria experienced such a feeling of loss at being released, at being separated from him, that she knew, without any shadow of doubt, that she was in love. All she wanted from life at that moment was to be gathered back into his arms, to have the right to be always there. Unable to resist it, she stretched a hand out towards him, and at once he knelt down beside the chair, taking the hand in his.

‘All right?’ he asked again, and she nodded her head.

‘Only a bit shaky,’ she said, glad of even the touch of his hand. ‘I’ll get you a brandy,’ he said, but she did not want him to leave her even for that long, and protested quickly that she did

not like brandy.

‘What
can
I get you, then?’ he asked.

She hesitated, loving him for looking at her with such concern, seeing closely for the first time the lines etched on his brown face, wanting to smooth back the ruffled brown hair with her hands. Then she said:

‘What I would really like is a cup of tea,’ and was not without guile in asking for that, for he could hardly turn her out in her present shaky condition, and waiting for tea, and then drinking it, could keep her here for quite a while longer.

‘Then tea you shall have, you poor child,’ he said.

‘Mr. Duncan, I’m not a child. I wish you wouldn’t keep calling me one. ’

‘You are,’ he insisted. ‘ A silly, silly child not to tell me you needed to rest.’ But he said it affectionately, reproachfully. ‘Maintaining a pose is an extremely tiring thing to do and I should have remembered it. . . . And if I’m not to call you a child, you’re not to call me Mr. Duncan. It makes me feel like your grandfather.’

‘What am I to call you, then?’

‘Charles, of course. That’s my name. . . . Now for this tea.’

He pulled an ornamental bell-rope, and after a few minutes, Miss Jameson appeared. Victoria was still relaxed in the big chair, but Charles was now back at the drawing board studying the sketches he had made.

‘We want some tea, Jeanie, please,’ he said. ‘This silly girl has just fainted and needs a reviver.’

Miss Jameson looked intently at Victoria, then back at her employer.

‘What made her faint?’ she asked. ‘She isn’t the fainting kind.’

‘I did, Jeanie.
Mea culpa.
I made her pose for too long.’ ‘Selfishness itself,’ said Miss Jameson, and went to the drawing board to look at the sketches. ‘Once you’re at work you think of nothing else. Just like men! But I will say they’re good. Especially that one.’

‘With your usual confident good taste, Jeanie, you’ve picked out the best. Now go and get the tea before Victoria passes out again for lack of it.’

Miss Jameson disappeared. Charles turned away from the board to look at Victoria again.

‘Your colour is coming back,’ he commented. ‘ How do you feel?’

‘Fine. I’m sorry I caused such a commotion.’

‘Please don’t apologise. It happens to the best people. Tough guardsmen sometimes faint on parade. ’

‘I don’t think I ever fainted before. ’

‘And I’ll see you don’t do it again. Not on my account, anyway.’

‘Mr. Duncan . . .’

‘Charles,’ he reminded her.

‘ Charles,’ experimentally, ‘you have a strange relationship with Miss Jameson.’

He laughed at that.

‘You make it sound like a guilty one,’ he said.

‘No, I mean the way she sort of bosses you, and the way you take it . . .’

‘We understand each other,’ he said mildly. ‘I know that she has a heart of gold, and she knows that I have one.’

Then Victoria laughed and he looked at her quickly. ‘What’s the joke, Victoria?’

‘The heart of gold is the joke. When we first came here, we weren’t particularly pleased at having to come and Miss Jameson seemed a dreadful old curmudgeon, strict and bossy and never very polite, and Sebastien and Amanda were both depressed. So I said, to cheer them up: “Never mind, perhaps she’s got a heart of gold ”, and that made us all laugh because it seemed so unlikely.’

Charles was looking at her with a speculative eye.

‘And what do you think now?’

‘Well, I’ve suspected for some time that there’s a heart there somewhere. Sebastien seems to have found it, anyway.’

Miss Jameson arrived with the tea tray and arranged the contents on one of the tables.

‘How are you feeling, Victoria?’

‘Fine, thank you, Miss Jameson. It was only a little faint.’

‘Do you want me to pour the tea?’ ‘I’ll see to it, Jeanie,’ Charles told her, and when Miss Jameson had left once more, he crossed to the tea table. ‘Victoria.’

‘Yes?’

‘You said you weren’t pleased at having to come here. Why was that?’

Victoria’s silence was only momentary before she decided to tell the truth.

‘We don’t like being posted off like a lot of inanimate parcels,’ she told him. She watched him pouring the tea. ‘In fact, we hate it. We’ve stayed in too many houses where we weren’t really welcome: or, if we were welcomed at first, people soon got tired of us. Even people we knew and liked, and we thought they liked us, resented the extra work we made and could hardly wait to get rid of us. And we didn’t even
know
you.’

‘Do your parents know you all feel like this?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know. I really believe that when people are so absorbed in their work, obsessed by it even, they can’t enter into the minds of other people. Or won’t. I suppose, if they really understood what we felt, their consciences might make them give up the work to stay at home. And that’s the last thing they want to do, so they keep their eyes shut.’

‘Don’t you understand, Victoria, that that is a very strong condemnation?’

‘I suppose it is,’ she agreed.

‘Then why, if you feel like that, don’t you do something about it?’

‘I almost did, this time.’ She smiled faintly at him. ‘ I almost disobeyed orders and stayed in London. When we were younger, of course we had to do as we were told, go where we were sent; but now I’m perfectly capable of looking after the housekeeping, and Amanda and Sebastien, too.’

‘I hope you didn’t all feel that you were unwelcome
here,
Victoria?’

She took the cup of tea that he was offering her and did not reply.

‘Victoria?’

She raised her eyes to his: clear, honest eyes. She would not prevaricate.

‘I can’t say we felt welcome. Miss Jameson was extremely off-putting; and you know that you were prepared to find us an awful nuisance.’

‘Oh, God, was it so obvious? My dear child—no, my dear Victoria, I apologise. You must forgive me. Why, believe it or not, I’m enjoying having you around. Now please tell me that you don’t feel unwelcome here now: that you don’t resent me, or resent your parents for sending you all here.’

‘As to that,’ said Victoria, neatly evading his demand, ‘there’s one thing that
I
am quite determined about. If I have a family, I shan’t leave my children, to go chasing off around the world. I shall stay at home and give them all the loving care they need;
I
won’t drop my children, like foundlings, on other people’s doorsteps, to feel humiliated or unwanted.’

‘Oh, lord, I said that, didn’t I?’

‘You did, to the Contessa and Margarita.’

‘But it was a joke, you stupid child. Sorry, I’ve said it again. It was a joke, Victoria.’

‘Not one I liked much. It was too near the truth.’

‘I seem to remember that the Contessa said what a charming foundling you were to find on one’s doorstep. I endorse her feeling, Victoria. I’m fond of my foundlings. Now am I quite forgiven?’

She could not help remembering that this was not the only wounding thing he had said, but she would not go into that now. She said, consideringly:

‘I’m not sure, Charles. I think you’re on probation.’ He smiled at her most charmingly, and the heart that had so recently given itself over to him swelled with fresh love for him.

‘Then I see that I have to behave myself. Shall we make a fresh start, Victoria?’ And there was no resisting that.

She smiled back and said: ‘Yes, Charles, let’s do that.’

She began to drink her tea, and they came down from such rarefied heights to more mundane matters; and when tea was finished, Victoria went away, reassuring Charles that she was now perfectly recovered, and leaving him to his work. She found Sebastien reading old motoring magazines on their terrace.

‘Had your tea, Sebastien?’

‘Yes, thanks. Lemonade and things to eat.’

‘Where’s Amanda?’

‘I don’t know. I came back from a walk and she wasn’t here. ’ ‘Were you at the farm?’

‘No. I don’t want to wear out my welcome. But I bet that’s where Amanda is. I told her she shouldn’t keep on going there, but she told me to mind my own business. At least, if I go there, I do something to help, but Amanda just gets in people’s way. She can’t keep away, you know, Vicki.’

‘I know.’

‘She’s got a thing about Giorgio.’

‘I know.’

‘Well, she won’t do herself much good by dogging his footsteps.’

‘She’s too young to have much sense, unfortunately.’

‘I hope she won’t spoil everything for us as well, Vicki. You know, they’re very busy just now, which is why I’m keeping out of the way. I have an idea that Mama Beltoni, and the old man too if it comes to that, are getting tired of the way Amanda runs in and out of the place, making free with it. ’

‘I’d better speak to her, I suppose,’ said Victoria.

‘Rather you than me. She’s got right back to that irritable touchiness she used to have. I thought Italy was doing her good, but now I’m not so sure. ’

‘No,’ said Victoria on a sigh. ‘ I’m not so sure either.’

‘If you’re going to talk to her, I’ll take myself out of the way,’ said Sebastien, and when Amanda returned, tired after her walk back from the farm, that was just what he did. Amanda had not had any refreshment, so Victoria went to the kitchen to get some for her, and took it back to the terrace.

‘You went down to the farm, Amanda?’

‘Yes. Anything wrong with that?’

‘Of course not. Only Sebastien says they’re very busy right now. He kept away because he didn’t want to wear out his welcome. Perhaps it would be as well if
you
didn’t go so often, just for the present. ’

Amanda, who had in truth been disappointed by her reception at the farm to-day, and the way they had ignored her and not even

given her anything to drink, when it was so hot, immediately took umbrage.

‘Oh, of course it would suit
you
if I didn’t go,’ she said bitterly.

‘Now what do you mean by that?’

‘Everybody can see you want to keep Giorgio all to yourself. The way you ran after him at the party . . .’

‘Don’t be silly, Amanda. ’

‘Oh yes, it’s silly when
I
speak the truth. You’re the only one who’s always right. But I know you try to warn Giorgio off me, I heard you telling him at the party that I was too young. Well, in a year or two, I won’t be too young; but you would get
your
oar in before then, wouldn’t you? It’s just not fair!’ And Amanda, who had started off with a fine flow of indignation, burst into tears.

It was not a new situation for Victoria. She had coped with so many of Amanda’s outbursts. They had not concerned young men. They had had to do with things that were often trivial, though they had certainly not seemed so to Amanda. Not being invited to parties when she thought she should be; not having new clothes for an occasion when she thought they were due to her; being sent off with other children to do or see things she thought were too young for her. They were nearly always sparked off by jealousy of some kind; as this one concerning Giorgio was.