The Runaway Visitors (23 page)

Her decision made, she went back to impart it to her sister. It would be best to go before Charles returned. Otherwise, he might feel in duty bound to insist on their staying, and Victoria would not be able to tell what his real wishes were. If they had already left, it would save a deal of unwanted argument.

‘Amanda,’ she said, ‘the time has come for us to go back to England. ’

Amanda looked up in astonishment.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Have you heard from Mother and Dad?’ ‘No, not since that letter about ten days ago. No, I just feel sure we’ve outstayed our welcome, which is not a feeling I like; and it seems we’re upsetting Charles’s plans, and I think it better if we go while he’s still in Paris.’

‘That makes the third of us running away,’ commented Amanda.

‘I’m not running away. I shall tell Miss Jameson we’re going and I shall leave a letter for Charles. It’s been a long visit, and any longer would make it an intrusion.’

‘Yes, I suppose if he’s engaged, there’ll be a lot going on. But what about Giorgio?’

‘What about him?’

‘I won’t be able to see him. ’

‘You can write to him, as often as you please. And visiting Firenze is not like going to the moon.’

‘Aren’t
you
sorry to be leaving him?’ asked Amanda curiously.

‘Giorgio?’ Victoria looked straight at her sister. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I’m fond of him, I think he’s a darling, but I can live quite happily without him. ’

‘Well, I can’t,' said Amanda, ‘ and I’m not going to. But I’ll come back with you to England, for the time being. It looks as if Giorgio is going to be in that hospital for quite a while. ’ But the fact that Victoria could be so cool about Giorgio gave Amanda a wonderfully contented feeling. She had not liked to think that her beautiful sister was a rival. ‘When do you want to go?’ she asked.

‘Tomorrow morning is as good a time as any.’

‘Without even saying goodbye?’

‘We can say goodbye in a letter. Oh, I know it’s not very gracious, but it will save a lot of argument. We’ll get packed up to-night, Amanda, after supper; and I’ll tell Miss Jameson in the morning.’

‘I wonder what
she
will feel about it. She didn’t want us here at first, but I bet she misses us when we go.’ And Victoria thought that might well be so.

When the time came to tell Miss Jameson, however, that lady was her usual inscrutable self. Victoria gave no reasons for going, beyond the fact that she thought the visit had lasted long enough, and that they would not wear out their welcome. ‘Hmmm, so you’ve chickened out,’ said Miss Jameson.

‘I’d hardly call it that. ’

‘I don’t know what else it is, running off when he’s in Paris. ’ ‘Well, please don’t disturb him by letting him know we’ve gone. We dragged him back before, and I would appreciate it if you’d let him finish his business this time. After all, there’s no need for anxiety. We drove down, and nobody was perturbed. So we drive back.’

‘Very good,’ said Miss Jameson. ‘You don’t want me to let him know. I’ll give him his letter when he gets back, and then
I
shall bear the brunt of it for letting you go.’

There was a lengthy pause. Then Victoria said: ‘You’ve been very, very kind to us, Miss Jameson. We have appreciated it, honestly. We’ve given you a lot of extra work.’

‘You’ve been useful about the place yourself, Victoria. I daresay I shall miss you—all. ’

Victoria leaned forward and kissed Miss Jameson’s cheek. ‘Perhaps we’ll see you again some time.’

‘Ay, well, remember me when you settle down yourself and need a housekeeper.’

‘You mean when Mr. Duncan gets married.’

‘I mean
if
he gets married. I’d have expected
you
to have a bit more fight in you, myself. ’

Victoria stared at Miss Jameson in puzzlement.

‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked.

‘Think it over, Victoria, think it over,’ said Miss Jameson. Victoria thought it over, worrying the subject almost to death. As she drove the autoroute northward, her mind kept reverting to Miss Jameson’s oracular words. As she put her head on the pillow in her room in the first strange hotel, and then the second hotel, she went over and over the possibilities. What was she supposed to fight about? What had she thrown away by leaving Charles’s house? Why had Miss Jameson said:
‘If
he gets married?’ But then she mustn’t imagine that Miss Jameson was in Charles’s or Margarita’s confidence—although she did seem to see clearly and far with that dispassionate eye of hers.

They crossed the Channel on the car ferry and drove the London road homeward. They came to the house to find a huge pile of mail swamping the doormat, both front and back gardens dismally overgrown, and a trail of confusion where Sebastien had prepared himself for his camping trip. Dust and an air of neglect represented a challenge which Victoria would not take up until next morning. She had brought in a loaf, milk, butter and eggs, but the fridge was woefully empty, and she realised that they were going to miss Miss Jameson’s meals, served so well and so punctually and always so delicious. The reins of housekeeping must be taken up again: but not this evening.

‘Let’s go out to supper this evening, Amanda,’ she said. ‘We seem to have lots of cash in hand. Work can wait until tomorrow. ’

Work was the one thing, in fact, that kept her from brooding. Each morning she swept through the house with vacuum cleaner and polisher, dusters and polish, pressing Amanda into service too. After an hour or so of this, she went to the shops, then prepared a light lunch. In the afternoon she worked in the garden, swopping grass herself to bring it down low enough for the mower, weeding the beds, trimming the edges. Plants put out from the conservatory before they left for Italy were trimmed up and taken back in again, fed and watered. Victoria rang up her friends and arranged a buffet supper party for the first Saturday, trying not to remember Charles’s party with its elegant men and women, or Giorgio’s with its fun-loving young Italians. And when they came on the Saturday, all so delighted to see Victoria back, she found to her dismay that they all seemed too young for her now. Unconsciously, she had raised her sights in Italy. It was an older man who appealed to her now. But she gave every appearance of enjoying herself, as did Amanda; but afterwards as they were clearing away and washing up, Amanda said:

‘They do seem to giggle an awful lot, about things that aren’t really funny, Victoria.’ So perhaps Amanda had raised her sights too.

She had written to her parents about her return, and had written to the address she had for Sebastien. She wanted to write again to Charles, for now she felt that the letter she had left behind had not said all she wanted to say. Besides, she knew that there was an ulterior motive here: she wanted to keep in touch with him. She kept composing the letter in her head, but the fact that Margarita might have been speaking exact truth kept her from writing it down.

For, if all that Margarita had said was right, they might both by now be feeling greatly relieved, and thankful that they could settle down to the life that had been disturbed by three unwanted guests; and when Victoria’s letter arrived, they might smile indulgently at reading between the lines her desire to keep in touch. So she continued not to write it.

One afternoon, she was at the bottom of the long garden swopping grass around the trunks of the trees that gave them privacy from the garden opposite when Amanda called her from the house.

‘Vicki, Vicki, you’re wanted!’

‘ W ho is it?’ called Victoria, but Amanda had disappeared back into the house, and Victoria, thinking she was wanted on the telephone, dropped her sickle and hurried inside. There, standing by the sitting room window where he had been watching her return, was Charles! Amanda, her hair dripping water on to the towel around her shoulders, said:

‘You’ll have to excuse me, I’m washing my hair. I wasn't going to answer the door, but Charles rang and rang and rang . . .’ and she hurried from the room, closing the door behind her.

‘Well,’ said Charles, ‘what do you mean by all this, Victoria?’ He looked and sounded quite dispassionate. Victoria thought he was making a last bow to conscience by coming here, making sure that they were all safe and sound. Or perhaps he even had business in London and was killing his two birds.

‘I told you in my letter. I thought we’d stayed long enough. I’m a free agent, aren’t I?’

‘I should have liked to think you weren’t entirely free; that there were a few threads tying you to Tuscany. Didn’t you owe me more than a mere letter to hospitality? Your continued help with the Madonna, for instance?’

‘Oh, is
that
your reason for coming? You miss your model?’

‘ N o . That was not my reason. . . . May I sit down?’

‘I’m sorry.’ This brought Victoria quickly to her senses. ‘Of course, sit down, and I’ll make you some tea.’

‘Don’t bother about tea, not just now. Victoria, there’s something here that I don’t understand. I thought you were settling down very well in my house. I grant that there wasn’t a great deal to keep Sebastien there when he had a tempting opportunity here; and Amanda’s little excursion was no more than that—a rather silly little adventure which we can all forget about now. But you—I expected more from you than a curt letter of good-bye and a hurried, unreasonable departure. Now what went wrong?’

Victoria was silent for long moments. This did not sound like a demand for privacy, which Margarita had said was so important to him. This did not sound like salving his conscience. There was something sincere about his whole approach that was so different from Margarita’s that Victoria did not see how two such people could be compatible. She said at last:

‘Charles, tell me honestly. Isn’t it nicer for you to have your

house to yourself? not to have to bother about us?’

He looked at her directly, in her jeans and her open necked shirt with the sleeves rolled up above her elbows; with her cheeks flushed like roses by her exertions in the garden, and her glorious hair tied back by a floppy ribbon; and suddenly he smiled at her, such a warm and intimate smile that Victoria felt herself melting in the glow of it.

‘No, I can’t say it’s nicer, Victoria, Why, I was getting used to you all about the place. It was beginning to feel like a home. ’ ‘Charles, what a nice thing to say. Wasn’t it a home before?’ ‘No, it was a house. A nice house, one that I was rather proud of. I didn’t actually realise there was anything missing. Now I do.’

‘I thought,’ she said slowly, taking the bull by the horns, ‘that somebody else was going to make a home of it for you—not us.’ ‘Did you now? Do you mind telling me who it was?’

‘You don’t need me to say it. It was Margarita. She said you were engaged, although I didn’t know whether to believe her. And she made it quite plain that
I
was not welcome. She also tried to make me believe that I was unwelcome to
you
.’

‘I wondered if Margarita’s somewhat clumsy hand had been at work. Jeanie thought it might have been, too.’

‘Jeanie? Miss Jameson? What has
she
to do with it?’

‘A good deal. There was, actually, never any likelihood of my marrying Margarita . . .’ (at this point, fireworks seemed to explode in Victoria’s sky in a great burst of radiance) ‘. . . but it seems that Jeanie saw it as a possibility, and didn’t like it. She also saw another possibility which she preferred; and believe me, my darling Victoria, it’s a possibility that
I
prefer too; for Jeanie would much rather be
your
housekeeper than Margarita’s. And from Jeanie Jameson that’s about the finest compliment you’ll ever get. ’

Victoria was looking at him with some doubt mixed with the dawning wonder in her eyes.

‘I’m not quite sure what you’re saying, Charles.’

‘I suppose it’s a proposal of marriage,’ he said, smiling.

‘A very roundabout one, all wrapped up in Jeanie Jameson.’

‘A genuine one, all the same.’

‘I can’t believe it. Are you proposing to me to keep your housekeeper, to please Miss Jameson?’

‘Let’s leave her out of it. Except that she did harass me to follow you. She said: “You’re not going to let her get away, are you? You won’t find another like her in a hurry ”. I didn’t need to be told, I knew it already. You
are
one in a thousand. But although I was sure about my feelings, I was a bit doubtful about yours. Giorgio caused me some qualms. Something went on between you two, didn’t it?’

‘Not really. He wanted there to be something, I never did.’

‘Good, good. Then there might be a chance for me, Victoria. Marry me, darling? I do adore you, I think you’re the loveliest girl—and I don’t mean just the outward you, the copper-gold hair and the rose-petal skin and the grace that always goes with you; but the real you, that puts other people before itself; the grace that is inside as well as outside. Do you think there’s a chance for me?’

‘Oh, Charles . . .’ Victoria went to his side and was pulled down beside him, and next moment was wrapped in a close embrace. ‘Of course I’ll marry you,’ was all she managed to say before his kiss prevented her from saying anything more for some time.