The Runaway Visitors (3 page)

‘I was a bit put out, I must admit. They’re so damned casual, those Fenns. Because they think their work is so important, they don’t stop to think that other people’s work might be equally important. And then I remembered what enormous encouragement I had from them in the early days. They bought my sculpture and told everybody I was a genius, and introduced me to all kinds of interested people; so I decided that I could put up with it. Don’t worry, this lot won’t get a chance to upset my work schedule. I’m starting on the figures for the new building of the people in Manchester now.’

‘Oh, darling, you got that? I’m so delighted. Congratulations. Of course, I knew you would ...’

‘Well, I didn’t know.’ It sounded as if Charles was laughing at her. ‘The Committee couldn’t decide for months. I think it was only the fuss about the work I did in Washington that swung the balance— they thought I
must
be good. ’

‘Surely everybody knows that by now.’

‘Ah, you’re too prejudiced in my favour, Margarita.’ The voice of the first woman who had spoken—who had proclaimed

the Borgliascos bores—was heard again: ‘Isn’t it getting a little cold out here now? Couldn’t we go inside,

Charles? I’m shivering.’

‘Of course we can. Come along, everybody, Elsa’s cold. Let’s move inside. ’

Victoria felt immense relief. When they had gone, she would make her way back to her room. Eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves, she thought; and although she had unintentionally, unwittingly, heard that conversation, the saying held good. ‘This lot,’ he had called them—herself, Sebastien and Amanda. ‘This lot won’t get a chance to upset my work schedule.’ He had decided they were going to be a nuisance before he had even met them. And about her parents, he had said: ‘They’re so damned casual, those Fenns.’ Perhaps it was true that they were casual, perhaps they did put more importance on their own work than on other people’s, but he shouldn’t have spoken so freely and in a somewhat derogatory manner about them to his friends.

She made her way back by the way she had come. She reached her room safely without being seen by anybody. Amanda was sleeping soundly. Victoria began to undress by the light of one shaded lamp.

‘Well,’ she concluded, ‘we’ll see how it goes. He needn’t be afraid that we shall be a nuisance. If there's any bother, I shall pack up and we’ll go home. I sometimes used to suspect—when we were all younger and had to do as we were told—that we weren’t always exactly welcome; but I’ve never heard it plainly stated before, and I can’t say that I like it.’

CHAPTER II

In the middle of the next morning, Victoria found herself on a hilltop above Charles Duncan’s farm overlooking a wide panorama of olive groves, pines and Italian cypresses, with the sweet maquis-like smells of the cystus, the thyme and the rosemary all about her.

The sun was already very hot, but up here in the hills there was a cool breeze to alleviate it. Victoria wore a sleeveless dress in a cool sea-green colouring which went particularly well with the unusual colour of her hair. It was gold without being a true gold with a suggestion of auburn that could neither be called a true

auburn. There were bronze lights in it. It was, in fact, shining and bright, and had fascinated more than one young man of Victoria’s acquaintance. Sometimes she wore it down and felt young and girlish; at other times, she piled it up on her head and felt dignified. To-day, it was tied at the back of her neck with a flowing sea-green ribbon.

She looked cool, poised and elegant, without realising that she did so. She never took seriously the remarks of her friends when they said: ‘ Oh, Victoria looks nice in anything,’ but the fact was that she could transform the most ordinary, off-the-peg dress the moment she put it on. She had an air, a style about her, that was the more attractive because she was unconscious of it. She sat on the trunk of a cypress that had been uprooted in some long-ago storm, her ankles crossed, her hands at each side supporting her on the trunk, and thought about the present condition of herself, Sebastien and Amanda.

There had been no sign of Charles Duncan this morning, nor of any guests. Miss Jameson had walked into Victoria’s room at half past seven with three cups on a tray, stating baldly: ‘Here’s your morning tea.’ Victoria, refusing to follow such an example of bad manners, had said: ‘Good morning, Miss Jameson, thank you very much. But Sebastien doesn’t like morning tea.’ Whereupon, Miss Jameson removed one cup and marched to the door. With her hand on the handle, she said:

‘I suppose you’ve got this fad of having your meals out in the open air? You’ll be wanting your breakfast on the terrace?’

‘Yes, we’d like that.’

The closing of the door had been the only answer.

‘Old curmudgeon,’ said Victoria softly.

But the breakfast on the terrace had been exceptionally good. Warm rolls, splendid hot coffee, honey, marmalade; and boiled eggs wrapped up in a napkin. Sebastien cheered up at the prospect of good food: supper last night had been excellent too.

Miss Jameson had not mentioned Mr. Duncan or guests, nor would Victoria be the first to ask about them. When they had taken their breakfast tray back to the kitchen, they had started out for a long walk all together, but Sebastien and Amanda had long since raced away from her, and she had been content to let them go, to have herself to herself for a while.

She became aware of a rustling and of cracking twigs on the hillside behind her, and turned her head to see that a tall, broad man was walking towards her. She remembered him at once. Although it was so long since she had seen him at her parents’ house, he did not seem to have changed much. Older, but not so much older: certainly not grey-haired, as she had thought he might be. She realised that he was much younger than her parents, something she had not been able to tell when she was nine years old. In his thirties still, she thought. The brown hair still seemed rough and unmanageable, but perhaps he did not bother about such things. There was a look of power and confidence about him.

He was watching her as he came closer.

‘Buon giorno,
’ he said, and the voice at once confirmed that this was indeed Charles Duncan: that rich, not quite smooth voice, deep, most satisfyingly cultivated.

‘Good morning,’ she replied.

He paused beside her, his glance taking in the cool, slim beauty, the burnished hair.

‘You are English?’ he asked, seeming surprised; and Victoria suddenly realised that he had not yet placed her.

‘English, yes,’ she said, and did not smile at him but regarded him with an appraising look. The fact that they were both English seemed naturally to give them the right to speak to each other on this foreign hillside.

‘Enjoying the beauties of Florence?’ he asked, nodding at the pale beauty of the city seen through the trees.

‘Hoping to,’ she rejoined.

‘There are many of them to enjoy. But perhaps you know it well?’

‘No, I’ve never been here before.’

‘Then a real treasure trove lies before you. But only if you’re interested in the arts, that is. ... Are you?’

‘Interested but dreadfully ignorant,’ said Victoria. She was not allowing warmth to creep into her voice. She was speaking politely, as to a stranger, but was keeping him at arm's length. ‘That’s a fairly happy position to be in,’ Charles Duncan

commented. ‘As long as you have a good teacher. You need somebody to show you all the worth-while things. ‘But I expect you have somebody?’

‘No.’

‘No? That hardly seems possible.’ The remark was meant to be flattering, but still she did not smile.

‘I’m sure I shall be able to find my way around, she said. ‘There will be printed guides, I can ask for advice.’

He looked at her again, so cool, so reserved, that she represented a challenge.

‘I would be happy to give you some advice myself,’ he said.

‘I should never presume to take up your time,’ she replied.

‘Oh, a little time here and there,’ he said casually. ‘ Nobody can work all the time. I would be happy to show you a few of the many wonderful things here.’

‘I shouldn’t dream of allowing you to,’ she said.

‘Oh.’ There was amusement and perhaps a touch of sarcasm in his voice as he went on: ‘We haven’t been properly introduced. Is that it? Do such things matter anymore? Then let me remedy it at once. I’m Charles Duncan. I own and live in that large stone-walled house down there.’

‘I’ve heard about you,’ said Victoria.

‘Then you’ve probably heard that I’m eminently respectable.’ ‘No, that didn’t happen to be one of the things I heard. ’

‘Nothing too bad, I hope?’ He still sounded amused.

‘Nothing but good, in fact. Largely concerned with your genius.’

‘Oh, that’s going too far,’ he said mildly.

‘And your passion for work,’ she said. ‘Which
I
certainly have no intention of interrupting. So I’ll say goodbye to you now, Mr. Duncan. ’

‘You haven’t reciprocated,’ he reminded her.

‘In what way?’ she asked.

‘You haven’t told me your name. ’

‘I don’t think it’s necessary. I’m quite sure we shall meet again.’

‘Good news indeed,’ he said. ‘I shall look forward to it. And now, as you seem to want to get rid of me, though I can’t think

why, I shall carry on with my walk.
Arrivederci, signorina.
’ ‘Goodbye,’ said Victoria, coolly, and watched him walk away. So that was Mr. Duncan’s approach when he felt himself to be a free agent! She did not think he would want to show her the treasures of Firenze when he learned the truth.

She had been surprised, indeed, by his attitude. To hear her parents speak of him, one would imagine he was devoted to his work to the exclusion of almost everything else. Last night, listening unwittingly to his conversation with friends, this morning in this encounter with him, she realised that there was a social side to him also, that Charles Duncan liked the company of women and was appreciative of their beauty.

She continued her walk slowly, stopping to admire views and to study the wild flowers on her way, and came back to the house to find that Amanda and Sebastien were there before her, cosily settled on the terrace with a jug of lemonade and a tray of glasses. Sebastien immediately poured a glassful for Victoria.

‘When we got back,’ he said, ‘we were so hot and thirsty, I went to the kitchen for something to drink; and Miss Jameson stopped what she was doing and immediately began to squeeze lemons with some patent little squeezer thing she has. I waited while she made the lemonade, and when she gave it to me, she said: “I suppose you’ll forever be wanting
something,
morning, noon and night”. Just about as sour as her lemons, but still we got it and it’s delicious, so what the hell! ’

‘Perhaps Mr. Duncan told her she’s got to look after us,’ Amanda said.

‘Perhaps she’s got an awkward Scottish conscience,’ said Victoria. ‘And if she is as sour as her lemons, we’ll just have to try to sweeten her up a bit.’ But when it was time to take the tray back to the kitchen, she asked Sebastien to do it.

‘Oh, you take it,’ said Sebastien, ‘you’re better at sweetening people up than I am.’ So Victoria took the tray, went to the door that opened on to the corridor to the kitchen, and opened it.

At once, she heard Charles Duncan’s voice, and hesitated. She would wait until he’d left the kitchen, she decided; and in her moment of hesitation, she made out what he was saying:

‘. . . well, you do keep your ear to the ground, Jeanie, and you do know all that’s going on around here, so where do we have a new arrival?’

‘You have three new arrivals in your own house, Mr. Duncan.’ ‘I’m not talking about
them.
Apart from them. This is a slender beauty with hair of burnished gold, a bit of an ice maiden. Subject for a painter more than a sculptor, with a wonderful tawny golden colouring . . .’

‘Oh, you’re interested in her as a subject for sculpture, are you, Mr. Duncan?’ said Jeanie’s sarcastic voice.

‘Now that will do, Jeanie Jameson,’ said her surprisingly indulgent employer.

‘Well, don’t blather about golden beauties, and tell me what I’m going to do about lunch. Are
they
to have theirs on the terrace and you stuck up in your studio, or am I to put it in the dining room for everybody?’

‘Oh lord, have I
got
to be lumbered with juveniles every day for lunch? We’d better start as we mean to go on, Jeanie, and I’ll have mine up in the studio. ’

‘You’ve got to meet them some time, Mr. Duncan.’

‘All right, then. Lunch to-day in the dining room.’ Victoria turned back into her room and waited for a decent interval to elapse before returning the tray to the kitchen. By then, she was more than indignant, she was really angry, although not quite sure with whom she was angry most. Charles Duncan? Her parents, for putting their three children into such an awkward position? Miss Jameson, for knowing full well whom Charles Duncan had met and saying nothing about it? Or the fall of circumstance, which was liable to do this to her from time to time? She went into the kitchen with a cold and reserved air, put the tray down on the table and said coolly: ‘Thank you, Miss Jameson, it was very kind of you,’ and walked straight out again. But not quickly enough to escape Miss Jameson’s comment, delivered after a peculiar little snort: ‘Ice maiden—that’s just about right! ’