The Stars of San Cecilio (12 page)

As in a flash she recalled her own first meeting with him — not the first time she saw him, but the first time she actually came face to face with him on the little jetty in San Cecilio, with the moon shedding its light over the sea. He had been charming and kind. Later she had discovered that he could be hard and cold. Just now she wasn’t at all certain what was going on behind the emotionless mask of his face, but once more he was being kind.

All at once a sensation of desolation swept over her. He was kind to her because she had been foolhardy, and a big black mongrel dog had knocked her down, and her arm had been grazed. He had already examined the graze very carefully, and now he asked her to excuse him for a moment while he withdrew to some corner of the house where he kept the materials for cleansing it, and ensuring that it became nothing worse than a graze.

When he returned she was wallowing in the trough of her desolation, and the brandy he had persuaded her to drink had in some way acted as a depressant, which she knew it shouldn’t have done. Unless it was that she had been secretly very much depressed beforehand — in fact, for several days

— and the brandy was the key that opened the door to all her carefully controlled emotions. Whatever it was, however, she was in no mood just then to analyze her feelings, and she only knew that they seemed to be getting the better of her, particularly when he knelt beside her, and his sleek dark head came very close to the tip of her chin. And the sudden smarting of the graze when he treated it with something out of a bottle brought a rush of tears to her eyes, and she gave a little gasp, and one of them splashed down on to the back of his hand.

He looked up as if he was startled.

‘That hurt you!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m sorry, but it is important that this sort of thing should

‘Only this morning is rather different, because you have had a shock, and also you were very much concerned because the well-being of that extraordinary-looking creature Senora Cortina calls a puppy was most unexpectedly threatened! ’ he said, and his voice was infinitely gentle. ‘‘I know! I understand! ’

She looked up at him helplessly, and the tears were still swimming in her eyes, so that they looked like grey-blue violets drenched with dew; and despite every effort on her part her traitorous lower lip would not be steady.

If only he did understand, she thought! If only he understood just what his nearness did to her, and how completely barren her whole future stretched before her because of it! And then panic seized her lest she should give herself away, and he should be horrified, and dismiss her — send her back to England....

‘Please do forgive me,’ she begged, in a terror-stricken little rush. ‘It was the iodine, I think. ... I wasn’t prepared for it.’

But his whole expression had undergone a complete change, and the lustrous dark eyes were suddenly full of concern. He rose from his kneeling position and took a chair beside her, leaning forward and possessing himself of both her hands, and holding them strongly.

‘Querida,’ he said — and she was certain the endearment escaped him by accident — ‘ something rather more than that is wrong, I think? You are not hurt anywhere else, are you? That

brute of a dog didn’t----------‘

‘No, no,’ she assured him, sounding calm as his agitation mounted.

‘Then your fall was rather worse than I was able to observe? I was a little late on the scene, otherwise there would have been no fall of any kind! You are badly shaken — bruised?’

She smiled determinedly through her tears, and then successfully willed them away.

‘I am perfectly all right, ’ she assured him.

He looked down at her hands, and the sight of them lying in his virile brown palms seemed to fascinate him. They were so slender and white and well cared for, and not for the first time they struck him as very fragile hands, and inadequate for one who had to earn her own living.

‘Nevertheless I think you ought to go upstairs to your room and lie down. Perhaps I ought to give you a sedative. . . .’

She gently removed her hands.

‘Nonsense, Doctor. I shall be completely myself once I’ve had an opportunity to change my dress’

— looking down at the rent in the pink linen caused by a branch that had clutched at her during her fall — ‘ and washed and tidied myself. ’ She was conscious that there was dust on her cheek, and her hair would persist in falling forward so that it was more like a golden cloak framing her face.

Slowly the doctor’s eyes lifted from her hands to her face, and although there was no longer any sign of weakness, and she was completely in control of all her emotions, the troubled look in his eyes persisted. Also he seemed to find her face, unrevealing though it now was, as temporarily fascinating as her hands.

‘Que — Miss Waring,’ he said, so swiftly that there might never have been any hesitation over his choice of a manner of addressing her, ‘will you tell me whether you are really happy here! ’

She looked at him in surprise.

‘Happy? But of course I’m happy.’

‘And you do not regret that you ever came to Spain?’

Her eyes widened, and her pulses quickened because she was suddenly once more afraid. He had guessed.... He was guessing!

‘I love Spain! ’

His eyes were still troubled, and his voice was troubled, too.

‘We once talked of roses, you and I — and the one perfect one to be found one day in a garden. For you, that is. . . . ’ His eyes held hers for a moment, and then he looked away. He stood up, and moved away to the window. ‘Your young friend, Peter Hamilton-Tracey, telephoned me this morning and asked for permission to take you out to lunch with a relative of his. Some elderly aunt who has arrived to stay in San Cecilio, and whom he wishes you to meet. Presumably he also wishes her to meet you. . . . ’

He turned and looked at her fixedly.

‘Yes,’ she answered, as casually as she could, ‘I was expecting the invitation. ’

‘And you were also expecting to meet the aunt?’

‘Yes, I—I was told about her.’

His eyes held a look she simply could not understand. ‘When young men introduce young women friends to their relatives they are usually rather serious about them.’ He started to pace up and down the library. ‘At least, in Spain it would indicate rather more than seriousness! I have no very clear idea how you conduct these things in your country, but I feel in a sense responsible for you, and my advice to you is, do not let loneliness drive you into a situation that you might find it difficult to extricate yourself from. That is,’ with a queer smile just touching the corners of his lips, ‘if you still feel the same way about roses! ’

‘I ------- ‘ Lisa was beginning, when the door opened and

Dona Beatriz stood looking with distinct curiosity at both of them.

‘I heard that you were here,’ she said, ‘and that Miss Waring had been foolish enough to interfere with a mongrel dog! ’ Her voice suggested that, having done such a thing, Miss Waring had received her deserts. ‘Senora Cortina is in a state of despair in the kitchen, because her vegetable supply is low, and the vegetable man has gone on his way without leaving her any onions or leeks for the soup. So next time, Miss Waring,’ with a cold smile, ‘that you think to save her puppy’s life for her, remember also that she has an employer whom she is paid to serve, and that the proper preparation of his meals is of the utmost importance! ’

Lisa stood up. She could hardly believe that Senora Cortina had been so ungrateful that she actually complained about her

— or even about the shortage of vegetables for lunch! — but she had seen the way in which Dona Beatriz’s eyes had darted between the two of them, her employer and herself, and that it had not passed her by that at the moment of her entry they had not been discussing either puppies, or the damage Lisa had caused herself as a result of her affection for one of them.

In fact, Dona Beatriz suddenly looked a little grim, especially when she caught sight of the empty brandy glass on the table, and the various medicaments that had been used in the treatment of Lisa’s arm.

‘So much trouble,’ she said curtly, and for such a little thing! ’

‘It was not a little thing to Miss Waring.’ Dr. Fernandez replied, almost as curtly. And then, to Lisa: ‘I think it would be as well if you remained in your room until dinner-time tonight, Miss Waring. I will see that a tray of lunch is sent to you, and I recommend that you undress and go to bed. Tonight, if you are fit, we shall be delighted to see you at dinner.’

Lisa could almost feel Dona Beatriz’s surprise as she went out of the room, and she knew that the Spanish woman would never forgive the slight snub in front of her. But she would vent her displeasure on her, Lisa — not Julio Fernandez!

As she closed the door she heard Dona Beatriz say, more soothingly:

‘Poor Julio! How these things always recoil on you! But I don’t suppose the girl was really hurt, was she?’

‘She might have been badly mauled.’

‘It was a stupid thing to do. And for a bundle of bones that ought not to be given house-room! But, then, you are too kind to your servants, as well as that girl. For the remainder of today I suppose she will consider herself an invalid, and who will look after Gia? She really ought to remember that Gia is her main preoccupation. ’ Lisa did not hear the conclusion of this conversation, but she recognized that Dona Beatriz was right in what she said. Gia was her main preoccupation, and while she received such a handsome salary for looking after her she ought to concentrate on looking after her and nothing else.

Nothing else! . . . She walked to her dressing-table mirror when she reached her own room, and the sight of her dishevelled appearance appalled her, especially when she recalled that Dr. Fernandez had gazed at it quite earnestly — as if he derived a certain amount of rather curious pleasure from doing so!

She picked up a comb and automatically ran it through her hair, having no intention whatsoever of shirking her duties for the rest of that day and retiring to bed. And her pulses quickened as she recalled the doctor’s words:

If you still feel the same way about roses! ’ The one

perfect rose in the garden! But it was hardly likely it would ever be for her.

CHAPTER TEN

The lunch for Peter’s Aunt Grizelda was a great success, and after it was over Lisa was able to admit to herself that she had enjoyed every moment of it.

Aunt Grizel, for one thing, was quite unlike anyone she had ever met before, and if ever a personality had a stimulating quality about her, she had it. She was Miss Grizel Tracey, possibly somewhere in her early sixties, with close-cropped hair, shaggy white eyebrows that overhung a lively and humorous — and shrewd — pair of greyish-blue eyes, and a weather-beaten face that had remained throughout its life as Nature intended it. No light dusts of powder for Miss Tracey, skin tonics or creams to disguise the fine networks of wrinkles that had probably formed soon after she was thirty at the corners of her eyes and mouth, largely because she had a habit of throwing back her head and laughing until the eyes nearly closed, and her lips were so frequently stretched above her excellent dentures that the skin had become loosened at the corners, and lost most of its elasticity. But that would never bother Aunt Grizel. Any more than prematurely white hair had bothered her, and it would certainly never occur to her to use a colorful rinse that would make it look absolutely lovely.

Aunt Grizel had made up her mind in her teens that she was not good-looking, and that marriage would probably pass her by. And the fact that it had passed her by had not embittered her.

She could chat happily about her old school friends’ domestic problems now that they were grandmothers, and chuckle wickedly because they were never likely to overtake her. Such problems as daughters who expected rather a lot in the way of baby-sitting, and older grandchildren for whom some sort of a permanent home had to be maintained in order that they could spend at least a part of their holidays with their grandmother.

‘The only grandchildren I’ve got are the pictures I’ve never sold,’ she admitted, ‘and those I cart happily about the world with me because I can’t bear to be without them. And as I couldn’t bear a permanent home they’re the ideal grandchildren for me. ’

Although it was a very warm day, with the temperature likely to rise a good deal higher during the afternoon, she wore a tweed suit and nylon stockings of heavy mesh, and the only vice she appeared to have cultivated — that of smoking heavily, even between the courses of a meal

—    provided Lisa with a real surprise when, during the coffee stage of the lunch, she tried to induce her nephew to accept one of the long, dark, Spanish cigarettes she extracted from a pocket of her handbag.

She caught Lisa’s eyes, with surprise written largely in them, fixed on her, and her own eyes twinkled as she explained:

‘I love Spanish cigarettes, just as I love everything Spanish

—    the food, the wines, the people, the scenery, the fiestas, the bullfights! Yes: even bullfights! ’ Her eyes twinkled still more as Lisa strove politely to conceal her surprise. ‘They’re not half as gory as they’re made out to be, you know — when you get over the initial shock, and the excitement begins to get hold of you. Have you ever shared in the excitement of a real Spanish crowd?’ she asked the girl. ‘Felt it make your blood flow more quickly, as if you’d had too much champagne?’

Lisa shook her head. Then she explained, with a faintly humorous smile of her own:

‘But I’ve never had too much champagne, either.’

Aunt Grizel sent her a quizzical glance.

‘Then that’s an experience in store for you — a pleasant experience so long as it is only a little too much! ’ Her eyes seemed to find the girl an interesting study, and the fact that her nephew had been so keen for them to meet had intrigued her before ever the meeting had taken place. ‘My nephew tells me you came to Spain for a holiday. Miss Waring, and remained to look after some child or other. That looking after children is your job. Do you enjoy it?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lisa assured her, and as she looked around the cool, airy, principal lounge of San Cecilio’s leading hotel — the hotel where she had passed that fortnight of her holiday — she could have added that it was here that she had met the man who was the father of the child since become her charge. But for some reason she didn’t do so. Miss Tracey’s eyes were very shrewd — a little too shrewd, perhaps — and Lisa was afraid she might give herself away if she spoke of Dr. Fernandez. She might color, or her eyes might reveal something. ... So she left it to Peter to explain casually: