The Stars of San Cecilio (13 page)

‘By the way, Aunt Grizel, you probably know Lisa’s employer. Fellow called Fernandez. Dr. Julio Fernandez.

Practices in Madrid, and looks as if he ought to be terribly well-known. Heart specialist, or something. ...’

‘Julio Fernandez?’ Aunt Grizel looked interested. ‘Oh, yes, I know him. Or I know of him. ’ She explained to Lisa: ‘I have a flat in Madrid, and although I only stay there for a part of each year, I do know quite a lot of people whom I meet frequently when I’m in the capital. Spaniards love entertaining, and they do it very well, and as it happens your Dr. Fernandez is socially very much sought after. He’s a widower, isn’t he? And he isn’t a heart specialist, Peter, he’s a neurologist. ’

‘Well, hearts and minds go together, don’t they? Peter murmured flippantly. ‘The one is never affected, in an emotional sense, unless the other sanctions the interference with normal routine,’ looking at Lisa with an oblique, amused blue gaze.

Aunt Grizel shook her head at him.

‘Dr. Fernandez is not interested in the mental attitude that is the result of some wayward capitulation of the heart. Although, as a matter of fact’— looking as if she was not above a bit of gossip when it came her way — ‘there is a rather devastating widow who has been doing her best to trap him into a second incursion into matrimony for several years now, and his friends will have it that she’ll succeed one day. The marvel is that she hasn’t succeeded before this, because she’s quite ravishing in the way some of these Spanish women are, and a doctor needs a wife

— particularly a doctor of his eminence. Socially she’s practically indispensible, and it must have been a bit of a handicap to him to struggle along without one for so long. ’

‘I think you’re referring to our Dona Beatriz,’ Peter said, ‘when you speak of a ravishing Spanish widow, and I agree with the doctor’s friends that he won’t have to struggle along with a handicap much longer. ’ Again he looked at Lisa, but questioningly this time. ‘Don’t you agree with me, Lisa? Aren’t all the signs at the moment indicating that your employer will provide his motherless child with a substitute mother before very long?’

‘I ------- ‘ Lisa knew that anyone with any powers

of observation would agree with him, but somehow she couldn’t, and she felt rather than saw Miss Tracey’s eyes become attracted to her as if she was a magnet.

‘You — what, Miss Waring?’ the older woman asked, with a bright sparkle of alertness in her eyes. She put her close-cropped white head on one side, and looked at the girl from that angle. ‘If you’re looking after Dr. Fernandez’ child you probably know a little more about him than we do. Is it true that he’s packing the child off to school in England this autumn?’

‘There is talk of it,’ Lisa admitted. ‘I think,’ she added, ‘Dona Beatriz, who is the doctor’s guest at the moment, is rather keen for him to do so. ’

‘ Ah! ’ Aunt Grizel exclaimed, as if that explained a great deal. ‘Then she’ll probably win, for I believe the child — whom I’ve never met

— is a plain little monkey, quite unlike her beautiful mother, whose death, everyone says, upset the doctor so very much that he never took kindly to his only child. Which always strikes me as a most unnatural attitude on the part of a father. ’ ‘Not if — if her birth caused the death of the woman he loved,’ Lisa felt forced to defend her employer, but the words sounded stiff and unnatural as they left her lips.

Miss Tracey looked at her as if she was really beginning to interest her.

‘Tell me,’ she asked suddenly, ‘how much you like your job? You find that you fit into a Spanish household?’

Lisa hesitated, not because she was uncertain, but because she felt embarrassed.

‘I like it very much,’ she admitted at last. ‘But it will only last until the autumn —or until Dr. Fernandez makes up his mind about his daughter’s future.’

‘Or Dona Beatriz makes it up for him?’

‘Perhaps. ’

‘And after that you will go home? Back to England?’ Lisa nodded.

‘You won’t look for another job in Spain?’

‘I — don’t think so.’

This time it was Aunt Grizel who nodded, as if she understood perfectly, and then she changed the subject by asking her nephew about his cottage, and insisting that they went there for tea.

It was the first time Lisa had actually visited Peter’s cottage, although she had seen the outside of it when she and Gia had been sauntering along the white road from which it lay back in a grove of trees. It was a typical small, whitewashed, Spanish cottage, with a green-tiled roof, and shutters that were fastened back against the walls. The garden was unkempt because nobody ever worked in it, but inside a local

Catalan employ maintained a certain amount of order, and if the furnishings were bare and crude, they didn’t shock his aunt.

‘You could do worse,’ she said. ‘I rented a place like this myself once, on this very same coast, and did some wonderful work, because the light is so extraordinarily perfect, and there were so many subjects for my canvases.’ She looked in the kitchen for tea, and when she discovered that there was none produced a packet from her capacious handbag of stout crocodile skin. ‘I brought this for you,’ she said, ‘because I expected you’d be living on coffee, and I have some sent out from England regularly. The one thing I can’t do without is my cup of tea!’

Lisa rather enjoyed that alfresco meal, with Peter apologizing for the discomforts and the deficiencies, and looking embarrassed when it was discovered that he actually did some of his own washing, because the woman he employed wasn’t very good at it, and she was even worse at ironing.

‘In fact, she’s not a very good cook, either,’ Peter had to admit. ‘Some of the meals she serves up are practically inedible, and run largely to greasy stews and lashings of garlic, so I eat out mostly. But fortunately I don’t have to pay rent for this place, so my currency is being eked out quite comfortably. ’

‘And what happens when it has run out altogether?’ his aunt inquired, sitting on a backless chair in the kitchen and drinking with relish the strong tea she had brewed.

Peter looked vague.

‘I don’t quite know. ’ In addition to the fact that he had been ill recently, he appeared to have the kind of temperament that refused to allow him to settle down in one particular job, and the fact that he had a certain amount of talent as a writer was another reason why the very thought of a routine job was inclined to upset him. He looked at Lisa. ‘I’m like Lisa here

— I drift from one rather uncongenial job to another, and hope that in the next I will find the answer to all my secret dreams and aspirations! ’

His aunt made a disapproving noise.

‘Then the sooner you make up your mind about your secret dreams and aspirations the better, unless you want to turn into a Mr. Micawber, continually hoping that something will ‘turn up’! But I decline to believe that Lisa’ — by this time she had abandoned the more formal Miss Waring — ‘is looking for anything very special from her jobs, apart from the one thing most young women look for. And as an old maid I can voice it as my opinion that it is a good thing to look for, if you don’t want to be lonely all your days — and of course I’m talking about marriage!’ She focused her gaze carefully on the girl, to witness her reactions. ‘Marriage is for young women like Lisa

— and she knows it! Don’t you, my dear?’

Lisa blushed almost painfully, and borrowed a teaspoon to remove a tea-leaf from her cup.

‘I suppose there are other things,’ she murmured, rather inaudibly.

Miss Tracey shook her head.

‘Not for girls who look like you! I never had golden hair, and a skin like a drift of apple blossom (quite a relief after the sallow complexions one sees around here, even to an old woman like me, so I wonder at the effect on some of the younger Spaniards with whom you must already

have come in contact!) and eyes------------‘ She seemed

to run out of descriptive adjectives when she got to Lisa’s eyes, so she suddenly sighed and shook her head. ‘So I got passed over, and remained single, and although it never bothered me at all I wouldn’t recommend it for Lisa! ’

All at once she seemed to have an idea.

‘You must come and stay with me in Madrid when your job comes to an end, my dear. I’ve only a tiny flat, but there’s room enough for you, if you don’t mind sharing what space there is with a lot of artist’s clutter! And I’ll show you Madrid, and believe me there’s a lot to see there — and provide you with some pleasanter memories to carry back to England than the inside of a Spanish nursery. And if Peter is still trying to make up his mind about his future he can come too. I can’t put him up, but we’ll find him a reasonable guesthouse, and I don’t mind footing the bill,’ looking at her nephew, ‘if it will enable you to make up your mind what you do want to do with your life, apart from waste it! ’

He smiled ruefully.

‘I shouldn’t think there’s anything I can do in Spain. ’

‘Not anything you can do in Spain, perhaps — but you can always arrive at a few conclusions, and they might enable you to make a few decisions,’ with so much meaning in her look that he appeared suddenly enlightened, and grinned.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘I see!’

‘I wonder whether you do,’ she remarked obscurely, and started to gather up the cups and saucers. ‘We’ll wash these up for you before I go back to my hotel, and Lisa returns to her charge. And remember, Lisa, I shall look forward to seeing you in the autumn — and before that, if you can get away. Perhaps you could get away for a few days’ break? Madrid is bracing in the cooler weather, but the color and the magic are there in the height of summer. ’

Lisa thanked her, but she didn’t think it likely that she would get a few days’ break — and she knew that she would shrink from asking for them. Dona Beatriz would almost certainly elevate her eyebrows and look amazed when the information was passed on to her that the English girl failed to look upon her well-paid holiday post as a holiday post — which of course it was!

Gia was not actually receiving much tuition, and their days were passed in a pleasant monotony of sunshine and aimless attempts to amuse themselves against a background of blue sea and brilliant color. Therefore, what more could the English girl want — or expect?

At least, that was what Lisa imagined would be Dona Beatriz’s reaction if she asked for a few days to go and stay with Grizelda Tracey in Madrid.

Her surprise, therefore, was considerable when she returned to the villa to find that her employer wished to see her in his library immediately she was available; and as a result of that visit to the library Madrid became a solution to a slightly awkward problem.

Dr. Fernandez was standing thoughtfully before the long window that opened outwards into the patio when she received permission to enter, following her light tap at the door. It was such a light tap, and the door was so beautifully solid, that he scarcely heard it, as a matter of fact, but he had been waiting for it, and he turned immediately she entered.

‘Sit down, Miss Waring.'’ He pushed a chair towards her. ‘I hope you have enjoyed your outing with your friends?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘The lunch went off very well?’

‘Very well,’ she echoed mechanically. He was wearing a light grey suit, irreproachably cut, as were all his clothes, and his linen was almost startlingly white, and his narrow black silk tie made him look somehow very Spanish. Or that was the impression she received of him, with the shadows of the library emphasizing the blackness and the thickness of his hair, and his olive skin a little more noticeably olive than usual. And his manner struck her as very formal — which, of course, was very Spanish.

‘You made the acquaintance of Mr. Hamilton-Tracey’s aunt?’

‘Miss Tracey? Oh, yes. I liked her very much. ’

‘Good! ’ He moved away and touched some papers on his desk. ‘And I have no doubt she also liked you very much?’ ‘I’m afraid I can’t answer that one.’ She tried to laugh lightly, naturally, as if he was merely being humorous, instead of so painfully stiff and dignified. ‘But we got on quite well together, I think, and she expressed a desire to see me again. ’ ‘Then that is excellent, and your Peter Hamilton-Tracey must be very well satisfied. ’

Her slim eyebrows drew together.

‘There’s no real reason why he should be feeling very satisfied, except that I helped him to entertain his aunt. ’

‘No?’ He picked up a gold-mounted fountain-pen, and tapped it on the back of his nails. ‘Miss Waring, it pleases me that you have had a pleasant break from the daily routine, but now I have something to say to you. You will have a somewhat longer break from routine — a week, or possibly even a fortnight — because Dona Beatriz wishes to take Gia back with her to Madrid. There are various important items, such as a dental overhaul, and the acquisition of some new clothes, which Dona Beatriz considers must be attended to at once, if Gia is to be ready for school in the autumn. ’

‘I see.’ But Lisa’s eyes had opened wide with something like amazement, and she sat up very straight in her chair. ‘But, if Gia is to get to school in the autumn, surely it will be necessary first to decide upon the school she is to attend, and the kind of uniform she will have to wear? And until you have done that—’

He shrugged in a way that struck her as impatient.

‘Whether or not she goes to school in the autumn, clothes are something she must have. Dona Beatriz has been going through her wardrobe, and apparently it is rather badly deficient. ’

‘I would have said that, for a small girl, it’s anything but deficient,’ Lisa heard herself saying with a decisiveness she had never used to him before.

He turned and looked at her, noticeably frowning.

‘And you know a lot about small girls and their requirements — is that it, Miss Waring? More than Beatriz, for instance?’

She bit her lip.

‘I know when they have all, and more, than they want. And from a purely material point of view I would say that Gia has everything she wants. ’

‘From a material point of view — only?’

‘I didn’t say that! ’

‘No, you didn’t say it,’ with a tightening of his lips, ‘and as an employee I think you would be wise if you didn’t even think it! ’ He moved away from her again and stood staring stonily out of the window. ‘My daughter, Miss Waring, has received every possible attention from the moment she was born, and as her father I will see to it that she continues to receive every possible attention! She has also received an extraordinary amount of kindness from Dona Beatriz! ’