The Stars of San Cecilio (9 page)

Overhanging the white walls, in addition to the wide-spreading branches, were torrents of flaming growth, and painted doorways looked as if they guarded the interiors of exciting, and in some cases very old, dwellings, whose windows had the inevitable curly wrought-iron balconies attached to them, while little grilles let into the brickwork here and there gave the impression of watchful eyes.

The centre of the square was very placid, with sunshine falling in golden splashes, and people drifting leisurely to and fro in the enervating soft warmth. In the afternoon the heat would be too intense for that kind of perambulation, and the square would empty of everything save flies, and one or two unwanted taxi-cabs. In the evening it would be shadowy and cool, and late at night it would be transformed altogether by moonlight — a plaza of magic black and white guitar echoes floating on the still, sweet night air, a serenading voice stealing out of an intersecting alleyway, and the murmur of the sea a background to guarded footfalls and, perhaps, occasional laughter.

• Spain! . . . Lisa felt, this morning, that it had
  
• The party was held at one of Madrid’s gayer, but s
  

Spain! . . . Lisa felt, this morning, that it had all the color and the romance of the ages, and it was a color and romance that had got into her blood. The thought that depressed her was that soon — all too soon — she would have to get it out of her blood, and when that time arrived she would have to say a final good-bye to it all.

Watching her across the table, and the check cloth, her employer seemed intrigued by those revealing, and yet unrevealing, expressions on her face.

‘You told me the other day that you still like San Cecilio,’ he said. ‘Is that one reason why you are apparently quite willing to perform errands for Senora Cortina when she finds herself in imminent danger of running out of something vital to her culinary needs?’

Lisa smiled.

‘Senora Cortina is not really as careless as all that, and she’s the most wonderful cook I’ve ever known. Now that I’m getting used to Spanish dishes I realize that more and more every day.’ ‘And now that you are getting used to Spain, and the Spanish way of life, how do you feel about that?’

‘I------‘ She looked at him for an instant, and then away.

This was where she could betray herself, if she wasn’t careful. ‘I think that it’s a very colorful way of life, and very restful. Nobody ever hurries; nobody ever thinks that any single thing is important enough to receive prompt attention, and yet things do get done. Life itself is, I think, of tremendous importance to you Spanish people.’

‘ Life, and love, and death!’ he interposed, with a queer flickering of a smile in his dark eyes as he gazed at her. ‘Birth, love, and death

— those are the main preoccupations. But, then, they are the main preoccupations of people all over the world. And the only difference with us Spaniards is that we like to dwell upon them, and accent the importance of them, in our daily life. Birth is natural, but it is also an exciting fulfilment. Love is something every woman hopes for, and with our women there is usually only one love. It is the result of the way in which they are brought up and prepared for marriage. ’

‘But marriage doesn’t necessarily mean love,’ she interjected.

‘Doesn’t it?’ One of his dark eyebrows rose. ‘How would you know?’

‘I don’t know, of course, but ... in Spain you arrange marriages, and one can’t love to order?’

‘No?’ This time his eyes looked cool and amused by her confusion. ‘ Yet so many of those marriages turn out to be a success that perhaps love is more like a plant one cares for deliberately, than a haphazard gathering of wild flowers. In any case, the wild flowers will fade sooner or later, whereas the plant might very well last out a lifetime. ’

She found herself so fascinated by the quiet, measured tones of his voice that, in spite of the amusement in his eyes, she stared straight into them. He said softly, after a moment: ‘You agree with me?’

‘No.’ She shook her head quite violently. ‘I know nothing about love, as you just implied, but I would prefer it to be a gathering of wild flowers instead of a plant that I would have to painstakingly persuade to grow! One gathers wild flowers when one is in a happy mood, and they are so perfect when you pick them — even the commonest varieties. And one never quite knows how a plant will develop, or what its blooms will be like, and — and, in any case, I’m no gardener!’ she concluded, with such a burst of firmness and decisiveness, and such a determined setting of her soft lips and small chin,

that he actually laughed aloud.

‘Then for you we will recommend the gathering of wild flowers — perhaps the plucking of the one perfect rose in the garden! If you are lucky enough to find a garden to wander in where such a rose might be found! ’ He surveyed her with sudden gravity. ‘Would that suit you better?’

She looked down hastily into her nearly empty coffee cup, and he ordered the waiter to bring her another.

‘No, no!’ she said. ‘Won’t the others be wondering where you are? I mustn’t keep you. ’

‘Never mind the others for the time being, ’ he replied. He looked almost impatient. ‘I asked you a question. Would that suit you better?’

‘The — the one rose . . .?’ She felt the color stealing back into her cheeks as she lifted her eyes. ‘Yes — naturally! ’

‘And you wouldn’t ever want to discard it?’ ‘Not once I’d found it, ’ with an earnestness that got the better of her shyness as they steadily gazed at one another.

This time it was he who looked down into his coffee cup. ‘Unhappily it is seldom that we find what we are looking for in this life,’ he commented.

Lisa studied the night-blackness of his hair, and the way it grew back from his excellently shaped forehead in that slight but intriguing Marie Stuart peak. Not for the first time, too, she marvelled at the length and thickness of his eyelashes, and her heart turned over at the strength and beauty of his mouth. It was almost too perfectly shaped a mouth, and too calm and composed.

She said quickly, before she properly realized what she was saying:

‘You said that love is something every woman hopes for— every Spanish woman, that is! What about Spanish men? Don’t they hope for it also?’ He lighted a cigarette with his slender, beautifully formed fingers, and when he was quite certain that it was alight he gazed at her through the faint, blue mist of cigarette smoke that crept between them.

‘Men — men of any nationality — are different from women. It is their task to go forth into the world and wrest a living from some corner of it, in order to provide for the woman they eventually choose. At least, that was the old idea, And in Spain, today, it is much as it used to be. Our women are seldom the providers, and they do not take kindly to performing two sets of duties. In your country it is different, of course........‘

‘But — love?’ she heard herself insisting, although she didn’t quite know why she did so, or how she found the courage to do so when he was such a distant employer, who had only for the moment unbent to her.

He put back his head and followed the ascending spirals of smoke as they merged with the sunny air beneath the trees that overhung the cafe.

‘Spanish men are preoccupied with loving rather than love,’ he answered, causing her slender brows to wrinkle. ‘With loving Life, and making certain that it is always spelled with a capital L ... living it with zest! That is why they are so preoccupied with death, and why you find them challenging it in the bull-ring! Why bullfights are as popular with us as football matches are with you! There is more danger in the bullring. ’

‘And Spaniards love danger?’

‘They love the element of danger — the flirting with death. And, besides, the more they wantonly risk their own lives, the brighter the eyes that watch them! ’

‘And that brings us back to love! ’

‘That brings you back to love, ’ he said gently. ‘But then you are young, and naturally you are intrigued by the very thought of it. For myself, I am far too busy, usually, to think of it very much. . . . And I am many years older than you are. My experiences are in the past, and will remain there.’

She felt as if she had been deliberately rebuffed, and the warm air grew a little less warm, the charm of the square less obvious.

‘I really do think you should rejoin Dona Beatriz now,’ she said, collecting her handbag and shopping basket.

‘Why?’ He reached out to deprive her of the shopping basket. ‘Am I not permitted to sit here in the sun if I wish?’ and he surveyed her quizzically, and also as if he wondered at her abrupt desire to move.

‘You forget,’ she said, looking at a clock in the window of a chemist’s shop opposite, ‘that it is getting on for lunch-time, and Doha Beatriz said something about lunching at the hotel. She will be expecting to meet you there. And I,’ she added firmly, ‘have a bus to catch! ’

‘If the plan is to lunch at the hotel, then you will lunch there with us. ’

‘No,’ with an incisiveness in her clear, English voice. ‘Senorita Cortina is waiting for the things I bought this morning, and in any case I do not expect to be entertained to lunch during working hours—not by my employer! But if you would like me to take Gia back with me I will do so. ’

‘If you and Gia are going back, we will all go back, ’ he said a little curtly, rising. And then he looked hard at her. ‘With your employer’s permission, apparently, you would lunch during working hours with anyone else who asked you?’

She looked up at him in surprise.

‘No one else has asked me.’

‘Not this morning — no! But some other morning — yes? Mr. Peter Hamilton-Tracey, who Beatriz insists is a very close friend of yours, might ask you, and then you would approach me for permission to do so?’

She felt herself flushing with a kind of anger this time.

‘Dona Beatriz has no right to insist that Mr. Hamilton-Tracey is a close friend of mine, because it is not true. ’

‘But, nevertheless, he might ask you to lunch with him one day. And what then?’ he wanted to know.

She turned away, vaguely irritated because he insisted on carrying the shopping basket, and not only did it strike her as far below his dignity to do so, but with it she might have made a hurried escape.

‘We will wait until I receive such an invitation, and then I will let you know what my reactions to it are, ’ she told him, with such prim demureness that his eyes raked her face almost curiously.

And then they ran straight into Dona Beatriz, dragging a sadly deflated-looking Gia by the hand, and, there was no doubt about it, Dona Beatriz was annoyed.

‘We have been hunting for you everywhere, Julio!’ she informed him, surveying him with a strong hint of displeasure. ‘And we have been standing beside the car in the car-park for at least half an hour, expecting you to rejoin us! Gia is quite worn out with wandering about the streets. ’

‘Then you should have gone to the hotel and had your ice, ’ Julio returned, without even wilting under the displeasure.

She regarded him with a hurt look this time.

‘But naturally we thought you would accompany us to the hotel, and I am amazed that you are still in the company of Miss Waring! ’

‘There is no reason why you should be amazed. ’ His voice was cool as the first flake of wintry snow when it fell in the Gudarrama that looked down on his home in Madrid. ‘Miss Waring could hardly be expected to return in the bus with this heavy shopping basket’ — actually, the contents of it were quite light — ‘ and I have been doing my best to persuade her to have lunch with us. But she insists on going back to the villa, so there is nothing for it but that we must all go back! And perhaps that’s just as well since Senora Cortina is expecting us.’

‘Really! ’ Dona Beatriz exclaimed, as if exasperation was running away with her. ‘ You know very well that we arranged

to have lunch-------- ’

‘I don’t think we did. ’ They had reached the car-park, and he had deposited the shopping basket in the back of the car. ‘You talked about lunch on the way here, but that is as far as we got. And unless I leave strict instructions behind me I don’t like to disappoint the efforts of people I employ. ’

Dona Beatriz tightened her lips and got in beside him, and Gia slipped a hand into Lisa’s arm and hugged it when they were together once more on the roomy back seat.

‘It’s been a horrid morning!’ the child confided in a whisper to the English girl. ‘She’ — Lisa said ‘Ssh!’ in a warning whisper because the ‘she’ was so loud, and Gia looked impish for a moment, and then developed an even more penetrating whisper — ‘she said I ought to be wearing gloves when I went out with Papa, and as well as new sandals I’ve got new gloves!’ She exhibited them. ‘They’re hot, and I don’t like the feel of them! Can I take them off?’

But after an anxious glance at Doha Beatriz’s rigid back Lisa decided to advise her to keep them on. For that morning, at least.

‘And I didn’t even have an ice cream!’ Gia lamented. ‘ It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d had an ice cream! ’

C H A P T E R E I G H T

Three nights later Peter Hamilton-Tracey accepted an invitation to dinner, and since Dona Beatriz was responsible for the invitation, and it was issued through her, the young man behaved towards her as if she was a legitimate hostess in her own house, and not simply a guest in the house of a man to whom — so far — she was not even engaged to be married.

But to Peter it seemed clear enough that she was fairly certain of what was going to happen to her one day. She was going to become the second wife of Dr. Julio Fernandez, or be exceedingly surprised herself. Already, in her attitude towards him, there was the easy comradeship of a woman who was upon the very verge of becoming a wife. She teased him, gently rallied him, with the same sort of gentleness, upon all sorts of subjects. But behind the gentleness, there was an inflexible firmness, a suave determination to carry the point whenever it was really necessary; and if this determination was wrapped up in the Spanish woman’s desire, at all costs, to please her man, and recognize his right to exert authority in his own home, nevertheless it was there beneath the wrappings, and to Peter it was a little sinister.