The Sun and Catriona (12 page)

They rounded a sharp bend, emerged abruptly from the little wood and there, in front of them, was a house. It was built of stone, mellow, golden stone that had witnessed many centuries of sunlight, and in shape it resembled a small French chateau. At one end of the building there was a circular tower, windows were scattered erratically about its massive walls, and in front there was a wide terrace. Trees and shrubs had been allowed to run riot all around, and in its isolation, half abandoned by man, the place had acquired a lost and secret look.

Peter switched off the engine and without a word he got out of the car. Catriona followed his example and the warm stillness came at her as if it were a living thing. She looked at Peter.

‘Where are we
?
’

He didn’t answer at once. Instead he stood looking around him, his gaze travelling slowly over the old walls, the rutted driveway, the wild, deserted remains of what had once been a garden.

‘It’s my family home,’ he said at last. ‘Or it was.
Ghajn
Lucia
...
the Fountain of Lucia.’

‘It’s so beautiful,’ Catriona said slowly. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

She looked up at the front of the house. Quite a long way up, there was a window that opened on to a small rounded balcony, a balcony that might have been designed for the use of Romeo and Juliet. She thought of Peter’s ancestors, those mysterious, vaguely exciting people who had once lived in this house, and wondered if their colourful ghosts ever wandered in the tangled gardens or lingered on the little balcony. From that height, she thought, it must be possible to look out across the tops of the pine trees to the waters of the nearby Mediterranean.

From one of his pockets Peter had produced a large, ornate brass key, and was inserting it in the lock of the front door. Rather reluctantly it turned, and the door swung inwards. Fascinated, but half feeling that she was a trespasser, Catriona remained where she was.

‘If you’re going to have a look round I’ll wait for you here,’ she said uncertainly.

‘Why?’ he demanded, inspecting the door’s rusty hinges with a critical eye.

‘Well
...
’ She shrugged helplessly, not knowing quite what to say.

Suddenly he looked round at her. ‘Come inside,’ he said. ‘You’ll be perfectly safe. I did not bring you here with seduction in mind.’

A flush spread beneath her tan. ‘I only meant
...
’ she began.

‘Well, whatever you meant, would you be good enough to come inside? I’m here to look at my house, and it will be annoying if I have to keep remembering that I’ve left you on the doorstep. Of course, if you would really prefer not to see the house, perhaps you would like to wait in the car.’

‘Oh, no, I’d like to see it—very much,’ she said meekly, running up the steps.

He stood aside, allowing her to precede him into a large square room dominated by a graceful wooden staircase. At one time, probably, the stairs had been polished, carefully and regularly, but some time had elapsed since any kind of care had been lavished on them, and the shallow treads were coated with fine yellow dust. Cobwebs clung between the banisters and a dead butterfly lay where it had last fluttered, on the bottom stair.

Catriona looked around her. The floorboards were dusty, too, and the windows were very dirty. Apart from a telephone, which had been left on the floor, there did not appear to be any furniture in the place. She glanced at Peter in bewilderment.

‘Why is it empty?’

At some time a piece of plaster had fallen from the ceiling and now it lay in a hundred fragments on the floor near the foot of the stairs. Peter bent to examine it. Evenly, he said:

‘A few years ago I had the furniture removed and the place locked up.’

‘But why?’

Frowning, he pushed a door open and walked through into another room. Catriona followed, and gasped at the sight of a magnificent plaster ceiling. She gazed up at it.

‘What do the figures represent?’

He answered without glancing at the ceiling. ‘The figure on the left, playing a harp, is meant to be King David. His music is driving an evil spirit from the heart of Saul.’ He threw the scene a cursory glance. ‘I suppose it needs restoration pretty badly.’

Catriona stood in the doorway, watching him as he casually tested a rotting floorboard with his foot. ‘This is a wonderful place,’ she said. ‘Why did you stop using it
?
’

He shrugged. ‘I had a reason. While we’re here we had better look at the rest of the house, but I don’t want to waste too much time.’ His voice was clipped and unemotional, but at the same time Catriona sensed that he was in a very unusual mood.

Talking less and less, they toured the rest of the ground floor, and her heart warmed to the charm of the old house. There was a sort of morning-room, originally intended for the ladies of the family, and also a small library equipped with French windows that
h
ad once opened into a tiny courtyard. Now, the library’s walls were lined with empty shelves, and coarse yellow grass pushed its way between the flagstones in the courtyard. The old
salotto
, once the heart of the house, now brooded i
n
silence behind shuttered windows, and its doors had been attacked by woodworm. Alcoves which had once accommodated rare porcelain now harboured nothing but cobwebs, and winter rains, beating hard against the eastern wall, had caused widespread patches of damp.

‘Did your parents live here
?
’ Catriona asked, still shocked by the abandonment of so much that was beautiful and that had once been cherished.

‘For much of the time, yes. My mother preferred it to Malta.’

‘Then you must have grown up here.’

‘Yes.’

She found herself visualising Peter as a child, an incredibly good-looking and probably quite adorable small boy, and she watched him as he threw open one of the windows. Pushing the shutters back, he stared out into the garden, and she thought that he looked curiously young now, young and vulnerable, as if this visit to his old home had somehow stripped him of his defences—the hard veneer that normally made it difficult to get close to him. She wondered whether Jacqueline had ever been to
Ghajn
Lucia—and then, resolutely, she pushed Jacqueline out of her mind.

Peter was staring fixedly at the sky. ‘There’s a cloud,’ he said.

She moved across the room and looked over his shoulder. A cloud, small but very dark, had appeared over the pine trees and was drifting slowly westwards.

‘It’s so small,’ she objected.

‘M’mm.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I shall check the rest of the house, and then we had better be going.’

He fastened the faded shutters, sliding a large bolt firmly into place, and as he did so Catriona wondered rather sadly how much time would elapse before they were opened again.

They went through into the kitchen, which was large, Victorian in design and in need of extensive re
n
ovation. The antiquated sink was the size of a horse trough, and a blackened stove that had once been used for cooking might easily have been on display in a museum. Above one of the doors there was a large, silent clock. Its hands stopped at a quarter to nine.

At last, after a cursory inspection of various sculleries and pantries, they went back to the hall and began to climb the main staircase. Peter was very silent now, and all around them the brooding, throbbing stillness seemed to have deepened. Catriona felt an almost unbearable tension beginning to take possession of her.

The staircase rose gradually, curling round on itself, arid foolishly Catriona started counting the stairs. There were twenty-five of them. She reached the top ahead of Peter, who had paused to examine some telltale traces of woodworm and for a moment she leant against the balustrade at the top, looking down on his dark head. As she did so something stirred inside her—something she didn’t understand
...

And then she heard the thunder.

At first it was little more than a murmur, gentle and distant, but seconds later it came again and this time it was an ominous growl, drawing steadily nearer. Peter abandoned the woodworm and swiftly covered the remaining stairs.

‘That’s close,’ he said lightly. ‘I’ll take a look and see what’s going on out there.’

He passed through an archway, crossed a wide landing, and opened a door that was directly opposite the head of the stairs. Catriona waited a moment, then rather hesitantly she followed him, realising as she crossed the threshold that it was the room with the Romeo and Juliet balcony. Peter was already unfastening the long windows that opened on to the balcony, and as she glanced past him she saw that she had been right to imagine the room would have a wonderful view. Beyond the tree-tops she could see the magnificent curve of the Mediterranean, and she realised at once that it would be a superb vantage point from which to watch a summer sunrise.

Then she looked again, and saw that the sea was an ominous mauvish grey. A line of cloud had built up along the horizon and as she watched there was a vivid flash of forked lightning, followed almost immediately by a slightly louder rumble of thunder.

Catriona shrank back, fighting to control her own reactions, ashamed of the shudders running through her. She hated thunder—how she hated it! Peter was out on the balcony, staring out to sea, but she didn’t join him, and it wasn’t until she heard the soft whisper of water falling on dry ground that she realised it was raining.

In Malta, she knew, there was never any rain between May and the end of August. During those weeks the islands just roasted beneath the ruthless sun. But now it had come, and the dry, dusty days were over. The rain went on falling, lightly and very softly, almost like dew, and when she drew near to the open window Catriona could feel the gentle touch of moisture on her face. For the first time in her life she appreciated how very much like a miracle a shower of rain could seem.

Then another shaft of lightning flickered in front of them, and this time the thunder was much louder. Catriona tensed, her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands. Whatever happened, Peter Vilhena must not be allowed to guess how much she hated the storm. Making a supreme effort, she steeled herself and went out to join him on the balcony.

He turned his head slowly and their eyes met. A tremor ran through Catriona, and she knew it had nothing to do with her fear of the storm, but when she tried to look away from him she couldn’t. His dark gaze was holding hers and she didn’t even want to break away.

Thunder rolled directly overhead. It seemed to shake the house, and from the tops of the pine-trees a flock of birds rose in panic. Catriona drew back against the window-frame, shattered by emotions that were tearing her in two. He wouldn’t understand
...
nobody could.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. His voice was taut. ‘You’re not afraid of thunder?’

She shook her head desperately. ‘It’s something that happened a long time ago.’ To her horror, a tear hovered on the end of her lashes.

‘What happened?’ He moved closer to her, and she could feel his breath on her cheek. His nearness made her slightly dizzy.

‘My parents quarrelled—during a thunderstorm.’ She didn’t add that she could hear their voices still
—
her father’s bitterly angry, her mother’s hard and defensive.

There was a tiny silence. When Peter spoke his voice was very gentle. ‘Does it matter
...
now
?
’

‘I suppose not. But my mother left after that quarrel. She never came back.’

Almost before she knew what was happening, his arms were round her and he was holding her so
tightly that she could scarcely breathe. Pulses throbbed wildly all over her body and she gasped, clinging to him, overwhelmed by the sudden realisation that this was where she had wanted to be. Dazedly, she wondered whether there had ever been a time when she had not longed to be in his arms. Then rational thought became an impossibility, for his lips were on hers and the pine-tops swayed erratically. As the kiss went on the whole world lurched, and she knew that for her nothing would ever be the same again.

At last he released her mouth and pressed his cheek, damp with rain, against hers. Thunder rumbled again, but this time it was a little farther away, and in any case she hardly heard it. Nothing was real any more, nothing in the world mattered, except Peter—the strength of his arms about her, the feel of his lips, the way his eyelashes fluttered against her cheek. Her fingers entwined themselves in his hair, and as he kissed her again she felt that she was drowning in ecstasy.

Somewhere, a telephone was ringing. Catriona. didn’t recognise the sound at first, and anyway it didn’t seem to matter. But the shrilling was very persistent, and after a time Peter lifted his head. His hold relaxed a little, and she sensed that he was drawing away from her. Her arms about his neck, she willed him to come back, but already the spell was broken. He looked down into her face, his eyes unreadable, and she felt a stab of uneasiness. How could he look at her like that? It was as if—almost as if he were trying to remember who she was.

Gently he released her. ‘I must answer the telephone,’ he said. ‘No one would contact me here if it were not important.’

He stepped through the window into the empty room beyond, and she heard his footsteps echoing firmly along the passageway and down the stairs.