An Undefended City

by Sophie Weston

  `My brother,' Aunt Betty was explaining carefully, 'was old-fashioned in some things. He thought that it was unfeminine to know anything about money.' This was untrue. Sir Ronald's experience had been based upon the expenditure of his dazzling but improvident wife, and she had been by no means economical, so his sister had perhaps some justification for his view that women weren't to be trusted with money. But that was not to say that he thought they should not be knowledgable. Indeed he had frequently complained of Aunt Betty's inability to keep household accounts in any recognisable form. He would have been very glad to delegate the management of his domestic finances into her hands, had he dared.

  Luis Escobar laughed. 'There are many men lh Mexico would agree with him.'

  `Really?' said Aunt Betty with something of a snap. 'Are you one of them?'

  'I have no grounds for saying so,' he responded, still with that laughing undercurrent. 'I am an engineer, not a banker.

  I know nothing of ladies' financial capabilities.'

  `An engineer?' said Aunt Betty, momentarily sidetracked. `Then what are you doing working for Octavio?'

  `I have a small company which Don Octavio has used on a number of projects in the south. It was decided that it would be to our mutual advantage if we were part of the same financial group. It is no more sinister than that,' he told her, a shade frostily. 'I work with Octavio,' the proposition was emphasised ever so slightly, 'because at the moment it suits us both. But the partnership can be dissolved at any time. I have no desire to become a businessman like Octavio, spending all his time in board rooms. I like to get out on to the site.'

  `Yes, I can see you are very different types,' said Aunt Betty sweetly.

  Luis Escobar laughed. 'We are different generations for a start,' he observed.

  `But you have no ambitions to follow in Octavio's footsteps?' pressed his interrogator.

  `Miss Betty, if you are asking me whether I have any plans to take over the Villa empire I should point out that if I had, I would be unlikely to tell you. Also, it already has an heir apparent. Diego may only seem to be interested in polo and aeroplanes at the moment, but he is still very young. Octavio is not going to disinherit him for a few schoolboy extravagances.'

  `Oh.' Aunt Betty's voice was pregnant with carefully considered revelation. 'You know Diego?'

  `Not well,' said Luis, a trifle impatiently, thought the shamelessly eavesdropping Olivia. 'We are hardly intimate.'

  `Then he hasn't told you of his marriage plans,' said Aunt Betty with satisfaction.

  There was a pause. And then Luis Escobar said incredulously: 'Marriage? Diego? Forgive me, Miss Betty, but if you imagine Diego is about to marry I think you are even less intimate with him than I am.'

  `On the contrary,' the answer was odiously smug, thought Olivia, putting down her suitcase and sitting on one of the stairs. There seemed no point in eavesdropping uncomfort-

  ably since if she were discovered there would be no disguising her guilt anyway. She propped her chin on her hand, wondering why Aunt Betty was bothering to discuss the affairs of a boy she could hardly remember.

  `Then it has been a very well-kept secret,' said Luis Escobar drily.

  `You are very slow for a man of your intelligence,' observed Aunt Betty. 'Why else do you think we are here?'

  There was another, longer pause. Olivia's bewilderment grew. Had they come to attend Diego's wedding? Why had she not been told? And how on earth was she to buy him a wedding present if she were to be whisked out of Mexico City this afternoon?

  Luis was saying slowly: 'I do not think you can mean what I think you mean.'

  `No?' Aunt Betty sounded cheerful at this triumph. `They haven't met for years,' he protested.

  `What does that matter? Marriages are often arranged in Mexico, or so Octavio tells me. And she cannot hope to find anyone as suitable.'

  `Suitable!' It was a snort.

  `Of course. He's of good family, well-educated. Not her equal in fortune, of course, but not exactly a pauper either. Nothing dubious about him, as there might well be about someone we knew nothing about. She can't be trusted to choose for herself, you know. Not when there's so much more than just her personal happiness involved. Though I doubt if she could even be trusted to choose for herself if all she was looking for was a husband to make her happy, for a more foolishly blind girl I have never met.'

  Olivia, who had gone perfectly white during this speech, put a hand against her suddenly galloping heart.

  `At least,' said Aunt Betty, clinching it, 'Diego is reliable.'

  `Reliable!' There were sounds of rapid movement, as if he had pushed away some furniture and was striding about the mosaic floor. 'Miss Betty, you are either wilfully blind or have been seriously misled. Diego is a number of things, including a very charming young man. I'm quite fond of him. But his best friend would not call him reliable.'

  `Oh, a young man's wild oats,' dismissed Aunt Betty. 'I don't take that very seriously. It's all over now.'

  `Is it?' said Luis grimly.

  `If not it will be when he has married Olivia,' Aunt Betty assured him. 'He just needs a little responsibility to steady him. And she needs someone to take care of her. I,' in a vigorous tone which belied the statement, 'am an old woman. I would like to see her settled.'

  `Yes, perhaps,' with impatience, 'but surely Miss Lightfellow must have friends of her own.'

  `How could one be sure of their suitability, though? She is a very rich young woman and she is in delicate health. She needs to be treated carefully. How many men would be prepared for that? Or rather how many men would be prepared to do that permanently? I don't want Olivia to marry some fortune-hunter, have her heart broken, and then divorce him within a couple of years.'

  `She must know people other than fortune-hunters,' Luis Escobar objected.

  Aunt Betty sighed. 'You haven't been listening. I told you—she is delicate. Most men would expect their wives to make a home for them, entertain their friends, travel with them if necessary, that sort of thing. Olivia wouldn't ever be able to be a normal wife in that way. She hasn't the stamina.'

  `You make marriage sound like a marathon race,' he said wryly. 'Surely it is not so trying?'

  `It would be for Olivia,' said Aunt Betty with sublime confidence. 'She has never been taught how to make a home. She can barely cook enough to feed herself if she is left without servants for an evening.' This was a downright falsehood which Olivia heard with a dull surprise which barely registered itself in her general shock.

  `She could learn,' said Luis. 'Everyone does at some point. A knowledge of cookery is hardly bred into the genes.'

  `But she has other things to do. She has to administer her father's estate—or rather she has to endorse the administration that other people effect for her. She is much too delicate and retiring to run things for herself.'

  `You make her sound like a zombie,' he said distastefully.

  Olivia flinched and put her arms tight round herself. She had a pain in her chest, always an indication of strong emotion and one of the principal reasons for the manifold prohibitions of her adolescence. Hating the weakness, she pressed her arm against her side, feeling the pain stab and perversely glad of it.

  Not a zombie, that's not fair. She just needs more care than most of us,' said Aunt Betty with odious tolerance. 'It is a great responsibility, after all. All that money, so many people working in her father's companies. She has to think of many more people than herself all the time, and her health has never been strong. Since her father died it has deteriorated. Her doctor in London seemed to think she has a sort of creeping melancholia. That's why we decided, Octavio and I, that it was time to get her married. She has always been stupidly shy, but now she is showing signs of retiring into her shell completely. That has to be stopped.'

  `It's incredible,' Luis Escobar said, sounding nauseated.

  Olivia felt as if she had been beaten. Tears came flooding to her eyes.

  `That's why Diego is s
o suitable. Olivia needs a husband who will look after her, who knows something of her background, and who is prepared to make her and her concerns his whole career. How many other men would or could do that?'

  There was a longer pause. Luis Escobar's pacing steps were still and, strain as she might, Olivia could make out no sounds.

  Then she heard him draw a heavy breath before he said, `None, I should think. The whole thing is disgusting.'

  Olivia's fist flew to her mouth to silence her instinctive protest. Furiously hurt, she scrambled to her feet, careless of whatever noise she might make. Fortunately Aunt Betty was loudly resenting his comment and neither of the people in the salon heard her headlong flight down the remaining stairs as a result.

  With her overnight case bumping against her legs and tears creeping down cheeks from which she had no free hand to brush them away, Olivia flew across the plant-filled court

  and out into the main drive.

  She only lessened her pace outside, partly because of the pain in her chest, partly because the noonday sun striking her unprepared skin gave her a shock. She was soon out of breath and most unbelievably hot. Slipping amongst the cool of the trees, she put down her little case, extracted a handkerchief from her handbag and dried her eyes and her forehead at the same time.

  Clearly she had to consider her position. Her flight had been pure instinct. She knew that Aunt Betty had a low opinion of her abilities and was in general amused at that lady's lack of capacity to see her niece as anything other than a recalcitrant child. This morning, however, the picture her aunt had painted had not been amusing. Olivia had sounded like a die-away parasite whose only excuse for existence was her financial endowments. She had been shocked to have it revealed so cruelly, but she could not deny the substance of what her aunt said. She was shy, she was retiring, she had no practical skills at all that would enable her to make her own way in the world if she were not bolstered by the vast fortune inherited from her father.

  All of this, of course, she had already known, though she had not realised that her family considered her case so hopeless that she had to be married off to some willing beast of burden. That of course assumed that Diego was willing. Perhaps he wasn't. Indeed, Luis Escobar's astonishment at the news suggested that he well might, not be., Could his father have forced him into the role of family sacrifice? Olivia winced.

  No wonder Luis Escobar thought it was disgusting. She agreed with him. She was bitterly ashamed of herself and furious with Aunt Betty for turning her into the mindless leech that she now saw herself to be. It would be a long time before Luis Escobar's contempt ceased to ring in her ears.

  Suddenly she began to be angry. How dared he? What right, raged Olivia in an inner monologue of considerable eloquence, had Luis Escobar to despise her? She saw no inconsistency between her fury at him and her own ,recent endorsement of his views. If she thought she was a wishy-

  washy moppet with no backbone, that was quite her own

  affair. Luis Escobar, a stranger, had no right to an opinion.

  And how dared her family, either? Wrapping her up in cotton wool all her life and then blaming her because she was fragile. Whose fault was it? They had been older and wiser (and more numerous) than the orphaned seventeen-year-old. Of course she had listened to them and taken their advice. And this was what happened as a result: they wrote her off as a person.

  Quivering with anger, she told herself that she would show them. She would go, now. Simply walk out, find herself a job, live quietly in Mexico for a bit and then, when she had proved she was not a halfwit or a schoolgirl, get in touch with them again. She contemplated the scene, smiling at the fancy. She would be very dignified. She would tell Aunt Betty that she was very grateful for everything that had been done for her, but she was grown up now and able to look after herself.

  Even while she planned the speech, however, she knew the daydream was impossible to achieve. Aunt Betty was capable of mobilising the entire Mexican police force to look for her, even if she could get out of Uncle Octavio's electrically secure gates.

  Olivia leaned tiredly against the gnarled bark of the nearest tree. Its trunk was as wrinkled and horny as a rhinoceros's skin. Its very strangeness reminded her of her position. She was in a foreign country without recourse to friends or even to such indifferent guardians as her accountant or her bank manager. She spoke the language only very roughly. Her father had insisted on her studying her mother's language, but proficiency in gently literary classes in England was a very different thing from the fluency necessary to make her way in Mexico, she was sure. And anyway she never had made her way on her own in any country in the world.

  Turning her head against the rough bark, Olivia felt despairing tears slip down her hot cheeks. She couldn't run away, she could see that. Her first instinct had been a stupid one. All that she could do was to dry her tears, slip

  back unobtrusively into the house, wash her face and pretend she had overheard nothing. If she didn't pretend very well and was unduly silent on the journey to Cuernavaca her aunt would only assume that she was still exhausted from the journey and, though she might despise her, would not cross-question her.

  A great weight seemed to settle on her heart. She bent to pick up her case as if it were Atlas's burden itself. A few dragging steps brought her to the metalled edge of the drive. There she stopped.

  How could she go back in there? Luis thought she was disgusting. As she said it to herself her whole body jerked and she felt shamed blood rise in her cheeks. Sick with indecision, she looked wildly from the house, with its assurance of protection, to the inviting terrifying gate.

  Olivia had already half turned back towards the house when she stopped again, an arrested expression on her face, and swung back to look down the drive. Yes, it was true, what she had thought she had seen. The gates, so imposingly fastened last night, opening only at the recognition of an electronic eye, were now flung wide. She quivered with excitement—so much so, indeed, that she reminded herself of a terrier pup that had once been hers. Most of the time Mops had been confined to the house, a torment to his adventurous spirit which his basically obliging nature had forced him to endure. Just once or twice, however, when a french window had been left open, or Nanny had released his lead when they were out for their walks, he had scented freedom. And like Olivia now, he had stood shivering with excitement at the offered liberation.

  Remembering Mops, ultimately banished to the Home Farm for his ratting proclivities, Olivia felt obscurely encouraged. The look she cast down the drive was almost mischievous and the tears ceased to flow. It was, she assured herself, an omen that the gates were so conveniently open. The gods were offering her a sporting chance. She would kick herself for ever if she did not take advantage of it.

  Clutching a suddenly infinitely lighter case, she made

  off down the drive with a speed which was only partly due to apprehension of a challenge from one of her uncle's henchmen. Had she been younger or without her suitcase, she might have skipped its entire length.

  The euphoria carried her out into the tree-fringed avenue and some considerable distance along its length before it occurred to her that she had no idea where she was going. Slowing to a more sedate pace, she began to look about her.

  Obviously she was in a very exclusive residential area. Mansions behind protective walls rose along both sides of the road. There was a fair flow of traffic, much of it long, expensive sedans, but nobody else on foot, as far as she could see. This was partly due, although Olivia did not then know it, to the time of day. At noon the sun is at its hottest in Mexico City and few would choose to go out into it. Even in the central shopping area, whither Olivia eventually penetrated, by dint of boarding a passing bus whose driver amiably waved her aboard, there were few people on the streets. Anyone who was not lunching in a cool, dim restaurant or shopping stepped carefully from shadow to shadow.

  Olivia observed this behaviour with interest, although she was far from understandi
ng the reasons for it. It amused her too that nobody seemed to move faster than an elegant stroll and she was irresistibly reminded of the pace that her mother had thought ladylike whenever the family had ventured on an expedition together. It had suited little Olivia very well to stop whenever her interest was caught, but it had driven Sir Ronald into silent fury—by which, with her usual regal assurance, Mama had not been in the least disturbed.

  It was thus reassuring to find the people about her moving at the leisurely pace she had always associated with her mother and Olivia began to feel almost at home. The kindly bus driver had encouraged her, and his evident ability to follow her careful Spanish encouraged her even more. He had put her down in Insurgentes, the street that Luis Escobar had told her about the night before, with a fatherly injunction to enjoy herself shopping. There was certainly an

  inordinate number of exciting-looking shops and Olivia was almost tempted.

  In the end, however, she decided to have a cup of coffee and consider her position. She found what looked like a very superior tea-shop with a rather beguiling owl that was obviously its trademark above the door. A little hesitantly she went in, wondering whether at this time of day the bustling waitresses would refuse to serve her with less than a substantial meal, as so frequently happened in London. However, no surprise greeted her timid request for coffee and, as she looked round, she saw a variety of meals, from what looked like breakfast to a distinctly sticky afternoon tea, being served and consumed. The waitresses all wore brilliant striped skirts with white blouses and a vivid peaked collar arrangement that reminded Olivia of Holland rather than Mexico. They seemed friendly too.

  The outside world, thought Olivia, ordering a second pot of coffee, had not proved too hostile so far.

  She began to consider her position rather more calmly. She had very little money. Aunt Betty had had charge of all such arrangements and had provided her with no more than five pounds' worth of Mexican pesos for airport purchases. Normally she would not have carried her own passport either, but Luis Escobar, not being aware of this tradition, had returned it to her the night before. Remembering him, she flinched and blushed, her hand clenching on the cup. It felt as if she was bright red and she glanced round, half ashamed, half defiant, but encountered complete indifference in the faces about her.