by Jane Arbor
“On the contrary, I think it is a lovely idea,” Emma claimed. “And I believe that if you could write it for the suggestion box as you have told it to me, Lady Bysshe might consider it the best yet.”
Pilar flushed with pleasure. “I could write it down if you would help me, Emma.”
“Then let’s rough it out now.” Emma scrambled up and went to look for paper and pencil in her bag which lay on the garden seat. There was a pencil attached to her diary and in the bag, also, was the brief note Mark Triton had returned to her own letter of thanks. She remembered why she had kept it - as evidence for Leonore of their very formal relationship. But the need had passed now. Leonore could not possibly suspect her still of “silly expectations”, nor that Mark had the slightest romantic interest in her.. .. She took the double sheet of notepaper from its envelope, crumpled Mark’s note and gave the blank half and the pencil to Pilar.
They delivered Pilar’s idea to the suggestion box on their way to the English hospital that afternoon, returning in the early evening to the villa where Emma was surprised to be summoned peremptorily to Leonore’s room.
Leonore was not resting. She was seated at an antique bureau, and she pointedly continued to write there for some minutes after Emma entered and stood waiting. When she turned at last, she indicated with the butt of her pen an envelope which lay on the blotter beside her.
“Perhaps I might ask you to explain this?” she invited, her tone sheer ice.
Emma recognized at once the envelope of Mark’s note. She believed she had returned it to her bag, but she must have dropped it instead. As coolly as possible she said: “Does it need explanation, señora de Coria? It is merely the envelope of an old letter of mine.”
“Yes - a letter to you from Mark Triton! I hope you are not questioning my right to ask you to explain a correspondence with my fiancé?” snapped Leonore.
“I am sorry. I did not know you were yet engaged, señora-”
“Please don’t make insolent side issues of that sort.” As Leonore’s head jerked up angrily the muscles of the column of her throat were taut as ropes. “As you admit to the correspondence, when did it begin and for how long has it gone on ? ”
“It began with a letter of my own. That” - Emma nodded at the envelope - “contained Mr. Triton’s answer.”
“So? You wrote to him first, inviting him to answer?”
“As you see, he did reply. But if you had looked closely at the envelope, you should have noticed that it is addressed to the pension where I was living before I came to the Villa Mirador. ”
“And what does that prove? The date has been obscured. How am I to know you are not still making use of your late boarding-house as a kind of poste restante?”
Emma felt anger pounding at her temples. “Well, I am not,” she said shortly. “The letter was written several weeks ago and it was the only one I have had. My letter to Mr. Triton was to thank him for introducing me to this post; his to me was to congratulate me on having obtained it.”
“Several weeks ago? But you have carried about the empty envelope ever since?”
“No. The letter, too.”
“So long? Really, I had always thought that only love letters were cherished and dog-eared so!” drawled Leonore. “But if the contents of this letter are as innocent as you claim, perhaps you will allow me to satisfy myself of that by letting me read it ? ”
“I’m sorry. That’s not possible I destroyed it this morning - at the same time as I must have dropped its envelope, in fact.” Later in the day, Emma had discarded the crumpled page of Mark’s writing in a waste- paper basket at the hospital, with a queer sense of regret and finality as it had left her hand.
Leonore shrugged. “Dear me, how very timely - that after being preserved for weeks, it should disappear just when a sight of it could prove the truth of what you would have me believe! Or might it perhaps have disproved it, I wonder?”
Emma’s colour blazed. “If you don’t believe me, you have your alternative, surely? You could ask Mr. Triton himself when he wrote to me and what he said. After that, if you would rather not offer me an apology, you might prefer to dismiss me instead?”
For a long moment their eyes met in challenge. Then Leonore conceded: “I must give you the benefit of the doubt, of course. And if you are telling the truth I shouldn’t dream of humiliating you by revealing to Mark that you had kept a quite unimportant letter of his for so long -”
As if to give Emma time to absorb the insulting implication of that, she turned back to her desk, dashing off a couple of signatures and sealing envelopes, before adding over her shoulder: “I hope I can take it that you are not dismissing yourself? That you are not putting me to the trouble, just when Pilar is used to you, of finding someone else for her ?”
How Emma longed to flash back: “Yes, I am dismissing myself -!” and to fling free of the veiled cruelties of this woman’s tongue. But that would be to abandon Pilar to them - dear, vulnerable Pilar whom she had grown to love, but whom Leonore could still hurt.
So Emma murmured: “If you accept my word, I’ve no wish to go back to the obligations I undertook to Pilar.”
It was the offer of a hollow truce and she knew it. But she felt she owed it to Pilar’s need of her, and at least it left the final retreat to Leonore.
To her surprise, Leonore did retreat. She said: “Very well, I accept it. We need not discuss the matter any more, and I shall not trouble to mention it to Mark. I needn’t keep you any longer, I think.”
So far, it was victory. But as Emma left the room she felt it to be an empty one. Leonore had accepted defeat only for some unrevealed ends of her own. Certainly not merely because she feared to lose Emma as a companion for Pilar.
CHAPTER FIVE
As both girls had hoped, Pilar’s novel suggestion for the Ball was applauded on all sides. Each lady guest was invited to have her labelled posy delivered to Lady Bysshe’s villa on the morning of the Ball, and her gardeners would do all that was necessary to house them in the posy bower where the offerings would be made. Meanwhile, the event gathered publicity like a snowball, and it was heard that parties were even coming over from Gibraltar to attend.
About a week before the Ball, however, the weather changed. Emma, who had come to take the perfection of golden days and sapphire nights for granted, felt almost personally affronted by the high hot wind which now skirmished at every street corner and nagged endlessly from dawn until dark. But when, with the success of the Ball in mind, she worried to Pilar and Ayesha that it must surely end in rain, they laughed at her fears.
Her whole face rounding with her smile, Ayesha said: “It not rain. Not in summer. In winter - rain. All day. All night. Wet everywhere - whoosh! This wind - levante. Levante blow hard. But levante good -”
“Good ?” echoed Emma, not agreeing at all.
“Good for bougs. Spoil bougs. So-!” And Ayesha made several graphic snatches at imaginary flies or mosquitoes before adding, for Emma’s further comfort: “Levante blow four days - five? And then no more. A day, at sunrise - drop. So -” Her flattened hand made nothing of the wind’s menace after that.
But it was still blowing one evening when Emma went to her room to change. Earlier, before leaving for the hospital, she had latched back the deep window giving on to the little balcony which was divided by a thick trellis of clipped jasmine from a twin balcony to Leo- nore’s room next to hers. Meaning to close the window before she changed, Emma stepped out on to the balcony. But as she stooped to the latch and freed the hook, it was furiously wrenched from her grasp by the wind, and the french window slammed hard shut upon the skirt of her dress.
Emma bit back a pungent comment on the treachery of the near-hurricane which Ayesha praised so highly for its destruction of “bougs”. But though she thought she had only to twist round in order to free her dress and open the window, she found this was not so. She could turn just so far, but the material must have caught on the fastening between the two hal
ves of the window. Short of tearing herself free or managing to ease the stuff from the lock, she was a prisoner where she stood.
She tried turning about, only to find she had even less play of movement that way. It was an absurd plight, but she was reluctant to tear her dress wantonly, and if Leonore were already in her room she would hear her if she called out.
She stood for a moment, listening for Leonore. And then froze to a silent rigidity as she realized that Leonore was indeed there, either on her own balcony or at its french window. And she was not alone. Ramón Galatas was with her.
Later, Emma knew that even then there had been an instant of grace when she could have called to them without embarrassment for any of them. But surprise that Leonore invited Ramón to her room when she claimed to be engaged to Mark kept Emma silent for too long. The next minute Ramón was speaking, his attractive Latin voice passionate, urgent. And then Emma knew that she dared not reveal herself as an unwilling eavesdropper on what he was saying.
He spoke in Spanish, but by now she understood the language enough to realize that he was urging Leonore to a rendezvous which, at first, she refused him.
Ramón pleaded: “Mañana?” and when Leonore replied that tomorrow was impossible for her he offered other times and days until, with a coquettish show of reluctance, she agreed to meet him on the evening of the day before the Flower Ball. Ramón’s answer was a stream of endearments and extravagant thanks, and Leonore warned him irritably to lower his voice.
They must have been out on the balcony, for Emma heard them move back towards the window. But not before Leonore, still scolding Ramón, said something in a near-whisper about “La Inglesa”, followed by Emma’s name.
At first, Emma supposed Ramón was being warned that, her own room and balcony being next door, it was possible for her to overhear. But as they were stepping out of earshot into Leonore’s room Leonore said on an unmistakable note of malice: “But of course I know she is too colourless to attract you! Nevertheless, a pretence that she does can be very useful to us –” The rest was lost as the other french window closed behind them.
Emma was galvanized to instant action. She could not possibly reveal herself now, so, unless she remained where she was until she was missed, she must free herself somehow by her own effort.
But as she wrestled again with the jammed fastening she was consumed with furious hostility for Leonore. Pilar had guessed at only half the truth. Her blind devotion had pleaded for Emma’s “understanding” of Leonore as the tender-hearted victim of Ramón’s persistent but hopeless courtship. Her intuition fell short of realizing that Leonore’s adroit “use” of Emma was not merely to placate Mark but deliberately to deceive him.
Yet Leonore had openly admitted as much to Ramón. She meant to make the best of the two worlds she was offered - flattening and enslaving both men; making Ramón her conspirator and allotting to Emma herself the role of decoy duck to draw off Mark’s possible suspicion. It was clear now why Leonore had given in to her over the matter of Mark’s letter. She could be “useful” to them -! The renewed frenzy with which Emma at-tacked the lock and finally ripped her skirt free expressed her full fury against Leonore.
In her room once more, she took off the frock and decided that the skirt’s fullness would hide the jagged rent, if she repaired it with care. She wished she could deal as finally with the other problem the evening had set her.
She had made no protest the first time Leonore had publicly thrust Ramón’s attentions on her; she remembered that, being sorry for him at the time, she had even made a show of encouraging him a little. But when and how might Leonore attempt the same thing again? Probably only when Mark was present, and Emma shrank from brawling with Leonore in front of him or even of Pilar.
And if she confronted Leonore alone, afterwards she could picture her protest being sneeringly dismissed as the fruit of her own imagination. Moreover, any further crossing of swords with Leonore might force her into giving in her notice. And now that Pilar was really blossoming under her hand, so to speak, she was reluctant to take that step.
By the time she had changed and gone downstairs the edge of her anger had dulled to frustration, and she could hardly bear the thought of having to be respectfully pleasant to Leonore as if nothing were amiss. But in the sun-room where they had dined since the levante rose, Ayesha had laid only her own place and Pilar’s at table, which meant that Leonore was dining out.
Feeling reprieved for the moment, Emma took up a book while she waited for Pilar to come down. But the constant fret of the wind against the door to the patio was disturbing, and after a few minutes she went to see whether the door was properly shut.
It was not. But as she made to close it she saw the glow of a cigarette in the darkness outside before she made out the figure of a man who was leisurely strolling the patio.
Mark Triton! And Leonore's balcony was immediately above! How long had he been there? What might he have overheard?
Reason prompted that if he had been there a quarter of an hour ago, he would have made his presence known to Leonore and Ramón as soon as he heard them on the balcony. Ramón had not been whispering ... But as Emma knew Mark had made no sign, he could not have been there -
He could not possibly be pacing there so calmly if he had any hint of Leonore’s disloyalty. Matters were as they had been.... But Emma, rooted to the threshold and watching him until he turned and saw her, knew that nothing within her was braced against the surge of conflict of wishing that he could know Leonore for what she was and yet longing that he should not be hurt, even at Leonore de Coria’s hands.
He crossed the patio towards her and followed her into the lighted room. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You look as shaken as if I were a ghost.”
Emma said: “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be out there.”
He looked at his watch. “No, I’m early. I told Leonore I shouldn’t be here till eight-thirty, and it’s not that yet.” He followed Emma’s glance towards the two covers on the dinner-table and added: “I’m not dining. Only collecting Leonore for a film at the Roxy. As soon as she’s ready, we may as well be on our way.”
“I think she is still in her room. Would you like me to tell her you are here?” (Tell her? Warn her, rather, if Ramón, too, were still there!)
“No hurry. What’s a wait of twenty minutes or so where an accepted feminine privilege is concerned?”
Emma moistened her lips which had gone suddenly dry. “You’ve been - here for twenty minutes?”
“More or less. As I was early I told Ayesha she needn’t announce me He paused to scrutinize Emma’s face once more. “There is something wrong,” he challenged her quietly. “You’ve had some kind of shock that’s not wholly explained by your finding me out on the patio when you didn’t expect me to be there?”
“No, really it was that.” A half-truth only, but it would have to serve. She could not cross-examine him as to where he had spent the time of waiting, nor define that sudden stab of need to protect him from Leonore. But when his continuing silence invited her to add something more she went on: “How could it have been anything else, when I’d just come straight down from my room myself? If my face showed more than surprise at seeing you, I must? learn to control my expressions better!”
His eyes remained narrowed upon her. “Your expressions?” he queried, cryptically. “Or your emotions - which?”
But before she could ask him what he meant Leonore was there in the room with them, wafting delicate perfume and proffering a treacherous hand for his kiss.
Ramón was not with her, and she evinced no sign of disturbance when Mark told her he had arrived early and had been waiting some time. She accepted his help with her wrap, ignoring Emma until they were at the door, on their way out.
Then she said over her shoulder: “Go up to Pilar, will you? She came to my room just now for aspirin, and as she is obviously starting a cold, I have sent her to bed. And by the way - Ramón Galatas said somet
hing about looking in this evening. If he does, I’m sure I needn’t ask you to be kind to him -” She broke off to flash a brilliant smile at Mark. “Nor need we worry, I daresay, that, with Pilar in bed, he and Emma won’t enjoy the cosiest dinner together? Just the two of them, with only Ayesha for chaperon. How nice!”
A discreet question to Ayesha proved that Ramón must have left the villa as secretly as he had come. Ayesha knew nothing of his being expected and Emma felt sure he would not return that night. She went to see how Pilar was, and later they both dined from a tray in the younger girl’s room without any interruption.
Pilar’s cold developed rapidly with a complicating high temperature. As the week passed, her chief worry was lest Leonore or Emma should catch it and whether she herself would be able to go to the Ball. But the doctor Leonore called in promised her this on condition that, the evening before it, she turned in very early for a long night’s rest.
She was only too ready to buy permission to attend the Ball at such a price, and by the time Leonore left for whatever assignation she had made with Ramón, Pilar was already in bed and obediently fast asleep.
Leonore drove off in her own car, dressed for the evening, without mentioning her destination to Emma or when she would be back. Indeed, throughout the week of Pilar’s confinement to her room, Leonore had evaded all but the briefest of contacts with Emma, appearing at even fewer meals than usual and wearing an air of aloof preoccupation whenever they met.
She must now that I’ve realized what she is trying to do and how deeply I resent it, thought Emma. She is determined not to face the issue with me if she can help it. But hourly her own sense of frustration increased as she saw how difficult it might prove to pin an accusation of duplicity to Leonore. It was Leonore who held all the cards....