by Ann Bridge
‘These have not been properly washed,’ he said to the bailiff. Por favor, tell the women to do them again, and examine each one yourself.’
‘Most certainly, Your Excellency.’
In the washrooms outside the Duke observed that there was not enough soap, and insisted on being shown the locked cupboard where the towels were kept; he said that another two dozen must be provided. ‘Who will be doing the cooking for the ranchos this year?’
‘Esperanza and Antonia, as usual—and young Ana will help with the vegetables and the washing up, Your Excellency.’
‘Muito bem. But please see that those blankets are washed today, so that they will be aired.’
As they walked home the Duke said to Nicholas—‘Senhor Oliveira is really quite a good man; but here it must be known, and seen, that every detail is looked into; otherwise people get careless. Those women he spoke of know that I shall come and taste the food myself—but they never know when I am coming!’ he added smiling. Luzia shot a gleam of satisfaction at Hetta as she overheard this. Nick asked what sort of food the ranchos would be given?
‘Oh, soup—always soup! And broa, maize bread, and a great deal of bacalhau; that is dried cod, it is one of our staple foods here, and old Esperanza knows many excellent ways of cooking it. And of course salads and vegetables, and all the wine they wish for.’
‘What they really enjoy most is the coffee,’ Luzia put in. ‘For the country-people this is rather a luxury, or at least to be used sparingly; here they can drink it by the litre! And Papa, tell Nicholas about the peru on the last night.’
Her Father smiled at her.
‘Yes, on the last night, when all the wine is made, they have a special dinner—roast turkey. This is a great treat for them.’
‘Why is it called peru? Do turkeys come from Peru?’ Nick asked. ‘I thought they were native to North America, originally.’
‘That is the turkey-buzzard. The birds we eat were found domesticated in Mexico by the first conquistadors, and introduced from there, I believe. I do not know how they came by the name “peru”—a geographical confusion, perhaps.’
‘A much more reasonable one than our calling them turkeys, anyhow,’ said Nick laughing. ‘At least Mexico and Peru are in the same hemisphere.’
Hetta was increasingly pleased with the way things were going. The Duke continued to tell Nick about the countryside and estate matters, and Nick to show an intelligent interest. When the old gentleman was occupied with the bailiff, or was busy in his study, Hetta as far as possible left Nick and Luzia to go for walks alone; they returned from these with such radiant faces that it was obvious their personal relationship was unclouded too. However, this involved Hetta in sometimes taking walks alone; old Mrs. Hathaway had told her that exercise was good for the baby, and it had certainly worked well for little Richenda, her first child, who was the healthiest and most cheerful of babies. At first she had walked mostly in the grounds, which were surrounded by a high wall—but she was a good walker, and as the memory of the episode at the cigarral faded, and her natural confidence returned, she began to go out through one or other of the high wrought-iron gates in the wall and stroll along the tracks through the fields, pausing to exchange greetings with the peasants working, or watching men, their trousers rolled thigh-high, treading their own grapes in those parti-coloured barrels.
One day as she approached a group of women who were beating the seed out of flax-plants on to a liteiro, a hand-woven bed-spread, she saw that they were talking to three men—that is to say the men were addressing them, and they were shaking their heads in non-comprehension, and laughing with bucolic glee at this fact; as she came nearer the men moved off, and were lost to view behind a patch of still-standing maize beyond the house—it struck her that there was something rather hurried and furtive about their departure. Hetta had picked up some Portuguese during her first stay in Portugal, and had increased it on her previous visits to Gralheira from Madrid. After greeting the women she asked who their visitors were?
Oh, strangers, foreigners—it was hard to understand what they said, the women replied, still laughing; one young girl added that she thought they were looking for work, but she could not be sure.
‘They were not Portuguese, then?’ Hetta asked, rather surprised.
‘Oh não não, minha Senhora. Portuguese they certainly were not.’ They might have been Spaniards, the young girl added.
Hetta had not noticed the men’s appearance very particularly, and in any case she had only seen them from a distance; one she thought had grey hair. She walked on a little further after leaving the women, and then took a different track back towards the house. This ran downhill to the banks of a small stream thickly bordered on one side with what the Portuguese call canas, a tall blue-grey reed almost 12 feet high, which the peasants cut and use for fencing; she crossed the stream by a little bridge and walked slowly along on the further bank, watching a dipper perching on stones in the water. She stood still to see if she could spot the entrance to its nest; suddenly she was aware of a movement among the reeds on the opposite bank—a hand parted them cautiously, and a face with a dark moustache peered through, and then a second face; as she stared at them they withdrew, but through the screen of reeds she clearly saw two figures moving quickly away.
This was so unlike the normal Portuguese openness and cheerful friendly behaviour that Hetta became a little suspicious; she stared hard through the reeds, and thought she saw a third figure; she could not be sure. But why peer and stare, and then hurry away? She went back to the bridge, crossed it, and looked about; a small pine wood came down almost to the stream, and she could see no one. She felt slightly uncomfortable as she walked home.
Two days later she encountered them again, as she was returning from a walk on the more hilly ground behind the house; here, close to the estate wall, the path ran through a wood where the heathy mata, the prickly undergrowth used by the peasants both for litter for their stalled oxen and as kindling for their fires, afforded a certain amount of cover. Rounding a corner of the path she saw, on a bank a little above her, a man’s grey head sticking up through the dull green underbrush; he peered at her intently, and a moment later the dark moustached face she had seen through the reeds by the stream appeared beside the grey head—he too stared at her before he ducked down again. She hastened her steps, then forced herself to slacken them to her former pace—they were rude, but not more than that, she told herself. She was, however, somehow very glad to pass through the great stone gateway on to the smooth gravel of the drive, which several gardeners were raking; their familiar faces were reassuring. She passed the time of day with them, and was about to go up the steps into the house, when on an impulse she turned back and spoke to the oldest, a lame old fellow.
‘Oh Fernando, did you perhaps see some men loitering about outside? I passed them just now in the wood.’
‘Sim sim, Minha Senhora, I have seen them—three, one a grey-head.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Minha Senhora, I do not know this; certainly strangers. For some days they hang about, watching who comes and who goes—sometimes on this side of the park, sometimes on the other. I think they are looking for someone, perhaps.’
‘They should be at work, at this time of the year,’ Hetta said, with assumed firmness.
‘So I think also,’ Fernando replied.
Hetta went into the house rather disturbed. ‘Looking for someone’—Fernando’s words stuck in her head. Could they be looking for her? Certainly they had been looking at her hard enough, both just now, and by the stream two days ago; and she remembered that the girl who was beating out linseed had said she thought they might be Spaniards.
If one has not only been brought up in a Communist country, but has actually been kidnapped by Communists, like Hetta Atherley—let alone have stumbled on a Communist plot to assassinate a person one knows, and that quite recently, one is apt to take even trivial things more seriously than ordinary
people. Reason with herself as she would, Hetta could not resist the impression that perhaps she herself was now being spied on, even hunted. It was true that Luis had been deported, and some at least of the other Hungarians imprisoned; but they must have had Spanish associates—had they followed her here? She suddenly remembered the man who had brought the mysterious flowers with no card to her in the Isabella Clinic—he had stared at her in just the same way. True both Luzia and Richard had brushed that aside as an accident—but had it been an accident? (She had of course no idea of the fuss that Richard had made with the authorities at the Clinic about that, nor how he had hurried her X-ray precisely on that account—she just remembered the man’s peculiar, searching stare before Luzia had fairly shooed him out of the room.)
The result of all this was to make her decide not to walk alone any more, not even in the park. After all she had the child to think of, Hetta told herself. Greatly to Luzia’s surprise she suggested next morning that she should join her and Nick in their walk, having learned that the Duke would be occupied doing accounts with his secretary; he was busy in the afternoon too, and after the siesta she again followed them out into the garden—she felt too restless to stay in the house. Things went on like this for three whole days—the Duke was constantly taken up with the estate accounts for the quarter, which he wanted to get finished before the vintage began, and Hetta stuck to the poor young people like a leech the whole time. Nick became rather exasperated.
‘I say, is your cousin coming up this week-end?’ he asked Luzia, seizing a moment when Hetta was playing with Richenda in the knot-garden.
‘Gil? I expect so. Why?’
‘So that we can sometimes see one another to speak to!’ the young man said impatiently. ‘I can’t think what has got into Mrs. Atherley all of a sudden—she never leaves us for a minute.’
‘It is rather strange,’ Luzia said thoughtfully. ‘There must be some reason, but I cannot think what it is. Hetta would never be tactless or inconsiderate without a reason.’
‘Couldn’t you drop her a hint?’
‘No—I must wait, and find out. There must be a reason,’ she repeated. ‘It is unfortunate that Papa should be so busy just now.’
Gil did come up for the week-end, so the four paired off happily again. But after those days of frustration Nick was eager to get his affairs settled, and on Sunday morning after Mass in the lovely chapel upstairs, and breakfast in one of the morningrooms, he firmly led his beloved up into the wood behind the house, and made her sit down on a mossy tree-stump.
‘We do not walk?’ she asked.
‘No, sweetheart—we talk! We simply must take this chance, while we can be together. Tell me—is it going well enough with your delightful parent, do you think, for him to accept me? Because if so I should like us to be engaged straight away.’
‘With him, I think it goes very well; you see how he shows you what goes on, and tells you about everything. But you’—she paused, and studied his face earnestly—‘are you sure that you could be happy, living here and helping Papa?’
‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘I think it could be a perfectly absorbing job. Of course I shall have to learn Portuguese, one would be sunk without that. But now that he has seen me, here, do you really think he will agree?’
Luzia began to laugh.
‘You have not asked me yet if I agree, now that I see you here.’
‘Well, do you?’ He put his hands on her shoulders and looked gravely in her eyes. ‘Luzia, you know that I love you, and I believe that you love me—enough to be going on with, anyhow. Will you marry me?’
‘Yes, I will,’ she said, as gravely as he. ‘I do truly love you, Nick.’
He gave her a long kiss, and then took his hands from her shoulders.
‘Good!’ he said. From an inner pocket he pulled out a clean handkerchief, one corner of which was knotted; he undid the knot and revealed a ring with a superb emerald, in a quaint old-fashioned setting of rose diamonds.
‘Oh, how beautiful!’ she exclaimed. ‘Nick, it is quite lovely.’
‘Try it on.’
‘No, you must do that.’
But when he put it on her finger it was very loose.
‘Oh, it’s far too big. You have such narrow fingers, for all they’re so long. Never mind—I’ll get it altered. You do really like it?’
‘I love it.’
‘I thought I would rather you had this than a new one,’ he said. ‘You see it was my Mother’s engagement ring, and my Grandmother’s, and my Great-grandmother’s before that.’
‘And your Mother let you have it?’ She was almost incredulous.
‘She gave it me herself—for you. You know how they all love you—Father is always asking when you are coming back to Pau.’
‘They are darlings,’ the girl said, warmly; she had the happiest memories of her stay with Lord and Lady Heriot. ‘Papa will love this,’ she added.
‘The ring?’
‘Yes—so many having worn it. It is like a betrothal in itself.’ She took it off. ‘You had better keep it till you have spoken to Papa.’
‘I shouldn’t let you wear it till it’s been made to fit, anyhow,’ the young man said, once more knotting it into the handkerchief and stowing it away; Luzia watched him, smiling.
‘Sorry there’s no box,’ the young man said, seeing her smile. ‘My Mother said there was one when my Father gave it to her but it fell to bits.’
‘When it fits me, it will need no box.’
‘Luzia, there is one other thing,’ Nick said, slowly.
‘What is that?’
‘Will your Father mind very much if I don’t become a Catholic? at least not at once? Of course the children will be Catholics—I realise that. And what about you?’ he added.
‘Naturally I should like it if you were one, and so would he. But he knows you are not. Why do you say not at once?’ she asked, a little surprised.
‘I think it would rather upset my old man if I became an R.C. He understands about the children, and he doesn’t really mind that; it’s—well, it’s a step further off. But I think he might mind about me.’
‘Then if this is your motive, I think Papa will approve it. I have only read a little theology, but to be a good son to one’s parents must surely be right,’ Luzia said, with her little definite manner when she had made up her mind about anything.
When Nicholas Heriot went into the study to ask the Duke of Ericeira, formally, for the hand of his only child, he was understandably a little nervous. Curiously, the room itself gave him a certain confidence, it was so like the ‘business-room’ in a Scottish country house with its safe, its filing cabinets, the shelves full of agricultural books and publications, even the huge map of the estate on one wall. To Nick the only unusual feature was the array of eight telephones on the big desk, but his host had already explained the reason for them—to be in touch with the farm, the adega, the oil-mill, the garage, the bailiff’s house, and office and so on, as well as the outside world, without the trouble of keeping someone to work a private switch-board.
Nick was very brief and straight-forward. Still standing, he said—‘I greatly wish to marry your daughter, Sir, and I have come to ask if you will accept me as a son-in-law.’
‘Sit down,’ the Duke said. Nicholas sat down. ‘What do your parents say to this plan?’ the older man asked.
‘They already know and love her; they would like it above all things.’
‘Would they be willing for you to spend most of your time here? This will be essential, especially when I am gone.’
‘Naturally they realise that, Sir, and accept it.’
‘And you—could you be happy, content, in this sort of life? Being a land-owner entails a great deal of drudgery.’
‘Much more worth while than most forms of drudgery,’ the young man said energetically. ‘I can’t think of any sort of work that I should enjoy more.’
‘I hoped that was so,’ the Duke said, smiling. He got
up. ‘I need not ask if you love my daughter, for I am satisfied that you do. Yes, Nicholas—I shall value you as a husband for her, and a helper for myself—which I am beginning to need increasingly. You have my consent.’ And greatly to Nick’s embarrassment, he kissed him warmly on both cheeks.
‘Thank you, Sir,’ the boy stammered out. ‘May I tell her?’
‘We will tell her together.’ He rang the bell, and bade Elidio ask the Condesa to come to the study.
Luzia had been waiting in the small breakfast-room close by; she too was a little wrought up when she entered the room—her grey eyes moved from one face to the other in silent questioning. It was an emotional moment; her Father masked it with a small pleasantry.
‘Well, my child, so you have found me an assistant! I have no objection to him, except that he does not speak Portuguese.’
‘He will learn! He has said himself that it was essential. He will begin immediately!’ Then, seeing her Father smile at her, she threw her arms round his neck and hid her face on his shoulder. ‘Oh, Papa!’ He smoothed her hair; when she lifted her head bright tears stood in her eyes—they fell as she reached up to kiss him. Nick was considerably affected by the scene.
‘Papa, we shall all be so happy together,’ she said then.
‘Yes, I believe that we shall. Well, my children, you have my blessing. But if this is a formal betrothal, where is the ring?’
Nick took out the handkerchief and produced the ring—the Duke looked at it attentively.
‘This is a splendid stone, and a very beautiful setting,’ he said approvingly. ‘It is not modern, surely?’
‘It was the betrothal ring of his Great-grandmother, and his Grandmother, and then of his Mother!’ the girl exclaimed before Nick could answer.
‘Your Mother’s ring? But does she not wear it?’ he asked Nick, in surprise.