Golden Apple Island

by Jane Arbor

  Lila the maid functioned for Fran at the telephone, produced magazines and withdrew to her own quarters. Fran riffled through a few glossy pages, then sat at the street window to watch for Gil’s car drawing up. It arrived at last and she was at the door of the salon waiting for him when he came up. He was pleasant with Lila, thanking her for looking after Fran, but one glance at his expressive face told Fran she was not popular, and his hand under her elbow as they went out to the car had the makings of a police clinch.

  As they got under way he said, ‘Well, that’s the end of that caper. If you still want to learn to drive and can’t afford to take lessons from a garage, then you’d better take them from me. But why, you’ll be good enough to tell me, did you find it necessary to whine to Elena Merced about your imaginary poverty?’

  ‘Whine to her—?’

  ‘And practically to beg one of her bracelets—a present from me, but no matter—that you made her feel she ought to offer it to you to help you out?’

  Fran blanched with horror. ‘Of all the—!’ she began, then urged, ‘Look, Gil, stop the car. We’re going to have this out before we get home.’ And as he obeyed with a shrug, ‘Now, I’ll ask you to believe I did not “whine” to Elena Merced and I did not beg any bracelet from her. Is that clear?’

  ‘But you embarrassed her by admiring it inordinately, after making a poor mouth earlier about not being able to afford the things you wanted?’

  ‘I did nothing of the kind. If you must know, I thought it was a bit flashy,’ Fran added tartly and untruthfully.

  Gil’s lip curled. ‘Well, thanks. Next time I choose a piece of jewellery I’ll make a note to consult you. Meanwhile, are you suggesting Elena made the whole thing up?’

  ‘Not the whole thing—’

  ‘Come! Handsome of you, that,’ murmured Gil.

  ‘But she has distorted the truth—or you’ve misunderstood her,’ persisted Fran. ‘The truth being that I did tell her I was a bit hampered for money and that later, out of the blue, she offered me the bracelet of her own accord. When, naturally, I refused it she took it back and the subject wasn’t mentioned again by either of us.’

  ‘And that’s your story?’

  ‘That’s my story. Take it or leave it.’

  There was a pause. Then Gil said with a smile in his voice, ‘I’ll take it, chica. Or rather, I’ll strike an average between it and Elena’s much more dramatic version.’

  ‘But mine’s the truth!’

  ‘And hers, as I’ve no doubt she intended, wrung my heart with pity for you.’ He half turned in his seat to meet Fran’s troubled eyes. ‘You must forgive her, little one. We Spaniards don’t think a story worth telling if we don’t doll it up in drama, and if Elena is anything, she is all-Latin temperament to her elegant fingertips.’

  ‘As I’m not, if embroidering the truth has to be the yardstick,’ retorted Fran sourly.

  ‘As you’re not—full stop,’ he grinned, then put a gentle forefinger to her cheek. ‘But seriously, chica, if you have been short of money, why on earth haven’t you taken the problem to Grandfather?’

  ‘How could I? He is giving me enough hospitality as it is.’

  ‘You talk as if he were a stranger, instead of a relation with obligations to you. It suited him to offer you hospitality, and dispensing charity, when it does something for his image, is one of his stronger points.’

  ‘Well, I’ve no intention of asking him for money. Besides, it’s only while I’m not earning much that I have to watch the pence. I shall be all right again when I get back to England.’

  ‘And when do you suppose that will be?’

  ‘Why, when Mother is completely well again, and she is improving every day. In the early spring, I hope.’

  ‘No harm in hoping, I daresay.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Only warning that whether you do go when you have decided it is time could well depend on Grandfather.’

  ‘But’—Fran’s gesture was that of brushing cobwebs from before her face—‘he couldn’t keep us here when we mean to go. He couldn’t want to indefinitely!’

  Gil shook his head at her in mock pity. ‘My innocent, you have a lot to learn. Among other things—that what Grandfather may want in that regard, as in any other, will be for him to say, and no one else.’

  ‘But that would make us virtually prisoners here—which is absurd!’ Fran appealed in bewilderment, ‘Gil, you’re so cynically critical of Grandfather that it’s just not true. Why?’

  ‘I’ve told you.’ Gil turned back to the steering-wheel. ‘We’re too alike. There’s so much of him in me that I know and often hate what makes him tick.’

  ‘Then you must sometimes hate the same things in yourself,’ argued Fran.

  Gil turned his disarming smile on her. ‘Of course, frequently. For instance, if I want something I know I’ll go to any devious means to get it. And so, in my experience, would Grandfather.’

  ‘And if I believed that of either of you, which I don’t, I’d heartily dislike you both,’ declared Fran. ‘But to get back to the point—why should Grandfather want to keep us longer than when Mother is fit to leave? Since you claim to be so intuitive about his motives, do you know that?’

  She had to wait for Gil’s reply. When it came—

  ‘Not for certain, though I could make a guess,’ he said.

  ‘And your guess would be—?’ But even as she put the question Fran knew she didn’t want him to answer it. Where ignorance is bliss ... She had remembered his quip about the ‘steps’ he might take if ever she were cast in the role of his enemy and she simply did not want to know for certain that he feared her as a rival for the estate. Of course that had only been Rendle Jervis’s nonsense. But she dared not risk hearing that Gil’s guess as to his grandfather’s motives was rooted in the same idea.

  She was relieved by his crisp, ‘Forget it. When the crunch comes, I’ll weigh in on your side if you need me. Meanwhile, you can oblige me by not blaming Rodriguez too heartily to the Quinta at large.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ said Fran.

  ‘Good. Because Grandfather might decide to break him for it, and I’m not having that.’

  ‘Break him? There you go again—making Grandfather into an absolute monster!’

  Gil shook his head. ‘No. It’s just that he enjoys power. He’d equally sack an estate-worker on a whim, support the fellow’s family while he was out of work, and still not understand that people would rather have justice than charity. So you’ll backpedal on Rodriguez if you please and tell them at home that you’re not going to him again because I’m giving you lessons instead.’

  But Fran said, ‘No. It wouldn’t work out.’

  ‘Not? Why shouldn’t it?’

  ‘Because we should only fight. You’d get me into a tizzy of nerves and we’d probably both end up over a precipice.’

  Gil threw back his head and laughed. ‘You have got our relationship taped, haven’t you?’ he said. When he left the argument there Fran found she was perverse enough to wish he had cared enough to persuade her.

  One of the differences between England and El Naranjal was that Christmas came quietly, almost unheralded beforehand. There were no garish street illuminations, no commercial Santas in the stores, no swollen mails, no visiting carol-singers. Instead there was the Nativity crib at the west front of the Cathedral, facing the plaza, where every passer-by paused to kneel and to light a candle to its simple mystery, and recitals of Christmas hymns sung in the nave in the evenings of the week before the ultimate Midnight.

  On the day after Christmas there was a party at the Quinta for the children of the estate—a simple affair of lemonade and sweetmeats and fruit and a puppet-show and a small present for each child. Their elders received casks of wine and double pay for the festal days during which no work had been asked of them, and on the Feast of the Epiphany, the sixth of January, there was to be a family dinner-party of de Matteor relations and their frie
nds.

  ‘It’s a tradition with us that is generations old. I’m so glad that Father still keeps it up,’ Raquel said happily to Fran. ‘You’ll remember, darling, I told you about it in England?’

  Fran agreed, ‘Yes. Isn’t it the party that, within living memory and before that, fell on its face only once?’

  ‘Tch, querida, the odd English expressions you still use! But yes—once, when some branches of the family were rich and others were too poor to afford party clothes, the poor ones took offence at the rich ones turning up in their best and their jewels, and they walked out in a body before so much as a single glass of wine had been drunk.’

  ‘Whereupon the current head of the family hit on the idea of making them all wear national peasant dress, which everyone could find somewhere in their cupboards, and the situation was saved,’ prompted Fran.

  ‘Yes. That was your great-great—I mean, my great-grandfather, and people have come in island costume ever since. We must ask Lucia to look out something for us both. If she still has them you could wear one of the dresses I wore before I went to England,’ said Raquel.

  That night there were the same two guests for dinner as on their first evening in El Naranjal—Gil brought Elena Merced and Rendle Jervis stayed on after a business session with Don Diego. At the end of the meal the men remained in the dining-room and in the salon the talk turned on the coming Twelfth Night party, Lucia politely assuming that Gil had asked Elena to it.

  ‘Thank you. Yes, he did,’ Elena told her. ‘Fortunately I have to keep a whole wardrobe of folk-costume for my stage work, so I’ll have plenty of choice.’ She turned to Fran. ‘Very likely I could find something for you too, as you probably haven’t anything of your own.’

  Before Fran could reply Lucia said a shade too distantly, ‘You are very kind. In fact, however, we have a good selection of our own and we have fitted out Francisca with something she likes.’ But Elena’s glance had moved to the full-length painting which graced the wall opposite to her.

  ‘That dress is very characteristic of its period, isn’t it? And the portrait is of your own mother wearing it, didn’t Gil tell me?’ she asked.

  Both Raquel’s and Lucia’s eyes went to the picture. Lucia said, ‘Yes. She wore it at her last family party and Father had her painted in it shortly before she died. Raquel, do you remember how wonderful Mother looked that night?’

  Raquel shook her head. ‘I think I do. But I wasn’t very old and I’ve never been very sure how much my memory has gone by her picture.’ Her gaze dwelt lovingly again. ‘She was very beautiful, wasn’t she? And her hair—I do remember that. That it wasn’t black like ours, but a kind of dark coppery flame. Very much the same colour as yours, senorita,’ she added to Elena.

  ‘Thank you. Yes, it’s not unlike. But the traje’—Elena’s expressive hand indicated the peasant costume—‘that intrigues me. I suppose you still have it in your collection?’

  Both sisters shook their heads. ‘No,’ said Lucia.

  ‘No? I should have thought—?’

  ‘No,’ confirmed Lucia. ‘Of course I didn’t know at the time what happened to it. After Mother died, I mean. But later Juan—our brother, Gil’s father, you know—told me Father had taken charge of it. And as he may have done that because it had agonizing associations for him, naturally we’ve never asked him what became of it.’

  Just then the men came in, coffee and lemon tea were served and an hour later Gil left with Elena.

  On the night of the party the guest list necessitated tables being laid in the hall as well as in the dining room. There was to be no order of precedence; people were to draw their partners’ names on arrival and to take their places according to the numbered menu-cards at the tables.

  The whole of the Quinta’s previous three days was given over to preparations—to counting silver, glass and china; cooking, arranging flowers and setting the tables. The matter of wine was Don Diego’s province, and Lucia told Fran that there was a tradition that no else knew what he would choose from his cellar until he had it brought up for chilling or achieving room temperature. He would ask Lucia what she proposed to serve for the meal and choose accordingly, without consulting her again. Like the insistence on peasant dress, it was one more family custom hallowed by time which nobody questioned or dreamed of altering.

  Gil had shown Fran his version of the men’s ‘uniform’—narrow boots worn over tight-fitting trousers and a full-sleeved, open-necked shirt under a bolero-type waistcoat of rough frieze. Her own choice from the capacious cedar trunks Lucia opened up were high-heeled lace-up boots, a red panniered underskirt, a black apron to cover it and a puff-sleeved bodice closed by a crisscross lacing of red and black tapes.

  ‘Do I wear anything on my head—a mantilla or something?’ she had asked Lucia.

  ‘Not a mantilla. A peasant girl at the date of that dress would only be allowed a stuff velo which she would wear—so.’ Lucia draped a square of red cloth on Fran’s hair and knotted it behind one ear. ‘Mantillas were only for those who could afford the high, elaborate combs and lace. It’s very different nowadays. Now they can all buy combs and mantilla lace at the chain-stores. Yet now that they can, how many of them do, except for fiestas or a Marriage Fair? Not they. Instead they plaster their heads with something called lacquer, which I always thought was the finish for a tin tray, not for the hair of a young girl,’ finished Lucia primly to a shout of laughter from Fran.

  On the evening of the party she met Gil coming from his room as Fran went downstairs. He looked her over and tweaked one of the rabbit’s ears of her headdress. ‘What, no mantilla?’ he teased.

  ‘No. Aunt Lucia says a girl of my class wouldn’t be able to afford one.’

  ‘Then you can get yourself kissed tonight and have nothing to worry about, can’t you?’ he retorted as he tucked an arm into hers and they went downstairs together.

  The de Matteor relations arrived by the dozen, their own guests numbering at least half as many again. Some of them Fran had met earlier, some not. In the lottery for dinner partners she picked a middle- aged uncle by marriage of Gil’s. He was a banana-exporter with a sunburned face networked by smile-lines, but as he hadn’t a word of English Fran saw her Spanish being stretched to its limits.

  ‘Call me Tio Jose,’ he urged her as they joined the queue to be greeted at the door of the salon by Don Diego and Lucia with all the formality of a Command reception. When they gained the lovely room Gil was there, leavening the pretentiousness by seeing that people had drinks as soon as they were free to enjoy them. But as he came over with a jovial ‘Hola’ for his uncle, it was as if they and everyone near by were caught up in tableau as Don Diego drew himself to his full height and stiffened, his eyes frozen on a couple who must have been a few yards behind Fran and her partner in line.

  The man she did not know. The woman was Elena Merced, and the only sound to be heard in the little island of silence was Gil’s shocked gasp at sight of her.

  For Elena’s version of the peasant costume required of her was faithful to the last detail of the painted dress in the portrait of her host’s dead wife which hung on the salon wall. There were the high white boots, the yellow full skirt, the grey bodice, the shawl draped so as to reveal the glory of the copper hair. The imitation was so true that in any

  company which took itself less seriously than this one, it might have passed for a joke. But here, even Fran realized, it was more than a social gaffe. It was an affront for which Elena would not be easily forgiven.

  Oddly, no one bothered to glance at the portrait for comparison as they waited for the comment which Don Diego must surely make. At Fran’s side Tio Jose muttered an expletive, then in a tone which held ice Don Diego said smoothly, ‘You have gone to too much trouble in order to create your effect, senorita. A certain amount of expense also, no doubt. Whereas, had you come to me, I might have been willing to loan you the original dress which you have copied so faithfully for reasons into which one won’t enqu
ire.’ Then he looked over and beyond Elena and her partner, offering his hand to the couple behind them.

  Among the onlookers there was a stir of embarrassment, then they took their cue from their host and moved away without any comment on the little scene. Elena’s head went up and her eyes narrowed. She said something rapidly to her partner who, after answering her, took her arm and made way for her to go with him past the entering couples, back into the hall. Presently Fran noticed that Gil had disappeared too, but he was there again when the party sat down to dinner. So was Elena’s partner, but not Elena herself. Her empty chair and cover had been removed and no one mentioned her absence.

  Some time after the return to the salon Raquel was tired and Fran excused herself to Tio Jose in order to see her to her room. Raquel’s judgment of Elena was characteristically gentle—the kindest comment Fran thought Elena was likely to earn. Raquel said, ‘Of course, she is a stranger. So perhaps we should not expect her to appreciate that we were shocked. She may even have thought she ought to be congratulated! A great pity. Naturally she would feel she ought to leave.’

  Fran’s worry was lest Gil, for some reason of his own, for some cynical notion of ‘getting at’ his grandfather, had been party to Elena’s breach of manners. She felt she would have known had she seen his face in the electric moment of the confrontation. But she had not glanced his way. And though she argued that, above everything, Gil was a de Matteor, with the de Matteor code in his very blood, the distasteful fear was there and stayed to rankle.

  To meet him in the hall when she went downstairs again was like an extension of her thoughts of him. He was alone, without his partner, a fifteen-year-old second cousin; he was pulling a light coat over his shoulders and he halted at sight of Fran.

  ‘You’ll do,’ he said ungraciously. ‘Make my excuses to young Pilar, will you? I’m going out and I don’t know when I shall be back. There’s been a phone call—Elena has had an accident and I’m going to her.’