‘Madre de Dios,’ he said and sat straight up in his chair. One of the sons of the local padrón, Don Alejandro Alcantarilla Medina, was riding past on a magnificent stallion. But it was not the horseflesh – superb though that was – or even the dignified, aristocratic bearing, the almost insolent arrogance and self-confidence of young Don José Luis, the padrón’s eldest son, that drew his eye. The young hidalgo had his sister with him. She was riding, as aristocratic Spanish girls often did, behind her brother, her arms around his slim waist: she had no fear of the strength of the dancing horse, for was not José Luis in complete control? La dama Lucia, sixteen years old, and home from her convent school for the first time in months, was wearing riding dress: a wide, blue skirt exquisitely embroidered around the wide hem, which fanned over the rump of the horse: a matching short blue jacket that was also embroidered with – could it be? – gold thread, over a man’s-style ruffled shirt, of a whiteness that almost blinded John’s eyes. Her black curls were trapped against their will under a severe gaucho hat, and her dark eyes twinkled with excitement, even more brightly than the diamonds screwed into her perfect little earlobes.
Don Alejandro had locked his precious only daughter away for her own safety as the war had raged around his ancestral acres. So today, at last, she was happy to be free, to be with José Luis, to be . . . admired. She knew that the gringo at the table admired her. Had she not seen his eyes almost start from his head as she and her brother made their stately way along the dusty main street? It would be fun to tease him, especially since José Luis could not see her naughtiness. She forgot everything that dear Mother Mercedes had taught her about the wicked, lustful ways of men and she devastated John Cameron with her smile.
‘Ay, caray,’ breathed John Cameron in his newly learned Mexican Spanish, ‘did you ever see a plum so ripe and ready to fall from the tree?’
Pedro Robles looked around, fearful that the very dust might listen and report the insolence of this foreigner to the padrón.
‘Sh! How you are stupid, Señor, even to look on the face of Don Alejandro’s daughter. He would whip the skin from your back. And la dama? She would spit in your face.’
John laughed. No woman – not even Catriona when he had bid her farewell – had done that. ‘Yours, I’ll grant you, Pedro, and who could blame her. But, believe me, amigo mio, the lady who can resist the charms of John Cameron hasn’t yet been born.’
‘You have learned much of our language, Señor Juan,’ said his companion, a shifty-eyed paysan in dust-caked jeans, ‘but not enough of our culture. You might as well touch the moon as the daughter of el padrón. Just to look at her with bold eyes could cause her father or her brothers to cut out your heart. Men disappear in Mexico and no one who is wise asks questions. And who will ask for you? Be on your guard: you are not safe here. You have no nation: you could just disappear. And who would mourn?’
John upturned the wine bottle to find that it was indeed empty and reached for his other drink. He threw flaked salt onto the back of his left hand, picked up the roughly cut lime in his right, licked the salt from his hand and squirted the lime juice into his mouth, as he had seen Pedro and the others do, before draining his glass of tequila. He winced; not a drink for a gentleman. He gestured for a second bottle of wine, his gaze still on the straight little back of Lucia Alcantarilla Medina. It was doubtful that he had even heard his friend’s warning. Perhaps it was the masculine, but yet so feminine, riding habit. Or perhaps it was six lonely months under cold Mexican stars. But he longed to see the girl’s face again, to hear her speak. Her voice, he knew without hearing it, would be as beautiful as her smile.
He would go to what passed for a hotel and pay for a hot bath and a shave. ‘Learn from a master, my friend. All I need in order to have that rich young beauty eating out of my hand is time: time and a little Scottish cunning.’
He stood up, picked up the rather dirty bottle of wine and threw some thin coins on the tabletop. He looked down at Pedro and smiled inwardly. ‘And I have plenty of both.’
*
For days he waited, starting from his chair at the sound of any horse’s hooves, but no bloodstock pranced down the dusty streets of Las Estrellas. John rented a horse and rode out to the Alcantarilla ranch but he was turned away by well-armed, well-fed, well-clothed guards.
‘Private land,’ they said. ‘No road this way.’
Or this way or that way. God in heaven, did the don own the whole of Mexico? If Mexico had suffered during the civil war, the Alcantarillas had not. Herds of fat cattle grazed on the land guarded by a veritable army of well-mounted men.
‘You can ride for three days, Señor Juan, and not get to the end of el padrón’s land. Give up this foolish idea,’ advised Pedro. And John, unused to horses or leather saddles, rode back to town and soaked his sore bones in tepid, dirty water and dreamed of black curls and flashing Spanish eyes.
And then there was the corrida, the bullfight. And the best bullfighters in Mexico came at the invitation of el padrón to fight his best bulls in the ring: a celebration of peace. Afterwards there would be dancing in the streets to the music of a mariachi group, who were coming all the way from Cuernavaca to play for the fiesta.
‘Mariachi?’ asked John, without too much interest.
‘It is from the French, Señor, le mariage. We were ruled by the French, you know, and they left us much of their food and their customs. The mariachi was music for the marriage, and now it is just music for pleasure, for joy. Now it is Mexico.’
‘And what is happening?’
‘In two days there will be the bullfight. Then everyone will eat too much, and drink too much and love too much.’ He laughed, the laugh of an experienced man. ‘And it will be la Navidad before we find relief from the headache, and maybe some of us will never find relief, for there will be more mouths to feed next spring, and there will be angry fathers and brothers.’
John went into the hotel and he washed his one good shirt and polished the silver points on the end of his string tie. If everyone was coming to the corrida, he would see la dama.
She came in state, like a queen, her father silver-haired and ramrod-straight beside her, her brothers riding beside the carriage, they and their magnificent horses looking as if they had been carved from the selfsame pieces of fluid metal. Lucia threw roses in the dirt at the feet of the Mexican women, who cheered her and wondered at her milky-white skin, her dress of silk and lace, her jewels.
It was the first time John Cameron had seen a heavy cream-coloured lace mantilla arranged on shining curls of the bluest black.
‘Every woman should dress like that, Pedro,’ he said. ‘She’s beautiful, innocent and yet provocative.’
‘She’s danger, señor.’ But John did not know enough Spanish to realize that Pedro had used the noun, danger, instead of the adjective, and perhaps he was not clever (or wise) enough to understand the subtle difference.
He made his way through the crowds to a spot where he could run in the street beside the rose-filled carriage like the peasants. He picked up one of Lucia’s discarded roses and, when he saw that she saw him, he kissed the rose and threw it back into the carriage. She looked at the dusty rose on the immaculate cream lace of her skirt and she picked it up.
She’s hooked, he thought. She’ll keep it.
But Lucia Pilar Francesca Alcantarilla Medina knew who and what she was, and she looked saucily into John’s eyes as he ran beside her carriage, and she dropped the rose into the dust and turned a haughty cream shoulder to the man who had almost fallen under the hooves of her brothers’ horses to throw it to her.
‘Bitch,’ he snarled. Then he laughed, for it was a game, and the game was no good unless both could play. And in the flower of the Alcantarillas he had met a worthy adversary.
He made a point of walking near the flower-filled box with its green and red bunting. Then, when he saw that the girl had spotted him, John stared at her indifferently and turned away, and when he turned
again she was talking animatedly with her brothers and fanning herself furiously with her exquisite ivory fan.
*
For weeks he teased her. She did not know that he watched the dusty road out of Las Estrellas to see the clouds of dust that told him she might be condescending to visit the town. When he saw her, he looked at her coolly, although the blood was leaping through his veins. He turned away as her carriage passed through the streets and went into the nearest shop, as if his business was so much more important than the sight of a young girl. At last, one day, she avoided her duenna and tricked the youngest of her brothers into riding with her into town.
‘Go, Alvaro,’ she ordered imperiously. ‘See if there are messages for Papa at the telegraph office. I will wait here and drink a glass of water.’ And the owner of the bar scrubbed a tabletop with his best towel and washed and cleaned a glass until it shone, then, reverently, he filled it with water and handed it to the padrón’s daughter.
‘Lucia,’ began Don Alvaro.
‘Who will hurt the daughter of el padrón, Alvaro? Go.’
The young man shrugged his shoulders and went. Don Alejandro could forbid his daughter nothing. He would scold her for sitting in a café, but it would be her brother who would feel the real weight of his anger.
And who will hurt her? thought the young man, who had not seen the gringo gun-runner sitting in the shade.
John did not understand every word Lucia had spoken. He was lost in the musical notes of her voice. He watched her sip the water, and then he noticed her scarf slip from the shoulders of her shirt and fall to the floor. Such an old ploy. He laughed and she pouted, and after he had made her wait just long enough, he moved forward and picked it up.
‘Gracias, señor,’ she said, her voice and her eyes kept low. Her little hand was held out for the scarf, but John bowed low and then pushed the scarf into the pocket of his tough denim trousers.
She did not know what to do. She was so young, he thought. Then, unbidden, came the picture of another girl of about the same age. His daughter, Victoria.
Angus
Rain was beating down on the streets of Dundee.
‘It’s the stotting kind,’ old Euan Gordon told Victoria, and he traced the rain’s passage with his hand. ‘It comes down and then it goes back up.’
‘We need it,’ said the daughter of the farm. ‘If it just lasts the right time and gets everything well watered. But, have you noticed, Mr Gordon, that rain either lasts far too long and floods everything or it doesn’t last nearly long enough. Very perverse thing, rain.’
Mr Gordon was quite taken aback. The climate was his favourite subject of conversation, but he was not used to having the discussion taken seriously. Miss Jessop would merely have said, as she always did, ‘so it does, Mr Gordon, so it does.’
He was so disturbed that he almost forgot to tell Victoria that she was required in Mr Smart’s office. When he did remember, she grabbed her notebook and her pencil, smoothed her hair – how like a woman, thought Mr Gordon – and hurried into the office.
Alistair Smart was standing at the window watching the rain, the stotting kind. ‘Ah, Victoria, thank you for coming in.’ He gestured to the rain. ‘You should see it in India – so heavy sometimes that it could knock a wee thing like you clean off your feet.’ He pulled out a chair. ‘I have a proposal to put to you. Sit down, my dear.’
Alistair Smart had been standing behind his massive desk when she had entered, clutching her notebook. Today’s departure from the norm made Victoria nervous. Usually, because he was a very courteous man, he stood up when she entered the room, but he never came out from behind his desk. What on earth could he be going to say? She hoped she was not to be dismissed. With so many men coming back from the war looking for work, it would be inevitable that some women lost their jobs.
She was so caught up in her own feelings that she did not notice that her employer was as nervous as she herself was.
‘I’ll get right to the point, Victoria,’ he said and she braced herself for disappointment. ‘I would like you to come out to the Calcutta office with me.’
He said it as if he was saying nothing more significant than ‘I would like you to run out and pick up a Courier.’
She said nothing. Calcutta . . . India . . . The mystical East. He had actually said he wanted her to accompany him to Calcutta.
‘I can see you are somewhat taken aback, Victoria. Let me explain. It’s obvious that the war will be over in a few months. I must see what has been going on at the mills out there. Usually we have someone on home leave every year, and although we have had several written reports there is nothing quite like seeing for one’s self. Don’t you agree? And the admirable Miss Jessop says that her one trip to India has cured her for ever of wishing to travel. She says that if she sails as far as the Isle of Arran on her summer holidays she will have spent as much time in a boat as she wishes. I cannot do without a secretary, Victoria, and Miss Jessop herself has suggested that you should accompany me. I have given the matter a great deal of thought. You are very young, but we have worked together for some time now. Dr Currie encouraged me to ask you and, since she is, as it were, your reference, I have decided to ask you. You would be perfectly safe and all the conventions would be followed. I am sure you need have no worries on that score. If, however, you feel that you are too young, that your mother would worry about you on such a long voyage, I will understand, but I will have to find someone else.’
He stopped and Victoria nodded vigorously. Her mouth had gone dry and she could not speak. Calcutta . . . to go to Calcutta . . . the Straits of Gibraltar, Suez, Port Said . . . Bombay, overland to Calcutta. Oh, yes, oh, yes. She could almost feel the heat between her shoulder blades; she could smell the spices, the exotic flowers. She could hear the temple bells, the call to prayer. She came back to earth with a bump.
She could see her mother struggling bravely against the tragedy that had overwhelmed her, trying desperately to pretend that it was not happening. She could hear a young girl’s voice promising, ‘I will never leave you, Mamma, never.’ But she had never believed that promise would mean that she would lose an opportunity like this. What an incredible chance. To work in this lovely office had been the answer to her prayers. But now this, to travel under her employer’s protection, to be paid a wage, for she would be working, and yet, at the same time, to see sights that most men never saw. She had to go; she had to go. It was too cruel.
The colour drained from her face so rapidly that Alistair Smart thought she was about to fall.
‘I can’t, Mr Smart,’ she blurted out. ‘I would love to go, and I can’t tell you what it means to me that you asked me, but . . . I can’t leave my mother.’
She turned, groping at the same time for her handkerchief, and hurried from the room.
Alistair Smart stood for some time just looking at the closed door. She had said no. He could hardly believe it. He had thought that she would jump at the opportunity of safe, escorted travel. He had seen the initial joy and excitement in her face and he had been sure that she would accept. In fact, it had never occurred to him that she would refuse. He sat down wearily in his chair. He was . . . disappointed. No, it was more than that. He was hurt. She had said no. She did not want to travel across the world with him. Was she afraid? No. She knew that she was safe. Good heavens, he was her employer, and old enough to be her father.
Why, in the name of heaven, you old fool, does it matter to you? he asked himself. Why do you suddenly feel bereft, as if all the lights have gone out? It can’t be, no, it can’t be that . . .
He thrust the thought away and, drawing a ledger towards him, began to work.
Victoria took refuge in the lady’s room – a facility added by old Mr Smart upon the hiring of Miss Jessop, and which should now, more properly, be called the ladies’ room. Mr Smart, Senior, had had very Victorian notions of the sensibilities of females and, besides the usual offices, there was an en
ormous chaise longue – possibly for combating fainting fits or the attacks of hysteria from which all decent women, he was sure, suffered. In its thirty-year occupation of the little room at the end of the executive corridor, nothing more weighty than Christmas parcels had rested upon it. Now Victoria threw herself down on it and christened it with her tears.
I have to get over this disappointment before I go home, she thought. I could not bear poor Mother to know how very much I want to go and oh, please God, don’t let me resent my promise to her. I can’t leave her now. I want to be with her. Her dreadful situation is partly my fault. Oh, John Cameron, what a cruel charmer you are. I hope there is nothing of you in me, and I pray that you never ever hurt anyone else.
She sat up, feeling melodramatic and slightly silly. Where are you, John Cameron? Oh, dear God, forgive me, but I wish he were dead.
Then, since that was an appalling thing to say about anyone, and doubly wicked about one’s own father, Victoria Cameron knelt down, rested her head on the chaise longue and prayed for forgiveness.
13
DAVIE MENMUIR WRESTLED BOTH WITH the root and with his inclinations. The root was causing serious plumbing problems in the Blackness Road house and was proving the very devil to haul out. Four years ago, before this bloody war had started, he would have had that root out and the garden tidied long since, but he wasn’t the man he had been: there wasn’t the strength in the injured body that there once was. Despite his efforts to control it, Davie began to cough and wheeze and, fearful that Catriona would look out of her window and see him, he stumbled behind the resurrected gooseberry bushes and lay there until the spasm had passed. What he thought best for Catriona had ruled his life for years now, and he had spent so much time battling with his own feelings and desires that trying to do what he thought Catriona wanted came second nature to him. But, at the same time, sense and practicality told Davie that something had to be done – and soon. How long could Catriona pretend, or perhaps deny her condition?
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