by Jack Tollers
*
Not three blocks away, Lady Felisa was slowly stirring her coffee while she gazed at her grandchild with renewed interest. She was a frail woman hard on sixty and made no secret of her soft spot for Victoria. The girl was now making faces at her Cointreau; she was tasting the liqueur for the very first time at her grandmother's insistence and was finding it rather strong for her.
‘Well Victoria, you must tell me now? Who on earth sent you those roses? And why did they come without a card?’
But Victoria was nonplussed. ‘Search me. Maybe we should enquire at the florist shop,’ she suggested.
The old lady waved a hand impatiently. ‘But surely you have at least an inkling... Who could possibly send you such a gorgeous bunch of roses to my home?’
Victoria smiled with a sudden idea. ‘Maybe someone sent them to you, grandma.’ She did not know it, but indeed, the idea had actually occurred to Lady Felisa. A widow for the last fifteen years, and going on to seventy, she still had quite a lot of charm, and more than once it had been suggested to her that she should meet so and so.
‘You’ve got a nerve young girl!’ she said affecting displeasure.
But Victoria was quick on the uptake and warmed to the subject. ‘Well, why not? After all, they were sent, as you say to your place. Very few people know that I come to see you weekly, if and when this mysterious admirer you suggest could find out the proper address. And I know no boy of my age with enough romantic leanings, let alone money, to do a thing like that. Not in these times anyway. On the other hand, it seems typical of your time, and I can quite easily believe that more than one gentleman would find himself interested in winning your golden heart.’
The old lady laughed at that. She was fascinated with the torrent of eloquence from her grandchild—and couldn’t quite resist a touch of feminine vanity. They were having lunch on the balcony looking over the low city skyline, their first meal out of doors after a particularly harsh winter. While the old lady went in to take a telephone call, Victoria toyed with her liqueur and with the idea that the roses were intended for her and that some Prince Charming was just around the corner, one whom she would soon meet properly, with a name attached to a face... And then, it suddenly came to her in a flash, could it have been the young cadet she had seen on the bus? After all, she reflected, he had seen where she had stopped... No, she said to herself, what a silly idea, and anyway, she thought, she couldn't even remember his face. She looked at her watch and thought that she still had a good half an hour before going to her usual Saturday meeting at the San Martín de Tours parish.
Grandma Felisa had heard most of Victoria's musings and, sitting again in front of the girl asked her all about the young cadet she had recently seen to an ever surprised Victoria, caught once again talking to herself.