The Cazalet Bride

by Violet Winsper

  'It is at the orders of the patrono that we make the senorita feel at home.' Sophina poured out Ricki's coffee and set down the pot. 'Now I go to see to giving you the charm to make sure you'll always have a bit of luck about you. It'll give you heart when youre needing it.'

  The charm was a silver shamrock and Ricki wore it day and night. She had a habit of touching it for luck, true Gael indeed that she was, despite her mother's English blood. And it seemed right now to bring her father a little! closer - what would he say gt; dear Tynan, when he read her letter and learned that she was working in Spain, emlployed as physio-attendant to the nephew of an Andalulsian land-owner?

  She paused outside Jaime's room, took a deep breath and opened the door and walked in

  'Glory be!' she exclaimed. There was half a melon in a puddle of chocolate on the rug beside the bed, also several iced biscuits and a spoon. The tray and a glass in a con­tainer had been picked up and placed on the bedside table At the other side of the boy's bed stood Don Arturo, his eyes snapping darkly in a face that might have beer carved from tawny stone. 'Good morning, Miss O'Neill.' He gestured curtly at the mess on the floor. 'I hoped Jaime would be in a good mood to greet you, but as you can see he has deposited his breakfast all over the floor and he now refuses to be washed and dressed.'

  There wasn't any fear or defiance in the childish eyes gazing at Ricki - they were empty, disinterested. Then he turned away, his profile an olive carving against the white pillow. He heard neither the angry man, nor cared much, that was evident, for his 'surprise' in the form of Ricki.

  The Don bent over his nephew and Ricki saw a nerve twitching beside the firm mouth as he spoke to the boy. 'Come now,' he said, 'it is not cortesia to behave in this way towards your new attendant Miss O'Neill will think you a sulky baby instead of the senorito of a Spanish house. Chico, I will now sit you up and you will say buenos dias to the senorita. Come – aprisa!

  The lean hands were about to take hold of the child when Ricki caught at the Don's sleeve. 'It might be best if you left me alone with Jaime,' she suggested tenta­tively. 'We will make friends in our own way.'

  Don Arturo straightened up, then he turned to face her, his brows drawn together in a frown. You think it is my presence which causes him to behave in this way?' he asked.

  She bit her lip and had difficulty in sustaining his dark gaze. A twist of a smile distorted the Don's lips as he took in her look of discomfiture. 'You are quite right, Miss O'Neill, in your assumption that I am unwanted in this room. Very well, I will leave it. I am sure you will manage to make friends with Jaime.'

  He turned on his heel and walked to the door, where he treated her to a faintly sardonic bow before closing it behind him. Ricki drew a sigh, then she sat down on the bed besid the small, rigid figure of her patient. 'Well, I must say I'm a bit disappointed in my reception, Jaime,' she said. 'Don't you care to have a girl here to talk to? I bet I know far more stories than all your male nurses.' She gently touched his shoulder. 'Do you like stories?'

  He gave a little quiver at her touch, but she knew it was not one of active recoil and she carefully turned him to face her. 'My name is Ricki, she smiled. 'How about hav­ing a go at saying it?'

  But the child merely batted his long eyelashes and kept his mouth tightly shut. Ricki didn't press him to speak but got to her feet and walked to a shelved recess which held a number of books. She inspected their titles and noticed with interest that quite a few of them were in English Tales of the Crusades. The Amber Witch. House of Asgard, Conquest of Peru. Books in the large print such as children prefer and could best follow. She took down a volume of Don Quixote and was delighted to find that it was illustrated by Dore - a scuffed, much handled copy of the adventures of gaunt, romantic Don Quixote and his rotund squire, Sancho Panza. There was an illustration of the quixotic knight tilting at the wind­mills and she broke into a laugh.

  'Have you read this story, Jaime?' She returned to his bedside and showed him the book.

  He scowled a little and shook his head.

  'I bet you can read, a big boy like you,' she said. 'But as this copy is in English I daresay you have a bit of bother with the words. I shall have to read it to you, it's so comi­cal in parts.'

  'It is a book of my uncle's,' he muttered. 'They are the books he had when he was a boy.'

  'Oh, don't tell me that's why you don't read them? He enjoyed them and now he wants you to do the same,' she spoke in a tone much lighter than her thoughts. The an­tagonism which Jaime felt towards his uncle was tinged with something more serious than a childish dislike and it was plain that she was going to have to deal with more than the physical hurts of this handsome, moody child. She felt almost unnerved for a moment, then she took a grip on herself.

  'I've a theory about books,' she said. 'I always think them extra enjoyable when they've been handled and en­joyed by somebody else. A brand new book seems so stiff land starchy, so that all the time you're worrying about creasing its pages and getting biscuit crumbs in its seams.'

  Jaime stared at her, solemn as a small owl, then the corners of his mouth slowly, grudgingly relaxed. 'You say funny things,' he remarked.

  'I'm a funny person,' she admitted obligingly.

  'And your hair is like curled up leaves when they fall from the trees,' he added.

  'And there was I thinkin' the Spanish were all very gallant,' she said, imitating her father's brogue. 'Hair like leaves, you say, and no doubt a face like a lemon.'

  Jaime's face crinkled and then, as though not for a long time had his throat been exercised in this way, he laughed. 'You are, I think, a g-nome,' he said. 'They live in the woods and cast spells.'

  'A g-nome, eh?' She smiled at the way he pronounced it.

  'Well, as they say in Ireland, the best friendships start with a blow on the nose. Now how about coming to my room for a fresh breakfast while I have this mess oil the rug cleared up?'

  'I - cannot walk, senorita .' His face grew moody again.

  'We'll take a taxi,' she said, putting on a smile as she brought his invalid chair to the side of the bed and expertly helped him into it. He glanced up at her with wide, intrigued eyes, as though never before had anyone thought to play such games with him.

  'What is a taxee ?' he asked.

  'It's a shiny black coach that takes you for spins all over the place. To balls and banquets and ballets and so talking the nonsense that had such a purpose behind it, Ricki wheeled him to her room, where she pressed the service bell and had a manservant bring her charge a boiled egg , bread and butter, and some fruit. 'There was an ac cidente,' she attempted to explain, when the man brought the tray. 'Jaimito jogged his elbow and upset his other tray.'

  But the manservant, Alvarez, looked mystified until! the grinning boy told him in Spanish what he had done with his breakfast.

  'By the pigs of St. Antony!' The usual dignified Alvarez was waving his hands about as he went out of the room. 'Que demonio!

  'He calls me a demon,' Jaime informed Ricki.

  'I can't say I blame him, my lad. Don't you know that there are thousands of children who never know what it is to have biscuits and chocolate?' She shook open the linen napkin that had been brought with his tray, then as she tucked it into the front of his dressing-gown she noticed a rather strange object hanging on a cord about his neck. 'What's this, Jaime?' she asked, fingering it.

  'My amulet to drive away sickness,' he told her. 'It has been blessed by a gypsy bruja who lives in a cave in the hills.

  'There are no such things as witches - who gave you this?' She was superstitious herself, but there were limits!

  'Sophina. Sh - she said it would help to make me walk.' He watched with his enormous dark eyes as Ricki set about buttering bread and slicing it into slim fingers. 'There are brujas, Rickee. They fly among the clouds when there are storms. I -I do not care much for storms.'

  'Storms bring the rain, and rain means good crops. Why don't you dip your "soldiers" in your egg, Jaime? I always do w
hen no one's watching me.'

  'It is good like this,' he nodded as he sampled her sug­gestion. 'It is the Engleesh way ?'

  'Yes, the English way,' Ricki agreed absently. She was thinking about the pagan charm Sophina had hung about the boy's neck. His recovery was not dependent upon a miracle or the black powers of magic but if Jaime was being encouraged to believe it was, then he wouldn't work physically or mentally to help himself get out of that invalid chair on to his own two feet. She wouldn't go as far as to remove the charm, but he would have to be won away from the idea that the magic of a witch was going to help him get better. Maybe she could dream up some magic of her own connected with his treatments -the hidden healing eye of the infra-ray, for instance might be turned to good account.

  'These are warriors storming a castle,' he was muttering away to himself, 'now they raze it to the ground, so!' He whacked at the empty eggshell with his spoon until it was a mess of fragments. 'Ole, the House of Cazalet is no more!'

  Ricki went strangely cold when this child said that, and her fingers were clumsy as she peeled him an orange and separated it into segments. 'Here are the spoils of war,' she said. 'They must be made short work of and by the way, shouldn't a Cazalet knight be knocking down the castles-of his - enemies?'

  Jaime chewed his orange and looked at her with an un-childlike expression in his dark eyes. 'It was the senor tio's castle I was knocking down,' he said. 'I do not care for him, or this place.'

  'Jaime!' She was profoundly shocked by the almost calm way he said it, as though a reason dictated his dis­like rather than a childish prejudice. 'That's a very rude and ungrateful thing to say. Your uncle thinks a lot of you, you're all he has, you know, and you should try to be friends with him. Why won't you try? What silly thing do you think you have against him?

  'I just do not like him,' the child retorted, 'and when I can walk I am going to leave this place and be a vaquero like my father was.'

  'Your father was not a vaquero,' she protested. 'He was a gentleman like your uncle - a caballero'

  My father was a rider with the bulls at the ranch of my grandfather,' the boy said, his eyes flashing and his resemblance to his hated uncle at its most acute. 'I should live there, also, but Don Arturo keeps me here because he knows I hate it here!'

  'I - don't think that's quite true, Jaime,' Ricki said, distressed by the hornets' nest she had poked and disturbed with her remark about knights, castles and enemies. The tongue of a Gael can cast spells and stir cauldrons, her father often said. Beware of yours, my girl!

  'Does your grandfather live far from the estancia?' she asked, for the hornets were out now, and she had to knows everything if she was going to be of any real help to this small troubled soul with the eyes too big for his face.

  It turned out that the boy's grandfather had a ranch of fighting bulls on land above the valley. His devisa was famous, Ricki was proudly informed, and his vagueros the very toughest. She encouraged this conversation all through the next hour, when she put her young patient through a series of light exercises in order to test his general musculature. The accident had caused severe damage to several discs in his spine and these, she noticed

  quickly, had undergone bone-grafting operations. The spine was weakened and he might never be the vaguero he longed to be, but there certainly seemed no real physical reason why he shouldn't walk again. He would walk again, Ricki resolved, surprising him with a light kiss on his olive-skinned shoulder.

  'You kissed me!' His eyes grew larger than ever. 'Do you mind?' she laughed, getting him into his small striped shirt and short trousers. 'Don't tell me you're one of those cold chaps who doesn't care to be kissed.'

  'It is all right,' he said thoughtfully. 'Quite pleasant.' Her heart gave a little kick when she stole a look at his face, for it looked suddenly pinched and she knew he was remembering his mother's kisses.

  'Well, my vagueo, she said, 'I'm going downstairs to have a look round. Are you coming with me? We'll get Alvarez to carry your chmount to the foot of the stairs'

  'No, I stay here!' He shook an emphatic head and began to beat his hands like a troubled adult on the arms of his chair, not fooled, coaled or ready to fall in with the idea that it was his mount. He began to speak rapidly in Spanish, his words finally merging into English. 'I will stay up here and draw pictures, Rickee. I like it better up here.'

  Because up here, she knew, he wouldn't be so likely to run into his uncle. She couldn't suppress a sigh, wonder­ing again what on earth she had let herself in for by com­ing to this house of past regrets and present hates. 'Do you want to do your drawing here in my room, up at that little table by the window?' she asked.

  'That would be most nice, Rickee.' He gave her arm a stroke as she wheeled him to the table, and glanced up sideways into her eyes. 'I thought only cats had green eyes,' he said.

  'Ooh, but I am a cat,' she whispered. 'A Manx cat with­out a tail.' She heard him laughing as she left him by her window and went to his nursery-suite to get his drawing book and his pencils. She flipped through the book on her way back and saw some of those drawings his uncle had told her about. Grim, unchildlike, the results of a mind that couldn't forget.

  'How about drawing something like this, Jaime?' She sat down at the table beside him and sketched for several minutes, the result being a somewhat erratic horned-sheep clambering up some rocks.

  'He is a demon sheep,' Jaime chuckled. 'You draw very funny things, Rickee.'

  I thought we'd agreed that I'm a bit of a funny one.' Ricki gave his chin a tweak. 'Draw some animals and vagueros for me, eh ?'

  'Perhaps I had better,' he agreed. 'Then you will know a vaguero when you see one - and also a sheep,' he added, giggling to himself.

  Good, she thought. Learn to laugh, my lamb.

  'Ah, while I think of it!' She hurried to her handbag on the dressing-table and unlatched it. 'I bought you some sweets in Toledo and I almost forgot all about them.'

  'When Sophina forgets, she says she has a head with more holes in it than a sieve,' Jaime said, his eyes fixed on the paper bags Ricki was taking out of her handbag. 'What sweets?'

  'Here you are, pink and white sugar pigs, and boiled sweets like gooseberries.' She gave them to him. 'Now don't go swallowing one of those. You suck them.'

  'You can have one of those,' he pointed to the boiled sweets, and bit the curly tail off a sugar pig. 'These are nice, and funny. Mil gracias, mi tata.

  'Which means?' She cocked a green eye at him, one cheek bulging with a boiled gooseberry.

  'My nurse.' He bent quickly, shyly over his drawing book, and Ricki's throat was hurting as she said good-bye for now, and went off on an exploration of the immense and rambling patio downstairs. It extended round the back of the farmhouse, and what she intended to look for was an attractive, secluded nook where Jaime could do some basking in the sunshine. It wasn't good for him; to spend so much time indoors, and the mornings with him were exclusively hers, a couple of hours after his siesta being given over to lessons he took with a Senor Andres.

  An artist, the Don had told her, who was earning his living as tutor to various children of local landowners. He was of Andalusia and he had been, the Don had added, a friend of Jaime's father.

  Ricki was very curious about this one-time friend of Leandro's, and inclined to wonder if it was he who was insidiously turning Jaime against his uncle.

  Down in the patio there was a strong smell of hay from the stables, and the grunt, stamp and crow of farm ani­mals. Ricki noticed with interest the wall niche that held a time-weathered statue of the Madonna, and the stone slot nearby, where the adventurous sons of this house had sharpened their swords in the days when cloaked lookouts

  had walked the battlements of the old watchtower, still standing guardian over the various buildings of the Granja.

  There was, despite its tinge of tragedy, a certain en­chantment about this farm in the valley. A variety of birds nested in the jutting eaves of the outhouses, while pigeons strutted
and cooed on the rim of the stone drinking trough near the big cowsheds. Camphors, jacarandas and flower­ing vines softened the rather severe structure of the Granja, while the colonnade of archways that led into the house gave it a cloistered, almost Moorish appear­ance.

  Ricki couldn't resist taking a look inside the watch-tower, which was now used as a storehouse for sacks of grain and seed, blocks of fodder, and heaps of dried heather for fuel. A large dog raised his head from his paws when Ricki poked her head round the door and he looked so fierce and wolfish that she had to force herself to stand still when he came across to investigate her. 'Hullo, boy,' she said, and to her relief he cocked his ears, wagged his tail and was, after all, a veritable sheep in wolfskin.

  He was trotting beside her when she came upon a low, arching door set in a rough stone wall. The latch was stiff, unused, then the door gave with a groan to her push and she was gazing into a sort of orchard with a very neglected air. The fruit trees which had once borne oranges, medlars and lemons had gone to seed, the paths among them were overgrown with weeds and shrubs, and lichen had set like a rust in the carving of stone seats and pergolas.

  'Well, what have we here, Sancho?' Ricki queried of her companion, then compelled by curiosity she walked into the orchard, forgetting to close the door behind her. She felt at once like the girl who ventured into the hidden garden of the dragon everyone feared - only to find he had a gentle heart, after all. She plucked a sprig of wild vervain - the magical plant - and came at last through a tangle of thickets to a small, tiled pool at the bottom of the garden.

  The neglected pool of a nymph, surely, with clusters of snails just showing their shells under about a foot of leaf-spattered water, and lilies floating idly on heart-shaped leaves.

  The pool was large enough to swim in - yet it had been allowed to get into this state! It was bordered by stone flags that would catch quite a bit of sunshine if the trees were cut back - what was that among the trees? Glimps­ing a roof, Ricki pushed through some more tangled shrubs and discovered a small garden house, a delightful place, covered from its roof to its foundations by large seashells which had been cemented together and arranged into patterns. There was an arched doorway, its edges dec­orated with hundreds of smaller shells, and a dimness beyond the arch that put Ricki in mind of a sea cave, She was rather doubtful about venturing inside, then Sancho, as she had christened the dog, took the initiative and she cautiously followed him.