The Malady in Maderia

by Ann Bridge

  Julia heard the study door open, but paid no attention.

  “Yes, I’ll send Tomás up on the mo-bike. Won’t they need someone to show them the way from the car-turn through the tunnel, and up to the cliffs?”

  “I suppose they will.”

  “Well, I simply can’t go tomorrow” Terence said definitely—“I’ve got a board meeting. But I expect Colin will go. If not, do you think Pauline could bring you over?”

  “I’ll ask her—hold on.” She turned round and saw her hostess standing just inside the door. “Pauline, could we go up to the Paul da Serra tomorrow? Some scientists will want to be shown the way.”

  “Yes, certainly. Where will they start from, Funchal? If so, we can pick them up and take them all the way.”

  Julia passed this on, and it was settled that da Silva would let her know when the experts had arrived. “Tell him they’ll have to leave at quarter past seven, and take lunches” Julia reminded Terence.

  “Yes, Ma’am. Hammocks the usual time, I suppose? Does Pauline want one? No?—all right, just an extra one for you. Bye.”

  “What is all this?” Pauline asked, as Julia put down the receiver.

  “Some experts from Lisbon are being sent to look at the sheep.”

  “But I thought Pereira and de Carvalho had sent specimens of blood and things already?”

  “Yes, they had, and Dr. de Carvalho thinks it all a great nonsense their coming—that they won’t learn anything fresh. But you know what governments are” Julia said tolerantly.

  “Well, they’ve taken their time about coming” was Pauline’s only comment.

  Julia always remembered her final expedition to the Paul da Serra with particular pleasure. They fetched the “experts”, two smallish, stoutish men, typical Portuguese intellectuals, very polite and rather formal, from the Montefiore; they seemed slightly surprised to be met by two ladies—was the Senhor Pereira, one of them asked, not going to come too? Julia bit her lip—she ought to have thought of Pereira, the vet, but it was too late now. It would probably be possible to see him later, she said smoothly, but he was very busy, and this was a long expedition—meanwhile she and the Senhora Shergold would take them directly to the sheep, which were, she presumed, what the Senhores wished to see.

  As they neared the car-turn she saw the little Austin pulling up ahead of them—Penelope, Aglaia, and Colin got out of it. Almost before Pauline’s car had stopped Julia sprang out and darted over to her cousin.

  “They expected Pereira; I said he was busy” she said hurriedly. “Can I introduce you as from Intelligence? That may cheer them up.”

  “Yes, of course” Colin said. “Do they speak French?”

  “We haven’t tried—I expect so.”

  In fact Dr. Figueiredo did speak French, though his assistant didn’t; they both appeared much relieved at the presence of someone from British Intelligence. Colin took the doctor aside and explained to him that “these Senhoras” knew about the sickness of the sheep, but not its cause—which he, and he understood Colonel Marques also, believed to be a nerve gas of a new type; he asked the doctor not to refer to this in front of the ladies, and to warn his colleague not to do so. This “top secret” atmosphere seemed to reassure the two scientists still more, and they set off up the ridge in good spirits. These were slightly dashed by the walk through the tunnel, which they found both alarming and unpleasant; however, Mrs. Armitage had her customary haversackful of torches, and took Dr. Figueiredo by the arm; that obstacle was passed all right.

  But the two urban intellectuals were again daunted by the aspect of the cliffs, and still more by the sight of Julia and Aglaia lying down and being fastened into their hammocks—“By this fashion we also ascend?” Dr. Figueiredo enquired incredulously of Colin.

  “Unless you can climb as well as the two ladies” Colin replied, indicating Mrs. Armitage and Mrs. Shergold, already climbing carefully up the bare vertiginous ridges of the face—with a slight shudder, the two Portuguese resigned themselves to being parcelled up and slung aloft.

  At the top the four hammock-borne passengers were undone, and the party set forward across the plateau, Penelope taking the lead, as usual. “Better go first to the picnic pool; there are usually some sheep there” she said to Colin.

  “Whatever you say.”

  Towards the pool they accordingly walked, Mrs. Armitage describing to the newcomers, in her fluent Portuguese, the dismal aspect and unnatural tameness of the sick sheep. After a few minutes the pool came in sight. Sure enough, some half-dozen of the leggy creatures were standing by it, drinking—but at the sight of the party of strangers they started, and then bounded away, running like deer across the short grass and bracken.

  “Well, I’m damned!” Mrs. Armitage exclaimed. “They must have got over it, whatever it was. What an extraordinary thing!”

  Pauline Shergold burst out laughing. “What a sell!” she said, glancing at the astounded faces of the two experts. “I told you they’d taken their time” she muttered to Julia.

  But Julia had taken her little diary out of the pocket of her dress, and was studying it; then she went over to Colin. “Twenty-eight days” she murmured in his ear. “Would that be about right?”

  “Are you sure? Yes, I suppose that’s what they were working for” he said. “It would give them as much time as they needed, I imagine. Of course we don’t know when the brutes recovered.”

  “I wonder if Dr. de Carvalho has tried knocking off Marcusinho’s atropine?” Julia speculated. “If not, he ought to do that at once.”

  “What are you two nattering about?” Penelope Armitage asked rather sharply; she was vexed that this expedition was turning out such a flop.

  “I was saying that I think we ought to go on a bit, and see if all the sheep are well again, or only just this lot here” Julia lied easily.

  “Yes, we had better, I suppose.”

  As before they divided into two parties, one of the Portuguese in each, and walked on for about another mile; they saw plenty more sheep, but only from a distance—all fled at their approach, apparently in full activity. Rather dejected, they returned to the pool, ate their picnic lunches, and started homewards. On the track below the cliffs Colin, who had been talking with Dr. Figueiredo, stepped forward to join Julia and Aglaia, who were walking a little ahead.

  “Ag, I must report this performance to London at once” he said, “and I think I’d better do it from Funchal; it’s quicker, and I get a better line. If Pauline can give me a lift in, I’ll come out with Terry this evening.”

  Julia watched the girl’s face. For a minute it clouded over; then, with an effort, she smiled.

  “All right, darling” she said. “Why are they in such a hurry to know? No, never mind” she added hastily. Do do that. They’d better hear it from you.”

  “This probably ties in with your original idea, Aglaia” Julia said, warming to her—“so Colin had better be the one to tell them.”

  Pauline Shergold’s car was much roomier than the little Austin, so there was no difficulty about giving Colin a lift. He asked to be dropped off at the clinic—“That infernal hour!” he said; “I don’t want to delay Terry.” Julia said she would like to go to the clinic too.

  “Whatever for?” Mrs. Shergold asked.

  “There’s a parcel for me there—I forgot to ask Gerald to collect it. And besides I want to ask about the little boy; if the sheep are better, he may be better too.”

  “So he may! Right, I’ll call for you after I’ve left these good people at the Montefiore.”

  At the clinic Colin immediately put in his call to the Office, while Julia went in search of Dr. de Carvalho. He was in his consulting-room—when the secretary asked if he could see the Senhora Jamieson he sprang up and came out.

  “Come in! Come in! The very person I wished to see! I tried to telephone, but you were out.” He ushered her in and closed the door after them. “The child is well!” he exclaimed.

  “So are the sh
eep! I came to tell you, so that you might stop his atropine.”

  “Is it not strange?—I decided this morning to omit the dose, and there was no reaction, so I omitted it again at midday, and still nothing. He is well.”

  “I’m very glad. Had you tried leaving it off before?”

  “Yes, two days ago—but the headache came on again then with great violence.”

  “That’s perfectly splendid—now we know to within forty-eight hours how long the stuff lasts” Julia said. “Of course we didn’t know when the sheep had recovered.”

  “So ces messieurs have had their trip for nothing! What did I tell you?” de Carvalho observed, with sardonic triumph.

  “May I tell my cousin? He’s put in a call to London, so he can tell them that too.”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, and my parcel—could I have it?”

  “It is here.” He opened a drawer and handed her a small parcel, very heavy for its size; it had no postmark, Julia noticed. “May I open it at once?” she asked. As he nodded she did so. Inside the wrappings was a small metal cylinder stamped with Russian lettering—an exact replica of the cofrezinho; there was also a note from Major Hartley. He began by complimenting her on “young Colin’s immense success, to which I feel sure you contributed largely, as usual.” He went on: “Sir Percy was insistent that you should have this at once, so I persuaded Scotland Yard to get their forensic people to see to it in a hurry. I send it via the Consulate—we here feel that the youthful finder of the original deserves everything.”

  “Oh how nice!” Julia exclaimed.

  “What have you there?” the doctor asked, looking up from his case-notes.

  “A copy of the child’s cofrezinho—I told Sir Percy I must have one to give him.”

  “May I see?” he asked eagerly; he examined the thing closely.

  “This is what it was like?” he asked.

  “Yes, exactly, so far as I can see; I think they must have taken an impression from the real container.”

  “They go to all this trouble for a peasant child?” he asked.

  “Well, why not? After all, he got the actual specimen of the gas concentrate for them.”

  “Ah yes—does your letter speak of this? In what form it was, I mean?”

  “No, not a word. They wouldn’t put that in a letter, of course; we shall have to wait till my cousin goes home to hear about that. Dr. de Carvalho, may I take this up to Marcusinho now?”

  “Certainly. But should you not first find out how he is to get home?”

  “A good idea. May I use your own telephone to speak to Mr. Armitage?”

  Terence laughed hugely when Julia told him of the sheep’s recovery, and the dismay of the wretched experts at the hammocks. “And what about Marcusinho?” Terence asked.

  “Yes, he’s perfectly fit too—by accident, the doctor stopped the antidote this very morning. Now he wants to know how he’s to be got home?”

  “I can take him tonight.”

  “Can you take Colin too? He came in to ring the Office with the glad tidings.”

  “Of course. I’ll pick them both up.”

  When Julia went up to see the child the doctor came with her, and told the grey-haired nurse to get him dressed.

  “He goes home? He does not have the evening dose?” the woman asked.

  “No, no more doses, ever—he is completely cured” de Carvalho said, with a sidelong smile at Julia.

  “Gracias a Deus!” the nurse said. “But this is wonderful!— and most strange” she added.

  Julia gave the child the heavy little metal box—“There you are, Marcusinho.” He clutched it eagerly.

  “Muitissimo obrigado, minha Senhora! But why was my mother so slow in finding it?”

  “She found it at once; but then I mislaid it—it was my fault” Julia said happily, thinking that she had lost count of how many lies she had told that day. “And now you are quite well again, and are going home.”

  18

  “Sorry I’m Late” Philip Reeder said, coming into the dining-room at Glentoran—“I met Menteith, and he wanted to discuss the County Council’s plan for this new road up to the Forestry Commission’s hutments. Is that tea hot?”

  “No, I’ll make some fresh” Edina said, turning up the flame under the big silver kettle. “Give me the small pot off the sideboard.” As she scooped tea from the caddy into it—“Did you get a decent price for the pigs?”

  “Yes, smashing—and for the old moos too. It pays to go to Stirling, every time, in spite of the petrol. Where’s Julia?”

  “Gone to London.”

  “London? What on earth for?”

  “She had a phone call from her lawyer just after you left yesterday about letting Gray’s Inn, and she decided to dash down and see about it. I gather there’s a chance of letting it furnished for a couple of years.”

  “But if she lets it, where will she live?—after she leaves here, I mean?”

  “Well, we talked about that a bit—she didn’t go till after lunch. I suggested that just for a couple of years she could leave Nannie Mack and the Philipino here; they get on like a house on fire with our nursery party, and it’s much better for him than being an only. I hope you don’t mind?” his wife asked.

  “Not in the least” Mr. Reeder replied, piling butter and honey onto a scone. “But that doesn’t settle where Julia is to live. Or is she to stay here too?”

  Edina laughed.

  “No, not all the time. We both feel that when Mrs. H. comes back from Madeira she oughtn’t to be alone so much with those two spoiled old trouts of maids—anyhow they’re both getting pretty rocky. And there’s masses of room in the flat.”

  “Yes, that’s quite a good idea. Only I should have thought Julia would want to be with the child.”

  “She talked of getting a job” Edina said, filling her husband’s outsize cup from the fresh pot of tea.

  “What sort of job? She doesn’t need the money, anyhow.”

  “She didn’t say. I suppose she might work at those papers of hers, that she writes for: Ebb and Flow, and whatever the other one is.”

  “Can’t think why Intelligence don’t take her on, if she feels free to take a job at all; that’s really her line” Philip Reeder said. “When does she get back?”

  “She said she’d telephone. Before Colin and Aglaia come, in any case.”

  “Is she staying with them?”

  “No, she was going to her Club.”

  “All the same, it seems a bit dotty to get rid of the Gray’s Inn chambers, when she hasn’t got anywhere else of her own to live” Philip said.

  “I believe she really funks going near the place at the moment” Edina said. “No, I think a couple of years furnished let is a good idea; she need only just collect her clothes and books, and dump them at Mrs. H.’s flat. It will all be much less—less raw —in two years time.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. Only Julia never seemed one to run away from anything before.”

  “She never lost a husband before” Mrs. Reeder said with finality.

  Julia returned to Glentoran a few days later.

  “Yes, it’s all fixed” she said, in answer to a question from Edina. “They seem very nice people—he’s a lawyer himself, so that’s quite appropriate; he used to know Philip’s old legal uncle, that he got the top set from originally.”

  “What ‘set’?” Philip Reeder asked.

  “The set of chambers—that’s what they call them in Gray’s Inn. I think they’ll look after the furniture all right too—she was thrilled with it.”

  “Did you see Colin and Aglaia?” Edina asked.

  “No—I just had a chat on the telephone. They’ll be up day after tomorrow, as of course they’ve told you.”

  “Is Colin settling into his London job all right? It seems such an odd move for him, after always being abroad” Edina said.

  “Yes, they’re very pleased with him” Julia said thoughtlessly; then wished she hadn�
�t, for Edina at once asked—“Why? Did you see them? Who, Torrens?”

  “No, I had dinner with Major Hartley.”

  Philip Reeder, whose attention to other people’s conversation was very much of the stop-go variety, now looked up from his paper.

  “Hartley, eh? Did he tell you anything about this terrific coup Colin’s supposed to have brought off in Spain?”

  “No” Julia said, for a moment in genuine astonishment. “What coup, Philip?”

  “Oh, when I was in Edinburgh day before yesterday I ran into Watherston, and he said young Colin had done something quite spectacular—he’s the number one white-headed boy at the moment, it seems.”

  “No, Major Hartley didn’t tell me” Julia said coolly. “They don’t talk much, as you know.” She realised that Colin’s brief dash to Madeira—after all he had only been there just over a fortnight—had, in the vagueness of Service rumour, been comprised under the general heading of “Spain”, where he was known to have been for some time. “I’m so glad” she added.

  “Yes, it’s twice as different again from what he’d heard last time” Philip said. “Good show.” He returned to his paper.

  Julia at once became preoccupied with how to get hold of Colin and Aglaia and warn them not to speak of Colin’s having been in Madeira before they encountered the Reeders; if the rumour that Colin’s “coup” had taken place in Spain was the version preferred by the Office, that version should be stuck to by Colin himself. Telephoning from Glentoran wasn’t very private, since there was an extension in every sitting-room and bedroom, and in that huge house it was hard to know where everyone was at a given moment; Edina even complained, half-laughingly, that her mother, old Mrs. Monro, spent half her time in her own wing listening-in to the rest of the family’s telephone calls. She asked Edina next day how the young people were coming out from Glasgow—“Boat or plane?”

  “Oh, they’re coming by the little plane.” Edina looked at the huge engagement-block on her desk. “Twelve ten” she said.

  “Would you like me to meet them? I can, easily.”

  “D’you know, that would be rather a boon. I’ve got to go in to Tarbert to take some honey to the hotels, and to pick up some things off the steamer, and she may be late. Do you mind taking the Daimler?—I shall want the station-wagon.”