The incredible thing was the questions the old lady produced; questions of so breathtakingly personal a nature, probing into her family’s history, their occupations, her father’s income, her own reasons for following the career she had, the amount of money she had earned, how she had spent it, what she had saved, questions about her religious and political beliefs, her health, wanting to know of her childhood illnesses, the life she had led in Scotland as compared with London, the social life she had chosen, the number of men she had known, her attitudes towards them - it went on and on.
But what was most incredible of all to Isabel was the way that she answered this catechism. She would never cease to wonder at that: the way that she had seemed to accept as normal this old lady’s outrageous probing, her positively impertinent questioning and had answered in almost total honesty, only balking at the queries about her men friends. She said calmly, “That I can’t remember,” when Sebastian translated the query and repeated the same answer to all similar questions.
But she felt no sense of personal outrage or offence about it. In the setting of that cluttered yet elegant room, with the garden and its colour and scents beyond the window, with Sebastian sitting there between them, it all seemed utterly natural and right.
And then, at last, the questions stopped, and the old lady sat as still as ever, looking at Isabel with that same beady black stare, and then, sharply, nodded, and held out one wrinkled old claw of a hand.
Instinctively, Isabel stood up and glanced at Sebastian, who nodded approvingly. So she stepped forwards to take the hand in her own, feeling the papery skin, dry and delicate, against her own warm and rather damp palm.
The old lady leaned forwards very slightly, and spoke in the same throaty voice, and Isabel looked questioningly at Sebastian who smiled and said only, “I will tell you of this remark later - for now, Isabella, I ask you simply to say your goodbyes, and wait for me in the courtyard, for I must speak with my mother for a few moments before we leave. You permit?”
“Of course - ” she said, and nodded and smiled at the old lady, and let go her hand, and then, almost feeling she should have left the room backwards, she picked up her gloves and bag and went out, closing the door behind her very softly.
Almost at once the housekeeper was there in the cool shadowy hallway, and led her through the way they had come back to the courtyard, and then bobbing her head slightly went away, leaving her to take deep breaths of the iced mountain air and blink up at the square of sunlit sky high above, before almost collapsing onto the coping of the well to recover herself.
16
He came out ten minutes later, and stood there at the doorway of the house, looking at her with his head poised a little to one side, and she looked back at him, a little anxiously and with a questioning look on her face.
“Well? Am I to be fired on the spot? Or will the Señora permit me to remain at the Cadiz to complete the season?” she asked in as light a voice as she could conjure up.
He smiled at her indulgently, as one would at a sweet but silly child, and came across the courtyard to sit beside her on the narrow coping of the well.
“You make a joke, yes, Isabella? Although perhaps, it is not so funny. For indeed it may be considered by Madre, when later we discuss more detailed plans, that it is not quite proper for you to remain at the Cadiz as enfermera - ”
She stared at him, her face creased with puzzlement. “What? Not proper? How do you mean, not proper? Are you trying to tell me that she doesn’t like me? That she does think I ought to leave the Cadiz? Because if that’s the case, I’ll tell you this much -”
He raised his hands, and took her face between them, looking down at her with his eyes narrowed into a smile, and then, cutting off the spate of words that had risen in her, he bent his head and kissed her with a calm possessiveness that took her breath away far more than did the kiss itself, totally unexpected though it was.
For a few seconds she sat there, stunned with surprise, and then, she pulled back and pushed him away, and said breathlessly, “And what the hell do you imagine you’re doing? Of all the daft, crazy - what are you about, man? Are you quite daft? I asked you whether - what - ah, will you explain?”
“But it is obvious, is it not? You are a woman of intelligence as well as spirit and charm, my Isabella. You knew why we came here this morning, just as you know now what I mean, what it is - aboot,” and he smiled at his own very bad imitation of her accent.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Isabel said furiously. “And if you don’t immediately explain, I’ll -”
“So! You wish of course to have me say all as it should be said. This is of course right. From the start we have been always careful to behave as we should. So, Señorita Isabella - my beautiful Isabella, I ask you to become my wife. In a few days, I will arrange for you to talk with my lawyers, since you have, sadly, no relations who can serve this purpose for you, and then, we arrange for our wedding at the end of the summer -”
His voice trailed away, and for a long moment they sat there on the edge of the well, staring at each other, and she knew her face was filled with an expression of horror, knew it was there as surely as she knew the look of stunned surprise was on his. And then he said sharply, “Why do you look at me like this, Isabella? You knew, surely, you knew what it was I was to say - you cannot look at me like that, as though you are surprised! It is another of your Scottish jokes, yes? It is not that you do not understand -”
“Sebastian, for God’s sake! Are you - why should you think any such thing? Of course I’m surprised - I’m - I’ve never had a shock like it in my life! Why should you think that I ever meant - that I should ever think that you - oh - this is absolutely crazy. Mad!-”
“But we - I explained! I said to you, I explained! When I arranged to bring you here to see my mother, when I told you how she is, that she is a lady of the old days that with her all is always very formal, very proper, you agreed to come! Had you not wished to accept my proposal you should have said then, should have said you would prefer not to disturb my mother, and then, for both of us, no pain, no embarrassment, nor difficulty! I believed we understood each other!”
He stood up, and began to move about the courtyard, pacing heavily and angrily from one side to the other, his back rigid with anger.
“And at the restaurant, when you spoke to me of the situation with Squires! For what other reason, Señorita? For what possible reason does a woman tell a man of such a matter unless she intends to inform him that he has the chance for which he had been waiting? I do not comprehend your behaviour, Señorita, unless you are giving me again the joke of your country that I do not understand.”
“Sebastian, my God, I’m sorry - I had no idea - when you asked me why I was fed up and were so friendly and kind. I thought - but why should you think I was inviting any such thing as - ah, come on, Sebastian! It’s you that’s joking, surely?”
She sat there, still and rigid on the narrow wall, her hands gripping her bag, and staring at him, filled with a disbelieving shame; not again, not twice in so short a space of time! What was the matter with this island? Was there something in the air, some mad effect of the blazing sun that made such things happen? To have left an almost shattered heart in London, because the one man she had ever cared for had rejected her, only to have two other men fall at her feet within a matter of weeks - it was sheer lunacy. And she essayed a smile, tried to laugh, to show him she knew it was all ludicrous, absurd.
But he was standing very still and staring at her, his face tight and angry and then he said in a choked and very quiet voice, “You told me that you had rejected the advances of the man Squires because of your love for another man. You sat in the restaurant and you looked at me and said you could not accept Squires for this reason, and on your face is a look of such affection, such - such desire, that for the first time since I met you and knew you were the one for whom I am waiting so long, I am sure. The weeks of patience and friendsh
ip have led to the love I am hoping for, and then, when I tell you of the visit to my mother, and you accept I think, yes! My Isabella loves me, she wishes for me, and when I have shown her to the Madre, then, all is clear for us -”
“Sebastian, you’ve misunderstood, totally, and horribly, and - oh God I wish I’d never said a damned word! Look, when I said I loved someone else it wasn’t you I meant. What sort of woman would I be to do such a thing? You of all people with all your fuss about the right way to go about things - you should know no decent girl is going to tell a man she loves him when - when - Ye Gods, Sebastian, I’m no’ denying there were a few times when I thought you were damned attractive- you are, very attractive - but as for loving - no, of course not! Heaven help me, I came here to get over the man I do love and who - and now Biff and you - oh, it’s too much!”
And she jumped to her feet, scrabbling her gloves and bag into her shaking hands and fled, stopping only for one brief second to look back over her shoulder at him standing there, ludicrously framed in vine leaves and palms.
And then she was running full tilt along the dusty road back towards the village, anywhere to escape from his stillness and hurt pride.
He caught up with her halfway up the long road, pulling the car in beside her and leaning over to open the door.
“Get in,” he said curtly. “There is no way to Palma except the return with me. And it is hot and you are already disturbed by your haste.”
She hesitated, standing there on the hot dusty road, feeling the cool mountain air on her flaming damp cheeks, gasping a little from the rush of her flight, and knew she was being absurd, and after a moment more of hesitation, got into the car to sit rigidly beside him, her face red with a sick combination of shame and exertion, while he sat grim and tight beside her, driving the car as hard and fast as it would go.
They were almost out of the mountains and into the plains before she spoke again, and then she said in a tight but very controlled voice, “There is something I must ask you.”
“By all means,” and his voice was even more controlled and colourless than her own.
“Let us suppose, for one moment, that I did - that I would have been prepared to accept your very - kind proposal of marriage. Would you, under any circumstances, have made such a proposal without first consulting your mother, introducing me?”
He frowned, and turned and looked at her for a fleeting moment before returning his attention to his driving.
“Before? - No, of course not. This is not the way of my family, nor will it ever be. We are people of breeding and good behaviour, a fact which I had believed you understood. We are not the gypsies, the people of the roads with no roots, no traditions! We are Garcia of Valldemosa, and as such we behave by the rules. Always.”
“And suppose that your mother had not agreed that I was a suitable wife for you? I gather she did in fact agree to accept me?”
“She had some misgivings about the free life you have led in England, but accepted that this reflected no direct fault in you, but was part of the lax attitudes towards such matters in that country. Your willingness - as we understood it - to accept the forms of behaviour of ourselves we both saw as an assurance that your life in London had not unduly damaged your moral character.”
“My moral - Señor Garcia, even accepting that different people have very different attitudes and ideas, I find that a piece of outrageous arrogance! My moral character! How dare you tell me that your mother sat there making judgements on my morals! It’s a piece of the most -”
“Since this matter has come to an end in the manner it has, I see no reason why we should descend to further recrimination, Señorita,” and his voice crackled as icily as the mountain tops they were now leaving behind them.
She took a deep breath and after a moment nodded her head crisply.
“All right. But let me ask you again. Suppose that she had not accepted me as suitable. That she had said ‘No, she is not fit to be your wife’. What would you have done then?”
He shrugged. “Done? What do you expect I would have done?”
“Have told her where to get off, that’s what!”
“I do not understand.”
“Told her that you’re a man in your own right, and that you’d choose your wife as and where you wanted, and to the devil with her and her opinions! That’s what I’d expect a real man to say.”
She knew her voice was rising with anger, but didn’t care a whit, and went on recklessly. “I’d no’ expect any grown man in a position like yours to knuckle down to the bullying of an old woman who -”
“It seems to me, Señorita, that in the misunderstanding that we have suffered, both of us have been fortunate,” he said and his voice was as colourless and calm as ever, underlining her own heatedness. “For, as a gentleman of Spain, I must assure you that the woman who will come first in my life always is my mother. However important to a man his wife may be, as his partner and as the mother of his children, the mother is of prime importance, always. If you had not been able to accept that, then never could we have made any sort of happiness together. It seems to me that I have been more fortunate than I realized a little while ago. My pride was damaged, I do not deny, for no man of my breeding is accustomed to rejection from any such source. But this I will recover from far sooner than I would have recovered, I suspect, from the damage that would have ensued from a marriage between us.”
He drove on, composed and apparently relaxed, and she could have shaken him, could have reached out and hit him in her irritation at the calm arrogance of him, at the ease with which he apparently had been able to accept her refusal of him, coming as it did so soon after that insulting questioning meeting with the Señora Garcia. It was almost more than she could stand.
But then, as the car purred on its way into Palma, and the narrow poverty stricken streets of the outskirts became wider, changed their character into the richer shoplined boulevards of the town centre, she relaxed. After all, at least she didn’t have to feel guilty about this man, as she did about Biff, which was some small comfort -
And then she remembered, realized how with both Biff and this cold arrogant creature sitting beside her, it had been her own stupidity that had caused them to react as they did, and her face flamed with mortification. What sort of girl was she to treat men so? What had happened to her? It would be a long time before she would be able to live with the memory of her own behaviour, she told herself drearily as they stopped outside the Cadiz, and he came round the car, with chilly punctiliousness, to open the door for her.
She stood there on the pavement for a while, staring up at the hotel, and then at him, and suddenly bit her lip and looked away.
“It’s going to be very difficult to go on here after this, isn’t it?” she said and didn’t know what she wanted him to answer. To stay or go? Which should she do? And which would he want her to do?
He moved across the pavement towards the entrance, carefully and formally indicating the way. And said quite quietly with no expression at all on his face. “It is to me a matter of supreme unimportance, Señorita. Should you stay, I need not see you any more than I need see any member of my staff in whom I am not particularly interested. You can deal with Mendoza. Should you decide to go, then it is equally unimportant for I can obtain a replacement for you very easily.”
The hall porter had seen them, and was holding the door open invitingly, and he looked back over his shoulder before walking quickly in towards his mirror-doored office.
“Very easily indeed,” he repeated, and then he was gone, leaving her standing alone in the lobby.
17
To stay or to go? To sit it out, grimly, to the end of the season, or scamper for home, tail between legs, away from the sidelong glances and ill-hidden sniggers that would be inevitable once the Cadiz staff realized that Sebastian was no longer taking her out? The question slid in and out of her consciousness, came between her and work, reared up and shrieked at her from her mirror when
she brushed her hair, came up at her from her plate as she ate -
For three days she went on in this state of indecision, at one moment determined to go straight up to her room and pack to catch the first plane home, the next finding all her Scottish stubbornness building up to make her set her mouth and harden her resolve; damned if she’d let any tuppenny ha’penny Spanish hotel owner make her do anything she didn’t fully want to do! - and then once more depression and shame would overcome her, and again she’d decide to pack.
And then, on the fourth morning, as she was completing the clinic and dealing with the last patient, a man from the gardening staff with an infected rose-thorn wound in his hand, she heard someone come into the surgery room, and looked over her shoulder, irritated, for patients were supposed to wait outside until called for. But even as the words of reproof rose to her lips, she closed her mouth again, for Vanda Connaught was standing there, leaning against the door jamb with all her usual arrogance.
“You wanted something?” Isabel said shortly, turning back to the gardener and continuing with the bandaging of his hand.
“It’s a personal matter,” Vanda said and it seemed to Isabel that her insolent drawl was even more than usually exaggerated, and she bit her lip to force back her irritation, and said nothing.
“Le dille aqui? Does it hurt here?” she asked the man, touching his hand again and he shook his head and grinned, and she smiled at him. “Pasado mañana - la venda fresca -”
“The day after tomorrow - a fresh bandage?” the man said, proud of his few words of English, and went away happily nodding nervously at Vanda Connaught as he squeezed past her at the door, she not moving an inch to allow him to pass.
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