Sleeping Tiger

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  “Sí.”

  “I have a ticket for San Antonio.”

  Without expression, he held out a hand for it, ripped the relevant page from the ticket book, made out a boarding pass, slid the pass back into the ticket, and returned it to her.

  “Thank you. What time does the plane go?”

  “Half past seven.”

  “And my luggage?”

  “It is marked through to San Antonio.”

  “And the Customs?”

  “Customs at San Antonio.”

  “I see. Thank you so much.” But her ingratiating efforts to raise a smile were not successful. The man had had a hard night and he was in no mood to be pleasant.

  She went and sat down. She ached with exhaustion, but she was too nervous to feel sleepy. The plane had left London Airport at two in the morning, and she had sat staring into darkness and telling herself briskly to take things one at a time. Barcelona. San Antonio. Customs and passports and things. Then a taxi. It would be quite easy to find a taxi. And then Cala Fuerte. Cala Fuerte would not be large. Where does the Englishman, George Dyer, live? she would ask, and they would be able to direct her to the Casa Barco, and there she would find him.

  The storm hit them as they came over the Pyrenees. The captain had had warning of it, and they were all woken and buckled into their safety belts. The plane lurched and wobbled, climbed higher and lurched some more. Some passengers were sick. Selina, closing her eyes, willed herself not to be, but it had been a close shave.

  As they came down into Barcelona, the lightning attacked them, seeming to fly like banners from the wing tips. Once through the clouds they were lashed by rain, and when they landed at Barcelona, rocketing down through a cross wind, the runway was waterlogged, and shimmering with reflected lights. As the wheels brushed the tarmac, they sent up great wings of water, and there was an audible sigh of relief from everybody when at last the plane trundled to a standstill and the engines were stilled.

  It was strange not having anyone to meet her. There should be a driver, a chauffeur in a uniform, with a large warm car. Or Agnes, fussing with rugs. There should be someone to find her suitcase, and deal with officialdom. But there was no one. This was Spain; Barcelona at six o’clock on a March morning, and there was no one but Selina.

  * * *

  When the hands of the clock had crept round to seven o’clock, she went into the bar and bought a cup of coffee, paying for it with some pesetas that the thoughtful man in the bank had insisted she bring with her. It was not very good coffee, but comfortingly hot, and she sat drinking it and watching her own reflection in the mirror that backed the bar. She wore a brown jersey dress and a coat the colour of porridge, and a silk headscarf, slipping now off the back of her hair. Travelling-clothes Mrs. Bruce called them. She had set ideas about travelling-clothes. Jersey is comfortable and doesn’t crease, and the coat must go over everything. Shoes must be light, but sturdy enough for long walks over windswept airports, the handbag large and capacious. Automatically, even in moments of drama, Selina followed this excellent and unvarying advice. Not that it helped. She still looked a mess and felt exhausted. She was afraid of flying, and dressing like a knowledgeable traveller didn’t make you one, nor dispel the conviction that you would either die in an air crash or lose your passport.

  The plane to San Antonio seemed very small, and looked as unreliable as a toy. Oh, no, thought Selina as she walked out towards it, with the wind blowing gusts of petrol fumes into her face and the puddles splashing over the tops of her shoes. There were only a few passengers and they filed glumly into the aircraft as though they shared her convictions. Once strapped in, Selina was given a glucose sweet, and began to eat it as though it were a new miracle cure for sheer funk. It wasn’t, but the plane did not crash.

  The bad weather, however, was still about, and they did not see San Antonio until they came in to land. There was nothing but cloud, lumps of grey cotton wool at the windows. Then there was rain, and then, unexpectedly, fields and the tops of houses and a windmill and a bunch of pines and earth the colour of brick, and everything glistening in the rain. The airport had only just been built, the landing-strip bulldozed out of the soil, and now the runway was a sea of red mud. After they had landed, two mechanics manhandled a gangway up to the side of the aircraft. They wore yellow slickers and were spattered in mud up to their knees. For once nobody seemed over-anxious to leave the aircraft. When they did, they went cautiously, picking their way between the puddles.

  San Antonio smelled of pines. Wet, resinous pines. The rain, miraculously, seemed to have stopped. It was warmer, with no bite to the wind. There were no snow-topped mountains here, only the warm, surrounding sea. This was San Antonio. The flying was over and she was still alive. Selina pulled off her headscarf and let her hair blow in the wind.

  There was a queue for immigration. Members of the Guardia Civil stood about as though they were expecting an influx of criminals. They wore guns, and not for ornamental reasons. The immigration official worked slowly. He was holding a conversation with a colleague. It was long and involved, an argument of sorts, and he only stopped short at intervals in order to inspect painstakingly, page by page, any alien passport. Selina was the third and she had been waiting ten minutes before he eventually stamped “ENTRADA,” and handed it back to her.

  She said tentatively, “My luggage…?”

  He did not understand, or did not want to, but waved her on. She put her passport back into her sensible bag, and went on searching on her own. For a small airport, San Antonio in the early morning seemed unusually crowded, but at nine-thirty the Barcelona plane returned to Spain, and this was a popular flight. Families gathered, children cried, mothers entreated them loudly to stop. Fathers argued with porters, queued for tickets and boarding passes. Lovers stood about hand-in-hand, waiting to say good-bye, and getting in everybody’s way. The noise, in the high-ceilinged building, was deafening.

  “Excuse me,” Selina kept saying, trying to work her way through the throng. “I am sorry … excuse me…” Some of her fellow-passengers were already gathered beneath a sign which said “ADUANA,” and she struggled to join them. “I am sorry”—she tripped over a bulging basket, and nearly knocked down a fat baby in a knitted yellow coat. “Excuse me, please.”

  The luggage was already arriving, manhandled on to the makeshift counter, claimed, examined, sometimes opened, finally passed by the Customs officer, and removed.

  Selina’s suitcase never appeared. It was a blue one with a white stripe and easy to identify, and after an eternity of waiting she realised that there was no more luggage to come, the other passengers had, one by one, filtered away, and Selina was alone.

  The Customs officer, who had, up to now, successfully managed to ignore her, hitched hands on his hips and raised his black eyebrows at her.

  “My suitcase…” Selina said. “It’s…”

  “No hablo Inglese.”

  “My suitcase … Do you speak English?”

  A second man moved forward. “He says ‘No.’”

  “Can you speak English?”

  He shrugged elaborately, suggesting that maybe, under desperate circumstances, he might possibly manage a word or two.

  “My case. My luggage.” She broke desperately into French. “Mon bagage.”

  “Not here?”

  “No.”

  “Where you come from?” He rolled all his r’s with a great flourish. “Wherre you come frrom?”

  “Barcelona. And London.”

  “Oh!” He made it sound as though she had imparted grave news. He turned to his colleague and they began to speak, a liquid rattle of Spanish that might have been a private conversation. Selina wondered desperately if they were exchanging family news. Then the English-speaking man shrugged again, and turned back to Selina. “I will find out,” he said.

  He disappeared. Selina waited. The first man began to pick his teeth. Somewhere a child wailed. The loudspeaker, to add to the misery, burs
t into the sort of music normally associated with bullfights. After ten minutes or more the helpful man came back, with one of the stewards from the aircraft.

  The steward said, smiling as though he were imparting a charming favour, “Your suitcase is lost.”

  “Lost!” It was a despairing wail.

  “Your case is, we think, in Madrid.”

  “Madrid! What’s it doing in Madrid?”

  “Unfortunately, at Barcelona, it has been put on the wrong truck … we think. At Barcelona there is also a plane going to Madrid. We think that your luggage is in Madrid.”

  “But it was labelled to San Antonio. It was labelled in London.”

  At the word “London” the Customs man made his hopeless sound again. Selina felt she could hit him.

  “I am sorry,” said the steward. “I will have a message sent through to Madrid, to return the case to San Antonio.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I did not say it was in Madrid,” said the steward, determined not to commit himself. “We must find out.”

  “Well, how long will it take to find out?”

  “I do not know. Maybe three, four hours.”

  Three or four hours! If she was not angry, then she would cry. “I can’t wait here three or four hours.”

  “Then perrhaps you can come back. Tomorrow, maybe, to see if the suitcase is here. From Madrid.”

  “But can’t I call you? Ring you? On the telephone?”

  This was apparently a joke. Through smiles, she was told, “Señorita, there are few telephones.”

  “Then I have to come back here to-morrow, to see if you have found my case?”

  “Or the next day,” said the steward, with the air of a man full of bright ideas.

  Selina made a final appeal. “But everything I have is in my case.”

  “I am sorry.”

  He continued to stand smiling at her. She felt at that moment as though she were drowning. She looked from one face to another, and slowly realised that nobody was going to help her. Nobody could help her. She was alone and she had to help herself. She said at last in a voice that shook only a little, “Is it possible for me to find a taxi?”

  “But of course. Outside. There are many taxis.”

  There were, in fact, four. Beginning to be oppressed by the warmth of the porridge-coloured travelling-coat, Selina went in search of them. As soon as she appeared, the drivers all blew their horns, waved, called “Señorita,” leapt from their cars and rushed for her custom, each trying to channel Selina towards his own vehicle.

  She said, loudly, “Can any of you speak English?”

  “Sí. Sí. Sí.”

  “I want to go to Cala Fuerte.”

  “Cala Fuerte, sí.”

  “Do you know Cala Fuerte?”

  “Sí. Sí,” they all said.

  “Oh, can’t anybody speak English…?”

  “Yes,” said a voice. “I can.”

  It was the driver of the fourth taxi. While his colleagues had tried to beguile Selina, he waited, placidly finishing his cigar. Now he dropped the odorous stub, stepped on it, and moved forward. His appearance was not reassuring. He was an enormous man, very tall and equally fat. He wore a blue shirt, open-necked and revealing a black, furry chest. His trousers were slung by an intricately worked leather belt, and on the back of his head was an incongruous straw hat, of the variety that tourists bring back from holiday. He wore, at this early, cloudy hour, sunglasses, and narrow black moustaches suggesting unknown Don Juan qualities. He looked so villainous that Selina reeled.

  “I speak English,” he said, with a strong American accent. “I work in Spain, on a U.S. Army air base. I speak English.”

  “Oh. Well…” Surely any of the other three taxi-drivers was preferable to this ruffian, English or not!

  He ignored her hesitation. “Where d’you want to go?”

  “To … Cala Fuerte. But I’m sure…”

  “I’ll take you. Six hundred pesetas.”

  “Oh. Well…” She looked hopefully at the other taxi-drivers, but already they seemed discouraged. One had even returned to his car and was rubbing on the windscreen with an old rag.

  She turned back to the large man in the straw hat. He smiled, a broken-toothed leer. She swallowed, and said, “All right. Six hundred pesetas.”

  “Where is your luggage?”

  “It is lost. It was lost in Barcelona.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “Yes, it got put on the wrong plane. They’re going to find out, and I’ll get it tomorrow or the next day. I have to go to Cala Fuerte now, you see, and…”

  Something in the big man’s expression made her stop. He was gazing down at Selina’s handbag. Selina followed his gaze, and saw that, indeed, something strange had happened. Although the two sturdy straps were still over her arm, the bag hung open like a gaping mouth. The front straps had been neatly cut, as if with a razor blade. And her wallet was missing!

  The taxi-driver was called Toni. He introduced himself formally, and then he acted as her interpreter during the long and tedious interview with the Guardia Civil.

  Yes, the señorita had been robbed. In the crowd at the airport this morning, had been a thief with a razor blade. She had been robbed of everything. Everything she owned.

  Her passport?

  Not her passport. But her money, her pesetas, her British money, her traveller’s cheques, her return ticket to London.

  The Guardia Civil, with concentration, examined Selina’s bag.

  Had the Señorita felt nothing?

  But nothing. Pushing through the crowds, how could she feel anything?

  The bag looked as if it had been cut by a razor.

  That was it. A razor. A thief with a razor blade.

  What was the Señorita’s name?

  It was Miss Selina Bruce, of London, travelling on a British passport.

  And where was Miss Bruce’s place of residence, in San Antonio?

  It was … Selina hesitated here, but events had gone beyond hesitation. Casa Barco, Cala Fuerte.

  What colour was the wallet? How much money, exactly? Were the traveller’s cheques signed?

  Wearily she answered the questions. The clock crawled round to ten, to half past ten and beyond. The worst of her apprehensions had more than been fulfilled. She had lost her suitcase and she had lost her money. And she still had to get to Cala Fuerte.

  At last it was over. The Guardia Civil squared off his papers and stood up. Selina thanked him, and shook hands. He looked surprised, but still did not smile.

  Together, Selina and Toni crossed the now empty airport building, went out through the glass doors, and stopped, facing each other. Selina held her coat over her arm, for it had begun to get uncomfortably warm, and watched him, waiting for him to make the first move.

  He took off his dark glasses.

  She said, “I still have to get to Cala Fuerte.”

  “You have no money.”

  “But you’ll get paid, I promise you. When we get to Cala Fuerte … my … father will pay your fare.”

  Toni frowned enormously. “Your father? You have a father here? Why didn’t you say?”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference. We … we couldn’t get in touch with him. Could we?”

  “Your father lives in Cala Fuerte?”

  “Yes. At a house called the Casa Barco. I am sure he will be there, and will pay you.” Toni watched her, suspicious and unbelieving. “And you can’t just leave me here. I haven’t even got my plane ticket back to London.”

  He stared into space for a bit, then decided to light a cigarette. He was giving nothing away, and refusing to commit himself.

  “You said you’d take me,” Selina went on. “And I’ll see that you’re paid. I promise.”

  His cigarette was lighted. He blew a cloud of smoke into the air, and his black eyes swivelled back to Selina’s face. She looked anxious and pale, but also, undoubtedly, well-to-do. The ruined h
andbag was alligator, and the good shoes matched. The scarf was silk, and both the dress and the coat of expensive wool. Sometimes, as she moved, Toni glimpsed the gold of a thin chain around her neck, and she wore a gold watch. There was, undoubtedly, money around—if not in the handbag, then somewhere. It was only March and there were not yet so many taxi fares that he could afford to turn down a good one. And this girl, this young Inglesa, did not look capable of tricking anybody.

  He made up his mind. “All right,” he said at last. “We go.”

  4

  Made beneficent by his own kindness, Toni talked expansively.

  “San Antonio, until five years ago, was a very poor island. The communications with Spain were lousy, only a small boat twice a week. But now we have the airport, so that visitors come and in the summer there are a lot of people, and things are getting O.K.”

  Selina thought that the first thing that needed to get O.K. was the surface of the roads. The one they were on was unsurfaced and rutted with car tracks, on which the aged Oldsmobile, which was Toni’s taxi, rocked and bucketed like a ship at sea. It wound, between low, dry-stone walls, through a countryside squared off into little farmsteads. The ground looked stony and unpromising, the squat buildings had been bleached by the fierce sun to the colour of pale sand. The women, who worked in the fields, wore black skirts to their ankles and black scarves about their heads. The men were in faded blue, ploughing the unresponsive earth, or jolting, in wooden carts, behind a pair of mules. There were flocks of goats, and scrawny chickens, and every mile or so a well, circled by a patient, blinkered horse, and a water-wheel, spilling brimming buckets into the irrigation ditches.

  Selina noticed this, and said, “But you had rain last night.”

  “That was the first rain for months. We are always short of water. There are no rivers, only springs. The sun is already hot, and the ground dries very fast.”

  “We flew through a storm last night, over the Pyrenees.”