The Youngest Sister

by Anne Weale

  ‘Oh...would you...? Thank you,’ she said, handing over the peanuts.

  The brief contact with his fingers as the packet changed hands sent a strange tingle up her arm. She had had several boyfriends, none of them serious, but couldn’t remember ever being as strongly aware of their physical presence as she was now with this stranger.

  Having opened the packet and put it back on her tray-table, he said, ‘Are you on holiday?’

  ‘No, I’m not. Are you?’

  ‘I live on the island.’

  ‘Really? What do you do there?’

  ‘I relax and recharge my batteries. My job involves a lot of travelling. When I’m at home I sit in the sun and vegetate.’

  She was about to enquire what his job was when he beat her to it by asking, ‘If not a holiday, what takes you to the island?’

  ‘I’m going to see my great-aunt.’

  ‘Have you stayed with her before?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve never been to Spain at all.’

  ‘Where on the island does your relative live?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ Cressy admitted.

  Had this been a holiday, she would have read a guidebook before coming away. There hadn’t been time to do that. She had only the common knowledge that Majorca was the largest island in a group called the Balearics—one of which, Ibiza, had once been a mecca for hippies, and possibly still was.

  ‘The house is called “Es Vell”. It’s somewhere near a town called Pollensa,’ she told him.

  ‘That’s up north, nowhere near Palma airport. Will there be someone meeting you?’

  Again Cressy shook her head. ‘Aunt Kate doesn’t know I’m coming. She’s a bit of a recluse. It was her Spanish neighbour who let us know she was ill. She rang up yesterday afternoon. Luckily the person who took the call speaks some Spanish, so she could make out roughly what was being said. Aunt Kate has broken her leg. At seventy-eight that’s serious.’

  He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Wasn’t there anyone older who could have come out to take charge?’

  ‘How old d’you think I am?’

  ‘Eighteen? Nineteen? Rather young to cope with the situation you’ve outlined...especially if you don’t speak Spanish.’

  ‘I’m twenty-three,’ Cressy said briskly. ‘And, apart from not speaking Spanish, I can probably cope a lot better than some people twice my age. I work for Distress Signal, an organisation which specialises in dealing with domestic emergencies.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it, but I would have thought they’d be staffed by sensible middle-aged ladies, not girls who could pass for teenagers.’

  ‘They’re staffed by a wide range of people...of both sexes,’ Cressy informed him. ‘Normally a situation like this one would be dealt with by someone Spanish-speaking. But in this case, when there’s a close relation who can come to the rescue, that’s obviously preferable to employing an outsider.’

  ‘If you’ve never been to Spain before, and your aunt is a recluse, it doesn’t sound as if the relationship between you is a close one.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ she conceded. ‘But I do know a lot more about her than a stranger would. At one time she and my parents had a good relationship. But then she went off to the Mediterranean and they gradually drifted apart. My parents lead very full lives—and they’d rather go to France for their holidays. My mother wilts if it’s too hot.’

  As she spoke she wondered why she was confiding in him. Chatting to strangers had always been one of her foibles. When she was younger, her lack of caution in making friends had been a worry to her elders—especially to Maggie, who’d run the house while Mrs Vale was busy helping to run the country from the House of Commons. Cressy had lost count of Maggie’s warnings that talking to strangers could be hazardous. But that had been when she was younger and less competent to judge whether people were trustworthy or not.

  ‘How long have you worked for Distress Signal?’ he asked.

  ‘Two years. What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a freelance journalist and travel writer. If you ever read travel articles you may have seen my by-line... Nicolas Alaró.’

  Her eyes widened in astonishment. She had read a lot of his pieces. He had been to all the places she would have liked to visit. Sometimes she cut out his articles and filed them away against the day when she might meet a suitable travelling companion and take off on a round-the-world trip. She didn’t fancy going alone, which was why she was going with a group to the Galágapagos Islands.

  The last clipping she had filed had been about an expedition on a yacht called Endless Summer, sailing the channels of Patagonia.

  “‘Alaró” sounds Spanish, but you don’t write as if English was your second language. Are you completely bilingual?’

  With his black hair and tanned olive skin, he could pass for a Spaniard in some ways. But his eyes weren’t brown, they were dark indigo-blue—the colour her sweater had been before many washings had faded it.

  ‘I had a Mallorquin grandfather who left me his house on the island. I also use his name for working purposes. My real surname is Talbot...and you are?’

  ‘Cressida... usually called Cressy.’

  Deliberately, she didn’t mention her surname. He might connect her with her mother. She was proud of her mother’s achievements but she had learnt a long time ago that Virginia Vale was either admired or loathed, and he might be one of the loathers. Many men were.

  She said, ‘Travel writing must be a marvellous way to earn a living. I enjoyed your piece about the voyage on Endless Summer.’

  ‘I enjoyed researching it. South America’s a fascinating continent. I’m going back there early next year. I want to get to the summit of Aconcagua. It’s the highest point in the western hemisphere... the highest mountain outside Asia.’

  She saw by the light in his eyes that the project excited him, and she felt her own heartbeat quicken at the thought of such an adventure.

  She still hadn’t fully adjusted to the astonishment of finding that, in a sense, he was someone she knew. She rarely bought books in hardback but hadn’t been able to resist buying all his as soon as they came out, the most recent being a collection of his travel essays.

  She had bought it at Stanfords, the London bookshop known to travellers from all over the world for its fine range of maps and guides. If she had known beforehand that he was doing a signing session at the shop she would have gone along to have her copy autographed. It had been a big disappointment to discover she had missed the chance of meeting him, if only for the few seconds it would have taken him to write his name on the fly-leaf.

  To meet him by chance seemed almost...as if it were fated.

  The practical side of her nature made short shrift of this proposition, reminding her sharply that what mattered was his intimate knowledge of Majorca. He could supply her with much-needed information.

  Cressy’s practicality was really her only asset. Even her family acknowledged that, although disastrously lacking in academic ability, she was very strong on common sense.

  ‘What’s the best way to get to Pollensa?’ she asked, when the salmon pâté had been set before them. ‘Is there a bus service to it? Or would a taxi be better?’

  ‘A taxi will get you there faster but will also cost a lot more. Does your great-aunt have a car?’

  ‘I don’t know for certain. I’d think so. She certainly had one the last time she came to stay with us in England. But that was ages ago. I must have been about eight then. I remember the car she was driving because a boy I used to play with made such a fuss about it. He was a car fanatic, and Aunt Kate’s was something unusual.’ She searched her memory for the name. ‘He called it a roadster... a Cord roadster. I forget the year it was made, but some time in the 1930s. My father was rather taken with it too.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Nicolas. ‘It’s one of the legendary cars from an era of luxury motoring before the roads became choked with assembly-line vehicles. What’s more,’ he
went on, ‘that Cord is still running...or was, up to a couple of years ago. I saw it going through Alcudia with an elderly lady at the wheel. She aroused my journalist’s curiosity. I asked around and was told she was Katherine Dexter, once a leading combatant in the battle of the sexes.’

  Cressy’s mother and sisters would have corrected that description. She let it pass. ‘How did she look when you saw her?’

  ‘It was only a glimpse. At that time she looked pretty good. So did the car. I was told it was very rare. The makers went out of business with only about two thousand Cords on the market. According to my informant, your great-aunt’s model was being kept in repair by a garage mechanic who was hoping she would leave it to him. Whether it’s still on the road—quién sabe?’ Remembering she had no Spanish, he translated. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Old cars can be temperamental. If it is still running, I don’t think I’d want to drive it,’ Cressy said, thinking aloud. ‘Maybe I can rent a motor scooter.’

  ‘If you need one, there’ll be no problem. In July and August, yes. But not at this stage of the year. As for reaching Es Vell today, I’ll run you there.’

  Again she was taken aback.

  Before she could say anything, he went on, ‘My house is in the same part of the island. I don’t know your great-aunt’s place but I doubt if it’s more than a few kilometres off my route.’

  ‘It’s extremely kind, but I really couldn’t impose—’

  ‘If you’re worried about the risk of accepting a lift from a stranger,’ he said, looking faintly amused, ‘we can get over that quite easily. By virtue of my distinguished maternal grandfather, I’m quite well-known in Mallorca...as the Spanish call it. There’ll be people at the airport who’ll convince you that you won’t be risking your safety if you accept my suggestion.’

  Cressy found it hard to fathom the generosity of his offer. She was attracted to him but didn’t flatter herself that he was attracted to her.

  Research had proved men were attracted to women who more or less matched them in terms of physical assets. For that reason the men she attracted were guys whose faces and physiques could be classed as averagely pleasant rather than to-die-for. She had never appealed to anyone with Nicolas’s outstanding looks and she didn’t expect to. He was in her sisters’ league. Therefore, his offer had to be prompted by disinterested helpfulness rather than being the first move in a holiday romance.

  Casting about for some reason why Nicolas would want to help out a girl like herself—presentable but nothing special—Cressy suddenly realised the solution was under her nose.

  He was a journalist. Aunt Kate, in her day, had been a celebrity. The motive behind his offer of a lift must be the hope of an interview with her. As well as writing travel articles, he did occasionally do profiles of interesting people encountered on his journeys.

  In his book there was a profile of Edward James, a millionaire patron of the arts with an extraordinary house in Mexico. The introduction to the profile said that Nicolas had been a backpacking teenager when Edward James had consented to be interviewed by him. It had been his first journalistic coup, the foundation of his career. It could be that he saw Cressy as the means to an end—the end being a profile of Aunt Kate.

  The possibility that, far from being genuinely helpful, he was using her, or attempting to do so, was curiously upsetting. But two could play at that game. If he meant to use her, he couldn’t complain at being made use of himself.

  ‘I don’t think we need to go to those lengths. I can check your bona fides for myself. What is your latest book called, and what is the last place in it?’

  Looking amused, he said, ‘It’s called Faraway Places and the last piece was about Nantucket. I called it “Yesterday’s Island”. But, beyond confirming that I am who I claim to be, I don’t see that it proves anything.’

  ‘It proves you’re a well-known name, unlikely to be a serial killer or “The Mystery Rapist of Majorca”.’ As she said this, she wiggled her fingers to indicate she was quoting the kind of headline seen in the popular Press. ‘I’d be very grateful for a lift to Aunt Kate’s place. Thanks for the offer. How far is it from Palma to Pollensa?’

  ‘Now the motorway’s finished, it takes less than an hour.’

  While they were eating the main course, he said, ‘Tell me about your job. Why did you choose it, and what sort of things do you do?’

  Actually, Cressy hadn’t chosen it. The job had been set up for her by her mother, who had met the director of Distress Signal.

  ‘We do a huge range of things, from emergency child-minding to visiting people in hospital when their next of kin can’t. Last week I drove a rather wobbly old man to spend a holiday with his house-bound sister on the other side of England. This week I was going to look after a Down’s Syndrome child while her mother is in hospital, but now someone else will be doing that.’

  ‘You must be a good deal wiser and more capable than most twenty-three-year-olds,’ he said dryly.

  Cressy shrugged. ‘It’s a question of horse sense. Sometimes clever people don’t have much. I’m a total dud academically, but I’m good at practical things like—’ She broke off, aware that she was letting her tongue run away with her.

  ‘Like what?’ he prompted.

  ‘Oh...unblocking drains...that sort of thing.’

  ‘You sound an ideal travelling companion. Equal to every contingency. Never fazed when plans go awry. Does adventurous travel appeal to you?’

  She knew from his book that he had been to many remote and potentially hazardous places.

  ‘If you mean like your journey through the Atlas Mountains with a mule, I think that would be too adventurous for me.’

  ‘That was a long time ago. Do I gather you’ve read my books?’

  Her mouth being full, Cressy replied with a nod.

  ‘As far as I know, I don’t have many women readers.’

  It was on the tip of her tongue to remark that he would have thousands if his publishers put his picture on the back of the jacket, or included shots of the author in the pages of illustrations. But the only glimpse his readers had ever been given was an anonymous figure with wind-tousled dark hair—not as long as he wore it now—sitting with his back to the camera in wilderness terrain.

  She said, ‘You seem very camera-shy. There’s never a photo of you with any of your travel pieces.’

  He shrugged. ‘As I’m not an actor or a male model, what I look like is irrelevant.’

  His answer surprised and puzzled her. He must know he was, if not strictly handsome, compellingly attractive. Her mother and sisters were all fully aware that their looks were a major asset. Her mother had been one of the first politicians to seek the advice of an image consultant, and to take advantage of a photogenic face and a flair for speaking in sound bites to advance her career.

  Having grown up with people who knew and exploited the value of their faces and figures, Cressy found it hard to believe that Nicolas was without vanity. He must have realised how easily he could have dated the most attractive women. Yet he spoke as if his looks were a matter of indifference to him.

  It suddenly occurred to her that he might be married. Not that the way he had stared at her in the airport suggested he was a man whose love for one woman had made him blind or indifferent to the rest of her sex.

  ‘How does your wife occupy herself during your absences? Do you have lots of children?’ she asked.

  He said dryly, ‘Even in the quieter parts of Mallorca it’s virtually impossible to find a woman content to sit at home having babies for an absentee husband. I wouldn’t want that sort of wife anyway. But, conversely, there still aren’t many women prepared to spend months on end living in primitive conditions. Those who don’t mind roughing it are usually dedicated to good works, or not feminine enough for my taste. How’s your private life?’

  Was that very slight emphasis on ‘private’ a subtle riposte for her cheek in asking him intimate questions? Or was she imagining a nu
ance where there wasn’t one?

  ‘I don’t have one,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m still living with my parents. My job doesn’t pay enough for me to set up independently. Well, it might in the country, but not in London, where the cost of living is higher.’

  She had put her watch forward by an hour immediately after fastening her seat belt. When a sensation in her ears told her it wouldn’t be long before they landed, she couldn’t believe how quickly the time had passed since they took off.

  Her first aerial view of the island made it look very brown and barren. Almost rising out of the sea was a range of steep, jagged mountains and then the land flattened out and became a patchwork of farmsteads and groves of grey-foliaged trees.

  When Nicolas leaned closer to her in order to look out of the window, Cressy was sharply aware of the natural aroma of his skin. Judging by his shorts and boots, he had flown into London that morning from somewhere remote. Obviously he had changed his shirt and had a shave at Gatwick; the shirt was too crisp to have been slept in and his jaw had no trace of dark stubble. But she doubted if Gatwick had facilities for taking a shower, as she knew there were at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. Yet he smelt good. Better than men who sloshed on expensive lotions. He smelt as good as old books and summer grass and clean towels warm from the airing cupboard. She wanted to close her eyes and inhale the scent of him.

  Instead she kept her eyes open, studying his face in profile and the way his springy black hair grew from his forehead and temples.

  A shiver ran through her. She had a crazy impulse to reach out and stroke his cheek to see what effect it had on him.

  In her mind she saw his eyes blaze before, pinning her shoulders to the back rest, he brought his mouth down hard on hers in a kiss unlike any she had ever experienced before.