The Youngest Sister

by Anne Weale

  Before she was ready she heard the splash of Nicolas entering the pool. When she opened the door he was still under the water, a long, dark shape gliding towards the deep end. He surfaced like a seal, giving his head a quick shake which sent dozens of bright drops flying from his wet head like a halo of diamonds.

  Then, turning, he saw her stepping into the tray of the poolside shower.

  ‘Hang on a minute, Cressy.’

  Puzzled, she watched him come back, swimming a powerful crawl which, although the pool was a long one, brought him back to the shallows in less than thirty seconds. As he stood up the water streamed off a body so beautifully structured that she caught her breath. He was built like a merman, broad shoulders tapering to a lean waist and a midriff as flat and taut as a teenage boy’s. Except for professional athletes, she had never seen anyone in their thirties who had kept that shape. But then all her sisters’ lovers had been City types, bankers and brokers, who, if they exercised at all, did it in a gym—not by leading a tough outdoor life as this man did.

  ‘Even at this time of day newcomers can get burnt, especially when they’re as fair-skinned as you are,’ said Nicolas. ‘I’ll get you some factor fifteen sun-cream.’

  He stepped past her, giving her a brief, breathtaking view of the back muscles which had propelled him through the water.

  Reappearing with a tube of sun-cream in his hand, he said, ‘Turn round, I’ll do your back for you. That’s the part that’s exposed when you’re swimming.’

  Cressy turned, automatically putting up her hands to hold her hair out of the way. Many times in the past, on holidays, her sisters or girlfriends had sun-oiled her back for her. But it was the first time a man had done it.

  She felt a splodge of cream being squeezed between her shoulderblades. Then four cool fingertips began to spread it over her skin. Clearly this was a service Nicolas had performed many times. He must have tossed the tube onto a nearby lounger because presently he used his other hand to lift each of her shoulder straps and cream underneath them. That done, he did the same with the edges of the top of the swimsuit, taking the cream a couple of centimetres underneath where the fabric would lie when he replaced it.

  The slow sweep of his middle finger down the side of her back, then in a U-curve sweeping below her waistline and up the other side, had the same effect on Cressy as the time when a man who had kissed her, unexpectedly and not unpleasantly, had then suddenly thrust his fingers through the gap between the buttons of her shirt to touch her breast. For a second his touch had excited her, and then she had pushed him away with a vigour he hadn’t expected. Oddly, although it was less intimate, the effect of Nicolas’s touch was actually more exciting and sensuous. It was all she could do not to gasp aloud at the strong reaction it sent thrilling through her.

  ‘There you are. Now, when you’ve done your front, you can sunbathe for up to half an hour if you want.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She took the tube he handed her, hoping he couldn’t sense the turmoil going on inside her.

  But it seemed that he couldn’t, because he dived back in the pool and headed for the deep end.

  Nicolas had plunged back into the pool because touching her had turned him on, and she wasn’t the kind of girl he could make love to there and then without any romantic preliminaries to put her in the mood.

  Actually, she was half in the mood already. He had felt her quiver when his finger crossed her spine and there had been other tell-tale signs of excitement, as well as her flushed face, when she had turned round to take the sun-cream from him.

  He had known a lot of women and he was fairly sure that, behind the façade of not being very sure of herself but as friendly as a puppy, Cressy had the potential to be hot stuff in bed.

  He had noticed her looking daunted by Elena’s glamour. Elena pretended to be a siren but, like many sexy-looking women, when it came to the crunch she closed her eyes and thought of Spain. Cressy, once she overcame her inhibitions, would be far more passionate. Later tonight, when he turned out the downstairs lights and took her upstairs, he hoped to be close to the point when she would be as ready and eager to make love as he was.

  ‘We’ll have dinner early tonight, because you aren’t used to Spanish meal times and I’ve been living with people who get up at sunrise and go to bed at sunset,’ said Nicolas as Cressy came out of the pool and wrapped a towel round herself.

  He had left the water before her and was now stretched on a lounger with a glass of what might be iced water or gin and tonic at his elbow.

  He sprang up. ‘What can I get you to drink?’

  ‘Water, please.’

  She was lying on a lounger with the back propped at forty-five degrees when he returned with a tall glass. All the loungers had towelling covers to match the pool towels.

  ‘You need to drink a lot of water here when the weather’s hot. You’re not a vegetarian, are you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Are you?’

  ‘No, but I’m not a carnivore like the Argentinians, who practically live on huge steaks. A lot of my friends in London are halfway veggies, and a few eat nothing but macrobiotic food. Tonight Catalina is cooking fish.’

  Somewhere nearby a telephone rang. Nicolas rose and disappeared into the barn. A few minutes later he stood in the doorway and said, ‘It’s my editor calling from London. I’ll talk to him from my workroom. Would you mind listening in till you hear me speaking to him, and then replacing the receiver?’

  As he handed it over, he said, ‘If I don’t come back, come up to my room at seven. It’s directly opposite the top of the stairs. Your room is the one you went through to the bathroom you used earlier.’

  With only half an hour left in which to make herself presentable, Cressy opened the shutters in her room and leaned out to see if there were hooks on the wall to hold them in place. Not that it looked as if a wind might blow up. The sun was sinking in a clear flamingo-coloured sky which promised another cloudless day tomorrow.

  Although the contents of her pack did include a skirt and a top to wear if she had to go somewhere where jeans and shorts wouldn’t be acceptable, she decided not to wear them tonight. Both would need pressing, and Catalina would be busy preparing the evening meal and not want to be bothered with a request for the ironing board. Instead Cressy washed her hair with the bath’s shower attachment and blow-dried it with the dryer thoughtfully provided by whoever had equipped the bedroom—presumably Nicolas’s mother. Before leaving the room, she hooked a pair of little silver acorns through her ears.

  The door of Nicolas’s room was already wide open, but she tapped on the heavy dark wood before crossing the threshold in response to his ‘Come in.’

  The room was a very large one, and the first thing she noticed was that the walls were hidden by crowded bookshelves and many paintings hanging almost frame to frame. One end of the room was a working area, with a PC on a wide desk, filing cabinets and a fax machine. At the other end of the room were comfortable chairs, some sophisticated equipment for playing music and a king-size bed.

  It was an unusual bed, the tall headboard and the footboard both stained a soft blue-green colour and embellished with fanciful birds with flowers in their beaks. The style in which they were painted looked more Scandinavian than Spanish. Perhaps it had been a present from Nicolas’s English father to his Mallorquin bride, or perhaps it owed its decoration to a local craftsman who had been away from the island and had copied it from a bed seen on his travels.

  Although she was interested in its history, Cressy didn’t enquire. Had it been anywhere else, she would have asked about it. But this was Nicolas’s bed, and although at the moment it was covered with a bedspread of heavy dark blue cotton, which set off the yellow birds and the vivid flowers, in her mind’s eye she could see him in it, sleeping or reading, his long, lean body naked under the sheet, his tanned shoulders turned to bronze by the light of the reading lamp.

  Or the room in darkness except for a shaft of moonlight, and N
icolas making love to someone. Someone who, in a few hours’ time, might be herself.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘IF YOU want to phone home, the phone’s over there,’ said Nicolas, indicating the desk. ‘I’m just going down to refill the ice tub. I shan’t be long. I’ve written the code for England and my number on the telephone pad.’

  Predictably, her parents’ telephone rang twice and then she heard her father’s recorded voice giving the answering machine message.

  Prepared for this, she said, ‘This is Cressy. Everything’s under control. Aunt Kate is in hospital with a broken wrist and thigh, but she’s going to be all right. I’m staying at a farmhouse not far from her cottage. If you want to contact me, the number is...’ she read it off the pad ’...otherwise I’ll call you again when I know how long I’m likely to be here. Bye for now.’

  The call made, she stayed where she was, looking at the desk where Nicolas wrote his books. Unlike her father and sisters, who were constantly upgrading to the latest state-of-the-art equipment, his PC was nothing spectacular. The most noticeable things on his desk were not electronic gadgets but personal things, including photographs of his parents and grandparents. His own looks were a recognisable combination of his father’s rawboned features and light-coloured piercing eyes, and his grandfather’s raven colouring.

  He came back. ‘Did you get through all right?’

  She vacated his chair and moved in the direction of a group of paintings. ‘I left a message on the machine. They may ring back.’

  Inwardly, she doubted it. Her parents rarely dined at home, unless they were entertaining, and wouldn’t think it necessary to call unless she failed to make contact for some considerable time. Maggie would be anxious about her, but Maggie wouldn’t ring a foreign number for fear of what it might cost. Maggie lived in a time warp and still thought a pound was a lot of money and a hundred pounds a small fortune.

  ‘What would you like to drink? I’m having Campari and soda.’

  ‘Could I have tonic with ice?’

  He didn’t try to persuade her to have something in it, for which she was grateful. He, too, was still in the clothes he had been wearing earlier. As he filled two tall glasses, he said, ‘The area of tan on your legs suggests that some time in the last month you were out of doors in shorts and walking boots. Or is there some other explanation for the paler skin below your calves and at the top of your thighs?’

  ‘You should have been a detective,’ Cressy said, smiling. ‘Yes, I spent my holiday walking the Pennine Way.’

  He came to where she was standing, looking at a picture of a fig tree growing at the side of a white-washed cottage with a neat stack of wood outside it.

  That’s one of my mother’s paintings. The fig is her favourite tree. This is the same tree in winter, with the shadow of its branches on the wall.’

  ‘Have you inherited her talent?’ Cressy asked.

  ‘Unfortunately not. I’d like to be able to sketch, but I have to make do with a camera. Who did you walk the Way with? A boyfriend?’

  ‘No, another girl. Have you done it?’

  ‘A long time ago, when I was an undergraduate. Did you do the whole walk from Edale to Kirk Yetholm?’

  ‘Yes, but we’d had enough by the time we’d finished. How long did it take you?’

  ‘Eleven days. Did you sleep in a tent or stay at youth hostels?’

  ‘At hostels. The weather wasn’t ideal. We were held up by several wipe-outs. We didn’t like the idea of stumbling into a bog. Somebody told us a man actually died of exposure when his tent blew away in a gale.’

  ‘I read about that—but he had been warned by a shepherd that he ought to turn back,’ said Nicolas. ‘Have you done much walking, or was that trip a one-off?’

  ‘I’ve always liked walking. But, if you’re a woman, walking in isolated places does make you feel slightly at risk. That’s why I persuaded a friend to go with me. But she didn’t enjoy it. She was bored. I suppose that wilderness scenery isn’t to everyone’s taste.’

  He had handed over her glass and now he said, ‘Salud,’ and drank some of the deep pink liquid in his own.

  Cressy echoed the toast and was sipping her tonic when he said, ‘Which was your college? Girton... Newnham?’

  That she should be taken for a product of either of those illustrious pinnacles of scholarship made Cressy laugh.

  ‘I wasn’t at Cambridge. I didn’t go to any university. I wasn’t nearly bright enough.’ She chose not to mention that her mother and one of her sisters were Oxford graduates.

  He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I’m sure you were, but perhaps not good at exams. If you weren’t at Cambridge, how come you know The Magic Apple Tree?’

  ‘It caught my eye as a postcard in the shop at the National Gallery. There was something about it which made me want to see the original. So I went to Cambridge for the day. It’s such a beautiful town. The ancient buildings...the gardens along the river... the marvellous bookshops. You must have enjoyed your time there.’

  ‘I enjoyed the work. I detested the weather in winter and I didn’t much care for the social life. The majority of my contemporaries had their sights set on Parliament, the City or top jobs in the media. I can’t relate to those sort of people. They either bore or disgust me.’

  Cressy wondered what he would make of her family, and they of him.

  ‘Do you only like people like yourself...adventurers?’ she asked.

  ‘Not at all. I like a wide range of people, as long as they’re not hell-bent on achieving power for themselves and success for its own sake.’

  Having thought about that for some moments, she said, ‘I don’t think those are great objectives, but is it fair to condemn them when you yourself already have all the trappings of a “top person”? This lovely house...a Bentley and a Range Rover...the means to buy all the books you want.’

  Amusement creased Nicolas’s cheeks and formed fans alongside his eyes.

  ‘Do you disapprove of inherited privilege, Cressy?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t disapprove of anything... except cruelty.’

  To her astonishment he put out his hand and touched her cheek with the back of his forefinger. ‘I’m beginning to like you very much. I hope it’s mutual.’

  She felt something akin to the sensation when he had touched her bare spine—but that had been purely physical, and this was combined with a curious pain in her heart.

  ‘How could I not when you’ve been so extraordinarily kind to me? Do you have any more of your mother’s paintings in here?’

  ‘Yes, several. They’re up at that end.’ He made a gesture towards the bedroom area.

  The two she had already seen had been watercolours. The ones hanging near his bed were larger paintings in oils. One was a study of a fig tree just coming into leaf in the middle of open countryside, with a profusion of wild spring flowers in the foreground and a line of distant mountains in the background.

  ‘That’s glorious,’ she said sincerely. ‘Your mother obviously loves the Majorcan landscape. She must miss the island—does she?’

  ‘I don’t think so...not very much. She believes that home is where the heart is, and her heart is wherever her American husband wants to be.’

  On the other side of the bed, next to another painting of the island’s mountains, was a portrait of Nicolas, painted when his face was still immature. The elements of it were there but not yet fully formed. If his eyes had been dark, he could have been taken for a tousle-haired gypsy boy. They shone out of the boyish brown face as vividly as they did now, but without the rather cynical glint they had acquired in the years since his adolescence.

  ‘I think supper will be ready shortly. Let’s go down, shall we?’ he suggested. ‘But first you’d better put some insect repellent round your ankles and wrists. There should be a stick of it in a basket on your bedside table.’

  ‘I’ve already used it,’ she said. ‘Was it your mother’s idea to supply gue
sts with all those useful bits and pieces, not to mention a hair-dryer?’

  ‘Yes, but I think she borrowed it from the Americans, who are particularly good at providing for every possible need their guests might have. Catalina is an excellent housekeeper, and looks after the place as carefully as if it were her own, but it’s Mamá who decides when the slipcovers need replacing, and that sort of thing. She and Tom and my stepbrothers and sister spend a holiday here most years. They’ll be here in September.’

  ‘How many “steps” do you have?’ asked Cressy as they went down the stairs.

  ‘Three. Two boys and a girl. Have you any brothers and sisters?’

  ‘Two elder sisters.’

  She didn’t elaborate and was glad when he didn’t ask about them. It gave her a welcome sense of freedom to be in a place where, apart from Kate, who had been out of touch for years, no one knew anything about her background. Here she wasn’t Paul and Virginia Vale’s youngest daughter, or the sister of Frances and Anna Vale. She wasn’t anyone’s appendage. Only herself.

  On the terrace a table had been spread with a blue and white cloth on which stood an earthenware bowl piled with lemons, some with their dark green leaves attached to them. The side plates were of glazed brown earthenware, and the cutlery had sapphire-blue transparent plastic handles. The pepper and salt were in large wooden grinders and chunks cut from a crusty loaf lay in a basket lined with a blue and white napkin, matching the cloth and the other napkins.

  It was all a far cry from the formal, professionally catered dinner parties her parents gave twice a month in their fashionable crimson dining room for guests chosen for their importance or their usefulness.

  Cressy liked this much better. Not that she was ever included in the dinner parties at home, although Frances and Anna sometimes were.

  Nicolas drew out a chair for her. The places were set at right angles to each other, and he put her in the chair facing the mountains.