The Youngest Sister

by Anne Weale

  She watched him closely to see how he reacted. But the deep blue eyes didn’t flicker. They met hers calmly and steadily.

  ‘Don’t we all?’ he said dryly. ‘But the world well lost for love is a romantic theory, impossible to put into practice. There is no escape from the world...no long-term escape.’

  ‘You’ve escaped from it. That’s why people enjoy your books...because they give them a vicarious sense of freedom.’

  ‘I know. But it’s an illusion. Like everything else, my kind of freedom has its price. Most of the armchair travellers who enjoy reading my stuff wouldn’t like the reality. I leave out or gloss over the downside of a wilderness traveller’s life—the interminable waits to have papers checked, the rough rides on mountain roads with the wreckage of other buses littering the landscape below. I don’t mind that. There are other times which make up for the boring and bad bits. But it isn’t the kind of travelling a lot of people would enjoy.’

  I would, she thought. If I were with you, I’d enjoy going to hell and back.

  Nicolas drained his coffee-cup and rose to his feet. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go up and do some more work. May I leave you to turn out the lights? They can all be turned off from the switches at the bottom of the stairs.’

  ‘Of course... and thank you for taking me to the party, and for dinner.’

  ‘My pleasure. Goodnight, Cressida.’ He crossed the room, very tall and straight-backed, and still, even with his hair cut and his long legs hidden by trousers, as powerfully attractive as he had been at the check-in.

  His departure left her deflated. Had he gone because he was bored with her? She would have liked to believe he had gone upstairs early, by Spanish standards, to avoid the temptation to make another pass. But she couldn’t convince herself that it was the reason. A third possibility was that he had remembered whatever it was that her sister had been alluding to. He might feel himself to be in an awkward situation now that his house guest had turned out to be the sister of someone with whom he had parted on bad terms.

  At breakfast Catalina gave Cressy a note:

  Cressy, I’ve been up most of the night, writing. Shall now catch a few hours’ sleep and may not wake till mid-morning. See you at lunch. N.

  At the hospital, she made enquiries about using the mobile telephone, if they had one. They did, but it was in use. They promised to have it brought to Kate’s room as soon as it was available.

  Kate was in a brighter mood. ‘I’m getting used to this bed and to the hospital noises. I had my first decent night’s sleep since the accident,’ she said, in response to being asked how she was. ‘Did you bring the books I asked for?’

  Cressy unpacked her day-pack and took out the books and some bits and pieces she had stopped off to buy. A look round Kate’s bathroom had revealed a dearth of the toiletries considered essential by most women. Even her toothbrush was long overdue for replacement.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, I opened the drawers in your bedroom to find your nightdresses. But all I could find were two pairs of winter pyjamas.’

  ‘Never wear nightdresses. When the weather’s hot, I sleep in my skin,’ said Kate. ‘This gown they’ve given me will do. What’s this you’ve brought? Not scent?’

  ‘It’s the toilet water Virginia takes with her on journeys. If your hands feel sticky it’s refreshing.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have wasted your money, but it was a kind thought,’ said Kate. ‘How is Virginia? Still upwardly mobile?’

  ‘Still deeply involved in politics,’ said Cressy, ignoring the sarcasm.

  ‘She will never achieve her ambition to be Prime Minister. There may be another woman PM in your lifetime, but I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Kate. ‘It certainly won’t be your mother. What’s the latest bee in her bonnet?’

  Her hostile tone was surprising. Cressy had always had the impression that Kate had been her mother’s role model and had encouraged and approved of her political career.

  Before she could answer, there was a tap on the door and one of the staff wheeled in the telephone trolley. When Kate would have sent it away, Cressy explained that it was she who needed to make a call.

  Having already looked up the codes she would need in the telephone directory at Ca’n Llorenc, she dialled the number of Frances’s office. Her sister wrote a City gossip column for the business section of one of the Sunday newspapers, and also wrote profiles of leading businessmen.

  The call was answered by Frances’s secretary. ‘I’m sorry, Frances is in a meeting. May I take a message?’

  ‘No, thanks. It’s nothing important,’ said Cressy. Which was a lie. It was desperately important. It had been on her mind half the night.

  ‘Why are you ringing your sister?’ Kate asked.

  ‘She rang me yesterday. There was something I wanted to check. Which reminds me—what about your mail, Kate? If it’s not delivered to the cottage where does it go?’

  ‘I have a box at the correos. You’ll find the key in the top right hand drawer of my desk. But I don’t receive many letters. My books are all out of print. I’ve lost touch with most of the people I used to know.’

  She said it matter-of-factly, without any hint of selfpity, but to Cressy it seemed dreadfully sad to be so alone at her age.

  ‘Perhaps, when you’re fully recovered, you should think about coming back to England, rejoining the family circle,’ she suggested. ‘I’m sure we could find you a nice little place in Sussex not far from ours. I know the weather’s not wonderful, but there are compensations.’

  ‘To spend my last years in the cosy bosom of my devoted family,’ Kate declaimed in a saccharine voice. Her laugh sounded more like a bark. ‘You are a romantic, Cressida. You see the world through a rosy haze of illusion. Your family is anything but cosy. They are driven by ambition, the lot of them. And I was one of the people who encouraged those self-centred attitudes. But I know better now...’

  When Cressy returned to Ca’n Llorenc, she was longing for a swim to restore her.

  ‘You look a bit down,’ said Nicolas, rising from one of the loungers where he had been stretched in the sun with a long drink within reach.

  ‘It’s been quite a gruelling morning.’

  ‘Get changed and have a swim. I’ll fix you a pickme-up.’

  Half a dozen lengths of the pool made her feel a new being.

  ‘Perhaps it’s partly the heat. I don’t usually feel flaked out before lunch,’ she said as she mounted the steps at the pool’s shallow end, her arms raised to squeeze the water from her hair.

  Nicolas was wearing dark glasses and she didn’t actually see him looking at her body. But she sensed his appraisal, and quickly picked up the pool towel she had left on a chair and swathed it round her.

  ‘It’s a common reaction for visitors to feel tired around this time of day. Even people on holiday expertence it. It’s the heat, a different environment, perhaps a touch of dehydration. I prescribe a siesta.’

  Somehow the way he said it made her think not of sleeping but of making love. The thought had occurred before and now it came back more vividly, making her shiver.

  ‘You’re not feeling feverish, are you?’ In a single lithe movement Nicolas rose from the lounger and put his hand on her forehead.

  Intensely aware of his body—clad in the briefest of swimwear—looming over hers, she said quickly, ‘I’m fine now...better already.’

  ‘Good, but knock back a glass of water before you get to the sangria. It’s not the knock-out stuff they serve at some ex-pat parties. This is fruit and wine sweetened with honey.’

  Cressy sat down on the lounger alongside his, and loosened the towel.

  ‘What time did you wake up?’ she asked.

  ‘Not till noon. When I’m writing I keep odd hours. It doesn’t bother Catalina. She’s accustomed to it. Why was your morning gruelling?’

  ‘I unwittingly triggered a furious tirade from Kate. Not at me—at the women’s movement. For years it was like a relig
ion to her. Now she’s lost faith, and has no one with whom to discuss her disillusionment. So this morning it all poured out and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.’

  ‘How did you handle it?’

  ‘Very badly,’ Cressy said ruefully. ‘In trying to calm her, I inflamed her. All my attempts to be positive made her increasingly negative. She worries me. When people lose something central to their existence, they sometimes do desperate things.’

  ‘You think she might take her life?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not where she is. But if there is nothing left for her to hang on to—’ Cressy stopped short. ‘I shouldn’t be unloading all this on you. You’re preoccupied with your book. You can do without other people’s troubles.’

  ‘I have no problem taking yours on board, Cressy.’

  She wasn’t sure what to make of this.

  Nicolas saw her confusion and was himself surprised to find that he’d meant what he said. Experience had taught him to avoid being involved in other people’s predicaments, but Cressy was different. She had the same effect on him that the spaniel had had on her—he wanted to wipe that anxious look off her face.

  As if their minds were linked and his thought had got through to her, she suddenly sat up straight, exclaiming, ‘What about Star? Is she still shut in the outhouse? Oh, dear, I forgot all about her.’

  ‘She’s fine. Catalina let her out. When last seen, she was lying in the shade of the stone bench at the far end of the terrace. If I whistle, she’ll probably come.’ He did so.

  Cressy relaxed, her eyes fixed on the archway where the spaniel would appear if she responded to the signal. Nicolas looked at her long, shapely legs and wished he could persuade her to siesta in his room.

  But even if she were willing, which she had made clear she wasn’t—or not yet—the situation was complicated by last night’s revelation that she was a member of the Vale ménage.

  He had already tangled with one of them and, although it had been a long time ago, she might still bear a grudge. On his side, it had been a struggle to remember her name. He had dismissed her from his mind and wouldn’t have remembered her at all except that her mother was a determined self-publicist who never lost an opportunity to air her views on television or in the press.

  For the time being he saw no reason to mention the matter to Cressy. It was unlikely she knew about it. A much younger sister wouldn’t have been privy to her sisters’ free and easy love lives.

  It was curious that, growing up in their orbit, she had turned out a puritan. Or claimed to be. But was she really? Far more than her sisters—whose appeal owed a lot to clever exploitation of average assets—this girl was gorgeous, but seemed to have got it into her head that she was too tall and well-built to be attractive. Apparently devoid of vanity, she had none of the confidence of a physically alluring woman who knew her power over men.

  The day before yesterday, when he had introduced Elena, he had seen her wistful admiration of someone who—did she but know it—wasn’t a patch on her.

  Cressy reminded him of the girl in a pantomime his English grandmother had taken him to see as a small boy. Reading between the lines of what she had told him, and what he already knew of the Vales, there was a marked similarity between Cressy’s situation and Cinderella’s. Her sisters were far from ugly, and she had a selfish mother rather than a cruel stepmother, but there was still a strong parallel between her life and that of the downtrodden Cinders.

  But, although Cressy’s Prince Charming might materialise eventually, he didn’t see himself in that role. He had recognised a long time ago that his way of life was incompatible with any serious relationship with a woman. If she were amenable, they could have a lot of fun together. But there could never be any serious commitment.

  The stray appeared in the archway, and Cressy jumped up and ran to meet her. Nicolas watched her long-legged Junoesque figure hurrying away from him. When she crouched down to pet the animal, the posture accentuated the lovely curve of waist, hip and thigh. He felt a surge of desire to teach her all the things she didn’t know about, and would unquestionably enjoy once he had coaxed her out of her inhibitions.

  As the girl and the dog came to join him he realised his body’s response to the thought of making love to her would, if she saw it, embarrass her.

  He rose from the lounger and did a shallow header into the pool.

  Cressy had known Nicolas was watching her and, in the moment between his standing up and disappearing, had seen the reason for his sudden plunge into the pool.

  The confirmation that he wanted her made her heart lurch in her chest. As she went to the changing room she was momentarily walking on air, her heart going like a rock group’s drummer and all her most primitive instincts clamouring for release and fulfilment.

  But while she was dressing she realised that it wasn’t really her he wanted. It was a woman—any woman. Like any other male animal who had been alone for a long time, he was on the prowl for a mate. But not with a view to becoming a lifetime pair, like the singing gibbons in the wild parts of South East Asia, whose idyllic existence was threatened by deforestation. She had watched them on TV the previous week, the young males practising the songs that would attract a female with whom they would set up a new family unit in an area of jungle exclusive to them and their young.

  Their happy life in the treetops had brought a lump to her throat. Maggie, watching the programme with her, had afterwards made the comment that it was a pity human beings had forgotten how to live like that.

  Cressy had said, ‘Some of them still do, Maggie.’

  The housekeeper had given one of her characteristic snorts of disapproval. ‘Precious few of them nowadays. I read in the paper this week that one in every three marriages will end in divorce.’

  ‘The papers always look on the black side. That means that two out of three marriages don’t break up,’ Cressy had argued.

  Remembering that conversation, she gave a deep sigh. She hadn’t known then that she was going to lose her heart to a man who, by all appearances, had no intention of giving marriage a try.

  ‘What’s your plan for this afternoon?’ Nicolas asked during lunch.

  ‘I thought I’d go back to the cottage to do some more sorting out. Kate has given me carte blanche to go through her things and make the whole place more organised. This evening I may go and see her again. Nothing will induce her to watch television and she finds reading tiring—I think she needs stronger glasses or may have a cataract—so the evenings are boring for her.’

  ‘Is it too soon for me to come with you?’ he asked. ‘Would a strange man upset her?’

  ‘I don’t see why it should. Her views on the male sex have mellowed. In fact I think it’s her pen friendships with two professors, one in Germany and one in America, which have kept her going. But don’t you want to get on with your book?’

  ‘I’ll be working on it this afternoon. All work and no play...’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought a hospital visit to an eccentric old lady constituted play,’ said Cressy.

  Nicolas leaned back in his chair, his long fingers toying with a glass of iced spring water. ‘But afterwards ’I’ll be taking a beautiful young woman out to dinner,’ he said, his eyes on her mouth.

  ‘If we’re going to eat out again, it’s my turn to be host,’ said Cressy, hoping she sounded casual, as if taking men out was something she did all the time.

  ‘As I told you the day you arrived, this is macho territory,’ said Nicolas. ‘In Mallorca men pick up the bills and women are happy to let them. They feel that being a charming companion is sufficient contribution, and I agree.’

  But what was his definition of charming companionship? she wondered. Did he expect a good deal more than conversation at table?

  She had the feeling that, having backed off after her declaration on the first night, he had changed his mind and was now returning to the attack—or, if that was too blunt a term to describe his intention, at least to pr
actised seduction.

  It would be easier to deal with him, she thought, if she didn’t like him as well as being attracted to him. It was impossible to relate her sister’s description of ‘prize rat’ to the man sitting beside her who, so far, had demonstrated only those qualities which women liked and admired. She wondered what Kate would make of him.

  Catalina appeared. ‘Teléfono por la señorita.’

  Cressy picked up the receiver of the telephone on the table by the chair where she had been sitting when Nicolas had said goodnight the previous evening.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘I have a message to call you back,’ said her sister.

  ‘Oh, Frances...hello. I thought it was the hospital calling—that I might be needed there.’

  ‘Is something wrong with the old girl? Apart from the bones she’s broken?’

  ‘No, no...nothing specific. When I saw her this morning she was fine.’

  Although the doctor hadn’t mentioned it, since that morning’s outburst Cressy had been wondering if Kate might have high blood pressure which, if she became too worked up, might lead to a stroke. But she wasn’t about to share that concern with her sister, who wouldn’t be interested anyway.

  ‘Why did you call me?’ asked Frances.

  ‘When you rang yesterday...’ Cressy paused, wondering if Nicolas could hear her end of this conversation from the terrace. Dropping her voice, she went on, ‘You said things which puzzled and worried me. Why were you so mysterious? Why can’t you tell me what happened?’

  Frances didn’t need reminding of yesterday’s conversation. She had the kind of retentive, accurate memory which enabled her to repeat conversations verbatim months after they had taken place.

  ‘Because it’s confidential,’ she said. ‘When Anna gets back from the States you can ask her, and maybe she’ll tell you. If I were you, I wouldn’t ask her. It was a bad time in her life and it’s left scars. She’s never fully recovered. Just take my word for it, Cressy, Nicolas Talbot is bad news. He behaved contemptibly.’