‘Well, I could not. The thought of you being in that woman’s suite tonight was poisoning me. Now you are free.’
‘Am I?’ She looked dubiously around her at the dark night. The lights stopped at where Ramon had stopped the car. Ahead of them was obscurity; they must have reached the woods.
He was looking tolerantly at her, a little smile smarting to edge away the anger.
‘Free,’ he repeated, ‘from persecution.’
‘And gossip? What are those people, those “nice” people, saying back in the hotel?’
He exhaled rather disinterestedly. ‘Do you really care?’
‘Yes, senor, I care.’
‘So you are a sobersides for all your impetuosity. I like that, I like many facets to a gem.’
‘Senor?’
He ignored her question. ‘I will tell you what has happened. The senora has looked again and found her wretched purse at the bottom of that odious black bag she carries around. She has held it up with a coy, how-foolish-of-me laugh ... a laugh which nobody has augmented with their own laughter. Nobody. Do you hear me, senorita?’
‘I hear, and it sounds reassuring, but it isn’t true.’
‘It will be.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps the purse may have slipped to the floor, be beside her cushion, some detail like that, but what I have said will be true.’
‘You hope.’
‘I know.’
‘You can’t know.’
‘But I do. Not the details of the purse, but the sympathy of the travellers. In the short time it took us to leave the room I had not one but many ... indeed I would say from everyone present ... sympathetic glances. You, poor child, were too upset to see.’
‘But glances are nothing.’
‘Handclasps are. A pat on the shoulder.—And a quick note.’
‘A note?’
‘From a Mrs. Macdonald. You recall her?’
‘Yes. Nice. Scot. Co-operative. I liked her.’
‘She liked you. So much so that she found time to scribble a quick note.’
‘Of sympathy?’
‘Something much more useful. An address.’
‘Address?’ echoed Zoe.
‘Of a person in the next town we will reach fairly soon once we set off again ... this is a good quick car ... the location of her sister who is spending a leisurely summer in Europe just staying where she pleases and whom Mrs. Macdonald was going to see tomorrow on her way through but would much prefer to forgo for you.’
‘For me?’
‘Mrs. Macdonald heard my declaration regarding the conventions, senorita, and knew what it meant to three people: you, myself—Mrs. Fenton. There had to be, she realized, something actual for Mrs. Fenton, so Mrs. Macdonald thought quickly, spoke quickly, wrote quickly, gave me this address. By now she will have rung her sister, let everyone—and Mrs. Fenton—know what she has arranged, and by the time we reach St. Augret, Miss Gillespie, that is the name of Mrs. Macdonald’s sister, will be ready to drive with us to Spain.’
‘All cut and dried.’
‘Senorita?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Zoe looked helplessly out at the dark shapes of the woods.
After a moment in which the Spaniard was obviously trying to work out what was cut and what was dry, he gave a small shrug and started the car again.
‘This obliging person, this Miss Gillespie,’ he remarked as he negotiated dark winding bends to St. Augret, ‘being agreeable, we might even forgo San Sebastian and take a direct road down to Madrid.’
‘Madrid is your city, senor?’
‘Much larger, though much less beautiful, senorita, than my own, but it is our honoured capital, and for you it is a required thing.’
‘And Miss Gillespie?’
‘Si,’ he agreed. ‘Also, I have business there ... and my own personal interests are not so far distant. Again, I have an interview with that architect I told you about.’
‘The castle?’
‘Si, he nodded, and putting his foot down on the accelerator urged the large black car to eat up the dark miles.
But, in such a modern vehicle, it was not long before the darkness was giving way to light, not the light of morning, that was hours away, but city light, not as much light as the previous cities of France by night-time, but still strings of golden lamps that soaked up the shadows and illumined a pretty town with cottages with gardens of white jonquils and asphodels, that in the half glow looked like friendly little ghosts.
It did not take long to find the Pension Danoise, a few elmy streets and they were there, a low, wide stone villa with the verge of the lawn marked by flowering bushes, the path to the front door embellished by a toy truck and a doll in a torn dress. So there were children here.
But even before Senor Raphaelina could raise his hand to take the tongue of the knocker, the old door opened, and a smiling, grey-haired woman, so like Mrs. Macdonald that they recognized Miss Gillespie at once, said with unmistakable regret: ‘This is quite dreadful, building you up
like this, taking you out of your way like this, making you think I could come.
‘I can’t, of course.’
They were in the parlour, being waved into deep wide chintz settles, being plied with chocolate and small gateaux.—Somewhere in the background Zoe glimpsed two small people. The owners of the truck and the doll?
‘Jean, my sister, had so much to say she didn’t give me a chance to answer, to explain why I can’t avail myself of your kind offer,’ began Miss Gillespie ruefully.
‘It should be the other way around,’ inserted Senor Raphaelina humbly. ‘We wished to avail ourselves of you.’
‘Yes, she said that, too. That frightful woman! But it’s still out of the question—unhappily. I simply can’t come.’ Senor Raphaelina was reaching discreetly for his pocket book, murmuring quietly that of course it must be considered as a paid position.
‘No,’ said Miss Gillespie, ‘it’s not that at all, and if Jean had given me a chance I would have told her the story. But she rang and talked and talked, then rang off again. That’s Jean.’ An affectionate smile.
‘I can’t come,’ she explained, because the owner of the pension, Madame Gisbert, is ill, and I am the only responsible adult in the house. I suppose I could find someone in the village, but Madame has been so good to me I simply cannot leave her like this. Especially with the two children as well.’
‘Madame’s children?’ asked Zoe.
‘Oh, no, Madame is elderly, which makes my leaving her all the more impossible. She is not gravely ill, mind you, but she does need several days in bed.’
‘And the pequenas? I mean les petites.’
‘Madame accepts children as well as adults. These two ... Henri and Fleurette ... are twins, and they are staying with Madame Gisbert while their parents dose their house prior to the family leaving for the United States. Monsieur Bontonne is an engineer and intends to do exchange work over there.’
‘I see.’ There was a thoughtful note in the senor’s voice. He glanced to the door and flashed the pair just beyond the door one of those smiles that Zoe already knew so well ... warmth, assurance, friendliness, invitation.
They accepted the invitation at once. They ran as kittens run to cream. In a moment they were in the room and offering shy smiles back.
‘A word with you, Miss Gillespie,’ proposed the senor, and he retired to a corner and conferred with the woman in a low voice. The children continued flicking smiles with Zoe, the boy’s wide and infectious, the girl’s more cautious, and at the same time making surreptitious raids on the cakes.
Zoe heard Miss Gillespie say: ‘But that’s certainly an idea.’ Then: ‘Yes, I think it could be arranged.’
The pair of them left the room and Zoe heard the taking off of a phone from its hook.
It was ten minutes before the senor and Miss Gillespie returned, and both were smiling and both were carrying small portmanteaux.
‘Then you can come—’ greeted Zoe.
/> ‘No. The situation still remains. But Senor Raphaelina came up with a wonderful idea, an idea to which the children’s parents—very modern young parents as you will gather, always eager to widen their children’s horizons, upon my assurance regarding the senor—agreed to most eagerly. As they remarked, it is not every day a child has the opportunity to visit Spain.’
‘Visit Spain?’ Three voices said it—the boy’s, the girl’s, and Zoe’s.
Miss Gillespie, watching the small girl closely, sighed with obvious relief. ‘Thank goodness she’s not going to be like that!’
Before Zoe could ask, ‘Like what?’ Fleurette began to dance with joy.
‘Rain, rain, go to Spain,’ she sang rapturously.
‘Only not while we’re there,’ reminded the boy.
Both bubbled, ‘Can we redly go?’
‘You really can,’ the senor assured them. ‘I have informed your mama and papa when you will be safely-returned.’
‘It’s most opportune, really, for all concerned,’ put in Miss Gillespie. ‘There’s no better chaperonage in the world than that provided by small babbling tongues.’
‘I don’t know that,’ puzzled the boy, ‘that chap-er-on-age. Is it something to do with a hat? With a chapeau?’
‘You will learn many new words on your Spanish journey,’ promised Miss Gillespie. ‘Miss Breen will teach you English.’ To Zoe she said, ‘They speak fluently already, don’t they, for little French folk.’
‘It is not English we must learn, it is American,’ said the girl.
‘Are you English?’ the boy asked Zoe.
‘Australian.’
‘Where they have kangaroosters.’
‘Kangaroos.’
‘How can an Australian who speaks English teach American?’
‘A Scottish lady tried,’ Miss Gillespie reminded him. And, with a beam, ‘In a Danish house. Pension Danoise.’ They laughed back, but still looked questioningly at Zoe. ‘I’ll tell you that answer tomorrow,’ promised Zoe. She glanced at the senor. ‘If we’re to leave early so as to avoid the coach, hadn’t the children better go to—’
The senor’s ‘No’ brought back wide smiles to two little faces that had clouded over at what they knew Zoe had been about to say. That: ‘Hadn’t the children better go to bed?’
‘Miss Gillespie has told me that their siesta today was a particularly long one, that they are in fact as bright as two small buttons. Too bright, indeed, she has sighed. In which case, senorita, I see no reason why we should not push on now, drive through the night. With the blankets and cushions the pension will provide the little ones will be as snug as bears should the sandman call.’ Another flashing smile at the enchanted children.
‘Also, although I intend to take a different route, it will be a good distance before I can do so. Although we are well ahead of our “friend”’ ... the long lip curled ... ‘I have no objection ... have you? ... to make it more miles still.’
‘No, senor, I have not.’
‘Then let us leave now while the cakes are still fortifying them ... oh yes, pequenos, I saw the abducting hands. Say good-bye to Miss Gillespie.’ As they did so he said casually to Zoe: ‘It is a good thing that Spain sees fit to require no visas from either you or the small ones, otherwise we might be delayed.’ He twinkled down at Zoe, adding: ‘A third child, is it not so? You never thought of ascertaining that.’
Zoe turned her guilty glance away. As though, she thought, remembering hers and Di’s delight at their ease of Spanish travel, I’m not well aware of that Spanish relaxation of rules to encourage tourism.
Bundled comfortably and warmly in the big back seat of the big black car, two little tongues wagged unceasingly for the first hour. It must indeed have been a long siesta today, decided Zoe.
Taking advantage of the Australian ... they were more wary and respectful of the Spaniard ... they introduced themselves solemnly as twins. The boy said gravely that he was Fleurette Bontonne, the girl said gravely she was Henri Bontonne.
Zoe said, ‘How do you do, Fleurette,’ to the boy, and to the girl, ‘Nice to meet you, Henri,’ and pretended not to hear their delighted giggles.
‘I’m Zoe,’ she introduced in her turn.
‘Zoo!’ they chorused.
‘Would you prefer that? Would you sooner I was a bear or a tiger or a lion?’
Ramon inserted, ‘You can be what you like, Senorita Zoe, until the border, but south of the border a woman is entirely that.’ He followed a bend. ‘She is all woman.’ Henri, masquerading as Fleurette, sang, ‘South of the border down Mexico way.’
Fleurette, being Henri, said, ‘They pronounce it Mek-i-ko. And it’s an American, not a Mexican song. How can an Australian who speaks English teach American?’ While they argued, their voices growing progressively slower and drowsier, Zoe said, ‘You mean I may not wear slacks, that sort of thing?’
‘We are much more emancipated now, senorita, though in many cities it still pertains, but I really meant that there woman is valued in the way man likes to think of woman ... sweet, gentle, tendering, tender. I believe most of my countrymen still think of woman as something precious in Spanish lace.’
‘Spanish lace?’ She echoed him softly, almost tasting the words. Spanish lace.
‘The hair beautifully dressed,’ he said, ‘the mantilla, the jewelled comb.’ Zoe flinched a little at that comb, Though he had not turned his head he must have sensed the little movement and put his own construction to it ... it would have to be his own, he did not know she had forfeited his comb.
‘You cannot see yourself with your pale hair in a black mantilla, is that it? But you are wrong, senorita. Look out at the night. Black with silver has no peer.’
‘Short hair for that silver? Blunt peeled sticks?’
‘Five, six, pick up sticks,’ the boy, half awake, mumbled drunkenly.
‘My name is Henri.’ Fleurette fell asleep again at once. Spanish lace. Zoe looked out as he had told her. Saw filmy trees casting black lace shadows on a moon-silvered road. Spanish lace. Her lids were growing heavy.
The last thing she heard was an amused:
‘The sandman calls. There are three children asleep.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Back in Australia they would have called that first paler than dark blue glow piccaninny daylight, thought Zoe drowsily, opening her eyes. But it was France, not Australia, and she didn’t know the name they would use. She must ask the twins. That is, if there were twins. If she hadn’t dreamed them up, dreamed what had happened last night. She half-turned, finding it a difficult manoeuvre in her still little more than semi-sleep, and the man beside her said, reading her thoughts: ‘No, it was real. They are there. But they still drift.’
She regarded him covertly in the near dawn. If weariness had caught up with him, he certainly did not show it. He would be, she estimated, a very strong man. She let her eyes trace the proud profile, the slightly jutting jaw, the firm throat, the slight suggestion of arrogance at the cheekbones ... the very straight, very black, almost thrustingly thick hair.
‘Si, Senorita Zoe?’ There was a trace of laughter in the low voice.
‘Yes, Senor Raphaelina?’
‘No, I asked you,’ he reminded her.
‘What did you ask?’
‘Your conclusion. You have been regarding me for quite some time. Is it Yes, senorita, or is it No?’
‘To what, senor?’
‘I have to supply the question as well as provide the subject? But there, it is a ponderous debate for so early in the day. Pre-coffee talk should go no deeper than the ripple on a pond. You are ready for coffee?’
‘Yes, senor?
‘I am, too, but we will wait until the other small ones awaken. Now you are annoyed with me, your eyes remind me that you are all of nineteen.’
‘And two years more.’
‘I am corrected.’ He smilingly inclined his head. ‘Look, senorita, look to the west, and in case your sleepy blue eyes can’t f
ind that direction it is the opposite to where the sun is now putting out a tentative finger or two to see if this old world is worthy of receiving its full appearance.’ She looked and gasped. Somewhere through the night he must have veered to the coast, and now the sea lay at their feet ... would it be the Bay of Biscay? ... grey, but a lighthearted, grey, sparkling, mercurial, diademed, looking as though it might change to tinsel, promising bright colours as the day crept on.
‘You said we wouldn’t come this way,’ said Zoe.
‘We have not come this way,’ he teased, ‘if you mean the coach route. Oh, yes, the coach touches, then travels down the coast, but we have touched it at a different spot. The coach is scheduled to reach the sea near Biarritz; we are having a much larger helping of the ocean than that.’
‘We are still in France?’
‘Of course, foolish one.’
‘I’m not very good at distances,’ she apologized.
‘I did not mean the foolishness because of that.’
‘What did you mean, then, senor?’
‘I said it because I did not think you could believe I would let you enter my Spain for the first time without telling you, Senorita Zoe.’
‘Oh,’ Zoe said.
‘We are quite a distance from the border, but I do not think it will be many hours before we reach Irun.’
Spanish Lace Page 5