They were out of San Sebastian and within a few minutes of the Court of the Myrtles when Ramon said drily, ‘You appeared to be in a great hurry to get back to the hotel.’
‘Did I?’
‘Was it the water calling you ... or was it that young man crossing the street whom you did not wish to meet?’
‘What young man?’
‘Oh, come, senorita, I am not blind.’
‘Then I must be, for I saw no young man.’
A long pause and ostensibly attention only on the road, then: ‘You disappoint me. The main thing I have noticed in you is your honesty.’
‘You mean—Mrs. Fenton’s purse?’
‘You know I did not mean that.’ He was grave now and when Senor Raphaelina was in that mood, he was an entirely different man. Fortunately the children’s attention was on their buckets and spades, otherwise their eyes would have been bewildered pennies at the change in their idol.
‘I meant your evasion ... quite unsuccessful, incidentally. I noticed it. The young man noticed it ... and noticed you.’
‘He did not!’ heatedly.
‘And yet’ ... the senor drew up the car in front of the inn ... ‘there was no young man?’
He lifted out the children, but made no attempt to help Zoe.
Biting her lip, but still wondering what else she could have done but avoid David, Zoe followed the three to the Court of the Myrtles and into their room to change for the beach.
CHAPTER FIVE
Sea is uncomplicating. Within ten minutes on that half moon of white beach, a turquoise tide kissing the sand edges where the ripples ran in, the senor could hold out no longer. He turned with a resigned shrug of his big shoulders and smiled at Zoe.
‘So.’ he said, ‘I am defeated.’
‘If that makes me a victor I don’t feel like one.’
‘Then we will leave it now,’ he capitulated.
‘Now?’ she picked up, puzzled.
‘Eventually it has to be examined, of course,’ he said in some surprise.
‘Why must it be examined? Why is it “of course”?’
He looked at her with the same surprise in his face as he had had in his voice. But the uncomprehension in her face halted his tongue.
‘In time.’ Again he smiled.
Zoe decided, with him, to leave it at that.
It was a United Nations on the little beach, a junior one. The senor remarked that every nationality was represented in the gathering of small time except the ones one would rather have expected—the Spanish younger set.
‘But this is an expensive part of Spain,’ he added a little sadly, ‘our own sons and daughters being mainly far from affluent must find a cheaper place, to play.’
‘No doubt,’ encouraged Zoe, ‘they are playing more profitably. All that the United Nationals appear to be doing is emptying out the Bay of Biscay.’
‘The Golfe de Gascoyne.’
‘Is it? And why do children empty out the sea?’
‘You are nearer to them than I am, senorita. Ask the question yourself.’
‘I think they like to rearrange,’ proffered Zoe lazily.
‘That small boy ... Dutch, I think ... is carrying sand to the water as fast as that small girl ... German, would you say? ... is fetching water back.’
‘And the Australian girl, what is she doing?’
‘Lounging indolently and trying to keep an eye on the children, but the eye persists in closing up.’
‘Sleep then, pequena, I will watch.’
She did not sleep, only drifted. It was gloriously relaxing on the pretty beach, a beach far less perfect than the long strings of beaches up and down and across the Australian coast, much coarser and more meagre of sand, without the rich colour, without the bold swirl of breaker, but gentler, more dream-provoking and immeasurably enchanting.
Henri and Fleurette emptied and carried with the rest, as children always do, with no language barrier whatever.
When they settled down to serious castle building that looked like taking them the rest of the afternoon, the senor suggested to Zoe that they embrace the opportunity to swim themselves.
‘See, a competition has begun. All the mammas are watching the children erect palacios and ornament them with shells and seaweed. Our children should be quite safe among the rest of the competitors while we snatch some sea for ourselves.’
Zoe readily agreed, jumping up from the sand in her blue sheath that had proved a perfect fit, pulling on the white rubber cap over the ‘peeled sticks’.
As she ran to the end of the beach where there was a deeper channel through which one could swim out to the tiny island, Ramon apologized for not asking her first if she felt capable of striking out that far.
‘It is the same as the bullfights,’ he regretted, ‘one accepts everybody belonging to one country as a similar person. It is quite possible that, although Australian, you cannot swim.’
‘I can,’ she admitted, eyeing the island which, on closer scrutiny, was much further than her estimated hundred yards, ‘but frankly I would want someone near.’
‘But I will be near,’ he assured her, and dived in.
It was a little colder than she had expected, but after a few strokes she became used to it, and began to enjoy the swim across. It was her first swim since her daily dips on the ship ... and that brought up the subject of David. The senor had been exceptionally good, exceptionally generous with her, she thought. She decided then and there she would explain David to him. She felt she owed it to Senor Raphaelina.
But to explain why she had avoided him was not going to be so easy. She could not hear herself saying: ‘I didn’t acknowledge David because he knew I had been in Spain before and would certainly have said so.’
There was no real reason, apart from feeling silly over her omission, for her to keep up the foolish lie, but she still shrank from telling the senor, because, she supposed, there could be no half-telling, and she would have to relate the entire Diana-Miguel story, and just now she was not ready for that. Or—turning on her back and floating—was it that she felt he was not ready to hear it?
When he is ready, she thought, I’ll ask his advice. He is Spanish ... very Spanish ... he can tell me if it would be right for Di and Miguel to flaunt tradition, to act from their hearts, not their minds.
‘You are a mermaid,’ Ramon praised her. ‘There are only some twenty yards to go. Can Up Top beat Down Under?’
Down Under won, but Zoe had a strong feeling that Up Top had not tried very much, for where she was panting he was looking as though he had just sat down after a leisurely dog paddle. She said so, and he frowned. ‘Dog paddle? Where is this dog?’
‘In some ways you have all the English; in some ways you have none.’
‘You must teach me.’
‘How can an Australian teach English to a Spaniard who—’ She began to echo the twins.
‘Easily. This is the United Nations.’
‘This little island?’
‘Yes.’ he teased. ‘There are no language barriers here. In fact there are no barriers, full stop.’
‘There you go again!’ she laughed. ‘Sometimes you have phrases, other times, like cut and dried and—’
‘Dogs who paddle?’
‘Dogs who paddle? You have none.’
‘Does it matter?’ He was leaning back on the grass, for the tiny island was swarded, treed and even dotted with summer flowers.
‘No,’ she said rather in surprise, ‘nothing matters. Not here, does it? It’s withdrawn, isn’t it? It—it’s locked away.’
He was looking at her with bright, dark eyes, warm, dark eyes, and all at once Zoe was admitting in a rush: ‘Yes, I knew him, only—well—well—’
It made no sense, she thought, but he found sense in it instantly.
‘The young man?’
‘Yes. He was on our ship from Sydney.’
‘You did not want to meet him once more because previously on the ship he had
annoyed you?’
No answer now ... the rush of words had stemmed. She felt sorry she had started.
‘Don’t be afraid to answer me, child. I have been on such voyages, I know what youth is.’
She must reply this time, in all fairness to David who had been very nice she must put the senor right.
‘Oh, no,’ she said earnestly, ‘he wasn’t like that at all, not David Glenner.’
‘Is that the young man’s name?’
‘Yes. David was always a good companion.’
‘Then—?’
Now was the time to clear the atmosphere, but Zoe still felt she couldn’t. It was all too trivial, too childish. Also it might lead to her real reason for being here, and though she needed this Spaniard’s advice, for some inexplicable reason she found she shrank from asking it. No, she told herself, not just yet.
‘Then?’ Ramon asked again.
‘I don’t know,’ she lied. Oh, heavens, how true it was about tangled webs! ‘All at once those days were behind me, it—it was now, not then. Oh, I’m making no sense. You can’t possibly understand.’
‘But I do. I do.’ He was turning to her and the dark eyes were warm and shining again. ‘What would you say, senorita, if I told you I felt the same? Felt that one week ago was then, but that now is now, that—that—’
There was applause from the beach. Someone was holding up a successful castle contender. Zoe wanted to hear what he had to say, but at the same time she didn’t. She could not have explained it even to herself, the longing to hear but the need not to. The curious knowledge that there was something shining if she waited for it but that just now there was an emptiness beneath the surface, that it was neither the time nor the place...
There was only one thing to do, and she did it. She dived into the sea and started back.
At once he dived in beside her, swam stroke by stroke with her, but not reassuringly now, not affording her confidence, but demandingly, compellingly, letting her go a yard ahead, then defeating her with ease. Mastering her.
‘Submit,’ he was calling above the impact of their bodies through the waves, ‘submit!’ She did not know whether he was laughing at her as he swam easily by her side or whether he was extracting ... deducing—
‘I submit that you’re the better swimmer.’ She was out of breath, thank goodness they were only yards from the beach or she would never make it.
‘Submit for all you are a cool Britisher, transplanted admittedly to a warmer southern tempo, but still the English girl at heart, that you still want to hear what a Spaniard has to say.’
‘You have more breath than I have,’ she evaded. ‘I couldn’t find that many words.’
They were wading depth now, and Zoe stood up a little unsteadily. He stood up, too, but he lent no hand to help her.
‘You are right, of course.’ His voice was quiet now, con-, trolled again. ‘It is not the place on the beach with a hundred children. But tonight is another time, pequena, it is shadow and moonlight, it is—Spanish lace. And then—’ His words, if he said any, were drowned in the rush of Henri, Fleurette rather sulkily behind him, Henri the winner in the castle competition, but, typical of the boy, sharing his prize, a very large ice-cream, with his sister.
‘Helad,’ Henri said proudly, ‘that is ice-cream in Spain.’
‘Ole, my little Henri, you are very clever! And Senorita Zoe, she was clever, too. She swam to the island.’
‘We did not see her. Zoe, do it again.’
‘Not now. I’m tired.’
‘Then after a rest,’ begged Fleurette. ‘After dinner.’
‘One must wait an hour after dinner. If one swims one invites a cramp,’ Zoe said dutifully, and tried not to notice Fleurette’s pout. The girl was not as easy to manage as Henri.
‘Also after dinner tonight you two will be in your cots,’ said Senor Raphaelina firmly.
‘While you are swimming!’
‘No, there will be other things.’ The voice was still firm. ‘Tonight.’
Together they bedded the children after a simple meal ... Zoe was relieved to find that Spain, anyway, was not flamboyant in the care of the young ... then, as the pair, exhausted by the day’s activities, by last night’s unusual mode of sleep, slipped off almost at once, the senor turned to Zoe and asked had she any particular place in mind for dinner that night.
‘I, senor? But don’t we dine here?’
‘Not necessarily. It is excellent, but—well, how shall I say it?’
‘Wholesome,’ she suggested, and he nodded back.
‘For ordinary nights, yes, but not tonight.’
Tonight? What did he mean? Her first evening, or so he believed, in Spain? Or—or—
‘I have taken the liberty,’ he told her next, ‘to book a table in San Sebastian. No, you need not look afraid. Where we will be dining our friends will not. They will be in the grand restaurant of some big luxury hotel, that is if they have reached San Sebastian, for the original itinerary delayed them in France for yet another day, but this is a little eating place I happen to know where the food is good and very Spanish.’
‘Naturally, being in Spain.’
‘But at the Londres, or the Maria Cristina, the Spanish trend will be slanted to please the tourists. They will think they are being adventurous, but they will only be eating their own foods with a different presentation.’
‘And we will be eating?’
‘You will see,’ he promised, then bowed. ‘In one hour, Senorita Zoe.’
She riffled through her dresses, suddenly most anxious to please him with her choice. The near cream she finally decided on could have been a continuation of her hair. She was a little dubious over the length which had seemed right in London but seemed quite short here in Spain, then she had the bright idea of discarding the narrow matching belt and letting the feather-fine wool hang loose instead. It was an immediate success, the wool draped gracefully in gentle folds longer than it would have caught up in a girdle, and the wider volume of the dress fell in becoming billows. She used the narrow tie for her hair instead, took out cream shoes and was ready just as he knocked on the door.
That he was delighted was very obvious. How satisfying these Spaniards from a woman’s point of view with their warm, extravagant praise.
‘But I am honoured,’ the senor said, praising her with his eyes, with his smile, with his deep bow. ‘Come, senorita,’ he finished.
‘Not pequena?’ she bantered.
‘Tonight you are a woman, and, as Spaniards like a woman, all woman.’
At the car he helped her in carefully, adjusted her dress, closed the window to protect her hair.
‘But it is straight and short,’ she reminded him ruefully. ‘A quick comb through and disarray is restored.’
‘There shall be no disarray. I shall buy you a mantilla.’
‘But, senor, that needs piled hair, a comb ... Oh!’ She clapped her hand over her mouth, but it only focussed his attention.
‘What is it, Senorita Zoe?’ he asked.
‘I’ve felt wretched over the comb.’ This was one confession she could make in all safety.
‘Si?’
‘I—I gave it away.’
He was not at all put out. He simply shrugged his big shoulders and said in the idiom he sometimes successfully remembered: ‘So what?’
‘So aren’t you angry? When it was a gift?’
‘It was not my own choice, you may remember, the boutique was closing and the saleslady was tired. Nevertheless I am intrigued. To whom and for why, apart from the reason of it also not being your own choice, did you give it?’
‘Felicity—the young girl on the coach.’
‘Younger only. Yes, I remember. But why, senorita?’
‘She admired it.’
‘Sufficient reason for a warm and generous heart,’ he confirmed.
‘Oh, senor, don’t be so kind to me. I was simply weak.’
‘Weak?’
‘It was hairpi
ns Mrs. Fenton had instructed me to get, small rubber-tipped pins.’
‘You did not mention hairpins, you mentioned only the hair, and you did not mention that person.’
‘No. I’m sorry.’
‘It is nothing,’ he smiled, ‘and if there is any sorrow it is for a forlorn young girl who could not face an ogress without what the ogress had ordered. So she did a trade with this Felicity. I am right?’
‘Yes, and I’m—’
‘Ashamed,’ he finished for her, ‘and so you should be for letting such a thing worry you. But now the confession has been made. Is there another confession, Senorita Zoe?’ He darted her a quick but searching look, almost a persuasive look, and for a moment words hung on her lips, rushing words telling him of the ridiculous lie she was living, pretending this was her first Spanish experience, and after that leading up to what she was really living the lie for: Diana.
But somehow she was afraid to admit to her deceit. For all his charm, he was intrinsically a firm, even stern man. Also his temper was not inexhaustible; she had seen it flash angrily in his encounters with Mrs. Fenton.
‘No,’ she heard herself say weakly, ‘no more.’ He seemed disappointed somehow. What kind of confession had he expected?
‘And you?’ she dared. ‘Have you something to declare?’
‘Indeed.’ That was all he said. No explanation. No notification of when or where. Simply, ‘Indeed.’
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