‘Which country,’ she said for something to say, ‘did you like best?’
‘This one. I’ve met you.’
‘How much have you seen of it?’
‘You at San Sebastian. You at—what’s this beach?’
‘Just a little beach and just a little island.’
‘Then that’s how much I’ve seen. How much have you?’
‘Di and I crossed from Lisbon to Badajoz and then intended to go to Seville and Granada, Cordoba, all around, but there was this little place—’
‘This Lamona?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it was your downfall?’
‘Di’s,’ she corrected.
‘Then what are you worrying about?’
‘I told you, David. Diana and I are long-time friends and Di sent this SOS.’
‘Well, I can’t see you hurrying to her side.’
‘You know what Di is.’ Zoe smiled faintly.
‘Blow hot, blow cold. Do you think she’s doing that to her Spanish gent?’
‘Miguel? No. I really thinks she loves him, that he loves her, and that’s why I really must get down to them, see that they’re not jeopardizing their future by paying too much attention to this Celestina—’
‘The villainess in the piece?’
‘Well—’ Zoe laughed, ‘I suppose it does sound an unlikely story.’
‘Very unlikely. But I’m glad at least it’s brought you back to Spain and afforded me the pleasure of a reacquaintance.’
‘David, what a wonderful speech!’
‘When in Rome—at least when in San Sebastian—do as the Spaniards do, be very gallant, pile it on thick.’
‘They’re not like that,’ she told him.
‘They—or he? Zoe, are you going Di’s way as well?’
‘Yes. In the next few days I must see Di.’
‘You know I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘David, stop needling me and come and meet the pequenos.’
‘The what?’
‘The little ones—oh, the kids.’
‘Now you’re making sense.’
They liked him ... but he was not Ramon, or a substitute for Ramon. Zoe saw that at once. But Henri agreed to being taught to swim. ‘He will be pleased,’ he anticipated.
And Fleurette agreed to be shown a sure way to flip out sand puddings.
‘He will like it.’
‘What about you,’ asked David unenthusiastically, ‘what can I teach you that he will applaud?’
‘You’re an old bear,’ she returned. ‘
She was glad of his company, though, it filled in the time. She could not have credited that she could have felt so—empty without Ramon. Empty?
Also, their ship reminiscences, including as they did Diana in every breath, decided her to ring, or try to ring, Diana tonight, tell her she was, if tardily, on the way.
After the children were in bed, she and David braved the telephone, for it was a problem even with a local call for two Australians in Spain, and when it was long-distance with no specific number, just a family name and a place ...
Again and again unintelligible answers bubbled back to them, and then, miraculously it seemed, they were speaking with the Lamona exchange, and the operator understood English.
‘Miguel Jose, si.’
‘At last!’ sighed David.
‘It won’t be Di, though. She’s governessing for a family out of the village.’
But it was Di. She actually answered the phone. She said, ‘Oh, Zoe. Oh, Zoe!’ and burst into tears.
‘Darling, for heaven’s sake! Diana, make sense, we haven’t got long. We’ll be cut off.’
‘When are you coming?’ sobbed Diana.
‘Soon. Di, are you—’
‘No, I’m not married yet, but I will be, I must be. Celestina says—’
‘Di,’ the line was not good, ‘do you still love Miguel?’
‘To the ends of the earth.’ It sounded like that.
‘Good, then. But don’t marry him till I come.’
‘Then come. Zoe, come!’
Now the line became so staccato that Zoe shrank back from the wrangle, and David leaned over and put down the phone.
‘You’ll ruin your eardrums.’
All Zoe said back was a wobbly: ‘She wants me at once.’
‘Then go.’
‘There’s the children.’
‘They are yours, then? At least his?’
‘I told you, David.’ She must be tired, she felt terribly close to frustrated tears.
David must have sensed this.
‘Sleep on it, kid, you know Diana.’
‘Yes, I know her.’ Zoe gave a weak smile.
‘I’ll come out again tomorrow. Perhaps to save trekking back and forth they could put me up here.’
‘Oh, David!’
‘O.K., I see your point. But I can’t see why the kids can’t be my chaperone as well as his.’
‘There goes that word again.’ Zoe said what Henri would have said had he been awake, and at least her echo raised two smiles. ‘See you tomorrow, then?’
‘Yes, David. And thank you.’
‘You can thank me by swimming out to “Our Island”,’ he laughed.
She laughed back, not sure whether she meant the laughter or not. Diana could be serious, it could be urgent, but as she had said to David and he had agreed with her: ‘You know Diana.’
Zoe was more adjusted the next day. It was not a matter of life and death, nor, if she knew her friend, a matter of immediate marriage, either.
She enjoyed herself with David and the children on the beach. But when the four of them came up for luncheon ... a simple meal as on the other days, just black bread, cheese, sardines, evidently a staple midday menu ... there was a letter waiting, its postmark Oporto.
Zoe took it up.
Making an excuse, she went to her room and tore open the envelope. She only became aware when she could scarcely read the large firm quite legible hand that she was trembling too much to hold it steady.
She put it on her dressing table and read it from there.
‘Dear Senorita Zoe, How are you? How are the pequenos? Is the weather fine? Is all well at the Court of the Myrtles?
‘Oporto enjoys good sunshine. Its quite famous gardens are full of roses and camellias. It is a fine place to conduct my business, which, too, goes well.
‘This is to tell you that I will be longer than I planned. I have decided to do more business, indeed to clear up many things so that by the time I return to you I will have, and now please note my idiom, a clean slate. Will you kindly give me high marks for that clean slate and forgive cut and dried and the dog who paddles?’
‘Oh, Ramon!’ Zoe laughed aloud.
Then she was not laughing, for suddenly the letter was running on a different note.
It was telling her very gravely how in the beginning, even being a very sane and very practical man, or so he hoped and tried for, the fact that she was Australian had displeased him. He only hoped she had not noticed that early affront in Don Ramon Raphaelina.
I noticed it, she remembered, but why? How?
Then she was reading why and how, holding on to the dressing table as she did so.
‘The Spanish are a proud race, too proud perhaps for our own good, but the traditions of centuries are difficult to discard in a fraction of a century. Some day, perhaps, we will have no use for many things, but it will come slowly, and it is not here yet, and that is why when my cousin wrote about Miguel...’—(Miguel?)—’ ... when Celestina informed me...’— (Celestina?)
Now Zoe took the letter up and read it from beginning to end.
There was no objection to this girl, she absorbed dizzily, but a Spaniard could still feel a resentment that she desired to hurry marriage in such a way. In the first when his cousin Celestina had told him of the attraction between the pair, between his nephew and this young tourist, he had felt a natural antipathy against Australian
womanhood, that instead of being sought after they made themselves the seekers. Or so he had thought, had deduced.
But now he knew very differently. He had met a Senorita Breen, and he could only wish that she was more like that other person. That she did not withdraw, like the tide withdraws, like a little mollusc does at a touch of its shell. That she did not evade her glance by bending over a child.
‘Senorita, I am seeing you now, all woman, as a Spaniard believes in woman, caressing that small girl.
‘But on paper, in my sufficient English, it is once more Browning’s “Never the time and the place.”—Do you understand?
‘I will be returning later than I said. It will be a week, perhaps several days more than that.
‘In the meantime be well, be safe, and the pequenos well and safe, too.
‘I am, Ramon Raphaelina.’
Dully Zoe noted there was no personal address, just ‘Porto’, which was Oporto, and a very large city. Too big just to write ‘Don Ramon Raphaelina’.
She put the letter down again.
‘Zoe?’ It was David at the door. ‘The luncheon is out,’ he announced. ‘If you don’t tuck in the sardines won’t last.’
She looked across at him. ‘I have to go to Lamona.’
‘A letter from Di? That was quick.’
‘Not from Di. From—’
‘Him?’
‘Yes. He—he’s Miguel’s uncle, David. I don’t know the full story, but I do know if I don’t prevent Diana from rushing into marriage with Miguel, or so Don Ramon via Celestina makes it sound, that—that—’
‘But they love each other, don’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why interfere?’
‘Because I have to. Because one can’t ride roughshod over people, David, not even in the name of love.’
‘But how can you go? You said this feller wouldn’t be away for long.’
‘He’s stopping longer than he thought. I would have time.’
‘I see. And where do I come in? Not as nursemaid, I hope, for those nippers. They’re very nice as nippers go, but playing nursemaid is hardly my cup of tea.’
‘I’d take them with me, of course.’
‘Take them?’ he echoed.
‘Well, I could scarcely leave them here. I could do it easily. Just a quick trip to put some sense into Di—she’ll listen to me, I’m about the only one she will—then back again to wait for the senor’s return.’
‘And after that? When he discovers your tricks?’
‘They’re not tricks, they’re just—just—’
‘When he learns what you’ve done?’
‘He needn’t learn.’
‘He will. Try to keep a kid’s mouth shut. He wouldn’t be here one minute before Hugo or whatever his name is—’
‘Henri.’
‘Would tell him about his jaunt.’
‘It won’t matter then,’ she said.
‘You bet it will. Spaniards can’t be put aside like that.’
‘I meant it won’t matter to Miguel and Di, and they are the ones to be considered.’
‘You reckon?’ said David closely. He regarded her a long moment. Then he asked again, ‘And where do I come in? I do, don’t I?’
‘Yes,’ said Zoe, ashamed. ‘I—I haven’t much money. David, can you lend me some?’
‘How do you plan to go?’
‘Ramon ... Senor Raphaelina spoke of an express that ran from Iran to Madrid—’
‘The luxury “Talgo”,’ David nodded. ‘You need to book in advance.’
‘From there I can take a bus or another train.’
‘Look, will the parents of these kids be agreeable to your traipsing them around like this?’
‘I have no intention of traipsing them, as you call it. They’ve had several days of being settled and are quite fit to widen their horizons again. That’s what their evidently modern and enlightened parents call it.’
‘All the same—’ he demurred.
‘All the same,’ put in Zoe, ‘I would ring and inquire, of course.’
‘Well, when you ask you might tell them we’ll be driving, not taking a train.’
‘Oh, David!’ Zoe’s eyes filled with grateful tears.
‘I’ve rented this car I’m using now for a month,’ he said gruffly, ‘so I may as well take passengers as travel alone. Also’ ... as she went to hug him ... ‘it’s not all that one-sided, Zoe. I’m looking forward to moving, too, especially with someone else beside my shadow to remark to about the passing scene. What time will we leave?’
‘I’d like the children to have a good night’s sleep. Besides, it will give me the opportunity to ring the parents or to contact Miss Gillespie. She’—in explanation—’was at the pension where we picked up the twins, and—’
‘You’ve lost me,’ David grinned. ‘I’ll have the car serviced and be round at eight a.m. sharp. Will that do?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Will you swim out to the island this afternoon?’
‘How can I refuse?’ she answered gratefully.
She swam, and swam easily, but it was not the same as yesterday. The island wasn’t the same. There was not that withdrawn, that secret feel.
‘Thanks, Zoe,’ said David, ‘but it’s no go, is it?’
‘What, David?’
‘For us.’
‘It wasn’t before,’ she pointed out.
‘I just thought I’d try. As a matter of fact I’m on the market. I’m tired of tripping round solo.’
‘Tomorrow you’ll be quarto.’
‘Do you count them?’ He grinned at the children, again emptying the ocean into the sand.
‘Ask me that when Fleurette whines,’ warned Zoe. ‘Does she?’
‘You’ll see!’
That night, ascertaining the number from the astute Henri, Zoe successfully contacted their parents’ home. Very modem, she judged them from the telephone conversation and subsequent permission ... more than permission, really, a warm enthusiasm that their children were being given the opportunity to see more of Spain.
Zoe assured them that she would be careful, that she was a sensible person, that she had more than a smattering of nursing knowledge, but it was not necessary. Monsieur and Madame Bontonne were indeed twentieth-century parents and evidently incapable of being dismayed.
‘Then all is well? You have confidence in me?’
‘Mais oui. Merci Hen. Oh—oh, Miss—’
Zoe was about to ring off, but she had to smile at the extreme degree of casualness, not even knowing her name!
‘Breen.’
‘Mademoiselle Breen. You will notice with Fleurette...’ The line was getting blurred. It would when the parents had finally decided to issue advice or direction.
‘Yes? Oui? Fleurette?’
It was no good. Zoe heard indistinctly—“... difficult at times’ ... ‘this convincing act of hers’ ... ‘when in the States we intend to consult—’
Now there was a run of static, piercing to the ears. When it stopped, the voice had stopped, the phone conversation had evidently finished during the racket at Zoe’s end.
‘Au revoir,’ shrugged Zoe to the dead line, and replaced the phone. She did not worry over the incomplete conversation—incomplete, anyhow, for her; she had received the permission and assurance she had asked for and that was all she required.
She went and packed her bag, packed the two small portmanteaux, saw Bernardo and Elena and asked for an early breakfast, explained that she and the children would be gone for a few days, then went early to bed in order to be up early tomorrow, get the children prepared and be ready for David when he came round with his car.
‘It’s only some three hundred miles to the capital,’ he had told her, ‘just a piece of cake by our standards. We could stop at Madrid or push on to your village, it depends on how we feel and the pace we make. But whatever we decide on we’ll do better with an early start.’
It was not so
prompt a start as David had planned. Deliberately Zoe had withheld from the children the exciting news, or so she believed, of their new adventure, preferring them to sleep peacefully instead of anticipating what the morning would bring. She, on her part, certainly did not anticipate half of their reaction—Fleurette’s half. For the announcement brought a drooped lip from Fleurette, at which Henri, overjoyed at the prospect of more travelling, looked at his twin and sighed knowledgeably, ‘Ah, so it’s going to be like that.’
Zoe, puzzled, remembering Miss Gillespie saying almost a similar, thing on the night they had taken the, twins from the Pension Danoise, recalling Henri remarking about something that occasionally his sister had on her shoulder ... could he mean a chip? ... now inquired of the little boy what he meant.
But Henri was not very informative ... probably did not understand himself ... so Zoe let the matter drop. She dressed Henri, then dressed Fleurette, but with considerably more difficulty.
‘I do not wish to go, Zoe,’ the child announced.
‘It’s going to be lovely.’
‘I have an appointment on the beach.’—Some day, thought Zoe, Fleurette is going to be a very sophisticated young mademoiselle, with real appointments, probably young men waiting eagerly for her to keep them.
‘You can play on the beach when we return in a few days.’
‘This was an appointment!’ Fleurette persisted.
‘Sounds very exciting. The other foot, chérie.’
‘You pronounce it badly, and I’m not wearing these shoes.’
‘Your little red ones, then?’
Spanish Lace Page 9