Clearing her throat, but the voice still issuing from the tight muscles in a hoarse little croak, she said, ‘They’re right.’
‘Senorita?’ he queried.
‘I have been here previously.’ A painful pause. ‘Overnight.’ Another pause.
Then:
‘With David Glenner.’
It did not occur to her at the moment that she had not mentioned the children, but when she did remember it, her omission did not matter. Nothing mattered in the face of Senor Raphaelina’s anger.
Within minutes, seconds almost, he had machine-gunned crisp, probably explanatory words ... or so Zoe judged ... to the hotelier and his wife, following the barrage with a formal bow and a buenas dias.
‘Buenas dias, senor, they said politely back. Then, a little uncertainly, ‘Buenas dias, senorita.’
Zoe mumbled a buenas tardes, feeling it must be nearly afternoon. If it wasn’t, then it was an interminable morning.
As she stood, not knowing what to do, cool fingers touched her elbow, and though the direction was light the purpose was strong ... as strong as if he had flung her over his shoulder and carried her to the car.
Once in the car he pressed the starter, then accelerated fiercely, put miles between them and the paradore, during which time he never opened his mouth.
Then, in an off-country track, where the only sky that could be seen was between the leaves of meeting elms, he cut the engine and turned to her. The anger had gone beyond just fierceness, the white line round his lips told her that this man was deeply embittered.
‘So, senorita, you amuse yourself making a fool of me, so why are you not laughing, then?’
‘Because,’ managed Zoe with difficulty, ‘it doesn’t amuse me, either.’
‘You mean—now?’
‘I mean at any time. If you’ll give me a chance to—’
‘To concoct an explanation?’
‘I don’t need to concoct the truth.’
‘The truth?’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Since when, senorita, have you and truth been on familiar terms?’
‘It’s all simple, really. At no time did I intend to give a wrong impression.’
‘Unless you could get away with it,’ he suggested almost idly, but there was certainly nothing casual in the glittering black eyes.
‘When you left this morning, senorita,’ he demanded, ‘what were you thinking? That it was very improbable that it would be the same paradore, that the odds were on your side, in which case you would say nothing?’
Her chin was up. She had done wrong, but not that much wrong, she thought. There was at least a limit to how much of his rancour she should accept.
‘I had nothing to say,’ she answered him.
For a moment she thought he was going to shake her, and instinctively she drew back, but either her defensive action or his own second thoughts brought his half-extended hand down again. Lighting a cheroot, he commented, ‘How different the standards in two countries; in Spain deceit and evasion are not so easily dismissed.’
‘Oh,’ she said with a flippancy that took all her effort, ‘when you spoke of standards I thought at once that you were frowning on unconventionality. You are a very formal race, are you not?’
‘We have not, at any time, been a light o’ love people.’
‘What, senor?’
‘My English, as you have indicated several times, needs depth, needs scope, but I have attended English music halls and picked up a few phrases. For instance—’ He shrugged, but did not repeat what he had said.
Seething, Zoe inserted, ‘You’re trying to tell me you can toss around the phrases but never adopt the morals.’
‘Si, senorita,’ His expression was severe.
‘Then for your peace of mind, on the evening I stopped at the paradore I also had the two children with me. Good heavens, senor, where else? Do you think I’m so irresponsible that I would have let them out of my sight? Also’—a pause—‘Mr. Glenner’s room was in a separate wing.’
A silence now, a silence that grew until Zoe could bear it no longer.
‘All right,’ she snapped, ‘say something! At least—at least apologize.’
‘For what?’
‘For—for the thing you implied.’
‘I implied nothing, you little fool. Surely you’d know I understood you better than that?
‘Then why,’ she asked, completely at a loss, ‘are you still angry?’
‘Why am I angry?’ he echoed, angrier than ever. ‘Because you lied. Because you have never stopped lying to me from the first moment I met you. Because not once have you offered me the truth.—“I have never been to Spain” ... “have never seen a paradore”...’
‘I never said that. Not about the paradore.’
‘But you implied it. You used evasions, subtleties, and the fringes of untruth, and—’
‘And in Spain you deal in direct speech, you don’t insinuate, you don’t skirt around the edges.’
‘No!’
‘How satisfying, how very convenient to be as perfect as a Spaniard! Senor ... Senor...’ as his fingers reached for and tightly enclosed her wrist ... ‘you’re hurting me!’
‘I could hurt you a great deal more,’ he said thickly, ‘if I did not—’
He said no more.
He sat staring out at the sky between the elm leaves, until, with a muttered curse, or ejaculation ... or something in Spanish, he threw out the unfinished cheroot, backed the car into the road again, and began once more that swift eating up of the miles.
He spoke sparsely. Once he indicated some birds hovering over the vega through which they were travelling. Another time he informed her stiffly that under the circumstances that had arisen, even though they had ample hours to spare, they would detour Madrid. Finally he asked punctiliously if she could postpone refreshment until they reached Lamona. He himself had little appetite, but of course if she wished ...
‘I do not wish.’
‘Then that is good. I will be able to set out today on my western business tour, not leave it till later as I anticipated.’
‘You’ll be tired after all these miles,’ she pointed out.
‘It will be an insensibility to me. I will not find an opportunity to think.’
‘Senor, I—’
‘No, little one, do not go over it all again. It was entirely my fault. I asked for too much. Or’—a little sad pull to the proud mouth that hurt Zoe more than his fiercest words had done—‘there was nothing to give.’
She rounded words in her mouth, but found she could not speak them.
‘I will go back to England,’ she did manage at last.
‘Si, senorita. And have no worry for the children, their safe return is my responsibility. Only’—he negotiated a sharp bend—‘do not leave before Diana’s and Miguel’s wedding. It would grieve them, especially when—’
‘Yes, senor?’
‘When business has called me away at the last moment. No, I will not be there, which will make it more possible for you.’
‘Senor, Miguel is your nephew, you must want to see him happily married.’
‘I am already assured of the happiness, so the actual witnessing of the exchange of rings really means little. No, senorita, it will not desolate me as you think, and Miguel, being also a business man, will respect and accept my reasons. In every way it will be a suitable arrangement. You will remain at the hostel until the ceremony, which is now only several days away, then take your leave as you wish.
‘And when I say as you wish, I mean it, senorita. You may tour back, fly back, take a train, whatever pleases you. For there will be sufficient money. No, do not stop me, please. I gave you an assignment and you worked admirably on it. It was not your fault that I did not give the instructions as clearly as I should. But the finished schemes are excellent, so excellent that I intend to use them on some of the castels I will undoubtedly see on my western investigation. Smaller castels that cry out for your cunning wooing of s
paciousness through colour and design.’
‘I can’t accept your charity,’ she said firmly.
‘It is payment for work done,’ he answered firmly. ‘And you will take it.’
They were climbing the last hill before they swept into Lamona. Had they really reached home? And why had she thought instinctively ... and futilely ... that? Home? ‘I will put you off at Rosina’s, senorita. When I say buenas tardes it will be good-bye.’
‘Then’—a little angrily—‘why don’t you say it?’
‘Because’—smoothly—‘I seem to have contracted the evasion, the half truth, the subtlety of getting around things from you. On which note’—approaching the hostel—‘I leave you, senorita. Buenas tardes.’
‘Good-bye,’ Zoe said, and, without looking back over her shoulder, she ran inside.
To her surprise, for she knew how highly Miguel regarded his uncle, how completely happy he had been over his approval of the betrothal, the nephew took the news of his absence from the celebrations in the commonsense manner that Don Ramon had anticipated.
‘It is regrettable, but it is good that business is so good,’ Miguel accepted. Diana, too, was sorry, but took no personal affront, which, keeping in mind the tuition she had received from Celestina, that lesson of the senor’s undoubted dislike and disapproval could well have been the case.
Celestina ... where had she gone? How did she feel about what had happened? How did anyone feel at the end of a dream? Zoe felt a hard lump in her throat.
The preparations went ahead. Trestles, then long boards to act for tables to place on the trestles, were brought in. Coloured lights were swung through trees. Lanterns were hung. Barrels of cerveza ... beer ... as well as the favoured vino were set in cool places. Conacs. Wedding champagne.
On the night before the wedding, families of cakes and buns arrived, all from old jealously-guarded Iberian recipes. Cigarillos were piled ready for the taking in heirloom bowls.
No need to hire a flamenco band and flamenco dancers in Lamona, for every villager could either play an instrument or pick up castanets and whirl.
On the morning of the wedding came the telegrammas ... telegrams. From Di’s people in Sydney. From Miguel’s old college friends in Granada.—From his uncle to both the young people.
‘May your life together be Catalonia cork,’ interpreted Miguel to Zoe, and he began to explain, then remembered that she had talked about Catalonia cork.
‘What can I wish after that?’ she sighed inadequately. She pondered a moment, then smiled, ‘May there be Spanish lace.’
‘Spanish lace is indeed extremely beautiful, Zoe.’
‘Then I wish you Spanish lace.’
It was not so far off to donning her own lace. Already Di was in the old but very lovely bathroom, lingering in scented water in the sunken tub. Vittoria was dressing up at the Casa Rosada ... Josefina, too.
Zoe stood a moment on the paved vineyard casa patio admiring the festive preparations, thinking how the most expensive society wedding could not have achieved the charm, the warmth and the gaiety that this one promised to give. She watched the fine lace cloth being lovingly draped over the bridal table, the barely less beautiful embroidered ones over the boarded trestles.
She saw the car in the distance coming much quicker to the vineyard than it should at the same time as the house telephone pealed. It was not much use her picking it up, her Spanish was far too inadequate. All she could do was respond, then beg: ‘Uno momento ... one moment.’ Then fetch one of the women.
But none of the women seemed around. The phone kept shrilling. If she didn’t answer it, Di might attempt to, and everyone knew that a bride must be kept on an even keel.
Going to the telephone table and picking the receiver up, she said, ‘Hola.’
‘Ah!’ There was no doubt that the sound at the other end of the wire was one of deep relief. ‘It is I, Vittoria.’
‘Vittoria! Are you dressed?’
‘No. Nor Josefina. Zoe, I am not happy about those two small ones. Although they run no temperature ... oh, yes, I disregarded your advice and bought a clinical thermometer after all ... I feel uneasy. If you look out of your porch you will see a car approaching.’
‘It’s here now,’ Zoe confirmed.
‘And it is my husband Francisco. Will it be too much for you to run up the Casa Rosada before you dress and give me your opinion?’
‘No trouble at all, and I’m pleased you asked me, though I hardly think—’
‘Who is it, Zoe?’ Diana called from the bathroom. ‘Someone for me?’
‘For me.’ Zoe decided to tell her. After all, she would have to explain her brief absence.
‘Vittoria isn’t satisfied with the pequenos.’
‘Then, darling, run up there by all means, we have ample time. I’ll just soak longer and become more beautiful,’ Di laughed happily.
‘I won’t be long,’ Zoe promised, and ran out and was in the car before it completely stopped.
Francisco looked apologetic. ‘It’s too bad taking you away like this, but women...’ He shrugged, though not as carelessly, Zoe perceived, as he would have wished.
‘I am one, too, remember,’ she said, ‘and anyway I consider that Vittoria has done a wise thing. Not that I will be much help.’
‘At least you can set her mind at rest as to whether or not we should summon the doctor.’
That surprised Zoe. In Australia doctors were summoned first, then parents did their considering. But of course, she had forgotten, Lamona had no doctor, one had to be brought from another village.
‘Also,’ said Francisco as though she had spoken her thoughts aloud, ‘just now he is extremely busy, there is an epidemic of—of—’ he thought a while, then said triumphantly, ‘very red fever.’
‘Scarlet fever. Have our children a rash?’
‘No, it is nothing like that. It is nothing obvious. And that is why perhaps we play the clown.’
‘The fool. No, you are wise.’
As soon as the car stopped she jumped out, not waiting for the Spaniard to come round and open the door as Spaniards do.
She ran up the path, past the wading pool where Henri was still emptying water and replacing sand ... thank heaven he was all right ... then into the hall from where Vittoria’s voice was calling, ‘Here, Zoe, here!’
Both children were in cots. Both were normally pink, normally bright-eyed. But both pulses, as Zoe expertly took them, for that was one thing her father had tutored her in, were not normal. They were very abnormal.
‘Get the doctor,’ she said to Francisco who was hovering at the door. ‘Get the doctor at once!’
CHAPTER TEN
Zoe was alternating her time between the two children; one moment she was hovering over Juan, the next over Fleurette.
But she could hear Francisco on the phone.
If only, she thought longingly, desperately, I could understand!
But all she could do in that direction, the comprehending direction, was watch Vittoria’s face. Vittoria was just inside the door, and she was pale but alert.
‘What is he saying?’ begged Zoe at last. ‘What is your husband telling the doctor?’
‘To come. But I’m afraid—’
‘So am I,’ Zoe rushed in. ‘Vittoria, we must have him out. I just don’t understand, and when you don’t know what you’re up against—’
Vittoria nodded gravely and hurried out to her husband. A few minutes elapsed, Zoe still dividing her time between the two children, then Vittoria came back to the door to beckon her.
‘Our doctor does not understand English,’ she said apologetically. ‘You must understand that he is a very hard-worked man and that he had not time for foreign languages.’
‘Of course I understand, Vittoria. Just tell me what he says.’
‘It is very unfortunate, we catch him at a wrong time.’
‘Then it will have to be a right time.’ Zoe’s voice was grim.
‘How can
it be? Not only has he this fever, but he has on his own two hands alone not one but three cases of—of—Well, it is much more serious than that other fever.’
‘I think you could probably mean diphtheria.’ Zoe’s heart was sinking. ‘But how—how—’
‘They are village people, probably they did not approve of precautionary injections—some of them are like that, in all countries I believe it is so; then perhaps if they were on some remote farm they had not even heard of them.’
‘Is there another doctor?’
‘Not for many kilometres.’
‘How ill are these children he is attending?’
‘I will ask.’ Vittoria went to the phone, spoke to her husband and he handed her the receiver. Quick words were spoken.
It was agony waiting for her to finish, but worse agony again waiting for whoever it was at the other end of the wire to finish his speaking and be interpreted to Zoe. But she need not have been on tenterhooks, she thought wretchedly; one look at Vittoria’s desolate face and she knew.
Vittoria turned slowly, painfully.
‘It is bad, Zoe. It couldn’t be worse. They can’t be left.’
‘Isn’t there a nurse?’
‘It is so urgent he must perform a—a—’ Vittoria’s brow creased.
‘A tracheotomy. I understand.’ Zoe went instinctively to the phone to pick it up from where Vittoria had carefully placed it, remembered the barrier of language and stopped.
‘Speak for me, Vittoria,’ she ordered.
‘Go ahead, Zoe.’
‘Tell him ... tell the doctor that I feel most strongly that these two children are very ill.’
Vittoria spoke into the phone and though her voice trembled it was clear.
‘Temperature so far,’ continued Zoe, ‘causing no undue worry. There is, also, no marked physical sign of anything wrong to date.’
Again rapid words.
‘But both pulses are not normal. The children are excessively drowsy. They seem half-drugged.’
Spanish Lace Page 17