The Dragon's Cave

by Isobel Chace

  ‘By allowing this Tony to support you?’

  She shook her head. ‘By singing,’ she said.

  ‘Very well,’ he answered distantly. ‘But I will ask you not to sing again in public while you are under my roof. When you go back to England you may please yourself. Here, you are in my charge, and I will not have you performing in public. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes,’ Megan managed.

  She raised her eyes to him and saw that he was looking positively cheerful, as well as being quite unaccountably pleased with himself. How could he, when she felt more miserable than she ever had in her whole life?

  ‘I’ll be back from Barcelona at the end of the week. Look after yourself until then,’ he said gently. ‘I have to go to Barcelona or—I’ll tell you about that when I get back!’

  She went to the door and opened it reluctantly. She wished that he had, at least, touched her, given her something to live on while he was away. But then why should he? She had no claim on him. Oh dear, she thought, the sooner she went back to England and never saw him again the better! Then with a sudden, devastating sense of relief she remembered the fan he had given her. She turned back to him, her whole face alight with pleasure.

  ‘I meant to thank you first of all for the fan,’ she told him. ‘I shall treasure it always. I’m very proud to have something of your mother’s. I would have thanked you before, only I knew you were angry with me for—for last night. But I want you to know that you couldn’t have given me anything better—’ She broke off, afraid of what she might say. ‘Thank you very much,’ she ended abruptly.

  ‘When I come back I shall teach you how to use it,’ he promised.

  She shook her head, her eyes blinded by tears. ‘When you come back, I shall go home to England,’ she reiterated.

  ‘Perhaps, for a little while,’ he agreed. ‘But, Megan, be careful while I’m away. Margot will do nothing to protect you because—because of something that happened between us long ago. It’s important to me that the people here should think well of you, as important as if you were Pilar or Isabel. Will you remember that?’

  ‘I’ll try to do what you would wish,’ she promised, though why it should matter to him what people should think of her was beyond her.

  ‘Will you?’ he drawled, his smile twisted. ‘You won’t see Tony while the dragon is safely away?’

  She smiled herself, amused by the idea. ‘ No,’ she said.

  ‘If you do, I shall undoubtedly be told about it!’ he warned her bleakly.

  ‘But I won’t!’ she protested. She felt suddenly happy and hopeful that perhaps everything would turn out all right after all. ‘Carlos, look after yourself in Barcelona too, won’t you?’

  His look of surprise rewarded her. ‘I shall be too busy to get into much trouble,’ he assured her dryly. ‘Hasta luego, amada!’ He leaned forward and kissed her fleetingly on the mouth. ‘Is that better, hija?’

  Megan gave him a mischievous smile, her spirits completely recovered. ‘Much better!’ she said.

  CHAPTER X

  Time without Carlos went slowly. Megan, who had never been lonely before, was surprised to discover that she was lonely now. There was nothing for her to do. Indeed, she only saw Margot at mealtimes, and she suspected that Inez was avoiding her, probably because she had got into trouble with her family for going to the barbecue with only an English girl as chaperone.

  Megan spent the first day writing to her family, preparing them for her imminent return to England. This was a harder task than she had expected, for she had the feeling that they wouldn’t be very pleased to see her back and as anxious to go on with her singing career as ever. What was so bad about wanting to sing? she asked herself. There were worse ways of earning a living. Why, oh, why was it so hard to persuade them of that?

  She and Margot had their evening meal together in the sitting-room.

  ‘It’s too much trouble to set the table in the dining room for a couple of women,’ Margot said sweetly. ‘The maids have enough to do, don’t you think?’

  Megan wasn’t sure that she agreed with her, but she only nodded and meekly sat down, searching for some topic of conversation that would interest the older woman.

  ‘Carlos says he is bringing Pilar back with him,’ she said. ‘It will be lovely to see her again.’

  Margot smiled with a touch of malice. ‘I suppose Inez has been forbidden your company? Such a pity! Mallorca hasn’t been the answer to your dreams after all, has it, my dear? It was very naughty of Carlos to have brought you here.’

  Megan looked at her under the cover of her eye-lashes. Margot was looking pleased about something, she thought, and she wondered what it could be that had given her so much pleasure.

  ‘I expect he thought you would like someone English with you,’ Megan remarked. ‘He tries to make things easier for you—’

  ‘Like disappearing the moment the builders arrive to do the bathroom?’ Margot cut in. ‘The noise has been terrible all day!’

  Megan was startled. ‘I haven’t heard them!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You wouldn’t! You’re on the other side of the house. I told Carlos it was quite ridiculous to give you that room—it’s one of the biggest we have—but he insisted and, just like in everything else, he had to have his own way.’

  ‘It is his house,’ Megan reminded her gently.

  Margot looked scornful. ‘Don’t be naive, my dear. The house is as much his mother’s now as it was when she was alive. That’s why he made me come here. I know it!’

  ‘But why?’

  Margot smiled bitterly. ‘Because he hates me!’

  ‘Oh, surely not!’

  ‘Does that shock you? It used to shock me when he was just a little boy that the man I loved happened to have fathered before I had met him, but I’ve grown used to it over the years. I suppose he resented my taking his mother’s place.’

  ‘He may have done,’ Megan agreed justly.

  ‘He did! He was an impossible child! His mother’s family was ready enough to dislike me and most of my husband’s money came from them, so that was bad enough, but Carlos made sure that none of my children ever had a penny of that money. Everything, every last peseta, came to Carlos when my husband died.’

  ‘Isn’t that customary?’ Megan enquired. ‘I mean Carlos is the eldest son.’

  ‘As he is never tired of pointing out! No, it wasn’t that that we quarrelled about. What he resented was his father falling in love with me. His own mother was not a very lovable woman—my husband married her largely because it was expected of him. It was a wretched marriage, as was to be expected. My husband often said that he had never known any happiness until he married me!’

  Megan was saddened. She could imagine the young Carlos having to listen to such remarks and she felt sadder still.

  ‘Carlos loved his mother,’ she said.

  ‘He romanticised her and her family encouraged him to remember her as somebody out of a fairy-tale, I regret to say.’ Margot’s expression grew more alert as a thought came to her and she turned it over in her mind, well pleased with it. ‘I think I’ll take you to meet them,’ she said carefully. ‘Better, we’ll give a party and invite them to come. What do you think?’

  Megan wondered uncomfortably if Carlos would like his family to be entertained by his stepmother while he was away. Then she gave herself a mental shake, reflecting that she was being silly about nothing. Margot had been the Senora Vallori for many years now, and the first Senora Vallori’s parents must have come to terms with the situation long before this.

  ‘I am here to help you in any way I can,’ Megan murmured out loud.

  ‘So you are!’ Margot remembered. ‘Well, it seems that at last I have found something for you to do. I’d like you to drive me to Soller tomorrow. They have a small place there where they live some part of every year. Senora de la Navidades, Inez’s mother, was telling me that she thought the old lady was in residence. She has an unmarried daughter who tags alon
g with her, poor dear, and I suppose she will be there too.’

  ‘Can’t you telephone and find out?’ Megan asked.

  Margot gave a little gasp of laughter. ‘The old lady had the telephone taken out,’ she explained. ‘She said it gave Carlos an excuse to be lazy and to give her a ring instead of going to visit her. Naturally she thought I was trying to keep him away from her.’

  Megan was surprised by the naked dislike in the older woman’s voice. ‘Did you?’ she asked. ‘I mean, did you keep him away from his grandparents?’

  ‘Grandmother. His grandfather had died long before I came on the scene. Well, yes, I suppose I did. He would have moved there entirely if I had allowed him to, but my husband wouldn’t have liked that. He was very conscious that Carlos was his son and had to be brought up under his own roof. It wasn’t my fault! I told Carlos that it angered his father when he spent so much time with his grandmother, but he wouldn’t listen of course, just as he never listens now. He said his grandmother was lonely and had a right to his company. You wouldn’t believe that any boy would think of such a thing, would you? But Carlos did. He went on and on about it and, in the end, I forbade him to visit her at all. He kept getting out though and one day I beat him for it. He didn’t say a word. He broke the stick into tiny pieces and threw them at me. That was the end of any hope I had of making friends with him.’

  ‘He must have been very fond of his grandmother,’ commented Megan.

  ‘Only because she disapproves of me!’ Margot frowned, her temper getting the better of her discretion. ‘She would have done anything to have ruined my marriage! Senora Llobera has never had a good word to say for me! She made my life a misery when we came here. In the end I persuaded my husband to live permanently in Barcelona. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to get away from her and her horrid cronies who are nearly as bad!’ It will be interesting to see what she makes of you!’

  Megan smiled lazily. ‘I don’t suppose she will approve of me either,’ she said.

  ‘Probably not,’ Margot agreed promptly, looking pleased at the thought. ‘I expect the Navidades will have told her all about your taking Inez to the barbecue and then leaving her on her own while you sang to the tourists. It’s hardly the sort of incident that is calculated to gain her approval. But then it doesn’t matter to you either way, does it?’ She smiled brightly, watching Megan out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘No,’ Megan agreed. ‘It doesn’t matter to me.’ But she wasn’t above admitting to herself that she would like Carlos’ grandmother to approve of her, and to like her a little, just as she would have liked Carlos’ mother to have liked her had she been alive.

  Margot sat in the passenger seat making critical remarks about Megan’s driving, the state of the roads, and how trying the sun was when it was so low in the sky.’

  ‘I hate the winter,’ she said. ‘I hate having to wear a coat all the time. You’d think the climate here would allow one to go out without having to wear half one’s wardrobe on one’s back.’

  ‘It was snowing in England,’ Megan said dreamily. She guided the car carefully on to the road to Valldemosa, relaxing only when they had left Palma behind them and were passing through the first of the farms and the almond orchards, still white with delicate blossom. ‘I thought they were exaggerating when they said come and see the blossom of a million almond trees in Majorca! It’s so beautiful that it doesn’t seem true!’

  ‘It is pretty,’ Margot dismissed it. ‘Would you like to stop and see the convent where Chopin and George Sand stayed when they were here?’

  Megan went pink with pleasure. ‘Do you mean it? You must have been there many times before! Are you sure it wouldn’t bore you?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Margot said politely. ‘Carlos will be pleased if he thinks I have been entertaining you properly.’

  Megan laughed. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll enquire,’ she said.

  Margot’s eyes snapped with amusement. ‘But you’d like him to? Don’t worry, my dear, I’ll make sure he knows about all your doings as soon as he gets back. I’ll tell him how helpful you are being over my little party.’

  Valldemosa was only seventeen kilometres from Palma. The road climbed up towards the picturesque village, the rose-coloured tiles rose steeply over gold-coloured walls, crowding into one another at different angles to one another, in a pleasing kind of chaos. The delicate almond blossom shone brightly in the sunshine and the green of the fields were bright with winter lushness. It must have been very much the same when George Sand had taken her sick lover there.

  ‘Do you like Chopin’s music?’ Margot asked.

  Megan nodded enthusiastically. ‘It’s funny to think that he composed his stuff here on a piano that was badly out of tune and had only been loaned to him while he waited for his own to get here from Paris. Then, when it did arrive, it was too late. He was leaving in a day or so.’

  Margot looked bored. ‘I shouldn’t have thought he was your cup of tea. Don’t you sing more popular stuff?’

  ‘Mostly,’ Megan admitted. ‘One can like all sorts of things that one can’t sing, though.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Margot agreed. ‘I didn’t know about the piano.’

  Megan turned into the main street of the little town and triumphantly parked the car. It was cold when they got out of the car, a wind blowing down the hills and along the street. Megan shivered and tied her coat tighter about her. The shops were not as exciting as she had expected. There were one or two Spanish bars, advertising themselves as English tea-shops, and several souvenir shops, all selling much the same goods. Margot strode past them all without a single glance to either side. Megan, who would have liked to have browsed through the carved wooden figures and the collections of Spanish hats and unlikely-looking dolls dressed in Mallorquin costumes, followed after her, wondering where they were going.

  Margot knew exactly where she was going. She turned up a steep slope, pointing to the signpost that directed them to La Real Cartuja, the Royal Carthusian Monastery that was founded in 1339 by King Martin, who gave up the royal palace of the Kings of Majorca for the purpose. In 1853, the monks left the convent and it was used as a kind of hotel, to put up visitors who wanted to hire the three-roomed cells for their own use. It was in the winter of 1838-39 that George Sand, her son and daughter, and her lover, Frdederic Chopin, moved in and suffered the rigours of a totally unheated Mallorquin winter, in beautiful surroundings that were apparently hardly appreciated by any of them. Nevertheless, it was here that Chopin composed some of his most famous Preludes, while moving steadily nearer to his death. What kind of nurse George Sand made, in her male attire and busy writing her own brilliant account of their time there, is better left to the imagination. If she disliked the local inhabitants, there is no doubt that they found her, and her whole manage, bizarre in the extreme.

  Margot bought the tickets for them to enter and hurried Megan through the rooms that the famous visitors had occupied. Both pianos, the one Chopin had actually used and the one he had bought in Paris and had had transported at such cost, were proudly displayed, together with some of his music and the handwritten manuscript of George Sand’s Winter in Majorca. But, if anything, Megan preferred the quaint little gardens that were attached to each cell, each one cut off from the others by high walls. From these one could see the most superb view, down from the little town and across the valley below, almost as far as Palma itself.

  ‘They must have been happy here!’ Megan exclaimed.

  ‘If it was as cold then as it is now, I should think they were glad to get back to civilisation,’ Margot retorted. ‘I would never have agreed to come here in the first place. Romance, especially romantic surroundings, is seldom comfortable.’

  Megan gurgled with laughter. ‘Perhaps not. I wonder if the blossom was out while they were here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Margot answered. ‘Probably not.’ It was obvious that the older woman was glad to leave the atmosphere of the convent behind
her. She refused to visit the private rooms of the old palace that had been left as they had been in the days when royalty had visited Valldemosa, and hurried Megan back to the car.

  ‘It isn’t far to Soller,’ she said, ‘but the road runs slap over those mountains and we won’t be able to go very fast. Will you be all right driving, or shall I?’ Megan wondered which the other woman would prefer. ‘I expect you know the road better than I do,’ she began.

  ‘That’s why I’d prefer you to drive,’ Margot said firmly. ‘Carlos says you’re quite a good driver.’

  ‘Does he?’ Megan was pleased beyond all reason. ‘I don’t know why he should think that,’ she added. ‘I haven’t exactly shone on the occasions when he has seen me at the wheel.’

  ‘Carlos always thinks he knows everything whether he does or not,’ Margot remarked unkindly. ‘If you can get us safely over those hills, I’ll tell him what a good driver you really are!’

  Megan was very much on her mettle as they climbed away from Valldemosa, taking the road to Soller. It was not particularly steep on the way up, but on the other side, they almost fell down the side of the cliff into the valley in which Soller was situated. Megan changed down into a lower gear, using the engine of the car to brake their descent, thus allowing her to be more sparing with her use of the protesting foot-brake.

  ‘It’s worse getting back,’ Margot announced gloomily.

  ‘It’s a pity you haven’t a more powerful car,’ said Megan.

  ‘Oh, you can’t do better than these little Seats,’ Margot affirmed. ‘Old age is all that’s wrong with this one. I bought her second-hand years ago. I never came to Mallorca in those days, so it didn’t matter what sort of car I had here.’

  Megan picked out the road to Soller, pausing at the crossroads to see if any traffic was going the other way.

  ‘The house is at Puerto de Soller, not in the town itself,’ Margot directed her. ‘You have to turn left here.’