House in the Hills

by House in the Hills (retail) (epub)

  She wriggled against him, her loins pressing against his buttocks, her hand wandering over his belly so she could bury her fingers in his pubic hair.

  ‘Will you hear my confession, Father Umberto?’

  He groaned and half turned. ‘What? Now?’

  Catherine smiled, withdrew her hand and threw back the bedclothes. She lay on her back looking up at the ceiling. The light coming in the window fell over her nakedness like a soft gauze veil.

  Umberto turned round on to his other side. She heard his breath catch in his throat, saw his eyes widen at the sight of her. She sighed when he reached for her, running his hand down over her shoulder. A thumb strayed to her breast before sliding over her waist and the rise of her hip.

  ‘What do you wish to confess, my child,’ he said, the words catching in his throat, strangled by the stirring of his loins.

  For the first time in her life, Catherine was filled with a feeling of having power over someone else. She’d thought she’d had power over Francisco, but their relationship had been as children compared to this.

  ‘I wasn’t really going to kill myself – like my mother.’

  She saw a more guarded look come to his eyes. ‘You lied to me?’

  ‘But I couldn’t help it,’ she whispered.

  He inched away, but her hand remained on his shoulder and the roughness of healing scars, all that remained of his efforts to purge her from his system.

  She felt his muscles tense, but kept her hand in place, needing to stay connected to him. Those whom she’d loved had left her alone too often.

  He raised his head suddenly. ‘What was that?’

  Raising herself on one arm, she peered over his shoulder. ‘Nothing. Just moonlight and shadows.’

  She lay down again, curving her body against his.

  He moaned and closed his eyes, his body stiffening in a different way. His blood pounded beneath the touch of her fingers. Like her he could not help himself. The rules of man were not the rules of nature. He rolled over on to her, and she opened up to him.

  * * *

  ‘We’ll be condemned for this,’ he said later as he got ready to leave.

  He opened the door. The moon was high, its light flooding the room.

  Catherine followed him, a thin sheet flung loosely round her shoulders, her loins bare. The world outside was as bright as the room behind them. He caught a handful of her hair, bent her head back and kissed the hollow of her throat.

  As she gasped, the sheet fell from her shoulders and around her hips, like a lovely Greek statue.

  The night air was crisp, the sky clear and the moon wore a silver aureole, a forewarning of a chilly night. Catherine admired it. Umberto, however, was looking elsewhere.

  Suddenly the front of the house, the humble yard and the goat pen were lit up as though by day.

  They froze, looking out into the night. A figure stood beside a car with shiny headlights. The smell of cigarette smoke joined that of a hot exhaust.

  Catherine felt her stomach tightening. She grabbed the sheet and covered herself, bringing it up beneath her chin.

  Umberto was frozen to the spot and all the colour had drained from his face. They could have demanded who was this person leaning against the car, but they’d both been surprised, shocked out of the fantasy world they’d locked themselves in.

  The woman – Catherine could see it was a woman – slowly raised her head. A pale, handsome face appeared from beneath the brim of a trilby-style travelling hat. The moonlight was such that she could see pencilled eyebrows, thickly lashed eyes and bright-red lipstick. The black stalk of a cigarillo protruded from the side of her mouth. Her eyes flicked from the half-naked girl to the highly embarrassed priest.

  ‘Your name?’ she said, addressing Umberto.

  Umberto gave his name.

  ‘Yes. The local priest.’

  Umberto looked terrified. ‘Yes.’ His voice sounded fragile, far away.

  ‘I’ve caught you sinning. I heard locally that you visit here often – too often.’

  Umberto suddenly seemed to collect himself. ‘Who are you?’

  Unsmiling, the woman threw him a haughty glare. ‘I’m the witness to sin who can ruin both your lives. Now get out of here.’

  She turned her gaze back to Catherine. ‘Get dressed. We need to talk.’

  Even though the woman had not given her name or stated her business, her manner and her sudden appearance in a very fine motor car gave her credence.

  Despite the circumstances, Catherine was awestruck. The woman was wearing a woollen suit with a dropped waistline. A silver fox fur adorned her shoulders. A black bow perched like a dead bird on one side of her broad-brimmed trilby. Everything was expensive and shouted city life. She’d seen no such clothes as these since leaving Castile Villanova.

  Catherine concluded she was tough; how else had she managed to drive on such a ruined road?

  Umberto was edging into the shadows.

  The fear of being left alone threatened to overwhelm her.

  ‘Umberto.’

  Umberto stalled.

  ‘Go,’ said the woman in a threatening manner. ‘Leave before I inform your superiors of your shocking behaviour. I can assure you that your career in the Church will be short-lived if I have to do that.’

  There was a moment – a fleeting moment reminiscent of the time when Catherine had been a schoolgirl and Umberto an altar boy and a figure of girlish romance. As they had back then, their eyes met with unspoken words.

  ‘Inside,’ said the woman in the rich clothes.

  The room, which earlier had seemed so warm, felt cold as Catherine backed into it. She shivered and watched as the woman’s eyes searched the humble farmhouse; a look of pity laced with contempt.

  ‘My name is Sanchia Juventa.’

  As she spoke the woman lifted the lace-trimmed edge of a curtain between the thumb and forefinger of her kid-gloved hand, examined it and let it drop again.

  ‘This was your aunt’s place?’ She spoke quickly and economically, no ten-letter word used where a three-letter word would do.

  She found herself stuttering as she explained. ‘My mother’s aunt… Aunt Lopa was my mother’s aunt.’

  The woman glided over the stone-paved floor, her shiny presence making the old place look shabbier by the minute.

  Catherine thought of the motor car outside. She didn’t know that much about cars, but it looked fine, very fine – which she interpreted as costing a lot of money. The woman was well dressed, definitely not from any of the farms or vineyards, and probably not from Pinhao. The suit was made of some kind of tweed, a plain mustard trim bordering the neck and hem of the jacket. She frowned.

  ‘Did you drive here from Porto?’

  The woman nodded in the same manner as she spoke; sharply and swiftly. ‘Yes.’

  With a sinking heart, Catherine came to the obvious conclusion. ‘My father sent you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I won’t go.’

  She flinched under the threatening look in the woman’s greenish eyes. ‘I think you will.’ Her tone of voice was bereft of emotion. This was a woman who got things done, who stuck to the facts and never, ever wore her heart on her sleeve.

  ‘Will I go to live with my father?’ She gathered the sheet more closely around her in response to the look in the woman’s eyes.

  ‘You will do as your father says.’

  The woman appeared unconcerned about what Catherine wanted or didn’t want. Her contemptuous gaze was still scrutinizing the basic furniture and primitive interior of the dwelling house.

  ‘My father abandoned me!’

  Her words were filled with fire and based on fact. She barely remembered the man responsible for her mother’s death. An obstinacy borne of anger shot through her.

  ‘We’re going. Tonight,’ said Sanchia Juventa, speaking in English that to Catherine’s attuned ear hinted at Spanish being her native language.

  Catherine snorted defia
ntly. ‘Then you’ll have to take me as I am,’ she said, dropping the sheet and standing there stark naked.

  Sanchia Juventa raised one thin eyebrow. ‘If you like. I really don’t care.’

  ‘I’m not leaving right away.’

  ‘Right away.’ The tone was dismissive. Her word was law.

  Catherine recognized this was a battle of wills. She had no intention of giving in to this woman and sensed if she won this battle, the rest of her life would run in much the same vein.

  Sanchia Juventa was elegant, cultured and not the sort to get involved in physical work. And that, thought Catherine, is her weakness. ‘Are you terribly strong?’

  Arched eyebrows lifted a little higher on the powdered forehead.

  ‘That chest is my inheritance.’ Catherine pointed at the old coffer. It looked heavy and was heavy. ‘I can’t leave it here. A new tenant and his sons are moving in. The contents are quite valuable. That’s besides my clothes and personal items. We’d have to load it into your car between us – unless you have a chauffeur hidden beneath the back seat.’

  Catherine had only seen the woman; a woman beautifully dressed and driving a shining motor car. She wouldn’t show it, but she was mightily impressed. This was an independence to be admired.

  The Spanish woman took only a few seconds to come to a decision. ‘Is there someone who can do this for us?’

  ‘A boy comes tomorrow to milk the goats. He’ll fetch someone.’

  * * *

  Dawn came too soon. Catherine’s eyes clicked open. Pigeons were still roosting above her in the rafters of the room she had loved at first sight. The view outside the window was the same as it had been yesterday except for the men manhandling her luggage, including Aunt Lopa’s chest, on to the back of the motor car. And there was Sanchia Juventa overseeing everything.

  The Spanish woman had wanted to leave immediately, but Catherine had been stubborn, citing her dowry – the iron-bound – chest as a reason.

  ‘Unless we lift it between us. Then there’s my other luggage, and the road being so bad in daylight let alone darkness…’

  She’d won the argument. The truth of the matter was that they could have handled everything between them quite well, but Sanchia was not the sort of woman used to getting her gloved or ungloved hands dirty.

  Exactly as Catherine had promised, the boy who came to help with the goats was sent to fetch help. Everything had been loaded – the few dresses, some of Aunt Lopa’s favourite crocheted pieces; Catherine handled them carefully, remembering the clicking of that hook and her great-aunt’s homespun wisdom.

  Although she had won a significant battle with Sanchia Juventa, she sensed that her ordeal was far from over. There were more battles yet; for the moment she was still smarting from the fact that Umberto had been ordered from the house. More than that, Sanchia had known about their liaison. Had tongues already been wagging?

  Poor Umberto. What would happen to him? She asked Sanchia.

  ‘He’s being moved to another parish.’

  Three, Catherine thought to herself. Three people had now been taken away from her, although Umberto at least was alive. God has his way, she thought to herself, except that her father had more to do with it than God ever had.

  She lingered in the old house, wandering through each room and smelling again the old leather, fresh straw and ash from apple logs left in the fireplace.

  She’d attempted to stand her ground the night before, but that was when Sanchia Juventa had stated the obvious. If she stayed or if she ran away, the priest would be ruined.

  ‘Your father would see to that,’ Sanchia had said in no uncertain terms.

  Catherine had glowered at her, hating the way the woman smoked cigarettes; the long ebony holder like a witch’s wand. But she knew what gossip could do. She’d heard whispered tales of women like her who’d been stoned or dragged out of their homes to have their head shaved and their naked bodies covered in animal filth. She’d heard of priests sent away to rot in perpetual seclusion.

  ‘His sin would be forgiven but not forgotten. He would remain a priest. All ambition thwarted. Would he like that, do you think?’

  Sanchia had a cruel way of smiling. Catherine decided she would actually enjoy observing the consequences if she did rebel.

  No. She couldn’t bring herself to do that to Umberto. He meant a lot to her and always would, but like others she’d loved, he was gone.

  ‘Catherine!’

  Holding back the tears, Catherine backed out of the shady house into bright sunshine, but she did not feel bright. One world was closing behind her, another was about to present itself.

  She remained staring at one particular shutter squealing on its hinges like a baby crying for its mother.

  Sanchia paid off the men – though not enough, it seemed.

  ‘We came at short notice,’ they said grudgingly.

  ‘Fine,’ said Sanchia. ‘And you only worked a short time.’

  The metal clasp of her handbag snapped shut. She turned to Catherine, frowning as she looked her up and down.

  ‘What is this outfit?’

  Catherine shrugged. Her coat was too tight, her dress frayed at the hem and she was wearing her work boots which had no laces.

  ‘My father never sent pretty things from the city. We made do with what we had.’

  Sanchia seemed to bristle at this.

  ‘Your father has more important things to spend his money on.’

  Now it was Catherine who eyed her up and down. ‘So I see.’

  Sanchia’s dark expression darkened some more. ‘I meant business.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  As a child, she’d sometimes imagined meeting her father again, finding him penniless and in dire need of her assistance. In her imagination she refused to assist him even though he begged for her help on bended knees and asked to know why she treated him so.

  Her response was always the same. ‘Because you killed my mother.’ In her vision he would turn away, fading into the greying fog of destitution and death.

  Twenty-Three

  Ellen Shellard sat in front of her dressing table, staring at her reflection without really seeing it. Germaine had stormed out of the room after throwing a doll on to the floor. The tantrum had been about her wanting to go away to boarding school in England. Walter was insisting and had informed his daughter that this was what he wanted, and this was exactly what she would do.

  Germaine had whined and pleaded, and although she hadn’t actually agreed to her father’s demands, she gave the impression that she did.

  However, once she was alone with her mother, it was Ellen who got the blame. Germaine’s bluish-grey eyes had turned as steely cold as those of her father.

  ‘It’s you who wants me to go away. Not my daddy. My daddy would never send me away to school.’

  In a vain attempt to support her husband, Ellen had insisted that the idea was her father’s, and that Germaine shouldn’t be quite so hostile about it. ‘You’ll probably enjoy it when you get to Red Maids. You’ll make lots of new friends.’

  ‘I’ve got lots of new friends here,’ she’d retorted, her long ringlets bouncing and her cheeks an unhealthy shade of crimson.

  ‘You haven’t really,’ said her mother. ‘You spend most of your time with your dolls.’

  Germaine’s crystal-blue eyes seemed to send out sparks of electricity. ‘I have friends! Not just dolls!’

  With a last torrent of angry words Germaine flung the doll she was carrying across the room, where it thudded against the bottom drawer of her mother’s dressing table.

  Alone with her thoughts, Ellen had sighed and closed her eyes; although Germaine was her own flesh and blood, there were times when she harboured a most definite dislike for the girl. Her father had indulged her far too much; what she wanted, Germaine got. Now she could not believe it was her father’s idea to send her away because it wasn’t what she wanted.

  Ellen had picked up the doll and sa
t it on her dressing table. She recognized it as being the same doll they’d found in the wine cellar some years before. Back then she’d wondered who it had belonged to. It was some months after finding it that she’d discovered the truth about its owner.

  She’d been walking along the corridor above the kitchen when she’d heard a commotion from down below. A woman was demanding to know how her darling Catherine was doing.

  Intrigued, she’d gone down to confront whoever it was. The kitchen staff had turned round askance when she’d asked what was going on.

  ‘Just a worrisome local woman. She wants to know about…’

  The woman, restrained by the gardener’s son, was strongly built and had no trouble in flinging the lanky youth aside.

  ‘Catherine,’ she said, her eyes wild and her plump face as dark and polished as a church pew. ‘Master sent away my little one and promised he’d send me word of her. He never did. I know he’s a busy man, but ’tis his own flesh and blood after all…’

  Ellen had remembered how cold she’d suddenly felt. On seeing her pallor, the kitchen staff had made another attempt to eject the woman from the premises.

  ‘Mistress,’ implored the plump woman. ‘Mistress. I beg you to help me.’

  It was not in Ellen’s nature to be unkind and the woman had looked so desperately unhappy. She had the look of a peasant, though she was cleanly dressed and had a kind face.

  Her shoes seemed too large for her feet and slapped on the stone floor with each step, like the paddles of a waterwheel.

  Ellen had taken charge. ‘Leave her. Come,’ she’d said, taking hold of the woman’s arm. ‘Let’s seek some fresh air.’

  With her hand cupping the woman’s meaty elbow, she’d guided her out into the cool passage that led from the servants’ quarters to the stable yard.

  ‘This Catherine. You said she was my husband’s flesh and blood?’

  The woman thrust out a square, work-worn hand and leaned against the wall. ‘’Tis my joints,’ she said breathlessly. ‘My legs are no good. And I need to catch my breath.’

  Ellen was touched by the forlorn expression in the woman’s eyes and the fact that the corners of her mouth seemed permanently pointing downwards. Overall her demeanour was one of abject sorrow.