A slim boy with fair, curly hair cropped short, and skin the colour of ripe, warm berries, and eyes that almost matched the incredible blueness of the lake, manoeuvred a clumsy row-boat up to the steps and accosted him. A fair Italian, Jonathan thought, taking in the thin, almost classical beauty of the boy and wondering at the strength in the thin arms. A spate of Italian made him shake his head, and suddenly he was shocked to hear perfect English from the laughing lips of the boy.
"Are you the Englishman who wants the Albergo Fionetti? Why do you want to come to us? There are plenty of hotels in the town—" the cropped, curly head gestured contemptuously towards the well-kept promenade —"and if you want luxury, go along to Paradiso!"
Jonathan grinned. He couldn't help himself. This ragged urchin had charm as well as impudence, and it was not a boy but a girl. Hardly more than a child. "I don't want luxury," he said firmly. "I want peace, and some fishing. I heard that you have both at the albergo. But how did you know about me?"
"Oh, Peppone told Emilio, who was collecting some people for Morcoté," the girl said as if people were parcels, to be distributed round the lake. She added dubiously: "We don't usually have people to stay. Only for odd meals."
She pointed up the lake. "Gandria's up there, very beautiful for artists. But you are Dot an artist, are you?"
"I paint a little."
For a moment under the hot noonday sun they surveyed each other, Jonathan amused, the girl slightly suspicious. She said childishly, "I said I would bring you over if I thought you were all right."
"And—am I, all right?" he demanded gently, very tall above the jetty, looking down into the bluest eyes he had ever seen.
"I'll take you. But don't grumble when you get there," she answered obliquely. "Stow your things here, by my feet."
He felt suddenly as if he had been given some privilege. He offered to row up the lake, but the girl dismissed that with a casual "I'm used to it. It's easy." He sat where she told him to sit, looking at the child's thin shoulder-blades under the faded cotton shirt. The old boat moved slowly but steadily up the smooth, blue water. The girl did not make conversation but once she asked him his name.
"Oh—Johnson—" he answered vaguely. He wanted to get to know Nicole Berenger before she realised he had come from Combe Castleton. He would be just a stranger on holiday, a fellow who dabbled with painting as a hobby. "You're one of the Fionnettis, I suppose."
She turned her head to flash him a glance from those incredibly blue eyes. "I'm Nicole Berenger," she said proudly, simply: but it was as if she was announcing her title to an ignorant fool. Then, childish again, she grinned her wide, gamine grin. "But you can call me Nicki. Everyone does."
In a minute she turned again, pointing: "Gandria."
Jonathan turned obediently to look up the lake at the approaching coastline, with the big villas whose wrought-iron gates led down to private jetties, millionaires' homes; beyond the villas, to the stuccoed houses covered with flowering creepers that perched precariously on the bank, to the cottages whose stone steps were lapped by the blue water of the lake. But the beauty of it passed him by for that first moment; he was too stunned, looking at this wiry waif who handled a heavy row-boat like a fisherman, and thinking of Helen Stannisford and Osterley House. This was a pretty kettle of fish indeed.
It was a good thing, Jonathan thought, that Nicole had her back to him, or she would certainly have seen the dismay in his face. Lugano was a modern, civilised little town; during his brief walk through it he had noted the bright, clean shops, the well-dressed appearance of its inhabitants. Now the girl he had come to find proved to be a ragged waif—for Nicole's faded shirt and slacks were not casual clothes pour le sport which visitors indulge in; they looked like her everyday apparel, and seemingly she was not even conscious of her gypsy appearance. Jonathan recovered swiftly from his first shock, his brain reacted quickly to any emergency, but he was glad he had not given his real name to the child. To this girl, rather. He found it difficult to believe that she was twenty-two, and Helen Stannisford's granddaughter, and the possible heiress to Osterley House and a fortune. What a shock she would have given sleepy old Combe Castleton if she had answered Uncle Steve's letters in person!
Somewhere deep down in Jonathan a boy laughed. If Nicole Berenger had been dirty as well as shabby, cross-eyed or stupid, he would have given up his mission then and there; made some excuse to return to the town, and booked in at one of the very pleasant-looking hotels he could now see terracing the Bay of Lugano. But there was something undeniably attractive about Nicole's serious, sensitive little face and the gamine grin that lightened it occasionally. She certainly wasn't dirty; her hair and skin gleamed with health and cleanliness that owed nothing to cosmetics. When she was older she might very well be a beautiful woman. . . . Oh, hang it all, Jonathan thought whimsically in the midst of his catalogue, she's only a child, whatever her birth certificate might say.
There was a certain charm in her unselfconscious sexlessness; she was neither a boy nor a girl; the same charm that one finds in intelligent children who have accepted life, children who have been brought up in a happy home. Yet Nicole's home life could not have been happy, in fact she had no real home. . . .
Compassion filled Jonathan as he looked at the slender back bowed with the weight of the clumsy oars, but already he knew better than to offer help. The tenderness in his face was banished instantly as she shipped an oar and kept the boat stationary, well out on the lake, so that he could get a fine sweeping view of Lugano and the immediate shores.
"San Salvatore." She indicated the mountain on their left, and the sharp peak on their right. "Monte Bré. Funiculars run right up to the hotels on the top; at night you can see their lights like a ladder going up, up"—her slim, brown fingers climbed vividly—"like a ladder of stars against the darkness of the night, and at the top the biggest star of all—"
She was not trying to impress him, he understood. She was simply doing her patter, being the guide for a stranger and a tourist. She pointed out Paradiso, with its luxury hotels and public gardens festooned with climbing roses; the Lido; the cathedral and several of the churches they could see from the water. The little town looked clean, charming, and a trifle conventional from out here. Jonathan found himself, unexpectedly, turning his eyes towards the older, picturesque villages further away. "Lugano is pretty, but I think I shall prefer the old places," he heard himself saying, and was rewarded by that quick smile.
"Ah, but we have no bathroom or plumbing. There is a place down the garden that Emilio sees to," she answered prosaically.
Jonathan drew in a deep breath of the crystalline air, air purified by the vast expanse of water, by the mountains and the snows of winter. "I think I can manage without plumbing," he said gently, "and this is a big enough bath. I'd like to swim tonight."
"You'll find the water cold." She was matter-of-fact. "We don't swim yet, for a few weeks." She pointed out Bissone on the opposite shore, and told him he must see the seventeenth-century house of the painter Tencella Carpoforo, who had founded a school of art at the Imperial Court of Vienna and left his home to the nation. Again Nicole's brown hands came into play. "It's now a museum. Quite small, but very interesting—because it's still a house. Everything is kept just as it was used, the dining room and bedrooms and kitchen. All the paintings and objets d'art are the originals—"
He was amused by her competence, touched by it as he would have been touched by a child's skill; yet already he knew that both amusement and tenderness must be hidden from Nicole. The tilt of her head, the sculptured nose, the small aggressive chin, the fire that sparked now and then in her blue eyes, were signs of pride. He remembered, too, that her father had been an artist.
"I'll take you there, if you like," she offered, using one oar to keep the clumsy boat from drifting.
"Not today. I want to get home and change into some clothes more suitable for this sun—" Jonathan's crooked smile appealed to her and she nodded. Th
ose were indeed silly clothes to wear in this place, but he looked distinguished in them. Not a bit like the usual tourists. She had promised Lucia not to bring him back if he looked stuffy, or likely to give them a lot of trouble. But she had liked him at once; it was as if they had been friends a long time. That was silly, she knew, but she was more homesick than she realised for her own kind; for the sound of an English voice that talked with her like a friend, not merely exclaiming over the beauties of the lake. As she began to row slowly and steadily towards Gandria he was asking, "Do you take many tourists around?" and she laughed. It was the mischievous laugh of a child.
"In this old tub? Sometimes, but Emilio takes them in the motor-boat. She's called Pegasus and flies through the water. But she's not yet paid for and uses a lot of petrol. This one we use for fishing, and odd jobs like fetching you. And when I have to go shopping," she added casually. "But I detest shopping! Usually I get Bianca to do it on her way home from school. This is my boat. I use it very much."
"I can see you do. Surely"—Jonathan spoke lightly, gently, so as not to arouse that spark in her—"it's rather a heavy boat for a girl to manage?"
"Pff ! I'm strong, stronger than I look." Nicole did not even pause to consider that. "And she only cost a hundred francs, because Stefano had finished with her. The motor-boat costs fourteen hundred francs and it will take Emilio a long time to pay for her."
Jonathan was doing sums with the unfamiliar Swiss francs. A hundred and twenty pounds. It did not sound much to him for a motor-boat. When he said so Nicole threw him one of her swift, curious glances.
"I suppose you're rich. If you are, we may make quite a lot of money from you while you stay at the Albergo Fionetti," she said, with complete frankness.
Jonathan laughed. This was the girl who had turned down the chance of inheriting a fortune. He could not understand it, but he found himself suddenly curious, eager to know all about her background. He said dryly, "At least I've been warned. But who is this Emilio, and why is it important to have a motor-boat? You seem to manage very well in this one, and surely you're not tied for time in this place?"
She rested on her oars and swung round to look at him, with pity for his ignorance. "Don't you see"—she waved a hand round the shores of the lake—"all these places are far apart? Gandria up here, Melide down there where the bridge is, and beyond Melide the old, old village of Morcoté with its famous church—you have to climb up four hundred steps to that and the cemetery! And over there, Bissone and Campione—that's Italian, and they have a casino. Don't go there or they'll skin you of all your money. And Caprino—there's a ristorante there with a good wine, and dancing on a balcony over the lake, very romantic and not expensive!"
"It sounds delightful." Jonathan was still dry. He could not remember when he had last gone dancing. "But I still don't understand why you have to visit all these places in a hurry. You live here, don't you?"
Nicole's chuckle was both amused and impatient. "Naturally we live here," she answered with quaint dignity. "I live here with the Fionettis, with Emilio and Bianco and Pietro. The albergo belongs to them, but we should never make enough to live on from serving odd meals. Emilio takes tourists round to places of interest. I do it sometimes; it's rather fun—but a motor-boat makes all the difference. They're always in a hurry, the English and Germans and Americans! A few days here, then off to Florence and Rome or Venice. The French and Italians are not in such a hurry. They come to look, and live with us for a while—not just to take photographs and say they've 'done' Lugano!"
He found himself sympathising with her outlook. Even during his journey of twenty-four hours from London he had heard people discussing itineraries that sounded fantastic to him. He wondered just what Nicole's outlook was, all in all; she spoke perfect English without a trace of foreign accent—probably due to her mother's teaching. Remembering Evelyn, and looking at this fair child, he realised that there was a family resemblance. Probably Helen Stannisford, before her hair turned white, had looked like this girl. She was still petite ... Yet in spite of the perfect, easy English, Nicole was living with an Italian family, and obviously regarded the Albergo Fionetti as her home.
"And I haven't even brought a camera with me," he grinned boyishly, "only some fishing and painting tackle.
"Yes—you paint. That is good!" Nicole's approval strengthened. "A motor-boat makes all the difference. Emilio does three trips a day round the lake, morning, afternoon, evening. That way he earns the instalments. When Pegasus is paid for he'll be all right."
"And you?" Jonathan demanded, greatly daring. "What do you do with your time?"
"I paint too." She pulled a little grimace and startled him again with her honesty. "Very bad pictures. My father would have burned them. But all this"—again the slender, brown hand indicated the breathtaking beauty, of still water reflecting mountains, of the rioting flowering creepers over old stone walls, the wrought-iron gates and poplars of the villa gardens, the huddled, picturesque cottages—"all this looks very nice in paintings. Tourists like to take back souvenirs, and most of them don't know that my pictures are very bad. I earn my living, and help Lucia to run the albergo, and look after the children when Lucia to run the albergo, and look after the children when they come home from school. Their parents are dead, you see."
"But—" Jonathan's eyes asked a question.
"My parents are dead, too," she answered briefly, and turned back to her rowing, and he knew that it would be unwise to ask any more questions yet. They had passed the villas set well up on their terraced gardens, and now reached one of the old stone steps in the bank. Nicole moored the boat to an iron ring in the wall and nodded upward, picking up Jonathan's cases with the casual ease of a porter. "The Albergo Fionetti," she said, and there was a hint of affectionate pride in her voice.
"I'll take those." He was determined, and with a faint surprised smile she surrendered the cases and led the way up the ancient, worn stone steps.
"Mind you don't fall back in the lake," she warned impulsively, and suddenly flushed deeply under her golden tan as she noticed his limp. "I'm sorry. I didn't see that you were lame, Mr. Johnson."
He grinned down at her suddenly.
"Only a temporary stiffness. It will go when I've done some climbing and swimming."
At first glance the Albergo Fionetti was a picturesque ruin, nothing more. They had left the attractive villas, standing in their own grounds, behind. This part of Gandria was a row of waterside cottages, their front doors at the top of worn stone steps to which small row-boats were moored, their windows barely above the water level. The albergo was larger than the cottages; it was raised up on the bank a little, and it stood in its own grounds. Jonathan stared at the little inn, fascinated; he had never seen anything quite like it. It rambled all over the place, an architect's nightmare; all the roof levels were different, covered with the old rose-red curly tiles that displayed moss and lichen so well. The lower windows and doors were supported by miniature Roman arches, none of the upper windows were straight, and every window seemed to possess its own rustic balcony over which wistaria and other creepers rioted. The garden, except for a few roses and a very neat vineyard, was ragged and unkempt and possessed few flowers; but on every single balcony there were window-boxes blazing with colour—aglow with petunias, geraniums and pansies, and the vivid blue of the gentian. The walls had been washed in pale pink, and against this soft, glowing background the creepers rioted.
"It reminds me of Polperro a little," Jonathan said absentmindedly. His tidy surgeon's mind abhorred the peeling plaster, the lichened roof, the general untidiness of everything, the smell of damp; yet the artist in him stood transfixed. There was something undeniably beautiful in the place, and the windows must command a magnificent view over the lake. Just beyond, further up the coast, the hills rose sharply from the very edge of the limpid water.
"Polperro? Where is that—in Italy?" Poised like a brown nymph on the topmost step, Nicole asked the question idly. Sh
e was pleased because he stood still to look, instead of rushing indoors to see what kind of a bedroom they were offering him; Nicole had spent ten years here, and she loved the place. She had known the sadness of her mother's death here, but even that had been softened by the kindness of the Fionettis, by the beautiful peace of Lake Lugano. She had been twelve years old when they had come here after her father's tragic death in Paris, and the albergo had long since become her home. If this Englishman had stared at the albergo with supercilious eyes, if he had hesitated about the matter of plumbing, she would have made some excuse to dump him back in the town. Instead, he stood and looked at everything with a bright expression in his grey eyes, and the suspicion of affection already growing in his voice. He would do. If Lucia made a fuss or Pietro tried to be funny, she would deal with them. . . . She asked the question about Polperro idly, politely.
Jonathan smiled outright. "I suppose it does sound Italian. Actually it's in Cornwall."
Instantly Nicole's face closed up. The smiling pride left it, she stood straight and slim beside the stranger and demanded suspiciously, "That's in the West Country, isn't it?"
He realised he had blundered. Evelyn would have talked to her daughter, of course, about the West Country.
"Yes. . . ." He was elaborately casual, examining an old bronze statue in the wilderness of a garden. "I used to go there for my holidays when I was a boy. I'm very fond of the West Country."
"My mother came from there, she was English." Nicole relaxed again. That idiotic private detective with his impertinence had made her all on edge, unnecessarily suspicious. Lugano was full of English people at this time of the year; naturally, some of them came from the West Country. She added gently, "She said some of our villages reminded her of that, too ... of the old fishing villages with the water coming right up to the doors of the cottages, like it does here. Sometimes I think she was very homesick, my mother."
Dorothy Quentin - The Inn by the Lake Page 2