"Yes."
Emilio slipped off the table and came over to Nicole, laughing and yet troubled. She shrugged off the arm he tried to put round her shoulders. "Why are you so angry? Surely all this story is good publicity for Jonathan? It says many good things of his work—during this Vietnam war, and at this place in England where he lives—"
"Combe Castleton," Nicole said stiffly.
"Combe Castleton," Emilio made heavy weather of the consonants, "and London, and Vienna, and Paris. And now our little emergency in Gandria. . . . Adler, the great brain surgeon, has praised his work so generously—"
"He doesn't need Mr. Adler's praise," Nicki said slowly, her face scarlet as she bent over the stove. "Can't you all see how he hates the newspaper stories? And people are coming every day up the lake to stare at us—not very close, because they know Pietro is being nursed here and must remain very quiet—but they come and stare at the albergo as if a murder had been committed here!"
"And very good for trade, too," Emilio grinned. "Later in the summer we shall be full up with visitors, and that is good for business. Your Mr. Grant has brought us luck."
"And ruined his own holiday," Nicole snapped, though under her brittle temper her heart ached with sadness for the happy, peaceful days that were gone for ever, before they had known anything about Jonathan. She added more quietly, "He came here for a rest, incognito. Now he can't step ashore without a reporter or a cameraman dogging his footsteps."
Emilio shrugged. "I shall never understand the English! They work so hard to get to the top of their profession, and then hate the publicity! Me, I am glad there are pictures of this house in the papers, I am glad many visitors will come to us later in the season. If the albergo is good enough for a famous surgeon's holiday, others will find their way here."
"Is that all you can think of, when Pietro is still so very ill?" Nicole asked sadly. She was realising these days that she was more English than she had thought . . . for in this matter her heart and mind were ranged wholly on Jonathan's side, though she still had a private battle to wage with him.
"Now that Pietro is going to get well—you yourself and Jonathan and Mr. Adler all say it is only a matter of rest and time—naturally I am glad we are going to do good business out of it!" Emilio argued good-temperedly. "It means I can get married sooner, and Pietro and Bianca will share everything I make! There will be a lot less work for you, Nicki."
There will be no work for me at all, for I shall have gone by then, the girl thought unhappily, but she made no further effort to stop the enthusiasm over the newspaper articles. A few nights ago it had been all tragedy, now it was all comedy; the Italians could be like children easily moved to the heights or cast down in the depths. Only Lucia, though she too grumbled about Nicole's temper these days, understood something of the cause.
Bianca had a sudden feminine inspiration. "I believe Nicki is jealous!" she cried triumphantly. "She has fallen in love with Jonathan, thinking he was just an ordinary man, and now he is much too rich and famous to marry her!"
Emilio, cuffing his sister soundly over the ears, saved the situation. "Shut up, you little beast! Remember we have to thank Nicki, too, for saving Pietro's life. And now get on with your homework or you will have to stay in all the afternoon!"
Nicole, feeling for the first time that she was not really a member of this family, prepared the invalid's tray with hands that were inexplicably shaking.
"Nicki, can you spare a moment? I want to talk to you."
Jonathan stood in the open doorway of his room, a pipe in his mouth after he had called to Nicki, his hands thrust suddenly into the pockets of his tweed jacket. Though the midday sun blazed down on the lake, making it a shimmering golden mirror, inside these thick stone walls it was cool; in most of the rooms the green shutters were closed and the glare shut out; only in Jonathan's room were they wide open at all hours of the day or night. He had been watching the girl walking down the long, irregular corridor with Pietro's luncheon tray in her hands, on her small face an abstracted look that was very unlike her usual alertness. She started when he called, and as she came closer he put one hand gently under her small, determined chin.
"What are you looking sad about, Nicki? Hasn't Pietro eaten his lunch?"
By way of answer she thrust the tray at him, and its empty dishes, and grinned. It was as if a mask dropped over her expression. So even this child could act, he thought ruefully.
"Pietro is doing fine; he wants to get up. I'm not sad any more, but I am very, very angry," she said defiantly.
"With me?"
"With you. If you hadn't saved Pietro's life I think I would like to kill you!" she said simply.
"That's frank, anyway." He took the tray from he unresisting hands and deposited it on a bench in the passage. "Come inside and talk, Nicki. Get it off your chest. This is siesta time and Pietro is resting, isn't he?
"Pietro is resting," she acknowledged, "and that great. cow of a nurse is knitting—always she is knitting! She must make enough socks to stock a shop!"
"Fraulein Weiger is not a cow, she is a very goo nurse," Jonathan smiled down at the girl with a twinkle in his grey eyes, "and it is me, not the poor nurse, with whom you are angry. Come and scold me—you've been avoiding me all the week, haven't you?"
"I have been busy, looking after your—nurses," she retorted with immense dignity, "and telling lies to the reporters, saying I know nothing."
"Very kind of you. I'm grateful." Jonathan was dry.
"And it would not be proper for me to come and talk in the bedroom of the great Jonathan Grant!" Nicole added fiercely.
"Oh, oh! Since when have you become so anxious about the proprieties?" he demanded, unable to stop the laughter that rumbled in his chest. This fierce yet demure child was so unlike the Nicki he knew, yet beneath his amusement there was a great tenderness for the hurt he knew she had sustained. He drew her inside firmly and over to the broad, shallow window seat. "We will leave the door wide open, child, and not even the proper Fraulein Weiger can complain!"
He felt her arms trembling in his gentle grip, and her face was averted from him as she stared over the lake. He sat down close to her, and suddenly he was not amused any more.
"Nicki, look at me. Tell me I'm every sort of scab for coming here—knowing all about your family history—and not telling you at once—"
"Jonathan Grant," she whispered fiercely, but she kept her face averted. She might have been addressing someone across the lake. "Mr. Johnson, a nice English surgeon on holiday! The same name as my grandmother's solicitor, living in Combe Castleton—I suppose you are his son! I suppose he sent you here to make your report on me—like that horrible detective! And I—like a fool, I trusted you and told you everything! How you must have laughed inside yourself!"
Jonathan felt the slow colour mounting to his own face. He answered soberly, "I've never laughed at you, Nicki— in that way. Stephen Grant—your grandmother's solicitor —is my uncle. I live with him and Aunt Bella. The Grants and the Stannisfords have been friends for generations..."
"So they sent you to find out about me," she said stonily.
"In a way, yes. I want you to try and understand how it happened, Nicki. It's true that I'd been ill, that my doctor ordered me away for a complete rest and change— preferably to some place I hadn't visited before. My uncle, who is very friendly with your grandmother and anxious about her health, asked me to come to Lugano—"
Nicole got up restlessly and stood with her back to him, staring out of the side window. "You could have told me who you were," she said in a muffled voice.
"And been sent away immediately with a flea in my ear like the enquiry agent?" Jonathan asked dryly. "Have some sense, Nicki! All their letters were coming back unopened; there seemed no way of reaching you, to tell you what conditions in Combe Castleton were really like, to plead with you for mercy to an old and frail woman—"
"Who had no mercy on my mother!" Nicole answered quietly.
"Well, I'm listening," she said stonily.
He told her of his great reluctance to interfere at all in a family dispute that did not, after all, concern him at all; of his visit to Helen Stannisford, and how it had changed his opinion ... that, and the sidelight thrown on Henry Stannisford's character by his uncle.
"So you agreed to come and spy on the wicked, wilful granddaughter," she said dully.
"I did nothing of the sort." Jonathan was stung to self-defence. "I agreed merely to take my holiday in Lugano, to try and meet you and put your grandmother's point of view before you. I warned them all that I would not attempt to persuade you unfairly—if you were happy here."
"So you gave me a false name, pretended to be my friend, and let me tell you all my history!" she cried angrily, and suddenly turned to beat her small fists against his chest in a desolation of weeping that she could not control. "Oh, Jonathan, how could you, how could you! And I thought I'd found a friend!"
"And so you have, my darling." He held her close, until the first paroxysm of grief was over, knowing that she was temporarily deaf and dumb and blind to reasoning. But his arms holding her securely, his hand smoothing the small fair head, gave their own message of loving kindness to the stricken girl.
"There, blow. It'll do you good to get that out of your system. And now will you listen to me carefully, Nicole— because I do want to be truly your friend, and I'm bitterly sorry to have deceived you at all. But you must admit you would never have allowed me to come here if you'd known who I was from the start."
She used the large, clean hankie vigorously. Her small ravaged face hurt Jonathan, but he did not want to weaken her further by too much sympathy. "I would have sent you away with a flea in your ear!" she admitted shakily, with a faint echo of her usual dry humour.
"Right, now we're getting somewhere. I was 'Mr. Johnson' because you would never have had any dealing with anyone called Grant. But as soon as I got to know you, Nicole, I felt a mean scab—several times I nearly told you the truth, because you had convinced me that you knew your own business best and I was not prepared to interfere in any way, except just to tell you about your grandmother and let you make the final decision."
"But you never did tell me—even that night in the kitchen," she said faintly. She wanted so much to go on believing in Jonathan, believing every word he said, but her heart was aching and sore with the discoveries of the past week, and she was still too tired to reason properly.
He smiled suddenly. "Dear Nicki, have you forgotten—we heard the branch breaking, just after you'd said something—something about your grandmother sending a friend if she couldn't travel herself. I was just going to tell you that I was that friend—"
"It would have been better if you had told me in the beginning," she said sombrely, "then I would have saved you a lot of bother, wasting your holiday! I shall not come and eat humble-pie in the house closed against my father. Never, never will I be such a traitor to his memory! You can write and tell my grandmother so, and your precious uncle!"
"I haven't wasted my holiday." Jonathan put an arm lightly about her slim shoulders, and both of them stood looking out over the lake, very peaceful in the golden afternoon. "You're not stupid enough to think I haven't enjoyed every moment of my stay here, Nicki."
"Except this last week," she murmured.
"Perhaps not this last week," he acknowledged ruefully, "though even that has been infinitely worth while in another way." He looked down at his free hand, flexing the fingers thoughtfully. "I know now that I'm strong again, that I shall go back to my work refreshed. And apart from anything else, I want to thank you for that, Nicki. You have given me a wonderful rest."
Her gentian-blue eyes were still misted with tears. She said, with a faint echo of her old insouciance, "And you have saved my little cousin's life, so we're quits. I couldn't be really angry with you, Jonathan, after that."
"That was pure chance." For a moment his voice Rounded crisp, impersonal, as it had done while he was operating. "Let's not have any emotional blackmail, Nicki, on either side. I want us to be real friends from now on, with no more lies—if you can trust me?"
"I want to. Oh, Jonathan, I want to!" For the first time she turned and faced him, and her eyes held his with the old frankness. "I think—I think it hurt most to find that you had lied to me!" She added doubtfully, "But I suppose you thought you were doing me a kindness—"
"You—and an old lady who has led a wretched life under the thumb of a bad-tempered tyrant." He thought for a while about Helen Stannisford, adding suddenly, almost harshly, "But I gave them no promises to try and influence you. And I did not even write at once and say that we had met. ... I only wrote last week, after Pietro's accident, and I want you to read my uncle's reply."
She took it from him reluctantly. It was a typed letter on the headed paper that she hated so much, Grant, Noble, Grant and Grant, Solicitors . . .
For the past week Nicole's head and her heart had been in bitter conflict. She had liked Jonathan so much, trusted him absolutely; on the night of Pietro's accident she had almost worshipped him. This was a man she could love and respect, a man doing a wonderful job with high skill and courage—enough courage even to defy medical etiquette —and the sureness born of experience and good training. To discover from the press reports, from the visiting doctors and specialists and the nurses, that Jonathan was an emissary from what she always thought of as the enemy camp, had been devastating. Against the personal anger that flared in her was the gratitude she felt for what he had done for Pietro, and the instincts of her own heart that he was, in spite of everything, still trustworthy. Now he had dragged all her misery out of her; now she had to read this letter from her grandmother's solicitor. But the wording of it soon banished every other thought from her head.
It was not a dictated letter couched in legal phrases, it was, in fact, rather badly typed, obviously by the uncle himself.
My dear Jonathan, it ran,
Your aunt and I are delighted to know that you are having such a splendid holiday, and that you feel quite fit again. At first we were so pleased, too, that you have found Nicole Berenger such a charming girl, and happy with her adopted Italian family . . . also that she is so like Evelyn as you remembered her. Yet, following on that good news, your decision not to try and influence her one way or the other came as a grievous disappointment to us both.
I dared not read more than the first part of your letter to Helen when I visited her yesterday. The doctor says her heart is in very poor condition and he emphasises the effect of further disappointments on her health. She was utterly delighted to hear some personal news of Nicole, and is living for the day when she will see her granddaughter. I do beg of you, dear boy, to reconsider your decision and ask Nicole again to come home, if only for a visit. Otherwise I fear Helen will travel to Lugano herself, against all her doctor's advice.
With love from your aunt and myself,
S. Grant.
For a long moment Nicole stared again over the water, her mind a tumult of conflicting emotions. She remembered her mother's unchanging love for her mother, her father's generous lack of resentment. Just now, down in the kitchen, she had realised that the time was coming when she must leave the albergo. Everything was against her stubborn pride. She sighed as at last she turned and handed the letter back to Jonathan.
"Very well. When Pietro is well again I will come and visit my grandmother. But I want no charity from her, and I don't promise to stay."
"Dear Nicki!" Jonathan smiled at her suddenly, tenderly. "That's generous of you. I don't think you will regret it. And you can always come and weep on my shoulder when you want to."
Nicole laughed shakily as she picked up the tray and went away.
"She must be rich, your grandmother." Emilio and Nicole were sitting on the
stone steps in front of the albergo. It was early morning and almost time to take Pegasus across to be fuelled for her day's trips. Emilio had been cleaning her out just now, until he intercepted the postman in his launch. Sometimes the mail came by the coast road from the village, sometimes by water. Today there was a fairly big packet for the albergo.
"Getting quite famous, with your broken-down old inn, aren't you?" the postman greeted his friend cheerily in Italian. "My, but some folk are lucky!"
Emilio grinned and whistled for Nicole, who came run-ning to fetch Jonathan's letters. Always their English guest had the letters. But today there was one for her, and when she had given Lucia the rest to put on Jonathan's breakfast tray she returned to the steps to open it. Since the house had been invaded with visitors and nurses, Lucia was getting flustered by so many strangers, and Nicki had persuaded Jonathan that he was doing them all a kindness by taking his breakfast in his own room. Actually she knew that he preferred to be alone. The old happy, growing familiarity with the Fionettis had been disrupted since Pietro's accident, and though she could not prevent Bianca's pestering adoration and Emilio's curiosity at supper, she could at least let him eat his breakfast in peace.
"Of course she is rich, we have always known that," Nicole answered impatiently. She was more interested in the letter she was reading than in the bank draft on the Bank of Switzerland for six hundred francs that Emilio was holding so respectfully.
The delicate, spidery handwriting was not easy to read, but Nicole persevered with mixed feelings. This reaching out towards reconciliation between herself and her English grandmother was contrary to all her pride, to her loyalty towards her dead parents, to her own instincts to preserve her freedom . . . yet it was what her parents had wanted. Above all, it was what Jonathan wanted, and Nicole hardly realised how much she had come to rely on his advice.
"Six hundred Swiss francs, not French francs, Nicki— that is quite a nice amount," Emilio said.
"Most of it is for the fare, the rest—she says here, it is the most they would allow her to send out of England, and I can use it how I like; we can buy clothes or anything I need when I arrive." She looked up, flushing with annoyance at Emilio's grinning face.
Dorothy Quentin - The Inn by the Lake Page 9