By the time they returned to the Villa La Cristola the owner of the place had returned from wherever it was that he had spent the day, and he appeared to be in a very amiable mood, and when Roberto told him about the ices he insisted on reimbursing Sarah. As a matter of fact, he handed over a small sum of money which he said she was to devote to purchases of that sort ... although he did not recommend over-indulgence in ice-creams. But he wanted the children to have everything that they required, and if they wanted a few treats occasionally ... well, he didn't think it would be very harmful if they were humoured.
He had the air of one who was, temporarily at least, very well satisfied with life, and Sarah wondered whether his satisfaction stemmed from some contact he had made that day. It was quite possible he had lunched in pleasing company, and the memory was like a fragrance that clung about him and mellowed Him to such an extent that even when Maria fell over on the drive and cut herself and was very loud-voiced and shrill in her lamentations he did not appear to flinch from the sound of her voice, or think it necessary to scold her for not looking where she was going. He was actually the one who carried her into the house and attended to the hurt himself in the downstairs cloakroom, while Sarah stood by and wished he would not take on one of her duties and make her feel absurdly useless when it was obviously her role to be as active as possible.
Maria's tears dried and a box of expensive confectionery produced from the car soothed her still further - he admitted, once Roberto also had been permitted to put his hand into the box, that one of the friends with whom he had lunched that day had sent the box as a gift for the children, but he had temporarily forgotten to produce it before. He unbent still further and carried Maria down to the beach, where delicious blue-black shadows were beginning to play amongst the greenish- blue rocks, and it was the one really perfect hour of the day for taking a swim.
But Sarah was shy of exhibiting her prowess in the water under his eyes, and she did not care to request permission to return to the house for her costume. So she sat down on the warm sand with her back against one of the rocks and watched the dark, distinguished- looking uncle fondling his niece's elf-locks, and while he encouraged the child rather unwisely, Sarah thought, to make inroads on the box of chocolates, and Roberto went wandering happily away over the rocks, she ventured to make a reference to the donor of the box of chocolates.
'Your friend is very generous,' she remarked. 'That is a really wonderful present. We really ought to put it away and hoard it for the occasional treat. And I'm quite sure Maria will want to keep her very best hair-ribbons in that when it is empty.'
Saratola looked up and a faint smile curved his lips, while a slightly indolent look of satisfaction dwelt in his eyes.
'You are quite right, senhorita,' he told her. 'My friend is unusually generous ... and unusually charming. She is the daughter of a very old friend, and I think wanted to curry favour with Maria and Roberto. One day, perhaps, we will have her to lunch, and then you will have the pleasure of making her acquaintance, Miss Cunninghame.'
And the slightly indolent look in his eyes became a faint but positive gleam of somewhat dry humour.
'You will like that, will you not, little one?' he inquired of his niece, who was leaning up against him, as his fingers moved in her hair.
She turned her great brown eyes up to his face.
'Do I know her, Uncle Philip?' she asked.
He shook his head.
'No, my little one. But she has heard a great deal of you, and she wishes to meet you ... and you must certainly meet her.'
'When?'
'One day, quite soon, perhaps.'
'How soon?' She was playing with the strap of his extremely masculine-looking wrist-watch. 'If it is very soon perhaps she will bring us another present!'
'What naked greed!' He pretended to be shocked, but Sarah could tell by the bright sparkle of amusement in his eyes that he was not. He even slipped an arm about his niece's slight figure and hugged her almost impulsively to his side. 'I cannot have my friends subjected to this material treatment, and if you are to meet her you will have to promise to behave as if all your thoughts are not constantly dwelling on personal benefits.'
Maria continued to regard him with grave and thoughtful eyes.
'What is she like?' she asked. 'This friend of yours?'
'Oh, beautiful... very beautiful!' He glanced across at Sarah, and although the humour still dwelt in his eyes it struck her that the extraordinarily relaxed expression round his mouth had in it an ingredient of something like contentment as well. 'Anyone more beautiful I think I have never met.'
'Oh!' Maria exclaimed.
Her uncle decided to expand on this exceptional quality possessed by his generous lady friend.
'When you have grown a little more, querida,' touching her cheek, 'and this good sea air has banished the paleness from your cheeks, and your eyes sparkle more, and you eat fewer chocolates and therefore preserve your teeth, you may possibly look just a little like her. But only a very little, I'm afraid,' with an exaggerated sigh.
Maria frowned.
'My mama is beautiful,' she said, 'and your friend cannot be half as beautiful as my mama!'
Saratola appeared to consider the matter; and in fact, he gave it so much thought and apparently weighty consideration, while gazing thoughtfully out to sea, that Sarah at least began to be quite sure he had decided to refrain from commenting on that statement. But she was wrong.
After a moment he smiled, and touched his niece's cheek again.
'There are degrees of beauty, my small one,' he told her, 'and it is sometimes difficult to decide wherein the greater beauty lies ... and in the case of your mama I do agree that she is entirely unique. She is, in fact,' smoothing the soft cheek with a long index finger and gazing in a far-away fashion out to sea, 'superb. You will not understand what I mean by that, but you can take it from me that I mean ... quite wonderful. My friend is wonderful, too, but in a very different fashion.'
'You mean,' Maria inquired shrewdly, 'that she is dark like me and not fair?'
He uncle appeared quite taken aback by her cleverness, and he commended her on it.
'That is so, my monkey... and I can't think how you guessed! But having guessed I will reward you with another chocolate,' and he popped one into her mouth. 'Now,' lifting her to her feet, 'I think it is high time we returned to the house, and high time, too, that you were thinking about preparing for bed.'
Roberto came running towards them immediately in response to his uncle's signal, and they all turned towards the path which led up to the villa garden from the beach. Maria challenged her brother to a race, and the two of them disappeared in a flash up the slightly shelving beach. Sarah, who wondered whether or not she ought to follow them, or whether she should suit her pace to her employer's more dignified one, had the minor problem settled for her when he turned to her and looked her up and down quizzically.
'Little girls grow up quite fast,' he remarked, 'and Maria is going to be perfectly normal in that respect. In a very short while now she will become aware that her sex is an asset to her, and that she must make the most of what she is and attempt, if possible, to improve on any deficiencies. She will become self-conscious and angry if anyone criticizes her pale cheeks and lacklustre eyes ... and perhaps even her mother's all-too-obvious beauty will annoy her a little. But we must hope that Venetia's daughter will eventually stand impartial comparison with her mother.'
'If it is impartial,' Sarah heard herself remark.
He glanced at her.
'Of course,' he agreed,, 'I am devoted to Maria, and naturally I hope that she will develop into a very pretty niece one day.'
'But you do not anticipate that she will ever be as beautiful as her mother?' drily.
He smiled inscrutably.
'Is Venus as beautiful as Sirius?' he asked. 'Or the light of the moon as bright as starlight? There will never be any real comparison!'
They walked on up the
beach, and he put out a hand to help her over difficult outcrops of rocks, and she felt the warmth and strength of his fingers on her bare arm. She received the impression, just before they reached the open gates of the villa, that his eyes were dwelling upon her contemplatively, and she looked up and round at him swiftly, while somewhere far ahead of them the children's eager voices could be heard.
'You are very fair, Miss Cunninghame,' he observed, as if he had been giving the question of her colouring some thought, 'though you are not a genuine Anglo-Saxon in the way that my sister-in-law is, but no one could possibly mistake you for a Portuguese. When I first caught sight of you in that hotel in Lisbon I thought you must be English, but I couldn't be absolutely sure. Not until I met your eyes!'
Sarah's eyes were misty-mauve as their glances remained temporarily locked.
'And then, senhor?' she asked.
'I realized, of course, there could be no doubt of it. You are very, very English indeed!'
But with nothing in the least outstanding about her lodes? Like Venetia! Was that what he was trying to convey?
CHAPTER FOUR
The next morning Sarah rose early, and, because it seemed heartless to arouse the children when they were sleeping so peacefully and there was still a good hour before they need be awakened, made her way out of the house with her swim-suit under her arm.
She was proposing to enjoy a lonely swim in that larkspur blue sea that was partially embraced by the two arms of the bay, and the obvious thing to have done would have been to have donned her costume in her own bedroom, and run down through the garden to the beach and the water without pausing to change out of her cotton frock on the way. But not knowing whether her employer, should she encounter him, would approve of this course, because his Portuguese ideas of decorum might be offended by it, she decided to take the safest course and undress on the beach.
She chose a really mammoth rock for this purpose, and having an outsize bath-towel with her there was never any danger of her being surprised in a complete state of nudity. But nevertheless she was glad when she was in the water, and only her cotton frock and her wispy undergarments (neatly rolled up in the bath towel and placed under an overhang of rock) indicated where she had undressed on the bare strip of beach.
The previous day, when she bathed with the children, Maria had informed her that her mother always ran down to the beach in her swimsuit, and apparently she was not concerned whether the local people were shocked or not. But Venetia Saratola was Venetia Saratola ... and what she did was probably not the right thing for a mere paid nursery governess to do, so Sarah considered she was wise in running no risks.
All the same, she hoped to get her bathe over before breakfast, while there were still no eyes about to observe her.
It was a wonderful morning, and in the whole of her life she couldn't remember anything quite as perfect. The setting of the bay was so aesthetically perfect, and the low cliffs and the umbrella pines and palms all lent it a drop-scene-at-the-theatre-ish air. It was not quite real - it was something out of a child's picture-book - and at the same time it was all wrapped about in a wonderful soft atmosphere, warm as silk in the sun, and palpitating with colour like a bowl of fruit or a young child's flawless skin.
The sky was blue, but as yet it was not a hard blue, and it was more like pastel-tinted gauze. The sea had a slight swell to it, and there was a welcome breeze when she waded out into it, and the sun flashed on her white helmet and deepened the light bronze of her skin as she commenced a vigorous breast-stroke.
For ten minutes or so she enjoyed herself thoroughly without thought for anything but the sheer animal joy of exercise like this ... under conditions such as this. She floated and crab-crawled and swam beneath the water, and delighted in the silken warmth of the water and the wonderful transparency that permitted her glimpses of maritime gardens so entrancingly beautiful that she longed, temporarily, to be a mermaid or a frogman and dive down and explore them. And while she was floating on her back she watched the shoreline dreamily, and marvelled at the toy-like delicacy of the white and colour-washed villas that were perched upon the sloping edges of the cliffs, and although she couldn't actually see them she knew that they were all surrounded by gardens that were a positive riot of colour under the brilliant morning sun.
She could pick but the Villa La Cristola quite easily, for it was far larger than any of the others, and although Philip Saratola looked upon it as a holiday home and very likely spent only a few weeks in every year there himself it had a certain impressiveness, and was certainly furnished in a way few holiday homes that Sarah had ever had anything to do with, or had heard about, were furnished and cared for.
She wondered how many people at home in England could maintain a summer bungalow in such a condition, with a couple of gardeners to look after the extensive grounds and maintain the emerald quality of the lawns and the freshness of the roses in a temperature that was already starting to climb more steeply every day, and a man and woman servant in the house helped out by local village help ... which would be the principal help at home in England.
There was no doubt about it whatsoever, Philip Saratola was an extremely rich man, and Venetia Saratola was very fortunate to have him for a brother- in-law, particularly as he planned to take care of her and her children for the rest of their lives ... and even if she never married again she would, apparently, have nothing to worry about Sarah found herself thinking of her and the portrait that hung in the dining room of the villa, and she couldn't help feeling more than half persuaded that Philip had an immense amount of admiration for his sister-in-law ... in fact, taking into account the almost reverential looks he had cast at the portrait, and his insistence that Venetia had all the virtues in addition to being really quite remarkably beautiful in an extremely English way, it looked as if he shared his late brother's admiration for her, and might almost be contemplating marrying her himself one of these days.
Sarah had no idea at all whether the laws of Portugal permitted a man to marry his sister-in-law, but marriage laws were altering all the time, and it was quite possible they did. And if he was not contemplating marrying Venetia - who would be a strain on his resources in any case - there was someone else who he freely admitted was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life; and taking into account the fact that she sent his small relatives chocolates, and that he wore -a most amiable expression after lunching with her, it could be that he planned to marry her.
In any case, he was bound to marry someone sooner or later, and Sarah, wondering why it was that such a personable man had remained a bachelor for so long, was fairly sure it would be sooner rather than later.
He must be somewhere in his middle thirties, and a man in his position needed a wife. She regarded the tips of her own toes as she floated on the water, and acknowledged to herself that she would be a fortunate woman who became the wife of Philip Saratola... even if she valued her independence, and disliked having to conform to an excessively formal way of life.
Once married to Saratola her life would be ordered and her dignity would be so well preserved that it would clothe her like a garment.
Her children would wear enchanting hand-smocked frocks, silken shirts and patent leather shoes like Maria and Roberto, and when the time was ripe they would be sent away to school ... or any boys of the marriage most certainly would.
Perhaps girls were treated differently in Portugal, even in Saratola households. And there would be a lot of social life, and almost certainly a whole crowd of relatives, dresses to be worn on formal occasions like the one Venetia was wearing in her portrait, flying visits from one house to the other, and a lot of time spent in Lisbon.
Lisbon! There was a lot in Lisbon to keep a woman entertained and diverted, and in addition the Saratola house would be very grand. A woman like Venetia would look wonderful acting the part of hostess in such a house. Had not Saratola himself more than indicated that she was the world's perfect hostess?
&nbs
p; Sarah frowned and felt as if the water had turned cold, and she turned over on to her stomach and struck out for the shore. It was high time she was returning to the villa for breakfast.
But she kept thinking of Venetia .. and she wondered whether Venetia wanted to marry Saratola. She wondered too whether Venetia looked upon Saratola as an extremely valuable property, or whether she was in love with him.
Whether he was in love with her. ....
Did admiration and love go hand in hand? Or could a man like Saratola love without feeling any particular admiration - without seeing a perfect hostess in a woman's slim shape, and a possibly excellent mother for children in a pair of lovely eyes? Just supposing he fell in love with a girl who had no particularly outstanding qualities, and had never acted the part of a hostess in her life except to a few close friends, would he marry her?
She didn't know why she asked herself this question, but she did.
Almost all women liked children, and would make good mothers, but only a very few could look like. Venetia and have all her charms and graces. So it was reasonably certain Philip had decided to marry her ... if she would have him, and the law allowed it!
Sarah waded up the beach, and then she saw him - the man who had occupied her thoughts almost exclusively for the past ten minutes - sitting on one of the curious, monster-shaped rocks, and smoking a cigarette in the brilliant sunshine.
He was wearing bathing trunks, and the sun was drawing attention to his deeply tanned body. Sarah stood still and stared at him for a moment, so surprised to see him that her surprise showed in her face.
Somehow it had never occurred to her that he went for a morning dip like other people, and that he would be prepared to face her without reaching for a towel or - a beach wrap, and that he could sit there indolently watching her approach with his cigarette smouldering between the shapely, tanned fingers of his right hand, while with his left he maintained a pair of binoculars in position, and she realized that he had been observing all her movements in the water ... possibly for several minutes while she floated on her back and thought about him.
The Bay of Moonlight Page 7