“That is sacrilege!” Fyfe exclaimed. “Now that the cat is out of the bag, you are going to have to listen to me eulogising about Falcon cars and if you are bored you can just blame it on the Press who have ferreted me out.”
“Have you produced a new car that is very exceptional? Susanna enquired.
“It is a six-cylinder 72 h.p. model,” Fyfe replied, “and I am going to enter it for the race next year from New York to Paris. And drive it myself.”
“From New York to Paris?” Susanna echoed. “But how? How can you do that?”
“Via Seattle, Japan and Siberia,” Fyfe answered. “About twelve thousand miles and I reckon I shall be able to do it in one hundred and seventy days.”
“But how can you attempt such a feat? Surely it would be dreadfully dangerous?”
There was a little throb in her voice that made Fyfe reach out his hand to find hers.
“I thought when I left New York more dead than alive,” he said, “and was brought to London because they told me that only the London surgeons could save my sight, that I had not a chance in hell of ever seeing again. Now I know that I shall not only see, but I shall drive my new car, as I intended to do.”
“How can you be so – sure ?” Susanna whispered.
She could feel herself quiver with strange sensations running through her because he was touching her hand.
“You have made me sure,” he answered. “Have you not poured hope and optimism into me in one way or another ever since we came here? You can hardly tell me now that we are on the last lap, that you don’t believe I shall win through.”
“Yes, of course you will,” Susanna whispered.
Then, as if she could not bear to think of it, she said,
“Were you worried and upset the first day we came here when I read to you about Henry Ford’s model since you feared that his cars might be more successful than yours?”
“It was a shock to find out that he was competing with my cars,” Fyfe replied. “Now I know more, I realise we are not vying with each other in the same market. And I have learned from confidential sources that Ford intends by increased production to reduce his prices every year.”
“And that will hurt you?” Susanna queried.
“I don’t think so. I am building a much higher quality car, one that you will be proud to be seen in.”
His words brought back forcefully to Susanna the thought that, when he could see her, he would be anything but proud for her to be seen in his car.
She rose to her feet saying,
“The reporters made me forget that this is a very special day. Many Happy Returns, Fyfe, and I have a present for you.”
She put the parcel she had been carrying in her left hand onto his lap.
“How did you know it was my birthday?” he asked. “I suppose Chambers told you.”
“He told me you were twenty-six.”
“Almost middle-aged! So I hope you will treat me with respect. But there was no need for you to buy me a present.”
“I hope – you will – like it.”
He was undoing the wrapping paper carefully and when he had done so he said,
“It’s a box and I have the idea that it is painted.”
“Open it,” Susanna urged him.
He felt with his fingers for the catch and, as he opened the pretty painted lid, the tune began to play and he gave an exclamation of delight.
Susanna was watching the smile on his lips and she thought as she did so that he was in fact even more like Lorenzo the Magnificent than she had really expected him to be.
There was the same firm chin, the same mouth that could be determined, perhaps obstinate, and yet the lips had something sensual about them.
At the thought she drew in her breath knowing that, just as women had pursued Lorenzo and found him attractive, women would also pursue Fyfe.
Much of his nose was still hidden behind the bandage, but his hair was dark and, although it was still very short because it had been scorched by fire, she could see that it waved back from a square forehead.
She was sure that when she could see him completely he would in some ways be more American, and yet undoubtedly there was some resemblance to the terracotta bust of Lorenzo.
As if he sensed her scrutiny, Fyfe asked,
“What are you thinking?”
“If I told you, it might make you conceited!”
“I doubt it. I have the feeling that you are comparing me to Lorenzo the Magnificent and not particularly to my advantage.”
Susanna was not really surprised that he should be so intuitive where her thoughts were concerned.
In the last weeks he had, as if on her instructions, trained his Third Eye to perceive so much and so acutely that sometimes she forgot that he was blind.
The tune from the little box tinkled to an end.
“It’s a lovely present!” Fyfe enthused, “and it was very sweet of you, Susanna, to give it to me. I don’t have to tell you that I shall always treasure it.”
She wanted to ask him if when she had left him, he would sometimes play it and think of her and then she knew it would be a stupid request.
Once this dream world had come to an end he would go back to a very different one, to his cars, to his racing and to the battle with his competitors not only in a race but for the patronage of the public.
How could he then be expected to remember the woman who had only been a voice in the darkness?
‘I have to be practical and use my common sense,’ Susanna told herself, ‘and that means facing the fact that I shall never, once he can see, mean anything to him – but a memory.’
It was a depressing thought, but she decided she would not let it spoil another precious moment that she could be with him.
“I have so much to tell you about the Ponte Vecchio,” she began. “I have never had time before to look in the shops and they are absolutely thrilling! There are so many things made by the Florentine craftsmen that I am quite certain have no equal anywhere else in the world.”
“That is what I have always thought,” Fyfe said. “As soon as I can see, I want to buy you a piece of jewellery, Susanna, that will not only express my thanks for what you have done for me but be a compliment to your beauty.”
His words brought a pain that made Susanna close her eyes for a moment.
Why had she not told him the truth at the very beginning she asked herself for the thousandth time?
How could she have pretended to be what she was not and now know that soon he must face the revelation not only of her appearance but of her duplicity in lying?
She was relieved from saying anything, however, when Clint came into the room carrying a jug of fruit juice which had, now the weather had grown so hot, supplanted the tea that Susanna had been provided with when she first came to the Villa.
Setting the jug down on a table on the verandah, Clint poured out two glasses and handed them on a tray first to Susanna and then to Fyfe.
“What does this contain?” Fyfe asked.
Before Clint could reply Susanna gave a little cry.
“That is cheating! You know you have to guess.”
“You are still giving me lessons?” he enquired with a smile.
She thought that she had never seen anything so fascinating as the movement of his lips.
“Of course,” she answered. “Even when the last bandage is off you may find it useful to see in the dark like a cat and to know what you are eating and drinking by using your senses correctly.”
“Very well, Teacher. I will listen to you for a little while longer,” Fyfe replied.
He took a sip from his glass and said,
“This is a juice we have not had before. I thought that we must have tried them all by now.”
“Guess!” Susanna insisted.
“I know. Peaches.”
Susanna glanced at Clint.
“That’s right, sir. The first peaches from the garden came in today and seeing what a
good crop we’ve got I expect you’ll have to put up with them now for every meal.”
He went from the room as he spoke and Susanna laughed.
“There is always a slight sting in everything Clint says,” she commented, “but perhaps that is what makes him so original.”
“I am very lucky to have him,” Fyfe said. “I know that as I am lucky to have Chambers and of course you, Susanna.”
“Have I been – lucky for you?”
“Now you are fishing for compliments!”
He paused for a minute before he said,
“I am saving them all up, as it happens, until I am myself again.”
He put his hand to his chin as he went on,
“You don’t know what it is like to have those hot restricting bandages removed. Sometimes I felt suffocated by them and I wanted to tear them off.”
“That would have been a terrible thing to do.”
“Yes, I know. The doctors made it very clear that it would be fatal for them to be taken away before the skin had completely healed.”
“And now – as you say – you are nearly yourself.”
She thought as she looked at him that he was, as far as she was concerned, different, very different from what he had been before.
Because she was so used to seeing a huge white bandaged mummified head in front of her, she had almost ceased to believe that he could be any different.
But now he was very much an attractive man, a man who made her feel shy when she had not felt shy before, a man she vibrated to in a different way from how she had reacted previously.
“Yes, soon I shall be myself,” Fyfe said as if he was following a train of thought, “and yet I almost shrink from stepping back into the world again. Being here in the darkness has been like living on an island in the middle of the Pacific.”
It was what Susanna had thought, but she knew that it could never mean to him what it had meant to her.
‘I love him!’ she told herself, ‘but he must never be aware of it because I could not bear his pity any more than I could bear to watch the shock in his eyes when he sees me and realises what I really look like.’
As if the thought was almost too hard to be borne, she put down the glass and said,
“I am going to find out if the books have arrived from Paris. Remember the long list we made? At least some of them should arrive today, but I cannot wait to see if the Gustave Flauberts we asked for are here.”
Fyfe did not answer and after a moment she said, a little hesitatingly,
“But perhaps now I know who you are and you no longer have to pretend, you would rather I read you about motor cars? There surely must be plenty about them in the newspapers and magazines?”
“It’s strange,” Fyfe replied, “but when you first came here I could think of nothing else. Even though it hurt me to do so, I deliberately did not ask you after that first day to read about what was happening in The Motoring World, firstly because Chambers told me that to get so agitated would retard my recovery and secondly it infuriated me not to be in America and know exactly what was happening.”
Susanna was listening, but she did not speak and he went on,
“Now I feel that I have a thousand interests that demand my attention and if the whole Falcon Empire has fallen to the ground it will be entirely your fault!”
“Adam always blamed Eve,” Susanna added quickly.
Then she blushed because she realised that she was suggesting that she was his Eve, which she had no right to do.
“We will talk about our books and all the questions they arouse in us,” Fyfe said firmly. “They belong to our island, Susanna, where there are no roads and therefore no place for cars. When we sail away from it, I will tell you and expect you to believe me, that the Falcon is the best and most outstanding car ever designed.”
“I reserve the right to question that,” Susanna replied. “Being English I naturally think that the Rolls-Royce is the top car of the world, while the French would undoubtedly challenge that statement with their Dion-Bouton.”
“Now that is something I have to answer – ” Fyfe began.
He was exclaiming very volubly on the merits of the Falcon when Mr. Chambers came into the room.
“I have two cables from America,” he said, “and I suppose, as Susanna has now been let into the secret of who you are, I can give them to you in her presence.”
“Susanna is not the slightest bit interested, so your plan of keeping her in ignorance was quite unnecessary,” Fyfe replied. “She had never heard of Fyfe Falcon and wishes only to ride in a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost!”
Mr. Chambers’s eyes were twinkling.
“I can see that this is going to be a real bone of contention. Shall I send for a Falcon car to prove to her its desirability?”
“Certainly not!” Susanna answered before Fyfe could speak. “We have just decided that we are living on an island and therefore the only practical method of leaving it will be by ship.”
She went from the room before Fyfe could find words to answer her and, as she walked down the passage, she could hear the two men laughing.
‘We are all so happy,’ she told herself. ‘Oh, please God, don’t let him see too quickly.’
Then she was duly horrified at the selfishness of such a prayer.
CHAPTER SIX
Susanna closed the book with a bang.
“Well, that is finished,” she sighed, “and I think for the good of your education we now ought to read something in Italian or English.”
“I am not worrying about my education,” Fyfe answered, “but my entertainment and I find that English novels are either heavy or too insipid to be interesting and the Italian novels too emotional.”
“You might be talking about women.” Susanna teased him. “Do you dislike women who are emotional?”
“That is one of those questions that there is no real answer to,” Fyfe replied. “If I say ‘yes’ you will infer that I like cold frigid women who are usually, of course, English and if I say ‘no’ you will think that I want someone throwing dramatics all the time if they are not being hysterical.”
Susanna laughed.
“You must have known some very odd women.”
“Perhaps that is true,” he agreed.
“And I suppose because you are Fyfe Falcon they flutter around you like moths around a flame.”
Because she was being deliberately provocative with such a banal smile, Fyfe groaned and said,
“Of course I want women to applaud my achievements and to tell me I am wonderful. What man wants anything else?”
“Some men must prefer sincerity to flattery.”
“I think you will find that all men want to be made a fuss of, which they seldom are.”
“That is not true,” Susanna argued. “However, you may be speaking as an American and I have always been told that England is a Paradise for men and America for women.”
“I wonder what you would think of America?” he remarked reflectively. “It is still basically a new country and in many ways it is very brash. At the same time it is exciting and there is a sense of adventure there that I have not found anywhere else in the world.”
The way he spoke made Susanna feel that he was longing to be back in America and she thought with a little stab in her heart that when he did return she would never see him again.
“I love Florence,” she said softly.
“Florence, like so much of Europe, lives on the glories of its past. One day it will crumble away and have nothing to show but ruins.”
“I will not listen to you!” Susanna said hotly. “There is more beauty in Florence than in the whole of America put together and every stone has a history.”
“A history that is all in the past,” Fyfe retorted.
She knew that he was deliberately teasing her. Equally she clung to Florence because it was the present and they were together.
She looked out of the window at the brilliant colours of the
flowers in the garden and the cypress trees silhouetted against the Madonna blue of the sky.
Below them the dome of the Cathedral seemed to shimmer in the sunshine and the Arno shone as it moved beneath its scores of bridges.
“Could anything be more beautiful?” Susanna asked, almost beneath her breath.
“It’s merely a black splodge to me,” Fyfe observed.
“Then I will ask you again when they take off your bandages,” Susanna said, “and, if you can find a place to compare with it in America, I shall be very surprised.”
She could see by his smiling mouth that he was amused by her enthusiasm and after a moment she said in a very different voice,
“When do the doctors plan to – take off your – bandages, Fyfe?”
“I am not certain,” he replied. “They have no wish to do anything hastily.”
“No – but it must be – soon.”
“You sound as if you are impatient to finish your job as a reader.”
“No! No! Of course not.”
The refusal came from her very heart.
He had no idea, she thought, how every morning she awoke thinking that perhaps this day was the last time she would be with him, this would be the day when he would see her face and no longer be interested in her.
Because she was half-afraid that he would sense her agitation, she rose to her feet to stand on the edge of the verandah.
“I am going to pick you some flowers,” she said. “It’s so hot that those I picked the day before yesterday are already drooping.”
“While you are picking flowers,” Fyfe said, “tell Chambers to come to me. I want to write a letter to a friend in America.”
Although she told herself that she was being ridiculous, Susanna felt a sharp stab of jealousy.
Perhaps he was writing to someone he loved and who, of course, loved him.
What woman would be able to resist him, not only because he was so attractive but also because, she realised now, he was extremely rich?
Fyfe had told her last night how his father had started to manufacture the Falcon car just before he died.
“He already had a huge fortune that he had made in railroads. He was always travel-minded,” Fyfe said, “and from the very moment that there was a possibility of a vehicle that could move without horses he had been interested in it.”
202. Love in the Dark Page 11