Night of the Singing Birds

by Susan Barrie

  ‘Only after your friends arrived, and you thought it necessary to order it,’ Angela said to herself silently, as he turned his broad back to her and she watched his departure. And she tried to check the rising tide of resentment that, for some reason, was making her feel almost spiteful towards him—and most certainly Willow Ruddock—as she heard him running down the steps to his car.

  Upstairs in her bedroom she removed the few items of jewellery she had worn that evening, and she slipped out of the white dress and thrust it out of sight in her wardrobe with the same intense dislike of it, that she had for everything connected with the evening just ended. It was beginning to perplex even herself before she finally slipped into her neatly turned-down bed.

  The light extinguished, the moonlight flooded her room, bathing every item of furniture, and she tried to remember how brilliantly it had flooded over Don Felipe as he stood coping with her sudden rebellion outside in the courtyard where she had said her first good-night to him.

  What an annoying man he was.... What an arrogant, assured, and in some ways unpredictable man. She had expected him to be annoyed, not amused, by her remarks about Mrs. Ruddock, but apparently they had amused him. And it was not enough to have the ability to amuse a man you were about, to marry, and whose complete lifetime you were about to share. There had to be something more than that.... She felt uneasily sure of that.

  Her grandmother might try and convince her that it was not so, and even her own common sense might tell her sometimes that she was fortunate to be marrying a man of stature and exemplary character who would look after her for the rest of her life, but the English half of her was absolutely certain that she was making a grave mistake.

  It was not enough to look forward to a future and children, and no love ... just amiable affection and the knowledge that she could depend on the man she had married.

  That evening she had seen his whole face light up when a pretty and charming woman climbed the steps of a hotel to meet him, and when she uninhibitedly put her hands into his and allowed him to hold on to them for such a length of time that it was an embarrassment to other people to look on at them.

  What would it be like staying in his house, with him and Mrs. Ruddock, feeling absolutely certain in her heart that he admired her enormously?

  And when a man admires a woman—a pretty woman! — and she is free, what is the net result? Does admiration mature, and with maturity do other ideas lift up their heads?

  Angela felt absolutely certain that Mrs. Ruddock was no fool. She had seized upon the opportunity to extend her stay in Spain, and she hadn’t even bothered to conceal the fact that she looked upon the Don’s approaching marriage with amusement. She just didn’t seriously believe that he was contemplating marriage!

  And if he was contemplating marriage, then it was not the kind of marriage that troubled her very much.

  At heart she was probably an adventuress, and she took such obstacles in her stride.

  Angela had been uneasy and resentful earlier in the day,, but after her evening’s outing she found herself seething with resentment and indignation.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Very much to Angela’s surprise Dona Miranda seemed to think there was nothing odd about Don Felipe wishing to entertain a few of his friends at one of his houses before finally parting with his freedom as a bachelor. And she immediately sanctioned her granddaughter’s acceptance of the invitation he had issued to her to become one of his guests. But she insisted that she herself should accompany Angela as her duenna, and when the girl sought to make acceptance of the invitation impossible by pointing out that the elderly woman would find it exhausting, pooh-poohed the idea as absolute nonsense.

  ‘I shall love it,’ she declared. ‘I’m quite fond of Felipe, as you know, and I’ve heard a great deal about his houses. I believe the Casa Martinez is filled with some very fine furniture—paintings, and that sort of thing, you know. Felipe’s grandfather collected them, and of all his homes he liked the Casa best. In fact, he died there.... Perhaps that is one reason why Felipe has avoided it since it came into his possession. It needs a young family to give it fresh life, and once you are married it will be a part of your duty to supply that need. And in the meantime you can make up your mind about fresh hangings, and that sort of thing. I’m sure Felipe will give you carte blanche to buy whatever you wish, and I shall thoroughly enjoy advising you.’

  She looked as if she meant to enjoy the visit in any case, and despite the fact that she could seldom summon up the energy to travel anywhere, and a visit to her solicitor in Madrid was the one event in the year for which she planned weeks ahead, began immediately to examine the contents of her own wardrobe, and advised her granddaughter to pack some really charming clothes for the visit.

  ‘If there are to be other women amongst the guests you must not allow them to outshine you,’ she said. ‘And you have recently acquired so many pretty new things that it will not seriously deplete your trousseau if you select some

  of them to wear on this visit. ’

  ‘But why...?’ Angela wanted to enquire—with a certain amount of reason. For Don Felipe was committed to marry her, and it was not a question of her having to put herself out to please him and attract him.

  However, she took her grandmother’s advice and made a careful selection from amongst her new clothes. She had to admit that it gave her a certain amount of pleasure, and to her own astonishment she felt suddenly determined—and it was a matter of almost vital importance—that Mrs. Ruddock, with her willowy golden beauty, should not cast her into the shade by wearing smarter or more elegantly styled garments. She might wear more spectacular ones, but Dona Miranda had footed the bill for a trousseau that was quite exquisite, and as Angela ran her finger over supple silks and shimmering hand-embroidered satins she knew that she could feel confident whatever she wore.

  In particular, she delighted in an apple green evening gown with crystal embroidery, and a white watered silk that stood out about her slender legs and ankles like a board. It, too, had some skilful embroidery, and the shoes that were intended to be worn with it had brocaded roses on their insteps, and at the heart and centre of each rose was a large crystal drop.

  Happily, too, she had plenty of attractive day clothes, and for the journey to the Casa she wore a tailored silk dress in a heavenly shade of clear azure blue. She wore dark glasses and no hat, and the Don, when he called for her and her grandmother in a silver-grey Bentley that was sufficiently commodious to ensure that Dona Miranda travelled smoothly and with the maximum amount of comfort, frowned at the sight of her unprotected golden head, particularly as the sun was very hot.

  ‘You should wear a hat,’ he told her. ‘With hair like that you should take care to avoid the effects of too much sun.’

  She smiled at him carelessly. She might be fair, but she could stand any amount of sun.

  ‘I dislike hats,’ she replied. ‘Whenever I can I dispense with one.’

  At that he frowned more forbiddingly than before.

  ‘It is more ladylike to wear a hat,’ he informed her in the bleak tones of pronounced disapproval. ‘And gloves, too,’ he added, observing that her grandmother, making herself comfortable in the back of the car, was meticulously hatted and gloved. ‘Ask Dona Miranda if a young woman about to acquire the responsibilities and obligations of marriage should not appear more formally in public.’

  She could not be absolutely certain that he was entirely serious, but her grandmother failed to overhear the interchange, and she decided to ignore his suggestion. She accepted a seat beside him in the front of the car, and they moved away from the villa and off along the blinding white-hot road to the Casa Martinez.

  The Casa Martinez was very near the sea, and the heat of the sun was tempered by the cool airs from the sea before they actually reached it. Dona Miranda stared at the heaving, brilliantly blue expanse of ocean with detached eyes, for she had never sunbathed on a beach or entered the water in a swimsuit in t
he whole of her life, and she knew she was quite unlikely to begin to do so at her time of life, or in the station of life to which she most fortunately belonged by birth. But Angela had brought a swimsuit with her, and she had no doubt Willow Ruddock spent the better part of her life on sunlit beaches like this—in between skiing in Switzerland and decorating the Casino at Monte Carlo.

  The house itself stood surrounded by splendidly kept grounds, and although it had a turn-of-the-century ungainliness about it, the exterior suggested that the interior was very opulent. It had been originally intended as a summer residence for members of the Martinez family, and it was spacious enough to accommodate large numbers of them and their friends. It was blazingly white, with cool green shutters and pantiled roofs, and from every window in the front of the house there were spectacular views of the sea and the yellow shelving beach.

  The car came to rest in a quiet inner courtyard where the walls were covered in flaming growth, and a fountain played in a marble basin and added to the beneficent sense of coolness that the nearness to the sea had already affected it with. Through an archway Angela could see the gardens falling away in terraces, and amongst other bewildering perfumes she actually caught the scent of roses.

  ‘Well?’ Don Felipe glanced at her as he helped her alight. ‘This is as you imagined it? Or perhaps more attractive than you imagined it?’

  ‘It is very nice, yes,’ Angela agreed, but with a deliberate restraint which told him that she was not prepared to go into ecstasies about anything connected with him, despite the fact that it had all been arranged that she should marry him.

  He shrugged his white-clad shoulders. She had the feeling that he was annoyed, and his mellow mood of the night before had entirely forsaken him.

  He helped Dona Miranda to alight as if her bones were very fragile indeed, and she, at least, he knew would appreciate his solicitude. And on her way into the house she paused to admire various features of it on the outside which quite obviously pleased him, and when he transferred his attention once more to his fiancee there was a certain asperity about both his look and his tone.

  ‘My other guests have not arrived yet, but you must feel free to move about the house as you will. But first I am sure you will wish to be shown to your rooms.’

  A middle-aged, dark-eyed housekeeper, Senora Cortez, showed them to their rooms. Angela’s had balconies overlooking the well-tended lawns in front of the house, but Dona Miranda had been permitted an excellent view of the sea. As she was unlikely to make trips to it or spend any time on the shore enjoying the health-giving ozone this was some compensation for what she would otherwise be missing during her visit. She could spend the coolest hours of every day on her balcony, relaxing in a specially constructed and superbly comfortable chair with a book or her writing materials, and, as a matter of fact, expressed every intention of doing so.

  Both rooms were very comfortably if somewhat severely furnished, and already Dona Miranda was casting her eyes around and taking mental notes o£ deficiencies. She was confident that she and her granddaughter were going to have an entertaining time listing improvements and discussing such things as furnishing fabrics and possible innovations, and although Angela was not looking forward to this diversion with the same amount of enthusiasm as her grandmother she was interested from the outset in the queer dignity and old Spanish charm of the Casa Martinez.

  She liked the cool white walls and the dark Spanish oak that contrasted so attractively with them, the handsome chests and solid furniture with which the place was filled. She couldn’t imagine modern furnishings looking half as well, and certainly nothing could replace the rows and rows of portraits in solid ornamental frames that were a visual record of the Martinez family. As soon as she had changed for lunch and repaired the slight ravages to her make-up that had been caused by the journey, she wandered in the gallery on to which the door of her room opened and studied face after face as it looked down at her. She had already arrived at the conclusion that for the most part Martinez men and women were a little forbidding of aspect, and certainly extremely dark in the best tradition of their Latin forebears; and only here and there could she discover a Martinez as handsome as Don Felipe, when she heard him coming along the gallery behind her, and he joined her in front of the portrait of one of his great-uncles.

  ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, as he looked her up and down with approval—he, too, had changed into one of his thin tussore suits that became him so well, and looked as if he had just emerged from a shower, he was so composed and cool—‘I see you are making acquaintance with some of my ancestors. You will find more of them in Madrid, at my principal home, but these are pretty representative. I’ve no doubt the English half of you finds them rather alarming, but you needn’t really have any fear of your future in-laws ... my uncles are all extremely amiable, particularly my Uncle Jose, whom you may meet during this visit, and my numerous cousins and aunts seem pretty harmless to me. Once you are a member of the family I’m sure they will put themselves out to make you really feel one of us.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She sounded a little dry. Surely, she thought, after her most recent conversations with him, he could not surely imagine she was anxious to be made one with other members of his family?

  He was in an obviously better humour than when he had collected her and her grandmother that morning, and even slightly expansive.

  ‘As soon as we are married,’ he said to her, ‘we must have your portrait painted, too, and you can hang amongst the rest—’ He waved a hand to indicate the watchful row of faces. ‘That will give you a feeling of belonging.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again, even more drily.

  His appreciative eyes were taking in the warm beauty of her hair in the dimness of the gallery, and the slender grace of her figure in the cool, apple-green linen into which she had recently changed. She was all white and gold, he reflected ... and it would be a change from that slightly sinister sable quality that looked out of most of the portraits.

  ‘By the way,’ he remarked, as he helped himself to a cigarette from his case and tapped it on the back of one of his shapely fingernails, ‘I am having some flowers sent to your room. They should have been there to greet you on your arrival, but apparently Senora Cortez slipped up.’

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, as if this was a contingency she had not anticipated. So far he had sent her flowers on two occasions, but they had come straight from a florist’s, and he had probably never seen them. On this occasion they were almost certainly to be an offering from his garden, and it would appear he was concerning himself with how soon she received them.

  ‘How lovely!’ she exclaimed automatically. ‘I have already noticed that you have many flowers in the garden.’ ‘But these are rather special roses—red roses. My gardener dislikes cutting them, and I believe it affects him adversely when he does so on my order.’

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed again, and wondered how often when visiting the Casa Martinez he ordered the cutting of red roses either for the decoration of the house or for one of his guests. She suspected he did not concern himself with the decoration of the house, so therefore it was probably a favoured guest who received them.

  Without entirely understanding why she did so or recognising the quality of the link-up, she asked:

  ‘How soon will Mrs. Ruddock and her friends be arriving? I suppose they did, after all, accept your invitation?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ But the dryness had suddenly transferred itself to his tone, and a rather peculiar look entered his eyes as they rested upon her. ‘They will be here before evening.’

  ‘Mrs. Ruddock appears to travel a good deal.’

  ‘Yes; I believe she does.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand how she manages to do it when English people have to make do with a travel allowance. She is fortunate to have friends like you when she visits Spain. Perhaps she has similar friends in other countries.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he agreed, almost urbanely.

 
She shot him a look that was a mixture of suspicion and faint, uncontrollable irritation.

  ‘Does she also like red roses, senor?’

  I believe so.... Although on the occasion of her visit this time I have ordered yellow ones for her room. She is rather like a yellow rose—or a golden orchid! — herself, don’t you think?’

  Angela bit her lip and did not answer. She realised she had asked for that.

  She accompanied him downstairs to the cool, flagged hall, and then he led the way to the main sitting-room, or sala, and asked her whether she would like a glass of sherry before accompanying him into the dining-room. With great regret Dona Miranda, who took her duties as duenna very seriously despite the fact that the two were engaged to be married—perhaps, she would have explained, because of it—had been forced to refuse to join them at lunch, the unaccustomed exertions of the journey and the preparation for it beforehand having tired her very much, and she had had to request the housekeeper to take a tray to her room. After that she proposed to rest, and was quite sure she would be fit to join them in the evening.

  So Angela and her fiance lunched alone in the dim and impressive dining-room, he occupying the head of a long and gleaming table while she sat demurely at his right hand. The table was laid as if for an important occasion with fine lace table mats and sheerest crystal, gleaming silver, fruit and flowers. Angela was glad she hadn’t been placed at the opposite end of the table, and then reflected that as she was not yet mistress of the house this would have been incorrect.

  And that set another thought moving through her head.