Night of the Singing Birds

by Susan Barrie

  This was a magnificent stretch of coast, and not for the first time pride of race stirred in her breast. Only this time it was pride of being Spanish—with all this flamboyant beauty a part of her heritage.

  She emerged from the water at the moment when the heat of the sun climbing into the brilliant arc of blue sky was beginning to make itself felt a little unpleasantly, and the indigo patches of shade attached to the lavender rocks was almost painfully accented in contrast with the shimmering pale gold beach. She could see the Casa rising above her, and as she walked towards it she also made out a group of people emerging from it, and amongst them was Willow Ruddock in—of all things—a bikini, which would probably shock Dona Miranda to the core of her being if she was permitted to catch so much as a glimpse of it. The host was wearing bathing-trunks and looking splendidly fit and brown, and as it was the first time Angela had seen him without the benefit of the most formal attire she felt wildly and uncomfortably that she had to avert her eyes not only from Don Felipe, but from the other two men who were similarly sketchily attired.

  She herself had brought a terry towelling wrap to cover her own modest swimsuit during the journey to and from the house—just in case she encountered anyone on the way—and she was clutching at it with her hands and holding it close around her when she

  unavoidably bumped into the others.

  She heard Willow Ruddock laugh, and then the other woman stopped and pointed directly at her with a shapely derisive finger.

  ‘My dear, aren’t you absolutely cooking?’ she demanded. ‘I know you Spanish have a thing about respectability, but this is carrying things to extremes! Felipe, are you going to insist that your wife goes into a sort of purdah when you marry her, or has she somehow got hold of the notion that you are?’

  She was so strikingly beautiful in her own brief bikini that was the same colour as the frock she had worn the night before that for a few seconds Angela stared at her in admiration, and then the realisation that she was being made fun of by the other girl, who was her fiance’s guest, brought a flush of scarlet to her face. Far from releasing her hold on her protective robe she clutched at it more tightly, and instead of seeing—after those few seconds of pure envy—an extraordinarily beautiful and, in fact, rather gorgeous girl, who resembled in a way a gorgeous piece of horseflesh, she saw confronting her an extremely malicious young woman, of an alien race who was determined to belittle her if she could.

  But Felipe, with an expression that was almost one of outrage, defended his fiancee to his guest.

  ‘Angela is simply behaving in the way she was brought up,’ he explained with acid curtness. ‘In Spain we do not believe that the shop window is the place for all the finest wares ... quite the contrary, in fact!’ Then, more sharply to Angela: ‘Go on up to the house, querida, and change into something more suitable. No doubt you will be breakfasting with your grandmother.’

  It was dismissal, but Angela did not mind. For the first time in her life she was grateful for the fact that he had the right to order her about, and although the others appealed to her to join them, and Willow looked taken aback—even a little vexed with herself for a moment—she did not pause to question his right to be so authoritative before they were even married. As she sped on up to the house it did occur to her that the incident that had just ended was a guideline of the way he might behave to her in the future, but for once such a thought did not trouble her.

  He might be planning to order her life for her, but he could defend his own. Willow Ruddock had actually looked confused ... and that pleased her.

  Later in the day she met them all again when they had returned from the beach, and Willow was dressed in an immaculate sun-suit, and even looked rather demure, for she had chosen one that could cause offence to no one, and was even a little in the mode of Angela’s own dresses. She was seated beneath a sun-umbrella on the terrace that overlooked the sloping lawns and the pergolas of roses, and although she wore dark glasses the eyes behind them were engagingly frank. She beckoned with a finger as Angela approached along the terrace, and said that she wanted to apologise for her conduct on the beach that morning.

  ‘I’m afraid I was indiscreet and said something to which Felipe took exception,’ she confessed, at the same time accepting a long, cool drink from a servant who also appeared on the terrace with a tray of refreshments. ‘Ah, lots of ice!’ she exclaimed, beaming upwards at the dark face of the servant. ‘Just the way I like it, in fact!’

  The servant withdrew, and she continued addressing Angela:

  ‘You mustn’t take any notice if I’m a bit brash at times. I was brought up very differently from you, you know, and I’m also quite a few years older, and it struck me you might be in for a raw deal unless you stick up for yourself rather more forcibly on occasion. This morning you should not have allowed Felipe to dismiss you as he did.’

  Angela, who was also sipping a lemonade, shrugged her slender shoulders.

  ‘I was not aware that Felipe dismissed me,’ she lied with dignity.

  Mrs. Ruddock smiled at her.

  ‘Oh, come now.... He ordered you back to the house to change. Has he ever seen you in a swimsuit? ’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Then he is in for a treat, because I was watching you from my window while you were enjoying your solitary bathe, and I must say you’ve got a most attractive figure, and as a matter of fact that prim little outfit you had on this morning suits you. And you are a very strong swimmer. Does he know that?’

  ‘Not so far as I am aware.’

  Another faint smile curved the attractive shape of Willow Ruddock’s lips.

  ‘How formally you talk ... rather like a book of etiquette designed for an old-fashioned school for very old-fashioned young ladies. Does your grandmother insist that you behave formally? Have you been brought up like that?’

  ‘I have been brought up to conform to a set of rules.’

  ‘Mostly obsolete these days in England and America, where young people are all for freedom. How do you, being partly English, regard freedom? I mean, does it worry you that you are so much hampered by tradition, and all that sort of thing?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  This was not, perhaps, strictly true, but she said it as if she had no reservations whatsoever.

  Willow looked at her rather hard for a moment, the large sunglasses she wore concealing much of the staggering beauty of her eyes and her astonishing eyelashes, while at the same time they succeeded in emphasising the purity of her complexion and the sheer skill of her make-up. Then she shrugged her shoulders as if

  she felt she was up against an unfamiliar problem.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t met many young women like you, certainly not young women who live under the domination of a grandmother and are prepared to submit to the same sort of domination when they become wives. And you are not anticipating altering the form at all when you’re Senora Martinez, are you?’ she stated rather than asked. ‘I mean, you’ll go on ... just submitting? There won’t be any attempt made to assert yourself? All your life you’ll be a kind of shadow walking in the footsteps of Felipe? Which seems to me fantastic in this day and age!’

  It was Angela’s turn to smile slightly at her.

  ‘My marriage has been arranged,’ she confessed, ‘but I am quite looking forward to leading a different life once I marry. I shall, for instance, be my own mistress, in charge of my own house— Felipe’s house, too, of course!—and there will be many new and interesting things to occupy me. It will be very different from living with my grandmother!

  ‘I should hope so!’ Willow drawled.

  Angela felt it necessary to amplify her position: ‘To you arranged marriages must seem strange, but then you have no Spanish blood. And very few Spanish women are actively unhappy once they marry.... Perhaps it is because they are easily made content. I am half English, but basically I think I’m very Spanish.... ’ Whether this was true or not she herself could not be


  quite sure, but from the way her little chin jutted she wished it to be clearly understood that she had few if any doubts on this head. ‘Yes, I’m sure I’m very Spanish!’ she emphasised.

  Mrs. Ruddock looked both amused and sceptical.

  ‘To me you look very English. But I don’t doubt your grandmother, who I gather has had complete charge of you since you were very small, has seen to it that the importance of being Spanish has been underlined many, many times since you were first able to understand what she was talking about. However, you do intrigue me a little ... perhaps because you look so English. And I happen to believe I know Felipe rather well, and I was honestly absolutely amazed when he said he was going to marry you. You see, if Felipe marries he ought to marry someone who will dominate rather than submit to him.... I think he could be rather

  cruel if he thought a woman was his slave. If she made him her slave, on the other hand, it would bring out the best in him. I am as certain of that as I am that spring follows winter, even in a country like this.’

  Angela regarded her as if she was by no means certain of what she was getting at.

  ‘And that being the case...?’ she suggested tentatively.

  ‘Unless you assert yourself you’re likely to become his slave, and in ten years’ time I wouldn’t like to think how badly crushed

  you’d be. Of course, if you’re madly in love with Felipe I suppose it s all right, but you don’t look to me as if you’ve ever been in love with anyone. You have a completely unawakened look.’ Angela hesitated. She saw no reason why she should uncover her soul for the benefit of Mrs. Ruddock, but she was truthful by nature and also by upbringing, and after a pause she heard herself admitting, while she stared into the dregs of her lemonade:

  ‘I have never been in love with anyone. I am not quite sure I understand what “being in love” means.’

  ‘Then you most certainly should not marry Felipe!’

  ‘No?’ The clear, sea-blue eyes were lifted and gazed straight at the dark glasses confronting her. ‘But is it not possible I may yet fall “in love” with Felipe?’

  ‘Not if you have not already done so!’

  ‘You do not think it is at all possible that he is in love with me?’ Willow lighted herself a cigarette, which she selected from a neat platinum case inset with her own initials in diamonds, and shook her head—and laughed pityingly.

  ‘My poor child,’ she said, ‘you are not entertaining delusions on that score, are you?’

  Angela continued to regard her unabashed.

  ‘You do not think he is the least little bit in love with me, Mrs. Ruddock?’

  Another shake of the head answered her.

  ‘Yet you do think it is not impossible that he should fall in love? With someone else?’

  Willow tried to look vaguely uncomfortable, and then she removed the dark glasses, bent forward and laid a hand over Angela’s, where it rested on the round table top.

  ‘My poor child,’ she repeated, ‘you have no knowledge of Felipe whatsoever, have you? No real knowledge! This marriage has been thrust upon you and in a matter of weeks you are going to find yourself tied to a man who is a virtual stranger to you. To me that sounds absolutely horrible! ... Believe me, it does! For I do know Felipe, and I—I—’

  ‘You are not in love with him, Mrs. Ruddock,’ with a dryness and conviction that quite shook the older woman. ‘If you are it is not the sort of love that could be of very great value to him. But you do strongly suspect that he is in love with you? For a long time, perhaps?’

  Willow shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

  ‘I have said that I think that being in love with a woman could transform him, and if Felipe married me I could transform him. Instead of the self-centred, egotistical male you see now there would be someone very, very different, I assure you.’ She flicked ash from her cigarette, gracefully, into an ash-tray, replaced the

  dark glasses and lay back and looked upwards at the hard and brilliant blue sky. ‘Felipe is a contradiction in terms—hard as ice and extraordinarily clear-headed one moment, all fire and malleableness the next. Or at any rate, that is how I see him! I was happily married, but even while I was happily married I was aware of his charm.... I could fall for him very easily, despite what you have just said, if he gave me the least bit of encouragement, and I am absolutely certain that if this strange entanglement with you could be set aside he would give himself up to the sheer, unadulterated joy of loving me! And being loved by me! I have already warned you that he is a man who needs to love, otherwise he will be quite unbearable to live with.... Really unbearable! And therefore it is up to you to grow up before it is too late, tell your grandmother that you decline to be ordered about by her, and—give him up! He will release you without a single qualm if you make the effort to win free.... I know, that is why I’m glad

  we’ve had this little talk, much sooner than I dared to hope we’d find an opportunity to talk—’

  Dona Miranda came tapping with her stick along the terrace, in the shade of the overhanging pantiled roofs, and Willow fell silent abruptly, and then warned cautiously:

  ‘Your grandmother is coming! Not another word!’

  Angela stood up immediately and offered her chair to her grandmother. Willow continued to lounge in her own chair, and the old woman looked at her with very little in the way of real pleasure in her eyes as she accepted her granddaughter’s chair, and relaxed in it with a faint sigh of relief, while her dark eyes remained suspiciously bright.

  ‘Thank you, my child,’ she said. ‘I find that nowadays walking even with a stick is a great ordeal for me. It is my rheumatism, I’m afraid.’

  Then her glance swung coldly round to her future grandson-in-law’s favoured guest.

  ‘You are enjoying your stay here, Senora Ruddock, I trust?’ she said. ‘I saw from my window this morning that you were bathing in the sea. But you are a poor swimmer by comparison with my granddaughter. You may have little on when you enter the water, but the little you have appears to handicap you.’

  Willow looked ruefully across at Angela, and smiled even more ruefully. She shrugged her shoulders—The gesture said plainly that she understood perfectly Dona Miranda did not approve of her, and this was going to be one of her days for making her attitude of mind as clear as crystal.

  Angela hardly noticed. She was dwelling upon the conversation she had just had with the widow, and although she was not exactly shaken she had been given a good deal of food for thought.

  And when, later, they all drove off in two cars to lunch with a male relative of Don Felipe, who had a summer residence on the same stretch of coast, she was given even more food for thought. Although Felipe saw to it that she occupied the place of honour at his side in his own car, his cold words when they started off had the curious effect of dimming, for the first time in her experience, the golden brilliance of the hot Spanish sunshine.

  ‘I must ask you not to bathe alone in the mornings while we are here, and in fact I would prefer it if you did not bathe at all.

  ‘But I do not wear a bikini,’ she remarked tonelessly, staring through the windscreen at the white road ahead.

  ‘That is not the point!’

  ‘But Mrs. Ruddock wears a bikini, and you bathe with her. Why should not I bathe also, since I do not wear a bikini, and my swimsuit is perfectly respectable? ’

  ‘Because it is my wish, and when I make my wishes clear I expect them to be respected,’ he replied with a curtness that was like a razor s edge, and left her with little desire to pursue the conversation—or any other line of conversation, if it came to that—with him.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Don Felipe’s relative proved to be a very charming elderly man with a weakness for feminine company who was so unlike Don Felipe himself that Angela, at least, was surprised. After more than half an hour of her fiance’s uncompromisingly silent company in the car on the way to the villa she felt the need of a little solicitude and attentiveness, and
she got them both from Don Jose Martinez.

  He was quite obviously charmed by her from the moment he welcomed her as she stepped from the car, and although he also paid a good deal of attention to the other ladies it was Angela whose hand he patted almost affectionately as he took it and drew it through his arm as he guided her into the house, and afterwards singled her out as the most honoured guest by placing her at his right hand at the luncheon table.

  At the last moment Dona Miranda had changed her mind about accompanying them, fearing the journey would be too much for her in the heat of the day, and it was therefore quite correct that Angela, as a future relative, should receive this special attentiveness. But Angela herself felt quite grateful for it, especially when she noticed once they reached the house that Felipe made a very obvious effort to attract a little limelight to Willow.

  She professed to be overawed by the magnificence of the house, with its splendid collection of portraits, valuable china and other objets d’art, and Felipe took it upon himself to guide her along the gallery where the strictly family portraits were hung, and pointed out to her various of his forebears who were not represented amongst the portraits in his own villa. And afterwards they disappeared into a little ante-room where cases of medals and priceless manuscripts were on display, and it was quite a time before they reappeared and accepted an aperitif apiece, which the others were already disposing of.

  Angela had asked for a fruit drink, but Don Jose had insisted that she take something a little stronger. He assured her the contents of his wine-cellar were above reproach, and when Felipe reappeared she was standing with a glass of sherry in her hand and looking as if she didn’t know what to do with it. Don Jose lifted his glass high and toasted her with a warm and faintly humorous twinkle in his handsome dark brown eyes, and as Felipe drew near he included him in the toast.

  ‘You have chosen excellently, Felipe,’ he told him. ‘Your bride is entrancing, and so young I feel outraged by my own advanced years. Were I but a few years younger ...’ And he smiled and bowed before Angela. ‘Need I complete the sentence?’ he asked her, with courtly grace.