Night of the Singing Birds

by Susan Barrie

  But the host was as urbane as ever when they returned to the house, and only Mrs. Ruddock looked as if she had endured more than enough for one day, and would be thankful when they started for home.

  She looked curiously at Angela when she walked back into the sala with her fiance keeping close to her elbow. Angela’s face was slightly flushed, and her eyes looked a little over-bright, but that could have been due to the strength and quality of the sunlight. Angela stood looking rather confused in the dimness of the sala, which was quite striking after the brilliance of the garden outside, and the host moved forward to enquire of her how much she appreciated the design of his lily-pool.

  ‘You will come again, cara?’ he said, taking her hand and retaining it between both his soft white plump ones. ‘Felipe must bring you often to see me, particularly when you are married.’ He looked as if he had said something very meaningful. ‘Ah, the marriage! The Great Day! ... How soon shall I be receiving my invitation?’ He poked his nephew in the ribs, slyly. ‘Ah, you are a lucky one, Felipe ... a clever dog to make certain of such a treasure! She is as pretty as a picture, and I am very nearly in love with her myself. You must let me know what it is you would wish for a wedding present ... give me some idea, at least. And be sure that you consult your future bride on the matter!’

  Felipe thanked him punctiliously, and assured him that he would consult Angela. Afterwards he remarked a trifle disparagingly to Angela that he supposed the old boy had something in mind that would tax his bank balance only slightly, for despite enormous wealth he had a reputation which was well deserved for being niggardly.

  ‘Something in the kitchen equipment line would suit him admirably, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘Preferably one of the humbler items considered important in a kitchen.’

  But Angela had taken quite a fancy to Don Jose, and even if he was mean she was quite sure she was going to like him increasingly as time went on.

  ‘Surely your kitchens are already well equipped,’ she replied, with a faint edge to her voice because any mention of her approaching marriage had that effect on her. ‘And as you have several houses you must have several kitchens.’

  ‘True.’ He glanced at her sideways as they drove back to his villa. ‘But there will be only one mistress for all of them ... you! It is for you to decide when something must be added to them! The decision in this case is entirely up to you! ’

  CHAPTER IX

  Hours later he unbent to her in a way he had never unbent before. Having obtained her grandmother’s permission to take her out to dine for the second time since their betrothal had been announced, he reacted in a manner that considerably astonished Angela, and might have astonished Mrs. Ruddock had they not been forced to leave her behind at the villa, where she sulkily insisted she was going to be extremely bored for the whole of an unplanned evening.

  Angela, wearing her apple green evening gown with the crystal embroidery, wondered as she once more sat beside Felipe in his car as they started off just what he had said to the widow with the smoky-grey eyes and the arrestingly beautiful but sulky mouth that had prevented her from proving slightly awkward about being separated from him for several hours, when he was after all her host. Her friend Johnny would no doubt put himself out to be as entertaining as possible, but Willow had made it abundantly clear, since her arrival at the Martinez villa, that by comparison with Felipe she looked upon Johnny as a poor thing.

  Angela felt sorry for Johnny, who was so transparent and so patently adored the lovely widow, following her around like a tame dog when permitted. And when she spurned him and he had to retire discomfited he still only too obviously thought exactly the same of her.

  Angela, reflecting upon Willow and her rather too youthful admirer, as the car headed into the last of the sunset, thought how unfair life was when a pleasant and quite inoffensive young man like Johnny could be more or less trampled upon by the woman he adored, and she who was planning to marry a man she did not love was perfectly well aware that, from choice, he would be with

  Willow at this moment, and no doubt if he was with her he would not be whipping himself up into a state of forced gaiety which had the effect of arousing little response in Angela. In fact, it merely caused her to wonder why he considered the effort it all involved necessary, when the end result would be precisely the same if he sat silent at the wheel and made not the smallest effort to be an entertaining escort.

  But after a time she found herself wondering whether he was putting it all on as a kind of act, or whether he was actually looking forward to the evening ahead of them. There was certainly nothing forced about the quality of his conversation, and although it seemed ridiculous he struck her as years younger than when they were being entertained by his uncle, Don Jose Martinez. And certainly there was nothing repressed about him, as there frequently was when Mrs. Ruddock was a member of the party.

  When she asked him where he was taking her, he replied that she must wait and see. Earlier he had talked with enthusiasm of the charms of a small fishing village, and as he had also made a slighting reference to scintillating company she not unnaturally supposed that the place they were making for was not the sort of rendezvous to which he would take Willow Ruddock— despite the fact that he had also promised her champagne and a sophisticated evening.

  They drove through several charmingly sited fishing villages, which by this time were all wrapped in the purple bloom that always followed the descent of the sun into the sea, and were twinkling with lights like stars shining through a curtain of gauze. It was the sort of night one could expect on that stretch of coast at that season of the year, and there was in the very atmosphere a feeling of warmth and excitement that rendered the drive a kind of impromptu for the rest of the evening that was to follow. There were heady scents floating in the slumbrous warmth, a sensation like a silken caress as the night wind lifted the hair on Angela’s forehead, and as the road climbed they could hear the booming of the rollers far below them, and catch a salty breath of the sea every now and again.

  Felipe’s car was open, and Angela sat back luxuriously in her seat beside the wheel, thinking occasionally how expertly her companion drove, and admiring the little she could see of his shapely hands on the wheel. Usually he was addicted to speed, but tonight he seemed to have overcome the temptation to cover the ground between him and his ultimate objective in as a short a time as possible, and he even stopped the car on one occasion to point out to her the far-away beam of a lighthouse on a distant point, and the swordlike pathway of light it created on the dark sea.

  On another occasion they stopped in order that she could be impressed by a tremendous drop to an unseen beach so far below them that it actually caused Angela to shudder as she peered downwards; and then he indicated a villa on the heights above the drop.

  ‘I used to own that house,’ he told her, seizing the opportunity to light a cigarette, although never under any circumstances was he prepared to offer her one. ‘It has a magnificent view from almost all its windows, and I liked to come here when I was feeling in need of a kind of spiritual refreshment. Looking at the sea from a great height always has that effect on me.’

  She gazed at him in surprise. He had spoken as if he actually did sometimes feel the need of an experience outside anything that could be provided by the life he

  normally led.

  Angela looked up at the starlike lantern suspended above the wrought-iron entrance gate, and she was conscious of regret because he had parted with the house. She, too, enjoyed looking upon the sea from a great height. Even marriage might assume some sort of attraction if part of her married life could be spent in a spot like this.

  Felipe glanced at her, with the pale light from the lantern streaming over her fair head and shoulders and etherealising her face. And having glanced at her in his usual casual way, his glance became arrested, as if something had firmly anchored it, and it was several seconds before he looked away. Then he spoke, a little strangely, as he pressed the st
arter button.

  ‘You have no right to be as attractive as you are, Angela. Some men might have their heads turned completely simply as a result of looking at you.’

  Angela answered in some surprise, but in a cool little voice that matched her looks:

  ‘But you don’t happen to be one of them?’

  ‘I haven’t said so, have I?’

  ‘It has never struck me that you are the sort of man capable of having his head turned by a pretty woman ... not even when she’s as outstandingly pretty—or should I say beautiful?—as Mrs. Ruddock. You might admire her, and I’m sure you do, but I doubt whether even she could turn your head.’

  ‘But you do think she has a considerable amount of power over me?’

  ‘Oh yes.... But if I happened to be her I wouldn’t bank on it. You are very Spanish, for one thing, and

  my grandmother has made it clear to me from my cradle that the men of my mother’s race very seldom go overboard for their women. It is an attitude of mind, the knowledge they have that women are inferior. Inferior in the sense that they fit into a pattern, I mean, and are, as you might say, always there. Spanish women cannot escape. Of course, I have no doubt at all that they can and do fall in love. My grandmother has tried to make me believe that when they succumb to some overmastering tide of feeling they do so very thoroughly, and that the quality is very different from anything of a similar nature a man of my father’s race might have to offer to a woman. But Grandmother is very Spanish ... I think she’s biased.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, and his voice sounded very dry as he turned the car away from the sea and they started to climb up into the hills. ‘I must say, for a young woman who is contemplating matrimony you have an extraordinarily detached way of looking at these things. As the mere man you are about to marry I can’t help but feel it is all very unimportant, anyway.’

  ‘I haven’t said so.’

  ‘No, but you certainly indicate as much. You obviously have arrived at very definite conclusions about myself, and apart from that it apparently doesn’t trouble you at all that I might be in love with another woman.’ He frowned as he drove, his dark eyebrows meeting in a cleft above the faintly arrogant bridge of his nose. ‘If that is really true, you certainly astonish me. You quoted your grandmother just now, but it would certainly surprise me to learn that she married in the state of mind you propose doing. For one thing I can’t imagine Dona Miranda submitting to anyone, and

  for another if she’s incapable of jealousy then I’m a poor judge of character.’

  She laughed softly.

  ‘Of course she’s capable of jealousy. According to her all Spanish women are, and that’s what makes life so exciting for them—exciting enough for them, shall we say?—when they marry.’

  ‘But you being half English I shall not have to look out for any squalls? ’

  Once again she answered, ‘I didn’t say so.’ Then her mood changed, and after bending forward to peer with interest through the windscreen at the winding and rather wild strip of road they were covering, she turned her head swiftly over her shoulder and looked at him with a sudden bright and rather provocative smile emphasising the curves of her attractive mouth.

  ‘Do tell me, where are you taking me? This road is not a bit like the coast road, and we seem to be climbing all the time. Is there a village anywhere near? Are we making for one?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘It seems to me we are travelling a very long way for our dinner. You must know this part of the country well.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And when we get there, will it be worth it?’

  ‘It all depends on how prepared you are to enjoy your evening.’ His dark, lustrous eyes glanced swiftly at her, and then away. ‘If you are prepared to be bored, you will not enjoy it. If, on the other hand, you have not made up your mind in advance that this is to be just another boring and rather pointless evening—’

  Her eyes sparkled in surprise.

  ‘I am never bored,’ she assured him. ‘That is, I am not easily bored. Except—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Except when I suspect something has been laid on for me that was the result of boring necessity in the first place.’

  He laid a hand lightly over her knee, and patted it. ‘Don’t worry, Angela! I promised you should not be bored to-night, and I meant it.... And if it gives you any comfort I was not feeling in the least bored when I decided upon the place I would take you for dinner tonight. There might have been one other famous occasion when we dined together and the whole thing fell rather flat, but that is in the past, and it will not be repeated. I give you my word! ’ he told her again.

  Angela surveyed him with narrowed eyes and continued to smile slightly provokingly. She lay back in a more relaxed manner in her corner of the car, looked upwards at the stars that were hanging like bunches of sparkling grapes in the purplish heavens above them, and then once more concentrated on the floodlit road ahead of them. The moon was rising over the whole rather desolate landscape, and it had a magically transforming effect. Angela decided that wherever they were going it could prove unusually exciting.

  When they slipped down into a completely deserted village she was disappointed at first. The shadows lay like ebony on the white surface of the road, there appeared to be few if any lights in cottage windows, and they travelled the whole length of the main street before they reached the inn. But once they reached it it was as if a curtain had gone up on a different world. The car-park of the inn was full of cars, and they were gleaming under the silvery rays of the moon. There were so many of them that, once Felipe had helped

  Angela alight, she was glad to cling to his arm to find a way out of the impasse, and as her small fingers clutched at the immaculate white sleeve of his dinner-jacket he fastened his own fingers over them, and she received an extraordinary sense of comfort and direction, as if everything was perfectly all right, and would have been even had the number of cars doubled themselves.

  There was a yellow lantern above the inn door, and an inn sign. Angela could not make out what the sign said, but the warmth of the lantern-light seemed to reach out and engulf her, and it effectively transmuted her pale blonde hair to bright burnished gold, and as for Felipe, his inky dark hair appeared also to acquire a burnished look that was somehow infinitely attractive.

  ‘This way,’ he said, and led her up to the inn door. She could hear music—the throbbing of guitars, and the rippling notes of a piano—even before someone within whipped the door open for them, and the instant he did so the situation became still more transformed. The interior of the inn was quite unlike the exterior, and in fact it was actually an open space with tables dotted around a glistening dance floor, and cascades of flowers drooping above the heads and shoulders of the diners, as well as decorating their tables.

  As the result of a swift glance Angela decided that most of the diners were extremely well-dressed men and women, and some of the latter wore the most becoming dresses and a great deal of expensive jewellery. The men had sleek heads and immaculate linen, and in the cleverly diffused lighting their dark eyes sent languishing looks across the tables at their partners, and the partners smiled languishingly back. A few of them were dancing, and in the hot, scented night their movements were leisurely, and it struck Angela that they were like figures in a drop-scene at the theatre.

  The throbbing of the guitars, and the rippling notes of the piano, set something moving in the same languid but exciting manner in her own blood, and for a moment she felt startled because the effect on her was so immediate, and she wanted to stand clinging on to Felipe’s arm in the entrance, and devote at least a few minutes to feasting her eyes on the scene.

  But Felipe led her forward, guiding her amongst the tables, and finally a waiter brought them to a table that overlooked a glassy strip of water, on which water-lilies floated, and the waiter pulled out a chair for her, and she seated herself and took note of the fact that there were scarlet flow
ers in a vase immediately confronting her, and the perfume of them was like incense that might very soon find its way up into her brain.

  Felipe also seated himself, and smiled at her.

  ‘Well? ’ he said.

  ‘It’s like fairyland. I—I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you have. But there always has to be a first time.’ He accepted a menu from the waiter, and consulted it. ‘Now,’ he told her, ‘you must allow me to order for you—as I believe you did once before,’ his lustrous eyes suddenly twinkling at her, ‘but only because your school had taught you excellent manners, and you believed it was the right thing to do. Now, tonight, it doesn’t matter about excellent manners, but it is important that you should enjoy yourself, and therefore I will select all the things you must eat. And of course we must have champagne.... That was part of the bargain, wasn’t it?’

  He summoned the wine-waiter with a snap of his fingers, and the champagne materialised, and several courses of unfamiliar dishes, so far as Angela was concerned, followed. She discovered that she had an unusually excellent appetite, and afterwards she attributed it to the long and unexpectedly diverting drive to this particular rendezvous, and sampled the dishes without waiting to be invited to do so by her fiance. He watched her carefully when she took her first few experimental forks-full, and a complacent expression of satisfaction dawned in his eyes when it became obvious that he had chosen wisely. He smiled at her as she looked across at him with a gleam of pure appreciation in her eyes, and as she nodded her head he said: