Night of the Singing Birds

by Susan Barrie

  ‘It is good, yes?’

  ‘It is very good,’ Angela admitted.

  The meal was a long-drawn-out, leisurely affair, and while they sat quietly enjoying it at their table the orchestra played and there were several cabaret turns which Angela thoroughly enjoyed. She particularly enjoyed the Flamenco dancers, having seen genuine Flamenco dancers on one or two occasions only, and would rather have enjoyed it—she half suspected—if Don Felipe had followed the example of other male diners and led his dinner partner out on to the glistening dance floor for some active participation during the courses, but being the type of man he was he much preferred to enjoy his dinner undisturbed by exercise, although he was quite prepared to sit back occasionally and judge the floor shows critically from a distance, and even to comment on some of the eccentricities of the dancers.

  ‘Afterwards, if you would care to do so, we will dance,’ he said. ‘But the food here is far too good to be ruined by jumping up and risking serious damage to one’s digestive organs at the same time by gyrating about on that floor there, and in any case my dancing is a little rusty, as you will find out when we do take the floor.’

  Angela regarded him across the table as if she was critically appraising him.

  ‘I don’t believe your dancing is rusty,’ she told him, after dwelling on the matter for several seconds. ‘You must sometimes have danced with Mrs. Ruddock, and I’m sure she demands perfection in her partners.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ A gleam entered his eyes, and he helped himself to some sweet water-grapes from the dish of fruit that had been placed on the table. ‘You seem to have a very high opinion of Mrs. Ruddock in some ways. She demands, apparently, the best on all possible occasions.’

  ‘Do you think she always gets it?’ she demanded of him curiously.

  He shrugged his white dinner-jacketed shoulders.

  ‘Who am I to say whether that is possible or not? Whether any one person ever gets the best that is available simply because they desire it, and feel perhaps they have a right to nothing but the best. In the case of Carmelita, she is so extremely decorative that I personally consider the best is just about good enough for her.’

  He spoke casually, wiping his fingers delicately on his dinner napkin, but she bit her lip as if he had deliberately gone out of his way to affront her, and she resented it bitterly.

  ‘I do wish you would not call her Carmelita,’ she snapped at him.

  His eyebrows rose.

  ‘Does it really upset you as much as all that? But we are old friends.... One can call an old friend by a familiar name, surely? ’

  ‘She is a woman friend. If I had a man friend and I called him by a familiar name, a pet name, you would object, I’m sure!’

  ‘Certainly I would.’

  ‘Well then!’ She bit her lip again as he studied her with a look of faint amusement on his face, and that annoyingly complacent air that informed the waiters that he had thoroughly enjoyed his dinner, and a sense of outrage bubbled up in her and declined to be confined within proper bounds. ‘I think that is utterly unreasonable!’ she told him. ‘Our marriage plans go forward, yet you may have women friends, and invite them to stay with you, while I—I am to accept it as all perfectly normal, while even my grandmother thinks that it is not normal! And you say you would object if I had a man friend!’

  ‘I would insist that you never saw him again, or at any rate only if you refrained from calling him by his pet name. And even then I should be on the watch for this impostor to make certain he was having the minimum amount of effect on you.’ Petulantly she helped herself to an apricot, and he reached across and prepared to accept her plate from her in order to pare it in the correct way before she sunk her small and very well-cared-for teeth in it.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I want it after all—’

  ‘It is a particularly ripe one, and yet not overripe. I think you should have it. ’

  ‘But I say I don’t want it! ’

  ‘Do you know what I think is the matter with you, Angela, my child?’ he enquired of her in very soft and rather curious tones. His eyes were still partially amused, but there was an unusually soft expression in them as they flickered over her. ‘Have you any idea, I wonder?’

  Although she hadn’t the least idea what was in his mind, she suddenly flushed brilliantly. She lowered her eyes and looked down at the apricot on her plate.

  ‘No,’ she answered.

  ‘Would you like me to spell it out for you? Or at least to put it into simple phrases?’

  Her eyes remained lowered, and the colour burned so painfully in her cheeks that it actually hurt her.

  ‘I—’

  ‘I think that you are jealous,’ he told her, speaking very distinctly. ‘I think that you are suffering from your first attack of jealousy—real jealousy.’

  Her long eyelashes fluttered, and she looked up swiftly.

  ‘Why, I—wh-what—what do you mean?’ she stammered. ‘How could I possibly be jealous? What have I to be jealous of—?’

  ‘Carmelita,’ he answered, laying down his napkin beside his plate and preparing to rise. ‘In other words, Mrs. Ruddock ... Mrs. Willow Ruddock. You are jealous because you think that she and I are on very good terms with one another. Now, shall we dance?’

  She was tempted to refuse to budge from the table, but confusion welled over her, and far from laughing or even smiling at her he looked very purposeful and extraordinarily composed, considering the subject under discussion. She had the feeling that if she so much as attempted to create a scene—even though a very minor one—he would know precisely how to deal with her and she would end up in her customary seat in his car with him at the wheel and a long, silent—full of the silence of freezing displeasure—drive ahead of them. And her outburst would have got her exactly nowhere.

  So she fought a battle with herself, crushed down the amount of indignation that seethed through her, and stood up and allowed him to take her by her bare forearm and guide her out on to the dance floor.

  The band had just begun a tango, and it was one of the old and well-tried ones, full of the voluptuousness of movement and the rhythm that gets into the blood. Despite his admitted rustiness Don Felipe drew Angela expertly into his arms and swung her out on to the middle of the floor, where for the first time in her life she received a shock of revelation. For far from being rusty he was a most accomplished performer—she had secretly suspected as much—and although she danced well herself she had never before experienced such a desire to acquit herself creditably, and something rather more than that. She was used to dancing with girls for partners, and very young and inexperienced men, so her fiance’s tactics had the effect of depriving her of a measure of her breath when she first found herself circling the floor with him. It was like dancing with something feline and immensely purposeful, and at the same time any deficiencies on her part were easily covered up by his skill. The music, once it had got thoroughly into her blood, set it on fire, and after five minutes she had forgotten everything that tended to underline her self-consciousness and was blissfully aware that this was an experience she might have missed, but which, fortunately, she had not missed.

  Felipe’s arms held her as if she was a part of him, and she could feel his warm breath stirring her hair. The scent of him, exciting and intensely masculine, seemed to creep up into her brain, and it actually set her senses swimming.

  For one second she missed her footing, and he reproved her with a husky laugh close to her ear.

  ‘You dance well, little one, but you hold yourself too stiffly. Let yourself go,’ he advised, ‘and it will all be so much simpler. Try and forget that we are to be married, and think of me as someone you have met for the first time to-night!’

  She had been holding her head stiffly, in the established manner, but she brought round her face swiftly, and found that his was almost alarmingly close to hers. His eyes, bright and mocking with laughter, gazed into hers.

  ‘Would
it be amusing, do you think, if we had met for the first time to-night?’

  ‘It might be amusing.’

  ‘But you prefer the knowledge that all the groundwork has been done and in a short time we shall be as close as other married couples? Perhaps closer, since we have still some bridges to cross before we really get to know one another?’

  ‘Do you think we will ever get to know one another?’ she returned in a breathless way, her heart hammering against his. ‘Really know one another, I mean, Felipe? It has all been so—formal and arranged! To me you are still a stranger, and I must seem very young and insignificant to you! ’

  ‘Not insignificant ... charming.’ He looked down into her face with his night-dark eyes, and she was amazed by the luxuriance of his eyelashes at close quarters. ‘Exceptionally charming, and exceptionally appealing! Do you know, querida, you have the bluest eyes, and the fairest skin! ... I think you are almost unbelievably lovely! One of the first things I shall do when we are married is have you painted!’

  ‘I thought we were supposed to be strangers tonight! ’

  ‘Well then, enchanting stranger, I shall endeavour to persuade you—before we part—to agree to have your portrait painted, and then I shall purchase it, and have it hung in my gallery in Madrid where I shall gaze at it often.’

  ‘Won’t that be rather expensive, if we are to part again so soon?’

  ‘It is always possible that we will meet again! ’

  ‘And if we don’t...?’

  His arms tightened about her, and for a few seconds she actually found it difficult to breathe.

  ‘You must not say that, querida! It would be such a waste! You and I meeting and then going our separate ways.’

  ‘But you are engaged to be married.... Have you forgotten?’

  ‘To you! It was ordained from the beginning of time that you and I would marry!’

  ‘Oh,’ she pouted, although her eyes were almost feverishly bright as she peeped up at him through her lashes, ‘you are not playing our game—’

  The music came to an end, suddenly, and they were left standing like other couples in the middle of the floor and gazing at one another a trifle ruefully. And then Felipe took hold of his fiancee’s arm very firmly and piloted her towards a door that was set in a kind of pergola of roses, and they found themselves in the garden proper of the inn, where the warm, velvety darkness of the night closed in on them on all sides.

  ‘Ah,’ Felipe declared, ‘it is better here. It was hot in there, and the band is not all that good in any case. Also I find dancing with you a trifle exhausting.’

  She tilted back her head and looked up at him. They were standing on a path that she could barely see, and the starshine was creating a silver wonder out of her hair, and the embroidery on her dress sparkled, too. It was so dark that she felt inclined to clutch at him, and he put his arm about her.

  ‘I enjoyed it,’ she told him, ‘and I didn’t find it exhausting. I don’t believe you did, either.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ he agreed, a trifle absently. ‘Listen!’ he said, and she put back her head the better to listen.

  The night was filled with the whirring of the wings of countless crickets, and there were birds singing, late though the hour was. The birdsong was piercingly sweet, and it seemed to be wandering on and on like the plaintiveness of a flock of nightingales come to rest in a nearby thicket. Never in her life had Angela been so entranced by birdsong, and she knew that her companion was listening attentively, his dark head slightly cocked, one shapely masculine forefinger still upraised. And then, with his arm still about her, he drew her along the path.

  ‘The night of the singing birds,’ he murmured softly, as if to himself. ‘We come all this way to be entertained by a natural choir that is many times more delightful than that brassy din in there,’ jerking his head over his shoulder towards the lighted inn. ‘Do you not agree, little one?’ drawing her fingers through his arm and holding them there as if he had arrived at the firm intention never to release them.

  Angela was silent, and he paused and put his free hand under her chin and lifted her face, tilting it so that the starlight fell full upon it.

  ‘You don’t agree, is that it? You prefer man-made noises?’

  ‘I enjoyed dancing with you,’ she repeated. ‘I—I—I don’t think it ever occurred to me that you were such a wonderful dancer!’

  ‘I can hold my own with most men of my years.’

  ‘And many younger men. I don’t think I saw many men in there dancing as you can dance.’

  ‘You should not have had eyes for other men! You should have been savouring to the full the delight of getting away with me, hanging upon my every word and seeing nothing but me! As it is you seem to have been taking in quite a lot apart from the excellence of my performance on the dance floor.’

  She shook her head at him, smiling.

  ‘No, Felipe, I am not interested in other men.’ There was rather a long moment of silence, and then he tilted back her face so that he could look right down into her eyes, and he saw his own image reflected in them, between

  him and the brightness

  of the stars.

  ‘That is ... true, querida?’ he asked her very quietly. ‘Perfectly true.’

  ‘Sometimes I think you are very young and that all this is not fair to you. It was never a secret dream of yours to marry an Englishman? ’

  ‘Not really. ’

  ‘You have no lingering regrets? You would not rather I talked to your grandmother and persuaded her that these are modern times and a modern young woman has a right to make up her own mind about the man who is to be her partner for life? For you know there will never be any question of divorce between us! Once married to me it will be for life ... perhaps beyond life, if the union is very close.’

  She felt as if wild thrills were coursing up and down her spine, and even her finger-tips tingled as the same wild thrills travelled along every important nerve artery in her being. Her soft lips parted, and she found it difficult to breathe ... as if she had been running up several flights of stairs and had not paused on the way.

  ‘That is how I would like it to be, Felipe,’ she told him, and for the first time she knew that she had uttered words to him that were no more, and no less, than the truth. In a sense she astounded herself, having persuaded herself for weeks that she was not interested in him as a man, and that all she was doing in going forward with this marriage was adhering to her grandmother’s wishes. But now, all at once, they were both aware that the situation was changed in some very subtle way.

  Felipe murmured something in Spanish that she did not quite catch, and then his white teeth gleamed as he smiled at her in the starlight, gripped the firmness of her little chin more closely for a moment, and then released it and encircled her with both his arms. He drew her up against him, held her against a heart that struck her as working overtime, unless it was purely her imagination ... muttered something huskily in Spanish, and then addressed her very clearly in English.

  ‘Your grandmother would not approve of this, but this is not a moment when your grandmother’s wishes should remain paramount. I have the highest possible regard for her, but we have a duty to one another, and there is something I must find out. Look upon it in the nature of an experiment if you wish, but do not afterwards report on it one way or the other to your

  grandmother... ’

  And before she properly realised what he intended, his mouth had found and taken possession of hers, and the sensation that she had been running up and down stairs increased tenfold as the first truly adult and important kiss of her life had the effect of altering the whole of the rest of her life for her, and from the moment he set her free she knew that she would die— possibly just wither away and die—if he never kissed her again.

  She stood holding trembling fingers over her lips while he stood looking down at her with wise and tender and utterly transformed dark eyes, and then he said gently that they had bett
er return to their table and settle their bill, and then he would drive her home.

  ‘And I think you can forget to-night, my darling.... But not, of course, if you don’t want to! And where Dona Miranda is concerned, not a word! Come now,’ placing his hand lightly on her shoulder, ‘let us leave the birds and this garden and go inside and settle our debts.’ As they walked back to the inn she said quietly, not looking up at him but staring straight ahead.

  ‘At least to-night has taught me one thing, and I am indebted to it for that. I must often have behaved in a very foolish fashion in the past!’

  CHAPTERX

  THEY drove back to the villa in a silence that could have been described as companionable, although underlying the silence there were still many leading questions that went unanswered. Angela no longer felt frustrated, and she had a sufficient amount to think about to prevent her wondering very seriously whether the preoccupation of her escort was entirely normal after the recent revelation in a deserted inn garden; and also she was very sleepy, and she actually dozed once or twice during the homeward journey, receiving a gentle pat on the knee and a murmured word from Felipe each time she woke up.

  When she finally woke up after a really prolonged nap the journey was over, and they were back at the villa. The house was in darkness save for the lantern over the front entrance, and Angela gathered that Mrs. Ruddock and her three friends had either already gone to bed or were not yet home. From the silence of the house, and the fact that the lights were switched off in the hall, she suspected that they had gone to bed.

  No doubt Willow Ruddock had been profoundly bored, and boredom had driven her to seek an early night.

  Angela realised that her grandmother had been in bed probably for hours, and she had no intention of disturbing her.

  Apart from a slight flick of her cheek and a, ‘Sleep well, little one!’ from Felipe, she received no further indication that he regarded the evening as a pronounced success, and a great step forward in the path of their future life together. In fact, she was disappointed when he made no attempt to kiss even her hand, and the sense of disappointment accompanied her up the dark polished staircase to her room, where it crept with her into bed and prevented her sleeping as dreamlessly as she might otherwise have done.