Night of the Singing Birds

by Susan Barrie

  In the morning she woke early—before the sun was up, in fact—and breakfasted alone in her room, afterwards going along to her grandmother s room to give her an account of her outing on the previous evening. Dona Miranda lay watching her very shrewdly as Angela described the drive along the coast, the inn where they had had dinner, and the singing birds in the starlit garden. The sound of the garden and the singing of the birds seemed particularly to interest Dona Miranda, but she did not make any actual enquiries as her granddaughter sat swinging her legs on the side of her bed, and looking down demurely at her linked hands.

  From the girl’s expression there was nothing to be learned that could have been described as of any real interest, at any rate to a close relative who had the girl’s interests very much at heart. But the slight guardedness of her expression did somewhat intrigue the old lady.

  ‘And so you enjoyed yourself, child?’ she enquired at last.

  ‘Oh yes, Grandmamma.’

  ‘And you certainly looked very delightful when you set off with Felipe. I was quite proud of my only grandchild. Did Felipe admire the green dress?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘He didn’t say so?’

  ‘He said I looked ... Yes, he did say I looked very charming.’

  ‘I should think so!’ The words sounded like a snort, and it was very seldom that Dona Miranda descended to anything so unladylike. ‘If he did not think you looked charming he would have been as good as blind!’

  Angela didn’t see anything of the others that morning, although she gathered they were on the beach. Felipe appeared at lunch, but he appeared very abstracted, and it transpired he had been doing some business in the local town that morning.

  He was very much afraid he might have to leave them and pay a visit to Madrid before the week was out, and that

  immediately set Willow Ruddock pouting, and drew from her quite an angry protest.

  ‘Oh no, Felipe! You abandoned me last night, and I was very, very bored—so bored that I went to bed at a ridiculous hour. You can’t go all the way to Madrid and leave us to entertain ourselves. After all, we are your guests,’ she reminded him, draining the dregs of her final cup of coffee and setting the cup down delicately in its

  tai

  saucer.

  Felipe looked along the length of the table at each of his guests in turn. His glance seemed to linger longest on the young couple who had accepted his invitation for a week, but now seemed disposed to linger on indefinitely.

  ‘If there is anyone who would care for a trip to Madrid I shall be pleased to have their company when I leave tomorrow,’ he told them as if he suspected that one or two of them, at least, might jump at it. But the young couple, who were thoroughly enjoying their extended holiday, and had no very real reason why they should rush back to England now that their hotel bills were being taken care of, remained silent. Only Willow spoke up eagerly.

  ‘Take me with you, Felipe.’

  He glanced at her, and it seemed to Angela, who was sipping the remains of her own coffee, that his glance lingered on her speculatively. And then he said:

  ‘No.... No, I think not. It is better that you should remain here.’

  ‘But it will be so dull without you!’ She ignored the fact that it was Angela who should have made that remark. ‘And if there’s one thing I simply can’t endure

  for long its dullness! Besides, if you take me with you I won’t trouble you at all, I promise you! You can drop me off at a hotel. I can look at the shops and get my hair done by someone who really knows something about hair, and then when you are ready to return you can pick me up again and we will return together. How is that?’

  His dark, thoughtful eyes continued to dwell on her.

  ‘I shall be staying at my club,’ he warned her. ‘I shall have much to do, and there is no question of my being in a position to show you anything of Madrid. Not that, as I am aware, you need to be shown Madrid....You know it already. But you could be as dull in your hotel as you will be here.’

  ‘Impossible,’ she declared, hypnotising him—or obviously trying to—with her huge, smoky-grey eyes. ‘There isn’t a soul in the world who could be dull in Madrid. It’s the most exciting capital I know. Please, Felipe,’ she pleaded, and quite obviously the concentrated attack from her grey eyes won. He capitulated with a slight air of irritability, and folded his napkin with impatience.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ he agreed, and rose to leave the room. ‘But I warn you once again it is a business trip I am making, and you will not see much of me in Madrid.’

  Willow mocked him contentedly.

  ‘Who said I wanted to see anything of you in Madrid?’ she retaliated, with a bright sparkle in her eyes, and a gay, upward curve to the corners of her unbelievably lovely mouth.

  Angela left the dining-room in the wake of her fiance, and caught up with him in the middle of the cool, echoing, flower-filled hall. He halted and glanced over his shoulder at her with obvious, although very slight,

  impatience, as she called to him breathlessly:

  ‘Felipe! May I have a word with you before you go to your study?’

  ‘Of course, cara. But I have a number of letters to write, and very little time to spare.’

  Angela braced herself.

  ‘Won’t you take me with you to—to Madrid, Felipe? I, too, could do some shopping, and—’

  He gazed at her with over-simulated horror.

  ‘And your grandmother? What would she have to say? ’

  ‘She would understand. I—I could make her understand.... And why is there so much difference between taking me and taking Mrs. Ruddock?’

  ‘Mrs. Ruddock is not my fiancee.’

  ‘No, but doesn’t that make it rather—rather worse....’

  She was horrified because his expression all at once grew extremely cold. And the sound of his voice froze her a little.

  ‘I’m not at all sure that I approve of an implication of that sort, Angela,’ he told her, as if instead of being engaged to be married they were strangers who disliked one another. ‘There is a certain amount of vulgarity about it, for one thing, which I deplore. I’m quite sure Dona Miranda would deplore it even more. Now, if you have nothing more urgent to communicate to me, allow me to get on with my letters. It is important that I do not miss the afternoon collection of mail.’

  ‘Oh, very well, Felipe.’

  She drew back, and he went on his way to his study, closing the door after him once he had disappeared inside it with a snap. She bit her lip. So the situation wasn’t

  really altered ... although after their evening outing together she had been prepared to believe that it was.

  Dona Miranda had had lunch in her room on a tray, so she had not heard the conversation that had resulted in Felipe agreeing to take Willow with him to Madrid. But when, the following day, the two of them set off in Felipe’s car she expressed the view that Felipe had acted very wisely. He would almost certainly leave the widow behind him in Madrid when he returned—or he would if he had any regard at all for the strictness of Spanish conventions, and the nearness of his approaching wedding. Dona Miranda confessed that she had not been at all happy at the continued presence of Mrs. Ruddock in the house, but she was prepared to acknowledge that it was difficult to get rid of an invited guest, who was also a friend of some standing, if the friend was unwilling to leave. She rather suspected that Felipe had acted in a highly diplomatic manner.

  But the girl who had acted the part of maid to Mrs. Ruddock admitted, when pressed by Angela, that there were still a large number of her things left behind her in her room. If Felipe intended to get rid of Willow he was planning to do so without the least suspicion on her part. And of course it would be a simple matter to send her things on after her.

  But somehow Angela was not as confident as her grandmother. In fact she was not confident at all.

  She was swimming in the sea a few days later when Felipe returned. The first she knew of his r
eturn was the sight of his car—very familiar by this time—approaching the villa along the coast road, and she extended her bathe far beyond the normal length of time she devoted to this daily exercise because of some new shyness which prevented her from hastily seizing her towel and drying herself and slipping back into her clothes. Another reason was a dislike of appearing before him dishevelled, before she had had a chance to do anything about her face and her hair; and yet another was distinctly more primitive.... She was afraid. Afraid to find out whether or not Mrs. Ruddock had returned with him.

  The sun was slipping low into the sea and the beach was growing dusky and the outlines of the rocks uncertain when she finally got together all the shreds of her courage and made for the house. It was brightly lighted by this time, and there seemed to be a good many voices all talking at once, and a good many pairs of feet racing up and down the stairs and along the corridors as she slipped in by means of a little-used side door.

  Felipe was in the hall, talking fester and more furiously than anyone else, and when he saw her he advanced towards her and grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her under the full blaze of one of the lights.

  She thought that his face looked thin and pale, and his features were set.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘Everyone in the house has been searching for you, and your grandmother is upstairs having hysterics because no one had the least idea where you were, and apparently you’ve been missing for hours. What in the world have you been doing? And why did you slip off and do it without informing anyone where you were going?’

  ‘I’ve been bathing,’ she answered, moistening her lips with her tongue because her mouth felt dry, and tasting sea-water as a result. ‘There was no reason why I should tell anyone that I was going for a bathe.’

  ‘No reason?’ She was quite certain he was going to shake her, and she actually tensed herself to resist him as his fingers grasped her shoulder more brutally. But evidently his better instincts got the better of him, for he refrained. ‘How often have I told you that this is a dangerous coast, with strong undercurrents, and that you must never take any risks? No wonder your grandmother is upset! I’ve been back here for over an hour and at least you might have been on hand to greet me! Instead of which I have to submit to having the whole house thrown into a kind of turmoil.’

  She managed to shake off his hand, and despite the fact that her hair was still a trifle damp, and her whole appearance was generally rather bedraggled, she managed to draw herself up to her full height and look as if she really was a very dignified young woman who couldn’t understand why such a fuss had been made because of her absence.

  And the one thing she did not believe was that her grandmother had been having hysterics.

  ‘I think you are making a great deal out of nothing at all,’ she told him in a clear voice that was very faintly edged with a strong note of scepticism, since in her opinion he really was making an extraordinary fuss, and she couldn’t think why. ‘Sometimes I bathe for only a short while, and on other occasions I like to remain down on the beach for as long as I feel I am unlikely to be missed. When I went down to the beach you had not

  returned.... How was I to know you had returned from

  Madrid?’

  The coldness of his face began to alarm her. He turned his back on her, walked away across the hall and then flung round and walked back to her.

  ‘How were you to know?’ he echoed her, a biting note of sarcasm in his voice while his dark eyes flashed. ‘As my future wife you might have spent a little while each day anticipating my return—or so I would have thought! And as this is the most likely time of the day to expect my return you could have been actually looking out for me, rather than going through the motions of a mermaid down there on the beach.’

  ‘I see.’ Suddenly she thought she realised why he was angry.... He was annoyed because she had not been looking out for him. And then down the handsome main staircase came a graceful figure, beautifully made-up and perfumed and ready for the evening ahead of her, and wearing a dress Angela had certainly never seen her wear before, and which she therefore deduced was new—almost certainly bought in Madrid—and which made her look quite exquisite.

  It was black ... perfectly cut, obviously extremely expensive black. And with it the radiant widow, whose hair had also been set in an entirely new style, wore a single white gardenia, tucked in at the low bosom of the gown.

  She stood at the foot of the staircase, giving a pat to her hair as if to make certain not one single strand of it was out of place, and then lifted her eyebrows as her smoky-grey eyes alighted on Angela.

  ‘Oh, so there you are, my dear!’ she exclaimed. ‘The whole house has been in an uproar because there seemed to be some sort of idea that you were missing. Why, I can’t imagine.... Unless Felipe suspects you of making assignations that do not include him!’ She advanced towards the figure of her host’s fiancee, smiling between the fringes of her outrageously long and luxuriant eyelashes, giving off a wave of French perfume with every mood. ‘I say, my dear, you do look a mess!’ she told her placidly. ‘As if you’ve been fished out of the sea! Did someone try and drown you while we were away? ’

  Angela made a darting move forward to the foot of the staircase, and at the same time Felipe called her name sharply.

  ‘Angela!’

  But she disappeared up the stairs, fled along the corridor which led to her own room, and fastened the door securely once she was inside it. From the room on the other side of the bathroom which she shared with her grandmother, she heard Dona Miranda’s voice calling in an unruffled manner:

  ‘Is that you, child?’

  ‘Yes, Abuela.’ Breathless after her wild flight up the stairs, she pushed open her grandmother’s door and saw the old lady sitting complacently in a chair near the window. If she had suffered any great alarm recently there was nothing in her appearance to indicate that she had.

  ‘Felipe, I understand, has returned,’ she observed. ‘And I gather that Mrs. Ruddock has returned with him.’

  ‘Yes.’ Angela stood chewing her lip in the doorway.

  ‘I suspect that something went wrong with Felipe’s plans, and that is why he has brought her back with him.’ Such infinite faith in Felipe shook Angela slightly, as well as aroused a good deal of astonishment because Dona Miranda was apparently extraordinarily simple and trusting, and declined absolutely to think the worst of her future grandson-in-law. ‘We shall have to put up with her presence here a little longer.’

  Angela enquired rather bluntly:

  ‘Have you been anxious about me, Abuela?’

  ‘Not excessively so, child. I thought you remained rather long down there on the beach ... but I could see you from my window, and I was not anxious. What makes you think I should have been?’

  ‘You were not in an hysterical condition a short while ago?’

  ‘Most certainly not!’

  Angela withdrew into the bathroom. Before she closed the door she said quickly, reassuringly, to her grandmother:

  ‘It’s all right, Grandmamma. It was just that I heard you were worried, and I had to find out. I’m so sorry if you thought I stayed too long on the beach.’

  ‘But I didn’t, I assure you, child—’

  Angela closed the door of her own room before the sentence was finished, and she drew a long breath. So Felipe had invented her grandmother’s hysteria, and his anger had been caused by something else. Very likely he wanted to impress upon her his right to restrict her movements, and it would have flattered his vanity much more if she had waited on the doorstep for his return. The fact that she had been calmly enjoying herself in the sea had annoyed him ... and the fact that he had thought it necessary to humiliate her in front of servants and guests—and in particular one guest, Willow Ruddock!—had had a most peculiar and decisive effect on her. For the first time she formed the resolution to be independent ... really independent! He had no rights over her yet...

 
and as a result of his trip to Madrid and his return in a very black humour accompanied by his lady friend who had been doing some extremely expensive shopping in Madrid, and had the air of one who had made up her mind about the charms of that particular corner of the coast, she was far from being absolutely certain that he ever would possess those rights over her.

  She was in fact still trembling with indignation and the reaction after being so painfully humiliated, and she made up her mind she would not join them for dinner that night, and if Felipe didn’t like it he could make clear his objections when he saw her again the following day. And by that time she might be more ready to answer them.

  Whether or not Felipe was in any way discomposed by her absence at dinner she had no clue to his reactions that night. She went to bed declining to partake of anything on the tray that was brought to her by one of the maids, and the house struck her as very silent and still, although she did hear music later on in the evening. She lay listening to it, soft piano music, and she guessed it was Willow amusing herself at the piano in the sala. And later still someone took to strumming a guitar, and she guessed it was one of the other guests.

  She slipped out of bed and looked out of the window at the dark line of sea, with a late-rising moon just beginning to cast a silver light over it. She thought she saw figures moving down on the shelving white sand, and two of them were keeping close together. With a slightly sick feeling of revulsion inside her she asked herself whether those two figures were the figures of Felipe and Mrs. Ruddock ... with that exciting French perfume clinging to her as she moved down on the sands, in the gentle, caressing warmth of the night.

  In the morning she got up early and bathed by herself in a sparkling blue sea. At that hour she usually felt at her best, but after a sleepless night and a multitude of unresolved doubts gnawing at her she was conscious of an unusual lassitude, and she merely floated on the water, remaining hidden in a trough of creamy waves as the others made their way down from the house for a first dip of the day.