by Ives, Averil
"It's going to be gay later on, and we might have dinner together." He looked at her approvingly, particularly at the golden hair that was swinging loosely on her shoulders, and introduced a coaxing note into his voice. "After all, we speak the same language! So why not?"
But she smiled at him and shook her head. He went off disappointedly — secretly hoping that he might bump into her again later on — and she fought her way to a shoe shop, where she purchased white shoe cleaner and collected a pair of Joe's small sandals that had been sent to be repaired. Clutching her parcels, and hanging on tightly to her handbag, she got swept down
a side street to the sea-front, and for a time she sat in the sunshine on the sea wall, watching bathers and sun-bathers on the beach, and children crowding round an ice-cream seller. And then when she began to feel she was becoming rather an noticeable figure, so obviously alone and with no fixed plan for her own entertainment, she once more made her way to a pavement café and ordered a pot of tea, which she knew would be fairly undrinkable but which provided her with an excuse for lingering under the café awning.
The sun slipped westwards, and the light over the sea grew less golden and clear, and the sea turned slowly to indigo. The sky became luminous, like a turquoise void, and in it the first stars pricked and the lemon light turned to saffron, and then to flame. Down on the beach the sea lapped, the sun-umbrellas were closed, and the sun worshippers returned to their hotels. There was a kind of brief lull, during which the excitement in the streets seemed to subside a little, the cafe tables emptied, and Kathleen felt very much alone.
In fact, she had never felt so alone in her life —alone and utterly without purpose! She swallowed, thinking of Miguel driving up to the front entrance of the Quinta Cereus with Carmelita beside him, and masses of baggage strapped to the luggage grid, and much more to follow.
Carmelita's new dresses, hats, shoes, underwear .. . All the things she had bought in Paris, for her wedding! Her new life!
Kathleen tore hard at her lower lip, and knew that she couldn't possibly return until it was quite late in the evening. Carmelita would almost certainly remain for dinner, and Inez would ask her all sorts of questions about the past month, and Miguel might feel just a little uncomfortable with Kathleen's eyes watching them.
Or would he expect her to understand . . .?
She felt a sort of deathly misery rush over her and plunged into the street, to be brought up short by the glistening bonnet of a car, which very nearly touched
her. The driver had been proceeding carefully, however, and he was able to bring his car to a standstill on the instant. He lowered his window and looked out at Kathleen, his attractive brown eyes reflecting amazement.
"Miss O'Farrel!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing in Amara at this hour? And don't tell me you're alone!"
He was immaculately dressed for the evening, a white gardenia in his buttonhole, a black cummerbund sitting snugly about his trim waist, diamonds winking in his shirt front and in his cuffs. His hair was black and shining and exquisitely sleek, his concerned smile very white-toothed. He belonged to a world Kathleen was temporarily excluded from — soon it would be permanently! — and she had nothing to say.
The smile vanished, and his concern grew.
"I say, you'd better get inside and let me drive you home! This is no place for a girl at this hour — not a girl alone, anyway! Are you having what you call a half-day? Tomorrow's the day for testa, you know! Tonight they're just getting ready for it!"
"Thank you, Senhor Queiroz," she answered, "but I don't want to go home yet. This is my half-day, and I—I want to make the most of it!"
He frowned.
"But, you can't — not alone! Not you! Unless," the smile returning to his audacious eyes, "you're meeting someone?"
"Yes." Her reply was so swift that it would have made anyone suspicious. "I'm meeting my—my sister and brother, later on! We—we're going to see the sights!"
She had never told a deliberate untruth in her life before, but this one had to be told.. Fernando Queiroz, however, merely looked slightly amazed, and then his whimsically curved lips grew just a shade more whimsical.
"That wasn't the kind of meeting I had in mind " Then he leaned from the car and addressed her more urgently. Other vehicles behind him were sounding their horns, and he knew he couldn't linger. "Look here, I'm going out to dinner, and people behind are getting impatient, but I can't leave you here! I may be the type who kisses a girl in a corridor whether she wants me to or not, but I can't abandon anyone as pretty as you at this hour of the evening!" He held open the door. "Slip in, and I'll drive you to your brother's house! That will be better than your hanging about waiting for them!"
But Kathleen stepped back on to the pavement and shook her head violently.
"No, no, I don't want—!"
And then the honking of horns grew louder, someone pushed between her and the car, and someone else literally thrust her into a shop doorway, and she turned and saw at once that the tiny enclosed space had another open door leading to a street that ran parallel with the one in which the traffic block was causing consternation. To the astonishment of the vendor of postcards and feminine trinkets she dived behind his counter and slipped out into the shadowed side street, and as she tore along it she heard the grinding of gears that told her that the condensation of traffic had been relieved. Fernando had done the only thing he could do, and driven on!
After that, she had no idea for how long, or in what part of the town she wandered. With the shadows deepening moment by moment it would, in any case, have seemed strange to her, and the bright lights that streamed out from café doorways confused her. There were bursts of singing, and conflicting radio programmes reached her ears, and in a tiny square where a fountain played and a statue had been set up to the memory of someone who, at some time or other, had done something for Portugal, some of the younger elements were dancing.
They had an accordion, and someone was strumming a guitar, and there was a great deal of hand-clapping and laughter. A girl with a red rose tucked behind her ear was doing a wild fandango, and dark eyes glistened in the brightening starlight. Kathleen darted back into the tiny alleyway from which she had emerged, and she was wishing desperately that she might find her way back to one of the hotels where she could order dinner, when someone snatched her handbag from under her arm, and she turned to find a pair of those glistening dark eyes regarding her. The bag-snatcher had made off, and his footsteps could be heard racing along the alley, but the man in the square who had glimpsed her golden hair and light dress while his fellow countrywoman was dancing her fandango had moved on soft feet after her, and now he was closing in.
He said something thickly in Portuguese, and then put out a hand to lay hold of her, but she screamed and backed against the wall. He frowned, and then his dark eyes glistened with appreciation, and he made another lunge towards her. He marshalled a few words in English.
"Senhorita shouldn't wander in Amara at night! ..."
And then he was holding her with brutal fierceness, dragging her away from the wall, and the smell of his breath — garlic and wine and stale tobacco —brought a wave of nausea rushing over her. She fought desperately to free herself, Joe's sandals falling to the pavement and the jar of shoe cream, which made a hollow plop, and burst all over her own shoes. Then, as the man's face pressed insistently closer despite her attempt to hold him off, she screamed again — sharply, and in a terrified way this time — and at the same instant her attacker was torn literally and bodily away from her, and she heard his amazed grunt as he landed in the gutter of the roadway.
Then he leapt to his feet, as nimble as some feline creature of the jungle, and with a throaty Portuguese oath he prepared to fall upon Kathleen's deliverer.
But the Conde de Chaves, who had interposed his tall form between Kathleen and the owner of the too brilliant dark eyes, merely looked at him in the deep dusk of the alleyway, and then as the other shrank back orde
red him off as he might have done some offensive cur.
"And you can think yourself lucky if you never hear another word of this!" the Conde said, his own Portuguese icy, not thick, with his rage.
The man looked absolutely petrified, and then he grovelled, and slunk away down the alleyway like a seriously alarmed alley-cat, and the Conde turned to Kathleen and grasped her by the arm. For the second time in her life she felt as if her knees would not support her, only this time she had a definitely legitimate reason for believing she might faint away altogether.
But she didn't. The Conde's fingers hurt her almost as much as the less immaculate fingers of her recent amorous attacker, and the ice in his voice must have acted like a douche of cold water on her failing senses. Anyway, like a swimmer in danger of drowning who had suddenly managed to suck in air, she allowed him to lead her away down the silent, deserted thoroughfare, and she didn't really need his caustic, "I should have thought even you might have had more sense!" before he thrust her into his car, which was drawn up at the bottom of the street, to banish the sensation of faintness altogether, and arouse instead the merest beginnings of a dull feeling of resentment.
She sat very still and silent beside him at the wheel, and she knew that she was trembling violently all the time he searched for his ignition key and finally produced it. In the empty spaces at the back of the big car silence seemed to press down and to reach out and cover them, and Kathleen felt her throat tightening up with an emotion that shook her and finally caused two tears to spill over and run down her cheeks.
She wiped them away with a trembling hand, and then, to her horror, more tears followed the first, and
still more. She had lost her handbag, and had no handkerchief, and her gloved fingers were not enough to cope with them, so the Conde passed her his huge, immaculate linen handkerchief.
He asked in a voice that was tight and unlike him:"Did he hurt you?"
"You're quite sure?"
"Quite—sure!"
He uttered a smothered expletive, and then demanded:
"But, why . . .? Why . . .?"
She made a helpless little gesture, and he snatched the handkerchief out of her hand and turned on the roof-light to look at her. Her face was drowned, and her eyes blurred and bitterly unhappy, so he swore outright this time, and then switched off the roof-light and caught her close to him.
"Don't cry, beloved!" His voice shook. "I can't bear it."
"Oh, Miguel!" She turned and buried her face against him, and he shut his eyes as he felt the silken softness of her hair stray over his face, and when she lifted her face for a moment the wetness of her tears streaked his cheek. "Oh, Miguel! . .. If you hadn't come!"
She was shaking so violently that he had to do something to still the trembling, and he turned her face up to his and kissed her long and passionately, and with a kind of desperation, on the lips. She gave a little choked sigh and relaxed against him, and he murmured to her tenderly:
"Forgive me for being such a brute to you, my heart! But if you knew how I felt when I came upon you just now — and realised that it was you yourself who had placed yourself in such a situation of danger! Kathleen, why in the world did you do such a thing? Why were you wandering about aimlessly in the less reputable part of the town at this hour of the evening? Have you no sense?"
"I lost my way," she told him, and added feebly: "Anyone might lose their way!"
"But, why were you in Amara at all?—Alone?" "I was given the afternoon off."
He bit his lip.
"Weren't you also given to understand that I was coming home?"
"Yes." She drew a little away from him. He had no right to put her through this inquisition when he was the one who was to blame for everything — for the fact that she had been in danger, and had still to face up to grim reality! "Yes—your sister told me! And she understood perfectly about my needing the afternoon off!" She bit her lip and looked away from him. "In any case, how did you—f-find me? And why did you come to look for me, or was it just an accident?"
"It was no accident." His voice was stern, and it was plain he couldn't understand her unmistakable shrinking away from him. He tried to draw her back into his arms, but she resisted him strongly. "Fernando Queiroz, who apparently ran into you in the town, came straight back to the quinta and told us you were alone amongst a mass of holidaymakers and testa-excited locals, and that you had said you were meeting your brother and sister-in-law, but he didn't believe it. He said you had run away when he tried to bring you home, and because it all sounded highly suspicious I telephoned your brother. And he, of course, admitted at once that there was no plan to meet either him or Senhora O'Farrel! So—"
"So?" once more rather feebly, and not daring to meet his puzzled, hurt eyes in the gloom of the car.
"So I set out at once to search for you! And mercifully I did find you!"
There was a deep, spreading silence in the car, and she received the impression that he, too, had started to shake a little . . . At any rate, his hand was not in the least steady as he reached for a cigarette and lighted it. The flame of his lighter made it perfectly plain that his fingers were fumbling a little, and when
they crushed out the cigarette almost immediately in the ash-tray she knew that he had no real idea what he was doing.
"Kathleen! If anything had happened to you! . . ." His voice made it necessary for her to steel her heart.
"And what of Senhorita Albrantes?" she asked very quietly. "Didn't she object to your leaving her to come dashing out to look for me?"
"Carmelita?" With a fresh cigarette extracted from the box fitted into the dashboard he turned and looked at her. "But why should Carmelita object? In any case, I left her in Paris — or just outside Paris! With her husband!"
"With her—husband?"
"Of course." His voice was almost deadly quiet, and suddenly deadly calm. "With whom else would she wish to stay when she has only just married him? Carmelita is very much in love, and unlike you she is not the type to fall out of love after a month's separation! As the years pass I imagine her love will grow stronger, and in any case it will never die," the quiet voice vibrating a little, "because we Portuguese are not like you English. Our affections become fixed, and yours do not! That, at least, is what you are striving to make plain to me, isn't it?"
Kathleen wondered whether her experience in the street just now had unhinged her mind a little. What was Miguel saying to her, and why was his tone so reproachful? Bitterly reproachful! . . What was he accusing her of?
"Miguel, I—" And then she gasped. "Miguel, did you say that Carmelita is—is married?"
"That is what I said." But his aloofness was like a wall between them. "She was married in Paris only a few days ago. I would have been home earlier but for the fact that there were difficulties in the way of the marriage until we managed to smooth them out, and after that it was a very hurried affair. Carmelita's
mother did not attend, for she has never approved, but I as the head of our house was able to deputise for her! . . . I know that it was the right sort of marriage for Carmelita, and for that reason I gave it my support. I even flew back to Lisbon shortly after we left here for consultations with various legal people. I was the only one Carmelita could depend upon to act for her."
Kathleen sat as if she had been rendered temporarily stupid, and quite tongue-tied. The Conde went on:
"Years ago, when we were both very young, Carmelita and I were unofficially betrothed to be married. But it would never have done. We were not in love, and we would not have been happy. Also, the family tie was too close. That sort of thing is not good."
Kathleen put her hands up to her face and kept them there. With her remorseful eyes hidden she managed:
"But how was I to know? You were so devoted to her, and she was here so frequently! . . . You told me weeks ago that you had made up your mind to marry!" She lifted her head and looked at him through the dimness with anguished eyes. "And your sister said—"
She could feel him become stiff and alert on the seat beside her.
"Yes? What did my sister say?"
"She said that you—" she moistened her lips—"that you and Senhorita Albrantes had gone to Paris to shop for your wedding! That it had all been arranged ages ago, and everyone knew! She said that you were not a philanderer, but occasionally a pretty face caught your eye, and—and mine had done that!" Humiliation rushed over her as she recalled the afternoon when Dona Inez had said that, "And, naturally—"
"Naturally?" he insisted, no thawing affecting the remote coolness of his tone.
"Naturally, I thought that you—that that was all I did mean to you!" She clasped her hands tightly in her lap, and looked down at them with an abject droop to her shoulders. "How could I be certain of anything else?" she enquired in a whisper.
"You couldn't," he agreed. "I had told you I loved you, but that apparently didn't mean very much! I had told you the period of our separation would be as brief as I could make it, but that, too, didn't mean very much! What sort of a plan did you think I had for you?" the harshness of his voice grating on her. "Did you decide that at the same time that I was making plans for my marriage — in Paris, with Carmelita! —I was also making plans for you? Not such respectable plans, of course—"
"Oh, don't!" she begged him, in a whisper.
She felt his hands on her shoulders, gripping them brutally.
"I would like to shake you, Kathleen," he told her, in a hard tone. "I would like to shake you for your lack of faith, and — perhaps! — your lack of love!"
But that was too much for her. She had endured quite a lot of mental agony that afternoon, and on top of it she had been frightened out of her wits and roughly handled. Now he was obviously capable of handling her just as roughly, and he was cruelly deriding her at the same time. A storm of resentment rose up in her, and she threw off his hands. She put out her hand to the door handle and grasped it, fully determined to leave the car once she had said her say.