The Stars of San Cecilio Page 3

‘Quite well,’ he assented, but his reply suggested that he did not wish to pursue the subject.

  For the most part she lay back against the luxuriously well-sprung seat and watched his slim, tanned hands on the wheel, realizing that although the high-powered car was being more or less put on its mettle he was driving superbly on a road that grew steadily steeper and more difficult to negotiate. The afternoon was full of heat and languor around them; the Pyrenees inland were dark as a violet sky save where the winter snows lingered on the peaks like caps of sugar icing, and fields of lavender and linseed were bright against that sombre wall. And always on one side of them was the sea, sparkling with every tone of blue from turquoise to the most vivid kingfisher, and the white beach fell farther and farther away below them until the people on it were mere specks, and so were the orange and scarlet sun-umbrellas.

  They sped through sleepy. villages and past white huddled cottages, and encountered little traffic at that hour of siesta. The aromatic scent of pines floated in the air, and pines seemed to crown every knoll and rise.

  When at last they drew up outside the villa it was after penetrating a thicket of pines, and they seemed to rise in a guardian wall around them as they sat in the sudden silence which followed the switching off of the car engine.

  Gia, on the back seat, was too used to white-walled buildings and green-tiled roofs and tassels of flaming blossoms that dripped like flame against the windows to be excited by what she saw, but Lisa felt as if the breath actually caught in her throat with pleasure and admiration. There were green-painted curly wrought-iron grilles to the balconies, a damask rose twined itself about one of them, and the front door was solid dark oak like the door of a church, and banded with iron also like the door of a church.

  Inside there was a black and white tiled hall, and a baroque staircase curving up to the bedrooms. The staircase also overflowed into a kind of gallery, and the walls were hung with portraits, which seemed very impressive for a holiday villa. The furnishings were not precisely holiday furnishings, either, for they had been chosen with care, and were mostly period pieces, while the rugs and the silken curtains, the cushions and the ornaments made Lisa wonder what would happen if they were damaged in any way. She had no knowledge — no real knowledge, that is — of works of art, but she thought she recognized a Tintoretto in the library, and there was an exquisite Greek bronze on a pedestal that aroused all her admiration.

  Dr. Fernandez watched her looking about her in a slightly awed fashion, and explained:

  ‘ This house belongs to a friend of mine, and actually I have already agreed to take it for a period of at least a year. It will be left exactly as it is, and there is a housekeeper to look after the place, and her husband attends to the outside. At the moment they are on holiday, but they can be recalled almost immediately. Could you move in here in a couple of days?’

  Lisa looked a little surprised, and then answered:

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She hesitated a moment, and then asked: ‘Will Miss Grimthorpe be coming here, too?’

  ‘No, I have decided to pay her a month’s wages and send her back to England. Her accent is not good, and Gia is too old, I think, for a nurse now. She must learn to look after herself more, and you will act the part of a governess-companion to her. ’

  ‘I see,’ Lisa said.

  Actually she was thinking—So that was how he did it! Just sent people about their business, when he no longer had any use for them, and paid them a month’s salary to salve any hurt feelings!... Was that what would happen to her one day?

  She felt that he was watching her rather closely, in the dimness of the hall.

  ‘You think that you will be lonely? Just you and Gia?’ ‘Oh, no,’ she denied instantly. ‘And there will be the housekeeper and her husband. ’

  ‘Precisely. And I shall come here myself sometimes — and perhaps bring friends. ’

  ‘I see,’ she said again.

  They passed out from the dimness into the vivid tangle of the garden, and Lisa thought that although it really was rather a wilderness

  — proof, perhaps, that the housekeeper’s husband was old — it was the most beautiful wilderness she had ever seen. There were roses so huge and so darkly exotic that she seldom remembered seeing any like them before, and the high white walls were overhung by pale mauve growth like clematis, and starry jasmine flowers. There were green tunnels of cypress, almond and orange trees, crazy-paved walks, and a huge patio on to which the main rooms opened, and where the light would linger after the sun had gone down. There was also a way down to the beach, which Julio Fernandez pointed out to her, smiling in the way that suddenly lighted up his dark face when he

  suggested that she might teach Gianetta to swim.

  ‘That is, of course, if you swim yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she answered.

  He glanced at her for an instant, and perhaps in that instant he saw her denuded of her crisp linen dress and clothed only in a brief swim-suit, her almost childishly slender figure tanned to gold by the kiss of his Spanish sun. Then he looked away, and presently he wandered away by himself, and Gia and Lisa wandered alone in the Sleeping-Beauty wilderness.

  Gia’s eyes were not too certain as she gazed about her. ‘Will it not seem strange,’ she suggested, ‘just the two of us in this big house, and my Papa not here?’

  ‘But he will come sometimes,’ Lisa reminded her. ‘You heard him say so.’

  ‘Yes.’ But Gia sighed unexpectedly. ‘And he will bring friends. That means he will bring Dona de Camponelli! ’ Lisa looked at her for explanation.

  ‘And who is she?’ she asked, while her heart missed a beat.

  Gia looked up at her with her greenish-hazel eyes full of an unchildlike but very definite displeasure.

  ‘Dona Beatriz de Camponelli—someone who Grimmie says will marry my papa! In Madrid she comes to see us often, and once here she came to see Papa. She is beautiful, like my mama, who was gathered to the Holy Angels when I was born. She and my mama were cousins, but I do not like her, although I would have liked very much to have known my mama! ’

  Something in the plaintive voice, and the sigh that followed the words, touched Lisa inexpressibly, and she reached out and drew the small figure close to her in an almost protective hug. Then she thought she saw the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle falling into place. . . . The ravishing, red-haired woman who had dined with Dr. Fernandez, the fact that he had so little noticeable fondness for his daughter—no doubt his heart had been broken when his wife died, and man-like he had blamed the child! — and now, after nearly nine years, he was going to console himself with the cousin who was so like his wife!

  Perhaps his daughter’s plainness, when his wife had been so beautiful, offended him, too, and that was one reason why he was sharp with her. Unnecessarily sharp. . .

  But as they walked back to the car Lisa had the feeling that the villa was not such a delightful place after all, and that the overgrown garden was an offence rather than a place in which one would wish to linger. Even the sun seemed to fall less goldenly, and the pines had the effect of shutting one in.

  If she came here to live she would never leave it as she came to it — its hallmark would fall across her heart, just as the shadow of the pines cut across the flagged floor of the patio, but, unlike that shadow, leaving an indelible imprint.

  She was so sure of that that she climbed into the car in absolute silence, and Dr. Fernandez looked at her rather curiously as he started up the engine.

  C H A P T E R F O U R

  ON THE WAY back he did ask her a few questions of a strictly personal nature, and she answered them automatically, as if she was still struggling to throw off the depressing effects of those last few moments at the villa.

  ‘You must forgive me if I appear to be prying into your life,’ the doctor said, ‘but under the circumstances I would like everything to be as clear as possible. You have really no ties at all in your own country?’

  �
�No.’ She appeared to hesitate for a moment. ‘No real ties, that is. ’

  ‘What do you mean by that? ’

  ‘Well, I have only distant relatives.’ Her smile was fugitive, and struck him as a little wistful. ‘ And they hardly count, do they?’

  ‘Not in England, perhaps,’ he admitted. ‘But in Spain we are rather addicted to family gatherings, and in fact the family is very important to the heart of every Spaniard. We do not drift apart and lose touch as you people seem to do.’ He frowned at the road ahead as if the English and their methods were not altogether approved of by him, and she found herself wondering what sort of circle he moved in in Madrid, and whether that thin, clever face meant that he was at the zenith of his profession, as she strongly suspected that he was. For not only did he look clever, but the aura of exclusiveness and expensiveness that surrounded him were the usual accompaniments of success. ‘In Spain, for instance, a young woman of your age would hardly be wandering about looking for some means of supporting herself. Some member of her family would almost certainly have taken her under their wing, and she would probably be married, or arrangements for her marriage would have been carried through on her behalf. ’

  ‘Instead of which in England we prefer to make our own arrangements for marriage—if, and when, we decide we would like to be married,’ she added crisply, while he continued to stare at the road ahead as if his main absorption was his driving.

  He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

  ‘I was merely pointing out to you that in this country your position would have been more secure. However,’ as he negotiated a sudden sharp bend in the road, ‘what I was trying to find out was just how free you are to do as you choose, and whether there were any ties apart from ties of blood that might make you feel homesick for England after you had been here a few weeks?’

  ‘You mean’—she felt herself flushing brilliantly, although he was not looking at her— ‘you mean, I might be — I might be engaged?’

  ‘You wear no betrothal ring, but your heart could be involved. ’ The tiniest smile touched his lips as she glanced at him sideways.

  ‘I—no, I’m not ... I mean, there is no one! ’

  ‘That is as I would prefer it,’ he told her, as if a minor obstacle had been removed from his path. ‘You will settle down more easily if there are no emotional entanglements linking you with your own country, and no sudden feelings of nostalgia likely to come between you and your job. I’m afraid I demand efficiency and concentration in those I employ, and a single-minded attentiveness to my affairs.’ He sent her a look from his brilliant dark eyes. ‘Is that too much to ask of you, Miss Waring? Remember it is my only child I am entrusting to your care, and you will be left very much to your own devices while I am not here! ’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I realize that.’ But Lisa experienced another of those moments when she wondered whether after all she ought to allow herself to be employed by him — whether it wouldn’t be wiser suddenly to change her mind, and make her apologies. There was something curiously coldblooded about the way he referred to her emotional entanglements, as if he half expected her to give a guarantee of immunity from any such entanglement while, at least, she remained in his employ. ‘Perhaps,’ she suggested suddenly, ‘you would like to make more exhaustive enquiries about me before you seriously consider allowing me to take charge of your little girl?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head as if he saw nothing strange about the suggestion, but had already made up his mind. ‘I have a feeling that you and Gia will get on well together, and that is the important thing. Also, if we can get the housekeeper and her husband back tomorrow— and they are not very far away, so that should be quite simple — I would like you to move in to the villa the day after tomorrow, and Gia of course will move in with you. ’

  ‘If you are thoroughly certain in your own mind that I shall give satisfaction?’ she heard herself murmuring, wishing she was as thoroughly certain in her own mind that this Spanish interlude, which was to have been nothing more than an interlude, wasn’t being unwisely prolonged.

  When they got back to the hotel Miss Grimthorpe appeared to take charge of Gianetta and Lisa thought she looked very sullen — not at all the type of constant companion she herself would have chosen for a child of nine. And the look she directed at Lisa was full of reproof, as if she considered that she had taken away her job, and a month’s salary in lieu of notice was hardly a suitable recompense. Which should have spoken well for the job itself, Lisa realized, but her own mind was too disturbed, and there were too many backthoughts to worry her, to permit such a thing as confidence to take any root just then.

  She bathed and changed for dinner, and in the hotel dining-room she was regaled by the sight of an empty table in the alcove where Dr. Fernandez always sat. But the flowers on the table were velvety scarlet roses, and they looked as if they were confident they would not remain unappreciated throughout the evening.

  And, just as she was leaving the dining-room, Lisa saw the doctor enter by the other portion of the swing doors, and he was accompanied by the woman with the coils of red-gold hair wound about her shapely head. Dona Beatriz de Camponelli! For somehow Lisa had no doubts at all that this was Dona Beatriz.

  She wore a black dress that was almost as striking as the golden one she had worn on the other occasion when she dined at the hotel, and about her shoulders was a gauzy stole that was iridescent with sequins. There were some blood-red stones, at her throat, and instantly Lisa decided that the scarlet roses had been chosen to match them.

  Lisa escaped as quickly as she could, before either of them saw her — or so she hoped — and outside on the terrace she was surprised when a page-boy handed her a note.

  The note said simply, but with an authority that was barely overlaid by the straightforwardness of the phraseology:

  ‘I shall be dining with a friend, but I would be glad if you join us for coffee on the terrace afterwards. I particularly wish my friend to meet you. J.F..’

  J.F. — Julio Fernandez! Her new employer!

  Lisa went down into the garden to wait until the moment when she might reasonably expect the others to appear upon the terrace, and from

  a point of vantage she saw them emerge from the diningroom The terrace was wide and decorated with huge urns cascading flowers and electric light bulbs, and from the windows behind it an additional flood of light streamed.

  Dr. Fernandez and his guest made their way to one of the discreetly arranged tables, and Lisa noticed immediately that it was a table for three.

  She ascended the terrace steps with a feeling of diffidence, and while a waiter hurried forward to receive the doctor’s order stood silhouetted against the velvety night. She was wearing a flowered chiffon dress, very unostentatious, very much inclined to emphasize the extreme slenderness of her build, so that she looked like a gossamer-draped wraith with the star-pricked gloom behind her, and only her lovely cap of hair shone with a living lustre. Sometimes she tied it back with a ribbon, but tonight it was falling softly to her shoulders, and the rays of light reached out and drew attention to its corn-silk beauty.

  Dr. Fernandez stood up, and accorded her a slight smile. His companion remained seated, but looked up with distinct curiosity.

  ‘May I introduce Dona de Camponelli,’ Fernandez said, after he had presented Lisa to the exquisite redhead. ‘And what,’ he asked, as she sank into a chair, ‘will you drink with your coffee? A liqueur?’

  ‘No, thank you. Just coffee, ’ Lisa answered, and folded her hands a little primly on her lap. This was so unlike the night they had shared a bottle of wine on the waterfront that she could feel the formality stiffening her limbs, and Dona de Camponelli was watching her with a gleam of amusement in her eyes.

  ‘You must forgive me for saying so,’ she said, ‘but you are quite unlike any children’s governess I have met before. They usually conform to a sort of pattern, and have an air of repressed authority about them. But you look rather as if you have
only just emerged from the schoolroom yourself! ’

  Lisa could not help feeling herself belittled by this observation.

  ‘I am not quite as young as I look, ’ she remarked.

  ‘Then that is perhaps as well, if you are to have any control over an imp like Gianetta. ’ Her sloe-black, slumbrous eyes, with the cool amusement still glinting in them, swung round languidly to the doctor. ‘Are you quite sure you aren’t making a mistake, querido? I had no liking for your dour Miss Grimthorpe, but at least she had years on her side, and years bestow experience! Miss Waring can have had so little experience that it is like thrusting an unfair burden on her shoulders to expect her to take entire charge of Gia. ’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ The doctor was grinding a cigarette out in an ash-tray at his elbow, and then she offered his case to Lisa. The Spanish woman, she was to discover, did not smoke, and apart from a highly provocative shade of lipstick she used little or no make-up. But her complexion was so flawless, her features so perfect, that she did not need it. ‘Miss Waring may look young, but she has already confessed to me that she is twenty-four, and that is far removed from the schoolroom, ’ with a smile at Lisa that warmed her heart for a moment, although his dinner guest’s next words dissipated the warmth.

  ‘In this country twenty-four might mean something, but in England young women develop slowly. Have you had previous employers, Miss Waring?’ she asked, and Lisa was conscious of a distinct sensation of shock as the realization struck home that in spite of the look of humor that was stamped upon her face Dona Beatriz de Camponelli was hostile to her — hostile from the very outset.

  ‘I, er — why, yes,’ Lisa answered awkwardly. ‘Dr. Fernandez has already taken up my references. ’

  ‘In so short a time?’ with a quizzical quirk to the painted mouth.

  Julio Fernandez looked surprised.

  ‘There has been plenty of time,’ he remarked. ‘And the references were entirely satisfactory. ’ Dona Beatriz laid a hand — an exquisite hand that blazed with rings — upon his arm.