Circles of Fate (6 page)

It didn't occur to her until later that she was probably being mean; that after being fed for years on Inez's reminiscences he might be just as impatient to see it as she was. When she did think about it she blamed him for never showing an emotional excess of anything, for being phlegmatic, unexcitable, for being Edward.

The path had a twist to it, so almost immediately the garden appeared to swallow her whole. Just before it did, she took one last look back. Edward, sitting waiting for her, looked very big and solid. It was a comforting last thought before she gave her mind up to her surroundings.

She thought of all the stories of enchanted gardens and pieces of lost Paradise that she had read, because this garden condensed them all. She walked along paths set under archways and came upon surprise gardens within the garden. Secluded squares with seats, sundials and, or, fountains cascading into marble basins. She had read somewhere that there were three sounds beloved of an Arab. These were: music, the voice of the woman he loved (sweet music, surely, to any man?) and running water. The Arabs knew a thing or two. Not only was their lute the ancestor of all modern string instruments, but they knew what sounds gave most pleasure to the senses. Anita could have lingered a good deal longer, if the house hadn't had a sound all of its own, a compelling drawing quality that magnetized her feet.

It was white, not green as one would suppose, and surprisingly faithful in detail to her imaginary concept. Oh, her mother had described it often enough, but it is quite an accomplishment to turn somebody's words into a living picture. In every memory detail it was quite perfect.

She rang the bell and heard its urgent summons deep within the house. The woman who opened the door was in her early fifties. She had a kindly face, not exactly beautiful in feature, but beautiful in expression. Round and gentle, matching her round, motherly little body. She couldn't have been more than five feet in height and she had to tilt back her head to look at Anita. Her features showed a minimum of interest; it was the angle of her chin which conveyed polite enquiry.

The ball was very much in Anita's court and, now that she was here, she didn't know how to bat it. It was the subservient look in the liquid Spanish eyes that made her say:

“Is your mistress in?”

The tiny feet, in their soft-soled house shoes, actually turned three shuffling paces before she asserted, with surprised indignation, as though it was a very new state of affairs:

“But I am the mistress.” Her mouth gathered a chuckle. “You must think it very foolish of me, but for a moment I went back in time. You see, I've served the Cortez family for many years. I find it difficult to believe that my son has been able to rent the villa in my name.” The Spanish are a vociferous race and, once started, there was no stopping this true daughter of Spain. Not that Anita wanted to.

“On the death of
dona
Inez, the house passed to her daughter, an English girl with no desire to live here and so –” Now she stopped, aware that she was leaking confidences to a stranger, and also querying this very English-looking girl's presence. Anita, having made her own deduction, was almost dancing with delight.

“You must be Pilar. My mother used to speak of you often, but I never expected to meet you. I thought you would have left the villa when my grandfather died. This is an entirely unexpected bonus.”

The old servant looked at Anita. “But you are so English. Not a trace of –?”

“I know. I don't favour Inez,” cut in Anita, unable to contain herself. “But I'm still her daughter.”

Pilar's stunned incredulity gave way to passionate delight and as she didn't seem able to make her mind up whether to dab at her eyes with the edge of her white apron, bob Anita a curtsy, or gather her up to her ample bosom in a warm embrace, she somehow managed to combine all three. And then Anita was being drawn into the cool hall – even here she couldn't escape the sound of gently falling water. She wondered about this until she spied the small indoor fountain. Pilar purposely stopped to look at the portrait of a Spaniard with dark melancholy eyes and proud, inflexible features.

“Your grandfather,” she told Anita in a choked, impassioned voice.

Of course, it could have nothing to do with the portrait; if she was moved it was because of Anita's visit. Anita felt that her own surprise could be nothing to that of the old servant's. It wasn't something that could be brushed off in a second. Then she looked at her grandfather.

It was the portrait of a man in his late thirties, so it must have been painted before his daughter's marriage, and yet it was there: all the disillusion, the sadness. So sorrow had entered his life before her mother's – for want of a better word – act of treachery. He was a man denied in some way, a man of warm passions with a strong physical appetite.

She stopped suddenly, caught up on a new thought. There was a strong resemblance between Felipe and her grandfather's portrait. She felt shocked until she thought about it more deeply. A lot of Spaniards do look alike. Something to do with their black eyes, velvet brows and arrogant features, and as both men were particularly handsome specimens there was bound to be a haunting likeness. And there was something else. Since last night Felipe had obsessed her thoughts and, unless she took herself severely in hand, she was going to see his face wherever she looked. Against reason, straining the barriers of caution and common sense to the limit, and for the first time in her life, she was in love. She wanted to relive every moment of last night, linger over and treasure each precious second. But not now. This was important.

She had expected to come to a dead house, dead because the new tenant would have no intimate knowledge of her family, but instead she had found Pilar in residence. Someone who had known and loved her mother and grandfather, who knew their little foibles and characteristics. What had made them laugh and cry, what outraged and what melted their hearts to pity. This wonderful opportunity had been given to her: the chance to enjoy the rewards of a lifetime of deferring, and perhaps clucking over, their idiosyncrasies. And because Pilar was a many-times-confessed sentimentalist (according to her mother, but you had only to look at her face to know as much) Anita's barrage of questions wouldn't be considered an intrusion. And perhaps she could rid her mind of an unhealthy shrine, the thought that the Casa Esmeralda housed some terrible secret, born because of her mother's reluctance to return. A reluctance more perverse now that she had seen the replica of her grandfather's face.

Oh, he had been a man of inflexible principles, but also a man who had known the warmth and weaknesses of the flesh. She didn't know how she knew this, she just did. Because he was a man, the sins which he found forgivable when committed by his own sex. would be unforgivable when the sinner was his daughter. But with him, man's illogical reasoning would only go so far. To lose one finger is bad. but at least you have four fingers left. To lose a whole hand is a calamity.
Don
Enrique had but one daughter. (His greatest sorrow in life was that his wife did not bear him a son.) That being so, there wasn't a principle on earth inflexible enough that he would prefer it to his daughter. He would keep his daughter and hang his principles and those of his scandal-tongued cronies.

A gently escaping sigh made Anita look at Pilar. The kindly face now wore a look of resigned inevitability. “Let us go into the
sala.
We shall be more comfortable in there. Then you can ask me the things you want to know.”

It was difficult to know where to begin. The generation gap which made it possible for Pilar to answer her questions, made it impossible for Anita to ask some of the more intimate ones.

She began with the one person who, for some inexplicable reason, did not loom too large in her thoughts. “You must have known my father. Please tell me about him. Were he and Mother very much in love?”

“He was English. He was kind. She was wholly fascinated by him. But you must know this already. Didn't she give up her home and her good name, and her chances of making a really excellent marriage?”

“Oh, Pilar,” she said, throwing up her hands. “You're just like the rest. Looking at facts. I want feelings. And anyway, didn't my mother take my father's good name? And wouldn't theirs have been an excellent marriage had he lived? I want to know whether my mother was in love with him, or was he the better of two evils because she couldn't stand the sight of the man her family was pressing her to marry? Was she escaping from a way of life that stifled her? She gave me all the freedom I wanted; I always wondered if it was because she was irksomely protected herself.”

“A canary is irksomely protected,” said Pilar. “If you open the cage door it will take its freedom. But it will die. On the other hand, a sparrow is born free. If you put him in a cage, he will die.”

“Oh, Pilar, you are very wise. I was brought up to freedom, my mother wasn't. She must have felt terribly adrift when my father died. Why didn't she come home?”

“These are things I can't possibly know. My Inez was a bird in a gilded cage. She was heavily chaperoned, as all well-bred Spanish girls are, because scandal is a serious matter in my country. She never resented the tight supervision, or interpreted it as interference as far as I was aware, because she knew that it was in her own interest and that her parents' chief concern was her happiness. Her mother – your grandmother – bore just the one child, you know.”

My grandmother? What was a grandmother? A grandmother was someone who hadn't loomed at all in Anita's thoughts. Always it had been her grandfather and her mother and father. Perhaps that's why she had never been able to piece the story together, because she had missed out a vital part.

She had not been blessed with an overabundance of caution or the instinct to apply cunning, but some dormant sense was screaming at her to heed both. And yet, at mention of her mistress's name, Pilar's voice hadn't changed tone and her eye gave only the slightest betrayal that her thoughts were not warm where Maria Cortez was concerned.

“My grandparents' marriage?” began Anita hesitantly.

“Arranged,” snapped Pilar. “And don't turn your nose up at that. It is right for parents to utilise their superior wisdom in this way.”

“I should regard it very meddlesome,” said Anita, but softly so that Pilar could not hear and be affronted. She was so Spanish!

“What do boys and girls know of such things? They judge with their eyes and their hearts and not with their heads. And when desire has gone they are left with an empty partnership which must be endured for life because marriage is binding in my country. Some of the arranged marriages fare no better. Sometimes one of the partners die, but by then it is often too late.” She looked up sharply. “I can tell you nothing of your grandparents' marriage.”

On the contrary, thought Anita, you have told me a lot. Although what good it would do her, she did not know. If anything the mystery was intensifying. Instead of explanations, she was being fed pointers that there was something to know. Of course it was just possible that she was being absurdly fanciful in one respect. All families have secrets they choose not to reveal to those members not personally involved. Perhaps this one did not touch her in any way.

Yet the refreshments Pilar insisted on providing did not ease the tightness in her throat. Pilar then said she must look round the villa. After all, it had been rented fully furnished and the treasures it housed all belonged to Anita. Inez had decided she couldn't bear to rob Casa Esmeralda and preferred to think of it always full of lovely things. And, besides, she could not have met the shipping cost and insurance to have them sent to England. Also, fully furnished, it netted a higher rent.

Anita began to take an interest. She counted the bedrooms and noted which dressing-rooms would convert into bathrooms. She felt quite excited. It would convert into a fine hotel. She thought of the money it would take and did not feel so excited.

Edward was waiting for her, exactly as she had left him. He looked as though the only time he'd moved was to brush a troublesome fly off his nose.

“Well?” he said.

“It's beautiful.” She clasped her hands together. “You should see it!” Then she laughed because, of course, she hadn't given him the opportunity.

With her excitement-bright eyes and bubbling-to-tell mouth, she reminded him of one of those weather-house people. She had gone in rain and come out sunshine.

“The most extraordinary thing,” she began.

“M'm?”

“I met Pilar.”

“Pilar?”

“You know. You must have heard Inez talk about her. The loyal family retainer.”

“Oh, good. I'm glad the new tenant decided to keep her on. Advantageous to all parties, I should say, because she'll know the run of the place, where to buy economically and suchlike, and it would be difficult for her to find employment at her age.”

“But, Edward, you don't understand. Pilar is the tenant.”

“Pilar! Good heavens! How can she afford the rent?”

“She doesn't. Her son does.”

He chewed his lower lip speculatively. “How can the son of peasant stock afford it?”

“Edward, don't sound so stuffy. Class has gone out.”

“Still, he must have a pretty good job to afford that set-up.”

“It isn't unusual for a poor boy to strike it rich. He must be very nice.”

“Because he's struck it rich?”

“Because Pilar is.”

“It doesn't always follow.”

“They were happy together,” she said, apparently following her own train of thought.

“Who were?”

“My mother and father. Otherwise why should my mother remain faithful to his memory?”

“I should say a person with one happy marriage behind them will risk another. It's the bitten ones who fight shy. Don't look so anguished, as it happens your parents were happy together for the short time they had.”