Doctor at Villa Ronda (17 page)

After a time the road climbed away from the modest hills with small towns perched defensively on their summits and a range of mountains loomed in folds of mauve and slate blue. Pine woods stretched ahead in an apparently solid mass, but eventually on nearer approach disclosed scattered white villas with splashes of yellow and crimson flower gardens.

When the road wound through the pines the smell of resin perfumed the air. Farther on was a small town with a few shops, a wine bar or two, and a square where the buildings on one side struck the eye with dazzling whiteness, but opposite merged into deep slate blue shadows. Then the car was running down a steep hill towards the sea until a sharp turn to the left brought it between pillared gates to Ramon’s house. Here again were the brilliant contrasts of Moorish arches, cool and shadowed, and the pale pink walls covered with bougainvillea.

Dona Elena was greeted by half a dozen servants of whom she asked a few questions and apparently received reassuring answers that everything was ready for the family and their guests.

“You will find this house different from our own,” Adrienne murmured to Nicola, who had already noticed that the Casa Margarita was built on less formal lines than the Montals’ Villa Ronda. Stone floors with rugs, much simple wooden furniture, flowers in rough pottery bowls, all indicated the refreshing ease of a country villa.

Her room looked out over the trees to a part of the bay sheltered by a curving arm of the mountains.

“When will Ramon arrive with the yacht?” she asked Adrienne.

“Perhaps tomorrow. Maybe today,” answered Adrienne with an indifferent shrug.

N
icola’s query was an idle one for it made little dif
ference to her whether he arrived one day or another, but she wished she could be as casual about Sebastian’s visit for which she tried to quell her impatience.

She spent the next few days lazing, often with Adrienne and Ramon, either in the Casa Margarita garden or down on the beach where straw umbrellas like wigwams mounted on poles provided shade and were furnished with a handy little shelf fixed at a convenient height off the sand for drinks and other odds and ends. Pines protected by stone walls came right down to the edge of the sandy shore and added further welcome patches of shade.

“A few days of this,” murmured Nicola one morning, “and I shall never want to do any work again.”

“Perhaps you will not have to,” retorted Ramon. “Stay in Spain, marry a man who will give you a maid or two and your life can be pleasant and leisurely.”

“Sound advice,” agreed Nicola. “I’ll think about it.”

“You have your Englishman, Patrick,” put in Adrienne. “He is one possibility.”

“No!” Nicola spoke more sharply than she had intended. “Anyway he is soon going back to England and may not return.”

“Undoubtedly he will return,” protested Ramon. “Once a man has lived here he cannot help himself. Either he will stay or he is drawn back. You know that San Fernando is really the Land of the Lotus-eaters?”

“I can well believe it,” said Nicola, her blue eyes twinkling. “It’s as good an excuse as any.”

“Ah, but no, it really is a fact. Odysseus came here and was so enchanted with the people because they were happy that he stayed and stayed.”

“But eventually he tore himself away?” Nicola mocked. “At least, so I’ve read.”

“With sadness and sorrow,” agreed Ramon.

During this time Dona Elena was not only the thoughtful hostess but treated Nicola with more friendliness than she had hitherto shown. She made no further references to Nicola’s missing sister, and Nicola had asked Adrienne not to mention the incident in the town of San Fernando.

But Elena’s attitude changed sharply on the arrival of Sebastian. In the most subtle ways Nicola was made to feel that she was the odd one out of a quartet made by Elena and Sebastian, Ramon and Adrienne. She found small tasks to occupy Nicola and prevent her from joining the others at beach parties or on drives to other parts of the island. Nicola accepted this role, part companion/governess to Adrienne, part unoccupied secretary to Sebastian, and remained in the background when the others went off somewhere.

Then one morning Sebastian asked her bluntly what was the matter.

“Matter?” she queried.

“Dona Elena says you have constant headaches. Have you been lying in the sun too long?”

“No. I’ve been careful not to overdo the sunbathing.”

So that was the scheme, she thought. Poor Nicola has another of her headaches...

“Then you’d better let me examine you and find the cause,” he continued.

In his casual yellow shirt and beige trousers it was easy to forget that he was a doctor. She wanted to tell him that her headaches were non-existent and a fiction on the part of Elena. Her only anxiety had been that he might not arrive.

“Truly I haven’t a headache now,” she protested.

“Then in that case you’ll be able to come with us to the Dragon caves. Bring sensible shoes and a warm jacket with you. It can be cold down there.”

Nicola, dressed as she had been instructed, came through the arched entrance of the Casa to join the others.

Elena asked in her most sympathetic tone, “How is your headache this morning?”

“I haven’t one,” replied Nicola, feeling more confident than usual. She was about to add that she rarely suffered from this complaint, but it was enough to see the chagrin on Elena’s face, for Sebastian had come out at that moment.

E
lena recovered and smiled. “I’m very glad.” She did not add any invitation to join the party, evidently assuming either that Nicola would have the tact to stay at home or that she would efface herself in a
corner
of the car. But Sebastian put a restraining hand on Nicola’s arm as she moved towards Ramon’s car. “We’ll take your smaller car, Ramon,” he said. “You three go ahead. We’ll soon catch you up.”

Ramon smiled and nodded and immediately drove off before Elena could decide on any action. Nicola, watching the disappearing car, knew that Elena was too well bred to turn round and peer out of the back window but her disapproval could easily be imagined.

After that first moment of surprise Nicola had no room for any thought but that Sebastian had definitely indicated a preference for her company. Such a day might never come again and Nicola was determined to enjoy every moment of it, but in the small car with Sebastian driving she found herself tongue-tied or clumsy when she spoke at all. His very presence next to her robbed her of self
-
confidence, and mentally she kicked herself for behaving like a stupid schoolgirl.

She was undecided whether to tell him of that chance encounter with a girl who resembled Lisa, but then the words spilled out of their own accord.

“She made no attempt to recognise you or be recognised herself?” he asked, when she told him what had happened.

“None at all. She disappeared before I could catch her up.”

He was silent for a few moments. “Are you sure that you would now recognise your sister if you saw her? Remember it is well over a year since your last meeting and she may have changed.”

“In small things, perhaps. Hair style, make-up, but not in her essential expression. This girl was exactly like that photograph that I showed you.”

S
ome weeks ago Nicola had acted on his suggestion that a photograph, even a snapshot, might help to locate Lisa, and one of the girls who had taken over Nicola’s
flat in London had sent the only photograph she could find among Nicola’s belongings, one that Lisa had used for modelling.

“I wonder if we’re searching for a girl who does not now exist,” he said at last.

“Doesn’t exist?” she echoed hotly. “Do you also believe that I made up a missing sister—for my own ends?”

Momentarily he gave her a sharp glance, then turned his attention to the road. “I don’t believe that at all, whoever may have put that idea into your head. What I meant was that your sister may have deliberately changed her appearance.”

Nicola saw the logic of his argument. “So any girl who looks the way Lisa used to be probably isn’t her at all,” she said slowly. “That certainly makes it more difficult to find her.”

“Have you made thorough enquiries in England? How do you know that she hasn’t returned there and is now searching for you?”

This possibility had not occurred seriously to Nicola but she soon dismissed it. “The flat where I lived is now occupied by two friends of mine. They could soon give Lisa my address.”

Eventually she realised that Sebastian must have at some time on this journey taken a different route from Ramon’s road, for although he drove fast they did not catch up the other car, and again Nicola felt that warm feeling towards Sebastian.

Just before they reached the famous caves he asked, “D’you know anything about the caves?”

“Yes. They’re full of stalactites and there’s a lake at the bottom. We have similar ones in England—at Cheddar and other places.”

“There are none in England like these,” he returned smugly.

“Then I shall have to find that out, shan’t I?”

He was slowing down the car at the entrance and now he turned to give her a long, sustained glance. As she, too, turned towards him she blushed and was the first to
avert her eyes. For one ridiculous, fleeting moment she imagined she had seen in his dark eyes the same light,
half
merriment, half admiration, that long ago she had seen in David’s eyes when she was engaged to him.

The other car with Ramon, Adrienne and Elena arrived within a few minutes and they all entered the caves with a guide who collected a few more people and sternly instructed his charges not to wander away from him or the paths.

Nicola speedily found that the caves were not quite like those at Cheddar or Wookey Hole. They were not only on a vast scale but miraculously lit as though for spectacular stage sets. Stalactites hung like waterfalls or tattered,
windswept
curtains; stalagmites reared from the ground in columns like pagodas or cacti, took the shapes of monks or fairies or groups of Dresden china—whatever the imaginative eye could invent

Steps or gentle paths led up and down to various levels, and as Sebastian had warned her, Nicola was glad to put on the lightweight cardigan she had brought with her, for the temperature was much lower than the blazing sunshine outside. At last they were down in a huge cavern where columns of stalactites and stalagmites met to form pillars apparently holding up the fretted scintillating roof. There was a glint of a mass of still, black water, and tourists were instructed to sit on the rough benches in front of it Suddenly every light was dimmed and the blackness, intense and enveloping, seemed a palpable thing that could be held in the hand and folded like velvet.

The guides, having brought their individual parties to this point, called quietly for silence, but the visitors had already hushed themselves, into an impressive stillness. Faintly, music came from a distant point, swelled as it approached, then a small boat decked with fairy lights emerged from a black tunnel, and the quartet of musicians was revealed. Boatmen dipped their oars without the slightest splash to disturb the Chopin nocturne and the boat with its two violins, viola and cello glided past the crowd and swung round for the return journey. Now they
played the Barcarolle from
The Tales of Hoffmann,
and Nicola knew that she would never hear that well-known air in more appropriate surroundings.

Only now was she aware that Sebastian had taken her hand in his and was gently swaying their twined fingers to the rhythm of the music. Tears pricked her eyes because the moment was too emotional, too beautiful, to be borne.

When the musicians’ boat had disappeared round the curving tunnel, Sebastian whispered, “We go out that way, too.”

“By boat?” she asked.

“Yes.”

The boats were small and took only half a dozen passengers at a time. When their turn came, Nicola selfishly hoped that none of the rest of Ramon’s party would be in the same boat. Impersonal strangers would not break the fragile thread of this experience, but subdued chatter from friends would debase it to just another tourist attraction.

In the darkness with only the faintest illumination coming from somewhere along the rough stone walls of the lake Nicola could not discern Sebastian’s face, but she did not need to be reassured that he was close by her side.

“What is the poem about the sacred river?” he asked her.

“Kubla Khan,” she whispered, “... ‘where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man. Down to a sunless sea.’ ”

Another voice in the boat murmured, “This is like crossing the Styx with old Charon.”

No doubt the boatmen were familiar with such sallies in half a dozen languages.

Daylight appeared with dramatic suddenness and the boat pulled in to a small platform for the passengers to alight.

“But it isn’t a sunless sea,” said Nicola. “A sunlit one instead.”