No Time For Love (Bantam Series No. 40) (12 page)

CHAPTER
SIX

L
arina waited a moment or two and then rose from amongst the azaleas to step down the path.

Running across the terrace she entered the Villa by a garden door which led her into a passage off the Hall.

Here there was another staircase leading to the first floor. She hurried up it and into her bed-room, and closed the door.

For the first time since she had been at the Villa she did not pull back the curtains to look out over the sea at the lights of Naples twinkling in the distance or those which glowed round the bay wherever there was a fishing-village or a house.

Instead she undressed and got into bed.

Every night since she had come to the Villa she had been thrilled by the comfort and luxury of her bed-room.

It not only had a magnificent view from the balcony from where she could look out in the day-time, but it also was far more luxurious than anything she had ever known in her life before.

There was a bathroom adjoining where the bath was sunk in the floor as had been the custom in Roman times.

It was very American, she knew, to have a bathroom attached to every main bed-room in the house and when she sat in her marble bath with its colourful tiles copied from those which must have decorated the original Villa, she felt herself carried back in time.

She would pretend she was the wife of a Roman Senator, or perhaps his daughter, and that waiting outside was all the pomp and glitter which had been characteristic of the Romans wherever they were.

But tonight all Larina wanted was to creep into bed and in the darkness tell herself that the sooner she went to sleep the better!

She wanted to see Wynstan again, she wanted desperately to go on talking to him, to be with him alone as they had been before the Italian beauty with her glittering diamonds had arrived.

Yet at the same time she could not bear to see him, knowing he had just kissed the lovely Nicole and he would be thinking of her.

She could not understand her own feelings; she only knew that the strange emotion in her breast, which she had felt as she had watched him kissing Nicole, had now become a vivid pain—a pain which was so intense that she wondered for a moment if she was on the point of dying.

Even as she thought of it she longed to run downstairs, throw herself into Wynstan’s arms and ask him to hold her closely.

How could she make him understand that she needed his strength and she wanted him to give her courage?

Then she told herself he would only despise her for being a coward.

He had laughed at her today when she had been upset in Pompeii. He had not understood that to think of the Pompeians choking to death under the black pall of dust and pumice
stone had made her afraid that was how she would feel when she came to die.

Suppose she had to endure the horror of choking, of suffocating as life left her body? Or feeling helpless, terror
-
struck, and having nowhere to turn for comfort?

How could she tell Wynstan of such things? She felt that close proximity with someone who was about to die would bore, if it did not disgust him.

Elvin was different. Elvin had lived so long with the thought of death that he would understand. He would be able to make her believe that it did not matter: that it was only the release of the spirit from the body and one was much happier once one was free.

“I want to believe ... I want to believe!” Larina whispered in the darkness.

Then she found it difficult to keep her mind on death when all she could see was Wynstan kissing Nicole, his arms enfolding her, his head bent to hers.

“Perhaps I could ask Wynstan to kiss me once before I die,” Larina said to herself and wondered if he would be shocked as well as surprised.

She had always believed that a woman did not ask a man to kiss her, and yet Nicole had put her arms around his neck and drawn his lips down to hers.

What had she felt? Had it been a sort of rapture, Larina wondered, which she herself had never experienced?

She had been in bed a long time when she heard voices outside and the sound of a carriage driving away.

They had gone! It was not very late and perhaps Wynstan would be expecting her to return to the Drawing-Room.

She could not bear to see him, not tonight with his lips still warm from Nicole’s.

She found herself listening. The Villa was very quiet. She wondered where Wynstan was; whether perhaps he had left with his friends and gone to spend the rest of the evening with them.

Then as she lay there tense, her mind chaotic with feelings she did not understand but which were nevertheless very intense, she heard him coming along the passage.

His room was on the other side of the house and therefore he must be coming to her.

She held her breath.

There was a tap on the door.

“Who is
...
it?” she asked, although she knew the answer.

“Are you all right, Larina?”

“Yes
...
quite!”

“Then sleep well! Goodnight!”

“Good
...
night!”

Her voice was hardly loud enough for him to hear it. Then as she heard his footsteps going back towards his own room she started to cry.

She had not cried since her mother died. She had not shed a tear since she had known that she too must die.

Now she cried helplessly and desperately for herself, because her life was nearly at an end and because she would never know love.

She cried until her pillow was wet with tears and she felt in the darkness that everyone had forsaken her: Elvin, Wynstan and
...
Apollo.

Wynstan had been quite sure that Larina would go to her bed-room as she had said she would.

At the same time he did not wish to linger in the garden with Nicole.

They had enjoyed a wild, tempestuous, fiery affair in Rome the previous year. But before he left he had realised that the flames were dying down and as usual he was growing bored and a little impatient.

He could never explain to himself why a woman who had first seemed so desirable should suddenly begin to pall.

The little mannerisms which at first he had found fascinating became irritants; he knew what she was going to say before she said it. As always in his
affaires de coeur
he ceased to be the hunter and became the hunted.

Nicole had been no exception.

The moment she felt he was cooling off she pursued him relentlessly, and he found it more and more difficult to escape from her demands, to avoid finding himself isolated with her even in the midst of the gay, over-hospitable Roman society.

If he accepted an invitation to other friends, Nicole always managed to be there, and somehow it was inevitable, because she arranged it, that he had to take her home.

Which meant there was no escape from her clinging arms and her demanding lips.

The Count, who had interests of his own, was seldom at home. He had properties in the north of Italy where he preferred to spend most of his time.

Nicole made it very clear that the only tie which kept them together was the fact that they were Catholics and divorce was impossible.

The last person Wynstan had expected to see, or indeed wanted to see in Sorrento, was Nicole, and he had no intention of accepting her pressing invitations or of inviting her to the Villa.

That was not to ensure that she would not invite herself! He thought irritably there was nothing more tiresome than a woman who would not admit that a light-hearted affair was finished and there was no chance of resuscitating it.

Wynstan sighed as he realised he would have to be firm and make it very clear that he had no intention of being any longer at her beck and call.

There had been a few occasions in the past when he was forced to be ruthless, but usually the women he had loved became friends and he liked the sort of friendship which could mellow with the years into something very precious.

But he knew that Nicole would never come into that category, and he told himself that when he wrote her a note tomorrow saying that he could not accept her invitation to dinner, he would make her understand, once and for all, that it was the end of their association.

His thoughts sent him to Larina.

It had not been polite to ask her to leave so that she should not meet his friends, but he knew that Nicole would address him by his correct name, which would involve him in explanations that he had no wish to make at the moment.

Always at the back of his mind was Harvey’s contention that Larina was out for money.

There was no doubt that she was desperate to see Elvin, and whether it was to make him marry her or to provide for
her, it would be a mistake to let her know exactly how much Elvin was worth.

It seemed impossible to think of Larina as being concerned about money.

Yet from what she had told him in the course of their conversations Wynstan was aware that she and her mother had been living in poor circumstances.

She had explained that they were in Dr. Heinrich’s Sanatorium, which was extremely expensive, only because he had taken them on special terms because her father had been a Doctor.

Wynstan knew London well enough to know that Eaton Terrace was a cheap neighbourhood from a residential point of view.

At the same time he had no wish to hurt Larina and he felt she might have felt insulted at being pushed out into the garden and having to go upstairs to sit in her bed-room while he entertained his friends.

When they had left he thought perhaps she might have gone to the Temple.

The moonlight was silver on the garden as Wynstan walked up the stone paths that were turned to a translucent grey.

The moon not only illuminated the world with a strange mystic beauty, but appeared to bring with it a feeling of quiet and of stillness which Wynstan felt had a message for him.

It was the same stillness he had felt the moment after Elvin had died.

It had been in the morning and he had been with his brother alone.

He had gone in to speak to Elvin. Then when he had risen to leave him, Elvin had put out his thin hand.

“Stay with me, Wynstan.”

“Of course.”

Wynstan sat down beside him on the side of his bed.

“I want you to be with me. You have always understood.”

“I have always tried to,” Wynstan answered.

The words he was saying meant nothing. He had known as he took Elvin’s cold hand that he was dying and there was nothing he could do about it.

He made no attempt to call anyone. The nurses were only just outside, the Doctor could be reached in a few minutes. But he knew with a perception that was always there where Elvin was concerned that it was a waste of time.

They were together with a closeness they had known ever since they were children and as Elvin’s fingers tightened on his hand, Wynstan knew that this was the end.

Elvin’s eyes were closed. Then suddenly he opened them and there was a light in them.

“It is
...
wonderful
...
to be
...
free!” he said. “Tell
...
”

His voice died away, his eyes closed and his fingers relaxed.

Wynstan sat very still.

For a moment it seemed to him there was something moving in the room almost like a flutter of wings. Then there was only the stillness and a silence so absolute that he thought he could hear his own heart beating.

He had not been able to speak of those last moments with Elvin to anyone, not even to his mother.

He had sat for a long time on the bed thinking of Elvin, but knowing he was no longer there and the body he had left behind was unimportant.

It was with a superhuman effort, because he knew he had to face the world again, that he had risen to tell the nurses that their patient no longer had any need of their services.

Then he had gone out of the house to walk alone in Central Park.

He forced himself when he returned not to grieve for Elvin. No-one who loved him could want him to go on living with his illness destroying him, making every breath he drew difficult and laboured.

And Wynstan knew too although he could never speak of it to anyone, that Elvin was not dead.

Now as he reached the Temple Wynstan thought how Elvin would have loved the beauty of the moonlight and the statue of Aphrodite.

She seemed almost to be alive as she stood there on her pedestal with the lilies at her feet and her head turned to look out over the sea below.

Wynstan found himself remembering how when he had come up to the Temple on his arrival, Larina had been standing in much the same pose, her head turned away from him, her hair vivid with tongues of fire from the setting sun.

He remembered that strange feeling when for one second he had thought she must be Aphrodite herself.

He thought now it was the impression of slim, untouched virginity about both Larina and Aphrodite which made them seem alike.

He thought too, that when he had stared at the statue as a boy he had always been sure that the goddess had grey eyes, a small straight nose, and curved lips that were not sensuous but sensitive.

“The goddess of love!” Wynstan said aloud, then abruptly he turned and went back to the Villa.

He had gone to the Drawing-Room, hoping that perhaps Larina had come downstairs once she heard his friends leaving, but the room was empty!

So he went to her bed-room to make quite certain that she was there and safely in bed.

He thought her voice trembled when she answered him. Then he told himself that doubtless she had been half-asleep and he had woken her.

As he walked to his own room, Wynstan wondered, as he had wondered all day, what was the secret that Larina was hiding which she would convey only to Elvin.

Because she felt she had wasted so much of her precious time in going to bed early and in tears Larina rose very early.

The dawn was only just breaking as she drew back the curtains of her bed-room and she decided that she must see it from the Temple perhaps for the last time.

Tomorrow was the day she would die and she had no way of knowing whether it would be early in the morning or late in the evening and therefore she was determined that today must not be wasted.

She looked at herself in the mirror and realised she must wash away the traces of the tears she had shed the night before, in case Wynstan should question her.

In the morning light she faced the fact frankly that some of her unhappiness had been due to the fact that she had seen him kissing the Italian and she thought how humiliating it would be if he ever guessed what had upset her.

“He is far more perceptive,” she told herself, “’than I imagined a man could ever be.”

So often when they were talking he would be aware of what she was going to say almost before she said it, and when she could not put what she felt or thought into words he would do it for her. He never misunderstood what had been her intention.

As she finished dressing she felt herself longing with a physical yearning to see him again.

There was so little time left for her to be with him! Only today and perhaps part of tomorrow. Then she would be gone and he would go back to America and never think of her again.

Because she realised her tears the night before had left her pale with shadows under her eyes she chose the brightest of her summer gowns which she had bought at Peter Robinson.

It was a muslin of tiny pink and white stripes, trimmed round the neck and over the shoulders with white
broderie anglaise
which also edged the two frills of the skirt.

It made her look very young, like a rose which was not yet in bloom. But Larina had no time to spare on her reflection.

She swept her hair back from her forehead in the fashion which Charles Gibson sketched so attractively. Then she opened her bed-room door and tip-toed down the stairs so as not to wake Wynstan if he was still asleep.

She let herself out of the Villa and climbed to the Temple.

The dawn was just breaking as she reached it, and now Aphrodite’s beauty was not the shimmering silver that Wynstan had seen the night before but warm, almost flesh
-
coloured, in the first glow of the sun.

Larina leant over the balustrade to see the sea slowly turning from grey to emerald, the sky from blue to crimson.

It was so lovely that she drew in her breath and felt for a moment as if she had wings and could fly out to greet the sun-god when he appeared over the horizon.

She found herself repeating the last words of a poem she had read, by Pindar.