No Time For Love (Bantam Series No. 40) (7 page)

Italy which she had always longed to see, which she had learnt about, read about and talked about to her father.

And Sorrento of all places!

She had not told Mr. Donaldson because it made her feel shy. But the reason she was particularly interested was that it was near Sorrento that Ulysses was said to have resisted the call of the Sirens. He had plugged the ears of his crew with wax and made them lash him to the mast of the ship so that he should not be enslaved by their voices.

Of all the books that her father had made her read Larina had been most interested in those about Greece.

Dr. Milton had been particularly concerned with archaeological discoveries in Pompeii and Herculaneum and with the tombs that had been recently excavated in Egypt, but he had also encouraged her to study the religions and histories of all the ancient civilisations.

She knew from what she had read that Sorrento was in the Bay of Naples where the rich Romans had built their summer Villas.

But before the Romans, it had been colonised by Greek settlers who were said to have founded the Temple of
Athena
on the tip of the promontory.

In all her reading of history, the Greeks had thrilled Larina as no other people had been able to do.

She had tried to be enthusiastic about the other cultures and religions which absorbed her father. But the Babylonian and Assyrian gods were heavy and earthy, the Egyptian gods with their animal features grotesque.

The Greeks had no Kings as splendid as the Pharaohs, no pyramids, no Nile to bring fertility to the land.

Yet it seemed to Larina that they had discovered something which was different to all the other civilisations—it was light and was personified in their god, Apollo.

As the god of light, the god of divine radiance, every morning Apollo moved across the sky, intensely virile, flashing with a million points of light, healing everything he touched, germinating the seeds and defying the powers of darkness.

To Larina he became very real.

Even as the Greeks had seen him not only as the sun, but as a perfect man, she had visualised him too, and gradually there had grown up a picture of him in her mind.

He was not only the sun, he was the moon, the planets, the Milky-Way and the stars. He was the sparkle of the waves, the gleam in the eyes. Of all the gods, her books had told her, he was the one who conferred the greatest blessings and was the most generous and the most far-seeing.

What she had loved was when her father had told her that Apollo’s constant companion was the dolphin, the sleekest and shiniest of all creatures.

Larina had gone to the Zoo and looked at the dolphins and thought of them as attendant on Apollo, shining as he shone with a light which lit not only the world but men’s minds.

She tried to tell her father what she felt and thought he understood.

“I found when I was in Greece,” he said, “that at night when Apollo vanishes the Greeks are miserable. I do not believe there are any other people in the world who keep so many lights burning in their houses.”

He smiled as he went on:

“Even during the brightest days they will light their lamps, when they can barely afford the oil.”

He paused before he added more seriously:

“Light is their protection against the evil of darkness.”

“Apollo is light,” Larina told herself.

If she could not go to Greece before she died, at least in Sorrento she would actually be standing on soil where Greeks had worshipped him.

It seemed to her in the excitement of what she was planning that it would not be Elvin she was meeting in Sorrento, but Apollo, who had been part of her childhood dreams and who as she grew older had in some way been part of the mind she was developing within herself.

That, she knew, was what the Greeks had brought to the world, the development not only of a perfect body, but also of a questing mind, a mind such as she had herself where she believed there were no bounds to knowledge and to reason.

There was however little time for introspection or for thinking too long about Apollo. She had to buy clothes, and for the first time she knew that what she spent would not be extravagant because she would have no sense of guilt about it.

She rose very early the following morning and hurried to the Bank, cashing Mr. Donaldson’s cheque for one hundred pounds and drawing out what remained of the small balance which had been dwindling away every week since her return to London.

“I will keep ten pounds for tips and I can spend the rest,” she told herself.

There would be no chance of her returning from Sorrento, since the twenty-one days would be up very shortly after she arrived there and after that she would have no further need of money.

She wished she had asked Mr. Donaldson more about the clothes she would need in Sorrento, but told herself he was unlikely to know any more than she did.

She was aware that in the sunshine one needed white or bright colours and there was very little in her existing wardrobe which would be of any use.

Besides with her one hundred pounds she was determined to look her best for Elvin, and perhaps be a worthy visitor to the Villa of which Mr. Donaldson had spoken so warmly.

The difficulty of course was that she had no time to have anything made.

The best clothes in London from the best dressmakers were designed for each individual customer and were fitted several times and took at least two or three weeks to be completed.

Her mother’s best clothes which she wore on special occasions had all been made by a dressmaker in Hanover Square, but even so they had not been very expensive because the Doctor’s wife could not have afforded anything extravagant.

Larina went first to Peter Robinson in Regent Street where there were dresses ready made.

She found two light gowns which could be altered by the following day to fit her. They were pretty, light muslins that were not expensive and were in fact the only gowns in the shop that were not much too large in the bust.

“You are very slim, Miss,” the fitter said as she pinned away at the superfluous folds of the material.

“I know I am not fashionable,” Larina said with a smile.

“I daresay you’ll put on a bit as you get older,” the woman said comfortingly.

The silhouette popularised by the American Charles Dana Gibson had swept England. His magazine-drawings of lovely women standing with a pronounced forward tilt, had brought into vogue ‘the Gibson S bend’!

Larina knew she would never have the ample and protuberant bosom or the definitely curved behind which was accentuated by the swing of the skirt, and often by discreetly hidden little pads.

One thing she was determined not to buy were the boned, high necks which most ladies affected in the daytime and which Larina knew were very uncomfortable.

Instead she chose gowns which had a piece of soft muslin round the neck which ended as a bow in the front or alternatively a bow at the back. It was modest, but definitely not boned.

“It would be too restrictive in the heat anyway,” she told herself, feeling a little guilty that she had no desire to be fashionable.

Then as she was wondering where she should buy her evening-gowns, she remembered that she and her mother when they had been in Switzerland had been looking at the pictures in ‘
The Ladies Journal
’
and had seen some very attractive designs by Paul Poiret.

Underneath them was written:

‘This French designer is trying to change the trend of women’s clothes to what he calls a more graceful, flowing look. His new ideas, like his new creations, are causing a sensation in Paris as well as in London.’

“There would be no harm in looking!” Larina told herself.

She knew that Poiret’s shop was in Berkeley Street, and with a feeling of being utterly reckless she took a hackney
-
carriage instead of trying to get there by omnibus.

Ordinarily she had been far too shy and too nervous to enter the luxurious precincts of such a shop by herself, but now that she had no future she had developed a courage she had never had before.

If people were surprised at her behavior it did not matter; if people criticised her she would not be here long enough to hear it! Even if she did something outrageous it would be forgotten in three weeks’ time when she was dead.

Quite boldly, not even worrying about her somewhat dowdy appearance, she entered the shop and asked to see some of their models.

“We have very few’ models to show at the moment, Madam,” a very superior looking Vendeuse told her. “Monsieur Poiret’s new collection from Paris will be shown next week. At the moment we really only have the garments that are in the sale.”

“In the sale!” Larina exclaimed.

She realised this meant the clothes were ready and could be altered to fit her.

She would not be told, as she had half-expected, that everything would take a long time to be made for her.

She felt afterwards it had been an inspiration, a stroke of good fortune, that she had been brave enough to enter Poiret’s.

She came away with two evening-gowns and two for the day besides a travelling outfit.

When she explained to the Vendeuse that she was leaving for Italy on Friday, perhaps because of the excitement in her voice or perhaps because she looked very young and, although she was not aware of it, rather helpless, the woman ceased to appear superior and became warm and friendly.

Finally dropping all barriers she asked:

“How much have you to spend?”

“I have nearly a hundred pounds for everything!” Larina said.

They made out a budget together; so much for hats; she would need only one large shady one for the sun and she could change the ribbons around to match her various gowns.

So much for shoes: she would need white ones for the
daytime and a pair of satin slippers to go with the evening
-
gowns.

For gloves she could manage with what she had already, and all the rest could be expended on the exciting, original, delightful gowns which, as the Vendeuse pointed out, Mr. Poiret might have designed specially for her.

Larina learnt that he did not like the Gibson S bend. He liked gowns that flowed, that had a rhythm about them, and those were the sort of gowns into which Larina was fitted.

There was one of white which was made of chiffon, another in the pale pink which made her think of almond blossom.

The evening-gowns had chiffon scarves to match, and all of them seemed to fall in a fluid line which reminded her of the movement of the wind in long grass.

“You look lovely, Madam, you do really!” the Vendeuse exclaimed when finally the last gown was fitted and she was promised they would all be delivered late on Wednesday evening.

Looking in the mirror Larina had no doubt that they did become her better than anything she had ever worn in her life before.

They brought out the lights in her very fair hair, the light in the grey of her eyes which sometimes held a touch of green in them, and they accentuated the whiteness of her skin.

“You have been so kind,” she said impulsively to the Vendeuse, “I still cannot believe that I could have been so brave as to come into this shop alone.”

“It has been a real pleasure!” the Vendeuse said with a note of sincerity in her voice. “I only wish I could come with you to Italy and see you wearing them.”

“I wish you could too,” Larina answered.

“Never mind, I know how admired you will be,” the Vendeuse said, “and that is a satisfaction in itself!”

Larina smiled. She was sure that Elvin would admire her and she wanted to look nice for him.

She remembered the little compliments he had paid her. Then she remembered the biggest compliment of all, when he had said he wanted her to be with him when his ‘spirit took wings’.

Now it would not be his spirit which was flying away into the unknown, but hers.

‘In Sorrento I shall be flying into the light not into the darkness,’ Larina thought, ‘and with Elvin there I shall not be afraid.’

CHAPTER
FOUR

Wy
nstan had travelled from Paris to Rome and from Rome to Naples in an irritated frame of mind.

He had, as he had expected, enjoyed himself on the
‘
Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse
’
with the alluring Countess of Glencairn.

He had known when he went down to the big Dining
-
Saloon the first night that he had not been mistaken in thinking that she found him as attractive as he found her.

Her dark eyes lit up when he appeared and her lips pouted provocatively, and long before the evening was over he knew they were all set to enjoy an
affaire de coeur
in which the French could indulge with such lightness that it was in fact like a
soufflé
surprise.

Having been amused by women of many nations, Wynstan found the French more sophisticated and more civilised in their attitude to love than any others.

They approached it like an epicurean discovering a new and strange dish, savoured it carefully and without hurry so that the full flavour, the underlying succulent taste, was fully appreciated.

English women, Wynstan thought, were always so deadly serious in their love affairs. It was invariably a case of ‘Will you love me for ever?’ ‘Is this the first time you have felt as you do now?’

There was always at the back of their minds the idea that love must be a permanency rather than just a ‘will o’ the wisp’ which could fly away overnight but which nevertheless was an enchantment for the moment.

Yvette Glencairn was experienced in the ancient science of fascinating a man, and Wynstan, who thought he knew every move in the game, was entranced to find that there were some new moves which definitely added to his education.

Because she was French and clever at keeping not one man but many under her spell, Yvette was always charming to her husband, which so often the English forgot was important when the other man was only a case of
pour passer le temps.

The Earl hailed Wynstan with pleasure and talked to him of horses and the days when he had been Master of Hounds.

They speculated and argued as to who was likely to win the Derby and the other classic races in England that Season.

Wynstan had sat with the Glencairns at meals, and they had often come to his cabin after luncheon or dinner was over.

But when the Earl had retired to bed and the rest of the ship’s passengers were settling down for the night, it was then that Yvette, in a diaphanous and very revealing rest
-
gown, would open the door of Wynstan’s cabin to find him waiting for her.

She was enticing, exciting and very satisfying, and when she pleaded with him to stay with them in Paris, he had been sorely tempted to postpone his journey to Sorrento for several days.

He was well aware how many friends he would find in Paris at this time of the year.

The chestnuts would be coming out in the Champs Elysees, the flower-sellers’ baskets would be filled with parma violets, there would be the smell of spring in the air, and Maxim’s would be gayer than ever.

As his mother had found out by some mysterious means of her own, he had when he was last in Paris, spent a considerable amount of time with the successor of the
grandes cocottes Parisiennes
of the ’90s, the glamorous Gaby Deslys.

She was the theatrical figure of whom all Paris was talking and it was obvious to Wynstan, as it was to all her other admirers, that her success would be phenomenal.

She had none of the beauty which Wynstan usually sought in women. But her cherubic face, her eyes warm and enticing beneath their heavy lids, her crimson lips that were always parted in a smile which revealed sensuality, gaiety and good nature, made her somehow different from anyone else.

She was audacious, bizarre, at times vulgar, and she looked like a bird of Paradise—not only on the stage, when she wore very little except feathers and pearls but in the restaurants, and also by some mysterious chemistry of her own in bed!

She had a vitality which made everything she did seem sensual, and yet the more luxurious and the more scandalous she was the more people loved her.

From the very moment she appeared she seemed to personify Paris itself, and when she had acted in London the previous year, the newspapers wrote of her as being
‘
la Vie Parisienne
,’
and meant it!

It would be amusing to see Gaby again, Wynstan told himself, and there were a great many other friends he knew would welcome him with open arms. But he had promised Harvey he would keep Larina Milton from making trouble and already the election in America was gathering momentum.

The
‘
Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse
’ had not equalled her regular run from New York to Southampton which was five days, twenty-two hours and forty-five minutes. Instead owing to the weather she was forty hours late.

It had taken another day and night before he got away from Cherbourg and it was very late on the 8th of April by the time Wynstan reached Paris.

This was the quickest way he could reach Rome but he was delighted when he found that he could stay the night in Paris before catching an express the following morning.

Unfortunately he missed the express.

It was understandable as he did not reach his Suite in the Ritz Hotel until six o’clock in the morning after what had seemed a night of laughter—sparkling and frothy as a glass of champagne!

Gaby ablaze with feathers and jewels had danced on one of the tables at Maxim’s, and after Wynstan had taken her home he had known there would be no chance of his catching the express which left the Gare de l’Est at a quarter to seven.

What was more the next Rome express from Paris did not leave until the following day. The alternatives were slow trains, and frequent changes which would not get him there any quicker.

He felt guilty!

Then he told himself there would be no indiscreet American newspapers in Sorrento, and if Elvin’s girl-friend had to cool her heels a little she might be all the more eager to settle for a reasonable sum.

He had thought about Larina while crossing the Atlantic, and he had come to the conclusion that Harvey was wrong and that it was impossible that she should be having Elvin’s child.

Elvin had never been like that—or had he?

There had been no woman in his life—that Wynstan thought he knew—but then he told himself he had been out of touch with Elvin for long periods of time.

When they were together they had an affinity which was closer than anything he enjoyed with his two elder brothers; but after all he had been abroad so much that Elvin might have developed interests of which he had no idea.

There always seemed to Wynstan to be something of Sir Galahad about Elvin.

Because he had been weak and sickly even as a child, he read a great deal more than the rest of the family, and when he talked to Elvin it had usually been on philosophy or psychology and they seldom touched on modern or commonplace topics.

But that was not to say, Wynstan told himself, that Elvin had not developed an interest in women of which he was not aware.

It was obvious from Larina’s cable that she had meant something in his life.

For instance what had he promised her and what had he said in his letters? There were no answers to his questions except those he would not accept.

When finally Wynstan set off for Naples he began to feel angry.

If this woman had hurt Elvin in any way he would strangle her!

Elvin was someone special in his life, someone whose image he could not bear to have spoiled or defamed.

It was this which had made him agree to go to Europe rather than Harvey’s almost hysterical fear that his election campaign might be damaged.

Wynstan was fond of his oldest brother, but he saw quite clearly his ruthlessness, his egotism, his insatiable ambition for power and importance.

He did not criticise, he merely accepted it as being what Harvey was; but where Elvin was concerned his feelings were very different.

Elvin was a part of his heart which Wynstan never revealed to anyone else.

Everything that was idealistic in Wynstan was concealed under a cynical and detached attitude which women found irresistible.

Because they could not capture him, could not pin him down, and make him their captive, they pursued him frantically and relentlessly.

The amused twinkle which was never far from his blue eyes drove them crazy, while to Harvey and Gary he was an enigmatic figure whom they decried because they could not understand him.

“Wynstan is just a play-boy! He has not a thought in his head beyond amusing himself,” Harvey said often enough, and knew even as he spoke it was untrue.

Wynstan stood apart from the family and his mother knew it, which was why she claimed in all truth that he was exceptional. The rules and regulations she insisted on for the rest of her children did not apply to him.

The train was due to arrive in Naples in the afternoon.

It had been very hot since early in the morning when they had changed trains at Rome.

Wynstan’s valet had laid out for him in his sleeping
-
compartment a white tussore suit and a fine linen shirt which made him look even more elegant than usual.

Wynstan bought his suits in London, his shirts in Paris, his shoes in Italy, and his cuff-links at Tiffany’s in New York.

However he wore his clothes with an ease and elegance which made them seem so much a part of himself that people did not notice them but only him.

It was seven years since he had been to Naples and since he had stayed in his grandfather’s Villa at Sorrento.

He had forgotten, he thought, that Naples—nicknamed ‘the devil’s paradise’—was mysterious. And he told himself as the train steamed into the station that it was one of the few cities of ancient pre-Christian times that had not perished but had survived on the surface of the modern world.

He was met at the station by a Courier who had been notified of his arrival by Mr. Donaldson.

He led Wynstan away from the bustle and noise of the station to say apologetically:

“
Scusi Signor,
but I could not find you a car at such short notice.”

He thought he saw Wynstan’s expression darken and went on hastily:

“I thought a comfortable carriage,
Signor,
with fast horses was better than an uncomfortable car which undoubtedly will break down on the journey to Sorrento.”

There was something so ingenuous in his explanation that Wynstan smiled.

“I am in no great hurry,” he said.

As he drove off, leaving his valet to cope with the luggage and follow him in another carriage, he thought that was the truth.

He was in no hurry to reach Sorrento and the problems that awaited him there, and now as the excellent horses carried him through the beautiful city he began to relax and look at his surroundings.

The houses with their elaborate porticos, the Castel Dell’Oro, the baroque Churches, Palazzos, the Piazza Pebiscito and the splendour of Naples made him remember how it had been founded by the Greeks who settled in Cumal in 730
b.c.
But what he had forgotten besides the beauty of Naples with its narrow steps ascending towards the sky, its alleys, its subterranean dwellings, and its Port filled with ships and small boats, was the quality of the air.

Wynstan drew in his breath and thought he would have recognised it with his eyes shut.

There was something different about it, an air that could be found nowhere else. Just as when he had his first view of the sea, it had a transparent luminosity that was also different.

As soon as they were outside the city he saw Vesuvius rising immediately from the coastal plain, its wooded slopes towering high above the road down which he was travelling.

Now he leant back and forgot everything except the beauty of the flowers, the shrubs, the trees in blossom and the picturesqueness of the small villages where half the population seemed to be sitting out in the sunshine drinking wine.

And where inevitably there was the sound of music.

“How could I have been so stupid as not to come here more often?” Wynstan asked himself and he wished that when he reached the Villa he could be alone there.

Because he felt suddenly reluctant to face anything that might spoil the loveliness of the blue sea, the vivid sky and the vibrant quality of the air, he stopped the carriage at the
Castellammare di Stabia.

There he sat outside a small Inn and ordered a bottle of the local wine.

The Italian coachman was delighted. He put hay bags over the noses of the two horses and disappeared to find friends at the back of the Inn.

Ahead, Wynstan knew, was the most beautiful drive on earth and he thought that perhaps the glass of wine would sharpen his appreciation of what he had believed as a child was the road which led to El Dorado.

He had always been surprised that his grandfather, who had seemed to most people a rather frightening, overpowering man, should have had the imagination and the vision to create anything so beautiful as the Villa where he had spent the last years of his life.

He had rebuilt it to the exact design of what it was believed to have looked like in Roman times.

There had remained some of the magnificent mosaic floors, a number of pillars, a few broken walls, and of course the foundations.

Following the lines of these and collecting everything in the neighbourhood which might at some time have been remotely connected with the Villa, old Mr. Vanderfeld had created a Palace of beauty that was unsurpassed in the whole of Italy.

What was more, and this had surprised his family more than anything, he had made the garden a dream of loveliness.

It had required vision and imagination and Wynstan had often thought as he grew older that he resembled his grandfather more than his father.

There had been a poetry in his grandfather that had been transmitted to Elvin and himself, but not to Harvey or Gary.

His wine finished, reluctantly Wynstan resumed his journey, followed by the admiring glances of the dark-eyed
Signorinas
gathered round the fountain in the village.

The water of
Castellammare di Stabia
had been famous since Roman times, and there was the Grotto in the hills which had been there long before the Romans.

They drove on and now the sea was suffused with a golden light which came with the setting of the sun.

The Villa Arcadia was at the actual point where the mountains gave way to the undoubtedly fertile
Peano di Sorrento,
a natural terrace some 300 feet high, falling in sheer cliffs to the Bay of Naples.

There were, as Wynstan knew, special steps built down to the sea where there was a private jetty and where he expected to find his motor-boat.

It had been built for him in Monte Carlo and he had cabled the ship-builders to send it to Sorrento so that it would be there by the time he arrived.

He was looking forward to seeing it. He had owned motor-boats before, but this was a very special one and built to his own design.

He hoped he would have the opportunity to get away on his own and try it out in the Bay.

The plain of Sorrento was an unbroken expanse of luxuriant green except for the white walls of an occasional villa and the Church towers and domes capped with multicoloured majolica.

Everywhere there were orange and lemon trees, burdened with their fruit, vineyards, walnut and fig trees, cherries and pomegranates and tropical flowers.