Red Lotus (5 page)

"In time," her companion told her, following her shocked gaze, "these valleys will be workable again, and then it is the most fertile land in the world."

"Is San Lozaro volcanic?" she asked.

"We have our resident peak," he smiled, "but it is at the very head of the valley, too far away to cause any real trouble. It hasn't erupted for over a hundred years."

They drove on in silence, still with El Teide rising grandly above them, majestic, aloof, disquieting in so many ways. Then, abruptly, Philip Arnold turned the car off the wider road into a deep green valley.

The whole impression was one of swaying leaves as the

deep-green fronds of the banana trees lifted like a slow-moving tide beneath the paler green of the palms. Higher up, on the slopes of the hillsides, the narrow terraces which she had come to expect ran in their neat, parallel lines as far as the eye could see, clothed with vines, and here and there a vivid scarlet splash of colour rose up as if in defiance of the eternal green.

Felicity had noticed these vividly-red blossoms all the way along the road, but never in such profusion as this. They had flared in a field or over the wall of a cottage garden, but here they seemed to dominate the whole valley. She wanted to ask her companion about them, but they were approaching an archway in a high pink stucco wall and she knew that they had reached San Lozaro, at last.

They drove into an enclosed garden full of flowers, and rioting everywhere, over walls and ancient steps and seats and ornamental urns, flared the bright-red blossom which she could not name.

"The native lotus," Philip Arnold said with a shrug. "It grows everywhere and is at its most flamboyant at this time of year. The people in the valley
call it the 'flower of love.'

His voice, hard with sudden cynicism, had thrust love out. He had no use for it, Felicity supposed, no desire to be entangled in its delicate web, as the groping, grey-green fronds of the lotus entangled the valley where he made his home.

She turned away, curiously disappointed, curiously chilled, and they drove steadily towards the house.

It stood on a narrow terrace looking down across the plantations towards the distant sea, its mellow, golden walls almost hidden by hanging vines and creepers. Purple bougainvillaea cascaded from little carved balconies almost to the tiled floor of the central patio, where a fountain splashed into a carved basin to keep the air moist and cool, and two white doves rose and circled above the garden at their approach.

It was all so still and beautiful that the raucous voices issuing from the house seemed doubly harsh in Felicity's ears, and she saw her companion frown as he glanced beyond the patio into the coolly-shaded interior where,

apparently, the arrival of the car had been the signal for the disturbance.

"You will grow used to the noise made by the average female Spanish servant in time," he observed. "They appear to believe that if they rush around and talk a lot it gives the impression of tremendous diligence."

In a second or two the squabbling ceased and a small, rotund woman with anxious, fearful eyes hurried out to the pavement.

She greeted them with a flood of voluble Spanish, and Philip listened, the frown still heavy on his brow. After what seemed to be a moment of indecision, he turned to Felicity.

"I'm afraid the news is not good," he said. "The doctor is still with your uncle. He is very ill."

"I must be able to do something," Felicity cried, peeling off her gloves. "I nursed my mother—"

"We have plenty of help here," he told her. "The house is full of superfluous women. I think they will be best pleased if you leave the menial tasks to them. Most of them have served your uncle all their lives, and they are born nurses."

"But surely I may see him?" Her voice hardened a little. "I have come a very long way for just that reason, Mr. Arnold."

"Of course," he said, "you may see him But we must bow to the doctor's orders at the moment. It will depend upon what he feels is best for his patient, I should say."

Felicity bit her lip, not wanting to argue with him in the present circumstances, not wanting to feel that he was being dictatorial, even rude, and above all not allowing herself to contrast his brusque behaviour with that of Rafael, Marques de Barrios. It was hardly a fair comparison, she acknowledged. The two men were of different races.

A servant began to unpack her luggage from the ample boot of the car and Philip turned to direct a word or two to the man. He was small and dark-skinned, with a low forehead and closely-set black eyes, evidence of the strong strain of Guanche blood running through his veins, but his flashing smile was wide and uninhibited and he made her a small, attentive bow as he walked before them into the house.

"You will show the Senorita Stanmore to her rooms, Sabino," Philip ordered.

"Si! Si, Don Felipe!" The
man crossed the patio, stand
ing aside for Felicity to pass. "This way, Senorita!"

Felicity hesitated. It seemed incongruous that she should be shown to her rooms by an outside servant, especially when she had just been told that the house was "full of superfluous women," but no doubt most of them were employed in the kitchen at present, preparing the evening meal or whispering together over the fate of their master.

She began to wonder about her cousins, Robert Hallam's children, whom she had expected to meet straight away. None of them appeared to be within hearing distance of the arriving car, however, and it seemed that Philip Arnold guessed her thought, for he said:

"Sisa is with her father. She will not leave him. Julio has not come back yet. He is out somewhere on the plantations. We have no regular hours for working here, as in England," he added. "Our toil is governed by the sun."

He had spoken of her cousins with easy familiarity and still with the note of authority in his voice which had set her wondering about his true position at San Lozaro. Did he live in the house itself, or had he some other place of domicile within the vast garden's encircling walls?

"I am looking forward to meeting them," she confessed. "Julio is the eldest child, isn't he? I mean—after Maria."

The name hung, quivering between them. It was as if she had shouted it in the sudden, deathly stillness of the patio. Sabino's smile faded on his lips and Philip Arnold's face took on a curious greyness. The light, which had been all about them in the garden, dimmed with the sudden coming of the sub-tropical night and even the climbing fountain seemed arrested in the windless air. There was no sound from within the house. It was as if death itself had taken over where once there had been abundant life.

"Yes." The word came, clipped and aggressive, barring the way to further questioning. "Julio is eighteen. Sisa and Conchita are fourteen and seventeen respectively."

"I ought to have remembered their ages," Felicity said, half nervously, as he stood back, waiting for her to pass. "It's—rather difficult to adjust oneself to a new situation right away."

Philip Arnold nodded, whether in agreement with her

sentiments or in dismissal she did not know, and she followed Sabino and her suitcases into the cool interior of the house.

The lamps had not yet been lit and the inner courtyard was shadowy in consequence, but she could see a vast (tessellated floor stretching into the shadows and a heavily-ornamented staircase leading up from it to a gallery above. The gallery ran round three walls of the inner structure, the fourth being entirely taken up by the head of the branching stair itself.

Sabino turned, beckoning her with an encouraging smile, the shock-of Maria's name apparently forgotten now that they were no longer in "Don Felipe's" presence.

"This way," he repeated. "I show you where you will go."

Felicity mounted the staircase behind him, walking silently in his wake along the gallery, from which doors opened at regular intervals. Behind one of these doors, she supposed, her uncle lay seriously ill, but no sound came from any of the rooms she passed. The doors were thick and heavily carved, old and substantial as the house itself, and the massive pieces of furniture placed against the walls between them only seemed to accentuate the heavy silence which brooded over everything.

At the end of the gallery Sabino paused, looking back once more as he thrust open a door on the end wall. It led into a little passage, and as she walked ahead of the old servant into her own domain, Felicity had the curious sensation of being completely isolated from the rest of the family.

The rooms she entered were spacious and well furnished in the sparse, Canarian style. The sitting-room held a table, a desk, a wooden settle dark with age, and two comfortable chairs, both facing the window and the balcony beyond it. She told herself that she must get used to the idea of not having a fireplace in a room, the focal point of all English living, and passed on to the bedroom, where Sabino was already setting down her suitcases.

He disappeared with a bow and a murmured word of Spanish which she was too preoccupied to catch, and she looked about her at the big, four-poster bed which would surely swamp her and disturb her sleep. It had no canopy, but the corner posts were most ornately carved, and the

beautiful drawn-thread work of the counterpane made it a fitting centrepiece for the room. It was native craftsmanship and had probably been worked by her aunt, the lovely Spanish woman whom she could not remember.

Impatient now to meet her cousins and enquire about her uncle, she washed in the old-fashioned basin on the mahogany stand in the far corner of the room, pouring crystal-clear water from the huge ewer with its garlanded flower pattern which she saw, with a small sense of shock, represented the red lotus that grew in such profusion all over the valley.

She stood gazing at it for a moment before she turned and went slowly back along the gallery towards the stairs.

DOWN in the central hall lamps had been hung along the walls, casting little pools of yellow light against the pale cream of the plaster and deepening the shadows outside in the darkened patio. The swift, sub-tropical night had come like the beat of a raven's wing and all sound was stilled. There was no wind left even to stir the feathery heads of the island palms. They stood silhouetted against the deep blue of the sky as if they had been etched in with a dark pencil as the moon came up over the shoulder of the jagged ridge above the valley.

Already its light had touched the high cone of The Peak, paling its snow cap and deepening the shadows in the barrancos which scarred its sides. They were purple now, scored sharply against the mountain's face, no light touching them even as the moon rose higher and cast a silver wash across the garden's trees.

The hall was deserted. There was no sound anywhere, no movement. Felicity felt chilled and curiously alone. Had she no part to play in this drama of her uncle's household? Was she completely unwanted, apart from Robert Hallam's natural desire to see his sister's only child?

And now, perhaps, he was dying,- somewhere up there behind those guarded doors.

She thrust the suggestion from her mind, but she did not move towards the patio, where she knew that the Spanish family generally gathered before its evening meal. A shadow had stirred out there among the other shadows and subconsciously she knew that it was Philip Arnold.

He had not gone there to wait for her. Almost as surely she knew that. He wanted to be alone, and the garden had served his purpose. To go out to him now would be a form

of trespass, and she had no desire to incur his anger. The servants, too, seemed to be leaving the patio alone. Someone had placed a tray with glasses and a bottle of wine on the stone table beside the fountain, but the occupant of the garden had been left to serve himself.

She did not know what to do. Then, from somewhere behind her, within the house, came the sound of an opening door, and high-pitched sobbing echoed shrilly from the gallery above.

Immediately the shadows in the patio dissolved and Philip Arnold passed her. His face was grey and drawn, the blue eyes under the dark brows strangely bleak. There was none of the former arrogance in his face as he said:

"It is Sisa. Will you come?"

The appeal—if it was an appeal—had been just what Felicity had been waiting for. She wanted to help. She felt the need for action more than anything else, and the sound of a young girl's anguish had touched her heart. There was a helplessness about the man who mounted the stairs ahead of her, too, which suggested a typical male inability to cope with tears, although the wild sobbing which still reached them could only have been the tears of a child.

"Someone has told her," Philip said through set teeth. "Her father is dead."

He had not sought to soften the blow in her own case, and Felicity swallowed hard, trying to blink aside the sudden tears which had welled to her eyes before they reached her cousin's room. When they halted outside the door her heart was beating fast.

"Sisa!" her companion said in a voice she would never have recognized as his. "It's Philip. Will you let me in?" There was no answer.

"I have your cousin here. Your cousin from England. She has come to comfort us in our distress."