The Dragon's Cave (8 page)

CHAPTER
V

‘
You’d better call me Margot,’ Senora Vallori suggested.

Megan nodded. ‘If you want me to.’

‘It makes me feel old to be addressed as Senora all the time. Heaven knows, it makes me feel old enough to have a companion wished on to me.’

Megan felt uncomfortable. She wriggled in her chair and looked at the sunshine outside, seeking inspiration from its warmth.

‘I thought you wanted someone English to live with you here—that you were lonely—’

‘So I am!’

‘Oh,’ Megan said inadequately,
‘
I suppose it isn’t the same as going to England as you had wanted to.’

Senora Vallori sighed. ‘Carlos tells me that England isn’t the same as I remember it. I suppose he’s right. I’m used to the comfort of living in Spain now. The Spaniards give their women such a lovely,
protected
feeling
!’

Megan was on the point of arguing with her about that, but she changed her mind, reflecting that she was not married to a Spaniard, and was never likely to be, and that therefore what seemed like loving protection to her employer seemed like a whole lot of petty restrictions to herself.

‘Can you drive a car?’ the Senora asked suddenly.

Megan nodded eagerly. ‘I drive my father’s car sometimes. He gave me some driving lessons for my birthday. But isn’t it more difficult having to drive on the right?’

‘Makes no difference at all
!’
the Senora assured her. ‘It’s useful that you can drive, though. You can take yourself about the island and see the sights.’

Megan’s eyes widened in protest. ‘But I ought to be doing things for you—’

‘
So you shall, dear. Only I am not exactly in my dotage and so I don’t need anyone to wait on me all the time.’

‘
In fact,’ said Megan, ‘you don’t know what to do with a companion now you have one
!’

Senora Vallori looked mildly embarrassed. ‘You’re very welcome! You must know that! I expect I shall find lots of things for you to do in a little while, my dear, but as we already have two maids and a gardener-cum-chauffeur, there doesn’t seem to be a great deal for you to do at the moment.’

‘I can’t think why Carlos su
ggested my coming,’ Megan said a
bru
ptl
y.

‘
Nor can I, dear, but I expect he had his reasons. And you are going to do up the small sitting-room, aren’t you? Why don’t you get on with that?’

Megan stood up. ‘It’s a
little
difficult to shop as I don’t speak any Spanish yet. May I go and look round the shops? Perhaps I’ll get some ideas that way.’

‘Do,’ the Senora invited her. ‘By the time you get back Carlos may be in and you’ll be able to talk to him.’

Megan gave her a startled glance.
‘
I don’t think—’ she began.

Senora Vallori’s eyes hardened.
‘
Don’t you?’ She looked away again, the smile on her face never altering.
‘
Don’t be late for dinner, dear, will you? We have guests coming.’

‘
No, I won’t be late.’ Megan gathered up her handbag in a sudden rush and hurried out of the room. She would go out, she decided. She would take her first look at Palma and try and feel a little less unwanted. It was so peculiar that Carlos should have brought her here if his stepmother didn’t want or need an English companion. As for the Senora, she couldn’t make up her mind about her. It was too early to
know if she liked her. Most of what she had heard about her she didn’t like at all. Megan repressed a faint shiver as she thought about her. All she really had against the Senora was that she wasn’t a particularly kind person. She wasn’t even thoughtlessly kind in the way that Megan’s own mother was kind. She was charming and very sure of her own attractions, but she wasn’t
kind
!

Megan passed down the magnificent steps into the patio, pausing for a moment to look at the potted flowers and some ornamental carvings that she hadn’t noticed previously. A car zoomed past the entrance, taking up the whole of the narrow street, warning her to be cautious as she stepped outside and made her way towards the cathedral and the sea.

At the bottom of the street she wondered whether to turn left or right. Both looked equally unlikely. The streets were very old, narrow and shuttered, with the occasional line of washing hanging out of one of the secretive windows. Some women stood gossiping in the doorway of one of the houses, flattening themselves against the yellow ochre walls whenever a car crept along beside them. She turned left because a lorry was making a delivery in the street on the right. An old woman, dressed totally in black, eyed her curiously, turning right round in her carpet slippers to get a closer look, her toothless mouth hanging open in her astonishment.

It was soon obvious that she had gone the wrong way, but sooner than turn back she thought she would turn right and then right again as a pleasanter way of backtracking on the way she had come. The narrow street she chose was dark, lit only by the narrow slit of sky overhead, so Megan hurried down it as fast as she could, fearful of she knew not what.

Quite why the door caught her eye she didn’t know, but there it was, painted in scarlet and green, with the legend
Banos Arabes
written round it. It was half
open, inviting her to peer through at the garden beyond, at the brilliant colours of the anemones growing at least a foot high, at the geraniums and the poinsettias, and other flowers that she couldn’t put a name to, and, best of all, the orange and the lemon trees, full of fruit that was actually hanging on the branches.

Megan took a step up into the garden and was beckoned inside by an old man sitting on a wooden form with his back to the wall.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said in English.
‘
I was admiring your garden.’

He smiled at her, leaping to his feet and holding out his hand to her, apparently pleading with her to come inside.
‘
Buenas tardes,
señorita
!’

‘
Buenas tardes
,’
she repeated shyly.

He gave her an encouraging look and stamped off down the path, beckoning her to follow him. She did so, not liking to seem ungracious when he was being kind enough to allow her to look round. He looked completely harmless, she thought, and the sun was shining. He wouldn’t do anything to her while the sun was shining, surely? It was only the shadows in the street that had put it in her mind to be cautious in the first place.

To her surprise there was a door in the wall and he led the way inside, saying proudly that these were the Arab baths. Megan cast a quick look over the ancient arches inside and saw that she had indeed come upon an archaeological site of some kind, a site, moreover, that was considerably older than even its old surroundings. She remembered that Ibiza, another Balearic island, had been a colony of the Punic city of Carthage, and thought that they might well have been in Majorca too. Then the Moors had owned the island for a long, long time, just as they had so much of Spain itself. It wasn’t so surprising that they should have left some of their buildings behind them.

The caretaker began an elaborate pantomime to show how the water had been heated and conducted round the baths. It was, Megan discovered, a typical Arab bath that was worked on the same system as the old Roman baths had been before them and which are now called Turkish baths in the West. The old man dipped up and down, making graphic movements with his hands, and so intent was he on his elaborate explanations that he didn’t hear the footsteps approaching, nor did he notice when they were joined by another girl until she spoke to him, a torrent of angry Spanish coming from her brightly lipsticked mouth.

The caretaker stared at her in silence. Megan smiled hopefully at the newcomer and was surprised to find that the girl’s interest was in her and not in either the baths or the caretaker.

‘
I am Inez,’ she began in a quaint lisping English that was quite charming. ‘Inez de la Navidades. You have heard of me?’

Megan shook her head, silent in the face of suc
h
superb confidence.

‘But
you must have heard of
me
!’
You are the young English companion of the Senora Vallori, a
re
you not? Then she must have told you all about me
.
I am the
novia
of Carlos Vallori. How do you sa
y
this in English? That we are going steady, no?’

‘Are you—are you engaged to Carlos?’ Megan asked curiously.

Inez shrugged her shoulders. ‘Engaged? Going steady? I am not sure that I understand the difference
!
These words have a different nuance?’

‘Yes,’ Megan admitted.
‘
Yes, they do.’

‘
T
hen I must explain it better,’ Inez went on. ‘I am very close to Carlos. Is that clear enough?’

Megan nodded briefly. She looked curiously at the other girl and thought she was exactly as she would have imagined Carlos’ future wife to be. She was beautiful in a flashing, fiery way, with soft, mobile
lips that asked to be kissed, and a naturally provocative manner that was charmingly feminine and probably very much admired by the men of her acquaintance.

‘How did you know who I am?’ Megan asked.

‘I saw you walking down here. I could see you were a foreigner and who else would you be? Few tourists come down this way and
they
don’t live in the Calle Morey
!
I saw you coming out of the house. Whatever brought you here, though? Surely you aren’t interested in this sort of thing? Anyway, I ran after you to ask you to have tea with me. Will you? It will be nice if we can be friends together as I have no one with whom I can talk about Carlos. You will be my friend, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘
Then I shall begin by paying for your ticket here, though I can’t think you understood much of what this man had to say about the baths, did you?’

‘
No,’ Megan admitted. ‘But he tried to make it interesting. I should like to give him something for himself.’

Inez nodded, frowning. ‘If you want to, but he won’t expect much—’

‘
I do want to.’

Megan handed him a coin and was rewarded by a twinkling smile of appreciation. With all the dignity of his race, he picked an orange from one of the trees and handed it to her, murmuring a few words under his breath.

‘What does he say?’ Megan asked Inez.

The Spanish girl looked amused. ‘That you are as beautiful inside as you are on the outside.’

Megan felt herself blushing.
‘
Oh
!
’ she breathed.

‘I think it is probably quite true,’ Inez murmured, laughing at Megan’s expression. ‘Don’t you like to receive the compliments?’

‘Ye-es,’ Megan agreed.

‘It is just as Carlos says I You are completely
English! How do you enjoy living in the same house as Margot? She is not nearly so English,’ Inez added. ‘But you have discovered that for yourself?’

‘
No,’ Megan said fla
tl
y. ‘Of course I haven’t been here long, but Senora Vallori isn’t an easy person to know.’

‘We find her difficult to know, but I thought it might be otherwise with one of her own countrywomen. She confides in no one, that one
!’

‘She’s very charming, of course,’ Megan put in dutifully.

Inez
’
s dark eyes flashed.
‘
Very
,’
she agreed, trying not to laugh. ‘Come, let us go past the Cathedral and have tea together, no? You shall tell me all about yourself and I shall tell you all about Carlos and me
!
’

Megan had very little choice but to follow the Spanish girl out of the gardens and back into the shadowed street. It was pleasant to have company, though, as they strolled along the cobbled surface, retracing the way that Megan had come from the Calle Morey. Inez knew exactly where to go, finding her way through the narrow maze of streets with the greatest of ease, turning this way and that, past the Bishop’s House and the Diocesan Museum, round the magnificent Cathedral itself and past the Almudaina Palace, where General Franco now stays when he comes to the island on state business. Inez pointed out each building with a supreme lack of interest as to what lay inside them.

‘
I have better things to do
,’
she said scornfully,
‘than to follow the tourists through such places. Carlos is ashamed of my ignorance about our history, but I have no interest in such things. What does it matter what our parents did? I am too busy doing myself.’ She turned breathlessly to Megan, her eyes alight with curiosity. ‘Where did Carlos meet you? He tells me you know Pilar? Were you staying with her friends in London? Are you a student?’

Megan stopped walking to look in the window of a shop full of wood carvings of Don Quixote and his faithful servant Sancho Panza. They were all handmade, many of them fashioned to the same pattern, but none the less beautiful for that. Some were made of dark-coloured wood and some in a lighter colour, and their sizes varied from a few inches to several feet high.

‘
No, I’m not a student. I’m a singer.’

The reaction was everything she could have hoped for. Inez’s hands flew up in astonishment, her mouth round with astonishment. ‘No? But this is something I have heard nothing about! Tell me all about it immediately. I have never heard anything more interesting
!’

Megan gave her a pleased smile, flattered by her ex
c
itement.
‘
I had only just begun
professionally
,’
she admitted.
‘
It’s the most marvellous sensation, though!
I can’t describe how it feels when you stand on a platform and have the whole audience in the hollow of your hand, and you know you can make them feel sad or gay just by the change of timbre in your voice. I’ve always wanted to be a singer
!
’

Inez pointed out a caf
e
across the road and gave her a little push towards it.
‘
But in Mallorca there is no difficulty
!
’ she exclaimed.
‘
It will be easy for you to go on with your career while you are here—’

‘No!’

‘
Porque no?
There are a hundred night-clubs and places like that where they are always looking for singers! I shall find you a job straight away. My father will help
!
He owns a great many places of entertainment.’

Megan pushed open the door of the caf
e
and sat down at the nearest empty table. She felt suddenly empty of all emotion. It was as though she had been borne along by a balloon that had suddenly been pricked, dropping her with indecent haste back on to the earth. It was only in that moment that she realised the extraordinary thing that had happened to her. She had been happy singing with Tony’s band. She had always wanted to sing. And she was going to be perfectly miserable being Senora Vallori’s unwelcome companion and having to live in that museum of a house for she didn’t know how long
! ‘
I don’t know,’ she said with difficulty.

‘It is clear that this is what you must do
!’
Inez insisted.
‘
I shall arrange everything. Leave it all to me
!’

‘I can’t!’ Megan burst out. ‘I’ve agreed to be Senora Vallori’s companion. She wouldn’t like it if I got a job in a night-club! Nor would Carlos!’

‘That is a difficulty,’ Inez conceded.

Megan summoned up a rather bleak smile.
‘
C-Carlos doesn’t approve of singers.’

Inez screwed up her nose thoughtfully. ‘That is true. If it were someone for whom he had no responsibility, he would not mind at all, but in your case he will feel responsible for you—’

‘I can look afte
r
myself
!
’ Megan snapped.

‘But Carlos will not think so,’ Inez pointed out reasonably.
‘
If you are living in his house, he will expect you to be like one of his sisters. He would
never
allow his sisters to sing in public!’

Megan found that she wasn’t at all pleased to be classed with Carlos’ sisters. It gave her the, same uncomfortable feeling that she had when she thought of living in his house as his stepmother’s companion. The whole arrangement dismayed her. She didn’t want to be anyone’s paid companion! She wanted to take to her heels and run as fast as she possibly could, and not just from Senora Vallori and Majorca, but from Carlos too! In fact
especially
from Carlos!

‘What am I to do?’ she asked, with a helplessness that was unusual in her.

Inez’s eyes narrowed. ‘You could go back to
England,’ she suggested.

Megan shook her head.
‘
I can’t
!’

‘Because of Carlos?’

The sharpness of the question took Megan unawares. She supposed that it was because of Carlos—in a way. He was relying on her to make his stepmother a little more happy and a
little
easier to live with, and she wouldn’t let him down for anything, which was ridiculous, because Carlos didn’t
depend
on anyone, and certainly not on an inexperienced eighteen-year-old like herself.

‘And P
ilar,’ she said, not knowing quite why she did so.

She was rewarded by a wide smile.
‘
I had forgotten that you know Pilar. It was
she
who persuaded you to look after her mother, no? Ah yes, you are
Pilar’s
friend and you can do nothing that would upset her. I understand now why you cannot sing in public while you are here.’ With an air of intense satisfaction, Inez turned her head and summoned the young waitress to their table, ordering tea for two and some of the famous Mallorquin puffs, sometimes filled with cream and sometimes not, and dusted with icing sugar. ‘But it is a pity, no? I shall tell my father all about you all the same. One never knows what may happen and I should so enjoy knowing a singer
!
’

Megan opened her mouth to protest that she wasn’t any more Pilar’s friend than Carlos’, but then she thought she was making too much of the whole business and lapsed back into silence.