The Stars of San Cecilio (11 page)

— and marriage to Dr. Fernandez! And you can take it from me that that is one thing she intends to bring off one day! ’

Lisa said nothing to this.

‘However, all that’s beside the point, except that at the moment Dona Beatriz is suffering slightly from frustration, and feeling frustrated she’s inclined to be spiteful. She doesn’t want to make things too easy for you, and she could make things awkward. I’d rather get you away from the house sometimes; take you to the cinema in San Cecilio, take you out to dinner — things like that. No watching eyes, no comments. And there’s another thing. I’ve an aunt who’s coming to visit me soon, or to look me up, at least. She’s my aunt Grizel, short for Grizelda, and nobody knows how old she is, because she looks as if she might go on living forever! She has a flat in Madrid, and her great hobby is painting. She has painted her way right round the world, or so she boasts, and every now and again she has exhibitions of her pictures in places like London and Paris I suppose she’s really quite an artist. However, the main thing is she wants to come and see me in my cottage, and I’ll have to give her lunch. I’ll take her to an hotel, of course, and I’d like you to join us. I think you’d enjoy meeting her, because she’s quite unlike the usual run of aunts, and fairly bright and breezy. Will you do so, Lisa?’

Lisa didn’t hesitate over this.

‘Oh, yes, I’d like to,’ she said. And, she thought, Spanish sensibilities couldn’t possibly be upset by her meeting with the aunt of an attractive young man like Peter Hamilton-Tracey, and joining the two of them for a meal. And although she was quite well aware that Dr. Fernandez didn’t approve of her association with Peter for the simple reason that it could prove unsettling to her daily life, and affect the quality of the service he demanded as an employer — there couldn’t possibly be any other reason why he should object! — she agreed with Peter that the atmosphere of the villa since the arrival of Dona Beatriz was not quite the light-hearted atmosphere it had been before she left Madrid.

Sometimes even the thought of Dona Beatriz weighed upon her, like a cloud she could do nothing to lift, because by comparison with herself she was all things elegant and sophisticated, and her relationship with Dr. Fernandez was so very different from the relationship of a girl who was filling a temporary post, and not yet entirely trusted.

And one day, of course, she would marry Dr. Fernandez.... When he had recognized how futile it was to continue dwelling upon the past, and the brief happiness that had once been his, and realized how much she had to offer him!

It was only a question of time. Peter was right about that.

When Peter said goodnight and went back to his cottage he carried with him her reiterated promise to meet his aunt, and he in his turn promised to let her know in good time when that aunt threatened to arrive. Then she could approach her employer for permission to absent herself for the first whole day that had been granted to her since he became her employer.

CHAPTER NINE

But before that day dawned an incident happened that caused her to see him in quite a different light from any that she had so far seen him in.

Senora Cortina was in the habit of receiving vegetables at the side entrance to the villa, and these were brought to her daily by the young man who drove a donkey-cart down a narrow lane that was an offshoot of the winding main road, and brought the cart to rest outside a creaking iron gate. The creaking of the gate usually announced his arrival, and Senora Cortina would emerge in her apron — frequently wiping her hands on it as if she had only just deserted the kitchen sink — and scold him in a loud voice for being late with cauliflowers, or the crisp hearts of lettuce that she was to arrange into a salad for lunch.

This was so much part of a daily ritual that Lisa and her charge often listened for it at about the hour when they knew that that shrill and rebuking voice would shatter the drowsy silence of the garden. Following the grating of wheels on the rough surface of the lane, the creaking of the gate, and then leisured footsteps making their way to the side door, they would cease whatever they were doing, lift up their heads, and then smile at one another when the tirade broke out.

‘This is a fine hour of the day in which to bring vegetables for lunch! ... For lunch!’ The voice would reach a pitch of indignation. ‘It is the laziness in your bones that you are suffering from, Pedro Gonzalez, and the sooner you do something to overcome it the better for us all! The better for my cooking!...’

Then would follow wheedling compliments in a sleepy male voice on the undoubted quality of that cooking, and more often than not the offender — in spite of the lateness of the hour — would be invited inside for some refreshment which he had scarcely earned. And when he emerged, after the lapse of a quarter of an hour or so, at least, and he caught sight of Gia peeping through a gap in the hedge, with Lisa standing more properly a little way from her, he would wink at them both with one of his handsome black Spanish eyes, and then climb back on to his cart and grind leisurely away.

Spain is the country of manana — tomorrow!

— and with Pedro Gonzalez tomorrow could just as well be the day after tomorrow, judging by the perpetual sleepiness of his expression, and the deliberate care with which he avoided any sign of anything approaching haste. He was, Lisa supposed, typical of a good many young men in that part of the world, a Catalan, indolent by nature, with little purpose in the beyond the day-to-day routine, and the occasional bullfight and fiesta. She would imagine his lassitude slipping from him a little at fiesta time, or when he was encouraging a favorite matador in the bull-ring, and his black eyes could certainly work overtime if a pretty girl was anywhere in his vicinity.

Lisa he had eyed casually at first, and then with increasing interest when he saw her on several occasions. Gia described him, giggling at her own description, as ‘Pedro the vegetable man who liked the look of Lisa! ’ But Lisa saw nothing either apt or funny in this, and apart from smiling at Senora Cortina’s outbursts when he arrived with the vegetables, she preferred to keep out of the orbit of his black glance if possible when he was in the vicinity.

She wasn’t used to men of his type — down-to-earth, sensual types, with a look of brutality at the corners of a handsome mouth—and she shrank from being silently approved of. Also, for some reason, she had an active mistrust of Pedro, and this wasn’t anything at all to do with the looks he directed at herself.

One morning he arrived at the side gate with a huge black mongrel dog sitting up beside him in the cart. The dog wasn’t merely a mongrel of the worst vintage — and there were many mongrels whom Lisa had fallen in love with on sight!

— but he was shamefully neglected, and he looked bad-tempered. He was sitting on a sack of onions when the cart drew up, and he lifted his lip and showed his teeth in an ominous manner when Pedro thrust him aside in order to lift the sack on his back and deposit it inside Senora Cortina’s kitchen, and a low growl left his throat. Pedro gave him a hearty slap that sent him into a corner of the cart, and when he looked round and saw Lisa attempting to persuade Gia away from the hole in the hedge he treated her to a display of his hard white teeth.

‘You like dogs, senorita?’ he asked, in his languid manner.

‘ All English people like dogs, and make the great fuss of them! Is that not so? Si?’

Lisa did not reply, and he settled the sack of onions more comfortably on his back, gave the dog a second thrust away from a box of lettuces, and then with his eyes still on her continued conversationally:

‘This fellow not good-tempered fellow. Very bad-tempered dog. Yesterday he fight and kill another much smaller than himself, and I give him a whipping. Today he not forget, and growl at me. Tonight I give him another whipping! ’

‘Then it’s no wonder that he’s bad-tempered!’ Lisa could not prevent herself from saying in a burst of indignation.

‘You think so?’ He leaned against the cart, the sack of onions dangling like an indolent cloak from his broad back, and his black eyes blazed with a mixture of amusement and mockery. ‘Ah, but that is because you are English, and in England it is the habit to fuss the dog! The little pet dog! Si?’ ‘That is no pet dog,’ Lisa told him, eyeing the mongrel apprehensively, for Gia was making overtures to it, and they were not being well received. She drew Gia back from the gap in the hedge, and, while Pedro thought up more provocative things to say, became aware out of the tail of her eye of

Senora Cortina’s recently acquired puppy (also of doubtful ancestry) emerging ahead of its owner from the partly opened side door and preparing to take a stroll along the path. Senora Cortina hadn’t yet heard the iron gate creak, and the puppy was temporarily free and obviously filled with a sense of adventure, and its small paws padded happily along the path until it heard the growl of the older dog. Only when it heard that growl and paused, its long spaniel-like ears twitching alertly, its terrier eyes displaying sudden uncertainty, did Lisa realize that something had got to be done about it — and done quickly!

Most well-trained dogs respect the inexperience of a puppy

— even when its appearance is distinctly odd, as in the case of Senora Cortina’s pet, which had been acquired because her husband had taken a fancy to it, and she did occasionally give way to her husband. But not so Pedro’s big, ugly-looking black dog, who followed up his first growl with a violent, annoyed bark, and then leapt through the air and landed upon the puppy.

But not before Lisa had anticipated the leap, and herself moved like an uncoiled spring in order, to secure the safety of the puppy. As she snatched it up — and it felt like a bundle of soft bones in her hand, covered by extra-ordinarily silky skin—Gia let out a shriek of warning, which was, however, much too late. For the black dog landed upon Lisa instead of the puppy, and it bore her to the ground with ease, since its proportions were massive and it was full of a kind of frenzy. Without being clearly aware how she had even forced her way through that gap in the hedge to reach the path, Lisa found herself sprawled at full length on the ground, with the cause of the trouble now seriously threatening her as well as the tiny creature she sought to preserve.

Gia shrieked again, and then called upon Pedro to do something. But his movements were leisurely as he moved to the assistance of the English girl, and it was only something he said softly in Spanish that caused the dog to become immobile as if by magic, while still displaying its ugly yellow teeth.

Pedro put out a hand and helped a dazed Lisa to her feet, and he addressed her in the same soft tone.

‘Next time it will be as well if you do not interfere, senorita. ’

But he got no farther, for a furious voice behind him ordered him to get outside with his sack of onions, and his dog, and stay outside; and Gia flew to her father’s side and caught at his arm and held it tightly while she explained exactly what had happened, and how brave Lisa had been.

‘It was the puppy, Papa! She thought the big dog would do it some harm — that it would be killed! ’

‘It might very easily have done you some harm, Miss Waring! ’ Julio Fernandez said, with a tight, enclosed look about his face, and utterly inscrutable eyes, as Lisa stood awkwardly hugging the puppy and looking up at him in a bewildered way. As she thrust back a long end of her hair that had fallen across her forehead and he caught sight of the ugly graze on her arm his expression tightened still more, and his voice was short and clipped as he demanded: ‘Are you quite sure that brute didn’t touch you? That mark on your arm --’

‘Just contact with the gravel of the path, I think,’ she answered, looking at it ruefully, and then attempting to smile lightly. ‘Yes; that’s all it is. No worse damage! And the puppy’s quite safe — trembling all over, but otherwise quite all right!’ She gave the little animal an affectionate look, and then as the strand of golden hair fell forward again put it back with slim fingers that were shaking noticeably. Inside herself she was also feeling a little sick, for the whole affair had happened very suddenly, and she had no clear warning that it was going to happen until it was practically over. She still felt bewildered; her own movements had been purely instinctive, and she had no idea how she had thrust her way through the gap in the hedge in the very nick of time to be of service to the puppy.

But the important thing was that she had been of service to the puppy.

‘I don’t think Pedro’s dog likes puppies,’ she said, rather foolishly, and then felt a powerfully persuasive arm about her shoulders, and knew that she was directed towards the house.

As the pleasant dimness of the interior of the villa closed round them Senora Cortina’s voice could be heard scolding the vegetable man unmercifully, and he was protesting as his onions were once more stowed away in his cart. Lisa thought it a little hard that, as the result of the intrepidity of the puppy, he should lose a valuable customer, and as a brandy glass was placed in her hand, after she herself had been installed in a comfortable leather chair in the library, she heard herself making feeble excuses for him.

‘It wasn’t really Pedro’s fault. His dog is untrained and naturally unpredictable, I’d say. But it did obey him when he called it off. I don’t know what he said, but it did obey him. And, in any case, I don’t suppose it would have touched me. ’

‘Drink up that brandy,’ the doctor ordered quietly, and when she had done so took the glass away from her. He stood looking down at her. ‘In this country it is not wise to interfere in animal disputes. Our people are not trained to regard them as your people at home. You must remember that in future. ’

‘I will,’ she promised, and an embarrassed color struggled into her cheeks as his grave dark eyes studied her. He was Spanish in such a dignified, attractive way, she thought, almost wistfully — not flamboyantly Spanish, like Pedro! Even had he been born into a similar station in life, doomed to concentrate on vegetables as his main means of sustenance, and to hawk them from door to door, he would still be completely unlike Pedro. Humane, and emotionally stable — emotionally economical! — with a wisdom at the back of those night-dark eyes that was like the wisdom of the ages, because he obviously saw so much, and thought so much more than one might suspect him of at a first meeting.