The Swallow and the Hummingbird (23 page)

‘Gringo, you had better practise your Spanish. Susan speaks like a native,’ said Jose Antonio.

‘I do have the advantage,’ she replied tactfully. ‘We lived all over.’

‘Then you speak Italian and French too?’ Agatha asked enthusiastically. Susan nodded. ‘How lucky you are.’

‘I should go and check on Dolores,’ said Agatha, getting up. ‘Jose Antonio, why don’t you come with me?’

‘If she shouts at me I’m sending her straight back to Buenos Aires,’ he replied in a gruff voice, following her into the house. Once inside he took his wife’s arm, looked behind him to check that they were alone then hissed in Spanish, ‘What the devil happened to her face?’

Agatha shook her head. ‘She wouldn’t tell me.’

‘But you asked?’ He raised the palms of his hands to the sky.

‘Of course, I asked. What do you think I am? I’m as curious as you. I felt sorry for her. She looked so sad. I think she’s alone in Buenos Aires. I liked her. We talked all the way up in the car and yet, as much as I tried, she gave nothing away.’

‘Was she married?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘She has that wounded look in her eyes.’

‘Not as far as I know. She has no ring.’

‘That means nothing. Why has she come out here all alone? Doesn’t it strike you as odd?’

‘Not if she grew up here. Besides, she’s an independent woman with a very strong character. Very American. She’s got money. I don’t think she’s in need of protection.’

Jose Antonio narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t be fooled by what is on the outside. Still waters run deep.’

‘Maybe, but she doesn’t want to talk about it.’

‘I put money on a man. It’s either a man or a lion and I lay my bets on the former.’

Agatha chuckled. ‘We will probably never know.’ She sighed and folded her arms. ‘What a shame. She would be a beautiful woman. She’s young too. She should be married with small children.’

‘She’s come to the wrong place if she is looking for a husband. What Latin man would marry her with a face like that?’

‘Jose Antonio, may the devil strike you down,’ Agatha gasped, appalled. But she knew he was right. The men she knew were all much too obsessed with physical perfection.

‘Perhaps she doesn’t want a husband.’

‘Don’t believe it, Gorda, every woman wants a husband.’

Agatha shook her head and marched through the hall and up the stairs to where Dolores sat in bed in a baby-pink nightdress, waited on by Carlos and Agustina. When she saw Jose Antonio she smiled coyly, the smile of a flirtatious young girl.

‘May God’s blessings rain down upon you,’ she said in a velvet voice.

‘I am glad to see that you are well again,’ Jose Antonio replied politely. He noticed that she wore her grey hair down over her shoulders and thought how grotesque she looked in pink frills with her wrinkled old skin spilling over the lace collar. She smiled at him, a toothless smile full of gratitude and affection.

‘I remember when you were a little boy,’ she began. Agatha looked at her husband and raised her eyebrows. ‘You were a dear little thing. Not the big man you are now. How proud your father must be of you.’ Jose Antonio didn’t want to remind her that his father had run off with a girl half his age and settled down south in Patagonia. ‘He would have done what you did. God rain his blessings down on him too.’

‘You are being well looked after?’ he asked, edging back out of the room.

‘La señora is a generous-spirited woman. I knew that from the first moment I saw her. When you invited her to
Las Dos Vizcachas
to meet your family.’ She sighed with nostalgia. ‘May God rain his blessings down on her too!’ She smiled again and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Mama and Ernesto are watching over me, señor. I know because without their warning I would have died. What would you and la señora have done without me? God be praised.’

‘God be praised,’ said Jose Antonio drily, stepping out of the room and down the stairs as fast as his long legs could carry him.

They had dinner in the courtyard, beside the popping red tree. The food wasn’t as good as Dolores’, which was a shame because Jose Antonio was now unsure about employing her.

‘She’s crazy,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I could cope with her better before.’

‘At least she doesn’t mope about in that ghastly black all the time,’ said Agatha.

‘Baby-pink on a woman of her age is monstrous!’ Jose Antonio exclaimed in distaste. ‘Let’s face it, Gorda, she’s a hag who has suddenly discovered her dried-up sexuality. It is too late to revive it!’

He laughed boisterously at his own joke. The thought of Dolores’ sexuality put George off his food. It wasn’t until later, when the children and their parents had gone to bed, that George and Susan found themselves alone.

They sat on the swing chair on the veranda, holding hands in the darkness, watching the flickering candle in the hurricane lamp attracting moths and flies. The gentle clicking of crickets rang out across the park and a large, luminous moon lit the plains in a pale green light. They had retained their glasses of wine and George was smoking. Both of them felt the night was enchanted and that they were lucky to be there. With their memories of home temporarily forgotten they only had eyes for each other.

‘I’m thirty years old,’ she said, staring out in front of her. ‘I had a right to call you a boy.’

George blew smoke into the humid air. ‘You don’t look thirty,’ he said truthfully.

‘I felt like forty until I met you.’

‘What does age matter? I’m twenty-three now. My birthday passed without a murmur.’

‘That’s what happens when you travel, those at home forget you.’ George suddenly thought of Rita and hoped that she would be able to forget him. Somehow he doubted she would. But he dismissed the thought. He didn’t want to ruin this moment with Susan.

‘When is your birthday?’ he asked.

She laughed softly. ‘March the twentieth. I’m Aries.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not really into that sort of thing. I can tell you what I am without consulting the stars.’

‘So what are you?’

‘In love with you, George. Very much in love with you.’

George was once again surprised by her directness. Having been so cagey on the boat her candour was disarming. He put his arm around her and drew her to him.

‘I have dreamed of hearing you say those words. I never thought I would. What changed?’

She sat in silence for a while, deliberating how to answer his question. He was longing to ask her about her scar, he knew there was more to it than simply a slice of violence through her skin. He knew she would satisfy his curiosity when she was ready and not a moment before.

‘I was confused, George,’ she replied carefully. ‘I didn’t expect to fall in love. I kept myself to myself deliberately. I needed time alone.’ He kissed her temple and breathed in the scent of her hair.

‘I didn’t expect to fall in love, either,’ he said, enjoying holding her so close, scarcely able to believe that she was really there, in his arms. ‘I also needed time alone, that’s why I came out here in the first place.’

‘Oh dear. We’ve really messed it up for each other, haven’t we?’

‘No. We’ve made it better. You don’t look so sad any more.’

‘I only realized when it was too late that I had met someone special. I thought I had lost you. I’ve been given a second chance and I don’t want to blow it.’

‘You won’t blow it, Susan. I won’t let you.’ He kissed her tenderly, sensing that she had been deeply hurt by someone and not wanting to frighten her.

After a while he pulled away and held her face in his hands. He gazed into her eyes, searching for the hidden truth. They glinted in the light of the candle like impenetrable spheres of glass. He frowned at her in bewilderment, then slowly moved his right hand towards her scar. At first she flinched. No one had ever touched her there, not since the doctors had stitched her up. Her eyes suddenly looked fearful and she recoiled like a startled swan. But he shook his head and smiled at her encouragingly, with compassion, and she became still and allowed his fingers to gently trace the bumpy surface of a wound that had only healed on the outside. The skin was soft and smooth but lined with scar tissue like a railway track. He pulled her face towards him and kissed her there, tasting the salt of her tears as she blinked away emotions that had lain unexpressed for almost two years.

‘Who did this to you?’ he asked, cradling her against his chest. ‘What bastard did this?’

But Susan was unable to reply. Not yet.

Chapter 15

Susan lay in bed, staring out into the darkness. It was quiet, but for the crickets and a dog who barked somewhere, far away in the distance. The room smelt heavily of gardenia and cut grass, smells that since childhood she had always associated with the Argentine. The sheets were soft, the bed comfortable and the darkness cool and soothing, a familiar friend, for during the year after her disfigurement she had hidden in it as much as possible. She was acutely aware that George was in the room next door and strained her ears for a sound to confirm his presence there. The closing of a door, the running of a tap. But the walls were thick and she heard nothing. She wanted to climb into bed with George and wrap herself in his strength and confidence: she knew the only way to rid herself of her past was to create new memories, forged out of love. She loved George. She had loved him from the moment she had left the
Fortuna
knowing that she had let someone very special slip through her fingers. But she hadn’t trusted him. For how could she trust anyone to love her now?

Something light and winged fluttered in her stomach as she recalled the moment he touched her scar. She put her hand up to her face and felt the wound, trying to convince herself that it wasn’t so grotesque, it wasn’t so big, that George really had kissed her there. It had been an unimaginable moment. A sudden stepping out into sunlight after months and months of shadows. She had been right to come. She had been right to trust him.

To escape her recent past she recalled her childhood. When she concentrated she could still remember her mother’s smell. Sweet like bluebells in springtime. She could still remember what it felt like to be embraced so totally, pressed so tightly against her body, wrapped in her love. She was used to being adored. She was beautiful, flawless, blessed. She had dazzled wherever she went, from the parties in Washington to the races in Paris, her loveliness had been celebrated. Perhaps she had been too arrogant; perhaps this scar was a punishment for narcissism. She was now used to the stares. The whispered comments and the small children pointing or laughing at her.

Why George had seen beyond the scar, she didn’t know. Why, when so many other men had recoiled in horror, did George run his fingers down it and kiss her there? With those thoughts she drifted into an untroubled sleep. The first in many months. And when she awoke the sky was clear and blue and full of brightness.

George was already beneath the veranda having breakfast with Agatha and the children. Jose Antonio had risen early to ride out with the gauchos. For him the farm wasn’t work, it was a way of life. He liked to use his hands, feel the horse beneath him, gallop across the plains rounding up the herds of cows. The sun cracked his skin and the palms of his hands grew rough and calloused, but he felt part of the land and the land was where he belonged. If he weren’t the boss he’d be just as happy as a gaucho. He could even play the guitar like one but Agatha hated it when he sang. Said he sounded like a strangled bull.

When George saw Susan his face lit up. She was wearing a pair of beige slacks and an open-necked white shirt with short sleeves. She looked refreshed and happy.

‘How did you sleep, Susan?’ Agatha took great pride in the comfort of her guest bedrooms. Susan smiled and sat down next to George.

‘Very well, thank you. What a lovely room it is,’ she replied, turning to look at George. He pulled a lopsided grin and his eyes twinkled, taking pleasure from their secret. The children seemed to pick up on the invisible vibrations that quivered between them for they wriggled in their chairs and giggled behind their hands.

‘The perfect day to go to Santa Catalina,’ said Agatha, referring to the old colonial Jesuit church a few kilometres outside Jesús Maria. ‘Take the truck, George, and a picnic. Spend the day there. Make the most of it.’ She picked up the little silver bell and rang it vigorously. A few moments later Agustina hurried out.

‘
Si señora?
’ she asked, rubbing her hands together in a gesture of servitude. Agatha instructed her to make a picnic for two, then dismissed her with a wave. As she retreated inside, Carlos loomed out of the shadows holding a letter. He whispered something to Agustina then handed it to her. ‘Señora,’ she said in a meek voice, stepping onto the terrace again. ‘Here is a letter for Señor George.’

‘Ah, George,’ Agatha exclaimed jovially. ‘News from home. But not from Faye.’ She studied the handwriting as George felt the shame burn his cheeks. ‘A young woman, no doubt. Must be Rita.’ Susan’s face blanched and she turned inquiringly to George. ‘George has a fiancée in England,’ Agatha continued, oblivious of the discomfort she was causing. ‘I’m afraid I’m not putting any money on the marriage actually happening. He’ll have given his heart to someone else by the time the year is out, mark my words.’ Susan disguised her concern with a tight smile. Agatha handed him the letter.

‘I’ll read it later,’ he mumbled, tucking it into the pocket of his shirt. He caught Susan’s eye and tried to reassure her by shaking his head. To his surprise she didn’t look hurt as he had expected.

‘Do tell me all the news though,’ said Agatha. ‘I’m longing to know how they are.’ Then she turned to Pia and Tonito and said in Spanish. ‘Think of all those poor children in England next time you decide you don’t want to eat your lunch. They could do with a few beef steaks, I can tell you.’

Pia and Tonito screwed up their noses. They were tired of being told of hungry English children. Not having enough to eat was beyond their comprehension.

The letter was quickly passed over and they resumed their conversation about the Jesuits of Santa Catalina. The colour returned to Susan’s cheeks and George breathed easily again. He hadn’t wanted to tell her about Rita. He had decided to sort it out in his own good time in the kindest possible way. After all, there was no need for Susan to know. As far as he was concerned, Rita was the other side of the world, part of a past life that bore no relation to the present. A life that he had chosen to leave behind. Susan was his future. He felt sorry for Rita. But she was young, she would find someone else.