Meeting in Madrid Page 13

  ‘I hope Dona Lucia won’t think I’m neglecting my duties where Teresa is concerned,’ she began uncertainly, but Jaime cut her short.

  ‘Why should she? You were not engaged to instruct Teresa twenty-four hours of the day. I shall tell Lucia what we have arranged.’

  Once again he was the autocratic master of Soria, the arbiter of all their fates while they remained under his roof. Catherine could not argue with him nor would Lucia be able to do so unless she had a very strong case to present.

  When she told Teresa about the new arrangement her pupil seemed vastly amused.

  ‘Lucia will hate the idea,’ she said, ‘and so will Ramon.’

  ‘Why Ramon?’

  ‘Because he likes to think that you are there all the time at his beck and call.’

  ‘You exaggerate!’

  ‘No, I know Ramon very well. He is never happy unless he has a pretty girl at his feet.’

  ‘It should be the other way around!’ Catherine laughed.

  Teresa shook her head.

  ‘Ramon will pretend to fall at your feet, but he will not mean it.’

  ‘I’ll remember the warning!’

  ‘Alex Bonnington was the only one who sent him away—how do you say in English?—with a fly in his ear.’

  ‘A flea, but I don’t think the Marquesa would appreciate the expression!’

  ‘I wish she would come to visit us,’ Teresa mused. ‘It is never dull at Soria when she is here. Perhaps she will, one of these days, when she grows tired of Andalusia, although I cannot think how long it will take. When are you going to start work for Jaime?’

  ‘This afternoon, when you go for your music lesson.’ Twice a week Teresa made the journey to Santa Cruz to be instructed by a well-known professor of music in the art of playing the piano, and quite often she would accompany Ramon when he took up his guitar in the evening, although there were a good many arguments between them over the finer points of presentation. Ramon, who was self-taught, was unable to read music, but their disputes generally ended in laughter or a compromise, which seemed to please them both.

  ‘I thought you might come with me to Santa Cruz,’ Teresa pouted. ‘You could look round the shops while I was with the professor and then we could have tea at the Mency or the Bruja, where there is a swimming-pool!’

  ‘Teresa, stop! I’ve already told you I’m going to work,’ Catherine protested. ‘If we have a full day off for the fiesta, I really should do something constructive to earn my keep.’

  Teresa regarded her pensively for a moment.

  ‘You are much too conscientious,’ she declared. ‘Maybe Lucia will want to go to Santa Cruz.’

  The car drove off with Teresa sitting in the back in solitary state, however. It was two o’clock and the noise in the kitchens was beginning to die down. Soon it would be the siesta hour and a deep quiet would settle on the house itself to match the peace of the sun-drenched plantations beyond. Now and then a lorry would trundle by, laden with banana fronds, but otherwise there would be little sign of life in the shimmering heat. It would be even warmer in Santa Cruz, where the mountain wind didn’t penetrate. Catherine was glad she had stayed at Soria.

  At three o’clock she made her way towards the study, opening the door on the confusion which lay within. She crossed to the desk with the odd feeling of being watched, but the only gaze she encountered was the painted one on the wall above the red velvet sofa. Carla de Berceo Madroza looked back at her with pensive eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’ she seemed to say. ‘It is no place for you to be.’

  She settled down to work, her gaze drawn again and again to the beautiful, painted face, her eyes fastening on the fabulous ruby at Carla’s throat. It was the kind of jewel that only someone like Carla could wear to advantage, she thought, fire and blood imprisoned in a precious stone. Teresa could have worn it, but it was wrong for Lucia, who was too cold to show it off to advantage. It was a gem to reflect the fire in its wearer’s eyes, not to lie dormant among the lace at Lucia’s throat.

  She worked till the clock on the high chimneypiece struck five and by then she had tidied most of Don Jaime’s papers into neat piles, ranging them in order of importance along the desk. It had been a gallant effort and she felt pleased with herself, so pleased that she did not hear the door opening.

  ‘What are you doing here, may I ask?’

  Lucia’s incisive question cut across her pleasant musings like the crack of a whip.

  ‘I’ve been working.’ Catherine rose from the desk. ‘I offered to help Don Jaime in my spare time, since he appeared to have so much else to do.’

  Lucia came further into the room.

  ‘What do you hope to achieve?’ she demanded. ‘Do you imagine that working for him will make him appreciate you more? If so you are mistaken. Yesterday you were almost on your way back to England because he thought you careless and inefficient, so you cannot hope to impress him by typing a few letters and clearing up a mess.’

  ‘I like the work,’ Catherine said defensively, ‘and I had nothing else to do when Teresa was at her music lesson. It was too hot for Santa Cruz in the afternoon.’

  ‘Don’t trouble with excuses,’ snapped Lucia. ‘I know quite well why you are doing this. You imagine that you can make yourself indispensable to him as an unpaid secretary.’

  ‘Not unpaid. He has offered me a fee.’

  ‘Indeed?’ A slow, dark colour mounted into Lucia’s cheeks. ‘And you have accepted it, no doubt.’

  ‘Naturally. Don Jaime pointed out that it was a business arrangement, and it was the easiest way to settle the matter.’

  Lucia did not appear to be listening. She had turned round and was looking at the portrait of her predecessor, and all the venom of which she was capable was reflected in her eyes.

  ‘You understand that you are unwelcome here,’ she said. ‘You have never been anything else than a trial since you came.’

  ‘Yes, I think I realise that now,’ Catherine acknowledged, ‘but I’ve done my best, Dona Lucia, hoping to please you.’

  ‘Hoping to please Jaime, you mean! Well, you may do so for a week or two, but it will not last. He has very little faith in women and that is something you cannot change. Even that old woman, his grandmother, has no real power over him.’

  ‘Then I have very little hope,’ said Catherine, trying to smile.

  Lucia continued to study the portrait, staring at Carla’s painted face as if she might find an answer to the unspoken question in her heart.

  ‘I never tried to take her place,’ she said, speaking almost to herself. ‘I couldn’t have done, even if I had wanted to, but I did more for Soria in the end. Jaime is aware of that,’ she declared aggressively. ‘He knows how much the hacienda owes me and he will not overlook it.’ She swung round to confront Catherine again. ‘You may work your fingers to the bone for him if it pleases you, but he will not forget what he owes to me!’

  ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t wish to forget,’ said Catherine, feeling that the whole thing was becoming embarrassing. ‘He—wants to marry you. I think you said you would be engaged quite soon.’

  ‘Yes! Yes, that is true,’ Lucia said emphatically. ‘I have full control in this house, you understand, even now?’

  As Catherine preceded her to the door the painted eyes of Eduardo de Berceo Madroza’s first wife seemed to follow them out.

  Teresa was late coming back from Santa Cruz.

  ‘I met someone,’ she said mysteriously. ‘An old friend of the family.’ She flung her leather music-case to one side. ‘How exciting it is in a city!’ she exclaimed. ‘Even in Santa Cruz. We had tea at one of the new hotels on the beach. Where is Lucia?’

  ‘In the kitchens, I think.’ Catherine felt slightly uneasy. ‘You’d better hop upstairs quickly and change. It’s after six o’clock.’

  Teresa laughed.

  ‘It would be to no purpose,’ she decided. ‘Manuel will tell her, anyway. I feel sorry for Manuel, you know,’ sh
e went on. ‘He is so slavishly devoted to my madrastra, yet she cares nothing for him. One day I think he will see how it is and then he will go away to break his heart in secret somewhere else.’

  ‘You talk too much,’ said Catherine, moving towards the stairs.

  ‘I see far more than anyone thinks,’ Teresa returned positively. ‘But tell me what you will wear for fiesta tomorrow,’ she added lightly. ‘Have you any special dress? We must all look really beautiful so that we do not disgrace Don Jaime!’

  When she gave her uncle his full title she was generally teasing.

  ‘You do not answer!’ she protested, turning at the branch of the stairs. ‘Have you nothing to wear?’

  ‘I didn’t think I would be going to a fiesta.’

  ‘It is only a minor one. Nothing like Corpus Christi, you understand, but everyone wears their prettiest dress and there is dancing in the streets.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘It can be great fun. You will ride in a carriage, of course, with Alex Bonnington, but I will go on horseback with Ramon and Jaime.’

  ‘And Lucia?’ Catherine asked involuntarily.

  ‘I don’t know. She rarely goes to fiesta and never to a feria, but this time I think she will be there.’ Teresa gave her a sidelong glance. ‘She looks magnificent on horseback, but she will not ride. That would be undignified. Besides,’ she added, her face darkening, ‘she would not be able to wear my mother’s ruby if she went on horseback.’ The ruby was a sore point with Teresa, who coveted it because it had once belonged to her mother. Catherine steered the conversation back to the less dangerous subject of what she should wear for the fiesta.

  ‘That pretty dress you had on the other evening,’ Teresa suggested, her mood changing dramatically. ‘You could dress it up with a brightly-coloured sash. I have many of them in the baul in my room. You must come and choose.’ The ancient leather trunk with its studded corners proved a veritable goldmine to be explored with much enthusiasm.

  ‘You could have this,’ Teresa suggested, holding up a beautiful mantilla which Catherine had been admiring. ‘It will look nice, but it will also keep you warm if the wind blows too strongly. Or this,’ she added, running a bright pink sash through her fingers. ‘Choose quickly and we will try them on!’

  Vividly intense, she was already half-way to the fiesta, eyes sparkling, red lips parted in anticipation, her eager feet too impatient to stand still for long, and in that moment she looked really beautiful. She was Carla’s daughter all right, wilful and restless as her mother had been even after she had married and borne a child. All the potential dangers were there, mirrored in the dark eyes for anyone to see, but Madroza blood also ran in her veins.

  Catherine took a certain amount of comfort from the fact, although she was strongly reminded of Ramon who was determined to take life by the horns in true torero style.

  She rejected the vivid pink sash in favour of the lovely mantilla, unaware that it had been worn by Don Jaime’s mother on her wedding day in far-off Andalusia.

  ‘You must dress your hair high and wear a comb,’ Teresa declared. ‘It holds the mantilla in place. Otherwise it will slip down over your forehead and be a nuisance when you dance.’

  ‘If I dance!’ said Catherine. ‘And I haven’t enough hair to wear a comb. Not like Lucia.’

  Teresa considered the point.

  ‘Perhaps you are right,’ she allowed. ‘Then you must wear the mantilla like a shawl to keep you warm.’

  The finer points of their wardrobe settled to her satisfaction, she bundled the other heirlooms back into the leather trunk and closed the lid.

  ‘It was made in Toledo,’ she explained, running her fingers over the thick, smooth hide. ‘It must be very, very old. Really old things can be amazingly beautiful, don’t you think, with all the history of a country caught up in them. Just supposing this trunk had once belonged to a conquistador who had travelled all over the world to gain new territories for Spain. Can’t you see him, Cathy, riding out on his splendid Arab horse to sail away to the Americas, perhaps, or distant Peru, and always returning to the Court with the gift of new lands for his king and queen?’

  Catherine looked down at the trunk, aware that she was seeing Teresa in yet another mood, aware, too, that the image of the valiant conquistador had also become her personal image of Don Jaime. He had fought to maintain Soria for the people who lived there, for the family which was now his special responsibility, and if he had won and his quest was nearly over she should be glad.

  Folding the lovely mantilla over her arm, she walked to her own room where she stood gazing at it for a long time before she laid it over the chair beside the window.

  In the morning she was wakened by Teresa complaining that it was raining. El Teide was obliterated and a thin mist hung like a veil over the nearer hills.

  ‘We cannot go!’ Teresa moaned. ‘At least, not to the fiesta!’

  ‘Will it be cancelled?’ Catherine asked, sharing her disappointment.

  Teresa crossed the bedroom floor to hang out of the window.

  ‘It may just be a little shower,’ she decided hastily. ‘Manuel is the best one to tell us about the weather conditions. I will go in search of him.’

  Perhaps Lucia would put her foot down and forbid the excursion altogether if the rain did not stop, Catherine thought, following her downstairs when she had dressed, but it did seem unfortunate that the weather should have changed so dramatically.

  ‘It will ruin the flower-carpets!’ Teresa wailed. ‘And I so much wanted you to see them!’

  ‘What did Manuel say about the weather?’ Catherine asked.

  ‘I could not find him. He is sulking, perhaps, or he might even have gone away. For good,’ Teresa concluded with a dark look in the general direction of the staircase where she expected her stepmother to appear at any moment.

  ‘I thought you said he would drive us to Orotava.’

  ‘Lucia will drive if he does not return, or Ramon. I cannot understand Manuel wanting to stay here, anyway,’ Teresa rushed on. ‘I would not stay for one minute to be scorned by the person I loved.’ She considered the hypothetical situation for a few seconds. ‘Perhaps I would try to punish them, but Manuel is too docile for that.’

  By eleven o’clock the rain had cleared and El Teide looked down at them from a brightly-washed sky. Teresa’s spirits soared in response to the sunshine.

  ‘Now we can dress and prepare to go!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh—’

  Catherine turned at the sharp expression to find Lucia descending the black oak staircase and coming towards them. She looked magnificent dressed simply in palest grey which suggested that the austere black of her widowhood had finally been laid aside, and her only ornament was, as usual, the beautiful unmounted ruby hanging from its short chain in the hollow of her throat. Her superb height gave her an added elegance which Catherine envied as she noticed the lovely tortoiseshell comb thrust into the coronet of her dark hair.

  ‘Are you not ready?’ she demanded. ‘It is very bad manners to be late.’

  Teresa said: ‘We wondered about the rain, and Manuel is not here to drive us.’

  Lucia’s eyes sharpened.

  ‘He must be here! I have spoken to him only this morning. But no matter!’ she decided. ‘We will go without him. Ramon will drive us.’

  Catherine and Teresa hurried upstairs.

  ‘Don’t be long! She’s already in a bad mood,’ Teresa whispered.

  Catherine followed her downstairs again with the mantilla over her arm.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ Lucia almost pounced on her.

  ‘Teresa thought I might wear it,’ Catherine explained. ‘It seemed just right for my dress, but if you don’t think it’s suitable—’

  ‘Of course it is suitable!’ Teresa interrupted disdainfully. ‘You are only wearing it as a wrap.’

  Lucia’s eyes were still fixed on the mantilla.

  ‘You had no right to give it to anyone,’ she pointed out. ‘It does not really belong to
you.’

  ‘I haven’t given it away,’ Teresa returned with dignity. ‘Cathy knows it is only on loan. It creates a better atmosphere, something that is just right for fiesta.’

  ‘It is vulgar to overdress,’ Lucia reminded her, touching the discreet comb in her hair. ‘That is best left to the canalla. I can’t imagine Jaime appreciating any flamboyant gestures on our part.’

  Catherine wished that she had left the controversial mantilla in her room, and then, suddenly, her fingers tightened over its soft folds and she was walking determinedly towards the door.

  ‘It will serve two purposes,’ she said. ‘To make me feel beautiful and to keep me warm.’

  ‘We’ll wait here,’ said Teresa, parading along the patio like a peacock in her blue, dress. ‘Let Lucia sort out the problem of who shall drive the car.’

  Ten minutes later the big black car came round the end of the house with Ramon at the wheel.

  ‘All aboard!’ he grinned cheerfully. ‘I’ve been given leave of absence for the whole day.’

  Nothing further was said about Manuel’s disappearance until they reached Alex Bonnington’s bungalow on the outskirts of Orotava. Built high, it was an old house practically hidden in vines but with a wonderful view right down to the puerto which it overlooked. An ancient gardener, who had obviously lost his battle with nature some considerable time ago, waved them into a cleared space at the side of the house as Alex herself appeared through a screen of scarlet bougainvillea.