Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (59 page)

“I sure will.” His face was bright and expectant.

“Take care of him,” the woman said simply, looking first at Kelly and then at Steve.

“Don’t worry. We’ll have him home at a reasonable hour.”

“Thank you.”

They went outside and there was now a limousine there, in the
port cochere
, with a strikingly handsome man of thirty odd wiping the tonneau with a soft cloth. He straightened up when they walked down the stone path, and Kelly had a glimpse of an olive-skinned, strong face with sepia eyes and a sensual mouth. His body, lithe and supple, was bare to the waist, revealing rippling muscles gleaming with sweat.

He saw Richard and put his hand up. His smile showed gleaming white teeth.

Richard’s answering smile was perfunctory.

“That’s the chauffeur,” he volunteered and they gained the street, where Steve stood, with uplifted finger, intent on hailing a cruising cab.

After almost a quarter of an hour they snagged one. “About time,” Steve said, as they got in. “I had no lunch at all, so I’m famished. And we have quite a distance to go, I understand.”

“I had a lousy lunch,” Richard said, not to be outdone. “Some kind of fishy soup, which made me want to vomit, so I’m hungry too. I don’t really think I like Spanish food.”

“You’ll like it where we’re going,” Kelly promised, and at last they reached the Puerta del Sol, where Botin’s was located in an ancient quarter of the city, The restaurant was two centuries old, one of the very special culinary landmarks of Madrid. Touristy, yes, but just the same authentic, historied, with one of the best cuisines in all Spain. Old-world, leaning not at all on elegance but instead on the excellence of its product, it was below street level and was labyrinthine, with its network of rooms and open kitchens.

The leaded glass panes next to the table at which the three of them were seated were violet and rose and umber in the last, dying light of the long, semi-tropical day. The cooking areas, behind glass, were alive with the brilliant blue tile so indigenous to Spain. Steam swirled round the white-capped chefs behind the windows; the aromas were mouth-watering.

“Keen,” Richard said, looking around. “This place is keen.” He leaned his elbows on the table. “I also dig having dinner at nine o’clock at night.”

“Do you, darling? I hate it. It’s my major complaint about Spain and Portugal. I get so annoyed with these dining rooms with the ropes up until nine-thirty or ten. Personally, I think it’s barbaric.”

“It’s a way of life,” Steve remarked.

“One that I’m not fond of. The irritating thing is that you can’t find a place for a light lunch during the day. Everything is in courses.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Steve said. “I never was a six course guy myself. Give me a good porterhouse with onions and an Idaho and a girlie show afterwards. That’s my style.”

“What’s a girlie show?” Richard asked interestedly.

“Just talking off the cuff,” Steve said gruffly. “I say a lot of things I don’t really mean.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m me, that’s why. Big talker.” He turned to Kelly. “Another drink?”

“I’ll skip another drink. But you go ahead.”

“No, I’ll skip it too. Frankly, I’m dying to eat.” He summoned the waiter, and after scanning their menus all three decided on the suckling pig.

There would be a half hour wait, they were told, and Steve suggested a tour of the place, so they got up and wandered off into other rooms. The clientele was in the main American and English, with the usual scattering of German tourists. However, crowded around the bar area there were some local residents, Madrid types from all classes. Workingmen were mixed with well-suited businessmen, and one or two women, with escorts, sat on stools.

A roving cameraman approached them. “Take your picture?”

“Uh uh,” Steve said, turning his back, but Richard got quite excited. “Oh, can’t we?” he asked. “Gee, Steve, I’d like that.”

“Hell, it’s such a sucker gimmick,” Steve objected, but relented. The shutter clicked as the flash exploded. “Pronto … ten minutes,” the photographer said and went looking for other easy marks.

Since they had to wait for dinner anyway, there was another drink at the bar, which had a little more color, and then they went back to their table again. Just before the meal arrived the photographer brought them the blown-up photos. It was not unflattering, Kelly saw, giving a quick look at herself. But Steve complained that he looked like a thug.

“Aren’t you?” Kelly asked, feeling her drinks.

“What do you think?” he countered.

“I think maybe you are,” she murmured, while Richard pored over the pictures of himself and his new friends.

“You may be right,” Steve said, and that was all she could get out of him.

• • •

“It was good, but I can’t swallow another mouthful,” Steve said, pushing his plate back.

It was true. Half of their meal could have been taken home in a doggie bag. Only Richard wanted dessert. Kelly and Steve settled for coffee and a cognac. They sat and chatted, while a steady stream of people came through the doors. It was almost eleven o’clock, but that was Spain for you. A night country.

“I’m having a super time,” Richard said. “I don’t generally stay up this late.” He caught himself up instantly, realizing his faux pas. Now, his upward glance at Kelly seemed to say, you’ll decide I’ve been up past my bedtime.

“But I’m not a bit tired,” he said quickly.

“All right, just a little bit longer,” Kelly agreed, lacking moral fibre. She was a sucker for his round, childish face, his limpid blue eyes, his blond hair that swept down across his forehead. I’ll undoubtedly be a very bad, over-permissive mother, she thought, and stuck a cigarette in her mouth brusquely. A porcine slob three tables back was eyeing her furtively; a distasteful type, occupied with picking the bones of a capon, his heavy-lidded eyes resting on her with avidity. He was all the nasty men she ran into all too often in her job, and she wished she were facing the opposite way.

Steve lit a cigar.

“I like the smell,” Richard said. “
Your
cigars don’t turn me off, Steve.”

He pushed back his chair. “I have to find the bathroom, I suddenly realized.”

“I’ll go with you,” Steve said, rising. “Hold the fort,” he told Kelly. “We have to see a man about a dog.”

“Cheero.”

She sat there, over her cognac. She was perfectly happy … yes, that was the word. Of course it had to end, though one wished it didn’t. She looked at the professional snapshot again. Steve, unsmiling and tight-jawed, looked like someone in a Rogues’ Gallery. She gazed long at the grim, cheerless face. Why did women like questionable men? The answer was obvious. It was the unknown, the mysterious, that intrigued.

And yet he had quoted Strindberg.

Richard’s beaming face looked back at her. A handsome boy. Her own smile, professional out of long habit. I do have nice hair, she thought. The face that looked back at her was like a stranger’s all the same. Would you recognize yourself on the street? she had often wondered. You only saw yourself head-on, in a mirror. What does the back of you look like? How do you hold yourself? You spot friends walking along … but would you spot yourself?

We’re not what we look like but what we feel like, she thought and then, after studying the three faces for several minutes her eye suddenly went beyond Richard, Steve and herself. In the background was the crowded bar … and suddenly there was a familiar profile. She knew that man.

Slowly, it came to her. It was the chauffeur she had seen, briefly, outside the
quinta
of Constant Comstock on the Paseo de la Castellana. That tall, muscled man with the bushy triangle of dark, strong hair on his chest.

It
was
that man.

She was almost sure of it.

And as she studied the faintly blurred, tall man in the background, she became certain that it was the Comstock driver. Surely that was the same face, the same eyes, the same splendid build? That sensual mouth …

Her next reaction was one of annoyance, anger perhaps. So the Comstocks were keeping an eye on Richard’s companions. In spite of her credentials. They had assigned the houseman to monitor the evening.

What of it?

Just the same, she was coldly critical. And when Richard returned to the table, alone, she was hard put not to take out her displeasure on him. Yet how could she blame the boy for his family’s distrust?

“Where’s Steve?” she asked.

“Combing his hair. Or something. He made me comb mine too. He said we had to spruce ourselves up because we were with a good-looking broad.”

“Did Steve say that?” she asked sharply.

“Say what?” His eyes were blue and innocent.

“Did he call me a broad?”

The eyes wavered. “Maybe he said lady, I’m not sure.”

“Which was it?”

He was meek. “He said … a good-looking girl.”

“Then why did you … Listen, Richard, where do you get these colorful phrases?”

“I read a lot,” he said promptly.

“Somebody’d better censor your literary intake. Doesn’t anybody
care?
”

He knew, at last, that he was being scolded. His face changed; he looked spanked. And of course she couldn’t stand that chastened expression. “It’s all right, I’m just slightly exhausted,” she said hastily. “Pay no attention, I like you the way you are. And now it’s your turn to mind the store, all right? I’m going to the
bano.
”

“Okay, Kelly,” he said, cheered, and the shine came back to his face. He was humming when she left the table, snapping his fingers in time to the music that came from an inner room.

I’ll be a
very
bad mother, she thought.

Before she left the powder room she ran a comb through her own hair and dabbed some scent behind her ears. So Steve Connaught had told Richard to spruce up a little. She gazed at herself in the glass and had a moment of depression. It was only a pick-up, after all. Tomorrow Steve would find another pretty face.

But it wasn’t tomorrow yet. She went back to the table again.

Steve and Richard were talking; that was, Richard was talking and Steve was listening. She sat down. Richard was yakking away. “I don’t like the present administration,” he was saying passionately. “It’s Fascist, now don’t you agree with me? You’ll see, too. People won’t put up with it. Blood will run in the streets.”

“You think so?” Steve asked with a grave face.

“I do! Times are changing. It’s like the French Revolution. Have you read Rousseau?”

“I have a nodding acquaintance with him,” Steve said without batting an eyelash.

“Well, he was the father of the French Revolution. He believed that man was good by nature but corrupted by civilization. And I believe that too, Steve.”

“What do you think, Kelly?”

She looked across at Steve. “I think we’ll have to table this discussion. Because, although it’s been the greatest, I know someone who has to go beddy-bye.”

“Not yet!”

“What Kelly says goes,” Steve announced. “She’s the one who’s responsible for both of us. It’s your bedtime and mine.”

“Why do I have to be treated like a
child?
”

“For the next few years it’s your fate,” Steve said calmly, and snapped his fingers at the waiter across the room. Somehow, when he did it, it didn’t irk Kelly. Obviously it didn’t irritate the waiter either, because he hopped right over and scribbled out the chit.

Outside, in the cool and fragrant night air, they waited while Steve flagged down a cab. Richard sat in the middle, leaning just slightly toward Kelly. She had the feeling that, if she were to put an arm around him, he might lean all the way. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, though she wanted to. Somehow she liked his pride and admired his staunch independence. He might need love but, as with animals, one had to move slowly and cautiously. She didn’t want to do anything that might damage that self-sufficiency. By all odds, it looked as if Richard might have need of that in the years to come.

At almost midnight, the courtyard of the house on the Paseo de la Castellana was a melange of smells; jasmine, heady and sweet, and the woodsy redolence of the boungainvillea. Flowering shrubs gave off a cloying scent, the strongest of which was the gardenia, so potent that it was almost a sickish stench. A thin slice of moon, silver and dazzling, lit up the starry sky; stumbling over a hump of stone as they walked up to the house, under the trees and flowering bushes, Kelly caught at Steve’s hand.

“All right?” he asked, grasping her.

“I’m fine. I think I drank too much.”

“You had a few drinks, that’s all. Don’t be silly.”

“That’s Sirius,” Richard said, looking upwards. “See? The bright star southward. What a night, boy.”

The pretty little uniformed maid opened the door for them.

“Buenas noches,”
she said, with her shy, dimpled smile. And then Joia joined them, coming down the stairs.

“I had such a good time,” Richard told her excitedly. “We ate like pigs. Anyway, I did. As a matter of fact, we ate pig. With an apple in its nose. It was a super place, you could see right into the kitchens. Lots of blue tile.”

“So then. All was good.” The woman took Richard’s hand. “I will put the boy to bed,” she said softly. “The Senor will be with you shortly.”

“But it’s late. We won’t bother him.”

“He wishes to meet you. Please.” She led the way into a different room from the one they’d been in earlier. It was a library, book-lined and spacious.

“Please sit down.” The woman smiled her twisted smile and took Richard’s hand again. “Say good-night,
querido.
”

“Good night. And thanks. It was great. I appreciate everything you’ve — ”

“Okay, Rich,” Steve said. “We all had a good time, didn’t we?”

“Sure. It was … gee, swell.”

“Now run up to bed.”

“Yeah. Good night, Kelly.”

“Good night, Richard.”

“Jean Jacques Rousseau,” Steve said, when they were alone. “The kid’s got an I.Q. of probably 160. He could teach a class at Wesleyan. He’s the original Quiz Kid.”