Nurse for the Doctor (10 page)

It was true that he frequently pressed Mrs. Duveen to accompany them on these drives, but Mrs. Duveen for some reason preferred to be left behind to be superbly lazy at the villa; and when the marquis asked Josie if she wouldn’t like to see more of the countryside—his countryside—Mrs. Duveen prevented her admitting that she would like to do so very much by saying immediately that she had rather a bad headache, and would prefer it if Josie remained with her. After that Josie continued to take the hint, and apart from accepting the use of another of the marquis’s cars to drive her into San Fernando for some essential shopping, and a solitary visit to the hairdresser, she saw little of the world beyond the villa gardens in those early days of her stay.

But one afternoon when Don Luis arrived at the villa and found her quite alone, she listened to some persuasive talking on his part and went off with him in a slightly rakish sports car which he drove rather recklessly. She didn’t find out about the recklessness until they started off, however, and she had no idea that the car—extraordinarily dilapidated to be the property of a close relative of a marquis—didn’t possess a hood. By the time she found out it didn’t seem to matter.

The marquis had taken the whole party off for a visit to Montserrat, and with the disappearance of his car Josie had felt more alone, and slightly forlorn, than she had ever felt in her life before. It was true that the marquis had really pressed her to accompany them.

There was plenty of room, he had assured her. The back of the huge car took five people with ease, and there was still room for two very comfortably in the space beside the chauffeur. And they would only be six if she went with them.

But Josie saw Sylvia Petersen’s apprehensive glance—possibly she thought it was bad enough to have Mrs. Duveen thrust upon her for the whole of the afternoon—and the thought of being wedged between her and Dona Maria, while the marquis sat on one of the occasional seats facing her (if he didn’t elect to sit beside his own chauffeur) was too much. So she gazed rather stonily at Josie, who, after all, was only someone employed by the Duveens, and Josie once again accepted the somewhat noticeable hint.

“No, thank you,” she said, very firmly, while the marquis gazed at her with a hint of vexation in his eyes (which, however, she didn’t notice). “You will be quite crowded enough without me, and I have some letters I must write.”

She spoke with her eyes on Michael, being made comfortable in his seat by Dona Maria, and the marquis looked over his shoulder and followed the direction of her gaze.

“Very well,” he said, and his voice sounded unusually curt. “If that is as you would prefer, then we will go.”

But she was a little surprised to notice that he took the seat beside his chauffeur, and he was gazing rather sternly ahead—not at all as if he were looking forward to the outing—when the big car glided away.

CHAPTER IX

She was
still standing and trying to make up her mind to go in and begin her letters when Don Luis’ car came sweeping up the drive.

It had once been a very bright scarlet, but it looked a little tired in the strong sunlight, although there was no doubt about its capacity for speed. The roar of its engine actually startled Josie a little when it appeared round a bend in the drive, and she was about to retreat across the terrace when Don Luis sprang out and beckoned to her.

“
Senorita
!” he called. “I beg you not to disappear. I wish to show you something of our Spanish countryside.”

He was wearing a light grey flannel suit and a flowing tie, and he looked very careless and engaging as he stood smiling down at her. Not in the least like his impeccable cousin, whose sartorial perfection alone would set him apart in any company. And however friendly he might become, he would never forget his dignity. Don Luis didn’t seem to have much use for dignity.

“Senorita Winter—or it should be Summer,” he assured her, as he took in the picture she made in her flowered frock and misty blue cardigan, because there was a slight nip in the air this afternoon—“I will accept no excuses because I know you are alone, and my cousin has already given me permission to escort you if I wish. And I do wish,” he added.

“Do you?” She sounded a little doubtful, until she remembered that the marquis had also mentioned to her that Don Luis might be the right type to take her about, if she felt the desire to be taken about. Recalling his actual words: “He will not presume, and he will make you quite a pleasant escort,” she suddenly felt a little reckless, thinking of the many afternoons when the marquis and Sylvia Petersen had set forth together since her arrival at the villa. And although he had promised to take her pillion-riding, he hadn’t yet fulfilled that promise.

It seemed to her just then that it was always “someone else” who was to be responsible for her, and that only Don Luis had actually plumped for her company.

“Very well,” she said, and she smiled up at him brightly. “So long as that car of yours doesn’t roar like a tortured thing all the time.”

“It doesn’t,” he assured her, smiling back at her gaily. “Only in spasms. And it is a little old, so you must not think harshly of it. We will coax it along for the first mile or two, and then we will give it its head—by which time you will be used to the roar.”

“So long as it doesn’t break down,” she remarked, as she took her place a little gingerly beside the driving seat.

“It will not,” he promised her. “Inez has
never
let me down!”

“Inez?”

He waved a hand to indicate the scarred red bonnet. “The companion of my lonely moments ... I have for her a great affection, as you would say in English.”

Just before they started off she put a hand up to her head.

“Oughtn’t I to fetch a hat?

But Don Luis shook his head.

“You will not need a hat,” he assured her. “The wind will merely blow your curls about, and you will look charming.” His smile apologized for the audacity of his words.

But after they had been travelling for a mile or so Josie began to wish she had fetched a head-scarf, if not a hat. A hat would certainly not have remained on in the rush of air that came at her round the inadequate windscreen. And when they started off there had been a gentle breeze, but after the first half mile the breeze became a gale that was not entirely the result of churned-up air. The day had begun with white clouds racing across the blue of the sky, and now those clouds were joining forces and becoming one rather sombre cloud that looked as if it would shortly obliterate every little patch of blue altogether. And on their right hand, as they dived like a snake along the coast road, the sea also began to look as if its mood would shortly be very bad-tempered.

“Later we will have rain,” Luis prophesied; “but not yet. Before the rain comes I will find a little cafe where they serve English tea, and you will eat lots of very little rich cakes such as you would
not
obtain in England, and we will talk and you will tell me all about yourself, and the kind of life you live when you are not making yourself useful to two people I do not very much like.”

“You mean—Dr. and Mrs. Duveen?” one hand held up to prevent the short ends of her hair being torn from her head.

“Yes—Dr. and Mrs. Duveen. The mother and the son, for of course she is not his wife! He will need a wife, when he has one, to make a great fuss of him, however—otherwise the mother will continue to watch over his interests as if he was her only chick.”

“Which, as a matter of fact, he is,” Josie said, and then realized that she was discussing her employer. “We will not talk about them,” she finished, rather formally. Luis smiled at her sideways.

“Certainly we will not talk about them if you do not wish it. There are so many other subjects that are more interesting!” He waved a hand to indicate a spot where the sun was still shining out at sea. “That, for instance—that light that is pure gold in so much darkness! If I were an artist that is the sort of thing I would paint.”

“But you are not an artist?”

“No. My interest is horses, and also I farm a little. I have a very small farm away up in the foothills which you must visit one day.”

“I’d love to,” she said, and because—in spite of the wind, and the roaring in her ears, the sudden sombreness that had followed the disappearance of such a constantly shining sun, and a chill that was making her wish for a warmer coat—travelling in Luis’ car was an exhilarating experience, and wherever she looked there was beauty on either hand, she meant it.

She had only seen the coast smiling and full of color before. Now, all at once, it didn’t so much lack color, as take on, even while they drove, a series of entirely new sets of hues. There was violent purple where the mountains ran down to meet the sea, and the yellow beach took on a kind of greyness, and the bright red cliffs that looked like splintered rocks became a bleached orange. The sea itself was swirling and indigo, whipped by the wind into a regiment of creamy-crested breakers.

It was a little like Cornwall, Josie thought—or Devon. A little of Cornwall and a little of Devon, transported, on a grey day, to the Costa Brava.

They had their tea under a still bravely spread sun umbrella in a little village where visitors were becoming few and far between, and Josie was grateful for it because it warmed her, and she enjoyed the cakes because they were delicious. Then, when they started back, Luis asked her all about her family and her friends, seeming greatly interested in every detail of her life so far, although Inez, from the time they left the Catalan village where their tea had been served to them, started to behave in a fashion that was not evidently true to form, and should have caused him a certain amount of preoccupation. But Josie had already gathered that he was a lighthearted young man—a bachelor who enjoyed running his own little farm—and his attitude to life was that comfortably “
manana
”
attitude of many Spaniards, and if troubles were to descend on him he did not propose to meet them half way. Inez developed a knocking noise inside her bonnet before they had covered a quarter of the return journey, and by the time another eighth of the journey had been covered she was struggling along with difficulty. This might not have mattered so much if the sun had been shining, but it was now completely overcast, and the rain had started to fall in earnest at last. It was then that Josie made the discovery that the car had no hood, and the rain simply came straight at her and soaked her through to the skin.

The sight of her, shivering and bedraggled on the seat beside him, was the first thing that really upset Luis, and he brought the crawling Inez to a standstill and got out and hunted amongst the spare parts in the boot. And at last he unearthed a depressed-looking camel hair rug which he insisted on draping about her, although she was by that time so wet that she could hardly have got any wetter if she’d tried.

“
Caramba
! But that rain came down before I expected it,” he admitted, his own hair plastered to his head as he tried to protect her from the worst of the elements. Josie, shivering as if she would never stop, but trying not to look as if she blamed him for this unhappy adventure, assured him through her clenched teeth, that it really didn’t matter if they could only get home fairly soon. And then it seemed that their real troubles started, for the car refused to start again, and try as he would Luis could not induce even a cough from beneath the bonnet.

They were at least a couple of miles from a garage, and unless he left her and walked back for assistance even that garage would prove useless to them. So, in the end—although she hardly knew whom she pitied more: him his two-mile walk, or herself for being left behind in the car with the heavens simply opening themselves upon her—Josie watched him walk away through the driving rain, and acknowledged to herself that this first little outing with Don Luis was hardly a success.

It seemed to her that hours passed before he returned with a mechanic in a jeep, and by that time she was so numb with cold, and so conscious of her clammy, clinging garments that all she felt was a kind of spreading sea of misery barely made endurable by the appearance of the jeep.

The mechanic got to work on the insides of Inez’s bonnet, but it seemed that the fault was not one that could be rectified easily. Inez, who had never let Luis down, was making up for lost time, and in the end they all three drove up to the villa in the jeep, the mechanic promising to return for Inez and tow her back to his garage.

Don Luis looked very worried when he half-lifted Josie out of the jeep, and only her insistence that she be allowed to walk prevented him from carrying her across the terrace and into the quiet dimness of the hall.

“You much have a hot bath at once,” he said, “and I think you ought to have a good stiff dose of brandy or something.”

He looked round rather helplessly, and was relieved to see his cousin advancing towards them from the shadows of his library door. The Marquis de Palheiro had a completely expressionless face, but his eyes peered sharply at Josie, and after one look he started ringing for a servant.

“Tell Magdalena to prepare a really hot bath for the Senorita Winter straight away,” he said, when the man appeared. And then he took Josie by the arm and led her into the library. He poured something into a glass that took away her breath when she sipped at it, but he ordered her in the same rather stern, but infinitely quiet voice to “go on and drink it all up”, and while Don Luis helped himself and poured forth their story, stood without once removing his eyes from Josie’s pinched and colorless face.

“It is not the senorita’s fault,” Luis said earnestly, anxious to get her completely excused because they were very late, and it was already almost the hour for dinner. “I persuaded her to let me take her for a drive this afternoon, and it was Inez who broke down.”

“If you take my advice you will do something decisive about Inez,” the marquis returned, as if the words actually hurt his mouth. “Preferably get rid of her altogether, and replace her with something more worthy to be called a car.”