Summer Comes to Albarosa Page 5

He was sympathetic. ‘Would you care to let me see the villas?’

  She agreed instantly. A word or two from Don Ramiro in the right direction might work wonders, she reflected, for he was probably well known in Albarosa.

  When they approached the Villa Cristal, two of Gabriela’s smaller children were playing in front of the porch.

  ‘This one is already let?’ Don Ramiro asked.

  ‘No.’ Caran was forced to explain. ‘It’s occupied by a family who have apparently been turned out of their former house.’

  ‘And they can pay the rent of such a villa?’ he queried.

  She flushed. ‘At present they’re not paying anything. They’re very poor indeed. That’s why they lost their other place, I believe. They couldn’t pay the rent.’

  ‘I should like to meet this woman,’ he said in a tone of authority.

  The two children scuttled away like lizards as Caran and Don Ramiro approached, and evidently their excited cries and shouts brought Gabriela out of her kitchen.

  At the sight of this tall man accompanying Caran, Gabriela almost cringed with terror.

  ‘This is Gabriela,’ murmured Caran, smiling at the woman. ‘I don’t know her surname.’

  ‘Gabriela Ribera,’ she supplied without being asked. Then she began to gabble incoherently in Spanish, begging Don Ramiro not to throw her and her children into the street.

  ‘My husband is a good man. Felipe works hard and docs his best, but he doesn’t cam much money.’ She put her hands over her face and sobbed heartrendingly.

  Don Ramiro listened in silence.

  Seeing their mother in distress, the two children clung to her and added their crying to hers.

  Caran said gently, ‘Gabriela, we have not come to turn you out. Don Ramiro is a friend.’

  The woman raised her tear-stained face. ‘Friend! Then you will help us? We do not want to stay here, because we know it is forbidden, but a small place that we could afford, oh, we would be so happy!’

  She touched Don Ramiro’s arm and Caran noticed how he drew away.

  ‘I can promise nothing,’ he said at last. ‘But you must find somewhere else to go.’ He turned away and walked down the path. Caran knew she must follow, but she whispered hurriedly, ‘Don’t worry, Gabriela. We’ll find something for you.’

  When she caught up with Don Ramiro, who had waited for her on the lower path, she murmured, ‘Poor woman! She doesn’t know where to turn.’

  ‘You must not let sympathy and pity influence you too much,’ he cautioned her. ‘In our country, as in every country, there are careless people who do not know how to live or pay their debts. Then they expect others to come to their rescue.’

  Caran sighed. ‘Oh, I know I shall have to get them out. They should never have been allowed in, but Gabriela’s mother had charge of the keys, so it was perhaps only natural that she should let her daughter take one of the villas.’

  Don Ramiro did not reply and Caran assumed that he was annoyed because he had been involved in a distressing scene. At the Villa Esmeralda, the last but one, he rubbed his hand along some or the outside plaster and when it flaked off, he remarked, ‘These are not well built. The workmanship is poor.’

  Caran bridled. ‘They may not be as well constructed as one would prefer, but they are mainly for summer use,’ she pointed out.

  ‘And in the winter they are neglected and shew their faults.’

  ‘I shall be here to look after them, winter or summer,’ she declared.

  At that he glanced at her and smiled. ‘You sound as though you have adopted your task for many years to come.’

  ‘How do you know that I might not want to stay here permanently? I might like this part of Spain so much that I couldn’t bear to leave it.’

  ‘Oh, Spain, yes. My country appeals to the heart. People believe that they come and go as they please. They do not realise that Spain has wound slender chains around them and when they stray too far, the chain is tugged and they come back.’

  A poetic way of putting it, Caran thought, but she granted that all Don Ramiro said might be true.

  By now they had left the Villa Esmeralda and Caran hesitated. ‘There is one more, the Villa Zaliro,’ she explained, ‘but that is permanently occupied.’

  ‘By someone who really pays the rent?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s English and he works here, I believe. His name is Eldridge, Brooke Eldridge.’

  Don Ramiro turned towards her. ‘That is very good that you have one of your own countrymen so near at hand to guide you. I suppose he’s the young man who works on the irrigation scheme up in the hills.’

  ‘Oh, is that what he does?’ Caran’s memory leapt back to that first day when she had poked her nose into Mr. Eldridge’s villa. The wellingtons, the thigh-boots, the serviceable jacket, all these pointed to a wet and watery job.

  ‘There are two new villas being built for my employer,’ Caran said. ‘Would you like to see them? There’s not much to see yet, because the building work seems to have stopped suddenly.’

  ‘I know about them,’ answered Don Ramiro. ‘They are set in a very bad place.’

  Caran stared at him. ‘A bad place? But why? The views from there are superb.’

  Don Ramiro smiled. ‘Perhaps that is what I meant. Bad for those who are not fortunate enough to be living in them.’

  Caran was puzzled, but since such a tremendous amount of work had to be done before these two were habitable, the point was not worth arguing about.

  She and her escort had nearly reached the Villa Joyosa when someone, whistling jauntily, came down from the small car park, a piece of roughly cleared earth at the end of the road leading from the town.

  Mr. Eldridge’s whistling stopped abruptly. ‘Buenas tardes,’ he greeted Caran, then turned towards the Spaniard. ‘I hope it goes well with you, Don Ramiro.’

  The difference in appearance between the two men was striking, thought Caran. Don Ramiro in his well-cut dark suit, impeccable shirt and elegant tie, while Brooke Eldridge wore mud-stained jeans, an old grey sweater with strands of wool dangling from a hole in the elbow. His dark red-brown hair stuck up at unruly angles and there was a small streak of mud on his left cheek.

  ‘How is the irrigation going along?’ asked Den Ramiro, ignoring Brooke’s remark.

  ‘Reasonably well,’ answered Brooke, ‘That heavy rain a few nights ago did no good at all. Washed away some of the concrete on part of the dam, but no real damage. I suppose you’ve been helping Miss Ingram to sort out her troubles with these villas? She couldn’t hope for anyone better at solving such problems.’

  ‘Don Ramiro was merely interested in seeing the villas, that’s all,’ Caran put in hastily. She considered that Brooke Eldridge was being unnecessarily rude to Don Ramiro. The words might be innocuous, but the tone they were spoken in was uncivil, to say the least. His manner goaded her to say snappishly, ‘We did not even glance at yours. There was no need.’

  Brooke nodded pleasantly. ‘Thanks. Then I won’t detain you. Good night.’

  Caran led the way into her own villa, but she was conscious of the fact that Brooke had probably turned his head to see whether Don Ramiro were following her.

  ‘He is not a very pleasant young man,’ was Don Ramiro’s comment, when he entered the living room. ‘But no doubt he will not give you much trouble. If he pays the rent regularly and docs no damage, you can leave him alone.’

  ‘Has he worked here long on this irrigation construction?’ Caran asked as idly as she could.

  ‘More than a year, I believe. But we need waste no more time or thought on the Englishman. Perhaps you would care to have dinner with me in the town?’

  Caran was unprepared for this offer—one might almost call it an honour. She had been intending to offer him a snack of some kind, for she knew that the usual dining hour in Spain was about nine o’clock and now the time was barely six. Yet it would be nonsensical to refuse his offer. Don Ramiro was possibly her best chance of acquiring a
small measure of influence in Albarosa. With his backing she might manage to stir up the various people concerned with maintenance of the villas.

  ‘If you would give me, say, twenty minutes to dress, I shall be glad to come,’ she said demurely.

  He smiled. ‘Only twenty minutes? Most of my women acquaintances need far longer than that to make themselves ready even for a simple meal in a modest Albarosa restaurant.’

  As she took a quick shower, then renewed her make-up, she mused on the vast number of womenfolk he must know. Was he married? He had so far made no reference to a wife, but then that was hardly her business. She had not brought an extensive wardrobe with her, intending to buy clothes as she needed them here in Spain. Now she chose a fairly warm dress of midnight blue courtelle with a band of iridescent pearl embroidery at the neck.

  When she returned to the living room Don Ramiro displayed his approval of her appearance. ‘Only twenty-five minutes,’ he said with a glance at his thin gold wrist-watch.

  His car was parked near her villa, so Brooke Eldridge must have seen it when he arrived in his own battered estate car. Caran was am-used by the thought that Brooke had undoubtedly wanted to see who the visitor was.

  Don Ramiro drove swiftly up the winding, narrow road into the town and took her to a cafe in one of the small squares that she had not so far discovered.

  The cafe was almost full; men on their way home stopped to meet their friends over coffee or a glass of wine or beer; a couple of families watched their children eating ice-cream and solitary men read newspapers while they ate, almost absent-mindedly, saucerfuls of tapas. Not an apparently obvious English tourist in sight, thought Caran.

  This was surely the real Spain where old Moorish customs lingered, for in the streets some of the elderly women still pulled their shawls over their faces at the approach of a stranger, in high summer a sprinkling of tourists would be chattering in their incomprehensible tongues, aiming their cameras at the colourful casbahs or women treading their laundry knee-deep in one of the Moorish fountains.

  Don Ramiro asked Caran questions about the villas. ‘This woman who owns the group, what is she like?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘I don’t know very much about her circumstances, except that she’s a widow—about fifty, I suppose, or perhaps in her late forties. She has invested most of the capital that her husband left her in these villas and, naturally, wants the investment to pay.’

  ‘Has she ever been here and seen what Albarosa is like?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She told me that she’d spent nearly three months here during the first summer, that was two or three years ago.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t she live here permanently and look after her estate?’ he asked.

  ‘She has some connection with an antique shop in England and she can’t be away for long periods,’ Caran told him.

  ‘Then she is not wholly dependent on her income from the villas here?’

  Caran shrugged. ‘I don’t know much about her finances. I expect she told me only what was necessary for me to understand.’

  Don Ramiro was silent for a few minutes. Then Caran said, ‘I believe you own a villa near Albarosa. Is it far away?’

  He smiled. ‘You acquire information rapidly. Did Senora Melina tell you?’

  ‘No. Mr. Eldridge mentioned it.’

  ‘Ah, of course, the Englishman. Yes, my villa is on the other side of Albarosa, on the way to Almeria, but not far. It is shut up at present, but when I open it again, you must come and visit us.’

  ‘Thank you. I’d like to see it.’

  When they had dawdled long enough over their aperitifs, Don Ramiro took her on foot through a couple of streets, then a Moorish arch lit with small twinkling lights. A black iron grille opened into a courtyard with high walls and in the centre a small fountain was illuminated by a pale green glow. In warmer weather, Caran supposed, there would be tables our here, but tonight was too chilly.

  A door in the corner of the courtyard led down carpeted stairs to a large restaurant decorated in Moorish style with small arches in the ceiling ornamented with the stalactite formation found elsewhere in Andalucia. Tables were ranged around three sides of the floor, leaving a small clear space in the middle, no doubt for dancing, Caran assumed.

  She wisely allowed Don Ramiro to select the courses of the entire meal. ‘Whatever you order I shall enjoy,’ she said.

  ‘Most graciously spoken!’ At that moment some trick of the lighting revealed his dark eyes and Caran was aware of a glittering intensity in their depths. She glanced away quickly, slightly disconcerted, but admonishing herself for imagining that Don Ramiro meant any more than a casual compliment.

  At the far end of the room a small dais accommodated three musicians, guitar, tambourine and drums. The trio played a variety of Spanish dances and airs but, it seemed to Caran, in a rather listless, bored fashion, until later a pair of flamenco dancers appeared on the space in front of the tables.

  The girl wore the red and white spotted Andalucian costume, swinging and twirling so that the many flounces rippled with her movements. There was something familiar to Caran about the girl’s face, but she could not place her until almost the end of the dance when she recognized her as Benita, Gabriela’s sister. The music rose to a frenzied climax to match the dancers and Benita sank in submission to her masculine conqueror.

  The diners applauded, Benita and her partner bowed and the musicians mopped their brows. Clearly they had been saving their energies and enthusiasm for the flamenco exhibition.

  ‘You like our dances?’ Don Ramiro asked.

  ‘I haven’t seen enough of them to understand the meaning, but I find them thrilling.’

  She was undecided whether to disclose to her host that the girl worked in a grocers’ shop by day and apparently spent some of her evenings dancing. Caran concluded that what Benita did in her scanty spare time was the latter’s business.

  Yet as her glance strayed about the restaurant, she saw Benita sitting at a table in a corner near the musicians, and the man opposite was not her partner, but Brooke Eldridge.

  Benita was telling him something in a gay, vivacious manner and he listened attentively, now and again adding a word or two when Benita paused for breath. Naturally, thought Caran, he would know Benita quite well during the year he had been in Albarosa. There was no reason why he shouldn’t come to this restaurant to dine and watch her dancing.

  She wondered, too, if Brooke had seen her in the company of Don Ramiro, but that was less likely, for her host had chosen a table from which dances and any other spectacle could be viewed, while leaving him and Caran in comparative shadow.

  Caran tried to keep her glances away from Brooke and his Spanish companion in case the mere act of concentrated staring might induce him to turn his head in her direction, but she was aware of how often her eyes strayed to that corner, although she pretended to watch the musicians.

  When she and Don Ramiro rose to leave the restaurant, Brooke was still there, although Benita had disappeared, perhaps to change from her costume into street attire, so that Brooke could accompany her home? After all, Benita lived with her mother, Manuela, quite close to the villas.

  Caran resolutely thrust all thoughts of Brooke out of her mind and concentrated on Don Ramiro’s suggestion that before he took her back to her villa, they might walk a few yards in the fresh air.

  He conducted her along several steep streets, then up one that was a narrow passage with stone steps. At the top was a white wall with a smooth, rounded top and, looking over it, Caran could see that this point commanded a view over a tremendously wide area.

  ‘We are almost on the top of Albarosa,’ he said quietly. ‘From here you can see the coast in both directions and some of the mountains. Near here is a tower with a flat roof and from there you can see every point of the compass.’

  Glancing below’, she could see part of the town, lit in patches while other parts were in darkness. In the moonlight she could distinguish the
wide bay with glimpses of white beach. She could not see the villas, for they nestled down by the shore on a lower level and were secluded by bushes and trees, but she could make out the small spit of land close by. Away in the distance towards the west were occasional twinkling lights pricking the dark mass of mountains.

  ‘I didn’t realise there were such good viewpoints,’ she said. ‘I must come up here one time in daylight.’

  ‘Are you then afraid of the dark, even when it is moonlit?’ His voice held a caressing, teasing note.

  ‘No, of course not, but what I meant was that if I knew the landscape better in daylight, I’d be able to identify the places better in semi-darkness.’

  ‘Beyond that headland to the left,’ he pointed out, ‘is a fishing village called Matana. I own some of the land in between; vineyards, olive groves, orange and lemon orchards and so on.’

  ‘So that’s why you also have a villa here?’

  ‘You can’t see it from here. It’s behind a clump of trees over there.’ He pointed with a wide sweep of his arm to the right. ‘There also I have inherited some of the land.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had such important interests in this neighbourhood.’ She would not ask him what else he owned in Almeria and the surrounding area. Bringing her to this pinnacle and showing her even part of his kingdom was enough to impress her, but she wondered what exactly were his motives and whether they were connected with her as housekeeper-manager of a few villas, or more personally. ‘Gradually Albarosa is changing,’ he said. ‘When the Moors left most of Spain they were allowed to remain here and keep their customs and traditions. For five centuries they have been content to be isolated even though they are now Christians, not Moslems, and owe allegiance to Spanish rule. Even in my father’s time there was no road, only a track across the river beds. Now a better road has come and soon the tourists will discover this town perched on a hill.’