Summer Comes to Albarosa Page 6

  ‘Is that good or bad?’ she asked.

  ‘Both in different ways, perhaps.’

  For some minutes he was silent. Then he said, ‘You have thought of your position at the villas?’

  ‘My position? How do you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps in your country it is not unusual for a young girl to live alone in a villa while the only other neighbour is a young man?’

  Caran laughed softly. ‘Oh, you’re thinking of the conventions. Mr. Eldridge is at the opposite end to my villa.’

  ‘All the same, until more visitors come, you could consider staying with Senora Molina.’

  Caran was firm on this point. ‘No. I was engaged to be on the spot. I couldn’t keep trudging up and down every day.’

  ‘As you wish.’ His tone had become cold.

  ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘with Mr. Eldridge there, it’s better than being quite alone. If there were any danger—’‘

  He had put unwelcome ideas into her head. What danger could threaten her? If some emergency arose, Brooke would probably not be at home to help her. She dismissed Don Ramiro’s scruples. Fie owned so much of the land around that he could hardly avoid being feudal, with conventions to match.

  Long after Caran was home and in bed she heard the sound of a car. Brooke, no doubt. She listened for voices, but if he had brought Benita home, he had already dropped her at her house.

  Slightly ashamed that she should be interested in Brooke’s late homecoming, she composed herself for sleep. She was not going to let thoughts of either Brooke or Don Ramiro keep her awake.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Caran finished her report next morning and walked into the town to post it. She hoped Mrs. Parmenter would understand that the villas could not be set in apple-pie order ready for letting without the money being available.

  Today the sky was overcast and she was more than halfway home down the road to the villas when a few spots of rain fell. She began to run, but not fast enough to escape the sharp shower that soaked her hair and the lightweight coal she was wearing.

  A car hooted behind her and she moved to the side of the road to avoid being splashed any more than was necessary.

  ‘Going far?’ bawled the driver, as he leaned out of the window. He was already opening the door on the off side.

  She might have known that few people other than Brooke would be using this road, but there was no point in getting wetter, so she shook the raindrops off her coat and clambered into the estate car.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t pick you up before the shower,’ he said blandly. ‘I didn’t realise you’d be out and about after your evening out.’

  ‘I wasn’t very late coming home,’ she said mildly, and was about to say ‘Not as late as you’, hut stopped herself in rime. That would have been a give-away, indeed.

  He swung the car expertly into the car-park and she prepared to alight, bur he put out a restraining hand.

  ‘Wait a few moments. The rain will stop very soon.’

  Certainly it was coming down in buckets and she closed the car door.

  ‘You’re going it a bit with the noble Don, aren’t you?’ he said, after a pause.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Her resentment was quickly aroused.

  ‘Only that Don Ramiro isn’t usually lavish or casual with his invitations to dinner.’

  ‘At least he has good manners,’ she pointed out.

  ‘In which I’m lacking—oh, I know. I’m only trying to warn you that he usually has strong motives. He’s the calculating type. Nothing impulsive about him.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean that his motives are necessarily bad ones,’ she countered. She turned towards Brooke. ‘And could I remind you that you warned me not to pry or spy on you? You seem to have kept a close watch on all my movements.’

  He laughed. ‘Are you pretending that you didn’t see me in the restaurant, the Marroqui? Several times you looked straight at me.’

  ‘I might have been wondering whether you had deliberately followed Don Ramiro and me or whether it was mere coincidence that you happened to dine in the same restaurant.’

  ‘I was there first, as it happened. I saw you and Don Ramiro come in, but I was much too discreet to wave to you both in my vulgar fashion.’

  ‘The rain has nearly stopped now.’ She unfastened the door and stepped out of the car. ‘Thank you for the lift.’

  ‘Did he offer any help about finding accommodation for Gabriela and her brood?’ Brooke leaned towards the door.

  ‘M’m. He’ll manage something,’ Caran murmured vaguely, unwilling to admit that she had not taken up the question again or that she was not sure if any kind of help were in Don Ramiro’s power.

  She hurried off to her own villa before Brooke could ask any further awkward questions. Besides, she wanted to read the letters she had collected at the post office. There was no delivery service down here at the villas and all correspondence and parcels had to be posted or collected in the town. She assumed that Brooke had always attended to his own mail.

  One was from her mother, hoping that Caran had found everything in order and was enjoying her new job in lovely winter sunshine. ‘Here, it rains non-stop every day,’ she wrote, ‘but if it were fine, I should probably be out in the garden all the time, so I have to catch up with odd jobs indoors.’

  Caran’s mother was an ardent gardener and won prizes and cups in local horticultural shows. Winter sunshine I Well, at this time of year one couldn’t expect the sun to shine every day, thought Caran, as she dried her soaked hair with a thick towel.

  Her mother had enclosed two other letters from friends who did not know Caran was in Spain. The bulky envelope Caran had left until last, for she recognised Julie’s untidy scrawl. There were several sheets written on both sides and Caran waded through an account of the shortcomings of Julie’s new boy-friend, troubles at the photographic studio where she worked and the difficulty of finding a suitable flat-mate to replace Caran.

  ‘So I thought I’d have a holiday from everything (Jude wrote), and come and spend a couple of weeks or so with you. I remember you said that some of the villas were empty, so you could probably fix me up. I’m giving up this flat at the end of the month, so I’ve got to find somewhere else and it might as well be a warm and sunny place where I can be idle and away from it all. Let me know quickly, won’t you? Have you met any interesting men yet?

  ‘Love, Julie.’

  Caran walked around the living room with the letter in her hand. How was she to reply to Julie? It was not that she wanted to deprive the other girl of a holiday, but she had no authority to let villas to casual friends. The best solution might be to let Julie share Caran’s own villa.

  She read the letter again. Jude spoke of giving up the flat at the end of the month. It was now the second week of November, so that left little time for delay, unless Julie meant she would come later in December or even after Christmas. Knowing Julie’s impulsiveness and her partiality for snap decisions, Caran concluded that her friend wanted a speedy reply to facilitate a speedy departure.

  After lunch Caran spent the afternoon answering her letters, telling Julie that she would welcome her and asking for the exact date when she would be coming. She also wrote to Mrs. Parmenter explaining the situation and offering to find Julie accommodation in the town if there was any objection to her staying in an unoccupied villa.

  When she returned from the town after posting the letters, Caran called on Gabriela.

  ‘I must have the other bed returned,’ she instructed. Gabriela looked blank. ‘But what shall I do if I have not enough beds for the children?’

  Caran tried to be reasonable and patient with this woman who certainly had her troubles, but yet wore them like a crown of thorns. ‘Listen, Gabriela, you must have had some beds and furniture in the place where you lived before you came here.’

  ‘No, no—all gone to buy food.’

  Caran winced at this example of such abject poverty.

  �
��But your husband—’ she began.

  ‘Felipe is working now and he works hard at El Catalan, but for a few months before then he was ill and could not work at all. That was why we could not pay the rent.’

  Caran was silent. ‘Well, I shall do my best to get you another place, but you must also help yourselves and look for something. Ask your husband, Felipe, to come and see me when he has free time.’

  Gabriela promised to do so, adding that she would walk all the streets of Albarosa to find even a barn or stable where the family could live, but how was she to do so with so many children clutching her skirts? ‘I could not leave them here alone and my mother cannot attend to all of them.’

  Caran conceded the point and left Gabriela to her endless household chores of washing, cleaning and cooking.

  The next morning Felipe appeared at the door of Caran’s villa with the divan base of a single bed.

  ‘Senorita?’ he said politely, ‘here is part and I go to bring the rest.’ He propped the base in the porch and went away, returning in a few minutes with the mattress on his head and the headboard under his arm.

  ‘Thank you, Felipe. Would you mind bringing the whole lot into the bedroom?’

  Gabriela’s husband was fairly tall and slender. His thin dark face showed permanent anxiety, two deep lines were etched either side of his straight Latin nose, and the much-mended trousers and thin sweater he wore this morning were hardly enough to keep out the chilly wind. It probably took him effort enough to dress respectably in his waiter’s clothes and off duty he had nothing but this shabby outfit.

  When the extra bed was in position in Caran’s bedroom, she asked him to sit down and gave him a glass of wine.

  At the end of the long conversation he admitted that he was no nearer finding another place to live than he had been six or seven weeks ago. There was nothing he could afford. Yet Caran had the impression that he was not only honest, but eager to get away and make a more settled life for his wife and family.

  ‘When the villas are let, I could possibly employ Gabriela to do some of the cleaning,’ she offered. ‘Benita, too, could come back as a maid.’

  His face lit up with grateful smiles and he grasped her hand. ‘Yes, yes, all will come right for us and we will all work hard,’ he promised.

  That evening she thought it would be a friendly gesture if she dined at El Catalan where Felipe served her with an excellent meal and she gave him a generous tip.

  Nearly a week went by and she had heard nothing from Mrs. Parmenter. Without more money to oil the wheels, Caran felt she was at a standstill as far as encouraging the painters and workmen to resume their operations.

  So far there was not enough for her to do, although she realised that when the season really started she would probably be run off her feet without a minute to spare. One afternoon she roamed along the shore on the far side of Albarosa. Don Ramiro had indicated that his villa was somewhere in that direction, but when she came to the limit of the sandy beach backed by clusters of pines there was nothing but rocky stone outcrops and after a few difficult climbs up and down, she turned back.

  Almost as soon as she entered the villa, a man’s voice called out, ‘Miss Ingram! Are you at home?’

  She hastened to open the door. The man standing in the porch was vaguely familiar.

  ‘I’m Paul,’ he announced. ‘Aunt Alison’s nephew—Mrs. Parmenter, you know.’

  ‘Oh, of course. Come in.’ She had glimpsed him only hurriedly at the airport and had not been prepared for his sudden appearance here,

  ‘You got my aunt’s letter telling you I was on my way?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I went to the post office this morning, but there was nothing there from Mrs. Parmenter.’

  ‘Oh, bad luck. Never mind. I’m here, so that’s all right. I’ll leave all my gear out here in the porch.’

  ‘What sort of meal would you like?’ she asked. ‘English or Spanish? We could have tea and toast or coffee and cakes or I could cook you something more substantial. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Not particularly. English tea and toast sounds good on this November afternoon. Not that it’s really cold weather. In this part of Spain it never becomes icy, except in the mountains, but somehow you always expect Spain to be sunny and warm and fit for lying about basking in the sun.’ While he drank tea and ate the fingers of toast and little scones that Caran had made this morning, she studied Paul Fernwood. Medium height and rather stocky in build, fair hair and a pale face inclined to fleshiness; even in his tweed suit he looked very much the business type, as though he ought always to be wearing a bowler hat and carrying a rolled umbrella.

  ‘Aunt Alison thought that I’d better come for a while and see if I could help you to straighten out matters. Also, it fitted in quite well with my own plans, so here I am.’

  She told him briefly what she had already reported to Mrs. Parmenter. ‘All the workmen say no credit.’

  ‘We’ll soon put that right,’ he promised.

  After tea, she asked if he had made arrangements for accommodation in the town or was he intending to stay temporarily in one of the villas.

  ‘Oh, I thought I could take one of the spare villas for the time being,’ he answered.

  ‘In that case I’ll go and attend to it, see that it’s aired and so on.’

  ‘I’ll take the one next door,’ he suggested. ‘Then it’s easy for us to be in touch.’

  Caran knew now that she could no longer delay admitting that one villa was unlawfully occupied. Paul would soon find out for himself.

  ‘I didn’t put it in the report,’ she confessed, ‘because I thought I might solve that problem in a short time, but you’d better know about it now.’

  Paul listened to her account of Gabriela’s circumstances. Then he said cheerfully, ‘Oh, don’t worry, Caran—I hope I may call you that? Don’t worry, we’ll soon turf them out. If we don’t, they’ll invite their friends to come and take over any other villas that happen to be empty.’

  Caran was vaguely disquieted. Perhaps she should already have been firmer with the family, but Paul sounded as if he were quite prepared to use strong-arm tactics.

  For the next hour she was busy attending to the Villa Turquesa, next to her own, and making it comfortable for Paul.

  ‘It’s a little dusty,’ she apologised, ‘but I’ll get it cleaned our properly in the morning.’

  ‘There should be at least one maid here to look after all the villas. What’s happened to that girl?—Benita, I think her name was.’

  ‘She’s working at a shop in the town. Evidently she didn’t get paid her wages.’

  ‘Oh, that blessed agent we used. He seems to have let the whole place go to pot.’

  Caran smiled. ‘That’s why I gather your aunt wanted someone on the spot.’ At the same time, she was now beginning to wonder why Paul hadn’t come in the first place to act as a resident manager. Perhaps he had an important job in London and could be absent for only a limited time.

  Back in Caran’s villa, she and Paul studied the copy of her report, item by item. She made notes of his comments and instruction.

  ‘You know all this part quite well, I suppose? Were you here in the summer?’ she queried.

  ‘Yes, I stayed a few weeks. I was glad I did, for I saw various possibilities here. When I came the previous year I wasn’t in the right mood to enjoy myself. My fiancée had just thrown me over—and there were other problems,’

  ‘I’m sorry—about your broken engagement, I mean. Not mended yet?’

  ‘Indeed, no. She’s married someone else.’

  Caran nodded and gave a little sigh to indicate that she understood just how disrupting women could be to a man’s life. She guessed that he might be about twenty-five or six, so there was probably plenty of time for him to meet the right girl.

  ‘Let’s go up to the town and have dinner, shall we?’ he suggested when they came to the end of the report.

  ‘I’d like that,’ she agreed in
what she hoped was a businesslike non-committal tone without too much eagerness.

  He ordered a taxi to take them into Albarosa. ‘I’ll have to see about hiring a car while I’m here,’ he said. ‘Do you drive?’

  ‘I’ve no experience of driving on Continental roads,’ she admitted hastily. ‘At home I drove my father’s car but I’d need a little practice in keeping to the right instead of the left.’ She smiled. ‘Why do the British have to be so individual?’

  He chose El Catalan for dinner, but Caran could not see Felipe. Perhaps it was his night off duty.

  Halfway through the meal, Paul raised his glass of wine to Caran. ‘Here’s to our partnership!’ he said, his grey eyes sparkling with cordiality. ‘Oh, I can see we’re going to get along famously.’

  Caran was slightly bewildered by the speed with which Paul Fernwood established so amicable a footing. She herself was accustomed to progress more gradually in her acquaintanceships. Julie, for instance, was entirely opposite, falling over herself with enthusiasm for new friends, then as speedily discovering their faults. It occurred to Caran to mention Julie now.

  ‘A friend—we shared a flat in London—wants to come for a short holiday,’ she explained. ‘Would it be all right if she shared my villa?’

  ‘Certainly. Why not?’ Paul agreed. ‘I expect you could do with a little bit of English company. By the way, have you met our resident recluse, Eldridge?’

  A faint flush spread over Caran’s face and she hoped Paul would not notice it. ‘Oh, yes, I met him as soon as I came here.’ That was entirely true.