Circles of Fate (9 page)

He sighed over the sarcastic edge to her voice and said: “Not really. Until recently you have led such a busy life. Before your mother's illness, music took up all of your time and every scrap of your attention. For you, no man could compete with a concert-grand and the music of Chopin and Liszt. You played with grace, sensitivity and amazing flexibility. The poignant beauty of a nocturne would still be in my throat, and your fingers would be scurrying over the notes of a lively mazurka. It's a million pities you gave it up.”

“You're an old flatterer, Edward Selby. I was never as good as all that.” Despite herself she was flattered, and touched. “And you know I had to give it up. Mother had such terrible headaches that the slightest noise made her wince. She couldn't even bear me to play softly; sometimes it even jarred on her nerves when I spoke in anything above a whisper. It was as though her hearing had grown more acute, so that the everyday sounds one doesn't consciously hear were magnified: the dripping of a tap that hadn't been properly shut off, the click of the electric light switch, even the spurt of a match being struck seemed to distress her.”

“You did a very kind and noble thing for your mother.”

“Nonsense! I did nothing.”

“Only give up your one absorbing interest, so that now you are left with a vacuum in your life and little or no experience of what goes on in the world. You may be able to read a score of music, but you know nothing about falling in and out of love and acting like a normal teenager. And you aren't a teenager any more, but a woman and therefore you are supposed to be wise in the ways of men and proof against certain situations. And how can you be? Inez knew, and it is what she feared. She said to me, just before she died, ‘Look after her, Edward. Protect her because in her present state of mind she will fall for the first handsome adventurer who shows an interest in her.' ”

She looked down at the ring which Edward had given her, and which she now wore on her right hand. “Is that why...? Because Mother asked it of you?”

“Even if Inez had not voiced her fear, I should still have wanted to keep an eye on you. There's a bond between us.”

“A bond, Edward?”

His eyes fell shyly away. She was utterly perplexed by this until his sheepish smile provoked a possible truth. Perhaps he thought that to sentimentalize was a purely feminine pursuit. That could account for his awkward dissemble. “Remember, I first met you when you were one day old. I am fond of you and I wouldn't want you to fall for a wrong sort.”

“Felipe is not a wrong sort.”

The cynical lift of his eyebrow said clearly, ‘And how would you know?'

She knew. She felt it in her bones. But Edward, despite that earlier lapse, didn't normally deal in feelings. His analytical legal mind demanded facts. She frowned in heavy concentration, as though she were preparing a brief to be used in a court of law, and began:

“Just now you called him an adventurer. An adventurer is someone who pushes his fortune, especially by unscrupulous means: one who engages in hazardous enterprises. Well, that does seem to fit Filipe. His is certainly not the most honourable of professions, but there will be a reason. It is not what a person does, but why they do it. I mean, it would be a bit short-sighted to smack a child for being naughty, without first troubling to find out why he was acting in the way he was. Don't you see?”

“I see the fellow has a worthy advocate in you. You mean that, because of an unknown factor, he has this need to express himself. Prove himself. Is that it?”

“Or live up to someone. His father?”

His look changed from frank puzzlement to abashed discomfort, and he scribbled ring impressions on the tablecloth with a blunt finger. He hated to discuss anything that had the slightest sniff of scandal, or perhaps he didn't mind blackening Felipe's character but was reluctant to do the same to Pilar.

His voice was oddly without expression.

“That side of it is a bit of a riddle. Presumably Pilar was married.” He wriggled, so obviously giving her the benefit of the doubt. “But it is all very vague. It is something that is not referred to.”

“I see. I mean that literally. I really do see! That could well be the reason.”

“Yes, I suppose it could,” admitted Edward, grudgingly interested. “If my parentage was obscure,” he worded delicately, “I suppose I should want to cut a dash and rise above my fellow man, if only to spite the blighter!”

The thought of Edward cutting a dash brought a smile to her lips; only her fondness for him prevented her poking fun, although he was not entirely unaware of the gleam of mischief contained in her eye. He met it with an answering grin, and a hand came down to cover hers.

“I can't forbid you to see that fellow. I'm not your legal guardian and in any case you are of age, but I beg of you –” His features sobered – “do take care.”

Edward feared for her, she knew that. He was kind and pitying – but his concern was unfounded. Felipe wouldn't hurt her. After a moment's gentle consideration she amended that to, wouldn't knowingly hurt her. And even if he did, running away wouldn't take the hurt away. That wasn't the solution. Sometimes you had to face up to situations. Perhaps if you acted as though you were big enough and strong enough and brave enough, these coveted assets would eventually be yours by right.

Edward gleaned some, if not all, of her thoughts by reading the variety of expressions that raced across her face before it finally settled in a pattern of obstinacy that he recognized and respected. It was the face she wore when presented with a challenge. She had the will to face up to her problems, he knew that from the way she had tackled her mother's illness. But because of that, because she was still in the recovery stages, she was not fully equipped to deal with any major battles.

He sighed. He'd opened her eyes. He could do no more.

“I would play the heavy uncle and take her straight home,” he later confided to Cathy. “Only –”

“If you do,” she cautioned, “she will romantically enlarge what may be only infatuation into something big and wonderful. Better that you have no part in it and let it fizzle out by itself.”

If only it would.

Edward had an ally in an unexpected quarter. Pilar was also anxious for the affair to die a natural death.

Felipe told Anita: “My mother is perturbed about us. She told me that we must not grow fond of one another because there is a big barrier between us.”

“What does she mean?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “When my mother chooses to be mysterious there is no knowing what she means. But I have an idea. You do not like what I do for a living?”

“No, Felipe, I don't.”

A silence stretched between them, during which time they both contemplated this big barrier. The shadow of it fell on their faces, obscuring the smiles they had exchanged on meeting. It was not prearranged, they had happened upon one another in the street.

“I was coming to see you, anyway,” disclosed Felipe. “On a matter of business.”

“Business!” It was sacrilege to talk of such things on such a beautiful day. Business was something conducted solely in England, under grey skies and between tepid cups of tea. She knew this because of the visits she had paid to Edward's office.

“What business?”

Felipe's expression changed. His features stiffened and became very proud and a hint of arrogance showed in the lift of his mouth.

“I am speaking now on behalf of my mother. She has asked me to approach you about a certain matter. She wishes to purchase Casa Esmeralda.”

You mean you are willing to buy it for her, thought Anita. Because where would Pilar get the money from?

“Will you sell?”

“I don't know. I must think about it. I hate you for making me think heavy business when all I want is to be lizard lazy and soak up this wonderful sun. Perhaps I shan't sell. Perhaps I'll turn your mother out on the street and convert Casa Esmeralda into a fine hotel.”

She was laughing and her words contained no sting, but his eyes narrowed. The sun glinted on his black pupils, turning them into slits of jet, challenging her in a way that was not entirely without menace.

Then he laughed. “I am not very well up in the English sense of humour. Have you made a joke?”

“If I did, Felipe, it was in bad taste. About selling, I won't decide until I've talked it over with my solicitor, which I promise to do later today.”

“I see that you are not acquainted with the vagaries of our telephone system. It is possible to book a call to England, but that is not to say you'll get through today.”

She knew that he was very gently mocking her ignorance, and it delighted her to be able to say: “Not by telephone. But by personal contact. My solicitor is here with me.”

Unruffled, he said: “How very convenient. Do you always pack him, like a spare vest?”

“No, but sometimes there is a second-skin closeness about Edward that irks me.”

“Ah, Edward!” He lifted up her left hand, uncurled her clenched fingers and pretended to be surprised because there was no ring.

“I like Edward much better than I did. Talk to him by all means, but bear in mind that I intend for my mother to have Casa Esmeralda.”

His tone backed his words.

“Is it so important for her?” she asked.

“To be mistress of the house where she has worked as a servant? Yes, it is important.”

Anita had no ready retort, although she suspected there was more to it than that, and so the subject was allowed to drop. In any case, she was inclined to believe that Felipe didn't know all the answers and was as incredulous as she was. A realist, he probably regarded this as a romantic whim, which, because of his deep affection, he was willing to indulge.

“Pilar must be very proud to have you for a son,” she said on a sudden impulse.

“I've tried to make her proud.” He said that with an air of leaving something unsaid, and Anita remembered Edward's hints about the obscurity wrapped round Felipe's father. Perhaps Pilar hadn't always been proud to have a son. Perhaps at one time he had been a great source of embarrassment.

Leyenda wasn't like England and the few who wriggled through the restraining net, the tight moral code, suffered for their misdeeds. It was particularly shameful if the one who erred was a woman. Unfairly, men emerged less scathed, and in certain cases, if their wives were known to be cold or rejected the intimacy of marriage out of necessity, because of illness for example, it enhanced their reputation to take a mistress. But even then there were certain rules which must be obeyed, the most important thing being that the woman should not be of an inferior class.

“Look,” said Anita, unable to deny a spontaneous upsurge of sympathy to Pilar's cause, desire, or whatever it was that made her want to own Casa Esmeralda. “I don't have to talk to Edward, I've decided. Your mother can have the house. I don't want it.”

“Are you quite certain?”

She noticed the faintly cynical curl at the corners of his mouth, another character clue. She realized she was collecting them and storing them away in a secret compartment of her mind, to be taken out later and put together in an endeavour to find out what made him tick.

This latest clue told her that he despised her meek acquiescence. He had no use for an easy victory, he scorned weakness and made no allowance even when it was based on sympathy. He would have fought her intention of turning his home into an hotel, but he would have applauded her fighting spirit.

In finding out about Felipe, she found something out about herself. Where he was concerned, she didn't have a fighting spirit. Had it been within her power she would have erased every scar that life had imprinted on his soul, righted every wrong. She wanted only for him to be happy.

Yet, how could she feel this way when everything he stood for, his aggressive approach and his way of life, filled her with revulsion?

She was aware of a disturbing feeling of antipathy when she was near him. It wasn't new. It had always been there. It was a feeling that was familiar, yet with a kernel of strangeness because she had only recently identified it. She was like a moth, both repulsed and attracted by the flame which would inevitably touch her. Although she knew all this, she was happily oblivious of the intensity of that hurt, if she thought about it at all, she thought in terms of a lightly scorched finger, not a complete burn-out that would inflict scars too deep to heal.

Edward was only mildly surprised when she told him of Felipe's wish to purchase Casa Esmeralda on his mother's behalf. She wondered what it would take to really surprise Edward, to shake him out of his complacency. When she informed him of her decision to sell, he more or less used Felipe's words.

“Are you certain?”

But his tone was bland and not charged with derision as Felipe's had been.

“Yes, quite certain.”

“I think you are being wise,” he recapitulated, “to want to cut all connections once your holiday is over.”

She acknowledged the remark with a significantly raised eyebrow, but made no comment. Instead she reached into her handbag and produced a card. “Felipe asked me to give this to you. It's the name and address of his solicitor. He thought perhaps the two of you could get together over price and draw up the contract.” Wrongly interpreting the look on his face, she said: “Is it very bad of me to thrust this piece of business on you? After all, this is your holiday. And one you desperately need. I tend to forget what a hard-working person you are.”

Perhaps Edward was surprise-proof, sluggish, but now and again he came back with a lightning punch.

“No you don't. You think of me in terms of work. You think I'm nothing but a dried-up law book.”

“No, Edward, that's not true,” she said, sensitive to his hurt, not a little surprised by it. He had never minded being considered, well, not quite human, a person devoid of emotional impulse.