Meeting in Madrid (6 page)

Almost imperceptibly they had touched down on the wide apron in front of the main reception area, and Catherine gathered her hand-luggage together while Don Jaime took down her white woollen coat from the overhead rack.

‘You’re not going to need this,’ he said, ‘once we get away from the mountains.’

When they reached the reception lounge he appeared to be searching for a familiar face among the many Spaniards waiting for friends and relations as they came off the Madrid plane.

‘There’s Ramon!’ Teresa cried, dashing forward to embrace a tall young Spaniard who had just come in through the revolving doors.

‘My younger brother,’ Don Jaime explained. ‘I did not think he would come, but it is certainly pleasant to be met by one of the family.’

Teresa was approaching with Ramon in tow and Catherine found herself looking into a pair of dark eyes which were frankly appraising. Ramon de Berceo Madroza, unlike his older brother, was prepared to accept her on sight, possibly because they were of an age and because he had always had an eye for a pretty girl. He, too, had obviously expected her to be much older, and his frank acceptance of her was a sure sign of his surprise and delight.

‘
Bienvenida, senorita
!’ He bowed over her hand, a gesture Don Jaime had never permitted himself. ‘You are happy to be in Tenerife?’

Catherine hesitated, but only for the split second it took to glance in his brother’s direction. Don Jaime was frowning.

‘Very happy,
senor
,’ she answered firmly, ‘although it doesn’t really matter where I work.’

‘You will enjoy the
hacienda
once you have got used to us,’ Ramon assured her, ‘and soon all our errors with your difficult English language will be swept away!’

His tone had been gently teasing, his dark eyes still admiring.

‘If you are ready, Ramon, we will make a move,’ his brother said drily. ‘We have a long journey before us.’

A fleeting spark of resentment kindled in the younger man’s eyes, but it died almost immediately as Ramon helped load their accumulated luggage on to a trolley which a porter trundled out to the large black car waiting for them in the car-park.

Catherine drew in a deep breath of the keen mountain air as she followed Teresa, looking around her at the massed blooms in the immaculate flowerbeds and beyond them to the dark green of a pine forest which clothed the nearer hills. The island rose steeply from the sea and up here on the plateau it was more like Scotland than the subtropical island she had expected, but soon they were in the car and driving Westward towards the coast. The road which had climbed two thousand feet up to the plateau from Santa Cruz de Tenerife now twisted downwards in a series of hairpin bends which afforded them breathtaking views of the other side of the island, of an ochre-coloured coastline fringed by a line of white breakers and backed by a second sea of green banana fronds swaying gently in the cool breeze which had followed them down from the mountains.

‘It’s beautiful—really beautiful!’ she exclaimed involuntarily. ‘I had no idea it would be like this.’

‘Wait till you see Soria,’ Ramon promised, sitting beside her in the back seat. ‘You will fall in love with that, too.’

Don Jaime was driving, with a silent Teresa sitting beside him, but he drew the car up at a suitable passing-bay to let her admire the glorious panorama beneath them. Tropical vegetation had now taken over from the darker line of the forest, and red and violet bougainvillea grew everywhere, cascading over ochre walls and the little houses clustered by the wayside, drooping flamboyantly from a balcony on a lonely farm and sometimes trespassing on to the road itself. Palms had replaced the sombre firs of the mountainsides and an avenue of tall eucalyptus stretched for miles, the tiny leaves, like silver coins, spinning in the wind. Far away and always present, the giant conical peak of El Teide rose against the sky, his white cloud-cap doffed in salute.

‘Thank you,’ said Catherine when Don Jaime started the car again. ‘It was good of you to stop.’

‘It is a view to remember,’ he said. ‘Down there is Puerta de la Cruz, which was once the fruit port for the valley, but now it is mainly a tourist centre. Soria is more remote,’ he added on what was surely a note of warning.

‘Will we stop at Orotava?’ Teresa asked hopefully. ‘You could give us tea at the English Club, Jaime.’

‘Why not?’ her uncle agreed. ‘It is not far out of our way.’ Orotava was a sub-tropical paradise, with masses of bougainvillea everywhere and little pink and white geraniums growing wild in the ditches beside the road. They approached it along an avenue of eucalyptus trees which seemed to shimmer in the afternoon heat, but presently they entered the shaded grounds of the Club and were immediately found a table under an arcade of vines where tea was brought to them on a silver tray, with scones and cakes and plenty of guava jelly.

The unexpected break in their journey gave Catherine more time to think about their destination. It was obvious that Soria was well off the beaten track, a small kingdom on its own where Don Jaime de Berceo Madroza ruled supreme. In thinking of the
hacienda
she automatically wondered about Dona Lucia, who was Teresa’s stepmother and temporary mistress of Soria. What would she be like? Kind or condescending or even frankly hostile? It was impossible to say.

‘Don Jaime, of all people!’

The cool, English voice broke in on her reflections and she looked up to find a tall, fair-haired girl of about her own age standing by Don Jaime’s side. He rose immediately to offer her a seat.

‘I’m playing croquet,’ she announced, laying her mallet aside, ‘but I have just time to be introduced.’ She was looking at Catherine. ‘You’re from England,’ she suggested. ‘Are you on your way to the
hacienda
?’ An underlying doubt had tinged her voice for a moment and then she laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re Teresa’s tutoress!’

‘Miss Royce—Miss Alexandra Bonnington,’ Don Jaime introduced them formally. ‘Alex is quite a character around Orotava,’ he added. ‘She paints!’

‘Which sounds as if I commit all the deadly sins at one go!’ Alex Bonnington laughed. ‘But I can assure you that I do it for a living. Otherwise, I couldn’t afford to stay here. Jaime only sees me on the rare occasions when we’re both able to relax.’ She looked at Catherine with a deepening interest. ‘I hope you’ll be able to come to Orotava now and then, Miss Royce,’ she said. ‘We have an excellent library at the Club and there are plenty of English people around if you feel in need of a chinwag in your own language. Hullo, Teresa!’ She turned to the younger girl with a faint smile. ‘Are you still the little rebel without a cause?’

‘Not without a cause,’ Teresa answered with more dignity than Catherine would have suspected. ‘I know what I want to do in the end.’

Alex had practically ignored Ramon, giving him no more than the briefest of nods.

‘Will you take some tea with us?’ Don Jaime asked. ‘We were just about to begin.’

‘I’d love to, but I was on my way to make up a foursome,’ said Alex, picking up her mallet. ‘Why not drop in and see me one day?’ she invited as she shook hands with them for the second time. ‘Do you paint. Miss Royce?’

‘I’m afraid not, though I’ve often longed to try,’ Catherine confessed.

Alex Bonnington considered her for a moment in silence. ‘You may need something to do in your spare time,’ she suggested. ‘Teresa will bring you to see if you can.’

Again there was the underlying doubt in her voice which Catherine was quick to detect.

‘ ’Bye!’ said Alex. ‘Till we meet again.’

They met swiftly and unexpectedly half an hour later in the ladies’ cloakroom.

‘I’ve cut my hand,’ Alex explained, holding her wrist under the cold water tap in one of the basins. ‘Terribly silly of me, really. I just don’t know how I did it. I broke a tumbler while we were having some squash to drink and groped under a bench for the pieces. I bleed like a pig,’ she ran on, ‘so don’t get alarmed. It’s not at all serious, I assure you.’

‘Please let me help, all the same,’ Catherine offered. ‘If

we had a bandage—’

‘Teresa will go for one,’ Alex suggested. ‘Ask at the office, Teresa, there’s a dear, sweet girl!’

While they waited Alex allowed the water to trickle slowly over her wrist.

‘How are you going to cope?’ she asked.

‘With Teresa?’ Catherine hesitated. ‘I think we’ll see eye to eye sooner or later. Teresa isn’t very pliable just now, as you may have guessed, and she wants to be a dancer more than anything else, but she has plenty of time to change her mind, although I don’t think it’s exactly my task to help her to the right decision. I’m here mainly to teach her to speak English.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of Teresa,’ Alex said carefully. ‘I was considering the whole set-up at Soria. You haven’t met Lucia yet, I gather, so I feel that I should warn you to be on your guard. Lucia will be your enemy, and I don’t envy you. She can’t possibly be expecting anyone like you, anyone so young. I don’t mean to sound too alarming,’ she added quickly, noting the rising colour in Catherine’s cheeks, ‘and of course, this is only a job as far as you’re concerned.’

‘I would wish my work to be satisfactory to Don Jaime and Dona Lucia equally,’ Catherine said a little stiffly.

Alex laughed, although not unkindly.

‘You must be quite starry-eyed,’ she declared, ‘but you have yet to meet Lucia.’

Teresa returned with the necessary bandage, leaving Catherine to tie it while she looked on.

‘Splendid!’ Alex commented, surveying her wrist with satisfaction. ‘I won’t bleed to death, after all! ’Bye, once again. I’m sure Jaime will be wondering what’s happened to you.’

Don Jaime was standing beside the parked car, glancing at his watch. He seemed impatient, and Catherine was surprised to find how far the sun had travelled down the sky.

‘Jaime will want to reach Soria before nightfall,’ Teresa explained. ‘He will know that my stepmother expects us before dark.’

Catherine offered their apologies.

‘Miss Bonnington had a slight accident,’ she explained. ‘She cut her wrist and I bandaged it up for her.’

‘Something’s always happening to Alex,’ Ramon observed. ‘Is she badly hurt?’

‘No, not at all. It wasn’t a very deep cut, but it bled a lot.’

They got into the car, the men in front this time, with Ramon driving. Don Jaime had not offered to occupy the back seat.

Retracing their way along the same road, they branched right to travel high above the sea, and in the rapidly-fading light Catherine could just make out the black volcanic line of the shore with white waves, like lace, breaking along it and the calm stretch of dark water beyond which seemed to stretch to infinity. Above them, dominating the whole island, stood the Pico de Teide, withdrawn now into his mountain fastness to sleep away the coming night.

The road they followed stretched for miles, always high above the sea, with a small township here and there clinging to the hillside. It all seemed so far removed from the busy world of Orotava and its guardian port and the brash new hotels which had sprung up to cope with an increasing tourist trade. This was the real Tenerife in all its desolate splendour, scarred by black rivers of calcined lava which had flowed from Teide’s last eruption and dark with mystery.

Abruptly Ramon turned the car inland, climbing a little way before they began to drop down into a hidden valley where all the lush vegetation of the north was renewed. The sea was behind them now and densely wooded hills closed them in, but the land on either side of the road was intensely cultivated. Fields of bananas stood motionless in the still air, while figs and vines clothed the foothills in terrace after terrace, irrigated by a semi-circular dam at the top. This wide cultivated strip stretched as far as the eye could see until they came to a high wall running beside the road, and here Ramon slackened speed and Catherine’s heart began to pound because she knew that they had reached Soria, at last.

At a wide, arched doorway in the wall they pulled up, and almost immediately the door was opened by a small, swarthy youth who saluted them as they passed through. Ramon turned the car along a brick-paved road bordered by a hundred flamboyant plants and flowers whose scent rose headily into the evening air, assailing their nostrils as they drove along. One perfume seemed to dominate, and Catherine turned to Teresa to ask what it was.

‘Stephanotis,’ Teresa replied indifferently. ‘It is everywhere.’

The house itself lay in a little hollow sheltered by a group of palms, its
adobe
walls gleaming pinkly in the pale evening light, an old house built many years ago in the Moorish style and added to periodically as the family grew. Planned originally round an inner courtyard, it had expanded on either side, with broad arches leading from one section to the next and a central fountain which leapt high into the air to splash back into its ancient stone basin filled with waterlilies.

The main door of the house stood wide open, but nobody waited to greet them.

Don Jaime got out of the car and crossed the
patio,
while Teresa and Ramon took a little longer to follow him. There was no joy in this homecoming for Teresa, apparently, and Ramon put their luggage down on the flags and drove away. Don Jaime turned back at the door.

‘Leave them to Alfredo,’ he commanded as Teresa lingered beside the suitcases. ‘He will attend to them.’

Inside the house a great commotion had begun, with several female voices rising in unison somewhere at the rear of the hall, an excited chatter of servants as they realised that the master of the house had returned. Two of them appeared at an inner door, the older one smiling broadly, the younger painfully shy in the presence of a stranger.

‘Eugenie! Sisal’ he greeted them. ‘This is Miss Royce from England. You will attend to her, Sisa, while she remains here.’

The younger girl seemed pleased, although she did not step forward immediately, sheltering behind the older servant’s maturity. She was small and plump, with a mane of sleek, straight hair flowing around her shoulders and a broad face out of which glowed a pair of large, dark eyes.

‘
Si, si
!’ she agreed eagerly, rushing off to help with the luggage.

Catherine glanced about her at the great hall with its beautifully tiled floor gleaming in the light of a magnificent wrought-iron lantern which hung from a central beam, and then, suddenly, she was aware of being watched.

A long gallery ran round three sides of the hall, reached by a magnificent branched staircase, and at the head of the stairs a woman stood waiting. In the shadows above them she looked extraordinarily tall in her long-skirted black dress which was wholly devoid of ornamentation, and the fact that her wealth of black hair was worn high and braided to form a coronet about her shapely head did nothing to detract from the illusion as she came slowly down the stairs towards them.