An Undefended City Page 10

  `You haven't exactly been nice to me,' he pointed out, returning with a palpable effort to his earlier bantering tone. `I wonder,' he mused, 'whether all girls are as rude as you when they receive proposals of marriage?'

  That touched her conscience. 'I didn't mean to be rude,' she offered contritely. 'I was just surprised.'

  He sighed. 'And that is understandable, I suppose.'

  `I don't know you,' pursued Olivia. 'We only met the day before yesterday. How could I possibly know you? Or expect you to want to marry me? Of course it was a surprise.'

  A strong sense of injury took hold of her. She rose to her

  feet and began to walk purposefully round the garden to where a little road led off up a hill. It did not occur to her that he would follow and, although her pace was necessarily modified by the increasing steepness of the hill, it was with surprise that she heard him speak at her elbow.

  `You haven't,' said Luis mildly, 'actually answered me. Though that may also come as a surprise to you. I'm sorry to bother you with a mere administrative matter like that, but one does like to know whether one's proposals have been accepted or not. It's not the sort of thing one really wants hanging around as an open offer.'

  Olivia was breathless and still somewhat bemused, but the violent exercise had walked her into a more balanced frame of mind. She paused and when he fell into step beside her, surveyed him from under her lashes. He bore it with unruffled calm, though a certain twitch of his lips indicated that he was aware of her furtive regard and was amused by it.

  At last she said, 'Do you really want to marry me? Or was it a spur-of-the-moment thing?'

  He seemed to be choosing his words carefully.

  `Of course it could be both,' he pointed out. 'They are not mutually exclusive states.'

  Nor equally reliable.' Olivia was wry.

  Luis bent his head in acknowledgement of the point. `What would your friends say?' she demanded with apparent irrelevance.

  He raised his eyebrows. 'Congratulations, I presume. Isn't that what they normally say?'

  `But—' she broke off, at a loss to put her doubts into words. 'Nobody knows me. They would think you were mad.'

  `Barbarita,' he observed in a detached tone, 'already thinks that we are to be married. And if she thinks either of us is making a mistake it is you she is worried about, not me.'

  Olivia was much struck. 'Yes, of course she does think so, doesn't she? I was so embarrassed last night. . . . Why does she think so?'

  Luis shrugged again expressively. 'Why not? She's a

  romantic soul and I haven't ever brought any other girl here with me. And she obviously realised that I—' he hesitated almost imperceptibly—`was very fond of you.'

  Olivia pounced on that. 'But are you? How can you be? In two days?'

  `It's supposed to be possible in two minutes,' he told her.

  She was not sure whether he was mocking her or himself. There was a distinct edge to his voice that she could not account for and so was silenced. They walked on round the hill and then he spoke again.

  `Look, I haven't put it very well and I know you were shocked. But think about it. Don't answer me now. We have the whole of today without disturbance. I phoned Cuernavaca and they are sending the helicopter for us, but your uncle had taken it upcountry today so we can't leave until Monday. So you don't have to tell me until then.'

  Olivia said 'That is extraordinarily generous of you.' The thought of Cuernavaca made her shiver although they were standing in blazing sunlight in the middle of a cobbled street. It was empty except for a tabby cat, swaying on a doorstep, its eyes half closed with pleasure.

  Concentrating hard on that cat, Olivia said, 'I wish I knew why you wanted to marry me.'

  It was not a question and it was not even said very loudly. He had the option to ignore it if he chose. But Luis, as she was coming to recognise, was not one to sidle past awkward moments.

  He said, 'To be honest it's not a spur-of-the-moment decision. I've been thinking about getting married for some time. There are various reasons, personal and professional, why it would be a good idea. But Mexican girls are very tied into the parental home. They never really leave their mother behind—or their sisters or their aunts either, quite often. A man marries and suddenly finds himself in the middle of a monstrous feminine conspiracy to change his life-style. Can you understand that?'

  Olivia nodded. 'I think so. Mama didn't have any sisters, but she often travelled with Grandmother and there were always aunts in the house.'

  `Perhaps your father didn't mind. Or perhaps he thought it was a reasonable price to pay. I don't and I never have. I like and respect my own mother, but I wouldn't want her underfoot all the time, and the same goes for my wife's mother. Does that seem very hard-hearted to you?'

  Olivia considered it. 'I don't think so, no. In fact, it sounds rather normal.'

  Luis chuckled. 'Now that's exactly why I want to marry you and not a Mexican girl. Here it would be the height of abnormality.'

  Olivia pondered. They were walking very slowly up the street, for the slope was now prodigious. At the very top of the hill she could see a large statue of a man which dominated the town which she had seen from various angles and vantage points throughout the morning. As they approached she realised how sizeable the landmark really was. Like so much else in Mexico it impressed her not merely by its quality but by its unexpectedness. Though it was no more surprising than the unpredictable stranger at her side. Now he was laughing.

  `What is it?' she demanded suspiciously. 'Are you laughing at me again?'

  `At both of us,' Luis assured her.

  She was not sure that the answer was reassuring. 'Why?'

  `Well, we're hardly traditional, are we? If I'd said I'd fallen madly in love with you, you wouldn't have hesitated a moment before turning me down. But because I've shown myself to be calculating and rather unflattering you're prepared to listen. Doesn't that strike you as funny?'

  `If you said you'd fallen madly in love with me, I shouldn't have believed you,' said Olivia calmly.

  Luis sobered. 'No, I realise that.' He took her hand companionably. The path had become more and more rugged and the houses had fallen away. Now they were walking in more or less open landscape with little showers of stones whenever Olivia took an unwary step. She accepted his help thankfully.

  When they got to the top and the ground flattened out to a plateau she put a hand to her side to ease her breathing. He

  left her and wandered round the statue with a critical expression. It had an ugly square-jawed look which was both impressive and repellent. Olivia spared it a glance and decided she disliked it. When she had mastered her breathing sufficiently to speak, she said:

  `Señor Escobar—

  He laughed at her, mobile eyebrows flying comically upwards.

  `Surely you could manage to call me Luis, by now. I know you haven't known me long, but we seem to have packed a lot into a short acquaintance.'

  Reluctantly Olivia smiled.

  `Yes, I suppose so. Very well then, Luis—I don't know what to say. I'm terrified of going to Cuernavaca without any defence, as I imagine you've guessed. My defence should have been my independent exploit of yesterday, but—' she bit her lip, then, with an effort at lightness, went on, 'Today it doesn't seem very convincing, even to me. But marriage seems even more alarming.'

  He nodded in grave agreement. 'More alarming than marriage to Diego?' he murmured.

  Olivia flung up a hand, acknowledging the point.

  `There you have me. I don't know. Could I—I mean, you said I didn't have to tell you till tomorrow—could I think about it?'

  'Of course.' He gave her a sudden warm smile. 'But don't worry about it. If you don't want to, I shan't be offended. I just hoped you might like the idea. I'll tell you what—now that I'm here I ought to go out and see Barbarita's farm manager this afternoon, which will leave you time to rest and think things over. Then we'll go dancing this evening just as B
arbarita suggested. There's always a dance on Sunday night and you'll enjoy it. So even if you don't want to marry me, you can forget about your family until tomorrow and let your hair down tonight.'

  Olivia was deeply touched. 'You're so kind to me,' she said in a wondering tone.

  'Naturally. I'm showing off to prove what a good husband I'd be,' he teased. Come on, we'd better be going back.

  You'll want something to eat and I want to be off before the

  sun is full. It's a pretty unsheltered road to the hacienda.'

  `Yes, of course,' she said, following him down another, better made up path than that by which they had made the ascent. 'Is it far?

  `Barbarita's property?' They were almost immediately on to metalled road and walking side by side. Olivia would have liked him to take her hand, but he did not. 'No, not very. I shall be back in time to take you dancing.'

  Olivia gave an excited skip. 'Oh, lovely! I don't think I've ever been dancing before.'

  `What?' Luis stopped dead and stared at her. 'You can't be serious.'

  `Yes, I am.' She gave him an enquiring look.

  `But you must have been. How old are you?'

  `Twenty-three,' said Olivia, not at all put out. 'But I've never really known anyone to go dancing with. Don't forget I've lived in the country since I was seventeen.'

  `But not an entirely depopulated country,' protested Luis. He was looking deeply perturbed.

  `It might just as well have been. I was never allowed to go out because it was thought I might be ill. That's why they wouldn't let me go back to school or to college or anything. Old school friends used to ask me to their parties, but they were usually too far away. And even if they were in the neighbourhood, I wasn't allowed to stay up late and Aunt Betty used to come with me. I soon gave up going.'

  `You poor sweet!' He appeared strongly moved. 'I shall take you to the lushest, grandest ball Mexico City can provide. And that's a promise. You have been undeservedly deprived'

  `I don't want to go to a grand ball, but I shall be perfectly happy with the dance this evening.' Olivia gave a hop and then stopped, struck by an unpleasant thought. 'Always assuming I can dance,' she said uneasily. 'After all, I've never really tried, so I don't know. Perhaps I can't.'

  `You'll be able to dance well enough for this evening's jamboree,' he assured her. He tucked her hand through his arm and moved on. 'The tone of the evening,' he went on

  informatively, 'is neither elegant nor restrained, and the dancing matches it. Basically you just jig about to the music, doing whatever you fancy.'

  `Oh,' said Olivia, relieved. 'It's not very formal and traditional, then?'

  He gave a crack of laughter. 'Traditional Mexican home entertainment, yes. Ballet Folklorico standard, no. When they start playing local music, you'll find they do a sort of cross between Tyrolean clog dancing and an Irish reel. It's highly bucolic and lots of fun.'

  `It sounds nice,' said Olivia. She gave a long sigh. 'I do like you, Luis.'

  `Just for taking you to a country hop?' He sounded, she thought, very grand and assured, and she withdrew her hand. He hardly seemed to notice, being bent on some inner contemplation—a knotty problem, apparently, from his concerned expression. She was silenced, and they made their way back to Barbarita's by unpeopled back streets at a downhill pace which brought them home inside fifteen minutes.

  Luis ushered her into the plant-filled hallway and halted.

  `Thank you for showing me around,' said Olivia.

  He ignored that. 'You're so unwary,' he said in troubled tones. 'Like a child. But you don't have a child's instinctive defences, do you? What am I going to do with you, little Olivia?'

  `As you have pointed out,' said Olivia, a shade stiffly, 'I am my own responsibility. I shall do something with me, without your interference.'

  His face broke into the quick laughter with which she was becoming familiar.

  `Oh, I hope marriage doesn't count as interference,' he returned. He blew her a kiss from his fingertips before departing. 'Because I still want to marry you—very much.'

  When he had gone Olivia expelled a long breath and went slowly upstairs. It was quite extraordinary the way a few minutes with Luis Escobar could stir a normally timid soul into revolt. She wondered whether it was because he had so much vitality that it was infectious. But then Aunt Betty

  was very energetic too and she never provoked Olivia-into following suit. Indeed, Aunt Betty's exhortations only produced a paralysing sense of inadequacy while Luis really had, for a few minutes, made her feel as if she could be captain of her own fate with just a little resolution.

  It was exhilarating but also rather alarming to find in herself such instincts for rebellion. She wondered if they were enough to sustain her through a prolonged refusal to marry her cousin and decided regretfully that it was unlikely. Which left the incredible possibility.

  Olivia had never thought very much about marriage. Or rather she had thought about it in the same category as she thought of a number of other things such as college or walking holidays or a small apartment in London—infinitely desirable and attainable only by other people. School friends had written and told her about their studies, their boy-friends, their jobs, and eventually their weddings. It had always seemed to Olivia that the rest of the world grew up and changed and moved on while she was foredoomed to spend her life forever a not-quite schoolgirl, the nominad guardian of a fortune which effectively wrenched from her all power of controlling her own life. If you had asked Olivia whether she liked being rich she would honestly have said that she thought not. On the other hand, and she would have admitted it just as readily, she had very little idea of what she could have done to support herself if she were not rich.

  She sat in a basket chair looking out of the window for a long time before she noticed that her overnight case had been placed on the table. It was shut. Barbarita had lent her a lacy nightdress into which she had been introduced during her unconsciousness on the previous night, and this was now laid out at the foot of the newly-made bed. Olivia had loved it. Of hand-woven dinen, it had yellowed from its original white with age and washing so that it was now ivory. It had smelt freshly of herbs. Indeed the whole room, plain and furnished with old wood and tapestries, smelt of herbs and sunshine. It was a peaceful place. Olivia found herself glaring at her smart case for its intrusion.

  However, it would be a good idea to brush her hair, she supposed, and crossed to it. There was a note on the lid in beautiful pothangered script.

  `Emilio has retrieved your suitcase, as you see. The boys were worried when they saw Luis bring you here and so they left it at the taco stall,' Barbarita had written. `I hope you slept well. Luis has said he will attend to some business for me, so if you cared to join me for luncheon in my room, we would be quite alone. Unfortunately I have to see the doctor this morning, but Emilio will come to tell you when he has gone. I hope,' she had ended formally, as if Olivia was likely to have a hundred alternative calls on her time, 'that you will be able to come.'

  Olivia stood pondering this missive for no little time. On the one hand it seemed welcoming and a kind thought for a stranger in her house. On the other its formality of language hinted at some undisclosed purpose. Olivia had the feeling that it was a little like being summoned to appear before a judge. She had a suspicion she would be called upon to give an account of herself. She also had rather more than a suspicion that Luis had deliberately been sent away so that she would have her evidence alone and unaided.

  She chided herself for these suspicions. Barbarita had been charming last night. And if her note was a little stiff that could surely be put down to her age and the fact that she was not writing in her native language. If the doctor were here she was probably unwell. Of course it was natural that, in such a case, she should want Luis to conduct any business that was pending. Equally it was understandable that she should look forward to the company of a new face at lunch. She was obviously gregarious and the town was hardl
y big enough to provide a large society for Barbarita. She probably wanted to gossip about fashion or theatre and was not to know that Olivia had very little acquaintance with either.

  Olivia seated herself at the inlaid dressing table. In the mirror her face looked as serene as always. Even when

  panicking she had the air of calm. It deceived many people, though seldom her nearest and dearest. Presumably, mused Olivia, staring at her own reflection with detachment, because they were the cause of the panic more often than not. It would be interesting to see whether she could disguise her inner trepidation from Barbarita.

  She began to brush her hair with deliberately slow strokes, a calming activity, while she waited for Emilio's knock upon the door.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BARBARITA was sitting up in bed looking bright-eyed and not in the least alarming. Ushered in by the smiling Emilio, Olivia hesitated in the doorway. There was a fire laid in the grate but unlit as the room was basking in sunlight. It came pouring through the windows which stretched from floor to ceiling and fell in a great bar across Barbarita's bed. The latter was a four poster of dark wood and impressive proportions so that the old lady looked like a puppet in the middle of her cushions and pillows. It was not unlike being hailed into the presence of a dowager empress.

  `Good day. How nice you look. Come over here and kiss me,' said Barbarita imperiously but with great kindness. 'I hope you feel recovered after all the fuss of yesterday.'

  Olivia crossed to her side and did as she was bid. A chair had been placed suggestively beside the bed and she sank into it at Barbarita's mute command.

  `Thank you, I'm much better,' she said in her soft voice. `But how are you? Has the doctor been to see you yet?'

  Barbarita grimaced. 'Oh yes, he came on his way to church. He doesn't leave me waiting long when I call for him.' This regal announcement was somewhat tempered by her adding reflectively, 'I must be one of the few patients who pays their bills round here. Apart from the tourists, of course.' She suddenly looked mischievous. 'They come here, eat too much highly spiced food and then go to him because they think they are dying. He charges them a week's wages for a stomach powder. How do you like Mexican food, my dear?'