An Undefended City Read online

  `Nothing.'

  Luis was dissatisfied but not in any position to demand further elucidation. The line was crackling audibly and her voice only reached him in bursts, interspersed with static.

  `Look, I'm sorry about this evening. I had to fly south this morning—a job that needed my attention. I don't know how long I shall be here. It looks as if the team have come across some underground waterways that we weren't prepared for. I've phoned Mama and told her and Victor to make their own way to the hacienda. I'll join you as soon as I can, but I really can't tell yet when that will be.'

  As there was no response he paused. He could not tell whether Olivia was genuinely silent or if her comments were being drowned by electrical interference.

  `I hope you're not angry with me,' he finished.

  Olivia, who would have been touched by such an admission not twelve hours previously, reflected with some bitterness on his powers of deception. He almost sounded anxious and that tone of warm affection was very well done. She gave a wintry smile which the butler, still helpfully arranging furniture in the boudoir, stored up to tell his

  cronies. All did not seem to be going too well with Don Luis's wooing.

  'Of course not,' said Olivia.

  `You sound so remote,' said Luis uncertainly

  Olivia shook herself. Dignity, after all, required that one put some sort of face on things. She could not scream at him for deceiving her with an old family retainer as auditor. Nor could she really accuse him of deceit. It was she who had read into his manner more affection than was there. Luis, to do him justice, had never tried to mislead her.

  `You must blame the telephone system for the remoteness,' she therefore said with an attempt at lightness which convinced him.

  The butler could have enlightened him as to its hollowness, but Luis, being without such on-the-spot assistance, trusted the evidence, however fluctuating, of his ears.

  `That's all right, then,' he said cheerfully. 'Look after Mama for me. And give her my love. See you soon.'

  He rang off, she noted, without a word of love to herself. And though, had he sent her tender messages, she would instantly have discounted them as flattery or worse, she was perverse enough to be hurt by the oversight. She blew her nose hard and went back to the dining room.

  An expectant silence greeted her entry. Even Uncle Octavio had wound himself down in his peroration sufficiently to notice her absence. He half rose from his seat as she entered, offering to go to the telephone, but she stopped him with a shake of the head.

  `Luis has rung off,' she informed them. 'He sounded a long way away. He was on a site somewhere in the south.' She looked enquiringly at Uncle Octavio, who nodded. 'He said he didn't know how soon he would be able to get away,' she reported, 'and so he has told his mother and brother to come here on their own. I don't know how,' she concluded. `He didn't say.'

  Her uncle clicked his tongue impatiently.

  `You should have had a word with him, my dear,' he reproved his wife. 'Really, this is most inconsiderate!'

  `Oh, I don't think so, Octavio—after all, Señora Escobar is not to blame. . .

  Uncle Octavio closed his eyes, with the air of a patient magistrate listening to extenuating circumstances. 'Very well, my dear, as you say. And as it is you who will be inconvenienced, I have no further comment.' But the spiteful look he cast Olivia was eloquent, before he assumed a demeanour of saintly resignation.

  `I shan't be inconvenienced, Octavio,' protested his wife, surprised by his unwonted consideration for her into opposition for once. 'Their rooms are all prepared and it cannot matter to me what time or even which day they arrive. The servants will do everything.'

  A shade of annoyance crossed Uncle Octavio's patient expression.

  `Always the perfect housekeeper,' he told her with a fondness which far from flattering her made Aunt Isabel send a bewildered, not to say scared, look at the butler.

  The elder Miss Lightfellow was under no illusion as to where the oblique remark was aimed and she bristled.

  `Are you suggesting that Olivia is at fault because Luis Escobar is late for your party?' she demanded. 'May I ask whose business he is on now, miles from anywhere?'

  This was unanswerable and even Octavio Villa had the sense to recognise it. It was beneath his dignity to admit such a thing, however, so he pretended he had not heard Miss Lightfellow's broadside, returning with magnificent unconsciousness to his conversation with his son-in-law.

  `So Luis is delayed?' asked Diego, bright-eyed. He came to a decision. 'Well, in that case, Livvy, I must take you riding tomorrow. It's the best way to see the country and you'll enjoy it. You do ride?'

  Olivia agreed to it, though without much spirit. Diego gave her a guileless smile.

  `Your father showed me Shropshire, after all. It's only fair that I introduce his daughter to this little corner of Cuernavaca at least. It's beautiful—very green, just like England and not at all like the nasty jungly bits where poor

  old Luis is at the moment.' His smile was infectious and his voice was caressing. 'You're very much better off here with us.'

  There was a somewhat startled pause. His mother, who was well acquainted with her son's vagaries, recognised the tone as one in which he habitually began his numerous flirtations. The thought alarmed her and she directed at him a look that was half admonitory, half pleading. Octavio, coming to the same conclusion but without his wife's scruples, allowed a smile to grow, without interrupting his monologue.

  All unaware of these undercurrents, Olivia thanked her cousin in a depressed voice, found she had no appetite and picked over the rest of the meal in a manner bearing only the slightest resemblance to eating.

  A sleepless night did little to restore her equilibrium. Anamargarita's announcement that Luis needed a rich wife had taken strong possession of her mind. Why she should mind so much she was not quite sure. Had not she herself, when counting up the pitifully few contributions she could make to the partnership, included her wealth?

  Well, yes, she might have included it, but she had not realised that it was her sole or even her major attraction. All her life she had been schooled in the dread of being married for her money. That was precisely the reason that her father and then her trustees had kept her sheltered from ordinary social activities. With the result, she told herself bitterly, that she was so unfit for adult society that she could not form any relationship without the Lightfellow millions to back it up.

  But the real sting, though she shied away from recognising it, was the inescapable corollary to Anamargarita's remarks. Luis had really wanted to marry her, but would never have been permitted to do so by the Cisneros family! In all possible senses, then, Olivia was second best.

  She went riding with Diego in a mood of painful uncertainty. On the one hand she was so hurt that she was strongly tempted to flee the hacienda before Luis arrived.

  On the other, there was a perverse hope that he would deny Anamargarita's assertions—though what good that would do, when Olivia would not believe his denials, she was forced to admit she could not imagine. There remained only the determination to disguise her distress. Olivia had always had more pride than her family had given her credit for and was, besides, highly accomplished at dissimulation. For so long feelings had been a weakness she had grown expert in pretending, even to herself, did not exist, at least in public.

  Diego, therefore, had no clue as to her state of mind. Indeed, provoked by her inner humiliation, Olivia joked and chatted with more ease than she would normally have shown in the presence of one who was effectively a stranger. He was no less surprised than charmed and decided at last to discount his father's view of her. She was considerably prettier than he had been prepared for and, further contradicting Octavio's opinion, she was neither dull nor stupid. Quiet she might be, but with a little expert handling could be coaxed out of her shell. Of course his father had always treated people roughly and that would by no means get the best out of elusive Cousin Olivia.
He began to feel that she offered a challenge to his skill to which the latter was by no means unequal.

  By the time they returned to the house Olivia was chattering brightly and Diego was very well pleased with himself. He would have been astonished to be told that her mind was more than half elsewhere and that she did not even hear most of his graceful compliments.

  They trotted up from the orchard to all appearances deep in amusing conversation. The party on the veranda viewed their arrival with mixed feelings.

  `Ah, here comes my niece now,' said Uncle Octavio with complacency. 'My son has been showing her round the place. Young things get on so much better without the old folks by, don't you agree, Señora Escobar?'

  The lady made no reply beyond a slight tightening of the fine mouth, but the look she directed at Olivia's graceful figure was speculative in the extreme.

  To begin with Olivia had been rather alarmed at the thought of meeting her prospective mother-in-law. Quite apart from the traditional difficulties attendant upon the relationship, the lady herself sounded formidable. The daughter of a peasant who had won a series of scholarships to the university where she met her husband, according to Luis it was she who had got her husband away from his dangerous political activities into Mexico and then supported him by giving music lessons until he had eventually come to terms with the necessity of finding a job. Clearly Luis admired and loved her, and clearly too she was a woman of strong character. Olivia had wondered how much influence she still had with Luis and how much she would resent a foreign wife for her younger son.

  Now, however, she was so deeply wrapped in her own thoughts that she quite forgot to be wary. She greeted Señora Escobar with her usual shy courtesy which made that lady put up her brows and think deeply.

  `She looks like a Titian and sounds like a mouse,' she told her elder son later.

  Victor had borne the long car journey with fortitude, but it had shaken his spine considerably and he had been grateful to retire to bed as his hospitable hostess suggested. His mother woke him in the late afternoon after what had proved to her a rather frustrating first meeting with Olivia.

  Her son laughed at her with affection. 'Quite a combination,' he remarked.

  `Possibly. But I don't like it,' said Señora Escobar, frowning.

  `Prejudiced against red hair, Mama? mocked Victor.

  `Not her hair, stupid,' returned his mother, aiming a maternal buffet at his chest in indignation. 'The whole setup. There's something fishy about it.'

  He chuckled. 'Always sensing intrigue! How dull life would be without your nose for the sinister. Very well, Mama dearest, what is fishy about your Titian-haired beauty?

  `Well, she doesn't behave like a beauty,' said his mother, fumbling for words to match her unease. 'I mean, she's

  quite stunning and everyone here treats her like some upcountry hick and she accepts it. She's too humble.'

  `Just modest,' diagnosed Victor. 'She's been taught that looks aren't everything—a very sound principle.'

  `Perhaps.' His mother was not satisfied. 'But there's something else to it. I can't cut out of my mind what Luis said that day. .

  Victor grimaced. 'You mean the day he made Villa invest in his company?'

  'It was hardly an investment,' said his mother indignantly. `It was a loan on some of the stiffest terms ever heard of. And as long as he's got to pay it off, the company is hardly Luis's either. Octavio could foreclose at any time and then the blueprints would belong to him just as much as if they'd been filed under his company's copyright in the first place.'

  `True,' agreed Victor. 'And Luis knew that when he accepted the loan.'

  Knitting her fingers together in a cat's cradle, an habitual trick when she was worried, his mother said, 'I know. I pointed it out to him, too. But he said he wouldn't need the money for long, that he was going to refinance from his own resources within the year and Octavio wouldn't have any opportunity to foreclose. And then we'd all be independent. He's always wanted to be free of Octavio. Sometimes I think I did wrong in going to him for help. But it seemed the obvious thing. . .

  `Of course it was, Mama,' said Victor soothingly. This was a debate in which he had played a part before. He knew his mother blamed herself for, as she saw it, mortgaging her younger son's future in order to ensure the survival of her elder. That Luis did not subscribe to her opinion, and had told her so forcefully on a number of occasions, did not affect her self-reproaches a whit. And Victor, who had a healthy respect for his brother's ability to run his own life, had tried in his turn to dissuade her from this line of reasoning.

  `When he said that, I was worried,' she confessed. 'I mean, how could he refinance it? Octavio lent the company

  thousands of dollars and Luis is wealthy enough as engineers go, but he hasn't got that sort of capital.'

  `Perhaps he'll go to a bank,' said Victor patiently. 'Believe me, Mama, Luis knows what he's doing.'

  `The bank won't lend unless he's got more security than an untested machine,' averred his mother with some shrewdness. 'Not unless he's got some sort of financial backing. You don't suppose, do you, that he's marrying this girl so that he can go to a bank and say Octavio Villa is my uncle by marriage—use that for security?'

  `Well, what if he is? countered Victor.

  His mother gave him a look in which scorn was compounded with despair.

  `That's no reason for marriage,' she announced.

  'I think it's an excellent reason,' opined Victor, his head on one side. 'Concrete, if you know what I mean. Clearcut. None of your emotional mish-mash.'

  'You,' said his mother with measured hostility, 'are as bad as Luis.'

  'Tell that to Luis,' said Victor, unimpressed.

  Victor could certainly not imagine his mother tackling Luis on the subject of his intended marriage. Luis was a devoted son, but he had long since passed the age of allowing his mother to comment upon his private affairs. In general she contented herself with describing to Victor at length the dangers that Luis was courting with every step, but as none of her dire predictions ever came to pass and Luis continued serenely (and successfully) along his way, she had never had the excuse to repeat her warnings to her younger son. Indeed he had a cold way with one whenever one overstepped the mark and ventured into his private territory. Victor, whose bond with his brother was none the less close for being unobtrusive, recognised this and did a good deal in his quiet way to head his mother away from interference which Luis would not forgive.

  On this occasion he did not think he had any need to worry about where his mother's impetuosity might lead her. She had a very real respect for Luis's privacy which she would

  have recalled by the time his brother arrived. What he left out of his calculations, because the situation was a new one to him, was the fact that there was another possible victim, more accessible than Luis. As his valet began the painful process of dressing him it was just as well for Victor's peace of mind that he did not know that his mother had gone in search of Olivia.

  She finally ran her to earth in the music room. None of the Villa family was musical, but when Grandfather Villa built the hacienda, the fashionable standards of the time had dictated the inclusion of a music room. It therefore stood, magnificent and largely unused, at one corner of the house. It had a virtually unworn Aubusson carpet, a grand piano specially imported from Germany before the First World War and a number of spindly but elegant chairs that were, as the few music parties ever held there had discovered, a punishment to sit on.

  `Oh!' said Señora Escobar, pausing in the door with a little theatrical start. 'I'm so sorry, I thought this room was empty.' She had in fact enquired where Miss Lightfellow was to be found from at least three servants that she had encountered in the hallways.

  Olivia, who had been looking rather drearily out of the window at the charming rural vista, stood up courteously.

  `There is no need to apologise, señora. I'm only wasting time. If you want to play, I can go away.'


  She made for the door, but was halted by the other.

  `Please don't leave on my account. I shouldn't dream of playing. There's hardly time before dinner, and anyway, that instrument,' looking somewhat disdainfully at the highly polished Bechstein whose main function in life had for the last twenty years been to bear one of Doña Isabel's dainty flower arrangements, 'is probably out of tune I think I can afford to leave my practice until I get back to Mexico City. Besides, this is an excellent opportunity for us to get to know each other.'

  It was a not unfriendly speech. Señora Escobar was trying hard to keep an open mind. Olivia gave herself a little shake

  and did her best to respond suitably.

  `How long have you known Luis?' asked his mother, taking the seat in front of the piano with a swish of silk skirt.

  The Villa household expected to dress formally for dinner and Olivia had felt distinctly put in the shade by the glittering creations of her aunt and her grandmother. Señora Escobar, however, was a different matter. In purple so deep that it was almost black, the only jewellery she wore was a Victorian pendant of amethysts and pearls. Her dark hair, with only a wisp of grey at the sides, was cut to its natural wave, framing and softening a face that would otherwise have been too austere. It made Olivia realise how grotesque were the elaborate curled and lacquered creations of her grandmother. Señora Escobar was a beautiful woman with the intelligence not to disguise her age and the style to wear it gracefully. Olivia found her intimidating.

  As she hesitated, she realised that she was the object of a scrutiny that reminded her of Luis. It was as if her interlocutor was engaged in an inner debate at which she could not guess.

  `You're very shy, aren't you?' mused Señora Escobar. `And yet it all seems to have happened so quickly. A month ago—forgive me—Luis had not even mentioned you.'

  `A month ago I had only just met him,' said Olivia wryly. She seated herself on one of the spindly chairs. 'That's how long I've been in Mexico.'