An Undefended City Page 20

Luis stared at her. 'Yes, there is, but he's dealing with the men who were hurt in the explosion. I thought you knew about it. You said you knew about it.'

  Olivia sniffed. 'I thought it was you,' she said not very lucidly.

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'I thought you were hurt in the explosion, you stupid

  pig!' she cried, driven into wholly uncharacteristic rudeness. Luis did not appear to take offence. Indeed, his eyes

  lightened almost with a return of his habitual laughter. 'Did you indeed?' he murmured. 'Well, I'm not. But I

  wonder why you thought that.'

  `Victor told me so,' stated Olivia. She hunted feverishly and fruitlessly for a handkerchief and looked appealingly at Luis.

  Unable to supply the deficiency, he grimaced and indicated his dirty state. Olivia compromised and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. Her own person had achieved a certain local grubbiness since she arrived and this proceeding left a trail of smut across one cheek without removing the tear stains. Seeing this, Luis began to smile.

  'I don't know what you're standing there grinning for,' Olivia told him crossly. 'Victor must have been mistaken. But he certainly thought you'd been badly hurt. He said—' she hiccupped and controlled it, 'he said your eyes were damaged.'

  `Ah.' Luis was thoughtful. 'Well, they were in a way. The blast went off early and I hadn't had time to put on my goggles. I walked around in something of a daze for a couple of hours afterwards.'

  Olivia surveyed him with suspicion. 'If that's the truth, why did Victor terrify me out of my mind?'

  `Were you terrified?'

  `Well, of course I was. I thought you might be going blind. I couldn't think. . .

  `What,' asked Luis gently, sitting on the corner of his own desk and regarding her bent head with great tenderness, `couldn't you think?'

  `How—how we were going to manage,' she blurted out. `I mean, your work and everything. I would have done anything I could to help, but I'm so stupid and I'm not an engineer and even if I'd read things out to you, I'd probably have made nonsense of them. And then I couldn't have helped you doing your designs or anything. And then you'd wish you hadn't married me even more than you do now.'

  A silence ensued, while she studied the scratched surface of his desk in minute detail.

  `I have never,' said Luis evenly, at last, 'said that I wished I hadn't married you.'

  Olivia's hand rose at that. 'Yes, you have. That night

  when you came back and Diego was there. You didn't even listen to me. And it was obvious before then. And just now, when I walked in: did I want a divorce, you said. Why not be honest and say that you want a divorce?'

  Her eyes brimmed over. She did not knuckle the drops away this time, or bury her head in her hands. She merely sat there with the tears coursing down her cheeks unchecked, silent.

  `Because,' said Luis very solemn but with the laughter still lurking in his voice, 'I don't.'

  Olivia hunched a shoulder. 'Yes, you do. Or you ought to.'

  He laughed aloud at that. 'Do you expect me to apologise for not wanting a divorce?' He took her face between his hands and searched it. 'You,' he informed her lovingly, 'are a very silly, tortuous, melodramatic girl.'

  `There you are,' sniffed Olivia, not daring to believe what she thought she heard in his tone, 'you don't even like me.' `My dearest idiot, I adore you,' he exploded.

  Olivia stopped sniffing and prepared to listen. But Luis seemed to have had his say. He stood up and began to pace the room. Perhaps he needed encouragement.

  `I don't believe you,' she said helpfully.

  `No, I know you don't. I've been trying to get through to you for weeks—months ! And you're always very polite and very kind—it's lethal, that kindness of yours, you know. One never knows whether it comes from affection or compassion. And nobody likes to be pitied.'

  Olivia stared at him. 'I don't pity you,' she said. 'Why should I?

  He shrugged. 'Because I'm in love with you. Because I have been for weeks. And because you never felt anything comparable for me. I was just an escape route to you, wasn't I? We had a bargain and you kept your side of it meticulously. Only I went and fell in love.'

  `When?' demanded Olivia.

  `What does that matter?' he said impatiently. 'Weeks ago, as I said. Before that damned wedding. Before I even got you to Cuernavaca, I think. Barbarita saw it. That's why she

  wrote to warn me that you were so unhappy you were going to leave me.'

  His face twisted and he turned away from her. Olivia jumped to her feet.

  `Because you didn't care for me,' she cried, stamping her foot in exasperation. `Can't you see that? I thought you didn't love me and weren't ever going to love me. You never said you did, ever, and you never touched me.'

  Luis did not turn round. 'If you remember,' he said heavily, 'you said you didn't want to be touched. I believed you.'

  `When?' she challenged. When did I say anything so stupid?'

  `In Cuernavaca,' he reminded her.

  She remembered. 'But I was wretched, overwrought. I meant it, but only for then—not as a sort of principle, a life style.'

  `I see.' He turned back to her. `Why did you mean it then?'

  She took an impatient step towards him. 'I was frightened. I'd been warned against you by everyone who cared about me—and you, for that matter. And you didn't come back and didn't come back. And your mother told me you were marrying me for the money—and I thought I knew that and didn't mind—and then,' their eyes tangled and Olivia was becoming less and less coherent, 'then I did mind and I wanted to be more than that and I didn't see how I could be, and I lost hope and—'

  Luis took her firmly in his arms and silenced her murblings with a long and comprehensive kiss. He raised his head after some minutes, regarded his handiwork with undisguised satisfaction and said, 'You've stopped crying.'

  `You haven't kissed me for ages,' said Olivia happily. She rubbed her head against him like a cat and became aware of the odour of machine oil. 'This shirt is very dirty,' she observed. She was reminded of one of her major causes for distress. `Anamargarita wouldn't have liked cuddling you in this state, you know,' she told him provocatively.

  `Anamargarita wouldn't have been offered the op-

  portunity,' he said, refusing to rise to her bait. 'I'm not going to quarrel with you over that silly girl. I did my duty by her, my God I did. I took her to dances and picnics, the whole works, because she was an indissoluble part of the Villa ménage, but she was so boring.'

  `She's so beautiful and so well—so used to the social niceties here.'

  Luis snorted,. 'She is also a self-willed hussy, very badly-behaved and extremely vain. Oh, you silly Olivia, how can you possibly have thought I would like a girl like that, even if you didn't realise that I had sense enough to fall in love with you?'

  Deeply pleased, Olivia controlled an inclination to purr and said mischievously, 'I think you're an opportunist. I don't think you're in love with anybody. I think you just need your shirt washed and think I might be cajoled into doing it.'

  For answer Luis drew out from his pocket a grubby packet. Carefully and with considerable dramatic effect he unfolded it and drew out a crumpled piece of paper.

  `What is it?' squeaked Olivia, craning.

  `Guess.' He held it above her head and she jumped, laughing.

  `Show me.'

  `You won't recognize it,' he told her, but let her have it.

  It was a photograph, Much folded and brown in the creases, it was nevertheless a fairly recent one. Olivia remembered it being taken. Up to now she had never seen the result, but presumably he had ordered it to be sent to him privately. It was the one the photographer had taken of her on the staircase that last moment before they left Cuernavaca. She was staring into the middle distance, dreaming, her face soft and, even to her own critical eyes, beautiful. Behind her there was only the darkness of the house so that she looked like a surreal image.

  `That se
emed to be you,' Luis told her. 'So beautiful and so—remote. There and not there. I loved you so much and I'd done everything wrong that I possibly could. I didn't think that I had any chance with you. And then you were

  seeing more and more of Diego. Of course he's nearer your age. . . . I wanted you to gain more confidence, more independence; but then I could see that when you were eventually sure you could stand on your own feet without my support, you'd go away from me. Can you wonder I was unpleasant last week? I was jealous and angry—and hopeless.'

  `Well, I'm quite independent now,' Olivia assured him. `Yes, I thought you were.'

  `And I want to stand on my own feet.'

  Luis flinched.

  `So will you please,' said Olivia, exercising her new found confidence to mutually satisfactory effect, 'stop waffling, come back over here and kiss me.'