An Undefended City Page 8

  Olivia was trembling so much she could hardly stand up, but she now found pride coming to her rescue. It struck her that it was deeply undignified to allow herself to be bullied by a pack of schoolboys. She therefore stiffened her recalcitrant spine, looked her tormentor straight between the eyes and said in a precise little voice which dripped icicles.

  `There is no need. Every Mexican I have met so far has been perfectly charming. Except you. I find you,' her gaze swept them all with disdain, 'utterly detestable.'

  It was a good line, but it was not, given their precarious mood, perhaps very wise. They were nonplussed and so took refuge in savage mimicry.

  `Perfectly charming,' they mouthed at each other. 'Utterly detestable!'

  Olivia could feel them pressing on all sides. A bottle was produced.

  `If the lady doesn't like our food, try her with Mexican drink,' said a boy who had hitherto been silent. He had a quiff of greasy hair falling across his eyes which gave him a particularly unsavoury appearance. Olivia quailed inwardly but, having found her courage at last, refused to show her trepidation.

  `No, thank you,' she said, as the bottle was unstoppered and thrust at her.

  But they would not be gainsaid. The leader had his fingers entwined in her hair and pulled her head back hard. She gave a little gasp of pain and her eyes watered. They laughed in satisfaction and the other boy tipped the bottle against her lips. She kept her teeth tightly closed, but could not wholly exclude the fiery liquid. It tasted like tar on her tongue and she gave a whimper of distress as it caught her throat and she choked. They laughed again, now thoroughly excited by their success in baiting her, and her hair was once again tugged at savagely. She closed her eyes in despair and, when she had given up all hope of being released, found herself free.

  Gasping, she staggered sideways against the corner of the stall. The taper at the top of the support flickered wildly at the impact. In the flaring shadows she could see a man, one hand on the shoulder of the boy who had forced her to drink, but she was too bewildered and the light was too uncertain for her to identify more than the fact that he was taller than the boys. Then, with a vague feeling that she ought to find her suitcase and a conviction that she would be utterly incapable of doing so, she folded both hands about the stall pole and sank down it like a flag lowered to conclude proceedings.

  There then followed a nasty few minutes in which she was neither in command of her senses nor wholly unconscious. She felt as if she had been transported into a flying boat that she had once seen on a roundabout at the village fair. The world lurched about her in a kaleidoscope of colours and she cried out in alarm.

  `Miss Lightfellow—Olivia. Hush now! You're quite safe.'

  Olivia barely heard the words, but the tone was soothing. Obediently she quietened and the world stopped whirling and settled down to a comprehensible place. She opened her eyes.

  She was being carried at shoulder height through the throng. It was an unnerving sensation and she jumped, clutching at her rescuer's, shoulders convulsively.

  `Careful,' he said. 'If you make me fall into the gutter I'll sue you.'

  The voice was familiar. In fact Olivia marvelled that she could recognise it instantly when she had heard it for the first time only twenty-four hours ago. She did not look at the voice's owner.

  `Oh dear,' she said, with feeling.

  `Well may you say oh dear,' he went on pleasantly. 'The gutter is unsavoury in the extreme and these trousers are nets,. It could cost you substantial sums.'

  Encouraged by this reassuring threat, Olivia dared at last to raise her eyes to his face. The light of so many tapers was brilliant but fitful, so she could see little more than an impression. Indeed, his face looked like a bronze mask, with great shadows for eyes and gleaming cheekbones. But, she comforted herself, he did not sound angry, in spite of this warlike aspect.

  `I'm afraid I've given you an awful lot of she said

  timidly. 'I'm sorry.'

  He flung back his fiery head and gave a shout of laughter.

  `I suppose I should have known your first words would be an apology,' he said, spluttering. 'You run true to form, don't you Miss Lightfellow?'

  It is difficult to be dignified when you are being borne along in the manner of a recalcitrant four-year-old being put to bed. It is even more difficult to be crushing when the person you wish to subdue is the one who is carrying you. Olivia, however, did her best.

  She sniffed. 'I don't follow you, Senor Escobar,' she said in a tight little voice.

  `No indeed. I followed you. For the whole of today. And extremely inconvenient it has been,' he pointed out.

  He shouldered his way between two stalls, across a crowded pavement and in through two doors so impressive that Olivia at first thought they were entering a church. His heels rang on a stone floor and the interior was lit by candles, reinforcing her initial image. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, though, she perceived that they were in a courtyard. It seemed full of very tall plants which half hid a stone fountain, playing in the centre of the hall. The jungle vegetation and ecclesiastical light produced a shadow play

  which had Olivia shrinking against Luis Escobar, all dignity forgotten.

  `Where—where are we?' she faltered.

  He lowered her carefully to the floor and she stood swaying for a moment in the erratic light. Luis Escobar thoughtfully retained hold of her elbow.

  `This is the house of a friend of mine,' he told her. 'When you've got your sea legs we'll go upstairs and meet her.' `This is a house?' gasped Olivia.

  He was amused. 'Yes, of course. What did you think it was? A municipal home for waifs and strays?'

  Olivia's look was reproachful. 'That,' she informed him, `is not kind.'

  There was a silence. Luis never took his eyes from her face, but his expression was unreadable. Olivia was just beginning to stir uncomfortably under it, when he gave a sharp little sigh.

  No, you're right, it was not kind. And you've had a hard day, haven't you? I apologise.'

  His unexpected kindness moved her. Almost without realising she was doing it and in total contravention of her usually reserved habit she hugged his arm. She was already holding on to him to steady herself and it was the slightest of movement, but they both recognised it. Luis became very still. Then, with deliberation, he placed his hand over hers.

  `That was a nasty little scene out there,' he said. Olivia shuddered. 'I've never met anything like it.'

  Luis's mouth twisted. 'I don't suppose you have,' he

  agreed wryly.

  Olivia hung her head. 'It was probably partly my fault,' she admitted. 'I think—to begin with—they just wanted to be friendly. Only they frightened me. So I lost my head a bit and offended them.'

  `Too much frightens you, I think,' Luis commented. He held her hand more tightly. 'Come along. We'll go upstairs and meet your hostess and then you can tell me the whole terrifying saga of your bolt for freedom.' The mockery in his voice was gentle.

  Olivia laughed, albeit shakily, and they began to mount the stairs.

  `Who am I to meet?' she asked.

  `A friend of mine—or to be more precise a friend of my mother's. She has been expecting you all afternoon. I wasn't at all sure that you'd take the bus as far as Guanajuato, so I had to follow the coach to see if you got off earlier. That seemed a rather insecure way of preparing for your reception, so I telephoned ahead and asked Barbarita to have you met. Just in case I missed you or had a puncture, you understand.'

  Olivia flinched. 'I have given you a dreadful amount of trouble,' she repeated mournfully.

  He gave her hand a shake. Now don't start apologising again, for God's sake ! Yes, you have, but it was worth it

  Olivia stopped on the stairs. 'How can you possibly say that? When you've spent the day chasing me; probably had Aunt Betty bellowing at you; wasted the time you intended to spend in Cuernavaca; and then had to rescue me from a bunch of thugs.'

  Luis stopped also, t
urned her to face him and put his hands on her shoulders.

  `Your version,' he teased, 'is a trifle melodramatic. The drunken boys outside were hardly thugs, Cuernavaca is overrated, and your Aunt Betty knows better than to bellow at me. The emphasis on the last word was only just short of arrogant. 'And as for chasing you,' his smile grew, 'as I said, it was worth it.'

  Olivia searched his face but could detect nothing beyond amusement.

  `I think you mean that,' she said at last slowly.

  `I never say what I don't mean,' Luis told her. There was an edge to the words which confused her even more.

  `But why should it matter to you what happens to me?' she demanded.

  `Because, if for no other reason, I'm paid to care,' he said in a burst of anger which drove her back against the banisters in shock.

  Olivia did not know what to say and began to twist her

  hands together in front of her. She was hurt but not resentful. It seemed to her perfectly logical that he should regard his guardianship as an obligation conferred upon him by the salary her uncle paid him. And she had interrupted his schedule and diverted him from whatever was his proper work.

  `Are you very angry with me?' she whispered, voicing her greatest fear.

  Luis, who had been starting to climb the stairs again, stopped as if she had struck him. He took a deep breath. Then he said in a controlled voice, which made her think he was polite rather than truthful, 'If I am angry it's not with you. You could never make me angry. I've never met such an inoffensive creature in my life.'

  Such reassurance was hardly flattering and Olivia winked away the instinctive tears that flooded her eyes at the curt announcement.

  He saw it. Wow what's wrong?' he demanded.

  `Nothing,' she denied. 'Of course nothing's wrong. I—I'm very grateful to you. And to—to--' she hesitated. 'I'm sorry, I don't know the name of my hostess. What did you call her? Barbara?'

  `Barbarita. She is the Señora Vasconcellos. But she will ask you to call her Barbarita. Everyone does. She used to be a dancer and that was her professional name. Now that she's in her eighties and lives quietly she still likes to be reminded of the old days. She was very kind to my mother when my father and she escaped from Spain during the Civil War. And she will be kind to you now. So don't,' his voice rasped, 'be afraid of her.'

  I'm—' Olivia caught herself on another apology and bit her lip.

  But he understood. 'Sorry?' he offered.

  She detected impatience, wholly justified impatience, as she told herself, and shrank.

  Luis took her face between his hands. 'Look,' he said, `you're an ordinary human being like anyone else—your Aunt Betty, your Uncle Octavio, me. No one is going to be specially horrible to you. And if they are, you're as capable

  of defending yourself as any other able-bodied, not stupid young woman. You don't need any special dispensations.' He gave her a little shake. 'Do you understand?'

  `Yes,' said Olivia obediently and unconvincingly.

  He gave a sharp sigh. 'And you don't believe a word of it, do you?'

  'I might believe it. I probably could, in time,' said Olivia with a lopsided smile. 'But it won't make any difference to the way I feel. I just am frightened of things, particularly of strangers. I know it's unreasonable and very boring for everyone else, but I can't help it.'

  Luis gave her a long searching look and then threw up his hands. 'All right,' he conceded at last. 'You're frightened and you can't help it. Well, we'll just have to face what you're frightened of and beat it on its home ground.'

  The pronoun both startled and touched Olivia. 'We?' she repeated.

  He laughed and gave her a quick hug. 'If I left you to do it on your own I'd bite my nails down to nothing,' he told her. 'Come along, we'll start with Barbarita.'

  He took her hand and ran with her up the rest of the curving flight of stairs. Olivia followed, willing but breathless, and when he stopped, leant, laughing, against a balustrade, one hand to her side.

  `I've got a stitch,' she protested.

  `No excuses,' Luis was only half teasing. Beneath the casual manner she detected a firmness of purpose which, while it did not alarm her as Aunt Betty's fits of determination did, puzzled her. He seemed to be promising to see her through much more than the immediate ordeal of meeting her hostess. And Olivia, a modest girl, could see neither why he should make such an undertaking, nor how he intended to carry it out. She was, _however, grateful and smiled at him.

  `Very well. No excuses.' She gave him her hand trustfully. 'As long as you promise to lead me out of it again, I'll follow you into the dragon's cave.'

  He took a moment to answer. Then he said, 'You may rely on me. Domestic dragons are my speciality. And this one is a pet.'

  They crossed a tiled, candlelit hall and he flung open two high carved doors. Olivia, hovering behind him, saw at first only a blaze of light which made her shut her eyes instinctively. When she opened them she perceived a long and immensely high room, stone-flagged like a cathedral, hung with twenty-foot tapestries and lit by a chandelier which hung from a domed, painted ceiling. At the far end—and it seemed an enormous distance from where they stood—there was a fire of mediaeval proportions beside which was set a winged chair. All that could be seen of the occupant, who was facing the fire, was a fall of long, dark skirt. Beside her, however, was a profusion of books, newspapers, tables, embroidery frames; in fact all the paraphernalia which would suggest prolonged residence of the same spot. Olivia had only time to deduce that her hostess was chair-bound, before Luis was urging her forward.

  `We arrive at last, Barbarita,' he remarked, strolling to the fireplace and bending to kiss the hidden cheek. 'There was no one about downstairs, so we came straight up.'

  He held out a hand to Olivia who, somewhat hesitantly, went to stand beside him in front of the lady thus addressed. It felt as if they were two culprits called for retribution to the headmistress's study, as all the guilt she had hitherto suppressed rose in her throat again.

  `The servants have all gone to the fiesta. I told them to,' remarked Barbarita in a clear voice. She was very old, but she had a distinctly unheadmistressy twinkle and she smiled at Olivia very kindly. 'Except for Emilio, and I sent him down to the bus station to meet your Miss Lightfellow in case you missed her.'

  `As you see, I did not,' he replied. 'Let me introduce you, Olivia,' with a mock heroic bow, `Barbarita.'

  `It is very kind of you to have me,' murmured Olivia. `But your poor Emilio should not have been sent out to retrieve me. I do hope he's not still waiting. Shouldn't someone go and tell him that I've been found?' She appealed to Luis. 'I could wait here with Senora Vasconcellos while you look for him.'

  The old lady leant forward. `Barbarita,' she said. `Señora

  Vasconcellos was my mother-in-law—a terrifying woman. I still dream about her whenever I've done something particularly extravagant. It intimidates me to be called by her name. You will be doing me a great kindness to forget I have any other name but Barbarita.'

  Olivia gave a choke of laughter at this unexpected pronouncement. 'I'll try to remember,' she promised.

  `Excellent.' The old lady leant back and surveyed her with shrewd black cherry eyes. 'And do not worry about Emilio. He will be back as soon as the passengers from the last bus have dispersed. Luis would undoubtedly miss him if he went back. The crowds during fiesta get worse every year. Or better and better, I suppose I should say, because I love the people and the music and the noise. I always have done. My mother-in-law thought it very frivolous of me. Are you frivolous, my dear?'

  She patted an upholstered stool at her side. Olivia accepted the mute invitation and sat down. She was relieved and amused by her reception. Not only was Barbarita quite unperturbed by the nuisance of an unprepared-for guest, she seemed equally incurious about her unconventional arrival with Luis, as she clearly knew he had been in pursuit of Olivia across the countryside. And now she appeared to want to settle down to a gossipy exch
ange as if Olivia was a well-loved granddaughter rather than a stranger.

  Impressed, Olivia answered her question literally. 'I don't think I am, no,' she responded, having considered the matter. 'At least, I haven't really had much opportunity to be frivolous, I suppose.'

  Barbarita was moved. 'Poor child,' she said, patting her cheek. 'So young and pretty too. But you mustn't let Luis bully you. He may seem serious enough now, but I remember him when he was as wild as you please.'

  `Oh come, Barbarita,' said the object of her accusation. 'I never reached your standards of wildness.'

  The old lady laughed, wrinkling her nose at him. 'Well, perhaps not,' she allowed. 'But I have known you when you were a lot less dull and worthy than you are now. And I shall tell Olivia all about it.'

  Luis cast his eyes heavenwards. 'Then God help me! You will please bear in mind,' he instructed Olivia, 'that Barbarita has the artist's talent for embroidering the truth. Where my history is insufficiently dramatic she may allow herself—just a little—licence.'

  A speaking look full of confidence and affection passed between them. Olivia saw it and felt that, although he had claimed Barbarita was his mother's rather than his own friend, there was considerable affinity between the pair.

  Barbarita chuckled. 'But it is only recently that your history has become insufficiently exciting,' she pointed out. She turned to Olivia and said in conspiratorial tones, 'You will have to make sure that he doesn't get stuffy. Men can become tedious when they're married. Luis, you are not to deprive this child of frivolity.'

  `Such was not my intention,' he returned, his deep voice threaded with amusement.

  Olivia was bewildered. If Luis Escobar was planning to marry she did not see how it could possibly affect herself. Unless his care of her during her sojourn in Mexico meant he had to postpone his wedding. She turned enquiring eyes on him and found him rueful.