THE YOUNG SPANIARD Page 3

  ‘Excuse me.’

  She had left the table and was walking towards a group standing on the pavement. James watched as she spoke to a tall youth; the youth had dark, curly hair, he wore his shirt open at the front and James could see the dark hairs on his chest, and as if that were not enough, he threw back his head and laughed, revealing what might, James supposed, be described as ‘flashing white teeth’. The relief was tremendous. Aunt Morag could come and sort this out if she really thought it necessary; but it was too simple, too utterly conventional for any interference on his part to be justified. Then the tall lad moved to one side and James saw another man standing there. When the group broke up, it was this other man who followed Rose as she returned.

  ‘This is Raoul,’ Rose said.

  The sun had moved behind the tall buildings on the far side of the square and now there was shadow and the first shiver of an evening breeze. The darkness will come quickly, James thought, no lingering twilight reconciliation here. He took off his sun glasses and put them in the case. The other two were sitting back in their chairs, quiet after the brief introductions. There seemed to be no need for speech; the need for haste, too, had gone. Energy dwindled with the day. The people who had been feeding the pigeons were moving away from the centre of the square, the tables at the café were filling up, waiters in evening dress were standing at the entrance to a restaurant nearby.

  I must offer him a drink, James thought; but the idea of speech filled him with weariness. He looked at Rose, sitting between them, her fingers laced round her glass; James sensed that she was savouring this moment, waiting for something to unfold. She would always see herself as the central figure around whom others danced; even if he had come to see her merely to get advice about a suitable hotel, she would not have believed that that was the reason. He shrugged his shoulders: let her believe what she would, it was not important. And yet the sense of security had gone. He said quickly to Raoul:

  ‘A drink?’

  ‘Thank you, but I have ordered.’

  Perfect English, a little precise, the words delivered with a snap.

  ‘You speak English very well.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Raoul bowed. There was a gleam of humour in his eyes, but it was not strong enough to counteract a certain bleakness in the thin face. What was there here for Rose? The face was handsome, in a fastidious, fine-drawn way; there was something about the mouth with its thin, sharply chiselled upper lip, not sensual, but . . . It was as though a memory rather than a word eluded him.

  Raoul was aware of his scrutiny. He said, ‘I don’t think we’ve met before.’ His voice was amused, but the eyes were momentarily vacant as though the resources of the mind had been called inwards to repel attack.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ James apologized. ‘I was wondering . . . You’ve never been to Scotland?’

  ‘Never. Nor Ireland, nor Wales, nor that other place . . . what do you call it? . . . England.’

  James chuckled.

  ‘I never go there myself, except on my way somewhere else.’ Rose glanced over her shoulder towards the entrance to the café.

  ‘I don’t know what’s happened to your drink.’

  She sounded petulant and both men knew that she was annoyed because for the moment they had forgotten her. Raoul patted her on the shoulder and said mockingly: ‘Poor little one.’ She picked up her handbag and took out her mirror, flicking a few strands of hair into a curving line across her forehead. Raoul snapped his fingers at the waiter who came across with the drink, a pernod.

  ‘And how many tourists have you put on the wrong plane today?’ he asked Rose. He might have been placating a child. She did not answer, angry with him; he sipped the drink and then put the glass down on the table while he felt in his pocket for cigarettes.

  ‘You’ll have cancer by the time you’re forty,’ she told him.

  He lit the cigarette and flicked the match away.

  ‘I shall be dead before then.’

  He sounded as though it was a fact, but one which had lost its interest for him. The cigarette was more important: he really needed that. As he tilted his head back at the first long draw the muscles of his neck were taut and the sweat glistened around his jaw. It occurred to James that he was looking at a man under considerable strain. Rose was watching, too, with a queer kind of fascination. She might have looked at a wild animal with the same relish.

  ‘A melodramatic statement,’ James said, wondering what the reaction would be.

  ‘Is death melodramatic?’ Raoul apparently preferred to discuss the matter in the abstract. ‘I should have said it was too unpredictable—at least in my experience . . .’

  Rose, bored by abstractions, sighed and put her elbows on the table; as she hunched her shoulders the front of her blouse looped outwards. As a distraction, it worked well. James found himself speculating as to whether she wore anything beneath the blouse; after a moment, she leant forward displaying two small, firm breasts for his inspection. He reflected, looking at them, that this was probably the only excitement that Rose would afford him.

  ‘. . . whereas melodrama is so well-prepared,’ Raoul went on, unperturbed. ‘You always know what will happen next and how the scene should be played.’

  ‘This scene ends when you finish your drink,’ Rose murmured.

  ‘Why the hurry? Your friend is not here yet.’

  James looked at Rose in surprise. Rose was more than surprised, both hands went to her face, her eyes opened wide. She looked young and rather foolish; one was reminded that not long ago she had been a schoolgirl.

  ‘You haven’t forgotten?’ Raoul asked, amused.

  She grabbed her handbag and pushed back her chair. ‘Oh, do hurry with your drink, do!’ She drummed her heel on the ground and made a little moaning noise in her throat. ‘What am I to do? I suppose it was your coming that made me forget.’ She looked at James accusingly.

  ‘What is it that you have forgotten?’ James asked, although he had an idea that he already knew the answer.

  ‘Nothing,’ Raoul smiled. ‘Nothing at all, except a girl friend who was arriving at Barcelona today and whom Rose had arranged to meet and take to a hotel she had booked for her.’

  ‘You may have travelled with her,’ Rose said. ‘There’s usually just the one first class carriage on that train and only English people in it.’

  James did not even bother to protest about his nationality. He was remembering the solitary figure waiting at the station exit, the case at her feet. He was not sure how he felt about meeting her again. The fewer contacts he made in Barcelona the better. Perhaps he could make some excuse to leave them now.

  Raoul finished his drink.

  ‘Well, the world will not come to an end. She is older than you, isn’t she? and capable of looking after herself, surely? She has probably gone to your flat.’

  ‘She doesn’t know I’m in a flat.’

  ‘Then she has probably gone to the Granada. We’ll come with you and help to smooth her ruffled feathers.’ They began to walk slowly round the side of the square towards the Ramblas. Rose said:

  ‘However am I to explain that I forgot?’

  ‘She knows you, doesn’t she?’

  Raoul glanced at her, smiled when he saw how angry she was, and ran his finger lightly down her spine. She looked up at him, perhaps noticing the faint contempt in his voice; it was a long, level look that they exchanged. Undoubtedly they were lovers. James wondered how a man like Raoul could be interested in this silly girl. Of course, one heard about the unnatural restraints and pressures of Spanish life; perhaps the men, denied much that their temperament demanded, were carried away by the satisfaction so casually afforded by girls like Rose. But Raoul, now strolling leisurely beside Rose, did not look like a man carried away by passion; and if there was something that he needed it seemed that it was not to be found here, for he had the look of a man who, all the time that he is talking, is really listening for something else, for a faint, fa
r-off sound in a distant street. Even the eyes had the strained look of a person listening intently.

  Well, it was all very mysterious, but it was nothing to do with him. He was certainly not going to spend the rest of the evening in this atmosphere. It was bad enough that his shirt was by now wringing wet, his body filthy; that the air, heavy with dust and petrol fumes, weighed on his eyelids; that the smell of cooking fat and oil wafting from the grilles of the restaurants made him feel sick: none of this could be helped. But Raoul and Rose he most certainly did not have to suffer any longer. They were half-way down the rambla. He must say to Rose, ‘I have been ill—pleurisy, you know. It has left me rather weak. So I’m sure you will understand if I don’t accompany you this evening.’ There was no point in staying with them; Rose’s affair had probably developed beyond the stage where the tentative enquiries of a stranger would do much good. And, in any case, he would be leaving tomorrow for Seville. It was most important, a voice inside him insisted, to say this and leave them now in the grateful shade of the rambla. But inertia overcame resolve: the thought of the explanation—he hated talking about his illness—was too much for him. He waited until the traffic lights turned to green and then crossed with them to the Granada. After that, everything seemed to fall into place, as though once James Kerr had been threaded into the pattern the design could begin to take shape.

  It was no surprise when, at the reception desk. Rose asked whether a Miss Perry had been enquiring for her; no surprise to learn that Miss Perry had not only been enquiring but was there, waiting in the lounge.

  When they went into the lounge James hung back, studying a case which displayed fans and mantillas at prices which seemed to him out of all proportion for such flimsy articles, while Rose apologized and Raoul was introduced by his full name, Raoul de San Hivera y Portero.

  She looked, when he was finally confronted by her, more travel- stained and crumpled than on the train; but her eyes were brighter than ever and she greeted him with warmth as though he was an old friend.

  Rose was too anxious to make amends to pay much attention to Frangcon’s explanation that they had travelled together on the train. Raoul stood by, quietly observing Frangcon: James had the feeling that he was not entirely pleased by what he saw. Perhaps he had been expecting another Rose, only less interesting to him, a little shadow who would not intrude on his affair. In which case, he was no doubt irritated at being saddled with this naive, exuberant girl.

  Rose said that Frangcon must be famished and that they had better eat at the hotel; she said that she would book a table for eight forty-five, which would give Frangcon time to tidy herself. After the table was booked James, Raoul and Rose went into the bar. Frangcon joined them in a short time, not noticeably tidier.

  ‘It would take me hours to get properly organized for the evening,’ she said, a statement which, at that time, James took to be an exaggeration. ‘But I’ve had a wash.’

  She had a dry vermouth and then they went up to the dining room. In the lift the boy asked Frangcon in slow, deliberate Spanish whether she liked Barcelona and she replied ‘me gusta mucho’. They both laughed, as though this was a dialogue much rehearsed between them. In the dining room the waiter who came with the hors d’oeuvres trolley told Frangcon the Spanish for each item while the rest of the party waited interminably to be served.

  ‘Do you know the entire hotel staff?’ Raoul asked.

  ‘There was nothing else to do but talk to them. And they were all so nice.’

  ‘Frangcon talks to everyone.’ Rose sounded affectionate in an amused way. ‘And she believes that all people are nice at heart.’ She gave Raoul a sly smile which conveyed the impression that she knew a great deal about him but intended to be discreet. He responded by raising his eyebrows and saying a few words softly in Spanish. They both laughed, and James reflected that it was going to be a very tiresome evening.

  Raoul asked for the wine list and he and Frangcon took a long time deciding on a wine sufficiently mellow, but not too heavy. Rose joined in. ‘Darling, not a sweet white. You remember the last time . . .’ She was not, James judged, so much interested in the wine as in demonstrating her relationship with Raoul. As previously she had seemed to play it down, he assumed that her change of attitude was for Frangcon’s benefit. It was all in very bad taste, James thought austerely, as Rose continued to indulge in reminiscences which could only be of interest to herself and Raoul. Frangcon, determinedly pursuing the subject of wine, seemed to be quite oblivious of all this nonsense. By the time they had agreed on a red Tarragona wine, James was exhausted, Raoul had become irritable and Rose was sulking. Frangcon talked a lot over the meal, asking Raoul endless questions about Spanish food and customs. When she talked she seemed to reach out to the person that she was with. It was obvious to James that Raoul resented this; he talked very volubly, but there was a brittle defensiveness in his manner. As the meal dragged on Rose became heavy-eyed and James felt his head beginning to throb. Frangcon and Raoul drank a lot without appearing to be in any way affected. Frangcon asked him about Spanish wine, but he said that he was a snob and preferred the French wines when he could get them, which was very seldom. Rose watched him without actually looking at him directly. When he began to talk about champagne, she said:

  ‘Darling, you will get like Milo and have the shakes if you go on in this way.’

  Frangcon held her glass up to the light and admired the dark glow of the wine.

  ‘There was a man hanging around the lounge whom the waiter called Milo,’ she said.

  ‘It would have been you that he was hanging around,’ Rose told her. ‘I hope he behaved himself.’

  ‘Is he a fairly thick-set man?’ James asked. ‘Lightish hair and rather a droll face?’

  Raoul nodded. ‘An expansive smile, teeth all his own except the gold one in the left upper jaw.’

  ‘It was he who gave me your telephone number,’ James told Rose.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He seemed rather amusing,’ Frangcon said. ‘He told me some story about being known as the “Tiger of the Mountains”. Does he tell that to everyone?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Raoul answered. ‘Most people would know.’

  ‘You mean it’s true?’

  ‘During the Civil War, Milo was a guerrilla leader.’

  ‘What side was he on?’ James demanded. He had strong views on the Spanish Civil War.

  Raoul laughed, but his eyes were not amused. ‘You mustn’t attribute political ideals to Milo. He came, so one hears, from a small mountain village which was dominated by two families—the Rodrigues and the Pachecos—who had been fighting one another spasmodically for centuries. At the time of the Civil War the Rodrigues family were very powerful. They supported the Republican cause. Most of the Pachecos were “executed”, but Milo escaped to the mountains.’ There was a growing bitterness in his voice which made his listeners uncomfortable. ‘A blood feud—that was what it amounted to; yet, when the war was over and all the Rodrigues were dead, he became quite a hero. Odd, isn’t it? A case of “Tell me who your heroes are, and I will tell you what you are.” What other race would behave like that?’

  ‘The Scots,’ James said. ‘But in another century, praise be.’

  ‘What does he do now?’ Frangcon asked.

  ‘He has a job of sorts with the police. An excellent opening for more blood-letting, one would have thought. But his thirst for blood appears to have been quenched and he has settled for women and wine.’

  There was rather an awkward pause. Raoul finished the last of his wine, his face taut and angry. Rose said, ‘So much for Milo.’ She pushed her plate to one side and looked impatiently at Frangcon. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  Frangcon said that she was sorry, she had not noticed that they were all waiting for her; having made the apology she finished her meal very slowly and then wondered whether it would be possible to have coffee. No one mentioned Milo again.

  ‘I expect you are tired,’ Rose sai
d to Frangcon as they sipped their coffee. ‘Would you like to spend the night here? I can pick you up in the morning—I’m not on duty until the afternoon—and take you to the hotel I’ve booked for you.’

  ‘I’m not really tired, Rose . . .’

  Rose was saying something about a good night’s sleep when Raoul, who had been watching Frangcon, interrupted.

  ‘You don’t want to spend a night here, do you? It’s a very dull place and outrageously expensive.’

  She looked at him gratefully. ‘Well, it was rather more than I wanted to pay.’

  ‘I was sure of that! I have an intuitive sympathy for anyone who is short of money.’ He glanced at Rose but she was staring into her coffee cup, her face bland as that of a china doll. He went on: ‘And people are so unhelpful. They think it’s degrading to be asked for a loan.’

  ‘I don’t want a loan,’ Frangcon protested. ‘I just want to stay at a less expensive hotel.’

  ‘And so you shall! Come down to the reception desk with me and we’ll collect your luggage.’

  Rose watched them leave the dining room. She sighed and said, not unkindly:

  ‘Three months of Frangcon!’

  ‘Is she such an exhausting person?’ James asked.

  ‘She just does everything her own way and her way is so much slower than everyone else’s. She is quite artless, too; some people think it’s an act, but it isn’t and it can be rather uncomfortable at times.’ She picked up her handbag and got to her feet, hitching the blue stole around her shoulders. ‘She teaches infants. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it.’

  When they reached the reception desk Raoul had arranged matters and the porter had agreed to send Frangcon’s luggage on to the other hotel.