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  She shook her head violently. “No, no. I owe you everything and I want you to know everything . . . and, well if it’s not awkward, I would be glad to stay here a little while. You see . . . I’ve only just come back into the world and I’ve been very fortunate because you were there to bring me back, and I know you are a good man and this is a good place and——” She broke off, bereft of words, tears beginning to touch the corners of her eyes.

  He laughed quietly and said, “And I make a fair omelette, and just take it easy, and of course you can stay. Here.” He pulled a clean folded handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her.

  Sarah blew her nose and wiped the corners of her eyes. When she would have handed the handkerchief back to him he shook his head. A lock of damp dark hair fell loosely across his forehead and she suddenly saw him as a boy and as a young man with that spring of unruly hair and she knew again, but this time with the balm of near adoration for him, that she never wanted to leave him for his coming had been directed and her loving servitude fixed for her forever. Whatever he wanted from her he should have, whatever he dreamed of for himself would be her dream and part of her passion would be to provide it for him. Feeling all this, she knew, was far from hysteria, far from a search for comfort for herself. No matter who or what had shaped the design of their lives so that she sat here now, she believed beyond all doubt that it all had been immutably fated.

  Straightening herself up, fortified by the removal of all doubts, she smiled briefly at him and said, “I was a nun . . . for eight years. I walked into the sea to drown myself from shame. I’m three months gone with a child. But when it came to the point I couldn’t let myself go. I wanted to live and—you gave me back my life.”

  He said nothing. He just looked at her blankly for a while. Then he slowly put down his pipe and walked across the room to the pine wood sideboard. She heard the thin notes of glasses touching and the sound of drinks being poured. He came back, a glass of brandy in his hand, and stood above her, palming one hand about the bowl of his glass. Suddenly he smiled and said, “I was a bit slow. Your hair I mean. I did think of prison, but I was pretty sure they didn’t do that these days, not even in this country. But a nun never crossed my mind. What’s your name?”

  “It was Sister Luiza but before that and now it’s Sarah Branton.”

  “I prefer Sarah. English or Irish?”

  “My father’s English. My mother was Irish.”

  “I thought I heard it there somewhere.” He lowered himself into his chair and gave her a sudden grin. “Well now, that’s the main part cleared up. Are you sure about the child bit?”

  “I’ve missed three periods.”

  “Your mother’s dead?”

  “Yes.” It was easy to answer now.

  “But your father isn’t, and what about the convent people?”

  “I wrote a letter to the Mother Superior telling her what I was going to do. As for my father, I’ve been dead to him for a long time. Anyway, he and my mother parted when I was quite young. I’ve got an aunt living still in this country, but she spends most of her time in America. I really haven’t got anyone.”

  “What about the man. The child’s father?”

  “I want to forget him. It was all my fault. He’s a doctor who works in the little hospital run by the convent. Sometimes I can’t believe that it ever happened. That it was all a dream.”

  “Perhaps it was. Anyway, we’ll get Herman to look at you. He’ll know.”

  “Who is Herman?”

  “A doctor friend. He tucked you into bed and gave you an injection to make you sleep long.” He was silent for some time, gently biting the edge of his lower lip, and then he asked, “Would you have been happy to stay on at the convent if this baby thing hadn’t cropped up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He shook his head. “It’s my experience that people who say they don’t know are usually really quite certain but don’t want to commit themselves. You wanted to get out, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did but all this happened before I’d really made up my mind.”

  He gave her his big, crooked smile then and said, “You know what I think? I think you just want to flop back and let things ride. You can take it from me that walking into the sea doesn’t seem to be your style.”

  She smiled hesitantly back at him, tightening her lips a little to control the emotion which flooded through her at his soothing kindness and naturalness and then said, “You make it all seem . . . well, natural and not all that important. I can’t tell you what that does for me.”

  “Don’t try.” He got up and walked to a radio-cassette player that stood on top of a low run of bookshelves. Over his shoulder he said, “You just stay there and get smoothed out. I’ve got to go and shut the hens up and put the goats in their shed for the night.”

  Behind her she heard the click of the player switch. The room was suddenly and gently touched by the sound of music. She lay back and closed her eyes, feeling the slow caress of violins gently wrap itself about her, knowing with a deep gratitude that some kind fate must be working for her that he should bring her to life with one of her favourite Schubert pieces.

  * * * *

  At that moment in his room in ‘Cheltenham, Arnold Geddy, the senior partner in the solicitors’ firm of Geddy, Parsons and Rank, stood looking down at the late afternoon traffic moving along the Promenade, the light April rain washing the young growth of the trees with a soft gloss that took the reflections of car and shop lights in brilliant ripples of gold and silver. He sighed for a moment with a rare emotion . . . forty years a solicitor, and always people, people and their problems. Not a moment of real satisfaction in his professional life such as a man would know if he could take brush and palette and capture on canvas the colour and life he looked down on now. He smiled ruefully, recognising and touched by his rare moment of romantic excess.

  He was a short, plump man, going a little bald and with a smooth face, pale, touched on the cheek bones by fine vein bursts, a face which he could control to a neutral, unmoving passivity to show no signs of his emotions or dreams to others.

  The telephone on his desk rang and he reached behind him and picked up the instrument.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr Geddy, sir—the international exchange are on the line, a personal call for you from Portugal. But they want to know if you will accept the reverse charges. It’s from a Father Dominic at Lagos.”

  For a moment or two he made no reply. But there was no surprise in him for he knew quite well who Father Dominic was, though he had not spoken to him for years. Then with a partly suppressed sigh he said, “Yes, tell them I’ll take it.”

  A little later Father Dominic came on the line and they talked together for about five minutes. Afterwards he got the girl to call Lieutenant-Colonel Branton’s house and ask if the Colonel could see him that evening. The girl rang back to say that the Colonel was away fishing in Wales and would not return until late the following afternoon.

  As he put the receiver down Mr Geddy shrugged his shoulders. What did it matter? It could wait until tomorrow or next week or next month. The Colonel would be completely unmoved to know that his pregnant nun daughter had drowned herself. But there were others who would not. He picked up the second telephone on his desk which gave him a direct outside line by-passing the switchboard and dialled a London number.

  As he waited he sighed, remembering the girl, fair-haired, quiet and shy; and then the mother, all brightness and quicksilver . . . aye, and reckless, too, with a greed for the good things of life and with a ruthlessness which had given her all she wanted.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALTHOUGH IT WAS still cold at night she slept with her window partly open and the curtains drawn back. As she lay watching the stars and the black silhouette of a cork oak against the sky there was a tranquillity in her which she had never known before, a deep calm which left no place for anxiety. Everything, she knew, would be resolved with time. Not
hing had happened by chance. Everything which had happened to her since leaving the convent—and maybe long before that— had been ordered. The power behind the ordering she did not question. She was simply grateful for it and could have no curiosity whether it was or was not benign. She was logical enough in her thinking to realise that the future might not bring her happiness, but that was not important. She lived now for a purpose, to serve a man as she had once felt called to serve Him. Where she had failed before she had no doubts of any failure in the future if this man gave her the chance. Nobody else might understand her conviction. She had been sent to him because he needed her. That truth was hidden from him now, but he would know it one day.

  For the rest of that evening they had sat either side of the fire talking a little but offering no intimacies to one another. Most of the time they were silent, listening to the music he played for her on the cassette. She needed no more than that, taking the music to herself and losing herself in it. Coming up to bed he had suggested she should leave her door open so that she could call to him. She smiled to herself in the darkness, seeing and hearing him. His face for a moment serious, his under lip pushed out, and then his sudden smile as he said, “Well, you never know. The night’s a bad time for reliving things—waking or dreaming. So if you want me—just yell. I’ll leave my door ajar.” It was at that moment—although she had never known it for herself—that she realised what he was being to her; a brother to a sister who was in trouble. She was content with that as she knew she would be content with anything he wanted from her or wanted her to be to him.

  Thinking about him she drifted into sleep. When she awoke it was to a morning of strong wind, blowing from a cloudless sky. He brought her breakfast in bed; orange juice, coffee and toast, and a small pot of home-made strawberry jam and another of marmalade, all laid out meticulously on a fresh tray cloth.

  Smiling at him, surprised by how relaxed she immediately felt with him, knowing, too, that she was genuinely glad to see him, she said, “It all looks very professional. I don’t see how you could have failed with a restaurant. And this.” She reached out and lifted a small jar from the tray which held a few heads of Spanish bluebells.

  He smiled. “You’d be surprised. I’m an expert at failure. Still, to be true—I didn’t do too badly when I sold it. Got a fair bit of my money back. Shall I pour the coffee for you?”

  “No, thank you. Do you know . . .” she hesitated a moment, “. . . I can’t remember the last time I had breakfast in bed.”

  “Well, enjoy it now.” He turned away to the door, but when he reached it he stopped and looked back at her and said with a touch of guilt in his voice, “I’ve got to tell you something. I hope you’re not going to be upset. But I thought it was a wise thing to do.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, you said you wrote a letter to your Mother Superior about what you were going to do. She’d have got it either yesterday or this morning. I thought it was a wise thing to let her know you were safe. You know what the police and the authorities are like in this country. And your clothes on the beach and all. Somebody’s probably found them by now. So . . . well, you must see that it’s better they know you’re alive so that they get a chance to cover up.” He grinned suddenly. “Convents don’t like scandals. You did say you were pregnant to them?”

  “Yes, but no more than that. Not who. And, please—I’m not upset about it. You did the right thing. How did you know the right convent? Oh, yes, of course, I told you last night. But whom did you speak to?”

  “The portress I suppose it was. Anyway, I made her write it all down and then read it back to me. I just said that you were all right and safe and so on. I didn’t say where you were or who I was, but I did promise that you yourself would telephone some time today. Is that all right?”

  For a moment she lowered her head and with the tip of her finger touched one of the bells of a jacinto dos campos. She was nothing to this man, he had saved her, taken her in and comforted her, and in everything he did and said there was a kindness and humanity which overpowered her. She looked up and smiled. “Everything is all right and I don’t know how to tell you——”

  “Don’t try,” he cut her short gruffly. “Well, enjoy your breakfast.” He went out quickly. But from the top of the stairs he shouted to her, “When you take your bath don’t worry about the tom-tom noises the cistern makes. With any luck I may get round to fixing it for the Holderns before they get back.”

  But she scarcely heard him. Her whole being was engulfed by the warmth of him. Her eyes filled with tears and she felt her body begin to shake so that she had to hold the handles of the breakfast tray to steady herself.

  * * * *

  Herman Ragge came at mid-morning and went up to see Sarah in her bedroom. Farley went out and turned the garden sprinklers on and then went round to the swimming pool to go on with his painting. The window of Sarah’s bedroom was closed. Maria came out and began to hang up some washing on the line rigged in the orchard. He heard her talking to the hens and the pegged-out goats which were the idols of the Holderns’ eyes. She came back and with her empty laundry basket on her hip stood and looked down at him, black-skirted, a black knitted shawl over her white blouse, her old face as brown and lined as a walnut and a man’s black felt hat on her grey hair. There was usually not a lot of talk between them except on small household matters, but now and again she could be disarmingly straightforward and percipient.

  Now she said in almost bad-tempered tones, “Senhor Farley, she comes from the sea. It is not good for her to be in this house. It is not good for you.”

  “How do you know she comes from the sea?”

  She nodded briefly to the orchard where her washing hung. “I take her shift this morning and wash. It is stiff from salt water. No other clothes. She wears the Senhora’s. When I am in her room making the bed this morning she stands by the window and gives me nothing but a good morning and then her back but already I have seen her eyes.”

  “She was probably embarrassed.”

  “No. When you ran Il Gallo you were good to my man and gave him a job. Now, for this, I tell you. She is a witch. She is not good for you.”

  She used the word bruxa . . . witch, sorceress . . . and Farley smiled. Her half-crippled husband had often used the same word about her. Maybe, he hid his smile, it was a matter of professional jealousy. He said, “Maria, she was in trouble. I can’t tell you any more than that. I just did what anyone else would do.”

  She shook her head. “You always do more than anyone else. Don’t keep her here. Otherwise there comes trouble—for you. When I go back today I will look for it.”

  “Where? In a crystal ball?”

  “That is my business. Maybe I tell you about it, and maybe I don’t. But anyway it will be good for her to go, and better for you.” She gave a pugnacious jerk of her old head and turned away to the villa.

  Farley went on with his painting, smiling to himself, and thinking about her husband, Cesar, who had a withered left arm, a sporadic passion for the bottle and an aged but lively eye for the girls. He had helped around the kitchen and the bar which had given him opportunities for both his passions. Still, with one arm he did more work than many men would have done.

  When Herman came down Farley fetched some beer from the house and they sat in the shade of a Judas tree, its blossoming long over.

  “Well, how did you get on with her?” Farley asked.

  “I don’t know. She puzzles me.”

  “How?”

  “Well, she was polite enough. Shy, too, a bit. But I don’t think she wanted to have much to do with me. She thanked me for what I’d done for her and I sensed she thought that was the end of the matter. She was over the hump and there was no more to do except say a nice thank-you. I had to persist a bit.”

  “Why?” Farley began to pack his pipe slowly.

  “Well, you told me she’d said she was pregnant. After all— and I told her this—she’d been in the water
a long time, damned near drowned. That’s the kind of thing that can muck a pregnancy up. But she said she felt well and unworried, and there was no reason for me to do anything. Just from her manner I knew that the last thing she wanted was me giving her a proper examination. So . . . I just took her temperature, pulse and all that. She’s O.K. I told her so, and she eased up a bit.” Herman grinned and then drained his glass. “As a matter of fact I think she was afraid of me as a doctor—not as my charming self—and that if I gave her a thorough examination I might tell her something she didn’t want to know.”

  “Such as?”

  “That she was just convincing herself that she was pregnant when in fact she wasn’t.”

  “But that would be ridiculous. She missed three periods.”

  “Ach! What’s that? A woman can go off for months but she doesn’t have to be pregnant. At this stage only a proper examination and a urine test could tell. She could just be anaemic.”