The Man from the 'Turkish Slave' Page 5

  They went down the stairway towards Quisto’s study. At each turn of the stair there were marble statuettes and it was not unexpected or disconcerting that a briar pipe had been stuck into the mouth of a Hermes and a wreath of faded vine leaves placed on the stiff hair of Aphrodite.

  The windows of the study framed a wide view of the harbour. Over a bottle of wine Quisto went on talking. There was no mistaking the pride he took in the island and his position amongst the islanders. His great-grandfather, he told Peter, had been one of the original survivors of the wreck. The black-sheep of a wealthy and aristocratic Portuguese family, he had married and settled down in Portos Marias for good. Das Tegas had become the chief family on the island and in 1860 a das Tegas had been granted the concession to work the guano deposits of the Alvaro group. For nearly forty years the island had enjoyed great prosperity. Fishermen had built themselves fine houses. A large church had been erected and the das Tegas family had spent a small fortune on their fabulous house. But by the turn of the century the guano deposits had been exhausted and the great clouds of sea-birds from which it came had disappeared because of some change in the sea currents that had disturbed the marine life on which they fed. Portos Marias was now making a scanty living from sheep and fish, and Quisto, before he was thirty, had given the quietus to what remained of the das Tegas fortune in a European tour which, Peter realised, would have made one of his naval shore-leaves look like a dying spark against a fireworks show.

  ‘Everything changes,’ said Quisto, for a moment sadened. Then, brightening, ‘But, maybe, one day the Good Lord will send back the sea-birds in their thousands and we shall have guano again…’

  Outside it grew darker. The house woke to a tumult of voices and activity, but Quisto ignored the outside world, although guests were obviously arriving. It was over an hour before Quisto gathered Peter up and ushered him into the large salon where they were met with a roar of welcome and the warm smell of food, of oil and spices, of broiling meats and fish.

  A glass of aperitif that tasted of apricots was thrust into Peter’s hand and Quisto hurried him through a confusion of introductions. Some of the people spoke English and some not, but it made little difference, for Peter was given no chance to speak much. Children gathered around his legs and were shooed away like chickens by Quisto. He knew already that Quisto’s wife had died about eight years previously and that the house was lived in by married sons and daughters and their children. As he went round he began to suspect that not even Quisto knew who they all were.

  A boy of twelve sat in a corner, amusing two small girls by firing tiny pebbles from a catapult at a chandelier above the stairs.

  ‘Luiz—or is it Pedro!’ roared Quisto, and he caught the boy a good-natured but hearty cuff which sprawled him in a corner. ‘ It is the chandelier my grandfather brought all the way from Venice! Venice, 1887! Ah, the tales he used to tell us as boys! Olé! The dark nights with the gondoliers singing and a woman’s waist as snug inside a man’s arms as a pecan nut in its husk…’ Eyes, arms and hands moved and Peter could see it all, the gondola nosing along the dark canal, the languid droop of a woman’s arm over the side.

  Peter gave up trying to sort people out. He contented himself to follow Quisto, to smile and to shake hands.

  In the end Quisto, his red face beaming, turned to him and said, ‘And now, senhor, you have met them all. Here, under my roof, the cream of Portos Marias, the men of wealth and the men of intelligence.’ Then, suddenly looking over Peter’s shoulder, his face lit up, creasing into a great smile of delight and he lifted an arm and gave a shout that filled the long salon.

  Peter swung round, wondering what was happening.

  Coming down the great staircase was a girl. Her dark hair was drawn tightly back, her lips, half-parted, were like geranium petals, and her skin was warm and brown with the sun, and soft with her twenty years. She came down the stairs slowly, holding herself like a princess, enjoying the attention she was getting, and the long yellow silk dress she wore made a whispering noise as she moved.

  Peter watched her, fascinated. But it was not her beauty which held him. The girl coming down the stairs was the one who had rescued him from the sea; the only person who knew how he had come to the island.

  His first instinct was to get away, to slide off into some corner and try to pass unnoticed. But before he could do anything Quisto had grabbed him by the arm and was leading him forward to meet the girl.

  ‘Tereza,’ he shouted, ‘I did not know you were back.’ Then, turning to Peter, he went on, ‘Senhor Peter Landers, allow me to introduce my eldest unmarried daughter, Tereza Maria das Tegas.’

  Full of apprehension, Peter held out his hand, felt hers touch it for a moment and then, as his head came up from the slight bow, he saw her eyes on him. She gave him a slow smile of recognition. In a moment, Peter knew, she was going to say something, something that would put him properly in trouble. Quisto, unknowingly, saved him.

  ‘Senhor Landers came on the boat to-day. He is to be with us for a fortnight.’

  There was a little pause. The smile was gone from Tereza’s face. Her eyes on Peter were wide.

  ‘Welcome to our house and to Portos Marias, senhor.’

  ‘Thank you, senhorita…’ The words almost choked Peter. He could feel his face flushing and an agony inside him that made him want to grab her and rush her outside, to make her swear not to give him away.

  But he was given no chance to speak to her. With a laugh which he felt was touched with the triumph she felt at having him at her mercy, she moved away from him, swinging out the folds of her yellow dress for one of her sisters to admire, and then Peter’s ears were full of the hearty voice of Quisto announcing dinner.

  Chapter Four

  At dinner Peter was seated on Quisto’s right hand. Tereza was some little way below him. The table stretched away as long as a railway platform.

  A servant brought in an enormous platter on which was stretched a fish about three feet long. A sigh of contented anticipation rose from the table. It was a noble fish, flanked with half-circles of lemons, a red studding of radishes and pimento, and piped in an intricate pattern with a thick yellow sauce.

  Quisto rose to his feet. There was a silence.

  ‘Friends, my family, to-night, in honour of Senhor Landers, I shall say grace in English. The good Lord, being multilingual Himself, will forgive me taking pride in a language which is not my own.’ He paused and glanced sternly down the table. ‘Pedro—or is it Luiz?—put that catapult away or I shall kick you out of the room!’ He closed his eyes and went on reverently: ‘God the Father, Holy Mother Mary the Virgin, and sweet Jesus the Son: we, too, are a family and with many friends, and we thank Thee for the strength to find and the health to enjoy our food, and for the food itself.’ He opened one eye, looked at Peter and then nodded towards the platter, saying in an aside, ‘ It is a magnificent atum, a kind of tuna, weighing well over twenty-five kilos.’ His eyes closed and he went on: ‘We thank Thee for this and for the wine we drink, though it is a little fiery from early gathering …’

  Peter sat there, only half listening to him, for his mind was racing with thoughts. He had no idea what the girl was going to do. She might be waiting for some appropriate moment to embarrass him before all the table. To her it might seem a joke … But Quisto had said that anybody who was anybody on the island was here to-night. How could he know how many people were involved in this affair? Once it was clear that he had not come on the fortnightly boat, that he had been dragged ashore from the sea, it would not take an intelligent man long to wonder whether he was the officer who had been lost from the Turkish Slave. The fishermen alongside and anyone they worked with would all be aware of that incident. If only he had been able to give her a word of warning before dinner … He sat there, thinking of the Santos steamer, now well on its way to the mainland, and he wished he were safely aboard it.

  Quisto’s voice, deep and reverent, boomed out the end of the Grace.
‘For all this we thank Thee. But, oh Lord, before I finish, let me ask again without smallness of spirit and in pure enquiry, why didst Thou take away the good guano and allow Thy fields to be polluted with chemical fertilisers?’

  Peter, remembering their talk in the study, had to smile despite his own trouble.

  ‘Amen!’ The word rose in a great shout from the table and the feast was on.

  Peter ate, but without any appetite.

  Some way down the table a man leaned forward and spoke to him. He was tall, gaunt-looking, his face a pale parchment colour and the lips pinched in as though he were permanently about to whistle. In stilted English he said, ‘You are confused still, senhor, with this house? One should visit it only in the morning. With the rising of the sun, the childs, the men scatter like birds to their business. The night-time it is roosting and bedlam. Soon,’ a thin sigh whistled between his lips, ‘I, too, shall be free to travel on the Bolivar. You like her?’

  Peter was caught. He had no idea what the man was talking about. He saw that the girl, who was sitting close to the man, was watching him and he knew she was waiting for him to speak. He had the feeling, too, that she was enjoying his difficulty.

  ‘Yes, I like her,’ he said desperately.

  Tereza laughed and her voice came across to him. ‘But she is an old boat. It is time they had a new steamer on the island run.’

  And he knew she was telling him that he did not even know the name of the boat on which he was supposed to have come to the island. He cursed himself for not being quicker. He was going to have to do better than this if he wished to survive the dinner.

  A voice on his right enquired in an American accent, ‘Are you wondering what he means about “free to travel”?’

  ‘Well, yes …’ Peter turned to the man. He remembered him now, though his name escaped him. When Quisto had introduced them the man had been sitting on the floor with three children squatting in front of him. He had been manipulating three thimbles and a pea—a game which Peter had last seen at Bodmin races—and the children, when his hands ceased their wizardry, were betting nuts against which thimble covered the pea. When they lost, he had collected his gains soberly.

  ‘He’s Doctor Kurt Jaeger,’ the man’s voice was quiet with a hint of tiredness in it, ‘and he was exiled to this place three years ago for some political trouble in Brazil. He’s due for release in a few months.’ The American smiled. He was a man in his fifties, loose-knit, his face as bumpy and rough as a field full of molehills. Grey-haired with straggly, tufty eyebrows, he had a way of cocking his head sideways rather like a bird warily keeping one eye on heaven and the other on earth. ‘ Don’t remember my name, do you, son? Don’t blame you. Never remember names myself. Lesset. Samuel Lesset.’ A hand stained with some green chemical came up and touched the red bow tie which was a splash of colour against his dark suit.

  For a time Lesset went on chatting in an easy, amiable way, and mostly about himself. He was a marine biologist, working for an American Food Corporation that was interested in the possibilities of plankton as food. He lived in a converted naval block-house at the top of the town and invited Peter to come and see his aquaria.

  ‘Quisto tells me you had trouble with the Santos police?’

  ‘It was only a dockside fight.’

  ‘Sure. But you did well to clear out. Never stop to argue with a Brazilian gendarme.’ He laughed and patted Peter on the arm. His hand fell heavily on the bandaged knife wound and Peter flinched.

  ‘Say, you hurt there?’

  ‘It’s nothing…’ As he spoke Peter could see that the girl was listening to them, her dark eyes on him. ‘Just a scratch I got in the fight.’

  ‘Ha, a fight!’ called Quisto. ‘It must have been a good fight. When our friend came ashore here, he looked as though he had been fighting for a week … And his clothes! They were in tatters and looked as though he might have swum here.’

  Peter went cold inside. Then he saw Tereza looking at him; her face was frank, wide-eyed with a simple curiosity. As she spoke there was a hint of mockery in her voice meant only for him.

  ‘And did you swim here, senhor?’

  A servant was pouring wine into his glass. Everyone at the table seemed to be waiting for him. Then, out of his confusion, the dour, obstinate pugnacity of his Cornish spirit came to his rescue. He wasn’t going to be kicked around, sported with and made to sit on tenterhooks. If she was going to show him up, she could do it—or shut up.

  ‘I fell into the harbour,’ he said bluntly. ‘Over the side of the dock during the fight. I didn’t stop to change my clothes before I caught the boat.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘You don’t have time to change when you’re being chased.’

  ‘Of course’—she said it demurely, understandingly, and at once seemed to forget him as she turned to talk to Doctor Jaeger. Lesset’s voice came to him, ‘She’s a lovely girl, isn’t she? A chip off the old block, too.’

  Quisto was carving a great joint of meat. An enormous helping was placed before Peter, but his appetite had gone completely. As he sat there, thinking longingly of the Bolivar now so far away, he was aware that a pair of pale, china-blue eyes, vaguely hostile, were staring at him. They belonged to a man, short, plumpish, and middle-aged, who wore a tight blue pea-jacket. His reddish hair was close-cropped. Out of the whirl of introductions Peter remembered him … a retired Brazilian naval officer called Capitão Guarani. He knew, too, why he remembered him, for of all the people present this man had been less friendly than the others.

  ‘You were on the fortnightly boat to-day, senhor?’ The words came in short, asthmatical barks.

  Tereza’s eyes were on Peter, but without hesitation he said, ‘Yes. I was on it.’

  ‘So was I. Didn’t see you.’

  Not liking the man, Peter found it easier to answer him.

  ‘I was below most of the time.’

  If the girl was going to say something, he felt, this was the time for her to say it. In a way he wished she would and get the agony over for him. She said nothing.

  Before Captain Guarani could question him further, a man on Quisto’s left leaned across and said something in Portuguese to Peter. He was a bland, prosperous-looking penguin of a man in a black suit and white shirt front. Peter shook his head, not understanding the rapid Portuguese. He was all right only so long as people kept it simple and slow.

  Quisto saw he had not understood and translated.

  ‘My friend, Nimo Dinez here, has a son in the merchant service. He wants to know the name of your boat—the one you left at Santos?’

  Would it never end, thought Peter? Momentarily the name of any boat except the Turkish Slave was gone from him.

  ‘You did leave a boat at Santos, did you not, Senhor Landers?’

  It was Tereza, the tiny, mocking smile about her lips again.

  ‘Of course I did, senhorita.’ The whole thing was between them and he could see that she was taking it as a game. He went on, going back in his memory to a pre-war voyage, ‘ It was the Vanguard. But I never want to ship on her again. She was dirty, slow and the food was bad.’ He was hoping that no one knew anything about shipping, for the Vanguard had done a Tilbury-Oslo run and her keel had never been wetted by the South Atlantic.

  Quisto interpreted for Nimo Dinez, who nodded his head, satisfied. Quisto waved a fork at Nimo and boomed at Peter, ‘Nimo’s the richest fisherman on the island. He owns three boats, and a piano—and has the devil’s own luck.’

  Nimo bobbed his head and rubbed his beaky nose with a horny hand. He chuckled, as though he had understood every word.

  ‘Piano,’ he said proudly, and made the motions of playing.

  ‘He’s a liar,’ said Quisto happily. ‘ He can’t play a note. His wife polishes it and he looks at it. Ah, but it is a magnificent possession.’

  But Peter was less interested in the piano than the fact that Nimo Dinez was the owner of fishing-boats.

  He glanced at him, wondering whether this
was a man who would leave someone to drown, and then he looked around the table at the others. The guests were clear to him now, though the family was still confusing, except for Tereza, Pedro-or-Luiz, and another son, José, a youth of eighteen, black-haired, broad-shouldered and very like Quisto. Doctor Jaeger, Captain Guarani, Nimo Dinez and Samuel Lesset… Were any of them the kind of men who would leave another to die? How could you tell what a man was capable of doing by just looking at him? If he survived this party and was left free to go on with his search for information, he could see that it was not going to be easy. He had to suspect everyone. For Peter it was a new and uncomfortable way of looking at his fellowmen … Even Quisto might be concerned in this affair.

  After what seemed an age, the dinner was over. Peter’s first concern was to get to Tereza. But this he was unable to do immediately. He had to go out on to the long veranda overlooking the stone-walled terraces of the garden and sit there drinking coffee and smoking with the men.

  After a time he drifted away and stood looking down towards Portos Marias. There were a few lights showing and he could see their reflection in the great dark pool of the harbour. He moved on, round the corner of the balcony and found what he was looking for. Tereza was standing at the bottom of a short flight of steps.

  As he came down to her she laughed.

  ‘Did you enjoy your dinner, Senhor Landers?’

  ‘You know I didn’t. I thought any moment you were going to give me away.’

  ‘I meant to do that. But you looked so solemn, so worried …’ She swung round, making her skirt flare out and moved a few steps into the garden. Over her shoulder she said provocatively, ‘You like my dress? But it would be better if I had nylon stockings to wear with it.’ For a moment there was a flash of bare brown leg and the glint of an embroidered slipper in the light from the house behind them. ‘However, I shall have them very soon. To-day I saved a man’s life and he gave me twenty dollars to spend on stockings.’