Sleeping Tiger (15 page)

Selina said, plaintively, “But I didn't have
anything
to wear.”

“So you took your revenge on my best pants.”

“It wasn't revenge.”

“Just because you can't take a joke against yourself.”

“Well, you don't seem to be taking this one very well.”

“This is different.”

“How different?”

He glared at her, but already he realised that his initial rage was wearing thin, and the humour of the situation was getting the better of him. Also, there was a gleam in Selina's eye which suggested an entirely unsuspected side to her character. He said, “I never thought you'd have the guts to stand up for yourself.”

“Is that why you're angry…?”

“No, of course it isn't. I'm glad you've got guts. And anyway,” he added, remembering delightedly that he could cap the dirty trick she had played on him. “I have something to give you.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” He had thrown the parcel down with his cap and now went to retrieve it. “I bought you a present in San Antonio. I hope you like it.”

She looked at the tiny package doubtfully. “It couldn't be anything to wear…”

“Open it and see,” said George, picking up his drink again.

She did, meticulously untying the knots in the string. The paper fell away, and she held up the two halves of the minute pink gingham bikini he had bought her.

He said, very seriously, “You seemed so upset this morning, about having nothing to wear. I do hope the colour will suit you.”

Selina could think of nothing to say. The bikini seemed to her to be both suggestive and shocking. That she had been given it by George Dyer made the situation too embarrassing for words. He surely wouldn't imagine that she could ever put it on?

Blushing, not looking at him, she managed to say, “Thank you.”

He began to laugh. She glanced up, frowning, and he said, quiet gently, “Did nobody ever tease you before?”

Selina felt a fool. She shook her head.

“Not even Nanny?” He put on a ridiculous voice, and at once it was not embarrassing any longer, but funny.

“Oh, be quiet about Nanny,” said Selina, but his amusement was as catching as the measles, and he said, “Don't try to stop smiling. You should smile all the time. You're really very pretty when you smile.”

9

At half past seven the next morning, George Dyer opened his door to Juanita, and found her, as usual, sitting on the wall with her hands in her lap and a basket at her feet. The basket was covered with a clean white cloth, and Juanita beamed self-consciously as she picked it up and came into the house.

George said, “Now what have you got in there, Juanita?”

“It is a present for the Señorita. Some oranges from the tree of Pepe, Maria's husband.”

“Did Maria send them?”

“
Sí,
Señor.”

“That was kind.”

“The Señorita is still asleep?”

“I think so. I haven't been to look.”

While Juanita was drawing water to make his coffee, he opened the shutters and let the morning into the house. He went out on to the terrace and the stone floor was cool beneath his feet.
Eclipse
lay quietly, her crosstrees white against the pines of the far shore. He decided that perhaps, to-day, he would take out the new propeller. Otherwise there was nothing that he had to do. The day stretched ahead of him, blissfully empty, to use as he chose. He looked up, and thought that the sky looked good. There was a certain amount of cloud inland, beyond San Estaban, but rain always gathered around the high peaks of the mountains, and out to sea it was clear and cloudless.

The clangour of the bucket as it went down the well had wakened Selina, and presently she joined George, wearing the shirt she had borrowed last night, and apparently not much else. Her long, slender legs were not pale any more, but tanned lightly to the colour of a fresh egg, and she had bundled up her hair into an ingenuous knot from which trailed one or two long strands. She came to lean over the terrace wall beside him, and he saw the thin gold chain which she wore around her neck and which doubtless supported a childhood locket, or a gold Confirmation cross. He had always disliked the word innocence, associating it as he did, with fat, pink babies and shiny postcards of winsome kittens; but now, unbidden, it sprang to his mind, as clear and unmistakable as the chime of a bell.

She was watching Pearl, who performed her morning ablutions in a small patch of sun on the slipway below them. Every now and then a fish would dart in the shallows, and Pearl would stop washing herself and freeze to stillness, back leg erect as a lamp-post, only to return to the business in hand.

Selina said, “The day Tomeu brought us to the Casa Barco, there were two fishermen down there, cleaning fish, and Tomeu talked to them.”

“That was Rafael, Tomeu's cousin. He keeps his boat in the pen next to mine.”

“Are all the village related to each other?”

“More or less. Juanita has brought you a present.”

She turned to look at him, her escaping strands of hair hanging down like tassels. “She has? What is it?”

“Go and see.”

“I already said good morning to her, but she didn't say anything about a present.”

“That's because she doesn't speak English. Go on in, she's longing to give it to you.”

Selina disappeared into the house. A strange exchange of conversation could be overheard, and presently she reappeared, carrying the basket with the cloth off the top.

“Oranges.”

“Las naranjas,”
said George.

“Is that what they're called? I think she said they were from Maria.”

“Maria's husband grew them himself.”

“Wasn't that kind?”

“You'll have to go up and thank her.”

“I can't do anything unless I learn to speak Spanish. How long did you take to learn?”

He shrugged. “Four months. Living here. I didn't speak a word before that.”

“But French.”

“Oh, yes, French. And a little Italian. Italian is a great help.”

“I must try to learn just a few words.”

“I have a grammar I'll lend you, and then you can mug up some verbs as well.”

“I know
Buenos días
is good morning…”

“And
Buenas tardes
is good afternoon, and
Buenas noches
is good night.”

“And
Sí.
I know that.
Sí
is yes.”

“And
No
is no, which is a much more important word for a young girl to learn.”

“Even I, with my pin-brain, can remember that one.”

“Oh, I wouldn't be too sure.”

Juanita came out with the breakfast tray and began to lay the cups and plates and the coffee things out on the table. George spoke to her, telling her that the Señorita had been made very happy by Maria's gift, she would doubtless be going up to the village later on in the day, in order to thank Maria personally. Juanita beamed more widely than ever, and tossed her head, and carried the tray back to the kitchen. Selina picked up an
ensamada
and said, “What are these?”

He told her. “They are made each morning by the baker in San Estaban, and Juanita buys them for me and brings them, fresh, for my breakfast.”

“Ensamadas.”
She took a mouthful off the end of one, and soft, flaky bread and sugar encrusted her mouth. “Does Juanita work for anybody else, or just for you?”

“She works for her husband and her children. In the fields and in the house. She has never done anything but work, all her life. Work and get married and go to church and have babies.”

“She seems so content, doesn't she? Always smiling.”

“She has the shortest legs in the world. Have you noticed?”

“But having short legs has nothing to do with being content.”

“No, but it makes her one of the few women in the world who can scrub a floor without kneeling down.”

When breakfast was over and before it got too warm, they walked up to the village to do the marketing. Selina wore George's shrunken navy-blue trousers and the espadrilles she had bought in Maria's the day before, and George carried the baskets, and as they walked he taught her to say
“Muchas gracias para las naranjas.”

They went into Maria's shop, through the front section, where the straw hats were piled, and the sun oil and the camera films and the bathing-towels, and into the high, dark room at the back. Here, in the cool, were barrels of wine and bins of sweet-smelling fruit and vegetables, and loaves of bread as long as your arm. Maria, and her husband Pepe, and Tomeu, were all busy serving, and there was a small gathering of waiting customers; but when George and Selina came in, they all stopped talking and looked around, and George gave Selina a prompting dig, and she said, “Maria,
muchas gracias para las naranjas,
” and there was much gap-toothed laughter, and back-slapping as though she had done something enormously clever.

Their baskets were filled with groceries and wine-bottles and bread and fruit, and left for Tomeu to deliver at the Casa Barco on his bicycle. George accepted the glass of brandy offered him by Pepe, and then he and Selina walked over to the Cala Fuerte Hotel to see Rudolfo. They sat at the bar and Rudolfo gave them coffee, and was told that a cable had been sent to England for the money and that very soon, in days, they would be able to repay him, but Rudolfo only laughed and said he did not care how long he had to wait, and George had another brandy and then they said good-bye and walked home again.

Back at the Casa Barco, George dug out the Spanish grammar which had eased him through the intricacies of learning a new language, and gave it to Selina.

She said, “I'm going to start right away.”

“Well, before you do, I'm going out to
Eclipse.
Do you want to come too?”

“Are you going to take her for a sail?”

“Take her for a sail? This isn't Frinton, you know.” He put on a comic Cockney voice. “Once round the island, arf a crown.”

“I just thought you might be going out in her,” said Selina, mildly.

“Well, I'm not.” He relented. “But I have to take that new propeller out some time, and it might as well be to-day. You could swim if you wanted, but I warn you the water'll be frigid.”

“Can I bring the grammar book with me?”

“Bring anything you like. We could take a picnic.”

“A picnic!”

“Juanita'll put some food in a basket, I'm sure. It wouldn't exactly be a Fortnum and Mason hamper…”

“Oh, do ask her. Then we wouldn't have to come back for lunch.”

Half an hour later they piled into the dinghy. Selina sat in the stern, with the box containing the propeller between her knees. She had the grammar book, and a dictionary, and a towel in case she wanted to bathe. The picnic basket lay in the bottom of the boat at George's feet, and George rowed. As they moved away from the slipway, Juanita hung over the terrace and waved a duster, as though she were saying good-bye for ever, and Pearl walked backwards and forwards along the edge of the water mewing plaintively because she had wanted to come too.

“Why can't we take her?” Selina wanted to know.

“She'd hate it once she got there. Too much water gives her traumas.”

Selina trailed her hand and gazed down at the depths of waving green weed. “It's like grass, isn't it? Or a forest in the wind.” The water was very cold. She withdrew her hand, and turned back to look at the Casa Barco, fascinated by this novel view of it. “It's quite a different shape from all the other houses.”

“It was a boat-house.
Barco
is boat.”

“Was it a boat-house when you came to live here?”

George rested on his oars. “For the Organising Secretary of the George Dyer Fan Club, you seem to have read my book with remarkably little attention. Or did you read it at all?”

“Yes, I did read it, but I was only looking for things about
you,
because I thought you might be my father. And, of course, there was really nothing about you. It was all about the village and the harbour and
Eclipse
and everything.”

George began to row again. “The first time I ever saw Cala Fuerte was from the sea. I'd come from Marseilles, single-handed, because I couldn't pick up a crew, and I had the devil's own job finding the place. I brought
Eclipse
in under power, and I anchored, not a few feet from where she's lying now.”

“Did you think then that you'd stay here, and live here, and make it your home?”

“I don't know what I thought. I was too tired to think. But I remember how good the pines smelt in the early morning.”

They moved in under
Eclipse
's hull, and George stood up and took hold of the guardrail and, holding the painter, climbed up on to the stern deck and made the dinghy fast, and then returned to help Selina unload. She handed up her towel and her book and the picnic basket and then scrambled up herself while George returned to the dinghy to deal with the heavy box containing the propeller.

The tarpaulin cockpit cover was still draped over the coach roof as George had left it, and bone-dry again after its soaking. Selina stepped down into the cockpit and put the picnic basket down on to one of the seats, and looked about her with the confused admiration of one who has never been in a small boat in her life.

She said, “She seems terribly small.”

“What did you expect? The
Queen Mary?”
George dumped the propeller onto the floor of the cockpit, and squatted to shove it, out of harm's way, under one of the slatted seats.

“No, of course not.”

He stood up. “Come along; I'll show you around.”