Sleeping Tiger (19 page)

“I'm too drunk to bait.”

“Let's go home.”

He drove back, still whistling that damned tune. When they got to the Casa Barco and George killed the engine and got out of the car, Frances got out too. As though it had been planned, she came in with him, and the house was cool and dark, but he turned on the lights and went, automatically, to pour himself a drink, because without a drink he would die, or go to sleep and burst into tears, and he was damned if he would do any of these things with Frances watching him.

She flopped, entirely at home, on to his sofa, her feet on one arm, and her curly head propped up by a sky-blue cushion. He fumbled his way through pouring a couple of drinks, dropped the opener and spilt the ice, and Frances said, “That's the hell of a tune you're whistling. Don't you know any other?”

“I don't even know what it is.”

“Well, stop anyway.”

His head was thumping, there seemed to be pools of water and melting ice everywhere and he couldn't find anything with which to wipe it all up. He picked up the drinks, and took them over to where Frances lay, and she took hers, but all the time her eyes were on his face, and he sat on the hearth with his back to the empty fireplace, and his own drink cradled between his hands.

She said, untroubled, “You know, darling, you're mad at me.”

“I am?”

“Sure you are.”

“Why?”

“Because I got rid of your little girl-friend. And because you know in your heart of hearts, you should have done that for yourself. And right away.”

“I couldn't buy an air ticket without any money.”

“That, if you don't mind my saying so, is the feeblest excuse any man gave to himself.”

He looked down at his drink. “Yes,” he said at last. “Maybe it is.”

The tune went on and on in the back of his mind. After a little, Frances said, “When you went off to find Pepe and that child was getting ready to go, I had a little mosey round your desk. You don't seem to be exactly productive.”

“I'm not. I haven't written a word.”

“Have you replied to dear Mr. Rutland?”

“No. I haven't done that either. But,” he added with a touch of malice, “I've consulted a specialist and been told I'm suffering from writer's block.”

“Well,” said Frances, with some satisfaction, “at least that's a flash of your ornery self. And if you take your kid gloves off, then I can too. You see, darling, I don't think you're ever going to write that second book.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Just you. The way you are. Writing's hard labour, and you're one of those classic, no-good, expatriate Englishmen who do nothing more gracefully than any race alive.” He acknowledged this with a spontaneous gleam of amusement, and Frances sat up, encouraged, because she had not lost her gift for making him laugh. “George, if you don't want to go to Malagar, if you don't enjoy the bull-fighting, then I don't want to go either. But why don't we get away together? We could take
Eclipse
to Sardinia, or go overland to Australia, or … ride a camel through the Gobi desert…”

“Bags on the front hump.”

“You're turning everything into a joke again. I'm serious. We're free and we have all the time in the world. Why flog yourself to bits over a typewriter? Is there anything left, in the world, that you can write about really well?”

“Frances, I don't know.”

She fell back on to the cushion. She had finished her drink, and dropped the empty glass down on the floor beside her. She was sprawled, seductive, raffish, frighteningly familiar. She said, “I love you. You must know that.”

There seemed no reason not to make love to her. He set down his glass, and went to sit beside her, to pull her into his arms, and kiss her as though he wanted to drown himself. She made small, pleasurable noises, and writhed her hands in his hair, and he took his mouth from hers and rubbed his cheek down the sharp angle of her jaw, and could feel the roughness of his beard scraping her skin, and she buried her face in his shoulder and her strong arms were like a vice about his neck.

She said, “Do you love me?” but he could not answer, so she said instead, “Do you like me? Do you want me?”

He took her arms from his neck, and pulled himself free, and was left sitting, holding her forearms as though they had been fighting.

She began to laugh. Her resilience and her good-humour were two of the good things that he had always liked about her. She said, “Why, I believe you're punch drink.”

He got up and went to find some cigarettes, and behind him Frances pulled herself off the sofa, and ran her fingers through her hair. She said, “I must patch myself up before I go back to Rudolfo. He's old-fashioned, you know, about so many things. Mind if I used your bedroom?”

“Go ahead,” said George, and switched on the upstairs light for her.

She ran up the steps, the heels of her sandals slapping on the wooden treads. She was singing the song that had been tormenting him all evening, and still it did not have any words, and then, as though someone had switched off a radio, the teasing tune was stopped, and Frances was silent. The silence caught at George, as surely as though she had suddenly screamed. He stopped prowling, and pricked up his ears like a suspicious dog.

Presently, Frances came down the steps again, with an expression on her face that he could not begin to decipher. He said stupidly, “What's up? No comb?”

“I don't know,” said Frances. “I didn't look. I didn't look farther than the bed…”

“The bed?” He was completely mystified.

“It couldn't be a joke? Not another example of that peerless British sense of humour?”

He realised then, to his horror, that she was really angry. Beneath the careful control of her voice was the tremor of an incipient explosion.

“Frances, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“The girl. Your daughter. Selina. Whatever you like to call her. You know where she is? Not in London. Not even at the airport at San Antonio. She's up there…” She pointed a shaking finger and her control, like an overstretched rubber band, suddenly cracked.
“In your bed!”

“I don't believe it.”

“Well, go and take a look.
Go on up and take a look.”
He did not move. “I don't know what's going on here, George, but I didn't hand over a considerable amount of pesetas just to find that little tramp back in your bed again…”

“She isn't a tramp.”

“… and if you're going to try and give me some sort of an explanation, it had better be good, because I'm not going to swallow a second load of hog wash about losing luggage and thinking you were her long-lost daddy.…”

“It was true.”

“True? Look, you bastard, who do you think you're kidding?” She was shouting at him now, and it was the one thing that made him mad.

“I didn't know she'd come back…”

“Well, kick her out now…”

“I'll do no such thing…”

“Right.” Frances swooped to gather up her handbag. “If you feel inclined to set up house with that mealy-mouthed little tramp, that's O.K. by me…”

“Shut up!”

“… but don't involve me in a complicated scheme to protect both your reputations, because as far as I'm concerned, they're simply not worth protecting.” She made for the door and flung it wide, turning back to deliver a final broadside, as she did so, but the effect was slightly spoiled by the entrance of Pearl, erect and dignified. She had been outside the door waiting for someone to let her in, and when Frances did just this thing, entered with a faint mew of appreciation and thanks.

“You'd better go,” George said, as calmly as he could, and Frances said, “Don't bother; I've gone!” and pausing only to give Pearl a vicious kick in passing, she was out of the door, and slamming it so hard behind her that the whole house shook.

In a moment the quiet night was torn asunder by the sound of the Citröen being brutally started and driven up the hill in bottom gear at a speed that set George's teeth on edge.

He stooped to pick up Pearl. Her feelings were hurt, but there was no further damage, and he sat her gently on her favourite cushion on the sofa. A slight movement above him made him look up. Selina was standing, her hands on the rail of the gallery, watching him. She was wearing a white nightgown with blue ribbons framing the neck, and she said, anxiously, “Is Pearl all right?”

“Yes, she's all right. What are you doing here?”

“I was in bed. Asleep.”

“You're not asleep now. Get something on and come on down.”

A moment later she descended from the gallery, bare-foot, but tying the ribbons of a ridiculous white silk negligee that matched the nightgown.

He frowned and said, “Where did you get those?”

Selina came across the floor towards him. “My suitcase had come. From Madrid.” She smiled, as though he should be pleased, and he was forced to resort to sarcasm.

“So you did get as far as the airport?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And what happened this time? The flight was cancelled? There wasn't any room on the plane? Pepe had a puncture?”

“No, none of those things.” Her eyes were so wide that the blues were entirely ringed with white. “I lost my passport.”

“You
what
?” To his annoyance it came out as an incredulous yelp.

“Yes, it was most extraordinary. You know you asked me, before I left, if I had my passport. Well, it was in my bag then, and I don't remember opening it again, but when I got to the airport and I was buying my ticket and everything, I opened my bag. And it had gone.”

She looked at him to gauge his reaction to this piece of information. George's reaction was to lean against the back of his sofa and maintain a monumental calm.

“I see. So what did you do then?”

“Well, I told the Guardia Civil, of course.”

“And what did the Guardia Civil have to say?”

“Oh, he was most kind and understanding. And after a little, I thought I'd better just come back here and wait until they found it.”

“Who's they?”

“The Guardia Civil.”

There was a small silence, while they watched each other. Then George said, “Selina.”

“Yes?”

“Do you know what the Guardia Civil do to people who lose their passports? They throw them into jail. They intern them as political prisoners. They let them rot in dungeons until the passports get found again.”

“Well, they didn't do that to me.”

“You're lying, aren't you? Where did you put that passport of yours?”

“I don't know. I lost it.”

“Did you leave it in Pepe's car?”

“I tell you, it's lost.”

“Look, Junior, in Spain passports aren't things you play games with.”

“I'm not playing games.”

“Did you tell Pepe about the passport?”

“I can't speak Spanish, how could I tell him?”

“You just got him to bring you back?”

She looked disconcerted, but only said, bravely, “Yes.”

“When did you get here?”

“About eleven.”

“Did we wake you up when we got in?” She nodded. “Then you heard most of our conversation?”

“Well, I did try to put my head under the blankets, but Mrs. Dongen has a very carrying voice. I'm sorry she doesn't like me.” There was no comment to be made on this, and she went on, in social tones that would have done credit to her grandmother, “Are you going to marry her?”

“Do you know something? You make me ill.”

“Is she married?”

“Not anymore.”

“What happened to her husband?”

“I don't know … how should I know? Maybe he's dead.”

“Did she kill him?”

His hands seemed, suddenly, to have taken on an independent personality of their own. They itched with the desire to take Selina and shake her till her teeth rattled, to box her ears, and slap that smug expression off her face. George slid his hands into his pockets, and balled his fists against these purely primitive instincts, but Selina seemed innocent of the turmoil that was going on within him.

“I suppose it was rather annoying for her, finding me here, but she wouldn't stay and listen to any explanations. She just kicked poor Pearl.… It would have been much more fair if she'd kicked me.” She looked George straight in the eye and he was shattered by her nerve. “She must know you very well. To talk to you like that, I mean. Like the way she did to-night. She wanted you to make love to her.”

“You're asking for trouble, Selina.”

“And she seems to think that you'll never write another book.”

“She may not be wrong at that.”

“Aren't you even going to try?”

George said, slowly, “You mind your own bloody business,” but even this did not deter her.

“It seems to me that you're afraid of failing before you've even made a start. Mrs. Dongen was right; you've been cast in a classic mould, one of those no-good expatriate Englishmen” (here Selina gave a startling imitation of Frances's drawl) “who do nothing so gracefully. I suppose it would be a pity to spoil the image. And after all, what does it matter? You don't need to write. It isn't your living. And as for Mr. Rutland, what is a broken promise? It doesn't count for anything. You can break your word to him just as easily as you broke it to the girl you were going to marry.”

Before he could think, or control himself, George's right hand had escaped from the prison of his pocket and he had slapped her face. The sound of the blow was as loud a crack as the explosion of a bursting paper bag. The ensuing silence was painful to a degree. Selina stared, incredulous but curiously unresentful while George rubbed his stinging palm against his side. He remembered that he had never got those cigarettes. He went to find them now, to take one out and light it, and he was horrified to see how his hands were shaking. When at last he turned around, he realised, to his horror, that she was trying not to cry. The thought of tears, and the subsequent recriminations and apologies, was almost more than he could bear. Besides, it was too late to start apologising. He said, impatiently, but not unkindly, “Oh, go on, buzz off!” and when she turned and fled, in a flurry of long bare legs and white silk, back up to his bed he called after her, “And don't slam the door,” but the joke was a sour one, and fell as flat as it deserved.