Sleeping Tiger (20 page)

11

It was late when he woke. He knew by the angle of the sunshine, by the reflected water-shadows on the ceiling, by the gentle sounds of sweeping which indicated that Juanita was cleaning the terrace. Instinctively tensed against the hangover which he knew was going to hit him, George reached for his watch, and saw that it was half past ten. He had not slept so late for years.

He moved his head carefully from side to side, waiting for the first stab of his well-deserved agony. Nothing happened. Pushing his luck, he tried rolling his eyes and the sensation was in no way painful. He turned aside the red-and-white blanket, and cautiously sat up. It was a miracle. He felt quite normal; better than normal, bright and alert and full of energy.

Gathering up his clothes, he went to shower and shave. As he scraped away at his face, the tune of last night came back to him, but this time it had words, and he realised, too late by now, why Frances had been so annoyed with him for whistling it.

I've grown accustomed to her face.

She almost makes the day begin.

Well,
he asked his sheepish reflection,
and how corny can you get?
But when he had dressed, he went and dug out his old record-player, and rubbed the dust from the Frank Sinatra disc, and put it on.

Juanita had finished scrubbing the terrace, and now, hearing the music, she laid down her brushes and came in, her wet brown feet leaving marks on the tiled floor.

“Señor,” she said.

“Juanita!
Buenos días.”

“The Señor has slept well?”

“Too well, perhaps.”

I've grown accustomed to the tune

She whistles night and noon.

“Where is the Señorita?”

“She has gone out to the Señor's boat, to swim.”

“How did she get there?”

“She has taken the little boat.”

He raised his brows in mild surprise. “Well, good for her. Juanita, is there any coffee?”

“I will make some.”

She went to draw a bucket of water, and George realised that he felt well enough to want a cigarette. He found one, and lit it, and then said, cautiously, “Juanita?”

“
Sé,
señor.”

“An Americana stayed at the Cala Fuerte Hotel last night…”

“No, señor.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

Juanita was in the kitchen, putting on a kettle. “She did not stay, Señor. She drove back to San Antonio last night. She did not use the room at the hotel. Rosita told Tomeu and Tomeu told Maria, and…”

“I know; Maria told you.” But Juanita's news filled him with a shameful sort of relief, although the thought of Frances hurtling back to San Antonio through the night in that lethal bomb of a car, gave him the shivers. He prayed that nothing had happened, that she had not had an accident, was not, even now, trapped in some distant ditch with the car on top of her.

With the air of a man cornered on all sides by trouble, he scratched the back of his neck, then went out on to the terrace to search for his other headache. He took his binoculars and focused them on
Eclipse,
but although the dinghy bobbed peacefully at her stern, there was no sign of Selina.

It was, however, a beautiful day. Just as bright as yesterday, but cooler, with a good sea running in from the harbour mouth. The pines tossed their spicy heads in the breeze, and small waves slapped cheerfully on the slipways below him. He was filled with pleasure by every prospect. Blue sky, blue sea,
Eclipse
dipping serenely at her moorings, white terrace, red geraniums, all dearly familiar, and yet, this morning, magically fresh. Pearl was sitting on the end of the jetty, consuming a delicious morsel of fish-offal she had found; Frances was back in San Antonio, and Juanita was making him a pot of coffee. He could not remember when he had felt so well, so hopeful or so optimistic. It was as though he had been living for months in the murky gloom of a potential storm, and now the storm was over and the pressure had lifted and he could breathe freely again.

He told himself that he was a heel, that he should be grovelling in a pit of self-hate and remorse, but his sense of physical well-being was too much for his conscience. All this time he had been leaning, with his hands flat, on the wall of the terrace, and now, when he straightened and stood up, he saw that his palms were chalked with white-wash. His automatic reaction was to wipe them clean on his jeans, but all at once his attention was drawn to the convolutions of his own fingerprints, outlined in the white-wash and as delicately drawn as a microscopic chart. A chart of himself, unique to George Dyer, just as the life he had led, and the things he was doing now, were unique.

He was not especially proud of himself. He had, over the years, hurt and offended too many people, and last night, the climax of it all, did not even bear thinking about. But none of this could take away from his present elating sense of identity.

I've grown accustomed to her face.

The record ended and he went inside to turn it off. As he shut the lid of the player he said, “Juanita.”

She was spooning coffee into his jug.

“Señor?”

“Juanita, did you know that Pepe, the husband of Maria, had taken the Señorita to the airport yesterday afternoon?”

“
Sí,
Señor,” said Juanita, but she was not looking at him.

“Did he tell you that he brought the Señorita back again?”

“
Sí,
Señor. All the village knows.”

It was inevitable, and George sighed, but persevered in his interrogation.

“And did Pepe say that the Señorita had lost her passport?”

“He did not know that it was lost. Just that she did not have it.”

“But she told the Guardia Civil at the airport?”

“I do not know, Señor.” She poured boiling water into the coffee jug.

“Juanita…” When she did not turn, he laid his hand on her bare forearm, and her head swung round, and to his amazement he saw that she was laughing at him, her dark eyes bright with amusement. “Juanita … the Señorita is not my daughter.”

“No, Señor,” said Juanita, demurely.

“Don't tell me you already knew.”

“Señor,” she shrugged, “Pepe did not think that she was behaving like your daughter.”

“How was she behaving?”

“She was very unhappy, Señor.”

“Juanita, she is not my daughter, but my little cousin.”

“
Sí,
Señor.”

“Will you tell Maria? And tell Maria to tell Tomeu, and maybe Tomeu will tell Rosita and Rosita will tell Rudolfo…” They were both laughing. “I did not tell a lie, Juanita. But I did not tell the truth either.”

“The Señor does not need to worry. If she is a daughter or a cousin…” Juanita shrugged enormously as though the question were too trivial for consideration. “But to Cala Fuerte, the Señor is a friend. Nothing else matters.”

Such eloquence was foreign to Juanita, and George was so touched he could have kissed her, but he knew that this would have embarrassed them both enormously, so instead he said that he was hungry, and, feeling companionable, he joined her in the kitchen to look in the bread jar and find something that he could smother in butter and apricot jam.

As usual the bread jar was full and had been replenished on top of the old bread. He said, reproachfully, “Juanita, this is very dirty. The bread at the bottom has got a blue beard.” And to prove his point, he turned the crock upside down and emptied all the bread out on to the floor. The last mouldy crust fell out, and then the sheet of white paper with which Juanita had lined the bottom of the jar, and finally a slim, dark-blue folder.

It lay on the floor between them, and they stared at each other in question, each imagining that the other must be responsible.

“What is that thing?”

George picked it up, and turned it over in his hands. “It's a passport. A British passport.”

“But who does it belong to?”

“I think, the Señorita.”

*   *   *

The idea was to start, not at the beginning of the voyage, but in the middle—the week that
Eclipse
had slid into the harbour at Delos. And then he would go back to the beginning to show, in a series of back-flashes, how the voyage had taken shape, how it had all been planned in the first place. His typing-paper felt thick and smooth and his typewriter was running as sweetly as a well-tuned engine. Selina was still swimming, and Juanita was in her wash-house, beating hell out of George's sheets with her bar of soap, and warbling away at some local love-song, so that when the knock came at the door, he did not hear it.

It was a very discreet knock and scarcely audible above the pounding of his typewriter, and after a little the door was pushed open, and this movement caught George's eye and he looked up, his hands suspended over the typewriter keys.

The man who stood there was young, tall, and very good-looking. He wore a suit, a regular business suit, and a stiff white collar and a tie, and yet he managed to look maddeningly fresh and cool, and he said, “I am sorry to disturb you, but I got no reply to my knocking. Is this the Casa Barco?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Then you must be George Dyer.”

“Yes, I am.…” He stood up.

“My name is Rodney Ackland.” He obviously felt that the conversation should not go further without some sort of ritual recognition. He came across the room to shake George's hand. “How do you do?” George thought
Firm grip. Keen, straight eye, thoroughly reliable.
And then, as an unworthy afterthought,
Dead bore.

“I believe Selina Bruce is staying here?”

“Yes, she is.” Rodney looked around in mild question. “She's swimming just now.”

“I see. Well, in that case, perhaps I'd better give you some sort of an explanation. I'm Selina's lawyer.” George did not comment on this. “And I'm afraid that, indirectly, it was my fault that she made this trip to San Antonio in the first place. It was I who gave her your book, and she saw your photograph and became convinced that you were her father. She spoke to me about it; she told me that she wanted to come and find you, and suggested that I should accompany her, but unfortunately I was forced to make a business trip to Bournemouth to see a very important client, and when I returned to London, Selina had gone. By then she'd been away three or four days. So, of course, I caught the first available plane to San Antonio, and … well, I think I should take her back.” They eyed each other. Rodney said, “Of course, you aren't her father.”

“No, I'm not. Her father's dead.”

“There is, however, a singular resemblance. Even I can see that.”

“Gerry Dawson was a distant cousin of mine.”

“What an extraordinary coincidence!”

“Yes,” said George. “Extraordinary.”

For the first time, Rodney looked a little discomfited. “Mr. Dyer, I have no idea of the circumstances of this … rather unconventional visit of Selina's, or even how much she's told you about herself. But she's always had a great desire … an obsession, really, about her father. She was brought up by her grandmother, and her childhood was different, to put it mildly.…”

“Yes, she told me.”

“In that case, as you know the facts, I'm sure we're batting on the same side.”

“Yes, I expect we are.” He grinned and added, “Purely out of interest, however, what would your reactions have been had I really turned out to be Selina's father?”

“Well…” Caught for the moment without words, Rodney floundered. “Well, I … er…” And then he decided to turn it into a joke, and laughed gamely. “I suppose I should have caught you over the port and nuts, and asked your permission.”

“My
permission?”

“Yes. A bit late, of course, because we're already engaged. We're getting married next month.”

George said, “I beg your pardon,” and the words themselves were an indication of his state of mind. He had not used the outmoded formality for years, since the Bradderford days of polite parties and Hunt Balls, and had imagined that it was consigned to oblivion. But here it came, back again, jolted out of his subconscious by sheer shock.

“We're already engaged. You surely knew that?”

“No, I didn't know.”

“You mean Selina didn't tell you? She is an extraordinary girl.”

“Why the hell should she tell me? It's nothing to do with me if she's engaged or not.”

“No, but you'd think it would be important. The first thing she'd talk about.” George thought,
You conceited clothes-horse.
“But that's beside the point. Now that you're in the picture, I'm sure you'll realise that I should take her back to London, and as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, of course.”

Rodney eased past him and went out on to the terrace. “What a splendid view! Did you say Selina was swimming? I can't see her.”

George joined him. “No, she's, uh, out beyond the yacht. I'll fetch her for you.…” And then he remembered that he couldn't, because she had taken the dinghy. And then he remembered that he could, because he would borrow the boat of Rafael, Tomeu's cousin. “Look … can you wait here? Take a seat. Make yourself at home. I won't be long.”

“You wouldn't like me to come with you?” Rodney sounded unenthusiastic, and George said, “No, it's all right. The boat's full of fish-scales, and you'd ruin your suit.”

“Well, if you're sure…” and before George's eyes, Rodney pulled a cane chair forward into the sun, and subsided gracefully into it, the picture of the well-bred Englishman abroad.

George dragged the boat of Tomeu's cousin Rafael down the slipway and into the water, swearing with every breath. It was long and heavy and awkward to handle, and there was only one oar so he had to scull, which he did inexpertly, and this in itself was infuriating, because Rodney Ackland, with his smooth bland face and his smooth bland voice and his uncreased charcoal-grey suit was watching him from the terrace of the Casa Barco. He made his way, rocking and sweating and swearing, across the water to where
Eclipse
lay, but when he called Selina's name there was no reply.