The Youngest Sister

She didn’t know how to handle this. Compliments had come her way, but not often, and never from a man like Nicolas whose own looks were so compelling.

To her relief, he went on. ‘When you’re my size you sometimes feel like Gulliver in Lilliput...a giant in a world of mini people. My father was tall and my mother is tall for a Spanish woman. By the time I was fifteen, I was taller than everyone at Ca’n Llorenc. Teenagers are always self-conscious. For a few years I felt like a freak.’

‘Oh... so did I,’ she agreed, with deep feeling. ‘It’s all right for a boy to be tall, but for a girl it’s a pain. I used to hunch my shoulders, trying to look a bit shorter. But then I would be told off for bad deportment.’

‘Where did you go to school?’

She told him the name of her boarding school, wondering if he knew it was famous for academic excellence and the alma mater of many of Britain’s most brilliant female minds. She had been one of its failures.

‘Were you educated here?’ she asked.

‘No, I went to my father’s school in England.’ He brought the vehicle to a halt, giving way to a large flock of sheep coming in the opposite direction.

As they streamed by on both sides of the Range Rover Nicolas leaned out of the window and called a greeting to the shepherd. When only the back of his head and a quarter of his face could be seen, he looked very foreign. No Englishman ever had hair as black and springy as the thick, lustrous mass tied back at his nape, like the locks of an off-duty rock musician. All she could see of his face was the slanting line of his cheekbone, the forceful thrust of his jaw and his long neck.

It was impossible, now, to imagine him as a lanky adolescent, as unsure of himself as she had been at that age—and to some extent still was. Not with the people she worked with, but with her family and all their high-powered friends.

When the flock had gone past, bleating, Nicolas drove on until they reached a sandy by-way flanked by trees she recognised, from a family holiday in southern France, as olives.

They had travelled at least a mile along this meandering track when a small house came into view. It looked a ramshackle place, as did the various outbuildings. There was no garden around it, only olive trees and bare earth where some hens were scratching.

‘It looks closed up,’ said Cressy as they approached it on foot.

‘The shutters being closed doesn’t mean no one’s at home. The Spanish believe in keeping the sunshine out. The rooms stay cooler that way. But I would expect the door to be ajar, and it isn’t,’ said Nicolas.

A bell, which looked like a goat’s bell, was suspended beside the door. He pulled the string. When no one answered and no sound came from inside, he tried the handle. The door was locked.

‘It seems you were right. It is closed up. But someone’s keeping an eye on the place.’

‘How do you know?’

‘That goat has been milked today.’ He pointed towards a nanny goat standing tethered under a tree, chewing and staring at them with indifferent yellow eyes.

A moment later they heard a distant voice calling something Cressy couldn’t make out.

‘Someone’s coming,’ said Nicolas. ‘They must have seen us arriving from somewhere higher up the hill. This terrain might seem deserted but there’s always someone about. No one comes or goes without being noticed.’

They did not have long to wait before a small portly woman came hurrying round the side of the house. At the sight of Nicolas she broke into a torrent of Mallorquín, at the same time producing a large old-fashioned iron key from the pocket of the pinafore she was wearing over her dress.

When she finally paused for breath, Nicolas said, ‘This is Senora Guillot, who telephoned the bad news. I’ll explain to her who you are.’

When he had done this, the Spanish woman smiled and offered Cressy her hand. But, having observed the niceties, she turned back to him, clearly expressing concern.

‘She thinks, as I did at first, that you’re far too young to deal with the situation. She says Miss Dexter is an obstinate woman who needs someone more authoritative to take control,’ said Nicolas.

‘Please tell her I have a lot of experience in dealing with old and sick people,’ Cressy said firmly. ‘When exactly did the accident happen? Could she tell us as much as she knows? Perhaps while you’re talking I could take a look inside.’ She indicated the key and then touched her chest and pointed at the house.

Instead of handing it over, the Spanish woman mimed that the lock wasn’t easy to open. It took several attempts, accompanied by muttered imprecations, before she got it to work and stepped inside.

Cressy had already noticed that the electricity poles along the side of the minor road didn’t branch off up this lane. If there was no electricity there wouldn’t be mains, drainage or any other modern amenities.

As she followed the Señora inside she noticed that the place had the musty odour of neglect. Even before one pair of shutters was thrown open, the sun coming in through the door showed it was a long time since the floor had been swept. More light revealed more disorder: a wind-blown film of powdered earth lying thickly on all horizontal surfaces and clutter everywhere. Dusty cobwebs, made by long-dead spiders, draped the rafters supporting the upper floor, which was reached by an unrailed staircase in a corner of the living room.

While the others talked Cressy took in the signs of a solitary life which perhaps had never been orderly and now had descended into squalor. She had had to deal with it before—visiting old men and women who had either given up on the effort or become too infirm to cope.

Presently Nicolas said, ‘The accident happened early on Sunday morning. The old lady fell down the stairs, breaking her wrist and her thigh. She might have lain here till she died, but luckily the noise made by the goat, which is milked morning and evening, made Senora Guillot realise something was wrong. Equally luckily, she had a nephew visiting her who did his military service in the Cruz Roja—the Red Cross. So he knew what to do until the ambulance arrived. He was also bright enough to search for some clue to the whereabouts of Miss Dexter’s next of kin. He didn’t have far to look—there was an envelope nailed to the wall above her bed with “Instructions in the event of my death” written on it in Spanish. Inside was your family’s London telephone number.’

The señora was mounting the stairs, beckoning them to follow her.

‘What about water and sewage?’ Cressy asked over her shoulder as Nicolas followed her up. ‘Will there be a well?’

‘If not there’ll be a cisterna—an underground water store. Sewage will be dealt with by a pozo negro, a cesspool. Depending on its construction, it will either be pumped out into a tanker or will drain itself.’ After a pause, he added, ‘You can’t stay here, that’s for sure. The place is a dump.’

‘It only needs a good spring clean,’ Cressy said cheerfully. ‘I’ve dealt with a lot worse in London.’

The bedroom, when light had been admitted, revealed itself as even more chaotic than the room below. Here there were signs that when the island had rain the roof leaked. An array of old family photographs, some in tarnished silver frames, stood on top of a chest of drawers: sepia prints of people in the clothes of the Twenties and earlier stood behind black and white snaps of more recent vintage. There was one of Cressy and her family, taken about nine years ago.

But she didn’t point it out to Nicolas, partly because she had looked a mess at that age and partly in case he might recognise her mother.

Fortunately most of his attention was given to Senora Guillot, who was still chattering nineteen to the dozen.

It wasn’t until they were driving away that he gave Cressy a condensed version of the little woman’s outpourings.

‘She’s been worried about the old lady living there alone for a couple of years. She would have been glad to do some cleaning and cooking for her, but Miss Dexter wouldn’t hear of it. She kept herself to herself. The only time she was seen was on market day in Pollensa, but she only went to buy provisions, not to socialise with other expatriates. She speaks fluent Spanish and has nothing to do with the foreign community.’

As they came to the road Cressy said, ‘Pollensa’s quite near, I gather. Will there be a car-hire firm there?’

‘Yes, but if you’re going to suggest that I run you over there and leave you to tackle this mess on your own, forget it. We’ll go back to my place to freshen up before going to the hospital together. This is a situation where you need local advice. You can’t handle it on your own any more than a Spanish girl with no English could cope with a similar situation in England.’

Cressy could tell from his tone that he would ignore her protests. He had made up his mind to be helpful and that was that.

Her sisters, accustomed to giving instructions rather than taking them, would undoubtedly have resented having their wishes overridden in that authoritative voice. It didn’t worry Cressy. She knew he was absolutely right. She did need his help and was deeply grateful he was prepared to give it.

‘Thank you,’ she said warmly. ‘Let’s hope if a Spanish girl ever finds herself in this sort of situation she’ll meet an Englishman who’ll be as obliging as you are.’

The glance he shot at her held a gleam of amusement. ‘You speak as if I were Spanish.’

‘As you live here, I assumed you felt more Spanish than English.’

‘I live here because I have a house here...and I prefer the climate. I don’t feel Spanish or English. My roots here were broken when I was sent away to school. Now I feel comfortable in most places. If I hadn’t been left Ca’n Llorenc, my base would have been a very small flat in London I share with a guy who’s hardly ever in it. We were at school together, and he now earns his living as an expedition guide.’

She didn’t ask where it was because then he might ask her where she lived. If he knew London well her answer might give the game away. Her parents lived close to the Houses of Parliament, in a neighbourhood occupied almost exclusively by MPs.

To divert the conversation into a safer channel, she said, ‘Does the island have a good medical service?’

‘I can’t answer that. I’ve never needed to use it and fortunately no one at Ca’n Llorenc has had any illnesses or accidents that I can remember. When they have minor aches and pains they consult a pharmacist in Pollensa. It’s cheaper and quicker than going to a doctor. But I can make some enquiries.’

‘I was thinking it might be better to have Aunt Kate flown back to England.’

‘It would be very expensive. She’s unlikely to have any medical insurance to cover repatriation by air.’

‘Most unlikely!’ Cressy agreed, remembering the state of the cottage. ‘But I’m sure my father will pay for whatever is necessary. On the other hand, she may be receiving first-class treatment where she is.’

By this time they were re-entering the gateway of Ca’n Llorenc. As they entered the courtyard for the second time Cressy’s anxiety about her aged relative was temporarily supplanted by intense curiosity to see how Nicolas lived.

The door was open and he ushered her through it, not into a hall but into an enormous room with another large double door on the far side of it. Like the living room at Miss Dexter’s cottage, this much grander room also had a bare stone staircase in one corner. But here the stairs were protected by a rail on one side and a thick black rope attached to the wall on the other.

The next thing to catch her eye was the painting on the chimney-breast of the huge fireplace, at present occupied by a large wicker basket crammed with a mass of dried flowers. With their small mustard-coloured heads, they looked like some kind of herb.

‘What a wonderful picture,’ said Cressy, moving towards it.

As she gazed at the deep blue mountain peaks in the background, and the pink and white blossom on the trees in the foreground, Nicolas, standing behind her, said, ‘It’s called Noria entre Almendros, which means “noria among almond trees”. A noria is a water wheel, worked by a donkey plodding round in a circle, with buckets attached to the rim for raising water from a well into irrigation canals. You saw them all over Spain when I was a child. They must have been introduced by the Moors because the name comes from the Arabic “na’ ara” which means to creak.’

‘Who is the painting by?’ asked Cressy.

‘An artist born in Pollensa called Dionís Bennássar. Here’s his signature.’ Nicolas pointed to the left-hand corner where the painting was signed in red.

She said, ‘The way the blossom is painted reminds me of Samuel Palmer. He painted my favourite picture, The Magic Apple Tree.’

‘I like that picture too,’ said Nicolas. ‘I first saw it in the Fitzwilliam Museum when I was at Cambridge.’

‘At the university?’

‘Yes. I didn’t really want to spend three years there—it’s viciously cold in winter—but it seemed a good idea to have a geography degree to fall back on if I couldn’t earn a living as a travel writer.’ He moved away and, raising his voice, called, ‘Catalina.’

Almost at once the woman Cressy had glimpsed earlier came from a room leading off the main room.

Nicolas introduced her and, like Señora Guillot, she smiled and shook hands. But behind the show of friendliness Cressy sensed she was being subjected to a critical appraisal.

‘Catalina will show you a bathroom where you can have a shower before we go to the hospital. I need to get into clean clothes, and I also have some telephone calls to make. I’ll be down in forty minutes,’ said Nicolas. ‘If you’re ready sooner Catalina will bring you tea or a cold drink out on the terrace.’ He gestured towards the door at the rear of the house, then translated all this into Mallorquín for the housekeeper’s benefit.

A few minutes later, mounting the stairs behind her, Cressy smiled to herself at the memory of her dismay when the travel agent had said there were no economy seats left on the flight to Palma. For, although all her expenses were being paid by her father, she had learnt thrift from Maggie and never liked wasting money.

However, as things had turned out, being obliged to travel more expensively had actually been a stroke of luck. If she hadn’t met Nicolas it would have been a major problem to locate her great-aunt’s cottage, let alone find out what had happened and discover Miss Dexter’s present whereabouts.

The window of the bathroom where Catalina left her overlooked the roof of a single-storey part of the building. Patches of golden lichen spattered the weathered clay tiles, and a creeper with orange flowers had climbed the wall at the end of it and was spreading up the gable of another wing of the building.

When Cressy started running a bath she found that almost boiling water gushed from the hot tap with a vigour suggesting that, in matters of mod cons, Ca’n Llorenc was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Miss Dexter’s primitive living quarters.

Having adjusted the flow to lukewarm, Cressy added some bath oil from a selection of toiletries Catalina had indicated were for visitors’ use.

While the bath filled she sat on the window ledge and thought how lovely it must be to live here, surrounded by beauty and peace, instead of in noisy, fume-ridden central London.

In his bathroom, Nicolas had stripped off and was enjoying a shower. After a long time away, it was always good to come back to the creature comforts missing from most of his trips. When he had cleaned up and changed, he intended to make some enquiries about where an elderly lady would get the best medical care which wouldn’t involve her great-niece helping to nurse her.

In some Spanish hospitals, patients were fed, washed and watched over by their mothers, daughters or other close female relations. The hospital staff provided medical care only. But he had other plans for Cressy, as she’d said she was called.

Usually, Catalina being an excellent cook, he would dine at home on his first night back. Then, having already made some duty calls to his Mallorquín relations on the island, he would ring one of several numbers in the address book on his desk.

They were the telephone numbers of women who had come to the island as wives but had since been discarded in favour of younger models. It was something which happened quite frequently in the various groups of high-living foreigners who frequented the small resorts. As a result, the island was littered with ‘thirty-somethings’ and ’forty-somethings’ on the lookout for a man—either a replacement meal-ticket or a lover. It meant that anyone who had had to batten down his sex drive for weeks or months had no problem in finding someone to let off steam with if that was what was required.

This time, by a stroke of luck, it looked as if he wouldn’t even have to make a phone call. Someone far more alluring than any of his usual bed partners had turned up. Cressy was the most delectable creature he had seen in a long time. Far more attractive than any of the women in his address book.

Luckily she wasn’t as young as he had first thought. As far as he was concerned, girls with no previous experience were like wild flowers. Not for picking. But at twenty-three Cressy had to be a lot more savvy than she looked. The thought of her lying in the bath on the other side of the house was a turn-on. He wished he had her here with him now, that gorgeous Amazonian body sleek and slippery against his.

Taking Cressy to bed would be the perfect reward for four months’ celibacy, he thought with a growl of anticipation.

Cressy was drying herself on a fluffy white bath-sheet. Then, as there was plenty of time, she massaged her legs with an after-bath lotion scented with the same subtle fragrance as the bath oil.

She was humming to herself, her spirits unaccountably buoyant in spite of her concern about her great-aunt’s injuries, when she remembered something that instantly changed her mood.

Nicolas’s behaviour wasn’t prompted by disinterested kindness; she mustn’t forget that he had an ulterior motive. Aunt Kate, in her day, had been as famous as Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem. He was hoping the end product of being helpful to Cressy would be an exclusive interview with her, like the profile of Edward James which had been his first journalistic coup and the foundation of his career.

Still in her jeans, but wearing a clean white T-shirt, she went downstairs and outside onto the terrace, and found Catalina there before her. The housekeeper was transferring an earthenware jug and two tall glasses from a tray to a large low table surrounded by comfortable chairs.

‘Limonada, señorita.’

‘Muchas gracias, Señora.’

This, plus hello and goodbye, was the limit of Cressy’s Spanish.

The housekeeper filled a glass with the juice and then, using a ladle which hooked on the side of the jug, fished for a couple of ice cubes to drop in the glass. Then she left Cressy on her own.

The terrace was paved with clay tiles in the same mellow terracotta colours as the Roman tiles on the roof. Here and there a few had been removed to make a space for a lemon tree to grow. It must have been from one of these trees that Catalina had picked the fruit whose chilled juice now left its tangy freshness on Cressy’s tongue.

Above her, forming a canopy, grew an enormous vine dripping bunches of half-ripened green grapes from a tangle of leafy branches. In the blazing light of a Majorcan afternoon it was heaven to sit in the shade, sipping freshly made lemonade and gazing at the hazeveiled mountains.

Footsteps on the stone stairs announced the arrival of her host. But when he came into view he was not the long-haired, heavy-booted traveller whose back-view she had admired at Gatwick airport.

‘You’ve cut off your hair!’ she exclaimed.

He laughed, showing excellent teeth. ‘I don’t wear it long at home, only in places where there aren’t any barbers. Tomorrow I’ll have it cut properly, but this will do for tonight.’

Because it was naturally curly—with a looser curl than a perm gave—no one would have guessed he had cropped it himself. It was the kind of hair which, like animals’ fur and birds’ plumage, would always spring back into place after a vigorous shake. The silver climber on his ear had also disappeared, she saw. He was wearing a shirt of dark blue and white striped cotton and a pair of dark jeans. When he sat down and crossed his long legs, she noticed that his ankles were bare and that his trekking boots had given way to a pair of dark brown deck shoes.

He took a long swig from his glass. ‘Mmm ... Catalina makes great lemonade. Felió has some bee-hives in the hills, where the wild thyme grows. Lemonade sweetened with honey tastes better than stuff made with sugar.’

He looked her over, his eyes taking in, but not lingering on the curves defined by the T-shirt. ‘You look very cool and fresh. I’ve told Catalina to make up a bed for you.’

‘But I can’t stay here,’ she protested.

‘Yes, you can. You have no alternative. It’s not easy finding a room in the big hotels. They’re all full of package tourists. There are hostals in most of the towns but, though clean, they’re really intended for travelling salesmen. They can be very noisy in summertime, when street life goes on till the small hours. You’ll sleep far more soundly out here in the country.’

He made it difficult to refuse, and part of her didn’t want to. Yet, mindful of the awful warnings drummed into her during her teens, she also felt faintly uneasy.

He was a well-known writer and, judging by this house and the estate surrounding it, his forebears had been people of standing on the island. But that didn’t alter the fact that he was a stranger, and bad things had happened to girls who placed too much trust in strange men.

She didn’t really suspect him of being a psychopath who during the night might rape her and throw her down a well, his faithful retainers keeping their mouths shut about her unexplained disappearance out of misguided loyalty to his family. That was the kind of scenario only dear old Maggie would envisage!

But what if he just made a pass? Some men felt entitled to sex after taking a girl out to dinner, going to a lot less trouble than Nicolas had for her. If he made a pass, how would she handle it?

CHAPTER THREE

‘PERHAPS I can stay at the hospital,’ Cressy suggested. ‘Most hospitals have rooms where close relations can sleep when people are critically ill. A broken thigh isn’t critical, but it’s pretty serious when it happens to someone of Aunt Kate’s age. And she must have been in shock when they found her if she’d been lying there some time.’

Nicolas glanced at his watch. After draining his glass, he said, ‘Let’s go and find out exactly what the situation is, shall we?’

Cressy had repacked her rucksack, with the discarded shirt in a plastic bag to be washed at the first opportunity. She had left the rucksack at the bottom of the stairs. As she picked it up and slung it over one shoulder she noticed that near the terrace door was a large antique table piled with stacks of old and new books. A title which caught her eye was The Mayan Prophecies: Unlocking the Secrets of a Lost Civilisation. Another was The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture.