The Youngest Sister

‘I enjoyed researching it. South America’s a fascinating continent. I’m going back there early next year. I want to get to the summit of Aconcagua. It’s the highest point in the western hemisphere... the highest mountain outside Asia.’

She saw by the light in his eyes that the project excited him, and she felt her own heartbeat quicken at the thought of such an adventure.

She still hadn’t fully adjusted to the astonishment of finding that, in a sense, he was someone she knew. She rarely bought books in hardback but hadn’t been able to resist buying all his as soon as they came out, the most recent being a collection of his travel essays.

She had bought it at Stanfords, the London bookshop known to travellers from all over the world for its fine range of maps and guides. If she had known beforehand that he was doing a signing session at the shop she would have gone along to have her copy autographed. It had been a big disappointment to discover she had missed the chance of meeting him, if only for the few seconds it would have taken him to write his name on the fly-leaf.

To meet him by chance seemed almost...as if it were fated.

The practical side of her nature made short shrift of this proposition, reminding her sharply that what mattered was his intimate knowledge of Majorca. He could supply her with much-needed information.

Cressy’s practicality was really her only asset. Even her family acknowledged that, although disastrously lacking in academic ability, she was very strong on common sense.

‘What’s the best way to get to Pollensa?’ she asked, when the salmon pâté had been set before them. ‘Is there a bus service to it? Or would a taxi be better?’

‘A taxi will get you there faster but will also cost a lot more. Does your great-aunt have a car?’

‘I don’t know for certain. I’d think so. She certainly had one the last time she came to stay with us in England. But that was ages ago. I must have been about eight then. I remember the car she was driving because a boy I used to play with made such a fuss about it. He was a car fanatic, and Aunt Kate’s was something unusual.’ She searched her memory for the name. ‘He called it a roadster... a Cord roadster. I forget the year it was made, but some time in the 1930s. My father was rather taken with it too.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Nicolas. ‘It’s one of the legendary cars from an era of luxury motoring before the roads became choked with assembly-line vehicles. What’s more,’ he went on, ‘that Cord is still running...or was, up to a couple of years ago. I saw it going through Alcudia with an elderly lady at the wheel. She aroused my journalist’s curiosity. I asked around and was told she was Katherine Dexter, once a leading combatant in the battle of the sexes.’

Cressy’s mother and sisters would have corrected that description. She let it pass. ‘How did she look when you saw her?’

‘It was only a glimpse. At that time she looked pretty good. So did the car. I was told it was very rare. The makers went out of business with only about two thousand Cords on the market. According to my informant, your great-aunt’s model was being kept in repair by a garage mechanic who was hoping she would leave it to him. Whether it’s still on the road—quién sabe?’ Remembering she had no Spanish, he translated. ‘Who knows?’

‘Old cars can be temperamental. If it is still running, I don’t think I’d want to drive it,’ Cressy said, thinking aloud. ‘Maybe I can rent a motor scooter.’

‘If you need one, there’ll be no problem. In July and August, yes. But not at this stage of the year. As for reaching Es Vell today, I’ll run you there.’

Again she was taken aback.

Before she could say anything, he went on, ‘My house is in the same part of the island. I don’t know your great-aunt’s place but I doubt if it’s more than a few kilometres off my route.’

‘It’s extremely kind, but I really couldn’t impose—’

‘If you’re worried about the risk of accepting a lift from a stranger,’ he said, looking faintly amused, ‘we can get over that quite easily. By virtue of my distinguished maternal grandfather, I’m quite well-known in Mallorca...as the Spanish call it. There’ll be people at the airport who’ll convince you that you won’t be risking your safety if you accept my suggestion.’

Cressy found it hard to fathom the generosity of his offer. She was attracted to him but didn’t flatter herself that he was attracted to her.

Research had proved men were attracted to women who more or less matched them in terms of physical assets. For that reason the men she attracted were guys whose faces and physiques could be classed as averagely pleasant rather than to-die-for. She had never appealed to anyone with Nicolas’s outstanding looks and she didn’t expect to. He was in her sisters’ league. Therefore, his offer had to be prompted by disinterested helpfulness rather than being the first move in a holiday romance.

Casting about for some reason why Nicolas would want to help out a girl like herself—presentable but nothing special—Cressy suddenly realised the solution was under her nose.

He was a journalist. Aunt Kate, in her day, had been a celebrity. The motive behind his offer of a lift must be the hope of an interview with her. As well as writing travel articles, he did occasionally do profiles of interesting people encountered on his journeys.

In his book there was a profile of Edward James, a millionaire patron of the arts with an extraordinary house in Mexico. The introduction to the profile said that Nicolas had been a backpacking teenager when Edward James had consented to be interviewed by him. It had been his first journalistic coup, the foundation of his career. It could be that he saw Cressy as the means to an end—the end being a profile of Aunt Kate.

The possibility that, far from being genuinely helpful, he was using her, or attempting to do so, was curiously upsetting. But two could play at that game. If he meant to use her, he couldn’t complain at being made use of himself.

‘I don’t think we need to go to those lengths. I can check your bona fides for myself. What is your latest book called, and what is the last place in it?’

Looking amused, he said, ‘It’s called Faraway Places and the last piece was about Nantucket. I called it “Yesterday’s Island”. But, beyond confirming that I am who I claim to be, I don’t see that it proves anything.’

‘It proves you’re a well-known name, unlikely to be a serial killer or “The Mystery Rapist of Majorca”.’ As she said this, she wiggled her fingers to indicate she was quoting the kind of headline seen in the popular Press. ‘I’d be very grateful for a lift to Aunt Kate’s place. Thanks for the offer. How far is it from Palma to Pollensa?’

‘Now the motorway’s finished, it takes less than an hour.’

While they were eating the main course, he said, ‘Tell me about your job. Why did you choose it, and what sort of things do you do?’

Actually, Cressy hadn’t chosen it. The job had been set up for her by her mother, who had met the director of Distress Signal.

‘We do a huge range of things, from emergency child-minding to visiting people in hospital when their next of kin can’t. Last week I drove a rather wobbly old man to spend a holiday with his house-bound sister on the other side of England. This week I was going to look after a Down’s Syndrome child while her mother is in hospital, but now someone else will be doing that.’

‘You must be a good deal wiser and more capable than most twenty-three-year-olds,’ he said dryly.

Cressy shrugged. ‘It’s a question of horse sense. Sometimes clever people don’t have much. I’m a total dud academically, but I’m good at practical things like—’ She broke off, aware that she was letting her tongue run away with her.

‘Like what?’ he prompted.

‘Oh...unblocking drains...that sort of thing.’

‘You sound an ideal travelling companion. Equal to every contingency. Never fazed when plans go awry. Does adventurous travel appeal to you?’

She knew from his book that he had been to many remote and potentially hazardous places.

‘If you mean like your journey through the Atlas Mountains with a mule, I think that would be too adventurous for me.’

‘That was a long time ago. Do I gather you’ve read my books?’

Her mouth being full, Cressy replied with a nod.

‘As far as I know, I don’t have many women readers.’

It was on the tip of her tongue to remark that he would have thousands if his publishers put his picture on the back of the jacket, or included shots of the author in the pages of illustrations. But the only glimpse his readers had ever been given was an anonymous figure with wind-tousled dark hair—not as long as he wore it now—sitting with his back to the camera in wilderness terrain.

She said, ‘You seem very camera-shy. There’s never a photo of you with any of your travel pieces.’

He shrugged. ‘As I’m not an actor or a male model, what I look like is irrelevant.’

His answer surprised and puzzled her. He must know he was, if not strictly handsome, compellingly attractive. Her mother and sisters were all fully aware that their looks were a major asset. Her mother had been one of the first politicians to seek the advice of an image consultant, and to take advantage of a photogenic face and a flair for speaking in sound bites to advance her career.

Having grown up with people who knew and exploited the value of their faces and figures, Cressy found it hard to believe that Nicolas was without vanity. He must have realised how easily he could have dated the most attractive women. Yet he spoke as if his looks were a matter of indifference to him.

It suddenly occurred to her that he might be married. Not that the way he had stared at her in the airport suggested he was a man whose love for one woman had made him blind or indifferent to the rest of her sex.

‘How does your wife occupy herself during your absences? Do you have lots of children?’ she asked.

He said dryly, ‘Even in the quieter parts of Mallorca it’s virtually impossible to find a woman content to sit at home having babies for an absentee husband. I wouldn’t want that sort of wife anyway. But, conversely, there still aren’t many women prepared to spend months on end living in primitive conditions. Those who don’t mind roughing it are usually dedicated to good works, or not feminine enough for my taste. How’s your private life?’

Was that very slight emphasis on ‘private’ a subtle riposte for her cheek in asking him intimate questions? Or was she imagining a nuance where there wasn’t one?

‘I don’t have one,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m still living with my parents. My job doesn’t pay enough for me to set up independently. Well, it might in the country, but not in London, where the cost of living is higher.’

She had put her watch forward by an hour immediately after fastening her seat belt. When a sensation in her ears told her it wouldn’t be long before they landed, she couldn’t believe how quickly the time had passed since they took off.

Her first aerial view of the island made it look very brown and barren. Almost rising out of the sea was a range of steep, jagged mountains and then the land flattened out and became a patchwork of farmsteads and groves of grey-foliaged trees.

When Nicolas leaned closer to her in order to look out of the window, Cressy was sharply aware of the natural aroma of his skin. Judging by his shorts and boots, he had flown into London that morning from somewhere remote. Obviously he had changed his shirt and had a shave at Gatwick; the shirt was too crisp to have been slept in and his jaw had no trace of dark stubble. But she doubted if Gatwick had facilities for taking a shower, as she knew there were at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. Yet he smelt good. Better than men who sloshed on expensive lotions. He smelt as good as old books and summer grass and clean towels warm from the airing cupboard. She wanted to close her eyes and inhale the scent of him.

Instead she kept her eyes open, studying his face in profile and the way his springy black hair grew from his forehead and temples.

A shiver ran through her. She had a crazy impulse to reach out and stroke his cheek to see what effect it had on him.

In her mind she saw his eyes blaze before, pinning her shoulders to the back rest, he brought his mouth down hard on hers in a kiss unlike any she had ever experienced before.

The fantasy felt so real that, when he did turn his head, she gasped and gave a nervous start.

Slowly Nicolas sat back. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Nothing ... only ... you startled me.’

‘I’m sorry.’ His blue eyes narrowed as he scrutinised her face. ‘You’re nervous. Are you worried about landing? Don’t be. It’s a good airport.’

‘I’m not,’ she assured him truthfully.

But either he didn’t believe her or he pretended not to. Reaching for her nearest hand, he held it firmly like an adult taking charge of a child.

‘We’ll be down in a minute and then you can shed your sweater. You won’t need it again till you go back.’

Cressy said nothing, feeling, for a different reason, as tense and panicky as if she really were afraid of what might happen as the plane came in to land. Short of an embarrassing struggle, there was no possibility of extricating her hand from his until he chose to release it.

The infuriating thing was that having her hand held was nice. It reminded her of being small and walking with Maggie in the park. She had always felt safe with calm, capable Maggie, and a little afraid of her brisk, energetic, sometimes quick-tempered mother.

Now, with Nicolas holding her hand, she felt both secure and nervous. Secure because in the unlikely event that anything did go wrong she would have him beside her, a man accustomed to danger. Nervous because intuition told her that meeting him and accepting his offer of a lift might put her far more at risk than she was at this moment.

Soon afterwards they touched down and the pilot applied reverse thrust.

Still holding her hand, Nicolas said, ‘Welcome to Mallorca...illa dels vuit vents..’

‘What does that mean?’ she asked.

‘It’s Mallorquín for “island of the eight winds”. We’ve been using wind-power since the fourteenth century, and our eight winds are also the reason so many yachtsmen come here.’

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN the aircraft had come to a standstill, Nicolas rose to his feet and opened the overhead locker where Cressy’s backpack was stowed. But when she would have taken it from him he shook his head, saying, with a glint of amusement, ‘You’re in macho territory now.’

She wondered if he was teasing her, or if, in the less touristy parts of the island, Majorcan manners and attitudes were still very different from those in London.

His own pack, when it appeared on the carousel in the baggage-reclaim hall, was a massive rucksack packed solid with equipment and, she guessed, too heavy for her to lift off the ground, let alone carry for long distances. But he swung it off the conveyor belt with the practised ease of a man who had done it many times before and whose body, compared with those of most of the tourists struggling awkwardly with their suitcases, was as different as that of a leopard from a crowd of overfed lap dogs.

With both packs on a trolley, they went through to the main concourse where a thickset man with grizzled hair was waiting for Nicolas. To Cressy’s surprise their greeting was very demonstrative. They embraced, they exchanged cheek kisses, they smiled at each other with the warmest affection she had ever seen shown by two men. Had they not been so dissimilar, she would have taken them for grandfather and grandson.

Eventually Nicolas turned to her. ‘This is Felió. He and his wife Catalina look after things when I’m away. He’s known me since I was born, and my mother as well.’

Thus he introduced her to Felió, who took the hand Cressy offered but whose smile was more reserved than the beam which had lit up his face at the sight of Nicolas.

It was like shaking hands with the exposed root of an old tree. Felió’s palm and fingers had been callused by years of manual labour. His face had the texture of a dried fig. He was a perfect match for the sun-baked landscape she had seen from the plane.

On the way to the car park, the two men talked to each other in a language which didn’t sound like Spanish. She supposed it must be Mallorquín. Then, out of this flow of words which made no sense to her, came two which did. Kate Dexter. Evidently Nicolas was asking if Felió had heard of her great-aunt.

The older man answered at some length, his reply accompanied by gestures which left Cressy uncertain as to whether he had or hadn’t.

When he finished, Nicolas said, ‘Felió knows where Miss Dexter lives. It’s only about fifteen minutes from my place. So that’s no problem.’

The vehicle in which Felió had come to fetch his employer was a military-green Range Rover.

‘Would you mind sitting in the back?’ said Nicolas as Felió unlocked the doors.

‘Of course not,’ said Cressy. ‘If you’ve been out of touch for a long time, you must have a lot to catch up on.’ She made a mental note to ask him later where he was returning from.

In contrast to her first impression of Majorca from the air, what struck her as they left the airport was the luxuriant blossom on the tall bushes lining the road. They looked rather like pale pink azaleas but she knew they were oleanders. The blue sky, the golden sunlight and these wonderful hedges, thick with flowers, combined to lift her spirits as if she were starting a holiday rather than being on a mission which might be fraught with problems.

She had thought that Nicolas would take the wheel, but he was in the front passenger seat, and from time to time he interrupted his conversation with Felió to turn and smile at her.

Usually when he did this Cressy would be gazing out of the window at the passing scene. But she always knew when he was looking at her and found it impossible not to return his smile. Each time he faced forward again she would have liked to continue looking at him, but she knew that if she did he would know it. She didn’t want him to guess she was far more interested in him than in the island’s hinterland.

She recognised that, although she had only just met him, she was in the grip of the most powerful physical attraction she had ever experienced. Everything about him was perfection and, to make matters worse—because she wasn’t comfortable with the feelings he aroused in her—his mind, as revealed in his books, was as pleasing as his person. Somehow she had the feeling that this was too good to be true, that there had to be a catch in it somewhere.

Neither of her sisters, who had everything going for them—brains, beauty, personality, wit—had been lucky in love. Why should she be? Except that she believed in love in a way that they no longer did and perhaps never had.

When they turned off the motorway where it was crossed by a minor road, she had a brief glimpse of a signpost indicating that Pollensa was seven kilometres further along the main road.

Not far along the side road the vehicle slowed down again to pass between massive stone pillars, one carved with the name Ca’n Llorenc.

Turning to her, Nicolas said, ‘In my Mallorquín grandfather’s time this was one of the largest estates in this part of the island. The main crops were almonds, oil and figs, but everything his family ate was grown or bred here. It was a self-sufficient community like the great estates in England. It could be still, if I wished it. But I prefer to travel, leaving the land in other hands.’

The drive was more like a farm track than the way to a great house. A long way ahead she could see the roofs of a number of buildings surrounded by what, at a distance, looked like giant feather dusters. Beyond them, in the distance, lay mountains, the farthest ones pale dovegrey in the afternoon light.

The track was flanked by ploughed land on one side and hay stubble on the other, with drifts of sky-blue wild flowers growing along the edges of the track.

Closer up, the feather dusters revealed themselves as date palms, with bunches of ripening orange-coloured fruit dangling among the branches. Then they passed through another stone gateway giving onto a large courtyard formed by the protruding wings of an old house built of rough stone with cut-stone lintels and sills above and below its many green-shuttered windows.

‘We’ll drop off Felió and my pack, and I’ll just say a quick hello to Catalina, and then we’ll go on to Miss Dexter’s place,’ said Nicolas. ‘While I’m gone, come and sit in the front.’

Cressy climbed out. After sitting still for several hours, she was glad of a chance to stretch and do a few limbering exercises. When the two men had disappeared, she put one hand over her shoulder and the other behind her back. With her fingers locked, she exerted the light pull needed to recover her normal flexibility.

The double doors leading into the shadowy interior of the house were shaded by the branches of an ancient vine trained over wires stretched between the wings of the building. In the centre of the courtyard stood a huge stone um, overflowing with brilliant red and pink geraniums. A well-fed black cat was drowsing in the shade of their leaves.

When Nicolas came back, Cressy was standing, storklike, on one leg, her other foot being held behind her to loosen her thigh muscles. Quickly she put it down and stood normally.

Behind him, lurking inside the doorway, wanting to see without being seen, was a woman in a print pinafore. Cressy smiled in her direction before turning and climbing back into the Range Rover.

‘You’re very supple,’ said Nicolas, sliding behind the wheel. ‘Are you a dancer as well as a rescuer of people in distress?’

‘Oh, no... I was just doing what your cat will probably do when he wakes up.’

‘He’s supposed to be a mouser,’ said Nicolas. ‘But Catalina feeds him. Sometimes he brings in a young bird, but he’s no threat to the mice.’

As they started back down the drive, Cressy said, ‘It’s incredibly good of you to go to these lengths for me. I’m sure you must be longing to have a cold shower and relax. How long have you been in transit?’

‘Around forty-eight hours, but I’m used to it. Jet lag doesn’t affect me any more. I can sleep anywhere.’

‘Where have you come from?’

‘I never talk about my trips until they’re in print.’ He took his eyes off the track to smile at her. The smile made his answer less of a snub than it might have sounded otherwise. ‘I find if I talk about places it saps some of my enthusiasm. I’ve heard novelists say the same about their stories.’

The remark made her wonder about his friends, and if they included many fellow writers and other creative people, artists and craftsmen, as well as men like himself who spent their lives doing adventurous things. She had a feeling his circle would be very different from that of her parents and sisters, for whom the twin peaks of achievement were power and money.

Sometimes Cressy felt so much like a changeling that she wondered if there could possibly have been a mixup at the expensive private clinic where she had been born. Not only was she physically unlike her sisters but she lacked their diamond-bright minds and their driving ambition. Nor, except in her size, was she like her father, a leading architect whose buildings she secretly disliked.

‘You look worried,’ said Nicolas. ‘Don’t be. I have nothing to do for the next few days. I’m happy to be your driver and interpreter.’

Cressy hadn’t realised that her face was reflecting her thoughts. Quickly brightening her expression, she said, ‘Is everyone in Majorca as helpful as you are? Is it a Majorcan characteristic?’

‘It’s a human characteristic, unless people have been corrupted by wretched living conditions in overcrowded cities. The islanders who work in the tourist resorts can sometimes be less than friendly, but most of the country people will try to be helpful.’ He had been watching the road as he spoke, but now, with a clear stretch ahead, he gave her a quizzical glance. ‘In any part of the world a girl with your looks doesn’t usually have any trouble drumming up help when she needs it.’