Authors: Unknown
They set up a great commotion as we approached the barrier, waving their arms, jumping up and down and calling on a shrill piercing note, the object of their excitement unmistakably Don Ramón.
Laughingly in answer to them, he shook his head and pulled down the corners of his mouth. ‘Forgive them,
senorita
, they are asking if it is my bride I am bringing back. They think it is to your honeymoon that you come.’
Certainly the little Indian boys could not have been more wrong—for at the barrier the enchantment ended. The handsome Don Ramon and I were abruptly parted, he by the little Indian boys who pelted down the reception steps, quarrelling as to who should have the privilege of cleaning Don Ramon’s shoes, and I, for my part, by a firm hand that gripped my arm, and a crisp voice in my ear. Both down-to-earth and both unmistakably British.
‘You Miss Bradley?’
The hand that held my arm took my answer for granted and propelled me forward towards Immigration. I drew myself up to my full height and turned to regard my captor with something of Don Ramon’s hauteur. My eyes had to travel a long way up. I saw a tall thick-set man of about thirty. He had a square unarguable-with chin, short thick brown hair, and cool grey eyes startlingly noticeable in his sunburned face. He wore faded blue jeans, a white short-sleeved cotton shirt open at the neck. No cravat or tie, and his chest and arms were as sunburned as his face. So were his feet, visible in leather sandals, marching me inexorably through the gateway marked ‘Immigration’.
‘Diplomatique,’ he said crisply to the officer, bundling me and my baggage in front of him as if he couldn’t wait to get me out of the hall and into the vehicle.
Outside in the burning sunlight, an old Land-Rover waited. It had a G.D. plate on the back and the Lion and Unicorn painted on the driver’s door. It sported a small Union Jack above the windscreen.
The man slung my case in the back. He looked neither like an Embassy driver nor an Embassy officer, more like an engineer or a lumberjack. An alarming thought struck me. I remembered Don Ramón's remarks about people and things disappearing in Charaguay.
‘I suppose you have some form of identification?’ I asked stiffly as he opened the passenger door for me.
He smiled grimly, ‘Don’t worry, Miss Bradley, I’m not trying to kidnap you. Heaven forbid! I’m taking you straight to the Residence. You’re to stay there as you’re only here for a few weeks. But first I have a word to say to you, so get in.’
There was no mistaking the grim hostility of his tone. I did as he told me and clambered up. The leather upholstery was hot to the touch. I could feel it scorching the skin of my thighs through my tights—a discomfort which was infinitely more bearable than my mental unease. I watched the young man get in beside me and bring out a bunch of keys from his trouser pocket. He selected the Land Rover one and inserted it in the ignition, though he didn’t turn it. Instead he dipped his fingers into the breast pocket of his shirt and brought out his security card which he handed me, folded.
Before I’d thought to open it, he demanded tersely and without preamble, ‘Why the devil did you make such an exhibition of yourself just now?’
‘I? An exhibition of myself? When? How? What d’you mean?’
‘Come, come, Miss Bradley. Why did you think we left in such haste?’
‘I don’t know. I wondered myself.'
‘Think, Miss Bradley. Think.'
‘Because of Don Ramón, do you mean?'
‘Because of you and your behaviour with such a person as Don Ramon.’
‘I found him a charming person.
And
very helpful.'
‘I’m sure you did,’ the man agreed quietly but grimly. ‘Most women do.’
I opened my mouth to say I wasn’t most women and closed it again.
‘Do you usually arrive for a new job on the arm of a stranger?' he went on.
‘I fainted,’ I protested, ‘I passed out.’
No words of sympathy hovered round his stern lips. No helpful advice about the danger of altitude.
‘How very convenient! So Don Ramon made your acquaintance
that
way?’
‘No. We’d made it before.'
‘I see. Aboard the aircraft?'
‘Yes.'
‘You don’t waste time, do you, Miss Bradley?’
‘I object to that remark!’ I snapped.
‘Objection overruled.'
‘And
it is none of your business, Mr. . . .'
‘Fitzgerald. James Fitzgerald.’ He waved me to open his card. The name rang a faint warning bell, but only very faint. And by this time I was too angry, too hot, too disenchanted and too tired to listen to distant bells. The card remained in my hand tightly clutched and closed. ‘And your business
is
very much my business.'
‘I am answerable to the Ambassador,’ I said with icy dignity.
‘Of course. But as you know the Ambassador left yesterday for the Washington conference.’ The man gave the ignition a sudden twist. ‘He’ll be away for the next two weeks.' He accelerated quietly and drew away from the kerb. I had thought of my reply by the time he paused at the intersection to the city highway.
‘Then I am answerable only to his deputy,' I said crushingly. And even more crushingly, he drawled, ‘Quite, Miss Bradley. Quite.'
‘To the Head of Chancery,' I said, my voice trailing weakly.
We were bowling at a smart pace down the highway past donkey and oxen carts and large fast-moving American cars. I glanced dry-mouthed from the stern profile beside me to the card I still held in my hand. He was too young, too handsome (if you favoured that sort of stern athletic-looking type), too casually dressed, too anything. . . . He could not be. He
must
not be!
I opened the card. He was.
James Fitzgerald, Head of Chancery, British Embassy, Quicha. The stern eyes of the man driving me stared up through the plastic cover over the photo.
Of all the unlucky things to happen, I thought. A row first go off. The stand-in secretary falling foul immediately of the stand-in boss. And of a boss whose powers were far-reaching, absolute.
‘You don’t look like a Head of Chancery,’ I said in my own defence.
‘Have you ever met one?' He turned the Land Rover expertly off the main highway on to a tree-lined avenue. I smelled that sweet conglomeration of blossom scents again. It seemed a lifetime since I’d disembarked in this erroneously named Shangri-La.
‘No.'
‘Then how can you judge?'
I couldn't reply. From my limited recollection of personal files on Heads of Chancery they were sometimes, it is true, up-and-coming
young
men who had fulfilled difficult overseas assignments. They were always in charge of security and discipline. Hence, I suppose, they might be expected to be tough, uncompromising and harsh. But I had never met one in the flesh.
‘I didn’t expect
you
to meet me, I wouldn’t have expected—I mean . . . Not usually . . .'
That point he appeared able to concede. ‘Possibly not.'
He decelerated and turned in through open double white gates up a well tended drive lined with mimosa. ‘But it’s all very informal here.’
I shot him a look of utter disbelief, which he ignored. ‘Mrs. Mallenport has a tennis party on. Otherwise Hester was going to meet you.’
Something in the way he said the name made me glance at him. Some strong feeling was bound up with Hester Mallenport. Like or dislike, approval or disapproval, I wasn’t sure which.
‘Nevertheless, I’m glad I did come.’ His tone robbed the words of any possible flattery. ‘If only to nip that little relationship in the bud. You will not, Miss Bradley, while you are here, strike up acquaintances with strange men on aircraft. Nor will you pursue the relationship with Don Ramon.’
I felt the angry colour come up into my cheeks.
‘You can’t tell me what I’ll do and what I’ll not do!’
‘On the contrary, I am telling you now.’
‘You’re as high-handed as the Charaguayans themselves,’ I exclaimed.
He laughed grimly, ‘I am infinitely worse.’ He swung the Land Rover round in front of a large white-shuttered villa surrounded by a balustraded terrace, with a shallow flight of steps leading up to a porticoed front door. The villa was large but unpretentious, its only sign of ambassadorial status being the coat-of-arms beside the door and a tall white flagpole on the lawn from which the Union Jack fluttered.
A Charaguayan soldier presented arms and then saluted as the Land-Rover came to a halt, ‘When we requested a replacement I expected someone of the calibre of Eve Trent,’ James Fitzgerald said. ‘The girl you’re standing in for. The girl in hospital.’ His face softened, but only momentarily before he went on, ‘Someone who will give instant obedience, unswerving loyalty and absolute discretion. And give them willingly.’
I wondered how anywhere, let alone here in this strange land of Charaguay, I could possibly live up to such a paragon.
A white-coated servant who had hurried forward to open the passenger door for me interrupted my apprehensive reverie. Mr. Fitzgerald jumped down and came round the front of the Land-Rover to stand towering beside me. From somewhere behind the villa I could hear the smack of tennis balls, laughter, and familiar British voices calling cheerfully, the sounds mingling with the screech of tropical birds in the banana palms. Mr. Fitzgerald stood for a moment looking at the villa and the palms and the tropical flame trees, the bougainvillea and the mimosa as if seeing it through my bedazzled eyes.
‘You have to keep your feet very firmly on the ground here,’ he said, ‘And your head out of the clouds. However much Don Ramon may tell you otherwise, this is
not
Shangri-La peopled by beautiful women and chivalrous men.’
Abruptly, as if to disprove even James Fitzgerald’s word, the door of the Residence opened. Framed in the door stood a tall auburn-haired girl dressed in the briefest of tennis dresses, with long shapely legs tanned to a deep nut-brown.
‘There you are, James,’ she called, waving her tennis racket. Moving with a kind of coltish grace she descended the steps and crossed the gravel of the drive, her shoulder-length hair swinging and shimmering like molten copper.
Close to, her face was almost as beautiful as her legs. Her flawless skin was tanned to a careful delicate brown that showed off her wide long-lashed hazel eyes and the striking colour of her hair. But there was a stubbornness to the chin and a slight over-fullness to the pink lips that made her not quite conventionally beautiful. All the same, I would have gladly swopped.
‘I didn’t expect you back so soon, James dear,’ she said delightedly. ‘You’re in time for the mixed doubles.' She handed him her racquet.
‘Hester, may I introduce your father’s new secretary— Madeleine Bradley, Hester Mallenport, H.E.’s daughter.’
‘Hello,’ she shook my hand. There was a teasing smile round her lips. ‘So you’re to replace Eve.’
‘For a few weeks,’ Mr. Fitzgerald corrected.
‘Well, I hope you enjoy your stay with us. My father’s a perfect poppet. Everyone adores him.’ Her hazel eyes sparkled mischievously. ‘But James here,’ she slipped her hand through his arm, and tossed her coppery head provokingly, ‘can be a frightful tyrant.’
‘I think she’s discovered that already,’ Mr. Fitzgerald said equably.
‘Unless, of course,’ she blinked her long lashes provocatively, ‘your name happens to be Eve Trent, and you’ve jet black hair and green eyes.’
‘That’s quite enough of that,’ Mr. Fitzgerald said sternly, and lightly tapped her with her own racquet.
‘Is Hester teasing you again, James?’ a fluting but kindly voice demanded as a stout handsome woman in her late fifties approached us from the garden path on the other side of the Land-Rover. She was dressed in lilac- flowered chiffon and pearls, and I knew without Mr.
Fitzgerald’s smiling greeting or Hester’s, ‘Really, Mother!’ that this was Mrs. Mallenport.
Introduction were effected again. Mrs. Mallenport bade me welcome to Charanguay, said I was a good girl to come all this way at such short notice and offered me a powdered maternal cheek that smelled nostalgically of old English lavender.
‘Hester is a naughty girl. But you know how to deal with her, James, none better.’ She smiled fondly. ‘So run along, have your game. I’ll see to Miss Bradley. No, I insist. I would like to.’
She waved them off with a plump beringed hand, shading her eyes till they disappeared from view behind a clump of orange-flowering shrubs.
‘Don’t they make a delightful couple?’ she smiled.
‘They seem very well suited,’ I replied with caution.
‘So they are—admirably. But James treats Hester like a younger sister.’ Mrs. Mallenport murmured, more to herself than to me, ‘While Eve ...' she sighed, ‘Eve ...'
Mrs. Mallenport said no more about James Fitzgerald while she conducted me to my room and the white- coated servant, Chico, followed us with my bag. If I had not expected such a hostile reception at the airport, I certainly hadn’t expected such a kindly welcome at the Residence. Don Ramón was right. In Charaguay no one was allowed to continue for long on an even keel.
Inside, the Residence was cool and spacious but in no way grand. The hall was square, white-panelled with a polished pine floor. Only the silver salver, half full of visiting cards, the Royal portraits and the gilded coat-of- arms distinguished it from an ordinary comfortable family house. My bedroom was at the back and looked out over the terrace dining room and the garden. I could see groups of people having tea on the lawn watching the tennis. ‘We keep open house to the British community on Saturdays,’ Mrs. Mallenport explained. And I could hear the steady unrelenting whack of hard-driven tennis balls. Mr. Fitzgerald’s, I didn’t doubt.
My bedroom was small and functional, but I had my own little primrose-tiled bathroom. Incongruously there was an oxygen cylinder standing by the bath, an unwelcome reminder of my disastrous arrival.