Flames Coming out of the Top (10 page)

It was a pretentious affair, spreading in a great welcoming horseshoe; in the middle of the courtyard a fountain was playing. The chauffeur drew up at a white portico and stepped down. At the same moment the door of the house opened and a negro servant in a suit of white ducks came forward. The whole arrival could not have been more perfectly planned in a country house in England.

As Dunnett entered he wished that the entire staff of Govern and Fryze could have been there to see him. He remembered Mr. Plymme and his unconcealed enthusiasm for the trip and felt sorry for him; he was missing more than he knew. And he thought of Kay Barton. This was going to be something to tell her about when he got back.

The butler led the way down a long corridor and threw open the door. “Señor Dunnett,” he announced. He stood stiffly to attention while uttering the words, like a toastmaster at a city function.

The effect of the announcement was a little startling when Dunnett discovered that only Señor Muras was in the room. His thoughts were interrupted, however, for his host immediately began to come forward. He walked rapidly, with short pointed steps, almost as though tap dancing.

“Señor Dunnett,” he said, “how good of you to come. We live, as you see, in the country. My wife is not very strong: the air of Amricante is poison to her. And so we have to entertain in the desert. You were not too uncomfortable on the ride?”

“I enjoyed every moment of it,” Dunnett assured him.

Señor Muras brushed the remark aside. “That alas is impossible,” he said. “Such roads. No one can endure them. My wife scarcely leaves the
hacienda
nowadays. It is quiet here; but she has her books and her music. You are musical, Señor Dunnett?”

“I … I don't play, if that's what you mean,” Dunnett replied.

Señor Muras smiled. “There is also listening,” he said. He smiled again like one instructing a child. “It is the desire for action which is one of the defects of the English character. And it is such a
young
fault. When people say that the British Empire is declining they forget that fact. Nations do not decline as you would call it so long as there are men who wish to do things—even little things like playing instead of listening. With us, I sometimes fear we are content so long as we can
think
of doing things.”

There was a pause. Dunnett was not sure whether Señor Muras's disquisition required any answer. Instead of replying he sat back and let his eye roam round the room. It was large and raftered and spacious. He rather enjoyed thinking of himself in such surroundings.

“My daughter is looking forward to this meeting,” Señor Muras resumed. “At her age she does not reconcile herself so easily to solitude.”

“Does she live here all the time?” Dunnett asked.

“She has just come here,” Señor Muras replied. “Until now, a convent. She thought at one time that she had found her vocation. But the nuns dissuaded her. I am very thankful that God could spare her”—he devoutly crossed himself. “They are strange, these workings of Providence, do you not think, Señor Dunnett?”

“Very strange, very strange indeed,” Dunnett replied. He was conscious of an obligation to shoulder his share of the conversation. With Señor Muras so prodigal, it seemed discourteous to remain silent.

A servant entered, carrying glasses on a tray. They held champagne. Dunnett took one. “You must excuse my wife,” Señor Muras remarked. “She is resting. She would not wish us to wait.”

At that moment the evening stillness of the
hacienda
was broken by the sound of someone—a girl—singing. Señor Muras crossed to the window and threw it open.

“That,” he said proudly, “is my daughter.”

The words of the song came through, clearer now. They filled the room where the listeners waited.

“If you'll be my sweetie”
the voice went on

“You'll sing to me

Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweetie

Like a bird in the tree.”

The singer stopped abruptly, as though she had suddenly remembered something else to do, and Señor Muras came away from the window. “It was an American convent she was at,” he remarked affectionately.

Dunnett stood for a while at the window looking out. It was a golden evening, beautiful and still. The
hacienda
, set in a shallow saucer of land, seemed to rest in a perpetual atmosphere of peace, as though the rush and turmoil of the world swept heedlessly over the edge and left everything inside untouched. A hundred feet from the house two large black birds with bare, muscular necks were stooping over something that lay on the ground, and tearing off bright scarlet strips of it with the motion of the thrush tugging at the worm. Dunnett could hear the ripping sound they made, and the scraping of their wing tips on the ground as they steadied themselves before taking a bite.

“You've got a nice place out here,” he remarked politely.

“You like it?” Señor Muras remarked in a surprised tone of voice. “I had scarcely hoped for that. For my part I find it a tomb; a remote, melancholy tomb. We try to disguise it, but that is all we can do. How can one make a house beautiful without people? And we live so quietly. In all, we are only three.” He raised his glass to his lips and emptied it. “Before we came here,” he said regretfully, “we lived in the centre. Such crowds! Such stimulation! At midnight we had to close the windows for the noise; I swear it. And now here at midnight the grave itself would be gayer. More champagne, Mr. Dunnett?”

Before Dunnett could reply, the door had opened and
Señorita Muras was standing there. She was dressed all in white and wore a crown of artificial white flowers in her hair. She remained where she was, her dark, handsome eyes playing into the room. Then she came forward, holding out a hand tipped by long, blood-red nails. When she was by him he discovered that she was as much drenched in perfume as Señor Muras himself. It was, at that moment, as he caught her eyes, that he recognised her as the closely-guarded convent schoolgirl on the boat. She had certainly emerged all right; what he had seen had evidently been the last day of the chrysalis stage.

“My daughter, Carmel,” Señor Muras said proudly. “This is Mr. Dunnett.”

“How are you?” she said. “I've been just crazy to meet you. I saw you on the boat, but you wouldn't recognise me.”

“How do you do?” Dunnett replied.

Señorita Muras smiled back at him. “Oh my,” she said. “You
are
English. Do you know, if anyone else said ‘How-do-you-do' like that it'd be a snub? But when you say it it's perfect.”

“I'm glad you think so,” Dunnett answered.

“There you go again,” Señorita Muras exclaimed. “You sound as though you were snubbing the whole time. But I know you're not. I think it's lovely hearing English spoken. I do really. We heard a lot of it in Hollywood.”

“That wasn't real English,” Dunnett replied.

“I'll say it was,” Señorita Muras answered. “There was one actor lived over by the convent had an accent you could hitch a horse to. He used to wear a black coat and striped trousers even when he was only in crowd scenes. He was
very
English.”

“Well, you're very American, aren't you?” Dunnett asked.

“Me?” Señorita Muras enquired in astonishment. “Oh no, I'm not American. Everyone at the convent thought I was awfully foreign; and there were all sorts at that convent. There were Chilenos and a Cypriot in my dormitory.”

“So you've only just left school, have you?” Dunnett asked.

Señorita Muras did not bother to reply. Instead she came over and led him to the couch. Her hand was cool and soft to the touch. “You tell me about London,” she said. “You know it, don't you?”

“I live there,” Dunnett replied.

“Say, are those Ripper murders still going on? I read a series about them.”

“No: they're done with now; that's ancient history.”

“That's swell, but what about Buckingham Palace— have you ever been over it?”

“It isn't open to the public, you see,” Dunnett explained.

“Well, what about Bond Street?”

“I know Bond Street all right.”

“Is it very smart? Is it smarter than Paris?”

“I've only been to Paris once. It didn't look very smart to me then.”

Señorita Muras paused. “You know the Old Curiosity Shop?” she asked. Dunnett nodded.

“And Albemarle Street where Lord Byron limped downstairs?”

Dunnett nodded again: he had not the least idea what she was talking about.

“I can't have too much of that sort of thing,” she told him. She indicated a spot vaguely in the region of her heart. “Antiquity gets me there every time.”

A contemplative look came into her eyes as she thought about the past. She took a cigarette out of the box beside her and without saying a word accepted the match which Dunnett struck for her. Antiquity had evidently affected her pretty deeply and she sat where she was, scratching patterns on the silver top of the cigarette box with the point of her finger nail.

Dunnett was not sorry that the first rush of conversation was over; on the Señorita's part it consisted so much in asking
questions to which the actual answer appeared to be unimportant. And he had a curiously uneasy feeling that Señor Muras was watching. When he turned round he found that this was so. Señor Muras was lying back at full length on a rattan chair. When he saw that he was observed his expression at once changed. The whole face softened and his eyes began to smile again. He even made pawing motions with his foot preparatory to rising.

“No, please don't get up,” Dunnett begged him. “I don't want to disturb you.”

Señor Muras waved the remark aside. “I must be up,” he said. “My wife, you know. … She will be down at any moment now.” He shifted his weight onto his two feet and pushed himself up in the arms of his chair. Then he came over and whispered in Dunnett's ear. “Please do not tire her,” he asked. “She is not very strong and is easily exhausted.”

The light by now had changed. The sun slipping suddenly behind the distant range had left the room suspended in a warm gloom. It was all abrupt and instantaneous, as though unexpected even by nature; that was the peculiar charm of tropic sunsets, Dunnett discovered. At one moment it was full day and, at the next, one more page of the calendar had already gone over the edge into night. The shadows in the garden disappeared; and the two obscene birds continued their meal in darkness. The sound of tearing and feasting continued at intervals to penetrate within doors. The room grew blacker. Señor Muras did not move: the red circle of his elegant cigar butt established his position but the rest of him was in darkness. He was visible only when he drew at his cigar. Then his features lit up with startling prominence. Dunnett felt that somewhere beneath those glowing eyebrows the small, bright eyes were still regarding him. When he put the lights on, Señora Muras was already coming into the room.

In mere physical terms Señora Muras was large, not large in the way her husband was large, but big in a heavy and imposing fashion that made small chairs—she invariably chose small ones—sag under her . But it was her colour rather than
her size that caught Dunnett's eye. For all practical purposes she was black. Not a gross, smiling negress—whatever the point of contact with the jungle might have been, it was obviously historic generations back—but black, nevertheless. She advanced, agitating the shelfful of jewellery that lay upon her bosom, and held out her hand. Dunnett took it, but not before he had noticed those whitish crinkled give-away folds between the fingers.

“You must forgive my wife,” Señor Muras reminded him. “No linguist. It was my daughter who wrote for her. Pure Portuguese family my wife's.”

It was Señorita Muras who came forward to help her. They exchanged a few words and the Señorita turned to Dunnet “She says that she's very pleased to meet you, and hopes that you'll be seeing a lot of each other,” Señorita Muras volunteered. “She asks me to say that she wouldn't have been late if she hadn't been upstairs resting.”

At what was obviously the end of the sentence Señora Muras gave a little titter and nodded her head. She was evidently anxious that her part in the conversation should not be overlooked; and it was also quite clear that so far as she herself was concerned she regarded her last remark as in the nature of a supreme politeness.

When dinner was served, the exceedingly small company went into an excessively large loom. Señora Muras took Dunnett's arm, and he was aware of a musky bulk of womanhood beside him as he walked. She seemed to enjoy the association, and kept on saying things in Portuguese that sounded like compliments; her voice, he noticed, was as low and unmodulated as a man's. Behind them Señorita Muras pranced and chattered like a squirrel.

Dinner was a meal on a Colonial scale, full and lavish and supporting. By the time they had reached the second dish of chicken—this time boiled with paprika and served with rice—Dunnett felt himself quietly and severely sweating. At first he had begun to remove his handkerchief and wipe his forehead between mouthfuls, but the others did not seem to
worry. Señor Muras himself sat at the top of the table, his bald head gleaming. Dunnett therefore let the perspiration remain. The Señora kept dabbing at herself with a rolled-up handkerchief like a sponge.

Dinner had drawn to a close and Dunnett had been given more brandy than he had ever seen put before any man, when the butler informed Señor Muras that he was wanted on the telephone. For a moment the placid smoothness of his countenance was disturbed. His features flickered. He heaved himself to his feet and excused himself with a flourish of apologies. When he came back his face was smooth and smiling again; if anything smiling a little more than it had been before.