The Winding Stair (26 page)

But Cynthia Brett had claimed him as an old acquaintance and was pouring a stream of complaints about life in the castle into his unwilling ear. Since she used a particularly carrying whisper, he was in agony until Jaime appeared, splendid in full livery, to announce dinner.

Mrs. Brett was waiting for them enthroned at the centre of the long dining table. ‘You're welcome, all of you. I'm too old and stiff to get up and greet you severally. Juana will act hostess for me.' Gair thought he saw a quick exchange of glances between Pedro and Roberto. ‘We are talking English today,' Mrs. Brett went on, ‘in honour of our guests. You have all met?' She made no further effort at introductions, but sat impassively in her big chair and watched the little bustle they made as they found their places.

It had been an awkward enough group to arrange, Gair thought, as he found his own unwelcome place beside Cynthia Brett, who, in her turn, was on old Mrs. Brett's left. Her husband was on his mother's right, with Elvira beyond him, and Prospero beyond her again, at the end of the table, facing down to Miguel at the other end, beyond Gair himself. On the other side, Juana was sitting across from her grandmother, with Pedro and Roberto on either side of her, Daisy and Teresa beyond them and Manuela and Estella tucked rather awkwardly in on the corners beside Prospero and Miguel.

Gair was just thinking, with an odd little twinge of relief, that Father Ignatius had been left out of this family party, when he came hurrying into the room, murmured an apology to Mrs. Brett, took his place between Elvira and Prospero and folded his hands to say grace.

The food and wine were excellent, but it was very far from being a lively party. Doing his duty as best he might by Cynthia Brett, Gair wondered who had arranged the seating. Juana, probably, though her grandmother must have insisted on Juana's own position. Old Mrs. Brett was eating hardly anything and speaking not at all, so that Cynthia Brett fell entirely to him to entertain. ‘What do you hear from dear Lady Forland?' she asked in her piercing voice as Jaime removed her soup plate. ‘I was so sorry not to be able to call on her before I left, but it was
all done in such ridiculous haste. You will make her my apologies when you write, Mr. Varlow?'

‘Of course.' He was afraid she was glad to find him here, had already, in all probability, seized on him as a rescuer for one of her daughters. He looked across the table and caught Juana's eye. She was marooned between her two cousins, who were both absorbed in their other neighbours. Daisy's colour was becomingly high; Teresa was sparkling across her champagne glass at Roberto.

‘I told Juana she should put you next to the girls, as an old friend,' Cynthia's strident voice brought him back to his duty. ‘No reason why you should be saddled with an old woman like me.'

Paying the necessary compliment, he hoped to turn the conversation to less personal channels by asking her how she liked Portugal. Juana's reproachful eye, from the other side of the table, warned him that this was a mistake.

But it was too late, Cynthia was launched. ‘Like it!' Her voice rose higher still. ‘My dear Mr. Varlow, I am not touched in the head. How could I like it? Dirt, and grease, and absolutely no conversation! Don't ask me how I like Portugal; tell me instead how you endure it. Is there any society in Lisbon? What am I going to do with my poor girls?'

The whole table was listening to her by now, her daughters obviously in agony. ‘Mamma!' said Teresa, who was sitting across the table from her ‘Don't.'

Cynthia drained her wine glass and Gair realised, with horror, that she had been fortifying herself already for this occasion. She took no notice of her daughter. ‘The wine's not bad,' she told him, loudly confidential, ‘but the food! What's this, pray?' She helped herself to the dish Jaime was impassively holding out to her.

‘It's chicken, senhora.' Jaime's English was as fluent as her own.

She bridled. ‘My good man, I was hardly speaking to you.' And, turning to Gair as if Jaime did not exist: ‘You see what I mean? A barbarous country. Intolerable. I don't know how I shall stand it.'

‘That's quite enough.' Mrs. Brett leaned forward from the other side of Cynthia. ‘We will now imitate the English and discuss the weather.' She leaned back again to speak to Jaime
who was now behind her chair. ‘What was that you were saying this morning, Jaime, about its being earthquake weather?'

Gair knew that in fact autumn not winter was the time when the danger of earthquakes was greatest, but Jaime took his cue, and the whole table was soon discussing the chances of another shock as bad as the one that had destroyed so much of Lisbon fifty years before.

This led, logically, to King Joseph's great minister, Pombal, who had rebuilt the city, but here, Gair soon saw, was dangerous ground again. Everyone began to talk at once. ‘He was a son of Satan,' said Father Ignatius. ‘He did a great deal for Portugal,' said Prospero. ‘He was not fit to live,' said Miguel.

Pedro and Roberto had embarked, furiously, on what was obviously an old argument, talking across Juana, who had gone very white. Across the table, her father was contentedly drinking his wine, unconcerned with the argument that raged around him. If he remembered how his first wife's family had suffered at Pombal's hands, he gave no sign of it.

Half the party had lapsed into Portuguese in the excitement of the argument, and Gair was uncomfortably aware of the servants behind the chairs drinking in every word. He glanced at Mrs. Brett, hoping that she might intervene once more to steer the talk into safer channels, but she had withdrawn into herself, like an old tortoise, and was taking no notice of what went on around her.

Pedro's defence of Pombal was growing more and more impassioned. ‘At least he kept order,' he said, ‘and stood up to the English. We could do with a man like him now.'

‘A man?' Roberto leaned forward so that for a moment Gair could not see Juana. ‘A tyrant, you mean. Think what he did—'

As he went on to speak of the executions following the Tavora plot, he leaned back again, and Gair saw Juana's face. In a moment she was going to explode. She might say anything. She must be stopped. His brain was paralysed. He could think of nothing he could reasonably interject into this dangerous talk. ‘Broken on the wheel,' Roberto was saying. ‘Even to think was dangerous.'

‘And now it's so safe?' Juana began, and suddenly all the other voices were silent, and Gair knew, as if he could read her thoughts that in a moment she would speak of the Sons of the Star, and their kind of tyranny. And still he could think of nothing to say.
But behind him, Jaime dropped a bowl of fruit and, at the same moment, Elvira spoke for the first time that day:

‘ “
The robin redbreast and the nightingale
Never sing well in cages
.”'

And then, everyday again: ‘I thought we were to speak English.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry.' It was the break in tension they had needed. Juana leaned forward to apologise to her step-mother in English. ‘I forgot.'

‘It makes no difference to me,' said Cynthia Brett. ‘I don't understand a word of these Portuguese politics, in Portuguese or in English. Who is this man Pombal anyway?'

For a moment, Gair was afraid it would all begin over again, but now Miguel leaned forward. ‘The best thing that can be said for him is, that he's dead. And had best be, too, as a subject. Reginald, since this is an English party, I'll take wine with you.'

The little formality, unpractised in Portugal, changed the course of the conversation. They had all had time to think. Jaime and the other servants had finished picking up the dropped fruit and were busy serving dessert. Teresa was explaining the custom of taking wine to Roberto, who thought nothing of it, and Daisy and Pedro had their heads close together, talking in low voices about hunting. Between the two couples, Juana sat as if changed to stone, listening with imagined horror to what she had nearly said.

Mrs. Brett pulled herself upright and looked around the table. ‘If you all have your dessert,' she said. ‘Jaime, fill up the glasses, and leave us.'

He must have expected this unusual command. He and the other servants went about their business as calmly as if this happened every day.

Only Reginald protested. ‘You'd best leave the bottles on the table, Jaime, if you're going.'

His mother looked at him coldly. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘perhaps it would be as well, Jaime.' This meant a further delay while Jaime opened new bottles of the sweet muscatel they were drinking with their dessert. By now a heavy silence had fallen on the party and all eyes were fixed on Mrs. Brett. ‘Thank you, Jaime,' she nodded to him as he bowed his way out behind the other servants. ‘Now, here we are,' she looked around the table. ‘The family.'

‘And Mr. Varlow,' said Miguel.

‘I invited Mr. Varlow.' That settled that. ‘I also wished Father Ignatius to be here, as the keeper of our consciences. So, now we are alone, I want you all to drink a toast with me. To my heir: to Juana.'

There was a little, shocked silence, and then Prospero rose to his feet: ‘To my dear niece,' he said. ‘Juana.'

Joining in the toast, Gair looked around with amazement. He would never have thought they would take it so well. Even Pedro and Roberto contrived to look pleased as they turned to drink Juana's health where she sat between them, her colour high, her hands clasped together on the damask tablecloth.

Then, inevitably, brutally: ‘Speech!' said Miguel.

Juana stood up and looked around at them. ‘You're all so kind,' she said in English. There were tears in her eyes. ‘I d … d …' her hands writhed together on the table and she looked across it at Gair: ‘I can't think how to thank you.' It came out in a rush. ‘Just: thank you. And thank you, ma'am. I'll t …t … I'll try to do what's right.' Was it an apology or a promise or a bit of both?

She sat down amid a little buzz of affectionate congratulation. Gair could hardly believe his ears. He simply had not thought this family capable of such good behaviour. Then he caught old Mrs. Brett's eye. Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head. So she did not believe in it, the old cynic. Well, did he?

Beside him, Cynthia Brett emptied her glass and leaned forward: ‘The dark horse, eh?' Her words ran together. ‘And we thought you were being so self-sacrificing when you insisted on coming over to look after your poor old grandmother. Risking your life in Portugal! Well, now look at us all.' Her bright, muddled glance swept round the table. ‘Let us eat, drink and be merry,' she said, ‘for tomorrow Napoleon will be here.'

‘Nonsense,' said old Mrs. Brett, and as if it had been a cue, they all started talking at once.

‘Try again, Juana. You can do it, I'm sure.' Daisy sounded brisk as a governess. ‘Keep your hands still, head up, and off you go.'

The retaining wall of the terrace was warm under Juana's elbows as she gazed out across the cliffs to the wild Atlantic that had been lashed to fury for three days by a spring gale. You could not see the waves break below, but you could hear their thunder and see the spray tossing, from time to time, as high as the cliff. Now, at last, with evening, the March sun was shining and the three girls had come out on to the terrace for Juana's elocution lesson.

It had been a great success, she thought, asking Daisy and Teresa to help her try and master her stammer. This way, they could bully her to some advantage, and, this way, she did not mind it. Who had changed the most, she asked herself, looking affectionately at Daisy and Teresa, she or they? It was hard to remember the bad old days back in England when their teasing used to bring on her stammer. Of course, they were happy now. It showed all over them and she smiled to herself, thinking of Pedro and Roberto's constant visits. And then, of course, her own position was so different. As heir to the castle, she came next, now, to her grandmother in the curious Portuguese hierarchy of respect.

She thought this horribly hard on Pedro and Roberto, but Gair Varlow inevitably pleaded patience. She had only to wait, he said, and sooner or later, the Sons of the Star must commit themselves, must strike – and be destroyed. But their January and February meetings had been curiously inconclusive. It was more and more obvious that whatever the rank and file might feel, the leaders proposed to wait for active support from Napoleon before they struck. And Napoleon was far off in Eastern Europe, where he and the Russians had fought, at Eylau, one of the bloodiest and most inconclusive battles in human memory. This news had been reported at the February meeting in the great cavern, but the messenger had had few words of encouragement for his Brothers of the Star, ‘The French call it a victory,' he said, ‘but
the Russians sang
Te Deum
for it. Till he has conquered them, Napoleon will have no time or thoughts to spare for us.'

‘Juana, what are you dreaming about?' Daisy's impatient voice brought her back to the present, to the roar of the sea below and the warm sun on the terrace. She shivered a little, just the same, as if the chill of the dark cell were still in her bones.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I was thinking about something else.'

‘Mr. Varlow perhaps?'

‘Good gracious, no. I only think about him when the weather is bad. Today's much too fine. But, come, let's to work. I know it by heart, I think.' She fixed her eyes on the distant, dimly seen promontory of Cape Espichel and began:

‘ “
Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a d … d
…”'

She held her hands ramrod-still against her sides and struggled with the word for an agonising few seconds, then gave up. ‘It's no good. I can't do it. Not today.' Had thinking about the cavern made her worse? ‘Let's do some Portuguese instead.'