” Really? People usually complain of the awful crowds, not of being alone.”
” Mind you,” he pointed out, ” I wouldn’t want any companion.” There was a suggestion in those long eyes which slightly tilted at the corners. I was sure, in that moment, that he was the type whom most women would find irresistible, and that he knew it. This knowledge disturbed me; I myself was becoming too conscious of that rather blatant masculinity and I wondered whether I had betrayed this to him.
I said rather coolly: ” Someone was asking about the bronze Venus this morning.”
His eyes shone with amusement. ” Oh well, if I miss it, I’ll only have myself to blame.” His meaning was perfectly clear and I felt annoyed with him. Why did he think we kept a studio and entertained people there if not in the hope of selling things? How did he think we lived?
” We’d hate you to have it unless you were really keen about y
” But I never have anything that I’m not keen about,” he replied. ” Actually though, I prefer the figure of the younger Venus.”
“Oh.. that!”
He put his hand on my arm and said: ” It’s charming. Yes, I prefer her.”
” I simply must be getting back,” I told him.
He leaned on his elbow and smiled at me, and I had a feeling that he knew far too much of what was going on in my mind and was fully aware that I found his company extremely stimulating and wanted more of it—that he was something more to me than a prospective buyer. He said lightly: ” Your father tells me that you’re the commercial brains behind the enterprise. I bet he’s right.”
” Artists need someone practical to look after them,” I replied. ” And now that my mother is dead …”
I knew that my voice changed when I spoke of her. It still happened, although she had been dead three years. Annoyed with myself as I always was when I betrayed emotion I said quickly: ” She died of T.B.
They came here in the hope that it would be good for her. She was a wonderful manager. “
” And so you take after her.” His eyes were full of sympathy now and I was pleased out of all proportion that he should understand how I felt. I thought then that I had imagined that streak of mischief in him. Perhaps mischief was not the right description; but the fact was that while I was becoming more and more attracted by this man, I was often conscious of something within him that I could not understand, some quality, something which he was determined to keep hidden from me. This often made me uneasy, while it in no way decreased my growing interest in him, but rather added to it. Now I saw only his sympathy which was undoubtedly genuine.
” I hope so,” I answered. ” I think I do.”
” She must have been an excellent business woman.”
” She was.” I still could not control the pain in my voice as I remembered, and pictures of the past flashed in and out of my mind. I saw her—small and dainty, with the brilliant colour in her cheeks which was so becoming and a sign of her illness; that tremendous energy which was like a fire consuming her—until the last months. The island had seemed a different place when she was in it. In the beginning she had taught me to read and write and to be quick with figures. I remembered long lazy days when I lay on one of the little beaches or swam in the blue water or lay on my back and drifted; all the beauty of the place, all the echoes of ancient history were the background for one of the happiest existences a child could know. I had run wild, it was true.
Sometimes I talked to the tourists; sometimes I joined the boatmen who took visitors to the grottoes or on tours of the island; sometimes I climbed the path to the villa of Tiberius and sat looking over the sea to Naples. Then I would come back to the studio and listen to the talk going on there; I shared my father’s pride in his work, my mother’s joy when she had succeeded in making a good sale.
They were so important to each other; and there were times when they seemed to me like two brilliant butterflies dancing in the sunshine, intoxicated with the joy of being alive because they knew that the sun of their happiness must go down quickly and finally.
I had been indignant when they told me I must go away to school in England. It was a necessity, my mother pointed out, for she had reached the limit of her capabilities, and although I was a tolerable linguist (we spoke English at home, Italian to our neighbours and, as there were many French and German visitors to our studio, I soon had a smattering of these languages) I had had no real education. My mother was anxious that I should go to her old school which was small and in the heart of Sussex. Her old headmistress was still in charge and I suspected that it was all very much as it had been in my mother’s day.
After a term or two I became reconciled, partly because I quickly made friends with Esther McBane, partly because I returned to the island for Christmas, Easter and summer holidays; and as I was a normal uncomplicated person I enjoyed both worlds.
But then my mother died and nothing was the same again. I found out that I had been educated on the jewellery which had once been hers; she had planned for me to go to a university, but the jewellery had realised less than she had hoped (for one quality she shared with my father was optimism) and the cost of my schooling was more than she had bargained for. So when she died I went back to school for two more years because that was her wish. Esther was a great comfort at that time; she was an orphan who was being brought up by an aunt, so she had a good deal of sympathy to offer. She came to stay with us during summer holidays and it helped both Father and me not to fret so much with a visitor in the studio.
We said that she must come every summer, and she assured us she would. We left school at the same time and she came home with me at the end of our final term. During that holiday we would discuss what we were going to do with our lives. Esther planned to take up art seriously. As for myself, I had my father to consider, so I was going to try to take my mother’s place in the studio although I feared that was some thing I should never be able to do entirely.
I smiled, remembering that long letter I had had from Esther, which in itself was unusual for Esther abhorred letter-writing and avoided it whenever possible. On the way back to Scotland she had met a man; he was growing tobacco in Rhodesia and was home for a few months. That letter had been full of this adventure. There had been one more letter two months later. Esther was getting married and going out to Rhodesia.
It was exciting and she was wonderfully happy; but I knew it was the end of our friendship because the only bond between us now could be through letters which Esther would have neither time nor inclination to write. I did have one to say that she had arrived, but marriage had made a different person of Esther; she had grown far from the long-legged untidy-haired girl who used to walk in the grounds of the little school with me and talk about dedicating herself to Art. I was brought out of the past by me sight of Roc Pendorric’s face close to mine, and now there was nothing but sympathy in his eyes. ” I’ve stirred up sad memories.”
” I was thinking about my mother and the past.”
He nodded and was silent for a few seconds. Then he said: ” You don’t ever think of going back to her people … or your father’s people?”
” People?” I murmured.
” Didn’t she ever talk to you about her home in England?” I was suddenly very surprised. ” No, she never mentioned it.”
” Perhaps the memory was unhappy.”
” I never realised it before, but neither of them ever talked about . before they married. As a matter of fact I think they felt that all that happened before was insignificant.”
” It must have been a completely happy marriage ” It was. “
We were silent again. Then he said: “Favel! It’s an unusual name.”