Lady From Argentina Read online

  It distressed her. She had imagined marriage to be something permanent, love between partners an enduring thing; at least in her family if not in others. But now it was being demonstrated all too clearly that this was not so. Even between one’s own parents a relationship that had started with love and consideration could deteriorate into detestation and contempt. It was a painful lesson to learn so early in life.

  When Charles and Frieda Lacoste split up she became a kind of human shuttlecock tossed from one parent to the other. Although her mother had legal custody of her, she spent as much time with her father. Neither parent was at all possessive regarding her, and she moved from one to the other as circumstances dictated.

  She remembered a day when her mother looked at her and remarked with a kind of surprise, as though she had just discovered a curious and hitherto unobserved fact:

  ‘Why, Adelaide, you are quite a beauty, aren’t you? I hadn’t noticed.’

  She was just seventeen and her mother was married to a man named Raoul du Gard, who was the owner of a fine château and extensive vineyards in the Gironde department not far from Bordeaux. Monsieur du Gard was a tall, lean, distinguished-looking man who had been married twice before. He was forty-five years old and his crisp black hair was greying at the temples; but he seemed to possess all the energy of a much younger man, as well as considerable charm.

  Adelaide enjoyed staying at the château, which was an impressive building and had been in the du Gard family for centuries. Raoul had inherited it, together with the vineyards, on the death of his father, killed in a road accident at the age of forty-two. It had been a responsibility which the son, though so young, was perfectly capable of taking on.

  Adelaide thought her stepfather could well have played the role of a handsome aristocrat in one of Charles Lacoste’s period films. She was attracted to him at once, and was flattered by the way a man of such distinction would talk to a young girl like her without the slightest hint of condescension.

  He taught her to ride. He was himself an excellent horseman and had a fine stable.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ he told Adelaide, ‘your mother has no love for anything equestrian and I have never been able to persuade her to sit on a horse. She maintains that horses have been made redundant by the car. What do you think?’

  ‘I think they’re gorgeous,’ Adelaide said. ‘And I love riding ever so much.’

  He took her on rides through the vineyards where the men and women were at work. He called them his people; he was like a feudal lord, she thought, and must be terribly rich. She felt proud to be riding with him, the master of everything within sight.

  One day he took her to see where the wines were stored. They left the horses outside and went into this cool dim interior with its curious odour and rows of casks. He described to her the process of bottling and other mysteries of the age-old business. But she was not greatly interested and she believed he realised it, for he stopped abruptly and turned to face her.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘how delightfully charming you are, my dear?’

  She did not know what to say and remained silent, a trifle embarrassed.

  ‘You should,’ he said, ‘since you have only to look into a mirror to see the truth of it. Am I not correct?’

  Still she said nothing.

  ‘Of course I am,’ he said. ‘And since you are so charming I think I should like to kiss you.’

  There was no one else in the place. She could perhaps have run away from him, but she felt no inclination to do so. Her feeling was rather one of pleasurable excitement. She trembled a little, but not from fear. Nor did she struggle when he drew her to him; she submitted without the least resistance.

  He had, of course, kissed her before, but only in a paternal kind of way: a light brush on her cheek or forehead. This was entirely different; in fact she had never been kissed quite like it before; not by anyone. It made her heart beat faster and there was a weakness in her legs, as though the bones had melted. Nor was it over in a moment; she was held close to him in a clasp that was so strong she knew she could not have freed herself even if she had wished to. And she was not at all sure that she did; she was intoxicated by the embrace; a thrill ran through her body. She caught the scent of him, strongly masculine, and she wondered how much further he would go. Would he be satisfied merely with a kiss? And if he were not, what ought she to do? Should she try to fight him off? He would be too strong for her. Should she cry out for help? She doubted whether anyone would hear. And did she really want anyone to hear? It was all so confusing; and he was after all her stepfather and master of this place. She had no wish to make a fool of herself.

  And in the event she was not obliged to make any decision. He released her and smiled and said:

  ‘Now that was really rather pleasant, don’t you think?’

  Again she was at a loss for words. She mumbled something unintelligible, and her heart was thumping and her legs were still weak. She felt that something momentous had happened, but she doubted whether it meant as much to him as it did to her. What had it been, after all? A kiss, a mere kiss. Nothing to get worked up about.

  He put a hand on her arm. ‘Come. Let us go back to the horses. Let us ride like the wind. What do you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let us ride like the wind.’

  *

  She said nothing to her mother about what had happened. Raoul had not told her not to mention it, but she had a feeling that it would be unwise to do so. But Frieda du Gard was not blind; she was as observant as the next person, and possibly more so than most. She was also well aware of the character of her husband.

  Though there was no way in which she could have known about the incident in the wine store unless Raoul himself had told her – which was quite inconceivable – it was not long afterwards when she informed Adelaide that her father wished to have her with him for a while.

  ‘So you have heard from him?’

  ‘Yes, I have heard from him.’

  Adelaide had a suspicion that it was her mother who had made the suggestion. It was unlikely that Charles Lacoste would suddenly have come to the conclusion that he wanted his daughter near him; he would simply not have bothered. As long as she was out of his sight she was almost certainly out of his mind.

  What had probably in fact happened was that Frieda had got in touch with him by telephone and had suggested that for the present it might be best for all concerned if their daughter were to leave the château. She might even have dropped a hint of something going on between Raoul and Adelaide; but that was doubtful, because it could have reflected badly on her. It would have been damaging to her self-esteem to admit that she might possibly be supplanted in her husband’s affections by her own daughter.

  ‘Your father,’ she said, ‘is going down into Spain to make a film. He would like you to go with him. He thinks it would be an education for you. He says it will widen your horizon. And I agree.’

  ‘Yes, mother,’ Adelaide said, ‘I am sure you do.’

  The faint note of irony was not lost on Madame du Gard. She glanced sharply at her daughter.

  ‘Have you any objection to going?’

  Adelaide gave a lift of the shoulders. ‘Who am I to object? I am just a thing to be passed from one of you to the other as it suits you. My wishes are hardly to be taken into account because they simply are of no account.’

  ‘Are you complaining that we make life hard for you?’

  ‘No, I am not complaining.’

  ‘And I should think not. There are plenty of girls who would be only too happy to have the advantages that you have had. Just think of the poor and the homeless.’

  She doubted whether her mother thought of them very often. She was not the sort to devote herself to the charitable work of assisting those who had had a raw deal from life. But in this instance it suited her to contrast the lot of the destitute and the downtrodden with that of her daughter.

  And Adelaide could not but admit to herse
lf that, much as she might have disliked some aspects of her life, it had on the whole not been too bad. It could in fact have been a great deal worse.

  ‘You will not be too unhappy to go?’ Madame du Gard inquired, looking closely at the girl. ‘There is nothing here that makes you particularly reluctant to leave?’

  She was probing. Adelaide was well aware of that; but she answered with an air of perfect innocence:

  ‘No, mother. Nothing at all.’

  Which was not quite true, of course. She would miss the luxury of life at the château and the horse-riding; that could not honestly be denied. But her mother had not been hinting at these things, as she very well knew. The question, without being specifically stated, had without doubt been referring not to any thing but to a human being. In plain words Madame du Gard might have asked:

  ‘Will it grieve you to leave Raoul?’

  And to that Adelaide could quite honestly have answered: ‘No.’

  She liked him, but she was most certainly not in love with him, and there would be no painful wrench in leaving him. The parting would mean no more to her than she imagined it would mean to him. They had been good friends and there had been that secret kiss, but it would have been foolish to build up such a minor incident into an event of world-shaking importance. She would leave him without the least regret.

  ‘I shall be very happy to go to Spain. It will be an opportunity to practise my Spanish.’

  She had, during the course of her rather haphazard education, learned both English and Spanish to go with the French and German which she already spoke. She appeared to have a gift for languages; they came easily to her, in contrast to mathematics and science, which she found boring in the extreme.

  ‘That is settled then,’ Frieda said.

  *

  And so it was. Raoul drove her in the white Mercedes to Bordeaux, where she was to catch a train for Paris. Madame said her goodbyes at the château, not feeling inclined to make the car journey. It had been arranged that Adelaide should spend a few days in Paris before the film party set out for Spain, when she would go with them.

  ‘I hope,’ Raoul said before they parted, ‘that you have enjoyed your stay with us.’

  ‘It’s been marvellous,’ Adelaide assured him. ‘Thank you for everything, everything.’

  His mouth twitched with a faint smile. ‘It has been a pleasure having you here, my dear. Come again whenever you wish. There will always be a home for you at the château. Remember that.’

  ‘I will,’ she said.

  She was to remember it years later.

  Before the train left he handed her an envelope. ‘Open it later.’

  She was well on the way to Paris when she did so. Inside were ten crisp new five-hundred-franc notes. There was also a card. Written on the card were the words: With love. Raoul.

  Chapter Five – Guido

  They travelled south through France in a convoy of vans and cars and caravans. A small extra caravan had been added to the tally for the accommodation of the director’s daughter, who was accompanying the party. She felt like a VIP to be treated with such consideration. She could hardly have asked for more if she had been one of the actresses in the film.

  It was early summer and the weather was pleasantly warm, the countryside through which they passed green and smiling. They drove through Orleans and Châteauroux, Limoges and Brive, turned eastward at Toulouse and reached the Mediterranean coast at Narbonne. From Narbonne they again headed south to Perpignan and thence to the Franco-Spanish border.

  Their ultimate destination was in the province of Murcia in south-east Spain. Here, in this dry hot land between the mountains and the sea, they established their base for operations. The film was to be a historical drama set in old Spain in the time of the Moorish occupation. It was a joint Franco-Italian-Spanish project, and Charles Lacoste confided to his daughter that he expected difficulties.

  ‘There is always trouble with these international productions. Language problems and nationalistic pride come into it. People have to be very tactfully handled.’

  Most of the extras would be Spanish, and filming would take place in and around Cartagena, in old decaying villages of the parched and dusty countryside and in the nearby sierra, as well as on specially constructed sets. Horses would be involved, and this added a further complication.

  ‘I shall be very fully occupied,’ Lacoste said. ‘I am afraid I shall have almost no spare time at all. You do understand, don’t you?’

  She understood very well. He was telling her that he would have little, if any, time to spend with her. There was also, though he did not mention this, the presence of his latest girlfriend to take into account. She was a minor actress named Violette Deveaux, who had a small part in the film. She was young, black-haired, petite and totally possessive.

  It had been apparent to Adelaide from the moment of their first meeting that she and Violette would never be friends. The actress resented the presence of her lover’s daughter and made little attempt to disguise the fact. For her part, Adelaide didn’t give a damn whether Violette resented her or not; she just thought it was rather stupid of her father to get himself involved with such an empty-headed person less than half his age. But she supposed he needed some relaxation.

  ‘You needn’t worry about me,’ she told him. ‘I have no doubt I can find ways of amusing myself.’

  *

  She watched some of the filming for a time. It interested her at first, but she soon became bored with it. Everybody else around seemed to have a job, and she felt out of things, a perfectly useless hanger-on.

  She decided that the thing to do was to get clean away from the film crowd and go off on her own. She was quite certain her father would not even notice her absence, and she still had most of the money that Raoul had given her and could pay her way. So she took to exploring the region, travelling by train or bus. She went to Murcia and Alicante, to the holiday resorts along the Costa Blanca, mingling with the crowds but feeling rather lonely nonetheless with no one for a companion.

  Until she met Guido.

  *

  It happened on one of those sun-soaked beaches where the bodies were laid out to roast like so many slabs of meat on a monstrous griddle. She was strolling aimlessly along when suddenly there was this boy grinning at her.

  ‘Hi!’ the boy said. ‘I’m Guido. Who are you?’

  She was surprised to hear him addressing her in English, but she learned later that he had taken her for an English girl because of the blonde hair and the fact that so many of them came to Spain for their holidays. He had been bumming around the beaches ever since he had run away from the children’s home where he had been brought up. He had picked up the English language in places like Benidorm from the package holiday set, on whom he battened like a human leech. He watched American films too, and his great hero was Clint Eastwood. His chief regret was that he had never been able to get himself a magnum revolver like the one that Dirty Harry used. He was maybe eighteen or nineteen years old and a veteran of petty crime.

  She looked at him and liked what she saw.

  ‘I’m Adelaide,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll call you Addie,’ the boy said. ‘You wanna be my girl?’

  She laughed. She thought he was joking, but he was not grinning now, and she looked into his eyes and knew that he was serious. He was wearing a tattered old shirt and bleached denim shorts and espadrilles. He had curly jet-black hair and he was nut-brown on all the parts of him that showed, and maybe on the other parts too. He was about five-nine tall and as lean as a greyhound.

  ‘Is that what you want?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Betcha life.’

  ‘Maybe we should go somewhere and talk.’

  ‘Maybe we should.’

  They talked, partly in English, party in Spanish, while sitting at a table and eating ice-cream sundaes, which she bought. She was to pay for everything in the days that followed, and they were to lead the life of R
iley in a modest way until the money ran out. But neither of them gave a damn about that, because Guido knew ways of getting more money which would never have occurred to her before meeting him.

  There was no more loneliness for her now and no more boredom. How could she possibly be bored with Guido for a companion? They made love in the strangest of places. Sometimes she took him back to her caravan, sneaking in after dark so that her father should not see them. Perhaps it would not have bothered him if he had; he had other things on his mind.

  Guido had no home of his own, but he had a tenuous connection with a loosely-knit hippy-type colony occupying a derelict building on the outskirts of Cartagena, where he could lay out his bed-roll when he pleased and leave his duffel bag without fear of having it stolen in his absence. Not that there was much in it worth stealing; he had gathered to himself very little of any value in the course of his vagrant life. Whatever he gained he spent quickly; surely that was what money was for. Kept in the pocket it was of no use at all.

  Looking back over the years, Adelaide was to see this period as a time of unalloyed delight, of unbelievable ecstasy. She would never again experience a love equal to that which she had felt for Guido; it was simply not possible. During the months of that hot dry summer in southern Spain she lived in a kind of dream, a state as it were of almost permanent intoxication; not with alcohol, not with drugs, but with emotion. Guido was completely amoral, and under his influence she seemed to lose the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Anything that he did had to be right, whether it was lawful or not.