Lady From Argentina Page 9

  Finally he said: ‘You have, of course, made up your mind. You will accept my offer?’

  She smiled. ‘I think you were confident that I would.’

  ‘It appeared probable. Should we go now and collect your belongings?’

  *

  He drove with her occupying the seat beside him to the more seedy quarter where she had been living. His car was a Citroen and he handled it with practised ease in the Paris traffic. When they arrived at the place he took a wallet from his pocket.

  ‘You will require money to pay the arrears of rent. How much will it be?’

  She told him, and he handed her the necessary amount.

  ‘I shall not come inside. You will not be long?’

  She assured him that she would not. There was very little to pack, for she had few possessions and her wardrobe was scanty. In the days that followed this deficiency was to be amply made up at Monsieur Roussel’s expense. He wished, he said, to see her dressed in style.

  ‘You are the kind of person for whom good clothes were made. You do them justice. You show them off to perfection. Your figure is superb.’

  As they were driving away he said: ‘You are leaving all that behind you. I do not think you will ever return to it. For you a new life beckons. Do you not feel it is so?’

  Again he was so persuasive that she really did believe it. It was he who would show her the way.

  *

  Even after a week she knew little about him. He did not talk about himself. It was obvious that he did not have a boring position in an office which would have taken him away for set hours of the day; but it was obvious too that he was not short of money. Much of the time she was left to her own resources; he would say he had business to attend to and she would have to amuse herself in whatever way she saw fit.

  He did not suggest that she should try to find another job. He had quickly abandoned the pretence that she was there just while she cast around for some new employment; and she did not remind him that that was supposed to be the original reason why she was there. They were both aware that simple philanthropy had never been his intention.

  So was it just that she had caught his eye and he had instantly desired her? Perhaps. It seemed the most probable reason for the way he had acted. And yet she could not avoid the feeling that there was more to it than that. There had to be some ulterior motive, though she could not guess what it might be.

  A middle-aged woman, Madame Guillaume, came in daily to do the housework. Adelaide questioned her about Roussel, but she could not, or would not, enlighten her. All she would say was that monsieur was a good employer and what he did with himself was none of her business.

  Adelaide saw that she would get nothing from this source. There are certain Frenchwomen who are complete oysters when it comes to giving away information, and Madame Guillaume was evidently one of this variety.

  She did no cooking. When they did not go out for meals Roussel himself cooked. He was very good at it; there could be no doubt on that point. And he enjoyed it. It was a hobby of his.

  ‘I could have earned my living as a chef,’ he told her, ‘if I had wished to do so. But of course I did not.’

  She asked the direct question: ‘So what do you do for a living?’

  He wagged an admonishing finger at her. ‘Now you are being inquisitive. I suppose you have asked Madame Guillaume and she has told you nothing. Am I right?’

  ‘Was there any harm in it?’

  ‘No harm at all, since she knows nothing.’

  ‘So it is a secret?’

  He smiled. ‘Let us just say I use my wits.’

  As a lover she did not rate him very highly. There was nothing passionate or exciting about his lovemaking. She would have hazarded a guess that he got more pleasure from eating, which he most certainly enjoyed. He was a gourmet but not a gourmand; he ate with discrimination but never to excess. In the matter of wines he was a connoisseur, but he detested spirits such as whisky, vodka and rum, which he dismissed as being fit only for the coarse palates of barbarians.

  *

  One night he took her to the opera; to a performance of La Bohème.

  ‘It occurred to me,’ he said, ‘that you might like to compare the Bohemian way of life in nineteenth century Paris with that which you led with your American artist.’

  She could see little resemblance. Wilbur was no ardent poet with a ringing tenor voice and she was certainly no Mimi sewing by candlelight with icy fingers. Nor had the apartment they shared been a freezing garret.

  ‘And how stupid of the man to burn his poems to heat the room. The warmth would have been scarcely noticeable and would have been gone in a moment. For that he destroyed the work of months, maybe years. Still, I suppose the verses would not have been worth preserving anyway.’

  ‘You are too down-to-earth,’ Roussel told her. ‘You have to accept operatic convention. Who, after all, ever carries on a conversation at the top of the voice in song? And besides, who could possibly sing as brilliantly as Mimi when dying of consumption? Or Violetta in La Traviata for that matter. How these opera heroines did suffer, to be sure. If they were not dying of some incurable complaint they would throw themselves from battlements, get stabbed to death in error, stab themselves when abandoned by false lovers, get seduced by charming villains or go raving mad. What a time of it they did have.’

  What a time indeed!

  *

  They had been living together for about three weeks when Pierre told her that he had to go to Buenos Aires on business.

  ‘I should like you to come with me.’

  It was not so much an invitation as a demand. It was obvious that he did not anticipate any objection on her part. And he was right, of course. The prospect of a trip to South America enchanted her. She would not have missed it for the world. All the same, she would have preferred not to have her acquiescence taken quite so much for granted.

  She had noticed that he was becoming more and more autocratic where she was concerned, as though he had acquired the right to control her life. She felt a certain resentment because of this; though she had to concede that he did have some justification, since he was spending a good deal of money on her.

  Nevertheless . . .

  *

  It would have been nice, she thought, if they could have travelled by sea as in the old days. There would have been the long relaxing ocean voyage, the crossing of the Equator with all its traditional ceremony, and then the final steaming up the River Plate from which the ships had once set sail for Spain with their rich cargoes of precious metal. It would have been so much more romantic than an airline flight, packed into a seat with other passengers as if on a bus journey through the sky.

  But come to it how you might, Buenos Aires was a jewel of a city. From the airport they were driven to a classy hotel on the Avenida Alvear not far from the Recoleta Park, and for the first three days she enjoyed herself in sightseeing with the aid of a street map, while Pierre Roussel attended to matters of business and left her largely to her own devices.

  She was fascinated by it all. This was where the tango had originated, and inland was the rolling pampas, where the gauchos herded cattle and sang to their guitars round the campfires at night. She wondered whether, if she asked him, Pierre would hire a car and take her to that wild cow country beyond the urban limits. But as things turned out she was never to put this to the test.

  On the fourth day Roussel told her that he had arranged to have dinner with a man named Ricardo Marquez.

  ‘I wish you to be there too. Looking your best.’

  She supposed he wanted to make an impression on this Señor Marquez, and figured that she might help. His next words confirmed her suspicion.

  ‘This Marquez has an eye for a beautiful woman. I am sure he will be charmed by you, my dear.’

  ‘And if he is? That will be to your advantage?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Does he know I shall be there?’

  ‘Yes. I
have sung your praises to him. I think he is intrigued. He can hardly wait to see you.’

  She was not at all sure she liked the sound of this. It was flattering, of course; but she wondered just what else Pierre might have related to Señor Marquez. To Roussel she had revealed more of her past than had perhaps been wise; some of it might have been better kept to herself. It had not occurred to her that there was a possibility of his passing on the story to another person.

  ‘Suppose,’ she said, ‘I were to tell you that I do not wish to meet this man?’

  He frowned. It was obvious that this suggestion had been unwelcome. He had not expected to meet any opposition to the arrangement.

  ‘You are not, I hope, going to be unco-operative. That would be very foolish. What reason have you for not wishing to see him? You are not surely going to pretend that you are shy? That I would find very hard to believe.’

  She made no attempt to convince him that shyness was her reason; and it was not. In fact she would have had difficulty in giving a logical explanation for her reluctance to fall in with his plan. It was as though some instinct were telling her to beware of this proposed meeting. Why, she could not say. Maybe it was a sixth sense. And besides, she resented yet again the fact that he should take so much for granted where she was concerned.

  ‘You might at least have consulted with me before making the arrangement, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘so that is the trouble. I have offended your amour-propre.’ She detected a faint sneer in his voice; and this was something quite new, as was his annoyance with her. Never before had he behaved towards her in any but the most urbane manner; and this change she found oddly disturbing. ‘I do humbly apologise for my unwarranted presumption. It did not occur to me that you would not be delighted to accompany me at this little threesome. But if it is so little to your taste –’ He shrugged.

  She was quick to deny that she had said this; or that she had meant to imply a refusal.

  ‘So you will come?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘So that is settled.’

  *

  Marquez was younger than Roussel; possibly aged thirty-five or so. He had black hair and a small moustache, and she had to admit that he was a very handsome man. He also had considerable charm and appeared to have decided from the outset to make himself agreeable to her. Conversation was carried on in Spanish, a language which Roussel spoke competently and in which she too was of course fluent.

  She had imagined that the two men would have some financial matters to discuss, but there was none of that. There was nothing indeed in which she could not take part, and Marquez seemed keen to involve her in every discussion. She was gratified by this attention from someone who was so obviously elegant and sophisticated. He had every appearance of being well-to-do, and she wondered what kind of business he was engaged in; but she was given no hint regarding this and she hesitated to ask. In this respect Señor Marquez was as much a mystery man as was Monsieur Roussel.

  The restaurant where they dined was first class, as she might have expected it to be, and the food and wines were excellent. The emphasis was on French cuisine, and she supposed this might have been the reason why it had been chosen.

  ‘And what, Señorita, do you think of Buenos Aires?’ Marquez inquired. ‘Does it impress you favourably?’

  She answered enthusiastically: ‘Oh, yes; I think it is a splendid city.’

  ‘This is your first visit here, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘And you have never before been to Argentina?’

  ‘No. Though I have always thought I should like to come. It has had a kind of fascination for me ever since I was a child.’

  ‘Perhaps you would like to live here?’

  ‘There would be much attraction in the idea,’ she admitted. ‘But of course it is out of the question.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Roussel said. ‘Quite impossible. You are putting ideas into her head, Ricardo. You should not do it.’

  She thought a meaningful glance passed between the two men. It was as though they had mutual knowledge of something that was being kept a secret from her; and suddenly she felt like an outsider. They might engage in conversation with her, try to make her feel that she was one of them, but the hard truth was that she was not.

  She was made even more aware of this fact when the meal was concluded and she was sent back to the hotel, while the two men went on somewhere else. Presumably they would then talk business or possibly indulge in some kind of diversion which she could not be permitted to share.

  A chauffeur-driven Jaguar was provided for her transport by Marquez. He said you could not rely on the Buenos Aires taxi-drivers and he wanted to be certain that she arrived safely at the hotel.

  ‘I feel a responsibility for you,’ he said.

  She could see no reason why he should; but it was nice to be treated with such consideration. A private Jaguar was certainly better than a taxi; it gave one a feeling of importance and made up to some extent for the slight humiliation of being dismissed at the conclusion of the dinner.

  The chauffeur was not in livery; he was wearing black trousers and a black leather jacket, and she did not find him at all prepossessing. He was a compact stubby man with a pockmarked face and unfriendly eyes. Marquez addressed him as Fernando.

  She rode in the back and no word passed between her and the driver in the course of the journey. When they arrived at the hotel Fernando got out and opened the car door for her, but he still said nothing; he was apparently a man of few words. He did, however, look hard at her, as though he were imprinting her features on his memory. She felt sure he would recognise her if they ever met again. And she rather hoped they would not.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  He made a slight inclination of the head, and she seemed to catch what might have been the hint of a sardonic grin; not comradely but faintly derisive. She had an uneasy feeling that perhaps he knew more about her than she would have wished; but there was no good reason why this should have been so. And still he said nothing.

  She spent the rest of the evening in the hotel room watching television. Roussel had not returned when she decided to wait up for him no longer but to go to bed.

  She fell asleep quickly and slept undisturbed.

  Chapter Ten – Sweetener

  She woke late to a curious sense of unease, a feeling that things were not quite as they should have been. She cast her thoughts back to the previous evening and remembered that Pierre had not been there when she had gone to bed. And suddenly she realised that he was still not there. She was alone.

  There was nothing to worry about of course. She told herself this. He would come back eventually; he was bound to. Perhaps he and Marquez had made a real night of it after getting rid of her and were holed up somewhere sleeping it off. Yes, that was what must have happened; nothing worse.

  When she had got herself out of bed, however, she made another discovery: Roussel’s luggage had gone. And that really was disturbing.

  But worse was to come. When she had dressed hurriedly she discovered on looking into her shoulder-bag that all the money there had been in it had vanished and that her passport had disappeared as well. She felt sure instantly that Pierre must have taken both money and passport, but she could not understand why. He must have returned while she was asleep and worked very quietly in order not to awaken her. But why, why, why? She could think of no logical answer to the question, but she felt certain that something dreadful was happening to her, something completely unexpected and totally inexplicable.

  She went down to the lobby and inquired at the reception desk. The clerk informed her that Señor Roussel had left the hotel. He had settled the bill and had checked out, leaving instructions that she should not be disturbed as she would be leaving later.

  She was aghast. It was only too apparent that Pierre had decided to abandon her. But why? And why take her passport and what little m
oney there had been in her purse? It was as though he had planned to leave her destitute and lacking the most essential document for a traveller in a foreign country. She would not have believed that he could have acted in such a heartless manner.

  The clerk was looking at her curiously. ‘Is anything wrong, Señora?’

  And the answer to that was that everything was wrong. But she could not tell him so. She felt utterly lost, with no one to turn to for help. She did not even have the money to keep her room for another night. She had to leave it now; pack her bags and go.

  But where would she go? What was she to do? What on earth was she to do?

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing is wrong.’

  Of course he did not believe her. He probably did not even believe she was Señora Roussel. Though his face was expressionless, he was no doubt getting quite a kick out of observing her predicament; guessing that she had been abandoned by her lover.

  She went back to the room and began to pack. She had no plan. She had to leave the hotel; that was certain. But what next? That was the question to which she had no answer.

  She heard a knock on the door; and without waiting for an invitation the person who had knocked opened the door and walked in.

  It was Ricardo Marquez.

  He glanced at the half-packed luggage. ‘You are leaving, Señorita?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was surprised to see him. The shock of Pierre’s desertion had driven all other considerations from her mind, and this sudden appearance of Marquez was completely unexpected. She had not given him a thought; had forgotten his very existence until this moment.

  ‘But Pierre! Where is he?’

  ‘Gone.’

  He seemed puzzled. ‘I don’t understand. Where has he gone?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  He looked astounded. ‘Are you telling me he has simply gone away and left you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is exactly what I am telling you.’

  There were tears in her eyes now. She did not wish to give way like that, but she could not help it. They were tears of anger as much as anything: anger with Roussel for his perfidy; anger with herself for having so blindly trusted him.