Kiss of Hot Sun Page 2

  By eleven-thirty I had given up, finally and for ever.

  Damn the man! Damn all men! It would be a mighty long time before I made such an utter fool of myself again. But just in case something unavoidable had delayed him, I still hung about in my room.

  I’d lost all heart for the appointment with Adeline Harcourt now. Why stay in Rome and be reminded? But out of courtesy I had to go through the motions, so I changed into something more suitable for a job applicant—a cool-looking pale green and white Courtelle outfit. Soon after twelve-thirty I emerged for the first time that day.

  It was only a short way to the Prima Astoria. I decided to walk, strolling easily in the hot sun. I had to admit, reluctantly, that despite everything Rome was a lovely place. And after all, it didn’t belong to Philip Rainsby. With the logic of my Irish great-grandfather, I decided that if I ever ran into the man again in Rome, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing I’d run away on his account.

  On my left the raised terrace of a classy hotel was brightly decked in coloured awnings and sun umbrellas. The tables were crowded with pre-lunch drinkers, but a man and woman sitting close to the balustrade became the instant focus of my attention.

  My eyes riveted on them.

  Philip Rainsby, laughing and joking with a woman! A brash over-ripe blondie type of maybe thirty-five plus.

  From the way he sharply bent his head as I went past, it looked like he’d seen me, too. But he gave not the smallest blink of recognition.

  I lifted my chin, and strode on briskly.

  Chapter Two

  I walked so fast and furiously that I arrived at the Prima Astoria in a sweat. Fortunately I had five minutes in hand, so I skulked behind a bank of potted pink hydrangeas in the cool lounge, and slowly simmered down.

  At five to one precisely I went across to the reception desk and asked for Miss Harcourt. I still hadn’t reached a decision about whether or not I wanted a job with her, even if she was prepared to have me. I’d not been thinking about that.

  Obediently, I tailed the bellboy across expanses of opulent floor, let myself be wafted upwards in a silent lift, and tottered after him through a long corridor.

  When he tapped on a door and held it open for me, I went in like an automaton. I was too bemused to get more than the vaguest impression of the apartment, except that it was rather ornately furnished.

  At first I thought I was alone, until a jewelled hand, followed by a slender arm, lifted itself gracefully above the back of a sofa set facing one of the tall windows. The index finger raised aloft, beckoned. At the same moment a voice, a thrillingly resonant contralto-deep voice, broke the silence.

  “Of course she won’t, caro mio. There is no earthly reason why she should ever discover...”

  Miss Adeline Harcourt, I gathered, was speaking on the telephone.

  The bellboy closed the door behind me. Obeying the imperious instructions of the still-raised arm, I went across the huge room. Miss Harcourt, stretched comfortably on the sofa, smiled a little absently and motioned me to sit down on a nearby chair.

  “But you worry yourself too much,” she went on. Her voice fascinated me. Not particularly loud, it filled every corner of the room; I could well imagine how it used to fill every corner of a great auditorium. “... listen.. ,” she was saying, "just a little help with the domestic side, that is all. I tell you, it is of no consequence to us...”

  I sat and observed Miss Harcourt discreetly. Monica had told me she was well into her seventies. From her appearance, though, it would have seemed ungenerous to label her even as much as sixty. Her easily lounging figure was supple; the gesticulating arm had the lazy grace of youth.

  A formidable old lady, I thought! I began to wonder if, after all, I might not enjoy working for her. Monica had been fun. Adeline Harcourt promised to be stimulating too, in a different way.

  She put down the phone at last, and switched her full attention upon me. Her smile was no longer preoccupied; it belonged to me—warm, friendly, and quite utterly candid.

  “Forgive me...”

  “Not at all, Miss Harcourt.”

  “You look charming, my dear. So pretty!”

  My deflated ego swelled with the puff. This woman had obviously been a real beauty in her time—the fine bone structure of her face was evidence of that.

  “So you are coming to help me at the Villa Stella?”

  “Well—I’m not sure...”

  “Not sure? But I thought it was all fixed. Monica told me on the telephone that you were anxious to find another post here in Italy.”

  Quite suddenly I’d come to a definite decision. “Yes, I do, Miss Harcourt. But I wasn’t sure if you’d really want me.”

  “Is there any reason why I should not?”

  “It’s just that I got the idea you weren’t really needing any help,” I explained, a bit uncomfortably. "It sounded as if Monica was rather pressuring you into it.”

  “Nobody pressures me into anything.” A shadow crossed her face, as though she was trying to convince herself as well as me. But I could easily have imagined it, because her mobile features were relaxed again into a pleasant smile. “I confess I did have certain... reservations at first. But now I have decided that Monica’s suggestion is an excellent one. The villa is too much for me to manage on my own. It will suit me very nicely to have you there to help.”

  “You realise I’ve had no experience of this sort of thing?”

  She snorted delicately, “You are intelligent, are you not?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Intelligence is all that is required in any business undertaking.”

  She picked up the phone again, and spoke briskly. “I have a reservation on the Catania plane this afternoon. Book an additional seat, if you please.”

  I felt hopelessly confused. Surely the extra reservation must be intended for me? For the moment I couldn’t place Catania, but clearly it must be at some distance if we were to fly there. And all the time I’d been taking it for granted that Adeline Harcourt’s guest house was not far from Rome.

  Miss Harcourt had replaced the phone. “Salary we will discuss later. You will find me not ungenerous. Now, will you be here with your luggage by three o’clock at the very latest?”

  Feeling I was probably putting my foot slap in the middle of something silly, I asked: “Where are we going, Miss Harcourt?”

  “Where?” Her sharp look doubted my sanity. “To the Villa Stella d’Oro, of course. Where else?”

  “Monica didn’t happen to mention where your villa was. I rather thought it must be near Rome.”

  “Oh, I see.” She smiled, relieved, I think, to discover that I was not an imbecile. “No, it is a long way from Rome. The Stella d’Oro has a magnificent situation in the hills behind Taormina. We get quite remarkable views of Etna.”

  Etna! But Mount Etna was in Sicily! So, now I came to think of it, was Catania.

  How could I possibly go flying off to Sicily just like that? It must be hundreds of miles from Rome—way down south. An island in the Mediterranean.

  I considered the alternatives. I might try to find another job in Rome. But what sort of job could I hope to get? An English girl whose Italian was decidedly ropy—one might almost say non-existent. A girl whose idea of local geography was so vague she hadn’t been able to pin down Catania.

  Rome, I reckoned, was out as far as a job was concerned.

  What else, then? Go back to London, tail between my legs? Admit defeat? Admit the exotic life was not for me?

  Going to Sicily wouldn’t be admitting defeat. It wouldn’t be a matter of running away from Philip Rainsby. I’d been offered a job there, a job that grew more attractive every moment I thought about it.

  An island in the Mediterranean! A villa in the sun!

  “I think I’m going to like Sicily,” I said impulsively.

  Adeline Harcourt scooped up my agreement with a quick smile. “You will love poor Sicily,” she pronounced in that richly
vibrant voice. “One cannot help loving her. She has seen so much tragedy, yet for all that she is beautiful. Beautiful!”

  It was like a curtain speech. A curtain coming down on my past existence. Soon, a new act would begin.

  * * *

  I had thought it impossible to switch the direction of life within the space of a couple of hours. But in practice I found it not only possible, but highly stimulating.

  Naturally, Monica rallied round, delighted that her plan for me had worked out. Having spent the entire morning trousseau shopping, she came back tired. But she readily skipped lunch to dash round a large department store with me, hastily sorting out the things she insisted I should need in Sicily. And afterwards she found time to come to the airport to see us off.

  Next morning she would be leaving Rome herself, going direct to New York with her Sam.

  When we were airborne, settling back comfortably with a long cool drink of vermouth and soda, Adeline Harcourt began to tell me about the villa with the romantic name. Stella d’Oro—Star of Gold.

  “It was given me by my beloved Vittorio,” she said with a happy sigh. “Such a generous man, Vittorio. He could never do enough for me.”

  When I remarked innocently that he sounded the perfect husband, she burst into a peal of merry laughter. In her penetrating voice she announced to a fascinated planeload of passengers that Vittorio d’Azeglio had been her lover, not her husband.

  “It made little difference, though. We were faithful for oh—so long. Then poor Vittorio died. His arteries...”

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered, embarrassed.

  “Don’t be, my dear. If your own life holds as much happiness as mine has done, you will be very content.”

  She sighed again, enjoying her memories.

  “I gave up the stage when I lost my Vittorio, and came to live in Sicily permanently. My heart was there, you see. Besides, I was never cut out for elderly parts.” She spoke the word like it was sour on the tongue.

  I tried to get an idea of the job I was expected to do.

  “Oh, just to give me a hand in running the villa. You will have to learn my little peculiarities and act accordingly.”

  “How many guests do you have?” I asked.

  “Never many at one time. You see, I run the Stella d’Oro for pleasure rather than for money. It would seem such an empty house with just myself. I like to have people around me.” She added quickly, “But I am very choosy. I only take those who have been personally recommended.”

  I got the feeling she wasn’t terribly keen to discuss the management of her guest house. Maybe it was altogether too workaday a subject. Instead, I asked her to tell me about Sicily, and that touched the button. We were in fact so preoccupied, Adeline holding forth and I an eager listener, that we almost missed the approach from the air. I was just in time to pick out the great bulk of Mount Etna before we landed at Catania.

  The drive to the Villa Stella d’Oro was about forty miles, I gathered. Miss Harcourt had phoned ahead from Rome, instructing one of her staff to meet us with the car. But it had not turned up. She was just beginning to tut impatiently when a cheerful voice hit us from behind.

  “Hi there, Adeline!”

  We both wheeled round. Grinning down at us was an incredibly good-looking man. He was casually dressed in a blue striped sweat shirt and white cotton slacks. His lean face was tanned whole shades deeper than mere bronze.

  “Giles darling!” Adeline cried. “How delightful. But why are you here?”

  “For the pleasure of driving you home,” he said gallantly. “What else?” But he was taking a good slow look at me as he spoke.

  Adeline Harcourt hadn’t missed a thing. “This is Kerry Lyndon, and she has come here to do a job.” She winked at me. “I stress this fact, my dear, to disabuse Giles right from the outset.”

  “Nobody,” he said, shaking his head solemnly, “but nobody comes to Sicily to work.”

  “Now Giles, be quiet,” said Adeline. “Kerry, this is Giles Yorke. A dear friend of mine and a clever artist when he chooses to exert himself. But he is also rather a naughty boy.”

  Giles led the way over to his car, a snazzy red sports job, wide open to the evening sun. He signalled the hovering porter to pile our luggage in the back.

  “In with you, girls.” Giles opened the passenger door for us. But as Adeline started to climb in, he put a hand on her arm. “Let Kerry get squashed in the middle. You’ll be more comfortable on the outside.”

  “I shall be more comfortable, young man,” said Adeline severely, “sitting next to you. This way I can be confident you will pay some attention to your driving.”

  We left the airport just like we were taking off, and were soon on a coastal road. The scenery was fantastic, but with the flow of chat I didn’t get a chance to look around much. To our right was vivid blue sea; to our left, the foothills of Etna. At breakneck speed we flashed through a landscape of black rock, verdant lemon groves, and a mesmerising carpet of brilliant flowers.

  “And what,” yelled Giles Yorke, “is Kerry in the scheme of things?”

  “She is going to help me run the Stella d’Oro. To relieve me of some of the burden.”

  “But I mean, what about...?”

  Adeline cut in with snappy decision. “I don’t know what you mean, Giles. I’ve just told you, Kerry has come to help me. And that’s all there is to it.”

  I glanced past her profile and caught Giles’ puzzled frown. Then Adeline shifted in her seat, and cut off my view.

  There was a tangible spikiness in the atmosphere. I couldn’t imagine what it was all about, but I was uncomfortably aware that in some way it concerned me.

  In an effort to take the strain off, I asked Giles about his painting.

  “What sort of things do you do?”

  “Oh, this and that,” he said carelessly. “Mostly pot-boiling views of the bay to flog to tourists. I have to keep that old wolf from knocking at my door.”

  Adeline had entirely recovered her good spirits. “As I explained to you, Kerry, he is a fine artist. But Giles is far too frivolous, so be on your guard.”

  The road jerked us upwards, flicking to the left and right, circling a giant’s tooth of hard rock that sprouted a curious spiny succulent bush from every smallest crevice. We passed very little other traffic. At one point a flock of hens were sleepily scratching dust in the middle of the road. They scurried from under our wheels with resentful squawks. As we accelerated away again, a snatched glimpse through a gateway showed me a large rambling house. A group of children were sitting in a circle on the grass, singing.

  “What’s that? A school?”

  “It is the convent of Santa Teresa,” Adeline told me. “For orphans. The sisters are wonderful, but there are so many children and not enough money. I do what little I can to help them.”

  We hadn’t much further to go. Zooming around a last bend, a blaze of yellow flowers on the bank, we shot through black wrought-iron gates, open to the road. Without pause we raced on, scrunching the immaculate drive of a formal Italian garden.

  I saw neat, low-trimmed hedges, exuberant marble statuary, and the dark straight fingers of cypresses. And then we had stopped by some wide, shallow steps. The white walls of the Villa Stella d’Oro glowed golden in the setting sun. Canopied balconies and wide, graceful arches made an immediate impression of cool spaciousness.

  The silence following the cutting of the motor was broken by excited twitterings. The staff were gathered in true old-time style to greet the return of their mistress. A fat, sweating, prematurely-aged woman and a ravishing black-haired girl of seventeen or so were both delighting in the moment, laughing and crying and wringing their hands in abandoned ecstasy. But the third member of the group did not outwardly share their joy. He was a tall young man; slim, swarthy, with the smug arrogance of a male who knows he is good to look at. Darkly sullen, his eyes were fixed upon me.

  Adeline, swinging smoothly out of the car, greeted the women a
ffectionately. The man she acknowledged with caution, and what looked like doubt at the back of her eyes.

  She introduced me. They had known of my coming, of course, through her phone call from Rome. I was prepared for a certain degree of unwelcome; I was a stranger, a foreigner, whose job it would be to tell them what to do.

  But Maria the fat cook, and Luciana the pretty young housemaid, showed no sign of resentment; only warmingly cheerful smiles.

  The man Carlo was quite another matter. I learned that he was Maria’s nephew, waiter and general handyman at the Stella d’Oro. He stared at me boldly, sneered, half-turned his back and muttered rudely under his breath. It was a virtuoso display of insolence yet all done with such subtlety that I am sure nobody else even noticed.

  If this was a foretaste of what was to come, I could count on trouble with Carlo. Still, I wouldn’t anticipate; I’d settle in and take things as I found them.

  * * *

  Adeline Harcourt was maddeningly imprecise about my duties. She seemed to treat me more as a guest than as an employee, and I found myself quite unable to pin her down to anything positive.

  “Time enough to find you more to do when you are properly settled in,” she said cheerfully, when I pressed her again on the day after my arrival.

  “More to do!” I protested. “So far I’ve had next to nothing.”

  But she merely smiled serenely. “Forget your precipitate northern temperament, Kerry darling,” she said, promoting me in her endearment scale. “You must adjust to the Sicilian pace now. Down here we take life much more easily.”

  They certainly did! Three servants, Adeline and me, all deployed for the benefit of just two guests, a pair of young honeymooners from Austria. It was a crazy situation.

  Adeline, no doubt unwittingly, made things more difficult for me by encouraging Giles to stick around the villa.

  And he on his part seemed glad of any excuse to desert his studio.

  The trouble was, I liked Giles. In fact, I liked him a lot. He was gay and amusing. He certainly had a carefree attitude to life, but then I’d never believed there was any particular virtue in taking a solemn view. Giles lived the way he wanted, and did nobody any harm that I could see.