Love Under Fire Read online

  What would he be like to talk to, Elvina wondered.

  What would he say? Would his conversation be very different from that of any other man?

  Her father’s cronies, the Portuguese Officials who came sometimes to the house or the members of the aristocracy whom she saw driving through the town, seeming by their very expressions to ignore the poverty and the dirt and the squalor that existed around them.

  On an impulse Elvina turned towards her stepmother.

  “Let me come with you tonight,” she said. “I will not be a nuisance, I promise you. And you could explain that as my father is ill I have taken his place. I could make myself a gown in the time. There is that old blue of yours that you no longer care for. I could cover it with a layer of gauze and sew on a few new ribbons. Please – let me.”

  Juanita Lake stared at her in amazement.

  “Have you taken leave of your senses?” she asked at length. “Do you think I want to arrive with another woman? I, who have always been escorted by men. Besides, as I have told you before, for me you don’t exist except as my servant, someone who obeys my orders. There is no place in my household for other people’s children. It is I who am important, I who am supreme in my own house. So get that into your head.”

  She walked across to Elvina and, taking her by the shoulders turned, her round to face the light from the window.

  “So it is Englishmen you are after, is it?” she said stormingly. “Let me tell you this. When you get a little older, I am turning you out! I am not a fool that I can see that with your fair hair and your English complexion you are going to show up the wrinkles that are coming to my face. In another year out you will go and no amount of pleading or crying will save you.”

  She gave an unpleasant laugh.

  “I shall not care what becomes of you. The camp up the road will welcome you doubtless or you can go and die on the nearest dunghill. So remember that when you start asking me to let you go to the ball.”

  She slapped Elvina’s face with the palm of her hand and then, turning towards the dressing table, unbound her long dark hair and started to comb it.

  For a moment Elvina stood staring at her, the tears starting to her eyes from the force of the blow. Slowly she put up her hands toward her burning cheek.

  “Hot water, clean towels, my stockings and petticoats!” Juanita commanded.

  Automatically Elvina sprang to obey the harsh order, and even as she scurried about the house, fetching first this and then that for her stepmother, her mind was all the time concerned with the threats that she had just listened to.

  Juanita meant them. Elvina was not such a fool as not to know the truth when she heard it. She knew now that this was what Juanita had always intended, to be rid of her some way or another.

  She wondered wildly what she could do.

  To appeal to her father was hopeless.

  She had only to go downstairs to see him lying on the sofa, dead drunk, an overturned wine glass on the floor beside him, to know that anything she told him would be forgotten the next time he opened a bottle.

  What was she to do?

  The question seemed to run through her head all the time she was helping Juanita wash and make up her face and she fastened her into her gown, arranging her hair in what they both imagined was the latest fashion and clasping round her neck the few tawdry bits of jewellery that had not been sold to pay bills or obtain wine.

  “Your father was saying something the other night about a locket with diamonds in it,” Juanita said unexpectedly.

  Elvina was suddenly very still.

  “Do you know what he was talking about?” Juanita enquired.

  “N-no, I have – no idea.”

  “I suspect it was a locket that belonged to your mother. Were there diamonds round it?”

  “I-I don’t – know. I – don’t – remember it.”

  “If you are lying to me, I will beat you until your bones stick out of your body,” Juanita grunted.

  “I will – have a search for it, if you like, and see – if I can find it,” Elvina suggested.

  “You can do it tonight. Search everywhere, your father’s room and the trunks that were your mother’s. There is not much left in them, but it may still be there. It will keep you busy while I am away.”

  Juanita rose to her feet. She stared at her reflection in the mirror and gave a little laugh of satisfaction.

  “I have the feeling that I shall enjoy myself at the ball,” she said. “I am still good-looking. I still have the power to attract men, I am sure of it. That is all that is really necessary to be sure of oneself and of one’s own beauty.”

  She turned round, looked at herself from another angle and smiled again.

  “Is the carriage here?”

  “I told you twenty minutes ago that it had arrived.”

  “You may have the privilege of coming downstairs and handing me into it,” Juanita said. “As I have no gentleman to escort me, I must make the best use of what I have. If your father wakes, tell him he will learn what I think of his behaviour tomorrow.”

  She turned towards the door.

  “And as for you,” she said, her voice ominous, “If that locket is not found, you will know what to expect!”

  Elvina watched the carriage drive away and then let the old man, who had served her father ever since he came to Lisbon and who was partially deaf, close the front door.

  She went upstairs to her own room. It was a small attic at the very top of the house, it was hot in summer and cold in winter and was therefore not considered good enough for any of the servants.

  She shut herself in and, kneeling down in one corner of the room, pulled up a loose floorboard and took a small bundle from under it.

  In it were all her treasures, a lock of her mother’s hair, a locket and a bow of ribbon that had fallen from one of her gowns and which Elvina had secreted away before

  Juanita had noticed its loss, a tiny gold ring that her mother had worn on her little finger, and the locket.

  It was wrapped in paper, which Elvina undid with trembling fingers.

  It was not large and the diamonds that surrounded it were not of great intrinsic value. But the locket itself was the most precious thing in the whole of Elvina’s life, for it contained, the only likeness she possessed of her mother.

  Beautifully painted on ivory, the round young face with its blue eyes and fair hair, seemed almost that of an angel.

  For a long time Elvina stared at it.

  Then she kissed it gently and lifting the chain hung it round her neck. She was so small, or else the locket had been intended for a much larger person, that it hung low between her breasts and was hidden from sight.

  She slipped the ring onto her little finger and put back the floorboard so that anyone entering the room would not notice that it had been moved.

  Often at night she wore the things that had been her mother’s, but she had believed until this evening that her father had forgotten their existence and certainly she had not spoken to him of the locket for many years.

  Now she was afraid. Juanita had a way of getting what she wanted, either by brutality or else by almost hypnotising things out of those who were afraid of her.

  With her back sore from her beating, with her arms hurting her and the tears still wet in her eyes, Elvina felt a kind of peace come over her from the very moment that her mother’s possessions touched her skin.

  She went to the window. It was only small and the street seemed a long way below. Yet the stars were nearer, coming out into the darkening sky as night began to fall.

  It was then that a sudden idea came to her and jumping up she took a shawl from where it was hanging on a nail behind the door and, pulling it over her head, she went downstairs.

  The house was in darkness for there was no point in wasting the precious and expensive candles on a man who was too drunk to see them and a girl who should have gone to bed supperless. Elvina felt her way along the familiar passages u
ntil she reached the door that led to the kitchen.

  Old José might be sitting there and might ask her where she was going, but she had the idea that he would be out in the streets, drinking with his compatriots or staring at the guests proceeding to the ball at the Palace.

  For fear she might be heard, however, she went on tiptoe until she saw that the kitchen too was in darkness and then, growing bolder, she pulled open the back door and let herself out into the street.

  Here there was confusion and excitement.

  The narrow streets were filled with people of all descriptions, gaping Redcoats who must just have arrived from England, Portuguese carrying guitars to twang beneath the windows where dark-eyed ladies, half-hidden in the shadows, would be waiting for them.

  There were crowds of small beggar boys in rags and with bare feet holding out thin, bony little hands to anyone they encountered and begging monotonously for bread or alms.

  There were peasants who had come in from the countryside because they had heard of the battle and who stared about them curiously afraid, as they had been for over ten years, of what would happen to them next.

  But above the smell of the crowds, the dust and the slop-pails that were continually being emptied into the gutters, there was the scent of aloe and cypress, of orange groves and of rosemary and thyme growing in the gardens of the houses or being carried on the wind from the wild land beyond the confines of the town.

  Elvina hurried along in the shadows. She was so small that no one noticed her and indeed she was used to moving unobtrusively about the town.

  She soon found her way to the seafront and to the great white Palace surrounded by its gardens. Through the ornamental gates the carriages were passing in a long line.

  Outside there were crowds of beggars and peasants pressing forward eagerly to catch a glimpse of the guests. It was a rare chance to see gentlemen wearing their decorations and orders beside women half-naked in their finery, their dark eyes flashing with excitement, their lips as red as the roses that many of them had arranged in their hair.

  Elvina, however, avoided the gates and moved away towards the back of the Palace. This was old familiar ground for she often came here to be alone.

  There was a spot where the top of the wall had crumbled and she could climb over into the Palace gardens.

  Often she would sneak in and sit here alone and undisturbed when Juanita thought that she was shopping or when she knew that to return to the house would be to receive yet another beating for something which she had done or left undone.

  The great rambling Palace gardens, neglected because all the young gardeners who tended them had gone to the War, were the one place where Elvina could feel at peace and know that she would not be disturbed.

  Tonight she was not too sure that she could enter unperceived. But the sentries were not expecting strangers and were far too engaged with watching what was going on themselves to suspect that anyone might enter the grounds except by the main entrance.

  With the help of an almond tree which she had used so often before, Elvina hoisted herself on top of the wall at the place where the sharp spikes, intended to repulse thieves, had long since fallen down, and let herself down on to the other side.

  Here there was soft grass beneath her feet, the fragrance of roses and flowering shrubs that brushed against her swollen and bruised shoulders and seemed to heal her by the very delicacy and gentleness of their touch.

  She moved slowly through the gardens, keeping in the shrubbery and behind the yew hedges until she came within sight of The Palace.

  Then she stopped. Every window was a blaze of light. She could see the glittering chandeliers filled with candles and guests moving under them to the strains of an orchestra.

  The music was sweet and melodious and, fascinated, Elvina drew a little nearer. Never had she imagined that people could look so beautiful in the candlelight.

  There was jewellery glistening round the necks and on the heads of the women and the men seemed equally resplendent in their coloured coats, high white cravats and diamond-studded orders.

  The music seemed almost hypnotic, as did the figures moving in time to it. Then, suddenly Elvina became aware that two people were walking from The Palace into the gardens, picking their way between the rose beds almost to where she was standing.

  Hastily she ducked behind a shrub and crept along close to the ground until she was sheltered by a little arbour covered with climbing roses where there was a seat arranged with satin cushions.

  “Shall we sit down?” she heard a man’s voice say.

  “That would be lovely,” a woman replied. “It’s so hot inside. I am sure your Lordship must find it stifling after the cold of England.”

  “You will recall that it was not so very cold when we left,” the man answered. “Although I admit the climate is much warmer here.”

  “Don’t play with me, we have so little time,” the woman said quickly. “Must you return tomorrow?”

  The question was almost whispered.

  “I am afraid so,” the man replied. “As you know I only came to bring dispatches for the Duke of Wellington and certain letters for members of the Government.”

  The woman sighed.

  “We were unable to talk when the sea was so rough, can you not stay just a little longer?”

  “I wish I could, but there is work for me to do in England.”

  “We well know that the chief work that your Lordship is engaged on is to try and make the Prince Regent a little more popular with the people and more amenable to his Ministers!”

  The man threw back his head and laughed.

  “Your Ladyship must have been listening to the most flattering and ill-informed gossip.”

  “On the contrary, my sources of information are impeccable,” the woman said. “Please, I beg you, stay a little longer.”

  Elvina knew, without being able to see the couple who were speaking, that the woman laid her hand on the man’s arm.

  Very very cautiously she raised her head.

  They were sitting with their backs to her and she saw the man take the woman’s hand and raise her fingers to his lips.

  “If I could stay, I would,” he answered.

  The woman gave a sound that was almost one of exasperation and took her hand away.

  “So, like many others, I have been refused by the all-conquering but elusive Lord Wye.”

  He laughed again.

  “You know me well enough to be sure that is not true. I would like to stay. I would like, above all things, to join Wellington’s army. But the Prime Minister’s instructions were explicit. I was to return immediately.”

  “We had hoped to tempt you to defy the Prime Minister.”

  “I know, your husband said the same thing. It was indeed gracious of you both. But my yacht has been replenished with provisions and water and unless the wind fails me, we sail at dawn.”

  “So, we shall not meet again?”

  “We shall meet in England.”

  “And how long have we to wait for that? Oh, my dear man, have you any idea how many bruised and unhappy hearts you leave behind you everywhere you go?”

  “Again you are flattering me,” Lord Wye said.

  “I wish I was,” she said, a little sob in her voice. “But I have to remain in this horrible, dirty, flea-ridden country while you return to civilisation.”

  “You must not be too hard on our oldest ally,” Lord Wye said gently. “The Portuguese have suffered greatly from the last six years of War. Did you see those children at the dock today? They were little skeletons. I wish I could feed them.”

  “I am not interested in Portuguese children!” the woman exclaimed petulantly, “but in you!”

  “I am deeply honoured by your interest in me.”

  “If I could only believe that,” she sighed. “But we must go back. We might be missed and besides there are a great many Portuguese dignitaries you have not yet spoken to. You must not leave behind a bad
impression.”

  “No indeed I am trying to leave a good one,” he asserted.

  She gave another sob and now her face was raised to his. For a moment he looked down at her.

  To Elvina they were both in silhouette against the light streaming from The Palace.

  Then Lord Wye bent and kissed his companion lightly. Just for a moment his lips touched hers and then, as she would have clung to him, he rose to his feet.

  “We must go back,” he said.

  Elvina could almost feel the despair that, like an arrow, seemed to pass through the woman at his side.

  Then a sudden pride made her lift her chin high.

  “I hope I may give you one more dance before you go,” she said.

  “I shall insist on it,” Lord Wye replied.

  They walked back to The Palace the way they had come and Elvina gazed after them until they passed out of sight.

  Then she rose to her feet and quite suddenly she knew what she must do.

  She slipped back over the wall the way she had come, slithered down the almond tree and ran as quickly as her legs could carry her back home.

  A drunken soldier snatched at her as she flashed by, but she eluded him. Some small boys called after her, but she hardly heard them.

  As she reached the house, she intended to awaken old José, but he was not back and the door was still ajar as she had left it. She went into the kitchen and, after kindling a light from a taper, found in the cupboard what she was looking for.

  It was a bottle of walnut juice that Juanita had made her prepare a few weeks earlier for staining the boards where the sun had faded them.

  She hurried upstairs, seeking in Juanita’s room for another bottle. It was full of dark liquid that her stepmother kept her hair raven black with.

  Elvina took both bottles to her own attic bedchamber.

  Here she pulled her shawl from her head and in the cracked mirror that stood on her chest of drawers she stared at herself for a moment.

  Her fair hair, the same colour as her mother’s, waved softly until it reached to her waist.

  Taking a pair of scissors, she began to cut it off!