Lovers in Lisbon Read online

  She spoke in a low voice that was almost inaudible, but the Duchesse heard it.

  “All that is over,” she said. “Now, do as I say, child, and be ready when I call, although it may be a few hours before I come back.”

  Felicita bent forward and kissed the Duchesse’s hand.

  Then, with her eyes shining despite the tears in them, she climbed out of the carriage.

  Once again she ran as if she had golden wings on her feet into the lodging house and then rushing up the stairs.

  The Duchesse gave instructions to the footman where she wanted to go and, when he had climbed up beside the coachman on the box, the horses drove off at a brisk pace.

  They drove first through narrow streets where the pavements were crowded and hawkers of lottery tickets mixed with street singers with guitars, fruit pedlars with baskets and others who had laid out their goods on the ground, while the fragrance of strong coffee mingled with the salty breeze.

  The flower sellers round the fountains of Rossino were doing a busy trade.

  Along the sea road the Duchesse passed by mimosa trees in bloom, hibiscus bushes and trailers of plumbago, the blue of the sun-bleached sky.

  Out of Estoril the road rose as it left behind the simple fishing village of scattered huts and houses. On its right the cliffs rose high above the waves sweeping in from the Atlantic.

  About a mile outside the village there were trees and open ground lush with green grass.

  Then, standing by itself, protected by trees and yet towering above them, was a house.

  As she looked at it, the Duchesse felt her heart contract.

  It was still there!

  Somehow she thought that it might have fallen into discarded ruins like her own life.

  But it was there right in front of her. The house that Juan had given her and where they had been so happy together.

  The horses drew nearer.

  And now she could see the garden bright with flowers just as it had been when she had walked in it and waited impatiently for him to appear.

  She remembered when he had first bought the house how he had said to her,

  “I shall be with you, my darling, as much as possible. And actually, if I ride fast, it takes me only twenty minutes from The Palace into your arms!”

  “That is twenty minutes too long,” Inès had replied.

  Then he was kissing her so that she could not protest to him any further.

  The horses drew nearer still and it seemed quite impossible that the house had changed so little.

  There was the verandah where she had sat happily with Juan and gazed out at the sea.

  Above it was her bedroom with its huge eighteenth-century bed, carved exquisitely by Master craftsmen and gilded all over.

  Whenever she lay in this bed, she felt that she was like a Queen.

  And that was what she believed she was, the Queen of Juan’s heart, as he was the King of hers.

  As she had not given him a direct order, the coachman drove in automatically through the open gates and, passing rows of flowerbeds, he drew up at the front door.

  It was not what the Duchesse had originally intended and yet she felt that, having come so far, it would be a mistake to go back without having seen what she really wanted to see.

  The footman jumped down from the box.

  “You wish me to ring the bell, madame?” he enquired.

  There was just a moment’s hesitation before the Duchesse responded,

  “Yes.”

  The man did as he was told.

  Far away in the depths of the house the Duchesse thought that she could hear the bell ringing.

  There had never been any need for Juan to announce his arrival as she would be waiting for him there on the verandah or, when it was cold, standing at the window.

  On other occasions she would watch for the first sign of him riding towards her.

  Then, as he was silhouetted against the sea and sky, he looked as he had the first time that she had seen him and thought that he must be one of the Gods.

  The front door then opened slowly and the man who stood there was a servant who was obviously not expecting visitors.

  He was in his shirtsleeves and without a tie.

  There was a look of some consternation on his face when he saw the carriage outside.

  The footman obviously asked him if the owner was at home and then there was a long-winded reply, during which the servant waved his hands vigorously to express himself.

  The footman came to the side of the carriage.

  “The man regrets, Donna, that his Master is away in Africa. He said he is Dom Nuno Comte da Silva.”

  “I wish to speak to the man,” the Duchesse replied.

  The footman beckoned the servant over, who came to the side of the carriage, obviously embarrassed by his appearance.

  “I hear your Master is away in Africa,” the Duchesse began gently.

  “Yes, Donna, that is true. He’ll not be back for three months.”

  “That is sad,” the Duchesse replied. “I wanted to ask him if I could rent this house for a month. I think, as I am La Duchesse de Monreuil, he would consider my application.”

  The man looked surprised and she went on,

  “As my doctor has ordered me to rest, this would be an ideal place where I would not be disturbed.”

  She spoke to him slowly and clearly so that the man could not misunderstand all of what she was saying.

  Then she added,

  “I am prepared to pay a very large rent so that I shall be comfortable and I am sure, as you could have plenty of help, you will not find me at all exacting.”

  There was a slight pause.

  She knew at once by the flicker in the man’s eyes that he fully understood what she was implying.

  Then, when she was certain that he was calculating how useful the money would be, she said,

  “I am prepared to pay – ”

  She named a sum in escudos that she knew any man in the same position would find hard to refuse.

  Ten minutes later she had obtained what she required.

  She gave the man some money to buy food with and permission to employ three if not four extra servants.

  Then she climbed back into the carriage and was ready to drive back the way she had come.

  “You would not like to see any of the house, Donna?” the man asked before she left.

  “It is exactly what I am looking for,” the Duchesse replied, “and I am also convinced that your Master will have very good taste.”

  As she left, she asked herself if she was mad to step back into the past like this.

  She knew that every room would bring back memories that hurt her as much as they had the day she left.

  Yet, having set out to lay the ghosts of the past to rest, she was not prepared to give up at the first final hurdle.

  What was more the idea that had come to her when she was talking to Felicita outside her lodgings had gradually taken shape in her mind.

  It was almost as if she was being compelled to obey an inner impulse that had slumbered within her for so long that now it was stronger than any sense of caution that she might have had.

  ‘Why am I doing this?’ she asked herself again.

  The horses drove down the hill and, passing through Estoril, went on towards the City of Lisbon.

  The answer was really quite simple and she fully acknowledged it in all its starkness.

  It was to hurt Juan even beyond the grave.

  Why should she not hurt him when he had left her in the house that she had just driven away from?

  She had wanted only to die.

  She could remember only too well how, after he had told her that he was to be married, she had felt for the moment numb.

  It was impossible to think and it was as if he had struck her a blow on the head and her brain had ceased to function.

  “It is something I have to do eventually,” he had said to her. “Obviously I must have a
n heir to inherit my title.”

  She did not move and he went on,

  “We have always been frank with each other, Inès, so I can tell you now that when I saw the girl who is to be my wife, she reminded me a little of you. I knew then that it would not be that difficult for me eventually to love her.”

  Every word he spoke was like a dagger being thrust repeatedly into her breast.

  Yet there was still that numb feeling in her head. which made it difficult for her to absorb what he was saying.

  “You will therefore understand,” Juan continued, “that it would be a great mistake and might cause a scandal if we continued being together as we have been these past years.”

  He paused for a moment before he carried on gently,

  “They have been years of happiness, Inès, great happiness, as far as I am concerned. But now I must behave with propriety towards my wife and those years must come to an end.”

  Inès wondered if she was still breathing and why she did not fall unconscious at his feet.

  “What I have already done,” Juan continued, “is to place a large sum of money in your name in the Bank in Lisbon. Actually I have thought too of handing over to you the deeds of this house, but I think that would be a mistake.”

  He hesitated before he said,

  “You may find this a little unkind, but I feel sure that you will be happier if you go away from here. We enjoyed Paris and I know that there will be a great number of men who would look after you as I have tried to do.”

  Inès closed her eyes.

  How could Juan be saying this to her?

  Juan, whom she had loved to the point of worship.

  Juan, who had filled her life so that no other man could ever replace him.

  She knew exactly what he meant when he suggested to her that she should go to Paris and she wanted to scream at the horror of his suggestion.

  But she had a pride which came from her breeding, even though it was not good enough for Juan.

  Her father had been born what the English would call a ‘gentleman’ and her mother a lady.

  It was that pride that prevented her from raging at him or, worse still, from kneeling at his feet and pleading with him to go on loving her.

  She would have done anything, committed any crime or suffered any humiliation, rather than lose him.

  But then she realised that it was really hopeless.

  She knew that, if her love could not hold him, so all the words were just wasted.

  She stood silent as Juan said,

  “I have been afraid to tell you this, Inès, but it has to be said. All I can repeat is that I am deeply grateful for the wonderful years that we have been together and in all sincerity I hope and pray that you will find happiness for yourself in the future.”

  ‘It was a set speech,’ she had thought to herself wryly. ‘He must have thought it all out when he was riding over from The Palace to see me.’

  As he walked, she thought a little uncomfortably, towards the door, he added,

  “Take care of yourself, Inès, and remember that I will always help you if you are in any trouble.”

  She heard the door of the drawing room close behind him and then his footsteps receding across the hall.

  Every nerve in her body urged her to try to prevent him from leaving and then she knew that it was what he feared might happen.

  Loving him so deeply as she did, she could read his thoughts.

  She was aware that, as he rode off on one of his magnificent stallions, he would be glad that he had not been involved in a scene or hysterics.

  For a long time she stood stationary where he had left her.

  She was forcing herself to try to understand what had happened to her and how she could face the future without Juan.

  It was then she realised that it was something she could not do.

  It was impossible to live without Juan, because there was nothing in her life but him.

  He had taken her away from her parents, her friends and everything that was familiar and now every thought in her mind and every breath that she breathed was of him.

  He had suggested that she should go to Paris and she knew that it was because he did not want her in Portugal while he was living in the Palace da Azul with his wife.

  When she thought of it, Paris was a misty place in her mind. The only thing that she could remember was how Juan had made love to her in a delightful old house they had rented in the Champs-Élysées.

  The many places that they had visited were no more than memories just of him.

  The Bois de Boulogne, because they had ridden there together in the morning – the River Seine because they had stood and watched it flowing past – all the restaurants – the Place Vendôme and the Madeleine.

  They were just names and elusive smudges in front of her eyes. All she could really see was Juan’s face and all she could hear was Juan’s voice speaking to her.

  He had left her some money in the Bank. For what?

  Payment for their love which could be paid only in blood from the wounds he had now inflicted on her.

  Payment for her to go away and leave him alone.

  It was then she knew that this was exactly what she would do.

  She would leave him so that he would never be troubled by her again.

  She would no longer feel the agony that was beginning to seep like poison through her body.

  She was well aware that it would intensify and then be so completely unbearable that she could not live with it.

  She made up her mind and, moving without haste, she walked out of the house.

  She passed straight through the garden and over the rough ground that led her to the edge of the cliffs.

  She had expected Juan to stay with her for dinner and so she was wearing her prettiest and most expensive evening gown.

  Round her neck was a diamond necklace that he had given her and there were diamonds in her ears and on her wrists.

  They were all part of the magnificent jewels that Juan had enhanced her beauty with and expressed his love for her.

  Her high-heeled shoes made it difficult to walk over the ground that had many sandy patches in it.

  She reached the edge of the cliffs.

  There was a rough path that she could go down to the beach by, but which also led, as it turned and twisted, to a deep gully.

  Here the great waves of the Atlantic swept over rocks and splashed their foam high into the air.

  It was very beautiful, just as the rollers coming in on the horizon were so entrancing that she and Juan had often sat here watching them.

  He had put his arm around her and she had pressed her body against his.

  While they watched the waves and talked, his lips would touch the darkness of her hair.

  “Your hair is like silk,” he had said so often when they were in bed together, “and I have never seen anyone look lovelier.”

  He would sometimes pull her hair over her face and kiss her through its soft silkiness.

  She would make her maid brush it every morning more than one hundred times and then the electricity in it made it dance as if it had a life of its own.

  The sun was now low and would soon be sinking out of sight as dusk always fell rapidly in Portugal.

  ‘This is – the right time to die,’ Inès thought, ‘the moment when my body will be carried away in the wash of the waves and ‒ there will be nothing more to remember.’

  No more suffering, no more tears.

  She had not cried, but she knew only too well that tears would come tonight, tomorrow and every night for the rest of her life.

  ‘When I am dead, I shall no longer remember him,’ she told herself and moved a step nearer to the edge of the cliff.

  It was then that a man’s voice broke into her soliloquy,

  “I think it would be a great mistake to do anything so dangerous!”

  Because it was so unexpected and Inès was deep in her thoughts, she gave a little scream
.

  Instinctively she stepped back from the edge.

  Then she could see, sitting close by her under the cliff so that she had not seen him as she approached, there was an old man.

  He had white hair and his face was lined. At the same time he had a presence about him that was unmistakable.

  She could not speak to him because what she was feeling was far too intense and far too traumatic for words.

  As if he understood, he said quietly,

  “Come and tell me why you intend to do something wrong and wicked when you are so young and beautiful.”

  “There is – nothing else – I can do!”

  She was surprised that she could speak at all seeing that she had been able to say nothing when Juan had said ‘goodbye’ to her.

  The old man held out his hand.

  “Come here, young lady.”

  Because she was numb with shock and felt suddenly irresolute, she obeyed him.

  She felt his hand take hers and he then pulled her down beside him onto a flat rock that formed a seat with the cliff overhanging above them.

  “Now, tell me what is upsetting you,” he suggested very gently.

  *

  It was only later that Inès realised that he spoke to her in French and she automatically and without thinking answered him in the same language.

  She had been well educated. It was something that her father had insisted on.

  She was tri-lingual in Portuguese, French and English.

  Now the old man said to her and it sounded rather more complimentary than it would have been in Portuguese,

  “You are so beautiful and so lovely that it would be a crime against God Himself if you destroyed anything so perfect as your body.”

  “My – body is – unimportant,” Inès replied stiffly, “but I just – cannot live – without my h-heart!”

  It was then as she said the words and, knowing the truth, that the tears came.

  First they ran down her cheeks and then they became a tempest.

  She was not even aware that the old man had put his arm around her and she was crying against his shoulder.

  She cried until finally, through sheer exhaustion, her tears abated a little and she sagged against him.

  “Now do tell me,” he suggested calmly, “why you are so unhappy and who has crucified you.”