II

Pilar sat squeezed up against the window and thought how very odd the English smelt… It was what had struck her so far most forcibly about England – the difference of smell. There was no garlic and no dust and very little perfume. In this carriage now there was a smell of cold stuffiness – the sulphur smell of the trains – the smell of soap and another very unpleasant smell – it came, she thought, from the fur collar of the stout woman sitting beside her. Pilar sniffed delicately, imbibing the odour of mothballs reluctantly. It was a funny scent to choose to put on yourself, she thought.

A whistle blew, a stentorian voice cried out something and the train jerked slowly out of the station. They had started. She was on her way…

Her heart beat a little faster. Would it be all right? Would she be able to accomplish what she had set out to do? Surely – surely – she had thought it all out so carefully… She was prepared for every eventuality^[4]. Oh, yes, she would succeed – she must succeed…

The curve of Pilar’s red mouth curved upwards. It was suddenly cruel, that mouth. Cruel and greedy – like the mouth of a child or a kitten – a mouth that knew only its own desires and that was as yet unaware of pity.

She looked round her with the frank curiosity of a child. All these people, seven of them – how funny they were, the English! They all seemed so rich, so prosperous – their clothes – their boots – Oh! undoubtedly England was a very rich country as she had always heard. But they were not at all gay^[5] – no, decidedly not gay.

That was a handsome man standing in the corridor… Pilar thought he was very handsome. She liked his deeply bronzed face and his high-bridged nose and his square shoulders. More quickly than any English girl, Pilar had seen that the man admired her. She had not looked at him once directly, but she knew perfectly how often he had looked at her and exactly how he had looked.

She registered the facts without much interest or emotion. She came from a country where men looked at women as a matter of course^[6] and did not disguise the fact unduly. She wondered if he was an Englishman and decided that he was not.

‘He is too alive, too real, to be English,’ Pilar decided. ‘And yet he is fair. He may be perhaps Americano.’ He was, she thought, rather like the actors she had seen in Wild West films^[7].

An attendant pushed his way along the corridor.

‘First lunch, please. First lunch. Take your seats for first lunch.’

The seven occupants of Pilar’s carriage all held tickets for the first lunch. They rose in a body^[8] and the carriage was suddenly deserted and peaceful.

Pilar quickly pulled up the window which had been let down a couple of inches at the top by a militant-looking, grey-haired lady in the opposite corner. Then she sprawled comfortably back on her seat and peered out of the window at the northern suburbs of London. She did not turn her head at the sound of the door sliding back. It was the man from the corridor, and Pilar knew, of course, that he had entered the carriage on purpose to talk to her.

She continued to look pensively out of the window.

Stephen Farr said: ‘Would you like the window down at all?’

Pilar replied demurely: ‘On the contrary. I have just shut it.’ She spoke English perfectly, but with a slight accent.

During the pause that ensued, Stephen thought: ‘A delicious voice. It has the sun in it… It is warm like a summer night…’

Pilar thought: ‘I like his voice. It is big and strong. He is attractive – yes, he is attractive.’

Stephen said: ‘The train is very full.’

‘Oh, yes, indeed. The people go away from London, I suppose, because it is so black there.’

Pilar had not been brought up to believe that it was a crime to talk to strange men in trains. She could take care of herself as well as any girl, but she had no rigid taboos^[9].

If Stephen had been brought up in England he might have felt ill at ease^[10] at entering into conversation with a young girl. But Stephen was a friendly soul who found it perfectly natural to talk to anyone if he felt like it.

He smiled without any self-consciousness and said: ‘London’s rather a terrible place, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, yes. I do not like it at all.’

‘No more do I.’

Pilar said: ‘You are not English, no?’

‘I’m British, but I come from South Africa.’

‘Oh, I see, that explains it.’

‘Have you just come from abroad?’

Pilar nodded. ‘I come from Spain.’

Stephen was interested. ‘From Spain, do you? You’re Spanish, then?’

‘I am half-Spanish. My mother was English. That is why I talk English so well.’

‘What about this war business?’ asked Stephen. ‘It is very terrible, yes – very sad. There has been damage done, quite a lot – yes.’

‘Which side are you on?’

Pilar’s politics seemed to be rather vague. In the village where she came from, she explained, nobody had paid very much attention to the war. ‘It has not been near us, you understand. The Mayor, he is, of course, an officer of the Government, so he is for the Government, and the priest is for General Franco^[11] – but most of the people are busy with the vines and the land, they have not time to go into these questions.’

‘So there wasn’t any fighting round you?’

Pilar said that there had not been. ‘But then I drove in a car,’ she explained, ‘all across the country and there was much destruction. And I saw a bomb drop and it blew up a car – yes, and another destroyed a house. It was very exciting!’

Stephen Farr smiled a faintly twisted smile. ‘So that’s how it seemed to you?’

‘It was a nuisance^[12], too,’ explained Pilar. ‘Because I wanted to get on, and the driver of my car, he was killed.’

Stephen said, watching her: ‘That didn’t upset you?’

Pilar’s great dark eyes opened very wide. ‘Everyone must die! That is so, is it not? If it comes quickly from the sky – bouff – like that, it is as well as any other way. One is alive for a time – yes, and then one is dead. That is what happens in this world.’

Stephen Farr laughed. ‘I don’t think you are a pacifist.’

‘You do not think I am what?’ Pilar seemed puzzled by a word which had not previously entered her vocabulary.

‘Do you forgive your enemies, señorita?’

Pilar shook her head. ‘I have no enemies. But if I had – ’

‘Well?’

He was watching her, fascinated anew by the sweet, cruel upward-curving mouth.

Pilar said gravely: ‘If I had an enemy – if anyone hated me and I hated them – then I would cut my enemy’s throat like this…’

She made a graphic gesture.

It was so swift and so crude that Stephen Farr was momentarily taken aback. He said: ‘You are a bloodthirsty young woman!’

Pilar asked in a matter-of-fact tone: ‘What would you do to your enemy?’

He started – stared at her, then laughed aloud. ‘I wonder^[13] – ’ he said. ‘I wonder!’

Pilar said disapprovingly: ‘But surely – you know.’

He checked his laughter, drew in his breath and said in a low voice: ‘Yes. I know…’

Then with a rapid change of manner, he asked: ‘What made you come to England?’

Pilar replied with a certain demureness. ‘I am going to stay with my relations – with my English relations.’

‘I see.’

He leaned back in his seat, studying her – wondering what these English relations of whom she spoke were like – wondering what they would make of this Spanish stranger… trying to picture her in the midst of some sober British family^[14] at Christmas time.

Pilar asked: ‘Is it nice, South Africa, yes?’

He began to talk to her about South Africa. She listened with the pleased attention of a child hearing a story. He enjoyed her naïve but shrewd questions and amused himself by making a kind of exaggerated fairy story of it all.

The return of the proper occupants of the carriage put an end to this diversion. He rose, smiled into her eyes, and made his way out again into the corridor.

As he stood back for a minute in the doorway, to allow an elderly lady to come in, his eyes fell on the label of Pilar’s obviously foreign straw case. He read the name with interest – Miss Pilar Estravados – then as his eye caught the address it widened to incredulity and some other feeling – Gorston Hall, Longdale, Addlesfield.

He half-turned, staring at the girl with a new expression – puzzled, resentful, suspicious… He went out into the corridor and stood there smoking a cigarette and frowning to himself…

III

In the big blue and gold drawing-room at Gorston Hall Alfred Lee and Lydia, his wife, sat discussing their plans for Christmas. Alfred was a squarely built man of middle age with a gentle face and mild brown eyes. His voice when he spoke was quiet and precise with a very clear enunciation. His head was sunk into his shoulders and he gave a curious impression of inertia. Lydia, his wife, was an energetic, lean greyhound of a woman. She was amazingly thin, but all her movements had a swift, startled grace about them.

There was no beauty in her careless, haggard face, but it had distinction. Her voice was charming.

Alfred said: ‘Father insists! There’s nothing else to it.’

Lydia controlled a sudden impatient movement. She said: ‘Must you always give in to him^[15]?’

‘He’s a very old man, my dear – ’

‘Oh, I know – I know!’

‘He expects to have his own way^[16].’

Lydia said dryly: ‘Naturally, since he has always had it! But some time or other^[17], Alfred, you will have to make a stand.’

‘What do you mean, Lydia?’

He stared at her, so palpably upset and startled, that for a moment she bit her lip and seemed doubtful whether to go on.

Alfred Lee repeated: ‘What do you mean, Lydia?’

She shrugged her thin, graceful shoulders. She said, trying to choose her words cautiously: ‘Your father is – inclined to be – tyrannical – ’

‘He’s old.’

‘And will grow older. And consequently more tyrannical. Where will it end? Already he dictates our lives to us completely. We can’t make a plan of our own! If we do, it is always liable to be upset^[18].’

Alfred said: ‘Father expects to come first. He is very good to us, remember.’

‘Oh! good to us!’

‘Very good to us.’ Alfred spoke with a trace of sternness.

Lydia said calmly: ‘You mean financially?’

‘Yes. His own wants are very simple. But he never grudges us money^[19]. You can spend what you like on dress and on this house, and the bills are paid without a murmur. He gave us a new car only last week.’

‘As far as money goes^[20], your father is very generous, I admit,’ said Lydia. ‘But in return he expects us to behave like slaves.’

‘Slaves?’