The Complete Quin and Satterthwaite

‘You will have tea with me,’ said Mr Satterthwaite’s hostess. She added reassuringly: ‘It is perfectly good tea and will be made with boiling water.’

She went out of the door and called out something in Spanish, then she returned and sat down on a sofa opposite her guest. For the first time, Mr Satterthwaite was able to study her appearance.

The first effect she had upon him was to make him feel even more grey and shrivelled and elderly than usual by contrast with her own forceful personality. She was a tall woman, very sunburnt, dark and handsome though no longer young. When she was in the room the sun seemed to be shining twice as brightly as when she was out of it, and presently a curious feeling of warmth and aliveness began to steal over Mr Satterthwaite. It was as though he stretched out thin, shrivelled hands to a reassuring flame. He thought, ‘She’s so much vitality herself that she’s got a lot left over for other people.’

He recalled the command in her voice when she had stopped him, and wished that his protégée, Olga, could be imbued with a little of that force. He thought: ‘What an Isolde she’d make! And yet she probably hasn’t got the ghost of a singing voice. Life is badly arranged.’ He was, all the same, a little afraid of her. He did not like domineering women.

She had clearly been considering him as she sat with her chin in her hands, making no pretence about it. At last she nodded as though she had made up her mind.

‘I am glad you came,’ she said at last. ‘I needed someone very badly to talk to this afternoon. And you are used to that, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t quite understand.’

‘I meant people tell you things. You knew what I meant! Why pretend?’

‘Well – perhaps –’

She swept on, regardless of anything he had been going to say.

‘One could say anything to you. That is because you are half a woman. You know what we feel – what we think – the queer, queer things we do.’

Her voice died away. Tea was brought by a large, smiling Spanish girl. It was good tea – China – Mr Satterthwaite sipped it appreciatively.

‘You live here?’ he inquired conversationally.

‘Yes.’

‘But not altogether. The house is usually shut up, is it not? At least so I have been told.’

‘I am here a good deal, more than anyone knows. I only use these rooms.’

‘You have had the house long?’

‘It has belonged to me for twenty-two years – and I lived here for a year before that.’

Mr Satterthwaite said rather inanely (or so he felt): ‘That is a very long time.’

‘The year? Or the twenty-two years?’

His interest stirred, Mr Satterthwaite said gravely: ‘That depends.’

She nodded.

‘Yes, it depends. They are two separate periods. They have nothing to do with each other. Which is long? Which is short? Even now I cannot say.’

She was silent for a minute, brooding. Then she said with a little smile:

‘It is such a long time since I have talked with anyone – such a long time! I do not apologize. You came to my shutter. You wished to look through my window. And that is what you are always doing, is it not? Pushing aside the shutter and looking through the window into the truth of people’s lives. If they will let you. And often if they will not let you! It would be difficult to hide anything from you. You would guess – and guess right.’

Mr Satterthwaite had an odd impulse to be perfectly sincere.

‘I am sixty-nine,’ he said. ‘Everything I know of life I know at second hand. Sometimes that is very bitter to me. And yet, because of it, I know a good deal.’

She nodded thoughtfully.

‘I know. Life is very strange. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be that – always a looker-on.’

Her tone was wondering. Mr Satterthwaite smiled.

‘No, you would not know. Your place is in the centre of the stage. You will always be the Prima Donna.’

‘What a curious thing to say.’

‘But I am right. Things have happened to you – will always happen to you. Sometimes, I think, there have been tragic things. Is that so?’

Her eyes narrowed. She looked across at him.

‘If you are here long, somebody will tell you of the English swimmer who was drowned at the foot of this cliff. They will tell you how young and strong he was, how handsome, and they will tell you that his young wife looked down from the top of the cliff and saw him drowning.’

‘Yes, I have already heard that story.’

‘That man was my husband. This was his villa. He brought me out here with him when I was eighteen, and a year later he died – driven by the surf on the black rocks, cut and bruised and mutilated, battered to death.’

Mr Satterthwaite gave a shocked exclamation. She leant forward, her burning eyes focused on his face.

‘You spoke of tragedy. Can you imagine a greater tragedy than that? For a young wife, only a year married, to stand helpless while the man she loved fought for his life – and lost it – horribly.’

‘Terrible,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. He spoke with real emotion. ‘Terrible. I agree with you. Nothing in life could be so dreadful.’

Suddenly she laughed. Her head went back.

‘You are wrong,’ she said. ‘There is something more terrible. And that is for a young wife to stand there and hope and long for her husband to drown …’

‘But good God,’ cried Mr Satterthwaite, ‘you don’t mean –?’

‘Yes, I do. That’s what it was really. I knelt there – knelt down on the cliff and prayed. The Spanish servants thought I was praying for his life to be saved. I wasn’t. I was praying that I might wish him to be spared. I was saying one thing over and over again, “God, help me not to wish him dead. God, help me not to wish him dead.” But it wasn’t any good. All the time I hoped – hoped – and my hope came true.’

She was silent for a minute or two and then she said very gently in quite a different voice:

‘That is a terrible thing, isn’t it? It’s the sort of thing one can’t forget. I was terribly happy when I knew he was really dead and couldn’t come back to torture me any more.’

‘My child,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, shocked.

‘I know. I was too young to have that happen to me. Those things should happen to one when one is older – when one is more prepared for – for beastliness. Nobody knew, you know, what he was really like. I thought he was wonderful when I first met him and was so happy and proud when he asked me to marry him. But things went wrong almost at once. He was angry with me – nothing I could do pleased him – and yet I tried so hard. And then he began to like hurting me. And above all to terrify me. That’s what he enjoyed most. He thought out all sorts of things … dreadful things. I won’t tell you. I suppose, really, he must have been a little mad. I was alone here, in his power, and cruelty began to be his hobby.’ Her eyes widened and darkened. ‘The worst was my baby. I was going to have a baby. Because of some of the things he did to me – it was born dead. My little baby. I nearly died, too – but I didn’t. I wish I had.’

Mr Satterthwaite made an inarticulate sound.

‘And then I was delivered – in the way I’ve told you. Some girls who were staying at the hotel dared him. That’s how it happened. All the Spaniards told him it was madness to risk the sea just there. But he was very vain – he wanted to show off. And I – I saw him drown – and was glad. God oughtn’t to let such things happen.’