Eventually Agatha returned with Dolores. George was out with the gauchos, but Jose Antonio was quick to bring the good news. ‘Dolores is cured,’ he beamed, expressing his delight by gesticulating wildly with his large hands. George wondered how his aunt felt about that. ‘What’s more, the melon contained poison that infected her whole body, her very nature. She is much changed. She smiles!’
‘And Aunt Agatha?’ George enquired.
‘La Gorda seems to be incapable of going to the city without returning with some human token of her visit.’
‘I think she deserves a reward for driving all that way with Dolores,’ George suggested diplomatically.
‘One woman cured, another scarred. It doesn’t rain then it pours,’ he exclaimed jovially, shrugging his shoulders. George’s heart froze. ‘She’s invited a woman to keep you company, gringo. But of course,’ he joked, slapping his thigh, ‘you have eyes only for Rita.’
‘What?’
‘She’s now running a sanctuary for recovering women. I might as well move in with Molina. Think nothing of it, gringo. She’s not for you. God has cursed her beauty by slicing through it.’ He ran a rough finger down the side of his face. ‘Come, we have work to do!’
Chapter 12
In little more than a dressing gown and slippers, Rita ran outside to meet the postman, as she did every morning, with a hopeful spring in her step and a silent prayer on her lips. Today, surely, there would be a letter for her. It was a frosty November morning. Another Christmas without George, she thought gloomily. Mr Toppit, the postman, smiled broadly and waved a fat brown envelope in the air. He recognized George Bolton’s handwriting from all the letters he had sent Rita during the war. Why the young man had gone away again he didn’t know, but he thought it a mighty silly thing to do to leave a pretty girl like Rita Fairweather on her own. ‘A love letter for you from overseas,’ he exclaimed, watching his breath curl on the air like smoke. Rita took it from him and pressed it to her lips. Her whole body seemed to inflate as if she had trouble keeping her feet on the ground. Mr Toppit felt proud, as though he were the cause of her happiness.
‘Oh thank you, Mr Toppit. You’ve made my day!’ she replied with a laugh, feeling the lumps with her fingers, trying to guess what the envelope contained. He noticed her eyes shining in the cold and thought how happiness enhanced a girl’s looks. If he weren’t married, if he were a young man again, if arthritis hadn’t begun to knot his joints, if he had the confidence of young George Bolton, he could lose his heart to Rita Fairweather. George was a lucky man, he mused. There was something about Rita that placed her out of reach, as if she belonged to the sea, like a mermaid. Not only was George lucky, he was blessed.
‘Would you give these to your mother?’ he said, rousing himself from his daydream.
‘Of course,’ she replied, taking the letters and turning to walk back into the house. ‘I’m going to open this all by myself on the cliff top. That’s our special place, you see. Up there on the cliffs.’
‘Mind you don’t fall off,’ he teased.
‘I won’t fall off. Life’s much too good!’ With that she skipped lightly into the house.
When she returned to the kitchen, her family could tell by the smile on her face that she had finally received a letter from George. ‘About time too!’ exclaimed Humphrey, who vehemently disapproved of George’s decision to leave Rita for another year. If it hadn’t been for the engagement ring he would have taken the boy aside and had strong words. As it was he had doubts that George would return. He was a bag of contradictions. An old man of the war in the body of a boy. Emotionally immature, yet wise and jaded, cynical even, disillusioned perhaps, keen for novelty and adventure but most of all for freedom. Why would he want to settle down to a quiet life in Frognal Point? Of course the war had changed him. It was inevitable. But it hadn’t changed Rita.
‘What is it?’ Hannah asked, while Eddie sprang up from her chair, spluttering questions through a mouthful of toast.
‘Open it. Go on!’ instructed Maddie, sipping her tea. Fully made up in scarlet lipstick and black mascara, with her hair combed in the style of Lauren Bacall, she looked like a movie star herself.
Hannah had tried to dissuade her from making such an exhibition of herself, but she was nearly twenty now with a personality of steel. There was no job either. She wouldn’t hear of it. And she spent far too much time with the boys in the White Hart pub. Hannah turned a blind eye. She had to accept that her child was now a grown-up.