Upstairs in the bedroom she reached into the bottom of her trunk and found her paint-box bound in a scarf of crêpe-de-Chine. She had been intending simply to show Wilson the paints, but now she had another idea. She took a vase from the table and filled it from the water jar.
When she returned to the veranda, the sun seemed to have fallen in the sky. The shadow of the house sprawled below, warped by the uneven slope of the terrain; the edge of the shadow rippled, reminding her of flags in wind. At the foot of the hill lay the sea. It stretched away to the horizon in alternating shades of lavender and jade. The American was sitting where she had left him, in an upholstered cane chair, his hands folded across his waistcoat, his hat pulled level with his eyebrows.
‘Wilson?’
He tipped his hat back and sat up straighter. ‘I was dreaming there for a moment,’ he said. ‘Must be the wine.’ He leaned forwards. ‘What’s that you’ve got?’
She handed him the paint-box. ‘It was given to me when I was a child,’ she told him. ‘Before that, it belonged to my mother.’
He admired it slowly, turning it in his rough hands, making it seem, for the first time, a thing of delicacy.
‘Are you going to paint something?’ he asked her.
‘Yes, I am.’ She smiled. ‘I’m going to paint your foot.’
His look of alarm pushed her smile over into laughter. ‘Look at it,’ she said. ‘It’s so dull. It needs some decoration.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Now what shall it be? A flower? An animal? Some gold at the end of a rainbow?’
‘I don’t want everyone to know my secret.’
‘I guess not.’
He looked at her, one corner of his mouth curling humorously upwards.
‘It’s American,’ she said. ‘I learned it from you.’
At length they decided on a flower. But which kind? He let her choose. Then it would be a rose, she said. A red rose. And, propping his foot on a stool, she dipped her brush in the vase of water and set to work.
‘Saffron,’ she mused. ‘It’s a strange name for a girl with red hair.’
Wilson thought for a while. ‘I believe her father was in the business of spices.’
She laughed; the stem of the rose jumped sideways. Sometimes his answers were so crooked and unlikely that she thought she must have misunderstood, but one look at his face would tell her she had not. It was only that he himself had no sense that what he was saying was anything other than commonplace and everyday. They were things that had happened to him, and that was how he passed them on — as fragments of a life, as facts. As she began to outline the petals of the rose she let her mind wander back through the story of the red-haired girl. Her father must have had some premonition of her effect on men, for she seemed to have lasted in Wilson’s memory in the same way that a certain fragrance lingers in the place where spices have been stored — though she could not now remember what saffron smelled like, or even if it smelled at all.
‘Did you ever see her again?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I never did.’
‘Did you look for her?’
‘I passed through Monterey a few years later. Somebody told me she’d got married. Maybe it was that man who came out of the fog.’ He laughed quickly.
‘Has there been anyone else?’ She felt she could ask him almost anything, so long as she used the voice he used, and did not look up from her work. The truth could only be drawn from the thorns and petals of the rose.
His eyes explored the air above her head. ‘No.’
She had embarrassed him, but she talked on through his embarrassment as if she had not noticed. They were doing favours for each other without acknowledgement, which was ground on which friendship could be built.
‘But it must be lonely,’ she said, ‘when you are always travelling from one place to another.’
‘You don’t travel by yourself. Mostly you team up. Especially if you’re heading into dangerous territory.’ Wilson sat back in his chair, easier now.
He told her about a trapper, name of Mickey Noone. They were riding across the prairies of West Texas together. Noone was after hunting beaver on the Colorado River, the Gila too, but the beaver were strictly incidental. He just seemed to have a natural bent for killing things. His rifle always lay in his arms, one restless finger in the region of the trigger. One day Wilson had asked him what he liked killing best. Noone shrugged. ‘It don’t matter what,’ he said, ‘though, on general principles, I’d prefer an Indian.’
‘I think I’d rather travel alone,’ Suzanne exclaimed, ‘than travel with such a man.’
‘I don’t believe he ever killed an Indian in his life.’ Wilson smiled down at her. ‘He was a terrible shot. Once I saw him miss a jack rabbit from six feet away.’
The rose, complete with petals, stem and leaves, had almost dried when they heard the grating of carriage-wheels in the street. From the shadows of the veranda they watched Montoya leave his carriage and climb the steps to the de Romblays’ house. At this distance they could not see his face, only the scarlet of his tunic and the epaulettes that clung, like huge glinting spiders, to his shoulders.
‘My God.’ Suzanne had only breathed the words.
‘What is it?’ Wilson asked her.
She shook her head. ‘I’ve just remembered something.’
Last night she had dreamed that she was standing in a house. It was late. No lamps or torches had been lit. There was not even a candle to see by. Only the moonlight falling through a high window, pooling on anything that had a shine to it.
She was standing at the foot of a stone staircase. She could look up and watch the stairs come sweeping down into the hall, almost like a river or a tide, each stair gifted with a silver edge. She could see details; the smooth wooden rail of the banister and how it curved towards her, curled into a snail-shell. She reached one hand out, let her fingers trace the curve and final circle of the wood.
She heard a shuffling close by. She had been expecting something to happen on the staircase — someone to descend, perhaps; but the sound had come from behind her. She looked round.
Two women were dancing with each other on the flagstone floor. They were Indian women, with oval faces and splayed toes. One wore a scarlet tunic. The other wore pale breeches with silver buttons. Otherwise they were naked. It was a slow dance; they scarcely lifted their feet from the ground. Round and round they shuffled, on their big square feet. Round and round. There was no music.
She had woken that morning believing the house to be Montoya’s.
‘Sounds like the uniform was his,’ Wilson said.
‘You know something, Wilson? He has invited me to tea.’
‘Montoya?’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Then you’ll be able to find out, won’t you?’
‘Find out what?’
‘Whether it was his house that you dreamed about.’
They watched as Montoya emerged from the house up the street and climbed back into his waiting carriage.
‘There are men like him in Paris,’ she said, ‘but I did not expect to find them here, in Santa Sofía.’
Wilson squinted after the carriage. ‘He’s not a typical inhabitant, certainly.’
She began to laugh, and found she could not stop. It was the thought he had given to his judgement, and the gravity with which he had delivered it. He, too, began to laugh.
‘Though I don’t know how I can talk,’ he added, a few moments later, ‘with a red rose painted on my foot.’