LITMIR.BIZ

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streets climbing up the hilltop to the south.

      In the hotel Bethan was busy with their trunks and sheets of crisp white tissue. Isabel was packing too, and they had both begged her to go away. Amy was willing to help, but somehow whenever she packed anything the smooth linens came out ferociously creased, and the fragile underclothes looked as though they had been tied up in knots.

      ‘Leave it to me, there’s a lamb,’ Bethan said.

      Amy was enjoying her solitude. It was a chance to say a private goodbye to the little town. She wasn’t altogether sorry to be leaving, because holidays made the family differences seem more apparent, whether they were Christmasses at Chance or summers away like this one. Soon they would be back in England, living a routine again, and that was much easier. The children spent term-times at the London house, and the girls went to Miss Abbott’s school for young ladies in Knightsbridge. They saw little of Gerald, who spent much of his time alone at Chance. Adeline came and went according to the demands of the Season and Saturday-to-Mondays at the country houses of her friends. But Amy had enjoyed just being in Biarritz. It was further than she had ever travelled before, and it had an exotic, southern feel that wasn’t just French like Deauville or somewhere. It was as if it was on the border between somewhere she knew and understood perfectly well, and somewhere exciting, and mysterious, and completely new.

      ‘I’ll be back,’ she murmured to herself.

      Amy wandered slowly along the wide, white-painted boardwalk between the Casino and the sands. It was busy with couples strolling arm in arm, skipping children, and old men in straw hats taking the sun before the heat became too much for them. The tide was going out, and the sand was smooth and glittering. The great rock in the middle of the bay was uncovered, and on the crest of it Amy could see the silhouettes of people who had climbed it after swimming out there for their morning exercise.

      Amy passed an arcade of spruce little shops fronting the walk, with Fendi’s at the corner. She would have liked to buy an ice to eat under one of the fluttering parasols, but didn’t have any money. Instead of walking on round the headland to where the statue of the Virgin on her rock was linked to the shore by a dizzy span of bridge, she turned inland up the steep streets where real Biarritz people rather than those on holiday lived. The little white and grey houses leaned over her on either side, their twisted metal balconies bright with flowers in pots. There were smells of baking and laundry and cooking oil.

      Amy was panting slightly from her climb when someone stepped squarely out in front of her.

      ‘Hello, miss.’

      She stopped at once, and smiled.

      There was the answering brilliant flash of white in the dark face, and the black eyes shining at her. Now that she had met him, Amy could admit to herself that the real purpose of her walk had been to find Luis and say goodbye to him properly. Luis was the waiter from the hotel who looked like a clever, humorous monkey. The two of them had struck up a tenuous, exciting friendship based on smiles exchanged when Luis served the two girls at their decorous lunches in an obscure corner of the great dining room. When Lord and Lady Lovell were present the head waiter himself served them, and Luis was relegated to distant duties with the trolley. Amy and Luis had talked for the first time when he brought her a glass of fruit juice on the terrace, and they had met once on the beach. Luis had been swimming, and he was wet and shiny like a dark brown seal. He was always looking over his shoulder for his superiors, and then he would melt away into nowhere while Amy was still talking. He was very lively, quite unlike anyone she had ever met, and Amy was fascinated by him.

      Luis was Spanish, but they spoke in French. His was very heavily Basque-accented and it bore hardly any relation at all to Amy’s polite English version. Sometimes they used the broken English he had picked up at the hotel. Amy felt that he was the very first friend she had made for herself in the real world, and then yesterday he had whispered that they could not meet again because today was his day off and he would not be in the hotel. So she had set off on her solitary walk, without even admitting to herself that she wanted to say goodbye properly to him.

      ‘You are walking?’ he asked her now. ‘Without your sister or your maid?’

      ‘I’m not supposed to leave the boardwalk when I’m by myself,’ Amy answered. ‘But …’ she shrugged in imitation of Luis’s own expressive gesture, and they both laughed.

      ‘I will walk with you, then. In case of kidnap.’

      Still laughing, they turned to walk on up the hill together. Luis was pointing into the shops, explaining to her about the people who lived and worked there. At the corner of the street they came to a cave-like little shop full of rainbow-coloured sweets and tiny, unfamiliar-looking pastries. An ancient woman in a rusty black dress was selling a handful in a twist of paper to a little boy, who was carefully counting out the centimes as he handed them over.

      Amy stopped to watch and Luis asked, ‘You would like?’

      ‘I would love.’

      He spoke rapidly in Spanish and the old woman twisted a paper cone for Amy too, scooping one or two of each variety into it. Luis paid her and they walked on, sharing the sweets between them. They were almondy, delicious.

      ‘If you would like,’ Luis said with sudden gravity, ‘we could visit my family.’

      ‘Yes, please,’ Amy said.

      One street further on they came to a row of houses so steeply perched that they looked as if they were about to topple over. A little girl was sitting on the step of the end house, playing with a stick and four stones. When she saw Luis she jumped up and ran down to him, calling out in Spanish.

      ‘This is my smallest sister, Isabella.’

      Isabella had tight black ringlets and the same eyes as Luis.

      ‘You have the very same name as my sister,’ Amy told her. Isabella took her hand and pulled her towards the house.

      ‘Come in.’

      Amy followed Luis up the steps and in through the door. The small room was square and windowless. It was cool beyond the shaft of light that fell in through the doorway. When her eyes got used to the dimness, Amy saw that the room seemed full of people. There was an old man with an immense, drooping white moustache, and an equally old woman with a black headdress pulled tight over her head. There was a square-built, strong woman who must be Luis’s mother, and children of all sizes. Luis drew Amy forward. My friend, she heard him saying proudly, over and over again.

      Do they all live here? Amy wondered. Where do they sleep? Through the opposite door she could just make out the shape of a big bed covered with a bright blanket.

      The little house was scrupulously clean, but almost completely bare. The only ornament was a dim, oily picture of the Holy Family with a little light burning in front of it. Amy thought fleetingly of the suite at the Hotel du Palais with its soft cushions and pretty covers.

      She shook hands gravely with each member of the family and felt them touching her gloves gingerly, looking at her pleated dress and her white shoes and stockings.

      The señorita was asked if she would take a refreshing drink, and they gave her a coloured glass full of a very sweet, reddish liquid that she drank with difficulty while they watched her.

      When it was gone, Luis stood up and said that now he must see his friend back to the safety of the hotel. At once they all stood up, shaking hands once more and smiling now. They ushered her the few feet to the door and watched as she walked down the hill with Luis. At the corner Amy turned back and waved.

      When they were finally out of sight, Luis said, ‘Thank you. You did us a great honour.’

      That made Amy angry. ‘Don’t say that. I didn’t do anything of the sort. They did me the honour, taking me in, didn’t they? Thank you for letting me meet them. I wish we could have talked to each other. Perhaps next time I will know some Spanish.’

      Luis looked at her, drawing his eyebrows together.

      ‘I like you,’ he said.

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