Three and One Make Five Read Online Free PDF Page B

mad, stuck in the middle of thousands of sheep, yet then a wife wouldn’t come along and at a moment’s notice kick me out of the house I’ve lived in for eighteen months.’
    ‘That hurt, didn’t it?’ he said with deep sympathy.
    ‘Yes, it did, even though I knew it had to come. Maybe things had started to go sour between me and Roger, but we’d still had some wonderful times together and the house had been our home. I wish . . . When things go wrong, Enrique, I’m like a little girl and I start wishing they could all be changed and made right after all.’
    ‘That’s why you’ve still got Barrats Hill.’
    ‘It’s funny how well you understand me.’ She saw his expression and smiled. ‘And now I’ve embarrassed you, although I can’t see why!’
    The waiter returned and put two cups of coffee, a jug of milk, two packets of sugar, and a glass of brandy down on the table, together with the bill. As he left, a car on the north side of the square backfired and several pigeons lifted off the high roof of the church with clapping wings.
    She spoke abruptly, almost belligerently. ‘I’ve rented a flat down in the port.’ She tore off the comer of one of the sugar packets.
    ‘D’you mean in Puerto Llueso?’
    ‘Everyone said how lovely it still was and when I was kicked out of Roger’s house I drove over to see if that was true. There was a notice of a flat to let right on the front, so I took it. Maybe we can see something of each other?’ She poured the sugar into her coffee.
     
    At eleven years of age, Juan was precocious, but perhaps no more so than the average Mallorquin boy who was spoiled from birth. He studied Alvarez. ‘Uncle, you’re not talking as much as usual. D’you think you’re dying?’ ‘That’s quite enough of that.’ said Dolores sharply.
    ‘Is Uncle dying?’ asked Isabel, Juan’s younger sister, with considerable interest.
    Jaime chuckled as he pushed the bottle of wine across the table to Alvarez. ‘Here, finish this in one last booze before you peg out.’
    ‘Will you please stop this nonsense,’ snapped Dolores.
    ‘But Uncle’s been looking at nothing and he didn’t have a second helping of arroz brut,’ persisted Juan.
    Dolores pursed her lips. It was quite true, Alvarez had not had a second helping of her delicious arroz brut. ‘Are you not feeling well, Enrique?’
    ‘Never felt better,’ he replied, as heartily as possible. He picked up the bottle and refilled his tumbler.
    ‘I bet I know the trouble,’ said Jaime suddenly. ‘It’s a woman!’
    Alvarez flushed.
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Dolores, her tone more questioning than admonitory.
    ‘I tell you, when a bloke’s off his grub he’s either dying or starving.’
    ‘That’s quite enough of that, in front of the children,’ she said, now angry.
    Juan was puzzled. ‘If you’re starving, you must be dying.’
    Jaime began to explain. ‘There’s two kinds of starving for a men and one of ‘em’s a sight more painful than the other . . .’ He stopped abruptly when he saw Dolores’s expression.
    ‘Are we going to get anything more to eat?’ asked Juan.
    ‘Eating and drinking, that’s all this family every thinks about,’ she snapped.
    ‘Would you rather I started thinking of something else?’ Jaime asked, winking at Alvarez as he spoke.
     
    Alvarez lay in bed and listened to the low, bee-like hum of traffic on the main road to the port. What had she said as they’d parted? ‘You will come and see me in my little flat, won’t you? Promise?’
    Of course, she was lonely: lonely and still suffering from the shock of the death of Clarke. And like any other lonely person, she was eager to make contact with someone she knew, even if he were twice her age, in the hopes that her loneliness would thereby be eased . . .
    A woman as vivacious as she would very soon make friends and therefore cease to be lonely. Then, surely, she’d not want to bother with someone who was at best no