“Mrs. Rouan, do you remember the tart I baked on my birthday?”
The woman smiled good-humoredly.
“I do. The master and the children loved it. It was very kind of you to have some sent in to us here in the kitchen; we all liked it very much. It’s an old family recipe, isn’t it? They’re the best.”
From beyond the garden, the path and the fields came the distant, solemn sound of the abbey bells.
“They’re ringing for Vespers,” said the cook.
“I know,” Miss Prim whispered, eyes fixed on the landscape. “Mrs. Rouan, would you like the recipe for my tart?”
The cook was amazed.
“But, miss, I thought the recipe—”
“I thought so too,” grinned Miss Prim. “Would you like to have it?”
Eyes shining with emotion, the cook extended her rough hand and laid it on top of the librarian’s.
“I’d be honored, miss, I really would.”
I “Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?” John 18: 37–8, KJV
4
Miss Prim worked her way diligently through the list of people she had to visit before she left. She knew that news of her departure would spread quickly around the village, and she didn’t want her friends to find out from anyone but her. As she walked through San Ireneo to Horacio Delàs’s house, she recalled the day of her arrival. She’d hurried through these streets, annoyed that she couldn’t find a taxi, and hardly noticed the austere beauty of the stone houses or the charm of the cheerful, neat shops. She’d been completely oblivious—she of all people, who so loved beauty—of the beating heart behind these walls.
A week had passed since she’d discovered her mistake about her employer’s feelings, and the pain had been replaced by a serene inner sadness. It was more than disappointment in love—Miss Prim rebelled inwardly at the thought of succumbing to such a sickness of the soul—it was the prospect of having to leave this delightful place, its quirky people, the way of life. She didn’t want to go, she admitted to herself as she crossed the village, she really didn’t. But what was the alternative?
“I remember when you arrived, so young and inexperienced and knowing nothing about the place.”
Having offered his guest a seat, Horacio settled himself in the old armchair from which he cast his kindly, measured, intellectual gaze upon the world and shot her a searching look.
Miss Prim cleared her throat before replying.
“It was only six months ago, Horacio. I hope I’m still almost as young.”
Smiling, her friend poured her a glass of wine and cut her some cheese with an enormous knife.
“But now you know so much more about us.”
She nodded, raising the wineglass to her lips.
“And yet you’re leaving us,” he continued. “Was that conversation really so difficult? Could you not turn the page and stay?”
Miss Prim looked at him sorrowfully. She had asked herself the same question every day since the night she had spoken to the Man in the Wing Chair. Couldn’t she carry on as before? Ignore it all, pretend it had never happened, simply continue with her job?
“I can’t,” she said.
“Are you really so much in love with him?”
She hopped up and went to straighten one of the pictures that lined the sitting room walls.
“I don’t know,” she said, resuming her seat. “I mean, it probably isn’t love, it may just be infatuation. But it isn’t really that. As least, not only that.”
“So,” he asked, “what else is it?”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how to explain. It isn’t always easy to know what one feels, Horacio. There are submerged currents colliding, then combining and merging.”
