Coming Home Read Free

they turned into the street.
    There was a short pause.
    â€˜Well, antiquarians have enquiring minds. Too enquiring sometimes,’ she said with acerbity. ‘There was always something else to see a few miles further on.’
    â€˜The grass is always greener…?’
    â€˜Precisely.’
    He wondered at the bitterness in her voice.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ she said after an uncomfortable silence. ‘But because of Papa I am marooned here, desperate to return to England and unable to do so.’
    â€˜I thought your childhood was spent in Portugal,’ he said.
    As they entered the tea shop she said, ‘And in England and Egypt as well.’
    He stopped. ‘What? He dragged you to all his working sites?’
    â€˜My mother also, of course,’ she said, as they sat down at a delicate little gate-legged table. He could not cram his long legs under the table because his left leg was still painful to bend for any length of time. In
the end he compromised by pushing the spindly chair back from the table and spreading his legs out straight.
    He nodded to her to carry on with her story and she continued, gazing at the whitewashed wall, seeing the long ago. ‘ Mãe was of a delicate constitution, poor darling. She begged him to let the two of us go back to Portugal to live with her parents so he could explore to his heart’s content. But Papa liked to have Mãe at his side, to prepare his meals just the way he liked them. She was very good at making a comfortable home out of whichever hut or cave we lived in at the time. And it was not all bad. Sometimes we stayed at the homes of fellow enthusiasts and they spoiled me abominably. Of course, it then became twice as hard once we were on our own.’
    Colly nodded. He knew what she meant. Sometimes after one had bivouacked in a luxurious place such as a disused pousada or castelo , it was depressing to spend the next couple of weeks on the march sleeping under hedgerows and in pig byres.
    He cleared his throat, trying for a casual tone. ‘You never told me – where are your parents now?’
    Absorbed in pouring tea, she did not look up.
    â€˜ Mãe died when I was ten and my maternal grandparents sent me to the convent of the Good Sisters of Hope in Coimbra. When my grandparents died of the fever, Papa took me back to Egypt with him to be his assistant.’
    Colly bit into the dainty scone in front of him. Scones and jam and clotted cream here, in Porto. It was like a dream.
    Or a nightmare if one took Miss Colebrook’s background into account. He employed his mouth and teeth in chewing his way through three dainty scones. It was better that she thought him a greedy hog than that he opened his mouth and told her what he thought of her father.
    â€˜So why are you here?’ she asked, her head tilted to one side like a robin.
    Did she want a potted history of his life, or did she mean, ‘Why are you here now ?’
    â€˜I am on my way home to England,’ he said baldly. She would not get a potted biography from him. He had no intention of telling her the story of his life – why he had joined the army; why he was in Portugal. She would cringe away from him if he told her the truth.
    â€˜Are you on leave?’ she asked, sounding interested.
    He settled back in his chair, smiling. ‘I have sold out. I received an offer of employment from a friend.’

    She bounced in her chair. ‘How wonderful!’
    â€˜You don’t know how wonderful, Miss Colebrook. His letter came right after the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro.’
    She smothered a smile, presumably because of his appalling accent, and for a moment he was drawn out of his tale to admire the way the creamy skin pinched at the corners of her mouth.
    â€˜I think I’ve become battle weary,’ he said. ‘But I was never so relieved and excited in my life than when I received his letter.’
    â€˜It is what you really