The driver took a moment to honk at someone, slowed down to wait for a tram to go by, and then turned onto Sixth Avenue. “It’s a few miles out of town, just east, but I could drive you just a couple of blocks near here to see the old part of town.”
“Why not?” Darling asked, when Lane gave him a nod.
Lane looked at the town outside the car windows. They passed a massive pink building with a red-tiled roof and a huge mosaic green and yellow dome. A row of columns connected by arches provided a long, shaded walkway. She could just see the courtyard beyond the arches.
“What is that wonderful-looking place?” Lane asked.
“That’s the county courthouse. This here is the old part of the city, called the Presidio. The Spanish came here first, and you’ve got some very fine houses in here. I’ll just drive you along Fourth Avenue so you can see. It won’t take a minute.”
Lane threw herself onto the bed of their suite. “This is heavenly! We were right to pick this. All this lovely adobe. It could almost be Mexico. I feel like I have been transported to a completely foreign place. And this weather! It is hard to imagine that somewhere in the world it is this warm on the ninth of November. We’d be in our wool shirts at home.”
Lane had seen the travel brochures for Tucson at the travel agency on Baker Street and had been attracted to the sunny desert landscape, perfect for a honeymoon as November ushered in the damp cold of a British Columbia winter. “We could go to a dude ranch,” she’d said, spreading the brochures across the table one evening.
“Are we dudes, do you think? I have decidedly negative views on dressing up in chaps,” Darling had said. “You know, I have an ex-colleague who moved there in ’37. He might have an idea for a less energetic holiday. I’ll write to him.” And indeed, his ex-colleague, now the assistant chief of police in Tucson, Paul Galloway, had recommended the Santa Cruz Inn, adding that it was a favourite of Hollywood movie stars.
“You have been transported to a foreign place,” Darling pointed out. While not of a demonstrative turn, he was quietly relishing the sunny warmth, not to mention a completely new sensation to him: the feeling of truly being on holiday, with no responsibilities and nothing to do but enjoy the company of his new and beautiful wife. He hung his jacket in the closet and rolled up his shirtsleeves. His tie was already discarded on the dresser. He looked at the suitcases.
Lane smiled. “Let’s not unpack now. Let’s just get out the things we need for tea. I’m astonished they have a good old English tea here, and,” she glanced at her watch, “it’s on in fifteen minutes. I don’t want to miss it; we can see who our neighbours are.”
Darling kicked off his brogues and lay down on the bed, scooping her into his arms. “I don’t care who the neighbours are.” He kissed her in a way that suggested they stay put awhile, which Lane found almost irresistible.
“We should see if we can find Consuela, the cabbie’s sister,” she said through his kiss.
“I’ve never met a woman with less sense of occasion. You are not easy to love.”
“I’m sure you knew that when you married me. Come, up you get! We didn’t come here to while away our time in bed.”
“I should have thought that was exactly why we came,” Darling protested, swinging his legs onto the floor.
They walked along the brick path past neat rows of flowers and green lawns, to where a fountain splashed in the centre of a large lawn surrounded by palms and other trees Lane couldn’t identify.
She clutched Darling’s arm. “Oh, listen!” she exclaimed, holding up a finger.
He duly tilted his head. “To what, in particular?”
“That cooing . . . mourning doves! One of my favourite birds . . . we had them in England.” They stood together in companionable silence and became aware of several types of birdsong, the soft cooing predominating. Lane sighed happily. “They always sound so peaceful. I feel as if nothing bad could happen in a place where they are.”
The library—modelled, Lane decided, on some fantasy European manorial room with dark ceiling beams and a long wall of books—was abuzz with quiet chatter and the clinking of cups. The women were in bright summer dresses, some sporting wide-brimmed straw hats and others pert little numbers with wisps of veil set at becoming angles. A couple of younger men in pale linen trousers stood by the massive unlit hearth with their elbows on the mantel, smoking pipes. The place had the confident, quiet feel of money.
“Those two by the fireplace look just like the brochure,” Lane whispered. “Do you think they stay there permanently on the off-chance they’ll be photographed? Oh. What have you got? I missed those.” She pointed at a pair of tiny scones on his plate.
“They’re over there. You’re not having mine.”
Lane left the little round table they had managed to get and went to where the scones were laid out, wondering if it would be greedy to take two.
“This is gorgeous, sweetie,” said someone nearby. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen nothing . . . anything like this. You’re spoiling me, you know that?”
Lane turned with her scones and a woman, possibly in her mid-thirties, with frizzy, nearly white bleached-blond hair in a pre-war Bette Davis style. She was wearing a deep ruby shade of lipstick that Lane wasn’t sure about for the time of day. The man she giggled at, the man she held up her china cup to toast, was considerably older. Lane would have said he was into his seventies. He was slight and perfectly dressed in white slacks and a blue blazer, and his full head of white hair was brushed and Brilliantined into a side part.
