Antigua Kiss (15 page)

He accompanied her back to the waiting-room and repeated his opinion to Ash, as if he were entitled to know the state of her health.

'When you've finished your shopping, come and join us at the Golden Peanut. We'll be there from eleven,' said Ash, dropping her off in one of the main streets.

In the Scent Shop in High Street, she bought a large atomiser of Diorissimo cologne for her hostess, and one of Rive Gauche for Bettina. Many luxury items being duty-free in the island, they cost far less than in England.

It was barely ten. Having an hour to spare, she went into a shop called Bay Boutique, in St Mary's Street, and there looked through the dresses. Perhaps she owed it to Ash to wear something rather more stylish at the party than any of her existing dresses. But although there was a good choice, there was nothing she felt was right for her.

Then, looking in a glass showcase, she saw some delightful jewellery made from a coiled shell, sliced to show its convolutions and threaded into decorative bib shapes with thick, silky cord. She did not covet one herself, but she knew her sister would adore one.

Would have adored one. With a pang, she corrected, herself. For an instant she had forgotten the still unbelievable fact that Jenny was dead.

She had a number of packages when she found Ash and his nephew sitting at one of the outdoor tables ef a cafe screened from the road by a tall flowering hedge between two gateways.

'Secrets?' Ash asked, as she put her shopping on the fourth chair after he had risen to draw out the third one for her.

She shook her head. 'A small present for Mrs Hathaway, and a pair of shoes for me. The ones I brought with me are all flat-heeled, not very suitable for a party.'

'I was going to suggest that a little something for Miranda would be a pleasing gesture, but I forgot,' he said. 'I might have known you would think of it yourself. You have nice manners, Christiana—

rather rare in these offhand times.'

The expression in his eyes as he praised her made her pulse give a queer little jolt. As the waitress came for her order, she had to remind herself that Ash himself had exceptional manners—those of a practised charmer.

The road to where they were lunching passed through the inland villages of Ebenezers, Jennings and Bolans. Then the sea came into view again, and a beautiful, long palm-fringed beach.

As they did in England, cars drove on the left, so that Christie had to look in Ash's direction to admire the scene on the right-hand side of the roadway. She noticed him grinning, and asked, 'What's the joke?'

'I was remembering some friends of mine who were taken for a ride along this stretch—a metaphorical ride. They stopped to enjoy the view, and a local lad came along and sold them three coconuts. Very good coconuts. He opened them for them, and they drank the water straight away. But twenty-two E.C. dollars was rather more than the market price, they discovered later.'

'What is the market price?'

'It varies, but certainly under a dollar each.'

She laughed. 'How galling for your friends! But I suppose anyone who can afford to holiday here is not on too tight a budget. It sounds as if that coconut vendor is going to be rich himself one day.'

Before they reached the hotel, Ash pointed out the Shekerley Mountains, with the summit of Boggy Peak, the island's highest point, rising above the others.

It was early for lunch, so they bathed, and then dried off on beach beds.

Having put some sun-cream on John, Christie protected her own skin, now toasted to light golden brown. She had done her arms, legs and chest when Ash asked, 'Want me to do your back?'

Usually, on the beach at the Colony, she would ask some friendly-looking woman if she would mind doing it for her. Here she had no choice but to hand the bottle to him.

He left his beach-bed to sit beside her on hers. Silently exhorting herself not to tense when she felt his hand on her, Christie said aloud,

'Tell me more about the Mill Reef Club. Is it strictly for millionaires?'

'Yes, people like Tom Watson, the IBM mogul, and Lord and Lady As tor. It was founded about thirty years ago, and now there are about sixty properties and five hundred members. You can see the roofs of some of the houses from the beach at Half Moon Bay, but the grounds of the Club are strictly private. Some distinguished people have been turned back at the inner gate if they had no invitation from a member.

Jackie Onassis is a regular visitor, I've heard. One can imagine the attention she would attract on a public beach such as this one.'

'Yes, I suppose if the word went round that she was staying here, the rubbernecks would come in droves,' Christie agreed.

Having trickled some cream down her spine, he was working it into her skin with firm, smoothing strokes with his fingertips. First up to the top of her left shoulder, then over the blade, then down to her waist and below it to the curve of her hip and the cleft of her bare behind.

'I'm being gentler with you than you were with me, you'll notice,' he teased her.

'You asked me to rub it in harder.'

'True, but my hide is tougher than yours. Your skin is as soft as a baby's.'

Christie was silent, her throat tight. She wanted to be as indifferent to his touch as she was when another woman applied the cream for her.

But she wasn't: in fact she was so acutely sensitive that she could feel individually the pressure of the three fingers he was using on her.

'The tie of your top is in the way. If you'll stop it from coming adrift, I'll undo the strings for a minute.'

She barely had time to anchor the triangles of cotton before he had undone the bow, and was starting methodically to cream the other half of her back.

It seemed an eternity before he reached the base of her spine; and then, when she thought it was over, she felt his thumb running up the line of her vertebrae and sending a violent frisson of intense and unfamiliar sensation rippling upwards from the pit of her stomach.

'There you are: all done.'

But the ordeal wasn't quite over. As her hands sped behind her to re-fasten the strings, they collided with his hands about to perform the same function.

As their fingers tangled, the loosened bra became displaced. With a murmur of dismay, Christie snatched it back into position.

'Sorry. Lose your spinnakers?' said Ash. 'Never mind. If that chap caught a glimpse of your breasts, I expect he thought, as I did yesterday, that they're one of the nicest exposures he's seen for some time.'

He was referring to a man who was strolling along the water's edge, looking up the beach in their direction. But it wasn't what he might have seen which was causing her to blush, but the reminder of being virtually topless while Ash was carrying her in his arms.

In an effort to sound unflurried, she asked, 'Why do you call them spinnakers?'

He stood up and went back to the other sun bed.

'A spinnaker is a special racing jib set on the opposite side to the mainsail when a boat is running.

Most spinnakers are coloured and patterned, and when the wind fills them they're much the same shape as a well-filled bra.'

'I see.'

'The time to see spinnakers out in force is in April, in Sailing Week.

Maybe by then I'll have taught you enough about sailing for you to help crew one of the
Sunbirds.
But, if not, Miranda Hathaway always takes a brunch party up to Shirley Heights above English Harbour. It's a great place to see the start of the first yacht race from Falmouth to Dickenson Bay.'

'Is that one of the races which you've won?'

'It's a race which includes seven classes, each one starting at ten-minute intervals over a period of an hour. So, there's more than one winner. The top trophy, the Lord Nelson Cup, goes to the boat with the best overall results at the end of the week.
Sunbird Two
has won it a couple of times, and some of the other trophies as well. But who told you that? Bettina?'

'No, John's baby-sitter . . . Mrs Jones.'

Recalling what else she had said Christie must unconsciously have frowned, because the next thing Ash said was, 'You look displeased, Christiana. Not put out by my likening your bra to a pair of spinnakers, are you?'

Her expression lightened. She smiled. 'I'm not quite as strait-laced as that!'

'You haven't got a strait-laced mouth.' His dark eves were focussed on her lips. 'Rather voluptuous, m fact.'

Her frown returned. 'Please, Ash . . . don't.'

'Don't what?'

'Don't flirt with me. I thought we'd already agreed on that.'

Before he could answer, John came running back from the hole he had been digging. Soon afterwards it was time to go to the hotel for lunch.

Built on a tongue of land jutting out between two glittering bays which gave guests there a choice of beaches, the hotel was very attractive, its public rooms grouped round a spacious, tree-shaded courtyard. The decor was sky-blue and white, and Christie was interested to see that, in one of the lounges visible from their table, there were built-in cupboards with fronts of white-painted wickerwork. They reminded her of her own pretty Regency cupboard with its brass grilles backed by pleated silk. She made mental notes of various other pleasing decorative touches which might have applications at Heron's Sound.

The hotel's boutique, near the entrance, was an unusual shape—octagonal. She would have passed by, but Ash said, 'You haven't bought a Christmas present for Aunt Christie yet, have you, John? Let's see what we can find her in here.'

And before they had been inside for more than two minutes, he said,

'Ah, I see the very thing.'

'What?' asked John and Christie, simultaneously.

Her impression, from two or three price tickets, was that nothing here was likely to be within John's minuscule budget.

'These.' From a perspex container Ash picked up a pendant and ear-rings made from gilded sand dollars.

'Much too expensive,' said Christie firmly.

'Not expensive at all,' countered Ash. 'What do you say, John?'

'It's pretty,' said the little boy, as his uncle swung the pendant by its chain. 'Mummy has one like that. Where is Mummy?'

Their glances met over his head: Christie's grey eyes distressed, appealing to Ash to help her in a dilemma which, although she had been prepared for it, she still didn't know how to handle.

ASH went down on his haunches, still gently swinging the sand dollar.

'Mummy and Daddy have had to go away, John. But they know that however long they're gone, you'll be quite all right with Aunt Christie and me, so they don't have to worry about you. And even though the houses here don't have chimneypots, Father Christmas will come just as usual. He'll come in the middle of the night. When you wake up tomorrow morning, it will be Christmas Day and your presents will be on your bed.'

He straightened. 'We'll have these please. Could you gift-wrap them for us?'

Intent on the child's reaction to the answer given by his uncle, Christie was only vaguely aware of the words he addressed to the woman in charge of the shop.

She knew she could never have matched the level, matter-of-fact tone in which he had spoken to John. Her own voice would have been unsteady, so that, whatever she had said, an awareness of some terrible happening would have been communicated to him, disturbing his sense of security which somehow, almost miraculously, had so far remained intact.

While the jewellery was being boxed and wrapped, the boy's attention wandered to the things on display. Suddenly, in the way of very young children, he edged closer to his uncle and put his hand on his leg. Ash glanced down and took the small, still- plump hand in his own.

Behind them, Christie looked from the tiny figure to the tall one, and found herself deeply moved by the contrast between child and man; the vulnerability of the one, and the strength and confidence of the other. Was there any situation in life which Ash would not be able to cope with? She found it impossible to imagine one.

'We're going back a different way, up Fig Tree Hill which is the only part of Antigua with the sort of rain forest vegetation you find on the islands farther south,' he said, as they climbed in the car. 'But don't expect fig .trees. Fig is the island name for a banana. In the French-speaking islands, dessert bananas are known as
figues
as distinct from the plantain called
banane.'

'Have you been to all the other islands?' asked Christie.

'Not all. Most of them.'

Not far beyond the village of Old Road, they passed two small boys riding donkeys accompanied by a baby donkey. Ash braked to let John have a good look, then in a low gear drove slowly up the steep hill, pointing out to Christie the massive silk cotton and breadfruit trees, the thickets of bamboo fern, and the trees of the mango, lime and soursop.

'I hope you won't mind spending Christmas Eve on your own,' he said, on the last lap of the drive. 'I have an engagement I can't break, and in which I can't include you. But I think you'll find a friendly atmosphere in the bar at the Colony tonight if you want to keep John up a little later than usual.'

'What time do you want us to be ready tomorrow?'

'About eleven will be early enough.'

It wasn't until John was soundly asleep that Christie investigated the contents of the large carrier bag which Ash had locked in his boot. He had handed it over with the flicker of a wink and no comment, from which she had guessed it contained some parcels for John to open with his stocking in the morning.

Each parcel was Christmas-tagged, with the boy's name written on the tag in clear black capital letters. But the soft-feeling parcel at the bottom was not for John. It had her name in a neat script in the space on the label.

What had he chosen for her? she wondered. It was obviously something made of fabric. Perhaps it might be a beach sarong, or maybe one of those colourful cover-ups she had seen in the Sea Island Cotton Shop.

After several minutes of striving to contain her curiosity, she gave up the struggle and opened the present. What it was was not instantly apparent, except that it was black and white, and interleaved with m\rch tissue.