Antigua Kiss (32 page)

'Are you sure you aren't cold? Let me feel your hands,' Ash said, at one point.

'Warm as toast.' She slipped off a glove and gave him her hand to prove it.

He would have kept it in his and walked on with interlaced fingers.

But, although it cost her an effort, deliberately she disengaged herself and replaced the glove. She; could not afford to indulge in romantic moments in romantic places. To let him see that she adored him was the surest way to lose him.

Her experience of unnecessary jealousy had been bad enough.

Justified jealousy would be hell.

Another day they went to Hamleys, the famous Regent Street toy shop, to buy a homecoming present for John, and one to put by for his birthday several months hence. Some of their purchases Ash had decided to take back as excess baggage, but most would be air-freighted later, and some things shipped.

On alternate nights they dined out, and went to a show. Between times they ate at the flat, sharing the cooking or eating delicious cold delicacies from Harrods' and Selfridge's food halls—smoked salmon from Scotland, imported French pates seasoned with truffles, stuffed prunes from Agen, game pie with pickled walnuts, caviar, fine English ham carved from the bone, and all kinds of cheese from one of Ash's favourite shops, Paxton & Whitfield in Jermyn Street.

Then they would relax and watch television until, often an hour after supper, he would say something such as, 'Are you interested in the next programme, or shall we make our own entertainment?'

Always she would be reluctant, and always he would ignore that, knowing that if he persisted there would come a point at which she ceased to resist him.

Then, and only then, was she able to indulge her longing to touch him, to feel the texture of his hair and skin, the warmth and strength of him, to breathe in his clean male scent.

As soon as their transports were over, instead of staying in his arms as she longed to, Christie would find an excuse to move apart.

If, as often happened, during the night he moved on to her half of the bed, she would slip out and climb in on his side. When, the first time, he remarked on it, she explained, 'I can't sleep if I'm cramped and hot.

Don't you think, when we get back to Antigua, twin beds would be more comfortable?'

'No, I'm damned if I do,' he had answered curtly. 'As far as I know I don't snore, and neither of us has insomnia. A man and his wife should sleep together in both senses. Twin beds are for people whose marriage is lacking in some way.'

She had looked at him coolly and steadily before replying, 'As you wish.'

She knew that he had been put out. Like Celia and men, he would not be content until he had total surrender.

On the final night of their honeymoon, the Ffaringtons came to London for a farewell dinner
a quatre
at Mark's Club in Charles Street. The club took its name from Mark Birley who also ran London's most fashionable night-club, Annabel's, where Hugo and Emily had met each other. Annabel's was too noisy for them now.

They preferred to dine quietly at Mark's in a setting not dissimilar from their own home. Hugo was the member, but Ash was going to be the host.

'When is the baby due?' he asked Emily, during the evening.

'August.'

'Why don't you come and stay with us in late November or early December? We'll have done all the hard work by then, and be ready for a breather before our first season opens on December the fifteenth. We're going to be high season only. You can be our test-guests, and perhaps suggest some improvements. Although I hope that won't be possible. I want Heron's Sound to be something special, like this place'— with a gesture encompassing the museum-quality of most of the Club's paintings and decorative pieces.

'We should be delighted, wouldn't we, Emmy? Why high season only?' asked Hugo.

'For one reason because mid-December to mid-April is when the people who will appreciate Heron's Sound want to spend time in the sun. I'm hoping to build up a largely repeat-booking clientele of the kind of guests who will find each other congenial as well as the setting. There aren't many places with atmosphere, good food and good water sports. People don't want to pay top dollar, as the Americans put it, for a level of comfort and cuisine below their own standard at home.'

'That's one reason. What's the other?' asked Emily.

He smiled at her; a smile he never gave Christie. It was warm and friendly, even loving. Emily had a share of his affection for Hugo; a young and beautiful woman but set apart from all others because he felt no desire for her, only brotherly fondness.

'Because I want part of the year for other activities. Although one or two of my forebears did well in shipping, farther back they were simple seamen. I need the sea in the same way that Hugo needs his forefathers' acres. And I want my half-brother's son, and my own sons and daughters, to enjoy the sea as much as I do.'

'Oh, you're planning a large family, are you?' Emily included them both in this remark.

'I hope so.' Ash changed the subject by starting to tell them about the paintings he had bought for his house.

The discovery that, having acquired a house, a wife and an adopted child, he was now bent on founding a dynasty gave Christie something new to trouble her.

During her first marriage, she had never avoided becoming pregnant.

After Mike's sudden death, she had been in dread for a while that she might bear a posthumous child. That fear dispelled, she had never given any thought to her failure, in six months of marriage, to start a baby.

Now she wondered if there might be something wrong with her. The possibility made her realise how much she wanted his children. Tall, brown, long- limbed sons and dark-eyed daughters, all taking after their father, on whom she could lavish love freely, and be loved in return.

But if that could never be, he would be bound to regret marrying her.

To a couple who truly loved each other, the inability to have children was a disappointment, not a disaster. When a man and a woman were all in all to each other, there was no misfortune which could not be shared and overcome.

She parted from the Ffaringtons with sincere regret, having taken to Emily more than anyone she had met for years.

'Do write, if you have a spare minute. And keep your fingers crossed for me in August. It would be nice to have a daughter,' said Emily, before she gave Christie a farewell hug.

Later, seated at the dressing-table, preparing to take off her make-up while Ash had a shower, she remembered the night before her first flight to Antigua. What a different reflection she had seen looking back at her then!

A pale face. Worried grey eyes. A look of tension around the unpainted mouth. A figure five pounds too thin, clad in serviceable winceyette pyjamas.

Now, in a peach silk and lace slip which Ash had seen in one of the windows in Old Bond Street and bought for her, she still had her narrow waist, but the curves above and below it were fuller and more feminine. If a hint of some inner disquiet still lurked at the back of her eyes, it was less noticeable than the glow of her skin, the sheen of her hair.

There's nothing like sexual fulfilment for putting a bloom on a
woman,
Ash had said, on their visit to Peacocks. And, looking round the shops in London, she had been aware of men eyeing her in a way they had never done before.

But what was the use of that if only one man mattered to her, and her hold on him was tenuous?

January . . . February . . . early March.

The golden weeks of Antigua's winter passed swiftly for the basking holidaymakers, and equally swiftly for Christie, whose days were not idle but busy.

She still found it hard to believe that this was her permanent home now; the island said to have a different beach for each day of the year, and the house beginning to recapture its original elegance.

In her task of putting it to rights, she was aided and advised by an Antiguan woman called Lillian. Without Lillian's local knowledge of where to find what, and how to enlist a team of reliable maids, Christie knew she could never have managed.

The bedroom which she and Ash shared now had screens of fine mesh at the windows to keep out all insects, and an overhead fan to stir and refresh the night air. A mosquito net over the bed was no longer necessary.

The first room to be redecorated, their bedroom had an inexpensive Laura Ashley paper, very eighteenth-century in feeling, with a pattern of birds and butterflies among twining sprays of leaves and flowers.

The design was in terracotta on a cream ground, with floor-length curtains to match, made and lined by Christie herself.

The pineapple posts of the bed were now beeswaxed and gleaming again, as was all the rest of the furniture. She kept her clothes in the bedroom, and he in the adjoining dressing-room. The bathroom they shared was part of their private balcony. It had slatted walls, liked fixed jalousies, through which she could lie in the bath and gaze at the garden without being seen from outside.

By day she was far too preoccupied with the house and garden, with John, and with learning to cook the Caribbean way, to have any time for introspection.

Each day began with a swim in the cove at the end of the garden.

They would swim again before lunch, and in the cool time before sunset. Then she would shampoo her hair which, to please Ash, she was growing longer, and lie in the bath while he dealt with his mail in the bedroom. The water would have cooled when he took her place, but he wouldn't bother to top it up from the hot tap. He only wanted to rinse the salt from his skin.

By the time he was dry she would have an iced drink ready for him.

Later, when John was asleep, they would eat in the candlelit dining-room, which now had apricot walls and curtains to match.

Christie had already finished the first of a set of needlepoint seats for the ten dining chairs, and was busy on the second. On the first seat, already in use, the design was a stylised pineapple which she had found in a London embroidery shop.

The second she had designed herself, and was working with canvas and wools posted to her by Emily. For this she had chosen a cross-section of a watermelon with its dark green rind and vivid coral- red flesh. The scarlet-shelled, black-seeded ackee fruit was next on her list, to be followed by bananas, mangoes, pomegranates, a coconut, limes, a pumpkin and peppers. Having mastered tent stitch she was adding other stitches to her repertoire and considering the possibility of introducing texture as well as colour into some of the seat covers. It would take her the best part of a year to complete the whole set. In the meantime the drop-in seats had covers of the same linen as the curtains.

For the time being she was doing all the cooking in the newly-built modern kitchen, and this was no burden to her. Her training, and Emily's two aids, made catering a painless exercise after Lilian had introduced her to sources of freshly caught fish, and good fruit and vegetable produce.

Later in the year Ash was importing a French- trained West Indian chef from Guadaloupe. Christie knew all the French culinary terms, but was otherwise not at all fluent. Fortunately Ash was, so the chefs arrival should pose no problems and would relieve her of all but the general supervision of the household.

In some ways she would be sorry not to be in charge of the kitchen.

She was enjoying cooking for Ash. He never looked askance at anything she chose to serve him, unlike her first husband who, whenever she had attempted to infiltrate a foreign dish into the traditional English fare he preferred, had reacted with a dubious

'What's this?'

Ash had a much more sophisticated palate. There was no ingredient or dish she had to avoid because he refused to eat it; nor had he the irritating habit of automatically reaching for the pepper and salt before he had even tasted the food on his plate. The knowledge that everything she prepared would be appreciated was a spur she had missed in the past.

But she tried not to let him see the glow evoked by his praise for something particularly successful.

'I'm glad you enjoyed it,' she would say coolly.

He must not guess that whatever it was she had set before him had been literally a labour of love.

Having eaten their evening meal, they would have coffee in the drawing-room. She would work at her needlepoint, and he would read or listen to music.

Sometimes, when he was reading, she would allow herself the pleasure of watching him for a few moments; but always poised to resume her stitchery should he raise his eyes from the page and detect the softness in her eyes as they rested on his strong, dark face.

After more than two months of marriage, with her days filled with interesting activities and her nights spent in deep, dreamless sleep preceded, still very frequently, by her husband's passionate lovemaking, she should have been filled with contentment.

But she sensed that the reason his ardour remained-at a honeymoon level was because she was still elusive. Sometimes, at dinner, she would glance up from her plate to find his dark gaze bent upon her with a searching look which she pretended not to recognise. She knew he could not understand why she wasn't his adoring slave.

One night, when she showed her usual preliminary reluctance, he had asked her angrily, 'For God's sake, are you never going to let me forget that I overruled your ridiculous plan for our marriage?'

And then, before she could answer, he had begun fiercely to kiss her.

Sometimes she felt that her life was like that of Scheherazade, the bride of a Shah who had sworn, because of his first wife's infidelity, to take a new one each day and strangle her the next morning. Only by keeping him interested in her tales, the Arabian Nights, had she managed to avert her fate for a thousand and one nights, after which he had revoked his vow.

Christie was not optimistic that her power to keep Ash enthralled was equal to Scheherazade's. She remembered him once remarking, apropos his father's second marriage, that it was easy for a woman to enslave a man. But in the case of his own marriage, she was the one in danger of being enslaved.