Sweet Seduction (17 page)

Twenty-Three

Benjamin Reed came to Kira’s rescue. She was struggling into crumpled clothes, determined to get back to normal, when she heard an engine straining to climb over the rough, rocky ground.

The morning was beautiful but she could barely appreciate it. Sun sparkled through the rain-washed sky and there was not a cloud to be seen anywhere. The vista of rolling hills was endless, bright with pure colour, the vibrant emptiness echoing a chord in her heart.

Giles’s Land Rover had gone but she could see the ridged tracks where he had driven over muddy earth. The Moke was steaming in the hot sunshine, vapour rising from its sodden fabric roof.

She watched an ancient Rover coming up towards the ruined mill. The driver was expert at swinging the vehicle round to miss the worst of the rocks and potholes. Beside him in the passenger seat sat another man whom Kira instantly recognised as her grandfather. He saluted with a battered straw hat.

"How are yer, girl? Are you all right?" he bellowed out of the window.

She nodded, finding a shaky smile. She knew she must look a sight, her eyes gritty and swollen. She could not repair the damage.

"I’m fine," she called back. She went to meet the car, hobbling a little. The restless night on a hard floor had not helped, and several times cramp had pinned her lame leg with its crab-like clutch.

"We were worried about you," Benjamin said, noting the shadowed eyes. He recognised the signs of crying. Dolly had cried a lot before the baby was born. He had been at his wit’s end to comfort her but she had quietened down when Tamara arrived. He had never understood his young wife, never knew why she was so unhappy. He had never seen the light. He did not want to make the same mistakes with this young woman.

"I knew you’d be up here, somewhere near the Morgan Lewis Mill. What a night to be stranded, my girl. You look in need of a hot bath and a good breakfast inside you. Come along now. Get your things."

"But what about the
Moke?" Kira had been about to ask about Giles’s catamaran sail but stopped. He could fetch his own sail.

"Josh here will drive it back. You come to Fitt’s House with me and don’t go wandering off again like that without telling anyone where you are. Giles nearly had a fit yesterday. He was so angry."

It was small consolation. It did not lift the hurt she was feeling, the aching despair.

She pushed away thoughts of Giles’s demanding mouth and hard, muscled body against her softness. She missed him already. But it was no good torturing herself with such memories. With a flash of insight, she wondered if perhaps her peace of mind could be with this elderly man, who was looking at her now with concern and affection. Affection
. . . but why, when he hardly knew her?

"Thank you," she said. "A hot bath would be wonderful. Thank you for coming to look for me. I might have got stuck on the track if the rain has washed bits away."

"No, you’d have managed. Sheer desperation can work miracles," he chuckled. He helped her into the Rover, noticing the limp. "You’re limping again."

"I got cold last night."

"That leg of yours needs looking at."

"It’s all right, really."

"I didn’t have too much trouble finding you," he went on. "You left a trail of goodwill yesterday, everywhere. The growers are all talking about the young lady from England who was really interested in their problems. News travels fast on this island. Everyone talks and chatters on the phone. Giles would like to put a time limit on talking. Tea-break, talk-break. He likes making rules."

The mahogany and casuarinas trees were steaming and dripping, their heavy leaves glossy and freshly green. Kira spotted a lot of rain damage. Small wooden outhouses had been flooded, hen coops flattened. She could see the sense of building the houses on blocks of concrete or wood. The young green sugar cane was rain-lashed and lay flattened on the fields.

Benjamin slowed down as they drove past St Andrew’s Church and Turner’s Hall Wood, passing Mount Hillaby, the highest point on the island.

"Turner’s Hall Wood is the last of the primeval forest on the island," he said. "Some palm trees are 30 metres high. The stringing vines make canopies overhead, real pretty. There’s locust trees, red cedar, Spanish oak and cabbage palm
. . . such strange-looking trees. You should see the magnificent jack-in-the-box with its heart-shaped leaves and masses of fruit. I’ll take you there one day. Would you like that?"

"I’d like that."

Driving on Highway 2 was quicker, despite the flooded stretches. Then they were turning into the drive of Fitt’s House and her first glimpse of the pink castle gave Kira a fleeting feeling that she was coming home. Shadows moved and for an uncanny moment she thought someone else was there.

Benjamin took Kira straight upstairs and showed her a big, old-fashioned bathroom with an Edwardian bath standing on curved feet, with a marble surround for accessories. He piled towels into her arms and gruffly told her to get on with it, clearly embarrassed.

Now that she was alone, desolation swept over her again and she sat on the edge of the bath, the spurting water from both taps drowning her jerky sobs, blurred lenses of tears. She peeled off her clothes, dropping them anywhere and sank into the hot water, trying to control herself. This wasn’t doing her any good.

Bruce and Penny were lost in the past and it was Giles who filled her thoughts now. Someone had brought in her suitcase and put it outside the bathroom door. She put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. It was too much trouble to put on any make-up. She did not care what she looked like.

But when she saw her reflection in the steamy mirror, she realised she could not go downstairs looking such a wreck. She splashed cold water over the blotched skin and practised a wan smile.

Benjamin had breakfast ready for her in the large cool kitchen at the back of the house. The kitchen was left over from several decades back. There was a brown earthenware sink, big enough to bath a goat, a stove that ran off gas cylinders and battered cooking pots that must have been forty or fifty years old.

A huge antique refrigerator hummed and rattled in a corner of the room. Despite the mass of genuine antiques in the house, Benjamin had obviously never spent a penny on the kitchen. It was long overdue.

He was dishing up fried bacon and breadfruit and scrambled eggs on cracked and lined blue porcelain plates. He had an enamel pot of coffee bubbling on the stove. Josh had brought in fresh hot bread from the small bakery down the road.

"I hope you don’t mind eating in the kitchen," said Benjamin, fussing around, straightening everything. "I’ve got out of the habit of using the dining room. Too big and too much trouble for one."

Kira pulled out a wooden chair and sat down. "This is fine," she said. “Thank you.”

"Sharing breakfast with a pretty young woman, now that really is something," he chuckled. "I thought that kind of thing was all over."

I shall have to tell him soon, thought Kira quickly. He can’t ma
ke passes at his granddaughter.

"Don’t you have a housekeeper or someone to look after you?" she asked. "I thought I saw a woman here when I came for the meeting."

"That’s Jessy. She still works for me but only comes in a few days a week. She came to work for us when my wife, Dolly, was alive." It was a matter-of-fact statement. "But I don’t need her no more, Kira. I like to cook and cater for myself and I don’t want any woman regular about the place. I’ve been my own master for too long."

His face steeled itself but the expression was gone in a second. It was the first time he had mentioned Dolly to her. Kira did not probe. He forked the fried breadfruit on the plates and looked up, waiting for her reaction.

"What do you think of it? The fried breadfruit? There isn’t anything in the world to beat the taste. God, bless him, knew what he was doing when he made the breadfruit tree."

Kira had to admit that the taste and texture was unique and she liked it. But she had no appetite. She forced down the food slowly, accepting more of the good coffee.

It was only eight o’clock. Benjamin must have been out soon after 6am. She was touched by his concern, worried by the early start, especially when she was no more than a stranger.

She caught a glimpse of her stricken face in a mirror as she helped clear the table. Crying never helped a woman’s appearance. It wasn’t fair.

She was sitting out in the garden later, compiling her notes for Giles, using work to take her mind off him. Benjamin joined her and made a staggering suggestion.

"If you are continuing this cracked-brained research that Giles wants, then you ought to make watertight arrangements," he began. "We can’t send out search parties for you every day."

"I’m sorry I was such a nuisance. It won’t happen again. I don’t want another uncomfortable night in a ruin."

"I’ve a much better idea. Why don’t you stay here at Fitt’s House? I’ve plenty of room and I’ve been rattling around this old place for far too long. There are five empty bedrooms, back and front. You can take your pick. I’ll get Jessy to clean it up for you, make it nice and ladylike. You could come and go as you please, so long as you leave a note as to which parish you are working in. What do you say, Kira? Could you put up with the company of an old man?"

Kira felt a constriction in her throat. She was moved to compassion for her grandfather. He was lonely and he liked her. And he was offering her a chance to get to know him better and to live in this eccentrically enchanting old house. Why had the distance grown in the family? Was there still time to breach the terrible things that had happened in the past? Kira hoped so.

After so much rejection, she was ready to lap up care and concern, to heal the hurt. Waves of giddy rejection pounded through her brain. The beating of her heart was crippled. She was so scared and vulnerable. She was missing Giles with a sublime indifference to how long she had known him.

He was leaning forward, trying to hide the anxiety in his faded eyes. He desperately wanted her to stay and he didn’t know why. He had nothing to offer her. She was lovely in every way, sitting in the dappled shade of his breadfruit tree, her eyes haunted with pain. Dear God, he’d like to know who put that hurt there. But now he wanted to sit and look at her, to have a little of her time before it was too late for anything.

She smiled at Benjamin, one of those radiant smiles with the dimple in the corner and he read in it his answer. He knew she was not going to turn him down. He could hardly believe his luck.

"How kind, Mr Reed. Yes, I would love to stay with you if I won’t be too much trouble. I love your old house and it would be a real pleasure. You’ll hardly notice I’m here."

"That’s great, that’s wonderful." He got up with the vigour and energy of a thirty-year-old. He hovered as if he wanted to re-arrange the shade on her face so that it would not spoil the fragile contours. "And call me Ben. Mr Reed is so stuffy."

"I’ll always leave you my route for the day, I promise."

"And start when it’s cool. Stop for a rest at midday and return about four. Remember, it gets dark very quickly." He was agitated, concerned, did not know what to say or do to protect her.

"I will. I will," she nodded.

The Moke had been cleaned and refuelled. It stood in the drive, waiting for her. Kira chose her room; she took the other big room at the front of the house.

There was a view of the sea from the tall windows that reached from floor to ceiling, and she could climb out onto the balcony that ran round the first floor. The room was barely furnished with worn rugs on polished floorboards, an old brass bedstead and a simple, locally-made mahogany chest of drawers.

Twenty-Four

Jessy arrived with another cup of coffee, her dark face beaming. "This is gonna be good news," she said, putting down the coffee at Kira’s side. "It’s about time Mr Benjamin had some rightful female company."

Kira smiled. "I hope I won’t make more work for you. I left the bathroom in a mess."

"Don’t you worry, missy. No more mess than Miss Dolly used to make."

"You knew Dolly?" Kira concealed her surprise.

"Why, yes’m. I came with her to Fitt’s House when she were a bride; a tiny, flibbertigibbet of a thing. Always rushing about and bringing in flowers and animals and anything small and hurt, in and out of the sea. Then the little baby came and she carried that baby around all day, like she were a doll-toy."

Kira wondered how much this elderly woman knew. She would have to question her carefully. It was obvious that her loyalty to the family was unshakeable.

"Was Dolly a good mother?"

"Oh yes. She were a good mother to that baby. ‘Cept sometimes when she had to go off to the sea and run in the water. You can’t swim with a baby in your arms."

"Who looked after the baby then?"

"Anybody. She would put the baby in y’r lap and run off, like she had to be free. Never knew when she’d be coming back. Sometimes it were hours."

"How very strange." Kira wanted to ask how Dolly died, what had happened to her but she dare not.

"She weren’t properly grown up or brought up. No mother, you see. Just a child herself. Not ready to be a wife and mother. Poor Mr Benjamin, he done put up with a lot. She were a worry to him."

Jessy clamped her mouth shut as if she had said too much to a visitor. She waddled away, her ample hips swaying in a brightly patterned frock. Why, hadn’t she been the first person to see the baby, to hold the baby, all slimy and bloodied from the birth and covered in sand.

* * *

Dolly guessed the baby was due soon. Jessy had tried to explain about the months of pregnancy but Dolly cared little about dates and didn’t even listen. She only knew that the baby was growing fast and she was as fat as a balloon and her body was beginning to ache with the weight. She worried she was going to burst.

Nothing stopped her from swimming. She swam every day, a loose shift clinging to her voluptuous figure. Benjamin had tried to stop her but nothing he said had any effect. She went her own way.

She had not seen Reuben for months now, keeping out of his way, not wanting him to see her huge and ugly. Her legs had swollen in the heat. He was angry with her and she did not blame him. She still loved him even though she was married to another man.

She knew now why she had married Benjamin, though on the day itself she had been dazed and confused. She had done it to show Reuben that someone wanted her as a wife, someone cared, someone influential on the island. That she counted enough as a real person to become the Mrs Benjamin Reed.

It had been a heady moment, accepting Ben’s proposal, like she was a lady, not a wild beach girl.

Somehow in her naiveté, she had thought she would be able to get out of the marriage sometime and then marry Reuben when he was good and ready. She had not reckoned on a baby. A baby made a difference.

Nowadays she did not run down to the beach with her fat stomach protruding in front of her. It was a slower progress. She swam more lazily, floating on her back, letting the warm water support her. The sun dazzled her and she closed her eyes, content to be almost asleep in the water bed.

The waves washed her ashore and she lay in the shallows letting the wavelets lift and move her at will. She could stay there forever, not thinking, not worrying, not wondering about what was going to happen
. . .

She knew nothing about birthing. Women on the island became pregnant, then suddenly one morning appeared carrying a baby slung across them in a colourful shawl. It usually happened overnight and seemed quite easy.

She had lain in the water a long time and the sun was beginning to go down. The tips of her fingers were wrinkled. She was thirsty. Fitt’s House, although only minutes away, seemed like miles to walk. It was a long way and she wondered if she could make it.

She struggled up onto her knees and, without warning, was gripped by a violent pain in her groin. She gasped, mind dislocated from her body, staring at her belly in disbelief and protest. Minutes later, another pain rocked her. She floundered in the water, trying to get to her feet, sweat and fear mingling with the salt water. She didn’t like it.

"Help me, help me!" she cried out, but there was no-one to hear.

She crawled up the beach, gathering sand in the folds of her wet shift, stopping each time her body was convulsed. But now the pains were coming faster and she hardly had time to move between them. She reached the fringe of sweeping palms, using the swaying lower branches to haul herself to her feet.

The shore line swam before her eyes. She could not focus in the fast-fading remaining light. She was gritting her teeth now, crushed under the searing pain that was ripping her body apart. Surely she was dying? The dark hooded presence of death appeared at her elbow.

"Help me, dear God," she moaned, dry mouthed, parched, her tongue swollen.

She spiralled into a swirling red abyss where her mind lost all sense of time and place. Something made her cling to the palm tree, the only strong living thing in a blurred landscape.

There was no time between the pains now; they merged into a red rag of racking torment, crucifying her tender flesh in its grip. It was a long tunnel of pain. Her mind spun out of control. Suddenly it changed into an enormous urge to push, to expel
. . . she began to pant, little shallow breaths that cleared some of the fog in her head.

Her body was drenched in sweat and there was a warm wetness dripping between her legs.

She stared, horrified, thinking her stomach was falling out. She fought against the urge to push, hanging onto her insides, but she was already too weak to muster any strength. Gravity helped the baby. Dolly screamed, vaginal flesh and skin tearing apart in hot, jagged strips.

Tamara came into the world, upside down on the sand, howling, red-faced and bloodied.

* * *

Kira sat very still, half listening. Dolly and Tamara were suddenly very much alive, running round the garden like children together. She heard leaves rustling and imagined it was their arms and legs brushing the branches. She heard high, distant young voices but it was other children playing on the beach.

She felt so close to both women, Dolly and Tamara, women of her own genes. They came to her, beckoning, smiling. It was a strange feeling, not frightening.

It was time to get back to work. She changed into a sleeveless blue dress and decided to visit the smaller holdings nearer to hand. She did not feel up to a long drive.

They left at the same time. Benjamin was going into Bridgetown to a meeting at the bank and to do some shopping. By four o’clock Kira had interviewed so many farmers that their names were beginning to get mixed up in her mind. Her detailed notes were becoming wild scribbles.

Her head was buzzing with information, much of it about the two men paramount in her thoughts, Giles and Benjamin. They were both good employers. Benjamin, stubborn and old-fashioned, letting his plantation slip, while Giles was fighting to keep up to date and modernise every aspect of sugar production.

"Mr Giles, he really looks after his own," a grizzled old farmer told her, the lines on his face like a wrinkled walnut. "It were him who took my Maiz to hospital when she was taken bad and paid for her funeral. I’m never forgetting that. I don’t mind if I get short-weighted on my cane. I’m never forgetting his kindness."

"But Mr Giles doesn’t want you to be short-weighted," said Kira. "He’s going to put a stop to this and every other injustice if he can. Something is going wrong somewhere along the line."

"Yes, ma’am. You tell him. Mr Giles’ll put it right. He looks after his own."

He looks after his own
. . . she warmed herself in the back draught of the thought. Kira knew he would. She liked being a small cog in their set-up; it made her feel good. She wanted to help these people, solve their problems, be trusted by them.

Fitt’s House was bathed in a crimson sunset as she turned into the drive, its pink walls reflecting the setting rays as its builder had planned. It was a fairy-tale chateau; the stone animals under some spell, waiting to be brought to life. Perhaps if she kissed them, she would find the prince of her dreams.

The front door was on the latch. Ben did not lock up.

Kira went up the old staircase, her leg hardly hurting at all. There was time for a quick swim before it got dark. It was Dolly’s blood and her passion for the sea.

She threw open the door to her room and stopped in the doorway. Had she come to the wrong room? She checked that it was the room opposite to Ben’s on the landing.

It had been transformed. The bare, functional bedroom she had chosen that morning was now fit for a princess. The brass bedstead had a flounced and flower-sprigged cover, matching curtains billowed at the windows. Soft white fur rugs scattered the polished boards; an elegant French antique writing bureau had been moved upstairs for her work. Pieces of rare crystal and porcelain stood on the deep windowsills. An old Victorian button-back armchair in dusky pink velvet and matching footstool was angled by the long window. A small hand-carved rose walnut coffee table was at the side of the chair. On it was a posy of flowers, a dish of fruit and a silver knife.

Ben had been shopping.

No-one had ever treated her like this before. Kira was so moved that she could not think. She went round the room, touching, feeling the different textures, the newness. There was even a new divan mattress on the old bed. Ben had thought of everything.

"Do you like it? Are the things all right?" Ben had been watching her reaction. His eyes were fixed on her face.

"It’s wonderful," said Kira, impulsively putting her hand on his arm. "Everything’s perfect. How can I ever thank you?"

"I want you to be comfortable while you’re staying at Fitt’s House. I’d forgotten how much fun shopping can be."

"I don’t understand why you are so kind to me," said Kira. "I’m a stranger you only met yesterday. You hardly know me."

"We met under the breadfruit tree, remember? I know when I like someone. As you get older you realise there isn’t time to wait around seeing if you’re right. If you get a gut feeling, then you have to act on it right away."

"Am I a gut feeling?"

"An indelicate way of putting it, but yes."

"I’m going to love this room," said Kira.

"Now I ain’t going to get in your way, missy. I guess you’re longing for a swim. My wife, Dolly, used to love swimming. Giles’s coming over later, to talk about the month’s figures. You’re welcome to join us later."

Kira did not know if she could face Giles yet, but it would have to be sometime. It might as well be this evening.

"Thank you. Yes, I’ll join you after my swim."

Kira swam out to a motorboat anchored off a small jetty which local residents used. It was a glass-bottomed boat for taking tourists to look at the coral reefs.

She lay on her back, floating in the bobbing waves, letting the last of the sun’s rays dapple her skin, trying not to think of Giles, or of seeing him again. The sea was so warm and buoyant, it required no effort to stay afloat, making only the occasional paddle with her hands.

She closed her eyes, thinking how far away London was. Bruce and Penny hardly seemed to exist. Barbados was so vibrant and colourful, the rest of the world paraded as a drab place. This was an emerald paradise.

The sun slid behind the horizon, shooting rays, and the sea darkened. Time to return to Fitt’s House.

Kira had drifted further than she thought but she was a good swimmer and struck out for shore. There was a sandbank beneath her feet and unexpectedly she felt it moving quite fast and her feet were flung up. She floundered for a moment that seemed an eternity, then righted herself and began to swim steadily.

But she was making no headway. The shore was suddenly further away. There seemed quite a strong current at this point which she had not encountered in the sheltered bay opposite the Sandy Lane Hotel. This was a long straight stretch of beach.

She was not making any headway; in fact she was being swept further out and along the coast. She did not like being helpless. She felt the first small twinge of fear.