Sweet Seduction (22 page)

Thirty

A man came to the doorway, holding onto the shattered door, a look of astonishment on his lined face, grizzled hair awry, shoulders weary and hunched.

"Grandfather," Kira cried out. She was across the last remaining space in moments. She threw her arms round the old man, hugging him with warmth and affection. He almost slumped against her, letting her strong arms hold him.

"Grandfather, Grandfather," she choked, her hair blowing over her face. "You’re all right?
I thought your sugary pink castle would have fallen down with all this dreadful wind and rain. But you’re here and Fitt’s House is still here. I was so worried."

She could not say any more. Her pulse was beating so fast. She knew Giles was right behind her, probably surprised by her outburst. She did not know whether to laugh or cry.

"There, there, child," said Benjamin roughly, awkwardly, getting wet. "Of course, I’m all right. So you know, do you? You know that I’m your grandfather? The wicked old man of your childhood, who made your life so difficult, who could have helped you but didn’t because he was plain cussed."

"And you know who I am? How long have you known? I’m Tamara’s daughter."

"I’ve always known," he said. "I’ve known for a long time. But come inside quickly, my dear. The porch, or what’s left of it, is no place for a family reunion. You too, Giles. We can’t stand out here. We’ll be blown away. It’s time we sorted this out."

He led them to the back of the house, the safest part. The kitchen was solidly built and it was obvious that Benjamin had been sheltering there. A bottle of rum and a copy of
The Advocate
were on the floor beside his rocking chair. The newspaper’s pages flew across the room in a gust from the open front door. Giles went back and closed it, pushing a heavy piece of furniture against the splintered wood.

The intense tropical storm was ravaging a path of destruction across the densely populated area of the southern coast, driving inland to violate Sugar Hill plantation, then taking an erratic turn to head out to sea again.

They learned later that the path was ten miles wide. The hundred miles an hour wind lost some of its speed overland as it could no longer gather energy from the warm sea’s abundant circulation.

Giles put his arm round Kira’s shoulder, hips touching her lightly. Kira melted at the touch, merging against him.

"Perhaps I should leave you two alone," Giles said, touched by the obvious affection between them. "You have a lot of catching up to do."

"You can’t go out, Giles. It’s too dangerous," said Kira quickly.

"Look who’s talking?" Giles teased. "Who insisted on rushing out in the middle of the hurricane to find her grandfather?"

"Did she now? I don’t deserve it," said Benjamin. He searched among the shattered contents of a china cupboard for two unbroken glasses. "They don’t match and they are the wrong size but they’ll hold a drop of rum to warm you up."

"We don’t match and we’re the wrong size," said Kira, taking the glasses from his shaking hands. "But we’re going to get along very well together. You wait and see, Benjamin. Everything is going to be fine from now. So tell me, how did you know it was me?"

"I got a letter from a hospital in London, from a Dr Armstrong, who seemed very concerned that a young woman, Kira Reed, was coming out to visit Barbados after a road accident, and that she had a grandfather on the island. But he said that you had some problems and were denying my existence."

"But why did he do this? He didn’t know you," said Kira, astounded. "How did the letter reach you?"

"It was simply addressed to Mr Reed, Barbados. So of course, it came to me first and I knew it was you. And I didn’t blame you for not wanting to know me. When I saw you, over the wall, I knew you were my granddaughter. My dear, there’s so much of Dolly and Tamara in you, in the shape of your face, your eyes, your dimpled smile. Tamara was the sweetest little girl and I loved her dearly."

"But you didn’t help her when she needed you," said Kira, rounding on him, eyes darkened. "She was desperate. That wasn’t fair."

"I know. I know," said Benjamin. "It has been on my conscience for years. I was furious that she left me, for a male Russian dancer of all people. I felt humiliated, unwanted, abandoned, all over again. I’m sorry, Kira. I should have sent money. I didn’t realise things were so bad. I turned my back on both of you. I can never forgive myself."

"But I forgive you, Grandfather," said Kira, putting her arms around him. "We can’t go on living like this. It doesn’t make any sense. We’ve a lot of making up to do. I’ll never leave you."

"Not even for this man of substance? My rival in the sugar stakes?" Benjamin looked across to Giles who was leaning on a wall, his hands deep in his pockets.

"No, not even for him. Giles and I are good friends," said Kira, somehow trying to make the words sound convincing.

"Very good friends," said Giles dryly.

"He smashed up his car, getting me here," said Kira. "It went into a wall."

"The Mercedes is a right-off," Giles broke in. "Ripped tyres, smashed windscreen, crushed bonnet."

"Thank you for that," said the old man with dignity. "But you can afford a new car."

"Several," said Giles.

Kira cleared a corner of the kitchen table and sat on it like a teenager. She was suddenly shy of the man who was her grandfather. He spread his hands in a gesture of conciliation. The windows were rattling, the shutters banging wildly.

"Where do we begin, my dear?" said Benjamin. "I suppose you want to shoot me down for the way I treated your mother? I guess I deserve it."

Kira took a deep breath. She had rehearsed this moment for years, being able to tell her grandfather exactly what she thought of him, to detail his callous treatment of her mother, to bring home to him the bitter feelings of her childhood.

Benjamin sat waiting for the onslaught, his faded eyes patient and resigned. "Go on, my dear. I can take it. Right on the chin. Here."

"I can’t," she whispered. "It’s all disappeared, Benjamin. I don’t feel that way any more. The hatred has completely gone and I don’t know why."

Benjamin took a slow sip of his rum and then reached to take hold of her hand. "You belong to a very old Barbadian family, Kira. The Reeds were among the early English settlers growing tobacco and cotton and then they discovered that sugar was more profitable. The Reed cane fields stretched for miles. We built sugar mills for grinding the cane. We built Fitt’s Village for our workers. The genes are strong, my dear."

He sighed deeply. Kira waited for him to go on. She was very aware of Giles, watching and waiting.

"When Dolly died, I had no time or inclination to re-marry. Tamara was my joy. Everything revolved around her. I thought she would inherit everything, plantation, house, my share of the plant. Then she met this ballet dancer, a Russian, who knew nothing of sugar."
Benjamin’s voice thickened. "She gave up everything for this man, never a thought for me. They travelled like gypsies over Europe. Tamara wrote when you were born, Kira. Then the letters stopped for years. I did not even know that Aaronovitch had died."

"She was too distraught. She fell apart."

"I understand now."

"They were so happy," said Kira. "They were only together a short time but it was perfect. My mother often told me about those years of happiness and her face would light up and glow."

"Like Dolly. Her face would glow." He ran his hands through his grizzled hair, making it stand on end. "Perhaps she was happy with me, some of the time. My dear, I’m tired. I can’t talk any more but I’m glad you are here. Your home is always here. Some of Tamara’s later letters I didn’t even open. I’m sorry. I have been a stupid fool."

Kira stood, hugging him, hugging away the years of misunderstanding. She could not hate him. He had suffered too much.

"Will you stay with me?" he asked, hesitating. "Live here at Fitt’s House, like a proper family?"

"I will. I’ll never leave you."

"Thank you, my dear." Benjamin shook his head. "I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve your kindness."

He found a stretched, out-of-shape sweatshirt from somewhere that nearly fitted Giles, but at least it was dry. Giles pulled on a waterproof sailing jacket that was hanging behind a door.

"You’re not going out again?" said Kira, aghast.

"I’ve some pensioners living down the road. They used to work for me. I’m going out to check on them," he said. "The storm is playing out. It’s moving eastwards. We’ve had the worst."

"But what about us?" Kira said, catching him up at the doorway.

He took hold of both her arms and held her at a distance. He was searching her face as if looking for a likeness to Reuben.

"I’ve told you, Kira. There is no ‘us’, nor can there ever be. We have to learn to live without each other."

"But what’s going to happen?" she wept.

"You will get over this, and in a year or two you’ll meet someone new and fall in love all over again. And this will seem like some strange Caribbean dream, a little bit of magic. It won’t be so simple for me. I shan’t find anyone else and I won’t be looking. You are all I have ever wanted and there isn’t another woman in the world like you."

"Don’t say that! I don’t want to find someone new. I only want you," Kira cried.

"Then you will end up being alone; an old maid."

As Giles spoke, Kira had the strangest feeling. She heard the words
. . . "old maid, old maid . . ." echoing in the wind, spoken by a woman, a woman of long ago.

"Can’t we be friends, really good friends?" she said brokenly.

"I don’t know if I could stand it. Seeing you, but not having you."

He bent and kissed her fiercely, his lips hard and demanding. The wind howled in her ears and it was if all the devils in Barbadian folklore had been let loose to cause mischief.

"Goodbye, my darling. Never forget that I love you."

Then he was gone, and Kira stood stunned and desolate as the storm swallowed him. Her life was being torn apart again, the tender roots wrenched from the soil and thrown into the air.

They could rebuild the chattel houses but could she rebuild her life?

Thirty-One

The island was devastated after Hurricane Erica. Copens was flooded by the high seas. The Reed & Earl sugar plant lost its roof and thousands of dollars of stored cane were damaged. Sugar Hill survived the onslaught, apart from a few broken windows, but the grounds were flattened, trees uprooted and tossed about like sticks. André La Plante’s house was too dilapidated to withstand the storm and many of his paintings were ruined.

Kira made herself useful around Fitt’s House, tidying up, unable to work until the roads were cleared. She managed to check that Jessy and Dolores were all right. Jessy said that Moonshine was back on the beaches, though many of the tourists had gone home on the first planes available.

It gave Kira time to think. If Giles was right and Tamara was indeed Reuben’s daughter, then that could be the strongest reason why Benjamin had refused to help. He had been prepared to bring Tamara up as a child, accepted her as his daughter, but the island gossip must have been humiliating. At some point he would have decided enough was enough.

She could not speak to Benjamin about it, afraid of broaching the subject, of causing more hurt. He wanted her as a granddaughter and that was what she wanted too. But why? Perhaps it was simply because she reminded him of Dolly and he wanted a living reminder.

"We shall have to live on breadfruit," said Benjamin, collecting the fallen fruit.

"Wonderful as it is, breadfruit doesn’t make a drink. I’d like some tea and coffee and fresh milk."

"We got plenty of limes."

Kira walked into Bridgetown to shop for food. It was not that they were short of food, but a lot of the supplies in the kitchen had been spoilt, burst open or broken. Some of the shops might be open.

She was appalled by the damage she saw on the way, particularly the rows of wooden chattel houses. Carpenters were already at work, repairing doors, windows, replacing roofs.

A leggy girl bumped into her round a corner, not looking where she was going. She was swinging an empty bag and was clearly at a loose end. It was Lace, in shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt.

"Don’t bother going anywhere," she said. "Half the shops in Bridgetown are closed for repairs. My car was wrecked in the storm, total right-off, and there are no parties to speak of. It’s hopeless."

They were in Trafalgar Square, near the bronze statue of Nelson. It had survived the storm. Lace’s mouth was turned down, her clothes un-pressed as the electricity was still cut off to Sugar Hill. It looked as if she hadn’t bothered to wash or comb her hair either.

"Giles has found someone else," she told Kira, a glimmer of amusement coming into her eyes. "Remember Patsie? They’ve been going out quite a lot recently. She’s one of the international set, so clever and smart, bags of money."

"How nice," said Kira. "You know, Lace, I always enjoy meeting you. You are such good company. But I wonder why you set out to offend me every time. Is it a form of infantile insecurity, do you think? Some personality flaw?"

Lace looked taken aback. "I don’t know what you mean. I like to keep up-to-date with the news, who’s going out with who. And what my brother does is always of supreme interest. There’s nothing else to do on this damned island."

Kira felt sorry for the girl. "It seems as if you really need something to do, some occupation that you would enjoy. Isn’t there anything you like doing? Couldn’t Giles give you a job? If everything he does is of such supreme interest . . ."

"Heavens, no. Work with my brother? Perish the thought. He does nothing but tell me off."

"With reason. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that your flighty ways and irresponsible chatter might irritate him? He works very hard and you take it all for granted, do nothing but spend his money. Do you ever go and visit your mother?"

"I hate illness."

"That says a lot about you."

Lace flashed her eyes with contempt. "Oh dear, you are upset, aren’t you? Has big brother really got under your skin? Better forget him, Kira. He’s lost interest in you. Your time, brief as it was, is over."

Kira nearly called her Auntie, but swallowed the words. The taunt would have been wasted. She would not know.

"You need a job. You’re frittering your life away. You’ll be screwed up, your mind atrophied and old before your time, Lace. Find something to do. You like clothes, don’t you?
Open a boutique. Sell dresses, design dresses, anything. There are lots of good dressmakers around who would make up your designs."

"I don’t need your advice," said Lace, flouncing off. "I have no intention of wasting my time working."

"Why don’t you open a second-hand dress agency, then you could get rid of all your old clothes?" Kira suggested lightly. Lace pretended not to hear. "After all, some of them must be out of date. You could call it Lace Work. That’s a great name.”

Kira watched her go, tottering on unsuitably strapped shoes despite the potholes in the pavement, and wondered who could help her. Perhaps she would fall in love and make a happy marriage. But Lace did not seem the homemaking type. She would flit from affair to affair.

The roads were not cleared for public transport so it meant walking back as well, or cadging a lift from Land Rovers that were managing to make a few trips. Kira had been lucky with a part-way lift coming into town. Now a crowded Land Rover was going as far as André La Plante’s house.

"Done made a real mess of that old place," said the driver, welcoming her aboard the crowded vehicle. She sat tightly on a bench seat, next to buxom housewives also out looking for food.

Kira was sad to see the damage that the hurricane had inflicted on the painter’s old house. It looked shrouded in sorrow, windows shattered, veranda torn apart, doors off their hinges, several walls down. It would need a lot of repairing.

No-one seemed to notice her as she wandered around. The carefully preserved artefacts of the artist’s life were strewn over the ground, caught in trees, hanging from branches. She started to retrieve them, putting them in baskets. Kira found a pair of brocade evening shoes in the debris and wondered who they had belonged to. She had a feeling th
at Dolly had rarely worn shoes.

"Who do these shoes belong to?" Kira asked one of the women custodians, who did not seem to know where to start with clearing up.

"I dunno, miss. I ain’t ever seen them before. Perhaps his daughter wore them but they look mighty old."

"Would you like me to help you? I know a little about the family," said Kira. Dolly was certainly her grandmother.

"Why, sure, mizz. That would be really nice of you. I don’t know what to do. I shall have to be talking to the authorities of the museum. Such a terrible wind storm. You’re Mizz Reed, ain’t you, staying along at Fitt’s House?"

"Dolly was my grandmother," said Kira.

"You don’t say? Well, I never. Then you’re right welcome here. Your grandmother, you say? I can make some coffee for us. I’ve brought a little oil stove with me."

Kira walked back after helping with some of the clearing up at André La Plante’s house. She promised to return another day, to sort out the baskets of items they’d found. His paintings were lined around to dry out, but some were ruined beyond renovation. She could not find the one of Dolly running across the sand, the first painting she had seen all those weeks ago.

Kira thought of Lace’s latest gossip. Giles had every right to go out with whom he pleased. And if he had known Patsie since schooldays, what could be more natural?

She tried not to think of him, kept herself busy. Gradually the island came back to normal. Electricity and telephones were reconnected. Food began to appear in the shops. The airport reopened.

Giles phoned once, a short sharp conversation to see if she was all right.

"We’re fine," she said, her voice strangled. She waited for some personal word that did not come. “Thank you.”

"That’s all right then," he said, ringing off.

Jessy found Kira working in the garden, sweeping up branches into a huge pile with a broom. Jessy had brought out coffee and home-made biscuits, aware that Kira had not stopped for breakfast.

"Like your grandmother, you are," said Jessy, putting the tray down on a cleared step. "Never had no time to eat. She thought food wasn’t important. Thought she could exist on air."

"I don’t want Benjamin slipping on this lot," said Kira, clearing the rest of the steps. "He’s so anxious to find out the extent of the damage to the plant. Some of the phones are back."

"I guess it’s taking time to repair the lines, counting their losses. And the cane’s flattened. It’s all right for the big planters who are insured, but the small farmer can’t afford no insurance."

"Giles will help, if he can," said Kira. "He won’t let the small farmers go under."

"Sure, Mr Giles will help but he don’t have a bottomless money-purse. I hear his house, Copens, took it pretty bad, real smashed-up. You’re really taken up with that Mr Giles, ain’t you? I see’d it on your face."

"Yes, I’m real taken up with Mr Giles," said Kira, making light of it. "But Lace says he’s going out with Patsie now."

"Don’t you take no notice of that silly girl. She done make up half of what she says. Ain’t you sure about Mr Giles then? He’s the finest man on the island. No-one been able to snap him up till you come along. The girls all tried, of course, but he had so much on his hands, especially his mother getting ill after Reuben died. Dolores looked after her for years, but it got too much for her in the end."

"How did Reuben die?"

"Oh, it were terrible, mizz. The island went into shock. Such a dreadful end for a good man. No-one knows how it happened. Most folk think it was an accident, that he was dead tired and fell, but there’s others, less kindly, who think he was pushed."

"How appalling. What do you think really happened? Did someone hate Reuben so much that they would want to kill him?"
Kira thought she knew the answer. Benjamin hated Rueben but she could not believe that her grandfather would take such an awful revenge.

"Well maybe, but I knows it wasn’t Mr Benjamin because he was here, nursing a swollen sprained ankle and in a mighty bad temper with it,” said Jessy. “He was too much a gentleman, even if he was raw jealous of Mr Reuben and Dolly. He’d fallen over some left-out tool in the yard and there was no way he could have climbed the steps up to the furnaces. He was hobbling about, bad tempered, on a stick for days."

"Does Mr Giles know this?" Kira asked quietly.

"I don’t rightly know. He was a small boy when it happened and Lace only a toddler. You know, you and Mr Giles would make an ideal couple, right for each other, both so clever and hard working, looking out for sugar and the island."

"Mr Giles doesn’t think so," said Kira, turning away so that Jessy could not see her face. She did not want to talk about Giles any more. It was over and nothing could be done about it. As Lace said, she had had her time.

Kira tried to light a bonfire but the wood was still too wet to burn. Steam was rising off the sodden land as an apologetic sun rose in the sky. The breadfruit tree was badly damaged, despite Benjamin’s pruning, but its roots were secure and it would survive. Benjamin said he was going to put a plaque on the tree, commemorating their meeting, and ordering that the tree should never be cut down. She smiled at the thought.

"Is it all that old rumour and gossip that’s stopping you and Mr Giles from getting together?" said Jessy, collecting the empty mug and tray. She went indoors to fetch more matches. "That wood won’t burn yet, you know."

"I know," said Kira, suddenly tired of the effort.

"The island won’t let that old gossip go, yet it’s so back in time. Then especially when Reuben done get himself killed. As if he couldn’t stand living any longer without his Dolly."

Kira felt a headache coming on. She was more tired than she knew, and tired of loving people who didn’t love her back. The trauma of the hurricane had taken its toll, then all the physical work since. She wanted Jessy to go on talking, yet she also wanted her to go away. "You mean he may have killed himself? You know about Reuben and Dolly then?"

"Lordie yes, mizz. Everybody knew. It was no secret. Those two thought nobody knew but the whole island knew of them meeting on the beach. Secret? It weren’t no secret, Lordie no!" Jessy went into a peal of laughter that denied the tragedy of the romance.

Kira was afraid of what Jessy might be going to say. Her heart suddenly lost its rhythm.

"They were mad for each other and it showed. Especially Miss Dolly. She were reckless girlie in love. Nothing could stop her, yet she done go marry Mr Benjamin all the same, daft thing."

"They say that before her wedding, she and Reuben," Kira began cautiously, not sure how much Jessy would divulge. "That she and Reuben spent the night together."

“Yes, they sure done that.”