Sweet Seduction (6 page)

She searched the sweeping palms, shading her eyes, but there was no-one there. Perhaps she was early. She never wore a watch, did not possess one.

"It’s either getting up time or going to bed time. I’m either hungry or not hungry. I don’t need a clock-watch."

Dolly used the Bajan double-nouns all the time. It was her way. She had been born on the island.

Dolly’s eyes sparkled. She had an enormous zest for life, and being poor did not diminish her joy. She was never more than seven miles from the sea and she lived in a climate of perpetual summer. It was a paradise.

She did not work. She was too busy to work. André made enough money from his paintings to feed them and buy new paints and brushes. People often gave him old canvases to paint over. She was wearing one of her mother’s cut-down frocks, a floral cotton.

At seventeen, Dolly was not likely to grow any more. She was a slim sprite of a girl, figure unformed, hair wild, green eyes always full of merriment and laughter.

She saw a tall figure striding through the coconut palms and ran towards him, pushing her hair from her eyes. She flung herself into his arms, her head pressed close to his chest, breathing in the scent of his skin.

"I thought you weren’t coming," she gasped. "I’ve been here ages."

"Liar. I saw you climbing over the rocks."

"Why weren’t you here?"

"Some of us have to work. We don’t all laze about like visitors."

"Your father is a monster. I hate him. He makes you work too hard."

Reuben Earl shook her shoulders and laughed. He had strong facial bones that were nearly handsome, a thick thatch of dark hair, eyes as blue as the Caribbean ocean.

"Don’t be daft, Dolly. We have a big plantation and refinery to run. It doesn’t run itself and the monkeys would soon take over. You’ll be glad too, one day, when I’m a big success, factory owner, a planter. Now stop talking, you minx, and let me kiss you."

They sank onto the sand, arms entwined, half in the shade of a sweeping palm, shielded by the big leaves from any curious eyes that might pass by. Reuben cradled her in his arms and took her sweet lips, offered so generously and warmly.

His hands moved to her small breasts, pert against the thin material of the cotton frock, and he felt his groin contract with desire. He could not resist her softness and the scent of her flesh. He kissed her face, her neck, moving down to the silken skin of her exposed shoulder, pressing his lips close to the almost revealed, shadowed valley. He groaned. He would have to stop. This was killing him as usual. Reuben rolled over and stared up at the flawless sky between the branches. He had been in love with Dolly since they
were at school together.

For years they had walked and talked, teased each other, swum in the sea, played cricket, gone to a few parties. Everything had been light and easy until the day he kissed her. Now he could barely leave her alone. His love had changed into a monster invading his veins, urging him to take her, possess her, make this wilful creature his own. His dreams were full of her soft body, of crushing her beneath his weight, of penetrating her secret places.

"Why have you stopped?" said Dolly, leaning up on one elbow, tickling his face with a stem of dry grass. "Please kiss-kiss me some more."

"I can’t. You know what it does to me. Drives me crazy. We shouldn’t keep meeting like this, secretly."

Her hand went down to the hardened shape between his legs, curious as to what it meant. Reuben pushed her away, rough and impatient, and sat up.

"Don’t touch me," he choked angrily. "Don’t you know anything?"

"No, I don’t know. I haven’t got a mother, you know that. Please, Reuben, I can’t stand it when you’re angry with me. What have I done?"

Tears welled in her eyes and Reuben couldn’t stand that either. He kissed away the tears and held her more gently, stroking her hair and her face. The tempest in his loins subsided and he pulled the shoulder of her frock back into place.

"Now you are all neat and tidy again," he said, as if he was dressing a child for Sunday church. Sometimes Dolly was like a child to him. An enchanting child in a woman’s body. He would not find the strength to resist her forever.

*
* *

Kira stared at the painting of the girl flying across the sand, bridging time with each caught breath. Was this her grandmother? There was something familiar about the girl’s face, almost as if Kira was looking at herself. Tamara had told her that her grandmother’s name was Dolly. Kira didn’t remember exactly. It could have been in a dream.

She left the painter’s house and continued walking. Some of the chattel houses had been abandoned to the elements and rotted away. There were quite a few fire-gutted ruins. Wooden homes were a fire hazard.

The concrete houses were newer, mostly built in the plantation style with a central flight of steps up to the front door, raised to escape the rain.

Kira lost herself in trying to remember exactly what her mother, Tamara, had said. But it had been a difficult time and there was nothing she could do to clear the fog. And now she desperately wanted to know. It was like a pain in her side. She wanted to know so much.

Seven

Kira delighted in the wild flowers blooming everywhere; they lightened the moment of gloom. Every nook and cranny was a cascade of blossom, hibiscus, wild orchids, bougainvillea, the delicate frangipani, the flamboyant poinsettia growing wild. It was a riot of colour, such a contrast to the grey London she had left behind. She noticed many trees on the leeward-side of the beach, on which warning signs had been nailed:

"These green apples are poisonous."

The trees were heavily laden with small crab-like frui
t.

"They’re manchineel trees," said a small boy, kicking stones. "Very bad to eat, miss. Make stomach bad."

"Thank you," she said. "I won’t eat them."

Kira asked several times for directions to Fitt’s House. The answers were pleasantly vague but she gathered that she was going in the right direction. Walking the leafy lanes, she could think herself back in England, except that no English hedgerows were laced with such exotic blooms.

Benjamin Reed must be influential, if not rich, if he was the President of the Sugar Growers’ Association. He would have bought his property and land before the prices soared with the tourist boom. Kira imagined a grand colonial house with an imposing entrance and flight of steps; her thoughts momentarily bitter with her own memories of damp bedsitters.

She wandered along a lane looking for house names, but there were none. Two square gate posts flanked a pair of rusty ironwork gates and beyond was a garden that was a disordered tangle of trees and shrubs and flowers. A winding central drive led to a house that was built of pink coral, the coral bleached and faded by years of sunshine and rain.

She caught sight of a wide flight of steps that led up to a blue-green veined stone archway, decorated with diamonds of turquoise stones. A jungle of plants and flowers in terracotta pots fought for places on the steps. Two life-size stone wolves – or were they dogs? – guarded the entrance, their expressions benign and not in the least fearsome.

Kira began to laugh. It was like something out of a Disney set. A stone balcony went round three sides of the first floor of the house, supported by columns; ornamented with scrolls and Grecian urns, the two front corners dominated by large stone eagles, or were they doves?
They had hooked beaks and pantaloon legs, but short bodies, plump and domesticated, both eyeless birds staring forever out to sea.

Kira’s gaze followed the stone balcony up to a replica balcony, a storey higher, crenulated like a castle, edging a flat roof, the tall windows shuttered against the heat. A pink castle
. . . the words came back into her memory. What had her mother said? Grandfather lived in a sugar plum fairy castle. This was a castle set in a jungle of flowers and creepers that threatened to grow into an impenetrable thicket and hide the house forever from the world. She wondered if there was a sleeping princess inside, hidden from the world. It was more likely to be an ogre.

The lane was overhung with branches and several times Kira had to duck her head. A green breadfruit swung towards her forehead, looking as hard as a cricket ball. She dodged the fruit but her lame leg let her down and she slipped, staggering sideways.

"I’m sorry, young lady. If you’d come along five minutes later, that branch would have been pruned."

The gardener shook a pair of pruning secateurs at her as if to prove his good intentions. He was standing on a ladder leaning up against the tree. A pair of pale blue eyes peered at her from a brown face, topped with cropped grey hair. He wore a tattered shirt that seemed to say how little his employer paid him.

"Are you all right? Gonna sue? That’s what people do these days," he growled.

"It was a bit unexpected and I slipped," said Kira. "Is this breadfruit? Can you eat it?"

"Ain’t you ever tasted it? Baked, boiled, fried. Taste good done anyway. The trees were brought over to Barbados a long time ago to feed the slaves. I’ll see if I can find you a ripe one."

"You’re very kind but I’m staying at a hotel and couldn’t cook it."

The old man rested his arms on the top of the wall, wiping gnarled hands on his shirt. "You on holiday then, miss?"

"I was in a road accident and the doctor at the hospital thought I ought to get away."

"You couldn’t have come to a better place. People have been coming to Barbados for their health for years. Even George Washington came, with his half-brother, Lawrence, to get over some lung infection. And there weren’t no jumbo jets in 1751. They think he stayed at a house in Bay Street; put up a plaque, they did, but nobody knows for sure if it’s the right place. So how come you got hurt?"

"It was an ordinary street accident in London, me and a motorbike. A sort-of collision on a windy day."

"Don’t sound too good. You’d better not walk too far before it gets dark. It gets dark very quickly. Comes down like a blind and there are no street lights out this way. You could get lost."

"Thank you," said Kira. "I don’t fancy walking along the sea road in the dark with all the traffic and no pavement. This is a funny house, isn’t it? Like something out of a Walt Disney film with all those weird statues. It looks a bit like a fairytale castle."

"It ain’t a funny house, miss," said the gardener, a bit ruffled. "Built it was, for a special person. Long time ago."

* * *

"A castle? You’re going to build me a castle? Oh Ben, you are a darling! I don’t believe it. No-one has a castle on Barbados. There’s only those old forts, out Gun Hill way. You’re teasing me. You’re always teasing me. It isn’t fair."

"Dolly, I’m not teasing you. It’s a real promise. If you marry me, I’ll build you the most fantastic house on the island. Something that will be the perfect setting for my princess to live in."

Dolly’s eyes lit up. "Me, a princess? Now, you’re joking. I’m the daughter of a poor white painter and I don’t know why you’re bothering with me, Benjamin Reed. You’re a rich sugar planter and could marry any girl on the island. I bet they’re lining up from here to Speightstown for your attentions."

Benjamin found it difficult to string any words together. He was not used to talking with women, especially a wild young girl with flying hair and green eyes that were always laughing at him. He did not feel comfortable with her. All his life he had worked, not courted.

"Dolly, believe me. I love you. I’m mad about you. Can’t get you out of my mind. It’s like an illness for which there ain’t no cure but you marrying me. I’d look after you, take care of you. And you could do what you liked. I shouldn’t mind. Paint, swim, ride, anything you wanted all day long."

"That’s not very flattering, Ben Reed, calling me an illness like spot-measles or the plague. Fidget, I think I’ll be going, Mr Reed, until you can think up some more pleasing and flattering words for a lady."

Benjamin Reed groaned aloud and struck his head. "Dolly, I’ll never get it right. Never. I can’t say proper words. I can only do things. Doing is my way of showing love. I’m building you a castle, girl. I know the right place, facing westwards, only a run from the beach."

"A pink castle?"

"Any colour you like."

*
* *

"I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make fun of the house. It’s very unusual, but you must admit that the statues are a little strange," said Kira quickly.

"The statues? Yes, I suppose you holiday folk might think them strange. They were made by a young local sculptor who hadn’t ever seen the animals. He did his work from pictures and photographs."

Kira detected a note of irritation in the old man’s voice. Perhaps she had kept him talking long enough, halfway up a tree.

"Thank you for the offer of breadfruit. It was nice talking to you. I hope I haven’t kept you from your work."

"Work’s never finished. Fitt’s House might seem a rum old place to you, young lady, but it ain’t all out of the history books. It’s got four solar panels on the flat roof," he said, as he disappeared down the ladder, tangible hostility in the air. "Hot water all day from the sun. I’d call that modern technology."

So this was Fitt’s House. Kira felt a surge of excitement that she was within yards of her grandfather’s house, the house where her mother had been born and grown up. Perhaps Tamara had even climbed this breadfruit tree as a child, run along this lane, picking flowers, straddled the stone animals in story play.

"How enterprising of your employer," Kira called out. She could hear the gardener sweeping up branches and a muffled oath.

"No point in wasting heat from the sun," he replied from the other side of the wall. “It’s all money.”

That sounded like Benjamin Reed’s philosophy of life. He would be a thrifty man, counting the pennies. Kira remembered the poverty of when she was a child, knew her mother had worked hard in a corset factory, spending hours at a sewing machine till her eyes were red and blotched with tiredness. Sometimes Tamara had brought home pieces of waste material, ivory and pink silk and brocade, to make dolls’ clothes for Kira. But the scraps frayed and were quickly of no use.

How easily her grandfather could have sent some money. A few pounds would have made no difference to him. He even had food growing for free in his garden. A shiver of anger went through Kira as she glanced back at the coral pink house and its absurd statues. The setting sun was casting wild orange and crimson rays in all directions, making the stone glow with light. Benjamin had certainly chosen the right site for his house. It looked glorious, bathed in the fiery warmth, deep shadows from the trees adding a steely blue to the picture.

Kira turned away abruptly. At the end of the lane she crossed the sea road and cut down to the beach between trees and houses. She did not want to get lost inland. She took off her sandals and the sand was cool to her feet. She hitched up her skirt so that she could paddle on
the edge of the lapping water.

There were evening joggers now, kids out of school playing cricket on the sand, people walking dogs, swimming after work. These were the lazy, hazy hours of evening. Everyone smiled and said good evening. Her anger faded. If she stayed too long in Barbados, she would have little hostility left in her heart towards her grandfather.

Kira was seeing Giles in every distant runner, his brown body glistening, muscles rippling, long legs moving with ease in easy strides over the sand. But she was in no mood for any man to start taking over her thoughts even though she could still feel the magnetic power of his eyes. He was a devastating man, someone to die for. Everything about him, his looks, his voice, his touch. She shivered at the thought of his touch. His skin would have the tangy salt of the sea in its taste.

She was suddenly drowning in tormented pictures of Bruce and Jenny, and the lingering hurt came back, crunching her stomach into cramp. The baby would be born in the Autumn. A tangible sign of his new love and their commitment to each other, their future.
She meant nothing to Bruce anymore and she had to accept that hard fact.

A young woman was playing with a baby on the shore. The baby was brown and chubby, covered from head to foot in sand, clutching fistfuls which his mother gently redirected from his open mouth. She wrapped him in a big towel and swung him around until he gurgled with delight. Kira noticed that the baby was very dark but that the mother’s skin was paler. There were many black youths walking with white girls, talking, laughing together, hand-in-hand, very natural. The colour taboos had been crossed.

Giles was white-skinned but darkly tanned. She wondered about his ancestry. His dark hair was crisply short but every feature was mid-European. Not that it was any business of hers, nor did it matter.

Back at Sandy Lane, Kira stood in the shower, letting the tepid water wash off the salt and sun oil.
The scar on her leg was vivid but she was hoping a tan would soon camouflage its ugliness.

Kira was not vain. She thought her chestnut hair and green eyes merely passable. She was quite unable to see the elusive quality that shone in the depths of her eyes or the tawny red that brought a burnished shine to her hair.

The scar was a misfortune but could have been worse. It did not matter if her leg marred her looks. She belonged to no-one but herself. Men were not the centre of her hurricane. The nerve ends near the scar were still sensitive to any touch. She patted them carefully with a towel.

Her hair dried into a wild tangle on her shoulders and she did not bother to style it. She did not know how much she resembled the girl in the painting. She put on a strawberry-coloured cotton dress that would turn heads. It had a blouson top, hip sash and hem appliquéd with cut-out flowers. All very Thirties; slim and svelte.

She spun round in front of the mirror. She looked like a pink flame. "You’ll do. Sandy Lane, here I come," she said.

Forget about everything, she thought; forget about Bruce and the baby he had made with his body. She wandered into the bar, fighting back waves of loneliness. It was full of people, laughing and talking. They gave her a cursory look, then went back to their drinks.

"May I join you?"

Giles’s deep voice broke into her thoughts. A dizzy sensation flooded through her at the unexpected sight of him, tingling her skin. She had no time to think of a reason for saying no.