Antigua Kiss (2 page)

He finished off the rum and put the empty glass aside. Then he went on, 'I'm sure we both have the child's best interests at heart, and I think there can be little question but that I can give him a better life.

He won't remain four years old for ever. A growing boy needs more scope for healthy activities than a flat in the suburbs can offer. With me he can swim and sail, and live a fine outdoor life in a year-round good climate.'

'But he may not be the outdoor type, and if he should turn out to be scholarly, surely London has far more to offer than wherever it is that you live?'

'At present I live on a schooner,' he answered. 'My base is Antigua in the Leeward Islands on the eastern side of the Caribbean. It's spelt A-n-t-i-g-u-a, but we don't pronounce it as the Spanish would. We leave out the u and call it Anteegah.'

'I've no doubt it's lovely,' she began, 'but—'

'It's one of the most beautiful islands in the world, and I've been to a great many islands, so I know what I'm talking about. If you lived where I do you wouldn't be pale-faced all winter, and you wouldn't need to be muffled up as you are now. You'd be brown and healthy, and sleep in a thin cotton nightdress.'

'I daresay, but the Caribbean must have its drawbacks, like everywhere else, or why have so many West Indians come to live here?' she asked dryly.

'That's true. The Caribbean isn't a paradise for everyone. But for such as myself it's very close to it. I've done well over there. I can afford to send the boy to school here, or in America, if he turns out to be unusually clever. You work for your living, I understand? Your husband left no provision for you, as Paul left none for his son. Only debts and a massive mortgage. So for you to bring up the boy would be quite a financial strain.'

It was hard to refute that argument. Her job as a domestic science teacher was not badly paid but, like many others, she was a victim of inflation, high taxes and soaring interest rates. Even with the advantage of being an expert manager, she had little to spare after the payment of her overheads.

'Excuse me: I think the kettle must have boiled by now. Would you like tea or instant coffee?' she asked, as she rose to go to the kitchen.

He shrugged. 'Whichever you prefer.'

Christie made decaffeinated coffee. She took dietetics seriously, and had given up drinking ordinary coffee, except on special occasions, after reading that heavy coffee and cola drinking was linked with fatigue and depression.

'Where are you staying tonight, Mr Lambard?' she asked, as she brought the tray back to the living-room.

He moved forward to take it from her. 'Here, if you have no objection.'

'Here? But I can't put you up. The only bed in my spare room is John's.'

'Your sofa looks long enough for me. Unless you don't wish me to stay here?'

Was it only her imagination or did his dark gaze hold a gleam of challenge?

She found herself saying, 'Not at all, but surely you would be much more comfortable in a hotel?'

'If I sleep here we can continue talking over breakfast. You don't want to stay up too late tonight, I imagine'—with a glance at his watch.

'What happens to the boy during the day while you're working?'

'One of my neighbours looks after him. She used to be a children's nanny, so she likes children and knows how to manage them. You seem to know a good deal about me. Who told you?'

'Paul's solicitor, when I spoke to him on the telephone. He said you were a teacher and had lost your husband. You must have married very young.'

'I was nineteen. My husband was twenty. He didn't know it, but he had a congenital heart defect. He died very suddenly six months after our wedding.'

He looked at her thoughtfully. 'Life has given you a rough deal—losing your husband and now your sister. Are your parents alive?'

Christie shook her head. 'Other people have had rougher deals. I'm healthy. I like my job. And now I have John.' She returned his scrutiny with a resolute look. 'Paul may have named you as John's guardian, but I'm not sure that a father's wishes count for more than a mother's; and even if you were half-brothers, and lived in the same house as boys, Paul didn't know you as a man. Having more money than I have doesn't necessarily make you a fit person to have charge of John.'

He lifted one well-shaped dark eyebrow. 'Are you hinting that you'll contest the will?'

She shook her head. 'It would be a bad thing for John if the two people who are all the family he has now resorted to litigation over him. If I were really convinced that you were the better person to have him, I would give him up—not gladly but with a good grace, for his sake.'

'Perhaps we can arrive at a compromise,' he suggested.

'Perhaps.'

But during the restless night which followed, Christie could see no way in which they could compromise when they lived in different parts of the world. Had he lived in England, it might have been possible to work out a system for sharing John in the way that separated parents did. But when the people concerned lived on opposite sides of the Atlantic . . .

The alarm clock woke her at six. She had always got up at seven but, with John to attend to, she needed the extra hour.

This morning she made the fatal mistake, instead of jumping out of bed immediately, of thinking,
I'll just have five minutes more.
The result was that she fell asleep again.

The next time she woke, someone was shaking her gently? and a deep voice was repeating her name.

'Oh, my goodness! What time is it?' she demanded, realising what she had done and, at first, being much more concerned about being late than by the alien presence of an almost strange man in her bedroom.

'Only twenty past six. You've plenty of time. I heard your alarm clock as I was leaving the bathroom. I guessed you'd had a disturbed night, and thought you might like some tea to get you going.'

Ash indicated the cup and saucer he had placed on her bedside table.

He was wearing a short silk dressing gown of navy silk over apple-green cotton pyjamas. He had had a bath the night before, after she had gone back to bed, and this morning he had washed his hair.

The angular lines of his jaw, shadowed when they said goodnight, were now no darker than the rest of his face. She could smell, very faintly, his after-shave.

Thank you . . . but you needn't have bothered.'

Why didn't he go away, instead of standing there, his hands in the pockets of the dressing-gown, looking down at her as if he had never seen a woman in bed before? She suspected he had seen many, but perhaps never one in warm pyjamas. His sort of woman would sleep in clinging satin, filmy chiffon or, more probably, nothing at all but an aura of expensive French scent.

'What time does the boy wake up?' he asked.

'I expect he'll be awake now. He usually reads until I go in to him.'

'Reads? At his age?'

'It's not really reading. He looks at picture books and talks to himself.'

'Will it frighten him if I say hello?'

'I shouldn't think so. He's a very friendly little boy.'

As he moved to the door Christie sat up, her self-consciousness submerged by a more important consideration.

'Mr Lambard—'

'Ash.'

'Ash,' she amended. 'He . . . John doesn't know his parents are dead.

He's too small for the word to have any meaning, and one can't say they've gone to heaven because his parents were not religious, and he hasn't been taught to say prayers. He's been left with me before, during the school holidays, and sometimes with other people when I couldn't have him here. So far he hasn't even asked me when his father and mother are coming back. You may not agree, but Mrs Kelly and I—she's the neighbour I mentioned last night—both feel it's better to say nothing. I wouldn't ever lie to a child,' she added earnestly, 'but with one of John's age, it's not difficult to dodge an issue. So, please, be careful what you say.'

He nodded. 'I won't say anything—for the time being. I was thinking while I was shaving that it's a fortunate circumstance that your job involves long holidays. You can bring him to Antigua and stay with him for a few weeks while he settles down in new surroundings.'

Before she could protest that he was taking far too much for granted, he had left the room and closed the door.

* * *

It took Christie a little less than twenty minutes to wash and dress.

She had not worn make-up for four years. A box of cosmetics given to her by her sister on Christie's last birthday remained unused in the drawer of her dressing-table.

Jenny had not understood the reason for Christie's refusal to revert to the ways of her girlhood. She had thought it was grief for Mike which accounted for Christie's continued lack of interest in current fashions and social activities. The real reason was something which Christie could never confide to anyone, not even her sister. Least of all to her sister who obviously did not suffer from Christie's secret incapacity.

One of the reasons Paul had not liked his sister-in- law was, she knew, that he had thought her a prude. But it wasn't narrow-minded primness which made her tense and uncomfortable when anyone mentioned sex. The explanation was far more complex.

Had Paul but known it, Christie had not disapproved of the fact that he and her sister had lived together for some time before getting married. She had often regretted her own virginity on her wedding day. If she and Mike had emulated Jenny and Paul, the unhappiness of her short marriage could have been avoided, and she would have had fewer harrowing memories to haunt her all the rest of her life.

When, dressed in a pleated grey skirt, white blouse and grey lambswool cardigan, she left her bedroom, she could smell bacon cooking and hear her nephew's piping voice coming from the kitchen.

Before she reached it she heard Ash ask, 'Where does your aunt keep the marmalade?'

In answer, the little boy must have pointed to a cupboard because, when she joined them, her unwelcome house guest was opening the cupboard containing her stores of home-made marmalade and jam.

'Those are unopened jars. The one we're using is in here,' she said, opening another door.

Having put the marmalade on the table, she bent to kiss John's rounded cheek. 'Good morning, my lamb.'

He responded with a vigorous hug. He was an affectionate child who liked to sit on her lap to be read to, and who rushed to clasp her round the legs when she fetched him from Mrs Kelly's flat after returning from school. The thought of losing him, of living alone again, filled her with dread. To spend the rest of her life without anyone on whom to lavish her deep reserves of affection seemed unendurable. But the usual outlet for those feelings was something she had had to renounce. To love and be loved by a child was all that was left to her.

'One egg or two?' Ash asked her, as she straightened after being hugged.

He had gone back to the cooker and was breaking eggs into a pan of hot oil. Tomatoes, cut into halves, were fizzling gently in a second pan, and several days' supply of bacon rashers were visible under the eye-level grill.

'One, please.'

She wouldn't help being impressed by the deft way he rapped the eggs on the edge of the pan and, using only one hand, swung the shells open. Her brother-in-law and her husband had both been useless in the kitchen, prevented from acquiring even the most rudimentary skills by their doting mothers. She wondered how Ash had acquired his competence, and remembered his remark the night before that he didn't depend on women for all his creature comforts.

'Why do you scrape your hair back like that? It looks nicer loose,' he remarked, with a glance in her direction as the last of five eggs plopped into the fat and began to set.

'In my job neatness and hygiene are more important than looks,' she answered stiffly, knowing that she probably sounded priggish, but resenting so personal a comment on such short acquaintance.

'You aren't at work yet,' was his reply, with another glance which took in her clothes and low- heeled black shoes. But if he was critical of them, he didn't say so but left the cooker to draw a chair out from the table for her.

With a murmur of thanks Christie sat down and unrolled her napkin which matched the red linen cloth. It felt strange to be treated like a guest in her own kitchen.

The importance of a nourishing breakfast had been impressed on her during her training, and evidently Ash also believed in beginning the day with a hearty meal. Having eaten two eggs, five rashers of bacon and two whole tomatoes, he cut himself a second thick slice of Christie's home-made wholemeal bread, and helped himself to the marmalade and some more butter.

But there didn't appear to be an ounce of unnecessary flesh on his muscular frame, suggesting that his intake of food was balanced by a high output of energy.

'You said you'd done well in the Caribbean. At what?' she enquired as she filled John's blue mug with milk before pouring out coffee for Ash and herself.

'I'm a charter skipper. I cater to people, mostly Americans, who want to "get away from it all" but still have good food and modern conveniences. I provide them with a combination of the
Swiss Family
Robinson
life with inner-spring mattresses, dry Martinis and all the other comforts of home. It's the way I like to live, too, but I have it all the year round and they only enjoy it for two to four weeks.'

'Does the schooner belong to you?'

He nodded. 'She was left to me.'

'By someone on your mother's side of the family?' As far as she knew none of his paternal relations had ever owned a large schooner.

'No, her previous owner was no relation. She was just an old lady I knew. She had no one to inherit the boat, so she left it to me. I'd been knocking about the Caribbean for a year or two by then, and the cost of buying anything seaworthy was rising a hell of a lot faster than I was earning money, so probably I should still be crewing if I hadn't run into Tugboat Annie as some people called her.'

Christie knew him to be at least five years older than her brother-in-law, who had been twenty- seven. 'How old were you when this happened?' she asked.