Antigua Kiss (21 page)

She was still reclining in the hammock when Ash came up through the garden, and strolled across to her.

'What are you reading?'

She showed him the cover. 'But I haven't been reading. . .just lotos-eating.'

To her surprise, he quoted the opening lines of Tennyson's
The
Lotos-Eaters.

There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,

Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes . . .

She remembered Miranda's remark that Ash was a lover oflife in all its aspects, but Christie would not have imagined that poetry would be among them.

It had long been one of her own pleasures, a taste inherited from her mother, but not shared by her sister or Mike. The only verses her husband had known had been the bawdy lyrics of rugger songs.

'You look slightly shocked,' he said dryly. 'Do you feel there's something effeminate about a liking of poetry?'

'Oh, no—not at all,' she replied. 'I was merely surprised . . . and impressed. I've always loved poetry myself, but I've never met a man who did.'

'The greatest poets were and are men. Women may read it more, but they don't seem inclined to write it much.'

'No, I wonder why not?'

His inscrutable half-smile lifted the corner of his mouth. But he explained it a moment later by saying, 'One of the things I like about you, Christiana, is that you don't feel obliged to refute every statement of that sort. There are so many women around who take every unqualified generalisation as an outrageous slur on their sex which they must indignantly repudiate.'

'I wasn't upset by that statement, but I do become outraged occasionally. I think we should stick to poetry. It's a safer subject than Women's Lib. Do you like modern poems as well as the classics?'

'There's one modern American poet whose work I like—James Kavanaugh. You probably wouldn't have come across him. He was a priest, but gave it up. I have two books of his stuff—I'll lend them to you. I've never had much of a library because there's been nowhere to keep it. But there's a room at Heron's Sound which I thought we might make into a book room.'

They began to talk about the house, a subject on which their minds were so much in accord that Christie forgot the doubts which had troubled her earlier. 1

In the week between Christmas and New Year, they went several times to Heron's Sound. Between them they measured the rooms and Ash made a plan of the layout to which Christie attached various sketch-notes and several pages of written reminders of her ideas about decor.

Miranda had insisted that she and John should vacate the cottage at the Turtle Creek Colony, and move to the Hathaways' house. To the older woman's vexation, she could not be present at the wedding as she and her husband had an unbreakable engagement in Florida on the same day, and were flying there the day before.

Secretly, Christie was glad of this circumstance. She felt sure Miranda would have insisted on organising a wedding party, and her own preference was for a minimum of fuss and ceremony.

She had thought they would leave for London immediately, but Ash said no normal couple would choose to spend their wedding night crossing the Atlantic. He had booked to fly out the next night.

Some of his efforts to conceal the true nature of their relationship were rather disturbing.

One evening, before dinner—he was also staying with the Hathaways—he picked a spray of crimson bougainvillaea and divided it into two pieces. One he tucked behind Christie's ear. The other he slipped behind the clip of her front-fastening bra, having first unfastened the modestly high top button of her dress and opened it up to show the soft mounds of her breasts.

Miranda and Joss were both present, and there was nothing about the gesture which could have offended any but the most prudish of onlookers.

It was the act of a man in love adorning his beloved with the flowers which bloomed in such profusion that the house could be filled with their brilliance without denuding the garden.

But as Ash was not a professional actor, it made - Christie oddly uneasy that he brought such conviction to his role. And even the brush of his knuckles against the tops of her breasts sent a strange little tremor down her spine.

He never kissed her goodnight or good morning, even when their first and last encounters were in public, and it would have been normal to do so. But, invariably, the first and last words he addressed to her were accompanied by an ardent look which gave the impression that, during the day or the night, he would kiss her—and very thoroughly.

Their bedrooms were not far apart. Christie guessed that Miranda, a broad-minded woman, would take it for granted that they were already sleeping together. No doubt she would feel that, as they were both mature adults, there was no reason why they should defer the pleasures which she and Joss enjoyed.

She showed Christie the large, air-conditioned master bedroom with its seven-foot-wide double bed.

'You must have this room on your wedding night,' she said. 'Apart from anything else'—with a lurking twinkle—'it will be more comfortable for Ash. I'm sure his feet overhang the end of the guest bed he's sleeping in at the moment. In our bed he can lie diagonally, and really stretch out. When Joss and I stay with other people, we always feel so cramped. I don't like twin beds. I like to sleep cuddled up close, but before I sleep I always read, or maybe do a little needlepoint, and for that one needs elbow-room.'

Christie gazed intently at a painting, hoping to hide her heightened colour.

'I have some black crepe-de-chine sheets,' Miranda went on. 'Joss dislikes them. He says they feel slithery. He prefers percale. But they look very naughty and sexy. I'm sure Ash will approve, especially with you lying on them.'

She noticed Christie's embarrassment, and said, on a slightly puzzled note, 'I'm not shocking you, am I? Sometimes—' She stopped short.

'Sometimes what?' Christie tried to sound casual.

Miranda hesitated. 'Sometimes you have a very ingenue air, Christie.

It's part of your charm in a world full of hard-boiled young women.

Frankly, if I didn't know it, I should never have guessed you'd been married. I should say you'd come straight from a convent. You don't smoke, you don't swear, your conversation is never risque, and—'

'You make me sound a sanctimonious horror!' exclaimed Christie.

'Why, no, I didn't mean that, dear. If you were that, Ash wouldn't love you. No, I find you very refreshing. Worldliness can become boring.

There's only one place a man likes a woman not to be modest, and that's in bed with him.'

She caught sight of herself in a mirror, and paused, her expression critical. 'I wonder if I need a neck-lift. Am I starting to look like a turtle?'

To Christie's relief she began to discuss cosmetic surgery.

The day before their wedding coincided with
Sunbird Two's
return from a charter.

In the evening, when the outgoing charter party were on their way home by air, and part of the turn-around procedure had been accomplished, Ash gave a, party on board for those of his sailing friends who were in harbour at the time.

Christie had expected it to be a stag party. She would have been happy to spend the evening alone, with John in bed and only the staff in residence now that the Hathaways were away.

But Ash dismissed this idea. 'Stag parties are for young men without too much sense. I have no intention of spending my wedding night nursing an almighty hangover. You don't want a pale green, cross-eyed bridegroom, do you?'

She laughed. 'Are you ever pale green and cross-eyed?'

He shrugged. 'I've committed all the usual follies, but not for some years.'

It was a good party. She enjoyed it.

By now she had become used to the curiosity in the eyes of people meeting her for the first time—the young widow from London who had succeeded where so many others had failed.

The men probably came to the conclusion that, behind the demure facade, she must be hot stuff indeed for old Ash to give up his freedom for her. The women were more likely to think that the child had a great deal to do with it, and that it wouldn't be long before Ash was off on another of his escapades.

Whatever their theories about the marriage, none of them would guess, or perhaps even believe it if they were told it, that Ash had promised his bride a separate bedroom in his house and, if not a separate cabin, a separate bunk whenever they spent nights on board either of the two
Sunbirds.

Although, when she came to think of it, he had not actually made this plain in so many words. But when they were studying the plan he had drawn, he had not contested her suggestion as to which should be his room and which her room. The rest was a tacit agreement based on his sworn word on the raft.

At midnight the party broke up and, followed by a chorus of good wishes, some of them ribald, they walked to the car park and Ash drove her home.

'You seemed very relaxed this evening. No eleventh-hour jitters?' he enquired, when they were nearly there.

'Not so far. What about you?'

'Why should I be nervous?'

'It's a big step ... a confirmed bachelor giving up his freedom,' she pointed out.

'What makes you think I was ever a confirmed bachelor?'

'Weren't you?'

'No. Merely a man who'd never met a woman he wanted to marry.'

'And you haven't now—not really,' she said, in a low voice.

She knew that he glanced towards her, but he didn't say anything.

What was there he could say?

Miranda's housekeeper was waiting up for them. She and George, the butler, were married and lived in a cottage in the grounds. They had three grownup children who were all overseas, doing well for themselves.

'Can I get you anything, Mr Lambard? Some coffee maybe?'

'No;-thanks, Rose. We'll just have some brandy. Thank you for baby-sitting.'

'You're welcome, sir. Mrs Hathaway left orders for you to have breakfast in bed tomorrow, Mrs Chapman. What time would you like me to bring it, ma'am?'

'About eight o'clock, please, Rose. I'll have it in bed if it will please Mrs Hathaway, but I'm sure to wake up early as usual, and I'll probably have my usual swim.'

'The bride shouldn't see the bridegroom before the ceremony, ma'am,'

Rose said seriously.

Miranda had mentioned that, like many Antiguans, her housekeeper seldom missed church on a Sunday. Clearly Rose did not assume that Ash and Christie were already sleeping together.

'As I'm driving the bride to the ceremony, we shall have to disregard that tradition,' said Ash.

After Rose had bidden them goodnight, he poured out one large and one smaller measure of French brandy.

'Drink it. It will help you to sleep,' he said, as she looked doubtfully at the glass he was offering to her.

As she took it, he raised his own glass. 'To us.'

They both drank to the toast. Then Ash said, 'I suppose, inevitably, you're remembering your first wedding, and all the eagerness and excitement you must have felt the night before. That may be lacking this time, but where there are no expectations there can't be any disappointments. You may find, this time next year, that what we have together is as satisfying, in its way, as a marriage based on romantic love.'

'I—I hope so . . . for your sake as well as my own. I'm the one who has most to gain. You're the one who's . . . losing out,' she said uncomfortably.

'In one respect only, and very few people have everything they want from life. Finish your brandy in your room. I'll look in on John.'

He took her hand, gave a curiously formal bow, and brushed a light kiss on her knuckles. 'Goodnight, Christiana.'

'Goodnight.'

She left him and went to her room, carrying in her mind's eye the image of the tall man, informally dressed for the schooner party, saying that formal goodnight to his bride-to-be.

She felt her heart aching for him; that he would never know the bliss of holding in his arms a girl whom he truly loved and who loved him, with all her heart.

She would never experience that either, but somehow her sorrow for him was sharper than the resigned acceptance she felt on her own account.

But perhaps Ash had never dreamed of the world well lost, of a love that would last for ever, she thought, as she prepared for bed.

Although it was now one o'clock in the morning, she had never felt less like sleeping. She decided to read for a while. For her, it was not important to look clear-eyed and radiant tomorrow.

Today, she corrected herself. In less than twelve hours from now she would be Mrs Ashcroft Lambard.

The bestseller, begun in the hammock, was on her night table. But as she stretched out her hand, she remembered that in her bag was the book of poems by James Kavanaugh which, earlier that night, Ash had found for her on the schooner's bookshelves.

She slipped out of bed to fetch it; a book with a dark brown wrapper and paler brown pages, decorated with drawings of trees. At the back was a section with a drawing of a man and a woman embracing in a field of flowers. The first of the poems in this group was called
Where
Are You Hiding, My Love?

It was a long poem. She read it through once, then again. Could it be that Ash
had
shared the feelings expressed in this poem? For the third time her eyes skimmed the verses, lingering on certain lines.

Where are you hiding, my love?

I have sought you for so long

That surely you must feel the pulsing

Of my endless longing!

And farther down,

I care not whose you were—or even whose you are—

Your eyes will tell me that you are mine

And that you are waiting.

Where are you hiding, my love?

Each day without you will never come again.

Even today you missed a sunset on the ocean,
A silver shadow on yellow rocks I saved for you. . .