Antigua Kiss (4 page)

'I've never had it.'

'Never? Not even at your wedding?'

'It wasn't that sort of wedding.'

He shot a swift, narrowed glance at her, but he said only, 'Any glasses will do if you haven't flutes.'

Christie turned to a cupboard containing lemonade goblets. 'What did you mean—I won't be here?' she repeated.

John came back with a large white envelope. Wide-eyed with interest, he watched his half-uncle ease the cork out of the bottle and fill two glasses with pale golden, bubbling wine. His long, square-tipped fingers had the deftness of much practice.

'You wouldn't like this stuff, my lad,' Ash's free hand .ruffled the child's hair.

It was clear that in less than twelve hours he had become an established member of John's small world.

Ash handed one of the glasses to Christie. He raised the other. 'To the future.'

'To the future,' she echoed uncertainly.

He drank, then handed her the envelope, his eyes amused by her hesitance.

Christie set down her glass, and tipped out the contents of the envelope. When, having examined the tickets, she looked up at him, he said, 'I think you'll find Christmas in the sun just as enjoyable as a white Christmas over here—and maybe it won't snow this year.'

Her beautiful teeth—only noticeable when she was laughing—bit into her soft lower lip. How could she rage at a man who had paid a great deal of money for her to cross the Atlantic? Yet what intolerable arrogance to assume she had no other plans; to dictate her actions in this high-handed manner.

'I THINK this is something we should discuss later this evening,'

Christie said, in a carefully controlled voice.

He said, 'As you wish.' But she could see he was confident that his wishes would override hers.

'By the way, I invited your friend Mrs Kelly to join us for supper,' he said casually.

'Margaret? Where did you run into her? At the shops?'

'No„ I called on her at her flat.'

'Really? Why?' she asked, thinking—To pump her about me, I suppose.

'I needed to know the name of the school where you teach, so that I could ring up and check the dates when this term ends and the next one begins before booking your flight. Mrs Kelly is a nice woman.

You're lucky to have her to help you.'

'I know. Very lucky,' she agreed.

'You don't like this champagne?' he asked, reminding her that she had taken only one small sip of it.

Christie drank a little more. 'It's delicious, but I'm not used to drinking. It may go to my head if I drink it too fast. Is it true that champagne is the only drink which doesn't give people hangovers?'

'I wouldn't know, never having had an excess of it.I suspect that a split of champagne would do most people more good—and cost the Health Service less—than all the tranquillisers and sleeping pills which Mrs Kelly tells me are prescribed far too freely over here. Do you take them?'

'I did for a while after my husband died. I don't any more. Why do you ask? Do I strike you as being a neurotic?' she asked, somewhat indignantly.

'Not neurotic. A little tense, maybe. But that's understandable in the circumstances, and three or four weeks in Antigua will relax you. It does everyone; even businessmen with ulcers and high blood pressure.'

His cool assumption that she would fall in with his plans had an anything but relaxing effect on her. But she said only, 'What time were you planning to have dinner? I usually bath John about six, and give him his supper at half past. Then he plays in bed till he's sleepy.'

'So Mrs Kelly told me. I suggested she joined us at seven, to eat about eight.'

Ash watched her bath John that night. The bathroom seemed even smaller than it was with the tall, dark man as an audience while she knelt on the bathmat and lathered the child's rosy body as he played with his fleet of plastic boats.

Having bathed him, she left him with Ash while she went to change the white blouse which her nephew had accidentally splashed.

When she rejoined them, wearing a grey flannel shirt-dress, she saw Ash looking critically at it. But it wasn't until she had tucked the child into bed that his half-uncle had the effrontery to remove the clasp which held her hair back.

'It doesn't suit you like that,' he said, when she made a small sound of protest.

'In your opinion,' she retorted.

'Your husband wouldn't have wished you to mourn him indefinitely.

Even Mrs Kelly, whose husband died fairly recently, wears lipstick and coloured dresses.'

'Please . . . give it back,' she insisted, holding her hair back with one hand and stretching out the other for the clasp.

Ash shook his head. 'It's time someone made you snap out of this state of withdrawal you've sunk into. You're a young and potentially beautiful woman. However much you loved him, however bleak the future seems without him, life still has plenty to offer someone of your age.'

'You don't understand—'

'No, I don't,' he agreed, rather curtly. 'If it had been you who had died, would you have hoped that your husband would never look at another woman . . . never enjoy life . . . never marry again?'

'No . . . no . . . certainly not!'

'Then why commit suttee yourself?'

'I haven't. I—you don't know anything about me.'

'I don't have to know you to see that there's something wrong with a woman who deliberately plays down her assets. You've an excellent figure, good legs, and the kind of streaky blonde hair which some of your sex pay a fortune to achieve by artificial means. But you're trying to pretend you're a flat-chested spinster of forty.'

Christie opened her mouth to deliver a furious riposte, but was forestalled by the doorbell.

'That'll be Mrs Kelly, I imagine.'

Ash went to answer it, leaving her fulminating with annoyance at his high-handedness.

'What a charming man,' said Margaret, in a confidential undertone when she and Christie were alone for a few minutes while he went to the kitchen for another bottle of champagne.

'Do you think so?'

'Don't you?' Mrs Kelly looked surprised.

'I'm not sure. I haven't known him long enough to form any definite opinion.'

'Nor have I, but my first impression—and I think I'm a reasonably good judge—is that he's a very nice person. Kind, sensible, very concerned to do the best thing for John.'

'I'm not sure. It seems most peculiar to me—a bachelor wanting to bring up someone else's child. He and Paul weren't as close as all that,' was Christie's reply, in a low tone.

Before Margaret Kelly could comment, Ash returned to dispense the champagne.

Dubious about him as she was, Christie could not fault him as a host.

During the excellent meal he had prepared, and which he served single-handed, insisting the women should relax for a change, she felt more than ever like a guest in her own home.

While they ate a Dominican dish called
Pato con pina,
a stuffed duck garnished with pineapple, which followed the creamy aubergine soup, a speciality of Nevis, an island not far from Antigua, Ash kept Margaret amused with tales of the idiosyncrasies of some of his charter passengers. He was a good raconteur. Christie had to join in the other woman's laughter at some of his most absurd anecdotes.

Long before the meal was over—it ended with a cold rum souffle—she had forgotten her vexation at being made to wear her hair loose.

It was Margaret who reminded her that the evening had not begun amiably. She said, 'I don't remember ever seeing you with your hair as it is tonight, Christie. It suits you. The other way is too severe. Don't you agree, Ash?'

They had been on first name terms for some time by then.

'I do,' he said, looking at Christie with a quizzical glint in his dark eyes.

Suddenly her mood changed. It occurred to her to wonder how much several glasses of champagne had contributed to her feeling of cheerful relaxation. And how much of his cordiality was a deliberate strategy to overcome her resistance to his wish to take John away from her.

'Why
do you want to bring up John?' she asked abruptly. 'It doesn't make sense to me, a man in your circumstances voluntarily encumbering himself with a young child when there's no necessity. In general, men aren't interested in babies and children, except their own—and not always then.'

She saw that this unexpected broadside had surprised him, and was glad she had revived the point at issue between them instead of allowing him to distract her from it.

'In general, you're right,' he agreed. 'But most men—particularly those who, starting with nothing, have built up a profitable business—hope to have a son, if not to follow in their footsteps, at least to inherit the fruits of their labours. My problem is that I should like a son, period. Now if a woman feels an urge to have a child, she will have very little difficulty in finding a man to sire it for her. She's not obliged to marry him. He may never know that he's performed a service for her. But how many women, do you think, would be willing to bear a child for me? Apart from the fact that gestation takes a great deal more time than procreation, the kind of woman I would choose to be the mother of my son wouldn't consider such an arrangement. Nor do I stand much chance of being able to adopt a boy. So, although I should never have wished it to happen, the tragedy which has left John an orphan doesn't put me to any inconvenience. Rather the reverse.'

Christie glanced at Margaret, thinking she might have been shocked by his outspoken statement. But her expression was unruffled. She asked, 'Have you ever been married, Ash?'

'No.'

'Oh, so it's not an unhappy previous experience which puts you off marriage?'

'Not at all. My relations with women—other than with my father's second wife—have always been extremely enjoyable—to me and, I hope, to them,' he added, rising to his feet. 'I'm going to wash the dishes. No, sit tight, you two. I can manage. Perhaps you can convince Christiana that my attitude isn't as outrageous as she seems to find it, Margaret.'

'I should have thought you would find it even
more
outrageous than I do,' said Christie, when they were alone.

'No, not really, dear. My views have broadened a lot in the past few years. My husband could never accept that manners and morals change with every generation. In his day it was all right for a young man to sow his wild oats, but a nice girl had to behave herself. It upset Matthew very much when he realised that neither of our girls were nice any more, in that sense. But they've settled down now, and they're just as good wives and mothers as my generation. Looking back, I realise it was largely the fear of having a baby which kept us in line.'

She paused. 'To return to what Ash said just now, I think girls always have marriage in view. They're always searching for the right man.

But men aren't. They want to make love to as many pretty girls as possible until, suddenly, one girl comes along who's special, and they lose interest in the others. Ash hasn't met the right girl yet.'

'If he hasn't by now, will he ever? He's not a boy any more.'

'Round about thirty. That's no age. A lot of men settle down earlier because

they're

not

particularly

attractive

and

feminine

companionship isn't too easy to come by. That can't be a problem in his case. He's a charmer of a high order.'

'He may be God's gift to women, but it doesn't make him an ideal guardian for a child,' was Christie's somewhat acid comment. 'Not that I can do much about that,' she added, with a heavy sigh. 'My solicitor's advice is to give in gracefully. He thinks Ash has a better claim than I have.'

Margaret said, 'I hate to agree, knowing what John means to you, but one can't ignore the practical difficulties of someone in your situation—in effect, a single woman—bringing up a small boy.'

Ash came back. 'Did Christie tell you she's going to spend the Christmas holidays in Antigua with me?'

'No, she didn't. Oh, my dear, how exciting! It will do you the world of good, the best part of a month in the sun. You'll need some new dresses . . . sundresses. They won't be easy to find at this time of year.

You must let me run up a couple for you. It doesn't take more than an evening, that sort of dress.'

She chattered on, full of enthusiasm, while Christie sat, saying little, unable to feel any excitement at the thought of four weeks in Antigua because, at the end, she would have to come back on her own.

After Margaret had said goodnight and returned to her own flat, Christie asked Ash, 'What time does your flight leave tomorrow?'

'A little after ten, from Heathrow. I need to leave here about eight-thirty.'

'Is that early enough? I thought one had to check in about an hour beforehand?'

'So they say, but I never do. Flights are sometimes on time, sometimes late. I don't care for hanging about in airports, so I cut it as fine as I can. I've never missed a flight yet.'

She could imagine him strolling unhurriedly into the terminal, knowing exactly where to go and what to do.

He said, 'Although it's basically the same, this flat is much nicer than Margaret's. Are you responsible for the way it's decorated?'

'Yes, I couldn't stand the existing decor, so I re-did it. The furniture is from my mother's family home. As possibly you know, it's mostly Regency. I'm lucky to have inherited it. Jenny and Paul didn't care for antiques, so Father left it all to me.'

'Those are your parents, I presume?' He indicated a photograph of her father as a young subaltern with her mother in a white wedding dress in the style of the early 1950s.

'Yes, and that's my sister on the bookcase. We weren't much alike.'

'But no photograph of your husband, either here or in your bedroom?'

She stiffened. 'No. I—I have some snaps, but no studio portrait,' she answered, in an expressionless voice.

How like him to point out something which most people—anyone with an ounce of tact!—would not have mentioned.

'I think, if you don't mind, I'll go to bed,' she said, rising.