Antigua Kiss (8 page)

With a lift of the hand, he turned in another direction, towelling his head as he went, the action making the muscles ripple down his back.

His car was larger than Bettina's, with a bench seat in front so that they could both have sat beside him had he allowed it. But he made John go in the back in the interests of safety.

'There's a forty-mile limit on all roads here, but not every driver observes it,' he remarked dryly, as he slid his tall frame behind the wheel.

But he did, Christie noticed. He was a very relaxed driver, showing no sign of impatience when a large herd of goats blocked the road for several hundred yards, and stopping to pick up an elderly villager who had missed the bus into town and set out on foot.

Although she knew that it had a cathedral and a deep-water harbour for cruise ships, to Christie St John's seemed more like a country town than a capital city.

The main streets were arranged on the grid system, with broad roads sloping downhill towards the harbour, intersected by narrower cross streets.

Tucked in between the big buildings were houses no larger than village houses. Modernity, in the form of large, air-conditioned banks, mixed with tradition in the form of pavement stalls spread with trinkets made from shells and seeds.

First they went to a shop selling sports gear where Ash selected a mask and flippers for his nephew and then for Christie.

'You must let me pay for mine,' she said.

He shook his head. 'Extra gear is always useful on the boat, and they won't be much use to you in England.'

As they left the shop, he said, 'I have one or two business calls to make. John can come with me, and you can explore the shops at your leisure. We'll meet at Darcy's in St Mary's Street at eleven. It's more or less opposite the Coco Shop, which is good for clothes and presents, I'm told. Don't worry if you can't make it on the dot. If you're late, we'll have another drink.'

On her own, Christie went first to a branch of her English bank to cash a travellers' cheque. Ash had already explained that there were two currencies operating on the island, American dollars and East Caribbean dollars, and that it was important to be sure which currency price tickets were marked in.

There were several people for whom she wanted to buy presents, notably Margaret Kelly. The shop he had recommended was a small timber house painted dark brown with a corrugated iron roof painted white like the shutters on the windows, and the guard rail of the twin flights of steps leading up to the front door. Inside it was larger than the exterior suggested, and Christie was tempted to buy Margaret one of the cotton smocks imported from a neighbouring island and hand-embroidered round the collar with lizards, hummingbirds, shells and other local motifs. In the end she decided to wait until she had looked around more. In a neighbouring building, painted royal blue and white, she found the Sea Island Cotton Shop and there, in Margaret's favourite dark red, a batik-printed overblouse which was equally attractive.

However, she had no parcels with her when she joined the others at their table in the shady courtyard which was their rendezvous.

Ash had risen to his feet when he saw her pausing in the gateway.

'Nothing tempting?' he asked, with a raised eyebrow, seeing she carried only her shoulder bag.

'Oh, yes, any number of temptations,' she said, as he pulled a chair out for her. 'But Margaret, who's travelled a lot, advised me not to do my shopping straightaway. She said it was better to wait and see.'

'What would you like to drink?'

He had a glass of lager in front of him, and John had a pink concoction which was probably a mixture of fruit juices.

Christie was glad to be sitting down in the shade. It was extremely hot in the streets. She would have been more comfortable in a loose sun-dress, but was wearing a short-sleeved blouse to protect her shoulders. Where it was tucked inside the waistband of her skirt, making a double layer of fabric, she felt unpleasantly sticky, although Ash with a leather belt slotted through the loops on his shorts looked cool enough. But he was acclimatised and she wasn't.

'What is an Antigua Kiss?' she asked, remembering the drinks mentioned by the Manager of the Colony.

To her astonishment, he reached for one of her hands and, lifting it, pressed it to his lips before replacing it on the arm of her chair.

'That's the mid-morning, public version. There are others—more exciting—which I should be happy to demonstrate at suitable moments.' As he spoke, he was looking at her mouth.

Christie felt herself turning as pink as the stuff in John's glass.

'Y-you know what I mean ... it's a drink,' she stammered in confusion.

'Oh, really? It's a new one on me. I've heard of an Antiguan Smile.

Why not have a rum punch? That's as refreshing as anything.'

Without waiting for Christie's assent, he gave the order to the waitress.

At this point, much to her relief, a diversion was created by a large green lizard scuttling across the courtyard, passing under several tables and causing squeaks from some elderly female tourists sitting at them. To John's delight it ran past him before taking cover among some plants, giving Christie a moment or two to recover her self-possession.

No doubt Ash had only been teasing, and it had been stupid of her to show she was flustered. She ought to have laughed it off, not reacted like a nervous schoolgirl.

For lunch he took them to the Runaway Beach Hotel which was not very far out of town. He had told her to bring their bathing kit and, before lunch, they had a swim, but did not try out their new masks.

'Haven't you any bikinis with you?' he asked, when Christie had changed her wet green suit for a dry black one.

She shook her head. 'December is not a good time to buy inexpensive beach things. All the chain stores are selling warm clothes. It's not hard to find expensive swimsuits for people going on winter cruises, but I didn't want to spend the earth when I'm only here for a few weeks.'

'No, but you ought to have a bikini or you won't get your middle brown. Bettina's stuff tends to be pricey, I believe, but not all the boutiques are expensive.'

'Aunt Christie does brown her tummy when nobody's looking except me,' said John.

Ash's mobile left eyebrow went up. 'You surprise me. Toplessness merely, or complete nudity?'

'Neither. John means that I sometimes sit on our verandah in my underwear which, to anyone passing, would look like a bikini,' she answered. 'Is there much topless sunbathing here? I haven't seen any at the Colony.'

'No, you wouldn't. It's not encouraged. Although there are plenty of secluded coves where people can lie in the raw without offending anyone else. Personally I prefer to exert a little imagination, if not too much.'

A certain glint in his eye made her suspect that, had John not been present, he would have said something to make her blush again.

For lunch they had smoked ham with pineapple, accompanied by servings of lobster and chicken in coleslaw, these mixtures arranged on a large red- veined leaf from the sea grape bushes growing along the back of the beach.

With lunch Christie tried a Pina Colada, a mixture of pineapple juice, coconut cream and rum whipped in a blender until it was frothy.

Having sipped it slowly, through a straw, she became aware that it was not as innocuous as it looked. Obviously the rum had been added with a generous hand and, not being accustomed to drinking, she would have to watch her step.

After lunch they drove a little further north to a stretch of water behind the coast road where many birds were to be seen, including the brown pelicans known on the island as boobys, and the frigate-birds often called weatherbirds. Ash had fieldglasses in the car with him, and he let John look through them to see the birds in close-up.

The sun was losing its fierceness by the time they returned to Turtle Creek.

'Now for the snorkelling lesson,' he said, as he parked the car.

John was his first pupil, and a surprisingly apt one. In no time at all the little boy had mastered the way to hold the mouthpiece between his lips and inhale and exhale through it. It happened that a shoal of small pale silvery fish were darting about near the shore, and while John was absorbed in watching them, Ash came to where Christie was waiting her turn.

He had already told her that the test of a good mask was that it should cling to the face when the wearer inhaled without the aid of a strap.

Nevertheless it took him several minutes to adjust the strap to his satisfaction and, while his fingers were busy at the back of her head, she found herself intensely conscious of his closeness and the brush of his forearms against her bare shoulders.

'There: I think that should be comfortable. Now sit down here in the shallows and keep your face submerged and practise breathing until it no longer seems strange,' he instructed.

Before the lesson was over, both she and John had had the exciting experience of gliding through the water with as clear a view of the plants and creatures beneath the surface as they had of the trees and birds in the air above.

John even had no problem with his small pair of bright yellow flippers, but Christie found it more difficult to adapt her leg movements to gain maximum impetus from them. They seemed to her heavy and clumsy, but Ash assured her that many people had the same difficulty at first.

When the time came to leave the water, John flip-flopped his way up the beach with the air of a veteran snorkeller. When Christie attempted to follow suit, she tripped over her flippers and fell backwards.

Before she could struggle to her feet, Ash scooped her into his arms and, as if she were no heavier than John, carried her ashore.

'I should have warned you—it's advisable for adults to back out of the water,' he said, grinning. 'Small kids seem to manage to walk forward in flippers, but not grown-ups.'

From the water's edge to the low wall which prevented sand from encroaching on the lawns was not a great distance. But to Christie, cradled in his arms, in intimate contact with a man's almost naked body for the first time in more than four years, it seemed an eternity before he lowered her into a sitting position on the wall, and knelt to remove the flippers for her.

'I should like to stay and have dinner with you, but I have another engagement,' he said, rising to his full height and placing the flippers on the wall. 'Tomorrow morning I'm busy, so I'll come over here about two and we'll have another snorkelling session.'

Christie watched him strolling across the gardens, still wearing his wet black briefs, with a towel tossed over one shoulder, and his clothes in a canvas bag.

She wondered where he would dry and change. Presumably at Bettina's cottage.

This supposition was confirmed when, about an hour later, leaving John playing ball with another child, she walked to the main block to mail the postcards she had bought in town that morning.

As she arrived in the entrance hall, where there was a letter box by the reception desk, she was just in time to see Ash and Bettina leaving the building. She was dressed for an evening out in a long narrow backless red dress with a side-slit skirt. Her hair was loose on her shoulders, and Christie glimpsed a cascading shell ear-ring as she turned her head to speak to her tall companion. He was probably one of the few men with whom Bettina could wear high heels and still have to look up slightly, thought Christie, watching them disappear in the direction of the car park.

When Ash arrived the next day, he tossed a paper bag on to Christie's lap.

'I hope it's the right size. If not, I can change it.'

She opened the bag and pulled out a bright pink cotton bikini. Her reaction was a mixture of the feeling that she ought to be grateful to him, and a certain resentment of his assumption that a bikini of his choosing must be acceptable to her.

Before she could say anything, he told her to go and try it on.

Slim as she was, Christie would never have chosen a bikini cut as this one was. The top was gathered into a ring between her breasts, and the thin strings which held it up were attached to the ring, thus exposing the skin normally covered by the ties of an ordinary halter top. The bottom part left the sides of her hips completely bare except where the strings tied. It also exposed a great deal more of her behind than did her other swimsuits. Even so she would not have been embarrassed to wear it in front of anyone but Ash. It was the thought of his seeing her in it which made her shrink from reappearing on the verandah.

However, when she did go back he was amusing John by making a playing card appear and disappear, and he barely glanced at her.

Even when she said, 'It fits perfectly. Thank you very much for bringing it. What do I owe you?' he continued to watch his nephew's baffled face.

'Nothing,' he said. 'It's a welcome to Antigua present.'

'But Ash, I can't possibly accept—'

'Oh, come now, Christiana, this isn't the nineteenth century and, if not related by blood, we are both
in loco parentis
to this young fellow.

That allows us to dispense with most of the conventions, don't you think?'

'Some of them, I suppose. But why should you pay for this bikini as well as everything else? It must be costing you a fortune to keep us in luxury like this. I can't feel comfortable about it.'

'Ah, but you see I have a scheme to recoup my outlay".'

Having made the card materialise behind John's ear yet again, he put it in the pocket of his shirt, ruffled the child's hair, and stood up.

'Are we ready for the beach? I brought you something else; an American sun-screen with an extra high protection factor for those areas you haven't exposed yet.'

Now his dark gaze did scan her body, and she felt her colour rising, although not in the fiery blush which had suffused her face yesterday morning at Darcy's.

Striving not to lose her composure, she said, 'What sort of scheme?'

'I'll explain it some time when we're
a deux.'

He unbuckled his belt, unzipped his shorts and stepped out of them.