Sweet Seduction (19 page)

"Ask Benjamin," he repeated. "Your grandfather knows."

Twenty-Six

Locals who watched the weather were suspicious about the conditions that Wednesday. Something was happening. Something was not quite right.

Dolly was not aware of the increasing wind for a long time. The previous day had been calm and sunny with a little low cloud, a usual sort of day. A light sea breeze cooled the island. Dolly knew nothing about rising pressure or air movement from the north, and she had not noticed a thick sunset or distant lightning in an overcast sky.

She rarely listened to weather forecasts on the radio and there hadn’t been any bad storms in her lifetime. The last hurricane had been years ago and she was not interested in history.

She left Tamara at her father’s old house while she went swimming.

"You will have her, won’t you?" she pleaded, carrying the child on her hip. "Jessy has gone out and I must go swimming."

"Of course Tamara can stay with me. We’ll do some painting, won’t we,
ma petite
? I’ll get her some brushes and a pinafore."

"Thanks, Papa."

Dolly waved to André as she ran down the lane. Benjamin did not approve of her unconventional ways with her daughter, but Dolly strove for freedom from the ties of motherhood. Being a mother went on so long, every day. The sea called her with an insistent voice, like some witch from the fragrant and salty depths.

She loved her little girl dearly but could not cope with the twenty-four hour commitment. There was only so much time she could give to Tamara. Part of the day she had to have to herself, to breathe, to think, to be herself. And in case she caught sight of Reuben.

Her passion still burned as fiercely as ever. It was like a knife deep in her ribs. They spoke now, but only distantly. It had taken months before he would even nod or say hello or acknowledge her presence. She had done her best in small, tentative ways to make amends but he was unable to listen, still tormented by her decision to marry Benjamin.

"You kept saying you couldn’t marry me," she reminded him with despair. "I wanted to be married. I wanted to have my own home, not to live in a falling-down wooden shack with my father."

"You could have waited," said Reuben, tight-lipped, unable to look at her, womanly with motherhood.

"For how long, tell me? Five years, you kept saying. How could I wait that long?"

"It seems to me you married Benjamin for a bathroom," said Reuben, his voice full of disgust. "I hope you’re making real good use of it, feeling nice and clean. A bath a day will keep your true love away."

"How can you be so horrid?" Dolly flared.

"Easy. Especially when the girl you’ve loved for years marries someone else. What did you do? Throw a dice? Me or Benjamin? Did Benjamin win you in a dice game?"

When he saw Tamara for the first time, Reuben was shattered. The baby was the image of Dolly, beautiful, dark, wild-looking but with not a shred of Benjamin in her appearance. Reuben could not smother his suspicions. He remembered that ecstatic night at Sugar Hill, when they made love again and again in the big bed, before falling asleep, exhausted in each other’s arms.

Anger exploded in him and he thumped his fists together, causing pain to shoot through his wrists. If Tamara was his child, his daughter, he had lost more than his beloved Dolly . . . he had lost his family.

Dolly was relieved that Reuben and Benjamin now spoke to each other, if only guardedly. The new plant was a success and even Benjamin was showing some taciturn
approval of the new mechanisms.

That morning there had been light showers but only a gentle wind. But the sky was overcast with a low pall of altostratus with soft-looking cumulus clouds. Dolly did not like the darker sky. She wanted sunshine and clear skies as every day. There was occasional thunder, but she took no notice.

When the sky lightened over the east and the rain stopped, Dolly decided it was fine to go swimming. She did not connect the lightening of the sky with a change in wind direction.

The sea was relatively calm with any deep swells still far out. She could hear a light surf but was not disturbed by it. Her own special stretch of beach was fairly sheltered.

She did not notice the sea beginning to churn, or the large waves breaking beyond the reef and sweeping in to the shore to break again. She did not know that the sea at Hastings was washing through the Hotel Royal and that sand was flooding the road. The sea was breaking heavily over the pier head in Bridgetown.

An unexpected wave reared and broke over her head. She came up, gasping, hair strangled in her mouth.

"Ouch!" She never finished her exclamation for when she cleared her eyes, she was surprised by the change in the sea’s surface. A huge swell was causing problems for the small fishing boats and they were making hurriedly for the shore.

Now she could hear the wind whistling and groaning through the trees, sudden gusts flurrying the sand. Branches began to bend under the strain, leaves rustling and flapping
like storms of tired clapping.

Suddenly Dolly was frightened by the speed at which the weather had changed. She did not know that the wind, expected to back from north through west to south over the island, had abnormally shifted from north through east to south. A hurricane was going to hit the southern half of the island instead of passing some fifty miles north of it.

She ran, stumbling through the swirling sand. Rain was pitting the sand like a smattering of Braille. She scooped up her dress and pulled it over her wet swimming costume – Benjamin insisted that she wore one now. She began to hurry inland towards her father’s house. Her sandals lay forgotten, soon covered with shifting sand. Everything looked different.

Tamara would be terrified. The little girl never liked the sound that the wind made. Dolly knew that André would be too occupied with securing his precious paintings to give much thought or time to comforting the child.

Her lungs began to labour. She was soon out of breath, alarmed how fast the wind had whipped up. Gusts of fifty miles an hour knocked her off her feet and sent her sprawling.

How could it have changed so quickly? It had been a normal morning, if silently overcast, with a pleasant breeze. Now only a few hours later, a hurricane was sweeping the island.

Dolly was panting, heaving and coughing, trying to keep her balance, fighting to make progress against the force of the wind. She threw herself from tree to tree, clinging to any branch for support.

"Please God, look after Tamara," she gasped. "Don’t let her be frightened. My little girl. Look after her, please. Keep her safe."

The lane was already a mess of broken branches and debris, leaves hurled into the air by sudden gusts. She fell again, rolled by the violence into the dust, unable to breathe. Her hair was streaming, frock soaked and filthy. Her feet were cut and bleeding but she hardly noticed.

The noise was deafening as the hurricane tore across the southern coastal districts of the island. Trees fell, ripped from the ground, roots smashed and wind-lashed. Fences were tossed in gusts, wooden chattel houses shuddered, collapsed, the steeple of St Martin’s Church toppled. Small, sailed fishing boats sank under the turbulent seas.

Three miles away, a corrugated roof was torn from a chattel and hurled across a field.

Dolly caught sight of a flash of pink cotton. Tamara had worn a pink frock that morning. She would be blown along the ground like a doll.

"Tamara!" Dolly shrieked. Somehow she found the strength to cover the distance, scooping Tamara up, dreading that she might find her child battered and lifeless. She clutched Tamara in her arms. Tamara’s face was blotched with tears and dirt but she was still breathing.

"Mama’s here, Mama’s here," Dolly crooned, crouching down against the trunk of a tree. They must find shelter. Somehow she had to reach the house.

She tried to look around, to see which way to go, but the landscape had changed so much. Nothing was the same. There was no shelter nearby and the gusts were strengthening. It was a hell of crashing branches and groaning trees, wind howling like a dervish. She covered Tamara’s face and pressed the child to her body. Somehow they must get through to André’s house. It was constructed of wood, old but strong enough surely to withstand these gusts.

"Mama, make it stop," Tamara wept, clinging. "I don’t like it."

"Hush, hush, I will. I will," said Dolly. "We must get back to grandfather’s house. Be a brave girl now . . ."

They began to crawl along the ground, Dolly half-dragging the terrified child with her, hindered by debris and smothered in swirling leaves and sand. The noise was deafening. Tamara was screaming. It was raining again, making the ground slippery and treacherous.

Ahead, Dolly saw the shape of a familiar building, one of the outhouses, and hope surged through her. They would get there. They would reach it.

"Not long now, honey," she shouted hoarsely. "We’re nearly there. You can make it with me."

The corrugated roof had travelled three miles, born by the devil wind, scything through fields of cane, caught in the eye of the hurricane, spinning like a rotor blade.

The sheet of iron rode across Dolly’s body, a wheel of death.

They found her some hours later, still protecting the slight form of her small shocked and shivering daughter.

*
* *

Hurricane Hilary took thirty-five lives. The animals somehow protected themselves and soon returned to their normal habitats.

Eight thousand small houses were destroyed, leaving 20,000 people homeless. St Michael’s was the worst hit. About two hundred larger houses were seriously damaged. Only one church, St Martin’s, suffered. Roads were blocked by fallen trees and wreckage. Telephone and electricity supplies were blown down. A few water pipes were damaged by uprooted trees. People wandered about, shocked and stricken, unable to believe what had happened so quickly.

The sea spray, blown over the island, blistered the leaves and crops. Trees were stripped and broken. Advanced planted cane was broken down, cane blown parallel to ground surface, eventually back-rooting. Provision crops were completely destroyed. There was going to be a severe shortage of food.

Twenty-three sail-type fishing boats were lost, more damaged. Pot boats were lost and hundreds of fishing pots lost. A small motor vessel, a yacht and a schooner were hit in the Careenage. A schooner sank somewhere off Pelican Island. The beaches were strewn with wreckage for weeks. The children took it home for souvenirs.

Reuben was shattered by the damage to Sugar Hill plantation. He wandered through the bruised trees and flattened cane, full of sorrow and despair.

He did not know the news about Dolly yet. When he heard, he lost the last shreds of his youth. His spirit shrivelled and died with her.

Twenty-Seven

Breakfast together under the breadfruit tree was becoming a habit, and a sundowner on the veranda a welcomed moment of relaxation after a busy day.

"You don’t have to go back to London," said Benjamin, cradling his tall glass. "You can stay as long as you like."

"But I have a living to earn," said Kira, with a hopeless kind of guilt. She had not told him yet who she was. "I’ve no work lined up for the coming months and I’ve almost finished Giles’s research."

"You could work for me. I need someone young and enthusiastic. Why not stay and help me run my plantation? I’d teach you everything I know. You’re a bright, intelligent woman and seem to have an instinct for sugar and for Barbados."

The words ran like liquid sugar through her veins. It was what she wanted to hear. She did have an instinct for sugar plantations and their problems. She loved the fields of waving cane. It was as if she had been brought up here on the island and not in a series of bed-sits in London. Somehow she had skipped a generation.

"A woman running your plantation?" she laughed. "Doesn’t that go against the grain? I don’t know anything about sugar except where to pour it." Kira kept her voice light. "Anyway, Giles would have a fit if I started working for you. He is already uptight about me staying here."

"What does Giles matter? Let the damned man have a fit. I’d like to see it."

Benjamin chuckled into his cool iced rum drink. He called it the Fitt’s House Special and he would not give Kira the recipe. She was working on it.

"Giles would make it difficult for me," Kira went on, more to herself. The damn man.
Those words ran round her mind. "A woman helping to run the Reed Plantation would be like a red rag. Out of the question."

Sometimes she wondered if those moments on the sand had ever happened. Could her body ever forget them? It had been half delirium from near-drowning and shock. Was it so terrible that she was Benjamin Reed’s granddaughter? Giles had reacted as if it was a crime.

"You’re efficient and talented. Think about it, Kira, and let me know. There’s no hurry. It’s a big decision to make."

* * *

"Blast you, man, what were you thinking, letting her run around alone in a hurricane? And what about Tamara? Didn’t you have any thought for either of them?" Reuben’s face was contorted with fury.

"I didn’t know where she was," Benjamin groaned. "She had a mind of her own. You can’t blame me."

"I do blame you. Why didn’t you employ a nanny if Tamara was too much for Dolly to look after?" Reuben glared.

"Too expensive. I’ve a lot of debts."

Reuben could have throttled him. "You and your debts. This damned fool castle and the money you borrowed from the firm. I’m going to see that every penny is paid back. I won’t let you get away with it, Benjamin Reed."

"Are you threatening me?"

"Take it any way you like, you bastard."

 
Reuben took a pace forward, his hands flying to Benjamin’s throat. He was seeing red, the red of Dolly’s blood across her body.

Benjamin fought him off. They were both heaving, fighting for Dolly. But she was dead and neither of them would admit that she had gone.

* * *

Giles was polite to her when they met around, complimentary about her work and about as friendly as a cobra. He had put up an invisible wall and Kira could not understand why.

They came face-to-face at a dance, both guests of another sugar planter. It was held at a local night-spot with a steel band on a small concrete floor, among swaying palms, only yards from the murmuring sea. The music was rhythmic and sexy; the singers making up verse after verse with impromptu words; the drummers putting their souls into the pulsing beat.

The metallic sound was so right out in the open air, the waves washing gently on the shore, breakers parading far out to sea. The wasted slip of an old moon hung in the sky. Kira let a special kind of peace steal over her.

Giles asked her to dance. Kira accepted without thinking. He moved with the easy rhythm that belonged to a man who had been dancing to music all his life, who belonged to the islands not to any polished Western ballroom dance floor.

The bar was a wooden shack with thatched palm leaf roof. The pale moonlight reflected in the rows of bottles and glasses. It was crowded with people.

"I’m glad you didn’t dress up," he said, admiring her gold-threaded blue sari and bare feet.

"You said not to dress up for a steel band."

It was a bewitching night, the breeze from the sea full of land scents blowing through her hair, but no longer feeling dangerous. Kira danced in a daze, so pleased to see Giles, his hands touching her occasionally to remind her they were dancing together, catching hands one moment then losing them. They looked at each other as if they had forgotten anyone else existed.

Kira could not stop herself from hoping. Perhaps Giles had now accepted that she was Ben’s granddaughter and realised that it didn’t matter. She wanted the situation to go back to how they used to be.

"You said wearing a sari was perfect for dancing," said Kira. "Something cool."

"So I did," he said, moving his cheek against the softness of her hair. "I was right, wasn’t I?"

Kira closed her eyes, starved for his touch. A wave of tenderness rippled through her, mingling with her resentment, not voicing any disappointment. She missed him so much.

"Can we talk sometime? About us? There’s a lot I want to say," she asked.

"Of course," he murmured.

But the moment was lost. Some more people arrived who knew Giles and they put tables together and suddenly it was one big noisy party. The intimacy had gone. Giles was laughing with his friends and later he got up to dance with one of the girls, a beautiful slinky black girl in a skimpy silver dress, her hair braided in an intricate design and an exotic flower behind her ear.

Then Lace arrived. Kira recognised her immediately. She was wearing another slip of a dress, pink lace, long legs and bare shoulders. She came straight over to Kira, eyes flashing.

"I told you it wouldn’t last, didn’t I? I’m always right where Giles is concerned," she said, taking Kira’s drink from the table, throwing away the straw and drinking long from the glass. What was the matter with the girl?

"Have you left school yet?" asked Kira.

Lace looked surprised. "Yes. Why?"

"Your manners are positively kindergarten. It’s a wonder you are let out without a nanny."

"Has he told you about our mother?"

"Yes, I know she has MS. I’m so sorry."

"Ah, that much you know. He’s dumped you already, has he? I recognise the redundant tone of voice. Don’t worry, Russian-named Kira. There are plenty more fish in the sea. Someone else will snap you up. You’re quite a catch, I understand."

Kira felt herself shrinking. She wanted to go home. The leg, which had not troubled her all evening, suddenly began to ache. "Go and enjoy yourself elsewhere," she said, getting up. "I don’t need your brand of conversation."

She found Giles and asked him if he could take her home; she was tired.

"Sure," he said, searching for his keys. "I’ll drop you off at Fitt’s House then come back. The night is young and I haven’t seen these friends for months. They’ve been in the States."

The States. The women had the gleam and glamour of New York on their skin and the clothes they wore.

It hurt Kira immeasurably that Giles was going back to the party after he dropped her. He was demonstrating again that he was a free agent. He could do anything he wanted. Barbadians liked to stay up late and sleep during the heat of the day. It was their way of life. The cooler night hours were their leisure and pleasure time.

"Thank you," she said, as he dropped her at the end of the drive to Fitt’s House. It was all she could do not to turn and cling to him. Her legs felt as stiff as poles as she swung them out of his car and closed the door. She could not look at him.

"See you in my office tomorrow. Ten o’clock."

Kira had forgotten. Her work on the plight of the small farmers and their transport problems was finished. She had written her report. Benjamin had borrowed a word processor for her and she had spent the last few evenings putting all her notes and observations into a spreadsheet.

Benjamin was still up, reading
The Advocate
, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. "You’re back from the party so soon," he said, sounding pleased.

"I was too tired to dance," said Kira.

"You’ve been overdoing it these last few days. You ought to relax more. And perhaps someone ought to take a look at that leg of yours. It doesn’t seem right that it’s still hurting."

"They said it would take time."

"But not this long, surely? There’s a very good orthopaedic surgeon visiting Bridgetown this week. Would you let me make an appointment for you?"

"If you like," Kira said wearily, then remembered her manners. "Yes, thank you, Ben."

"Off to bed, then, my girl. Take a drink, whatever you want."

She bent and kissed his leathery cheek. It was the first time. "You’re so kind to me," she said.

* * *

Reuben was still at the factory. It was late. He worked on auto-pilot these days. He could not remember when he had last slept properly. He had a family now; married a local woman, the perfect planter’s wife, Elise, and had two small children, Giles and Lace. He ought to be happy. But Dolly haunted him and their child, Tamara, was a living reminder. He was being eaten away with regret. He struggled in a mesh of grief and guilt. He was trapped by his old love for Dolly.

He climbed the iron steps to his office then up further to the galleries where the furnaces burned day and night.

He went round checking things which had already been checked. A kind of focussed stillness made him concentrate. This was his job, his work, his life. Sugar and more sugar, producing calories and alcohol. Surely he should be proud of his work?

For a moment he thought someone else was there. He stopped, listening, his feet scraping on the iron walkway. Strange, but he had a feeling he was not alone, then dismissed it. It could be a bird or an animal.

He peered into a furnace. There was no need, but the glowing red and gold embers below held a kind of deadly fascination. They were like an entrance to hell.

No-one knew exactly what happened. But they found what was left of Reuben Earl the next morning. And it wasn’t much.

* * *

She drove into the yard at Reed & Earl on the dot of ten o’clock, overwhelmed by the sickly sweet smell of the cane and molasses. She parked the Moke next to Giles’s car. Her skin had a deep honey tan which was shown off to perfection by the short-sleeved blue cotton shirt and skirt she was wearing. She had made up her mind. Today she was going to have it out with him. She wanted to know why being Benjamin’s granddaughter was such a sin.

As she switched off the engine, Giles came out of his office. His face was expressionless, sleeves rolled to the elbows, arms burnt brown by the sun. He hesitated, then came down the steps to meet her.

"Sorry about the party," he said. "I hadn’t seen Patsie for years. I went to school with her."

"I’m not your keeper," she said, not betraying by a flicker of an eyelash the tidal wave of feeling that the sight of him always produced. "Anyway, old friends are always special."

"So are new friends," he said, opening the door of the Moke. He took in the sight of her smooth bare legs, looking longingly at the length of them. "Have you brought your report?"

"Yes. It’s all here." She tapped her briefcase.

"Nice case," he commented.

"Benjamin gave it to me for my birthday."

"You’ve had a birthday?" He sounded surprised.

"Yes. Don’t most people?"

"I didn’t know the date. We could have had a party."

"You weren’t around."

He made a sharp, exasperated sound and turned on his heel, taking the steps up to his office two at a time. Kira hurried after him, keeping her eyes off his well-washed jeans and long, muscular legs.

"Briefly then," she said, trying to sound cool and efficient. "There aren’t going to be any small sugar farmers in five years if you don’t help them now. They are turning to vegetables and tourism. Huge tracts of sugar land are being lost. And a whole lot of smallholdings are lying fallow because it’s cheaper than losing good money trying to cultivate them."

"You went out to research lorries and transport," he said grimly, pouring two glasses of lime juice, adding ice.

"Hand-in-hand," said Kira. "The small farmer can’t grow cane for several reasons and transporting his crop is only one of his problems. The decline stems from cultivation and reaping, monkeys and fires. He can’t undertake the cultivation, fertilisation, weeding, cut and load the cane in a one-man operation. He buys fertilizer and it’s impossible for him to check that it finds its way to his fields. Nor can he be certain that all of his cane reaches your factory and is registered in his name. The whole system is eroded with errors."