Bride's Dilemma Page 11

  “Then settle down and cool off.” John ordered.

  Liza squatted and cast a glance from her father to Tina. Her eyebrows disappeared into her fringe. “Don’t tell me you two have been having a tiff already?” she demanded.

  “Of course we haven’t,” Tina avoided John's eye and fiddled with the flowers in her lap. “Shall I make you a coronet of these little blue flowers, Liza?” she asked.

  And while John lay back on the grass, his arms pillowed under his head, Tina wove the flowers into a circlet watched by Liza. A little later they drove to the seashore restaurant called Smuggler’s Cove and sitting at a table under a giant rainbow sunshade they had long cool drinks and cream ices. Tina tried to feel relaxed, but she succeeded only with an effort.

  The sky was like rose-tinged silk when they returned to the car and big sea-birds hovered above the sheet of gold that was the sea. Far off the mountains of Jamaica were a purple chain. A glorious scene, lost too quickly in the twilight that come so suddenly to hot climates. On the way home, Liza’s sleepy head rested against Tina, and the weight and warmth of the child was food for Tina’s hungering spirit. She encircled her with an arm, but John at the wheel remained aloof from what she had to offer. And because she was young, sensitive, and afraid of intruding, she left him to his thoughts and they drove on through the star-dusted, palm-fringed dusk in silence.

  Marketing with Topaz turned out to be a thoroughly diverting and interesting experience. They were chauffeured as far as the wharf by one of John’s servants, where Tina told him to wait, then she and Topaz made their way along the crowded quay where the air was salty from the glistening loads of snapper and kingfish being swung out of the holds of the fishing boats, and lively with the work chants of the strapping, colored seamen.

  Topaz loped along beside Tina, a head-basket balanced on a plaited fibre-ring, her strawberry-pink shirtwaister blending with the smooth coffee of her throat and arms. Tina wore a shady hat, but already she was moist from the heat and felt her dress clinging between her shoulder blades. Maybe she was crazy to take on this task, but there were too many indications that she could develop into a nonetity around Blue Water House unless she exerted herself. The butler and the cook had turned sour at first, when she had interviewed them in the kitchen quarters that morning, but she had stuck to her guns. She was the missus, but if she allowed them to overrule her, they would do so with impunity.

  “Massa John complain about de food I make?” the cook had demanded aggressively, looking on the verge of snatching off his white cap and apron.

  “You’re a good cook, Jason,” Tina had soothed him, “but I want to show you some English cooking. I’m sure yams, marrows and sweet potatoes can be baked and stuffed, but I’ve been told that you dish them up boiled all the time.”

  The cook’s eyes had looked rather boiled at that remark. “Dey fine like dat,” he had exploded.

  “Certainly, a couple of times a week,” she agreed. “I’m not trying to put your back up, Jason, but I’m sure you have Massa John’s interest at heart almost as much as I have, and it will be nice to give him a wider variety of meals.”

  And because the West Indian temperament, the male one, is hot on wives pandering to husbands, Jason suddenly showed a part of the wide smile he was capable of and allowed her to inspect the store cupboard and its contents. She had discovered a singular lack of preserves and jams. On such an island, where the fruit was so luscious but where unfortunately it so easily spoiled, she considered it a great waste not to preserve some of it for pies and flans. She had told Topaz that she wished to order a batch of fruit, and they were making their way to the store the colored woman considered the most reliable. Topaz was shrewd and Tina was content to rely on her judgment.

  They arrived at the square where the stores and stallholders were congregated. The atmosphere was noisy and haggling; brash and spicy with a mixture of aromas, the colorful native wares and foods meeting the eye at every turn. Pork, salt fish-cakes, the orange meat of sea-eggs, corn and cassava. The kind of food Tina suspected John had been living on, eating to satisfy his hunger, poor darling, and vaguely craving the steak and kidney pie he had said he was partial to. Spotting a grocery store with a butchery section, Tina decided then and there to buy steak and the rest of the ingredients for a thoroughly English dinner that evening.

  Back in England, Tina’s aunt had done most of the shopping, and this morning she experienced her first wifely delight of having a plump purse with which to splash out on a jar of brandied peaches, a huge coral and cream lobster, a tin of asparagus, a deep yellow and scarlet Dutch cheese, some dark, delicious looking gherkins . . . into the large basket carried by Topaz went a variety of eatables with which to woo her husband, while a tiny smile clung to the comers of her mouth. Over at the butchery section she thought it wise to let the more experienced Topaz select the chuck steak and kidneys, then she decided that a chicken would be nice for tomorrow evening. Topaz prodded the breastbone of the bird the butcher was extolling and, finding it hard, loudly demanded to be shown another. “We wants tender meat, not ole crow,” she informed him spiritedly.

  That’s how she was in the fruit store, but it seemed part of the recognized shopping formula to squeeze fruits, prod vegetables, and accept for tasting purposes refreshing triangles or mango or starapple; a section of tangerine, or a Cay lime. Tina found this horny-skinned citrus really tasty and ordered several pounds for bottling.

  The store owner was a sooty giantess named Evadne, who wore a gay bandana and a glistening smile. In between taking orders, she and Topaz exchanged the latest titbits of gossip, mainly concerned with who was marrying and carrying. “Ma sister Sapphire’s second goin’ to be a girl,” Topaz stated firmly. “Her goin’ to get birthed at the moon’s waning.”

  “Dat one sure sign,” Evadne agreed, tossing a ring of freshly cut pineapple into her pink cavern of a mouth. “How dat husban’ of hers settlin' down? Dem clear boys a bit high-nosed.”

  Tina, having a pumpkin weighed by a topsy-plaited assistant, gathered that the word ‘clear’ meant a dash of white blood in this brother-in-law of her maid’s. She pretended not to notice the dark eye Topaz rolled in her direction and had nase-berries added to her substantial order.

  “Chocolate an’ tea don’ mix,” Evadne declared. “Dey okay kep’ separate.”

  She flashed her smile at Tina to let her see she meant nothing personal by this remark, and added that she hoped the new Mis’ Trecarrel would come regular to her shop. On the way back to her car, with Topaz carrying the shopping on her head, Tina wondered if Joanna had done her own marketing. Somehow she couldn’t imagine it. Instinctively she knew that in every way she was different from the woman who had hair like dark red silk, who had loved the sea in all its moods, who had been at home in the saddle, at the tiller of a boat, at the foot of a table of guests at Blue Water House. A gracious hostess, a vivacious wife, a popular friend. She had surely been all three—yet something had gone wrong between her and John.

  Tina screwed her handkerchief in a moist hand and felt certain Paula Carrish had caused that rift. From what Ralph Carrish had said it was evident that Joanna had been highly strung and easily aroused to distrust, and Paula had often posed for John in the privacy of his studio. No ordinary woman, but one whose female magnetism reached out like a caress when she looked at a man. What more easy than for her to insinuate poison into Joanna's suggestible mind?

  “Dahling ... fancy seeing you!” That seductive voice with the dropped r’s was unmistakable, and Tina knew she lost color as long fingers were laid on her arm and she met a pair of green eyes beneath the wide brim of a crystal straw hat. Paula! A patronizing smile on her thin ruby lips, and clad in cool jade-green shantung with jade stones swinging in her ear-lobes.

  “Hullo, Miss Carrish.” Tina had to force herself to sound amiable. “As you can see, I’ve been doing some marketing.”

  “Heavens, how conscientious of you—on your honeymoon!” Paula flicker
ed a smile over Tina’s face, with little tendrils of pale hair clinging to her hot, damp forehead. “I always do my marketing by phone, but you new little brides are always bursting to please with a fledgling eagerness, aren’t you? What a shame the gilt’s already off the ginger-bread for John!” Paula’s fingers tightened meaningly on the fine bones of Tina’s wrist. “I Shouldn’t waste the energy, my dear. Keeping young in a sub-tropical climate means keeping cool, and right now you look in need of a long iced booster. I’m on my way to the Spindrift Club for a cocktail, so how about joining me? We should get to know each other—” The woman gave a throaty little laugh. “After all, I’m one of your husband’s closest friends.”

  The meaning behind those words wasn’t lost on Tina. She was meant to accept them as a challenge, and she did so. “A long cool drink would be welcome, Miss Carrish,” she replied, squarely meeting the green eyes that glimmered beneath languorous, tinted lids.

  “The name is Paula, my dear.” The long fingers slipped away from Tina's wrist. “You and I must not be formal—I’m sure we’re going to find we have several things in common.”

  Tina shivered, and camouflaged it by turning quickly to her maid, who had fallen back a few paces. The dark eyes of the colored woman were fixed upon Paula, and Tina surprised a look of antagonism in them before Topaz assumed a polite, listening look as Tina told her to go along home in the car. “Tell my husband where I am if he asks, Topaz,” she added. “Say I’ll pick up a cab.”

  “Yes’m.” Topaz then loped off along the wharf, swinging her arms and seemingly unaware of the heavy basket of goods on her crinkly head.

  “Primitive creatures, aren’t they?” Paula drawled.

  Not only they, Tina thought, falling into step beside the tall lance-thin figure who had the faintly undulating walk and hardly discernible bosom of the models Tina had watched with Gaye Lanning when they had gone shopping for her trousseau. All that seemed to have happened in another life— Chorley—the empty years with Aunt Maud. Only the here and now was real. The glitter of the sun on the tourmaline clasp of Paula’s bag. Her shadowed profile under the wide brim of her hat, pale as white jade except for the ruby slash of a mouth...

  There was hate in her, Tina felt. The kind that has its birth from the pangs of a frustrated love. It was eating at her heart like a canker ... it made her a dangerous woman with the weapon of some secret knowledge aimed at Tina’s vulnerable heart.

  Chapter Six

  PAULA was a member of the Spindrift Club, and on their way through the long modern cocktail lounge she was hailed by various acquaintances who treated Tina to long stares of frank curiosity. Paula introduced her to a planter and his wife, neighbors she obviously didn’t wish to offend, but she seemed eager to talk to Tina alone and made charming excuses not to linger when the couple invited them to have a drink.

  They finally settled into wicker chairs out on the canopied observation deck, which overlooked the private beach that shelved to the sea where bronzed young people were skimming the surf on narrow boards. “Join me in a Sangaree,” Paula suggested when a waiter came to take their order. “It’s a drink I recommend.”

  Tina nodded, unaware that wine and curaçao were mixed in the concoction which eventually arrived in highball glasses tinkling with ice and decorated with lime slices and nutmeg. Tina chewed a pretzel and gazed down, unrelaxed, at the sun-baskers and surfers. One sun-tanned giant was riding the glistening curves of aquamarine with a superb nonchalance, his lionesque blond head thrown back, his wide-shouldered, lean-hipped body somehow pagan in its lithe grace as he shot over the glassy corrugations.

  Paula was also watching him as she fitted a cigarette into a jade holder and flicked a matching lighter at the tip. “Impressive male animal, isn’t he?” she drawled. “Men like that usually haven’t a thought in their heads beyond fun and females, but Dacier d’Andremont is an interesting exception. There’s very good blood in him, I believe, and the d’Andremont property on Martinique is said to be extensive.”

  “It’s unusual for a Frenchman to have such light colored hair, isn’t it?” Tina remarked, taking a sip at her drink and blinking a little at its potency.

  “He’s an unusual guy in several respects,” Paula tapped ash from her cigarette with a fingernail enamelled to match the jade holder. “Despite all that physical attraction, he’s the invulnerable type who can take women or leave them, and most women find such a man a perpetual challenge. Each one feels he should settle for matrimony— with her. Talking about matrimony, how are you settling down as a wife?”

  Here it came, Tina thought, the probing into John’s second marriage. Paula could no more keep away from it than the golden bees that zoomed into the trumpets of flowers cloaking a wall near Tina.

  “Quite well,” she said brightly. “I’m firm friends with Liza already.”

  “And with John, of course?” Paula insinuated softly.

  The question was a double-edged probe, and Tina met it with the pluck of desperation. “Naturally we’re friends,” she replied. “Don’t you think husbands and wives should be?”

  “Only with other husbands and wives, my dear.” Paula had slipped from indolence into alertness without moving a muscle of her graceful body, but it was evident in the emerald glint of her eyes and the way the tip of her cigarette went danger red. “Being pals is all right in a placid set-up, but hardly possible in a passionate one. A girl might as well stay with her mother if that’s the kind of relationship she wants with a man.”

  “My mother's dead,” Tina said, aware that all she could do was fight edged wit with blunt honesty. “I was brought up by an aunt, and I assure you I prefer being with John.”

  “You’ve always worked for your living, eh?” Paula swung a long, slim foot in a black patent shoe, flicked away ash with a fingernail that had never broken on the keyboard of a typewriter, exuded a perfume that had probably cost several guineas for a couple of ounces. “Were you a shopgirl—something like that?”

  Tina’s skin prickled with antagonism at the way Paula looked and spoke, while her fingers tightened on her drink until her nails slowly drained of their natural coral-pink. “I was a shorthand-typist, Miss Carrish,” she replied stiffly, wishing she dared tag on that even had she been fortunate enough to possess a brother in a well-paid position she would never have made a hanger-on of herself and then presumed to act the lady bountiful with other people.

  “A typist, eh?” The narrowed green eyes raked Tina and found nothing in her that might appeal to a man; obviously all she saw was the self-consciousness, the angularity of lingering adolescence, the retreating look of a kitten who had learned long ago to keep mischief and love to herself. “You’ve landed quite a large fish for small bait, haven’t you, my dear?” Cigarette smoke slipped from the thin blaze of a mouth, hanging on the air with that deliberate remark.

  Tina heard the words and felt witless, impo-tently aware that when she was no longer face to face with this woman she would find herself manufacturing quite a few barbed answers. “I—I didn’t marry John because I was after a cushy meal ticket, if that’s what you’re implying,” she fought back. “It wouldn’t matter to me if he wasn’t a clever sculptor a—and quite well off.”

  “Oh, don’t kid me you don’t like your cake nice and plummy!” Ice tinkled . . . the ice in Paula’s drink mixing with the chips in her voice. “John almost didn’t take that trip to England . . . he suffers quite a bit with his left leg, but then, of course, you must know that.”

  Ice trickled down Tina’s spine—she hadn’t known it!

  “I guess you happened along,” Paula drawled, “just as John was noticing a few threads of silver in his hair and needing the reassurance of men of his age—that he’s still able to attract a chick. It’s a love affair with most men. You’re to be congratulated on hooking him legally.”

  “Thank you.” Tina spoke without conscious irony, her thoughts with John, who told her so little about what pleased and hurt him. Paula knew so m
uch more about him than she did, and the knowledge left a bitter taste her drink could not dispel. A pulse hammered in her temple and she took off her hat and shook back her hair, wanting through it the breeze that was stirring the fronded, sinuous palms down on the beach. The blond giant in white trunks no longer formed part of the sapphire and silver mosaic . . .

  “Why don’t you have your hair cut and styled?” Paula remarked. “Long hair without a natural wave is inclined to look rather lank.”

  Her own sienna tresses were coiled into a rich knot at the nape of her neck, and Tina, tired of being needled, got back with a jab. “John has specially asked me not to have my hair cut,” she replied. “He likes it this way.”

  “But it makes you look like an illustration for Alice in Wonderland!” Paula laughed glossily. “John didn’t marry you just to give Liza a sister, did he?”

  “I certainly hope so!” Tina’s usually quiet temper was having an edge put on it, and she managed to inject into those four words a meaning Paula couldn’t fail to understand. She saw the shock of her implication drill through the other woman, who sat very still, gazing fixedly at the ocean, then the picture changed as swiftly as it does on a screen and her long white hand was signalling the waiter to bring repeats of the potent Sangaree. Tina wanted to refuse a second drink, to rise and run, frantic as a mouse that had dared to pop out of its hole. Her fingernails dug into the straw brim of her hat.

  “I’d rather like to show you something.” Paula flicked open her bag and took out a small case that opened to show a pair of colored photographs set side by side. She handed the case to Tina, who took it with a hand that showed the state of her nerves. The man was unmistakably John ... when he had been the husband of the girl in the frame beside him.

  Tina was lost to her surroundings as she gazed at the photograph, absorbing every detail of the fascinating face. The wing-shaped eyebrows, enormous hazel-green eyes, small chiselled nose and rich red curve of a mouth. And the hair! Glossy, sienna-brown like Paula’s, but softly clouding about the slim white throat. Tina’s heart was painfully squeezed, for Joanna had been lovely and appealing, a man’s dream of heaven on earth!