Bride's Dilemma Read online

  This particular evening, after coffee and cognacs, they sat in their usual separateness in cushioned cane chairs, the lamp above John flickering its light over his dark head and angular features. Absorbed in what he was doing, she knew he was totally withdrawn from an awarenss of her. She watched him, shifting his pipe now and again, tapping his left thumb against the cleft in his chin, nodding to himself and adding another line or curve to the sketch he was working on. In a way it pleased Tina that she did not intrude on his working mood, that she was not an object of discord that sent him to the seclusion of his studio. This was the only real intimacy of her marriage, she realized, but the sort that usually came to a couple when their heady raptures had matured into a deeper-toned relationship.

  Tina, only twenty-one and with the static of love sparking in her veins, wanted those heady raptures . . .

  Grown restless, she put aside her book and went to the parapet of the veranda, where she leant on it and listened to the chirruping of the cicadas and occasional croak of a tree-frog. The palm trees rustled and between their fronds glinted the stars that seemed to mass into brooches against the dense velvet of the tropical sky. A shy little horn of a moon was piercing the velvet, the milky glow draining the touch of honey from Tina’s skin and leaving her throat and arms moth-white against the blue of her dress.

  She tensed and gripped the stone of the parapet as nuttily-sweet smoke drifted to her nostrils and John strolled over. “Grand night, isn’t it?” he murmured above her head. “You could count the stars ... is that what you’re doing, Tina, or are you wishing on them?”

  “There’s a new moon,” she said. “I’ve wished on that.”

  “What for, I wonder?” She heard a faint catch in his voice. “But I mustn’t ask, of course, otherwise your wish won’t come true.” He moved and leant an elbow on the parapet, facing her in the moon-glow. “Are you superstitious, Tina?”

  “About some things,” she admitted, thinking of the frangipani which dripped in a pale mass from a nearby tree, filling the air with its peachy tang. “I know you men put more faith in down to earth realities, but think of the fun you’re missing in not being able to believe that a pixie in your purse will bring luck, and that when a frog’s vest turns from gold to russet there will be rain.”

  “I wish, Tina, that you could stay as disenchanted by life’s realities as you are right now.” His face as he spoke wore an expression that baffled her, he seemed irritated and yet reluctantly amused. “We all have to grow up some time, however, and I’m warning you that the situation between us is heading for a showdown. We should have had it before we got married, but there just wasn't time for heart-to-heart chats—” he paused, raking the pallor of her face with slitted blue eyes. “You’re frightened, aren’t you?”

  Terrified, she could have answered. He wanted one of two things of her, a loveless marriage or an annulment of the farce. She . . . she wanted his love.

  She watched him tap out his pipe against the edge of his hand, then thrust it into a pocket. One of his arms slipped round her and he held her quietly as he gazed down in the whispering garden. In a while he said: “Liza’s off to a birthday party tomorrow afternoon, isn’t she?”

  Tina nodded. “She’s looking forward to it. It’s a pity this is such a wideflung neighborhood and that she hasn't a next-door friend.”

  “She has you until she returns to school.” He spoke rather dryly. “Anyway, tomorrow afternoon I’m going to take you to Orange Coral Cay to meet an old friend of mine, Rachel Courtney. She lives on the cay and is quite a character. You’ll like her.”

  “Orange Coral Cay,” Tina repeated. “What a colorful name for an island?”

  “Mmmm.” He glanced down at her. “Do you like Ste. Monique, Tina? Does it seems as romantic to you as on the day I told you about it? Or do you find that a closer acquaintance has dispelled the magic? Sometimes that happens, no matter how desperately we cling to the hope that it won’t.”

  Her heart shrank within her, for that surely was what had happened to him. He had hoped in England to recapture what he had once known with Joanna—instead he found himself robbed of his hope, disappointed in the young, callow thing he had so impetuously married. Tina could have wept, but tears would have given her away to him. He would be compassionate and mop her dry against his shoulder, but of all the things she craved from him, pity was the least of them. She therefore clung to her control and her pride as she assured him that she found Ste. Monique a lovely and interesting place.

  She knew the minute she spoke that she sounded like a tourist on a visit, someone who expected to be leaving instead of staying. John gripped her shoulders and searched her face with eyes that seemed to burn with an impatience he was only barely controlling. “Don't be stiff and polite with me, Tina,” he crisped. “It’s disconcerting . . . you make me feel that I’ve hurt you in some way without being aware of doing so. What are you sulking about? That spat in the car the other afternoon?”

  “Oh, that!” She managed a laugh of dismissal. “I’m used to being called incompetent.”

  “I don’t happen to think you incompetent, you little fool!” Now he was really angry, his lean features carved of it, his fingers bruising her shoulder bones. “Snap out of this stupid habit of thinking yourself less than you are, and develop some self-esteem.”

  “What on ?” she asked, the stone of the parapet against her spine, the tormenting length and strength of John’s body pressing hers. “Do you think I don’t know that when people look at me they’re comparing me to Joanna and finding me a poor substitute? I have no beauty of face and form. I’m a novice at all the things she could do so well—” Then, unforgivably, prodded on by the devouring pain of his closeness of body and separateness of heart, she added wildly: “You’d have done better to marry Paula. She’s much more suitable in every way.”

  He caught his breath, sharply, then as though he knew no other way to silence her, short of striking her, John ground her mouth to numbness beneath his. His arms crushed her ribs and she felt the frantic pounding of his heart against her. It was as though he wanted to kill her, and in a mindless panic she pushed, fought, gripped wildly a fistful of his hair as he swung her to the cushioned lounger. Desperately she tried to wrench free of his assaulting mouth, for not like this had she wanted him, in anger and reckless passion . ..

  And yet of their own volition her fingers relaxed their straining grip on his hair and found his face. She felt the warm, moist skin, the pulse hammering madly beside his mouth . . . dragged suddenly from hers as though something jerked him cruelly to his senses. She watched with wide, dazed eyes as he loomed to his feet, then turned blindly from her and shot down the steps into a thick wedge of shadow. His footfalls died away into the heart of the garden, and slowly a shudder of revulsion swept over Tina. Now he would hate her for what she had forced him to reveal ... a hunger and an anguish connected with Paula Carrish!

  With a hand holding a broken silk strap to her shoulder she made her way upstairs to her bedroom. She locked herself in, not out of trepidation but in case he came in to apologize and found her weeping her heart out in her pillows.

  Last night’s shattered emotions had jelled together into a thin protective skin, and Tina appeared for breakfast looking calm even if she didn’t feel it. Liza was full of chatter, which seemed to ease the tension, and when the meal ended she hurried Tina away to help select a dress for the party that afternoon. It came out that a rather dishy boy was going to be there, and Tina, lending an ear to this tale of young love, was reminded of her own empty childhood and the things she had been unable to confide to her aunt.

  Aunt Maud had not been an easy person to talk to, and from out of those childhood repressions had sprung Tina’s present inability to tell John, simply and fearlessly, that she loved him. She shrank away from it more than ever since last night, for there had been no tenderness, nothing but a fierce hunger in his kisses and the way he had held her. He had triggered off responses in her be
cause of her feeling for him, but in the clarity of daylight she knew that a consummation obtained from passion would not have brought them closer to each other. Certainly not a passion resulting from what he seemed to feel in a strange, bitter way for another woman!

  Tina and the child finally settled on a dress, an apricot confection with ribbon trimming, then they went out to the garden to sit in a canopied couch-swing. The atmosphere was hammering with heat and Tina didn’t want Liza over-exerting herself down on the beach, so to keep her amused she read aloud to her a couple of chapters of The Coral Island, a yarn she had loved herself as a child. She had lived in library books. They had opened up for her a warm, beckoning world where she had found excitement and escape from Maud Manson’s harsh personality.

  “You make it sound so real,” Liza said admiringly, when Tina grew thirsty and had orange drinks brought out to them. “You made me go cold when you read that cave exploring bit, with the water gradually rising outside and the children looking at each other with big, scared eyes. Ooh, look, I’ve still got goosebumps!”

  With her legs curled beneath her, Tina sucked her orange juice through a straw. “Make friends with books, Liza, and you'll never know what it is to be bored,” she advised. “Pop records are great fun, but don’t neglect all the best things, especially fine music and the splendid kind of art your father gives to the world.”

  “Pops is clever, isn’t he?” Liza swung the couch and crunched the cube of ice out of her drink. “I bet I won’t have his abilities when I grow up. Anyway, it isn’t important for a girl to be as clever as a man, is it, Tina?”

  “If she wants a career it helps, Liza. But it’s much better to have a warm heart if a girl is more interested in marriage.”

  “What about being nice-looking?” Liza asked. “My friends at school say boys aren’t interested in girls unless they’re pretty.”

  “I don’t think that’s strictly true,” Tina smiled. “It must be nice to be pretty and admired, of course, but a bit on the empty side for a boy if there’s nothing inside the colorful wrapping. I’d say most boys like a girl they can talk to as well as enjoy looking at.”

  Liza hugged her knees against her chest and blinked her long, dark lashes as she thought this over. “You’re nice to talk to,” she informed Tina, then added: “Everyone says my mother was beautiful, but I was so young when she died and I can’t remember her at all. But I can remember my Cornish Nanna. Pops took me to England to see her when I was about six, just before she died. She was little and thin, like a pixie, with ever so many lines in her face. She told me to love Pops very much, but never to—to think I owned him or that he owned me. What did she mean, Tina?” “That if we aren’t careful, darling, we can make life a burden for the people we love. We can possess them, greedily, as we might a special toy or ornament, never wanting anyone else to touch them.” Tina curled an arm about Liza and gave her a squeeze. “You love your father in the very best way because you’ve been able to accept me as your stepmother. If you hadn’t done so, then your love would have been the kind your grandmother was talking about. The selfish, clinging kind that strangles love in the other person.”

  “I don’t like that word stepmother. It’s hard, with edges jutting out all over it, and it doesn't suit you one little bit.” Liza nuzzled against Tina’s shoulder like an affectionate puppy, then drew back as Tina caught her breath in pain. “Did I hurt you?” the child asked in alarm.

  “No, it was just ray bra strap digging in me.” Tina drew the dark head back against her shoulder, which under her dress was marked in several places by plumdark bruises. They had shocked her when she had seen them that morning, the tangible evidence of John’s violence last night, put there when he had forced her to quiescence on the lounger in the veranda. She hadn’t known that John was capable of giving way like that, and it had been terribly late when she had finally heard him enter his room. Just once had their eyes met across the breakfast table, a cool, withdrawn expression in his which had chilled Tina’s heart. But towards the end of the meal he had said: “Don’t forget we’re going to see Rachel Courtney this afternoon.”

  She took that as a tacit agreement that they would forget last night. Pretend that agonizing scene had not occurred. Oh, God, who was John kidding? He must know as well as she that things had now taken a turn for the worse between them.

  A bird settled on a branch of a nearby magnolia tree, and Tina, watching it perched there in a wondering, uncertain way, felt that it typified her own position at Blue Water House. She, too, trembled on the verge of flight though she longed to settle down and build her nest.

  That afternoon when Joe nosed the motor-launch through the reef, choppy little waves were dancing on the water, while the air shimmered with heat. For coolness Tina wore an apple-green halter dress, the straps thankfully wide enough to conceal her bruised shoulder. A coolie hat shaded her eyes. John, smoking a cheroot beside her, was in cream tropical drill. It threw into relief his dark Cornish looks and made him seem rather foreign.

  “Say, Joe,?” he suddenly called out, “is there a storm building up?”

  “Reckon there is, boss.” Joe scanned the sky with his seaman’s eyes. “What time it start I cain’t figger. You want for me to turn back?”

  “No, we’ll carry on to Miss Courtney’s place. She’s expecting us.” John glanced down at Tina. “If the weather turns dodgy, the Macraes will keep Liza overnight, so don’t go getting jumpy.”

  Her hands had clenched on the rail at the word storm, and it was just like John’s sharp eyes to spot the action. “It’s natural for me to worry about her,” she replied.

  “And maybe about being marooned on the cay with me, eh?” There was raw scorn in his voice, mockery in his eyes when she braved a meeting with them. “Auntie should have told you the facts of life, my sweet, not left you to pick them up, probably out of some darn novel.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she gasped.

  “Oh, come!” Cheroot smoke jetted down his nostrils. “What the devil was all the melodrama about last night if you weren’t scared stiff? You fought me like a little wildcat, then scampered away to your room and shot the bolt on your door. I recall that I advised you to do so, but the thing that wasn’t necessary was for you to throw Paula in my teeth.”

  “I—I’m sorry about that,” she whispered, her throat thick with pain and terror at the way they were sinking deeper into a morass of misunderstanding. “John—”

  “Yes?” His eyes, cold and hard, rested on her triangular face beneath the drooping brim of her hat. A soft coating of natural honey showed off her wood-smoke eyes—she seemed more adult this afternoon and strangely attractive—but John looked at her as though at someone he didn’t particularly like any more.

  It was a look that sent her shrinking into her shell. “I—I wish things could be different between us,” she managed, without a scrap of confidence to give the words life and meaning. They trailed away and were lost in the sound of the sea and the throb of the launch’s motor.

  “I wish it, too,” he drawled, flicking ash over the rail. “It’s a pity they can’t be, but for now let’s put a cheerful face on our deplorable mistake. We owe that much to Liza. When she returns to school on Monday we’ll decide on a course of action.”

  He strolled away to speak to Joe, leaving Tina encased in her private pain. Alone there at the rail she really grew up and knew she would never be a child again. The strange thing was, her love for John had not died; it had grown. It was now a woman’s love, intense, and strong enough to bear a parting from him if that was his wish. She watched the flurry of the spray and listened to the hiss of the waves as they slithered and scattered before the hull of the launch. Ahead of them a small island was coming into view and she tensed as John came back to her side and informed her that they were approaching their destination. Once they were past a fretted coral reef, there were colorful native catamarans dancing on the aquamarine water streaked with violet, and gri-gri trees a
nd tufted palms rising from a beach of crushed tangerine coral. Tina saw a scattering of palm-thatched houses on the cay, and they berthed to quite a welcoming committee of chocolate-colored urchins.

  With a grin John turned to Joe and told him to toss over the big fancy sweet tin which Tina had thought was a present for Miss Courtney. John handed the tin to the biggest of the children and told him to share out the sweets, had a few words with some of the adults who were unloading fish off the catamarans, and then piloted Tina along a path that wound between a grove of tamarind trees that eventually opened to reveal a fairly large, palm-thatched house with a broad timeworn sun porch and a front garden in which grew large Shasta daisies, bright cannas, and pink and blue hortensias.

  John opened the gate and down the garden path, formed of colorful pieces of stone and tile set in cement, came dashing a cream and cocoa basset-hound. Grinning all over his comical face, he leapt at John and whined a lovelorn greeting, then he trotted round Tina, decided he liked what he saw and thumped his tail against her legs.

  “Johnny Trecarrel, how are you!” boomed a voice, and Tina glanced up from patting the dog to find a woman advancing towards them down the path. She was quite elderly, triple-chinned, and jangling with necklets and bracelets. Flowered georgette floated around her and she had the widest, friendliest smile Tina had seen in a long while.

  “I’m fine, Rachel!” John took the hand she held out and gave it a firm shake. “You’re looking well yourself.”

  “Can’t grumble, dear boy. The old indigestion plays me up now and again, but I like to eat, and when you reach my age there isn’t much else left to do.” She swung her glance to Tina and took her in from the apple-green braces over her slender young shoulders to her small, sandalled feet. “This is your bride, eh, Johnny?”