Flash of Emerald

by Jane Arbor

  Hope sat very upright as the car stopped outside a one-storey white wood-cladded building. So much thought about the man Craig Napier; so much speculation; so many words exchanged—what was he really like? Her own pet imagery which ascribed colours to people and things would have described his voice on the telephone as ‘dark’. A dark voice, a dark man to match? But as she got out of the car and prepared to meet him, he was only a silhouette in a doorway, light behind him.

  Tina introduced him. He came forward, held out his hand. The dark voice Hope remembered said, ‘Thank you for making this your first point of call, Miss Redmond. Please come in.’

  In his room she looked at him. He was dark, tall, informally dressed in patterned silk shirt over slacks. His head was broad at the brow, his deep-tanned skin taut over pronounced cheekbones. One black eyebrow was higher than the other, implying a permanent unspoken question. The eyes which were studying her in return were surprisingly flecked with green.

  She had time to wonder what he made of her own looks while Tina was speaking to him. What had he seen? Neither brunette nor true blonde; in-between golden brown, shoulder-length hair; skin with a light powdering of freckles; features in their proper place but without distinction; eyes—well, greyish; lashes which were all her own. Just now, nothing about her at its best, after a daylong journey...

  Tina was asking, ‘Do you want me to stay, or shall I wait in the car for Hope?’

  Craig Napier looked at her unsmilingly. ‘There’s not much point in waiting, is there?’ he said. ‘Have Dickon bring your cousin’s luggage, and I’ll drive her to Barbara Paul’s myself. And as we’re only having a business talk, I daresay we can dispense with you as a chaperone.’

  Tina’s flush showed she was aware of the implied snub. ‘Oh, very well,’ she said, and went out, closing the door with elaborate care behind her.

  Craig Napier looked after her. ‘She would love to have slammed it if she dared,’ he commented. ‘I trust you’ve grown beyond such infantile defiances, Miss Redmond?’

  Hope said, ‘If you mean am I older than Tina, I am, by nearly five years. I’m twenty-three.’

  ‘And may I ask whether, as Mr. Godwin’s confidential secretary, you were consulted, or were a party to our young incompetent’s being sent out to me as a personal secretary?’

  How to answer that? ‘Naturally I wasn’t consulted as an equal,’ Hope said. ‘It was my uncle’s decision, and though I admit I questioned whether Tina had enough experience, you hadn’t been very explicit about your needs. Until she came out here, Tina didn’t realise—’

  Though I’d have thought any London executive circle would know what a personal secretary’s duties should be?’

  ‘Yes, well—’ This was becoming a somewhat acid exchange, and Hope switched attack. ‘I must say none of us understood why you appealed to my uncle at all, when any of several first-class agencies might have served you better,’ she remarked, making a challenge of it.

  Craig Napier shrugged. ‘Sorry to have puzzled you, but this time I decided to try the direct approach.’

  ‘But why to my uncle?’ she persisted.

  ‘Because my memory advised me that if he enjoyed the services of super-efficient, no-nonsense young women like the one who had spoken for him when I rang him once, he must have a flair for training them that way. Therefore—’ His spread hands finished the explanation.

  Hope stared at him. ‘That time—I answered the phone when you called, and Uncle Lionel was in Barbados!’

  ‘Exactly. Though I didn’t get your name.’

  ‘But—but we only talked for a few minutes! Just from that you couldn’t have—!’

  ‘All the same, I decided to chance my arm. But look’—with a tilt of the eyebrow—‘what I got!’

  Hope decided they weren’t being fair to Tina in her absence. She said, ‘Well, my aunt, Tina’s mother, did call your engagement of Tina, a kind of blind date, and as she made an equally blind date by coming out to you, one could fairly say that you both deserved what you got. She isn’t at all happy with you, Mr. Napier.’

  He nodded agreement. ‘The understatement of the year. She’s been cry-baby miserable, and in consequence, as obstructive as a mule. Though not entirely her fault, I suppose, if she came out primed to expect our corner of the Caribbean to rate only just this side of paradise, and its marriage-mart possibilities to be unique.’

  Hope flared at that. ‘She didn't come looking for marriageable men, though when she is interested that way she’s pretty enough to get any one she wants, I should think. But she did come expecting a better time than she has had, and naturally she’s been disappointed.’

  ‘Though she seems in no hurry to shake our dust from her feet. I’d have thought she would have made plans to be off, the minute you came to her rescue. But tell me, how do you see your role in this operation, Miss Redmond?’

  ‘Well—to take her place temporarily while you make other arrangements, I suppose. We—that is, my uncle felt he owed you that.’

  ‘And more, I’d say,’ was the dry comment. ‘But what guarantee have I that you’d be any more competent than your cousin proved to be?’

  Hope looked him straight in the eye. ‘None, I daresay,’ she admitted. ‘Except that, within the limits of work that would be strange to me, I think I do know what being a personal secretary entails.’

  ‘I’d hope so. And how long would you be prepared to stay?’

  ‘Well, not indefinitely, of course.’

  ‘But until I decided I could dispense with you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t promise that. It wasn’t any part of my uncle’s plan in sending me out here.’

  ‘No? Yet I can’t imagine that you didn’t leave him in the hands of a good deputy to you?’

  Hope thought of Kathy Tremayne, capable and thrusting for promotion. Kathy could stand in for her ... Aloud she said, ‘Perhaps we could shelve the question for a time, Mr. Napier? See how I’m able to cope, and go on from there until—?’

  He cut in, ‘Very well, that suits me. What salary were you getting in London?’

  She told him, and he said, ‘You’d rate rather higher, here, geared as we are to the franc and the American dollar. I’ll double that.’

  ‘You’re very generous.’

  ‘Only over-generous if you aren’t worth it. I’ll give you tomorrow to get over your journey, but I’ll expect you the next morning. Tina came over from her digs by motor-scooter—they’re universal transport here. Can you ride one yourself?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve had one in England. Can I hire one in the town?’

  ‘Yes, or Tina’s should be available, I daresay.’

  Though she wondered, Hope didn’t question why, if Tina were staying on in the island, she wouldn’t still need the scooter. She stood up. ‘Well, if that’s all for now, Mr. Napier?’ she said, and then was moved to ask a question which, impertinent or not, her curiosity couldn’t resist.

  ‘When you applied to my uncle to find you a secretary, do you mind telling me how many others you’d had?’ she queried.

  Craig Napier didn’t answer until he had gathered some papers from his desk, squared them into a pile and brought them with him when he came to open the door for her. Then he said, ‘Several. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because don’t you think it might help us both if I knew why they didn’t suit you, or you them?’

  His silent nod seemed to agree. ‘A fair question. So I’d say it was because, though their timing varied, sooner or later all my secretaries deluded themselves either that they were in love with me, or that I was hiding a secret passion for them. And as neither belief contributed to their efficiency or to my tolerance—they had to go.’

  The answer was so unexpected that Hope’s small laugh came out as a rather silly titter of embarrassment. She said, ‘I see. But at least Tina seems to have been an exception to the others.’

  ‘Meaning that she was merely unequal to the job in the first place?’ />
  ‘Yes. To be frank, I don’t think infatuation for you has ever entered her head.’

  His hand on the door-handle, he looked up and back. ‘Any more, at a guess, than it’s likely to enter as level a head as your own? But if you should ever feel the symptoms coming on, do remember, won’t you, that you’ve been warned?’ he said as he showed her out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The utter, blatant conceit of the man! Hope took her place beside him in his car, allowing her silence to string out long enough to convey to him her scorn of his implied threat Then her tone matter-of-fact, she asked, ‘How far is it to Mrs. Paul’s?’

  ‘About three kilometres, and all on the level. Tina could do it on her machine in under ten minutes.’

  ‘And your office hours?’

  ‘Elastic, for you and me, which is something your cousin didn’t appreciate. Normally we start early, rarely later than nine. What hours did you keep in London?’

  ‘Nine-thirty to five, or later if I hadn’t finished, or if my uncle weren’t ready to drive Tina and me home.’

  ‘You lived with him and your aunt, I understand? Why, and since when?’

  ‘For the three years I was going through secretarial college and since. After my father died ten years ago, my mother went back to nursing. She caught a virus from a patient and died from it, and then I went to live with her brother, my uncle, in Richmond.’

  The rain had stopped and the clouds were drifting from the lemon-coloured evening sky as a roadside cedar-wood bungalow came in sight. ‘Barbara Paul’s place,’ Hope’s companion announced as he pulled up, helped her out and unloaded her bags. The garden path to the house was bordered by flowering shrubs, steaming after the rain. The top part of a half-door was open to an interior of which Hope’s first impression was of rush mats on a tiled floor, dark furniture gleaming with polish and a french window giving on to a back verandah. Through this window came the slight figure of a woman who stretched a hand to each of them, saying to Hope, ‘Welcome to Madenina—I was wondering just when I could expect you,’ which struck Hope as odd, since Tina, back before her, would surely have mentioned that she was on her way.

  Craig Napier set down Hope’s luggage and kissed Mrs. Paul lightly on the cheek, while Hope reflected how typical it was of Tina’s absorption in her own woes that she had never troubled in her letters home, to describe Mrs. Paul for what she was—pretty, young, no accepted ‘landlady’ type, bright-eyed and with a twist of rich black hair coiled at the nape of her neck. Nor had Tina ever mentioned a connection between her employer and her landlady which would explain the easy intimacy of that kiss.

  Meanwhile where was Tina herself? Craig Napier did something towards answering that as he told Mrs. Paul, ‘I kept Miss Redmond for a briefing and sent Tina back with Dickon.’

  ‘She had the car, then?’

  ‘As I say—complete with chauffeur service.’ To the questioning look which Hope sent between them he said, ‘Hadn’t Tina told you that, since she decided against leaving, she isn’t living here with Barbara any more?’

  ‘Not here?’ Hope echoed blankly.

  ‘No. She’s moved into the Great House, as a guest-cum-employee of Madame de Faye, who has recently come back to the island.’ It was Barbara Paul who answered.

  Hope said, ‘Tina didn’t tell me anything about this. And employed—what as?’

  ‘I think the rough idea is that Tina should companion and governess Madame de Faye’s small stepson, Crispin, when he comes out from Europe. So you’ll be on your own with me. I hope you don’t mind?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Hope. ‘I’m very grateful to you for putting me up.’

  ‘Fine,’ smiled her hostess. ‘Now, you’d like to see your room, I daresay.’ As she picked up one of Hope’s cases, she spoke again to Craig Napier. ‘The sun has been over the yardarm for some time: Will you stay for a drink?’ she asked.

  But he declined. ‘No, thanks. I’ve business in town before I finish. And by the way, I’ve given Miss Redmond the day off tomorrow. Perhaps you could show her around a bit? Give her the feel of the place?’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ she promised. ‘And another time for that drink, Craig, hm?’

  ‘Twist my arm hard enough—’ he quipped, and went out.

  Barbara Paul lingered while Hope looked with approval at her small white-furnished bedroom with its tiny window balcony and its mosquito-net draped bed. ‘Too bad of Craig not to let you come straight here from the airport to freshen up,’ Barbara remarked. ‘When was your last meal?’

  ‘That was lunch on the plane.’

  ‘Then, when you’re ready, we’ll have a drink and then supper. Don’t hurry.’ At the door on her way out she paused. ‘My name is Barbara. Use it, won’t you? And yours is—Hope, isn’t it? May I call you by it?’ she asked.

  ‘Please do,’ said Hope, feeling she had made a friend.

  The drink was a Creole punch—a light rum with a fruit syrup, ice cubes, topped up with water and a slice of lime balanced on the edge of the tall glass. Supper was a shrimp salad, followed by fresh paw-paw, and when Hope exclaimed at the size of the ‘shrimps’, declaring them to be outsize prawns, Barbara laughed.

  ‘They’re all shrimps to us. Same shape; much of a colour when boiled; some small, some big—why bother with distinctions? You’ll find we’re a lazy people on the whole,’ she said.

  ‘Are you Madenina-born yourself?’ asked Hope.

  ‘Born, yes. But my parents are English. They retired and went home after I married.’ She paused. ‘You’ll know about me, I daresay? About how I’m placed? That I’m widowed? Tina will have told you?’

  ‘I’m afraid she didn’t,’ Hope admitted. ‘The one or two letters she wrote home were all of how miserable she was after the first few honeymoon days, and of Mr. Napier’s brutality to her.’

  Barbara grimaced. ‘Which I can well believe, as she talked of little else while she was with me. But about myself—and about Nelson, my husband. He was an etymologist, specialising in foreign dialects, and he was on a project, making a dictionary of Caribbean patois. Being almost native and speaking it, I was able to help him, and we fell in love and married. But he was only about halfway through the work when he died. He was drowned. Or perhaps you’d heard that?’

  Hope shook her head. ‘No. How did it happen?’

  ‘Out sailing with Roland de Faye—the owner of the Belle Rose estate, Victoire de Faye’s husband, Craig Napier’s chief. They were all friends, and often sailed together. But that day Roland and Nelson were alone. It was just about a year ago; our storm season had hung on late, and the boat—it was Roland’s—must have caught a squall and broken up completely, for no trace of it, or of them, was ever found.’ Barbara paused, biting her lip to stop it quivering. ‘That—that was the worst of it—not knowing ... not knowing,’ she concluded.

  ‘It always is,’ murmured Hope compassionately, ‘I’m so very, very sorry. But words don’t help much, do they?’

  ‘They have to, and one is grateful for them.’ Barbara smiled wryly. ‘Anyway, Nelson always begged me, if he died first, not to—as he put it—“make a profession” of being a widow, and I’ve tried not to, with Craig to help me.’

  ‘You are good friends?’ Hope questioned, wondering if she could guess what the answer would be.

  Barbara nodded. ‘Without him, I think I’d have crumpled up and joined my people in England. But Craig persuaded me that I owed it to Nelson to go on with his work, and though I thought it a crazy idea, that’s what I've done. And now that dictionary is going to be finished—or else!’

  Hope said, meaning it, ‘I’m glad, and I think you’re wise.’

  Smiling, ‘Privately, I know I am,’ said Barbara. ‘The apartment Nelson and I had in town was too expensive to keep on, but while I took a short holiday in England, Craig found me this little place. I can afford it; I’ve got work to do, and I’m as happy as I could hope to be, without Nelson.’

  Hope said, ‘I
told you I didn’t know about the accident. But I mean I didn’t know your husband was involved. In fact, I do remember hearing in London that the owner of Belle Rose was dead, and before I came out here now, someone put me more in the picture—about Madame de Faye’s leaving the island and about Mr. Napier’s carrying on in management for her. I was surprised when Tina told me she’d come back.’

  ‘So were we all,’ Barbara confirmed. ‘We rather thought she had left Craig as permanent prince regent, a role he fills very well, and always has done, even when Roland de Faye was alive. But that’s enough about me and our affairs. Tell me about yourself?’

  Hope told—perhaps more than she would have done to a less receptive ear than her new friend’s. Barbara put in a quiet question now and then, and one of her last was, ‘What about boy-friends? Have you left behind anyone special?’

  Hope shook her head, discarding a brief thought of Ian Perse and his buttonhole-posy which hadn’t weathered the long flight too well. ‘Nobody in particular,’ she said. ‘I think I need to like people a lot before I go overboard for them in a romantic way. So if I don’t like a man as a friend, or feel I’m only just another date for him, that’s curtains for me.’

  ‘He wouldn’t want to date you, if he didn’t like you,’ Barbara pointed out

  ‘But really like me—as me, I mean. Not as a scalp to add to his belt!’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Barbara agreed. ‘And I suppose I was lucky—Nelson and I were friends, quite levelheaded platonic ones, before we fell in love and knew we had it all—liking and love, the lot.’ She paused. ‘Do you think you’re going to like Craig?’

  The question, so irrelevant to their talk of boy-friends and lovers, took Hope completely aback. Like Craig Napier? Need she? She had only to work for him and do her best by him in that, hadn’t she? And after that flip warning to her not to like him too much, liking him at all might prove quite a task! Evading Barbara’s direct question, she asked, ‘Going to like working for him, you mean? Well, I suppose I’d better try while I’m here, though that may not be for long.’