by Jane Arbor
‘My mistake. I thought “bewitched” implied some conflict with your saner self; that you feel you should be above such tourist enthusiasms as, for instance, spotting the green ray.’
‘Should I be so anxious to see it, if I were?’
‘You could be—while you’re under the spell, later to wonder why it all mattered to you. But keep looking. It won’t be long now.’
The black mass of the cloudbank began to glow rosily and to break into drifting galleon shapes. When the top rim of the sun was only as narrowly crescent as a new moon, Craig spoke again.
‘Even if the ray shows, it doesn’t count if you’re alone, you know,’ he warned.
Not turning, ‘It doesn’t? Why not?’ Hope asked.
‘Obvious, surely? You need a witness to your claim of seeing it—a kind of guarantor. Didn’t Barbara tell you?’
‘No—Oh! There it is ... was! I’ve seen it!’ She turned to him, panting a little. ‘It was there? You saw it too?’
‘Yes. But describe it.’
‘Well—at the very last moment there was this flash, as emerald green as—as—well, as emeralds,’ she finished lamely.
‘Good. Refer to me anyone who doubts that you’ve seen it. Meanwhile, my congratulations. But before you graduate as a true Madeninan, there is something else—’
‘What?’
‘Barbara should have told you. This—’
Side by side, they were very close, their thighs almost brushing. So that he had hardly to reach to draw her to him with one arm while tilting her chin between the forefinger and thumb of his other hand.
Then he kissed her—a long, masterful assertion by his lips upon hers, at first closed and unresponding from a surprise which came very near to shock, then pulsing in a hungry urgency which shook her to her depth.
But this was all wrong. They weren’t lovers. He had no right! She had none—She pulled free, feeling her colour mantle, seeking something to say which would conceal her hurt, and found it. She said unevenly, ‘If—if that wasn’t “taking advantage”, I don’t know what you would call it. It was utterly uncalled for and—and unforgivable.’
He sat back, regarding her gravely. ‘Then you did suspect me of it?’ he accused.
‘Not then. Not for a moment. I thought you were being very kind. But—’
‘But you found my kiss offensive?’
When she said nothing, he went on, ‘Then you weren’t listening to what I said. I told you there was another condition to your being accepted as one of us, through having seen the ray—and I demonstrated, without asking your permission. That’s all.’
The chill in his tone had its sobering effect. She must not betray how his kissing her had stirred her craving for it to have meant more than it could have done. ‘You mean,’ she hesitated, ‘that to be kissed by my—witness was a kind of forfeit I must pay to be believed?’
‘Exactly. It confers a seal on your sighting of the ray.’
‘You—you could have explained that,’ she said lamely.
‘And find myself graciously afforded the freedom of your cheek? I’m afraid I lost the habit of butterfly pecks about the time I left the nursery.’
That stung, goading her to retort, ‘You still shouldn’t risk your apparent enthusiasm being misunderstood, should you?’
He shrugged. ‘Dare nothing, gain nothing.’
‘Even though you weren’t trying to gain anything—just carrying out a tradition, that was all?’
‘Even though—never having seen enthusiasm as one of the more heinous crimes,’ he said coolly as he switched on and drove off the grass verge where they had stopped. A few minutes later they reached the bungalow, and as Hope thanked him and got out of the car she asked him if he were coming in.
He shook his head. ‘No, I have to see Victoire. But tell Barbara, won’t you, that you’ve taken your test and are now a fully paid-up member of the green ray union?’
Shaken, she remained standing where he left her, after he had driven away.
How could he? However conventional he claimed his kiss had been, did he really suppose she could go straight to Barbara who loved him, proclaiming that she had just come straight from being kissed by him? It was unthinkable, and she could only trust that she hadn’t ever to admit to Barbara that she had seen the green ray and in whose company. As for herself, she could only blush inwardly at the thought of how nearly—how very nearly—she had been tempted to surrender to the seeming ardour of a kiss which had set her own desire afire.
How much had she allowed him to guess? How much had he known, and had despised her for it, and for her tardy acceptance of his not having meant anything more than a traditional gesture when he had kissed her?
If she had betrayed her need to him, what a fool he must think her! Nothing between them had led up to an emotional scene, and he had made painfully clear that nothing should lead away from it. ‘Enthusiasm’, he claimed, was all that had impelled him to kiss her as he had, and maintained that he saw no reason to deny it. So far as he was concerned, the incident was closed. And that had to go for her too, she realised bleakly, as she braced herself to go in to Barbara and to behave as if, since they last met, nothing had happened to set her world a-tilt and to spoil their relations through no fault of theirs.
CHAPTER SIX
Barbara never now questioned Craig’s failure to visit her, and this evening was no exception. She was full of sympathy for Hope’s accident and showed she knew all about the wives’ descent upon the boucan on the eve of every feast-day.
‘And speaking of feast-days,’ she said, ‘Tina rang up to ask if she could bring Crispin here tomorrow while she goes to Jour de l’An with Luke Donat, and I said she could.’
‘In the morning?’ Hope asked.
‘No, in the afternoon, and she’ll collect him by sundown.’
‘But you work in the afternoon.’
‘Yes, well, I can always make time for Crispin.’ Barbara hesitated before adding, ‘I hadn’t told you, but once or twice lately Tina has brought him here when she’s wanted to have her hair done, or to do some shopping.’
‘Doesn’t she get time off for that kind of thing?’
‘She says not, and that if Victoire does promise it to her, she’s as likely as not to change her mind at the last minute.’
‘I still don’t think Tina should off-load Crispin on you when you want to work,’ Hope claimed. ‘But tomorrow I shall be here, and I can help you with him.’
‘You aren’t going to Jour de l’An yourself? I wouldn’t suggest you go alone. It gets much too rowdy and one needs a man as escort, but I thought Craig might be taking you,’ said Barbara.
Hope drew a sharp breath. ‘Taking me? Why should he?’
Barbara shrugged. ‘Just an idea, as it would be your first experience of a West Indian carnival. But there’s always Mardi Gras, which is much more typically Madeninan, and you’ll probably be invited to a party for that.’
Which sounded, Hope thought, as if, with Craig’s defection, Barbara had opted out of any public appearances of her own. Why? True, she had introduced Hope to the Planters’ Club, but that had been before her parting with Craig, and she had not suggested their going again. It was almost as if she were hiding from someone or something, though from what?
When, the next day, Hope suggested to Tina that she was making a convenience of Barbara, Tina was truculent, wanting to know why, since Barbara claimed to like having Crispin, she shouldn’t be allowed to do just that.
Hope conceded, ‘At times which suit her, why not? But why, just to help you out? And does Madame de Faye know you bring him here, while you go and do something else?’
‘I don’t tell her,’ Tina admitted.
‘Though he might.’
‘I’ve risked that, and he hasn’t yet. Anyway, if she won’t give me time that I can call my own, she isn’t entitled to know.’
‘Even though,’ Hope parried, ‘you told me yourself that she and Barbara don’t g
et on? So do you suppose she would care for his being here when she thinks he’s in your charge?’
But Tina passed that off with a jaunty, ‘I’m not supposed to know they’re at daggers drawn, and what the eye doesn’t see—’ and Hope had to leave it there.
Crispin, fortunately, was amenable to any suggestion made as to his amusement He went for a walk with Hope; the three of them played paper games; he supervised the baking of scones for tea and contentedly listened to a story about pirates on the local radio.
He wanted to know how Hope had injured her hand and offered his own grubbily bandaged right thumb in a sympathetic gesture of misery-loves-company.
‘You must learn to write with your left hand,’ he advised. ‘I can write with my left, if I have to.’
‘Can you indeed?’ admired Hope. ‘Show me.’
‘If you’ll try too.’
Hope experimented, producing a shaky scrawl which earned only his grudging approval.
‘I can do better than that,’ he claimed, and did, concentrating hard with his tongue between his teeth. ‘Belle-mere can write with her left too. That’s what made me try, when I saw her doing it,’ he remarked before he tired of the exercise and went on to something else.
The shadows began to lengthen, the sun was going down and Barbara began to be concerned for Crispin’s homegoing. Tina had not yet come back for him, and presently even he mentioned with some satisfaction that in less than a quarter of an hour it would be his bedtime and he would miss it.
Barbara worried, ‘It’s too bad of Tina. I’ll give her a little longer, but then I’d better drive Crispin home myself.’
They waited. No Tina. It was almost fully dark when Barbara decided to go, leaving Hope to guess how reluctantly she was going to beard Victoire on Victoire’s own territory, and when she returned she was irate.
‘Victoire was abominably rude,’ she told Hope. ‘She claimed she had no idea that Tina was out with Luke Donat, nor that Tina meant to leave Crispin with me, and wanted to know whether I really supposed she would countenance his being put in my charge—making an insult of the way she said ‘“your”.’
‘What did you say to that?’ asked Hope.
‘I told her I resented her suggestion that he would be less safe with me than with Tina. At least I had brought him home more or less to time, which Tina hadn’t—’
‘And then?’
‘She hadn’t even the grace to thank me, implying that I was in league with Tina to deceive her, and I don’t envy that one her reception when she does turn up at the House.’
When Tina did arrive nearly an hour later, she was full of apologies which Barbara brushed aside, saying that though she had seen Crispin safely home, she had no intention of being party to any such deception of Victoire in future. And Hope, on an intuition, asked Tina, ‘Those other times when you left Crispin here, were you really going to the hairdresser’s or into the town? Or were you keeping a date with Luke Donat then too?’
Tina’s blue eyes threatened to fill. ‘Then too,’ she admitted. ‘He’s fun, and there was nowhere I could park Crispin but here. And now what am I to do? I’ve got to face Madame. Come with me?’ she appealed to Hope. ‘She has got nothing against you, and I daren’t face her alone.’
Hope hesitated. ‘There’s nothing I can do.’
‘Please!’ Tina pleaded, and Barbara advised, ‘You’d better go, Hope. You may be able to serve as a buffer, even if Tina doesn’t deserve one.’
‘How do I get back?’ Hope demurred.
‘I’ll follow you up in my car, and wait for you short of the house, which I am not visiting again while Victoire is mistress there,’ Barbara declared with finality.
Tina and Hope found Victoire in the saloon. At sight of Tina her eyes flashed splinters of steel before the inevitable rain of accusatory questions began.
So? Tina had actually returned, had she? Where had she been? With whom? She had been engaged to take full charge of Crispin, hadn’t she? Then what right had she to delegate his care to someone else—someone to whom she herself had no intention of owing the slightest obligation? How far did Tina suppose she was free to pursue her own pleasure at the child’s expense? And how could she possibly hope to be trusted in future?
Even nearer to tears than she had been at the bungalow, Tina faltered in shamefaced reply, helped out by Hope when Victoire bullied her into incoherence, At last it was over. Victoire made a grievance of herself having seen Crispin to bed, sent Tina to the nursery under the threat of a suspended sentence of dismissal, and only when Tina had departed did she treat Hope as a guest and an equal.
‘You will have an aperitif with me?’ she invited, almost gracious now.
Hope declined, saying she had only come because Tina seemed afraid to come alone, that she mustn’t take any more of Victoire’s time, and that she hoped Victoire would be more lenient than Tina probably deserved.
‘As to that, I shall have to see,’ Victoire said rather cruelly. ‘She has betrayed my trust in her, and that I do not easily forgive. But meanwhile, tell me about yourself, won’t you?’ With a glance at Hope’s bandaged hand, ‘Craig treated you kindly over that? You are not suffering with it too much? And you are reasonably contented with Barbara Paid as your landlady?’
‘Very, thank you,’ said Hope.
‘And she entertains for you, I expect? You are getting to know some attentive young men?’
Hope answered that indirectly. ‘No, Mrs. Paul doesn’t invite many people to her house. She’s very busy most of the time, and I like a quiet life as much as she does.’
‘Ah.’ Victoire’s slow nod added emphasis to the monosyllable. ‘Though one hears that she is making a virtue of necessity—that she lives quietly because people do not visit her, not that she would not invite them if she thought they would accept.’
‘Indeed?’ said Hope, believing nothing of the kind. ‘I must say I haven’t that impression at all. I’m sure that why she doesn’t entertain is because she chooses to live that way.’
‘Yes, well, of course she must put the best face upon it,’ Victoire conceded. ‘She would not want you to know that she is not accepted as readily now as she and Nelson Paul were, when he was alive. But tell me—how often does Craig Napier visit her? Frequently? Not very often? Not at all?’
By now there was little doubt in Hope’s mind that Victoire’s questions were prompted by the malice she had towards Barbara. But how to answer this last one? Did she tell the truth—that Craig’s very frequent visits had now dwindled to none; that she thought she could guess the reason was a lovers’ quarrel? Or did she block Victoire’s curiosity by saying she knew nothing of Craig’s and Barbara’s affairs? Or did she whet it, by claiming they were still as close as she had found them when she had come to the island?
What did Victoire want to hear? Suspecting she would welcome the news of their estrangement, Hope decided to imply the opposite. She said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t keep count of how often Mr. Napier calls upon Mrs. Paul. But I’m sure she values, him as a friend, so I suppose they do meet fairly often.’
‘Outside, you mean? They keep rendezvous?’ asked Victoire sharply.
This Hope could answer frankly. ‘I really don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘But I suppose they see as much of each other as friends usually do.’
‘And of course the word “friend” can cover as much or as little intimacy as people require of it, can it not?’ Victoire insinuated, proving to Hope that she was being ‘pumped’ to some purpose and determining her to have no further part in it. She stood up, ignoring the question. ‘I must go,’ she said, but was not allowed to escape Victoire’s final murmur, ‘So very indiscreet of Craig to continue the association. But how can one ever advise a man in his own interest, if he is careless of it himself?’ After which she allowed Hope to leave, showing no concern, however, as to how she was going back.
Barbara’s greeting was an interested ‘Well?’ and when Hope recounted Tina’s ordeal
at Victoire’s hands, she said, ‘Well, the child had a lesson coming to her, but she didn’t deserve scarifying like that. Will Victoire keep her on, do you suppose?’
‘I don’t know, though I should rather think so. Tina says she has very little time for Crispin herself. He hardly ever sees her. So if it weren’t for Tina and the kitchen staff, he would be left entirely on his own,’ said Hope, letting Barbara suppose she had left straight after Tina’s despatch to the nursery, so that she hadn’t to report on Victoire’s impertinent questions on Craig’s relations with Barbara.
It was odd, Hope thought wryly, how defensive and protective of Barbara she felt, considering how she herself had been caught by Craig’s magnetism. It was as if loving the same man had forged a bond, rather than the makings of jealousy, between them—a situation with its own poignancy but no bitterness for the odd girl out—herself. He had kissed her once with no more meaning than would be asked of him in a game of Forfeits. He had kissed Barbara in loving solicitude many times and, whatever their present difference, no doubt he would kiss her in love again. And because Barbara was Barbara—kind, courageous and full of character—the odd girl out could envy her but could not hate.
It was with a good deal of diffidence that Hope met Craig at the office that Monday following the Jour de l’An. But he was so much his imperious self, rapping out orders and expecting swift compliance, that it was easy to conclude he had completely dismissed the possibility that he had embarrassed her on Friday night.
As always during the weeks she had worked for him, she marvelled at the range of the responsibility he carried and the expertise with which he dealt with the problems it brought. On that one day he was office executive and appeal court; he was called out to one of the plantations on a suspected case of pest infestation in a young crop; on this post-holiday Monday he had also to adjudicate in the case of a plantation worker who, ‘high’ on weekend rum, had attacked his mate with a cane-cutlass—all this between dealing with his correspondence and frequent telephone calls to and from the communal sugar-mills.
