Sweet Seduction

by Whitelaw, Stella

  He draped the pretty necklaces from his fingers, dangling them in front of Kira. He wore opaque mirrored sunglasses that reflected her own face, oddly curved like mirrors at a funfair.

  "Fifty dollars this one," said Moonshine, picking out a string of delicate pink and white coral. "But thirty to you."

  Kira sighed. She hated saying no.

  "They are very pretty," she agreed. "But this is the first day of my holiday and I don’t want to buy anything yet."

  "Your first day? So how do you like Barbados so far," said Moonshine, taking off his glasses. It was obviously a signal that ended his selling patter. He was a handsome young man with smooth skin and crisp, glistening hair.

  "I’m going to like it very much," said Kira, putting Giles to the back of her mind. "I haven’t had much chance to look round but everyone is so nice."

  "You must go to the East coast, to the Scotland district. The sea is magnificent, rollers this high. I surf there but it is very dangerous. You should not swim there."

  "You have a very unusual name."

  "Moonshine is my nickname. Everyone has nicknames on the island."

  "How did you get it?"

  He threw back his head and laughed. "Now that would be telling. Perhaps it’s the sunglasses."

  He closed his case and stood up, grinning. "Now you have a good day and don’t get yourself burnt in the sun, lady. It’s very strong. And when you want to buy a necklace, remember Moonshine. I see you on the beach. So long."

  He moved off to the next potential customer. Time was money and Kira guessed he had to make the day’s quota of sales before he could relax.

  During the day she was also offered – at numerous times – sarongs, fresh pineapples, carved figures and her hair braided. There were no long faces when she did not buy. The vendors were happy to have a chat and then leave her alone. She did buy a sarong; a cheerful primrose number splashed with riotous flowers. She wrapped it over her black swimsuit and saw the sense of it.

  "It’s lovely," said Kira.

  "You want two?" said the woman, quickly onto a second sale.

  Kira shook her head. It had been simple last night to find her grandfather’s name in the telephone directory; Benjamin Reed, Fitt’s House, Fitt’s Village, St James. It was not far from where she was now, apparently. She could probably walk it if she had any sense of direction. But it needed a lot of courage to face the man who had left his only daughter to starve.

  There was a balmy trade wind blowing off the sea, taking the oppressive heat out of the sun. But Kira was careful to put a shirt over her shoulders. Barbados was the most windward of the Windward Islands group, and Kira realised why it was possible to live there without air-conditioning. The first British settlers, quick to note the cooling winds, had built their houses to face them and constructed windmills to harness the power for their sugar mills. They used the same winds to carry their fleets back to England with their rich harvest of sugar and tobacco.

  Kira found the beach bar she had noticed on her morning walk. If the owner took time to sweep the sand in front of his wooden bar, she reckoned he would have the same pride in the food he served.

  The place was packed, mostly with people drinking rum punch at the bar. But the barman recognised her.

  "So you’ve come back."

  "I said I would."

  "What would you like? A drink? Some food?"

  "Yes, please. Can I have some sort of sandwich and a long, cool drink? Lemonade or something."

  "Yes, ma’am. Coming up. Take a seat and I’ll bring it out to you."

  She sat on a bench facing the sea, watching a catamaran with colourful striped sails skimming the waves, water skiers being towed by speedboats, windsurfers, a Jolly Roger pirate ship taking tourists on a cruise up the coast. Its red sails were full of wind, billowing, the faint sound of Bajan pop music floating to the shore.

  The sandwich was inches high with sliced cold chicken and salad, the iced drink made with fresh limes. Kira did not think about safe drinking water, feeling sure it came from a deep island well.

  "Thank you. This looks lovely."

  "Best sandwiches on the West coast."

  Later in the afternoon she changed into a simple black cotton skirt and striped top, tying her hair back with a scarf, and set out to find Fitt’s House. She looked casual and smart even if her clothes were from a London chain store. Tendrils of unruly chestnut hair escaped the scarf, tugged by the wind, framing a face which looked rested and glowing after only a few hours in the sun.

  There were no pavements so Kira walked carefully, side-stepping over the deep drain at the roadside each time she heard a vehicle approaching. Cars, buses, carts, mopeds, bicycles passed her, all rattling and noisy, stereos blaring. She felt safer standing still till they had gone by. Rows of black faces stared and grinned at her from the bus windows, the pop music from the in-bus stereo deafening. They were interested in visitors, particularly those who chose to walk.

  The traditional chattel houses were fascinating; so small, doll-like, with neat curtains at their windows and flowers by the centre door, and each one was different in some architectural aspect. As the family grew, they built a similar unit onto the back. In some homes the roof stretched back several units, going up and down at odd slopes.

  She paused by a ramshackle house built of wooden planks with wide shutters and a red corrugated iron roof, a tottering veranda all round. It had been built on a rise of ground and a well-swept path led to the open front door. There seemed to be something special about the house because a woman in a brightly-coloured dress and straw hat was sitting outside and showing people in. Surely such a tumbledown place was not a tourist attraction? Kira went closer and read a notice nailed to a wall.

  THIS IS THE HOME OF ANDRÉ LA PLANTE, FAMOUS

  ARTIST. 1918-1970. ALL VISITORS ARE WELCOME.

  Kira went in, glad to be out of the heat for five minutes. She stood in the darkened hallway and realised that everything had been kept as it once was, as if it was still lived in by this André La Plante. The house was a capsule frozen in time.

  She wandered through the rooms, looking at the ornaments and photographs and old copies of newspapers strewn on tables. His pipe was still by his chair, a faded patchwork cushion dented as if by the weight of his back. It was uncanny and Kira shivered for no reason.

  The lean-to kitchen was almost primitive with an earthenware sink and a single cold water tap. Mrs La Plante, if there had been one, had had to cook on a kerosene stove and her pots and pans were battered and ancient. Kira looked with interest at the contents of the larder, the packaging outdated and brown-stained.

  She went out into a backyard and followed other visitors into another open-sided wooden building. This was the artist’s studio and the walls were hung with his paintings. An easel stood in the sunlit doorway, a half-finished painting on display, his paints and brushes still on a high table at the side.

  Kira took a closer look at the paintings. They were vibrant and full of colour and light, mostly native pictures, every aspect of the island and its people. One canvas in particular caught her attention. It was of a young girl, about sixteen or seventeen, running through the waves, sarong wet, her hair flying. He had caught the enthusiasm for life on her radiant face.

  "That was his daughter," said another house custodian, from her rocking chair by the entrance to the studio. "Dolly La Plante, when she was a young ‘un. André was always painting her. Pretty thing but a headstrong handful of trouble, I’ve been told."

  The woman grinned, her teeth large and berry-stained. She went on talking, gossiping, glad to have an audience, but Kira was hardly listening, her attention transfixed on the painting of Dolly La Plante.

  * * *

  Dolly ran along the beach, kicking up the powdery white sand with her bare feet. Her hair was flying and her loose cotton dress falling from one shoulder. She clambered over a rocky peninsula into the next bay, which was quieter and had not yet been developed.r />
  She’d heard there were plans to build hotels all along this part of the coast. A tourist boom was predicted for Barbados now that the war was over and there were more flights from Europe and America. She did not like the idea of the privacy of the beaches being invaded by foreigners, but on the other hand they might buy her father’s paintings. They were always short of money and a few sales could mean a new stove. She was sick of cooking on that old thing.

  Not that it mattered, being poor white on Barbados. It was warm. There was plenty of cheap food in the market, and although their house was old and desperately needed repairs, it could withstand the rainy season with a few strategically placed buckets and that new stuff, plastic sheeting stretched across the leaking roof.

  But Dolly dreaded another hurricane. Even now the wind rattled the doors and windows and sometimes lifted the red corrugated roof. Her father’s studio would not survive the first onslaught of a big wind. The wooden outbuilding would collapse card-like on its non-existent foundations.

  She searched the sweeping palms, shading her eyes, but there was no-one there. Perhaps she was early. She never wore a watch, did not possess one.

  "It’s either getting up time or going to bed time. I’m either hungry or not hungry. I don’t need a clock-watch."

  Dolly used the Bajan double-nouns all the time. It was her way. She had been born on the island.

  Dolly’s eyes sparkled. She had an enormous zest for life, and being poor did not diminish her joy. She was never more than seven miles from the sea and she lived in a climate of perpetual summer. It was a paradise.

  She did not work. She was too busy to work. André made enough money from his paintings to feed them and buy new paints and brushes. People often gave him old canvases to paint over. She was wearing one of her mother’s cut-down frocks, a floral cotton.

  At seventeen, Dolly was not likely to grow any more. She was a slim sprite of a girl, figure unformed, hair wild, green eyes always full of merriment and laughter.

  She saw a tall figure striding through the coconut palms and ran towards him, pushing her hair from her eyes. She flung herself into his arms, her head pressed close to his chest, breathing in the scent of his skin.

  "I thought you weren’t coming," she gasped. "I’ve been here ages."

  "Liar. I saw you climbing over the rocks."

  "Why weren’t you here?"

  "Some of us have to work. We don’t all laze about like visitors."

  "Your father is a monster. I hate him. He makes you work too hard."

  Reuben Earl shook her shoulders and laughed. He had strong facial bones that were nearly handsome, a thick thatch of dark hair, eyes as blue as the Caribbean ocean.

  "Don’t be daft, Dolly. We have a big plantation and refinery to run. It doesn’t run itself and the monkeys would soon take over. You’ll be glad too, one day, when I’m a big success, factory owner, a planter. Now stop talking, you minx, and let me kiss you."

  They sank onto the sand, arms entwined, half in the shade of a sweeping palm, shielded by the big leaves from any curious eyes that might pass by. Reuben cradled her in his arms and took her sweet lips, offered so generously and warmly.

  His hands moved to her small breasts, pert against the thin material of the cotton frock, and he felt his groin contract with desire. He could not resist her softness and the scent of her flesh. He kissed her face, her neck, moving down to the silken skin of her exposed shoulder, pressing his lips close to the almost revealed, shadowed valley. He groaned. He would have to stop. This was killing him as usual. Reuben rolled over and stared up at the flawless sky between the branches. He had been in love with Dolly since they were at school together.

  For years they had walked and talked, teased each other, swum in the sea, played cricket, gone to a few parties. Everything had been light and easy until the day he kissed her. Now he could barely leave her alone. His love had changed into a monster invading his veins, urging him to take her, possess her, make this wilful creature his own. His dreams were full of her soft body, of crushing her beneath his weight, of penetrating her secret places.

  "Why have you stopped?" said Dolly, leaning up on one elbow, tickling his face with a stem of dry grass. "Please kiss-kiss me some more."

  "I can’t. You know what it does to me. Drives me crazy. We shouldn’t keep meeting like this, secretly."

  Her hand went down to the hardened shape between his legs, curious as to what it meant. Reuben pushed her away, rough and impatient, and sat up.

  "Don’t touch me," he choked angrily. "Don’t you know anything?"

  "No, I don’t know. I haven’t got a mother, you know that. Please, Reuben, I can’t stand it when you’re angry with me. What have I done?"

  Tears welled in her eyes and Reuben couldn’t stand that either. He kissed away the tears and held her more gently, stroking her hair and her face. The tempest in his loins subsided and he pulled the shoulder of her frock back into place.

  "Now you are all neat and tidy again," he said, as if he was dressing a child for Sunday church. Sometimes Dolly was like a child to him. An enchanting child in a woman’s body. He would not find the strength to resist her forever.

  * * *

  Kira stared at the painting of the girl flying across the sand, bridging time with each caught breath. Was this her grandmother? There was something familiar about the girl’s face, almost as if Kira was looking at herself. Tamara had told her that her grandmother’s name was Dolly. Kira didn’t remember exactly. It could have been in a dream.

  She left the painter’s house and continued walking. Some of the chattel houses had been abandoned to the elements and rotted away. There were quite a few fire-gutted ruins. Wooden homes were a fire hazard.

  The concrete houses were newer, mostly built in the plantation style with a central flight of steps up to the front door, raised to escape the rain.

  Kira lost herself in trying to remember exactly what her mother, Tamara, had said. But it had been a difficult time and there was nothing she could do to clear the fog. And now she desperately wanted to know. It was like a pain in her side. She wanted to know so much.

  Seven

  Kira delighted in the wild flowers blooming everywhere; they lightened the moment of gloom. Every nook and cranny was a cascade of blossom, hibiscus, wild orchids, bougainvillea, the delicate frangipani, the flamboyant poinsettia growing wild. It was a riot of colour, such a contrast to the grey London she had left behind. She noticed many trees on the leeward-side of the beach, on which warning signs had been nailed:

  "These green apples are poisonous."

  The trees were heavily laden with small crab-like fruit.

  "They’re manchineel trees," said a small boy, kicking stones. "Very bad to eat, miss. Make stomach bad."

  "Thank you," she said. "I won’t eat them."

  Kira asked several times for directions to Fitt’s House. The answers were pleasantly vague but she gathered that she was going in the right direction. Walking the leafy lanes, she could think herself back in England, except that no English hedgerows were laced with such exotic blooms.

  Benjamin Reed must be influential, if not rich, if he was the President of the Sugar Growers’ Association. He would have bought his property and land before the prices soared with the tourist boom. Kira imagined a grand colonial house with an imposing entrance and flight of steps; her thoughts momentarily bitter with her own memories of damp bedsitters.

  She wandered along a lane looking for house names, but there were none. Two square gate posts flanked a pair of rusty ironwork gates and beyond was a garden that was a disordered tangle of trees and shrubs and flowers. A winding central drive led to a house that was built of pink coral, the coral bleached and faded by years of sunshine and rain.

  She caught sight of a wide flight of steps that led up to a blue-green veined stone archway, decorated with diamonds of turquoise stones. A jungle of plants and flowers in terracotta pots fought for places on the steps. Two life-size ston
e wolves – or were they dogs? – guarded the entrance, their expressions benign and not in the least fearsome.

  Kira began to laugh. It was like something out of a Disney set. A stone balcony went round three sides of the first floor of the house, supported by columns; ornamented with scrolls and Grecian urns, the two front corners dominated by large stone eagles, or were they doves? They had hooked beaks and pantaloon legs, but short bodies, plump and domesticated, both eyeless birds staring forever out to sea.

  Kira’s gaze followed the stone balcony up to a replica balcony, a storey higher, crenulated like a castle, edging a flat roof, the tall windows shuttered against the heat. A pink castle . . . the words came back into her memory. What had her mother said? Grandfather lived in a sugar plum fairy castle. This was a castle set in a jungle of flowers and creepers that threatened to grow into an impenetrable thicket and hide the house forever from the world. She wondered if there was a sleeping princess inside, hidden from the world. It was more likely to be an ogre.

  The lane was overhung with branches and several times Kira had to duck her head. A green breadfruit swung towards her forehead, looking as hard as a cricket ball. She dodged the fruit but her lame leg let her down and she slipped, staggering sideways.

  "I’m sorry, young lady. If you’d come along five minutes later, that branch would have been pruned."

  The gardener shook a pair of pruning secateurs at her as if to prove his good intentions. He was standing on a ladder leaning up against the tree. A pair of pale blue eyes peered at her from a brown face, topped with cropped grey hair. He wore a tattered shirt that seemed to say how little his employer paid him.

  "Are you all right? Gonna sue? That’s what people do these days," he growled.

  "It was a bit unexpected and I slipped," said Kira. "Is this breadfruit? Can you eat it?"

  "Ain’t you ever tasted it? Baked, boiled, fried. Taste good done anyway. The trees were brought over to Barbados a long time ago to feed the slaves. I’ll see if I can find you a ripe one."