Bride's Dilemma

by Violet Winspear

  The pale bedroom furniture embellished with gilt-work was also covered in dust sheets which Tina flipped back for a moment. The bed was stripped ... a great swan bed drifting through a sea of carpet that again was the color of the eyes Joanna had worshipped. Here the bitter, dead frangipani scent was even stronger, acid, like a crushed peach stone. Tina stared at the long, built-in clothing closets, then impelled as though by a hand she slid them open. Gone were the silks, the chiffon and the organza in which Joanna would have looked like a dream. Gone the glistening furs, the tiny shoes, the yachting outfits. Gone the woman, but not the ghost! Tina hurried away, but for hours afterwards the scent of dead frangipani was in her nostrils.

  Did John ever go into Joanna’s rooms, there to touch the elegant furniture she had chosen and which would have blended so perfectly with her loveliness? Did he stand at the windows and listen to the sea and hear in it the sound of a voice? A voice that sobbingly asked him why he had ceased to care?

  The Carrish bungalow turned out to be large and picturesque, set in a fringe of flame trees and palms so that it was provided with an air of privacy. The roof was of curly green tiles, the stucco walls a fresh cream, while a gaily-striped canopy covered the sun-following veranda. There was a neat front garden with symmetrical paths between carefully tended beds of flowers ... no friendly, lolloping dog here to bury its bones under the peach trees and tread dirt into the lounge.

  “Haven't you a pet, Ralph?” Tina asked, more for something to say than because she thought it likely. Paula didn’t look the sort who liked animals around.

  “Over at the plantation we have a couple of guard dogs,” he smiled, taking in Tina’s slender figure in a blue two-piece, her hair held back in a matching butterfly bow at the nape of her neck. “You look very cool and pretty,” he added admiringly.

  “Why, thank you.” She smiled back at him and thought what a pity it was that he was unattached. He was too nice not to have a girl of his own to whom he could give affection.

  “Shall we have a drink before I show you over the plantation?” he asked.

  She nodded and sat down on the settee of jade-green velvet that stretched along one wall. Beside it there was a coffee table illumined, in the evenings, by a hanging lamp of opaque glass. The cane chairs flared like fans on slender black legs, cushioned in emerald and orange, and Ralph stood mixing drinks at a cocktail bar that had a frame plaited from cane and a glass counter. The room echoed Paula’s personality in every detail, especially so in the ebony voodoo masks on the pale green walls and the great spray of some waxen-looking plant in a copper container that was almost the color of her rich, glossy hair.

  Ralph brought a tulip-shaped tumbler to Tina, in which there was a dash of gin over cracked ice, fresh lime halves squeezed of their juice, then tonic almost to the silvered rim. “Cheers!” he said, sitting down beside her and hoisting one long leg over the other.

  “Mmm,” she sipped and wrinkled an appreciative nose, “you mix a tasty gin-sling.”

  “How’s John?” he asked “I haven’t seen anything of him for a couple of weeks. I suppose,” with a grin, “he’s still in the honeymoon throes.”

  “He’s busily at work on a new project,” she said, her nose in her drink and a coral flush tingling the tips of her cheekbones. “Does he leave the entire running of the plantation to you, Ralph?”

  “Sure, but I don’t mind. John’s the artistic type and you can't expect him to get enthusiastic about keeping banana trees free of pest and whether or not the yearly crop of lemons is worth the trouble of growing them. Our oranges are great, nothing there to grumble about, but I pull out my hair over the lemons.” He touched a wry hand to a thinning temple. “Don’t like to be beaten, that’s the trouble!”

  “No one likes to be beaten,” she smiled wistfully, giving more away by the quality of that smile than she had intended. She saw a keenness come into Ralph’s eyes and she edged her glance away from his until it was resting on that dramatic display of waxen flowers. The flesh of the flowers was Paula’s, the gloss of the container held the hidden fires of her strange deep nature . . .

  “As an old friend of John’s and someone who cares about his happiness, may I ask you a question, Tina?” Ralph asked quietly.

  She cradled her drink for a pulsing moment, then looked at him. “Go ahead, Ralph,” she tried to speak lightly. “I suppose you want to know if we’re hitting it off?”

  “Please,” he touched her wrist, “don’t think me a Paul Pry, but there are people to whom happiness doesn’t come easily. John is one of them, my sister another—you may be a third.”

  “You—make us sound quite a triangle.” A jab of pain made her speak sharply. “D—does it show so plainly, that I’m not living in a bridal seventh-heaven?”

  “There’s no such thing,” he said deliberately. “You’re wise enough to know that what makes a marriage is a sound, down-to-earth relationship based on a foundation of mutual trust, respect, allied aims and physical compatibility. You’re what John needs, what he’s never had—” Ralph’s fingers made a hard bracelet about her wrist. “Do you throw up defences against him? Defences you aren’t consciously aware of? Like me you’re an introvert, and I know what it feels like to dread opening up and getting hurt.”

  Oh God, how right he was! How fearful the dread of a cool stare in answer to a warm confession of love!

  “He doesn’t love me—can you blame me for guarding my heart?” she whispered, her throat thick with pain.

  “What makes you so sure about the state of his heart?” Ralph pressed.

  Her eyes widened and filled with the anguish of remembering the devils She had let loose in John when she had taunted him for marrying her instead of Paula. “You should know,” the words broke from her, “you’re Paula’s brother!”

  “Ah!” Sudden lines of pain etched Ralph's face and he looked very much his age. He gulped his drink, set aside the tumbler and sat forward with his gaze moodily fixed upon the polished logwood floor. Outside in the garden a bird squawked and Tina saw the muscles tauten under Ralph's white shirt as though the sound jarred on the nerves she had exposed. “Does it help,” he murmured, “if I say that I’m sure John never loved my sister? That what was between them—”

  “Please,” Tina got feverishly to her feet, “let’s not talk about it any more! Show me round the plantation—come on!” She held out a hand to him and he took it, firmly, and they went out into the sunshine and made their way among the palms and the flame trees towards the tangy scent of citrus fruits that hung thick on the warm air. In a fever of interest Tina insisted on seeing everything—the nursery where the oranges and tangerines were cultivated, the jagged banana forest where the great hands of fruit glinted amber here, deep green there. She was shown round the big processing plant and the packing sheds, filled with the sing-song chatter of the colored workers. It was strange and unreal that she was the ‘missus’ to all these people, that they fell silent and shy when she drew near because the owner of all this was her husband.

  Almost two hours later, wilting from the heat, Tina returned to the bungalow with Ralph—and there in the lounge, a moon-pale curve on the velvet settee, was Paula in a stunning shift of white crepe. Seated nearby in a cane chair was a large figure with corn-gold hair, the aromatic smoke of a thin Havana drifting about him. He loomed to his feet as Tina appeared, and dreadfully conscious of Paula, she stammered a greeting in reply to Dacier’s: “How nice that we meet again, Mrs. Trecarrel!”

  “Hullo, Mr. d’Andremont,” she murmured.

  “Don’t glower at me, Ralph,” Paula drawled at her brother, who wore a frown as he stepped into the room. “I developed a bad head at the water-polo match, so Dacier brought me home. I know it’s inconvenient, but you’ve had enough sandwiches and canapes made for an extra guest.”

  “Sorry you’ve a headache,” Ralph growled, nodding hullo at the whimsically smiling Frenchman. “Naturally there are enough eats to go round. Tina, please sit down.�
��

  She did so, her legs woolly and her pulse already accelerated by that energetic tour of the plantation. Paula was looking across at her, indolent and exotic there against the flattering velvet, her hair in a glistening swathe to one shoulder. Her dress had a neck-plunge which shafted well down between her model’s breasts, and Tina felt sure that in contrast to Paula she must look immature and prim.

  “Dahling,” the other woman said to her, “are you going to return Ralph’s hospitality by inviting us to dinner one evening?”

  “Polly—”

  “Oh, hush up, Ralph,” she said to him. “Tina's out of honeymoon purdah now, and I want Dacier to meet John. Well, what about it, Tina?”

  “I—I’d certainly like all three of you to come to dinner one evening,” Tina stammered. “I’ll arrange it.”

  “There’s a nice little thing,” Paula purred, stretching a pale arm along the top of the settee and digging her long nails into the velvet—just as a cat does when excited. “Now let’s have tea brought in, Ralph. My head suddenly feels a lot better.”

  Ralph stared hard at his sister, then as he swung towards the door Tina saw that his lips were compressed, his nostrils white-edged. It could have been with anger—or was it the tormenting love that bound him as to an unpredictable, dangerous child?

  Chapter Eight

  TINA told John at breakfast that she was thinking of giving a small dinner-party. He quirked a smile across the table and told her it was okay with him. “Who’s coming?” he wanted to know.

  “Ralph and Paula,” she replied, dabbing at her lips with a napkin to hide the nerve that flickered at the thought of having Paula here, near John. “Dacier d’Andremont is also coming, and I wondered if you could suggest a nice local girl I could invite as a partner for Ralph.”

  “There's Janet Macrea,” John said, adding in a provocative tone of voice, “She’s only about nineteen, but we greying males rather like them dewy with innocence.”

  A brief meeting of eyes followed this crack, and Tina, nerves rippling under her rib-cage, wondered what he would do if she suddenly went round to him and kissed that glistening speck of marmalade off his bottom lip. “Yes, Janet should be perfect,” she agreed, having met and liked the older Macrae girl when she and John had collected Liza the morning after younger girl’s birthday party. Janet was sandy-haired and healthy-look-ing, with an open kind of personality that would surely make a relaxing change for Ralph, who was continually in the company of the sphinx-like Paula . . .

  “Getting matchmaking ideas with regard to Ralph?” John enquired, elbows on the table, cleft chin propped on his knuckles, sea-blue eyes regarding her with amusement.

  “He’s extremely nice,” she smiled back. “He works like a Trojan for you, and I must admit that I think he'd make the right sort of girl a charming husband.”

  “And where does Paula fit into the cosy domestic picture you're painting?” The smile had died out of John’s eyes and now they were almost hard. “Do you think this rich, gay landowner is planning to take her back with him to Martinique?”

  John’s taut expression drove a knife-point into Tina’s heart, and she wished passionately that Dacier was romantically interested in Paula, but she didn’t think it likely. Though the pair of them seemed to enjoy crossing swords, once or twice yesterday Tina had noticed him looking at Paula with a cold, almost repelled look in his amber eyes. No, she wasn’t the type of woman Dacier went for. When he had said he thought it likely he would one day lose his heart to an English girl— it was true Paula had been born in England— there was a Continental provocation about her that made her the femme fatale type Dacier had not been referring to.

  After breakfast, when John had gone to his studio, Tina changed into a bathing suit and went down to the beach. The tide was out, so wearing grass sandals she waded towards the reef where there was a fascinating underwater galaxy of rainbow-tinted fish and fretted coral. She splashed about like a child, letting the tiny fish swim between her fingers, fairy things with wings you could see through. The coral grew like tree ferns and caverns, making a weird fable-like world where loggerhead turtles paddled along, encrusted with barnacles, and orange starfish lay like plump pincushions on sandy patches between the yellow coral rocks. What she had to watch for was the black sea-urchins, whose spikes were both painful and poisonous, and what she most delighted in were the cobalt-blue fish no larger than a thumbnail.

  At last, replete with all this strange beauty, she returned to the beach with her hair in wet tendrils and stretched out on her orange and white striped beach-jacket. The sea-carved clffs rose all around her like a shell, holding her enclosed in the hollow booming of the sea, its eternal motion rocking her off to sleep.

  She awoke drowsily, unaware that someone was sprawled nearby watching her. Indolent from the sun, she stretched her young body in its white swimwear; her legs were slender and pale-gold, the left knee resting against the bend of her slightly updrawn right leg, her fingers digging the sand in surprise when a voice said: “You are a pocket Venus, ma belle.’'

  She swung her glance to the right, and there was Dacier d’Andremont, large and strikingly attractive in fawn slacks and a bamboo-gold shirt. His smile flashed and as she quickly sat up, a plump peach landed in her lap. “I find them most refreshing, don’t you?” His white teeth sank into one, and the sweet, slightly acid fragrance drifted to Tina’s nostrils and made them quiver.

  Again, as Tina nibbled the juicy peach and knuckled the moisture from her chin, she was aware of being with someone who was totally sympathetic and dependable—and yet he didn’t actually look it. With his lionesque head, those whimsical eyes, that vitality-packed frame, she felt herself with a man who knew a tremendous lot about women. The nice thing was, he didn’t exploit his knowledge but charmingly pretended that he could still be fooled.

  “Did you come to Blue Water on purpose to see me?” she asked.

  “I did.” He rested on an elbow and prodded his peach stone into the pale sand. “It was that yesterday you looked a little sad, mignonne. Has your good husband already lost interest in his bride?”

  She scrubbed her fingers hard on her beach-jacket and felt a flush prickle her skin. “That’s a leading question, Mr. d’Andremont, one I could take exception to. After all, this is only the third time we have met.”

  “Once is often enough for two people to establish that they are in sympathy with each other.” He dug a hand into a back pocket and produced his opulent cigarette case. “You do not smoke, I think?”

  She shook her head. “I’m the old-fashioned type,” she said wryly.

  “Don’t be on the defensive about that—Tina.” He glanced over the flame of his lighter, then snapped it out. “I may call you by your cute first name, no ?”

  “Go ahead,” she smiled, wondering a little if he was flirting with her. Very rarely had she been flirted with. John had courted her in a curiously matter-of-fact way—probably because the urge to fall in love was dead in him.

  “What are you thinking, Tina?” Dacier puffed the smoke of a Gauloise. “That a French bachelor should not call a married woman a pocket Venus, that he must pretend he much prefers to look at, say, that palm tree over there?”

  “I think palm trees are very graceful things,” she fenced, flipping a narrow chiffon scarf out of her beach-jacket pocket and preparing to tie back her hair with it. The next moment Dacier had calmly plucked it out of her fingers and dropped it to the sand like a ruby cloud.

  “Leave your hair as it is,” he ordered. “Beautiful things should not be tamed and tied.”

  “Oh, come off it, Dacier!” she laughed. "It’s good of you to want to boost my morale, but don’t overdo it.”

  “So,” he shrugged his shoulders in an amusing Latin way, “my compliments are wasted on the wife of John Trecarrel. What, then, shall we talk about? Marriage?”

  “It’s always an interesting subject,” she agreed, arms clasped about her updrawn knees, her gaze upon the sh
ifting silver of the ocean.

  “Interesting and complex,” he murmured. “Especially so when a girl loses her heart to a much older man who has already been married. It takes courage, that.”

  Dacier swept a glance over her pensive face, then stubbing his cigarette in the sand, he said: “We have been acquainted a very short while, but each of us knows that already we have established a feeling of understanding, therefore as a friend I am going to speak candidly. You are not happy in your marriage, is it not so? You find yourself part of a situation which bewilders and unnerves you—and I do not like to see this. You said, when first we met, that your husband was haunted by the past. The ghosts, they are still there, up in the house above the beach? They hover between you and John Trecarrel ?”

  She shivered at the graphic way he put it, and the need for his sympathy gripped her and would not be denied. “I thought I could help John to forget,” she said, “but it needed love—his love for me. Instead there’s a wall between us. We smile at each other, we discuss daily matters, but we feel the barrier whenever we touch . . .”

  Her lashes clung in sudden wet points, young and hurt was her look, while her pale, untied hair swung to conceal the tears she fought to control. She felt Dacier take hold of her hands and firmly press them. She heard him say: “A marriage that gives sadness and little joy is not for you, chérie. A one-sided love holds the seeds of disaster, and when they are fully sown it is you who will reap the bitter harvest—”

  “Oh, don’t!” Tina put her head against her knees as though in physical pain, for there was too much truth in what he said for it to be bearable. She had cocooned herself in a padding of hope and desperate activity for the past couple of weeks, now Dacier had bared her aching heart and her unloved body, and she was afraid and quivering as a moth that must fly or die. His fingers cupped her chin and he made her look at him. His pupils were enlarged darkly against the amber irises of his eyes and she stared into them, then his hands slipped to her shoulders and he was suddenly leaning so close that she felt the warmth coming off his tanned skin. She was held motionless, desperately aware of her hungry need for tenderness.