by Jane Arbor
Her surmise had been wrong. At the bungalow he stayed only long enough to let her get out and to push her scooter into the lean-to which was its garage. He did not wait to see Barbara, who clucked concern at Hope’s wet state and sent her to take a hot bath. The evening cleared out after the storm, enabling them to sit out on the verandah until it was quite dark.
Barbara asked what Hope expected to do in her spare time, and Hope countered by asking what social life there was; what, for instance, Tina had found to do.
Barbara grimaced. ‘Not much, I’m afraid. That was one of her grouses—that she didn’t get to know anyone but me. But as she seemed to think she would lose caste if she appeared anywhere without a male escort, she never reached first base in meeting anyone. She has her car, by the way,’ Barbara added. ‘She drove over in it at lunch-time, expecting to show it off to you.’
‘I didn’t come back. I lunched in the canteen. Mr. Napier said you worked through once you started, and wouldn’t want to be interrupted,’ said Hope.
‘Do call him Craig. I’m sure he’ll call you by your first name except when he wants to be very formal in the office,’ Barbara suggested gently, ‘and though that’s true—that I do work on through the afternoon, I hope you’ll feel free to come back any time you want to. Though if I were you, I’d keep some swimming gear over there. Between noon and three you’d have plenty of time to scuttle over to Cloud’s Nest for a dip, especially if I gave you a packed lunch to take with you.’
‘Thanks awfully. I’ll do that sometimes,’ Hope agreed, relieved that another of her surmises about Craig and Barbara had proved wrong, since Barbara obviously had nothing to hide as to how she spent the midday hours. She had been at home to Tina this morning; she would welcome Hope ‘any time’, she had said. Hope reminded herself to snub Tina with facts when they next met Barbara was saying, ‘There’s the Planters’ Club. It’s for the owners and managers, of course. But every fortnight they have a Ladies’ Night—the next one, this Saturday, the day after tomorrow. You’ll meet people there. Would you like to go? With me, I mean?’
Hope said, ‘I’d love to. But if you’re going, won’t Mr.—Craig be taking you?’
Barbara looked away. ‘Oh, Craig and I are friends, but we don’t go about together. Anyway, if Victoire de Faye is going to the Club on Saturday, he’ll be escorting her. But I wonder if Tina might change her mind and come with us, as you’ll be going. Shall I telephone the House and ask her?’
Hope listened to the one-sided conversation, heard Barbara say, ‘Oh, all right. Nice for you,’ and when Barbara hung up she reported that Tina was going to the Club, but with Luke Donat, the son of another planter, to whom Victoire de Faye had introduced her.
‘She implied that it hadn’t taken her long to make some social contacts, once she got out of Craig’s and my clutches,’ laughed Barbara without a trace of rancour.
‘What goes on at the Club, and what does one wear?’ Hope asked.
‘People meet and chat; a lot of sugar “shop” is talked,’ said Barbara. ‘There are buffet refreshments and some dancing and card-playing. The men dress informally; the women like to wear long. Anything pretty you have with you will do.’
The Planters’ Club building was on the quays of Port Belain, its next-door neighbour the Yacht Club, both overlooking the latter’s marina. The foyer and the big room beyond it were crowded with people, drinking and talking in groups. Everyone seemed to know everyone, and it was not long before Barbara and Hope were drawn into a group where the introductions were made mostly by first names, as if it didn’t matter who was who, as long as they were good company.
As she listened to talk in which she wasn’t joining, Hope looked about her. Tina was there, looking at her butterfly prettiest. Her companion was a darkly handsome youth, who moved with slim-hipped grace when he put a possessive hand under Tina’s elbow and led her towards another group where Victoire de Faye, at the centre of a ring of men, was holding court, Craig Napier beside her.
Presently the crowds broke up and drifted off to different purposes. The bar was an attraction. So were the card tables. The shift of population cleared the floor of the big room, and dancing began to a three-piece band playing Latin-American and calypso rhythms. Victoire de Faye did not dance. Craig had left her to join some men at the bar, but she never seemed to lack company, one man succeeding another in seeking her out. From the bar Craig went to ask Barbara to dance at the same time as Hope was being partnered by a young West Indian from Antigua, whom Barbara had introduced as being a pupil on the Donat estate.
After the dance he sat out with her until Luke Donat approached, when he bowed with old-fashioned courtesy and moved away.
The coal-black eyes of the other youth appraised Hope boldly. ‘So you are the English cousin of my little partner? Which of your boy-friends brought you along to this hop?’ he demanded.
‘Boy-friend? I haven’t one. I came with Mrs. Paul,’ Hope told him.
‘No boy-friend? Too bad. Then I’m not cutting in on one if I suggest we dance. Care to?’
The invitation was too offhand for Hope’s liking, but she had no reason for refusing. The band was playing a tango and he guided her through it with superb expertise. When the rhythm changed to an insistent pop beat, he released her and embarked on an advance-and-retreat movement, inviting her to copy it and to invent steps of her own. Moving leisurely towards her and away, he managed to make conversation.
‘Where have you been hiding since you came out?’ he asked.
Hope told him and he agreed that Tina had said so already. ‘You should have got your chief to find you some place in town. You’d have had more fun,’ he advised.
‘I think I’m going to enjoy being where I am,’ said Hope.
‘And trust Napier to see that you don’t get too much fun. According to your cousin, he practically rang a curfew for her every night.’
Hope laughed. ‘I’m afraid Tina exaggerates a lot.’ To change the subject she asked, ‘What do you do yourself?’
‘Do?’ As if he thought he was answering her question, ‘My father owns the Planchet estate,’ he said.
‘Yes, but you—?’
He shrugged. ‘Sail. Swim. Ride. Play around generally. Any of all that on your own programe?’
‘Only swimming.’
‘Well, that will do for a start. Where do you swim?’
‘I haven’t been here for a week. I haven’t done any yet.’ Hope’s glance had noticed Tina sitting alone and watching their antics intently, her pretty face sullen. Tina was registering jealousy of her partner and Hope had no wish to detain him. She stood still and he moved with her off the floor.
‘What’s wrong?’ His tone was truculent. ‘Don’t you fancy my dancing? Or have you got a date with some bigger fish?’
‘Of course not. I’ve enjoyed it. But the band does rather go on, doesn’t it?’ She sat down, while he stood with a foot on the rung of her chair.
‘In other words, you are sending me back to duty with young Tina?’ he demanded shrewdly.
‘Well, she isn’t dancing at the moment, and you did come with her.’
‘None of my doing, inviting her. She was wished on me by Victoire de Faye, and after all, I’ll try anything once. Won’t you?’
‘It depends on what it is.’
‘Chicken!’ he jeered at her. ‘Anyway, it was doing them both a kindness to take Tina off Victoire’s hands. Because Victoire, it’s been obvious for some time, is breathing rather heavily in Napier’s direction, so that relieving her of her little protégée for even one evening was a charity, as I saw it.’
So Tina must have based her speculations on island gossip, thought Hope. But scorning to discuss them with him, she advised instead, ‘Well, duty-escort or no, don’t you think you owe Tina some more of your company now?’
‘Wanting my honest opinion on that?’ he quipped.
‘Not particularly. Simply telling you that I think you do,’ she said, frank bec
ause, with anyone of his thick skin, she felt she must be.
He looked at her, impervious to the snub. Then, with pseudo-gallantry, he clicked his heels and sketched a salute. ‘Yes, ma’am. Or correct me, do! Should it be schoolmarm?’ he mocked her as he slid lithely away.
Glad to be rid of him, Hope watched his return to Tina and saw them both go towards the buffet. She sat alone until she began to feel conspicuous, and was about to seek the cloakroom when Craig Napier came up to her.
‘Will you dance?’ he asked.
She was glad when, on the floor, his hand went firmly to her back, drawing her close. She would have felt self-conscious, executing with him the impromptu capers she had shared with Luke Donat, and once she began to follow Craig’s lead, she realised that dancing with him meant at his explicit guidance and control. He danced as she suspected he did most things—with the bland assurance that he knew very well what he was about, and at least in dancing it made partnering him very pleasurable: It was good to be led where he wanted, turned at his scarcely perceptible touch, swept and swayed this way and that, always at his interpretation of what the dance should be. While it lasted, it made one entity of the two of them. Or was that, she wondered, to see herself as a kind of puppet, jerking to his pull on the strings? But she rejected the thought. Dancing in partnership ought to be like that, and nowadays too often wasn’t. She wished this dance hadn’t to come to an end.
Craig said, ‘You and Barbara should have come with our party. But you seem to have made some contacts of your own. You even filched Tina’s escort from her, which couldn’t have pleased her overmuch.’
‘Only for one dance,’ Hope pointed out.
‘No more? She seemed to be sitting alone for rather a long time, looking as if the law of the jungle was operating strongly in your favour and against her.’
‘Tch! That’s nonsense.’ Though Hope knew Tina had radiated jealousy, she was not going to admit as much to him. ‘Tina couldn’t be so petty as to mind my dancing once with Luke Donat. Besides, she’s had plenty of other partners tonight, and no one expects to dance every time—’ Hope checked there, realising too late that that sounded as if she were admitting and excusing herself for usurping Luke Donat; also, from Craig’s expression, that he thought the same. But all he said with pseudo-mildness was, ‘You don’t have to apologise for jungle law, you know. It’s been universally around for far too long, and you probably wouldn’t be feminine if you couldn’t argue your right to make use of it now and again.’
Which meant, Hope thought, seething, that he hadn’t believed a single word of her denial that she had deliberately kept Luke Donat from Tina. Jungle law, indeed—as if she would ever be in competition for a man with a kitten like Tina! Just how little dignity did he suppose she had?
When the music slowed and stopped a few minutes later, he said, ‘I’ve already collected Barbara and her partner for supper, and you must join us too.’
Hope hung back, foreseeing the inevitable crosscurrents of hostility between Victoire de Faye and Barbara at which Tina had hinted. ‘Oh—’ she began. ‘Barbara and I had arranged to meet for supper, I think she meant—’
‘Rubbish,’ Craig cut in. ‘She’s with her partner, Edward Rippon, and they’ve already accepted, so if you don’t, what do you propose to do? Chew a crust in a corner, solo? Don’t be difficult, please. Come along.’
He led the way to a table near the buffet where Victoire de Faye was about to seat herself. At sight of Hope with Craig and Barbara she hesitated, then said, ‘I have changed my mind, Craig, about staying for this. I should like you to take me home.’
He drew out chairs for Barbara and Hope before he replied. Then, calmly, ‘When you’ve had something to eat. What may I bring you?’ he asked.
She frowned. ‘I said I wanted to leave now. Didn’t you hear me? Or are you suggesting I go alone?’
‘You haven’t your car. I brought you in mine.’
‘And so?’
‘And so I hope you’ll let me drive you back as soon as you like after supper. Meanwhile, please don’t spoil the party.’ He stood by her chair until she sat down with obvious ill grace, acknowledging the others with a nod shared between them.
She toyed with smoked salmon and sipped a little wine while for the most part, the men talked between themselves and to Barbara and Hope. She addressed Barbara once on some triviality and condescended to Hope, ‘Barbara should have found a partner for you. So humiliating, I always feel, for a girl to have to depend on the odd, casual invitation to dance,’ making Hope aware that she had been noticed and pitied while she had sat alone after Luke Donat had left her.
Altogether the supper session was an uneasy one, and Hope was not sorry when Barbara suggested they leave after it. While Barbara said goodnight to her partner Hope heard Craig ask Victoire, ‘If I’m to take you home now, what about Tina?’
Victoire shrugged. ‘What about her? She came with Luke Donat. She can go back with him.’
‘Not,’ returned Craig firmly, ‘after you’ve already left.’
‘Why not? She is not a child.’
‘All the same, you should know as well as I do that going out for the evening and coming home from it are two different things to Donat. If you’re determined to go now, he and Tina are not to outstay you,’ he retorted.
Another shrug. ‘If they want to, how can I stop them?’
‘I can. They’ll come,’ said Craig, conviction in his tone. As he turned away, adding, ‘When you’re ready, I’ll join you at the car after I’ve seen them into Donat’s.’
Hope realised she had glimpsed a facet of his character which she liked. He had little use for Tina, as she knew, but he showed almost a guardian’s concern for her as a girl. More, certainly, than did her new hostess, Victoire. It was obvious too that he didn’t trust Luke Donat. And in that, on the little evidence she had, Hope agreed with him.
On their own way home Barbara said, ‘Victoire makes things very difficult for Craig.’
‘You mean her wanting to leave when, as she was already at the table, he must have been expecting her to stay? I’m afraid she reminded me of a child saying, “I was going to play; now I shan’t,” just to be awkward,’ Hope remarked.
‘Yes—when she found he’d invited us to eat with them; when she had thought they were to be téte-a-téte and realised that they weren’t. More than that, she had to be reasonably polite to me in front of Edward Rippon and you. In front of Craig, she doesn’t always bother to try.’
Hope was silent, piecing this into Tina’s pronouncement that Victoire and Barbara did not ‘get on’. Dared she ask Barbara why? Instead she compressed with, ‘Doesn’t Madame de Faye like you, then?’
‘Doesn’t she make it rather obvious?’ There was an unwontedly bitter note in Barbara’s voice.
‘She did tonight,’ Hope admitted. ‘But do you know why?’
‘Yes.’ Almost echoing Tina, Barbara added, ‘She hates me—with reason, she thinks,’ speaking now with a finality which Hope felt she must not question. Whatever the cause of the other woman’s enmity, it was clear that Barbara knew it for an injustice, the wound of which went deep.
CHAPTER FOUR
Tina lost no time in making a double errand of showing off her new toy to Hope and of airing a grievance on the subject of Luke Donat. She drove over to the bungalow on the Sunday.
Hope admired the car and asked when Tina’s small charge was expected to arrive.
‘Crispin? Early next week,’ Tina said, and then, ‘Luke Donat said you made a big thing of pitying me for not getting a partner while he was dancing with you; that, though you told him you wanted him to stay with you, you went all heroic and sent him back to me. Did you?’
‘I don’t know what he meant by “a big thing”, nor why he lied that I wanted to keep him,’ returned Hope. ‘He’s a very good dancer, I’ll give you that, but I didn’t find him attractive. You could have had him back, as far as I was concerned, at any time you wanted.’
‘But you did send him?’ Tina pressed. ‘You humiliated me by sending him?’
‘Oh, don’t be so touchy,’ Hope urged. ‘He came back to you, didn’t he—lies and all? But look, are you going to give me a run in the car or not?’
It seemed that Tina’s pride of possession was too much for her ill-humour. ‘All right,’ she grudged. ‘Where do you want to go? Shall we swim? If so, where?’
‘At Cloud’s Nest?’ Hope suggested. ‘It’s beautifully quiet there.’
On the way she told Tina of Barbara’s advice to keep a swim-suit at the office and to slip over to the coast sometimes in the long lunch break.
Tina pursed her lips. ‘If you can get away with it.’
‘If—? What do you mean?’
‘That you’ll be lucky if the Ogre doesn’t find a very special job for you to do on the day you plan to go, and whether or not you get a break, he couldn’t care less. Or if you’re late back, as I was once, when I came into town with a couple of girls from the boucan, then the angels had better be on your side, that’s all.’
Hope leaned forward to flick a finger on the dashboard. ‘Touch wood, I needn’t ever be late back. Any time I thought there was any risk, I needn’t go. But normally there should be bags of time.’
As it happened, she chose the following Thursday, a day of rich heat, when the sea seemed to beckon. As she wheeled out her scooter and prepared to mount, Craig was going to his car.