She smiled, comforted and at peace.
'What time do we start?' she asked.
Going out with Perry this time was different— though she wouldn't let herself try to analyse just why. She told herself stolidly that it was just that she knew him better now, and was more relaxed with him, that the Country Club had its own special atmosphere. And she was annoyed when a small voice pointed out to her that she wasn't really relaxed at all—that her pulses were going uncommonly fast.
They met several people they knew, all eager to commiserate with Peregrine on the raid on his dispensary—or to ask him about his trip to America. But with a table to themselves, in spacious surroundings, they had plenty of chance for private conversation.
He asked her, in spite of Anne-Marie's having forbidden him to do so, whether, in the light of all that had happened recently, she would rather go home than stay in Trinidad.
'That would break one of the conditions you laid down when I came out here,' she reminded him. 'The other—about not having a regular boy-friend out here! You let me get away with that, and see where it landed me.'
'I'm serious,' he said. 'Be frank, Bryony. Do you want to go home before your time is up?'
She was seized with the craziest impulse—to look him straight in the face and say: 'I don't want to go home at all—at least, not for keeps.'
But sanity intervened. It was nothing but this glamorous setting, the seductive sound of steel-band music coming from the dance hall, which put such a lunatic notion into her head.
'I'd rather finish my contract,' she said instead, in a cool, friendly tone. 'In many ways I've enjoyed being out here.'
'I wonder what you'll do when you get back,' he observed rather moodily. 'Now that you've exorcised this demon from your mind—about being an adopted child, I mean—and can look at life sensibly, I suppose you'll be finding some English-up-to-the-eyebrows young man like Ronald Gilbert, with a suitable income, and sending us invitations to your wedding.'
'You're developing a very vivid imagination,' she observed drily. 'But if I do marry this paragon I'll certainly see that you get your invitation.'
He gave a short laugh.
'Which, just as certainly, I shouldn't accept.' And he added hurriedly: 'I've not the income for dashing halfway across the world on social occasions. Doubt if I ever will. Doctoring is not one of the most lucrative professions.'
An even madder notion took hold of her now—to say quite clearly, so that he couldn't possibly fail to hear: 'I'd rather marry a doctor than anyone. Funny, isn't it?'
Instead, she asked curiously: 'What did Mrs Forrest say when you told her you didn't want her to help you any more? Was she annoyed? Did she understand you resented her trying to put me in a bad light over Lucy?'
He smiled.
'What a lot of questions! But I'm going to answer your first, if you don't mind. She said, if you really want to know, "I suppose you're going to make a fool of yourself over that so-called housekeeper of yours. I knew she'd make trouble the moment I set eyes on her."'
Bryony went scarlet. She could find nothing to say. And he went on coolly: 'Would it interest you at all to hear my reply?' And when she still failed to speak, he continued: 'I told her that I was head over heels in love with you, but that I doubted if I'd have the faintest chance of your taking me on.'
Words came to her at last. She said: 'I suppose you think that because I imagined myself half in love with Hugh at one time—and have only just discovered what a horrible man he is—I couldn't realise————— ' Her eyes swam with tears then, and she could only murmur stupidly: 'Oh, Perry! I'm going to cry. And I haven't got a handkerchief.'
'Use your table-napkin, darling. And come on. Let's go and dance. You can weep into my shoulder then, and people won't notice.'
They didn't stay long at the Club after this. He took her to the car, and drove her in the moonlight by hairpin bends to a bay where the only sound was the lapping of the sea against the sand. And there he gathered her into his arms and assured her, laughing and kissing her at the same time, that he was definitely coming to her wedding after all—whether it took place in England or in Trinidad.
'It wasn't love at first sight with me,' he confessed. 'I thought you had rather hard eyes—and that you might make a good disciplinarian. But you've softened since you came out here. With rare exceptions your eyes match your profile, the lovely line of1 your cheek—my sweet!'
She moved away from him for a moment, and looking up at him said quietly: 'I suppose you think I'm hard about this man who thinks he's my father?'
'A little. But it's your own decision, darling.'
'May I sleep on it?' she asked childishly.
'Of course. Which reminds me that it's high time we got home. Just one more kiss, and we'll go.'
To her astonishment she slept extremely well, and when she woke up she had come to a decision. She would go to meet this man who was supposed to be her father, if Perry would accompany her. To show hardness when one was so wrapped in happiness was surely to tempt Providence.
The ordeal, she soon realised, was worse for the tall, stooped man who was waiting for her at the Hilton than for herself. He had, as he was soon admitting, so much more to regret.
At a sign from Bryony, Perry slipped off. And he told her then what had happened—nearly twenty-four years ago.
The story didn't take long.
'My wife—your mother—died in a small nursing home when you were born,' he said, speaking with difficulty. 'I was desperate. She was only twenty. And I was twenty-one—an art student. We'd annoyed our relatives on both sides by marrying with almost no income. And what I was to do about you I couldn't imagine. The matron of the nursing home was a good sort—managed to find a couple called Moore who were longing for a baby girl—and that was that.'
'I think I understand,' she said in a choked tone.
'I've many times wondered since then if Jenny would—if she knows what's happening here below. If it had been I who had died, she would have hung on to you somehow, I'm certain.'
'But I shouldn't have been the cause of your death,' was Bryony's comment.
'No! I confess that I resented her losing her life through you,' he said. 'I loved her very much.'
'Have you married again?' she asked him.
He nodded.
'I've a dear wife, and two fine children. She knows all about my coming over here to see you. We have a portrait of Jenny which I did when she was nineteen, and she's so like that sketch of you which Anne-Marie made, she felt sure you were Jenny's child. She thought I ought to try and contact you, to make sure all was well with you. And,' he managed to smile now, 'I gather it is. I congratulate you on your choice of a husband.'
She smiled back at him, but said gently: 'We must bury the past now. I owe so much to the woman who adopted me. I'd hate to cause her the least twinge of—of distress.'
'I think you're right. But will you kiss me once, my dear?'
They went over together now to where Peregrine was sitting, ostensibly reading the paper.
'It's been a happy meeting—and a sad one, too—for me, at least,' Mr. Heathley told Peregrine. 'And now we're going to bury the past. I shall be catching the first plane I can to New York. God bless you both.'
Driving home, Bryony asked Perry anxiously: 'Was it hard of me to want to bury the past, as he said? I don't want ever to be hard to anyone again.'
He steered the car into a side road—and kissed her on the lips.
'What's the past to us now!' he said. 'The future's ours. And talking of that, how soon will you be ready to marry me?'
'When I've made a wedding-dress for myself, and bridesmaids' frocks for Anne-Marie and Sally,' she told him. 'And fixed a date that will suit your family—and my mother and stepfather, who'll need time, by the way, to save up their fare—or pay for our wedding reception in England.'
'There speaks the practical housekeeper,' he said, 'my darling, darling love.'
And kis
sed her again.
Juliet Armstrong - Isle of the Hummingbird Page 18