“Most females look the better for a bit of razzle-dazzle,” Rachel chuckled. “It was Wilde who said that women’s styles may change but their designs remain the same.”
“What designs am I supposed to have?” Tina murmured.
“I think we both know that without having to put it into words.” Rachel gently pressed the shoulder bearing the bruises she had refrained from remarking on. “You need a necklace, dear child. I have exactly the thing in my room, so hang on while I fetch it.”
She left Tina alone in the big lamplit room. The smell of the oil blended with the haunting aroma of old wood, while the ticking of the clock mingled with the stormy threshing of palms fronds beyond the curtained window. Tina couldn’t hear John in the adjoining room, so she assumed he had gone downstairs. What would he say when he saw her dressed up like this? Would he be amused? More than likely.
Her hostess came bustling back with the promised necklace, which she clasped about Tina’s neck. They were opals, scintillating with color against the pale skin of Tina’s throat. They certainly added the finishing touch to her exotic appearance, but she couldn’t help wondering if it was true what people said about opals—that they were unlucky.
She went downstairs with Rachel, dressed in an old-fashioned lace gown with a velvet flower pinned at her waist, and they found John awaiting them in the sitting room, where the lamplight cast a cosy glow over the dining-table set with Rachel’s best china and glassware. A branched candelabrum formed the centrepiece, old-fashioned and lovely with holders shaped like daffodil cups.
John lifted an eyebrow at Tina as he rose from a wicker lounger. “Well, well, this is a surprise!” he drawled.
She broke into a shy smile, while the sari whispered as she walked across the colorful sisal rugs. She stood before her husband in a pose of unconscious grace, the lines of the gown flowing like opal-tinted water over the limbs of a naiad. “Rachel’s idea,” she said. “Do you like it?”
He walked right round her, looking amused but not in an unkind way. “It certainly brings out hidden facets of your personality, my child. You’re quite stunning.”
Her breath caught in her throat, for he sounded as though he really meant the compliment. But she had to go carefully, treading with infinite care on the thin ice that still shimmered between them. She performed a graceful salaam. “I live only to please my master,” she dared to murmur.
A quick smile tugged at the edge of his mouth. “At this moment, Tina, I’m almost tempted to believe you.”
Rachel stood watching the pair of them, ringed hands clasped just below her bosom, obviously as pleased as Punch at the transformation she had wrought in Tina. “What a pity Western women are losing their love of the exotic,” she said. “The men of the East would never tolerate jeans, sweaters, and those ugly quilted things called anoraks.”
In that cosily lit room, with the rain beating down hard outside, dinner was an enjoyable and tasty meal. With their coffee they had a Chartreuse the amber of a cat’s eyes, which Rachel said she had been saving for just such an occasion as this one.
“I believe I still have some of Father’s cigars in a cedarwood box I keep in the sideboard—ah, yes!” Rachel emerged rosy and beaming from the bowels of the cupboard and examined the contents of the box. “Here you are, Johnny. Light up and envelop us in clouds of Havana smoke.”
He obliged, settling back in the candleglow, the end of his cigar pulsing orange as he drew on the rich brown cylinder. The storm had blown itself out and through the reed blind filtered a moist, tangy breeze. Tina, at ease among cretonne cushions, her eyelids weighted by two glasses of dinner wine and the delicious Chartreuse, floated on the dreamy melody of the record Rachel had placed on her gramophone. Poor Butterfly, the song was called. Poor pretty thing who had loved a man who belonged to another woman!
“You can’t beat the old tunes,” Rachel said, tapping her foot in time to it. “This was all the go when I was a flapper. To look at me now, round as a barrel, you’d never believe that I was one of the favorite dancing partners at the military hops out in Bombay years ago. Do you like to dance, Tina?”
“I’ve only ever done so in the privacy of my bedroom, holding a pillow for a partner,” Tina smiled, looking at Rachel but aware of John’s eyes upon her profile.
“Tina had a rather restricted upbringing,” he drawled. “She should have had someone like you, Rachel, to mother her when her parents died.”
“What fun we’d have had, dear child,” Rachel beamed. “Most women are born with the urge to produce an infant, and caring for someone else’s is the next best thing. Still, we’re friends now and you must come across to the cay as often as you can. Johnny will let Joe bring you in the launch.”
“May I borrow Joe and the launch now and again?” Tina asked her husband.
“Of course, honey. I want you to make my buddies your friends.” He rose from his chair with a lazy stretch, then gave his left leg a rub as though it ached a bit.
“D’you still get trouble with that leg after all this time?” Rachel eyed him with concern.
“It’s the damp,” he shrugged. “Nothing more than the kind of nag you get from a tooth that doesn’t like sugar.”
“It was a miracle you kept that leg,” Rachel said gruffly.
He nodded casually, but it was evident he had no intention of discussing the matter, for he turned to Tina and suggested that she change out of the sari. “We ought to be getting home,” he added.
“You’ll stay as you are, dear child.” Rachel smiled. “The sari is yours—ah, but I insist! You look pretty as paint in it and there’s nothing to stop you wearing it for private, romantic evenings at Blue Water. Now I’ll get you a Kashmir shawl to wear on the walk down to the beach, and put your sun-dress into a bag.”
She bustled out of the room, and Tina drifted to the sideboard on which stood various Indian brasses and also one of the prettiest ornaments Tina had ever seen, a little silver birch tree with a unicorn tied to it. As she gave an exclamation of delight and picked it up, John came over and regarded it with her. “I believe Rachel’s Canadian gave her that many years ago,” he said. “A unicorn is symbolic of the elusiveness of happiness, and for a man it is most often tied to the delicate form of a woman, which the silver birch symbolizes. The workmanship is beautiful, isn’t it?”
He touched it and, purposely or not, had both arms around Tina in so doing. As she stood there, her shoulders against his chest, her heart beating fast, she knew that such a moment had to be grasped quickly before it eluded her and was lost. She turned into his arms. They were slack around her as he gazed straight down into her eyes and She nearly died of suspense and hope in the seconds that ticked away between them. Then, brushing casually at her hair, he said she looked tired, and her emotions that had been up on tiptoe sank down and she replaced Rachel’s love-token and withdrew from contact with John. She removed the opals from around her neck with a tiny shiver.
Rachel returned with a fringed silk shawl which she swung around Tina’s shoulders. She said good night to them on the veranda, and as she kissed Tina’s cheek, John having loped ahead down the steps, she whispered: “Don't let go of your dreams as easily as I did, dear child. Love is worth many sacrifices, especially the sacrifice of pride.”
Tina knew what Rachel meant, that if she wanted John she must shut her mind to the past and work towards the future. That she must give and in the giving hope to reap.
“I'll come again soon, Rachel,” she promised huskily.
“I shall look forward to seeing you, Tina. Good night, my dears! Safe crossing."
“Good night, Rachel!” John called out, then holding Tina's arm he was walking with her along the path that wound between the damp, rustling tamarinds. The storm had passed right away and the night was strangely quiet, the stars glinting washed and bright through the fronds of the tall trees. They left the grove behind them, and as they walked down the beach Tina thought of Tennyson’s “Wet sands marbled by
moon and cloud.” The scene was mysterious, the silvery ocean rippling round the lacing of the coral reef, and there at the rail of the launch the immense figure of Joe calmly awaiting them.
“Dat sure one humdinger of a storm, mistress.” His teeth glimmered in the moonlight as he helped Tina aboard. John unhitched the launch from a bollard and leapt over the side, growling a cuss word under his breath that told Tina his leg was still playing him up.
“How’s everything with your cousin on the cay, Joe?” he enquired.
“Dat Millicent done get her hair straightened out, an’ does she look a scarecrow!” Joe chortled richly as he started the motor. “What we do with de womenfolk, boss? Ain’t dey everlastin’ up to tricks?”
“You can say that again,” John laughed, and Tina glanced round from the rail to find him looking directly at her, a dark eyebrow quirked mockingly.
Tina and John took Liza back to school and stayed a couple of days in attractive Barbados. It was an extremely British island, Tina discovered, fertile and with an air of placid security. They stayed at a hotel set in a garden of purple moonflowers and scarlet hibiscus, above a bay where the colorful flying-fish fleets came in. Tina thought it a crime that these pretty, winged fish should be caught for eating, but she had to admit, when John scoffed her out of her prejudice, that they made a delicious meal. Tina swam with John at Lover’s Lagoon, where the sun shafting into the water revealed a rainbow of colors, and for the first time she saw his badly scarred thigh when they lay resting on a beach that was pink and delicate as a girl’s blush.
The scar was jagged and wide, deeply indented in the hard flesh. Tina wanted to put gentle fingers against it. She wanted so much to get close to him with her new knowledge of herself as an adult woman, but he had assumed a companionable attitude towards her that in its own way was curiously soothing and serene. For now she thought it best to let things drift on this tide of calmness, aware that undercurrents would surge when they were ready.
She, too, would be ready, she vowed. Paula Carrish was not going to get a second chance to spoil John’s life.
She listened to the lazy lullaby of the ocean that rippled over their feet, and gazed through drowsy lashes at the blue sky speckled with fleecy puff-ball clouds. Her flaxen hair lay in strands on the sand, sun-drained seaweed John had called it a moment ago. She smiled to herself and felt his toes playing with hers under the silky caress of the surf.
That evening they went into Bridgetown and dined at the Starlight Room, a rooftop restaurant shaded by palms and with a throbbing Bajun band. John wore tropical dinner clothes and looked, in Tina’s opinion, the most distinguished man in the restaurant. A glint in his eye whenever he spoke to her informed her that she, too, was worth a second glance in the white lace dress that set off his pearls. It was the enticing number Gaye Lanning had persuaded her to buy, which left her shoulders bare to the cleft between her breasts and showed the slender length of her legs, honey-toned enough not to need nylons, her small feet arching into silver shoes with twisted heel straps and high, slim heels. Her satin trench coat lay over the back of her chair, red as the lipstick she wore this evening.
“Is it true you’ve only ever danced with a pillow in your arms?” John asked, smiling lazily over the rim of his wine glass.
She nodded, one of her silver shoes tapping the floor to the rhythm of the Bajun band. Happiness tingled like an elusive caress.
“We’d better remedy that,” John said. “I think the wonky leg is fit enough to give you a few whirls, though I was never all that much of a hoofer.” He rose and circled the table to her and next moment was leading her on to the floor. He enfolded her in his arms, then she felt his hand at her waist, pressing her to the crispness of his white tuxedo.
They most certainly wouldn’t have won a prize for that foxtrot, but Tina floated on a cloud and enjoyed every moment of it. “I can’t believe that you are here, so close and near,” crooned the Bajun girl at the mike. "It can’t be wrong, it must be right, so, tonight, hold me tight.
Upon leaving the restaurant they took a starlight drive in an open-top gig, the horse’s hooves clopping on a quiet road winding under the moon that was now full and golden. They might have been real honeymooners, Tina thought, and wondered if John was thinking the same, for when they arrived at their hotel he suggested a stroll among the moonflowers before they turned in. “These few days have been good, eh?” he said. “Barbados is always unspoiled—unchanging.”
“I’ve enjoyed every moment of our stay,” she agreed.
He stopped walking where a lily pool shimmered, then very gently he framed Tina’s face in his hands and raised it to the filtering moonbeams. Her limbs and her body seemed to go fluid, and she was prepared to believe in this moment that if fondness was all he had to give, then she could take it and not cry for the stars. “Ah, Tina,” he murmured, and though his cheek came to rest against her soft, swathed hair, he didn’t try to kiss her. Her heartbeats grew slower and she numbly wondered if here in the scented night phantoms were haunting him. Had he visited Barbados with Joanna? Had they stood like this among the moonflowers? Leaves rustled as though a ghostly hand stirred them, and Tina shivered uncontrollably ...
“Let’s go in,” John said, and he moved away from her, leaving her cold, lost, knowing only that something tormented him.
They went home the following day, and almost immediately John started to work in his studio. This was quite a special retreat, with a domed glass roof shedding lots of light down into the room which was always strangely cool, maybe because of the moist clay and the various finished and unfinished pieces of sculpture grouped in comers. Tina was naturally curious about the procedure of John’s work, and though he showed her how to build up a figure from the inside with rolled fingers of clay, he liked to be alone unless he was using a model and because of the sustained concentration involved in creating something from a shapeless mass she had to give him time, when he emerged from his studio each evening, to switch from a lonely, creative mood into a relaxed and sociable one.
There would be an endearing air of abstraction about him when they met in the salon for a sundowner, his hair would be ruffled and sticky from the clay he had been handling, and there would be pipe ash on his slacks. Evidently there were moments when inspiration eluded him, for one afternoon he spent hours carving Tina a little pear-wood ornament. It was Psyche with tiny wings sprouting from her delicate shoulders, a gem in its detail and its appeal to the imaginative streak in Tina. She stood it on her dressing-table and wondered, with a catch at her heart, whether John associated her with the fairy-like Psyche who had been enamored of Cupid.
These days at Blue Water House weren’t unhappy ones. Shopping with Topaz one morning she spotted a face she knew, and next moment was smiling up into the hazel-green eyes of Ralph Carrish. “How come you haven’t been to see me yet?” he demanded.
She had been putting off a visit to him because of the necessity of seeing Paula at the plantation bungalow, but when Ralph informed her, in a casual tone of voice, that he would be alone the following afternoon, she agreed to have tea with him.
“I’ll lay on a spread and a tour, so don’t go letting me down.” He nipped her fingers in friendly warning and asked Topaz how her children were getting along.
“Dey fine, Massa Ralph.” Topaz flashed her handsome teeth at him and displayed not a sign of the antagonism Tina had noticed when they had run into his sister the other week.
Ralph bade them goodbye, and as they proceeded along the wharf Topaz remarked that Massa Ralph was a real gen’leman. “He not lak’ dat Miss Paula,” she added darkly.
Tina’s nerves were suddenly alerted and she wanted to ask Topaz what she was getting at. Joe, her husband, had been on the scene the morning Joanna had died, he had saved John’s life and he could have seen something he had later confided to his wife. She felt Topaz looking at her out of the sides of her eyes and firmly bit back the questions that clamored. Rachel Courtney had warned her
not to sift over the dead ashes, to let them blow away, and Tina, spotting a sea-fresh display of clawless crabs on the quayside, walked over and began to bargain for some in the patois she was fast learning.
“You’s getting to be a real smart housewife, ma’am,” Topaz said admiringly when they were stacking the shopping into the trunk of the car. “Dem crabs got plenty meat in their innards an’ taste fine stuffed with rice and onions, then peppered and buttered.”
Tina encouraged kitchen talk on the way home, for Topaz with a touch of the “mysteries,” as she called them, was inclined to plunge her into a mood of introspection that led in the end to the blues. She might again find herself trespassing into the shadows that must always haunt the life she had chosen—for instance, from the ocean side of Blue Water there were a trio of upper windows with sea-blue curtains always drawn across them, and there had been a morning when she had stood gazing at them, evidently noticed by Topaz, who later told her that the apartment had been slept in and used by the first wife of Massa John.
The challenge to take a look at the rooms had struck through Tina then and there, but she had not gone into them until a few days later, in a blue mood because John remained a charming but distant companion. Passing the rose window on the left curve of the gallery the sun had struck red through the diamond facets, flooding Tina in its ominous glare before she walked under the archway that led into a picture room and thence to the door she was determined to open.
Her fingers shook on the porcelain handle and out had swept a smell of crushed frangipani, once peach-sweet, now bitter and dead. Everything was covered, nothing was dusty, yet the rooms were tomb-like. The thick aquamarine carpet in the boudoir deadened all sound as she walked in. She saw her own colorless reflection in the Adam mirror above the marble fireplace, gilt cupids straddled it in a mischievous manner that was strangely pathetic now there was no lovely woman to gaze in the mirror, touch a hand to dark red hair and hear beyond the window the flurry of the incoming tide.
Bride's Dilemma Page 15