Although he spent part of his time in the dockyard at English Harbour, particularly when either
Sunbird One
or
Two
was in harbour, she was nearly always at Heron's Sound.
For this reason, every weekend he took her to lunch at the Blue Waters Hotel which was famous for its Sunday buffet of seafoods, half a dozen hot dishes including a spectacular joint of tender roast beef carved in generous slices by the chef, and a good selection of rich puddings.
At least one night a week they dined out; leaving John in the care of the wife or eldest daughter of the caretaker who, with his family, now lived in a cottage in the grounds.
One night they went to a housewarming party given by a couple who had been chartering
Sunbird One
for several years, and who had now bought themselves a holiday house on the island.
During the later stages of the party, Christie was taken away from the main room by a man who professed to be an artist. Whether he was she never found out. It could have been a ploy he had invented for persuading unsuspecting women to go into bedrooms with him.
'I know Jim and Betty won't mind if I show you the very interesting painting they have in one of their guest rooms,' was his gambit.
He was fifty, and not overtly a lecher, so Christie went with him. She was struggling in his embrace, when a freezing voice from the doorway said, 'I should let my wife go, if you don't want a bloody nose, Morris.'
While the older man scuttled from the room, she wiped his wet kisses from her lips. Her husband looked thunderously angry. Surely he didn't think she had invited the incident?
He said, 'Betty warned me that chap liked to paw if he had half a chance. What on earth made you come in here with him?'
She was about to explain when she remembered his comment on her suspicions about Celia.
'Jealous, Ash?' she asked lightly.
His furious scowl lightened. 'I believe I can hold you against ruttish little runts of his sort. Come here.'
He was standing with his hands behind his back, perhaps to restrain himself from the temptation to seize hold of Morris and shake him like a large dog worrying a rat.
When she came within reach, he took her firmly in his arms and kissed her until she was dizzy.
'More to your taste?' he asked mockingly, when he raised his head to look down at her.
'Anyone's kisses would be preferable to that man's slobbery lips,' she said guardedly.
Ash was not deceived. 'I think you'd like to go to bed. And why not indeed? Come on: we'll say our farewells, and be on our way.'
'No, not yet,' she objected. 'It's too early. And besides, I don't want to lea—'
He kissed her again, his hands sliding down her back to pull her hips hard against his.
'I want to,' he told her huskily. 'So do you, but you won't admit it.'
That night marked a lovely but poignant development in their relationship. Ash had always given her great pleasure but, long after midnight, when she thought herself drained of all feeling, he took possession of her body and she found herself panting and shaking in the throes of a new kind of delight.
For one pulsating, mind-bending instant, she had an implosion of feeling more sublime than any before. Afterwards, it was terrible to have to make herself move away from him. Tears squeezed beneath her closed eyelids. If sex without love could be like that, what would it be like if ever they made love
with
love?
But that was something she would never find out.
There came a day, not long after that special high summit of bliss, when Christie knew she had to go away and be by herself for a while, out of reach of the disturbing magnetism of her husband's dynamic personality.
In the nautical terms which she was beginning to learn, she felt that her mind was like a compass without its corrector box. She could never take an accurate reading of her attitude to the future while living in the same house with Ash.
He had only to glance at her or touch her for her to suffer a "compass error". Sometimes even hearing his voice, as he spoke to a member of the staff, was enough to deflect her capacity to think straight.
The flat in London having been sold now, and the money partly invested and partly—at his insistence—put into a special account apart from their joint bank account, she was not without independent means.
She decided to go to Barbados, an island further to the south which, so she had heard, had more and better housekeeping cottages than anywhere else in the West Indies. It sounded a good place to lose herself for a week or two.
She left the freezer filled with dishes to last two weeks, and she wrote out a suggested meal plan for Ash and for John. Anyway, he could manage perfectly well on his own. He was the least helpless of men.
In the letter she left for him, she wrote—
I'm not going to say where I'm going, because I don't want to be
hauled back before I'm ready. Please try to understand how I feel.
Coming to Antigua, marrying you, all happened so fast—like a
hurricane. Since then we've both been involved in making Heron's
Sound liveable as fast as possible. Now I need a lull. . .'
To her nephew, she said, 'I have to go away for a little while, darling, so be a good boy while I'm gone, won't you? Do just as Uncle Ash tells you, and don't leave Sammy out in the rain again. Even though he's a seal, I don't think he likes to be caught in a downpour like last week. It could given him mildew, and that would make him smell horrid.'
John seemed to accept her departure without any worries. She had been afraid that it would remind him that his parents had gone and never come back. Had that been the case, she could not have gone. As much as she needed a period of calm reflection, her love for the boy was stronger than any personal needs.
It was only because she was sure that he now loved Ash and her equally, and felt safe and secure with either of them, that she could contemplate going away.
In her note to Ash she had not stated categorically that she meant to return. She felt a little uncertainty might be good for him. He wouldn't suffer it for long. John had her promise that she would be back, and would not need a great deal of prompting to report that assurance to his uncle. Surely Ash knew her well enough to know that her word to her nephew was as binding as a promise could be.
When John asked her where she was going, she said, 'Not very far. I may not be able to send you a picture postcard, but I'll bring some back with me, and perhaps a present as well. What would you like?
Or shall it be a surprise?'
'A surprise,' he decided.
Christie hugged him, thinking, as she held him close, how nice it would be if she could be as demonstrative with Ash.
Often she longed to touch him; but theirs was not a relationship which admitted affectionate contacts. Even when they made love it was always he who caressed her. She had never dared to make love to him, even though she guessed that, in a perfect marriage, the wife's role was not merely passive.
She had been in Barbados two days when, shopping for food in a supermarket, she was astonished to run into Ian, the surgeon she had met at the Hathaways' Christmas party.
She wouldn't have noticed him, having eyes only for the goods on the shelves, but he recognised her.
'Christiana! What are you doing here?'
'Oh . . . Ian. Hello. How are you?' It was only with an effort that she could recall his name.
He was wheeling a grocery cart for a woman who he introduced as his sister. Her husband, also a medical man, had retired to Barbados two years ago. Ian stayed with them every year, and was gradually exploring the other islands before deciding where to buy a property for his own eventual retirement.
'Who are you staying with?' he asked. 'Laurel may know them.'
'I'm here on my own, in a housekeeping cottage.'
'What happened to that tall, dark young yachtsman you were involved with at Christmas?'
'He's in Antigua.'
'Then you're free to have dinner with me.'
'Thank you, but I'd rather not.'
But he wouldn't take no for an answer, and in the end she gave way.
But she didn't want to be seen in public with him. She suggested he come to her cottage for a simple supper.
'As long as you don't misunderstand that I'm not free for anything but supper,' she added pointedly, his sister having left them to chat while she continued her shopping.
Her uncertainty as to whether she should tell him what had happened since their previous meeting was resolved when, soon after arriving at the cottage that evening, he said, 'It seems to me that last time we met you were wearing a platinum wedding ring, and now you have a gold one. I also detect other changes. I can't quite define them, but they're there. I think there must be some special reason why you're here alone, Christiana.'
'Yes, there is,' she admitted.
Suddenly the need to seek someone's advice was overwhelming. She found herself telling him everything.
'What makes you believe he doesn't love you?' was his first question, having heard her out.
'If he did, he would say so. Ash isn't bashful. Anything but!'
By now they had finished the light meal. They moved to the small private patio with a view of the beach and the moonlight ocean.
Ian thought about this for a while. At length, he said, 'One of the differences between my sex and yours is that women need verbal and other assurances of love... flowers, presents, romantic gestures. That's what caused the collapse of my marriage. I was too preoccupied with my career. I didn't take enough time to make my ex-wife feel loved, and another man stepped in and made up for my deficiencies. I did love her. I thought it was enough to make love to her often, and with enthusiasm. Men tend to express love with their bodies, and to find it difficult to put their feelings into words.'
They sat talking until very late. It was the first of many conversations with him. Ian never said or did anything to overstep the bounds of friendship between a wordly-wise man and a troubled young woman twenty years his junior.
Then, one day, he said, 'Christie,'—as he had taken to calling her—'I told you at Christmas that I was strongly attracted to you. Getting to know you during these past days has reinforced my opinion that you-could make me very happy. I believe I could make you much happier than you are at present. Marriage is not as unbreakable as it used to be, and your present marriage was entered on very ill—
advisedly. Perhaps, after your being sexually incompatible with your first husband, and emotionally incompatible with your second, it might be a case of third time lucky.'
'Oh, no, Ian—no. It's very kind of you, but I couldn't ever marry
again,'
was her instant reaction.
'My motive was not to be kind,' he told her, with a rueful smile. 'I'm in love with you, my dear.'
Having declared himself, he moved along the sofa on which they were sitting, and took her in his arms to kiss her.
Not counting one or two long since forgotten teenage kisses at parties and after dates, Christie had been kissed with passion by Mike and Ash, and by that revolting man Morris. She did not push Ian away because she was curious to know what effect his kisses would have on her.
At first they had none. They were not unpleasant, but neither did they excite her. And when he became more excited, and began to kiss her the so-called French way, and to touch her breasts, she was seized with revulsion and hurriedly extricated herself.
'I'm sorry . . . I'm so sorry, Ian.'
'My fault—rushing my fences again! Let's pretend it never happened, and revert to our very pleasant friendship, shall we?'
Christie felt this would be very difficult, but he had another week's holiday—or so he claimed—and refused to leave her on her own. He arranged to meet her the next day, to drive her across the island for a walk on the rugged, surf-pounded Bathsheba coast in the north-east.
Before she went to sleep that night, she thought over what he had once said to her about the differences between the sexes, and how men tended to express their feelings bodily rather than verbally.
If Ian was right—and she credited him with a good deal of wisdom, even though his own marriage had not lasted—perhaps it was foolish to hanker for more than she already had.
There was no denying that Ash made love to her 'often and with enthusiasm', and she knew that only with him could she ever experience the delights she had once thought denied to her. Ian's embrace had proved that. He was an attractive man, and probably an adroit lover; but the moment he had become passionate he had turned her off, even sickened her.
Yet she had only to think of her husband's firm, cynical mouth to be pierced by a sharp stab of longing to feel his kisses on her lips, and his lean brown hands on her body.
For the first time she saw that perhaps her concealment of her true feelings might not always have the effect intended. After a while, if she never made love to him, perhaps instead of feeling challenged, he might become bored and look for a more response partner.
Suddenly she was possessed by a feverish desire to find out how he would react if, for a change, she invited his caresses, or even took the initiative from him. Why not? That would test his sang-froid, she thought, with a gurgle of amusement, if his normally reserved wife took to demanding her conjugal rights at all hours of the day and night.
The idea made her laugh aloud; and, as she did so, she had the strange feeling that, all at once, she hadfound her true self again.
It was as if, for years, from a time even before her first marriage, she had lost the ability to take life lightly, with a sense of humour. Now, suddenly, she had it back. She was a whole person once more, and eager to take a more positive approach to making her marriage a success.
The idea of prolonging Ash's desire for her by keeping him guessing about her feelings towards him seemed now a negative attitude.
Worse than negative: ungenerous. How many men, if the truth were known, cheated wives who were always warm and loving towards them? Probably a tiny minority.