Rooted In Dishonour

THE pilot had said it was raining in Castries, and the plane made its descent through banks of low-hanging clouds to emerge above a beach so white Beth could hardly believe it was real. For the latter half of the afternoon they had been flying over a turquoise ocean inset with a curling chain of islands that seemed so small from the air it was hardly possible to believe that anyone actually lived on them. But suddenly they were poised above St Lucia, and in spite of the clouds its colour and beauty were undeniable. The beach was lapped by foam-flecked surf, and away to the left was the tarmacked runway of the international airport, Vigie.

‘That’s Vigie Beach,’ said Willard, leaning past her to point out the luxurious hotels which faced the ocean. ‘And over there—those are the twin peaks of Gros Piton and Petit Piton, the islands’ landmarks.’

‘Piton,’ repeated Beth, frowning. ‘That means peak, doesn’t it? I’m afraid my French is not what it was.’

Willard’s arm lingered about her shoulders. ‘Big peak and little peak,’ he conceded, smiling into her eyes, and she drew her gaze away from him to look out of the window again.

It had been a long flight, but she was not tired. She thought Willard was beginning to look a little drained, but that was not surprising in the circumstances. This was the most energetic day he had had since leaving the hospital, and the excitement of returning home was beginning to take its toll of him.

Fortunately, her concern for Willard had successfully banished her own anxieties about accompanying him, but she was glad they were spending the night at an hotel in Castries before going on to Sans Souci. Sans Souci; the name intrigued her, and in spite of her inhibitions she could not deny the surge of anticipation that filled her at the thought of spending the rest of her life in that part of the world which had fascinated her for so long. She looked down at Willard’s hand resting possessively on her shoulder and drew her breath in on a sigh. She would make him happy, she told herself determinedly, and ignored the speculative gaze of the first class steward who had been staring at her so admiringly throughout the flight. If he thought there was something odd about the relationship between a man obviously well into middle age and a girl of her obvious youth, it was just too bad.

The airport formalities were soon over with and a chauffeur-driven limousine took them the few short miles to the island’s capital. They drove past the surf-kissed beach and the sun came out long enough to make Beth catch her breath at the beauty of a sea that paled from deepest green to translucent opal. It was all so alien and exotic, and she stared wide-eyed at the green hills behind the town, thick with alemada vine and coconut palms.

Willard, as usual, seemed quite content to lie back and enjoy her excitement in it all. It was enough to know that she was with him, and the admiring glances she attracted satisfied his belief that he was escorting the most beautiful woman around. At first, Beth had not liked this aspect of their relationship, but as she got to know him better, she had realised it stemmed from an innate sense of insecurity. For herself, she found his undemanding company reassuring, and it was such a relief to be free of the fumbling advances of the men of her own age she had dated in the past. Her looks had not made her conceited, but she had long accepted the fact that blondes of her size and build could not help but encourage every available male in sight to try their luck, and she was sick of fending off unwelcome passes. She had even begun to wonder if she was frigid when Willard came on the scene, but his charm and easiness of manner had soon disarmed her, leaving her aware that for the first time in her life she felt pampered and cared for, and more importantly, respected.

Of course, the hospital authorities had not approved. Nurses, particularly staff nurses who should know better, were not encouraged to get involved with their patients, and their initial association had taken place under the eagle eyes of the doctor in charge of the case. It had not helped that the doctor in question, Mike Compton, had himself been attracted to Beth, but Willard had been more than a match for the authorities. As soon as possible he had moved out of the hospital into a nursing home, taking Beth with him as his private nurse. Everyone had said she was a fool, that she would regret giving up the staff appointment, that when he went back to his home in the West Indies she would find it hard to get another post. But somehow something had driven her on, and now she knew it was the love she felt for this man who was to be her husband.

In the hotel which faced the harbour, Beth insisted that Willard went straight to bed. ‘It’s been a long day,’ she said, when he would have protested. ‘It may be only early evening here, but it’s much later than that in England, and you must conserve your strength.’

Willard regarded her half impatiently. ‘I’m not a child, Beth,’ he assured her, although he began to undress obediently enough and she went to unpack her bag and take out his medication.

When she came back, he had put on his pyjamas and was folding back the fine linen bedspread. He was a big man, but these past weeks had stripped the flesh from his bones, and she guessed he was only a skeleton of the man he had once been. Yet for all that, he was still a handsome man, his greying dark hair as thick as it ever was.

Between the sheets, he looked up at her with resignation. ‘Is this to be our lives, Beth?’ he exclaimed. ‘You putting me to bed, instead of the other way around?’

Beth smiled, shaking out a couple of tablets from a bottle and handing him a glass of water. ‘You know that only time and rest can effect a cure,’ she told him, as he swallowed the tablets. ‘Now, do you need anything else?’

‘Only you,’ he said, reaching for her, drawing her down beside him on the bed and holding her close. ‘Hmm, you smell delicious. What is it?’

‘Only that perfume you bought me in Harrods,’ she murmured, aware of the hardening grasp of his fingers. His strength was certainly returning, she thought, and wondered why it should make her feel suddenly so vulnerable.

Beth’s own room was similar in style to Willard’s. Simply but imaginatively furnished, it adjoined a central lounge where she chose to eat dinner that evening. The golden lobster nestling in its bed of salad was appetising, but her own energies had been stimulated by the flight, and the sights and sounds beyond the balconies of the suite tempted her to go exploring. However, the brief dusk had given way to darkness, and although there were plenty of lights outside there were also too many people to risk losing herself among the crowds that thronged the narrow streets abounding the harbour. Instead, after eating only a minute portion of her dinner, she contented herself by standing on the balcony in the velvety darkness, listening to the combating sounds of various steel bands and the shrill music and laughter that seemed to flood from every bar and eating house. The yachts that were anchored in the harbour were floodlit at night, and on some of them there were parties going on. And towering above them all was a cruise ship of an American line, docked in Castries for an overnight stay.

It was late when she finally retired to her bed, but still she couldn’t sleep. Although the sounds outside were muted now through the louvred shutters on the windows, her brain refused to cease its chaotic tumble, and everything that had happened these last hectic weeks came back to torment her.

It was difficult to believe that it was only eight weeks since she and Willard met. It seemed so much longer than that, and perhaps that was part of his charm. From the very beginning she had felt relaxed with him, but even so she had had her doubts about his immediate attraction to her. A patient often imagined himself in love with his nurse, particularly if his illness was serious, and she had treated his devotion with a certain amount of cynicism in the beginning.

Her own feelings had been less easy to diagnose. After spending two days in the intensive care unit at the hospital, Willard had been put into her charge, and in a short time they had become friends. He had told her who he was, and where he lived, all about the island; and she had listened with the kind of fascination shown by anyone who had lived an ordinary humdrum sort of life faced with the unknown and the exotic. The fact that Beth had always been attracted by that area of the world just added to its appeal, and she guessed Willard had used that shamelessly to encourage her interest.

But gradually they had talked of other things and other places. Beth had explained how she had always wanted to be a nurse, and how she and her mother had struggled to pay for her education after her father had been drowned in a boating accident when she was four. She could hardly remember him now, and as her mother had died two years ago she had no one to keep the memories alive.

‘What about marriage?’ Willard had asked her. ‘I don’t believe there haven’t been opportunities.’

‘I’ve never seriously wanted to get married,’ she had replied honestly. ‘I enjoy my work, and I’ve seen too many of my friends’ marriages come to grief to risk making the same mistakes.’

‘And why do you think they came to grief?’ Willard surprised her by asking one afternoon, when she was helping him up on to his pillows. ‘Your friends’ marriages, I mean. I’m interested.’

Beth pulled a face. ‘I don’t know, do I? Shortage of money, poor living conditions, incompatibility …’ She sighed. ‘Or maybe a combination of them all.’

‘But do you believe marriage can work today? With all the pressures you young people put on it?’ he demanded, and she smiled.

‘I suppose so. If the circumstances were right.’

‘And what circumstances would they be?’

Beth hesitated. ‘Well—so long as the only reason for getting married wasn’t just to legalise sex,’ she declared, and flushed. ‘I’m sorry, but I feel rather strongly about this.’

Their relationship entered a new phase that day, she realised now. Willard had been feeling her out, testing her. Assuring himself that they were on the same wavelength, so to speak. It was after that that he asked her whether she had ever considered private nursing, whether she would consider returning to Sans Souci with him as his nurse.

She had told him it wouldn’t be necessary, that he wouldn’t need a full-time nurse. So he had told her he was going to convalesce at a nursing home in Buckinghamshire, and asked her to go with him.

She had refused at first. She had a perfectly good position at St Edmunds and she didn’t want to leave. But then all that trouble with Mike Compton had blown up, and almost before she knew what she was doing, she had resigned.

It had caused quite a stir in the hospital, and she knew some of the nurses assumed she saw Willard as something of a gift horse. There were others, closer friends, who thought she was mad tossing up a promising career just because Doctor Compton was making life difficult for her. But Beth reassured them, and herself, by making the point that there were equally successful careers to be found in private nursing.

In fact, her life changed more drastically than she could have imagined. A week later, Willard asked her to marry him, and although she did not immediately accept, she knew she was not entirely surprised by his proposal. The attraction, the mutual empathy between them, was no temporary infatuation and she knew she had been dreading the day when he would leave the nursing home for good. But whether they were sufficient grounds on which to accept his offer, she had not been sure, and she was plagued with doubts and uncertainties. Then Willard had suggested that as he could not offer her a ring, their engagement should remain unofficial until he returned to Sans Souci, but that she should accompany him. It would give her time, he said. Time to get to know him better, time for her to decide whether she really would like to live in surroundings so utterly different from what she was used to. That was when she had felt she really loved him, that she had not made a mistake by leaving St Edmunds, that after a brief engagement she would marry him because he cared for her feelings more than his own …

She rolled on to her stomach now, and banged her pillow into shape. She wondered what he would say when he discovered she was a virgin. Although his illness had prevented their relationship from developing far along those lines, she guessed he imagined she had had a lover. Mike Compton, for instance, had behaved as if he owned her, and besides, these days women with her looks were expected to be experienced. But she wasn’t.

She sighed, and rolled on to her back again, feeling the moistness of her hair against her skin. If she didn’t sleep soon she would look a hag in the morning, and she had to look her best to meet Willard’s daughter.

His daughter!

She grimaced into the darkness. Barbara! How would Barbara react to her father marrying someone four years younger than herself? She doubted she would be pleased. And trying to be charitable. Beth had to admit that put into the same position, she might not like it either. After all, it wasn’t altogether nice to think of one’s father as having those kind of appetites, particularly not for a girl young enough to be his daughter.

But then, she argued equably, just because a man had been married and made a widower it did not mean he had to remain celibate for the rest of his life. It was possible that he might even want more children, and there was no earthly reason why she should not give them to him. Not immediately, perhaps, but soon.

She sighed. There were bound to be problems, and of a kind she had not even considered because she didn’t yet know what the situation was. She knew a little about the island, of course. She knew about the sugar plantation, which was its mainstay economy, and about the smaller banana plantation, that needed so much less cultivation. She knew he found it hard to keep workers these days, with world-wide inflation running at such a terrific rate, but he had told her that he had granted sufficient land to the men who stayed with him so that they could grow their own crops, and Beth thought affectionately how typical this was of him, of his generosity.

But apart from these impersonal details, he had not told her a lot about his relationship with his daughter. They apparently lived in quite a large house that stood in its own grounds, but again Barbara had to do her own housekeeping as servants were so hard to find. This had made Beth wonder how the situation would develop after she and Willard were married. Would his daughter want to hand over her authority to someone else? And if not, what would she, Beth, do?

She kicked the cotton sheet aside, and smoothed her gingham night shirt down over her hips. She was being unnecessarily pessimistic, she told herself fiercely. She didn’t even know the girl yet, and already she was anticipating her hostility. It was ridiculous. Barbara might well welcome another white woman about the place, but somehow that particular supposition had a hollow ring.

Sans Souci rose from the sea in a graceful curve, its hinterland thickly wooded and deeply green. Only the upper slopes of the rugged hills that rose inland were shadowed purple in the noonday glare, the rest of the island shimmered in a shifting haze of heat. Groves of palms and the twisting roots of mangroves grew down to the water’s edge in places, and beyond the headland the coral purity of the sickle-shaped beach was lapped by creaming surf.

As they neared the quay, Beth’s attention was caught and held by the colourful harbour of Ste Germaine, where yachts and fishing vessels vied for space within the curving arm of the sea wall. Beyond the quay where there was constant activity, market stalls could be seen, and above, the winding streets of the small town were lined with stucco buildings colourwashed in every imaginable pastel shade. Tumbling bougainvillea, in colours of pink and violet, grew in careless profusion while the more exotic petals of the hibiscus grew from pots and urns or along the wrought iron rails of overhanging balconies.

The motor launch which had brought them from St Lucia drew alongside the quay, and Willard put his hand beneath Beth’s arm.

‘Well?’ he said, and it was a challenge. ‘Do you approve?’

‘Do I approve?’ She looked up at him helplessly, shaking her head in a confused gesture. ‘Oh, darling, I love it already.’

‘Darling,’ he repeated with some satisfaction, sliding the back of his hand along her jawline, and then the pilot was smiling at them and indicating that it was time to disembark.

Beth had chosen to wear pants for the journey. Climbing in and out of motor vessels was easier when one did not have to worry about billowing skirts, and she hoped Barbara would not think her jeans were a sign of disrespect. Teamed with a navy body shirt, they threw her intense fairness into relief, and she had secured the silvery rope of her hair with a silk scarf at the nape.

Their arrival had aroused a deal of interest, and as Beth thanked the dark-skinned pilot for his assistance on to the quay a crowd of people clustered around them, shaking Willard’s hand and asking about his health. Apparently everyone knew about his illness, and Beth was disarmed by their obvious concern. She herself came in for a lot of curious scrutiny, but Willard was beginning to look strained and she looked about them anxiously, hoping to break this up before he started introducing her.