Candle in the Wind Page 12

  Mike's eyes regarded her steadily. 'You'll just have to trust me. Like I'll have to trust you not to bring your father's henchmen to beat me up.'

  Sam gazed into his face, remembering how she had traced each feature with her fingers; the quizzical kink in his eyebrows, the slight cleft in the firmness of his chin, his lips. In little more than a murmur she said, 'What if I refuse to come?'

  Mike's answer was said equally quietly but very firmly. 'Then I shall have to find some other means of getting you alone.'

  Her eyelids flew up at that and her eyes met his. 'How?'

  'I shall come at night and climb into your room.'

  Her voice sharp with alarm, she said at once, 'No! You mustn't. Mike, they have guns; promise me that you won't try it?'

  'If you won't meet me any other way then I'll have to.'

  She stared at him for a moment and then gave a tired sort of sigh. 'All right. Where do you want me to meet you?' »

  Matter-of-factly, and without any sign of triumph at her capitulation, he said, 'There's , a wine bar in Swan Street ^called 'My Father's Moustache'. If you go into the big Da Costa's department store you'll find that there's a back entrance opening into Swan Street. The bar is a few yards down the road to the left. I'll be there at two in the afternoon.'

  'What if I can't get rid of. the guard?' Sam objected.

  Mike grinned. 'You always managed to before.'

  That shook her a little and she could only say uncertainly, 'But I might not be able to make it at two.'

  'It doesn't matter, I'll wait all afternoon if I have to. And if you don't come tomorrow then I'll wait every day until you do,' he said forcefully.

  Sam bit her lip and looked away, lost for words in the face of such strong resolution.

  Mike glanced past her and then said warningly, 'Your watchdog has come on to the beach and is looking at my boat through his binoculars. I'll have to get back before he gets suspicious.'

  'Can he see you?' Sam asked nervously, afraid to look round.

  'No, you're hiding me from his view.'

  He put on his goggles and was about to replace the mouthpiece of his air-tanks when Sam said urgently, 'Mike. Did—-did my father hurt you when he threw you out of the house?'

  Mike's mouth twisted wryly. 'I'm not a pretty sight where they kicked me in the ribs after they knocked me down the steps, but I managed to get away before they really started laying into me.' He saw the stricken look that came into her face and added reassuringly, 'Don't worry, sweetheart, I can take care of myself— and of you.'

  And then he had slid silently back under the water and Sam had only a tell-tale trail of bubbles to watch until it was hidden by the waves. She lay down again and pretended to read and presently she saw the boat shake a little and then the fishing line reeled in, with, she saw with a touch of wry amusement, a biggish fish ostentatiously displayed at the end of the line. The boat's engine started up again and it moved slowly out of the bay back the way it had come, and when Sam glanced idly at the shore she saw the guard go back into the shade of the trees.

  She lay there for an hour or so longer; there was no reason to hurry back to the house, Paul wouldn't be picking her up to take her out to dinner until seven, so there was plenty of time. Nervously she wondered how she was going to get away from her escort tomorrow afternoon. Mike had been so sure that she would manage it, and equally sure that she would keep her word and meet him. And rightly so, Sam reflected as she lay and gazed up at the deep blue of the sky, .because, although she had raised a great many objections, she had known right from the moment he had kissed her that she would do as he asked.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The sun was high in the sky overhead when Sam had herself driven into the capital the next day. The chauffeur pulled up in a car park near the bus park and she told him to come back and collect her at five. Another car had drawn up nearby and two men got out of it, looking out of place in jackets that concealed their shoulder holsters when everyone else was in casual, short-sleeved shirts. But even the men and nerves about what she was about to do were forgotten for a while as Sam looked about her in fascinated curiosity. This part of the town was busy with people who arrived from the north of the island on buses which were open at both sides and painted bright red or yellow. The buses came and went at intervals, manoeuvring their way carefully between groups of women carrying loaded trays balanced by cloth pads on their heads. Other women squatted on small portable wooden benches and tried to tempt passers-by to buy popcorn, coconut cakes, peanuts or fruit. And further along the car park an open-air barber was shearing the heads of grinning customers right down to the scalp, and under the spreading evergreen trees other men played dominoes while they waited their turn.

  Taking her time, Sam walked slowly along, stopping to look in shop windows and to make one or two small purchases, the men always just a few paces behind her, their eyes alert, their hands free to grab at their guns if necessary. Sam began to tremble a little and her hands felt clammy so that she had to take out her handkerchief and wipe them, but she walked resolutely on, drawing nearer to the centre of the town. As she neared the entrance to Da Costa's, the Selfridges of Bridgetown, she glanced back and saw that the men were still close behind but looking bored and somewhat fagged now from the heat.

  The interior of the store, however, was air-conditioned and she was able to look round the counters in comfort. Her guards, too, must have appreciated the cooler atmosphere, but it was obvious from the wistful glances they cast in the direction of a cafeteria that they were dying for a drink to quench their thirst. And this gave Sam an idea when she went to the dress department and saw that there was a bar on the same floor. She took a long time pretending to examine the rows of dresses while keeping an eye as unobtrusively as possible on the two men. At last they succumbed to temptation and one went off to get a drink. When they changed over Sam was ready. As soon as they turned to speak to each other she ducked down below the level of the clothes racks and ran through an archway into another department where she pushed open the door to the service stairs, leaving it swinging. Then she dodged out of sight as the men came running in to look for her and naturally assumed that she'd gone through the door. They dashed down the stairway and Sam calmly walked back through the store, took a lift down to ground level, and turned put into Swan Street. The wine bar was just a short way along and she found Mike waiting for her in a booth near the doorway.

  He stood up as she -came in and a light came into his eyes that made her heart give a crazy kind of jolt. He didn't speak but took her hand and led her through the bar and out into a sort of service road where a car was waiting. He opened the door for her, but Sam held back, her face suddenly tense.

  Mike said reassuringly, 'It's all right, I'm not trying to pull anything. There was always the chance that those men might have found us if we'd stayed in the bar, and I don't want there to be any interruptions when we talk. This is too important. Here,' he held out a bunch of keys. 'If it makes you feel any better you can drive.'

  Slowly Sam shook her head. 'No, you drive.' She got into the car and Mike folded himself in beside her. He made the car look very, small.

  He grinned. 'That's the first time I've ever heard you offer to let anyone else drive. It was the only thing you used to get mad with me about—the fact that I insisted on doing the driving.'

  'Even in my car?'

  'Your Italian sports job? Yes, even in that. It's just one of those things a man does better than a woman.'

  A shade defiantly, Sam said, 'Someone told me I was a very good driver.'

  Mike glanced sideways at her as he drove out of town. 'Was?'

  'Yes. I—I've forgotten how,' she confessed. 'Like swimming, I suppose.'

  'But you picked that up again quickly enough.'

  'Only because you made me go in the water and gave me my confidence back.'

  Mike's voice hardened. 'And hasn't Paul de Lacey restored your confidence to drive? Even though he's obviousl
y been paying you fulsome compliments?'

  They weren't fulsome compliments,' Sam began angrily, and then stopped, realising she'd walked neatly into his trap. She flushed, and said, 'So you know about him?'

  'Of course. Your father imported him into the island as the latest suitor for your fortune about three months before I met you.'

  Tartly Sam said, 'It isn't my fortune that he's interested in.'

  He was about to make a somewhat scathing retort, but when he saw her flushed face, Mike said merely, 'We'll talk about it later,' and drove on in silence.

  At length they came in sight of the sea again and Mike pulled off the road down a track that led to a clearing fringed by a riot of flowering trees: jacarandas, frangipani, and, most brilliant of all, the flame red - flamboyants.

  'Let's take a walk, shall we?' He got out of the car and waited for her.

  Slowly Sam joined him. He was wearing a casual blue linen shirt with the cuffs turned back and slacks of a darker shade. A yearning that was like a physical pain suddenly filled her and she had to turn hastily away and walk ahead of him along a path that led them to the edge of the cliffs overlooking the sea. They found a fallen tree trunk to sit on and for a while they sat in silence. But it wasn't a pleasant silence; because of that sudden wave of sexuality Sam now felt tense and ill at ease, sitting so that there was a definite gap between them. Above their heads great casuarinas swayed and sighed in the trade winds and flurries of leaves drifted over them in lemon-drop showers, but for once the beauty of the scene was lost on Sam, she could think of nothing but the man who sat so silently beside her.

  When she could stand it no longer she said sharply, 'I thought you wanted to talk to me?' Mike turned to her and she was surprised to see a somewhat sad look in his eyes, but then he said, 'All right, I'll give it to you from the beginning. But you'll have to be tough, Sam, because what I have to say is going to hurt.' He paused a moment, hut when she didn't speak went on, 'I first met you about ten weeks before we got married. You'd spent the evening with a crowd of people at the Pepper Pot, that's a swank nightclub in Bridgetown. When I found you, you were alone on the beach in the early hours of the morning, you'd had far too much to drink and you were about to walk out into the sea.'

  Sam looked at him frowningly. 'Go for a swim, you mean?'

  'No, I don't,.' he answered bluntly.' I meant that you were going to try to drown yourself. Just swim Out so far that you wouldn't have enough strength to get back even if you changed your mind.'

  Appalled, Sam said immediately, 'That isn't true, I wouldn't do such a thing. You're lying again!'

  She went to get up, but Mike pulled her down again. 'Hear me out, Sam. I told you this was going to be tough.' Keeping a hold of her arm, he continued, 'I saw you from my boat and went in the water after you. You fought like a wildcat and I had to hit you before I could get you out. I took you to the boat and just dumped you on a bunk to recover while I changed into dry clothes and patched up the scratches you'd torn in my face.' He shook his head in remembered anger. 'God, I was mad at you. I thought you were some dumb, drunken, kid who'd had a row with her boy-friend and wanted to draw attention to herself.' His voice softened. 'But then you came round and I saw the hurt and misery in your eyes and realised that the drink was just to give you the courage to commit suicide.'

  'No!' Actually hearing him say the word made it all seem more terrible.

  His eyes flickered over her. 'It's true, Sam. You were in a hell of a state and you desperately needed a shoulder to cry on. Well, mine are pretty broad and, after I'd made you get out of your wet clothes, you just sat there wrapped in my beach robe and drinking coffee and told me everything.'

  'What? What did I tell you?'

  Mike didn't spare her any. 'How your father's overpowering ambition was ruining your life. How when you were only eighteen he forced you to become engaged to the son of a wealthy American businessman, except the son turned out to be a drug addict who tried to get you hooked on to the stuff, only he took a walk out of a twenty-second-floor window. Then your father tried to fix you up with some Arabian oil magnate and when you rebelled at that tried instead to make you accept a man nearly old enough to be your grandfather who was one of his biggest rivals.

  So to foil him you got engaged to a boy-friend instead, then broke it off when the boy started pressing you to set a date. And so it went on, until Paul de Lacey came to work for your father and you thought you'd found someone who wanted you only for yourself at last.'

  Sam gazed at him, her eyes wide and dark in her set face. In little more than a whisper she said, 'Go on.'

  Mike looked at her, hating to see the hurt in her eyes, but knowing that he had to do it for her own sake. 'You were happy, very happy, for a few months, but then, the night I found you, you overheard something you weren't meant to hear and you found out that your father was paying de Lacey to marry you.'

  'Oh, no! Mike, he isn't like that.'

  His voice harsh, Mike said, 'You overheard him discussing a marriage contract with your father. He was to be paid a lump sum as soon as the ceremony took place. And Paul de Lacey was trying to push the price up because he'd found out your mother committed suicide. They tried to hush it up and gave out that she'd got cramp while swimming, but de Lacey had found out the truth.'

  'She—she drowned herself?' The sky and the sea suddenly seemed to merge and Sam had to grip hard on the log to stop herself from fainting.

  'Yes. I'm sorry, sweetheart.' He tried to take her hand, but Sam snatched it away. He said heavily, 'I knew that you wouldn't take my word for it, so I got you these.' He went to the car and brought back a bulky envelope which he gave to her.

  Slowly Sam opened it and found inside a sheaf of photostats, all of newspaper items. There were photographs with the announcement of her first engagement and, dated a few months later, a story on her fiancé’s death, then other items, mostly sensationalist, about other on-off romances, including a picture of her with Paul headlined, 'ASHBY HEIRESS AND FRENCH PLAYBOY'. And lastly there was an extract from an English newspaper dated over ten years ago giving a brief account of her mother's death by drowning, with the cryptic footnote, 'the coroner brought in an open verdict as Mrs Ashby was partially clothed at the time'.

  Sam dropped the photostats as if they were scalding her and stood up abruptly. She turned and walked a few yards away from him to lean her head against a tamarind tree. The scent of bougainvillaea filled her nostrils and humming birds darted among the trees like metallic bees. Mike's hands came on her shoulders, but she didn't turn to him.

  'Is that all you have to tell me?'

  'No, I wanted to tell you about us.' He hesitated. 'But if you don't feel that you can take any more today…'

  Sam's voice was suddenly harsh. 'For God's sake say what you have to say!'

  'All right.' He turned her round to face him. 'After I fished you out of the sea you used to come and visit me on the boat. At first I thought it was just because it was something different for you, a diversion for the poor little rich girl, and I tried to get rid of you. You represented the kind of complication I didn't want in my life. But you seemed to enjoy messing about on the boat and trying your hand at cooking in the galley. You were forever giving your father's men the slip and coming on board when my back was turned. You were a very stubborn young woman.'

  His face changed then and when he raised his eyes to look at her his gaze was physical. He reached and took her hands, turning them over in his big palms, studying them reflectively. His thumb caressed her bare ring finger gently. 'And then I had to admit that I liked having you around. So I went to your father and told him I wanted to marry you.' His lips thinned. 'He asked me how much money I wanted to clear out and leave you alone. So it was then you decided that you just couldn't take any more and that we'd just get married and go. We were sitting here, right on that log, when you said it. I was hoping that coming here would bring it back so I wouldn't have to put you through all this.'

 
; Sam looked at the flower-strewn clearing and said huskily, 'Can you prove that we were married, Mike?' And her hands trembled in his.

  He answered forcefully, 'The church where we were married is only half an hour's drive from here. You can look in the register we signed and talk to the priest. He may even know the people we brought in as witnesses, although they were strangers to us, just two native Bajans who happened to be passing.' His grip tightened. 'Will you come, Sam?'

  Slowly she straightened up and squared her shoulders. 'Yes, all right, I'll come with you.'

  They drove on further north through the endless acres of sugar cane and presently Mike pulled up beside a small house set among trees at the foot of a hill, and at the top of the hill there was a small stone church that looked out across the ocean towards the beloved homeland of the Scottish exiles who had built it.

  'Why don't you go on up?' Mike suggested. 'I'll find the priest and follow you.'

  Sam nodded and began to climb the steep track, the breeze catching at her skirt. At the door of the church she paused and looked at the waves pounding against the cliffs, the noise loud in her ears. And even when she pushed open the heavy wooden doors and went inside she could still hear it, but now it was no longer a pounding roar, only a muted sigh that emphasised the stillness and quiet of the little church.

  It was just as Mike had described it, with the sun shining through the stained glass windows, but even his vivid description hadn't prepared her for the sense of peace and tranquillity that stole over her as she walked slowly up the aisle and gazed at the simple altar with the plain wooden cross above it. A feeling of familiarity came to her for the first time since she had lost her memory and she seized on it eagerly, trying to force memory back, but the more she tried the more elusive it became. Desperately she looked around the church, almost convincing herself that she could remember it full of flowers and with two native workers as their witnesses, but then she gave an angry, sigh and sat down in one of the front pews; she was getting so confused that she was mistaking imagination for truth.