Candle in the Wind Read online

  They drove inland from the airport before picking up the main highway leading into Bridgetown. Sam looked out at the town, glad of something to take her mind off unpleasant memories. The streets were busier even than Kingstown, but there was an air of greater affluence with lots more cars and seemingly hundreds of people on bicycles, many of whom looked curiously at the big, chauffeur-driven car as it picked its way surely through the streets. She realised that she had been completely silent for some time and tried to think of something to say.

  'Is it always as crowded as this?' she managed.

  James Ashby turned to her quickly, glad that she seemed to have got over her numbness.

  'Yes, always; this is one of the most highly populated islands for its size in the West Indies. Look, we're just going through Trafalgar Square and there's Nelson's Column, much smaller than the one in London, of course.'

  He pointed out other places to her: public buildings, a cathedral, Government House; soon Sam became bewildered by all the names and sights but did her best to look attentive because it seemed to please her father. Several times he asked her whether she didn't recognise a place, but she always had to regretfully shake her head. At last they left the town behind and took a road he told her was called Highway One and that ran northwards parallel to the coast past the popular Paradise Beach resort that was crowded with people and on past more long, tree-shaded beaches of soft sand and into the stretch of coastline known as the Gold Coast where large hotels lay hidden behind trees and opulent homes beyond palm-fringed drives.

  Soon they turned into one of these driveways between high iron gates which opened electronically when the chauffeur pressed a gadget in the car. The house was pearly a quarter of a mile from the entrance and set in beautifully landscaped gardens of immaculately manicured lawns, with trees and shrubs exactly positioned to give a false look of naturalness to the surroundings. The house looked fairly new from its design and this, too, although built of coral stone, had a regimented look about it with its precise Palladian architecture.

  But Sam hardly had time to take any of this in before her father hurried her inside and up a wide staircase. Other people fell in behind them and James Ashby started to give orders over his shoulder. There was something about issuing a statement for the press, withdrawing the reward offer, increasing security, the sharp commands went completely over her head. At the top of the staircase he led her to the left and through double doors into a sitting-room furnished with priceless antiques and with a bedroom opening off it. There were three people waiting for them in the sitting- room; a thin, middle-aged, but very prosperous-looking man, a sharp-faced woman in a well-cut but simple dark dress in her late thirties, and another woman in nurse's uniform.

  Her father said, 'Samantha, this is Dr Langdon who already knows the details of your amnesia and who is going to give you a physical check-up. And this is Mrs Gregory, my housekeeper. You already knew them both very well before you lost your memory.' He didn't bother to introduce the nurse. Turning her round to face him, he put his hands on her shoulders and smiled at her encouragingly. 'Now, I want you to go with the doctor and let him make sure you aren't suffering from anything. That diet you lived on when you were shipwrecked couldn't have been good for you. I'm going to, leave you now to deal with the work your return has involved, but I'll come and see you just as soon as Dr Langdon is through. All right?'

  Sam nodded rather reluctantly; she would have much rather gone somewhere to be alone with him, to talk and ask him about the part of her life she couldn't remember. There was so much she wanted to know. But he had said he would come back, so there would be time then.

  After he had gone the nurse led her into a large and very luxurious bathroom with a sunken marble bath that opened off the bedroom. Here a maid was waiting and the two women helped her to undress. Sam protested that she could manage, but they looked at her in astonishment and insisted on helping her, not letting her do a thing, until Sam began to feel like a doll—that or someone who was so imbecilic they couldn't help themselves, she thought wryly.

  Once she was bathed and back in the bedroom, wearing only a very thick towelling bath-robe, the doctor made her sit down while he examined her throat and the rest of her head, the nurse standing beside him to hand him the instruments he needed and the housekeeper—what was her name?—Mrs Gregory, that was it, hovering in the background.

  The doctor felt her head very carefully. 'Did you feel a lump on any part of your head after you were hit?' he asked her.

  'No, not a lump, but I had a cut here.' She lifted her hand to touch her right temple. 'I had to have a dressing on it.'

  'Ah, yes.' He probed delicately. 'No sign of it now. Does it hurt you when I touch it?'

  Sam shook her head but added, 'At first it hurt terribly, but now I only get headaches when I try to concentrate very hard or when—or when something happens to worry me.' Her voice slowed, and she looked away.

  'Hm.' He straightened 'up and said, 'I'm afraid I don't have any experience of amnesia, but I've already recommended a specialist to your father and I believe he's contacting him now and arranging for him to fly out here, so we should know what the chances of your recovering your memory will be within the next few days, with any luck. But at least I can make sure you're not suffering from anything else. Take off your robe and lie on the bed, would you?'

  Moving to obey him, Sam began to take off the robe, but became aware of being watched and looked up quickly to find Mrs Gregory's eyes fixed on her. The eyes were cold and hard in the sharp face and Sam gave an involuntary shiver, but as soon as the housekeeper realised Sam was looking at her, her mouth lifted into a smile that didn't reach her eyes and she moved solicitously forward.

  'Let me help you, my dear.'

  But Sam shrugged off the robe and lay down on the bed, acutely aware of the woman's eyes running over her slim body, her face a strange mixture of expressions but which to Sam seemed very much like hate and jealousy.

  The doctor's stethoscope was cold on her chest as he prodded her and asked her how long she had been without food and water in the dinghy, and what food she'd eaten on the island. He made her turn over on her front for a while, but when she turned back his examination became far more intimate and brought a flush to her cheeks.

  Afterwards he removed the plastic glove he had been wearing and said, 'There doesn't seem to be much wrong with you apart from the amnesia, but you've been through a great deal of stress lately and I think a couple of days of bed rest with nourishing food and a course of vitamins to make up for the deficiency caused by lack of protein should help a great deal. Perhaps if you have complete quiet it might relieve the headaches too.' He looked at her keenly. 'You have one now, don't you?'

  Sam nodded and confessed, 'I've had it for two days.'

  'Why didn't you tell me? I'll get you something to relieve it at once.' He looked at one or two packets in his medical bag but gave a dissatisfied shake of his head. 'No, I don't think these are suitable for you. I have some others in my office that will be better. I'll go and get them and be back directly.'

  'Oh, please, you don't have to go to all that bother. A couple of aspirins will do.'

  Dr Langdon gave her a rather strange look but insisted on getting the special pills. He left the room with Mrs Gregory and the nurse helped her into a long, delicately tucked Victorian nightdress that felt blissfully soft to her skin and then pulled back the covers of the bed. The sheets were of silk and the bed so soft that it provided a vivid contrast to the other places she had slept lately: the wooden floor of the dinghy, the piled leaves in the island hut, and the rather lumpy mattress on the bed in Big Annie's hotel. For a moment despair gripped her and she felt a sudden surge of loneliness and grief. Oh, Mike! Mike! But she bit her lip determinedly; she had made the choice, hadn't she? She had chosen what she knew to be the truth instead of lies and deceit. All right, so those weeks on the island had been glorious, but it had been nothing but sexual passion, she didn't love Mi
ke and he only pretended to love her. Making a fool of her every time he took her.

  It was quite a long time before her father came up to see her, but Sam turned to him eagerly. He sat on a chair beside her bed and took her hand.

  'How do you feel?'

  'Fine. Please, there's so much I want to ask you. About my mother, and about you. I want to know everything, the things we did together, why we live here.'

  She would have gone on, but he held up his hand. 'Of course you do. But don't let's rush things—there's plenty of time. I've got a specialist flying out from Switzerland immediately and I think we should wait on his advice before I go into too much detail. It might not be good for you to hear everything at once.'

  'You have someone coming out from Switzerland?' Sam said in surprise.

  'He's the best in the world,' James Ashby said with a touch of pride. 'Of course he didn't want to come straight away, said he had a clinic full of patients, but I told him to name his price and of course that made him change his mind fast. It always does,' he added cynically.

  Sam looked at his lips, twisted in contempt, and for the first time began to wonder about her father as a person. But she had little time before he turned to her and said intently, 'But one thing I am sure of, and that's that you must put all thoughts of the last few weeks you spent with your kidnapper out of your mind completely. You must pick up your life just as if nothing had happened, try to look on it as just a bad dream that's best forgotten.' His voice became sharper. 'And there must be nothing left to remind you of Mike Scott, do you understand me, Samantha?'

  Sam looked at his tense face with a puzzled frown. 'I suppose so. But how can I pick up the threads of my old life if I don't remember what they were?'

  Immediately his face relaxed and he gave what to Sam looked like a rather relieved smile, although she couldn't think why. 'You'll find that easy enough, but we'll wait until the specialist has examined you before we make any plans.' He stood up. 'I believe Dr Lang- don's back with your pills. And don't forget, there's nothing to Worry about,' he emphasised as he left.

  Soon afterwards the doctor came back with the nurse and gave Sam two bottles of vitamins to last for a couple of weeks. Then he handed her two large white tablets to take. He hesitated before giving her a glass of water to swallow them down and said, 'Your father did talk to you?'

  Sam nodded, thinking he meant about the specialist, and he gave her the glass. She swallowed them down, hoping that they would help her headache which was now really bad. But evidently those pills weren't for the headache after all because he produced another bottle from which he took one capsule.

  "This should help your head. But only take one a day, they're quite strong.'

  'I shall rattle if I take all these pills,' Sam managed with a weak smile.

  'Well, we won't start the vitamins until tomorrow. Now, Nurse Taylor here will stay with you all the time, night and day, while you're in bed, and you must tell her if you feel at all unwell. Do you understand?'

  'Why, yes, but I'm sure it won't be necessary.' Sam couldn't understand why he and her father looked at her so intently.

  He went away and the nurse went to sit quietly in an armchair by the window and read a book. Presently Sam slept, waking in the late evening feeling dopey and not at all refreshed. The nurse gave her a glass of hot milk, but she'd hardly finished it before she fell asleep again.

  The stomach pains began in the early hours of the following morning and at first she was in such a deep sleep that she merely tossed and turned uncomfortably, but then a fiercer pain gripped her and she woke up in a sweat. For a moment she couldn't think where she was and she called out in a panic, 'Mike!' Instantly the nurse was by her side and she seemed to know immediately what was the matter. She gave Sam a drink that was a help and a hot water bottle to put on her stomach. And presently she helped Sam to the bathroom and then found her what she needed. The pains weren't so bad now, but she felt completely drained, her hair damp with perspiration.

  When Sam was tucked up in bed again, weak and listless, she lay for a little while with a feeling of relief. Was that all it was? For a while she had been afraid she was going to be really ill. She wondered if it hurt like this every time. But she had no way of knowing, it hadn't happened to her since she had lost her memory. Suddenly her thoughts stopped short; she began to do sums in her head. There had been the week in the dinghy, and another week before she and Mike had made love, then the rest of the weeks on the island. She came to an abrupt stop and then feverishly counted again. Could she possibly have been… Oh God, no! Her mind shied away from the possibility. 'Then suddenly a lot of things fell into place: the way her father and the doctor had looked at her, and her father saying so earnestly, 'And there must be nothing left to remind you of Mike Scott. Do you understand?' But she hadn't understood, she hadn't understood at all. How could anyone who'd lost their memory understand a thing like that? And how could her father—her own father—have let the doctor go ahead and give her the pills? Surely he must realise that she wasn't the type of person to—but perhaps he thought that she was that type of person. Someone who could casually destroy anything that might have unpleasant associations. But she wasn't—she wasn't like that at all. And now it was too late, too late! Sam turned her face into the pillow and silently began to weep.

  She seemed to sleep most of the time the next day, only waking to eat and feeling muzzy-headed the whole time, until at last she realised that she must have been given a heavy tranquilliser. After that she refused to take the 'headache' pill the nurse offered her; better to have a splitting head than to sleep all the time. For a few hours she still felt disorientated and she dozed fitfully, but gradually she became more aware of her surroundings and could think coherently again. At first she felt an overwhelming sense of bitterness against her father for permitting such a thing to be done to her, but slowly fairness and reason came back and she realised that from her father's viewpoint he had been ridding her of something that could have completely ruined her life, been a constant reminder of what he thought must have been a terrible time for her. He wasn't to know that that part of it had been quite the reverse, it was the lies that had been used to bring it about that had been terrible. And he had thought that she understood and was in agreement with his wishes.

  So gradually the bitterness faded away and resignation came; there was nothing she could do about it now, better to try and forget and to do as her father said and try to pick up the pieces of her life again. But somehow she knew that she would never be able to accept what had been done to her, she would only learn to live with it.

  The doctor came the next day and with him the specialist from Switzerland. He was an austere little mail with a grey moustache and inclined to be rather taciturn until Sam gravely apologised for taking him away from his other patients. He looked at her for a long moment and then his brow cleared and his eyes twinkled at her.

  'Let me see what I can do for you, ma fille,' he said in his broken English.

  He felt her head and gave her lots of tests, most of which didn't make any sense at all to Sam. He questioned her closely about her headaches and told her to make her mind a blank and then to delve down into the far reaches of her mind to try to remember anything, anything at all. Sam tried, she tried harder for him than she'd ever done before, until she gave a whimper of pain from the great searing bands of hurt that tore through her head. He stopped immediately and Sam was thankful to lie down on her bed, her nerves palpitating and wet with perspiration. Dr Langdon wanted her to have another of his tranquillisers, but she refused to have anything but aspirin and the specialist backed her up on this.

  'It is most important that she should not rely on drugs to relieve the pain. She must learn to try to avoid any situation that would bring on a headache.'

  For the rest of the day she stayed quietly in her room, but towards evening her father came to sit with her. She looked at him steadily as he sat down and he flushed a little and looked discomf
ited. Sam had the sudden disquieting feeling that he had known she hadn't understood what he meant the other evening but had gone ahead anyway. Quickly she pushed it to the back of her mind; she just couldn't stand any more lies and deceit.

  He cleared his throat and said abruptly, 'I've been talking to the Swiss doctor. The news isn't very hopeful, I'm afraid. He seems to think that if your memory was going to come back it would have done so by now, either the whole or in part. He did say that a great shock or another blow on the head might bring it back quite suddenly, but the chances of that happening are, of course, quite remote.'

  Sam looked down at the coverlet and picked at the edge. 'I see.'

  Her father's voice became encouraging. 'But that isn't so bad. In no time at all you'll be completely caught up in your old life again. I thought that the best thing would be to invite your closest friends here one at a time. We'll tell them what's happened, of course, so that they don't try to rush you into accepting return invitations to parties and that sort of thing. But to take it slowly at first, I think. What do you say?'

  'Yes, I suppose so,' Sam answered dully.

  'If you don't feel up to meeting anyone yet you only have to say. We'll do just whatever you want,' James Ashby said with an anxious note in his voice.

  Sam realised that she was being miserable and tried to smile. 'That seems fine, honestly.'

  He gave an over-large smile in return. 'Good, then I'll arrange for someone to call in a couple of days. Perhaps we'll start with Paul.'

  'Paul?'

  'Yes, he was one of your closest friends.'

  'All right, if you say so.'

  He went to move away but Sam put out a hand to stop him. 'Daddy, please won't you tell me about my mother?'