Вайолет Уинспир: Dragon Bay

A TRIM yacht flying a Greek flag put into harbour at Fort Fernand, and some time later one of her passengers came ashore, followed by a sailor carrying a couple of suitcases.

The alighting girl was about twenty-one, slim, almost boyish, clad in a blue reefer jacket over beige slacks, with a jaunty cap perched on her long dark hair. Her eyes beneath the peak of her cap were deep and dark as peaty pools, and tiny gold rings glinted in the lobes of her ears.

‘That looks like a hotel.’ She spoke in Greek to the sailor and gestured at a building with ornamental balconies, batwing shutters, and red-flowering palms in its courtyard. ‘I will put up there for a few days,’ she added, and gazed around at her tropical surroundings. The sails of sloops and schooners bobbed in the harbour, and from out of salt and sun-faded sheds came a strong smell of fish, and tobacco in storage.

Poinsettias flowered gaudy and large against white walls, and the patches of welcome shadow were ebony dark as the Carib eyes of an old man who sat smoking a pipe on the cobbled wall of the waterfront. The girl met his gaze, and it came home forcibly to her that she was now in the French Caribbean and far from her own Greek shores.

When she and the sailor reached the hotel, he carried in her suitcases and she bade him goodbye in Greek. ‘Adio,’ she said. ‘Tell my brother that I have chosen the Isle de Luc for my — holiday, and I hope to be home in time to celebrate my darling nephew’s third birthday.’

The sailor flashed her a smile, for having been long employed by the Stephanos family, he knew the strength of the affection between Paul Stephanos and his slip of a sister. Even now Kara was a woman, she was still so young to look at, with her enormous Greek eyes holding that hint of sadness and gaiety that made her almost lovely when she smiled, or held young Dominic in her arms.

‘Adio, Miss Kara.’ The sailor gave her a smart salute. ‘I hope you have a happy holiday.’

Happy holiday? She smiled briefly and bleakly as she approached the reception desk of the Hotel Victoire and pinged the bell on the counter. It echoed through the siesta quiet, broken only by the whirring of ceiling fans, and then a corpulent Creole came shambling out of a room at the back of the counter, his sleepy, disgruntled face creasing in smiles that matched the creases in the white jacket he was pulling on.

Yes, they had accommodation for her. This was not yet the tourist season and the hotel was half empty. He swung the register towards her, and his eyes chased over her as she took up the pen to sign her name. She noticed the singularity of the name on the line above hers — Lucan Savidge, resident of Dragon Bay, Isle de Luc.

She gave a slight laugh. What a savage name and address, both of which probably belonged to a man as meek as a mouse!

The bell pinged again, and a coloured boy emerged from the shade of a potted palm and came to carry her suitcases to the iron-caged lift. Her room was situated on the second floor, midway along the corridor. It was quite spacious, with a wrought-iron balcony overlooking the patio of the hotel, and furniture, she was sure, from the Colonial days.

The boy told her in lisping Creole that the bathroom was at the end of the corridor, and that there would be no hot water for a bath until later that evening. ‘It has a shower, mam’zelle.’ His smile was sugar-white. ‘Ver’ cool, we here at Hotel Victoire. Up to date for tourists — you tourist?’

‘I suppose you could say that.’ Her French had been learned at school and the boy looked puzzled, then pleased by the size of his tip.

‘You want a guide, I take you all over town, show you the sights,’ he offered.

‘Perhaps,’ she ushered him out of the room. ‘What do I call you, in case I want to see the sights?’

He cocked his head, alert and impish. ‘Napoleon my name,’ he grinned. ‘Nap for short’

‘Very well, Nap for short.’ Kara grinned back at the boy, for she had the rare gift of being able to adjust to the ages of the young and the old. ‘If I want you, I’ll whistle.’

‘Okay,’ he said, and was gone like a dark shadow along the corridor, its windows shuttered against the hot afternoon sunshine. Kara closed the door of her room and tossed off her nautical cap and jacket. She ran her fingers through her long hair, slightly rough from the sea-water and sun she never avoided. Kara sighed. The girl Nikos had married in America was golden-haired, pale-skinned, beautiful and pampered.

The locks of her suitcase clicked loud in the room as she opened it and began to unpack. She shook out the linen dress she would wear that evening and hung it over the hard back of a Colonial chair. She tossed wisps of nylon to the foot of the net-draped bed, and then her fingers. clenched on a leather frame and she stood for a long moment gazing at the photograph of her brother Paul, an arm firmly locked about the slender waist of his wife, Domini. Beside them on the parapet of a terrace sat a small, lively-eyed boy, and Paul’s other arm was holding him with equal firmness.

Kara smiled even as a band of pain seemed to clasp her throat. Her own dear Apollo, who had fought the darkness that had almost taken his life and found so bright a love.

Domini, to whom Kara had taken her aching heart after receiving the letter that had shattered her own dream of a love and a life like her sister-in-law’s. Like a broken song, the letter would not release her from its words, still they haunted her.

Sweet Kara,

You will forgive and understand, I know. We made a pledge and said we would marry each other, but we did not take into account the sudden love for a stranger, from a stranger, that can come along and change all our youthful plans.

I am married, little Greek friend. Her name is Cicely and we met soon after I came here to Boston to run our shipping business in this part of the world. I am very much in love. I know it is the love that a man feels only once in a lifetime.

You too, Kara, will find love as I have found it, and then you will be as happy as I am….

Happy … without Nikki? The companion of most of her life, with whom she had tramped the Greek hills, swam and fished in the Ionian Sea, and stolen honey from the big brown bees in the heather of Andelos. Nikos, with whom she had shared most of her joys and sorrows … whose loss to another girl had sent her on a voyage halfway round the world.

Domini had suggested that she take the trip, and Paul had been coaxed into putting at her disposal the trim little yacht that belonged to the chain of sea-going vessels run by the Stephanos Shipping Line.

Kara arranged the photograph on the table between the twin beds. When the yacht arrived back at Andelos, and the Captain informed Paul that she had disembarked at this island in the French Caribbean, there would be fireworks for Domini to deal with in her warm, calm, British way.

‘My dear masterful man,’ she would say to Paul, ‘you must realize that Kara is twenty-one, a woman now with a mind of her own to make up. She wishes to be alone for a while. She needs to adjust to a future that will no longer hold Nikos. She will come to no harm — that dash of British blood from her mother dilutes her Greek impetuosity.’

Kara went to the dressing-table and studied her reflection in the mirror. She was as Greek as Paul to look at, but there were hints of her British blood in the small cleft in her chin, and in the shyness that sometimes made a veil of her thick dark lashes. Her figure was rather boyish, she thought, wrinkling her nose. She was as slim as a whip, but supple.

You swim like a seal, Nikos had often told her. You climb like a boy. In her innocence she had loved his compliments, but now she understood that if he had paid her compliments of a different kind, she might now be with him as his wife instead of being here … all alone.