style="font-size:15px;"> 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
