Juliet Armstrong - Isle of the Hummingbird Read online

  'It's clear she doesn't like her,' Anne-Marie admitted slowly.

  Sally gave a snort.

  'Because she's too pretty,' she said shortly. 'All the same——-'

  'We've had enough arguments,' Christopher declared robustly. 'Aunt Isabel, do you mind if I put on some records?'

  The old lady smiled.

  'Of course not. How we shall miss you, Chris, when you go studying medicine in Canada. Always pouring oil on the troubled waters.'

  'What about you, Bryony? What kind of music shall we have?'

  She gave a mock sigh.

  'I'd like something cheerful,' she said. 'A calypso for choice!'

  And in a moment the room was vibrating with steel- band rhythms.

  In bed that night, with moonlight flooding her room, Bryony moved restlessly from side to side, wondering whether she had been an utter fool to take on this post. A stay in the Caribbean, one of the loveliest parts of the world, by all accounts—where would the pleasure lie, if the atmosphere was charged with nervous strain? That look she had intercepted between Anne-Marie and Sally, when Aunt Isabel had made her last remark—did it mean that the girls were set on rebellion? Would they try to fool her, as they might well have been fooling Perry, over this ban on Frank and Bernard?

  She remembered Hugh's warnings about taking a post in the Gray family. But they had come too late. By the time she had heard them she was committed to the job.

  Thinking of Hugh—his sympathy over the shock she had suffered on learning of her dubious parentage, his insistence that it was of no importance—she regretted more than ever the way they had parted that afternoon. She shouldn't have lost her head. She should have braved Peregrine's annoyance, and at least said good-bye to Hugh with some semblance of composure.

  'Maybe I've seen the last of him,' she thought. 'And if so I've lost a friend. I'm not in love with him, any more than Anne-Marie and Sally are in love with these boys of theirs. But he's the only person to whom I've felt able to give my real confidence, or whose kisses meant anything to me at all.'

  And then another thought came to her. Peregrine had seemed to disapprove of Hugh, though hardly knowing him even by sight. Perhaps his objection to these boys—Frank and Bernard—was equally unreasonable. And yet, employed by him, she must carry out his wishes to the best of her ability.

  She must talk to him tomorrow, quietly and reasonably. It was only fair all round to do just that.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Bryony found no immediate opportunity for a private conversation with Peregrine. He was a hard worker, and very much in demand with patients of all sorts.

  Hugh had accused him of confining his attentions to the wealthy and influential, but Bryony quickly found this was untrue. He certainly had people of importance on his lists, but his surgery, like those of his partners, was thronged at certain hours by shabby folk who came on foot.

  It was May Wicker, the regular dispenser, whom she met the day after her arrival, who put her wise to this. Unlike Laura Forrest she was quite unsentimental about Peregrine, but she clearly admired him very much.

  'He's one of the best doctors in the island,' she declared, 'and keeps everyone else up to the mark—or tries to. He's been livid with me, once or twice, over small, careless mistakes,' and her protuberant grey eyes were serious, 'but of course he's right. Once I forgot a message from the hospital. Another time— and this was much worse—I didn't bolt one of the dispensary windows properly. No one got in; but thieves coming after drugs could easily have pushed a child through.'

  'Who discovered it? Dr. Gray himself?'

  'No, Miss Moore.' May Wicker gave a wintry smile. 'Mrs. Forrest was taking over for me on my day out, and of course reported it to the doctor.'

  'Wasn't that rather mean—considering no one had got in?'

  May shrugged her thin shoulders—a wisp of a girl, half Laura Forrest's size.

  'She thought it was her duty, so she said. Mind you—and maybe I oughtn't to be telling you this when I hardly know you—she's not above covering up her own mistakes.'

  'Well, I suppose it's a relief to have someone pretty efficient around to give you proper time off,' Bryony suggested soothingly.

  'Dr. Gray could find another part-time dispenser, I'm sure, if he had to.' May hesitated, then went on: 'I really don't know why I'm talking to you like this, but I can't see why those two don't get married and have done with it. She certainly wouldn't dream of working in the dispensary then, and I'd be saved constant irritation. She fusses me so badly that I make far more mistakes than I need.'

  Bryony smiled sympathetically, but said no more. Probably, she thought, any idea of marriage between Peregrine and Laura would be shelved until the girls were off their brother's hands. He must know that there was no love lost between them and Laura, and since he was not, to all appearances, wildly keen to leap into matrimony, he would prefer to concentrate on peace in the household.

  The difficulty of getting a few moments alone with Peregrine, to clear up what her attitude to the girls should be, was increased by having, herself, so much to do. She had to take the girls to school and fetch them back every day in the smaller car, and do the shopping—after lengthy and deliberate conversation with Tina—see that the dining-room, drawing-room and indeed the whole house was in good order, spotless and with flowers everywhere—and even keep an eye on the garden.

  Moreover, when the girls were at home they expected her to give them a great deal of her time—talking and arguing, discussing clothes and make-up, magazines and pop records—chattering like a pair of starlings.

  However, about a week after her arrival, when she was sitting alone on the loggia, writing home, Peregrine appeared and asked if he could have a word with her.

  'I've been wanting to talk to you,' she said quickly. 'Ever since I came—more or less!'

  He gave her a quick glance.

  'I hope you aren't going to say the job's too much for you. Aunt Isabel says you're working very hard— and certainly the house looks much more cared for since you came. But I didn't get you here to do chores, you know.'

  She smiled.

  'I'm training those little granddaughters of Tina's. They're getting quite handy with mops and dusters. To say nothing of affording me a lot of amusement! You can imagine how thankful Tina is to get free of them for an hour or two every day. Mind you, I keep them with me—don't let them go wandering about. Tina said she couldn't let me have them otherwise.'

  'Quite right. Their mother's not much good, and you have to be careful. But what about the girls you're really supposed to look after?'

  'We get on very well,' she told him frankly. 'Only they are sore about your ban on their going about at all with those two boys—Frank and Bernard. Don't you really think you're being a little too strict with them?'

  'No, I'm not,' he exclaimed forcefully. 'I don't like those two, and I don't like the set they're in. They've stupid parents who are always moaning about them and making no real effort to keep them in order.'

  'I thought perhaps you didn't approve of girls of that age dating,' Bryony observed haltingly.

  'It isn't exactly that. If they were sensible, steady boys, from families we know well, I'd be more easygoing. It's my belief,' and he was positively scowling now, 'that some of the chaps in that crowd, even if not Frank and Bernard themselves, may very well land themselves in serious trouble, one of these days. And if there's any sort of a scandal, I most definitely don't want my young sisters involved. In an island this size——- ' and he shrugged his shoulders eloquently.

  'Couldn't Chris give them some sort of a warning?'

  'He has tried. And what do you think young Sally said to him? "You're getting to be a prig like Perry." Anyway, Chris is off to Canada next week.'

  Bryony reflected for a minute or two, feeling rather depressed. Then she said: 'Perhaps we could get them thinking about something else. Anne-Marie is genuinely keen on painting, and very good at it. Couldn't we arrange with the Convent tha
t she goes to art school—to an evening class perhaps—once or twice a week?'

  'That leaves Sally at a loose end.'

  'She's all set at the moment on training to run a hotel, as soon as she leaves school. I've been telling her about my mother's place, Roselands—how she needs to work really hard at languages, and later on take a secretarial course. Maybe she could go to an evening class, too—learn to type.'

  'My dear girl, you can't go running them backwards and forwards to Port-of-Spain all day!'

  'Oh, I don't mind.' She achieved a smile. 'I like that little car. Incidentally, I'm taking your aunt to the cinema one day soon.'

  'Well, don't kill yourself. And don't worry too much.' His voice was kinder than she had ever known it. 'The girls like you. They've told me so. And that's half the battle.'

  She was not altogether surprised when Anne-Marie and Sally wanted time to think her plan over. Anne- Marie was more enthusiastic than Sally at first, but after a good deal of private discussion between them, they agreed that they'd like her to go further into the matter, and see if they could start these evening classes at half term.

  Delighted at their readiness to fall in with her plans, Bryony made no difficulty about helping them with their preparations for Carnival. Having gathered that costumes for schoolgirls, when they took part all together in a group, would be reasonably simple and inexpensive, she anticipated no snags. But she soon found that these youngsters had very different ideas from those of schoolgirls in England, looking forward to a fancy-dress dance at the end of term.

  The seniors at St. Monica's, advised by the good Sisters to go as a swarm of butterflies—'So gay and pretty I'—had given their vote instead to tropical fish, and imagination was running riot.

  However, that Home Economics course, which had done so much to get her the post in Dr. Gray's household, stood her in good stead now. Sewing classes had covered design as well as dressmaking and upholstery. And though the materials were more expensive than she liked, she knew at least how to buy without waste.

  As things began to take shape, she let the girls come back from school on their own sometimes—by bus for most of the way, and then on foot. Busy as she was, it saved one journey at least into town—and this was all the more welcome because Aunt Isabel gradually began to make more demands on her.

  Miss Fanier had many friends in the island, but since she no longer drove a car, she had been for some time forced to depend on them for lifts. It was bliss for her now to have Bryony run her around.

  She wasn't sure that Peregrine approved of these arrangements. Indeed, he murmured discontentedly, one day, that Aunt Isabel could well afford to hire a car from the local garage whenever she needed transport.

  'Before Chris went to Canada, he often offered to take her to town in the Fiat/ he said. 'But she always said she disliked driving in a small car.'

  Bryony laughed at that.

  'Can you imagine any young man being willing to potter about for hours with an old lady? That was the real reason. She wants to call on friends, or shop, or get her hair done—and she's come to see that a small car is easiest for parking.'

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  'Well, keep an eye on those girls. Oh, I know heaps of their school friends go home most of the way by bus. But Sally and Anne-Marie—they're a couple of monkeys.'

  A few afternoons later Aunt Isabel disclosed that she had arranged an appointment at a hairdresser's in Charles Edward Street. It wasn't the one she usually favoured with her custom: his charges had gone up, even to his old customers, and she had no intention of putting up with such cupidity.

  'Are you sure this other one is as competent?' Bryony asked her, frowning.

  'Of course. Lady Carridew gave me his card months ago. Lived in Greece at one time. Did the Royal ladies' hair.'

  Knowing the difficulties of parking in Charles Edward Street, Bryony felt like groaning. But when she glanced down at the card which, Aunt Isabel showed her, she was a little relieved.

  It read:

  Polydore, Hair Stylist.

  Mendip Grove, Off Charles Edward St.

  Depositing Aunt Isabel there would be a fairly simple matter.

  When the afternoon came for her to take Aunt Isabel to this establishment, neither she nor the old lady found it quite what they had expected. From the outside, anyway, it appeared to be more of a boutique than a hairdresser's, with one window devoted to up to-the-minute fashions for teenage girls, another given up to equally modern clothes for boys.

  However, they went in, and were directed by shop assistants to a passage leading straight through to the salon. And here Bryony got a bad shock.

  The woman sitting at a table making appointments and welcoming clients was Senora Blavona—the Venezuelan woman whom she had been forced to have removed from her cabin.

  On the ship she had maintained an icy silence. Now, having ushered Aunt Isabel into the salon, and seen that an assistant got busy preparing her for the operations of a black-bearded gentleman—evidently Polydore—she placed a chair for Bryony near her desk.

  'Take a seat, please,' she said amiably, speaking as always with a strong foreign accent. 'It is cooler 'ere, at the doorway.' But when Bryony sat down, she added under her breath, her dark eyes hostile: 'Why you come botherin' 'ere? I'm certain sure our—'ow you say?—mutual friend, 'ugh Woods, not sendin' you!'

  'Why this mystery woman stuff?' Bryony spoke quietly, but with undisguised impatience. 'Mr. Woods told me on the boat coming out here that you were taking up hairdressing in Port-of-Spain, but I wasn't in the faintest degree interested. Why should I be? I never exchanged a word with you on board, after that time you tried to gatecrash into my cabin.'

  Senora Blavona's eyes snapped.

  'You be'aved with typical British selfishness,' she declared in an angry mutter. 'But I tell you this. I 'ave a partnership in this business, and I do not wish you as a customer.'

  'That suits me,' was Bryony's murmured retort. Then, getting up from the chair, she strolled into the busy salon, where the Greek was carefully trimming Aunt Isabel's silvery hair, and told her cheerfully: 'I'm going to do some shopping in Frederick Street, Miss Fanier. I'll be back in an hour, if that's all right by Mr. Polydore.'

  The hairdresser gave her an ingratiating smile. 'In fifty minutes exactly.' He glanced round the salon where several women were having their hair attended to, and remarked: 'We have a reputation here for getting on with the job, and avoiding unnecessary delays.'

  'And for producing excellent results,' a customer who was having her set combed out observed.

  He looked at her, gave a little smile and bow, then told Bryony: 'I could make your pretty hair even lovelier!' Then before Aunt Isabel could assume an aggrieved expression at his apparent loss of interest in her, he went on hastily: 'Though it is Miss Fanier's type of hair, like spun silver, which I find most satisfactory to handle.'

  Telling herself that it was a very odd hairdresser's shop by English standards, and that the Senora was undoubtedly crazy, Bryony went off to do some marketing at an excellent Chinese supermarket. This accomplished satisfactorily, she visited a large store to buy some more tinsel for Anne-Marie's Carnival dress, then made her way up to the restaurant for an icecream soda.

  It was a regular haunt for people doing their shopping, but she saw no one she knew, and on the whole was glad. She wanted to think quietly over that ridiculous encounter with Senora Blavona, the South American woman who had joined the ship at Vigo, in the North of Spain.

  She hadn't appeared quite normal then, and didn't now. How could a woman so clearly unstable acquire a share in what seemed to be a flourishing business? A question of money, she supposed! And then this foolish reference to Hugh Woods as their 'mutual friend'. Hugh hardly knew her. He had said so. It was only on Bryony's own account that he had got talking to the Senora at all. He had, indeed, said that he had to cultivate hairdressers as well as pharmacists, in the interest of the wholesale chemists he represented. Bu
t if they were nuts————————-

  When the time came for picking up Aunt Isabel she found that she was just a little nervous. There was something about the Senora's eyes—something snakelike, almost—that gave her a sense of chill. She dreaded another encounter with her.

  However, when she went through the shop to the salon she found someone quite different at the appointments desk: a sallow, long-haired young man, with a friendly smile, who was able to tell her at once that Miss Fanier was practically ready.

  Great was Bryony's relief at the thought of being out of the place. She meant to use every persuasion to get Aunt Isabel back to her former hairdresser. But Aunt Isabel, in happy mood, was not for tripping straight out into the street but for lingering among the rather weird clothes 'for the Younger Set'.

  'This is the very place to get Christopher a birthday present,' she announced. 'It mustn't be too expensive, or too weighty, because of the postage to Canada. I don't want the poor boy paying a lot of duty on it.'

  A good-looking Indian boy came forward to help with one or two suggestions, but while Aunt Isabel hesitated between a turquoise and a crimson shirt, both with gay patterns in contrasting shades, some curtains at the side of the counter were flung open and—like the Bad Fairy in the pantomime, Bryony thought, near giggling—out came Senora Blavona.

  Whether or not she was surprised to see Bryony again was not clear. Anyway, she behaved quite differently, acting the sympathetic saleslady to the life, and succeeding in selling not only the turquoise shirt to Aunt Isabel, for Chris, but one in lemon silk, with a grey check, for Peregrine.

  'My elder nephew's a doctor,' Miss Fanier confided to the smiling Senora. 'I expect you've heard of him—Dr. Peregrine Gray—and he'll never buy anything for himself if he can avoid it. Always thinks of other people.'

  Senora Blavona, totting up the bill, flashed her a sympathetic glance.

  'I am stranger 'ere. I know very few peoples. But doctors—so noble!'

  Bryony thought she had never seen such a piece of play-acting, but Aunt Isabel was in a delighted mood, both with her hair-do and her purchases, and expressed her determination to pay another visit to this highly original shop before very long.