LITMIR.BIZ

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      The bones cascaded to the ground with heart-stopping suddenness and the man bent forward to examine them. There was a long silence, and Christina felt suddenly edgy. Oh, why couldn’t he do his spiel and get it over with? she wondered, visualising Mrs Brandon’s reaction if she were to emerge from the hotel and find her new companion sitting around in the dust, waiting to hear details of an imaginary future.

      ‘You must take care, m’m’selle.’ The man’s voice, suddenly hoarse and harsh, recaptured her wandering attention. ‘I see evil. You must beware—beware of the devil at Archangel.’

      Abruptly he rose to his feet, snatching up the bones and the tin cup, and walked off through the crowd, ignoring the disappointed protests that followed him. Christina got to her feet, smoothing her skirt, aware of the curious glances that were being directed at her. Her face flaming, she almost ran to the hotel entrance, the man’s words sounding like a warning drum beat in her head—‘Beware—beware of the devil at Archangel.’

      She still had not fully recovered her composure the next day when she set out on the last lap of her journey to Ste Victoire with Mrs Brandon. But, if she was honest, the fortune-teller was not wholly to blame for this. Mrs Brandon had indeed been angry to find that she had gone out—unaccountably so—and Christina had found herself wilting under the lash of her tongue. Nor had a halting attempt to describe her afternoon’s ordeal and its strange aftermath led to any softening of her employer’s attitude. Mrs Brandon did not hesitate to imply that Christina had asked for everything she had got and more, and when Christina had tried to tell her about the fortune-teller, she had been imperiously waved to silence.

      Dinner was an uncomfortable meal, with Mrs Brandon maintaining an icy reserve which boded ill for the future. It was not as if her anger had been roused by concern for Christina and the danger she had been in. It seemed simply to have been caused by the fact that her instructions had not been obeyed to the letter.

      Christina was thankful when she could at last withdraw to her own room. She felt unutterably weary, but perhaps predictably, sleep would not come. No amount of logical reasoning could dismiss the chill of the fortune-teller’s warning.

      She told herself over and over again that he must have an accomplice in the hotel who made it his business to acquaint him with details about guests which he could use. And Mrs Brandon was obviously well-known at the Beauharnais. The very fact that Christina was travelling with her revealed that her destination was Archangel, and the man had simply been trying to give the crowd their money’s worth by introducing a touch of drama into a very prosaic situation. It was so simple, when she worked it out. Why, then, couldn’t she believe it? She wished that she had been given the trite prediction of wealth and a handsome husband that she had originally envisaged. It would have been something to smile over in the months to come.

      Instead, she was facing the journey ahead with a strange reluctance, unable to dismiss the murmurings of inner disquiet. It was not simply her discovery that Mrs Brandon’s temper was all she had suspected, and worse—she could have lived with that—but rather all the unanswered questions she had pushed to the back of her mind in the relief of having a job offered to her and some kind of future to look forward to. Again, she found herself wondering why Mrs Brandon had come personally to England to seek her. Her health, after all, was not good—far from it. As well as her arthritis, she seemed to be taking a variety of tiny capsules for other purposes, and Christina could not help suspecting that she had a bad heart. If that was the case, then why had she not appointed some kind of agent rather than put herself to all the trouble of a journey half way across the world?

      She would have liked to tell herself that it was compassion and kindness that had prompted the action, but she knew that such a conclusion would merely be an exercise in self-deception.

      She was forced, instead, to conclude that Mrs Brandon had some urgent reason for wanting to look her future protegée over in person, although she could not even hazard a guess as to what that reason could be.

      But the feeling of elation that had gripped her on her arrival in Martinique was sadly lacking as she stood by the rail of the boat which was taking her to Archangel and caught her first glimpse of Ste Victoire. She was alone, Mrs Brandon preferring to rest in one of the air-conditioned cabins, and so she had no one to influence her first reactions to the place that was to be her home.

      It was inevitably a nervous arrival. Christina’s heart was frankly in her mouth as she saw how the boat had to edge its way past the crippling reef to get into the calm waters of the harbour, and she remembered uncomfortably how Mrs Brandon had warned her that they could be cut off in bad weather. It was June now, and she had read somewhere that summer was not the pleasantest season in this part of the Caribbean, with the possibility of hurricanes ever-present.

      She sighed impatiently. There was little point in thinking like this. She was just making herself miserable. She was letting an absurd prediction, uttered to impress a crowd of credulous tourists, prey on her mind too much. After all, she had suffered none of these qualms back in England, when she could have retracted if she had wanted to. And she had also discovered, on Martinique, that this smiling Paradise could have its darker side, yet it would be foolish to allow this to outweigh all the other considerations. This, after all, was where Aunt Grace had wanted her to be, and she owed it to her godmother at least to try and give this new life a chance.

      She lingered on deck as the boat docked, watching with fascination as the gangplank was run out and the freight and few passengers bound for the island began to be disembarked. An opulent car was drawn up on the quayside and a coloured man in a chauffeur’s uniform was standing beside it, leaning against the bonnet. Christina knew without being told that this was the transport from Archangel, and she went below to inform Mrs Brandon.

      She was surprised and somewhat gratified to receive the beginnings of a wintry smile and even the command to see that all the luggage was collected and taken up on deck was delivered in reasonably amiable tones. Perhaps Mrs Brandon was pleased to be home and would mellow accordingly, she thought optimistically as she supervised the transfer of their cases.

      She accompanied the older woman down the gangplank, carefully avoiding any appearance of concern or the offer of help. When they reached the quay, Mrs Brandon stood for a moment, white-lipped and an expression of strain tautening her clear-cut features, then she had herself under control again and was leading the way towards the car.

      The chauffeur snatched off his cap and came to meet them, grinning broadly.

      ‘Welcome home, m’dame—missy.’

      ‘It’s good to be back, Louis.’ Mrs Brandon relinquished her cane to him and climbed into the back of the car. Christina watched as the chauffeur, in spite of the sticky warmth of the day, wrapped a silken rug around her feet and legs.

      ‘You may travel in the front, mon enfant,’ Mrs Brandon decreed autocratically, and Christina climbed obediently into the passenger seat. It was very hot in the car and she would have liked to have wound down the window, but something warned her that Mrs Brandon liked to travel in the equivalent of a Turkish bath and that she would do well to accept the situation. Anyway, she thought, surreptitiously pushing her hair off the nape of her neck, Ste Victoire wasn’t a very large island and they would soon be arriving at Archangel. She began to think longingly in terms of a shower and a cool drink.

      The harbour area of the island did not strike her as being particularly attractive—a cluster of whitewashed buildings with corrugated iron roofs, many of which seemed to be in an advanced state of rust. The streets leading away from the harbour were narrow and crowded with every type of traffic. A lot of people, Christina noticed, were riding bicycles, many of them wobbling along precariously with large bundles on their heads or on the handlebars in front of them. Pavement stalls heaped high with exotically coloured fruit and vegetables threatened to spill into the road, and there seemed to be children and animals everywhere. She had to admire the imperturbable skill with which Louis negotiated his route, but she had to breathe a silent sigh of relief when the township was left behind, and they emerged on to a wider, straighter road which they seemed to have all to themselves.

      But after they

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