June 16,2004-“Your former girlfriend will soon be returning home,” April said to Stewart.
They were at his apartment in Morris Mews. Stewart jumped up out of his chair at April’s surprise announcement.
“What did you say?” he asked. “I can’t believe it. You must be joking or something.”
“Morgana is returning home next month,”April repeated.
“That’s news to me. The last I heard was that she had found some American guy over there and they were going steady,” he declared and sat back down in his chair.
“I told you already to warn her off. You don’t belong to her again.”
“Doesn’t she have a boyfriend now? I don’t see what you’re worried about. She isn’t coming back to me and I don’t want her back.”
April went inside for some more fruit punch and refilled their glasses.
“You know Stewart, my mother always warned me that I was wasting my time with you. I think Morgana’s return will prove her right or wrong.”
“Miss Camille knows that I care about you. I don’t know how she can be saying that. She has always been complimentary to me so how can she be saying those things behind my back?”
Stewart drank some of his drink as did April.
“Maybe she doesn’t know about your wild side, but she’s a sensible woman and has probably sized you up as a man who likes to have lots of women.”
“I don’t have lots of women and you know that too.”
“I know you’re sleeping with sexy Bobbette as they call her or why would she be so hostile towards me?”
“You’re imagining things between me and that girl.”
“Why can’t you just settle down with me alone? Why do I have to share you with any other woman? Don’t I give you enough loving?”
“It’s just you alone I have now.”
“I’m going to watch and if you go back to that girl, Morgana, I’m going to leave you.”
“Go back to Morgana, are you crazy?”
“I’ll be here watching your every move,” she said as they sat in their chairs feeling the cooling effect of the breeze blowing down from the hills. After a while, both of them became sleepy and fell into a short nap, no doubt sleeping off the effects of the heavy meal they’d just had.
***
Stewart kept shaking his head after Sunday with April bantering him about Morgana and now Bobbette sending this urgent text that she wanted a meeting with him. He thought he had to dig deep into his mental faculties as to how to appease both women. They were to meet at Edith Chin’s bar and grill in Manor Park. When he arrived, he saw her seated on a stool outside shaded by one of those patio umbrellas. She was dressed in a blue strapless dress and had on a pair of leather slippers. She had a scarf tying down her hair. He parked his car beside hers, locked it up and came to sit opposite her. He gave her a kiss on her right cheek.
“So how is the woman with the shapeliest body in the world, today?”
“Am I that woman you’re talking about? I don’t know about that. What I can say is that maybe I’m not very smart or else I wouldn’t let you get away with some of the things you do.”
He ordered an energy drink for himself and one for her too.
“I know you’re a very smart woman.”
“Your former girlfriend is returning home next month,” she said and when he gave her a blank stare she continued as their drinks arrived.
“Don’t stare at me with that blank expression on your face. You knew she was returning. Are you planning to go back to her?”
“Morgana and I are finished and I told you that she was seeing somebody else. She has her life to live and I have mine,” he told her and took some more swallows of his drink.
“Is she returning to a job out here? You told me that after she finished her degree she would get a job with a cousin of her late father. You’d think that with a job over there and her boyfriend also over there she’d be in no hurry to return home. If it was me, I would be staying, unless I had something better to return to and my boyfriend and I weren’t all that friendly anymore.”
Stewart again gave her a blank stare.
“I’ll admit that she was my woman, but since she sent me that email breaking off with me, I just sort of forgot about her. I didn’t even know that she had finished her studies. I knew that once she finished them she was going to work for Gordon but I thought she would have stayed longer and get some more experience before coming home. Maybe she’s just homesick, I don’t know. ”
“That guy and her, are they still friends?”
Stewart took some more swallows of his drink. He took out his rag and wiped his forehead.
“I haven’t heard from Morgana for almost two years now. As I said, I have no knowledge of what she has been doing during that time,” he replied. They finished their drinks and Stewart ordered two more.
“That’s how it is, Bobbette. Maybe she’s even engaged to this guy, or they could be planning to get married soon, I don’t know.”
“If you go back to her I’m leaving you.”
“You have nothing to worry about, as that won’t happen.”
Bobbette finished her drink and stood up.
“Stewart, baby, I have to leave. Robert is nearly home by now and I don’t want him to reach home and I’m not there,” she told him and gave him a small kiss before going to her car. Stewart watched her reverse out of the parking lot and drive away, but not before waving goodbye to him.
What the hell did all those women want from him? Morgana had agreed to be friends with him again. Voluptous Bobbette and hot April had vowed never to sleep with him again if he befriended their arch enemy. He didn’t believe them and would go right ahead and be with Morgana. He would get engaged to her as soon as she returned home.
***
June 30,2004-Stewart and Morgana were at her home in the Canrieves and they had agreed to be engaged. It was Morgana's welcoming home party and Stewart had attended the dinner consisting of platters of meat, locally produced food, vegetables and several bottles of champagne. He had then announced that he and Morgana would be engaged in September and probably get married a few months later depending on how the engagement worked out. After the dinner, they had retired to one of the concrete benches in the spacious garden to talk.
“Stewart, you shocked mummy and Aunt Sally by announcing that engagement.”
“I nearly lost you when I heard that you were seeing that other guy. So I had to do it.”
Morgana hadn’t changed much. She looked more mature and her face looked a bit paler but it could have been due to the fact that she had spent such a long time in a colder climate.
“Didn’t you miss me?”
“I didn’t come for the first Summer or Christmas holidays, that I was over there. Then dad died and I came out and heard that you were misbehaving and you know what happened.”
“Let’s put those things behind us and move on. We have the future ahead of us and I’m really sorry about Byron and Sid.”
“Every time I think about it, I feel sad about that gunman pumping all those bullets into Sid. I couldn’t come for his funeral because of my studies, but I have apologized to Sally. Then we’ve not up to now found daddy’s body or those of the other men. Mummy and the other widows have been having a memorial service every year since the tragedy. They plan to continue until they find their bodies and each year it’ll be at the church where one of them used to worship.”
Stewart had heard rumors that at least one of the men on the boat was involved in drugs and all of them had been killed and their bodies dumped at sea and the boat captured. He didn’t think it was Byron, but their killers probably didn’t want to leave any eyewitnesses hence the wholesale slaughter of everyone on board.
“It was really tragic. I hope nothing like that ever happens again. I don’t think I’ll ever go on a boat again. I’m so glad that mummy dumped up our pool.”
Stewart didn’t agree with her about the dumping up of the pool but he didn’t want to sound unsympathetic.
“I’m so glad that we’re going to be engaged. I hope that everything will be all right and we can get married shortly thereafter. But hear me talking about marriage and I’m not even working. Do you think you could support a stay at home wife?”
“Of course I could, but talking about work, I know you’re interested in working with a bank or some big firm. I know this firm that you could check. Their name is Newman and Graham and they’re management consultants.”
“I’m getting my resume together. You can give me their address or email and I’ll send them an application plus my resume. I gained real first world experience working for Gordon. I was thinking of staying another year or two and he was down on me to extend my stay. Then you called and I just decided to come home to be with you again. I hope that it was the right decision.”
“Newman and Graham is a professional firm and they’ve been around for a very long time. I’m sure if you get a job with them you won’t regret not staying longer with Gordon’s firm.”
“Lots of people told me that I had lost you forever, but I always knew that one day you’d come back to me. I’ll do my best to make sure that you won’t regret your decision to return home to be with me again.”
“Let’s see, if you behave yourself, we can take things from there.”
Stewart had made sure to turn off his cell phone. He knew that neither Bobbette nor April was aware that he had plans to get engaged to Morgana. At least he hadn’t told them, but they were bound to find out, maybe some weeks after it happened. That would give him enough time to come up with some plausible explanation.
“So how is the entertainment scene doing these days?”
“I’ve not been out much, with you not around. I’ve been keeping a low profile.”
Morgana laughed.
“You, keeping a low profile, you know what, I shouldn’t have told you when I was returning and then visit Corners and see you in action.”
“Corners would look strange to me, it's been so long I haven’t been there.”
“If you want we can go there tomorrow night.”
She told him that she wanted to go, whereupon they returned inside to find Sally and her new man, Vernon Hanlan as well as all of the guests gone. Morgana’s mother, Monique’s new man, Val Williams, was also gone but the rest of the family was watching television. Stewart bade them all goodbye and went his way. He turned on his cell phone and checked for missed calls and realized that both April and Bobbette had called him.
He decided to call April tonight and Bobbette tomorrow.
Stewart noticed the tone of April’s voice the moment she started speaking and he didn’t like it.
“Stewart, I want to know why you haven’t called me? Is it because of Morgana? Is she back on the island? Is she the reason why I’m not hearing from you?”
“Morgana is still abroad, but she could very well be on the island. I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“As I told you before if I had a number for her I’d call and warn her off.”
“April, you’re making a fuss over nothing. Why would I suddenly take up back with Morgana after I’ve spent all this time with you?”
“You know the saying about old lovers, but we’ll see how it works out. But I’m not going to simply lie down and take it. I want to come and look for you tomorrow evening.”
Stewart hesitated a bit.
“No, not tomorrow, I have a meeting with our unit manager that could go up to ten o’clock.”
She agreed to come the day after tomorrow.
The next day he called Bobbette.
“Stewart, what’s really going on? Why didn’t I get you when I called last night? Your phone just kept ringing and sending me to voice mail.”
“I don’t know what could have happened. Maybe I dropped off to sleep.”
“I heard that Morgana has returned home.”
“That’s news to me. Are you sure about that?”
“I got it from a very reliable source.”
“I don’t have a number for her, but I’ll call Monique and find out if it’s true.”
“I want to know about your next move if it’s true that she has really returned home.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“I think you and her are going to rekindle your friendship. I am almost one hundred percent certain you will soon be sleeping with her again.”
“You forget that she has her boyfriend in the States.”
“Maybe she has left him to come out here and be with you.”
“You’re just speculating. Morgana and I will be nothing more than social friends, if and when she returns.”
“I’ll never share you with her. And just a piece of advice, I don’t sleep with married men.”
Stewart took another swallow of his malt beverage as he thought about the threats from April and Bobbette. After she sent him that email breaking off with him, Morgana had sworn never to talk to him again. He just had to play his cards right. He didn’t think he had made a bad situation worse by announcing that he wanted to be engaged to her. He could always pass it off as her mother and aunt demanding that before they allowed her to talk to him again.
***
August 14,2004-April looked with incredulous eyes at what Stewart was saying to her. She was at his apartment, having gone straight there after hearing the rumor of his impending engagement to Morgana.
“That guy just messed her up. I don’t know if he promised to get married to her. What I do know is that they were to be engaged and he just went and found another girlfriend, leaving Morgana out in the cold.”
“Monique called me and said Morgana was blaming me for what happened, because if I’d gotten engaged to her she wouldn’t have been friendly with any other guy. She said that Morgana was crying a lot and getting hysterical. She told everybody that she wanted to be engaged to me. I told Monique that I couldn’t help her. Then Sally called and I turned her down too. After that, Eloise Nembhard, Morgana’s aunt on her father’s side, called and begged me and I just changed my mind. I don’t even know if I’m going to go through with it again.”
“What an incredulous story and you expect stupid me to believe that?”
Bobbette had shouted and screamed at him when he told her that Morgana had begged him to be engaged to her. He had told her that Morgana had offered to buy the ring and her mother would pay for the engagement party.
“It will begin to sound more incredulous because Monique has already bought the ring and she’ll pay for the engagement party.”
“I suppose that her dear daughter has returned, looking for lost love and you’re only too willing to oblige. Maybe if she had brought back a child or was pregnant, you would have been only too willing to accept paternity.”
“You don’t have to behave that way.”
“I must be a real idiot to sit here and listen to all that crap from you. I know people who’ve seen Morgana out and there’s nothing wrong with her.”
“You can’t look at a person and know that everything is okay with them. Why do people die suddenly?”
“I’m no doctor, how’d I know? Anyway, I’m warning you that if you ever put a ring on Morgana’s finger, don’t ever come near me again,” she said and took up her bag.
“Where are you going?”
She looked at him and Stewart thought that she wasn’t going to answer him.
“To my home, where else? Do you think I’ll stay with you after what you did or are planning to do? Maybe Bobbette will but I won’t. I was just warming Morgana’s bed for her, but she can have it back, full time now.”
“Morgana wasn’t on the island fully before you were ready to take up back where you left off with her. What was I to you then, just something to be used and tossed aside?”
She flung open the front door and stormed outside.
Stewart heard her calling a taxi and didn’t move. Presently he heard when a taxi stop, a car door slam and the car drove away.
She had passed some remarks about Bobbette. It just continued her line of thought that he was sleeping with that girl. It showed that despite his many efforts, he hadn’t been able to convince her that he and that girl weren’t lovers.
Stewart went and took a beer out of his refrigerator. He drank some of it and thought about his women. Had he made a mistake in telling both women that Morgana had broken up with him? He shouldn’t have said anything bad about her to them, thus making them feel he was no longer interested in her. He should have maintained Morgana as his main woman even though she was abroad. Now that she was back they would know where they stood with him. The danger there was that after she started seeing the new guy, word would have gotten out that he and she were no longer friends. Maybe he shouldn’t have told Morgana that he wanted to get engaged to her but just string her along just as he was doing with April and Bobbette. He had only formalized a situation that he had left hanging before she went away and of course to get into the good books of both Monique and Sally.
He knew that Bobbette would soon come around, but he knew what her latest warning meant. He knew how hopeless it would be to try to convince April that his pending engagement to Morgana meant nothing to him as the girl would be convinced that he was planning to marry her arch enemy.
***
January 21, 2005-Stewart and Morgana were dining at the Drummond Court Hotel on Mountain View Avenue. They were having their appetizers before the waiter came to take their orders. They were planning to go clubbing later on. He and Morgana had become engaged last September. Many of their mutual friends and close relatives were there congratulating them and hoping that they would tie the knot in a matter of months. As he had predicted, Bobbette had come around to his way of thinking and was sleeping with him again. April had gone away, swearing never to have anything more to do with him.
Both of them ordered fish. Morgana took slice fish and rice and peas while Stewart had his with locally produced food. They had just started eating when Stewart asked.
“You were saying that these two guys are to join your firm next week. What are their names?”
“Brad Newman and Rick Graham.”
“I know those two guys.”
“I didn’t know that. What do you know about them? Are they good people?”
“Rick is okay, but Brad is a show off type of guy,” he replied.
“I’m surprised you don’t know them. Brad and I used to do holiday jobs at Caswell’s former firm.”
“Maybe I’ve seen them before, but their names don’t ring any bells.”
They were halfway through their meal. Since Morgana had been back, she had begun sleeping with him but wouldn’t spend nights with him and was again complaining that she wanted to save it up until after they were married. Stewart’s mind kept flashing back to April; he was beginning to miss her.
“Why did April migrate?” Morgana asked.
“How would I know? I’ll admit we were friends, but contrary to what you might think, only social friends.”
“And she just got up and left the island and didn’t even say a word to you. I find that hard to believe.”
Stewart scratched his left leg. He put down his knife and fork, took up a servette and wiped something from his mouth.
He took up back the knife and fork.
“Why do you think she left the island so suddenly?”
“We weren’t friends so I would be the last person to know.”
They had now finished eating and Stewart was drinking a beer while Morgana was having a glass of lemonade.
“My aunt, Eloise, told me that I would have a hard time holding on to you. She said that you were too smooth a talker and you have the lover-boy looks.”
“She isn’t easy. I remembered dancing with her at your send off party and she told me that I could have her if I wanted. I knew she was joking of course, as her husband is only a few years older than I am.”
“She’s like that, Mark would have knocked you flat,” she remarked and Stewart laughed as her husband, was a huge giant of a man.
The waiter came and Stewart paid him, plus giving him a tip.
“Let’s go to Corners and really enjoy ourselves,” Stewart told her and the two of them left holding hands for his car.