The following is the final excerpt from Carol A.N. Dunn's novel, The Mountain of Inheritance, a gold medal-winning book in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission Writing Competition.

The attraction Laurie incited in Joel had initially surprised him, for she was not in keeping with his usual type. He had always liked his women plump, effervescent and unrestrained. Laurie was dainty and reserved in a cloistered sort of way. What amazed him even more, however, was that he had garnered her interest in the first place.

Almost from the start, Joel had known that he would marry her if she would have him, for she would be a confirmation of all that he had achieved in life. Yet, having been already burnt by love, he knew he was incapable of offering her this. What he did have to give, however, was something more tangible and something he knew instinctively that she craved: refuge from the sense of displacement she had felt all her life.

Putting up resistance

During his last weeks as a single man, Joel began contemplating how compatible they would be in the physical sense. Over the months of their involvement, he had occasionally tried to coax Laurie into going further whenever he had become aroused in her company, but she had always resisted him.

In that stretch, too, her response to his kisses and caresses had been tepid and lacked the fire he was accustomed to. And that very first time they were together, hours after their bridal reception, she was tentative with him at the start; but little by little she opened up, and then at last she burst forth like a flower that had suddenly bloomed under his touch. And he could see the joyous amazement in her eyes that it could be like this between them. And each time after that, like someone who had discovered something new and wondrous, she gave herself to him with increasing fervour, which both astonished and enthralled him. And it delighted him to know that he had been the one to stoke the flames inside her.

Keeping vows

But he was to find that vows made with the best of intentions were often the hardest to keep. Before the first year of their marriage was out, Laurie had become somewhat anxious that she had not yet conceived. Joel hadn't cared either way. He liked things the way they were. But after the second year passed, Laurie grew worried. Visits to her doctor had shown that physically, there was nothing wrong with her and she was reassured that time and patience were all that was needed. But Laurie waited, and there was still no baby.

Then it became her obsession. Joel was indignant when his wife suggested that he submit himself to a medical examination and was resolute in his refusal. Then he watched her sink into gloom after a false alarm. And after three years of marriage, his wife remained frustrated and childless.

The pastor's children

Recently, she had taken a particular fancy to her pastor's children and as each childless month flowed into the next, her attachment to them grew stronger. At first, Joel paid it scant regard, for it seemed to fill a void in her that nothing else would. But later he came to view it as unhealthy, something from which no good could ever come, and he began to warn her about it. Then the children started to have the run of his house and garden. It seemed like they were everywhere. And when Laurie wasn't stuffing them with the little treats she cooked up in the kitchen, she was allowing them to bang out discordant tunes on the piano, which rattled Joel's nerves.

Joel decided he wouldn't take it a moment longer when the children brought their dog with them one day and the wretched mongrel proceeded to wreak havoc among some freshly planted petunias.

"Why did you have to go and make a fuss about the dog?" Laurie asked him a few days later. "You made the children feel so bad and now their father hardly wants to allow them to come up here at all."

"You want the stupid dog to run wild all over the house like the little brat them, too?"

"They are not brats, Joel, they are just ordinary children, and since you won't -" She stopped herself then, but not soon enough.

Joel grabbed her shoulders. "Go on. Say it. Say it no!"

"Since you won't give me a child I have to be satisfied with those of another man."

Joel had never struck a woman in his life, but at that point he came dangerously close.

Carol A.N. Dunn can be contacted at loracnnud@yahoo.com.