Jasmine Harvest Page 10

  “Well, considering he asked her to act as his hostess, what do you expect?”

  “Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. When she isn’t monopolizing him she’ll be making a favor of loaning him out. Because she’s just a—a Gorgon’s head where he’s concerned. Or do I mean a harpy?” Betsy queried vaguely as they reached the terrace.

  People were being served with cocktails there, as they were in the hall beneath the roof-high dome and sitting on both wings of the staircase. A salon which Paul had told Caroline he rarely used now had been cleared for dancing, though as yet only one or two couples were on the floor. A buffet supper was laid out in the dining room which Paul did use; there were banked flowers everywhere; light and color blazed, except in the garden room and on its adjoining terrace, where a few chairs were discreetly grouped in twos in the shadows cast by the vine which shaded and cooled both room and terrace by day.

  Dress was by people’s individual choice, ranging through a gamut of styles from Ariane’s figure-conscious silver lame to Betsy’s green satin lounging pants and the comparative simplicity of Caroline’s choice of a boat-necked two-piece in thick white surah for the way it enhanced her sun tan, now almost the match of Betsy’s.

  Paul’s male guests were variously in open-necked silk shirts, matelot stripes and tropical suitings. Paul himself wore a white dinner jacket, and at a casual glance around her Caroline thought the only man in sight too formally dressed was the Pole, Witold Czinner, who was in black that was greening a little from long use.

  It was not long before she and Betsy were separated and gradually the pattern of the party shifted and altered, fewer people lingering in the velvet dusk outside, more going to dance in the salon or the hall or to clamour round the buffet for drinks.

  Caroline found herself gratifyingly in demand. She danced with some of the young men she had met on the beach with Betsy; once with Paul, savoring the pleasure of that, trying to make it last, and with a stranger to whom Ariane introduced her, who took her to supper at the buffet and to a mildly flirtatious interlude on the darkened terrace before they danced again and parted.

  It was between dances a little later that she found herself standing next to Witold Czinner, whom she had met briefly one morning in Ariane’s shop on the Croisette. His greeting to her now, as then, was a heel-clicking bow low over her hand and as he drew forward chairs for her and for himself he said in French, “I ought to ask you for the courtesy of the next dance, Mademoiselle. But I’m afraid my waltzing is of the school of the Blue Danube and though, even in Warsaw, I daresay the young people are doing these rock things now, I’ve never had much heart for practicing them, I’m afraid.”

  Caroline said, “I’m glad you don’t want to dance. I was rather hoping to sit the next one out. Is it a long time then, Monsieur, since you were in Warsaw yourself?”

  “Too long. I have been in France for ten, eleven years, and in Germany before that.”

  “But you plan to go back to Poland, some time?”

  He shrugged. “We of Eastern Europe can only allow ourselves to hope, Mademoiselle. We do not ‘plan’, you understand?”

  “Yes ... I’m sorry. Are you alone here, or have you your family with you?”

  His sad, absent eyes followed a couple drifting by, hand-in-hand. “I am a widower, Mademoiselle. I lost my bride of a few weeks before I came out of Poland, and such family as I have—two elderly parents and a brother—are still there. But yet, I do hope to go back—when I have saved enough money to keep myself and them while I put to work the slow machinery which may enable me to bring them all out with me next time. Meanwhile I must not complain. I have a job which I have come to love, even though it wasn’t originally mine.”

  “What are you really, then?” Caroline asked.

  “A designer of ceramics. You appreciate fine china, perhaps?”

  “I know very little about it, though I can recognize the types most people can. Our own Staffordshire, for instance, and Dresden, and hadn’t you some Meissen figures in the Salon Ariane window the other day?”

  His face lighted up. “So you knew our Meissen orchestra? That’s good. But alas, it is not complete, and can you guess, I wonder, why I put as many figures as we have in the window?”

  “Well, in the hope of selling them, surely?”

  “On the contrary, in the hope that someone who has one or other of the figures and instruments we haven’t may offer them for sale to us, completing our collection. Although if that happened, I should be sad. For then Madame, rightly enough, would insist that I push the sale of the whole orchestra, and for me it would be like parting with dear, familiar friends—Madame!”

  The last word was occasioned by the approach of Ariane. Springing to his feet, he offered her his chair, for which she rewarded him with a drawl of a smile—there was no other word for it—and a “Thanks, Witold,” in her dark honey voice.

  Seated, she looked up at him appealingly. “That, my friend, was only just in time to save my ankle-bones parting from my leg-bones! And now I wonder if you’ll do something else for me—find my cape-thing that I’ve abandoned somewhere? You remember, the bit of fur nonsense I was wearing earlier? I haven’t an idea where it may be, so don’t trouble yourself too much, and don’t, please, go at all if—” she glanced from him to Caroline—“I’m breaking anything up?”

  “Of course not, Madame. Mademoiselle Neville and I were only discussing fine china, and if she will excuse me—?” Another formal bow asked permission of Caroline and he moved away.

  Ariane murmured, “Poor Witold. He’s so dedicated and so loyal though one could wish he didn’t make such a thing of his statelessness. Sometimes he makes me feel the rest of us haven’t the right to be even normally gay. But what can one do for him? He’s no social mixer, and the only other way in which one is tempted to try to help him, he won’t allow. I mean, of course, offering him money to get this dream of his of returning to Poland really going. But he won’t hear of it at all.”

  “Have you tried, then?” asked Caroline.

  “Oh, yes. But he only says, ‘Madame, you pay me the salary I am worth to you, and that is enough’. Too proud, you see, though one can’t help respecting him for it. However, searching for my rag of mink is going to keep him happy and busy for a little while, and you’re going to forgive me, aren’t you, for using it as an excuse to prise you away from him so that I could have a little talk with you—about Betsy?”

  “With me? About Betsy? Why?” Sheer surprise made Caroline’s tone blunt.

  “Well—” both the gesture of Ariane’s hand and her smile were apologetic—“simply, I suppose, because for her own sake it’s time it was said, and because it would take more malice than I hope I possess to say it to her face. So I thought it kinder to drop a tiny hint to you instead. After all, you’re good friends as well as cousins and much of an age. So I argued you must know ways of teasing her out of it without wounding her feelings too much, which I might very well do if I tried broaching it myself.”

  Knowing, but needing to play for time, Caroline asked, “Teasing her out of what?”

  “Oh, my dear! Of course I mean this—how do you describe it—‘carrying a torch for Paul’—or is my slang out of date? Because she really is being so very foolish about him, and with him that it’s becoming quite embarrassing to anyone who is even ordinarily fond of her, as I am.”

  Instantly Caroline’s hackles went up in defence of Betsy. Feeling the small lie was justified, she said, “Well, she has never embarrassed me. I admit I wish she didn’t find him as attractive as she seems to, but that’s for her sake. And if you mean Paul himself is embarrassed by her—”

  “But naturally he is, however cunningly he conceals it! This evening, for instance, he has only had to turn his head to find her there, poor lamb, owl-eyed and beseeching and—”

  “I was going to say.” Caroline cut in, “that since most men don’t lack for ways of brushing off attentions they don’t want, I should have thought it c
ould be left to Paul to discourage Betsy whenever he wants to. If he wants to, that is.”

  “Now, now,” Ariane chided, “that’s not fair. You really can’t accuse him of encouraging Betsy’s foolish schwärmerei for him. For Paul, give him his due, is only himself—always. By which I mean he doesn’t consciously turn on the kind of fatal power that seems to act on pretty, impressionable zanies of Betsy’s type as an arc-light hypnotizes rabbits. He just has the brand of charm that gets him home without his even trying. Surely you realize that?”

  Grimly true as she knew it to be, Caroline continued to root for Betsy. “All the same,” she insisted, “he can’t be so very irked by her crush on him, or he would avoid her or snub her. But he doesn’t do either; on the contrary he’s always as relaxed and pleasant and at ease with her—as he is with me, for instance.”

  “Pouf! Merely the good manners that come easy to him! And I don’t suppose you claim he goes out of his way to seek her company, do you?” For the first time there was an edge to Ariane’s tone.

  Caroline said dryly, “We’re agreed, aren’t we, that he doesn’t have to seek it? She thrusts it on him. But I don’t think he needs protecting from her, and if I do say anything to her, it’ll only be because I don’t want her to get hurt by building any more hopes on his perfectly normal friendliness than—again for instance—I do.”

  All smiles again, Ariane murmured, “Oh, dear, I must have expressed myself badly. Of course, Paul can look after himself; he’s had enough experience of little lovelorns taking him too seriously. All I meant was that I, for one, shouldn’t want to be there if his patience suddenly gave out and he forgot to be polite with Betsy. I do so hate watching anyone lose face ... don’t you? However—” an arch nod and a confident tap on Caroline’s knee—“I know you’re going to find some kind of way of persuading Betsy she is wasting her time—And now, chérie, do you realize we’ve turned into a couple of wallflowers since we’ve been sitting here? Not an unattached male in sight. So let’s go and see where they're lurking, shall we? Where shall we try first?”

  “Oughtn’t you to wait until Monsieur Czinner comes back with your cape?” Caroline asked.

  “My dear, you don’t suppose I really wanted it? It was only an excuse to get rid of him. No, he’ll run it to earth and bring it to me wherever I am. That’s the best of Witold, you see—the way he can make a sacred responsibility of the smallest job I ask him. Meanwhile, I’m for some air on the terrace and the chance of finding a man there who will ask me to dance. What about you?”

  But the terrace was quiet and deserted. Ariane’s hand tucked companionably into the crook of Caroline’s elbow, they strolled its length in the velvety darkness and turned the corner of the house, only to draw equally blank there.

  Ariane halted. “Men!” she began in mock disgust. “One has only to provide a bar and they lose all sense of the romantic. You’d think some of them at least would be téte-a-téte out here—”when suddenly from the forecourt the engine of a car snarled into noisy life. Someone was leaving the party early, and as the driver manoeuvred for space his headlights raked the terrace from end to end; steadied, and focused on the garden-room for long enough to pluck from the darkness the two figures within.

  Paul. Betsy, her back to the waist-high trellis which was the room’s open side; Paul’s rangy height dwarfing hers as he faced her, very close. He was smiling down at her; then his hands went to the crook of her elbows, drawing her to him. Her slight body curved to his; her fingers linked behind his neck. Then their faces merged to one outline as they kissed and the beam of light slid away from them; wavered, then abandoned them for good as the car turned at an angle and was driven away.

  At Caroline’s side Ariane drew her breath in a sharp hiss and her fingers bit into the flesh of Caroline’s arm. All tolerance gone from her tone, positive venom in it now, she said,

  “Did you see? That was Paul—with Betsy! And he was—He was encouraging the—the little fool! Inviting her to kiss him ... kissing her!”

  “Yes,” said Caroline. And knew, as Ariane whipped about and left her without another word, that with that simple confirmation of what they had both seen, she had innocently given Betsy and perhaps herself too into the hands of an enemy. From now on, she guessed, Ariane was going to drop her well-found mask of kindly patronage of Betsy. For Betsy, in Paul’s arms and kissing him at his invitation, had suddenly turned rival to Ariane, whose property he was. Ariane’s outburst had said that only too plainly, and Caroline’s brief satisfaction at her discomfiture fast became a compassion and apprehension for Betsy which was equalled only by anger with Paul.

  If he wanted to flirt on the side without Ariane’s knowledge, why couldn’t he pick on someone his emotional size and weight? Some girl in his set—and there must be plenty!—who knew all the rules and who could kiss and ride away as lightly as he could. Not Betsy, who had chosen to make him her dawn and her dark, her rain and her sun! Not Betsy, whose too ardent response to his careless love-making was a cheating of another man while he couldn’t hit back, as Paul must surely know!

  Meanwhile, to Caroline anger brought its own reward. While she felt it, it overlaid the ache of her own loving, and if only she could make it last until she could convince Betsy there was no future in loving Paul Pascal it might teach her the utter folly of it too...

  She allowed the click of Ariane’s heels to recede completely, then moved out of sight and earshot of the garden-room and smoked most of a cigarette before returning to the house.

  There Betsy and Paul, as far as she could see, had not reappeared; Ariane was dancing with a stranger and she herself was quickly claimed for a visit to the bar by some of Betsy’s cronies, the two students from Grasse, Henri and André, among them. She had met them both several times since that first evening in Ariane’s flat, and now, as then, it was too evident that Henri ought not to drink much more.

  “I don’t know why I trouble myself with ce gosse. Whenever we go to a party, me, I have to stick to Vichy water so that I can drive him home, and where is the fun in that?” André grumbled in an aside to Caroline. And another cognac for Henri later, “Look, for his own good I’d better get him out of here. So if I can persuade him to bring that girl he is with out on to the terrace to get some air, will you come along too and make a foursome of it?”

  Henri, however, had reached an obstinate stage and when he did agree to make the move he insisted on bringing along a large unwieldy parcel which he retrieved from where he had parked it earlier, behind a bank of flowers in the hall.

  As they went out to the terrace it pleased him to make a mystery of it, and the other three thought it best to humor his mood by hazarding wild guesses as to its contents, which were, he hinted darkly, something which Betsy had promised him, only to let him down. So he had brought along his own, whether Paul liked it or not. There—!

  With which cryptic utterance and at his second clumsy attempt he slit the cord which tied the parcel, spread the paper and revealed a pile of gaudy-sticked fireworks of all kinds.

  “Imbecile!” André had stared, then lunged. But not before Henri had snatched up three or four crackers and retreated out of reach. André shouted again, “Imbecile, ne nigands pas! Don’t play the fool with those things in your state! You know what a stray spark can do in the region in this drought; what do you think Paul banned them for, huh?”

  But Henri only bunched his prize in the crook of one elbow while he fumbled in his shirt pocket for, presumably, matches. Finding them, he struck one; it petered out and André moved forward again. But Henri sidestepped into the lee and shadow of the house; struck three or four matches together, their small flame lighting up his fatuous smile as he applied them to one of the crackers he held and called, “Et maintenant—Caroline! Junie! Attention!” and made to fling it, spitting flame, among the pile of fireworks at the others’ feet.

  But before he could do so his arm was caught from behind and wrenched backwards until he yelped. The spent crack
er dropped from his grasp, to be ground underfoot by Paul’s heel while Paul’s grip on him held fast.

  Intent, the other three had not seen Paul arrive until he was there, his glance sweeping them briefly before, shifting his hold to the scruff of Henri’s shirt, he manhandled him firmly out of the shadow and over to the heap of fireworks.

  “What are these things doing here?” Paul demanded, and when Henri was silent, shook him.

  “Well?”

  “They’re mine. I brought them with me.”

  “To my house without permission? To my party? Why?”

  Henri, tipsy as he was, still had wit enough to try truculence. “To set light to them, of course. To put a bit of life into your dreary party. What’s any party, without a few sparks to pep it up? And what are fireworks for?”

  “I’d like,” said Paul, in full command of the situation, “to demonstrate some of the uses to which I could put them if I were as big a fool as you and only about half as ill-mannered. But that’s by the way. Since you brought them and you’re not going to entertain anyone by pipping them off around here, you can take them back where they came from, can’t you? And take yourself too. For, host or no host, I assure you that in the circumstances I’ve not the slightest compunction about slinging you out. So get going, will you? And I mean—now!”

  But as Henri was released with a suddenness which buckled his knees and sent him sprawling, André sprang forward.

  “We came by car, Paul, and he can’t be allowed to drive. Not in his condition!”

  “Of course he can’t. But that’s his problem—if it isn’t as much yours for letting him get this way.”

  “I did not let him,” André protested. “I’m not his nursemaid!”

  “No? All the same, I wouldn’t have said any of you looked to me to be bending over backwards to discourage him in this particular caper—” Paul’s toe stirred the pile of fireworks. “But no—” as André stooped to gather them up, “let him do that, and if he drops as many as he manages to hang on to, he can come back for them and consider himself lucky I don't make him cart them away one by one. What’s more, if you’re not prepared to see him home, he’ll have to get there under his own steam. Let him walk.”