Jasmine Harvest Page 11

  “Walk to Grasse? It’s all of nineteen kilometres!”

  “What of it? It’d do him good, clear his head.”

  “No, I’ll take him,” said André. ‘Sorry, Paul, about this. But really we others—the girls and I—weren’t in on this firework lark, you know.”

  “That’s all right,” said Paul shortly. “Come back when you’ve dropped him, if you want to.”

  “No, I’ll call it a day, I think. But thanks all the same—and for a smashing party. Good night, Caroline. Good night, Junie. Be seeing you—”

  But Junie, it seemed, had judged discretion to be the better part, leaving Caroline alone with Paul, who dusted off his hands in a gesture of dismissal of the other two, then turned to her.

  “Was that true—you weren’t egging on that moron to show off his pretty sparks?”

  “Of course we weren’t. We’d brought him out here to take your advice for him—to see if it would clear his head. None of us knew what was in his wretched parcel until he opened it and showed us.”

  “But I daresay you regard the whole thing as a storm in a teacup and me as a monster of intolerance?”

  “Nothing of the sort. We all knew it was criminally idiotic of Henri, but he wouldn’t listen to André. It took your authority to turn on the heat, and of course you were justified. Though I must say—”

  Paul waited. “You must say?”

  “That though I was glad you took the stand you did, it seemed a bit out of character, I thought.”

  “Out of my character? You interest me. What do you mean by that?” He waited again, and when she did not reply, “You’re not telling? Never mind, we’ll refer it back and I daresay you will before the night is out. What would you like to do now?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “Then you can redeem a promise you made me. Come and smell jasmine on the night air with me. How are your feet clad for walking?”

  She indicated her medium-heeled sandals. “Adequately. But—” What was her anger against him worth, when she wanted so much to go with him wherever he invited or led?

  “Spare the ‘buts.’ Come along. You can’t be said to have lived until you’ve smelt jasmine on an August night. Preferably by moonlight, but one can’t have everything, and there’ll be other nights. Meanwhile, this way—”

  To reach the plantation they had to cross the forecourt and the roadway beyond. There a gate opened on to a path, ribbed across with logs for foothold, which led away into the darkness between rank upon rank of jasmine plants so prodigal of blossom that it might have been a blanket of snow laid over them. The land was terraced downward, each wide strip buttressed by stout clay walls; the path stepping down by way of two or three stairs made of logs or slabs of stone at each drop. At the lowest point of the plantation it was divided from the neighboring smaller one, of tuberoses also in full blossom, by the width of a ha-ha, dry now but spanned by a sturdy log bridge where Paul halted.

  “This is as far as we’ll go. The tuberoses are mean with their scent at night—day girls, all. But you get the idea about jasmine, I hope? Really quite something, isn’t it?”

  Leaning elbow to elbow with him on the handrail of the bridge, Caroline threw back her head, her nostrils greedy for the delight of the fragrance all about her.

  “It’s out of this world,” she breathed.

  “Isn’t it? Or I’ve always thought so. And yet, you know, it’s lazy by day. Between here and Cannes there are a score or so of jasmine farms, but in the daytime you’d never know it by scent alone.”

  “Is it like this all summer, or is it at its best now?”

  “Reaching its peak about now or shortly.” Paul went back to gather a handful of the tiny white stars which, returning, he strewed with thoughtful care along Caroline’s arm from wrist to elbow. “When it does, we—” he corrected himself—“they’ll be gathering every day as long as the crop lasts, from before dawn until noon, which is the latest that the day’s ‘pick’ can leave for Grasse by every lorry that can be mustered to take it.”

  “Who gathers it?”

  He shrugged. “Toute le monde. Everyone with two hands and a back that’ll take bending double for seven hours or so at a stretch. Women and teenagers mostly. Often the girls gather for hours before they go off to their ordinary jobs. It’s a way of earning extra money for one’s dot, and it qualifies one for being chosen as Jasmine Queen for the Fete.”

  “I’ve heard about that,” said Caroline. “It’s held in Grasse, isn’t it, after the jasmine harvest is in?”

  “Yes. By definition it’s a cross between a beauty parade, a battle of flowers, a horkey and a harvest home. The town band out in full force; a procession headed by the fire squad, since they’re the real Wielders of powers around these parts; dancing in the evening on the Cours and usually one of the light operas done in the open air. But you’ll see for yourself—”

  “If Betsy and I are still here when it’s held.” Caroline forestalled the question she saw he was about to ask by adding, “And when the crop has been gathered, what happens then?”

  “I’ve told you—it’s delivered to Grasse, and if you want a lecture on how it’s dealt with there, you should apply to Berthin. Here the plants are covered with as much soil and litter as they’ll take; really because they don’t stand cold well, though by local legend because Mother Nature calls them back to the underworld every year. They push through again in early spring; then they’re pruned and manured and they’re away to another season. A fussy devil, though, jasmine. Needs its sun and its water and its soil just right. Greedy too; it exhausts its ground so thoroughly that it’s only possible to plant twice in the same place in a generation. But bless its sweet heart, even roses have to give it best as the aristocrat of the region. And when the backroom boys in Grasse manage to concoct a synthetic to take its place, that’ll be the day—only it won’t be yet, thanks be.”

  Caroline thought, I know now what he meant when he said his approach to flower farming was different from Berthin’s! For it seemed to her that where Berthin saw their culture only in terms of yield, Paul saw flowers busy at their growing to beauty and fragrance; even thought of them as capricious personalities which had to be humored, and loved them for it. Berthin’s real interest only began with their processing in the maw of the scent factories, by which time Paul had done with them as, in the compelling cycle of nature, the mother-plants had done with them too.

  Knowing she liked Paul’s view best, she said, “I take back ‘out of character.’ It wasn’t—fair of me.”

  He slanted a quizzical look at her profile. “I told you ‘out of character’ would crop up again! But—backpedalling on it of your own accord? Why?”

  “Because I’ve just realized you wouldn't have been as angry as you were about the risk to the crops from Henri Mercier’s fireworks if you cared as little about the estate as you’d have people believe.”

  “My dear girl, what feminine reasoning! I need to live by the estate, don’t I? Do I have to be sentimentally committed to it, just because I’d rather not see my next year’s dividends go up in smoke at the hands of a tipsy lout like Merrier?”

  Caroline shook her head. “You are committed to it. You do care about it. If you didn’t, you couldn’t talk about the crops as lovingly as you did just now. What’s more, the only other time I’ve ever seen you angry or even roused was over the same subject—the estate.”

  “So? And when was that?”

  “The first morning I was at Berthin’s cottage. I was behind the cellar door when you were quarrelling with him about the state of the mimosa plantation. I overheard all you both said, and I may say that at the time my sympathies were wholly with Berthin.”

  “And you’re not alone in that—But if you’ve now seen Fragonard for yourself, perhaps you’ll agree I had reason for blowing up about its condition?”

  “Perhaps—but only, as Berthin pointed out, if you were prepared to do something about it. After all, why
should he get more kicks than ha’pence for doing the very best he can by the estate and by you and your dividends?”

  “He doesn’t do so badly in ha’pence. Anyway, he seems to have ranged you well on his side, and if his courting is to match, I wonder when I must listen for the merry tocsin that’ll put him into the real money and beyond the kicks for good?”

  “Berthin is not courting me!”

  “No? My extra-sensory perception must be right off beam ... However, since I seem to be on the mat for my sins of omission, perhaps you’d care to suggest how I might reform?”

  “I think you could ask yourself whether you’ve any right to criticize Berthin, when you’ve contracted out of all responsibility for the estate. You could also stop thinking and speaking about him as ‘the enemy’ when he is nothing of the sort and is generous enough not to think of you that way.”

  “So you have discussed my shortcomings with him?”

  “Not only your shortcomings. He also told me the truth about your quarrel with your father—over this very plantation, wasn’t it?”

  “He did, did he? Berthin heaping coals of fire—! And I suppose in the course of this forum au sujet de moi, you also touched on the question which always crops up when my affairs are discussed—he canvassed your opinion and you canvassed his as to why I haven’t clinched matters in my favor by beating him to the altar before now?”

  “We did nothing of the sort.”

  “I’d like to believe you—Equally,” as Paul spoke he was intent on flicking a lingering floret or two from Caroline’s arm, “I’d rather like, for some odd quirk which I may later regret, to tell you why, if you’d care to know?”

  “If you think you’re likely to regret it, I shouldn’t.”

  “And if you had half the intuition your sex is credited with, you wouldn’t need telling! Because, ask yourself—what girl, knowing the set-up for what it is, isn’t going to look for the nigger in the woodpile of a proposal of marriage from me?”

  “You mean she might suspect she was being used as a lever to regain you the control of Pascal? But why should she? You wouldn’t presumably be proposing just to ‘a girl,’ any girl, out of the blue without—well, without having made love to her first, found out whether she seemed to love you?”

  “Well, naturally I shouldn’t have picked her name out of a hat. But having marked one down as the object of my honorable passion and aimed my best love-arrows at her, how could I be sure she was convinced that my motives in asking her to marry me weren’t really tied up with Pascal?”

  “Surely that’s up to you? You shouldn’t need advice from me on—technique. But if you want a blueprint on how, on your side, you might convince this—this hypothetical girl that you were sincere, I could suggest one, though you may not like it.”

  “I’ll buy it. Go ahead.”

  “Well, I think you could prove almost anything in the way of sincerity towards her if, when you asked her to marry you, you weren’t still acting the playboy while Berthin struggled alone with all the problems that have been wished on him; that is, if you were showing much more active goodwill towards him and the estate than you have done up till now.”

  “Goodwill? In other words, ‘Handsome is as handsome does’?”

  Caroline nodded. “Roughly.”

  “I see.” A small silence. Then, “Pity, isn’t it, that no woman born can ever keep an argument off a personal level?” Paul mused aloud.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Simply that that was no ‘hypothetical girl’ talking. It was you.”

  “It was not!”

  “It was you,” he insisted. “It was you crusading for Berthin, and all the rest was you because, on your own showing, that’s the kind of rugged worth you’re going to demand of the man you marry—remember? But how much do you suppose this rather dreary goodwill you’re advocating would count with the honey-chile who’d like to get married but would naturally prefer to believe she was being courted for love? Take an example. Take, say, Betsy—”

  “Don’t take Betsy! That is—” she said to his glance of surprise at her vehemence—“If you’re not serious about her—and even she admits you aren’t—you haven’t any right to ‘take’ her in this connection.”

  “Why not? She’s a poppet. Attractive. Biddable. She likes me. Why shouldn’t I short-list her with a view to proposing marriage?”

  “You wouldn’t dare! Not without loving her, and you don’t, do you?”

  “Not, in current American, ‘as of now,’ I admit. But how did you guess?”

  “At heart, she knows it herself. But she still can’t resist you. Which makes what you did tonight utterly unfair to her and rather—horrible.”

  She had to wait for his reply to that. Then he stated rather than asked, “So it was you with Ariane on the terrace.”

  “You saw us?”

  “By the same chance searchlight which, I imagine, showed Betsy getting herself kissed in the garden-room. All right. I plead guilty to doing it as if I meant it. No defence, except that she is eminently kissable and wanted me to. Which you consider pretty flimsy, I daresay?”

  “Seeing how vulnerable she is where you’re concerned, yes.”

  “But if you were a man,” he countered, “you’d know there are just three ways of dealing with a girl who wants to set the pace, as Betsy would like to. You can feel flattered and go all the way she asks—and afterwards curse yourself for a fool for getting involved. Or you can take the line, ‘My good infant, I’m no cradle-snatcher!’ which is guaranteed to make her your enemy for life. Or you can recognize her crush on you for what it is—as a kind of measles she will get over in time—and play along with it just short of hurting her pride, which is the ploy I’ve used with Betsy. And never, if it does anything for your peace of mind, with any vestige of intention of proposing to her without the proper emotions on my side.”

  Caroline said, “I’m glad to hear it, I couldn’t believe you could be quite so callous, and until tonight I’d given you credit for handling her admirably. But—kissing her like that! If that’s your idea of ‘playing along’ as you call it, and her idea as well as yours of playing fair by her fiancé, then the sooner the better you stop being as kind as all that to her—measles!”

  At that his head jerked round in sharp disbelief. “What’s this about a fiancé?” he asked. “D’you mean Betsy—?”

  “—is already engaged. Or as near as makes no matter. But you must have known that?”

  “No, I swear not. What do you take me for? Though what, come to that, is the man thinking of, letting her run loose about the Riviera without him?”

  “He can’t help himself.” Caroline outlined Edward Brant’s commitments with beef cattle in the Argentine. “They would have been officially engaged already if he hadn’t been sent out there, and I never dreamed Betsy hadn’t told you about him,” she added.

  Paul said, “Not a hint. She deserves to be roundly spanked—But don’t worry. Since she meant that I should kiss her some time, tonight’s clinch was inevitable. But I’m pretty sure she knew it for what it was—a kiss at a party which implied neither my pent-up passion for her nor the wilful seduction which your concern for her seems to have judged it. I suppose Ariane was in on the spectacle too?” he finished casually.

  “Yes—unfortunately.”

  “Why unfortunately?”

  If he didn’t know why, Caroline had no intention of spelling it out for him. Skirting the truth of Ariane’s reaction, she said, “Because only a few minutes earlier she had told me she was worried for Betsy too, and as I had said I thought you were to be trusted not to encourage Betsy, it didn’t help my argument to come upon you apparently making love to her like crazy.”

  Paul’s laugh rang out. “Merely art for art’s sake! Or ‘Whatsoever you set your hand to, do it with all your might.’ In other words, why kiss a girl at all, if you aren’t going to bring some enthusiasm to it?”

  “Why indeed? As long as she doesn�
�t read the enthusiasm for what it isn’t,” Caroline commented dryly.

  “Ah, but didn’t you say I shouldn’t need advice on technique? You keep the thing gay, but play it lightly enough, and she’ll be in no more danger from it than, for instance, you would be if I kissed you now.”

  Despising the nervous prickle which ran along her spine, Caroline said, “If that’s true, it seems a fair enough comparison and quite—perceptive of you, if I may say so.”

  He laughed again, though more shortly. “Easy! And all on your own evidence that you’re ironclad and bullet-proof against philandering irresponsibles like me!” He paused. Then,

  “Or I wonder—are you ma mie?” he said, as he drew her roughly to him and kissed her hard and long upon her unresponsive mouth.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WHEN he released her Caroline moved off the footbridge and for the whole of the return walk kept the half-pace ahead of him which the narrowness of the path alongside the jasmine demanded.

  “I hope that answered your question to your satisfaction?” she said over her shoulder, as soon as she had control of her voice.

  “As to whether your sangfroid is in any danger from me? Well, suppose we say that if it is, you concealed the fact pretty well? For I don’t remember kissing anyone quite so unrewardingly since I nerved myself to my first, and contacted the bridge of the lady’s nose instead. And she wasn’t, if I recall, any more ecstatic over the encounter than you were.”

  “Then kissing me will have been an experience to add to that one, won’t it? And what right have you to expect a rapturous reception every time, when you go about kissing people on a kind of conveyor-belt system? Betsy... Me ... How many more are you going to kiss before the night’s out, for goodness’ sake?”