Jasmine Harvest Page 3

  Caroline said, “Caillebotis, I think. A caillebot is a guelder rose. Where are we going for lunch?”

  “To another of the places where the world and his wife have to be seen this week, if not last or next, and the odd thing about this one is that it isn’t even madly expensive—yet,” Betsy told her.

  The restaurant in question, called simply Bel-Ami, faced a comparatively quiet square behind the Croisette. Its outdoor tables were placed beneath its frontage of foot-thick arches, the cool shade of which was so welcome that they elected to lunch there rather than inside.

  They ordered a vegetable soup with an elusive flavor which Caroline believed must be basil, a pissaladière, a pizza-like open tart of onions and anchovies, and candied fruits to follow. While they ate, the square filled up with cars, and Betsy, sometimes with the prompting of their friendly table waiter, identified for Caroline a number of the celebrities—film stars of both sexes, a best-selling novelist, a colored singer still in her teens but already with a top-bracket income—who alighted from the cars and made for Bel-Ami, There were others whom Betsy did not know and lesser mortals to whom she called out or waggled her fingers in greeting. It was when they were drinking their coffee that she uttered a small “Tch” of annoyance, and Caroline looked up to notice the woman who was crossing the pavement, followed by a paunchy middle-aged man.

  Betsy muttered, “Ariane Lescure—might have known she’d show up sooner or later!” But she was ready with a thin smile and a laconic “Lo, Ariane!” by the time the newcomer was threading her way to their table, leaving her companion standing.

  Ariane Lescure—whoever she was—was older than either of the girls; in her early thirties, judged Caroline, whose further impressions were of a heady perfume, the slimmest of figures in a black open-necked shirt and knee-buttoned pantalons; of auburn hair in sculptured layers and a speaking voice with the quality of thick, dark honey.

  “Betsy, ma petite!” She went on in English, attractively accented. “You naughty child, you should have told me you were without an escort for luncheon and I’d have seen that you had one or rather two. One for you, one for—” But as her glance included Caroline a finger went to her lips in mock dismay.

  “But no, Betsy! This cannot be the duenna type Paul told you you must have! She is far too young, too pretty and too chic to chaperone anyone, even you! You have a real dragon on the way, surely—no?”

  Betsy shook her head. “I haven’t. She’s my cousin; her name is Caroline Neville; she came down by train this morning. She’s coming to join me at the villa, and as far as I remember Paul didn’t make it a condition that I had to send for a—a hag! And we didn’t want to be taken out to lunch, thank you. We had a lot to say to each other, and even if we had needed escorts, they’re two a penny round here, didn’t you know?” she said ungraciously.

  Ariane Lescure soothed, “All right, all right!” and then spoiled the oil-on-troubled-waters effect of that by adding, “I’m afraid it’s as Paul says of you, Betsy chérie—one must handle you gently, remembering that it is the jeune fille, the teenager in you which makes you so—what was his word?—thorny...” Ignoring Betsy’s scowl, she turned to Caroline and held out a hand.

  “Welcome to the Côte d’Azur—I may call you Caroline? Betsy hasn’t introduced me, but my name is Lescure—Ariane Lescure. We met through Paul Pascal. And you—like Betsy, you are English and you live in London too?”

  Deciding against clouding the issue by a mention of Sidcup, Caroline said yes to both questions. Adding, “May I congratulate you on your own excellent English, Madame?”

  Ariane lifted a slim shoulder. “Just a part of one’s civilized education, and your cousin prefers it to French. Don’t you, chérie? But you are leaving now?”—as Betsy signalled the waiter and rose. “Must you? Half an hour later and I’d have liked you to join Claude and me for coffee. But you’ll come along for drinks tonight instead, won't you? Not a party. Just a handful of people, though not Paul, of course.”

  Betsy muttered, “You don’t have to bribe me with Paul, you know. But I don’t think we’ll come, thank you all the same. We haven’t been up to the villa yet, and Caroline—” only to check as Ariane’s playful finger wagged within an inch of her nose.

  Ariane chided, “Now, now, I refuse to have Caroline made your excuse! On the Riviera she is entitled to fun, and why not? That means parties and people—men for choice—and those she won’t meet in Villon, unless you count Berthin ... So just give me time to prink after stepping off my treadmill, and we’ll say about seven-thirty, shall we? And you really must forgive me, dear, for suspecting you do only accept my hospitality when I am able to bribe you with the promise of Paul!”

  At that Betsy flushed an angry red beneath her tan. “Oh, all right, we’ll come. That is, if you’d like to?” she appealed to Caroline.

  “I should very much. I’d love to,” said Caroline, her smile and enthusiastic acceptance a shade overdone in an effort to offset a pointed rudeness with which she meant to tax Betsy later. But as soon as they were alone Betsy exploded into mimicry of Ariane Lescure.

  “ ‘Cherie’! ‘Betsy, ma petite.’ ‘You naughty child!’ You’d think I was five years old! Why doesn’t she pat me on the head and offer me an all-day sucker as well, I wonder?” she raged.

  “Probably because your manners didn’t merit one. You weren’t exactly all sweetness and light, were you? Meanwhile you could solve some mysteries for me. For instance, who is someone called Bertha at Villon, and who is this ‘Paul’ who seems to have forestalled Aunt Clio in saying you weren’t to stay on alone at the villa?” Caroline asked.

  “Oh, that?” They had reached the car and Betsy was using her ignition key. “Paul Pascal is my landlord, and what Ariane meant was that he only agreed to let me keep on the villa on condition I was chaperoned by someone. Berthin Pascal is his cousin; he lives with his sister Ursule in a cottage on the estate. There’s no mystery about them and I’ve promised to tell you the whole story when we get to the villa. So leave it for now, will you, please? I’ve got to concentrate on driving—”

  Taking her cue from the irritation in her cousin’s tone, Caroline obediently said no more and soon was absorbed in the scenery of the road which took them out of Cannes.

  Beyond the outskirts it climbed all the way, through villages sleepy and shuttered against the midday heat, and along the shoulders of hillsides neatly terraced with plantations of maize, rank upon rank of floribunda roses and stripling peach trees, each with its protective canopy of straw plait. By contrast with the grandeur of the distant blue peaks of the sheltering mountains it was a gentle, ordered countryside, and Villon, when they reached it, was a village like all the others they had passed through, and so unmistakably French that Caroline could have crooned with the sheer pleasure of being back in the country she loved.

  There was a bridge high over a tumbling river, (“the Siagne that Villon is ‘sur’ ” Betsy vouchsafed) ; an avenue bordered by the syringa which blossoms twice a year in the region; a couple more hairpin turns and then Betsy drew up at a small white villa with its back to a hill and its face full to the generous sun. But its windows were screened by gay striped sunblinds and inside it was cool and shadowed and as uncluttered by superfluous furniture as the houses of Southern France can afford to be.

  Caroline fell in love with her room, the twin of Betsy’s at the opposite end of the house. It contained the inevitable carved armoire for her clothes, a single chair, a mirror making a dressing-table of a chest of drawers and a bed with a shelf fitment holding an oddly masculine assortment of books.

  She scanned their titles. Two or three of the Babar series; some early P. G. Wodehouse in translation; a classic or two; Captain Hornblower in English; some French cloak-and-dagger stuff; a volume of war photographs, well thumbed. The owner’s signature was in childish script on the flyleaf of the Babar; was ornate with experimental flourishes on the others. It was obviously part of a boyhood library, and what was t
he P. Pascal of the signature reading now? Caroline wondered idly as she opened the shutters on to a tiny square of balcony, facing east, where she promised herself she would see the sun rise tomorrow.

  She took a bath and went down to the dolls’ house salon where Betsy presided over a tea-tray she had prepared herself, explaining that Marie went home to Villon for siesta time and returned in the evening to prepare dinner and to sleep.

  “The Latour family, more or less to a man, is in the service of the Pascals,” Betsy said. “Marie’s mother does all the laundry for the three houses—Paul’s, Berthin’s and this one; her father works on the estate and her aunt, Simone, keeps house for Paul.” Betsy paused and shrugged. “Which is as good a lead-in as any to putting you in the picture, I suppose. Where would you like me to begin?”

  Caroline said, “With Paul, I think, since he seems to dominate the background.”

  “You mean all that coy stuff from Ariane? Yes, well—the set-up is that the Pascal estate is a huge flower farm growing flowers for the perfume factories at Grasse. A good many of the plantations we passed on the way up here belong; there are acres of jasmine fields over there—” Betsy waved a vague hand—“and a whole mimosa forest higher up. They grow roses and carnations and sweet herbs—the lot, and Paul should have inherited it, lock stock and barrel, when his beast of a father died a year or two ago.”

  “Why ‘beast’? Did he cut Paul off with a shilling? Or no—” Caroline corrected herself, “by French law, parents can’t entirely disinherit their children, can they?”

  “Apparently not. But Papa Pascal did the next best thing—he took out his spite on Paul by leaving the place and the income to him, but tying it to the most lunatic conditions you ever heard—”

  “Such as?”

  “Why, that Paul, who, so everyone says, has the know-how of flower farming from A to Z, should hand over every scrap of control to Berthin for as long as he—Paul, I mean—is a bachelor! And if Berthin marries first, then he comes in as co-heir and still keeps full control for good, which would be legal enough, it seems.”

  Caroline puzzled. “It sounds pretty crazy, I admit. Vindictive too, unless Pascal pere thought he had reason to distrust Paul on more counts than one. What was it that sparked off the quarrel between them, do you know?”

  “Only the hearsay everyone knows. They say Paul made a bad gaffe in some dispute over a flower crop and the old man never forgave him for it. Then there was something rather horrid about a girl ... A village girl to whom Paul, on his own admission, had given quite a big sum of money just before she was killed in an accident on her moped. His father chose to believe the worst of him over that too, and you’ll hear various versions of it while you’re here. But it’s all so much wretched talk, and even if it’s true, it’s all over now and I’m not judging him for it.”

  There was a pause. Then Caroline asked quietly, “In other words, you’ve fallen for Paul and you won’t let yourself believe scandal of him?”

  Betsy nodded, her eyes wide. “Yes, isn’t it awful? I know only too well what you’re thinking. Edward—”

  “Exactly. Edward,” said Caroline dryly. “So Aunt Clio’s intuition was on the beam; Paul Pascal was the reason for your refusal to go on to Italy with Tom and Ann Drage, and you’re prepared to ditch Edward because of him?”

  “No ... Yes! That is, I couldn’t help myself if Paul had ever given me a second thought up to date—”

  “And hasn’t he?”

  “No, except by chucking me under the chin and calling me ‘Pretty sweeting.’ Oh, not literally, of course. But that’s the drift. He thinks he need only turn on that riveting smile of his and buy me a monster ice to keep me happy. And when you’re as crazy as I am about him, that hurts. And don’t say, for goodness’ sake, that when man treats you like that, it’s time to snap out of being crazy about him, because I can’t!”

  “I think you mean you don’t want to, and I can understand that. But there is Edward,” Caroline reminded her. “If he hadn’t gone to South America, you’d have been engaged by now, wouldn’t you? And if you’d done the civilized thing and gone to Italy with the Drages, I bet you’d have laughed off this thing you’ve got for Paul Pascal within a week.”

  “I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t! And how right you are that I don’t really want to, because though I’m sorry about Edward, compared to Paul he does look a bit like—like yesterday’s hash. And if I had gone to Italy the only thing that would have happened would be that I’d have muffed the only chance I have of an affair with Paul. Out of sight, out of mind ... That’s why I was determined to stay on at all costs.”

  “And you mean you’re prepared to stand up Edward on the very brink of getting engaged to him for the sake of the outside chance of a mere affair with Paul Pascal? Betsy, that’s plain madness, and you know it!”

  Betsy bit her lip. “Beggars can’t be choosers, and the way I feel I’d settle for a few dates and some—well, love-making. Of course I want more—who wouldn’t? I mean, I dream regularly that Paul has asked me to marry him. But that’s only wishful thinking at this stage. For the moment all I dare ask is that he should take me seriously and look at me—really look at me instead of always past me at—someone else. And oh, Caro, do be your age and admit that when you’re really in love that’s all you do ask at first and you’re willing to snatch at any crumbs you can get!” she finished in rather piteous appeal.

  Caroline said gravely, “I know, though I wish it hadn’t happened to you. And though you’re going to hate me for saying so, all this humility over crumbs sounds painfully like infatuation, and I know about that too, having had some.”

  “I suppose you mean that lout Roy Sanders, who walked out on you? But everyone but you knew he was just a plain cad, and you can’t possibly compare him with Paul!”

  “I didn’t mean to, not having met your Paul. I was only remembering how cravenly grateful I was for any favors Roy liked to throw me, and that it wasn’t until I came to my senses later that I realized real love knows its own value better than that. You see, Betsy,” Caroline paused in search of the words which would express her conviction, “when you think you’re in love, it’s only natural to want to give ... and give, and go on giving. But you shouldn’t have to grovel for whatever you get in return, and it sounds as if with regard to Paul Pascal you’re prepared, not to say doomed, to do that.”

  Betsy sighed. “ ’Fraid we’re not talking on the same wavelength, Caro dear. Let’s face it, I only suffer the odd twinge of conscience over Edward now and then, and for the rest I’m unrepentant. Uncomplaining too ... I am prepared to wait until Paul notices I’m around, and when you meet him I’ve an idea even you may see what I mean!”

  “I wonder,” mused Caroline. “After Roy, I told myself I was insulated against charmers, and I’ve an idea I still am. But be that as it may, the men people assure me I’m bound to like I hardly ever do, and the ones who—”

  “But Paul isn’t a charmer. Where on earth did you get that idea?” Betsy exploded.

  “I don’t know, except that a chucker of chins and a ‘riveting’ smile conjures up visions of just the type I grew out of with Roy Sanders,” Caroline retorted.

  “Look, forget Roy Sanders in relation to Paul, will you?” said Betsy intensely. “I told you, I only get the impression he’s chucking me under the chin. And just because he’s got a sort of impudent, puckish kind of smile that mows me down, that’s not to say it’s flashy. Since Roy, haven’t you met any men with smiles that get under your guard, whatever else about them doesn’t?”

  “Yes,” said Caroline—and knew that she had, quite recently.

  “Well, then,” pursued Betsy, “that disposes of ‘charmer’ in the sense you meant. For one thing, Paul is way up here in height—” her arm went up at full stretch—“and there’s nothing typically French about him either. He had an English mother, but he doesn’t take after his father or her, to judge by their portraits up at his house. In fact, his mother wa
s so fair that she reminded me of you a bit, in coloring at any rate. And he hasn’t bewitched me with his broken accent, because, owing to his mother, he’s as at home in English as he is in French. And if you’re wondering how, with Berthin Pascal in control, Paul had the say-so about letting this place, it’s because it was a present from his father to his mother, and before she died she had given it to Paul to use as a garconnière where he could throw bachelor parties. He doesn’t need it now, of course. Since his father died he has had the big house to himself and Simone Latour runs it for him. Not that he troubles it much. He spends most of his time in Cannes or Nice or shooting off at a tangent to Paris. But if he is loafing and acting the playboy, as people say of him, whose fault is that?”

  “Obviously you don’t consider it’s his!”

  “Well, I ask you, is it? It’s the fault of that wretched will which handed his birthright to Berthin on a plate!”

  “All the same, if they’re both reasonable men, I should have thought they could come to some working arrangement. And anyway, doesn’t the remedy lie with Paul?”

  “You mean he could marry and boot Berthin out when he liked?”

  “Yes, well—no one quite knows why he hasn’t. Of course I want to believe it’s because he means to marry for love and that if I stick around there’s a chance he might choose me. And if that’s wishful thinking, which I suppose it is, at least it’s easier thinking than that he’s just biding his time, waiting for Ariane.”

  Caroline echoed, “Ariane? Ariane Lescure? But she was wearing a wedding ring. Wasn’t that man she was with at Bel-Ami her husband, then?”

  “That one? Heavens, no! He was just one of her clients. I don’t know how much business she does with them, but she’s always toting different ones, and they mostly seem good for a meal-ticket or as an excuse for a party.”