Jasmine Harvest

by Jane Arbor

  “No,” she said—and avoided Caroline’s eyes as the latter hung up. For a moment or two she seemed to be waiting to be questioned; then, with the air of a child disappointed that a planned mischief had not been noticed, she asked, “I daresay that was something you didn’t expect, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, I thought you would surely want to have a word with Paul,” Caroline told her.

  “Oh, you did? And to say what? To creep again to him about having taken his wretched car, and to collect another brush-off like the last? No, thank you!”

  Caroline protested, “Oh, Bet, be your age! When you told him you were sorry, he’d got a forest fire on his hands. Did you really expect him to take time out then to pat you on the shoulder and say something like, That’s all right, honey. I realize you were provoked into it, and I assure you that All Is Forgiven and we won’t speak of it again’?”

  “And who would have known anything about the fire, if I hadn’t driven up there and found it burning?” Betsy countered.

  “You’ve got something there, though not much,” Caroline conceded. “Henri had gone straight down to Grasse and confessed to it himself, remember. So the alarm would have gone out all the same.”

  But Betsy would have none of such reasoned argument. “Paul still needn’t have looked through me as if I didn’t exist. Nor been so brutal with his orders—‘Then you’ll have to find what it takes’,” she mimicked sourly. “Nor insisted on my ringing Ariane to make his beastly apologies. He , could take time out for that all right!”

  “You didn’t telephone Ariane. I did,” Caroline pointed out.

  “But he wasn’t to know that. He knew how I should hate explaining it all to her, and it was his way of paying me out over the car. Besides,” Betsy raced on, forestalling Caroline’s contradiction of that, “you didn’t hear him earlier, taking the line of a Dutch uncle when I had nerved myself to tell him about Edward, expecting, that at least he wouldn’t pretend he didn’t know why I’d told him!”

  “Bet dear, he did realize you were hurt by his advising you to go back to England. He told me so. But what else could he say, when he doesn’t love you himself and you must know he doesn’t?” urged Caroline.

  “Then if he doesn’t, what about the way he kissed me at his party? I didn’t throw myself at his head or into his arms that night, and it wasn’t—it wasn’t anything like the kind of cool pass you say he made at you later,” Betsy claimed wildly. “And do you imagine I’d have let him or encouraged him, if I’d known he was going to turn round and slap me in the face as he did tonight? I’ve got a bit more pride than that, I should hope!”

  “You sound as if you had found some at last where Paul is concerned.”

  “I certainly have. That’s why I wouldn’t speak to him on the phone. Now it’s up to him. At least Edward never blew hot and cold with me like that. And do you know what I’d do if Edward were here now? I’d flaunt him at Paul, just to show that someone appreciates me if he doesn’t!”

  “How pleasant for Edward,” Caroline murmured. “But since he isn’t here to be used as a decoy duck, what about taking your gesture against Paul a step further and going home as soon as we can make the necessary arrangements?”

  But that, it seemed, was beyond Betsy’s resolve. “Go home?” she echoed as she had done the first time Caroline had suggested it. “Oh, I don’t know. After all, I’ve got to give Paul a bit of chance to come round and be nice to me again, haven’t I?”

  “Have you?” said Caroline, not asking a question but simply ending an unrewarding argument.

  All that day there was no talk anywhere but of the fire, and a constant stream of sightseers trekking past the villa on their way to view the damage.

  After snatching some sleep during the morning, the girls meant to go up themselves in the afternoon. But by then, for the first time since Caroline’s arrival, the weather broke in torrential rain and thunder, and they decided to go the next day instead.

  Meanwhile Caroline was on the tenterhooks of her expectation of the Transatlantic call or cable which Mrs. Lane had promised her. On that account, when Betsy grew restless in the evening and suggested they should go down to Cannes and see a film, Caroline staged a diplomatic headache and Betsy went alone.

  But there was no word from Mrs. Lane that night, and the next morning, when they woke to still continuing rain, Caroline remembered something less important she was waiting for—her purchases from Ariane’s shop which Witold Czinner had promised to send, but which had not yet arrived.

  However, supposing Witold had not yet been able to price the prints, she thought no more of them until late in the morning when Marie brought in the parcel, saying it had just been delivered by hand. A typewritten envelope was tucked beneath the string, and this, Caroline laid aside while she unpacked the parcel and invited Betsy’s rather grudging approval of its contents.

  “Yes. Lovely. But what made you go to Ariane’s for them?” Betsy wanted to know.

  “Because when Witold Czinner suggested Vallauris pottery it seemed a good idea, and I gather he knows more about any kind of ceramics than most people.”

  “Well, I bet Ariane will have made you pay through the nose for them. What’s this—the bill?” added Betsy, reaching for the accompanying letter and flicking it into Caroline’s lap.

  “I expect so. Witold wasn’t able to tell me—Why, what’s this?” Caroline finished as, instead of the promised invoice, she unfolded a handwritten letter with no address heading and an enclosure which fluttered to the floor.

  A glance at the first few lines of the letter and she was refolding it. But Betsy had retrieved the enclosure and was staring at it open-mouthed. “This is no bill, Caro! It’s a cheque ... From Paul to—Ariane. For—for a huge amount.” Her voice shook. “For three thousand new francs! That’s—that’s—Oh, what is it in English money?” she appealed blankly to Caroline.

  Caroline held out her hand for the cheque. “Around two hundred pounds. But it’s a mistake. Obviously it wasn’t meant to be sent to me, any more than this was,” she said, indicating the letter she held herself.

  “But what is that?”

  “Nothing... None of our business, anyway.”

  “None of our—! It was sent to you, wasn’t it?

  Is it a letter to go with the cheque? One from him to—her?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to be signed, and I’ve never seen Paul’s writing that I can recall.”

  “Neither have I. But you know that it is, don’t you? While you were looking at it, you read enough for that?”

  “I think so. But—”

  “You mean it’s a love letter and it does go with the cheque. I can see that from your face. What does it say?”

  “I’ve told you—it’s no affair of ours!”

  “Well, I’m making it mine! Don’t you see I must know what it’s all in aid of? You didn’t ask Ariane to send you her private correspondence instead of a bill, and if you won’t read the rest of that letter, I tell you I mean to—”

  But though Betsy snatched it and unfolded it she stared at it uncomprehendingly. “I can’t read it. It’s in French,” she said.

  “From Paul to Ariane—naturally. Now please give it back to me,” Caroline ordered.

  “Not unless you tell me what it says, as far as you read. And if you won’t, I’ll—I’ll take it out to Marie. Between us, I daresay, we can work it out,” Betsy defied.

  “Betsy, no!”

  “I will! So are you going to tell me or aren’t you?”

  Caroline gave in. Betsy meant to know, and while she withheld the letter, had the whiphand.

  “All right, though you’re going to wish you hadn’t made me. From the context it must be from Paul to Ariane, because it opens with an apology for breaking a luncheon date with her today, owing to his having to go to Nice about the fire insurance assessment for Fragonard—”

  “How does he address her? What does he call her?” Betsy broke in.

&
nbsp; “ ‘Ma precieuise—’ ”

  Betsy winced. “All right. Go on.”

  “Then he says he is enclosing ‘the monthly usual’ and teases her about not spending it all at once, even if she does know there is always more for her where it comes from. That’s all, and I’m not going to read any further for you or anyone else,” Caroline finished.

  A finger to her bottom lip to check its quivering, Betsy said, “I don’t want you to. That’s enough. Here, take the thing back. The monthly usual! The monthly usual!—three thousand francs! That means—Caro, it’s horrible. He’s paying her ... keeping her there on the Croisette in that flat, like a—like a common—!”

  Oblivious to her own pain, Caroline cut in sharply, “Betsy, that’ll do! Don’t torture yourself so!”

  Betsy, white-faced, turned on her. “I’m not torturing myself—don’t think it! I’m only shocked that I could be such a fool as to believe in him, when everyone else knew him for the outsider he really is. He and Ariane haven’t been waiting to marry. They’ve been—all this while!” She shuddered. “And to think I wouldn’t listen to those stories about that other girl, the one who was killed. He’d been keeping her too ... just history repeating itself, that’s all. Oh, I hate him, hate him, I tell you! And if he were here now I couldn’t trust myself to speak to him or let him touch me with a bargepole.”

  “Then you couldn’t have loved him all that much, if you can condemn him and hate him quite suddenly, without giving him a hearing. Besides,” added Caroline, “whatever there may be between him and Ariane, you’ve no right to compare it to his relations with Fanchon Raguse. Because Simone Latour has talked to me about that. She knew Fanchon well, and I think her faith in them both would convince even you that there was nothing scandalous between her and Paul at all.”

  “Simone Latour! She’d walk the gangplank for Paul if he asked it of her,” sneered Betsy. “And if there was nothing wrong, why didn’t he come clean about it? Oh, no, it’s all of a piece with—this. And this has made me realize I never want to set eyes on him again—ever. It’s as simple as that.”

  Caroline shook her head. “I don’t understand you. I’d have expected you to be shocked and bewildered and vexed, but not that you could hate him as suddenly as all this. You don’t ‘love’ one minute and ‘hate’ the next. You get disillusioned and the bottom drops out of your world. But loving, I’m convinced, only stops gradually. It has to ease up, as any pain must, given time. But you can’t throw it away at will, any more than you could throw away a headache saying, ‘It’s all right. It’s gone. I haven’t got it any more’.”

  “Well, so maybe I didn’t really love him. Anyway, whatever I felt for him, I must have been round the bend. If I give you that, does that please you? It ought to, considering the pains you’ve always been to, to convince me I was!”

  “Oh, Bet, do you think I want to fling ‘I told you so’ in your face? It’s simply that I question why you could forgive Paul for Fanchon Raguse and all the rest, yet suddenly be able to hate him now,” protested Caroline.

  “Why, because it adds up ... fits, of course. There was Fanchon. Now there’s Ariane—in the same way. That’s what sticks, Carol—the same way. It even explains why he hasn’t bothered to marry her, even to get Pascal back. He must know he’s sure of her whenever he chooses, and it makes him—well, just another Frenchman, not waiting to marry but having an affair on the side as if he were married. That’s what makes the very thought of him sort of—tarnished, and makes me only too thankful for Edward, even if I hadn’t begun to be a bit grateful for him already.”

  “You had? Since when?”

  “I’m not sure. Since the night before last, I think, when Paul was so unsympathetic and cool. But I was still besotted with him then and I was only using Edward as a foil, a kind of sheet anchor. Whereas now—quite suddenly—I can hardly wait to see him again, and what’s more I don’t mean to, any longer than I can help.”

  As Betsy finished speaking she crossed to the bureau where she swept papers, letters and writing materials from its pigeonholes and continued on round the room, adding oddments of her personal belongings to the collection while Caroline’s perplexed gaze followed her.

  “Bet, what are you doing?”

  Betsy turned. “Clearing up. Beginning to pack. Getting ready to go home. It’ll be no fault of mine if we’re not out of this house and on our way by tonight,” she declared.

  “But you can’t go—just like that!”

  “Who says I can’t? You should talk, considering how often you’ve suggested it! The last time, only yesterday morning, remember?”

  “I meant you can’t just walk out without giving Paul proper notice.”

  “You’d be surprised! Oh, don’t worry, I’m not bilking him. I’ll send him a week’s rent in lieu—that was the agreement, failing notice—and leave the key with Marie. Meanwhile I’m going to ring up for seats on the first plane out that we can catch or that can take us—That is, assuming you’re coming with me, and I hope you are?”

  Caroline said, “Yes, I’ll come. But not by air and not today. I’ve promised to stop off in Paris to see my friends the Chaussins, so I shall go back the way I came. And not today, because it simply isn’t fair on Paul to go as you plan—without a word of explanation and on a day when we know from his letter to Ariane that he’s away from home and almost certainly wouldn’t learn that we’d gone until we had. Besides—”

  There, however, Betsy cut in desperately, “Oh, Caro, don’t you see that’s why we’ve got to go today if we can get away? Because I want to be gone before he can get in touch? Because I don’t want to see him again, or hear his voice or have anything to do with him again—ever? I don’t care how we go, as long as we do. If we can get sleepers on tonight’s Paris train, we’ll catch that—But what did you mean just now—‘Besides’?”

  “Something I hadn’t told you about the morning I went to Cannes to buy those—” Caroline indicated her purchases. “Before I came back again I put in a call to Aunt Clio and spoke to her.”

  “You rang Mummy! Why?”

  “Because Witold Czinner had told me that Ariane plans to close the salon very soon, which seemed to me to mean only one thing. And as I was convinced that if only you could see Edward again sooner than you expected, you might have second thoughts about Paul, I rang Aunt Clio to ask her if it could anyhow be arranged.”

  Betsy’s eyes widened, brightened. “Caro, bless you! But why on earth didn’t you tell me? And what did Mummy say?”

  “She couldn’t promise anything, but she was going to do what she could, and I’ve been expecting a call or a cable from her every minute since.”

  “You’ve heard nothing at all from her?”

  “Not yet, though I shall, because she promised. But you see, don’t you, that it makes another reason why we can’t light out from here as you want to, in case, when she did ring, we’d already gone?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t, it doesn’t!” Betsy clamored. “Look, even if we’re catching the night train, we’ve got hours and hours yet. I can book a call to her now and almost certainly get through to her before we have to leave, to explain we’re on our way, which ought to please her. And if she rings or cables in the meantime, so much the better. Oh, please, please, Caro—agree to come with me as soon as we can pack and get out of this place! Because I’ve got to go. I must. I’ve done for good with head-pattings from Paul and Ariane’s gloating, and even if they don’t send Edward back at once, at least I mean to be in England waiting for him when he does come, if he does—Caro dear, try, please, to see just what it means to me!”

  But suddenly Caroline knew, a flash of compassionate insight telling her that Betsy’s sore pride needed the healing gesture of action; of an escape which she saw as her one face-saving cut across a situation which had suddenly turned enemy on her. Later, more tolerant, less vulnerable, she might look back and wonder that she hadn’t waited to face Paul and Ariane too with all the poise she could mu
ster. But now, in the moment of needing it most, she had none to call on. Escape was her only weapon; she had to use it now, and with dramatic haste or not at all, and Caroline must help her...

  Caroline said gently, “All right, Bet, we’ll go. But listen—we’ve got to leave everything in order. Telephone, household accounts, inventory, board wages for Marie in lieu of notice, the outstanding rent.”

  “Yes, yes, I promise I’ll see to everything! Let’s see, what comes first? To book our sleepers, don’t you think, and then put in a call to Mummy?” Betsy appealed, looking up from her hurried scrawl of a list of “musts.”

  “I suppose so. But there’s something else where I’m concerned. Whether you like it or not, I’m not going without saying goodbye to Ursule and to Berthin.”

  Betsy frowned. “How can you, without having to tell them why we’re going so suddenly?”

  “You must leave that to me. I shall probably say you’ve been urgently recalled to England for family reasons. But they’ve been so kind to me that I must go over there before we leave,” said Caroline.

  “Do you want me to drive you?”

  “No, I can walk. I’ll do your telephoning for you first and talk to Marie. Then I’ll leave you to see to packing for us both and we’ll finish off all the rest together when I get back. I shan’t be too long, I hope.”

  “And what about—that?” Betsy demanded, pointing.

  Caroline looked down at the cheque and the letter she still held. “I’ll deal with that too,” she said.

  She purposely went over to the cottage at a time when she could expect Berthin would be home for luncheon. But today he was not there. Full of her usual welcome for Caroline, Ursule told her he had accompanied Paul to Nice to meet the fire assessors and she did not know when to expect him back.