Jasmine Harvest

by Jane Arbor

  At Caroline’s news Ursule grumbled, “Such a sad errand for you to come on, my dear—to bid us goodbye at this short notice and long before I thought to see you go! Tell me, even if Betsy has to go, must you really go too?”

  “She wants me to, and as I couldn’t stay much longer in any case, we thought it best to close the villa and go together,” said Caroline.

  “Bah, the villa! Close it, by all means. But, short while or long, why could you not consider spending the rest of your holiday here with us?” Ursule wanted to know.

  Caroline shook her head. “It’s awfully kind of you, Ursule, and I know you mean it. But really I always meant to go back when Betsy did, and we’ve made nearly all our arrangements now.”

  “But you will come back? For Noel, perhaps? Or if you must have the sun, in the spring for Easter? And at worst, next summer? On this I insist!”

  Caroline forced her stiff lips to a smile. “I’d love to, but I musn’t promise.”

  “But you will write to us, tell us all that you are doing?”

  “Of course.”

  Ursule went on, “Not that we shall be here ourselves much longer, one supposes, now that Paul gives Berthin to understand he means to marry very soon, and Berthin, for all my hopes, seems to be as far from such a decision of his own as he ever was. Yet imagine, Caroline! Gabriel Pascal’s will gives him the chance of a lifetime and he lets it slip through his fingers for the sake of a sentimental memory of a boy’s amour and for want of a marriage which any other man I know would be glad to make! I mean marriage to you, my dear, as I think you know. But when I tax him, what does he say? That he is pretty sure Gabriel meant it to be this way; that Pascal is rightly Paul’s heritage, not his, and that he is more than content to have it so. And what, I ask, you, can one reply to betise like that?”

  “But it makes sense to him,” Caroline pointed out. “He told me once he was convinced Paul’s father knew Paul was likely to marry first, and that he only wanted to give Paul a sharp lesson. And Berthin said too that though he was doing his best by the estate for Paul’s sake, he could hardly wait to get back to his own work as a research botanist. So I think you can be sure he really does see his control of the estate as an interruption to that, and that he’ll be only too glad to hand over to Paul when the time comes.”

  Ursule bridled. “And what about me? Haven’t I the right to some ambition on his behalf?”

  “But only if it’s the same ambition as his, surely?”

  “Ah, but there’s the trouble—he has none of his own!”

  “He must have—in his own line. What’s more, I don’t believe you could possibly want him to marry, simply to clinch his possession of Pascal,” Caroline urged.

  “I’d have been happy to see him marry you—for love,” Ursule claimed doggedly. Then she shrugged. “But perhaps you’re right, and it's best that we turn into a couple of old celibates, side by side, Berthin with his test-tubes and me with my saucepans—Which reminds me, my dear. You must take with you back to England a couple of the cream cheeses I took from the press this morning, and a bottle of my acacia blossom wine which, however, you must promise not to open until at least a year from the date on the label. Come, let’s go and select one and see if there is anything else you fancy in my cellar or my buttery.”

  In the end the number of things—from dried herbs to patés—which she wanted to press on Caroline were only limited by the latter’s doubts as to what she could take past the Customs. As it was, they necessitated her borrowing a basket which, should Berthin return from Nice in time, Ursule promised he should go over to the villa to collect and to see if there was anything he could do for the girls.

  But before she left Caroline had a favor to ask Ursule; the use of her telephone for a call and its reply which Caroline preferred Betsy should not overhear.

  As she waited Caroline was aware of the quickened beat of her heart. Then the receiver at the other end was lifted and Ariane’s rich voice said in French, “Ici le Salon Ariane. Oui?”

  Deliberately in English, for the razor’s edge of disadvantage to which it would put the other woman, Caroline said, “Caroline Neville here. I’m ringing because I think there must have been some mistake over the invoice which should have come with some things I bought from your shop the other day, Madame Lescure.”

  A tiny pause. Then Ariane chided, “ ‘Madame’ Lescure? Dear me, how formal you are, Caroline chérie! What have I done to deserve ‘Madame’ at this stage of our friendship? However, a mistake over your invoice, you say? You have received the goods safely, but you think we have charged you too much, is that it?”

  “No. I mean that, instead of the bill which Monsieur Czinner promised to send in the parcel, something else had been sent by mistake. If it was a mistake,” Caroline added significantly.

  “If it was—! Now you are being really obscure!” But though Caroline could envisage the pucker of Ariane’s expressive brows, she was convinced her random arrow had gone home. Now they were on level terms and Ariane knew it. But she allowed another silence to ensue before she laughed shortly.

  “And may one ask what you did receive instead of the compte you expected?” she asked.

  “I have an idea you may know,” Caroline told her. “It was a personal letter written to you and a cheque made out in your name, and I hardly think Monsieur Czinner could have sent either of them to me in mistake for a bill.”

  At least Ariane made no false show of surprise. “But you suggest I might have done—on purpose?”

  “I believe so. You knew you could reckon on my returning them safely, but you thought I should be puzzled enough to discuss them with Betsy first, which was what you wanted. And if it was, you should be satisfied, because she was there when I opened the parcel and it was she who looked at the cheque while I couldn’t help reading the first few lines of the letter.”

  This time the silence held long enough for Caroline to doubt whether Ariane was still on the line. But then—

  “Quite the astute detective, aren’t you?” she mocked. “And supposing I admit to my little ruse, don’t I get any credit for it?”

  “Credit?”

  “Why not? Now I thought it an adroit, even a gentle way of letting your silly young cousin learn just how matters stand between Paul Pascal and me.”

  “Gentle? It was about the cruellest thing you could have done to her!” Caroline exploded.

  “Oh, surely not? After all, it was time she was brought to her senses and cleared out of Paul’s way and of mine. So as I reckoned you wouldn’t be able to resist reading Paul’s letter—”

  “I read only as little as caught my eye at a glance!”

  “No matter. It seems to have been enough. Anyway, it seemed to me that it and the cheque together should break Betsy’s fall, as one says. Or I wonder—would you rather I had taken her aside one fine morning and told her in so many words exactly how very well Paul and I understand each other, which would have probably have shocked her English prudery—yours too, I daresay—even more?”

  Caroline said bluntly, “If you ask me, it couldn’t matter less. You meant us, to deduce that you’re Paul’s mistress; and you’ve succeeded, and my only query is that you don’t seem to mind that we might spread the news amongst our mutual friends?”

  “Ah, but there I pride myself on being a little subtle on my own behalf! Not that my friends or Paul’s are likely to lose any sleep over our morals, would you say? But just in case, I argued, you see, that neither you nor Betsy would probably care to admit that the source of your gossip was what it was. A private letter. A cheque sent to you in error. And so—”

  “Yes. I see,” Caroline cut in. “You make yourself quite clear. But as it happens, you needn’t have worried even so little that we might talk, since Betsy and I are leaving for England tonight.”

  “Leaving? So soon?”

  “Yes. Betsy has to go for urgent family reasons and I’m going too.” There had been such gratification in Ariane’s t
one that Caroline uttered the lie without compunction before adding, “Meanwhile, I’m returning your property to you by post, and if you can let me have the real bill by hand today, I’ll settle it before I leave France.”

  “That? Oh, my dear, think nothing of it! A mere bagatelle—!”

  “It’s money I owe you and I mean to pay it,” said Caroline crisply, and hung up before she was tempted to put a question to which she dreaded the answer.

  For the possibility that Paul had been a party to Ariane’s piece of contrived cruelty towards Betsy was something she knew she could not bear to hear.

  She said her goodbyes to Ursule, wishing she could echo with truth the latter’s warm “Au ’voir” and returned to the villa to find Betsy crowing with excitement.

  “Caro, Mummy has rung up at last to say—what do you think? Edward is in Paris! Or no, that’s not right. He isn’t there yet, but he’s on his way and he’ll be there before we are,” she bubbled.

  Caroline stared blankly. “Edward in Paris? How on earth—?”

  “I knew you’d be struck all of a heap, as I was,” Betsy triumphed. “But according to Mummy she didn’t have to pull any strings because that cunning old fox, Daddy, had already decided to reward Edward for the good job he’s made of the Argentine deal by sending him to Paris to clinch one with a chain of delicatessen stores, so that he and I could meet there when he put it through. Daddy, the dear innocent, planned it as a surprise for me, and I just shudder, Caro, to think how I might have let him down. Edward too, the lamb—Anyway, he’s due in this evening; I’ve got the telephone number of his hotel, and now you’re going to ring there and leave a message for him to meet us off the train at the Gare de Lyon in the morning. O.K.?”

  “Yes, I’ll do it now.” On her way to the telephone Caroline asked, “I suppose you told Aunt Clio we’d already decided to leave here and take in Paris on our way home?”

  “Of course, and if the darling had climbed Everest unaided she couldn’t have sounded more ‘mission accomplished’ pleased. Because she did send you down here for the express purpose of winkling me away from Paul, didn’t she?”

  “More or less, though only on her hunch that you were getting too involved with someone, she didn’t know who.”

  Betsy nodded. “I knew it. Trust Mummy’s flair for sizing up a problem and then always—but always!—being able to persuade some willing horse to solve it for her! But you know, Caro, I think I can say I’ve got cured of Paul under my own steam, whether or not you believe that I really am.”

  Caroline assured her, “Dear, I do believe it, and I think you’ve realized the kind of bumper-value you’ve got in Edward by comparison. All I doubted, and still do a bit, is this hatred for Paul that you claim to have switched on. Because one doesn’t. One can’t—at once. Whatever a man has done to you, if you loved him there are still too many sweet things to remember about him and to regret—”

  “I suppose you’re quoting Roy Sanders and how you felt about him?” queried Betsy.

  “In a way, yes.” Caroline paused. And then, on the sweeping insistent tide of the knowledge that she owed Betsy the truth, she turned and raised candid, troubled eyes to her cousin’s face.

  “But not only Roy. I’m quoting Paul too,” she said.

  “Paul?” By some trick of emphasis or intonation Betsy’s echo carried both bewilderment and infinite understanding. “You mean—Paul? You too?”

  Caroline nodded. “Me too, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, Caro! I never guessed! Tell me.”

  Caroline told her the bittersweet all there was to tell.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SEVERAL hours later, only giving themselves time to hand over the little car before boarding the Paris train, they went down to Cannes, everything else they had had to do done and behind them.

  Both were silent now, silent but closer in sympathy than they had ever been. For nothing could better have proved Betsy’s conviction of her own “cure” than the complete lack of reproach or jealousy with which she had received Caroline’s story. In a way, Caroline felt, her own confession to loving Paul had lent Betsy stature and poise; made her the level-headed one who had freed herself of his menace in time and for good, and turned Caroline into the weaker vessel who admitted herself still held in the toils of his charm. Or if not all this, in Betsy’s eyes at least they were now ranged on the same side, equals and on the defensive together against the common enemy which Betsy was determined to make Paul for Caroline’s sake as much as for her own.

  But for the time being they had talked the subject out before they left the villa and on the journey down to the coast, both oppressed by a sense of endings, of “last times,” of gay things they would not do again in that setting, they spoke very little, and then only seldom of the thoughts they shared.

  Once Betsy said obliquely, “Pretty grim, come to think of it, how this whole stretch of the Riviera from, say, Fréjus to Nice is going to be closed country to us both until we’ve forgotten all this,” to which Caroline agreed with a laconic “Yes” and nothing more.

  Then again Betsy—“This I’ve got to say. If none of it were true; I mean, supposing it all turned out to be a bad dream, which of course it can’t, you do know, don’t you, Caro, that I’ve really settled for Edward and I wouldn’t grudge you Paul at all?”

  Caroline’s answering smile was grateful but faint. “I think I do know,” she said. “But it isn’t a bad dream. It’s happening. And even if Ariane wasn’t around and if Paul hadn’t committed himself to her, I’ve always known he’s only seen me as an adjunct to you or, at best, as a handy tinder to sharpen his charm on.”

  “Oh, no, more than that,” Betsy protested. “He really liked you; he said so.”

  Caroline summoned the ghost of a smile again. “Fair enough—except that, when you’ve no more hope of finding yourself loved than of getting the moon by crying for it, hearing you’re ‘liked’ instead doesn’t help much.”

  Betsy nodded emphatic agreement with that. “Don’t I know it? Because Paul liked me too, and while I was idiot enough to care for him it used to make me as furious as it does now to remember that I let it matter—” Thus Betsy uttered the epitaph of her feeling for Paul, leaving Caroline to wish that she could echo it, but knowing she could not.

  They left their luggage at the station before delivering the car to the garage from which it had been hired. Betsy parted from it with a pat on its bonnet and a rather wistful, “Wonder who’ll be driving you next?” Then they took a taxi back to the station and had only ten minutes to wait before their train was due.

  They had each been allotted single sleepers at opposite ends of a long coach. But before going to settle in them they stood in the corridor while the train moved out, remaining there for a time in order to catch their last glimpses of the matchless coastline and the red-sailed boats setting out for the evening fishing on the greenish, creaming sea.

  It was almost full dark as the train slowed for the St. Raphael stop. The girls parted then to go to their berths, agreeing to meet again later for the first dinner session in the dining car. In her compartment Caroline unpacked her toilet and night things and was washing her hands when there was a knock at the door and the coach attendant looked in.

  “Ah, Madame, you are here now. Just to see you have everything you need, and to check your ticket and reservation—No hurry, however. I can come again.”

  “No, wait. You can have them now.” Drying her hands, Caroline reached for her bag. But in the moment of her handing the papers to the man their recognition of each other was instant and mutual.

  He grinned, “So? It is Madame who rightly travels with me this time, not Monsieur! I hope you have enjoyed a good holiday in the sun, Madame?”

  “Very, thank you.”

  He filed away her reservations in his wallet. “These I keep until we reach Paris in the morning—You should not have thought Monsieur meant any harm, Madame. Agreed, he was forward, even bold. But what I ask myself
, is the worth of a man who cannot ask for what he wants? It remains the lady’s privilege to say yes or no to him. But as long as he has asked, believing she may say yes, though she says, no, what has he to lose?”

  This was Caroline’s moment.

  Savoring it. “To lose? Why, surely only one train on the Metro, with plenty of others to come along?” she said evenly, though as soon as the words were out she could not resist meeting the man’s abashed chagrin with a smile.

  He shrugged, spreading his hands. “Quel malheur! You have held this against me for all these weeks, Madame? This is too bad of you, and if I may say so, you have far too sharp ears!”

  “Evidently!”

  “But there! You are smiling. You have forgiven me now? And if Monsieur were here, you might even be a little kinder to him—no?”

  But at that Caroline’s smile faded, as did the brief illusion they were talking of the stranger Paul had been to her then and as this man believed he still was. “Perhaps. But Monsieur isn’t here,” she said.

  “No. A pity. For I was wrong, and sometimes one train on the Metro has something which the others haven’t... But what would you? That’s life, and a missed chance is a missed chance, lost for ever.” His hand on the door on his way out, the man paused. “Not—if I may say this too without offence—that Madame need fear there will not be many other messieurs from which she may pick and choose, I think!” Then he was gone, leaving Caroline more shaken by the little encounter than she would have cared to admit.

  Betsy, who was not a good traveller by train, had said she would give her travel pill time to work before going to the dining car, so Caroline did not hurry over her own pottering and was sitting looking out of the window when there was another knock at the door.

  “Come in.” Supposing that this time it would be for the making up of her berth, she rose and was ready to leave as the door opened, then closed again behind the entrant.