Tree of Paradise

by Abor, Jane

  Donna went through a gap in the crotons, but did not venture down to the shore. Whenever she had been able to, she loved to swim after dark. But before she swam here she must ask about currents and underwater shelving; for now it was enough to stand and stare—out to sea between the two horns of land which made a bay of the Anse Louvet, up at the velvet of the sky, and at the dark silhouettes of the coconut palms, sturdily rooted in nothing but sand, their trunks aspir-

  ing straight to heaven, their fretting topknots of fronds umbrellas for outsized giraffes, no less '

  She sighed for utter happiness in the moment. Behind her was an uninspiring house at odds with itself; problems which she had come to Laraye to look at and try to help to iron out if she could; a diplomatic road she would have to tread very warily—all this, with the addition of a neighbour who irked her too easily, yet intrigued her against her will. But probably, with what sounded like a no-man's-land of estrangement between him and her uncle, she would not have to see too much of him.

  And anyway, she decided on a 'high' of enchantment with the warmth and the lovely night and the promise of tomorrow's sun, nothing was going to spoil the magic of this island for her. Nothing at all

  CHAPTER TWO

  DONNA woke early to the beat of rain on the roof. But after it had stopped abruptly, as at the turning of a tap, she slept again, and when she had dressed and gone through to the verandah, her cousin was already at breakfast there. A used place showed that her uncle had already eaten and left.

  Bran, two years her junior, was tall and loose-limbed, with a mop of fair curly hair and blue eyes, both features in sharp contrast to the deep tan of his skin. At sight of Donna he stood to greet her with a peck of a kiss on her cheek, then held her off and said, 'Surprise, surprise! If we'd known you were coming yesterday we'd have baked a cake— Instead, I gather you stepped off on the wrong foot with Dad by accepting a lift from our friend and neighbour, Vance? How come?'

  `Because,' said Donna, 'he was at the airport and you weren't, and he offered, after he'd seen me waiting around for nearly an hour.'

  `Yes, well—we seem to have got the dates mixed,' said Bran easily. 'Sorry about that. But let's have a look at you. Last picture I remember of you, you were in a swim suit on a beach—rather puddingy, with a moon-wide grin. But you've slimmed down a lot, haven't you? You're quite a gal, though my word, don't you need a tan?, How long are you staying? What do you think of our pad? And how did Elyot Vance strike you, before Dad had his say? Anyway, come and eat. Rolls and coffee and fruit juice do you? Or do you want eggs?'

  Donna declined eggs, took her place at the table and

  answered his questions in reverse order. Of Elyot Vance she said, `He rather put my back up when I overheard him criticising Uncle Wilmot to another man at the airport, and he was pretty high-handed about refusing to take no to his offer of a lift. Rather sure of himself, isn't he? Enjoys his success?'

  'And how—and with reason, I daresay,' Bran agreed. 'More than a bit of the Midas golden touch to Elyot V. Seems he can't go wrong with Marquise, with his work force, with women—Sure you didn't fall flat yourself for the oomph he has for all the girls?'

  'Far from it,' Donna denied loftily. 'He's got "poison-ality", I'll give him that. But as I told you, he rubbed me up from the start, and I only let him drive me here because he said it was all on his way, and juggernauted me into accepting.' She went on to answer Bran's other questions. `I've fallen in love with this place—the situation and the view, and swimming from your own private bit of beach—superb ! As to staying, well, perhaps for as long as Uncle and you will have me. Or until ' She stopped, not quite sure how to word the truth which ought to come next.

  'Until ' Bran supplied for her—`you've learned

  all you-came to find out about Louvet and have enough grisly facts to report back? All right, all right,' he soothed as Donna flushed and looked away. 'Not so difficult to read between the lines of Uncle George's letters that he and the Company are worried pink, and that you're not his "and Son" for nothing, eh? Though why didn't he come himself, one is entitled to ask? Why send you on this cloak-and-dagger effort to see what we're up to over here?'

  Donna said a little desperately, 'Look, I wanted to come. It is a holiday for me. But since, as you must know very well, Louvet hasn't been pulling its weight for ages, Father didn't see any harm in briefing me to

  see if I could find out why. For one thing, whether Uncle Wilmot has cause for such a chip on his shoulder as he has, and for another, why you seem to have opted out.'

  Bran's hands, clasped behind his head, pushed his head forward in a leisurely nod. 'Information straight from the grass roots of your wide experience of us and our land and our conditions, no doubt?' he mocked. 'Well, maybe I can save you the trouble of a probe in depth. Dad's grouse is that his heart isn't in the banana industry and never was. And I'm getting out because there's no future in it on land that's in the state that Louvet is and has been for the last three years or so. Waste of energy to flog a dead horse. But you won't have seen Louvet yet, will you?'

  'No,' said Donna. 'But I want to. Could you take me over it?'

  `Sorry, no, not today. I've other fish to fry presently. You'll have to wait until Dad shows up. He may be over there now. It lies half a mile or so on, up the hill and on the far side of the road—' Bran jerked a thumb in that direction. 'But as he's taken the car, it's more likely he's ditched you to go off south into the rain forest on a botanising trip. Anyway, if you can walk, you could take yourself exploring alone.'

  'I might just do that.' Donna added curiously, 'What is it really about Louvet—apart from your and Uncle's lack of interest? Why has it gone to seed when, according to Elyot Vance, the actual land is no worse than that of Marquise, which he says it joins?'

  Bran's eyebrows lifted. 'There's loyalty for you! You resented having to be obliged to the man when he offered you a lift, but that didn't stop you from discussing Dad and the failure of Louvet on the way!'

  'I did nothing of the sort! ' Donna disclaimed hotly. 'I've already told you I overheard him talking to his

  friend, which was when he said that about Louvet; not to me.' Feeling the exchange was on the edge of acrimony, she changed the subject. 'Tell me a bit about yourself,' she invited. 'How did you get here this morning from this hotel where you spent the night, wherever it is?'

  `The Allamanda, Margot le Conte's place at Violon Point. I came up by mini-moke—there.'

  Donna shaded her eyes, following the direction of his finger pointing outside. 'On that? In it?' she queried of the small square truck with foot-high wooden sides behind a driver's seat and a snub-nosed bonnet. 'Calls itself a motorised vehicle, does it? You could have fooled me. I've seen hand-drawn dust-carts that could give it points for elegance. Does it go?'

  `Like a bomb,' Bran assured her. 'Eats out of your hand and never turns a hair at the steepest of hairpins —pun, ha, ha. You'll see a lot of them around; they're handy for using on the plantation roads. Anyway, Margot le Conte is too keen a business woman to allow her hire-cars out on private journeys, so I have to have something for transport.'

  'I see.' Donna suddenly laughed. 'Guess how Juno announced that you weren't going to be home last night?' When she repeated the message as Juno had delivered it, Bran's own laugh was a shout.

  `That—of the cubbyhole under the tiles which Margot almost begrudges me when I've been out on a night tour until the small hours?' he scoffed. 'I must take Juno aside and mention that opportunity would be a fine thing—that the great Margot le Conte isn't for seducing by a mere minion like me.'

  `She's your boss? She owns this hotel, the Allamanda?'

  `Uh-huh. She inherited it from her father when she was only eighteen; sacked its manager three years later,

  moved into his apartment "over the shop", and has run it on her own ever since. In five or six years she's made it one of the places of the island, and isn't content with that. I came into the picture when she decided tha
t her tourist clients would prefer guides who weren't of the taximan type—chaps they could invite to lunch with them when they were out on day trips, without embarrassment on either side. So into the tours business goes Margot, all sails set. I qualified for the type she was looking for. I know every inch of the island from A to Z. I wanted out from Louvet; the job suits me, and so there you are.'

  Donna was doing mental sums. 'Margot le Conte is still quite young, then? And is she French?'

  'Only by extraction. Sire's from Antigua, born of European and Antiguan parents. English is her language, of course, just as it's ours.'

  'And is it this success of hers that makes her "the great Margot"?'

  'That, and her ambition, spelt with a capital A. In fact, two of a kind, you might say—she and Elyot Vance. Both of them convinced that there's room at the top for them, if for nobody else. And neither of them wholly averse to making the climb together, according to coconut radio.'

  Donna tilted her head. 'Coconut radio?' she queried. 'Grapevine to you, my love. Dame Rumour.' 'Oh—Yes, I remember. You mean they would com—

  bine business forces—or what?'

  'Or what. Marital forces joined first, one imagines. Business ones to follow. Anyway, watch this space, all agog like the rest of us.' Bran stretched and stood up. 'Well, I'm off. A cruise ship came in yesterday, and I've got a date with a couple from Milwaukee. Care for a lift into town? I could drop you off half a mile this side of the Allamanda.'

  'No, thanks,' said Donna. 'I think I'll swim and then laze. Is it safe?'

  `Perfectly.' On his way down the steps Bran paused and turned. 'Does Dad know that Vance brought you up yesterday?' he asked.

  `Yes, of course. Their cars met at the foot of the lane, just as Mr Vance was leaving.'

  `And did sparks fly?'

  'No. How could they? Mr Vance had done me a kindness.'

  `Which would irritate Dad rather than please him. I can hear him—"Under an obligation to the fellow." Are you sure he didn't say as much later anyway?'

  Donna smiled wryly. 'In fact he did—word for word.'

  `How did I guess?' Bran chuckled, and went on his way.

  Donna had swum and floated and played in water which caressed like silk. It was still only mid-morning and now she lay prone on dry sand, letting it run through her fingers until she drowsed and presently slept.

  She woke with a start and sat up. She hadn't meant to sunbathe for long on her first day and her back was beginning to tingle. She might swim again or—at a small sound behind her she turned to look back at the beach steps. Halfway down, on one of them, sat Elyot Vance, forearms resting on his thighs, some object between his hands.

  'Oh,' she said. 'I didn't know—I fell asleep.' Odd, she thought, this guilt at being caught and watched while sleeping. And equally odd, the vulnerable inferiority of the scantily clad in face of the fully dressed. Wishing she had brought a towel as a cover-all, she stood up and was making a business of brushing sand from her body and legs as Elyot Vance joined her.

  'Enter slave, bearing gift,' he announced, proffering what he held in his hand.

  It was an aerosol can. She took it from him. 'What? Why?' she queried.

  'For your private mosquitoes, which probably won't trouble you again, once having sampled your blood and found it tastes no better than ours, about which they're blase by now. I found I had this unused can at home, so you're welcome to it. You spray it around you as a warning.'

  'Thank you, though in fact they haven't bitten me again, even last night, when I expected I'd be sleeping under a net. But my uncle's housekeeper scorned the idea, and I certainly didn't need one.'

  'You're making your own entertainment today?' 'Yes. My uncle and cousin are both out.'

  'Over on Louvet?'

  `No. That is, Uncle Wilmot may be. But Brandon has gone to take an American couple on a tour.' As Donna was wondering whether she ought to offer the hospitality of coffee or a drink in return for the insect-repellant, its donor said, 'Yes, well, it's pay day on Marquise, and I'm taking my manager down to the bank for the cash. I must go. Do you mean to swim again, or are you coming up?'

  She told him she must go to the house for some sunburn lotion and going ahead of him up the steps, aware of his critical view of her fiery back and shoulders, she wished again for the protection of a towel or a wrap. Almost any of the boys she knew would have made some such derogatory remark as 'Who's a boiled lobster, then?' and have offered to apply the lotion for her. But this man's silent scrutiny merely made her self-con-scious, she didn't know why.

  He hadn't brought his car down the lane, and when he had left she went in search of Juno, who chided her

  for courting the sunburn, but was prepared to dab calomine to it with a willing and generous hand.

  'You jes like all strangers, but you learn in time, Missus Donna—old man sun, he an enemy till he cooked you brown like me,' she said, and then, 'Mister Vance, he a good man. Mister Wilmot not think so, but he good, very good. Pay his men well, build houses for dem, send dem to hospital when dey sick, every time he see me he say "Hey, Juno" and sometimes take me to Marquise, see my cousin Maria and her man. Dey cook and man for Mister Vance, like me, cook for Mister Wilmot,' she added in explanation.

  This was a more generous assessment of their neighbour than Donna had been given to date. Average it out with her uncle's 'outsider', Bran's 'Midas' eaten up by ambition, and her own guarded reaction to his brusquerie, and what did you get? she wondered. Public Benefactor Number One, a monster of hard-bitten greed, the beau ideal of women (Bran again! ), or the roughshod-cum-cavalier who could antagonise or disarm almost, as it were, in one breath?

  But though she would have liked to demand that the real Elyot Vance should stand up, she was reluctant to discuss him with Juno, so with a non-committal murmur that he had certainly shown kindness to her, she switched the subject to Juno herself, to learn that she was a 'widow woman', that she had no children, and that she had worked for Wilmot Torrence for 'dunna many' years.

  Dressed again in slacks and shirt and a coolie hat tied under her chin, Donna found a couple of vases in a cupboard, filled the low one with a spread of hibiscus blossoms, the taller one with sprays of magenta ixora and oleander, and placed them in the living-room where she thought they brightened it considerably. Juno, however, serving a cold lunch of chicken and

  saffron rice soon after midday, disapproved.

  'Dem hibiscus only good for shoeshine boys, polish shoes. No use in house; dead by sunset every night,' she averred in face of Donna's claim that meanwhile they were lovely, and that she wouldn't mind renewing the arrangement every day.

  In the afternoon Juno disappeared into her own quarters and Donna decided to follow Bran's directions to the plantation. At the top of the hill, to the left of the road, a whole spacious valley was spread, lush with the dark green of row upon row of banana bullheads—Marquise and Louvet, side by side, the only boundary between them, Donna supposed, being the road which branched off the main one on which she stood, and became a track leading away down-valley as far as her eye could trace it. As she walked down the track, her guess that to her right lay Marquise and to her left lay Louvet was confirmed by a large roadside notice-board claiming the land on which it stood to be The Marquise Estate. Property of Elyot R. Vance. Estate Manager, M. Couseau, with a telephone number for the estate office. And as she walked on it became too painfully clear which was prosperous Marquise land, which was neglected Louvet.

  Scattered about Marquise, men were working, though none were near the road. Louvet, by contrast, seemed completely deserted. On Marquise, where wind and the weight of fruit had caused the main trunks of the plants to lean, they were carefully propped. On Louvet many had leaned, untended, beyond disaster point. Fallen bullheads everywhere added to the natural trash of decaying leaves and fibre which Donna's theory knew was left for the elements to turn to humus for the enrichment of the land. On Marquise every heavy swag of fruit approaching maturity
was cosseted against wind and friction and toxic sprays, in

  enwrapping polythene bags. On Louvet the bullheads also carried fruit, but nakedly, the skins so brown-pitted that they must eventually become rejects, Donna thought.

  The pity of it! The waste! Aloud she addressed an absent Elyot Vance. 'I see what you mean,' she murmured slowly, then bestrode the wide ditch between the track and the ranks of plants, treading trash and stumbling over hidden hazards as she walked down the length of one or two rows.

  Conditions were no better further into the plantation. It was obvious that no one had cared to keep Louvet in full production for the time that Elyot Vance had mentioned—at least two seasons. Another one in this climate of sun and rain and magically swift growth, and it could be a wilderness, she judged. Yet neither her uncle nor Bran cared enough for it to save it. Only Elyot Vance did, and he was denied it!

  On her way back to the road she stopped to look more closely at a new season's plant where so far only the one 'flower' it would bear had emerged—the fat, purple, pointed ovoid heavily a-swing at the end of its ropy stem, which wasn't in fact a flower at all, but a collection of bracts, protective sheaths for the embryo fruit.

  She lifted a bract to marvel at the group of tiny downturned fingers beneath it; each finger blossom-tipped, each one a banana-to-be. Her imagination hurried the fingers into girth and length and their gradual upturn as they grew, until each group of fingers, emerging daily from its bract, indeed resembled a green open hand attached radially, hand above hand, to the stem which at maturity would be slashed from the parent plant.

  Only her reading and her visits to Kew had taught Donna that this was how it was, and naturally she had