by Abor, Jane
never seen the cycle through. Nor was she likely -to see even part of it here on Louvet, she realised, with no dedicated enthusiast to care that she should, from first' ground shoot to harvest. Elyot Vance must know it all, but she couldn't see him troubling to act as her mentor, nor indeed herself accepting his patronage. For he would be patronising, she was sure, And caustic—as he had been already—to her ignorance. Besides, to Wilmot Torrence he was clearly the Enemy, and she supposed that that made him her enemy too.
A pity though that he was such a man-shaped man, so —alive. She would have liked to feel turned upon her that concentrated interest he had had-for his friend at the airport; now serious, now genuinely amused, instead of the satirical approach he had used to her. She found herself wondering what was his relationship with his equal in success, the legendary Margot' le Conte—what it meant to him and in what terms. Bran's assessment had made it sound rather cold-blooded calculated. But Donna hazarded that Elyot Vance's blood ran coldly only for people who had little but passing interest and curiosity value for him—as she herself had, once he found out who she was. She had never given herself many marks for intuition, but she felt—wanted to feel—that the woman he meant to marry could rouse fire in him, desire, hot blood. Margot le Conte—it was a romantic-sounding name ... Would the girl, little older than Donna herself, prove as romantic a . figure to match?
As she walked on, past a Marquise acreage which was obviously a nursery for young banana plants, the Devil was massing his clouds again. The air grew heavy and the sudden rain began, at first only pitting the dusty track, but quickly turning it to squelch. The Devil's wife must have given him best, for the sky was totally overcast, and Donna was despairing of shelter when,
ahead of her, through the curtain of rain, she discerned a building by the roadside on Louvet land.
She began to run. She would be wet through by the time she reached it, but she had to get out of this downpour. As she neared it she saw it was too solid an edifice to be, as her dim view of it had suggested, a packing and sorting station for fruit. It was a square, two-storeyed house, and suddenly for Donna a childhood memory stirred.
It was the sugar plantation house which Elyot Vance had said was still there, on the border between the two estates. He hadn't said that it was still occupied, and as she reached it she saw how forlorn and dilapidated it was, how cobwebbed its windows, how blistered and peeling its ancient paintwork.
It would be locked, of course, but the overhang of its upper floor balcony would afford some shelter. She ran in under it, shook herself like a spaniel, and tried the front door. It wasn't locked, and gave creakily to her push on it.
The inside door stood open to rooms which were thick with dust and rubbish, and they smelled musty. A back door gave on to a small walled courtyard. A staircase, some of its treads broken, led to the upper floor. Donna remembered none of it as it was now. She thought there had been a garden and a stone sundial, and that the balcony had been at the back, instead of at the front, facing out over what was now Marquise land. And then—it was built of wood throughout—it had been gaily painted in gypsy reds and greens. It had been as novel to her as if fashioned from gingerbread.
Although the rain had stopped and she meant to make her way back, hotfoot, to the bungalow, she went upstairs for a cursory look round. She crossed a room to the floor-to-ceiling window and found she hadn't to slip its catch to open it. She stepped out on to the
balcony, took a step or two towards the outer balustrade, and didn't realise what was happening underfoot until it had.
With a tearing, splitting sound the flooring had given way beneath her weight. Too late to step back on to what may, or may not, have been sound boards, she went down into the V-gap of the broken ones. The V opened to the depth of her own height, and for a sickening moment she thought it would let her fall straight through. But at its point it held by what felt like mere splinters, leaving her in the ludicrous plight —if it had not been so frightening—of being upright with her back against one arm of 'the V, facing the jaggedness of the other, her feet down to the broken wood at its point.
She could get out. She must get out! But her cautious reach forward to the jagged arm only broke away more wood, and her attempt to turn back, in order to claw at the flooring behind her, caused the weakness at the point of the V to splinter further. If she did manage to turn, and it gave completely, she would be left hanging by her hands until she fell ... She stayed where she was, not moving.
She felt sick with self-blame. She should have realised the state the woodwork would be in, unpainted and unpreserved against weather for years, it seemed. And how was she to be rescued? And when? Men were still working in the Marquise plantations, but they were too far off to hear her shout. Perhaps when they knocked off work some of them would come along the road, and they would see her if she signalled with—yes, her coolie hat would make a big flapping. Gingerly, hardly daring to risk the movement, she untied its strings, held it by one of them and waited.
Her shirt was sticking painfully to her sunburned back, and her slacks were clammy about her legs.
Would those men out there work until sundown? If so, that was hours ahead! And supposing even then, none of them used the road?
But she hadn't to wait hours. At first, from the direction from which she had come, there was the sound of a motor vehicle, then the familiar sturdy shape of a jeep. Careful not to move otherwise, she waved the hat frantically, and the jeep stopped.
The driver was Elyot Vance. After he had jumped down he stood for a moment, staring. Then at a big stride he came over to the house. Donna heard him begin aloud, 'What the—?' Then he went in under the balcony and she heard him run up the stairs and approach the open window.
Over her shoulder she called back, 'Don't step out. The floor is rotten ' To which his reply was a terse 'Obviously,' as he knelt to crawl forward, feeling his way. The floor held, as it had done for her to that point, and when he reached her he ordered, 'Turn round and face me.'
'I—I can't. I've tried. If I move, I shall fall through.'
'You must turn, and help yourself by holding on to the edge while I take the rest of your weight to haul you up. Now ! '
She turned. The frail wood at the point of the V broke at the thrust of her scrabbling feet, and the jagged edge of the flooring crumbled again before she gained a firm bold on it. But the strong hands under her armpits upheld her as their owner, still kneeling, edged slowly backward, inch by inch, drawing her heavily with him until she too was able to kneel on firm wood, facing him.
While he had pulled she had looked at him and seen in his taut jaw and clenched teeth and glittering eyes something of the fire which his cool satirical outward bearing masked. But it was no smoulder of passion, nor
even of physical effort, His tone left her in no doubt that it was a blaze of anger which drove him to his intensely breathed, 'May the gods give me patience! That anyone could be such a fool—' He broke off, as if words failed him.
Still kneeling, Donna looked down at her clasped hands, trembling from shock and mortification. 'Meaning me,' she murmured, not making it a question.
'By the fool? Who else? If you'd gone right through and down, you might have been killed, or broken some limbs at least! he .retorted.
'I—I might have fallen on my feet, like a cat.' It was a poor attempt at lightness which he scorned.
'Cats have unique fall mechanisms,' he snapped. He stood and took both her hands to draw her to her feet. Without releasing her he went on, 'A wooden house—wooden, in this climate! —standing derelict for years, and you choose to investigate, clamber about it—Why, the very state of the stairs could have told you what to expect of an open balcony, fully exposed to the weather! For pity's sake, come in off it while some of it's still underfoot. What were you doing down here anyway—alone?'
She followed him into the dusty room through the window and he slipped its catch shut. She explained, 'I was exploring Lotivet, and w
hen it began to rain heavens hard, I saw this place and I ran for it. As soon as I got near, I knew what it was, even though it looked different—and smaller. But no one except you had mentioned it to me, and you hadn't said how long it had been derelict and rotting. So how was I to know it was dangerous?'
' "Nobody told me." Famous last words,' he mocked. 'I'd have expected you to be canny to the sight of those stairs, not to mention the stink of dry rot in your nose. However—what's the damage? Are you hurt?' .
'Only bruised, I think. And this----' She turned the outer side of one wrist to him to show a long angry graze.
-'H'm. You'll need to watch that, keep it clean and covered. And you're still wet through.' His hands had reached to feel her shoulders, and he allowed his touch to travel down her body to her hips. His glance ran down the line of her slacks to her knee, where a T-tear gaped, then lifted to her rat-tailed hair in an assessment of her woebegone condition which was as clinical and dispassionate as a doctor's. For a moment she wondered wildly whether she would have rated more sympathy from him if she had indulged in a fit of the vapours, whatever they were. But she decided not. The man was a cold fish who enjoyed putting people in the wrong and then blamed them as fools for being there. Well, anyway, as fools whom he was forced to rescue from their own folly. So where was his alleged attraction for women, eh, Bran?—an attraction which she had experienced initially herself, but wouldn't again while, bored, he looked at her and through her without really seeing her at all. And now, she supposed, he would dutifully round off his second bout of knight-errantry in two days by insisting on seeing her home!
He didn't trouble to insist. He took it for granted that he would. When they went out to the jeep he lifted her bodily by the waist and dumped her on to the bench seat beside him, turned the vehicle and drove back up the track. Presently he remarked, `So your uncle sent you alone to look at Louvet? What do you think of it?'
'He didn't send me. -He'd gone out before I was up this morning.' Donna hesitated between loyalty and candour. And as she guessed loyalty would only make for argument, she chose candour. 'It—it's pathetic, isn't it?' she said.
'It's more than that. It's near-criminal,' he said grimly. But that was all. Donna was silent too, knowing he was right.
At the top of the lane to the bungalow she told him he could drop her there, and began to thank him. But he said, 'No. If your uncle has returned, I'd like a word with him. If not, perhaps you'll tell him I shall look in again?'
`You aren't going to make trouble, I hope?' she ventured, as the car standing on the crab-grass was evidence that Wilmot was at home.
'Just as much trouble as the situation calls for.' He braked, alighted, helped her down and made for the verandah. `Go and get out of those damp things,' he added. But she stayed when she saw that Wilmot was sitting on the verandah, a glass of punch beside him on the table where he was extracting leaves and sprays of foliage from small plastic bags. He stood as they approached. `Ah, Vance,' he said coldly, and sat again. 'And Donna—where have you been?'
It was Elyot Vance who answered for her. 'She's been exploring Louvet,' he said.
Wilmot's brows went up. 'With you?'
'No. She walked over on her own. Did you know she intended to?'
'Of course not. We haven't met since last night.'
'Then I suppose I can't blame you for not warning her about the state of the Dial House, but the fact remains that she went into it to shelter from the rain, and might well have been killed or badly injured when the balcony caved in as she walked out on it. Fortunately it held long enough until I happened by and was able to help her free. But that was her good luck and yours.' Elyot suddenly exploded. 'For Pete's sake, man, just how long do you mean to leave the place standing to rot away? Are you hoping that one day it will crumble
to shavings before your very eyes, saving you the trouble of doing anything about it, or what?'
Wilmot blinked at this attack and looked at Donna. `You shouldn't have—You should have realised
'Of course she should. But she didn't.' The words rapped out. 'And no credit to you if she had. That menace—bang-on to our boundary road; no trespass board nor danger sign; doors and windows unbarred; open to the idle curiosity of any passer-by, and what about the risk to children ? What about that?'
`There should be no children about there. They have no right on my land.'
`No? Well, they have on mine—with their mothers, my women workers who can't leave them at home. Try telling an adventurous toddler not to wander, as we do constantly—still, sooner or later one of them or a bunch are going to make it over to the Dial—and then where might you find yourself in the matter of culpable negligence—tell me that?'
`The house is on my land. No one has the right to trespass into it,' Wilmot maintained doggedly.
`When it doesn't boast so much as a fence or a gate to keep them out?' His opponent's gesture was contemptuous. 'Try making that a plea in a compensation court and see where it gets you! ' He paused, then added in a less aggressive tone, 'Look, man, why haven't you done anything to put the place together or to raze it, until now?'
`Because I have neither The money nor—'
At that Donna was moved to put in, 'Oh, Uncle; I'm sure the Company could bear the expense, if you would—'
Wilmot ignored her. 'Nor,' he repeated; 'the available labour, as you, Vance, should well know, since you absorb it all at wages which I can't pay. What's more, may I ask whether you've jumped to conclusions on the
condition of the Dial only from today's mishap to my niece?'
If Elyot saw the intended trap, he discounted it. 'Oh no,' he admitted. 'I've inspected it thoroughly before now. I assure you, no jump.'
Wilmot pounced. 'Then you've trespassed yourself, but haven't seen fit to approach me about it until now?'
'That's right.' The agreement was bland, almost good-tempered. 'I've trespassed, but the place is your property, it's on your land, and protest was pointless until an accident happened. Now it has.'
'And now—?' Wilmot invited.
'And so, protest, of course.'
'Which you've made—'
'—And an offer to meet you. If, as your niece suggests, Torrence and Son will carry the cost, I'll personally see that you get the men and the tools. How's that?'
`To destroy the place?'
A shrug. 'That's for you to decide. Though'Elyot Vance glanced at Donna—'I imagine that for old times' sake, your niece would rather it were restored. She remembers it from her childhood, she says.'
'And if I refuse to be "met" in the way you suggest?' Wilmot demanded.
`Then I'm afraid it's ultimatum that you do something yourself, lest the Growers' Association should see fit—'
Wilmot stood again, drawing himself to his full lanky height. 'Are you threatening me with action by the Growers' Association, young man?' he questioned.
'Far from it.' The other's smile was disarming. 'I'm merely a humble member of the Association, and you're another, neither of us with a say in the high-ups' decisions on sanctions. But if you won't accept help from your own Company or from me, alternatively why not persuade your son that he could do worse by you than to
take off his shirt and collect a few of his cronies to take on the job in their ample spare time?'
Wilmot was almost gibbering. 'Thank you,' he said. 'When I find myself in need of advice from you, I'll ask for it. Until then ,
Elyot's nod appeared to accept the sweet reason of that. 'Any time,' he said, and to Donna, `Get in there and change, and have Juno bandage that wrist'—an order which she did not obey. As he turned from them both, he added to Wilmot, 'Meanwhile, my offer remains open—indefinitely,' and went down the verandah steps.
'You may consider it closed—definitely,' Wilmot called after him, and sat down, drumming angry fingers on the table edge and muttering.
Donna ventured, 'Uncle, I don't think you should have antagonised him so. That house is dangerous as it stands, and his o
ffer to provide the men to work on it was generous, you can't deny.'
Wilmot erupted. 'Trespass! Nosing around! Telling me my own business! Hinting "or else". Trying the power game—with me! ' He eyed Donna with suspicion. 'That's twice in two days that the fellow has wormed his way in here; foisted himself on you first, and then on me. You haven't, I hope, encouraged him, by any chance?'
If Donna hadn't been so outraged by the accusation, she could have laughed. 'It so happens,' she reminded Wilmot, 'that twice in two days he's been there when I needed someone—this afternoon, rather badly. He didn't have to be encouraged to do for me what any decent man would in the same circumstances, I hope. Both times he did it, and I'm grateful.'
'Yes, well,' her uncle yielded slightly, 'I thought you might have been flattered. He has an easy way with women, one understands----'
'So Bran hinted of him as well,' Donna cut in. 'But'` I'm not as impressionable as all that, and I do rather "object to being lumped together with "Women" who may have fallen for his alleged charm.'
'Yes, well,' Wilmot conceded again, 'I suppose I can trust you to take care of yourself and keep men like him at arm's length. I certainly hope so, for in Bran's set in and around the Allamanda and the beach clubs, you can hardly help meeting him. Just so long as you don't expect me to welcome him here!' he concluded sourly.
At that Donna felt she had had enough as the present pawn in this bitter long-drawn game between her uncle and his neighbour.
'After this afternoon, do you suppose he'd be overeager to come?' she asked and, getting no answer, went through to her room, feeling defeated and depressed and wondering whose side she was supposed to be on.
When she had discarded her soiled shirt and torn slacks, changed into a flowered shift dress and managed to bandage her wrist herself, she felt a little better.