by Abor, Jane
That was an adroit argument on Margot's part. Donna had wondered what prospects she had of travelling much further afield than to Calvigne by jitney or the occasional trip in' her uncle's car, and she was tempted. But her memory of Wilmot's disapproval of Bran's defection from Louvet held her back. 'You are right,' she told Margot. `I've wondered how I could see more of Laraye while I'm here, but I don't think my uncle would care for me to take a job.'
'It wouldn't occupy you every day. You would only be on call when I needed you—say, to take out ladies who would rather be driven by a girl than a man. You might make some very good friends that way,' Margot urged.
'Yes. Well, supposing I went out with Bran as you suggest, and tried handling a car, and spoke to my uncle, perhaps I could help out when you needed someone. I don't think I'd like to promise more than that,' Donna said.
Margot shrugged. 'Fair enough. Go out with Bran, make him let you take the driving sometimes and use your eyes and ears when he does his running commentary on the sights. Particularly, get hold of the names of the flowers and the trees and have the life-cycle of the crops—the bananas and the aubergines and pineapples and coconuts—at your fingertips. People pay to be informed, and informed they will be, or know the reason why.'
'And you may be sure, with Margot in control, that they pay,' Elyot put in, in a dry aside to Donna.
'Of course. I'm a businesswoman. But I give value for money by using people like Bran and Donna, instead of taxi-boys, a lot of whom only, know the names of things in patois and consequently can't even spell them out, since patois isn't written,' Margot snapped back.
'And when Donna has acquired all this gen do you propose putting her on formal test?' he asked.
'I'd like to. And you'd like to show off, wouldn't you, darling? Rather fun, don't you think, if I played the dumbest of dumbwits who's never seen a banana or an
aubergine except in a supermarket or on a fruit barrow, and thinks orchids are rare hothouse freaks that only rich brides' bouquets can afford?' Margot appealed to Donna, who smiled and agreed, realising she was meant to.
A hour passed; nearly two. There was more dancing —Donna partnered once with Elyot, again in a sober waltz, and with a couple of men to whom she had been introduced before dinner. When Elyot went to the bar with a friend, Margot took Donna to see what she called 'my modest pad'—her private apartment on the top floor, the decor and furnishing of which were exotic in the extreme.
Margot took her leisure in a twenty-five-foot salon, glass-panelled all along the seaward side; sunbathed on
a screened verandah, bathed in an emerald green marble sunken bath and slept in a king-size bed under a white satin canopy in an all-white bedroom. Though Donna found the whole effect rather overwhelming she murmured in suitable awe, It's terribly luxe,' to which Margot replied complacently, 'I planned it that way. I'm a bit of a luxe person myself, and I do need the best of everything around me—you know?'
She had sat to comb her hair at the dressing-table mirror when Elyot came up to say that Bran had telephoned and that he had taken the call. 'He's in trouble,' Elyot announced.
'Trouble?' Frowning, Margot swung round on the stool. 'What?'
'Not serious, and not his fault,' Elyot assured her. 'It seems he's had a difference with a jitneyful of -revellers, the driver among them, on their merry way home from a Saturday night hoedown. The jitney had stopped—to put down some passengers, Bran supposed —just ahead of his car. But instead of going on when it did start-up, it charged backward on to his bonnet. and tried to climb it.'
'Tch, the fools! Is our car damaged?' Margot demanded.
'Apparently not much, but when they'd prised them apart, the whole busload of passengers fell upon Bran, accusing him of running them down. They wouldn't listen to reason, so the upshot is that he and his own passengers have had to go to the police station in Marc d'Assau to give evidence. That's a one-horse place in the mountains,' Elyot explained to Donna. 'Everything is being taken down in longhand with a well-licked pencil, and Bran's bother is that he doesn't know when he can get free to take you home.'
Margot said again, 'Tch ! That car was new last month. Are the other two, the Milwaukee couple, very
annoyed?'
'Why should they be? They've suffered no damage, they wanted a night out and they're only delayed. They'll probably dine out on the story as a bit of Caribbean local colour for weeks to come. Meanwhile, what about Donna?' Elyot asked.
'Oh. Yes. We'll send her home by taxi, of course.' `No, I'll take her myself.'
'Please don't bother. I can easily—'
'But, Elyot, you don't want to go yet?'
Donna and Margot had spoken together, and he answered Donna, 'It's all on my way,' and Margot, 'Yes, I'll go now, while my alcohol intake is minimal,' ignoring her annoyed, 'Tiresome of you ! ' which embarrassed Donna, but which he ignored.
In the foyer they said their goodnights to Margot, and as they got into Elyot's car, Donna remarked, 'This is becoming a bit of a cliché, isn't it?'
'A cliché?'
'Stereotyped, repetitive—your having to volunteer transport for me so often, I mean.'
'And should I reply gallantly that for me it's a pleasure which bears repeating, or risk offending you with a blunt reference to Hobson's choice? Perhaps I'd better play safe with a neutral "You're welcome," . which can say as little or as much as you care to let it. Anyway, what are you feeling about Margot's proposal?' Elyot asked after a pause.
'I think I'd like to try it occasionally, but it depends on what Bran will say to toting me around while I 'learn the ropes, whether I can master -the driving, and my uncle's reaction to the idea,' Donna said.
'Well, you should find the driving nothing of a problem, once you've had a bit of practice; your cousin will like anything that Margot orders of him—she's that kind of woman, and with your uncle you must use all
the diplomacy you know.'
'Yes, though I shouldn’t care to take it on if he doesn't want me to.' She changed the subject. 'Tell me, on these guided tours, may one take people quite freely on to the plantations? For instance, since there wouldn't be much profit in showing them Louvet, could I take them on to yours, Marquise?'
'Be my guest. It's all publicity for the trade.'
'Thank you.' There was silence then until Elyot suggested, 'I suppose tonight was your first experience of dancing to a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool steel band on its own home ground?'
'You mean out here, where playing on steel originated? Yes.'
'Originated of necessity, when the boys couldn't afford any instruments but cut-down dustbins. Do you like the rhythm?'
'It grows on you.'
'It does more than that for some people. It gets deep into their blood. Into Margot le Conte's for one. You may have realised that she hasn't many inhibitions to start with, but to a Caribbean beat of any quality, she abandons the lot and dances, stripped of every rag of reserve, as it were. As you couldn't, I take it, to anything like the same degree?'
Donna agreed, 'No. It must be quite an experience, dancing with her?'
'It is. Unique.'
'Which was probably why—' she couldn't help asking to make sure—'you chose to do only sedate foxtrots with me, knowing I couldn't compete?'
He appeared to ponder the question. Then—`You could say that. You're English. Margot is not. One couldn't look for the same kind of verve. On the other hand—'
Donna waited. At last she prompted, 'On the other
hand—what?'
'Well, I'd also admit that a man does like to vary his style—refreshing, you know, to get away from the jungle tactics that the drums demand, to the Blue Danube approach of having a girl in your arms, close enough to know she's really there, not one to five yards away and retreating.'
'I see,' said Donna gravely.
He laughed. 'You don't. You'd have liked to show off what you could do. But let it ride for now, and perhaps I'll let you—next time.'
W
hen they reached the top of the lane, as she had done once before, she asked him to drop her there. But he refused.
'When I take a girl home after an evening out, I don't dump her on the area steps as if she were a Victorian housemaid,' he claimed, and knowing that, if not from her, Wilmot would hear the story of her homecoming from Bran, she gave in.
At the foot of the verandah steps he took her hand. 'I'm wondering what a reluctant Blue Danube girl expects of her escort when he takes her home these days?' he said.
'Expect of him? Why, nothing—'
'No? Well, just in case, I shouldn't care to disappoint,' he said, and kissed her lightly but purposefully on her lips.
CHAPTER FOUR
THINKING over the evening, Donna realised she had had as little relish for being called a Blue Danube girl as she had for having been kissed in her escort's line of duty, because he thought she expected it. Blue Danube indeed! It was a wonder he hadn't chosen the mazurka or the gavotte if he wanted to date her dancing in the past. And since they both knew his taking her home was a chore that had been forced on him, why should he suppose she regarded him at all as someone who had invited her out and who, when he brought her home, might have kissed her goodnight when they parted?
Both epithet and duty kiss seemed to docket her as a type, and this she resented. In any future encounters with Mr Elyot Vance, he would have to learn that she wasn't as predictable as all that; that occasionally she could pack some surprises of temperament and mood too (Too? All right, by 'too' her thought had meant 'as well as' Margot le Conte, even though her honesty had to admit that the man was right—with a mercurial spirit of that calibre her own verve and versatility would have a pretty hard job to compete. But one could always try ...)
When she went to breakfast the next morning she found that Bran had already told her uncle about Elyot's having brought her home. 'The fellow's making a bit of a habit of it, isn't he?' Wilmot grumbled to Donna. 'Let's hope he hadn't the gall to come into my house and stay?'
'No. He just dropped me at the door and left,' Donna said.
'Good. He can evidently take a hint.' Wilmot returned to his consumption of grilled flying fish, and Donna watched Bran trying to persuade the tiny banana-quit who flew in every morning at breakfast-time to take sugar from his outstretched palm. The little bird nodded and fluttered and quirked his tail, but wasn't to be tempted. He preferred to perch on the rim of the sugar bowl and help himself.
Presently Bran said, 'Margot tells me she's enlisted you on the job as well, and that I'm to take you along with me until you've learned the ropes. Is that so?'
'Well, I hadn't given her a firm answer.' As she spoke Donna glanced in her uncle's direction, and Bran took the hint that she needed help.
'O.K. Leave it to me.' He cleared his throat loudly to call Wilmot's abstracted attention. 'Look, Dad, there's an idea afoot that as Donna ought to get around and see more of the island while she's here, she might as well come along and take a turn at driving when I go out on a tour.'
'And whose idea is it that we're not doing our duty by Donna? Is this more of the Vance fellow's interference in our affairs?' Wilmot demanded.
'Not a bit of it,' Bran assured him. 'It was Margot le Conte's suggestion, in fact. Besides, it's not a question of either of us failing Donna. You need the car and I've my job, so she couldn't expect to see much except Louvet and the town unless—' Bran paused, then took the plunge. 'Well, to be frank, the object of the exercise is that, when I've briefed her thoroughly, she might act as a stop-gap guide herself. Margot needs a woman to fall back on, you see, in case some of her timid ladies won't go out with a man. So how would you go along with that? I mean, Donna wouldn't consider it unless you agreed.'
'Though you seem to have it cut and dried between
you before I've been asked to agree,' Wilmot commented, at which Donna was moved to protest, 'Miss le Conte only put it to me last night, Uncle, and to Bran when he got back to the hotel. Of course I'll go no further with it, if you'd rather I didn't. Though—'
'Though what?'
Later Donna could not have told by what flash of inspiration she had hit upon the one note likely to appeal to him when she said, 'Well, it had occurred to me that in one aspect of Miss le Conte's idea of my "learning" Laraye, you could help me tremendously if you would. About the flowers and the trees, their names and their seasons—all that. I just wondered,' she added lamely in face of his unrelenting stare.
'And to what end, this information that you want to glean from me?' he asked.
'Just so that, if Miss le Conte ever did call on me to help her out, I could pass it on to the tourists, who, she says, want to know it all.'
'I see.' For the first time there was a gleam of interest in his cold eye. 'You get the geography from Bran and the natural science from me and feed it piecemeal to these guests of Miss le Conte's, though to whose lasting benefit, would you say?'
'Well, to mine, for one,' she retorted with spirit. 'They can forget anything I'd been able to tell them as soon as they like. But shan't. I want to take it all home with me—to remember and enjoy and relive as far as I can. So that's mainly why I'd like you to agree to my going out with Bran, and to helping me yourself if you will.'
'Helping you, in the time you will have, to a mere smattering of all that it's taken me a lifetime to learn, and still without having been able to put it to any rewarding purpose?' He stood up, crumpling his napkin. 'Very well. You may do as you please, which I've little
doubt you would, with or without my say so—'
'I wouldn't, Uncle, really!' she disclaimed.
'And to anything you want to know 'what I can tell you, you're welcome.'
She smiled. 'Thank you. I'll be coming to you, notebook at the ready,' she promised. But she spoke to his back as he left the verandah.
Bran said, 'Well, I congratulate myself with having conducted that with a rare turn of diplomacy.'
'You ! Donna scoffed. 'I did more than half of it, by suggesting he could help.'
'M'm—a stroke of genius, that. But who was it who had to go into action in answer to your silent, melting appeal, you tell me?'
'All right. It was you,' she conceded, then worried aloud, 'What did Uncle mean about his having achieved "no rewarding purpose" from all he knows about the Caribbean flora and fauna and all that? If you won't resent my saying so, it was the first time I'd heard him sound sad, not just sour.'
Bran nodded. 'I know. It's his pipe-dream, you see, that he's never likely to realise. He has neither the money nor many people's sympathy for his scheme for clearing part of the rain forests for a kind of natural park, with everything that's indigenous to Laraye and the other islands growing there, wild but labelled as what each specimen is. He'd see the planting of it and the care of it as the fruit of all his know-how; his gift to posterity, as it were. But it just isn't on.'
'A kind of Kew Gardens, do you mean?'
'A bit like, though wilder, and without any marked boundaries—just an acreage of the forest cleared and planted and blending with the rest. But to get it going would cost more money than we've got.'
'Aren't there any rich Larayans who would sponsor it?'
Bran shrugged. 'If there are, Dad is no salesman of anything—even of ideas.'
'Well ' Donna thought she had the solution—
'there's Louvet itself, isn't there? I know it's Company owned, but as Uncle isn't making much of a success with bananas on it, and you aren't interested, mightn't the Company let him have part of it for his scheme? I could put the idea to Father, you know.'
'No dice on Louvet.' Bran shook his head. 'The conditions—soil, rainfall—aren't suitable. It's too exposed to wind and the spraying of neighbouring crops. No, it has to be further south where it's much more lush, with a lot more rain and where everything, but everything, will grow.'
'There can't be that difference in conditions in an island not much over thirty miles long,' Donna objected.
'Which is a
ll you know,' Bran retorted. 'And which reminds me that you can see for yourself. I'm taking a couple down to Boiling Spring and the volcano tomorrow, and you may as well make it your first L-trip.'
There followed for Donna many days of exploration of the tortuous roads of the island—deep into the interior, east through vast banana groves to the Atlantic coast, north to fashionably developing residential estates, south through the steamy jungle of the tangled forest land, up into the mountains for views of azure blue bays far below, following the coastline through nestling fishing villages, driving to the very rim of the acrid-smelling volcano, edging along the lower shelves of gargantuan outcrops of rock which rose sheer from the sea. She surprised herself both by how much she remembered and how much she had forgotten; a scent could recall her nursery days vividly; places, such as the town park where she must often have played, meant
nothing to her at all.
There was not always room for her in the car, but as larger parties usually preferred to tour together in minibuses, there often was. Bran obviously had a distinct flair for his job; he made his guide patter interesting and amusing; he was patient with questions and never grudged his passengers time to stand and stare. Quite soon—after asking their permission—he allowed Donna to drive, at first on the easier roads, and then increasingly in the haphazard Calvigne traffic and corkscrew mountain tracks. At first she dreaded Bran's 'Here—change places with me and take over', but as she grew in confidence she became quite greedy for the time he allowed her at the steering-wheel.
She wrote home enthusiastically about this, stressing her opinion that as this, and not reluctant banana culture, seemed to be Bran's forte, he should be allowed to develop it. Of her uncle she still wrote guardedly, saying she hadn't really got through to him yet, hoping her father would remember and appreciate what a difficult man to know his brother Wilmot was.