Tree of Paradise

by Abor, Jane

  When, at around noon, they dropped down to the coast and she drove through a succession of fishing villages nestling in the lee of beetling cliffs, his interest in various restaurants they passed told her that he was thinking in terms of luncheon and perhaps debating whether to suggest her joining him.

  At last he made up his mind. 'Would it be in order for you to lunch with me?' he asked.

  `Thank you. I think so,' she said demurely.

  `Then where?'

  She took him to a quiet restaurant, palm-shaded, on the very edge of the shore, where she knew the seafood to be excellent and the service unobtrusive. But when he didn't approve it, saying it looked a bit tatty to him, she went to the other extreme and drove to one of the newer hotel-restaurants catering for tourists, where the guests were lodged in pseudo-Tahitian thatched cabins

  on the beach, from where the dining-room was reached by cable car up the mountainside. This her companion liked, though she thought it rather ostentatious. At the bar she chose a soft drink as she was driving, and took only half a glass of the bottle of wine he ordered with the meal, leaving the rest to him.

  They talked. He told her he would be taking a few days' holiday before getting down to his firm's assignment to him to prospect for available building land and negotiate its price. As soon as he started work in earnest, he would be hiring a car himself, but in the meanwhile, perhaps she would take him out again? And when he had his own car he would hope for some dates with her. Might he hope?

  She agreed guardedly, keeping up the fiction that she was not entirely a free agent while, though he talked about himself and his work, she learned nothing personal about him nor his background. Meanwhile, he was pleasant company and never lost an opportunity for a compliment, either oblique or direct. Everything about his appearance spoke of affluence—pale lilac silk shirt, impeccable grey slacks, casually knotted Charvet neckerchief, broad signet ring of plain gold—leading her to conclude that he was probably at executive level in what sounded like a very prosperous firm, though, in keeping with his reticence about his personal affairs, he hadn't told her its name.

  On the drive back his manner became more intimate and his attention more concentrated on her as she talked than on what she was telling him about the scenery they were passing. Once he slid an arm across the back of her seat, but when she sat slightly forward, showing she knew it was there and that it irked her, he withdrew it at once. 'Sorry,' he smiled disarmingly. 'Getting cramp in that elbow; just flexing the muscles, that was all,' which was so adroit a retreat from what

  might or might not have been a tentative pass that she gave him the benefit of the doubt with her concerned, 'Oh dear—is it better now?'

  At the hotel he thanked her warmly and made an embarrassed gesture towards his wallet. At first she thought, horrified, that he was going to offer her a tip, but when he asked, 'Whom and how does one pay?' she told him she would put in a chit and the cost would appear on his account.

  'Fine,' he said. 'And now, could we have a swim in the pool and an early drink before you go home?'

  Donna refused. She didn't keep a swimsuit at the Allamanda and besides—a white lie—she had an appointment to see Miss le Conte, the owner-manageress, before she left, she told him.

  'Dinner, then? Tonight? Tomorrow?' he pressed. 'Here, or wherever you like instead?'

  She hesitated. A dinner date for which she could dress up would be nice, and though she had taken to him only moderately, the man was no wolf. But though she had no appointment with Margot, she had meant to find what were Margot's reactions to her having taken out a man passenger alone and, now that he had asked her, how Margot would view her acceptance of his invitation to dine. So she said she wasn't sure about the evening, but she would ring him—with which he seemed satisfied, and after he had named a time, they parted.

  Rosa, questioned as to where Margot might be, said she was in her apartment. Donna said, 'Well, ring her for me, will you please, and ask her if she can spare me a few minutes?'

  Rosa's brown eyes widened. 'You not make trouble wid Missus le Conte 'bout dem two ladies?' she pleaded.

  'Of course not,' Donna assured her. 'Are they back, yet? How did they get on with Louis?'

  'Dey say super. Fine.' Rosa was beaming now. 'Louis great chap, dey say; good type, want him again. Ring Missus le Conte now; tell her you here.'

  After a minute or two she reported, `Missus say she occupied; she dressing, but if you won't keep her long, you go up.'

  Margot was in her opulent bedroom. Clad in a frilled silk negligee, she was doing her nails at the dressing-table; a valise, half packed, was open on the bed.

  She spoke to Donna over her shoulder while fanning out her fingers to see the effect of a silver pearl polish. `You find me terribly pressed, darling—just half an hour before Elyot Vance calls for me. He has to go to Grenada on business by the evening plane; staying the night, and I'm going along for the ride; back tomorrow. Was it anything madly important you wanted?'

  `Not so very,' Donna said. 'It's just that the Mrs Bellew and her daughter who were booked to me this morning thought they were supposed to go with Louis Trapontine, and went. That left me without a passenger, so I took instead a Mr Drinan, who hadn't booked, but wanted a tour. Was that all right?'

  'You took him alone?'

  'Yes—op a pretty comprehensive drive. He gave me luncheon. Was all that in order?'

  'In order? But of course, darling. You should know me—I never turn down business, and if you were free and felt you could handle him, why not? Anyway, who did you say he was? There was such' a crowd of new people in yesterday.'

  `His name is Drinan--Melford Drinan.'

  Margot turned then. 'Melford Drinan?' she echoed. `Well, what d'you know? I knew he'd booked in, but I haven't seen him yet. So aren't you the canny girl to leap to his aid? For I suppose he told you who he is—one of the Drinan family of Houston, who trade as

  Hexagon Development Inc.—just about the major land prospectors in the States? Florida, Bermuda, Jamaica—you name it, and wherever there's real estate to be negotiated, Hexagon will be there. So if you made any kind of a hit with Melford Drinan, cultivate him, do. He could be well worth your while. Did he say he would like you to drive him again?'

  'Until he hires a car of his own, he said, and he asked me to dine with him tonight or tomorrow. I said I would let him know.'

  'So go ahead. What are you waiting for? Make it here tomorrow night; it's a gala evening and more fun than just dining. And what did I tell you—that this way you would meet people? Men, of course I meant, because you English girls who used to get yourselves invited out to India to find husbands now holiday in the West Indies with the same idea. And why not, bless you? It's a universal game, and all of it good for the tourist trade.'

  `Some of us come out for different reasons from that,' Donna observed, her tone dry.

  Margot shook her head. 'You don't fool me. You wouldn't be human if you didn't keep one eye lifting in that direction

  She broke off as the telephone rang. 'Excuse me.' She reached for the receiver. `Ah—Elyot.' Her deep voice made a caress of the name. 'Yes—coming. Almost at once. Just must throw on a clout and fling a few more things into my case. While you're waiting, have them send a boy up for it, will you? What's that? I know ... I know, but I've been delayed a bit by—guess who? Your young protégée, Donna Torrence. And guess what, too? She's on the verge of hooking herself a prize fish —Melford Drinan of Hexagon Inc.—you know, and she came to ask if it was all right for her to encourage him. Isn't that sweet? Too utterly ingénue for words!

  Been out with him for hours today; dining with him tomorrow. Yes, all right, she's leaving this minute, and I'll be down. 'Bye, monster—' She turned with a smile to Donna. 'You don't mind if I have to rush you, honey, do you? I just had to tell Elyot that you've found yourself a boy-friend—relieve him a bit of having to look after you as he has done to date. But now I must dash. Good luck with the date, and be sure to k
eep me posted, won't you? I adore watching love-affairs burgeon; at the beginning they're so naive!'

  'It isn't a-- ' But Donna wasn't allowed to finish. Margot's hands, gently but firmly at her back, pro-pelled her from the room.

  There could have been several reasons why she told Melford Drinan that she would have dinner with him that night, rather than the next. It might have been sheer contrariness; or that, in asking Wilmot for the loan of his car to drive herself down to the hotel, she couldn't wait to assure him, in answer to his growled, 'You'll be bumping into that fellow Vance again, I suppose,' that she knew Elyot to be away, and that her date was with someone else. But at heart she knew it was because she couldn't bear the thought of Margot's goldfish-bowl scrutiny of her evening in Melford Drinan's company. She could just hear Margot patronising her; even enlarging on the theme of Elyot's alleged responsibility for her. As if he had ever felt any in depth! Whatever he had done for her had been thrust upon him, and the only time he had sought her out voluntarily he had wanted something of her. No, she felt she would like to tell Margot, as far as obligations were concerned, honours between her and Elyot were easy.

  Meanwhile, throughout that first evening with Melford, her thoughts were following Elyot and Margot to

  Grenada; intimately together in the little island plane, staying in the same hotel. They must both be too well known to risk scandal, but their rooms might not be far apart. They would dance during dinner and Margot would make a spectacle of it with the same abandon she always brought to dancing to the insistent beat and rhythm of a West Indian band. They would talk. If Margot enlarged on Donna's alleged 'catch', would Elyot be interested? And if he were meeting the friend he had been seeing off to Grenada at the airport that first day, would he remember to relate how the 'And Son' of Torrence And Son had turned out to be the mosquito-beset girl who had overheard every word of his disparagement of Wilmot and Bran? Or had he already forgotten the incidents of a day which to her had marked her first sight and awareness of him, yet which for him was just an ordinary one in his calendar, without special importance at all?

  She went out with Melford Drinan several times after that. Whatever his business interests on. Laraye, he seemed to be master of his own time, and when he hired a car for himself, he asked her often to lunch or dine or for drinks and a swim. He was punctilious with chocolates or flowers, and when, on parting from her at night, he expected to kiss her, she let him. Unlike Elyot, he didn't claim it as a duty he owed her expectations of him, and while she was light-years away from its meaning anything to her, and he saw it as a pleasant way of bringing an evening to a close, why not?

  Since their first date they hadn't always met at the Allamanda, giving Donna to hope that, by spreading their patronage to other hotels and swimming-pools, Margot would be deprived of capital for gossip to Elyot or to anyone else.

  But they were due for dinner at the Allamanda on the day that Wilmot received a letter from the Com-

  pany, committing him, at the Company's expense, to the immediate repair of the Dial House, the condition of which had been adversely reported upon in strong terms by Mr Elyot Vance of the. Marquise estate, whose concern for the public danger was such as to cause him to offer both his own architect's services and the necessary labour for the restoration of the property—which offer the Company had been grateful to accept; and had so informed Mr Vance by current airmail, understanding that as soon as he received the Company's agreement he would put the work in hand.

  While Donna read the letter which Wilmot had handed to her, he was echoing aloud some of its formal phrases which he seemed to find particularly offensive.

  "'Strong terms." "Concern for the public danger." The wheeling and dealing of the fellow! Knew the Growers' Association couldn't give him the go-ahead to interfere, so he creeps behind my back to get a ruling from the Company which he knows I can't ignore!'

  Donna returned the letter, grateful for her father's tact in keeping her name out of the affair. `Mr Vance did give you the opportunity to act with him yourself, without his going to the Company,' she reminded Wilmot. 'On the same terms too—that he would undertake the actual work.'

  'Under threat that he would go to the Company if I didn't agree. That's blackmail, no less! Does he realise, I'd like to know, that every man-jack he puts on the job will be a trespasser on my property?'

  'I'd doubt that, if he has our Company's permission to put them there.'

  `Bah And I suppose he'll expect me to be grateful to him for doing it?'

  'And I should doubt that too,' said Donna. 'He didn't sound very much bothered about getting your approval, and since he has gone over your head, I can't

  think he will look to you for an about-face on something he'll be doing for his own satisfaction.'

  It was difficult, this sitting on a peace-fence between the two men. Previously, after Madame Hue's visit, Donna had asked Bran what, if anything, he knew of the deep causes for Wilmot's antagonism for Elyot. But Bran, sceptical and only vaguely interested, had proved Madame Hue's contention that the younger generation did not easily appreciate that its elders could love or suffer for love, and it was left to Donna, seeing both sides through the eyes of loyalty and dawning love, to wish she dared say to either man—'Enough is enough, and it's all been water under the bridge for a long, long time.' But which of them was likely to listen to her if she did?

  Sometimes on their dates Melford Drinan would call for her. Usually, when they were to meet at the Allamanda, she would drive down herself in Wilmot's car, and she did so that evening. They were to rendezvous in the salon adjoining the main bar. She couldn't see him when she arrived, so as there was a great crush there, she found a seat fairly near the door, in order to intercept him as soon as he came in.

  She saw him before he saw her. As he came through. the open swing doors abreast of several other people, Donna's glance went beyond him to notice Elyot not far behind him. She looked back at Melford and moved towards him, getting ready to smile a greeting. But he came on, seeing her, she knew from his direct look at her, but giving no sign of recognition; instead making some observation to the tall, ash-blonde girl beside him, who in turn passed it on to the exquisitely groomed, statuesque woman on her other side.

  The three laughed, and Donna, seeing Melford's solicitous hand beneath the girl's elbow, halted so suddenly that she was jostled by someone behind her.

  So they hadn't just happened to be level at the doorway. The two women were with Melford, and in consequence he had cut her dead! That he was not alone had to be the reason, for Donna was quite certain he has seen her. Moreover, when she allowed them to pass within a yard or two of her on their way into the salon, he had looked at her again, his eyes vacant as a stranger's.

  She couldn't believe it. It was an experience she had never suffered before. She stood as if rooted, a lone island of a figure around whom people had to divide. She felt waves of mortification and anger flood hot colour into her face. Had anyone who knew her seen her humiliation, she wondered—and found the question answered when a hand clamped about her wrist, holding it low, out of sight of those around her, and she found herself staring into Elyot's blazing eyes.

  Almost through clenched teeth he muttered, 'We're getting out of here. Come—'

  `What ?' She pulled against him, but his grip on

  her wrist was like a handcuff as he shouldered a way for himself and for her, out through the doors, across the bar and taking the opposite direction from the car-park, drew her the whole length of the adjoining colonnade to a point where it was deserted and shadowed.

  There he released her, freeing her with so abrupt a turn of his own wrist that she was flung round to face him. `So,' he accused her thickly, 'it took that, did it, to show you how the drip regards you? As a pretty pas the-time at best, and at worst, only just this side of a common call-girl---! '

  At that she flared, and her open palm only failed to make violent contact when he caught her hand within an inch of his chee
k, and jerked it back at her.

  `That was vixenish and kitchen maid. Don't do it again,' he warned her.

  'You called me something worse than a kitchen-maid! ' she flashed.

  `Well, was I wrong to conclude you've let yourself be treated so? Just now you were ready to greet the guy with a wreathed smile—right?'

  'We—we had a date for dinner,' she said faintly. 'And he meant you to get the message that he didn't

  want to know, being otherwise engaged—right again?' 'He cut me deliberately—yes.'

  'Spelling it out that, as I've said, you've been nothing better than a fill-gap for his leisure all these weeks. Or do you deny that he's only had to beckon, and you've gone running? Dinner, lunch, drinks—you name it. Well?'

  'It hasn't been like that. He has asked me out quite often, but I haven't always gone.'

  'No? I'll believe you if you can name six occasions when you've turned him down.'

  'There haven't been many more than six times in all. And anyway, how would you know if there had?' she demanded with the false bravado of a child caught out in a lie.

  'Oh, my dear-- ' His tone was mock-pitying of her naïveté. `Haven't you learnt yet the extent to which, in a tight little community like Laraye, we all know all that goes on, and anything we happen to miss, someone is bound to tell us, whether we're interested or not?'

  'In other words you, not interested, as you were, couldn't escape hearing about me and Melford Drinan?'

  'If no one else told me, Margot would have done. As Nature abhors a vacuum, she abhors uneven numbers among the sexes, and getting them neatly matched up, two by two, is by no means the least of her many, many talents. A pity she seems to have been wrong about Drinan's pursuit of you being for real; her instinct for

  romance doesn't usually betray her like that, but she may have been misled by the stars in your eyes, perhaps.'