by Abor, Jane
As Donna paused, searching her memory, Bran prompted, 'Ever since when?'
But she couldn't name a precise point in time. All
she knew was that if Bran were right about Margot's pre-knowledge of Melford's engagement, she must somehow have earned Margot's enmity before that afternoon when Margot had congratulated her so expansively on her capture of his interest and had enthused in the same vein over the telephone to Elyot.
So early then in their relationship? Donna questioned. But since when or why, she had no idea, and told Bran so, convincing him, she thought.
When she was alone she wondered whether she could expect Bran to challenge Margot on her behalf, though she realised she couldn't. To do so would be to admit his eavesdropping, for which Margot was likely to give him short shrift. Besides, he enjoyed his work for her too much to risk her displeasure merely in defence of a cousin. But if Margot represented a rewarding meal-ticket for Bran, Donna had no such need to placate her, nor to oblige her any longer as a 'little tourist guide', and Donna couldn't wait to opt out as soon as she had fulfilled her current appointments. She did so by asking Rosa to take no more bookings for her, and she notified Margot in a guarded letter, thanking her for asking her cooperation and affording her the chance to explore the island, but claiming that now, possibly within weeks of her return to England, she ought to give more time to Louvet and her uncle's interests, hoping that Margot would understand.
In the circumstances she didn't really expect Margot's complacence, and she wasn't going to get it, as Margot, having sent no reply in writing, made clear as Donna was leaving the hotel after her last assignment.
Margot waylaid her and asked her into her office, where with her usual over-emphasis of the most ordinary remarks, she declaimed tragically, 'Darling, this is so sudden! You can't mean to do it to me—you really can't ! '
Donna cringed from the falsity of 'Darling'. How completely insincere was it possible to get? 'I must, I'm afraid,' she said shortly.
'But why, my pet, why? At the very height of my season and you such a total success with everyone you took out—why?'
(If you don't know why, you'd better start guessing.) Aloud Donna said, 'I told you my reasons in my letter. I came to see my uncle and Bran and Louvet and to discuss some problems on my father's behalf, and we've made very little headway yet. I've got to give them more time than I have up to now.'
'Pff ! As if we didn't all know Louvet is past hope, darling. And, hand on heart, would you say Wilmot Torrence either notices or cares whether you're there or not?' Margot coaxed, but after Donna had doggedly said nothing, her tone changed, turned ugly.
see,' she nodded. 'It suited you to make a convenience of my offer to give you a free run of the island, a lot of free meals, social openings, but as soon as it suits you better not to honour your side of the bargain, you decide to skip—isn't that so?'
Donna allowed fairly, 'It could look like that to you, but I did give you notice in writing and I told the desk not to book any more tours for me.'
'For reasons which a blind man could see through! ' Margot scoffed. 'Oh no, my dear. I know perfectly well why you are piqued enough to let me down. You were so flattered by Melford Drinan's attentions and you set such store on snaring him that when his fiancée turned up and you realised he had just been playing around, you felt you had to blame someone, and you've picked on me! This was the only way you could think of getting back at me, and so—'
Donna said evenly, 'All I've done is to end an arrangement which suited us both when we made it, and
I think I've honoured it as far as I was obliged to.' Looking Margot straight in the eye, she held her glance as she added, 'And how could I, in all justice, blame you, when you couldn't have known any more than I did that Melford Drinan was only marking time with me? Because if you had known, you wouldn't have encouraged me to cultivate him, would you? Even as a casual friend, you would have warned me against taking him seriously? Surely—wouldn't you?'
Margot bit her lip and looked away. 'Of course,' she snapped. 'What do you think?'
'That if you didn't, I couldn't possibly blame you, and don't,' said Donna. 'But equally I'm asking you to accept my reasons for not helping you any more, though at the same time thanking you for giving me the chance.'
'Oh, cut the formalities! You sound like a model letter of resignation from Every Business Woman's Primer!' Margot declared. 'And meanwhile, since I don't accept your reasons at their face value, you will forgive me, won't you, if I make a shrewd guess that, since the job only produced for you a woman-chaser as a lover, you feel that, given the time for the hunt, you could do better on your own? Now let's see—what men have we introduced you to? Whom could you have in your range. Even Elyot for one, I shouldn't wonder. For another
'If that's your guess, I've no choice but to forgive you for making it, have I?' Donna cut in.
'No—have you?'
'Even though it's Wrong.'
'Ah, but is it wrong?'
'Yes,' said Donna flatly, and turned on her heel.
Now she had made an open enemy, and it did not occur to her until later that she had probably allowed Margot to believe she had been deeply hurt by Mel-
ford's defection. She thought she had convinced both Elyot and Bran otherwise, but for the want of a firm word to the contrary, she had given Margot the petty triumph of thinking she had been painfully jilted. Later too Bran accused her of making too much of Margot's inexplicable hostility. He himself hadn't many illusions about Margot, but since Donna had enjoyed her tourist guide work, wasn't she doing the proverbial cutting off her own nose by opting out of it? To which Donna said 'Probably', but that her nose would be less injured than would her self-respect if she continued under any obligation to Margot.
Now her time was her own again, and contrastingly empty. She swam and sunbathed and walked alone, and when Bran was not using the mini-woke, she mastered it sufficiently to drive it into the town to do shopping for the house. It was while she was down there on the afternoon before she was due to spend the day on Marquise that she was hailed across Navarre Street by Irma Hue in her car, stopped so abruptly that it rocked on its ancient springs and evoked hoots and angry yells from the frustrated drivers behind it.
Unperturbed, Irma waved them through and repeated her call to Donna. 'He, Donna child—something to show you! Come over, will you?'
Donna, who had parked the mini-moke and was walking, went across. 'Get in,' Irma ordered and, as casually as if she and her car had a deserted racetrack to themselves, went on, 'What do you think? After being so rude, as good as ordering me out of his house, Elyot Vance—'
'Yes, well—' Donna cut in, in favour of the increasing stream of traffic the car was holding up, `oughtn't you to move on, find somewhere to park? You aren't very popular, stopping here, you know. People sound as if they're getting mad.'
'M'm, so they do. Can't wait a moment nowadays, folks.' Glowering at the first car she waved on, Irma went into gear and shot forward herself, grazing a kerb as she turned abruptly on to St Vincent Square where she found a parking slot under the saman trees and halted the car again.
'Now,' she turned to Donna, 'about Elyot. Just as if we had last parted with kisses, he rang me up the other day—something he wanted me to do for him; something he thought that only I could do.'
'And you said?' Donna prompted.
'Forgave him, of course, as one does with men like Elyot, and asked what it was, though he didn't tell me until he had asked whether I remembered the appearance of the Dial House before your uncle let it go to ruin, and even further back than that, to the time when the whole area was under sugar and the estate planter had lived there. To which I said of course I did, but why did he want to know.'
'So why did he?'
'Because he wanted me to do a painting of it—in watercolour or oils, as I pleased—to give his architect the idea of how he wanted it restored, exactly as it was, say, up to twenty years ago, before sugar failed en
tirely, and when Marquise and the rest of the area were not fully on bananas. About when it was singing its swan-song, he said, before it was left to stand empty for years.'
'I remember it faintly myself from about twelve fourteen years ago,' said Donna. 'It was painted bright red all over, picked out in green, and there really was a sundial in the courtyard.'
'And so I've shown it—look I ' Irma produced a portfolio from which she drew an unmounted painting in watercolours. 'He can have it in oils instead if he wishes,' she said. 'But I'm taking this up to him to see if
it meets his idea of what he wanted. Does it meet your memory of it, child—tell me?'
Donna was prepared to be pleased, and was. The walls of Mousquetaire were hung with tasteful paintings of flowers, still life studies and landscapes, all proving Wilmot's scorn of Irma's skill as an artist to be yet another of his soar prejudices. And the Dial House, as Donna's childhood memory pictured it, had come to life under her brush.
Irma's angle of view of it was just right. Its reds were gaudy, its greens were vivid; the tub flowers which be-decked its balcony a flamboyant mass of colour, its surrounding paved courtyard and its sundial a sombre grey by contrast. Donna breathed, 'It's just like! Exactly as I think I remember it! '
Irma shared her appraisal of the painting. 'You think Elyot will approve it for his architect?'
'I'm sure he should. But—' Misgivings had struck Donna.
'But what? You have doubts, child?'
'Well, it's my uncle's property. Is he likely to give Elyot the right to restore it as he wishes?'
'Huh! Who pays the piper
Donna took that as a literal -question and answered it. 'The Company will,' she said. .
'Tch! Such ignorance of your own proverbs! It's to be Elyot's time and Elyot's men, and Elyot's right to call the tune of how it's to be done, isn't it? Not your Company's, all the way from England, and certainly not Wilmot's, who could have rebuilt the place as Noah's Ark or the Taj Mahal, if he hadn't preferred to watch it fall apart about his e-ars,' ruled Irma tartly. She put away the painting and made ready to move off. Donna got out and waved her away, not relishing at all Wilmot's reaction to Elyot's latest move to override him But she was pleased. If Elyot had his way—and she
backed him to, though wondering what whim had prompted his plan for an exact restoration—she was going to like the thought, when she went back to England, of the Dial House a ruin no longer and of its sundial telling the hours.
She woke the next morning to a tropical downpour, the Devil's heavy curtain of cloud showing no break anywhere.
'What happens when it's as wet as this?' she asked of the sleepy Juno who had called her at first light. 'Do the men start cutting the crop, or do they wait until it clears a bit first?'
'Oh, dey cut,' yawned Juno. 'Banana ship sail midnight latest, wait for no man. Crop cut, carried, sorted for trash, washed, graded, packed, loaded, down on quay by eight evening—or else. But no need you go over Marquise yet, Missus Donna, do you drown on way.'
So Donna waited until the storm abated somewhat, when she set out clad in her own good raincoat, overshoes contributed by Juno and sheltered by the huge carriage umbrella which was the common property of the house.
She carried a picnic lunch in a deep pocket and with no wind to drive the rain either into her face or against her back, she rather enjoyed the walk over to Marquise, and by the time she reached the big main store and packing-station, the rain was already giving over. And as evidence that the cutting had indeed begun to time at dawn, the first loads of sorting were already coming in from the plantations in open trucks running on narrow-gauge rails, which were the legacy to the banana industry from the sugar harvests it had superseded.
Watching the waiting sorters' concerted rush upon
the trucks, Donna reflected amusedly that the cliché for all this would be 'All was bustle and confusion.' But that it was an ordered confusion was proved by the speed with which the trucks were cleared, the huge stems stripped of their protective wrappings and the dexterity with which the women workers separated the bands of fruit and picked the spent florets from the tips of each single banana.
Next came the first washing under a conveyor-belt stream of running water, and the discard of bruised or spotted fruit. A second washing left a film of natural latex upon the surface of the water; a third cleared the skins of traces of pest-sprays, and then the expertise of long experience graded and packed the bananas into the cartons in which, softly nestled, they would travel under refrigeration to England.
The crop came in; went through its routine; the piles of cartons became of the area and height of average rooms before the transport lorries checked them out arid away—the whole process one of swift precision in sharp contrast to the consequent welter of discarded polythene, trash of leaves, stems, damaged fruit, tyre-tracks and trodden mud which formed the store's inevitable underfoot approach.
Time passed; it was noon and the meal-break before Donna realised it. She was preparing to eat her sandwiches when Maurice Couseau, who had had little leisure to spare for her during the morning, insisted on taking her to lunch at his bungalow. This, as was Elyot's house, was perched high, with a full view of the rolling acreage of Marquise. Over the meal with his young wife the talk was of the day's crop, its unexpected heaviness and the battle for the time needed to get it all away to the deadline of eight o'clock at the docks.
`What happens if you can't make the deadline?' Donna asked.
'It must be kept—by us to eight p.m., by the loading dockers to an hour before sailing time,' was the blunt reply. 'We can ask for an extension, but we can't be sure of getting it, and as bananas begin to ripen at once, any that were left behind would make for dead loss.'
'And have any ever to be left behind?'
Maurice Couseau met that with a short laugh. 'On Marquise, never without very good reason, and to my respected employer nothing much short of a major Act of God which struck his whole work force at one fell blow would be likely to constitute a "good reason",' he said. At which Mrs Couseau protested, 'Oh, Maurice, that makes Elyot sound like a positive monster!'
'Monster? Not a bit of it. just a man with a flair for gauging just what he can expect of people and usually getting it—that's all,' he defended Elyot stoutly.
When they drove downhill again he dropped Donna among the banana lines, for her to watch the hacking down of the bunches and their loading on the heads of the waiting girls who would carry them so to the trucks. Amid cries of encouragement and a lot of laughter Donna tried on one of the coltas—the hard fibre crowns which spread the weight of the load without the girls' having to put up a hand to balance it. Their carriage was superb, long custom making nothing of the weight, but when a stem was placed on Donna's colta, her knees buckled and after a few tottering steps she had to beg to be free of it.
Towards the end of the afternoon she rode back to the sorting shed on one of the trucks which, arrived there, had to take its place in a queue of at least a dozen others as yet unloaded. The activity inside the shed was frenzied and matters were not eased by its having begun to rain again. The great wooden doors had to be slid to and the humidity behind them was intense. Trucks which had been emptied turned and squelched away
through the mud for fresh loads, the raw material of the skilled work which went inexorably on—against the clock,
Just inside the door where the truck put Donna down Maurice Couseau stood with Elyot, who nodded a greeting to Donna and said 'Just a minute ', delaying her from moving away as he turned again to his manager. 'How many more?' he asked him.
A figure was named, and both men looked at their watches.
'Going to be tight,' said Elyot.
'Too tight for comfort. Any chance of an extension?'
'Doubtful. Anyway,' Elyot glanced out at the pounding rain, 'this should slow things up a bit on the lines, and if we can absorb this backlog of stuff, we could catch up and be ready for the rest that's to come in. Le
t's go.'
As the manager moved off Elyot turned again to Donna. 'This is Marquise with its shirt off—the tatty end of the business deal which finishes up on the ice-cream counters as a banana split. What do you think of it?' he asked.
'I'm glad to have seen it. It's exciting. Is it always as hectic as this?'
'Not always, though when it isn't, our pride needs to pretend that it is, it being a tradition in the local clubs that no planter worthy of the name ever admits to having suffered a light shipment day. It isn't done; honour must be served.'
Donna looked about her. 'Is there anything I could do to help?'
'Is there anything you think you could do?'
'I don't know. Perhaps—well, I might pick off the little flowers on the bananas.'
He shook his head. 'A bit of a puny contribution. Our girls have quicker fingers than yours. But some-
thing that would help—could you collect all these moppets who are hindering their mothers, and keep them quiet in a corner? Are you any good with children?'
Donna looked about her at the toddlers who were underfoot, variously pulling at their mothers' skirts, fighting among themselves and playing improvised games with discarded bananas. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I'm very fond of them. But would they come to me?'
`If you do a Pied Piper act with the lure of some goodies that Couseau keeps in the office against emergencies like today's overtime working for the girls, who'd be taking their babes home about now on a less busy day. Then perhaps you could tell them a story or organise a game. Anyway, wait around, and I'll lay on the operation ! '
The children came willingly enough, squatting round Donna, round-eyed and eager as she shared out the sugared biscuits and sweetmeats which Elyot brought to her before rolling up his sleeves and making one of the team of men clamping shut and stencilling 'Marquise' on the cartons of fruit.
A game? Or a story? A round or two of Hunt the Banana proved popular; Oranges and Lemons, less so, since no one wanted to make an archway with Donna, thus missing out on the heady excitement of being caught under it. They played Tig until the younger ones tired, and then Donna, despairing of choosing a story acceptable to such mixed ages, hit on the idea of suggesting that they tell her a Larayan story instead.