Tree of Paradise

by Abor, Jane

Elyot said, 'Irma will tell you,' and left. And Irma, slightly on the defensive, said, 'Of course I was going to explain. It's a business matter I brought up with Elyot which indirectly involves you and your cousin, and Elyot suggested we all meet at Marquise to discuss it. Will you come?'

  'If you think I should. But what kind of business?' Donna puzzled.

  'I don't know that I ought to tell you before Brandon knows,' Irma evaded.

  I thought you said he did?'

  `No, I only meant that I had asked him to come to meet Elyot tonight; and he's coming. So let's leave it until then, may we?'

  Reluctantly, her curiosity aroused, Donna left it, and Bran, questioned, knew no more than she did. He borrowed his father's car, and all the way over to Marquise they canvassed each other's opinions as to what 'it' could be all about.

  Irma was there before them. Elyot poured fruit punches and they settled on the verandah. 'Shall I explain, or will you?' Irma asked him, and did so in answer to his 'It's your idea. Go ahead.'

  `Well, it's about Louvet,' she began. 'We all know how things stand. Wilmot doesn't want it and won't work it. Elyot wants to add it to Marquise and make a success of it.' She looked at Donna. 'If it were put on the market for sale, your Company would expect Wilmot to take the offer of the highest bidder, and Elyot would see to it that his was the best offer. But Wilmot wouldn't sell to Elyot, he says. And so, as it's to the interest of all of you that it should be sold, I've suggested to Elyot that there is a way round that. Always supposing that we agree to take it, of course.'

  There was a momentary silence. Then Bran said, !I'd say I'm game for anything that would rid us of Louvet. But why should you bother?'

  Irma flushed slightly. 'Because Wilmot is my friend, and he has been saddled with that white elephant for too long—'

  'Which conjures up a most bizarre image—Dad buckling at the knees, while this milk-white elephant . rides high. Wish I could draw,' murmured Bran. 'But go on—what's the scheme?'

  `This,' said Irma. 'That somebody makes a private offer—of a size that it would be madness to refuse for Louvet in its present state—either through the Company or to Wilmot direct, and as it would come from quite a different quarter than from Elyot and would even appear to cut him out, mightn't Wilmot be fairly likely to take it?'

  Again silence as Donna and Bran digested this. Then Donna repeated, ' "Somebody"? Who?'

  Irma shrugged. 'Just someone. It wouldn't matter who.'

  Donna felt a chill of foreboding. `A—a fictitious person, you mean? A cover for someone else who was really putting up the money? It would all be done under wraps—through solicitors or something, until it was signed and settled? But all the time there wouldn't be this mythical purchaser.' She looked straight at Elyot, through him. 'The offer would really be—yours?'

  He inclined his head. 'That was the idea.'

  'And Irma's, you say? But you go along with it? You're willing to play? Just as Bran says he's game for anything to be rid of Louvet, so you're game for anything to get your hands on it? You'd even stoop to this —this charade of a scheme to deceive Uncle Wilmot, and I don't know how you dare!'

  She broke off, her features working, as Bran put in, 'Easy, girl, easy! What's so wrong with it as a scheme, anyway? It would sell Louvet, which everyone agrees would be a good thing, and in doing it, it would save Dad's face, don't you see?'

  'Save his face!' Donna echoed, almost beside herself. 'Save his face—for how long? For just so long and no longer, I suppose, than it suited you all to pretend that it wasn't Ely ot who clinched the deal? So that when the time arrived for the cover to be dropped and for Elyot to start working Louvet, which would have to happen sooner or later, what about Uncle Wilmot's "saved" face then, you tell me? What?'

  Her glance had travelled from one to the other of them, her outraged questions addressed to them all, and each of them answered her in turn.

  Irma said uncomfortably, 'But once Wilmot learned the truth, it would be too late, and he would have to come round in the end.'

  Bran said, 'It sounds to me like a classic case of "ends and means". If the end result is satisfactory,

  what's wrong with the only means that are likely to bring it about?' ,

  Elyot said, 'It doesn't seem to have occurred to you that we could have laid the thing on and carried it out without any obligation to consult you. Bran, yes, since he, as his father's son, has a financial interest in the future of Louvet. But you, no. It was simply that I, for one, wanted your reaction, and I'm sure Irma thought it fair to get it too.'

  'And you've got it, haven't you?' she retorted furiously. 'Or must I spell it out that I think the whole thing is despicable and unworthy of any of you?'

  'No, you've made yourself quite clear as to that already,' Elyot said evenly.

  'Good,' she snapped, and looked at Irma. 'I meant I thought it was unworthy of you,' she said. 'I know you've interests of your own with regard to Uncle Wilmot and you want to see him rid of—how did you put it?—his brokenbacked banana patch, but that you would hatch a plot like this and think I'd be a party to its going through—no? You say you're his friend, but who needs enemies with friends who can scheme like this?'

  She dealt with Bran next. 'And you see nothing wrong with it? Just because it's a, way of getting rid of Louvet, you'd stand by and see Uncle Wilmot tricked into the only way that could be achieved. Well, I won't. You'll all have to think again. And as for you—' she turned on Elyot, her voice shaking—'I suppose you are so used to getting your own way that it didn't occur to you you might fail this time if you backed Irma's scheme? Well, Bran warned me about you very early on—said that everything you touched was a success and there was nothing that power or money couldn't get for you. And it's money here, isn't it? Secret money. You've only to wave a big enough

  cheque, signed by any other name than yours, and you are home and dry—you hope.'

  She broke off, needing to still her quivering lips. Still loving the shape, the presence, the potency of the man she'd thought he was, she hated the complacent duplicity which had fallen in with Irma's scheme; assuming that if money and deception would make it succeed, he'd go along with the deception, and the money—his—would be there to be used.

  'You hope,' she repeated meaningly, and stood up, wiping off her damp palms, one against the other, as if ridding them of a taint. More controlled now, she added, 'Meanwhile, if any private offer for Louvet comes to Uncle, either through the Company or from anywhere else, I shall advise him to put it straight into the nearest rubbish bin, which is where it should belong. Is that clear?'

  When no one answered her, she thrust aside the drink which she had scarcely touched, and moved far enough away to cause Elyot to rise and demand sharply, 'Where are you going?'

  She turned. 'Home to Louvet,' she said.

  'How?'

  'If Bran isn't ready to come, I'll walk.'

  'After dark? That distance? You'll do nothing of the kind. Brandon-!'

  Bran didn't move. 'She's had her say, calling us all twisters. She can darn well wait until I'm ready,' he said sulkily.

  Elyot's eyes flashed anger. 'She's going now, and she's not walking back alone. You will take her, and if she refuses to get into your car, I'll put her in bodily myself.' His imperiously jerked head brought Bran to his feet. Finishing his drink, he nodded 'See you—' to Irma and Elyot and followed Donna out, muttering

  as he opened the car door for her, 'Nice matey trip back this is going to be!'

  Bran's sarcasm had been right about the drive back to Louvet, and was equally so with regard to the relations between himself and Donna during the time which followed.

  When they had to do so, they spoke with studied politeness. Otherwise they avoided each other as far as was possible, and though Juno worried that young Mister now spent too much time at 'dat hotel', neglecting Donna, Wilmot's detachment from the everyday scene appeared to notice nothing amiss.

  Irma Hue rang up once when Donna was out and lef
t a message with Juno, suggesting that as she had something of interest to tell Donna, Donna should ring back. But Donna did not ring; nor did Irma telephone again, and she did not come over. Elyot made no sign at all.

  Thus isolated, Donna spent more time alone and increasingly more with her uncle. To her father she wrote that she saw no prospect ahead of his willingly quitting Louvet; that if the Company decided it must cut its losses, it must, in her opinion, act independently of Wilmot, and that, her trouble-shooting mission having failed, perhaps she ought now to return to England. If the estate were disposed of, she thought Bran could be trusted to be able to make his way in fields of his own choice, but she supposed and hoped that the Company would adequately pension Wilmot and perhaps allow him to retain the Louvet bungalow. She had not yet had a reply to this letter when Wilmot received a small bulky package by post from Elyot—the keys to the completed Dial House.

  Wilmot showed them to Donna with a grudging, 'Something, I suppose, for the fellow to acknowledge

  that it's my property he's been tinkering with. Want to go down and see what he's done with it?'

  The suggestion surprised Donna, for on his own reluctant forays on to the neglected land, he must have seen the work in progress. But she went with him as willingly as she did now on any expedition he offered her.

  The workmen had all gone, their rubble cleared; tubs of flowering plants were in place on the balcony, the floors were scrubbed, the windows were clean and there was a clock in the end gable. Wilmot tramped all over the building and the courtyard and said finally, 'It's as close to the original as I could have done it my-self. But why should he bother, when his ,only concern was for his brats of trespassers? And how did he know what it looked like in the sugar days?'

  Donna said, 'He must have remembered something about it; I could, and I think he asked Madame Hue to paint a picture of it as she remembered it, and his architect worked from that.'

  'And how do you know all this?' Wilmot asked suspiciously.

  'She showed me her painting before she took it to him,' Donna was able to answer with truth.

  'Huh! Paint—Irma Hue? Wonder the architect was able to tell which way up to look at it,' Wilmot snorted.

  'Well, I thought it was very good,' Donna felt obliged to admit.

  'And what sort of judge of art are you?' he retorted tartly—a question to which he obviously expected no answer.

  So the halcyon days of the dry season passed—cool blue mornings turning white with heat by noon, watered less often now by rain flurries which never lasted lcrng, 'calm golden evenings when a clear sky

  paled to lemon, or a cloud-wracked one to purple and flame as the sun went down.

  Anxious to learn the pattern of the climate and conditions in the months ahead when she would not be there—what about the torrid heat, the tropical rains, the risk of typhoons which the tourists shunned?— Donna heard from Juno the Larayan rhyme which said it all about the hurricane season-

  `June—too soon;

  `July—stand by;

  'August—if it must;

  `September—remember;

  `October—all over,'

  and though Juno assured her, 'Long time passing sin' hurricane catch Laraye. Cyclone no blow now'day,' Donna regretted that she would not know the heady, dangerous excitement of looking for a hurricane which might or might not come. Long before September or October she would have gone back to England.

  Immediately ahead there loomed a day of Carnival for Calvigne. It would mark no particular event, no saint's day, no special reason for making public whoopee. But periodically the town needed both to let off its high spirits and to put on a show for the tourists, and for this purpose one day was as good as any other.

  Donna heard of Carnival's promised delights from Juno and saw the preparations for it when she went down into the town. Bunting was looped between the lamp-standards; all the windows on the route of the carnival parade sported flags of every possible significance. Donna spotted among others the Red Ensign and the yellow cholera flag—Calvigne wasn't a cosmopolitan port for nothing! The shops and the market would be closed; the bars would be open. The schools, the town council, the Banana Growers' Association, the Yacht Club would be represented; five steel bands

  would accompany the parade; everyone's house-helps and gardeners would expect the day dff, or if not granted it, would take it. All the hotels were laying on parties and dances for the evening; the nightclubs expected to be serving breakfast the following day.

  On the day itself Juno, peacock-garbed and flower-hatted, 'went down by bus to meet Maria and Choc. Bran offered Donna no invitation to go with him; he merely announced that he would be sleeping at the Allamanda that night. Wilmot said that one Larayan carnival was just like another and that in his lifetime he had already seen too many. Donna would probably like to see the parade, but she couldn't have the car as he would be needing it. So Donna, lacking both escort and transport, decided to go by the next bus to watch the morning's procession and displays, planning to get back before Wilmot did, probably in the afternoon. On leaving to catch the bus she asked when she could expect him and where he was going, and he told her, naming an area she knew in the rain forest. He would be back in 'time for dinner, well before dark, he said.

  In the town the streets were a kaleidoscope of moving colour as a surging tide of Larayans, clad in their best and gaudiest, flowed over pavements and roadways, looking for the best vantage points from which to watch the parade. There was singing, there was laughter, there was picnicking on punches and hamburgers; the few cars which had ventured on to the streets were jeered and catcalled as they came virtually to a standstill against the stream.

  The very mass' of humanity might have been frightening if it hadn't been so light-hearted and good-natured in expectation of a day which it meant to make its own.

  Donna found a spot, shaded by a shop awning, from which to see the parade, which had begun at ten o'clock and was taking upward of two hours to snake and

  curvet and gambol its way round the town. 'The bands were spaced along its length, vying with each other to maintain a beat to which people could march; the banners of countless fellowships ballooned above the company; the decorated floats were the signal for screams of excited -appreciation from the audience along the route. There were hideously masked devils and dragon men, children in space-gear, clowns, angels, cowboys. Every now and then things were held up while the clowns gave a tumbling act or the cowboys mimed a shoot-out against Red Indians. The ultimate goal of the parade was the town cricket-g-round where a grandstand had been erected from which the floats would be judged.

  Donna ordered a light lunch in one of the marquees on the ground, knowing she must exercise more than usual of the necessary patience in waiting to be served. She hadn't seen anyone she knew, but she didn't lack the companionship of people ready to chat and to invite her comments on the fairness or wicked prejudice shown by the judges. She stayed until the awards had been made, the parade disbanded and it was time to catch the return bus. She was glad to have seen Laraye at its gayest, most innocently jubilant For all she had had to spend it alone, she was going to remember this day ...

  Back at the bungalow in the late afternoon, she had a swim, made herself a pot of lemon tea, collected the makings of a prawn vol-au-vent and fruit salad for dinner, then lay on a sun-lounger on the verandah, reading, until the sun went down.

  Until then she hadn't expected Wilmot, and though he had promised 'well before dark', she didn't question his lateness until it was really dark. She busied herself laying the table, preparing the salad, mixing his pre-dinner punch and getting ready to put the vol-au-

  vent in the oven as soon as he came in.'

  But he did not come. Anxious now, more than an hour after sunset, she fidgeted from verandah to kitchen, making jobs to do, telling herself she mustn't worry. He had the car; it could have broken down where he could neither get help nor telephone. The road through from Soubion, his objective,
was a lonely place after dark ... too lonely, no more than a mountain track for part of the way. Donna shivered at the thought of Wilmot marooned somewhere up there, and though her reason argued that he must have been benighted by accident many times before, nothing of the sort had happened while she had been in Laraye, and she didn't know what to do.

  At any other time Juno would have been there. So, about now, would Bran have been. But Juno, who would wait for the dancing and the bonfires, wouldn't be back for hours, and Bran had said he wouldn't be home that night at all: But something had to be done, someone must be told, someone who could help her, who had a car, as she, hadn't one at her disposal.

  She stood, hesitant, looking at the telephone. If she hadn't rejected Madame Hue's call to her, she might have rung Mousquetaire for advice. But Irma, anyway, was probably at the Carnival herself. It had to be Bran then. By now he was probably at the Allamanda for its evening party. Though supposing he weren't—?

  She picked up the receiver, got the number, gave her message to the porter who answered, 'Mister Brandon? Dunno if he here, missus. But wait. I go find.'

  He was a long time away. Donna fiddled with the telephone cord, picked at a stray thread on her dress, listened too for the sound of the car coming down the lane, and jumped in foolish dismay when a crackle in the receiver indicated that the porter had come back and was at the other end of the line. Or was it Bran?

  'Yes? Yes?' she croaked impatiently.. 'Is that you, Bran? Listen

  But the voice which cut in upon her was neither Bran's nor the porter's. Of any voice she least expected to hear, it was Elyot's.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ELYOT said, 'Donna? You wanted Brandon? Well, he's been paged, but he doesn't seem to be here. Would you like to leave a message? He shall get it as soon as he turns up.'

  She didn't know what to say. She had banked on being able to summon Bran and the mini-moke. 'Yes ... no. That is—' she hesitated. 'Leaving a message Won't do. Do you know perhaps where could reach him?'