The Wild Land

by Isobel Chace

  “It is a good thing your Charles is not looking at you now!” her father jeered at her. “What are you—a hippopotamus that you must go wallowing in the mud?”

  His daughter didn’t answer. She got up and poured some steaming coffee into his cup and then sat down again. He took a sip, watching her closely over the top of the cup. With a gesture of distaste he snorted into the liquid, spilling it all over the table.

  “It tastes of acorns!” he shouted. “It is not the war now, that I should have to put up with such filthy stuff. Make me some fresh, girl! I’ll not have your leftovers!”

  With a shrug, Marie-Françoise got to her feet again. “You will not think me rude,” she said gently to Emma, “if I suggest you go now. You can see for yourself how it is here, and I have no wish to embarrass you. Or your grandmother,” she added as an afterthought.

  Emma nodded. Secretly she was thankful for the opportunity to go. That horrible man!

  “I’ll see you soon?” she asked.

  The French girl nodded.

  “Oui, I shall be over one day this week.”

  “Moi aussi!” Monsieur Clement put in. “I shall have to hand you over the titles of the land you have purchased, n’est-ce pas?”

  Emma drew herself up.

  “That will not be necessary, monsieur,” she said, unconsciously imitating her grandmother at her most dignified. “My solicitor is dealing with the purchase.”

  Marie-Françoise blenched.

  “But no!” she exclaimed. “It is not possible! You cannot have sold more land, Papa? And not to Emma? Oh, what will Charles say when he hears?”

  “What should he say?” her father demanded. “None of his business! And none of yours. Make the coffee! That is all you are good for! And, as for you,” he rounded on Emma, “mind your own business, and don’t come snooping around here. I don’t care for spies! Do we understand one another?”

  “Perfectly,” Emma snapped.

  She would have left without a single backward glance, but she knew she couldn’t do that. She had to make it clear to Marie-Françoise that she didn’t hold her responsible in any way for her father. Deliberately she went over to the French girl and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

  “Be seeing you,” she said in English, and walked out of the kitchen into the clean air outside.

  She tried to pretend to herself that she had not seen the tears in the other girl’s eyes, or felt that blinding pity when her father had spoken to her so unkindly. One did not like to be pitied for one’s relations.

  She saddled up the mare with trembling hands, and mounted with the help of a mounting block conveniently placed at one end of the yard. The mare was skittish in spite of her hard work with the bull. She shied away from the gate and it was as much as Emma could do to hold her and to bring her back again under control. Once they had left the manade she gave her her head, however,-and they sailed across the dusty, wild land at a mad pace, both of them anxious to leave the Clements as far as possible behind them.

  For the first time Emma wished she had never come to the Camargue, had never met Charles, and certainly that she had never been such a fool as to buy any of Monsieur Clement’s land.

  Easter came and went. They celebrated in the French manner with a leg of lamb and the bowls of decorated eggs. It was a long, lazy, family day and Emma felt very much a part of that family. Even the highly polished furniture and the scarlet curtains, the kitchen copper and the checked shirts of the men seemed as familiar as if she had known them all her life.

  Her grandmother was the natural pivot of the proceedings. She sat at the top of the table, looking) younger than she had recently and more beautiful than ever, and accepted their compliments as though they were hers by right. The old lady looked truly happy, and perhaps that was sufficient reward for Emma’s coming.

  “The gipsies are beginning to arrive,” she announced with a pleased smile. “Emma will like to see them. We must make some arrangement to attend the festival, Charles.”

  Emma cast an oblique look at Charles through her eyelashes. She seldom looked at him directly since she had discovered that Marie-Françoise intended to marry him. It was better not to, for she liked to look at him. She liked the way his dark hair fitted his scalp and the humorous cast to his eyes—they were arrogant too, but this didn’t matter to her any longer. She even thought she rather liked arrogant men. Now he was looking frankly amused.

  “I believe you have as much faith in Sara as any of them,” he teased Madame Yourievska.

  “I live here!” Madame retorted. “I see the gipsies coming from all over the world. This is enough for me!”

  “Who is Sara?” Emma asked.

  Charles gave her a slow grin.

  “Well,” he began, “some time after the death of Christ, Mary Jacobi, sister to Our Lady, Mary Salome, the mother of James and John, Mary Magdalene, Martha and Lazarus, and one or two others, were cast adrift in a small boat, together with their dark-skinned servant Sara. They drifted across the Mediterranean and landed on the Camargue at Les Saintes Maries de la Mer. Just when they came in sight of land, Sara panicked and jumped overboard, and she would have drowned if Mary Salome hadn’t thrown her her cloak which miraculously became a raft and followed them in to the shore. The gipsies consider Sara to be their patron, and they almost all come and pay their respects to her at least once in their lifetime.”

  “From England too?”

  “A few. Mostly they come from Germany and Scandinavia. It’s quite a festival! You can hear some very fine music there.” His smile grew. “Do you want to go?”

  Emma blinked rapidly. Of course she wanted to go—but not with him! He belonged to Marie-Françoise.

  “Perhaps we could form a party, Grand’mere?” she suggested timidly.

  “We shall see,” that lady temporized. Emma thought that she probably knew exactly why she had suggested it and that she didn’t approve. It was Charles, however, who looked annoyed.

  “So that you can ask Sam, I suppose,” he said coldly.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Why not indeed!” he said witheringly. He turned away from her and gave all his attention to her grandmother, who loved nothing better than to have the undivided attention of any attractive man. Emma felt rather left out, although she knew it was largely her own fault, and she was feminine enough to resent the fact that Charles should ignore her so completely, even if he wanted to.

  Her curiosity was roused, though, to see these gipsies. It sounded romantic that they should all gather together once every year in this desolate corner of France. It was fitting, somehow, in the same way that it is fitting for the Moslem to go to Mecca.

  Everybody else was going to the corrida in Arles. The most famous matadors came from Spain for the occasion, but Emma was secretly convinced that bullfighting was not for her, and she was glad to have something else to do. She would ride out alone to Les Saintes Maries de la Mer and see the gipsies and amuse herself in the best way she could. She might even be able to think of some way of telling her grandmother of the land she had bought.

  Easter had been late that year, but even so Sara’s Day was not until May the twenty-second, and so very few had come as yet to the Camargue. Emma wandered round the empty streets and stopped for coffee at the little Flamingo Cafe. It was only on her way home that she saw a gipsy caravan with a GB sign attached to the back of it.

  “Come and have your fortune told, my pretty,” a laughing voice called out to her in English.

  She turned quickly and laughed back at the woman.

  “Now?” she asked.

  The gipsy called to a child to hold Emma’s mare and beckoned her into the caravan.

  “Come in, love, and I’ll do you for free, seeing that you’re an English lass yourself. Heard about you, I have. You’ll be the one who’s over here seeing your grandmother?”

  Emma grinned.

  “How do you get your news so fast?” she asked.

  The gipsy w
oman shrugged her shoulders.

  “I always come early,” she said. “It pays to know the local news—all part of the trade, you might say.”

  She led the way into the caravan that seemed bigger than Emma would have believed possible and sat her down in the sitting-room part of the van in a comfortable easy chair.

  “Cup o’ tea, love? Just pass those cups, will you, and we’ll be ready in a tick. My, but these Continentals don’t know how to get themselves comfortable in the same way that we do! Wouldn’t come, only to pay my respects to Sara.”

  “But can you understand all the others who come?” Emma asked.

  “We get by. Course, we’re a bit rusty, but it’s surprising how it all comes back to one. And you should hear the arguments that go on! Should a word be pronounced this way or that way! By the time they’ve finished I’m all which-a-way myself! Here we are, dearie, a nice cuppa, just like I promised.”

  And there it was! A real English cup of tea! Emma sipped it appreciatively.

  “This is marvellous. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it,” she said with a smile.

  “That’s right. You enjoy it, dear. And I’ll tell your hand while you’re drinking it.” She took both Emma’s hands in hers and peered down at them. “Ah, ah!” she said. “The tall, dark stranger!”

  Emma pulled her hands away and took another sip of tea.

  “Not such a stranger!” the gipsy said dryly. “But you haven’t known him long! I’m sorry, my dear, but it looks as though your future is all buttoned up.”

  Emma laughed a little bleakly.

  “Except that he’s going to marry someone else! It was kind of you to give me a cup of tea, but I’m afraid I really should be going now.”

  She put her cup down on the table with decision, but the gipsy only shook her head.

  “Stay and chat a while, my dear. The boy will see to your horse.” She went to the doorway and shouted out something and then came and sat down again. “You wouldn’t think he was Romany born and bred, would you? Doesn’t even know enough about a horse to walk it up and down!”

  It was sad, Emma thought, that the old ways were dying out. Soon they would be just like everybody else, conforming to a way of life they had despised for so long.

  “Does he like coming to France?” she asked.

  “He don’t mind. Mind you, I don’t like it much myself, but I thought it’d do us all good to have a bit of a holiday abroad this year.” She poured them each out another cup of tea. “Want to know what else is in your hand, dearie?”

  Emma shook her head.

  “You won’t be offended? But I don’t really believe in it.” She swallowed her tea quickly and stood up. “I really must go now, but it has been kind of you. Perhaps I shall see you again while you’re here. I often come into Les Saintes Maries to get the odd bit of shopping.”

  “I expect you will, then.” The gipsy accompanied Emma to her mare and watched her mount. “You’ll still be here next year—and the year after!” she called after her. “He’ll make a good Frenchwoman of you, you’ll see!” She laughed. “It’s all written in your hand, my dear. Plain to see!”

  Emma waved to her and urged the mare forward. She was tempted to look at her hands to see if she could see any such thing for herself. But, of course, she didn’t believe in it at all. It was all an idle superstition and she would be foolish to build any hopes or dreams on it. She straightened her back, pulled her hat down over her eyes, and travelled full tilt along the dusty road, straight into another rider coming in the opposite direction.

  The mare reared up, but Emma sat her easily, rather enjoying the sensation. She increased the pressure of her knees and brought the mare down easily. It was only then that she turned to see how her companion in error was making out. To her intense surprise it was Charles. He leaned negligently forward on the pommel of his saddle, watching her. She became uneasily aware that her hair had come loose and was blowing out in a great black cloud behind her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you were going to the corrida?”

  He shook his head, a slight, tantalizing smile just playing at the corners of his mouth.

  “But no,” he said easily. “I do not like blood sports any more than you do. I thought we might spend the afternoon together.”

  It seemed to Emma that she had very little choice. She could hardly just ride off in the opposite direction.

  “What did you want to do?” she asked almost sulkily, trying hard to restore her hair to some kind of order.

  Charles shrugged. “Have you seen the little museum?” he asked.

  Emma shook her head.

  “Then let’s go there for a start,” Charles suggested.

  He put out a hand to her reins and turned her horse for her, still smiling slightly.

  Emma allowed herself to be taken back to Les Saintes Maries. She was trying to make up her mind exactly what face to present to Charles. He was so abominably sure of himself and she was so abominably uncertain.

  He led the way to the little wedge-shaped building that housed the collection so painstakingly put together by the Marquis de Baroncelli. He tied the reins of their horses to the railings outside and swept her inside with a gay enthusiasm that was very catching.

  They went first to the bird section and stood for a long moment beside the case of stuffed flamingoes, gleaming white birds with their patches of salmon pink, so surprising in its intensity of color.

  “Now supposing you tell me all about it,” he suggested. He held her hand tightly or she might have gone off to the other side of the display case and pretended that she hadn’t heard him. As it was she could hardly believe he had asked the question, for he never once glanced at her, but moved casually on from case to case, studying each bird with the same detached interest.

  “About what?”

  His dark eyes met hers.

  “Are you going to pretend you do not know? The solicitor, the visit to Monsieur Clement, and why you look so guilty whenever I look at you.”

  Emma blushed.

  “Oh, I don’t!” she protested.

  He smiled.

  “Do you not? Then why the color now?”

  She didn’t answer. She couldn’t think of anything to say. To deny it would merely make her look more foolish than she felt already.

  “It was Monsieur Clement who wrote to you in England,” he prompted her. “Am I not right? Was that why he came to see you?”

  She pushed her hair back with her free hand.

  “I suppose Jeanne told you,” she said wearily.

  He nodded gravely.

  “Yes, she did. He is not a nice man, Emma. It is not good that you should get involved with him.”

  “But Jeanne had no right to tell you!” she protested. “If she was going to tell anyone, why didn’t she tell my grandmother?”

  He looked almost sad and a trifle embarrassed. “Perhaps because it is I who pay her wages.”

  For an instant she didn’t believe him.

  “How can you?” she demanded hotly. “You may hand them to her, but the money is really Grand’mere’s! It was her manade in the first place!”

  “That is beside the point,” he said sharply. “For what did Monsieur Clement come to see you? I mean to know, Emma, so you would do well to tell me!”

  She bit her lip.

  “I’m buying some land from him,” she said abruptly. “A thousand hectares. It can be seen from the windows.”

  Charles looked grimmer than she ever remembered seeing him.

  “I see,” he said. “I suppose he threatened to grow rice there and so spoil Madame’s view?”

  Emma nodded unhappily.

  “I was going to tell Grand’mere after the week-end,” she said. “You see, I didn’t know that he was Marie-Françoise’s father. Nobody had ever told me her surname—”

  “When did you find out?”

  “The other day. I rode over to see her and he came in while I was
there. Charles, he’s a horrible man! I don’t how she can stick him!”

  “She has courage, of a sort. But you, Emma, you are not to go near him again. It is understood!”

  “I shall do what I like!” Emma informed him. “I like Marie-Françoise, and you yourself asked me to be friends with her. I can’t ignore her now because of her father. It wouldn’t be kind, and, anyway, I’m not afraid of him!”

  “No?” It was simply asked, but it brought back all that she had felt when Monsieur Clement had come into the kitchen and she had discovered that he was Marie-Françoise’s father.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” she said. “We’ve seen all the birds.”

  He followed her slow progress up the stairs, watching her as she looked at each exhibit with meticulous care. All the Camargue was represented. Tridents and gardien hats lined the walls, and in one small case on the wall were listed all the brand-marks of the manades.

  “Where is the Mas Camarica?” she asked excitedly.

  He pointed it out with a sunburned finger.

  “There,” he said.

  She looked at the familiar little shield with its crescent moon and smiled.

  “It looks nice, doesn’t it?” she said.

  He nodded and went on up the stairs.

  “No, wait a minute. Charles! Why does it only give your name as the owner? What are you trying to do to Grand’mere?” She hurried after him up the steps, her face white and her eyes filled with unshed tears. “Please tell me,” she demanded. “Are you trying to take the mas away from her?”

  “No, chérie, I am not,” he replied simply. “Don’t upset yourself so! It is probably no more than an accident that her name has been left out. In France we are apt to put the man’s name rather than the woman’s, you know.”

  Emma searched his face. He looked honest, and there was the faintest twinkle in his eyes as though he found the whole affair rather amusing.

  “Can you not believe me?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said with difficulty, “I believe you.” And she felt committed, that she had made an act of faith in him that there was no going back from. She had to believe him.