Kingfisher Tide

by Jane Arbor

  Rose set about the letters, resolving as she worked to institute a simple filing system which would ease the necessary frequent reference bak to earlier ones on the same subject. Next she wrote cheques to Madame's dictation as to the amounts, and then posted these to an account book which itself was set to act as paperweight to the cheques while they awaited Saint-Guy's approval and signature.

  These latter astonished Rose with their liberality. In the course of half an hour Madame Saint-Guy had

  assessed needs and disposed of hundreds of francs to match, and when she was left alone to deal with the draft-speeches, Rose riffled through them and through the letters ready for the mail, marvelling at the breadth and scope of her employer's welfare interests.

  The French Thalidomide Appeal . . . Cancer Relief . . . Gardeners' Benevolence . . . Youth Clubs .. . Children's Holiday Funds . . . Animal Welfare and a dozen other Societies and Foundations and Trusts.

  What had Blaise said of cork culture? "You make money at it—pots." But of what Ali Baba dimensions must the 'pots' be to meet also a wage-bill which must not brook any competition ? Rose wondered. Not to mention the upkeep of a way of life which must be whole wealthy worlds away from—well, for instance, from her own ?

  She had finished and was checking her typescripts when the door opened and Saint-Guy came in.

  "My mother tells me you have some cheques for me to sign. Where are they ?" he asked.

  She showed him and waited as he leaned on a hand beside her and scrawled a signature to each cheque in turn. Then he squared the small pile and handed them to her.

  "If you'll make them with their letters, they will catch the evening mail. After that, if you have finished for today, I'll take you back in the car. When you are ready, you will find my mother in the hall, and I'll wait for you outside."

  Although it was only early March it was already spring in the region. Almost every day now the air was gentle, and the horizon of today's late afternoon sky was daffodil yellow, promising another cloudless

  day tomorrow. Rose paused before getting into the car and Saint-Guy, watching her, said, "If you aren't in a hurry to get back, perhaps you'd care to take a short course in what makes us tick ? I don't suppose you've been put in the cork picture yet, have you ?"

  "Only from what Blaise has told us about the cycle of your year."

  "As long as he doesn't claim it to be his year—" murmured Saint-Guy, putting the car in motion. "I suppose, as I suggested you might, you see quite a lot of Blaise ?"

  "Yes, he looks in on us quite often."

  "Too often ?"

  "Oh no." Feeling she must shield Blaise from the unspoken criticism of the dry question, Rose added, "He is bulldozing Sylvie into speaking French, and you should see him with our customers. He doesn't so much sell them things as he contrives to get them to beg him to allow them to buy."

  "Blaise, the golden-tongued. I can imagine—" Her companion's tone was a dismissal of the subject of Blaise. But Rose's sense of justice would not have that.

  "That's hardly fair. It was you who suggested Blaise should help Sylvie in the shop," she reminded him. "He is helping us both over a difficult time, and we are grateful to him."

  "Then if you are finding things as tough going as you feared, what about branching out a bit? For instance, could you approach your suppliers to let you have some new lines or ranges which might tap some wider custom ?"

  Rose shook her head. "You can't realise the num-

  ber of lines everyone in Maurinaire is dabbling in ! I doubt if we could find a single saleable one, without encroaching on our neighbours' trade, which wouldn't be fair."

  "Meanwhile your attitude to my offer to forgo your rent remains the same ?"

  "Just the same, thank you."

  "Why?"

  "Because"—she drew a long breath—"that happens to be solvency as I understand it." Then, flinching under the swift, unreadable look he threw her way, she added uncertainly, "Oh dear, does that sound too pompous for words?"

  "No. Just—very young," he said, somehow making the adjective derogatory and quite unanswerable.

  There was silence until they reached the main gateway to one of the cork plantations. The gates stood open and at the wooden but just inside there was a queue of girls all armed with short, moon-curved scythes.

  "M'sieur ..."

  "M'sieur . . ." They bobbed at Saint-Guy and smiled at Rose.

  "Our scrub clearers collecting their pay. They work on piece-terms," he explained, then glanced at Rose's thick-soled sandals. "You can walk. That's good," he said. "You can see more that way, so we'll leave the car here and I'll show you something of what they do."

  An hour later Rose had seen a sample of the order created from a chaos of undergrowth by the girls' skilled blades. Bole after bole had had its craggy roots exposed and the resulting debris either already

  burned to ashes or stacked in neat cairns ready for tomorrow's destruction against the ever-present danger of uncontrolled fire.

  She had also seen some pruners at work which only years of practice made commonplace to them.

  "Cork, unfortunately, doesn't co-operate too well," explained Saint-Guy. "It craves to spread; it wants to insist on gnarling. Neither of which we can allow it, so we have to prune with skill to get straight, tall boles."

  They had then walked some distance to the edge of an enclosure of matured trees, marked down for the strippers' knives later in the season.

  Hand on a knobbled trunk, Saint-Guy had demonstrated, "We cut horizontally here, low down. The same, as high as possible. Then several vertical cuts, trying to keep to the natural cracks of the bark, and the skill is in cutting thickly enough to produce a manageable sheet, and thinly enough to avoid injury to the cells which are to form the next layer for cutting. The next process is to boil it in the steaming-sheds and press it flat before we ship it to the nearest port for auction. Ours mostly goes out via St. Tropez or Toulon."

  "You only grow it and sell it? You don't make things from it ?"

  "No. We're merely growers." He slapped the bole under his hand. "This lot will be having their second stripping and will give a better quality yield than their first, which they had seven years ago. They won't be fit again for perhaps another ten years; they'll live and yield for about two hundred years, with their peak production at around eighty."

  "And you don't begin to strip until they are twenty or so. That mean's a man's long lifetime from sapling-hood to peak alone," marvelled Rose.

  "Exactly. But one is never working from scratch, you know, or twiddling one's thumbs, waiting for a particular plantation to mature."

  "Someone—some time—must have begun from scratch," she smiled.

  "Of course. In our case," he agreed drily, "a Saint-Guy, 'way back before the Crusades. A fact which helps, as you may imagine, to count one's harvests by generations rather than by years, and not to care overmuch that it will be one's sons who will see the peak yield of acorns one planted oneself."

  "And there have always been some Saint-Guy sons?"

  "Always until now, and there's no reason why there shouldn't be more. Or if not sons, grandsons, which would be the next best thing."

  "Yes," agreed Rose. But as they made their way back to the car she found herself wondering just how ruthless he might be, supposing any son of his showed, like Blaise, that the heritage of cork meant nothing to him. And wondering, knew how badly she wanted to believe that, however little he understood such a falling-away, he might be kinder towards it than he seemed to be now towards other people's compulsions when they differed from his.

  On the way down to Maurinaire they were about to pass the entrance to the Château when another car swept uphill. Both cars were halted as they met. Flore Michelet was at the wheel of the other, and as she leaned across to extend a hand to Saint-Guy her

  lifted eyebrows threw a question in the direction of Rose.

  Saint-Guy explained their errand. "Cork is a new experience to her, so I
've been giving her a conducted tour of the estate. Of course I hadn't forgotten you were dining with us, though I had expected to be back before you arrived," he told Flore.

  Her eyes narrowed in a lazy, indulgent smile. "On the defensive, mon ami? Why need you be?" Another glance at Rose. "Or ought we to keep as a secret of our sex, mademoiselle, that unless we are very insecure indeed, we are not worried by a bit of healthy rivalry? That, if nothing else, it teaches us the other types our men admire and of whom we must beware... ?"

  Then again to Saint-Guy, "So I daresay I can contain myself while you see mademoiselle home. And I plead guilty to being early for our date. In case you had other guests, I wanted to show you beforehand the list of the people I'm thinking of asking to my housewarming party when I open the villa at the end of the month. I thought there could be, perhaps, some names you would like to add yourself ?"

  "Yes, perhaps—" Saint-Guy glanced at his watch. "A quarter of an hour, then, and I'll be with you." A salute of his raised hand acknowledged her parting smile and her nodded, "Au 'voir" to Rose. Then the cars slid apart and went on their way.

  A fortnight later Rose was alone in the shop when Flore Michelet came in, though whether as customer or caller did not at first emerge.

  From Blaise the girls had learned that she had made her seasonal move from Grasse to Maurinaire, and today she was dressed less formally than Rose had seen her yet, in hipster pants and loose overshirt, her bare feet in espadrilles and the fall of her long hair caught back in a ponytail. She doffed dark glasses, offered cigarettes and enquired for Sylvie's whereabouts.

  Rose explained that she had gone to the shore for a swim, with Blaise.

  "Then she is still able to swim since her accident?"

  "Oh yes. The surgeons said it was good for her to try, although she tires more quickly than she used to, and she's nervous of going alone."

  "Well, she should be safe with Blaise—as long as she keeps swimming."

  Rose frowned slightly. "Is that quite fair to Blaise?" she queried. "He is always kindness itself to Sylvie; to us both."

  Flore agreed blandly, "But of course he is kind—to Sylvie! Kindness costs him nothing, and he is an adroit type, Blaise. It can't have escaped him that gentleness with your little sister will gain him favour with you, and that, I rather gather, is the object of the present exercise—"

  Colour flooded Rose's throat. "Blaise hasn't the slightest interest in me—in that way," she denied. "And if I thought he wasn't genuinely fond of Sylvie—"

  "You'd cut off your pretty nose to spite her face? You would discourage him from taking her out when you are tied here and can't go with her yourself ?

  Now how wise—or kind—would that be? Not to mention that it might look to Sylvie herself as if you were jealous ?"

  "I? Jealous of Blaise? Why, he's the very last person— !"

  Into Flore's eyes an expression, too swift to analyse, flashed and was gone. "So—there's already a 'first' for you of whom you could be jealous ?" Her small laugh which followed was disarming. "But there ! I am prying, which is maladroite of me. And of course it's only from Blaise's eagerness to enthuse about you, not Sylvie, that I deduced where his real interest lay. I could possibly be wrong—"

  "You say he talks about me to you?"

  "Whenever he can bring the subject round, yes. Against his own best interests too. For example, he'll have told you about his difficulties over his lack of capital and land for his schemes?"

  "Yes."

  "And no doubt you'll remember that I had to wield the big stick to force him to co-operate in being nice to a girl whose father holds most of the answers for him? A month, a week, merely days before you came to Maurinaire, he would have jumped at the chance. But do you know how he spent the entire luncheon that day? In a eulogy of you—your looks, your enterprise, your sense of humour, with just a sideways tribute to Sylvie here and there ! After which, one can hardly wonder that Claude Odet refuses to play. Which puts Blaise back exactly where he was."

  Rose shook her head. "I'm sorry, but I just don't believe, however unco-operative he was at your

  luncheon party, that it was because of me," she said.

  "Then will you," countered Flore, "believe instead his small blackmail of me? Before he knew that I intended to ask you, he threatened, if you please, that he wouldn't come to my housewarming unless I invited you!"

  Rose smiled thinly "He was joking, of course. Or if he said it, he would have meant us both."

  Flore shrugged. "He made a point of you, and I had Saint-Guy as a witness on both the occasions I've mentioned. Meanwhile, may I hope you'll take this as my invitation? You will come ?"

  What could Rose say ? For some reason she knew herself wary of Flore Michelet. But Flore was under no obligation to invite them, and if Blaise was going, Sylvie would surely want to go too. So she said, "Thank you very much. I think I can answer for Sylvie as well that we'd like to come."

  "Good. Eight o'clock. I expect Blaise will be only too eager to fetch you. Just informal gear—it will only be a buffet affair." Flore paused to look appraisingly about her. "I hear from Saint-Guy that you were disappointed with your bargain? That you had expected you were taking over a kind of Dior or Schiaparelli boutique?" she commented, her tone making their hope sound incredibly foolish.

  Rose said, "Well, we certainly had banked on there being a tourist season in Maurinaire, and we were rather dismayed at first. But a year in the sun for us both and the chance for Sylvie to get completely well was a pretty good bargain at any price."

  "And when you realised you couldn't get by on the tatty kind of trade your aunt did with only the locals

  for customers, there was the Saint-Guy rescue service ready and willing to cope?"

  "The— ? I'm afraid I don't understand ?"

  "Oh, come !" urged Flore lightly. "Just how long did it take Saint-Guy to concoct this job you have with Madame? And if you handle her accounts as well as her correspondence, you've only to ask yourself how little effect on the total one more worthy `cause' could have !"

  Rose said slowly, "I do handle Madame's accounts. But I still don't see the connection between my job and—"

  "—And the wholesale charity in which Saint-Guy encourages Madame and indulges himself in the name of his 'obligations' to Maurinaire? But it's all of a piece, I assure you! For centuries, generations of Saint-Guys have doled out alms by the bucketful; alors, the tradition must continue ! Every lame dog within or beyond barking distance of the Château must be Saint-Guy helped over his particular stile, while they themselves live as simply as peasants and employ only their beldame of a housekeeper, a cleaning woman and a man for the gardens—all in the interest of their various proteges !" scoffed Flore.

  So here was the clue to the contradiction of overmodest meals served on heirloom porcelain and of the Château's many trivial economies against its background of dignity and apparent wealth ! thought Rose. And there was a word for it. An old French phrase . . . Noblesse oblige. That was it—the age-old code by which the privileged shared an umbrella of generosity with lesser folk, yet which Flore's airy detraction somehow made ugly, patronising, to be

  resisted by the same quirk of pride which had earned Rose that quenching, "Just—very young," from Saint-Guy ...

  Despising herself for letting it matter, she told Flore, "I'm afraid you've got the sequence wrong. I was offered the job as Madame Saint-Guy's secretary before we knew how well or badly we might do in the shop. Naturally, I was glad of it, but I'm pretty sure I didn't get it by way of charity."

  "No?" Flore shrugged again. "Well, if you're quite happy about it, do forget I said anything. It was simply that, as Madame had only to borrow one of the estate clerks to help with her correspondence, and as Saint-Guy isn't the type to be bowled over by the prospect of a new, however pretty, face around the Château, I supposed it must be the same urge at work that makes him patronise all those mousey, capin-hand types who can't mean a thing to him personally— Mean
while, be kind to Blaise, won't you ? Such devotion can be tiresome, but he means well, and you have him at your feet !"

  With which, making an elaboration of adjusting her sunglasses, she sauntered without haste towards the door, apparently oblivious of the seeds of doubt and disquiet which she had sown for Rose.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FLORE'S invitation was no news to Sylvie. On her return she told Rose Blaise had passed it on and she had accepted. Rose said, "I did too," but kept to herself her own growing reluctance to accept anything at all at Flore Michelet's hands.

  Yet how thin-skinned could one get? she wondered. What had Flore done or said that was offensive? Blaise's squiring of Sylvie was so honest and untiring that even Sylvie could be expected to laugh off the idea that he was playing a double game between Rose and herself. And Flore could not have known how sharply—or why—Rose's hackles had stiffened in resistance to the hint that she was just one more `cause' to Saint-Guy, merely an object of his patronage.

  The thought rankled. She had never supposed she was an ungracious taker. She only knew she wanted to prove something to Saint-Guy . . . Flore might not have intended mischief, but had certainly achieved it in Rose's new watch on her relations with Blaise and in the nag of doubt as to whether or not her job with Madame had indeed been tailored for her by Saint-Guy.

  That week before Flore's party was a disheartening one. For one thing, the weather broke briefly, affording Sylvie a chance to carp anew at a climate which her imagination had painted as eternally

  halcyon. For another, their first bills came in and trade was poor. On some days they took only a franc or two, and those from so few customers that frequently Marie Durand insisted they go out with Blaine, leaving her to attend to the counter.