by Jane Arbor
Rose knew that she had meant to take the absurd idea to Blaise, as a joke to share with him and with Sylvie too. But now she could not. Now the three of them only shared laughter over impersonal things which touched none of them, and even if she had had much heart for curiosity, it was too late now to invite Blaise to solve the mystery for her.
She was glad when Sylvie was invited to spend a Sunday in Cannes with a school friend on holiday there. And though, reluctant and dispirited, Sylvie did not want to go, in the end she agreed. Blaise chauffeured them both in his car, and Rose and he left Sylvie at her friend's hotel, to be called for in the evening.
Blaise parked and they walked out upon the moon-curve of the Croisette, a-glitter with speeding cars, loud with cosmopolitan voices and exotic with the dry rustle of palms and the flame-glow of canna lilies and poinsettias.
The heat and glare had an almost tangible quality. Blaise said, "A long cool drink seems indicated. We'll make for the Arcachon Bar on the beach. It's not far." But they were standing now at the entrance to the forecourt of one of the premier luxury hotels and were to be held up for minutes by the seemingly endless stream of cars sweeping in.
At last in a lull people scuttled across and Blaise's hand went to Rose's elbow. "Now—" he urged, but then as suddenly checked her right in the path of
the next car which was approaching the drive-in.
She looked up at him. "Make up your mind— !" she began irritably. But she hadn't his attention. His grasp upon her arm was still firm, but his eyes were upon the occupants of the open car—Claude Odet driving, Flore Michelet beside him. The car pulled up only a bonnet's length from the two in its path. Blaise's gesture to Flore was something between a hitch-hiker's 'Going my way?' and a thumbs-up sign. Behind her sunglasses Flore appeared to smile in acknowledgment of him and Rose, she said something to her companion which made him laugh, then the car accelerated and went on its way.
Blaise said easily, "Sorry about that. I thought there would be time to get you across."
"So there would have been if we'd gone straight ahead," Rose pointed out, dismissing as foolish her fleeting impression that he had not halted her until he knew who were the occupants of the on-coming car; that he wanted to see or be seen by Flore or Claude Odet or both.
The Arcachon Bar was a gay place full of young people in various states of undress, their lithe bodies sleek and brown as seals', and all of them in possession of transistor sets tuned in to rival channels. Rose chose citronade and Blaise drank lager. Afterwards they lunched lightly on melon followed by fried fresh sardines, and agreed that a trip by motor-launch out to the Lerin Islands would be pleasant.
On St. Honorat they dutifully 'did' the tour of the eleventh-century castle keep which had served as watch-tower against Saracen and Moor alike. On Ste. Marguerite, the larger inshore island, they decided to
by-pass the fort, the prison of the mysterious Man In The Iron Mask, in favour of a stroll through the Aleppo pines, following at random the forest paths worn turfless by generations of peasant feet.
Tired at last, they sat down at a spot where they could catch glimpses of the incredible blue of the sea beyond a colonnade of pines, as regimented and aspiring as the pillars of a cathedral nave.
Blaise drew up his knees, clasped them and put down his chin upon them. He sighed, allowed a silence to fall. Then :
"Rose, supposing you wanted something like mad, something good and rewarding not only to yourself—would you say you'd ever be justified in doing or letting a shabby thing happen, to achieve it ?"
Blaise with a problem of which he wasn't making a cynicism or blaming on his fate ! Quite out of character a while ago, but not so surprising in the less assured person he had been lately. Which made his change towards Sylvie all the sadder, thought Rose.
Rather blankly she protested, "Oh, Blaise, what a poser ! The rights and wrongs of ends and means ! They've been argued down the ages. But in a general way, I think I'd say, 'No, never,' and for me personally I'm sure that whatever I stood to gain by an `end' wouldn't be worth a shabby 'means.' "
"Why, what would you expect to collect?"
"Well, self-reproach. A guilt which might never rub off."
"Even if you could put the thing right later? And knew you could when you did it ?"
She shook her head. "I'd have to be awfully sure of that—" As a sudden thought struck her, "Blaise,
this may be none of my business, but I was there when Fore Michelet wanted you to make up to Mademoiselle Odet for the sake of what her father might do for you. So this 'shabby' thing of yours, you don't mean you're thinking of making use of her so, do you ?"
He looked up sharply. "Using Marie-Claire? Mon dieu, no !"
"I'm sorry."
"All right. Forget it." He sighed again. "I asked for it. I might have known what you would say. You're such a 'black-is-black and white-is-white' person; you don't admit there are greys, do you ?"
"In other words, I'm hard. Or so you've said before."
"With lightweights like me, yes." Suddenly he shifted position in order to study her face. "And yet, you know, Rose, you could be a very rewarding person to make love to, I should think," he said.
"Could I?"
She had made her tone daunting, and he laughed shortly.
He said, "All right again. You don't have to spell it out that I've blotted my copybook on that subject. But supposing I told you—? No—" He took back some decision with the broken phrase, and after a pause they talked of other things until it was time to go back to pick up the launch at the landing-stage.
That exchange puzzled and worried Rose for some time.
Blaise, cryptic, taking refuge behind barriers of unsaid things, was something new. Also, under his
brief intense look, for one startled moment of recoil she had thought he might be contemplating a 'pass' at her, and had been sharply relieved to find herself mistaken.
She was glad too that her long shot about Marie.. Claire Odet had been wrong. She didn't want to believe Blaise as base as that ... But on his own admission he was debating some other plan, and how far might he stoop in the name of his ambition? she wondered. And the shabbiness turned against—whom ?
One outcome of Sylvie's day in Cannes was that her friend's parents, having booked a room for their son which at the last moment he could not use, had invited Sylvie to have it at their expense for the term of their holiday. She would be company for their daughter, and they made her acceptance a favour to themselves.
"I said I would go, if you didn't mind. But do you? Can you manage without me in the shop?" she asked Rose that night.
"Of course," Rose assured her. "I shall miss you, but I wish you would go."
"And I can tell you, I can hardly wait to get away from this place for a bit," returned Sylvie, making Maurinaire Blaise's scapegoat—a reaction in which she had all Rose's sympathy. They agreed to repay her hosts' kindness in part by taking them out to luncheon on Sylvie's last day in Cannes—"Book a table at some really smart place and we'll go to town for them," said Rose—and Sylvie went off two mornings later by coach, forestalling Blaise's rather sheepish offer to drive her 'if she liked.'
Without her the flat seemed very empty. But the shop was busy enough now to keep Rose occupied most of the time it was open, and whenever Blaise was there, Sylvie's absence had temporarily freed Rose of the sensation of treading a tightrope of tension on her behalf.
Meanwhile Rose had waited in vain for Madame Saint-Guy to enquire for the success or failure of her mission to Saint-Guy on Blaise's behalf. It was as if Madame, having passed the problem to Rose, had pigeon-holed it and forgotten it, and even when Rose broached it herself at last, her comment was detached, resigned.
To Rose's report that Saint-Guy seemed adamant that Blaise must conform, or carve his own future unaided, she said only, "If that is his decision, one must accept that it is for the best," thanked Rose for her help and dropped the subject like a stone, leaving Rose to ma
rvel again at her acceptance of a despotism which had Blaise for its only rebel, the only one out of step under its absolute sway ...
So the days of high summer ran on, and one morning Rose realised with a pang that more than half her year in Maurinaire was over. Now it was August, and what had the months achieved? The shop had begun to keep them and with care would continue to do so. Physically Sylvie was almost sound again and they had both enjoyed the sun-soaked time of their dreams. But were they both doomed to take heartache back to England when they went ? And could either of them bear ever to come back again ?
She was musing so over her breakfast coffee when the telephone rang and Saint-Guy's voice came over the line.
"It occurred to me that, as an experience, you might care to spend the day seeing the cutters at work in the Haute Foret. As I daresay you know, the world and his wife make a picnic occasion of it, and if you would like to join them, I'd call for you and drive you up."
Rose said, "I'd love to. But there's the shop—"
"Well, what is Blaise for? I'll send him or bring him down to look after it for you. In about half an hour. By the way, wear jeans or a boiler-suit and strong shoes."
"Shall I bring a picnic lunch for myself ?"
"There's no need. We lay on a déjeuner of wine and pasties and fruit, and I expect you'll be asked to sample a private hamper or two. Another thing—if you're coming in the spirit of helping with the haymaking, as it were, bring some thick gloves. Or no—you won't have any stout enough. I'll supply you with some."
An hour later he set her down in a clearing half a kilometre or so inside the wire fence where they had first met on that damp evening of her arrival.
The clearing was a-buzz with people as sturdily clad as herself, with romping children and scurrying dogs. Men and women alike were straw-hatted against the sun and those of the men who were armed with the curved stripping hatchets were taking directions from a foreman before starting work on the trees.
First there was the encircling slash of the bark high up, just below the lowest branches, another at the base. Then the long vertical division, the prising off with the wedge-shaped axe handles; the whole thing
done with the precision and speed of the wielding of a surgeon's knife.
As each section of bark came off it sprang strongly to the curve of a hollow cylinder, and at each assault on a fresh tree self-appointed experts gathered to discuss the section's thickness and quality and whether or not the strippers' skill had ensured that the new cork underneath would not come 'warty' when its turn came some three to ten years hence. Blaise had indeed had something when he had called cork culture 'long-term' ! thought Rose.'
The handing down of the sections was the signal for the womenfolk to do their part by stacking them for their several weeks of open-air seasoning before they went to the pressure-sheds to be steamed and flattened to the form in which they would be shipped away for auction. Helping with this work, Rose saw the need for the hide-thick gauntlets Saint-Guy had produced for her, for though the sections were light, they were unwieldy and rough as well as extremely dirty. As the morning passed she got grimier and grimier and had several falls over the slippery air roots of the trees—each time, fortunately, when she was empty-handed, as it seemed that damage to the brittle sections between tree and stack was regarded as a major crime.
While everyone else worked the children and the dogs were having a field day, adding to their elders' hazards underfoot, and their clamour making a kind a fugue with the raucous shouts of the strippers and the shrill chatter of the women. Among the dogs was Monsieur Courtes-Jambes, the dachshund, today all romping innocence and wearing a bland 'Who—me?'
expression as Rose told his little nine-year-old mistress about his Wolf ! Wolf ! alarm with which he had deceived her that first night.
At noon, as in all Maurinaire's activities, a halt was called. Dogs' tongues lolled and children's eyes brightened at the happy promise of food; a lorry brought up wine and eatables, parties settled down in the shade and the serious business of the al fresco meal began.
Afterwards there was sleep for almost everyone. Even, briefly, for the children and the dogs. Rose drowsed too, then sat up to enjoy her first cigarette of the day and to wonder whether any of the Post-Impressionists had ever painted siesta hour in a cork plantation—the recumbent bodies, the 'dead men' wine bottles, the abandoned tools, the dominating trees, and sun and shadow dappling all.
Now the children were beginning to fidget, the meeker ones to be quieted with an irritable `Tais-toi!' from their parents, the bolder ones conveniently deaf.
Through half-closed lids Rose watched the skirmishings. A few yards away a tough guy of about twelve was shinning up the trunk of a tree yet to be stripped. Before work had stopped for lunch Rose had seen a man go up it, examine it, then leave his unused stripping axe balanced in a forked branch. The axe was still there. As she caught the glint of the steel of its blade she realised it was the prize the boy was climbing for.
She sat forward; then, warned by an instinct she had no time to analyse, was on her feet. She saw the boy draw level with the axe, reach for it, grasp its handle, brandish it with a whoop of triumph at the small faces a-gape with awe below.
Then he missed his footing. His toes scrabbled wildly at the bole. He hung by one hand from a branch; the axe dropped, plummetwise, from the other. In the split second it took to fall the watching children froze, still staring upward. But in the same second Rose had lunged, scattered them with her spread hands and taken the impact of the axe-blade in a glancing blow to her shoulder.
Before the pain began she heard the frightened cries of the children and knew the climber had dropped heavily but safely beside her. Then all was chaos. Crowds, shouting, scoldings, commiseration, and as pain stabbed and she put a hand to her shoulder to find her shirt damp, another voice demanding—and getting—silence. Saint-Guy's .. .
"Rose! What's the matter? What happened? You're hurt ?"
His hand went gently over hers on her shoulder, drew it down. His glance asked her leave to enlarge the tear which the blade had made and when she nodded he bared the long cut, then issued some crisp orders.
A seat was improvised for her. Someone poured a glass of cognac. Someone else fetched a first-aid case from Saint-Guy's car, and while he worked deftly, swabbing and dressing the wound, a dozen eager voices related the incident, making more of Rose's alleged heroism than she could allow.
"They didn't see what happened. They were mostly asleep," she told Saint-Guy. "It was just a reflex action—I didn't even think. I suppose I was lucky, but it isn't a deep cut, is it ?"
"Serious enough to need some stitches, I'd say, and
a shot of anti-tetanus as a precaution. And 'lucky' is a prime understatement. If that axe had come down on your head, you mightn't be here now," he said grimly.
"Or Berthe Vionnet's little Yvette, or Pierre Capuchin's Jean might not, if Mademoiselle Rose had not shown such courage, m'sieur !" put in someone intent an wringing the last drop of drama from the incident.
Saint-Guy nodded. "As you say—" He knotted the sling which took weight from the shoulder and held out his hand to Rose. "Come along. I'm taking you down to the Château and we'll call the doctor to you there. You can walk to the car?"
"Of course." But showing off a little, she stood too quickly for the delayed shock which lay in wait for her. Before her the ground heaved as no stable earth should, the sun was momentarily eclipsed by a cloud which wasn't there, and it was only Saint-Guy's arm like a steel band across her back which steadied her until she was herself again.
"Silly !" She bit her lip. But she was glad of the car as a refuge, grateful for the care with which he settled her in her seat.
Presently he slanted a quizzical glance at her. "You know, I'm thinking you should be forbidden the plantations. You need rescuing there too often for my taste," he said.
She managed a smile. "I know. I'm sorry. I must be—what is it ?—`disaster-pr
one.' But that first time I didn't need rescuing. I'd climbed the fence once, and I could have got back the same way."
"I daresay—after that humbugging hound had led you a pretty dance through darkening woods you'd
never been in before. Anyway, the second time has been more than enough for my peace of mind. In amateur hands those stripping axes are murderous things, and when I arrived to see you on your hands and knees with one beside you, I—" He broke off. "Well, to be frank, I was prepared to give you a rocket for fooling around with it, only to find you the heroine of the hour. Disconcerting, that, you'll agree?"
"Very—except that I'm no heroine."
"You will be, when the story has gone round the town. Enough of one, anyway, to teach me the folly of jumping to conclusions. And who ever relishes a sharp lesson like that ?"
"Who indeed?" she said drily, smarting a little at the memory of her own first over-hasty judgment of him, guessing he remembered it too.
At the Château, Madame Saint-Guy insisted on keeping Rose there for the night. She would take no refusal when she heard Sylvie was away. Rose could telephone Blaise to ask him to bring back with him anything she wanted, and if the doctor said she might, she could return to the flat and the shop tomorrow.
The doctor came in the late afternoon, pronounced the wound rassez michante' and certainly needing to be stitched. Afterwards Rose was put to rest on a vine-shaded terrace where Madame came to sit with her, doing gros-point embroidery, until Rose fell asleep.
She had not heard Madame slip away, and when she woke it was early evening and Blaise was there instead.
She smiled at him hazily and he smiled back. "What's all this ?" he wanted to know. "Oh yes, I'm fairly in the picture, but what did the doctor say about that cut ?"
"He called it 'rather wicked,' but it's nothing much. Were you able to find all the things I wanted ?"