by Isobel Chace
“Does it go well, Charles?” she asked.
“It’ll do for the moment. We’ll have to keep renewing it. And”—he turned to Emma—“you’ll have to rest it, is that understood?”
“But tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow you can sit and look ladylike and watch the rest of us working ourselves to death.”
Emma tried to hide the sharp pang of disappointment that went through her. She stared down at the neat bandage, very conscious of the tears that had come unbidden into her eyes.
Charles looked sympathetic.
“Sam won’t care,” he comforted her. “He can sit beside you and leave the bulls to us.”
Emma’s head came up with a jolt.
“I suppose you’d like that!” she stormed. “Sam can probably deal with a dozen bulls! He’s not afraid of them!”
She waited for his retort, a little shocked by her own outburst. She didn’t want Sam to sit beside her! She wanted Charles! The colour fled from her cheeks and she looked a little frightened.
Charles laughed.
“I didn’t say he was,” he said significantly. “I merely said he would probably prefer to sit beside you and hold your hand.”
Marie-Françoise looked puzzled.
“What does it matter whether he is afraid of bulls or not?” she demanded.
Emma blushed.
“I don’t like aspersions made on my friends’ courage,” she said primly, a glimmer of laugher just peeping through her words. She accepted a cup of coffee from Jeanne and busied herself with stirring it. “He might not come to the ferrade anyway,” she added.
Charles downed his coffee at a single gulp. His eyes caught Emma’s and held them.
“I’ll go and see to the mare,” he said deliberately, and went out.
Marie-Françoise blinked nervously.
“I think I must go too,” she said. “I shall see you tomorrow, of course. You will be all right?”
Emma nodded.
“Thank you for your help,” she said.
The French girl smiled.
“It was nothing. I was glad to be there,” she said quickly. And then she hurried out after Charles, her face eager.
To Emma it was an unbelievably long morning. She helped Jeanne prepare the lunch by washing the asparagus, keeping an eye on the stock-pot, and even by oiling the fillets of steak in the way the maid showed her. She did anything to keep herself from thinking, for that way lay danger. Somehow, she thought, if she didn’t admit it, even to herself, she could pretend that it had never happened. That she hadn’t fallen head over heels in love with Charles. That, on the contrary, she still disliked him as much as she ever had done.
She was undeniably glad when her grandmother came home, carrying the week’s shopping from Arles.
“The crowds! And the prices!” Madame complained as part of the routine of putting the things away. “Things get more expensive every day. Soon we shall not be able to eat at all!”
She plonked some more things down on the table in a chaotic heap—meat, vegetables, little bags of exotic-looking herbs, fruit, ropes and other equipment for the manade all muddled together in delightful confusion.
“You look pale, my child,” she went on. “What has happened?” Her sharp eyes surveyed her granddaughter. “Have you been quarrelling with Charles?”
Jeanne burst into a flood of words graphically describing the accident, while Emma tried to break in at intervals to explain what had really happened.
“I suppose the mare rolled on you,” Madame Yourievska observed calmly.
Emma was nonplussed.
“Well, yes,” she finally admitted. “But I didn’t tell Charles that!”
Madame cackled with amusement.
“And you think he will not know?” she demanded. “He was grooming the nag when I came in. You can’t hide a thing like that from an experienced eye like his!”
Emma gave her a chagrined smile.
“I suppose he will,” she acknowledged. She began to laugh too. “I’m afraid you have an awful fool for a granddaughter, Grand’mere!”
Madame’s face softened dramatically.
“It is never foolish for a young girl to wish a man to think well of her,” she stated firmly.
It would be quite useless, Emma saw, to say that she hadn’t been thinking of any such thing. She had merely wanted Charles to know that she could manage a horse quite as well as anyone else—as well as Marie-Françoise, anyway.
“Were you badly hurt?” Madame asked.
Emma showed her her ankle.
“It would have been a great deal worse, but Marie-Françoise came along and helped me home.” She paused. “I like her, Grand’mere. Charles says she lives alone with her father.”
Her grandmother pursed up her lips disapprovingly. “She does. They share control of his manade—what’s left of it! They sell it piecemeal to the rice-growers. I have no patience with them! It is good land, all of it, they could be as rich as I am. But no, they prefer to squander their substance! And then they will look to Charles to save them. I know!”
“But Marie-Françoise is so young—”
Madame snorted.
“But she does not love the Camargue. Finish. It would be better if she went away—away from that miserable father of hers and all his problems. Then she could marry well and be happy. Zut, my dear, I hear that they are now going to breed Spanish bulls instead of the Camargue ones! Next it will be sheep!”
Emma grinned.
“I have seen sheep on the Camargue,” she said innocently.
“And Spanish bulls also, doubtless,” her grandmother retorted. “You can always tell them. Their horns come out towards you instead of standing high on their heads. But to be a good breeder one must become partisan about these things. One gradually raises the standard of one’s herd. One does not become so indifferent as to change one’s entire stock for a whim! Ma foi! That man! He had bad bulls, bad men to work for him, and that girl, she does not even care!” Madame picked up the rope from the table.
“Do you think this will be strong enough for tomorrow?” she asked.
And Emma was surprised to see that her hands were trembling.
After lunch her ankle felt easier. Emma moved restlessly round the house impatiently looking for something to do. Her grandmother was resting and all the men were out. Even Jeanne seemed to have disappeared for the afternoon. The French salon was not designed for spending a lazy afternoon. The heavy, straight-backed chairs made her own back ache and at last she decided to go to her own room to read.
To her surprise she fell asleep and slept heavily until Jeanne awoke her by shaking her gently by the arm.
“Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle!”
Emma opened her eyes, surprised by the urgency in the maid’s voice.
“Oui?” she whispered.
“You must come down at once,” Jeanne told her in a fierce undertone. “It would be terrible if Madame were to discover him here. But he says he must talk with you, and so I fetch you.”
Emma sat up, winding her hair rapidly round her hand.
“Who is it?” she asked.
Jeanne looked a little scared.
“C’est Monsieur Clement!”
“Monsieur Clement!” Emma jumped off the bed, gasped with agony as her foot touched the floor and became a little more cautious. “Are you sure, Jeanne?”
Jeanne nodded.
“There can be no mistaking that one,” she said disapprovingly. It was obvious that she was dying to know just what he had to do with Emma. Only her careful training prevented her from asking, and as it was she gave her several curious glances as she helped her down the stairs.
But it was Emma’s own thoughts that concerned her. She found herself unexpectedly nervous at being about to meet her strange correspondent, and a little excited too, for at least he had come. He had contacted her, showing that he was serious, just when she had begun to suspect that it had all been a hoax and no more than that.<
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In the doorway of the salon she caught her breath.
“Thank you, Jeanne, I can manage by myself now,” she said pleasantly.
The maid looked frankly disappointed.
“Mais, mademoiselle—” She broke off. “Eh bien,” she shrugged, “but I shall be in the kitchen, just in case—”
Emma pulled herself together, startled despite herself, and hobbled into the salon.
For a moment she thought the room was empty, but then she became aware of an elderly man, who looked both sulky and disagreeable, huddled in one of the chairs. His beret, navy blue and very elderly, was still jammed firmly down on to the top of his head, and both his hands and his face looked slightly dirty.
“Monsieur Clement?” Emma asked. Surely this couldn’t be the same man who had written to her? The letter had been in an unmistakably educated hand—or so she had thought. Her bewilderment must have shown, for he looked more disagreeable than ever.
“Oui, c’est ca.” He snuffled thoughtfully down his nose. “I thought you would come,” he said. “It was my letter that brought you, no?”
“Partly,” Emma agreed cautiously.
He chuckled, pointing a stubby finger at her.
“Only partly? This, I think, is not entirely true. You are too like this grandmother of yours not to have her curiosity!” He chuckled again.
Emma failed entirely to see the joke.
“May one ask why you have come to see me?” she asked in her best and most pedantic French. She was beginning to feel a bit of a traitor. It was plain that her grandmother did not normally entertain Monsieur Clement, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that Charles would not approve either.
“But yes! First let us have a drink and make ourselves comfortable.”
Emma hesitated.
“What will you have?” she asked.
“A pastis.”
She poured out two, watching the liquid change to a cloudy white as the cool water was poured in. She handed Monsieur Clement one and took a sip out of the other. It tasted of aniseed, which she didn’t greatly care for, but it was cool and light and the drink of the country, and she was learning to like it.
“Well?” she demanded as she seated herself again.
He leaned forward eagerly.
“My letter was true, was it not? I have done nothing against you! Why are you not more friendly?”
She met his look squarely.
“Do you know my grandmother, or Monsieur Rideau, personally?” she asked him.
His eyes dropped.
“I have dealt with them both,” he said sourly. “I know what goes on all over the Camargue and that Monsieur Rideau is buying land everywhere. Your grandmother doesn’t know that, does she?”
Emma was silent.
“That is why I have come to you,” the old man went on triumphantly. “I know some land that is to be sold soon. This Monsieur Rideau is very interested, and so would Madame be, if she could afford to buy it. You see the land backs on to her property. She can see it from her windows, it is as close as that. But it will be sold to the rice-growers, you may be sure of that!” He laughed, drinking noisily from his glass. Madame Yourievska will not be pleased to see rice growing under her very windows, n’est-ce pas?”
Emma drank the last of her pastis in a hurry. She felt slightly sick and the tears were threatening at the back of her throat. No, Madame would not like rice growing under her windows. And Charles? Charles wouldn’t do anything to stop it. Even if he bought the land himself, he would probably put it down in rice.
She wished she had never paid any attention to the letter of this horrible old man—that she had just come to her grandmother for a holiday in the ordinary way, knowing nothing of the disturbances that lay just beneath the surface of the manade. That way she could have been happy. She would have met Charles, and liked him, and perhaps even fallen a little in love with him, but she wouldn’t have been torn in two by this agony of doubt.
“Who is selling the land?” she asked coolly.
Monsieur Clement snuffled some more in his nose.
“So you are interested!” he declared. “You have money of your own?”
Emma smiled. Money! She had a little, it was true, but not enough to start investing in swampy pieces of France! Though the idea was tempting. It would be fun to have a few acres of her very own. Charles might even—
But Charles wasn’t interested in her. He had Marie-Françoise to worry about, and he wouldn’t be at all interested in her affairs.
“No, monsieur.”
He looked disappointed.
“It is not expensive land,” he whined. “It is perhaps a thousand hectares in size”—And how many acres was that?—“They would ask not much, perhaps twenty four hundred new francs.”
Two hundred pounds? Emma thought with renewed longing of her small savings. She had all of two hundred and fifty pounds.
“I think you should talk to my grandmother,” she suggested.
He snuffled worse than ever.
“I am afraid she would not see me,” he said at last. “She is prejudiced against me. I do not blame her, you understand? She has been misled, and I have as great a regard for her as ever. That is why I was so concerned about her affairs. It is hard to see an old lady ending her days in poverty all because of her trusting nature. I could not allow it to happen! That is why I wrote to you, her sole surviving relative. Oh yes, I was greatly concerned.”
Emma thought his self-righteousness sat a little uneasily on his shoulders, but she said nothing. Perhaps he really had been worried. Perhaps she should even be grateful to him.
“Monsieur, who is selling the land? Is it yourself?”
He looked embarrassed and then guilty.
“You can see how it is with me, mademoiselle,” he said pathetically. “I am a poor man, no longer strong. I cannot compete with the new manadiers. They have so much capital and I have none. There is nothing else for me to do, I must sell my land.”
“But why to the rice-growers?” Emma asked.
His large, dirty hand closed round his glass again.
“Ah yes, the rice-growers. They offer me eighteen hundred new francs for my land. It is an insult, no? I think I can do better than this, and so I come to you!”
“And if I don’t buy it?” Emma asked. She already knew the answer, but she had to ask. She had to make sure that she had really understood what he was offering her. She almost laughed. And to think that she had almost believed him about Charles! Why, it was ludicrous!
She watched the shrewd glint enter his eyes.
“I must sell then to the rice-growers,” he sighed.
Emma got to her feet.
“You must show me the land on your way out,” she said smoothly. “I shall need time to make up my mind.”
She hobbled to the front door with him trailing behind her. He pointed out beyond the trees towards the sea.
“It is next to the lucerne,” he told her.
It was a barren piece of land, unkempt and empty. Only a few tamarisk grew there, and here and there the water glinted.
“Well,” he demanded, “what will you do?”
She knew she ought to tell him that she would have nothing whatever to do with the deal. How would she even begin to explain her purchase to her grandmother, for instance? Or Charles? At least she ought to ask their advice. But she was quite determined that she didn’t want rice there herself.
“I shall buy it myself,” she replied faintly. “I’ll make arrangements to have the money sent over from England.”
He gave her a long considering look.
“I thought you would,” he said.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUNDAY dawned fine and clear. In the early morning there was just a faint suspicion of dew holding the dust that would later blow free beneath the hoofs of the cattle. Down by the corral men were already working, fitting up microphones connected to a van and testing them loudly across the still morning. Soon canned mu
sic began to sound out across the wild land, ludicrous in its absurdity. In a few hours the ferrade would begin.
Emma could see Charles below her window, already on his horse, slouched over the saddle, one elbow on the pommel to support him. He looked all man, and once again she was afraid of him.
I shan’t tell him today, she thought. It wasn’t really his business. She would just leave things until he found out—and her grandmother too. But she did wish she could get rid of this awful feeling that she had in some way betrayed them both.
She pulled her dressing-gown closer around her and hurried down the corridor towards the bathroom, saving her ankle as much as she could.
“Emma,” her grandmother called, “you won’t have time for a bath. We must hurry if we are to get into Arles and be back in time.”
Emma stuck her head round her grandmother’s door.
“I’ll be ready,” she said.
She was too, though only just, and squashed herself into the deux chevaux beside Jeanne and one of the gardiens. Her grandmother and the other two rode in the front.
“How is the ankle?” Jeanne whispered to her.
“Better. Much better, thanks. It still hurts a little, but it’s quite bearable.”
Jeanne blushed a little.
“I am glad,” she said. “You see, later there will be dancing, and it would be a pity for you not to be able to take part.”
Emma caught her breath. Would Charles ask her to dance?
“I’m—I’m not sure—” she stammered.
“But you must! It will be fun!”
Madame swung the heavily laden little car down the narrow streets of Arles and came to an abrupt stop in the Place de la République.
“I shall wait an hour, no more!” she threatened them.
The wind, not yet warmed by the sun, blew cold down the streets, just lifting the petticoats of the peasant women—or were they gipsies?—as they stood in little groups, selling greenery at every corner. Of course, it was Palm Sunday, Emma remembered. Only one more week to Easter! She had never known time to go so quickly.
