Assuming that she had not seen Count Jules, John decided that to make any mention of his visit would be to give her needless cause for anxiety; so he greeted her with a smile and said, `I think we'll go towards Agay, then turn inland. If you don't mind an hour's trudge uphill, there is a lovely view from the lowest spur of the ridge.'
She nodded. `We will go wherever you like. But tell me about your visitor. I was ready to start at twelve o'clock, as we arranged, but I saw him with you on the terrace; so I thought it wiser to remain under cover till he had gone. What did he want?'
`He said it was just a friendly call; and he enquired most tenderly about your health.'
`I bet he didn't come all the way from St. Tropez only for that. Please be honest with me, John. Now that I have told you everything I can about myself, it wouldn't be fair of you to keep me in the dark. I would much rather know about it if you have reason to believe that they are plotting anything fresh against me.'
On reconsideration, he decided that she was right, and, if warned, would be additionally careful in watching her every step. So, as they walked at an easy pace along the broad, curving road, flanked with occasional stone balustrades surmounted by urns gay with geraniums and small yellow striped cactus, he gave her the full story of his recent interview. When he had done she said with a shrug
`He really must be crazy to have thought that you might pay him twelve hundred pounds to leave me alone.'
`Oh, I don't know.. Most people have the idea that popular authors make enormous sums. It isn't true, of course few of them earn as much as most Harley Street specialists let alone a leading barrister. Still, he probably believes that my Mama could lay her hand on a thousand or so without batting an eyelid.'
`But even if she could, what can possibly lead him to suppose that she would be willing to part with a sum like that on my account?'
`You must remember that although Jules was educated in England he is very much a Frenchman, and has the typical Frenchman's outlook on women,' John told her. `Custom and lack of inclination combine to prevent them from developing the sort of friendships that English people like ourselves enjoy in the normal course of events. They regard women solely from the point of view of sex, and divide them into two categories those whose circumstances readily invite an amusing love affair, and those who are in no position to offer such an attraction. To anyone of Jules' nationality and class it is unthinkable that a chap like myself might have an affair with a young unmarried girl; because she falls into category number two. It is not entirely a matter of principle that restrains them from entering on such affairs, but also because they would be bored to tears. They regard it as essential that their mistresses should be sexually experienced and take the matter as lightly as they do themselves, so that they run no danger of becoming permanently entangled. Therefore, Jules would argue that, since I should get little fun out of seducing you, and landing myself with a packet of trouble afterwards, the only reason for my interest in you must be that I want to marry you.'
`Surely he can't think that? We . . . of course it seems much longer, but we have known one another only a few days.'
`He is probably not aware that I arrived here only on Monday; and for all he knows we might have already met before you left England.'
`But even if you were keen on me, it is unlikely that your mother would be willing to fork out twelve hundred pounds. Anyhow, until something had been definitely settled and we had become engaged.'
`I don't know so much about that. From the French point of view such a payment might be regarded as a lever to clinch the deal, and more or less part of the contract by which you agreed to marry me.'
`I have always thought that in France it was the other way about, and that in a marriage contract it was the girl's parents who had to put up the money.!
'Ah, but you've forgotten that you are an heiress. If your old man owns a controlling interest in Beddows Agricultural Tractors he must be worth a packet; and you are an only child. As Jules would see it, for my mother to put up twelve hundred to get you for me as a wife would be a jolly good bet.'
Christina laughed. `It is one I wouldn't care to make. As I've told you, I really know awfully little about my father's private life. I don't think he has married again, but he might have. Anyhow, by his mistresses he may have had children of whom he is much fonder than he is of me. It is quite on the cards that when he dies the bulk of his money will go to the people I have never heard of, and that he will leave me only a few hundreds a year to keep me from actual want.'
While they were talking they had reached the little village of Dramont, and after walking over to look at the memorial, which commemorated the landing of the Americans there on August the 15th, 1944, they took the by road that led up into the Esterel.
Their way now lay through the pine forest, which here and there had clearings in it of a few acres devoted to intensive cultivation. In most of them stood a lemon washed farmhouse, and the land was occupied by crops of fruit, vegetables and flowers, all growing on series of terraces which had been laboriously constructed out of the hillside and were kept in place by walls of rough hewn stone. On some there were rows of orange, lemon and tangerine trees, or short bare stalked vines, on others globe artichokes, young beans and primeurs of all sorts for the Paris markets; while many were small fields of carnations, grown in a four feet high wooden trellis work which enabled long mats of split canes to be rolled over them at night to protect them from the frost.
The going was stiff; so they did not talk very much, and then only of trivial things, such as the thrifty care with which the peasants cultivated every available inch of their soil, and of how utterly different the scene was from any that could be found in England at that time of the year. In an hour they had covered barely three miles, but they then came out on the summit of the lowest foothill of the range, and paused there to admire the view. Dramont was now hidden from them by the tops of the trees, but beyond it, no great distance from the shore, they could see the little Golden Isle with its pseudo feudal tower, and to either side of the twin capes of Agay the Mediterranean stretched away in an infinity of blue.
To one side of the road lay an orchard of ancient olive trees, their gnarled trunks and grey green leaves standing out in charming contrast to the yellowier green of the short grass in which they had been planted a century or more ago. In the hush of mid day, with sunlight dappling the grass through leaves unstirred by a breath of wind, it was a truly sylvan spot, having that spell like quality which made them almost expect that a nymph or faun would peep out at them from behind one of the trees at any moment. Instinctively feeling that they could find no more delightful place in which to picnic, they turned into the orchard without exchanging a word, and, sitting down under one of the trees a little way from the road, unpacked their lunch.
When they had satisfied their first hunger, John asked Christina what sort of time she had had at her finishing school in Paris, and after describing the life there she summed it up as more interesting but not so much fun as that she had had in Somerset. In Paris the only lessons had been French grammar and the study of the Arts; the girls had been taken to the opera, the Salon, concerts, classical plays, the best films, special dress shows for jeunes fines, the museums and all the places of historic interest. She had enjoyed all that; but the mistresses had been much stricter and the girls less friendly than at the school of domestic science, and she had greatly missed the fine old mansion that housed it, with its park, swimming pool and lovely garden; the paper chases and cricket in the summer, and in winter the bicycle rides on Saturdays into the local town for tea and shopping.