The Best British Short Stories of 1922 | Page 9

to bed at ten o'clock. But this evening the olive kept rolling
between him and the thing he read; it rolled between the paragraphs,
between the lines; the olive was more vital than the interest of these
eternal "complexes" and "suppressed desires."
The truth was that he kept seeing the eyes of the laughing girl beyond
the bouncing olive. She had smiled at him in such a natural,
spontaneous, friendly way before her mother's glance had checked
her--a smile, he felt, that might lead to acquaintance on the morrow.
He wondered! A thrill of possible adventure ran through him.
She was a merry-looking sort of girl, with a happy, half-roguish face
that seemed on the lookout for somebody to play with. Her mother, like
most of the people in the big hotel, was an invalid; the girl, a dutiful
and patient daughter. They had arrived that very day apparently.
A laugh is a revealing thing, he thought as he fell asleep to dream of a
lob-sided olive rolling consciously towards him, and of a girl's eyes that
watched its awkward movements, then looked up into his own and
laughed. In his dream the olive had been deliberately and cleverly
dispatched upon its uncertain journey. It was a message.
He did not know, of course, that the mother, chiding her daughter's
awkwardness, had muttered:

"There you are again, child! True to your name, you never see an olive
without doing something queer and odd with it!"
A youngish man, whose knowledge of chemistry, including invisible
inks and such-like mysteries, had proved so valuable to the Censor's
Department that for five years he had overworked without a holiday,
the Italian Riviera had attracted him, and he had come out for a two
months' rest. It was his first visit. Sun, mimosa, blue seas and brilliant
skies had tempted him; exchange made a pound worth forty, fifty, sixty
and seventy shillings. He found the place lovely, but somewhat
untenanted.
Having chosen at random, he had come to a spot where the
companionship he hoped to find did not exist. The place languished
after the war, slow to recover; the colony of resident English was
scattered still; travellers preferred the coast of France with Mentone
and Monte Carlo to enliven them. The country, moreover, was
distracted by strikes. The electric light failed one week, letters the next,
and as soon as the electricians and postal-workers resumed, the
railways stopped running. Few visitors came, and the few who came
soon left.
He stayed on, however, caught by the sunshine and the good exchange,
also without the physical energy to discover a better, livelier place. He
went for walks among the olive groves, he sat beside the sea and palms,
he visited shops and bought things he did not want because the
exchange made them seem cheap, he paid immense "extras" in his
weekly bill, then chuckled as he reduced them to shillings and found
that a few pence covered them; he lay with a book for hours among the
olive groves.
The olive groves! His daily life could not escape the olive groves; to
olive groves, sooner or later, his walks, his expeditions, his
meanderings by the sea, his shopping--all led him to these ubiquitous
olive groves.
If he bought a picture postcard to send home, there was sure to be an
olive grove in one corner of it. The whole place was smothered with

olive groves, the people owed their incomes and existence to these
irrepressible trees. The villages among the hills swam roof-deep in
them. They swarmed even in the hotel gardens.
The guide books praised them as persistently as the residents brought
them, sooner or later, into every conversation. They grew lyrical over
them:
"And how do you like our olive trees? Ah, you think them pretty. At
first, most people are disappointed. They grow on one."
"They do," he agreed.
"I'm glad you appreciate them. I find them the embodiment of grace.
And when the wind lifts the under-leaves across a whole mountain
slope--why, it's wonderful, isn't it? One realises the meaning of
'olive-green'."
"One does," he sighed. "But all the same I should like to get one to
eat--an olive, I mean."
"Ah, to eat, yes. That's not so easy. You see, the crop is----"
"Exactly," he interrupted impatiently, weary of the habitual and evasive
explanations. "But I should like to taste the fruit. I should like to enjoy
one."
For, after a stay of six weeks, he had never once seen an olive on the
table, in the shops, nor even on the street barrows at the market place.
He had never tasted one. No one sold olives, though olive trees were a
drug in the place; no one bought them, no one asked for them; it
seemed that no one