by Jane Arbor
“Of course you may. But—I’m not thinking of marrying, you know.”
“Not anymore?” Janine paused to frown over the picture chart of food values she was drawing up. “Then your love affair in London—that is finished now?”
“Quite.”
“At your father’s intervention, or at your own decision? Don’t tell me if you’d rather not.”
“It’s all right,” said Liz, and suddenly knew that it was. Extraordinary—that in less than a fortnight she should be able to think about Marta Gethin without jealousy and about Robin without pain! “It was neither, really. It sort of faded out on his side when he preferred another girl to me.” And that was another queer thing! She was telling Janine the truth and had told it—even if retouched a little by pride—to Roger Yate. Why not then also to Beth? She went on. “Who told you about this, though—about Robin Clare and me?”
“Your father did. He talked to me about you before he went on leave. And when he came back—before you came out yourself—he told me about your affair and said he hoped you would forget it soon.”
“He—he didn’t make anything—well, awful, of it?” That had been difficult to express, and Liz was only too aware of the quick flush that was staining her cheeks.
“My dear, no!” Janine shook an emphatic head. “He was only worried because he felt you hadn’t chosen very wisely, and he was convinced that some unhappiness for you now would be better than deep regrets later. Nothing more than that, I assure you.”
“I’m glad,” said Liz, grateful that Janine had understood. “I hadn’t anything to be ashamed of. Really I hadn’t!” She paused. “Who would have told Beth about this? Did you?”
“Yes, I told Beth, but no one else. Why, you don’t mind her knowing, do you, Liz?”
“No, I don’t mind,” said Liz. For there was both relief and a warning in the realization that it was almost certainly Beth, not Roger Yate, who had made something furtive and disgraceful out of her wistful, innocent and quite hopeless affair with Robin.
And if that were so, it meant that she and Beth had reacted equally warily to each other. But why? Perhaps, she thought, the psychologists had an explanation for instinctive reserves and antagonisms of that sort. But, for her part, she gave it up.
On another occasion Janine seemed to take her permanent stay in Tasghala so much for granted that Liz felt she ought to admit the truth.
“I’m afraid I misled Beth a bit about that,” she said. “Dr. Yate has promised to talk to dada about it as soon as he is well enough. But actually, on the night before he was taken ill, he had as good as said I must go back.”
“Oh, dear, and I thought it was settled! Never mind, though,” Janine brightened perceptibly, “so long as Roger is going to plead for you, you can rely on him to make out a good case. He has more dogged patience with difficulties—whether they are things or people or circumstances—than anyone I have ever known. That’s how he cured Beth—he simply would not admit defeat. If he thinks you should stay, you most certainly will. And you do want to, don’t you?”
“Very much—now,” said Liz.
Janine threw her a shrewd look. “You didn’t always?”
“Only since I’ve realized that dada needs me and wants me to, however stubborn he is about saying ‘No.’ I didn’t want to come at all, and I’m still rather appalled by the heat and that grim bungalow. It’s like something out of Beau Geste, with its foot-thick walls and that dog-toothed arrangement around the roof. I feel that someone is likely to snipe at me from behind it, or pour boiling lead down on me, as they did from medieval castles. And no curtains, and those shutters—all peeling dark gray paint that would only be used for in undercoat in England!”
Janine laughed. “Poor Liz! You haven’t experienced our sandstorms, or you would be grateful for thick walls and deep-set doors and windows! As for the fortlike effect, it’s an age-old tradition of building in the desert, and the French administration likes even new buildings to be in keeping. Curtains? They won’t stand the sun and the wind for long, you know. But I like to have them, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. I’d help you to choose and make them. And if I were you, I’d plan a little garden for your flat roof. A sun umbrella and some garden furniture, and oleanders or rose laurels in gay tubs standing about. Why, Beth would love to design it for you. And then you could snipe or pour boiling oil to your heart’s content. But only on your enemies, of course. Your friends you would shower with flower petals!”
“It sounds delightful,” Liz said, to her surprise, quite wistfully. “But it’s all dependent on my staying, and whether the Simons would agree to my doing things to the bungalow.”
“No need to worry about that,” Janine assured her. “People are very easygoing out here, and Monsieur Simon isn’t going to mind your improving his property. And for the rest, I’m pretty confident that Roger may persuade your father.”
Liz was not so sure. Dada had been so very adamant! But one day when he was convalescent but still weak after the third wave of fever which Roger Yate had foretold, on going to the hospital she was shown, instead of to his room, into Roger’s office.
The hospital portress, a soft-voiced lay sister, told her the doctor would not be long. He was taking a clinic, but had said he wished to see Mademoiselle Shepard before she visited her father. Mademoiselle would wait?
Mademoiselle would—gladly, though not without misgivings as to what he would have to tell her. Alone in the room, Liz looked at the professional detail about her: the tall filing cabinet, a glass-fronted cupboard containing a neat pile of laundered white coats, a stethoscope dangling over a chair, a deskful of papers and memo pads in what was, to its owner, probably quite ordered confusion.
There was nothing that was personal to Roger Yate. (Why should there be? His private quarters were elsewhere in the hospital.) And there was only one item she had never seen before, nor could she identify it, though she tilted her chair forward in order to peer more closely.
It was about the size of her closed fist, a red mass of sandstone acting as a paperweight. But it was no ordinary lump of sandstone, for its whole surface was a collection of oddly angled flakes, brittle to the touch and aglitter with points of light.
It was quite lovely. Unique. Carved that way? But did sandstone carve so sharply, or with those scintillations? Liz had just laid a tentative, caressing finger on it when the door opened and Roger Yate came in.
The legs of her chair came down with a crash and she sat back as guiltily as if she had been looking over his shoulder uninvited.
But as he greeted her and crossed to the desk he said easily, “So you’ve noticed my rose de sable? What do you think of it?”
“Rose de sable? Rose of sand,” Liz translated aloud. “Yes, I was looking.at it. I’ve never seen anything like it before. What is it?”
“It’s our chief curiosity—unique to the Sahara. It’s a natural fusion, a close packing of the sand by the action of wind and rain. The sun breaks down the surface into these sharp flakes, and long exposure to heat crystallizes particles of sand here and there, giving this spangled effect. Rose of the desert—Yes, you can say that whatever the open Sahara lacks in flora, it at least has its own sandflower, and this is it.”
While he spoke he took the mass into the cup of his strong, capable hands. But when he made to offer it to Liz she drew back.
“It looks awfully breakable,” she said. “Is it really?”
He nodded. “About as brittle as glass, as fragile as a lot of human relationships! Or is that too cynical?” he queried dryly. “Anyway, it has lasted me a long time. So take it—here!”
As it changed hands and Liz turned it curiously in her own, she was thinking, The way he touched it shows he is fond of it. And though he has never spared me rough handling—for my own good, I daresay—I think he could be gentle if he liked—
What made her think so? And by what trick of thought had she turned his care with the fragile rose de sable into
a pointer to his character? She did not know. Only that, as their fingers had met briefly in the exchange, she had wished—headily and quite inexplicably—that he had such gentleness for her.
The thought had shaken her, and his question, “Would you like to keep it?” seemed to come from a long way off.
“Keep it? Oh, no!” She set it down as if it had burned her fingers. “You couldn’t want to give it to me, I mean.” She almost made the childish gesture of putting her hands behind her back.
“On the contrary, I’d like very much to give it to you.”
“But you use it, and you must value it a great deal.”
“I’m rather attached to it, yes. But I’ve a corpulent stone rabbit somewhere that will make a better paperweight. And it only has curio value; it’s not rare, and you’ll probably find some for yourself one day.”
“I still couldn’t accept it.” But she wanted to, quite badly, and was perversely disappointed when he did not press her further.
He drew his chair up to the desk and sat down facing her. “Well, I’ve pleaded your cause successfully. You are staying on. Perhaps slightly on trial. But you are staying.”
“Oh, thank you! When you wanted to see me I guessed you had been talking to dada. What did he say?”
“Much the same as he said to you, I gather. That it wasn’t fair to expect it of you and so on. But he also wanted assurance from me on two other points on which I had to do my best for you.”
“What two points?”
“First, he didn’t wish to think you were willing to stay as a lesser evil than going back to find yourself on the losing side in the inevitable battle with your rival for your young man’s affections.”
Hurt, Liz exclaimed, “He couldn’t have thought that I’d use him as an excuse to—to run away from Marta Gethin!”
“It had occurred to him, I’m afraid. He said—may I quote—‘I’m not going to encourage a daughter of mine to shirk facing her dragons.’ But when I said that, far from lacking the moral courage, you were, I thought, spoiling for the fight with La Gethin, but had chosen to stay with him instead, he seemed satisfied.”
“That was nice of you. And the second point?”
“He was afraid that, though at first you were fascinated by the ‘romance of the East,’ inevitably it would wear off, leaving you irked and feeling cheated.”
Liz stared. Romance? In these brassy skies? In the bleak landscape, as yet unexplored, beyond the palms? In the—the orchestra of flies everywhere? In that beshuttered horror of a house? The corner of her mouth lifting wryly, and she said, “He needn’t worry. I never wanted to come to Tasghala, and I’m certainly not bewitched by anything romantic about it yet!”
“No? Well, so I told him. That, in my opinion the romance we could offer you didn’t add up to a row of beans with you. Which, I hastened to point out, did seem to make your wish to stay a clear-cut one and worthy of respect. What’s more—” Roger Yate’s glance held hers measuringly “—I took the liberty of allowing Andrew to believe that the choice was wholly your own idea.”
Liz protested, “But it wasn’t. You know it was yours!”
“The seed, perhaps. But since it clinched the argument and it made him happier to believe it, does it really matter who brought the plant to the fruiting stage?”
“No, and I’m very grateful.” Liz had taken it for granted Andrew would hear she had needed prompting, and if Roger Yate had deliberately refrained from telling him, she wondered how he had guessed she didn’t want dada to know.
Hands on desk, Roger levered himself from his chair. “So far, so good. Go to it now—If his temperature is still normal tonight and in the morning, I’ll discharge him tomorrow. He must go straight to bed and stay there until the following day. But after that he’s all yours. Dissuade him from doing too much and see that he feeds rather specially well. Malaria thrives on poor or careless living, and I suspect Andrew hasn’t bothered enough about himself for years.”
Liz rose, too, and he went to the door with her. But, rounding his desk, he picked up something from its surface. “You’ve forgotten your rose de sable,” he said.
This time she made no protest. She took it—lovingly. After visiting Andrew, she went back to the villa, eager with the news that she could return to the bungalow the next day, in readiness for his homecoming. But Janine Carlyon was still at school; only Beth was there. And before Liz could say anything Beth’s puzzled glance went straight to what Liz was carrying in her hand.
“Why, that’s—that’s Roger’s piece of rose de sable!” she accused. “Where did you get it from? He—”
Liz set it down. “He gave it to me. I’d never seen or heard about it before, and when he’d told me what it was he said I could have it. Wasn’t it kind?”
“He gave it to you?”
Liz flushed readily. “You don’t suppose I asked him for it or stole it, do you?”
Beth bit her lip and managed a placatory smile. “Of course I’m not suggesting you stole it. You do fly off the handle quickly, Liz! No, I was only wondering why he should have given it to you.”
“D’you mean by that—why to me, rather than to you?” asked Liz bluntly.
Beth’s lashes brushed her cheeks. “Silly! I wasn’t making comparisons at all. Naturally he wouldn’t think I wanted it, or he’d have offered it to me, I’m sure. No, I was only surprised he bothered to make you a present of it, when it’s quite commonplace in some parts of the desert, especially near El Golea. And I hope he didn’t let you think he was giving you anything of value, because it wasn’t quite fair of him if he did.”
Liz said dryly, “It’s all right. He didn’t allow me any illusions on that score. I admired it, and he said I could have it, as it wasn’t even a very efficient paperweight.”
“Oh, I’m glad!” Beth’s face cleared. “That you’re so pleased with it, I mean. I suppose it is rather a curiosity for you, and I oughtn’t to have disparaged it as I did, just because we think very little of it out here.”
“It’s all right,” said Liz again. “You couldn’t have known.” And the odd—if disturbing—thing was that she had withheld from Beth Roger Yate’s “I’m rather attached to it.” That was enough to lend value to the gift of a pin, and if it was what made the rose de sable precious to her, in honesty she should have told Beth so.
Before she left the villa for the bungalow, Janine advised Liz to “hasten slowly” in her eagerness to make it a pleasanter place to live in.
“Don’t be too openly discontented with it,” she urged. “That amounts to a criticism of your father for bringing you to it, don’t you see? Just make a cheerful suggestion or two, and whether he responds or not, drop the subject as casually as you brought it up. It is more than likely that, later, he will believe he thought of it himself. And from there—now what is the English idiom—the going will be easy.”
It was sound advice, and by the time Andrew was completely himself again, the organizing gifts that made him a good C.R.O., but which he had never used on his own behalf, were working overtime for Liz.
He obtained Monsieur Simon’s permission to refurnish the bungalow along the lines Janine had suggested; he produced a craftsman who would make garden furniture and flower-tubs to order almost overnight; he went with Liz to bargain in the market place for some pleasant rugs for the floors, and—somewhat under protest—ordered paints and varnishes and brushes when Beth clamored that she would “adore” to help Liz to do the painting that she hoped would give the whole place a “new look.”
“Far better let me put a man onto it,” advised Andrew. But Liz, backed by Beth, compromised by agreeing that a man should do the necessary scraping and cleaning-down of shutters and window frames, if they could undertake the actual painting. As she pointed out, there was no point they could not reach from a pair of steps, and she, for one, was going to revel in sloshing gleaming new paint wherever it was needed.
True to her promise, Janine measured windows, advised Liz
in the purchase of locally woven, hand-blocked linen for curtains and superintended the girls’ use of her sewing machine for making them up. It was she also who drew Andrew’s attention to her own villa’s light, slatted blinds, which obviated the closing of shutters except against the violence of wind or sandstorms with the result that the bungalow was fitted for blinds, too.
Finally, it was Andrew who suggested that the welcome party for Liz—belated by his illness and convalescence—should take the form of a housewarming as soon as the bungalow was fully decked in its new dress.
“Lovely!” agreed Liz, though with a fleeting misgiving about a party where, as hostess, she would hardly know anyone, and no men at all except dada and Roger Yate.
But, as if he read her thoughts, Andrew offered, “Meanwhile, we’ll have an evening or two at the country club, so that you can meet some young people besides Beth Carlyon. And your trip out to the oil site—you must have that, too. Plenty of scope there to fill a guest list for a dozen parties.”
Beth’s reaction to the prospect of a party was childishly expressed delight, which, Liz was forced to admit, was completely disarming to her instinctive distrust of the other girl. Perhaps, between Roger Yate and Janine—fiancé-to-be and understandably watchful parent—Beth didn’t have much fun, and it was mean to suspect her of slightly overacting her wistful “I do love parties. But Maman can’t really afford to give any for me, and Roger is still so fussed about me that I practically have to ask him if I ever want to stay late at the club. Silly, isn’t it, when I’m quite well now? I suppose you think I ought to be flattered. But honestly, I do sometimes envy the type of girl men never seem to feel protective about—”