Sandflower

by Jane Arbor

  Chris said nothing. Then, “How long have you known this, Liz?”

  “Not consciously at all until now. But it’s true, isn’t it? And you’ll write back to Jenny?”

  “You mean I’ll dictate an answer, don’t you? How much d’you think I’m going to enjoy that!”

  “Not at all, I know. But there’s another way in which you could answer her. You could cable her and then just—go to her.”

  “Go to her? Like this?” He touched his spectacles. “And I to offer her—what? You’re right, Liz—I’ve never stopped loving her. But don’t forget, she loves me as she remembers me, ticking over on all five senses, not four.”

  “Chris, she loves you! Every line of her letter positively shouts it. She wrote to you, didn’t she? As soon as she was free of her promise to her mother and when she had given you a reasonable chance to write to her? She sank her pride. Why can’t you sink yours?”

  “It isn’t a case of pride. It’s the rotten future I may have to offer her.”

  “And your very best chance of a future that isn’t rotten is to take their advice here, and go to England about your sight. There you’ll get the finest specialist attention in the world. And a hint in confidence, Chris—while you were being adamant against going, Dr. Fremyet told Roger Yate off the record that he wished he had the authority to force you, as he was privately certain you could be cured there. So will you go, as soon as they say you can?”

  He said humbly, “You make me feel like a worm. How can I ever repay you for knowing so much about me, almost too much?”

  She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “No credit to me. We’ve been friends, and that’s what friends are for. To know things about you that they can produce out of the hat to help at a crucial moment. And maybe—” a little smile he could not see came and went upon her lips “—I’ll come to you one day for the comfort of your broad shoulder. So go on being my friend, will you?”

  “Will I? Just try to stop me, that’s all! May I say one thing, though?”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “Well—bless you, Liz. Just bless you for being you, and for everything, that’s all. And now—got a pencil on you? Help me to draft that cable.”

  But as things happened, Chris was not yet to follow up his cable to Jenny. More or less isolated though he had been for weeks, he was still one of the hospital’s first half-dozen patients to succumb to an attack of dengue fever, which picked its victims here and there at random before gathering itself to strike at the whole community.

  Liz, who had never heard of dengue before, learned from Sister St. Olave what to expect of an epidemic of it.

  “Usually ’tis no killer, ye understand,” the old nun told her. “But it’s a plague and a nuisance, the way it runs like wildfire, once it takes hold. There you are—hale and steady one hour, stiff with fever the next. Spotty, too. It has a rash, like measles, and what we call a ‘saddle back’ of high temperature—two soaring humps of it before it drops to normal. And after it, the slow convalescence is nearly as tiresome as itself.”

  “But does it always take hold, become an epidemic?” asked Liz.

  “Mostly so. Up to now, none of the new drugs will check it, and as it dies out in the winter, there’s none of us able to acquire an immunity to it. No, the best hope yet of defeating it is what the oil men are doing.”

  “Why, what can they do?”

  “What? Aren’t they supplying the crude oil that’s being sprayed on the kind of rubble—the old dry streambeds and the crumbling walls—where the thing breeds? And wasn’t it Dr. Yate himself who gave the authorities no rest while he pestered for a night-and-day campaign against it? But that’s not to say it’ll give in to him this year, or next, even though he’s not the man to give in to it. Ah, well,” concluded Sister St. Olave with a French shrug that went oddly with her brogue, “Sure, and if we hadn’t dengue to worry about, mightn’t we be having something much worse?”

  That was all very well. But during the next week or two the spread of dengue widened from the few cases in the wards to several in the town, from there out to the oil site, back to the native quarter where it had probably begun, and so around again on a fresh wave of attack.

  At the hospital there were dawn to sundown lineups in the outpatients’ department, which perforce became a mere clearing station for admitting the worst cases and dispensing advice and sedatives to the others. Only one doctor at a time could be spared to attend to it. For the rest it was staffed by any of the nursing personnel, skilled or unskilled, who were still on their feet.

  Liz was one of these. She had expected, having no immunity at all to a tropical disease like dengue that she would probably succumb to it early. But she did not, and after a few days she forgot to watch for its warning symptoms. In fact, physically she had never felt better, though, like everyone else who had escaped, she was working all the hours there were.

  Her father did not fall a victim, either. Nor did Beth Carlyon—surprisingly, since Janine went down as soon as it began to run through the school, emptying it within a week. Janine was just about shakily convalescent by the time a second wave of the epidemic was on the wane. She was almost herself again on an evening when Liz, on her way home, called in to see how she was.

  Beth was there, too, making a small virtue of some hospital mending that Liz had brought out to her earlier, in answer to her rash claim that there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to help. Liz had promptly collected a pile of torn linen from the children’s ward stores, and had renewed the supply ever since. And tonight there was a peculiar satisfaction in guessing that Beth’s little sighs and lip pursings over her darning meant that she was wishing she could quit if she could only think up an adequate excuse.

  Janine, busy unpicking a patch that Beth had managed to pucker badly, put it aside as Liz came in.

  “My dear, you look worn out!” she exclaimed. “Let me get you something. Coffee? Or would you rather have something long and cold?”

  “Neither, thanks. I can’t stay. ” Liz perched on the broad arm of Janine’s chair.

  “Well, if you had intended walking home, Beth shall drive you. How are things at the hospital now?”

  “Oh, we’re just about coping. There was no one still waiting in the outpatients’ department when I left, and that’s the first time it has been like that for days.”

  Beth looked up to murmur, “You do sound capable, Liz! Not a bit as if you only began as a kind of errand girl at everyone’s beck and call.”

  Janine asked, “Wasn’t Nursing Sister Superior hoping to get some extra help from El Golea?”

  “She was. But we hear El Golea is beginning a wave of dengue of its own. There’s an extra doctor though, a German from Algiers—”

  Liz broke off. From her perch on the chairarm she had seen Roger’s car slide in under the trees outside. She rose and said to Janine’s look of surprise, “I told you I couldn’t stay. I want to be home before dada. And no, Beth needn’t drive me—I can walk.”

  But with Roger already in the doorway there was no means of escape, short of appearing to run away from him. Besides, there was an irritating challenge about the alacrity with which Beth threw down her sewing in order to greet him. Liz decided to linger...

  He said, “Hello, little one,” to Beth and ruffled her hair with casual affection. He nodded to Liz and accepted Janine’s offer of a drink.

  Beth cooed, “Lovely to see you, Roger! I haven’t dared to call you, in case you bit my head off while you were so hectic. Is it any better now? Liz says—”

  “We’ll manage, as soon as more of the sisters and the lay staff are about again. We’re using every available bed, but we didn’t have to admit any new dengue cases today. They were all slight enough to send home.” He turned to Liz. “When did you come off duty?”

  “About half an hour ago. When we finished in Outpatients’.”

  He looked at his watch. “That was something near a twelve-hour shift. It’s too long.
Did you get any rest at all during the day?”

  “Just for meals. Anyway, I wasn’t tired.”

  “It’s still too long. You’d better go back to the children’s ward tomorrow. At least you’ll get off duty when they are settled down for the night.”

  His manner made an order of it, so Liz said nothing. Then Beth was urging him, “You’ll stay to dinner, won’t you? I’m taking Liz home first, as she insists she must go. But afterward...?”

  He looked down into his drink, tinkling the ice against the glass. “Thanks, no, I won’t. Not tonight. As a matter of fact—” his glance slanted past Beth to Janine “—I came to ask you if you’d dine with me. That is, if you feel well enough?”

  Janine smiled. “Perfectly well enough! And we’d like to. Wouldn’t we, Beth? But where? Ought we to risk infection for Beth, do you think?”

  Roger said levelly, “I wasn’t inviting Beth tonight. Just you. Will you come?” And he stood up, ignoring the puzzled way in which Janine looked first at him and then at Beth.

  Janine hesitated. “Why, yes, if you really want me. Do you mean now?”

  “As soon as you can make it. Can you come as you are, without changing? It’s nearly eight now.”

  “Then I won’t change.” Clearly still puzzled by the invitation, Janine turned to Beth. “I know we can’t keep Liz, pet. But you must make her let you drive her home.” To Liz herself she said, “No, Liz dear, please! And in return, perhaps...?”

  “She can spend the evening with us, of course.” In any other circumstances Liz would have quailed at the suggestion. But she wanted to help Janine, and for the first time since she had known Beth, she felt almost sorry for her.

  For Beth’s chagrin was written all over her face, in the hunched shoulder she kept turned toward Roger, and in the sulky monosyllables that were her sole utterances until the other two left. Then she exploded.

  “And what do you make of that?” she demanded, as if, lacking a better ally, she must make do with Liz.

  Liz said mildly, “Of what? Mrs. Carlyon has been ill. You haven’t. So why shouldn’t Roger take her out to dinner, if he thought she needed an evening out for a change?”

  “He didn’t say anything about her needing a change!” Beth seemed to bite tartly on every word. “He has never once taken her out alone before, and didn’t you see how pointedly he avoided asking me, too, or explaining why he didn’t?”

  “Maybe he guessed how you’d take it—how you are taking it, in fact—and wanted to avoid a scene.”

  “That’s right—now tell me I made a scene!”

  “You didn’t. But you left none of us in any doubt that you considered you’d been snubbed.”

  “Well, wasn’t I? Roger belongs to me. He could at least have asked if I minded...”

  “Asked your gracious permission, in front of Mrs. Carlyon? Beth, be your age!”

  “I am being my age! He could have made a joke of it, couldn’t he? He could have explained why he wanted to talk to maman alone for any reason—Oh-h-h!” Beth paused on a long-drawn note of query and, as Liz watched, her ugly mood seemed to lift like a passing cloud.

  She went on, “But of course! I mean, I’ve just thought of something...” And though her arch little smile made a secret of what it was, Liz believed she could guess.

  She asked bluntly, “You mean you’re prepared to forgive Roger, so long as you think he wants to talk to Mrs. Carlyon about you?”

  “Well, wouldn’t you forgive him? Or need I ask whether you’d forgive him anything? I still think he needn’t have been so brusque and secretive about it. But if he wanted to talk to maman about our engagement...”

  “If he did, surely you’d know? Wouldn’t the two of you have discussed it?”

  Beth tossed a confident head. “Oh, understand each other well enough. But I’m not of age, you see. And Roger might think maman being French, she would appreciate being consulted first. Rather a nice gesture, really.”

  “It sounds pretty Victorian to me, and not a bit like him,” retorted Liz, reluctant to admit how little she wanted to agree with Beth. With brutal directness she went on, “I must say, if you and Roger are on the terms you claim, you’re a long time about getting engaged. I suppose you do know where you stand with him? He’s kissed you? Made—made love to you? You aren’t in any doubt about his feelings?”

  “I don’t know,” drawled Beth smoothly, “that you’ve any right to ask. But I’m not in any doubt. Who said I was?”

  “Then if you’re not, why should you mind if, for some good reason of his own, he didn’t want you along for once?” Liz stood up. “Let’s be going, if you mean to drive me back. And for goodness’ sake, don’t take out your pique against Roger on Mrs. Carlyon when she comes home, even if your precious little mystery isn’t solved.”

  This time Beth’s smile was seraphic. “I think it will be solved,” she said.

  Liz was not so sure. Roger’s manner had certainly been odd and absent. As if, temporarily, Beth hadn’t been in his thoughts and he wasn’t over concerned with her reactions. And he had made an importance—almost an urgency—of his invitation to Janine.

  Beth might be right, of course. But instinctively Liz felt there had been something to the exchange that neither she nor Beth had understood; even had not been meant to understand.

  Perhaps, thought Liz, it was silly to feel reprieved when, by the next morning, she had heard nothing further from Beth. If only she could like Beth more, being jealous of her wouldn’t hurt so much. But Beth wouldn’t merely wear Roger’s ring when her engagement became official. She would flaunt it! And Beth gloating over her wedding plans would be quite unbearable.

  Reporting at the hospital, Liz found that Roger had already arranged for her transfer to the children’s ward, where Sister St. Olave was reduced to no staff at all.

  Though there were no serious cases, the ward was full and the time flew in busyness until the siesta hour. Then, with the babel lulled while the children slept, Sister St. Olave suggested they should snatch a cup of tea, and sent Liz to the tiny ward kitchen to make it.

  The kitchen gave on to the short ward corridor, and Liz had just wet the tea-when she heard Sister St. Olave talking to someone there.

  “I have not, doctor,” the old nun was saying. “Not a soul but the little English girl orderly is here with me.”

  “No?” queried Roger’s voice. “What about Sister Bonavera? I thought...”

  “Sister Bonavera, is it? Ah, she had to go back to her bed after she’d got up from it this morning. You wouldn’t know, maybe. It was Dr. Herriot that sent her. The old dengue—yes. Will it ever have done with us now? But to help you, doctor—Have you asked for Sister St. Ursule? Sister Dorcas? Any of them that’s still on their feet in the other wards? You have? And there’s none of them able to go with you?”

  “Not one. I’ve combed the wards from end to end, and you are all needed where you are. My last hope was that you might be able to spare Sister Bonavera.”

  “And I could so, if she’d been with me. Wait now—you couldn’t be making do with an orderly, doctor?”

  “I could not.” Liz heard Roger laugh. “There now, Sister, you have me copying your Irish! What I mean is, I might as well save myself the trouble of taking one of the men orderlies. You know we have to respect the Tuaregs’ scruples about there being a nurse present when their womenfolk are visited?”

  “Indeed and I do. It’s one of us you must have, surely. But I asked about the orderly because I could just be sparing the little English girl.”

  “The...? Oh, Miss Shepard? No, I couldn’t take her.” His voice was sharply decisive.

  “Take her from me? Or take her at all?”

  “Take her out to the camp with me. She’s not a nurse. She hasn’t the necessary experience.”

  “She is willing and deft and gentle. And hasn’t she packed plenty of practical experience into the past few weeks? Will you be taking her now?”

  . “No.”
/>
  “On your own showing, she is the only one that’s able to go with you, doctor.”

  “Yes, but...” A pause. “She is with you here now, and you could manage without her?”

  “She is, and I could. The babes are asleep and she is only making tea for the two of us this minute.”

  “All right, then. Explain what I want of her, and send her down to the courtyard to meet me. I’ll call her father to say that I’ll see her safely home afterward. If I’m not at the car by the time she is, tell her to get into it and wait there for me. And Sister—”

  “Yes?”

  “See that she understands quite clearly what she’s coming for, won’t you? That we’ve work to do, that it’s no desert joyride we’re going on?”

  “That’ll not be necessary at all, doctor! She is a good, well-meaning, modest child.”

  “I’ve no doubt of it,” he said dryly. But as we shall be téte-a-téte for some hours, she may need reassuring that I’m good, well-meaning and modest, too.”

  “Doctor, I wouldn’t be putting ideas into her young head!”

  “All right. Tell her in your own way, Sister. But I’ve my reasons for wanting her to know that it’s a strictly professional trip. So tell her all the same.”

  Though the warning was softened for her by Sister St. Olave’s tact, Liz was still smarting under it when they set out a quarter of an hour later.

  As Roger started the car he asked, “Well, you’ll have been briefed on our errand?”

  “Yes. Dengue has spread to the Tuareg encampment where we went to the ahal. You’ve had an urgent call to it, and you are taking me along because there isn’t a proper nurse available.”