by Isobel Chace
Katherine went slowly back up the marble steps! Her suitcases were neatly piled beside the desk, and the receptionist smiled at her.
“Shall I ask the waiter to bring you some coffee in the salon?” he suggested to her. “I will let you know when the car comes.”
Katherine thanked him. Now that that momentary depression had left her she could feel the excitement trembling inside her. There were difficulties to be faced and the challenge of somehow making a small canning plant possible. It was funny, but she felt more the trustee of Edouard Hallet’s estate than its owner; even so, it was quite an adventure! She smiled happily to herself and sipped her coffee. She didn’t care how long the car took to get there.
In actual fact it arrived sooner than it was expected and she had to down the last of her coffee in a hurry so as not to keep it waiting. It wasn’t actually a car at all. It was more a miniature bus of the kind that they have on the Continent, that holds about six people and has a skylight in the roof that opens and windows all round the sides that don’t.
The receptionist himself stowed her luggage away into the back, where it rubbed shoulders with a selection of mechanical spares and a couple of nylon net sacks of fresh vegetables.
“This is Beshir,” he introduced the driver, and the two men greeted one another like long-lost friends, shaking hands and each slapping the other’s back with playful hands.
Katherine got into the front seat, with Beshir beside her, chuckling away to himself at some joke the receptionist had made. He wore his chechia, his scarlet skull-cap, very far down over his eyes, and a pair of sunglasses that hid most of his face.
“It will be pleasant to have the company to Hammamet,” he told her shyly, and then they settled themselves back in silence to enjoy the long drive.
It went surprisingly quickly. First there was the rather dull part as they went through the outskirts of Tunis itself with its phosphate factories and its other industries, but then they were out in the country, passing through the miles of vineyards (so odd to see in a Muslim country!) and the thousands and thousands of olive trees. It didn’t look like Africa at all, it was far more like the other side of the Mediterranean, with its white-gashed hills and scrubby green vegetation. She knew she was in Africa, though, when she saw a camel being used to draw water from a well and another dragging a plough behind it between the olive trees.
Then at last they came to the orchards. The apricots and the peaches were already in bloom and the oranges hung large and heavy on their sweet-smelling branches just waiting to be picked. They were nearly there.
Beshir insisted on stopping at Nabeul for petrol. He grinned broadly at Katherine.
“You can have a cup of coffee — see the pottery. Best embroidery here in all Tunisia!”
Katherine agreed a trifle nervously and he left her standing on the pavement outside a cafe while he drove away in search of a garage. It was rather an alarming town, she thought, with black smoke belching over the housetops. She supposed they were firing the pottery, but what she could see of it, standing out on the pavements, she didn’t like, and so she ordered herself a cup of coffee and sat out in the sunshine to drink it.
She wasn’t alone for long. The children came and stared at her, smiling whenever they caught her eye and saying “Bon soir,” as though it had some magic meaning which would keep them safe. Then as suddenly as they had come, they scattered away in all directions and only one man was left, tall and imperious, with his burnous gathered tightly around him.
“I am Brahim,” he introduced himself. “I had not expected to meet you today or I should have been waiting for your arrival at Hammamet.” He sat himself down with quiet dignity on a chair beside hers. “I am the manager of your estate,” he explained.
Katherine hid her astonishment as best she could.
She held out her hand to him and liked the firm way he shook it. She looked at him with some embarrassment.
“I don’t know the first thing about growing oranges and lemons,” she burst out in a hurry, “so I do hope you will |take me gently at first.”
He smiled.
“It is not right to see a woman concerning herself with business,” he said calmly. “I am an excellent manager. If I had not been, Monsieur de Hallet would not have employed me. The estate is doing well, for the land is rich and well tended, but it will not pay for all that the family demands from it.” He finished speaking and sat in silence, waiting for her to add some comment. If it had not been for the cigarette he was smoking, he could have been sitting in the same place any time in the last two thousand years and not looked at all out of place.
“Have there been many demands?” Katherine asked at last.
He nodded gravely.
“Then they must stop,” she said carefully. “Monsieur Verdon was telling me about the canning plant he and Monsieur de Hallet had planned to build. I - I promised him I’d try and find the money.”
Brahim took a long puff from his cigarette.
“It is badly needed.” He smiled with a sudden lightening of mood. “I shall bring the books in tonight for you to see and we can discuss it then, but I am afraid you will find it very difficult to manage. A lot of economies will have to be made.”
It was Katherine’s turn to laugh.
“I’m used to living on very little,” she said. “What time will you come?”
He looked up at the sky and did some quick mental arithmetic.
“I shall come three hours after sunset.”
“About nine o’clock?” Katherine confirmed in bewildered tones.
He nodded grandly.
“At that hour,” he agreed. He stood up and held out his hand again. “The blessings of Allah be with you, Miss Lane.”
She swallowed.
“And with you!” she replied faintly.
Her coffee seemed rather dull and ordinary after that. She thought she would need at least a hubble-bubble pipe to live up to
Brahim, and the idea amused her. But then the smile on her face sobered into a frown. It was all very well to make economies, but would anyone pay the faintest attention to her dictates? She sighed. There was no doubt about it, telling the de Hallets that they were not going to get as much money in future was not going to be easy.
Beshir was full of the lucky coincidence of Brahim being in Nabeul at just that particular moment when he brought back the car. For the first time Katherine saw that there was some resemblance between them, and she asked if they were related.
“We are brothers,” Beshir agreed. He took off his dark glasses and she saw that they really were very alike indeed, despite the fact that one of them wore Western dress and the other the costume traditional to the desert.
“Brahim will see you tonight? He has been worried all week by the bills that have come in. There has been no living with him!” the younger brother grinned.
“What bills?” Katherine demanded.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Hotel bills; bills for clothes; all kinds of bills!”
De Hallet bills! Oh well, they would have to be paid. There was no good getting upset about it, especially not before she had even seen them, but somehow that canning factory seemed suddenly very far away indeed.
It was only a short drive between Nabeul and Hammamet. It seemed only a few seconds between leaving one small town and entering the other, with the same flat distempered houses with blue painted windows and doors and the same narrow streets into which only an occasional door opened. The Arabs hugged their privacy and built their houses looking inwards over a central square, and there was really very little to see from the outside.
Katherine thought she had never seen such a lovely place as Hammamet. Orchards clustered round the small town, and beyond was the sea as blue as she had ever seen it. Wild flowers grew in profusion everywhere and the odd glimpses she had inside some of the pleasure gardens made her gasp as she saw the vivid splashes of colour that filled all the beds.
But it wa
s her own house that reduced her to silence. The elaborate wrought-iron gates should have prepared her, but did not. The long drive was lined with trees and was pleasantly cool, and ended in a wide square in which a fountain played. But it was the house behind the square that commanded all one’s attention. It was large and Moorish in character, with wide verandahs and arches everywhere. Bougainvillea hung over the doorways, vivid purple splashes, so heavily in bloom that they had to be supported with long wooden stakes.
Katherine got out of the car and stood in the middle of the square, just looking about her. She had never seen anything like it
— and to imagine that it all belonged to her!
Beshir blew the horn with gusto and deposited her suitcases on the nearest verandah.
“Someone come soon and show you inside,” he told her cheerfully, and was gone in a cloud of dust back down the drive.
Someone did come. A Negro came running out of the front door, dressed in highly embroidered camel-trousers and a Spanish type coat. He came to a full stop when he saw Katherine, and beamed with pleasure.
“Madame? I thought perhaps it was Madame de Hallet. Madame has business here?”
Katherine pointed to her suitcases.
“I am Miss Lane,” she said with a smile.
Eagerly he seized the cases and led the way into the house. It was just as lovely inside. Thick local carpets covered the floors and embroidered blankets from the island of Djerba hung on the walls like tapestries. But it was the vistas of arches, one leading into another for as far as the eye could see, that was the loveliest feature. There was no overburdening the rooms with furniture either. A few pieces, old and polished to a fine gloss, stood here and there, expensive and lovely.
A little awed, Katherine allowed herself to be led to her bedroom and was glad to see that she had a perfectly normal bed, even if it were covered with another embroidered blanket to give it a touch of the exotic.
“Madame is hot?” the Negro asked her anxiously as she threw open the shutters. “Shall I bring a pressed lemon with ice?”
Katherine grinned. A pressed lemon! With lemons from her very own trees! The Negro grinned too, aware of an overpowering sense of relief. It had been whispered in the market place that Mademoiselle Lane would not come, that Mademoiselle de Hallet would take over the estate. But she had come and she had eyes that he could see, not pale like that other one’s, and she was nice.
“I bring it straight away,” he said.
Guillaume had brought a bottle of the very best wine that the country produced as a peace-offering for Katherine.
“I felt so badly about leaving you to come on alone,” he told her. “Will this make up for it?” His bright blue eyes looked straight into hers and she could feel her defences against him melting.
“Don’t be silly!” she said sharply. “I didn’t mind a bit.”
He held the wine over her head, just out of her reach.
“Little liar!” he teased her. “Admit it and the bottle’s yours!”
She laughed.
“All right, I admit it!” She accepted the bottle from him and put it in the middle of the table. “And how about your admitting that it was just as much your idea as it was Chantal’s?”
His blue eyes clouded over.
“But it wasn’t, Kathy! Truly it wasn’t. I wouldn’t have had it happen for anything, but once she gets the bit between the teeth — Well, you know how it is!”
“Yes, I know how it is,” Katherine said grimly. “And don’t call me Kathy!”
“No, ma’am!”
They smiled at one another with a new understanding. Guillaume could be very charming, Katherine thought, and he would help her if he could, but he was no match for that sister of his, and he knew it. She would have to stand on her own two sturdy feet and like it. And it was no good thinking of Dr. Peter Kreistler either, she told herself angrily, for he was already in the other camp!
They were still standing by the table when Chantal made her entrance. She had changed for dinner, and for the first time Katherine thought she had lost that touch of chic. Tonight she was frankly overdressed.
Her pale eyes flickered over them both as she moved towards the chair at the head of the table.
“I hear that you’ve already met Brahim,” she said to Katherine. “I hope you didn’t pay any attention to his pessimistic mumblings. Uncle Edouard and I always used to call him the Prophet — he’s forever prophesying doom and disaster for someone!”
Guillaume laughed.
“He certainly looks the part!” he said.
Katherine didn’t say anything.
“Well?” Chantal demanded.
Katherine held her head up high and looked the other girl straight in the face.
“He’s bringing the books for me to see tonight,” she said clearly. “And he did mention a few bills that would have to be paid.”
Guillaume groaned. “My car, I expect!” he said philosophically.
Katherine was shocked. “Your car?” she repeated.
He shrugged his shoulders in an expressive French gesture.
“You don’t suppose I manage on what I get from France, do you?"
Chantal sat down with a slight, malicious grin on her face. She nodded to the servant to bring in the food and spread her napkin carefully over her knees. That was another thing that would have to change, Katherine thought. She was the hostess now, not Chantal, and the sooner she made that clear the easier it would be for everyone. But not tonight, she excused herself wearily. She was too tired tonight to start another battle.
“How much do you take from the Tunisian estates?” she asked Guillaume.
Chantal’s eyes sparkled.
“Yes, tell us, Guillaume,” she bade him. “Is it one hundred or two hundred a month? Katherine is bound to want to know! She’s the kind to count every penny, no matter how big the pile.”
Katherine blenched. One or two hundred! What on earth did he spend it on?
“It seems an awful lot,” she said out loud.
Guillaume gave her a pitying look.
“That’s nothing! You should ask Chantal what she manages to get through!”
Chantal, it seemed, was only too willing to tell her. She laughed down in her throat, as though she was glad to know that the figure would be more money than Katherine had seen in a lifetime.
“Uncle Edouard gave me a basic allowance of two-fifty a month,” she began sweetly. “But of course I couldn’t possibly manage on so little. I sent all the other little bills to him.”
“I see,” Katherine said coldly. “Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to manage on a great deal less. I can’t believe the estate alone produces anything like that amount —”
“Why not?” they both demanded in unison. “It always has!”
Katherine quietly finished her soup.
“Has it?” she asked them. “Or did your uncle pay the bills out of capital?”
Guillaume flushed.
“That was just a yarn of his,” he said. “Nobody likes shelling out, you know.” But he looked a bit subdued all the same. “What are you going to do?” he asked at length.
“I shall give you each a fixed allowance from the proceeds of the estate,” she said. There was a slight quiver in her voice, and she wished it would go away because she couldn’t afford to have them argue with her. “Any bills you ran up over and above that, you’ll have to pay yourselves,” she ended on a firmer note.
“And I suppose you’ll grab the rest!” Chantal put in spitefully.
Katherine bit her lip. What was she going to do? It seemed so silly of her not to have given her own financial position a thought. She had a certain amount of money that she had managed to save and she knew she could have two hundred and fifty pounds of it sent out to her from England. If she went carefully she ought to be able to manage on that. It wasn’t as if she would be having to pay any rent or taxes or anything like that.
“I shan’t take a penny,”
she announced proudly. “Anything that’s left over will go towards the canning factory.”
Chantal gave her a look of complete disbelief and Guillaume one of dawning respect.
“Good for you,” he said in shaky tones. “But how will you live?”
The room seemed lighter somehow, as though somebody had switched on the lights, although she knew they hadn’t. She felt lighter and she was beginning to enjoy herself. She looked round the magnificent room and felt free of it. Through the arch she could see the drawing-room, with the copper-topped tables and the comfortable chairs. It was all like a dream and the extraordinary thing was that, amidst all this splendour, she was glad to be waking up. She wouldn’t stay in Hammamet at all, she decided. There was nothing for her to do there. Brahim would run the estate and Chantal would run the house no matter how often or how much she objected.
It had always been the same, she remembered, whenever she had made a big decision. There had been that day when she had been asked if she would like the Casualty Ward of the hospital where she had trained. It had been a tremendous compliment to her professional abilities, she had known that. And yet she had finally turned it down to go into private nursing because she had wanted more contact with the people she had nursed. That had been her one fault as a nurse, she thought, she had always had the tendency to become too involved in the lives and troubles of her patients.
She took a deep breath and put up a hand to push in an errant pin in her hair.
“I shall go down and help in the hospital at Sidi Behn Ahmed,” she said. “I shan’t need a great deal of money down there.”
“You mean work in the hospital?” Guillaume asked. “Peter would never allow you to!”
But Chantal knew better.
“Oh yes, he’ll allow you to work!” she said venomously. “He’ll allow you to work yourself to death, and he won’t even notice you’re there! So don’t expect any gratitude for your noble gesture, will you, Nurse Katherine Lane?”
CHAPTER FOUR
KATHERINE sent a message by telephone to the Hospital of Fatima telling them that she would be arriving within the next day or so, and then went to her room to pack. It was late, for the session with the books had taken longer than she had intended.