by Sarban
It was more dreaming, or image-building, than active thought and she lay a long time, reluctant to do anything more energetic than thus to dream and listen to the quiet voice of the water and feel the coolness of the shaded grass against her arm and cheek.
Towards four o’clock she rose and began to pick her way through the woods, bearing right-handed in the expectation of coming to the grounds of Chevrel House and there finding one of the paths that would lead her back to the house. It was easy to keep her direction; the beech woods were fairly open and the Chevrel bourne was from time to time visible on her left hand to serve as a guide. Before long she came to a rotting, mossy wooden fence running down the slope of the wood. She crossed it and in a short time discovered a narrow, little-used path. The wood here was thicker, but it had a familiar look. She turned about in the path and followed it a little way down the slope and soon found her guess confirmed: it was the little path to the pond that she had found on her first evening at Chevrel House.
Being there, so near to the pond, she longed to slip down and take one last look at the bronze boy. She hesitated; it was no longer her own pond, the boy no longer her own discovery and private possession. She shrank from encountering Jamar again. Besides, she argued, defending her lack of courage to do the thing she most desired to do—she had no towel.
To base the objection on so trivial a ground was to make it at once look absurd. It was hours since she had seen Jamar at the pond; the woman would have long since had her bathe, if that was what she went there for, and gone home. Frances walked down the path, pushed through the thin, overcrowded saplings and stripped and dived into the pond as she had done that first evening.
She turned underwater and glided some yards towards the head of the pond without breaking the surface. Then she rose, filled her lungs again and lifted up her head to greet the god.
The green wall of the wood looked oddly unfamiliar behind the white stone. The statue was gone.
Astounded first, and then frightened by a possibility she dared not frame to herself either in words or images, Frances struck out for the bank again; the deep water had become suddenly a gulf of terror and she sobbed with relief as she clutched the grass and floundered out on the firm bank. Pulling her frock on anyhow over her wet skin and forcing her feet into her shoes, she snatched up the rest of her things and ran back as hard as she could to the house.
She found both sisters in extreme agitation and Emily was openly weeping. Miss Dorfray stared, uncomprehending and frightened, at Frances’s dripping hair, at the patterns of wet soaking through her cotton frock and the clothes held in her hand.
Frances could only gasp: ‘Jamar?’
It was difficult to understand Miss Dorfray; in her agitation and distraction at Frances’s bursting in so wet and wildly panting she seemed to have lost the gift of consecutive speech.
Frances began to get her breath more easily.
‘Never came home? She never came back from the pond, you mean?’ she demanded, seizing the main purport of Miss Dorfray’s disjointed words.
Like a picture created on a blank canvas by lightning-quick strokes of a brush Frances saw the statue and the distracted woman reaching up. She felt, as her own hand in reality felt, the heavy bronze sway; she shut her eyes and fought down a physical sickness at that imagined toppling lurch.
As briefly, as gently as she could she told them what she knew and what she feared. It did not seem strange to her that both should so soon comprehend the outlandish, hideous thing that she was suggesting. They asked no questions, only shifted their dim, soft, sad brown eyes from her face to each others and pressed their hands against their wasted breasts. They knew, it flashed upon her, they knew, while she had only guessed, that some such thing as this must happen.
Frances ran up to her room and hastily put on her things. When she came down again Miss Dorfray and her sister were trotting stiffly and with heart-breaking, ineffectual effort across the lawn to the path that led to the pond.
Frances did not hesitate: at a better pace she set off to the hamlet, making for the Talbot Inn where there was a telephone.
Late that evening, so late that the sun was only a red-gold glow through the thin upper boughs of the tall young ashes and all beneath the boughs and within the palisade of woods about the pond was a cool, blue shadow, Frances stood beside the square white stone between the two inlet channels. From its flat surface now stood up two short bronze pins, sloping in their sockets. The swampy underwood that had hedged the statue was slashed and broken and a deep muddy path had been smashed through it. The innkeeper and the three labourers from the hamlet, their trousers plastered with mud to the knees, stood in a group, lighting cigarettes and talking in whispers. The police sergeant from Lodersham stood with one boot on the edge of the carved stone, resting his notebook on one knee and peering a little in the failing light to read the last words he had written.
‘Well, Miss Prinne,’ he said, ‘that’s clear enough. Now where were you planning to stay for the next few days?’
‘The White Hart at Lodersham,’ she told him.
‘That’ll be alright, then. The inquest’ll be there, I expect,’ he remarked, and shutting his notebook turned to speak in a low voice to the constable who stood, like a dark statue himself, at the very brink of the pond.
Behind them lay a tangle of wet ropes and chains, and just beyond, between them and the group of labourers, two sacks covered something that lay on a hurdle. It was not at that that Frances looked so long, but at a thing that had been rolled aside so that it lay, half sunk in the ooze of the marsh, half concealed by the willow boughs. Yet part of it emerged, a rigid, dark thing, blackly visible in the evening light.
For a long time Frances stared at it and at last, drawing in her breath, she said, not knowing that she whispered the words audibly:
‘It’s not right!’
The sergeant had sharp ears.
‘No Miss,’ he said soberly. ‘That’s what we always say at an accident. It had no right to happen. But it did. It’s no use thinking of the rights and wrongs of it. And who’s to judge? It’s a terrible thing for the ladies, but who’s to say it’s not maybe the best thing for the poor young woman herself. She couldn’t have felt much pain: those hands are sharp, with that weight behind ’em they’d cut like knives. You’ll see the doctor’ll say she’d be dead before she reached the bottom: clean stabbed in the heart.’
Frances scarcely heard him. She still stared at the bronze boy, and she whispered again, so low that this time the Sergeant did not hear.
‘It isn’t right!’
From the willow twigs the bronze boy’s arms curved out, arching over his head to complete the gesture of triumph. It’s hands, like pointed leaves or concave blades, not quite touching, seemed still to cup the thing they had plucked out of Jamar’s breast.
The King of the Lake
I
THE CONSUL PICKED picked up the two passports that had lain before him on his blotter while he made his telephone calls, and looked at his two visitors, sitting on the other side of his desk.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Marrakesh say they can’t issue the permit. I spoke to the Military Governor’s secretary. They have the last word. It’s a military district, you see.’
He spoke sympathetically, regretfully. Not every traveller in Morocco who had called upon him to intercede with the French authorities in these difficult post-war years had seemed as deserving of special consideration as these two English girls. He had listened carefully to their plans and had studied the route they were proposing to take on his wall map. Tracing the line with his pencil point over the blank brown stretches of the Southern Territory he had felt envious; a desire for change and adventure that had slept now for many years suddenly awoke and stirred and made him turn restlessly away from the map and glance out at the white villas on the hill and think of the cocktail party he would be attending that evening. He could still in imagination exchange the confinement of an over
-crowded, over-decorated room where talk was drowned in a cataract of gabble, for a silent desert where he might be stretching himself out to sleep under friendly, golden stars, with the whole wide Sahara for his bed-chamber, and a world of space and sunlight and unknown things waiting for him beyond the dawn: if he were still as young and free as these two were.
‘Officially,’ he said, ‘I ought to discourage you. Too many people trying to get overland to South Africa since the war have come to grief. Even now, you know, the Sahara, or at least, this part of it, isn’t as frequented as the Brighton road. Cars break down, people lose their bearings and run out of petrol and water. The French authorities have to send out aircraft and expeditions to look for them. Unofficially, I confess I think they make too much fuss. I should like to make that trip myself. I’ll do my best for you.’
He had spent an hour telephoning to every official in the administration at Rabat who might be able to help. They had been apologetic. It was not, in the end, their affair: it depended on the military authorities. He had rung up Marrakesh. An unknown officer there was curtly discouraging.
‘It seems,’ said the Vice-Consul, ‘that the leader of your party, Mr—’ he looked at the notes he had made, ‘Mr Viljoen, is it?—has already been refused a permit.’
‘Yes,’ said one of the girls, ‘that’s why we came to you.’
They both looked steadily at him, disappointed, but by no means ready to despair. They were going to drive the length of Africa in a jeep: they were confident of overcoming all obstacles of nature and dealing efficiently with every perversity of their machine; they did not believe that the refusal of one official to sign a small piece of paper was insuperable. Since setting out from England they had learnt patience and pertinacity in unravelling the skeins of red-tape. The Vice-Consul was an expert, he must be able to untie this particular knot.
He opened the passports and looked at the photographs as he handed them back. The girls were both twenty-two, he had noticed; they were both described as ‘Students’. They had told him that they had graduated from London University that June. They did not quite know what they were going to do in South Africa. One of them, the one with short, dark hair brushed back from her forehead and lying close and neat to her skull—Nicola Joubert—had relatives in Pretoria, she said. There were lots of opportunities in South Africa. They would look about. In any case, they were not sure that they intended definitely to stay there. They were really going for the adventure of the trip. Viljoen, who had organised the party, with his own family and a family of English emigrants, knew Nicola Joubert’s uncle.
‘All sorts of people have done it,’ said the other girl. ‘People with little children. And one family we heard about set off on a motor-bike and side-car. Why shouldn’t we? We’re both good drivers and we did a maintenance course when we were in the A.T.S.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you could get through, all right,’ said the Vice-Consul. ‘After all, it’s not as if you were going alone in your jeep. You have three cars, and this man Viljoen is experienced enough, from what you tell me. Still, there it is: without a little bit of paper from the military authorities you won’t get beyond Ouarzazarte.’
They were both handsome girls, he thought, but this one, Alison Grant, was the more striking of the two. She was taller than Nicola; her light brown hair was thick and soft; her eyes blue, with a quiet, direct gaze; her brow and cheeks were lightly freckled. He had noticed the grace of her figure and her walk when she came into his office; it was easy to see that she was a girl brought up to an active, outdoor life; she had an air of tranquillity and steady capability, which, with her looks of perfect health and youthful resilience, convinced him that she was of the type who could carry through such an adventure successfully—if its success depended only on personal and physical qualities.
Alison took her passport, and tilted back her head slightly, in a gesture which both drew attention to her long, shapely throat and emphasised the firmness of the lines of her jaw and chin. It was no doubt an unconscious or habitual movement, but it struck the Vice-Consul as a quiet little declaration of her intention to persist. Nicola tapped her chin with the edge of her passport and looked at him. He had taken her for French when she first came in. She had an alert, keen kind of beauty that is often seen among French women, particularly those of the North; a high forehead, an oval face and small pointed chin with a fine, straight nose and small, well-shaped mouth and a pair of brilliant grey eyes. If he could read character at all in a face, he would have said that here was intelligence, humour, courage and high-spirits enough to cope with any situation.
‘Well?’ Nicola asked. ‘What do we try next?’
There was such a note of buoyancy in the question that the Vice-Consul grinned.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘You’ve done all you can in the proper channels. Why don’t you try tactics of your own? Go and see the Commandant de la Region at Marrakesh yourselves.’
Nicola grinned back at him. ‘I see what you mean. But should we ever be allowed to get at him? Mr Viljoen couldn’t get any further than a very sticky Captain.’
‘I know,’ replied the Vice-Consul. ‘And I can’t very well try and get you an introduction now I’ve been turned down once.’ He stroked the flat of his palm back and forth across his blotter and frowned. Suddenly he looked up smiling. ‘But I know someone who might get you further than I could. Go to Marrakesh. Viljoen is still there, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, they all are,’ said Nicola.
‘Good. Now the first thing you must do when you get there —go along and see a certain Capitaine Duncan. No, he’s not French and he’s not in the administration. He’s a Scot, but he’s been in this territory for fifty years. He joined the Foreign Legion when he was a boy and he’s one of the very few non-Frenchmen who’ve had a commission in it. He lives retired in Marrakesh now. I’ll write you a note for him. Anyone will tell you where he lives. Ask at the desk in the Mamounia Hotel. They know him. If he can’t help you, no-one can.’
He took a sheet of paper and quickly wrote a short note.
‘Thank you,’ said Alison. ‘I knew you could bring a rabbit out of the hat.’
‘Oh well, that’s easy. But whether the rabbit will play is another matter. I’ll tell you this, though,’ the Vice-Consul added, as he conducted his visitors to the outer door, ‘Duncan has done some adventurous travelling in his time. He’ll be on your side. He knows the desert. Convince him that you know what you’re doing and he’ll back you up.’
He watched the two climb into their jeep. Nicola took the wheel and started the engine. Alison gave her hair a little shake and threw back her head, then they both raised their brown, bare arms in salutation and the jeep roared away.
***
The following afternoon Alison and Nicola sat talking to a lean old gentleman with close-cropped white hair and a bristling white moustache and a little round, brown face all puckered and wrinkled and lit by two tiny points of blue light that twinkled through narrow slits under bushy white brows.
They talked for half an hour and the old gentleman did not interrupt them except once or twice when he sharply asked them to repeat a name they had so mispronounced that he did not understand it.
When they had finished he enquired simply:
‘Did they tell Mr Viljoen why they wouldn’t give him a permit?’
‘No,’ said Nicola. ‘No, I suppose they don’t feel obliged to give any reasons. They inspected the cars and said they were all right. Then they said the Commandant wouldn’t issue a pass.’
Capitaine Duncan stood up. ‘When I was twenty-five,’ he said, ‘I went from here to the Niger, partly on a camel, mostly on my feet. I know nearly all that route your Mr Viljoen is proposing to take. Nearly all of it. The bit I don’t know is wrong. You must change your route. That’s why they won’t give you a pass. Come along, now, we will go and see my old friend De l’Aubespine, the Assistant-Commandant.’
‘Now?’ asked Nicola.
‘Now!’ said Duncan firmly. ‘You shall drive me in your jeep and I will tell you where to go, but first we will pick up Mr Viljoen.’
***
They sat silent in the Assistant-Commandant’s office, following with a hopefulness they dared scarcely yet acknowledge to themselves, the questions put by Colonel De l’Aubespine to Viljoen, watching for a sign of approval on his face. He was a little younger than Capitaine Duncan, but as brown and shrivelled as he. His whole career had been passed in the enormous dun wastes they were asking to be allowed to traverse. The two girls began to understand from his questions that he knew the Sahara as something very different from a mere empty space to be crossed in the course of a journey: it was not simply a matter of calculating miles against gallons of petrol and pints of water to him. They had themselves so far seen no true desert. They had assumed before setting out, that the petrol-engine had for ever obliterated the ancient, inimical aspect of the desert; the desert was dead now, laid lifeless, under the wheels of conquest, a mere inert expanse of neutral ground. All that was needed now to cover so many miles of uninhabited and waterless territory was sound vehicles, good maintenance, properly calculated supplies and spares and competent navigation. Viljoen seemed to them to have convinced the Colonel that his party was perfectly equipped in all these.