Meet the Sun Halfway

by Jane Arbor

  “Then someone must speak for you and for Monsieur Paul,” she decided at last. “Doctor Renair, for instance. He knows Seiyid Karim well, and he would do it, I think. So may I ask him the next time I see him?”

  Sorab nodded her gratitude. “Please. You are very good,” she said.

  But the “next time” Alice and Yves Renair were to meet was so charged with other urgencies that his help for Sorab was not going to be asked. Alice had envisaged a talk with him over coffee on his next routine morning visit. She wasn’t prepared for the happening which brought him posthaste to the Home in the middle of that same night, and drove everything of lesser importance to the back of her mind.

  She had probably been asleep for about an hour when a gentle scrabble of knuckles on her door woke her with a start. It was Sorab who stood on the threshold and came across to the bed, night-torch in hand.

  Alice sat up, groping for the light-switch. “Yes? What is it?” she asked.

  Sorab whispered, “It is Omar. Another attack, and much worse, I think. He doesn’t seem to know me, or where he is.”

  “How did you find out? Was he crying? Did you hear him?” Alice had swung out of bed, reaching for dressing-gown and slippers.

  “Little Brahim heard him crying, and came for me,” Sorab told her. “May I call Doctor Renair now?”

  “Yes, do that, and I’ll go to Omar. Then see that the bed in the sick bay is ready. When the doctor comes he will probably want him moved in there.”

  But at her sight of the little boy Alice judged he was in need of more than isolation or observation this time. As Yves Renair had wished for him, he had stayed on when others of his group had returned to Tetuan, and he had suffered one very minor “grumble” since he had come out of his few days in hospital. But this was different; this was acute, and Yves confirmed her fears when he arrived a quarter of an hour later.

  “We must get him into hospital. Not here - down in the city. This is a surgical job and we’ve no facilities for anything major. How soon can you get him ready, and I’ll take him down by car?” He paused. “But I’ll need someone with him for the journey. Could you come?”

  “I?” Alice thought swiftly. “Why, yes. I can leave Sorab in charge. What shall I need to take with me? Or shall we be coming straight back?”

  “I shall, more or less. I have some urgent cases I must see tomorrow ... today, rather. But I’d like you to stay, so that there will be someone he knows when he comes round after the op. Say, night and day clothes for a couple of days. They will put you up at the hospital, and I’ll come down to bring you back.”

  Sorab and Alice worked swiftly then, trying to get Omar wrapped and moved with not too much disturbance of the dormitory. Yves telephoned the city hospital, alerting it to emergency surgical readiness, and presently they were under way on the tortuous hundred-kilometre journey to the plain.

  Alice sat in the back seat, making a cradle of her body and arms for Omar. Yves had given him a sedative before they set out, so that his distressing retching had eased, but he lay with his eyes open and glazed, neither sleeping nor fully conscious. From time to time Yves asked about him in a low voice, but for the most part he concentrated on driving as fast as the hazards of the road would allow, while Alice had to concentrate on bracing herself and her burden against every

  corkscrew turn which the car had to make.

  At last the mountains were left behind and only the long, straight ribbon of road into the city remained. Now the summer dawn was beginning to pale the night sky; it was grey now, not the star-pricked black velvet it had been, and by the time Yves swept the car into the courtyard of the hospital in the European quarter, the rich sandstone of walls and buildings was beginning to glow with the promise of the sun.

  After that, everything happened at speed. Nurses and porters appeared; Omar was transferred to a stretcher-trolley and borne away; Yves went with him and an orderly showed Alice to a waiting-room, where presently Yves joined her, telling her he had seen the Night Sister and had arranged for her to have a room and a bed.

  “At this hour? I shan’t sleep now,” she protested. “It’s morning.”

  “All the same, you had better go and try,” Yves advised. “They are operating at once, but the child won’t come round for some hours, which is when I’d like you to be there with him.”

  “Will he - is he going to be all right?”

  “There’s no reason why not. He is bonny and strong, and we were in time, though perhaps only just.”

  “And afterwards - for me? What shall I do?”

  “Well, if all goes as it should, the rest of the day can be your own. Treat yourself to a look round the city — you haven’t seen it yet, have you? You’ll be sleeping here again tonight, but I’ll be down to take you back some time tomorrow - D.V., of course, that young Omar doesn’t need you any more until he’s convalescent.”

  Coffee was brought to them then, after which Alice went out with him to his car to fetch the small valise which was her luggage.

  He took the driving-seat with a small sigh. “I could wish I were going to show you the city,” he said.

  She smiled. “I wish you were too. You were a wonderful guide to M’Oumine.”

  “And you the perfect guidee - if there is such an English word. You brought all the bubbling wonder of a child to M’Oumine.”

  “Oh dear, was I as naive as all that?” she laughed. “Delightfully so.

  That’s why I’m jealous of your starting a love-affair with this place, without my being there to direct it. However, if you’ll promise to save some of it for me to share with you another time, I’ll allow you your freedom of it today. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” She waved him away, then went back into the hospital in search of her room.

  She was sure she would not sleep, so she lay on the bed in her slip with just the coverlet over her. She thought about Omar, wondered how the operation was going. Yves had said she would be called when he was coming round, so she must wait until then. She had meant to ask Yves whether he had telephoned the Tetuan Sisters about Omar, and decided to do so herself, though she would wait until she had some definite news to give of him. It was only then that she remembered she had said nothing to Yves on Sorab’s behalf. But even if she had thought of it earlier, she doubted if she would have troubled him. They both had had enough on their minds. Tomorrow, when he came for her would be time enough...

  She hadn’t meant to sleep and hadn’t realised she had dropped off until she was awakened by the nurse who came to say that Omar had been back in his bed for a couple of hours, was showing signs of coming round, and that the Day Sister would allow Alice to sit with him for half an hour when he did.

  The nurse waited while she got back into her dress, then took her to his screened bed in a ward which was already busy with its washings and blanket-baths and temperature-taking rounds. As the screens parted to admit Alice and the nurse, Omar opened his eyes, grimaced, murmured with satisfactory recognition, “Miss Alice” and was promptly and very thoroughly sick.

  This diversion having been dealt with by the nurse with matter-of-fact calm, she went away on Alice’s assurance that she could cope if it happened again. It didn’t. Alice took the little brown hand which lay outside the quilt, and sat very still, watching Omar drift between sleep and waking. Once, his round black eyes roamed about the room and he said clearly, “This is not my bed,” but had drowsed off again before

  Alice finished telling him why he was there.

  When her time with him was up she was told she could sit with him again during the quiet afternoon hours. Meanwhile the morning was her own and she decided to take Yves’s advice and explore the city. She chose to go window-shopping on the boulevards of the European quarter, rather than venturing into the Moroccan bazaars and markets. She would “save” those for Yves to show to her, as he had promised.

  She had spent practically nothing since she had been in Tazenir where such shops as there were dealt only in
bare necessities and made no attempt at display. But here the temptations were enormous. The shops on the fashionable boulevards were mostly in French ownership, though interspersed by Moroccan ones equally luxurious in a different style. Perfumes, gowns, shoes, wines and confections in the European displays; silver, leather, carpets and rich woollens in the Moroccan -none of them showed any prices for their wares, and Alice decided she must make her tour a mere academic exercise. She dared not hope she could afford anything she saw for which her feminine soul hankered.

  Until, that is, in the window of a little corner boutique under a gay red and white awning, there was displayed this gown, this kaftan, which halted her and brought a long “Oo-h” of delight from her rounded lips.

  The shop was French, but the sign on the dress said “Le couleur veritable du Prophete,” which Alice took to refer to the traditional green of the robes of the Prophet Mahomet. For green it was, though shot through also with threads of blue and silver, muting it almost to green-grey in certain lights. Its skirt was pinned out to its full spread, emphasising the narrow corsage which finished in a straight line across shoulders and throat. The long open sleeves were also pinned out to show their full width, and skirt, corsage and sleeves were all edged with bands of silver-thread embroidery. It was a dress of Alice’s most covetous dreams. But what could be its price?

  There was nothing for it. She had to know. She opened the door of the shop and went in.

  A quarter of an hour later she came out again, swinging the dress-box from its loop on her finger. The price asked had indeed taken her breath away, but seeing her hesitation, the saleswoman had offered a guileful “Of course, for tourists like Madame, we give a discount of fifteen per cent for cash,” and though in her headlong dash from Tazenir overnight, Alice had practically no cash to offer, she had in her wallet several travellers’ cheques which the shop had trustingly accepted.

  On her way back to the hospital her delight in the dress warred with guilt at its price — and won. She was working through her vacation, wasn’t she? And hadn’t bought much more than a cake of soap for weeks. Long after she had forgotten what it had cost, it would be giving her pleasure. Though on that came the slightly sobering thought - How long must she wait for the right occasion for wearing it? Where could she wear it - in Tazenir?

  She lunched in the visitors’ canteen at the hospital and then went to keep her rendezvous with Omar, who had been allowed some bread-and-butter and milk as his first meal and who was much brighter -almost himself. During the afternoon he treated the other children to his full repertoire of funny faces, though refusing to cheapen his art by giving the repeat performance for which they clamoured. “More tomorrow - if I feel like it,” he promised darkly, letting no one suppose that the performance was to be counted on as a certainty, india-rubber features being the rare gift they were.

  At tea-time Alice left him for the night, telling him that Doctor Renair would come to see him tomorrow, and that after that it wouldn’t be long before he could go back to the Home. On the telephone Mother Superior in Tetuan had suggested he should have at least another fortnight there for his convalescence.

  Alice had not long returned to her room when an orderly came to say a visitor for her was waiting in the main hall.

  “For we? Are you sure? A man or a woman?” she asked, convinced that the boy was mistaken.

  “A Seiyid ibn Charles. And certainly for you, El-Anissa Ireland. He asks if you are here, and I tell him I remember you from yesterday.”

  Karim? She could only suppose he had seen Yves, who would have told him where 'he was. But why make opportunity to see her? What did he want?

  She told the orderly she would go down, and presently followed him. Going down in the lift she thought how nice it would be if she were meeting someone who would be taking her out for the evening. She would wear her new dress, and they would dine somewhere exotic, and afterwards they might dance in a night-club or even in a silly discotheque, if the whim so took them. Instead she would have supper in the canteen and either before or after it would take herself alone to a cinema, if she could find one which had an English film showing. But at least Karim, finding himself in the city, had troubled to look her up. That was an unexpected attention on his part, though in all probability Yves had asked him to.

  He was sitting in an alcove, turning the pages of a magazine, but looking up by chance as she left the lift, he rose and came over to her as if - well, if she imagined quite hard, she could believe he was eager and glad to see her.

  They shook hands. He brushed aside her murmur of, “This was kind of you” to say, “I was afraid you might be out, or tied up with Renair’s young patient. How is he, by the way?”

  “Very lively now. I’ve been able to sit with him twice and I left him only a little while ago. I shan’t be seeing him again tonight.”

  “Then may I hope you will spend the evening with me?”

  Her eyes widened in question. “With you? You are here for it -for the evening, I mean?”

  “And for the night. I am staying at the Menoubia, and I thought we might dine there together.”

  The Menoubia! It was globe-famous. The whole wealthy world and its glamorous wife - princes, millionaires, great statesmen -stayed and wined and dined at the Menoubia! It was no place for -And yet, heady and a little reckless, she heard herself accepting demurely, “I should enjoy that very much. Shall I meet you there, or

  will you call for me?”

  “I’ll come for you, of course. Say at eight? Will you have to tell someone you will be out?”

  “I expect I’d better.”

  “Then I’ll be here at eight.”

  She watched him go, King Cophetua magnanimously offering the Beggar-Maid a rare treat. But beggar-maid or no, she went back to her room in a state of happy euphoria at the prospect.

  The Menoubia! It was unthinkable that she should appear there in a crimplene day-suit or in the sleeveless smock she had brought as a change. That meant the kaftan. But what about slippers? An evening bag? Thanking Providence for the foreign custom which opened shops in the evening, instead of closing them firmly at half-past five, and hoping she had enough change from her travellers’ cheques, she sped out again, though this time to the modest counters of a chain-store.

  There, earlier, she had seen sets of heelless, babouche-like sandals and soft leather pochettes to match, inexpensive and in all colours. The green pochette she chose would hold handkerchief and lipstick, and beneath the hem of the kaftan the sandals would hardly show and in style were as Moroccan as the gown itself.

  At eight o’clock, with the night nursing staff taking over from the day, the lifts were in full use, so she walked down the broad stone staircases to the ground floor. Near the foot of the last of them, Karim stood in the main hall, looking up. Several stairs up, a rush of nurses and white-coated male staff forced Alice to pause to let them pass. Standing, a hand on the balustrade, her eyes met Karim’s, surprising there a look which she found unreadable.

  In a man who had a warm interest in her, it could have been admiration ... even a fond welcome. But from him to her, a mere dinner-partner, what was it? That it had fired her with a momentary impulse to run down to him, eager, artless — he couldn’t know. And as she began to move again, his hooded lids came down, hiding whatever that first unguarded glance had said - or hadn’t.

  As she joined him he said, “After I had left you, it occurred to me that I ought to have suggested somewhere quieter than the Menoubia, as you mightn’t be prepared to dress for the evening. But-”

  She saw him glance at the kaftan, and blushed. “I was tempted to buy it this morning, of course without an idea I could wear it so soon,” she told him.

  “It’s charming. I hope the evening will deserve it,” he said, then reached over her shoulder to draw over her hair the pointed Berber hood of the kaftan. “You’ll need that; I have the car open. Shall we go?”

  Their table was waiting for them on the terrace
of the hotel, and for their aperitifs they went straight to it, threading their way through the elegant cosmopolitan crowds in the magnificent foyer and halls. In contrast to the brilliance of the terrace the panorama of the medina was dark, only the spread of its squares picked out in street lights, its hundreds of radiating alleys mere indiscernible canyons. As Karim described the scene, pointing out the general direction of landmarks -mosques, gardens, markets - Alice experienced a stab of treachery towards Yves Renair. She had promised they should explore this aspect of the city together. How would he take it when she had to admit she had shared it with Karim instead? With Karim ibn Charles, who saw none of it with their strangers’ eyes; who by deliberate choice had made its alien, bizarre way of life his own; who knew it as they could never hope to? being aliens themselves.

  Remembering something Yves had said, she asked in a pause, “Do you think it’s possible to have a love-affair with a city, a country?”

  Karim said, “As with a woman? Yes, why not? Why do you ask?”

  “Because,” she said a little shyly, “it seems to me that you love Morocco rather like that.”

  “Like what? If you are drawing comparisons with love, you must know what you mean by love?”

  She hesitated. She had never yet been expected to voice aloud her ideal of love, but his flat question seemed to demand that she try. Choosing her words, she said, “Well, I suppose - passion and tenderness, and - and protectiveness. And admitting faults, but accepting them all the same. And friendship too. That’s important.”

  He had listened, watching her carefully as she spoke. “And if I feel all this for my country, then I’m in love with it?”

  She put the onus on him. “Don’t you know?” she asked.

  He considered the question. “It’s hard to say. I’m inclined to think it’s not possible to analyse love until after a particular one is dead. Before that one can’t feel the need to dissect it, nor is capable of being lucid about it. You have tried, but you don’t convince me that when one loves - anything or anyone - it is necessary to know all this. While one loves, it follows that it is all there. Do you agree?”