by Jane Arbor
Sorab said, “Well, he did not say so. Just that I must thank you. And I do, Miss Alice, I do! Without you, Monsieur Paul would have to go, but now that he will have hope in his heart, I know he will not fail!”
“‘And that he will now feel able to ask you to marry him?” Alice teased.
Sorab looked away shyly. “I cannot know until he asks me, and I have to remember that I am a Moroccan girl, he a European.”
“As if he will let that make any difference if he loves you,” scoffed Alice. “No, much as this place will miss you, I think it may need a new deputy Warden in the autumn, don’t you?”
“Seiyid Karim said he hoped so too,” Sorab admitted. “He also said that if he had not heard, by the Moussem of the Fiances, that Monsieur Paul - Benoit - was to be married in the autumn, he, the Seiyid himself, would want to know why not!”
“Good,” said Alice. “And when is this festival, the Moussem of the Fiances?”
“Soon. Very soon now. At the time of the next full moon,” said Sorab in dreamy content.
And what now to understand of a man who, only a few hours earlier had despised his impulse of flirtatious desire for a girl from the other of the two worlds in which his prejudice believed? wondered Alice bewilderedly. But she supposed he saw a difference. Sorab must have convinced him that she and Benoit Paul were deeply in love, whereas from him to herself no such thread of feeling ran.
At least, though, he seemed to have heeded her pleading of Sorab’s cause. He had mocked at her faith in the power of love, but he had acted as promptly and decisively as if he believed in it himself. For once, and in something that mattered, he had put himself on common ground with her. Little enough there for lasting heartsease, perhaps. But onesided love had to learn to make treasure of mere crumbs.
The next day, when Yves called professionally, she found he already knew that Karim was recommending to the Caid a reprieve for Benoit Paul. Karim had telephoned him to tell him so, said Yves, adding, “Considerate of him, I thought. It had occurred to him, he said, that I might have begun to make plans for my own move when Benoit had to go, and he wanted me to know that as long as the fellow behaves himself, matters remain as they are. That’s what makes Karim the good landowner and employer he is - there’s no detail of anyone’s circumstances that’s too trivial for him to attend to. I admit he doesn’t radiate warmth and bonhomie, but he does go down to the grass roots when he acts in anything. And however obdurate you thought he was, it looks as if he listened to you after all.”
Alice nodded. “Yes. I was gratified. Tell me, what and exactly when is the Moussem of the Fiances?”
“It is what it sounds like - a public betrothal occasion. It is coming up soon, on the fourteenth of the month, at full moon. Why?” Alice related Karim’s oblique threat to Benoit Paul, and Yves laughed. “A good deadline to draw! Yes, it’s a public holiday everywhere, and traditionally a kind of wholesale engagement party. But the place which celebrates it more robustly than most is Alaksaar in the mountains. It is worth seeing once. Would you like to go?” “Very much. But if it is that kind of a get-together, I ought to give Sorab the day off for it. She will be - we hope! - the one who is getting engaged, and there will be some festivities here, won’t there?” Alice asked.
“Oh yes - dancing, open-air supper, fireworks and so on. A pity about Alaksaar, but I suppose you feel you shouldn’t both be off duty at the same time?”
“I’d rather we weren’t, supposing anything should happen. I shouldn’t like to lay the responsibility on Rachma or Miriam, and if it is a holiday, they will probably expect to be free too.”
Reluctantly Yves agreed that she was right, and when he had gone she gave no more thought to his invitation until Seiyida Charles rang up a few days later.
“Alice?” asked her soft, attractive voice. “Doctor Renair tells us you feel too duty-bound to let him take you to Alaksaar for the Moussem. Which is such a pity, as it is a spectacle you really shouldn’t miss while you are here.”
“Yes, so he says. But he does understand why I feel I oughtn’t to go,” Alice said.
“And so do we, of course,” the Seiyida agreed. “You are being generous to your girls and to Sorab bint Khaled. But supposing I offered to - ah, what is your modern word? Yes - to baby-sit for you
for the day and the evening, what would you say?”
Overwhelmed, Alice said, “I’d say you were being too kind, Seiyida Charles. But I mustn’t ask it of you or expect it.”
“Now why not? I am of age, I have been a mother, and I would promise to keep my head, whatever knavery your young brood saw fit to think up,” the other woman returned gaily.
“I don’t doubt that, but-”
“Besides, you could make a gay party of it. Karim is taking Miss Kent, who wants to see it. Her hosts, Captain and Mrs. Rout, are going too. And you and Yves Renair — now say you will go, to please me?”
Gratefully, Alice agreed that she would, and the Seiyida suggested they could arrange later for her briefing on her duties and the time at which Alice would like to be free.
So, for all Karim’s coolly brittle reception of Elaine Kent, they must have achieved more intimacy since. At whose first move, his or hers? Alice wondered. Where and how often had he entertained her, if he had? And if he had taken her into his arms at the end of some evening they had shared, how had she responded and, afterwards, had he blamed himself for a fool - or not? Futile jealousy nagged with such questions, and imagination pictured far too much.
After ten days in hospital Omar came back, waggish as ever and basking in the other children’s respect for his convalescence and their awe of his highly-coloured account of his ordeal. Meanwhile, with the passing of the weeks, the muster of his audience had changed. For one, Ali of the date-grove intrusion had gone back to Tetuan, and so had Zoe, bossy and meddlesome to the last. To Alice’s relief, a potential bully had departed, along with two or three meek, biddable spirits who followed where anyone led. No doubt prodded into the exercise by Sister Bernadine, they had all sent bread-and-butter letters of thanks for their stay, and their places had been taken by others, equally individual in different ways.
For instance, in the present week’s contingent there arrived a twin boy and girl, nine years old, by name Rassim and Xenie, heralded in
a message from Sister Bernadine as being “problem”, with a history of being unwanted before the Tetuan Home had taken them in. They didn’t mix well with the other children, they didn’t always appreciate the difference between Mine and Thine, and tended to take a poor view of any form of coercion by authority. But this said of them, reported Sister Bernadine generously, they were no more difficult than a couple of sadly deprived gossoons had a right to be, and she was confident Alice would see them as a Challenge.
Thus warned, Alice had awaited the pair with foreboding. Sorab, who knew them from a previous holiday stint, pursed her lips at the news of their coming and uttered the harshest judgment Alice had heard her voice, commenting, “One child as demon-driven as Xenie bint Vareh is enough; she and her shadow are too much!” From which Alice deduced that in trouble Xenie was the master-mind, with Rassim as her stooge.
The arriving children usually brought a toy or two with them, the favourite with the boys being footballs and for the girls, with ultimate homemaking as their ambition, miniature housecraft sets. But the choice of the Vareh twins struck a different note. Rassim was not to be separated from a mouth-organ, while Xenie favoured a battered cardboard box of gaudy trinkets, plaits of tarnished silver and gold thread, ribbons and handfuls of cheap loose beads. The brooches she pinned to her overall, the tawdry bangles and rings adorned her wrists and chubby fingers, and there was an early clash of wills when, at their first task time, she claimed that Rassim would practise his music, while she intended to thread herself a head-circlet from her beads.
Alice, called in by Miriam to adjudicate, pointed out gently, “But Rassim’s music is his pleasure, and yours is playing with y
our beads, and at Task time we do something useful and for other people, not for ourselves.”
Xenie contended, “For Rassim to practise is useful. So, he will learn to play better, and for me a circlet, with a pendant hung - so,” she dangled a pear-shaped bead between her eyes and squinted at it -“will make me much more pretty, will it not?”
Lying tactfully, but firm, Alice said, “Yes, very becoming, I’m sure. But you are very pretty as you are, and I’m afraid Rassim must help Hussein in the garden and you must hem a duster as your Task.” Xenie tried again. “Me, I cannot sew with a sharp needle. I prick my finger and then I cry,” she claimed.
“And what are thimbles for? Ask Miriam to find a nice silvery one which fits you,” returned Alice, retreating, she hoped, in good order and having won that round. As for Rassim’s music, privately she couldn’t agree more as to his need of practice. The weird Moorish discords and cadences he produced on his mouth-organ were an assault upon the ears. But discipline was discipline and fair was fair. Along with the other boys of his set he must do his stint under Hussein’s demanding eye.
There was an uglier cast to the next Xenie-occasioned piece of trouble. Niraka, a pretty ten-year-old, reported the loss of her Hand of Fatma talisman brooch, accused Xenie of purloining it, and sure enough, it was found in Xenie’s cardboard jewel casket.
Xenie evinced no shame at the theft. “I like it. So I take it,” she claimed blandly.
“Yes, but” - Alice plunged a hand into the box and brought out a hideous tin-surrounded piece of orange glass
“I like this,” she said, lying again in a good cause, “but I know it is yours, so I do not take it.”
Xenie waved a grandiose hand. “You like it? Then it is yours. I give it to you,” she said.
“But Niraka didn’t give you her Hand of Fatma. You took it without asking, and now you must give it back.”
“I will give Niraka something else.”
“No. Her own Hand of Fatma. Nothing else, except that you will tell Niraka you are sorry you stole from her and that you won’t do it again,” Alice ordered, and supervised the deal. Though how did you cope successfully every time with an arrogance which assumed its right to take what it wanted and to act as it pleased? she asked herself, wondering whether her Because I Say So technique was the best to use with anyone as individual as Xenie.
Rassim, she felt, would have mixed better with the other children if Xenie would let him. But demanding his company and holding herself aloof, she kept him apart from them as effectually as if she had orders to keep him in strict quarantine.
Oddly enough, it was Rassim’s mouth-organ which evoked Alice’s brainwave for drawing him, if not Xenie, into the community. A percussion band, with Rassim as its nucleus performer! She thought back to her own kindergarten days when she remembered having beaten a strict tempo triangle ... What other instruments went to such a band? Drums, of course. Tissue-covered combs. Tambourines. Cymbals. And singing voices for the melody. As well as their own jingles, the children already knew many French and English singing-rhymes - “Frere Jacques’’ and Pop Goes the Weasel and their like, and if Morocco, one of the ancient homes of rhythmic-beat music, couldn’t produce the instruments, then what country could?
Over the telephone she outlined her idea to Sister Bernadine, who consulted Mother Superior, who gave permission for the things to be bought. But how and where to obtain them? Alice had not yet done anything in the matter when Seiyida Charles came to be briefed for the day when she was to deputize at the Home. Told of Alice’s idea for the band, she was enthusiastic.
“What could be nicer?” she said. “What bliss - actually to be encouraged to make as much noise as they like, as long as they do it in unison! The children will love it!”
“I hope so.” Alice explained how her original motivation had been Rassim’s isolation at his twin’s hands, adding, “I shan’t get Xenie to co-operate too, I’m afraid, but I can’t help that.”
“Well now The Seiyida frowned in thought. “Tambourines, you say? Musical triangles? So what about ribbon streamers for the tambourines and gay handles for the triangles? Even the drums -Don’t you think your little Xenie might turn her decorative art to
that?”
Alice said doubtfully, “It’s an idea. She might deign to consider prettying up something other than herself. I must put it to her when we get the instruments, and I suppose we can buy them from somewhere in the city?”
“Easily. And there is no need to buy them. Karim shall arrange it for you, make a present of them to the Home.” But at that Alice had a warning thought. If Karim disapproved of English fairy-stories, his stricture would certainly cover European singing-rhymes and games, and her pride would neither brook his refusal, nor accept favours at the hands of his prejudice. Aloud she said, “Oh no, he mustn’t do that. Mother Superior in Tetuan has authorised me to buy them, and I have to send the account to her.”
“Even so, you could allow Karim to get them for you. Better still, he could drive you down to the city, and you would be able to choose them yourself,” urged the Seiyida.
Tempted as she was by the prospect, Alice stood firm. “No, please, I think I must arrange it myself,” she said. “But thank you, Seiyida, all the same.”
The older woman’s answer to that was a shrewd glance. “You have another reason than that you must render an account to your Mother Superior? A more personal reason perhaps? Is that so?” she hazarded. “If you can, tell me. If not, I won’t press it.”
In face of her gentle concern Alice, unable to deny it, told what her reason was, feeling that, knowing her son as she did, the Seiyida would understand.
Nor was she wrong about that. Karim’s mother said sadly, “I’d hoped he wouldn’t give you an example of his warped judgement in these things. As if teaching our children the nursery customs of other countries could do anything but good! But I do see that you feel diffident, lest he might help you only to please me. You would rather be independent of him and order the instruments yourself. Yves Renair could probably help you there. Why don’t you ask him?” “Thank you. I’ll do that,” said Alice, relieved and feeling that as it wasn’t likely that the Seiyida would report anything so trivial to Karim, he needn’t ever suspect how, confused by warring love and pride, she couldn’t accept anything from him, unwillingly given.
Yves, approached, accepted the commission and duly executed it at a music store in the city. Alice, thinking that Tazenir could probably produce the ribbons and baubles which were to be bait for Xenie, spared him a search for these. But the village shops she tried carried no stock of them and she had still not tracked them down by the day of the trip to Alaksaar.
Karim left his mother at the Home in the morning, going on himself to lunch at the Routs’ villa. Yves called for Alice in the early afternoon, the three cars travelling independently of each other, with a rendezvous at Alaksaar’s one hotel.
On the way Alice asked, “What happens? And why is Alaksaar’s Moussem so special, when you say other places celebrate one too?”
“Yes, well - Alaksaar isn’t perched on crags or on a tiny plateau, as, for example, is Tazenir. It has a valley floor extensive and level enough for its Fantasia.” Yves glanced at her. “Next question - what is a Fantasia?” he prompted.
“So what is it?” she laughed.
“A cross between a rodeo and a cavalry charge. Superb horses, dressed overall in silver trappings; riders in white robes and turbans, brandishing loaded rifles almost the length of punt poles. They parade and ‘drum major’ with the rifles, tossing and twirling and catching them, While they control their mounts with their legs alone. Then at a signal and literally standing in their stirrups, they career forward headlong, firing at a target :at point blank range and pulling up beyond it as suddenly as if their clockworks had run down. That’s the main spectacle which draws the crowds. Another is the parade of the recently engaged couples, lined up to receive presents and for the girls to show their relative
s that they have got their man. The rest is a funfair with tented sideshows and stalls and an open-air cinema where everyone sits on the ground to watch ancient films and to jeer every time the reel breaks. Very noisy, very primitive, very Moroccan. Enthusiast that he is, I don’t wonder that Karim insisted that you see it,” Yves concluded.
“That I see it?” Alice echoed. “Why?”
“One supposes, as part of your Moroccan education. When I mentioned to him and the Seiyida that you felt you weren’t free to come, he said that was nonsense and asked her to try to persuade you. I rather got the impression that if he hadn’t been booked to Elaine Kent and if I hadn’t invited you first, he might have frogmarched you here himself.”
“Which is nonsense,” Alice protested, contrarily wishing it weren’t.
“I don’t know,” Yves demurred. “I don’t forget that he was one jump ahead of me at entertaining you in the city.” He bro ke off to add, “What do you think of our latest Western import - Miss Kent?”
“I have only met her once - the day Karim met her again himself. I thought she was very beautiful,” Alice allowed. “Glamorous and groomed to near-perfection, and I think she enjoyed thoroughly the experience of meeting Karim again.”
“And now is equally enjoying whatever Moroccan education he is seeing fit to give her. Lately I have had to make several professional visits to one of the El Faradis maids, and Miss Kent is very often there. Not, I suspect, with the Seiyida’s whole approval. And though she couldn’t be rude to a guest if she tried, my impression is that she and Elaine Kent don’t communicate very well.”
“But Miss Kent and Karim do?” asked Alice, wanting to know.
Yves lifted a shoulder and one hand from the wheel. “Who can tell about Karim?” he asked rhetorically.
“Often enough I can’t, and I count myself as one of his friends.”
Karim and Elaine Kent were at the meeting-place before them. Captain and Mrs. Rout arrived Boon afterwards. Karim ordered coffee and they lingered over it before making a tour of the main square and the labyrinthine streets raying out from it.