by Jane Arbor
Denise’s gesture in scrubbing the trace of the kiss from her cheek was so young in its gaucherie that Carey’s heart ached for her. At the urging of the people with her, she opened the parcel and the jewellers’ box under the wrapping; managed a false ‘Oh—lovely!’ at sight of the silver and pearl brooch on its pad, and added the box to the pile of her other gifts, at most of which she had sounded much more genuinely pleased.
Carey herself had arrived only shortly before. She had delayed longer than she intended, having been intrigued as she crossed the foyer by the ‘Oohs’ and ‘Ahs’ of furtive excitement occasioned by some ploy that was afoot at the bellboys’ bench.
So late, there were only two or three of them on duty, but young Absalom Seid, now promoted two places up from the bottom, was there, holding audience of the others with a performance of sleight-of-hand.
His stage props were a couple of dried beans and his two closed fists. The audience, invited to predict the whereabouts of the beans, invariably chose the wrong fist. Or, publicly shown to be in one open palm, they somehow reappeared from behind Absalom’s ear or from the crook of his elbow, or temporarily disappeared without trace.
At his sight of Carey, Absalom’s croak of greeting had hailed her. ‘Mees! Mees! Come! See!’, and she had lingered, gratifyingly mystified, until a summons from the head porter despatched the beans into Absalom’s hip pocket and Absalom himself at a smart pace to the errand in store for him.
This was the first time Carey had been made free of Randal’s own suite and it intrigued her to try to imagine him there at work or at leisure or entertaining people of his own choice. But that led to the profitless speculation as to how often Gerda Ehrens was invited there; how well she knew these rooms; whether she came to them alone; even whose was the gift of the green-and-cream orchid spray that was pinned to the shoulder of Gerda’s dress tonight—all petty jealousies which Carey despised, but which nagged to be answered, all the same.
Since the Tetuan incident Carey had mostly contrived to avoid Auden Calvin, but he was there at the party, self-appointed escort to Denise and as attentive and possessive of her as, Carey thought, she could possibly wish, supposing it was her plan to flaunt him as a conquest. Meanwhile people circulated, drank, chatted, laughed a great deal, and the evening moved towards the midnight that was to be Denise’s big moment.
The cake was cut—the knife guided by Auden Calvin’s hand over hers; she accepted kisses and good wishes; champagne was poured, and presently there was a drift from the suite to the public Florian lounge for dancing.
Not everyone went, but Carey was among those who did, to sit with Michael, sharing his enforced onlooking, until some time later someone asked her to dance, and she found herself caught up in the accepted informal exchange, by which people moved casually on from one partner to another, not always by choice, but often because someone whose particular style seemed to match their own, happened to be handy and free.
When an especially hectic spell of rhythm ended she extricated herself, meaning to rejoin Michael who, however, had gone from where he had been sitting. She was rather out of breath and too warm, and by contrast with the hot dry air of the lounge the darkness and temperate humidity of the long conservatory beyond held invitation.
She threaded her way down to it, prepared to find she was not alone in resorting to it. But to her surprise it seemed empty of people; full only of the heady scent of tropical flowers, lush greenery and the sweet, moist smell of earth. Closing the door from the lounge behind her, she gratefully took a lungful of the air, then made her way down the staging towards the far outer door.
It was dark enough for the exotic flowers to glow as against black velvet—the orange and blue bird-beaked strelitzas, the scarlet euphorbias, the deep violet air-carnations. On transverse stagings there were cacti; the delicate tracery of ferns, giant palms and the El Gara’s collection of orchids, the head gardener’s pride. Denise had been wearing one—probably Randal’s gift—and there was a twin to Gerda’s green-striped spray. On this transverse Carey was out of sight and sound of the lounge, and it was not until she straightened from a closer look at an orchid on a low staging that she realised Randal stood a yard away, probably as surprised to find her there as she was to see him.
But he did not show it as he moved towards her. ‘Admiring the orchids? I’d have sent you one for your corsage this evening if you were the orchidaceous type,’ he said.
She didn’t need to ask him what he meant. Gerda Ehrens was orchidaceous. Denise was learning to be so—decorative, exciting, polished—everything that plain-Jane Carey would never be. She smiled faintly. ‘Which I’m patently not,’ she agreed. And then—to keep his interest a minute or two more—she added, ‘Though what is the opposite type to orchidaceous, would you say?’
In the darkness to which her eyes had accommodated by now she saw him look her over appraisingly. It was a personal summing up ... almost intimate, and she felt her colour rise.
‘Yours,’ he said.
Her short laugh was embarrassed. ‘Silly question! You’d made that clear already.’ But when his silence seemed to agree, and that could have been the end of it, a whimsy she hardly recognised drove her on to ask, ‘And so, as we’re of one mind that I’m not the type for gifts of orchids, what would be suitable instead? Say—a daisy-chain?’
He shook his head. ‘Daisies? No, rather too juvenile. But still—something as typically English. Lambs’ tail catkins perhaps. Or an acorn spray. Or, if you insisted on perfume, say, bean flowers.’
‘Oh—’ For something to say to that Carey pointed out, ‘You only get the scent of bean flowers from a whole field of them, I think.’
‘Do you? I’ve been out of England for so long that I’d forgotten.’
‘Do you mind? Do you miss it?’ These few minutes of near-intimacy had to be made to last a little longer.
‘Do I miss England?’ He pondered the question. ‘Not acutely now. My work is here, consolidating what I’ve made of Auto-Maroc and of this place. The next thing on my plate is developing Hassi Ain airport, but I’ve got to find big finance for that. I’m working on attracting it—the project is a must for making employment and fostering tourism in the area. But once that’s under way I might have some time to spare for a bit of nostalgia and rediscovering England—who knows?’
Carey said, ‘I doubt it. From what I’ve seen of you, my impression is that you’re another Alexander the Great.’
‘Alexander the—? The chap who wept when there were no more battles for him to win? In your view. I’m as avid for conquest as that?’
‘I think you’re very single-minded about succeeding, anyway.’
‘Well, who ever got anywhere by going off at half cock? Still, even Alexander must have relaxed some time. Did he marry, for instance? I might even give serious thought to doing the same.’ Randal paused, waited, then added lightly, ‘Which should be your cue for feminine curiosity as to the details of the thought I’ll give it, when I do.’
Carey fingered the dark gloss of a palmate leaf. ‘Should it?’
‘You’d be exceptional if it weren’t. In my experience women resent a bachelor’s admitting to taking a long cool look at the pros and cons of marriage. For instance, if I were to offer you my blueprint for it now, wouldn’t you be good and ready to take offence on behalf of your sex, if it didn’t make Love with a capital L its major design?’
Carey said slowly, ‘I don’t know that I’d expect it to, if your plan were as coldblooded as you make it sound. But I can’t think you’re being serious. People may marry for all sorts of reasons. But they don’t decide to love by calculation or forethought. It just—happens to them, or not.’
‘And so you argue from that, that if it had ever had me by the throat, I’d have taken the plunge without reference to a blueprint, before this?’
‘Into marriage? Yes, I believe you might.’
‘Therefore, since I’m not married to date, I’ve never been in love?’ A
s if to scrutinise her more closely, he moved a step or two nearer which brought his sleeve brushing her bare arm. He went on in mock exasperation, ‘My dear girl, how naive can you get? Just because a man doesn’t marry his first love, or his second, or his fifth-plus for that matter, you judge that he’s never fallen in love?’
(Who had been his first love ... his second?) Carey looked away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It was partly from the intolerance you showed to your brother and Rosalie that I rather concluded you didn’t know what it was about.’
‘Ah—two corrections there,’ he retorted drily. ‘One—I admit I had no patience with their puerile assumption that they had invented love, but I had less still with their ruthless disregard of the consequences of the way they went about their affair; of its deception, and its effect on the business of the El Gara and not less on you. That was what really got my intolerance on the raw. And correction two—With more important things on my mind, I haven’t wanted to know what it’s “about”, as you put it. I can afford to postpone marriage at least until I can believe that the women I shall want will want me. For better, for worse, for the lot that I shall ask of her and give—But that said, in as cold blood as you like, it could still be dangerous to conclude that I haven’t as strong instincts for the hunt as most men. Or that I’m not tempted on occasion to bring them into play—as one flexes muscles—to keep them in trim.’
‘In trim for—what?’
‘For my next excursion into love—what else?’
‘And dangerous for whom?’ But she had no need nor right to pretend she didn’t know. By deliberately keeping him, by staying herself, she had invited the flippant exchange, provoked the physical nearness of which he had taken advantage and deserved the appraisal of the look which made both the blame and the danger hers, and warned all her awareness that this was his gambit to a flirtation which he was frank enough to admit was mere experiment, no more.
And yet, when he ignored her question, making the answer to it his swift, masterful hold upon her shoulders and then at her back as he bent his head to kiss her full on the mouth, she found neither the pride nor the strength of will to resist the false sweetness of it. Her own lips quivered to the pressure of his ... yielded ... wanted to. Wanted—In that moment she couldn’t care how little he was asking of her, nor how much her response might be telling him—shamefully. This was a Now that she had to treasure for the mere breath of time that it would last—
And then, suddenly, it was over. At the imperious rasp of a voice close at hand, Randal broke violently free and swung about. The voice—the German voice of Gerda Ehrens—had said, ‘And so, Randal—when you have time to spare from amorous frolics with the upper staff, perhaps you can trouble yourself to attend to a serious complaint from a mere guest?’
Randal stiffened, stood almost to attention. ‘A complaint?’ he rapped out. ‘Yours Gerda? What?’
She looked beyond his shoulder. ‘If you can be bothered, a little matter of theft, that’s all,’ she said with pseudo-indifference.
‘Theft?’ He was the complete executive again, affronted, outraged. ‘From you? Here in the hotel? Tell me—’ he demanded.
CHAPTER SEVEN
GERDA told him, ignoring Carey who might almost not have been present. But as Gerda began, ‘My gold and diamond cuff-links, though there’s no mystery about who took them. It could only have been the bellboy I sent for this evening—one of the Moroccan lads you have, I don’t know which,’ Carey’s involuntary start and her short-drawn breath brought the glances of the other two round to her.
‘What is it?’ Randal wanted to know.
‘Nothing. Would you like me to leave?’
‘Not if you know anything about this, and you sounded as if you might.’ He turned back to Gerda. ‘We’ve two French, two Spaniards and four Moroccans on the pages’ payroll,’ he said. ‘When was this? Did you report the loss to Reception at once?’
‘I only discovered it when I went back to my suite a short while ago. And I didn’t tell the desk. Someone in the lounge had seen you come out here, so I came straight to you. I hoped you might appreciate that I wanted to save you ugly public talk. You understand?’
‘Randal thanked her perfunctorily. ‘I’m not too clear about this,’ he told her. ‘You’ve only just realised the links have gone, but you had called this bellboy earlier, I take it? When? And what did you want him for?’
‘To collect this’—Gerda’s hand touched the orchid at her shoulder—‘and bring it to me. If you remember, you had suggested it should be cut as late as possible. And the time, of course, was before I went along to your suite for Denise’s party. I don’t know exactly. Somewhere between ten and half past, I suppose.’
‘So late? Well, that should give which boy it was. Most of them would have gone off duty by then and the head porter will know which of the Moroccans was still on. Or’—Randal turned again to Carey—‘if you were around in the foyer, by any chance, would you have noticed which of the hops were there tonight?’
Carey said, ‘In fact, I did. There were three when I went past just after ten—Brissac and Cordier and—Seid. And as I was leaving the foyer, he—Seid, I mean, went to take a call.’
‘Seid? Ah—’ From Randal’s calculating look as he paused she believed his intuition knew that her earlier gasp of dismay had been caused by her fear that the identity of a bellboy thief might narrow down to that of Absalom Seid, her own protégé. But he gave no sign as he said to Gerda, ‘This is serious. But go on. This lad, who would be Seid, the only Moroccan on the bench then, came to your suite; you’d have sent him down here for the spray I had had cut for you; he brought it back to you—and then what?’
‘The links were on the top of a bureau. I’d taken them from my shirt when I came in from riding. I took the orchid from him and asked him in to give him a tip. I had to go to my bedroom for my bag. I needed to search for some small change; I’d left him alone for at least three minutes—fully enough time for him to snatch the links—which of course he did.’
‘And there’s nothing else missing?’
‘There was nothing else of value around for him to take,’ Gerda snapped.
‘I was only questioning the possibility of your having been the victim of some other thief—one who did help himself to other things than the links,’ Randal explained levelly.
‘And would that be any less of a scandal for your hotel than that you employ pages who aren’t to be trusted in your guests’ rooms? No, it has to be this—this nasty pilferer, and I insist, Randal, that you send for him and accuse him now. Tonight, in front of me, please!’ Her tone conveyed an order, but Randal shook his head. ‘Time enough for you to call the boy a pilferer when he is proved to be one, I think,’ he said. ‘I agree the thing looks bad on the evidence, but it will keep. He is not much more than a child, and I’ve no intention of hauling him from his bed in the small hours. If he did help himself to your links, he’ll have had no means of disposing of them since, and confronting him can well wait until the morning.’
‘Always supposing he hasn’t absconded with them already!’
‘I’ll confirm for myself that he is in his bed and asleep in the staff quarters before I go to my own,’ Randal promised.
‘And I may be there, when you interview him?’
‘In the first instance, I’d rather you were not. I’d prefer to handle it alone.’
Gerda shrugged. ‘As you please—as long as you deal with him with proper severity and my property is returned to me intact.’
‘If the boy has it, I promise you it shall be.’
‘If!’ she sneered, then addressed Carey for the first time.
‘So very sorry, Miss Donne, to have interrupted your tete-a-tete with Mr. Quest. But you do see, I hope, that I regarded my business with him as slightly more important than yours?’ she said silkily before turning to lay a hand on Randal’s arm. ‘Goodnight, Randal. Don’t think me too much of a spoilsport, will you? I did really suppose
you to be alone. And perhaps you’ll make my excuses to Denise for leaving her party now? I’m going to my room.’
‘Of course. I’ll escort you. Carey, will you come too?’ Without a trace of embarrassment or of awareness of his owing apologies to either of them, he ushered them both ahead of him and went on with Gerda when, back in the lounge, Carey said she would stay longer at the party.
She knew she would not sleep that night, and did not, her mind throwing up first one harsh recollection of the evening and then another; superimposing her worry for Absalom on her mortification at the hands of Randal’s philandering, at Gerda’s pointed malice; the whole making a crazy kaleidoscope of thought in hideous patterns.
Yet for Randal’s assault she had only herself to blame. She had almost egged him to it and hadn’t wanted to escape it. Just once, let him seem to want me, her need had urged, but if she hadn’t been weak enough to listen, she would have been spared Gerda’s taunts. And how Gerda must have the laugh on her now—Gerda, who had warned her against such backstair gallantries and who had been there, looking on, when it had happened to her—when she had allowed it to happen!
Over to Absalom’s trouble. Was he guilty? Was he? How could he not be, since the cuff-links had disappeared? He had been left alone for a few minutes, Gerda had said, so that if he had been tempted to theft, he had had both opportunity and enough time.
As the black of the short night paled to grey beyond her windows, Carey wished she dared confront and warn the boy before Randal sent for him. But she knew she hadn’t the right to do that. He would have to face the ordeal unwarned and alone.
When it was fully light, knowing she would not sleep then, she got up, only to find, as she was dressed and about to go down, that apparently Randal had been up and about even earlier. For on the table in the hallway where parcels were sometimes left for her, there was an envelope addressed to her in his writing, and a smallish square box.