by Jane Arbor
He straightened his tie and glanced back at the closed door. ‘Evidently someone with scruples against barging in on a love-scene,’ he said.
‘A love-scene!’ Carey put all the contempt of which she was capable into her echo.
‘Well, at a glance, who was to know the difference?’ He watched as she busied herself with the papers. ‘If you wish me to finish this work for you, Mr. Calvin, perhaps you’ll be good enough to leave me to it? Alone to it,’ she emphasised coldly.
‘I thought you’d come up with a snag?’ he countered.
‘I daresay I can sort it out—’
‘Or perhaps there wasn’t one at all, and you were issuing an invitation which, when it came to the crunch, you hadn’t the nerve to carry through?’ he insinuated nastily.
Carey’s answer to that was to square off the pile of paper and to close the typewriter. She handed him the papers. ‘Raymond, at the desk, is a good typist. I think it would be better if you got him to do the rest of your work,’ she said.
‘Why should I? It’s your job, isn’t it? And supposing I report your refusal to your boss?’
‘I should tell Mr. Quest, if he asked me, the truth of why I refused.’
‘Your word against mine, h’m? Can you afford to risk that?’
‘I think so.’
He moved towards the door, which he opened a crack and then closed softly. ‘Even though our amorous clinch had a witness who may not be able to resist the temptation to tell the world about it?’ Opening the door again, he went out with an air of having had the last word, and Carey dropped again into her chair and held her head in her hands.
She wasn’t worried about his petty threat. Randal knew she didn’t like him; that, since the Xauen episode, she had done her best to avoid him. Offered the facts of this incident, Randal would believe her version, she felt sure. But the rest! Her own mind’s hideous, shaming comparison between Auden Calvin’s flirtatious byplay and Randal’s—both men seeing her as fair game; Randal no less opportunist than Calvin, and by ill-chance, both empty assaults humiliatingly overseen by someone!
This morning’s—by whom? Somebody with enough discretion or charity to hold his or her tongue, or some gossip who, as Calvin had hinted, wouldn’t wait to spread the story around? Carey realised that in all probability she would never know. But the thought that even the one person who had opened and closed the door on the scene might believe, as Calvin had suggested, that she had invited it and was an eager party to it—that was mortification which would rankle for a long time.
A few days later, as she was walking up the twisting road from the town, Randal’s car came round a hairpin bend ahead and drew up. He did not see Carey until he got out, but then he waited for her, swinging a bunch of keys from a forefinger. He jerked his head at the iron gate to a garden beside which he stood. ‘I was just going to take a look over the Villa Palma. Would you care to join me?’ he asked.
‘Thank you, I’d like to.’ Carey knew the property for one which stood on the El Gara’s land and had gone with his original purchase of the hotel. It had been rented to tenants who had recently left it, and since then it had been empty.
The house stood well back in its garden, a white, Spanish-style dolls’ house of four rooms on its single floor, and the inevitable patio. Randal used the keys on its doors and threw open its closed shutters. The afternoon sunlight streamed pleasantly.
‘Are you going to let it again?’ Carey asked.
‘What?’ Randal’s tone was momentarily absent. Then, ‘No,’ he said. ‘Or only nominally. I’ve always had it in mind as a kind of dower-house that I’d offer to Martin. But now he has opted out, I’m considering handing it over to Michael at a peppercorn rent. He is as much entitled to a bolthole from the hotel as Martin would have been; there’s a short cut through our gardens by which he can walk to work; there’s no staircase to tax his hip and anyway, it’s time he gave a thought to getting married.’
‘Getting—? But—? I mean, isn’t that a bit—?’ Sheer surprise jolted Carey into silence and Randal cut in, ‘All right, it’s jumping the gun, and there’s a lot more to Michael’s inhibitions than lack of a house to take a bride to. He’s convinced himself he’s not quite whole; he’s always allowed Denise to walk on him and since this flirtation of hers with Calvin, he seems to have finally thrown in the towel. And so this place as a hint to him—though a hint with the kick of a mule, I hope—to get on with lodging a serious claim to which she must give him yes or no. Or’—a slanted glance at Carey—‘would you, I wonder, see that as yet more eager-beaver stuff on my part?’
For a moment Carey could not reply, so perplexed, and at the same time relieved, was she at what he had said. Incredulous that he could believe the mere gift of a house could conjure a love-match from Michael’s one-sided devotion. Perplexed by his attitude to Denise’s affair with Auden Calvin. But breathtakingly relieved that Denise had been wrong and she had been right.
He wanted Denise for Michael, he had made that plain. Which meant—didn’t it?—that there was no question of his not ‘daring’ for his own ends to interfere between Denise and Calvin. He wasn’t to be blackmailed. Unutterably glad of it, but needing to make quite sure, Carey heard herself asking, ‘Then you think there’s nothing particularly serious between Denise and Mr. Calvin? That they are only playing each other along?’
‘What else? She has grown up almost visibly lately and she is a little drunk with power. I’d prefer she worked it off on Calvin rather than on Michael. Emotion-wise, Calvin can take care of himself. Where Denise is concerned, Michael can’t as yet.’
‘And you’re not afraid that, with so much older a man, she might get involved—too deeply involved?’
‘Well, I admit that, a few months back, when she was as idle as she was immature, I’d have stood for none of it,’ Randal allowed. ‘But now she is busy and has her own interests, she is much more aware of her own worth. No, I think she can be given her head a little. Besides, Calvin isn’t going to be around for good. Michael is.’
He talked as if the possession of the house and the fact of Michael’s being ‘around’ when Calvin was no longer, were handy blueprints to the romance he had decided needed engineering, thought Carey with an audible sigh which caused him to look questioningly at her.
‘You disapprove of my attempt to play genie-of-the-lamp?’ he accused lightly.
She agreed, ‘A little, perhaps. But I’m glad you think there’s nothing really serious between Denise and Mr. Calvin. I—I was afraid there might be.’
Randal nodded. ‘Nice of you to care. But don’t worry, the nonsense will blow itself out when Calvin leaves, I’m convinced.’ As he spoke he moved towards the door and she went out with him, unwarned that one thing she had said to him in all innocence was to recoil with the sting of a whiplash.
CHAPTER NINE
THE next day, when Carey returned from escorting a hotel party to Tetuan, she found Michael was already the astonished prospective tenant of the little villa.
‘At about a twentieth of the rental it’s worth,’ he marvelled. ‘When I told Randal he must be mad, as I knew he has always had it in mind for Martin, all he said was, “Please yourself. Take it or leave it, man.” So I took it and we sealed the bargain over a drink. He’s having his solicitors draw up the lease; he just tossed the keys at me, and that was that.’
Carey, feeling she had to know what finesse, if any, Randal had used in making the offer, asked, ‘Did he say why he wanted you to have it?’
‘Nope. Only that the place was going begging and that he’d thought I might like a pad of my own. I’d have to do my own furnishing, of course, and that as I could do worse than get Denise’s advice on that, why didn’t I sound her about it.’
Relieved that Randal’s technique had been so restrained, Carey said, ‘Good idea. Why don’t you?’
Michael laughed shortly. ‘On the cock’s nest principle?’
Carey frowned. ‘Cock’s nest? I don’t
get it,’ she puzzled.
‘No? Don’t you know that the male jenny-wren builds a nest of his own and then invites his girl-friend to do the interior decorating, with the idea of getting her so interested that—?’ Michael broke off. ‘Nice hope I’ve got, haven’t I, that it would work for me with Denise?’
This was so near the delicate ground of Randal’s intrigue that Carey thought it best to retreat. ‘No, I never heard that,’ she disclaimed. ‘And I only meant that for Denise to be faced with an empty house to be furnished from scratch ought to be just her cup of tea. If you gave her carte-blanche within the limit of the money you could afford, do you know, I can’t see her turning it down?’
Michael looked doubtful. ‘You think that if I suggested it to her she might take it on? Just as an exercise, of course.’
‘There’s no harm in asking her, is there?’
‘I suppose not. Except that, when she had done it ... afterwards, it would all remind me of her, and hurt.’ He paused and then, as if he had to steel himself to the question, added, ‘Look, do you know how far this affair of hers with Calvin is going ... has gone? I can’t ask her. She would just laugh in my face. But you, Carey—doesn’t she talk to you?’
Pitying him, Carey said, ‘A little, yes, though without really telling me anything. But I do know that Randal thinks there’s nothing in it—that she is just trying out her adult wings, as it were.’
‘Randal has said as much to you—that he’s not worried? But what do you think yourself? Be honest with me, Carey, please!’
Carey hesitated, wondering whether or not to voice fears which Randal—who should know Denise better than either of them—did not share. She decided to compromise on doubt. ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘I hope Randal is right. But I just—don’t know. Meanwhile, are you convinced you can’t afford to ask her about it all yourself?’
Michael turned a stricken look on her. ‘You’ve heard Denise in action before now. What do you suppose her answer would be?’ he said.
‘Still—the villa? You’ll put the idea to her?’ Carey urged.
‘Maybe. Perhaps. I’ll think about it.’
That was as far as he would go. But Carey felt encouraged that he would, and a day or two later he did, handing over the keys to Denise, who agreed on condition that she be given a free hand and that Michael was not to trespass on his own property until she told him he could.
On hearing this, Carey demurred to Michael, ‘Isn’t that a bit risky? Supposing she instals something or other you couldn’t bear to live with, or can’t afford? I never envisaged her wanting to do it without consulting you.’
But Michael claimed fondly that he was prepared to trust Denise’s taste; that, knowing how and where to buy, as she did, she said she could keep well within his figure, and if that was how she wanted it, that was all right with him. Until she decreed otherwise, he would regard the Villa Palma as forbidden ground.
Since the original hint had been Randal’s and Michael had acted on it, Carey rather expected Randal to bring up the subject with her again. But he did not, leaving her slightly puzzled until she became reluctantly aware that his omission to do so was symptomatic of his new distant manner towards her.
It was chilling, withdrawn, impersonal; yet correct to a degree which administered an unspoken snub in itself. Carey, her love making her sensitive to his every mood and climate, longed to question it. But the ‘What’s wrong?’ or ‘What have I done?’ that was the ordinary currency between friends, between equals, wasn’t possible from her to Randal. A tangent, that was all she was to him, touching his life briefly and usefully. Once perhaps, even provocatively ...? But no, she must not remember that moment had happened, if this was to be their aloof everyday from now on. So she responded in kind—and ached with the effort not to care.
Denise took her commission seriously, going down to the villa at least once every day, and Michael kept his word to refrain from prying, until the morning when he left Randal’s office to meet Carey in his own and to tell her the news on which Randal was giving him leave to return to England for a few days or as long as he might need to be away.
‘It’s my aunt, my only near relative since my people died,’ he explained. ‘Lives in Surrey with a housekeeper and she’s had a heart attack and is in hospital. It’s only slight, I gather, but she has had a minor one before, and Randal thinks I ought to go back and see if there’s anything I can do. Good of him to let me go, in view of the Gala Ball on Thursday, but he says you must take over my work on that. Sorry about it, Carey, but he made it an order.’
‘That’s all right,’ Carey said. ‘I suppose he’ll be briefing me. Are you leaving straight away?’
‘Yes. From the airport in an hour, and from Tangier by the afternoon flight to Gatwick. But if all goes well, I could be back by the weekend. Tell Denise au revoir for me, will you?’ Michael said.
Carey was not too worried at the prospect of taking over from him the last-minute preparations for an end-of-season Gala Ball which could not, she thought, differ greatly from the many Last Night At Sea parties which she had helped to organise in the cruise ships where she had served. Admittedly, the El Gara’s was to be a full-dress affair and the numbers would be swelled by non-residential guests, but as a kind of climax to her own season’s work, it was a challenge which wasn’t made much more daunting by the additional work of Michael’s duties. In fact, if she could have tackled it heart-whole and untrammelled by the El Gara’s undercurrents, she knew she would have welcomed it as a highlight of a chance to prove herself worthy of a renewed contract when her time ran out. As it was, though she carried Mrs. Hobart’s professional card in her bag and sometimes fingered it indecisively, for the moment her loyalty was still to the El Gara ... and to Randal.
When Michael had gone, she expected Randal to call her to his room to outline her extra duties. But instead he listed them and had them delivered to her, the only personal note to the message being a line or two to the effect that if she needed help, she should rope in Denise, and then a postscript to that which said, ‘Denise is having a car to go over to Tangier to buy herself something to wear on Thursday. If you want to do the same, go with her. Charge to your expense account, of course. Your appearance as hostess has to do us credit. R.Q.’
Which, read between the cold, laconic lines, meant that he intended she should wear something new, thought Carey, making a hasty mental review of her wardrobe. She dropped a note in at his office, accepting, and then went to check with Denise when she meant to go.
Arrived in Tangier, she supposed they would be shopping together. But as Denise had other ideas, they separated and arranged a time to meet for the return journey. Later Carey was to be glad about this when she found herself with enough time to spare to look in on Madame Seid and Absalom in the medina.
She had been satisfied very quickly at a French shop on the Boulevard Pasteur, needing to look at only one or two other evening dresses before she was shown one which she recognised as exactly right both for her and for the occasion.
It was very slim of line, with long sleeves fitting to the wrist; ankle-length and high-necked, its corsage and skirt button-studded from throat to hemline and at its waist-back, the faintest suggestion of a bustle to emphasise its Victorian demureness. It had also a matching hood for fastening at will to shoulder buttons.
‘So, madame,’ the saleswoman urged as she adjusted it and drew it lightly forward over Carey’s head, ‘on any one of our warm Moroccan nights, Madame should need no extra cloak when she strolls in the romantic moonlight or the dark!’—not realising how very little sales resistance Carey had to a dress of darkest glossy green with creamy ruched ruffles at wrist and throat, a dress which her fancy had seen at once as the echo of a gift of myrtle in bloom.
Her knock at the outer door of the house in the Calle Reno was answered by Absalom, whose smile of welcome went from ear to ear.
‘It is the Mees!’ he called to his mother who, as before, was taki
ng the sun on the plinth of the courtyard pump. She rose gracefully, lifted her robe a fraction to show Carey that her ankle was now free of its strapping and sent Absalom for the mint tea which, this time, Carey could not escape.
‘Your kinsman has cared for us,’ Madame told her. ‘He pays the doctor, and sends us food and oil for our lamps and grain for our hens, and he will call Absalom back to his work very soon. He is a good man. Why has he not yet taken a wife?’
The blunt question took Carey aback. ‘I don’t know,’ was all she could say.
‘But his brother, who is younger, has married your sister?’
‘Yes.’
‘And should not the head of the family be the first to marry?’
‘Among English people, it doesn’t always happen that way,’ said Carey.
Madame Seid nodded. ‘As the sidi Quest tells me when he first comes to say he will give the boy work in his hotel. When I thank him and send my humble greetings to his lady wife, without shame he says then he has no wife. Yet though once since he tells me he has chosen one, and agrees with me when I say that no doubt he has been waiting to find a woman who both pleases him and brings him a fine dowry, still one hears no news of his marriage, and so I ask myself, Why?’
Carey shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you why, Madame Seid.’
‘You, sister to his brother’s wife, do not know?’ Clearly this, to Madame Seid, was an inconceivable lapse in family confidence, but Absalom’s arrival just then with the glasses of tea spared Carey further questioning on Randal’s affairs. Nor was Madame to guess how unerringly she herself had identified Gerda Ehrens as the woman who would bring him ‘a fine dowry’—the essential which was more important than romance to an Eastern marriage and which, according to Gerda, was crucial for Randal too.
At their meeting-place it was obvious that Denise had shopped for more than a party dress, her purchases including perfume, shoes and an expensively fitted dressing-case which she displayed for Carey’s admiration, saying carelessly, ‘I needed one and I reckon I’ve earned it, whether Randal likes paying for it or not.’