Hotel Mirador

by Rosalind Brett

  Rather overwhelmed by the excessive seasoning of the savories and treacliness of the fruits and cakes, Sally drank black coffee and lay back among her cushions feeling like someone out of the Arabian Nights. Dane came and sat next to her, took her cup and placed it on a stool.

  “Don’t fall into a coma,” he said, “I want to talk to you.”

  “Here?” she said blankly.

  He smiled coolly. “There’s a connection between the place and what I have to say. One day, before I went down to the phosphate mine, Cécile mentioned that it might do the Caid a kindness if we told him we had a physiotherapist in Shiran. He has a young son...”

  “Yes, I know. She spoke about it to me.” Sally remembered the circumstances and looked at him quickly. To Dane, apparently, it had meant little at the time. “I told Mademoiselle Vaugard that I was committed to doing my best for Mike and couldn’t take on anything more.”

  “Did you? She didn’t say.” He thought it over for a moment, then decided to postpone or give up conjecture. “Well, this evening I spoke for a moment' about it to the Caid and he said he would like you to see the boy. He hasn’t much faith in women’s brains, by the way. He’s had two male masseurs, who might have been quacks out to make money.”

  “He doesn’t look the sort of man to be deceived.”

  “No, he doesn’t.” Dane added, in rather deeper tones, “The parents of an ailing child are always gullible, however educated they may be; their love makes them that way. The little boy’s mother begged for a masseur, and the Caid decided it could do no harm and might do good. He told me, in confidence, that he has even called in wizards and sorcerers.”

  “Good lord! Do they still exist?”

  “They sure do,” he said laconically. “In Europe they work through radio and newspapers—advertising.”

  “Now you’re being cynical. What do the doctors say about the child?”

  “The only doctor here in Nezam is a retired Moor. Everyone swears by him, and the Caid wouldn’t dream of offending him by calling in a younger man, or a Frenchman. The old doctor can only be replaced after his death.” An exasperated shrug. “That’s how they are, and you have to accept it.”

  “But the Caid seems so clever and modern.”

  “In many ways, yes. In the things close to his heart—his women and children, and his way of living, he’s still with his ancestors of two hundred years ago. I don’t suppose for a moment that anything you may say will alter his ideas about the boy, but as you’re here, you may as well see the youngster.”

  “But I’m not competent to diagnose!”

  “No need for that,” he said. “You’ve been trained to know the difference between the feel of a normal limb and an abnormal on, and I’m sure you could give a guess at what’s wrong with the child.”

  “Is it his leg?”

  “His arm, I think.”

  “And the legs are sound?”

  “I believe so. All I really know is that the child had polio.”

  “Then on my own there’s nothing I can do.”

  “You can put in a word for orthopaedic hospitals. You’ve had plenty of practice with Mike.”

  “All right.” She hesitated. “Dane, it’s unfair to expect me to know everything.”

  His look at her was cool. “Lately, I’ve told myself that you know so little about men and life that you ought to be well up in your profession. That’s the only direction in which you seem to have used your brains.”

  She looked away from the unpleasant glint in his eyes. “From the start we were wrong—you and I. You should have acted the cool and unprejudiced employer, and instead you provoked me into arguments—even about my background in England, which wasn’t your business. You wanted what I could do for Mike, but you didn’t take to me as a person. I can’t grumble about that—you antagonized me, too. But it was wrong to allow any sort of relationship to develop. I’d have been perfectly happy just working on Mike and...”

  “Oh, sure,” he broke in roughly. “But I don’t like fences between myself and those I employ, and particularly there couldn’t be the barrier you wanted between me and you. You’re too young and vulnerable to be allowed to go it alone in a strange country. From the very first I felt responsible for you.”

  “That wasn’t necessary. If I hadn’t been capable of looking after myself I wouldn’t have come to Morocco.”

  “Stop it,” he said softly but abruptly. “This isn’t the time or the place. I’ll take you to see the little boy. Give me your hand.”

  She did, and felt herself pulled strongly but without a jerk to her feet. The Caid, who was talking politely with a man and wife from the hotel, bowed to them ceremoniously, nodded very slightly to Dane and quietly stood back, as Dane led Sally towards him. Without a word, the man opened the door to disclose a tiled corridor strewn with hand-made rugs of distinctive design. He went ahead, opened a door into another passage which smelled of patchouli and geranium. The women’s quarters, guessed Sally swiftly. But there was no sign of a woman. Even in the fair-sized room they entered there was only a man of about thirty and the child, who was small for his five years. The man rose from behind a desk, and the small boy sat up in a silk-covered bed. Either the child had not slept this evening or he had been roused some time before, so that he would be wide awake for this interview.

  The Caid spoke very gently, in French. “Safia, my son, we do not come to worry you. But come from the bed and greet the guests.”

  The little boy with sallow skin and large dark eyes did it gracefully; slipped out on to the carpet, took a couple of paces and touched his brow and lips in welcome. Sally smiled at him, a little tremulously. He looked so small and valiant as he stood there, naked from the waist up, holding his left arm close to his body as if to support it. She knew, suddenly, that he had pain he never talked about; it was uncanny.

  To the Caid, Sally said, “Is it the left shoulder, monsieur?”

  He looked at her quickly, in some surprise. “Someone has told you it is the shoulder, mademoiselle?”

  “No, but Mr. Ryland mentioned that the limb affected was an arm. I can see by the way he holds it that there’s pain in the shoulder.” She knelt in front of the child, smiled and gently pushed back a few dark hairs from his brow. In the best French she could muster she said, “You will let me touch your arm, chéri?”

  Though it must have hurt him, he immediately turned his left shoulder towards her and dropped the arm to his side. Watching his face, Sally felt over the shoulder, saw him wince as she touched soft little lumps that shouldn’t have been there. Then, turning her head so that she could not see his stoic suffering, she let her fingers probe more deeply till they felt the head of the humerus. She had forgotten the Caid and Dane.

  She spoke softly, in English, with a word of French here and there. The child must have understood her tone, if not her words, for he smiled shakily, and turned so that she could feel the other shoulder. She stopped probing and held him gently, whispered that he was brave. And finally she stood up.

  Dane’s expression was dark and inexplicable; if anything, he looked irritated. The Caid was obviously bewildered, but his demeanor remained utterly polite.

  Sally took the child’s hand and led him to the bed; he climbed in and she covered him and wished him goodnight. “Sleep well,” she told him. To which he nodded gravely, even though he hadn’t a notion what she had said.

  Sally walked out of the room, followed by the two men. The Caid’s robes made a soft rustling sound as he went ahead once more and opened the doors. But he did not take them back to the reception room. Instead he opened the door of an astonishingly well-stocked library, which was certainly the brightest and gayest Sally had ever seen. There were two scarlet leather chairs, a desk and the inevitable tooled leather stool surmounted by a gold-tasselled cushion. The Caid bade his guests take the chairs and himself sat on the stool.

  “Some tea?” he asked.

  “No, thank you,” said Sally.

>   She looked at Dane and knew he would have accepted a whisky, if such a thing were available in this kasbah of non-drinkers. She didn’t know why he should, but he looked fed up, so she started the conversation herself. “Monsieur, when did your son have polio?”

  It must have offended the Caid’s sense of propriety that he had to talk directly to a woman, for he stared straight at the opposite wall.

  “It is nearly a year ago.”

  “And when did the shoulder show damage?”

  “About four months after. We called the doctor and he said that if the legs were not affected, the next most likely part was the shoulder.”

  “Was your son paralyzed with polio?”

  “Not after a few days. There was fever and pain all over the body, but in three weeks he was quite well again. There was then nothing ... until many weeks later he complained of pain in the shoulder. It grew worse, and stiff. Our doctor is old, he would not touch it. Either it would clear up of itself, he said, or it was a permanent disability from the polio.”

  There was a silence, during which Dane shifted and made the chair creak beneath his weight. Obviously the Caid could not bring himself to question a woman, and Dane was not in the mood just yet to help him out.

  So Sally said, “I’m not competent to give an opinion, monsieur, but I think you’ll find your son had polio only mildly. In paralysis, the bones go thin and brittle, but the little boy’s bones are slightly larger on the left than on the right shoulder. Also, the skin in a paralyzed area is bluish, but your son’s skin is healthy, and on that shoulder it’s the same color as the rest of his body.”

  There was another silence, more tense this time. Then Dane said, with unnecessary crispness, “Go on, honey, tell us the lot. There’s more on your mind, isn’t there?” The Caid must have gained only the gist of this because it was spoken so quickly; he merely nodded. Sally felt as she had felt some time ago, when she had taken her Practical. Inwardly she trembled, but her words were clear and to the point.

  “I can’t tell you what's wrong with the child’s shoulder, but I’ve felt the same condition in another child. At the Home in England where I work, we had a couple of children from a poor family. One had rickets; the other had a stiff and painful knee—he couldn’t walk. It was discovered that the knee had been badly wrenched and never been re-set.”

  Dane leaned forward. “You think that may have happened to Safia’s shoulder?”

  She shook her head quickly. “I can’t say, any more than you could. All I can say with certainty is that if he were a relative of mine I’d have him in hospital tomorrow.”

  Stiffly, the Caid stood up. “You have been very good, Miss Yorke. I must thank you for the trouble you have taken.”

  And that was all. He took them back to the rest of the guests, Sally sat between Lucette and Pierre de Chalain and watched more acrobats, dancing girls whose chief attraction were their sequined eyelids, and a snake charmer.

  She was aware of Lucette leaning towards Dane, of Dane unbending a little and laughing with her, of Pierre smothering a yawn and murmuring that it was past midnight and they had an hour and half of driving before bed.

  Then at last it was over. There were thanks on both sides, repeated again and again, the Caid bade everyone goodnight individually and took no longer over it with Sally than with anyone else. He went with them into a courtyard bathed in moonlight, where shadows were sharply etched in black and the rest was a stark unearthly white. The nine guests were ready to get into the cars.

  “Most of you might like a change of driver this time,” Dane suggested lazily.

  “Oh, let me go with you!” begged Lucette. “I have such a ghastly feeling that I may have to leave Shiran soon, so I must make the most of it.”

  “With Dane?” said someone. “How outspoken can the young get!”

  Dane smiled, a little tightly. “Lucette was born to flatter the male,” he commented. “Pierre, you might like to take Sally in the other car and two or three of you others can come with me.”

  It was blatant dismissal, though none of the hotel guests was likely to realize it. Sally, feeling sick and wounded; turned straight away and got into the other car without help. She saw the silver and blue thing glide away and gather speed, smiled brightly at Pierre.

  “For tonight you’re my gaoler, it seems. I hope you don’t mind very much.”

  “It is my pleasure,” he said gallantly. Then he hesitated, and added very quietly, “Dane is angry about something. You are better out of his way. Mademoiselle Lucette can more easily deal with a man who is in a bad humor.”

  Sally did not reply. She sat back as they drove away from the Caid’s house, gazed without curiosity at the mysterious little lanes where donkeys still munched in the doorways and an occasional camel sat and ruminated. They passed out of the kasbah and met the loose earth of the road. The evening was over.

  * * *

  A couple of quiet days were a great help to Sally. She saw Mike twice each day at his house, and bathed with him in the Hotel Mirador pool each afternoon. Yes, Mike had at last consented to come again to the Mirador, though he would only bathe late in the afternoon, when the pool was almost deserted. For some reason he seemed to take a malicious pleasure in sprawling in one of the foam-rubber loungers and watching the holiday making rich, and he always commented upon them, rather loudly. Lucette waved to them once, and he urged Sally to call her over. But Sally refused.

  “While you’re apart you two get along. I refuse to sit by and listen to an exchange of barbed remarks.”

  “But I ought to get to know the girl better before she leaves,” he protested. “Perhaps I’ve misjudged her.”

  “Forget it, there’s a dear. She’s not very happy, you know.”

  Mike exaggerated his glance of surprise. “Why not? I thought she 'had everything—even Dane.”

  Sally said, rather more firmly than was necessary, “Dane’s not falling for Lucette—not very far, anyway.”

  “A pity,” he said. “I hoped he was getting it bad. Still, if she works on him for a few more days...” He left it at that.

  Sally had never disliked a patient, but there were moments when she came near to disliking Mike. But immediately she became sorry for him, because he was torn between a desire to get whole again and a fear that the future might let him down as the past had done.

  Early next morning a parcel was delivered at the hotel for Sally. It was addressed in a beautiful spidery hand, and carefully sealed. Mystified, she slit the wrapping and opened the square cardboard box. It was full of hand-made trinkets, each one swathed in a white silk square, and at the bottom of the box lay a card on which was written in French: “The Caid of Nezam instructs me to send the enclosed gift to Mademoiselle Yorke of England, and to thank her most sincerely for her kindness towards his son.” There was no signature, but somehow Sally was sure that the tutor she had seen in the boy’s bedroom had written the card.

  She unwrapped a chased silver bracelet set with amethysts and zircons, another in the shape of a snake, with ruby eyes. There were also a signet ring, a chain necklace drooping a topaz, and several small charms made of jade and beryl. The whole must be worth quite a lot, and Sally was worried. What did one do about such a gift? It wasn’t as if her advice had been welcome to the Caid; he intended to ignore it. In any case, one couldn’t accept costly gifts from a stranger, whatever his position and race.

  She read the card again, smiled slightly at “Mademoiselle Yorke of England.” It sounded Elizabethan. Then she sobered once more, and thought about the little boy with the lumpy painful shoulder, his bravery and the pity of it all. On an impulse she gathered up the box and its contents and went along to Dane’s suite. But at the door she had to collect her courage; the bright, stilted smile came to her lips and she knocked, quite firmly.

  He opened the door at once, as if he had been on his way out, paused in the doorway and appraised her unsmilingly, then stepped back into the room and inclined his head to
indicate that she must come in.

  “Had breakfast?”

  “Yes, thank you. I ... just wondered what to do about this parcel. It’s from the Caid.”

  She placed the box on the desk and took off the lid. The trinkets lay within, unwrapped, and Dane looked at them and picked up the amethyst and zircon bracelet.

  “Pretty,” he remarked briefly. Then he read the card and dropped it on top of the articles in the box. “Leave them with me, will you?”

  “If you like. What will you do with them?”

  “I’ll thank him formally for you, and get rid of them.”

  “Give them away?” she said blankly.

  “It’s the best thing to do. The Caid doesn’t realize that it isn’t done for an English girl to accept this kind of thing from a stranger—but you and I understand it, don’t we?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. If I’m not returning them to the Caid for fear of offending him, the least I can do is keep them myself, as mementoes. In fact, I’d rather like my family to see them.”

  “All right.” He turned away. “If you’ve decided what to do, why did you come to me?”

  “I thought you ought to know I’d received the gift, and I wasn’t sure whether it would be possible to return it. It seems I did wrong in coming here. I apologize.”

  But he had carelessly got between Sally and the door. “Has it occurred to you to wonder how you earned the little present?”

  “I certainly didn’t earn it, but he’s a rich man and apparently generous. He felt he ought to pay for ignoring everything I said.”