Miss Turquoise

by George B Mair

  ‘But why kill them?’ Grant had seldom been more taken aback in his life.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ she said desperately. ‘When troops or aircraft are sent to look for these men they must find enough evidence to prove that the patrol met a caravan which attacked it and that there were no survivors.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, girl,’ said Grant abruptly, ‘how could four soldiers wipe out so many experienced campaigners? And in any case only eight were killed.’

  ‘Come.’ He could see that she was excited and followed her to the edge of the camp with Sidi Achmet padding at their heels. They were bound hand and foot, the younger man whom Grant had shot still alive and wearing a blood-stained shirt. ‘Now,’ she ordered.

  Four or five other men were standing behind them and stepped forward as the girl spoke, each with a knife or gun.

  ‘The knife for this once.’ She pointed to a middle-aged mixed breed, explaining that he was one of her uncle’s most bitter enemies while Achmet cut his throat from ear to ear and then thumped the knife into his chest.

  ‘Now with guns,’ she said. ‘The Spaniards couldn’t have chopped very many. But don’t forget to leave a dead soldier beside this one,’ she added, pointing to the bleeding body with her foot.

  The work went according to plan and nothing missed her as she organized the most cold-blooded atrocity Grant had ever witnessed.

  ‘And now the slaves,’ she said curtly.

  ‘Is that also necessary?’ he asked.

  She stared at him, surprised. ‘Of course. They will tell the truth if I let them go free and I can’t take them with us in case we meet another patrol.’

  What she said was ruthlessly logical. ‘Then give them coffee with poison. Like the soldiers.’

  She nodded and chattered to Achmet. ‘And now,’ she finished, ‘we make you into a Berber and move on, because we must be far away before morning.’

  Camp was struck before midnight and they were again on the move, this time with Grant’s European kit packed in a crate, his loose clothes flopping uncomfortably around his ankles and a turban chafing his forehead. He felt half asleep, but the loping gait of his camel helped to keep him awake until at last the magic of motion at night, moving in file through the vastness of sands which seemed to heave like the long waves of the Indian Ocean, caught his imagination and he gave himself up to the sheerly sensuous appeal of his surroundings.

  The caravan was led by a youth on a donkey and Miss Turquoise rode number five with Grant close behind and Sidi Achmet bringing up the rear. Dawn was beginning to break when the girl lengthened the rope and fell back level with him. ‘The jeep,’ he said, ‘it will be found and traced to you.’

  ‘No.’ Her voice still croaked and her lips were swollen. ‘A man has been sent to drive it back to Guerra. So he will tell the Governor that I have left for the oases and that you are in Mauretania.’

  ‘And everyone will be happy.’

  She glanced at him curiously. ‘You sound angry. What have I done wrong?’

  It was an impossible question. Her standards of value were so totally different and she was not to be blamed for an upbringing and morality which seemed wholly barbaric. But five girls and sixteen men had been slaughtered by her direct orders. And why? So that he could enter her accursed oases and . . . and what? His thoughts were running ahead of him. Steal eleven hundred tons of metal which was literally priceless. But to do it he was going to have to accept hospitality, deceive his host, perhaps even . . .

  ‘Well?’

  There was an edge to the girl’s voice which snapped him back to reality. ‘I’m not angry, just sorry that so many people had to be killed.’

  She looked at him in astonishment. ‘It was them or us.’

  He changed the subject. ‘Your throat. Does it hurt much?’

  She nodded. ‘My lips feel like leather and my muscles ache as though I had been thrashed.’

  But the caravan moved for two more nights before the girl felt safe enough to pause for longer than an hour. And Grant envied her stamina, knowing that every jolt still racked her neck muscles while her voice had cracked to a whisper and bruises were spreading over her throat. He still sweated by day and shivered in the evenings and had come to loathe the hot wind which whipped particles of sand into every corner of his body.

  Nine days then passed in fast marches with late evening meals, the girl now sleeping in her own tent, unexpectedly self-conscious about her voice and the marks which disfigured her neck. He knew that two of the women massaged her night and morning, and he dug into his stores of aftershave lotion and talcum powder when her skin broke into septic spots. Salt tablets helped him to keep in fair condition and he also reacted better than he had expected to the monotony of strange food. His Arabic had been polished up by listening to the chatter of his companions and so far he had not been caught out by anyone realizing that he understood conversation which was sometimes frank enough to make him squirm.

  His romance with Miss Turquoise seemed to be well known and the women discussed him with a candour which was broader than anything he had met in Katanga or Paris. But his reputation as a fighting man had also been solidly established and he gathered that he would have a warm welcome when they reached home.

  The girl still rode number five but would lie back beside him for hours, content to lope on in silence or else listening as he outlined in Spanish what he felt might be done to help her uncle. The question of his sterility fascinated her and she forced Grant to cover every angle of a subject about which he really knew little more than a final-year student. He guessed that she was devoted to the man, and looked forward to meeting a survival piece, one of the few remaining chieftains of the desert still ruling as an absolute monarch.

  She returned to his tent on the twelfth night after the massacre. They were bivouacked in the open, but living on strict water rations during the last stint before sighting the oases, and she was in a business-like mood. ‘We arrive tomorrow,’ she said, sitting by his feet at the foot of his blankets, ‘and my uncle will ride out to meet us. But he is suspicious of strangers so I sent Sidi Achmet ahead to tell him all about you.’

  ‘You make him sound frightening,’ said Grant, smiling, his fingers running through her sleek black hair.

  She hesitated. ‘Sometimes he is frightening. Especially when he remembers that he has no son. Or when he remembers that he hates foreigners.’

  ‘What happened to make him so bitter?’ he asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘My uncle thinks only about our tribe. The oases is our country. Not Spain. It must have a leader. And if foreigners came they would change our way of life.’

  ‘As you have asked me to do.’ He smiled.

  She crept towards him and kissed the thin scar on his forehead. ‘But we shall do it slowly and keep everything which is best. And I will teach you how to live and think and fight like a Berber. But first,’ she added hastily, ‘we shall marry and we shall go to a quiet tent surrounded by flowers and the women will sing outside whilst you love me. That way everything will be in the tradition of our people and my uncle will be happy.’

  She was cupping his chin in her hands, her lips an inch from his cheek, and he could feel the throb of her heart through even heavy clothes. ‘Then let’s hope your uncle approves,’ he drawled.

  Tension had suddenly snapped and she was again lighting a cigarette. She smacked her hands and a woman arrived with glasses of pale tea. As the tent-flap opened he could see two men on guard in the distance, their figures silhouetting against a sky now bright with a swelling moon which hung over the desert like a gigantic honey-coloured half-filled balloon. An hour later she stubbed out her last butt against the sand and as he watched her swing across to her own tent he remembered her last words: ‘My uncle is first man in my country. You must never do anything to make him lose face.’

  Next morning they struck camp shortly after sunrise and at midday a flurry of dust on the skyline showed a group of
camels charging across the desert. Palm trees were spiking the horizon and even Grant could smell water. ‘My uncle,’ said the girl quietly. ‘It is a compliment when he uses these camels, so Sidi Achmet must have spoken very well.’

  The girl had become an expert interpreter and her voice was now almost back to normal. But Grant still had to guard his expression not to give away that he could now understand Arabic with ease as a flurry of formalities introduced him to a well-built bearded man in the early thirties who shook hands with a grip like a vice. Forgetting orders Grant returned his grasp with a steady pressure which made the Berber grin with satisfaction as he increased the strain and slowly tried to wrench Grant’s wrist round. It was childish—but dangerous, as Aniseeh reminded him later. Neither had moved a millimetre, but when forearm muscles were ribbing skin like ropes, and when sweat had begun to break on their foreheads, Grant suddenly relaxed. ‘You win,’ he smiled.

  The Berber laughed and Grant guessed that he had never done a wiser thing in his life than to give in. ‘Doctor, soldier and strong man,’ Aniseeh translated. ‘He asks is there anything you cannot do?’

  They reached the oases in time for early dinner and as they ate fried locusts, meat steaks and a fruit dish of melon the Caid entertained him with a series of courtesies which cut out every opportunity to get down to business. Afterwards there were belly dances by young girls and knife acts by men who did everything but draw blood as they lunged and thrust at one another in a traditional mime dance with split-second timing. It was the most dangerous thing Grant had ever met in the entertainment world and as they broke up Grant saw his host eye him with calculating speculation. The girl had disappeared, blended with the group of chattering women in the background, but Sidi Achmet was never more than a few paces away, his grizzled beard and walnut-wrinkled skin breaking into a reassuring grin every time Grant met his eye.

  The party ended with tea and sweet cakes served beside a fountain, and after two weeks on the desert the strip of subtropical greenery felt almost like a Riviera garden.

  He guessed that most of the people lived in tents, but there were several white houses in Moorish style, each on its own ground, and he had been given a room in the Caid’s own home. There was running water beside a bed of carpets, cushions and gaily coloured blankets, while from the window he commanded a view which showed avenues of palms and fruit trees radiating from a central cluster of whitewashed buildings to lose themselves in dusty tracks which linked groups of tents whose multi-coloured walls patchworked the countryside with splashes of fading crimson or blue. The women dusted their forearms and ankles with the same shade, and some even their faces, although the tribe had long ago lost all connection with the real Blue People of the Sahara. The blue powder was simply another survival piece, a pointer to the far-back origins of a tribe which had found a good place and made it their own.

  He had grown a beard and had to admit as he studied himself in the mirror that in costume he looked almost like a Berber himself. He had lost enough weight to shade down his features, and the sunburn of early days had deepened into a rich tan.

  He was trimming his beard when Aniseeh knocked on the door, with Sidi Achmet, as usual, behind her. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said briefly, ‘My uncle wants to find out how good you are as a doctor and he has found a man who has been ill for weeks with pain in his stomach. He says you must see him one hour after sunrise.’

  Grant remembered the strange look which had crossed her uncle’s face after the dance. ‘What does he expect?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘A cure.’

  ‘And if it is not possible?’

  ‘It has got to be possible. He has gone into one of his bad moods.’ She held out her fingers to be kissed and walked rapidly away, Achmet still padding a few paces behind. It was as though a steel door had slammed down between them. And the atmosphere was suddenly laden with menace.

  Chapter Fourteen – ‘’Ow nice to see you again’

  ‘It has got to be possible.’ Aniseeh’s words jarred Grant’s imagination.

  Something had happened. The girl was living on her nerves and he could no longer see her without Sidi Achmet hovering within earshot.

  But the oases were dead quiet. Force X and Zero seemed remote. It was difficult after so many days on caravan to remember that Las Palmas was less than two hours’ flying time away.

  He smoked a lingering pipe and prepared for anything. His luggage had been delivered to the room and everything which mattered was all in one large trunk. Before turning in he checked up on a full standard set of surgical instruments, local anaesthetic apparatus and a selection of drugs.

  As he undressed and snuffed out the candles the room filled with moonlight and through the open window he could hear the last noises of the settlement: the snarl of two dogs fighting and the chirrup of crickets, the wail of a Berber song and the whisper of wind against palm trees.

  He was wakened by a girl carrying a wooden tray with breakfast of grey bread and goats’-milk cheese, a glass of lemon-juice heavily sweetened with coarse sugar and a pot of tea.

  Miss Turquoise arrived an hour later with Achmet. ‘Everyone is waiting,’ she said. Her voice was formal and she seemed more tense than ever. ‘I am to tell you that you must pay no attention to my uncle. He will see what has to be seen and then make up his mind about many things. You must not speak to him.’

  Grant was never at his best in the morning, but followed her along a short corridor into a spacious court where the Caid was sitting motionless beside a small jetting fountain while an elderly man squatted on the dust nearby.

  The girl interpreted, but Grant guessed that the Caid was missing nothing as he probed the case history, until, at last, with a ‘spot diagnosis’ in mind, he made the man lie down for examination. As he had expected, there was a swelling extending into the abdomen from below ribs on the right side.

  A distended gall-bladder, he explained, and probably due to a stone. It could be treated only by operation after a few days of preparation.

  The girl shook her head. ‘It must be done now.’ She lowered her voice and spoke very rapidly. ‘Something has annoyed him, David. You must be very careful.’

  David! He felt as though the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. Where in hell had she got that name! Grant was dead, and to her he ought to be Dietrich Gunten. His scalp prickled and a bead of sweat broke on his forehead.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Take any chance. But show him how good you are.’

  He forced a smile and decided to play it cool. ‘You once said that you wanted to become my nurse. Well, I can’t possibly do this without help.’

  ‘Then we shall do it together.’ Her voice was flat and noncommittal, but he saw the stress lines relax around her lips. ‘Though you must tell me everything slowly and in a way I can understand.’ She paused and fixed him straight in the eyes. ‘I shall try to help you in everything.’

  She explained to the patient what Grant hoped to do. There was a stone table upon which he could operate and the man was stretched out, naked, on the stone while someone shaved him from neck to thigh.

  Boiling water was being ferried in earthenware bowls and he gave the patient a heavy shot of pre-medication.

  His instruments were sterile inside their patent container, but he dropped them into the boiling water rather than chance the cloths which were now draped over the man’s legs and lower abdomen.

  A cushion was then slipped underneath to throw the lower ribs forward.

  David! David! Where had she got that name? And why the urgency? Why the need to impress? What in Satan’s name was happening behind the scenes?

  The girl had removed her blouse and tied a length of cotton around her chest, having taken him literally when he said that she must scrub her hands and arms to well above the elbow and get rid of anything on her person which might carry infection or drag against the wound.

  He had discovered a bottle of merthiolate solution and swabbed the man’s skin
before infiltrating with one per cent novocaine and one in one thousand adrenalin: which would at least do something to control skin-oozing.

  Several years had passed since he had opened an abdomen, but he guessed that the knack had not been forgotten. The Caid was staring at him with curiously pent-up expectation, his eyes glinting with excitement as Grant gently touched the man’s muscles. The patient was now asleep, with the thin belly wall relaxed over the outline of a swelling about the size of an orange.

  The Caid had sidled nearer and was a foot away from the man’s legs. ‘Tell him,’ said Grant carefully, ‘that if he wants to stand there he must wear a mask.’

  ‘You mean that?’ The girl’s eyes were anxious.

  ‘Yes.’ He lifted a scalpel and fitted a curving Bard-Parker blade to the handle. ‘And you can also tell him that if he gets in my way I won’t lift a hand to help him in anything.’

  The girl watered down some of the translation but it was enough to make the man’s face harden with anger as Grant poised the blade over skin and waited for him to move. ‘Please,’ said the girl. ‘The doctor knows what he is doing.’

  Grant could almost see him think. And then the Sheikh stepped two paces back. It was compromise enough and Grant swept the knife from flank to mid-line, parallel to but an inch below the rib margin. There was little or no fat and adrenalin had controlled most of the bleeding. Snapping haemostat forceps on to a few small skin vessels he showed the girl how to undo the clips and then tied off bleeding points.

  David! Trouble! But she wanted a cure. Said it was vital. Must do. What were the stakes?

  Working on a bloodless field he swept back skin and sectioned muscles with bold incisions which laid bare the peritoneum whilst one part of his mind explained the purpose behind every step, his choice of a Kocher’s incision which gave best access to gall-bladder, the reason why there was such little bleeding and the importance of this shining membrane, barrier against infection, which now bulged in the depth of the wound.