Far Sanctuary

by Jane Arbor

  “But as you have pointed out yourself, señora, I am unmistakably English, not Spanish.”

  The older woman sighed elaborately. “Madre mia! How you throw my words in my teeth! Very well, I confess I wasn’t reckoning with your English pride. Nor, perhaps, with Mark’s ability to cast himself for the role of ‘perfect, gentle knight’ if he liked - However, with the air cleared between us, and if you’ll sit down again, the rest of our interview can be as ‘employment bureau’ as you please.”

  Emma sat down. She did so reluctantly, but she did not relish telling Mark Triton later that she had not even examined the possibilities of the job. And insupportable as employment under Leonore de Coria might prove, she was still drawn to the thought of being able to help the younger girl. Yet with Leonore so much less a sympathetic character than she had imagined, what might even Pilar prove to be?

  She answered the factual questions put to her. Yes, she could drive a car. She was considered a good swimmer. She was normally healthy and did not think she would “droop” in the Tangier heat. Then Leonore was asking, “And what did Mark tell you about Pilar? ”

  “He said that she was mourning the death of her brother too deeply and too long, and that you felt she needed taking out of herself.”

  Leonore’s little smile came and went. “Yes, well - perhaps I need to be more frank with you. Will you understand me, I wonder, when I say that Pilar's fretting for Jaime is for someone she deeply loved?”

  The emphasis on the girl’s name was unmistakable, and Emma had difficulty in keeping distaste from her tone as she replied: “Yes, I think I understand.”

  Leonore said crisply: “Good. That saves my having to justify my reluctance to destroy myself in mourning for a rich husband who chose me, though I didn’t choose him. And since we understand each other so far, perhaps you can appreciate that I find Pilar’s hankering for Jaime something of a continual irritation and a reproach? What’s more, the child is beginning to translate her affection for him into a cloying devotion to me. For Pilar I am your ugly English legal word for a widow. I am merely Jaime’s ‘relict’. And this, between now and when I marry again, I completely refuse to be!”

  “And when you marry again,” asked Emma carefully, “what is Pilar’s future likely to be?”

  “You are thinking of your own future, supposing I offer you the post of duenna to Pilar?” countered Leonore. “But my marriage isn’t contemplated for at least some months, and by then I could hope that your companionship might have made enough of her for her to be ready to be groomed for a suitable marriage of her own. So that, even if you were superfluous at the end of, say, six months, I should probably know enough of your value to be able to recommend you to another pleasant situation of the same sort.”

  Emma said, with dry irony: “Thank you. But may I suggest that you may be expecting a great deal of a short time and of my impact upon your sister-in-law?”

  “I agree. Much will have to be done for her in a short time, if any eligible man is to throw her a second glance. At present she is naive and gauche and afraid of her own shadow. I should want you to take her about, encourage her in a little gaiety; go shopping with her, advise her on clothes. It doesn’t escape me, you see,” added Leonore, sweeping another glance of appraisal over Emma’s appearance, “that your own taste could be quite a good guide for a child like Pilar, who has no standards at all as yet.”

  “Thank you,” said Emma again. Increasingly she saw that her role in the de Coria household would be that of a kind of buffer state between the sisters-in-law. She would be answerable to Leonore even if her opposing sympathies were with Pilar, and she was doubtful of her ability to support it at all.

  But Leonore was continuing smoothly: “You would live here, of course, and the two of you would have the use of my smaller car. I would pay you well, but perhaps you would allow me to take Mark’s advice on how much?”

  “Willingly,” said Emma. And though at that point her inclination for the post had swung smartly to zero, she felt bound to say: “Perhaps, though, I could meet your sister-in-law before I have to decide?”

  “Of course." Leonore swung sandalled feet to the floor and drifted across the room to summon the Moorish maid by the signal of her clapped hands. While they waited for Pilar to be fetched she told Emma: "Ayesha is a Riffi girl from the mountains. Her native tongue is Arabic, but she understands Spanish and a little English, and our daily ‘boy’, Horeb, who hankers to be a guide to the English tourists, can always act as interpreter for her. Pilar, by the way, prefers Spanish, but you should not allow her to speak anything but English with you.

  She broke off and returned to the chaise-longue as the door opened to admit the girl herself.

  Emma looked at her with eager interest. She was very dark, her skin a warmly flushed olive, her hair drawn back from a centre parting into two black wings at her temples. She was thin as an undeveloped child, but her eyes held an anxiety that was adult. She wore flat Moorish babouches on her bare feet and her cotton dress was very short. But she had tastelessly added swinging earrings, a jangling assortment of cheap bracelets and no fewer than three heavy chain belts which gave her an air of being borne down by sheer weight of metal. She hadn’t an English girl’s coltish charm or assurance, nor any Latin poise to compensate. Emma, seeing how shrewd her sister-in-law’s criticism had been, longed suddenly to take her in hand.

  Glancing at Emma, she said something in rapid Spanish to Leonore. But Leonore cut her short. “I told you, Pilar, Miss Redfern is English. It is ill-bred to use a language that everyone who is present cannot understand,” and Emma pitied the shadowing of Pilar’s dark eyes at the rebuke as she bobbed in her own direction and said: “Pardon - I mean, I am sorry, Miss Redfern. But my English is not so good. It is not like Leonore’s -”

  At that Emma smiled: “It is still better than my Spanish!” But Leonore snapped again: “If she were less lazy about practising it, it would be quite as good as mine. But I hope that will be remedied now.” She turned to Pilar: “You understand, don’t you, child, that we are discussing my engaging Miss Redfern to act as your companion, so that when I am unable to take you about with me, you will no longer resent this with a fit of the sulks or moon about, quite unsuitably, alone?”

  At that Emma’s mind clicked to instant decision. She would take the job. As she saw Pilar flinch, she knew that she wanted less to mould the girl’s taste than to shield her from the subtle cruelties of Leonore’s tongue. That could be a most satisfying crusade....

  On the defence, Pilar said: “That is unfair. When I am not welcome with you, I do not sulk. I am a little unhappy, but I can always content myself here at home with Ayesha and Horeb.”

  Leonore’s delicate nostrils flared in a little sneer. “Yes - with your head in a romance, or fiddling about profitlessly in the garden!” She added to Emma: “Pilar actually believes there is reward in the losing battle she fights with our climate for the sake of a few miserable flowers!”

  “Oh, Leonore - I have grown some lovely ones! There were the harlequins and the first blooming of roses, and the canna lilies which are flowering now -”

  The protest had jerked from Pilar before Emma could reply. But Leonore scoffed: “Cannas! About as common as weeds and as gaudy as cheap gipsies!”

  “All the same, Jaime loved them,” murmured Pilar, her mouth stubborn. “A long time ago, I remember he told me they reminded him of you.”

  “Well, thank you, dear, but I am not complimented,” retorted Leonore. “And Miss Redfern, I’m sure, is not diverted by our bickering over a pursuit which you shouldn’t have much time for, once you learn to care about clothes and grooming. And make-up too, for goodness’ sake.” As if Pilar were not present Leonore turned with a resigned air to Emma. “Well, what do you say? With our combined efforts, can we do something for her, would you think?”

  Deliberately Emma looked to where Pilar stood, her eyes lowered over her locked and writhing fingers, as if shamed by the dires
t disgrace. Emma said quietly - to Pilar, not to Leonore - “I can’t think of anything I’d like more than to be accepted as Pilar’s friend.” Then she almost brushed past Leonore in order to offer her hand to the younger girl.

  As Pilar took it and clung to it, she went on: “My name is Emma. An awfully plain one, even by English ideas, I’m afraid, but much less stiff than ‘Miss Redfern’ and I hope you’ll call me by it when you are helping me to learn as much as I may be able to help you. And I love flowers and gardening, by the way -” She could not have asked for a sweeter reward than the look of infinite gratitude behind the drowned darkness of Pilar’s eyes, and she took considerable satisfaction in the belief that, at that moment, Leonore’s malicious power over the girl had thinned to a mere thread.

  While she waited for the English personal references, which she had given Leonore, to come through, Emma made her first task a letter of thanks to Mark Triton.

  She had postponed it until after her interview at the reply, when it came, was handwritten from his villa on The Mountain, the exclusive residential quarter of Tangier. Except that he addressed her as “Dear Emma Redfern” where she had called him “Mr. Triton”, it contained only a brief acknowledgment of her thanks and his good wishes for her immediate future in the job. Its coolness seemed to write “finis” across his part in her affairs, and Emma, returning it to its envelope, wished she had an opportunity to show it to Leonore de Coria. If anything would give the lie to her offensive hints, the cool tone of that letter should! At any rate, Emma told herself, she would keep it for a while with that possible end in view, even though she knew its few lines by heart before she put it away.

  A more difficult letter to write was the one she owed to her uncle and aunt.

  She had postponed it, until after her interview at the Villa Mirador, as she felt she could lessen their inevitable worry about her if, in telling them the whole truth about Guy’s desertion of her, she could assure them that she had lost no time in seeking work for herself; she knew, too, that they would visualize her new circumstances as affording her the social protection they would want for her while she remained in Tangier. But it was still not easy to steer between bitterness and an opposite sentimentality over her loss which her uncle at least would condemn. And she could not express at all her sense of her own inadequacy and failure. Was it true, she wondered, that if she had married Guy when he wanted, none of it need have happened? Or had that been Guy, his back to the wall, hitting out blindly and cruelly with blame? Either way, all her thoughts were threaded with the “If only -” of her first fruitless regrets until one night, from a vivid dream about Guy, she woke to the new sanity of knowing that she did not want him back. That was her turning point. From then on, she could even wish him well...

  Just before she was due to take up her duties at the Villa Mirador, Leonore rang up to say that, at Mark Triton’s reminder, she had realized that Emma must take a test to enable her to drive a car in Tangier. There was no waiting list, however, so if Emma would make the necessary arrangements, she could call for the car on the day her test was due.

  That left Emma somewhat at a loss over the documents she would need and where she ought to apply for an appointment for a test. But kindly Madame Blanchard, her landlady, came to her rescue about this. And on the morning she went for the car, Pilar came running to meet her.

  “Leonore is not up yet,” she explained shyly. “But she said I must come with you to show you the garage where she has an account for gasoline, and last night she gave me money - much more than enough - with which I am to play hostess to you at luncheon somewhere, after you have won your test.”

  With a smile Emma corrected: “In English, Pilar, we say ‘win’ only when we are competing against someone. And I may not pass my test, you know. I’m afraid I am very nervous.”

  “However, I think you will w— pass,” nodded Pilar. “You look so cool and capable. I, for one, should not fear driving anywhere with you!”

  They laughed together over such blind confidence. But on their way down into the city Pilar said again: “So! I knew you would drive in this manner - with such calm. Not at all like Leonore, who goes - pft! round all the corners and is angry when other cars are in her way. And you may hardly believe it” - Pilar’s eyes widened - “but I have even seen Señor Triton grow annoyed with her about this. Although I expect one may understand it as care for her safety. In some of the books I have read men are always most violent in anger where they love -”

  Near the garage was a garden cafe where Pilar promised to wait for Emma’s return from her ordeal. “I am allowed,” she said demurely, “to take coffee alone here if I sit at a lawn table where no one Leonore would call undesirable could try to speak to me.”

  So Emma left her there and went on in trepidation to a test which, exacting as it was, she managed to pass with credit. Her examiner, an American, congratulated her on her driving by rules of the road which were foreign to her, and she returned to Pilar with restored confidence.

  Pilar, however, was not alone. Seated beneath the sun- umbrella with her was a young Spaniard whom she introduced to Emma as Ramón Galatas, a friend of hers and of Leonore’s. As he sprang to his feet and bent low over Emma’s hand with a murmured: “Encantado, señorita!” she reflected that he was her idea of a typical handsome Latin - narrow-hipped and waisted and carrying his neat dark head with almost a dancer’s grace. At slightly longer acquaintance, she decided she did not like his full-lipped sensual mouth, and though his attentive manners were flattering, his smile flashed too readily and she found herself avoiding the hint of speculative insolence in his glance.

  He repeated in careful English: “Enchanted to meet you, Miss Redfern! I hope we may see each other often at the Villa Mirador.” And Pilar exclaimed eagerly: “I do not need to ask about your test, for I see by your face that you have passed it. And now we shall celebrate - is that correct? For I have invited Ramón to escort us to a nice restaurant and to take luncheon with us.”

  At that Ramón protested: “No, no. This I cannot have - you must both be my guests.” But with dry interest Emma noticed that when Pilar insisted that Leonore had appointed her as hostess, he yielded the point with willing grace.

  So the three of them piled into the little car and drove to El Minzah for lunch. There Emma left the other two to choose a table on the patio while she went on alone to a parking place.

  From her experience with Guy, she knew that no tickets were issued, but that the Moor in attendance would expect a tip at both ends of the transaction. She had just passed him a couple of pesetas when she noticed that the car door, on his side, was not shut. But, unfortunately, as she reached for its low handle-lever, he noticed it, too, and smilingly slammed it hard upon her fingertips.

  At once, at her ejaculation of pain, his apologies flowed - but in a mixture of Spanish and Arabic of which Emma grasped not a word. So she reasssured him with a smile and made nothing of the accident, although, by the time she reached the restaurant once more, her fingers were throbbing painfully and long blood-blisters were forming at the base of three of her nails.

  She found Pilar waiting at their table on the flower- decked patio. On their way in, Pilar said, she and Ramón had met Mark Triton in the entrance hall, and he had taken Ramón to the bar for a drink.

  “And when he heard that we were waiting for you, Emma” - Pilar’s accent made an odd thing of Emma’s name - “he insisted that he should be our host for luncheon, which he called by an English word I do not know, except that it means una fiesta de cuatro.”

  Emma translated that literally as “a party for four” and offered “foursome”, which Pilar accepted as the two men joined them.

  Over the mutual greetings, Emma tried to analyse her curiously mixed feeling of eagerness and equally curious disinclination to meet Mark Triton again. She had not seen him since he had left her in the pension garden on the morning of Guy*s desertion, and the tone of his letter had seemed to write her off from his f
urther concern. That was understandable. And yet - if Pilar had reported him correctly, he had wanted to join them for lunch when he heard that she was to be there. She could neither explain nor deny the tiny glow of pleasure that afforded her.

  His manner was one of easy hospitality which put her at ease, and the conversation during the meal was usually general except when Pilar or Ramón claimed they could not express themselves in English and lapsed into Spanish, with Mark as Emma’s interpreter. Once, when they were arguing together in that language, Mark, in his turn, made a private thing of explaining to Emma the Moslem belief in baraka - the spiritual sanctity possessed by holy or noble men, certain animals and even by ancient trees, and deeply venerated by all.

  He went on casually: “If I may say so, your initiation into things Moorish was - unfortunate. That ought to be rectified sometime.”

  “Rectified?” Emma could not suppress a slight shiver. “I don’t think I want to venture into the Moorish quarter again.”

  He twirled the stem of his wine-glass. “Well, not alone, naturally. Properly escorted and vouched for, I meant-”

  But at that point a hotel page came to say that he was wanted on the telephone and, excusing himself, he left the table.

  Emma had not mentioned her bruised fingers to Pilar, and during the meal she had contrived to keep their somewhat unwholesome appearance out of sight. But when their host had been gone some minutes, she unguardedly rapped them on the underside of the table and could not disguise her sudden wince of pain.

  Pilar exclaimed: “Dear Emma - what is it?” And a moment later Emma’s hand was being clasped solicitously between both of Ramón’s.