Sandflower

by Jane Arbor

  She drew aside to allow him to go on down the steps, but he did not move. “Time enough,” he said easily. “When you’re ready, in fact. I came late, as you know, and I haven’t danced with my hostess yet. Or is that, as Beth would put it, a not terribly gallant way of saying, ‘May I have the pleasure’?”

  Liz laughed, appreciating the sly dig at Beth’s extravagant adjectives. “Not very, I daresay. But it isn’t really a ‘May I have the pleasure’ kind of party, is it? I’m glad. I didn’t want it to be. If it were a formal affair and I was a real hostess, I shouldn’t have dared to run away from it like this.”

  “Well, when you’re ready to make a move, shall we go back and dance, or would you care to ‘run’ further? Say, on a stroll to the boundary of the grounds and back?”

  Liz hesitated. She could say no to the dance and yes to the walk and the consequent téte-a-téte with him. But with the choice in her hands, she was suddenly afraid of it. His casual tone had betrayed no preference of his, and the eternal feminine in her craved a lead.

  Playing for time, playing safe, she threw back her head and listened as she stood up. “They’ve just started up a rumba, I think. Do you like—” But there Fate snatched the choice from her. As she spoke she had taken an incautious step on the uneven ground and once more pain stabbed so sharply through her ankle that she almost cried out.

  Her companion was quick with a hand under her elbow.

  “You didn’t look where you were going,” he admonished. “Did your foot give way beneath you?”

  Aware that this time she could not walk without hobbling, and not even that before she had rested, she admitted, “Yes. That is—I’m afraid I must have twisted my ankle earlier, and it just gave way again.”

  “Earlier? How much earlier? You’ve been using it, dancing on it all the evening!” he accused.

  “Well, yes. I—”

  And she enlarged on the mishap, feeling like a rebuked seven-year-old at his irascible “Tch! So much for the theory of a nursing certificate—in practice! You’ll be lucky if you aren’t going around in a plaster cast for the next six weeks. Meanwhile, I must examine it. Can you walk? No? Then hold on—”

  But as he hooked her arm across his shoulders she pleaded, “Oh, please—not in the house! Everyone will think so, and there’ll be so much explaining to do!”

  To her relief, he paused. “All right,” he conceded. “I’ll run you straight to the hospital instead; lay on an X ray in case it’s a fractured bone, get you properly bandaged if it’s only a sprain. Now—”

  Making nothing at all of her weight, he lifted her and carried her to where his car was parked, without their meeting anyone. As he switched on the engine he warned, “There’ll still be explanations to make when I bring you back.”

  “Yes, I know. Less fuss, though, and you can say you thought it best to take me straight to hospital without worrying dada or anyone first.”

  He nodded. “Yes. And I daresay no one will suppose I’ve played Lochinvar and that we’ve temporarily eloped, will they?”

  In that she heard an irony that hurt. On the same note she challenged lightly, “As it’s you and I, they couldn’t very well, could they?”

  He laughed. “Probably not. As I remember the story, both Lochinvar and the lady were willing parties to the abduction. However, let’s not pursue the subject to its bitter end. It could prove embarrassing.”

  “Let’s not,” she agreed. Did he have to make it so obvious that he was a reluctant Lochinvar and that, outside his professional duty to her, he thought her a bit of a nuisance? But the next minute, when she winced at an unguarded movement of her foot, he disarmed her resentment with a swift, kind smile.

  “We’ll have you more comfortable soon,” he promised. “But you are going to be a rather static onlooker for the rest of the night. No precious ‘last dance,’ I’m afraid. No goodnight kisses. No assignation a deux with the sunrise—”

  Liz stared ahead into the velvet darkness. “I haven’t made an assignation with the sunrise. Have you?”

  He laughed again, a little shortly. “No. Willy-nilly, I’ve seen a good many Sahara dawns and at the end of a grueling night’s work, or ahead of a day that’s likely to be worse, one doesn’t approach them in much of a romantic mood. But at your age, dawns and sunsets and starlit nights ought to speak your language. Or—” he threw an oblique glance at her “—is that touching a raw wound for you still?”

  “You mean Robin? No. All that’s over.”

  “And you’re glad?”

  “Yes, I am now.”

  “Good. Then you could have watched your sunrise without any poignant memories to spoil the experience for you?”

  “I suppose I could, if I’d been invited. But I wasn’t.”

  “I think you might have been, if things had been different. However, the fates decided to snip the thread of that one—and I daresay I don’t need to tell you why I can’t offer to repair the omission?”

  “Of course you don’t! There wasn’t any question—”

  “There wasn’t was there?” He took up the checked phrase quickly as he drew up at the hospital gates. Half-turned in his seat, he brushed a couple of knuckles upward across her burning cheeks and went on. “Cheer up, Liz! There’ll be other nights, other stars, other dawns, and your evil chance, in the shape of a sprained ankle, won’t always intervene! No, don’t stir—I’ll come around for you.” Briefly in his arms for the second time, she was glad he could not guess that she wanted the moment to last forever. For this was the answer she had shirked earlier—that she craved his rare gentleness with her more than anything in the world.

  The injury to her ankle proved to be only a sprain, and after a day or two Liz was able to use it normally. But the forced inaction of those days gave her too much time in which to look at the situation she had contrived for herself—to look at it and to be appalled by it.

  How did such things happen—how could one feel completely at odds with a man while actually falling in love with him? It hadn’t been at all like that with Robin. She was sure they had been excitingly attracted to each other within minutes of their meeting. Or take Chris Soper—she had liked him and been at ease with him at once. And on the other hand, when she disliked anyone, she was never more than indifferent to his opinion of her.

  So how on earth—and even more bewilderingly, when—had she come to care for Roger Yate, to treasure his kindnesses, to feel stabbed through by his misjudgments and to mind all the while about his usual impersonal manner with her?

  Because she had begun by resenting him, hadn’t she? That had been in the plane, when he had been so wanting in the sympathy she felt she deserved. In fact she had felt so strongly about that, that she had passed her hostility on to Beth before she had even met the girl. Or was that the reason? Her innate honesty compelled Liz to wonder. For if there were an uglier word—jealousy, no less—for her unreasonable resentment of Beth from the outset, that meant she had fallen in love with Roger without knowing it. If she had been jealous of Beth from then on, that explained a great deal. And if Beth had sensed the thing Liz had not admitted even to herself, perhaps it was no wonder that she also had set up her own hostile barriers.

  Not that Beth needed to brandish ‘Keep Out’ signs with Roger’s protective tenderness so patently hers. Nor could she be accused of any actually damaging words or actions. But there were still little things—the warinesses, the not-quite-open disparagements, the oh-so-lightly offered warnings that sounded so harmless, yet which, if she suspected Liz of coveting Roger’s love, she might mean with deadly purpose.

  There had been just such a passage between them when Roger had brought Liz back from the hospital.

  Though their absence had been noticed, no one appeared to think it odd, and Liz was able to make light of the sympathetic stir on her behalf. The dancing and the coming and going continued, and only Beth embarrassed her by refusing to dance, in order to sit with her.

  There were, for Liz, t
he best of reasons why she had not wanted Beth’s company just then. But Beth had said, “No, Liz, I insist. You look so out of things, all alone. Besides, I’m tired. I suppose I must let Roger believe I missed him while he ran away with you. He’ll expect to hear that, won’t he? But actually I seemed to be in the middle of the crowd the whole time, and I could have had every dance at least twice over—Now, can I bring you a drink or anything?”

  Trying not to sound ungracious, Liz had declined, adding, “And Roger didn’t ‘run away’ with me. He only suggested taking me to the hospital because I didn’t want to upset the party, and if I had to have an X ray, I’d have had to go anyway.”

  “Yes, I see.” Beth had nodded sympathy. “And of course you must have known I couldn’t mind your disappearing like that, as it was just something professional that Roger was bound to do for you.”

  To that Liz had been stung to retort, “Well, had you the right to mind, even if it hadn’t been a professional jaunt?”

  And Beth had laughed very softly.

  “Only unofficially, of course! There’s nothing the least bit definite between us. So I couldn’t grumble, whoever Roger decided to go out with. But I shouldn’t be human if I were awfully keen about the idea. You see, he has let me come to depend on him so much that I’m afraid I never expect him to look at anyone else. In that way, I mean. Professionally, it’s different. And of course it’s quite different where you’re concerned, Liz.”

  Liz took refuge in irony. “Entirely different, as you say. How did you guess?”

  “How? Oh, well—you and Roger cross swords too often to be attracted to each other. I daresay you weren’t too popular with him tonight, either, for having walked and danced on that ankle for hours. And I know you, Liz. You’re much too levelheaded to try to make capital for yourself out of a long téte-a-téte that was forced on you both. I know girls who might. But you’ve too much spirit to risk a frightful snub at Roger’s hands. Besides, why should you care about what he thinks of you, when you’ve obviously made a slave of Chris Soper in a couple of meetings? Look, he’s coming over now, and if that isn’t exit cue for Beth, what is?”

  Liz had let her go, and by way of grateful contrast, had welcomed Chris extravagantly. His eagerness for her company was by no means the consolation she needed. But basking in it did something for her pride, and though she mustn’t encourage him, while he asked no more than he gave of cheerful companionship, it was good to pretend that she was as “heartwhole” as he claimed he was himself.

  So when the party broke up at last, and he came to say good-night, she had renewed her promise to go out with him if she were using her foot before his leave was over. And as Roger believed in the modern treatment of not allowing a sprained joint to stiffen with disuse, they were able to make a date for the last evening before Chris went back to duty.

  That night Andrew was dining at the hotel with a top executive of Pan-Sahara Oil who was on a routine visit to Tasghala. So Chris and Liz had dinner at the Club, danced once or twice afterward and later joined a party for an alfresco supper at the swimming pool. It was close on midnight when they returned to the bungalow, and Andrew was back before them, as the light filtering through the living-room shutters showed.

  Liz invited, “Come in and speak to dada, won’t you, before you go?” But on the veranda she paused to listen to the murmur of voices from the room, and turned back to Chris.

  “It sounds as if the VIP is still with him. Shall we go in, or not?”

  “Not,” said Chris, a shade too promptly. “I mean—I’d really rather say good-night to you here, Liz. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not. But wouldn’t you like to come in for a drink or something?”

  “Not in a foursome with a VIP and your father. No disrespect meant, but I’d rather end a near-perfect evening just with you. Liz—” Chris came closer, took her hand and began to play with her fingers. “Say you’ve enjoyed it, too?”

  “You know I have,” she told him sincerely. “You’ve given me a lovely time.”

  “And we’ll do it again—or something else—soon?”

  “Yes, I’d like that a lot. And thank you again for tonight, Chris.”

  She intended the words as a hint of dismissal. But when she made to disengage her hand, both his went around it.

  “You don’t have to thank me,” he said. “I only wish we were just setting out, instead of coming back. I may not see you for some time now, either. So may I kiss you, Liz—please?”

  Liz protested weakly. “Oh, Chris—” There was little enough to the exchange of a parting kiss, asked for so humbly. But she was reluctant to give him her lips, however lightly. She laid her free hand over their clasped ones and pleaded, “I—I’d rather you didn’t. I mean—we aren’t, we haven’t—”

  “But I am! I have! Fallen for you, I mean. You’re such an utterly natural person, and the sweetest thing that has happened to me since Jenny! The only thing that has happened since Jenny! You must believe that. It’s true. Oh, Liz—”

  The next moment she was in his arms, and though she turned her head aside, his lips sought her throat, her cheek and the lobe of her ear between his murmured repetitions of her name.

  As soon as she could, she put both hands on his shoulders in an attempt to thrust him back. But as she did so their figures were enveloped in a long wedge of light, and Andrew and his visitor were standing in the doorway that gave onto the living room.

  Startled, Liz and Chris sprang apart with an air of guilt. Chris was straightening his tie and swallowing hard, and she was thrusting back her hair as she glanced from her father to the other man, only to see that he was no strange VIP but Roger Yate!

  Caught in an agony of embarrassment, she glanced at him and met the eyes beneath the leonine brows before he looked away. For a moment that seemed an age the four of them stood as if they were characters posed for a tableau. Then things were said; Liz heard Chris refusing Roger’s offer of a lift by saying that he had only to walk to the hotel, and after that she had no clear impression until she found herself alone with her father.

  “Nice evening, Liz?” he queried, apparently intent on scrutinizing his half-finished drink.

  “Yes, awfully.” She recounted how it had been spent, adding, “I meant to bring Chris in, but didn’t, because we thought you’d still got Sir Gregory Fish with you.”

  “Yes, well—” Andrew grinned at her over the rim of his glass. “Sir Gregory believes that good men are scarce, so he took himself to bed soon after dinner, in order to be fresh for his flight north tomorrow. That left me rather high and dry—you see how I’ve come to depend on your companionship in the evenings, Liz! So when Yate showed up for a visit to one of the hotel kitchen hands, I asked him to come in for a drink afterward. I thought we should hear Chris bring you back, but we didn’t.”

  “He left his jeep up at the hotel and we walked down.” Liz paused. “We’d only just arrived, and Chris was going when—when he’d said good-night.”

  “I see. Well, sorry about the intrusion, Liz. I gather he was in the process of saying good-night when Yate and I came out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doing it with a lot of enthusiasm, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. Oh, dada, I suppose it did look—well, intense. But it wasn’t really. It would have been an ordinary good-night kiss if—if I hadn’t wanted him not to do it at all!”

  Andrew’s eyes narrowed quizzically. “Goodness me, what a complication of negatives! D’you mean you didn’t want him to kiss you?”

  “Not really.”

  “But you hadn’t led him to believe he could, and then withdrawn the invitation?”

  “Oh, no. No, I’m sure I didn’t—”

  “All right, Liz.” Andrew set down his glass and came to put an affectionate arm across her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have asked, I know. You’re too honest to be made of that kind of stuff, and I’d say Chris Soper could be trusted in most circumstances. So it was just a good-night kiss
that missed target and looked more passionate than it was? Good enough. Anyway, it’s Yate and I who ought to apologize. Uninvited onlookers shouldn’t criticize what they weren’t meant to see, should they? And Liz—” He waited until she looked up at him. “Chris Soper does happen to be one of the few chaps out here whom I wouldn’t mind your knowing better. Roger Yate would be another, if he and you were on each other’s short lists, which isn’t likely—However, ’nuff said for tonight, old girl. Run along to bed now, and enjoy your dreams!”

  But Liz went, worried for Chris, wretched for herself, and unable to forget Roger Yate’s complete indifference to seeing her in Chris’ arms.

  The next morning there was a note for her from Chris, delivered by hand before he left at dawn to return to the oil site. Andrew had found it in the hall and gave it to her, making no comment when she put it aside to read when she was alone. Over their coffee and rolls they talked of other things, and just as Andrew was about to leave to drive Sir Gregory Fish to the airfield, he said, “By the way, Yate tells me he has spoken to Nursing Sister Superior about your helping at the hospital. He suggested you might go over there this morning. So if you are free, will you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  When he had gone, she read what Chris had said in his note. It began:

  Liz dear—I’m sorry about last night. You didn’t want that to happen, and I vow I didn’t know it was going to, until it did. But I’d been so happy with you all the evening, and I did believe you were as heartwhole as I told you I was. If you aren’t—or if you are, but still don’t want to see me again—do please put me out of doubt by saying so. I’ll try to understand.

  But if the worst you think of me is that I was just a clumsy lout, try to forgive me, and I’ll promise not to rush you into anything, if you’ll let me see you on my next leave. (If I could hope you would be coming out to the site again, that would be heaven.) Meanwhile, everything I said last night goes, and if you want to be kind, a mail comes out to us by the evening convoy.