Sandflower

by Jane Arbor

  “But, dada—I’ve explained that to you! Even when Chris wouldn’t admit it himself, I knew he was more in love with his memory of Jenny than he was with me. And even if Roger thinks Chris let me down, why should it be any business of his?”

  Andrew shook his head. “It’s a mistake to underrate a man’s capacity for chivalry, Liz. It’s his version of the protective instinct, and I can imagine Yate vowing, ‘I’ll see the chap farther before I’ll join Liz; poor kid, in waving him farewell!’ Do you see? Making it his business, because he thinks more of you than I believe you guess.”

  “And yet,” Liz pointed out, “he’s coming to the party!”

  “Then there’s no longer any problem, is there? Obviously he has done the sensible thing and let Chris clear the air for him.”

  “If so, I’m glad. I don’t want his—pity.”

  “I said chivalry, not pity. They’re not at all the same thing,” corrected Andrew. He went on, “I’ll confess I had hopes of you and Chris Soper, Liz. And you’ve been working so hard at the hospital that you haven’t made any other close men friends. I’m afraid it bears out my fears—that I was wrong to keep you here. It’s too narrow an environment for you altogether.”

  “Oh, dada—I stayed to look after you! Why won’t you let me go on doing it in my own way?”

  “I will, of course, while you’re happy doing it. But it’s not a life’s work for you. I want you to marry, you know.”

  “But if I did, I should be leaving you.”

  “Not if you married here. I’ve an idea you’d still contrive to find some time for me.”

  “You’ve just said I’m not likely to marry here. You can’t have it—”

  “—both ways!” Andrew finished for her with a smile. “That’s your generation’s jargon for ‘You can’t eat your cake and have it, too,’ isn’t it? But that aside, when this dengue business has cleared up completely, I’m going to insist that you have more time for play. I’ve got a month’s leave due very soon. What do you think about our taking a trip over to, say, Nice or Cannes?”

  “Yes, I’d like that,” Liz said, and tried hard to look as if she agreed that “more time for play” and a month on the Riviera held all the answers to her future. If only, if only they did!

  She went again to the hospital the next day, so that if Beth had called she knew nothing about it. And in the evening she dressed for the party with the feeling that it marked the end of a phase. After it, nothing could be the same again.

  For Janine and Roger could not keep their love affair secret for much longer; she felt that Janine might even confide it to her tonight. Chris would be gone, and when he came back he would almost certainly be married. And after this Beth’s spitefulness would not be directed against herself. They might even, Liz thought with dull horror at the prospect, drift out of their wary enmity into a superficial alliance which wouldn’t be any less guarded as soon as their interests clashed, or even if Beth imagined they might.

  There was no fun to dressing tonight. Chris couldn’t see what she looked like, and there was no one else. But at the defeatism of that she reined sharply. That was in the most wretched taste, if you like! She owed it to Chris to look her best, didn’t she? If he could make a gesture of courage and faith in the future, so could she!

  She did not wait for Andrew to be ready, but went over to the hotel early. Chris was already there, giving a drink at the specially installed little bar to Dr. Fremyet and his companion, Dr. Meyer, the German relief doctor from Algiers, whom Liz had seen about the hospital but had not met.

  Chris gestured them together, and Dr. Meyer bowed with an air of having clicked his heels without actually doing so. He was a man in the middle forties, Liz judged, with smooth iron-gray hair and a grave, pleasant smile. He told Liz in precise English that he knew already who she was. Then he and Dr. Fremyet continued their talk in French, and Liz took the stool next to Chris.

  “How nicely you rustle!” he grinned. “What are you dressed in—tell me.”

  Liz laughed. “The rustling is paper nylon underneath. The top layer is blue gray linen, though you’d hardly believe it.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because it has a kind of misty sheen; that’s due to masses of tiny, tiny pleats running crossways. Feel.”

  Chris nodded his approval of the material, and Liz went on, “It has a very full skirt at the front. It comes straight across my collarbones and is low at the back. Oh yes, and huge pannier pockets—”

  “Do you look nice in it?”

  “I hope so.”

  “So do I. You’d better,” he said cryptically, and turned on his stool. “Is that some of my other guests arriving? Come with me to do the honors.”

  Presently both rooms were full of people, grouping and talking and competing for Chris’s company in order to wish him good luck. As he went among them his movements were surprisingly assured, and watching him, Liz thought it was possible to believe his dark spectacles were a whim, not a necessity at all. She only hoped Jenny Adrian was good enough for him. But he was going to be all right, she was sure of it.

  She looked around her. Roger had not put in an appearance, but across the room, Janine, in white, was looking her serene self again after her convalescence. She was with Dr. Meyer and Dr. Fremyet, smiling and talking with both men until Dr. Fremyet moved off. And when Liz looked again the other two had gone, as well. She could not see Janine’s coronet of hair anywhere in the room. Perhaps Roger had arrived and they were together.

  When Beth arrived she avoided being alone with Liz. Perhaps she had no more news or, if she had, had decided to keep it to herself. Liz had raised an eyebrow of inquiry when they met, but Beth had ignored it. She was in a low-cut green cocktail dress of too harsh a color for her youthful fragility, and though she was better groomed than she had been yesterday morning, her eyes were so bright and her cheeks so flushed that if Liz hadn’t known the cause was frustration and jealousy, she would have said Beth was in for a belated bout of dengue.

  In a corner of the larger room someone had started a game of poker dice, which was all the current rage at the club. Most of the younger people were there, offering hilarious advice to the players, and Liz was about to go over when Andrew came up to her.

  “We’re in the other room, at the buffet,” he said. “Just the few of us—Janine, Beth, Yate and the other doctors. We’ve managed to shanghai Chris for a moment, and the idea is a bit of a toast to him. Coming along?”

  “Yes, I’d like to.” After all, she must meet Roger again and learn to behave normally.

  In the smaller room while Andrew ordered the drinks for the toast, Janine left the others and joined her. Under the cover of the fall of her wide skirt, Janine slipped a hand into hers.

  “Afterward, Liz—will you and Andrew come back with us to the villa? Chris is coming, too. Dr. Fremyet will call for him later. I’ve some rather lovely news to tell you. Lovely for me, that is—I hope you’ll be glad about it, but I haven’t even told Beth yet—”

  Janine broke off as Andrew turned about and began to distribute wineglasses. The champagne was poured and for a moment each member of the little group stood quiet and posed as if for an informal tableau.

  Andrew raised his glass. The others raised theirs. Andrew said, “To Chris and all—and I mean all—that England, bless her, can do for him. We’ll be seeing you back again before long, Chris, eh?”

  Chris nodded. “Just watch me!”

  But he broke off as Beth’s voice, high and uneven, cut in, “And when you’ve toasted Chris, I’ll give you another! To my dear maman and her dear, precious Roger. For being so very clever, and still not quite clever enough. For pretending I was all either of them cared about while they were simply making use of me all the while, and still not being careful to do their handholding and sweethearting somewhere where I couldn’t overhear them from my room the other night!” She paused to twirl her glass with a melodramatic flourish. “Yes, do let’s drink th
at toast! It might put us in the mood for dancing at their wedding. Because they’re sure to ask us all to it—even me! If they think I’ll stand for having this done to me, they probably think I’ll grovel for a slice of wedding cake, too. And can’t you—this is a laugh—can’t you just see maman pretending to hope I’ll catch her bouquet!”

  There was a stunned silence. Then Janine, her face almost as white as her dress, went swiftly over to Beth and grasped her shoulder.

  “Cherie—be quiet, please! Such nonsense—You don’t know what you are saying!”

  “Oh, don’t I?” With a deliberately insolent gesture Beth snapped the stem of her glass and flung it at Janine’s feet. “Well, if I don’t, I’m still going to say it, and you can’t stop me!”

  She looked beyond Janine and the others, seemingly oblivious of the bewildered distaste to be read in their faces. “This is my show,” she shrilled. “They have had theirs at my expense, and now it’s my turn. But of course you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” Her wild glance singled out the French doctor and the German. “Well, I’ll tell you. My dear stepmamma here has been quietly carrying on an affair with the man I thought was going to be my fiancé—that’s what! Dear Beth’ here and ‘Cherie’ there—and all the time planning to betray me, the minute he noticed her existence!

  “Because he didn’t at first. I know he didn’t. While he cared for me—and he did—she was just my stepmother. But of course she was a widow, too, and widows don’t need to angle for men—they come running!”

  “Beth!” Though the word of warning and appeal came from Janine, someone else—Dr. Meyer—had moved to Janine’s side. But Beth’s torrent of words plunged on. “Running! Not that running after one woman stops them from running in a lot of other directions at the same time. And if you think that’s impossible, ask Liz Shepard over there. Ask her about her beloved Roger Yate! Because she’s been in love with him since I don’t know when, and though he couldn’t care less about her, he has never minded her being all dewy-eyed about him. Nor—when it suited his vanity and even while he was making up to stepmamma—contriving to spend a night in the desert with her. Such a convenient breakdown of his car—”

  But that was to be all. For at that moment the incredible happened. Dr. Meyer’s open hand struck Beth smartly across the cheek, and as she flinched and cowered, he reached for a chair and thrust her into it, a hand firm upon her bowed shoulder.

  His other hand went out to Janine and her own slid into it. He said, “My dear, I am sorry. It had to be done. She is hysterical, overwrought. She hasn’t understood, and so she is bitter, though she does not mean half the cruel things she has said. She will regret, she will apologize in time. Look, she is crying a little now! You will be especially kind to her for my sake, yes? Such a cruel introduction of me to your little Elizabeth!”

  Janine murmured, “It’s all my fault. You said we should tell her at once, Gerhard. I wanted to wait. I was afraid of how she would take it after all these years of having me to herself. And I was so very wrong! But you see, don’t you, that I needed a little time myself to realize that we had found each other again? It has only been three days, after all!”

  As she spoke Janine knelt at Beth’s side, and though the girl jerked her head away, began to stroke her hair.

  “Dear, forgive me! I never dreamed you could make such a terrible mistake—and hate me because of it! If only Roger or I had the faintest inkling that you wanted to marry him! But I’ve always thought of him as the brother neither of us ever had, and I believed you felt the same. And listen—last night I learned that he is in love with Liz. So how could he have wanted to make you jealous over me? No, he gave you back to me, cured, when you were all I had. And now he has helped to give me back Gerhard here, whom I loved a very long time ago.”

  Beth raised wet, angry eyes. “Liz? And Roger? I don’t believe it! And—you married my father. Remember?”

  “Yes—but only after I thought I should never see Gerhard again. Steven knew all about Gerhard and he accepted that he had been my first love. And you were so tiny and helpless, Beth. You needed two parents, and I wanted to be as nearly your mother as I could.” She looked up at the man beside her. “Gerhard, tell her about us. Make her understand!” But before he could do so, Janine seemed to realize that the three of them were not alone. Rising, she went to Chris and took his hands.

  “Chris, I’m sorry about this. Your party—and everyone so happy for you! You do understand that Beth isn’t herself, or she wouldn’t have spoiled things for you so? As for Liz and Roger—” looking from one to the other of them “—it’s I who am to blame, for betraying Roger’s confidence when I wanted to convince Beth just now. But perhaps he will forgive me. And Beth shall apologize, I promise. Now I’d better take her home.”

  Chris said, “Think nothing of it. And don’t wring an apology out of Beth for my sake. I’m afraid I knew she had something like this coming to her, though not quite this way. And I imagine friend Yate won’t press for an apology, either, even if he would have preferred Beth shouldn’t spill the beans for him. I’m not so sure about Liz, though. Could be she’ll be mad. On the other hand, she could have been holding out on poor Chris—”

  He need not have wondered. For minutes earlier, Liz, as unaware of her surroundings and other people as Janine had been, had met Roger’s eyes across the room and had known quite certainly that they were both listening to an inner music that no one else shared. She had vibrated to him as he to her, and the overtones would last until they were really alone.

  She heard Gerhard Meyer saying, “I think perhaps that we should clear the air for our good friends before we take Beth home, Janine. They have been very tolerant of the scene we have made. We owe them this.”

  Holding Janine’s hand, he went on, “Janine and I met in Kano just before the last war. She was young, but no lovelier than I find her now. I was twenty-five and was studying tropical medicine in my first year after qualifying. When the war broke out, I went back to Germany. But—my grandmother had not been Aryan. Perhaps you understand? Instead of being used as a doctor in the army, I spent my war—and its aftermath—in a concentration camp. When I went back to Kano, Janine must have been married and in Tamanrasset for some years, though I did not know that then.

  “Enough that I could not trace her, and so to other North African hospitals and finally to Algiers. When I came here on relief, a chance word to Dr. Yate and—”

  “Look, since I botched the thing rather, perhaps the rest would come better from me?” Roger put in. “Meyer here was pretty diffident about approaching Janine after I’d told him she was working in Tasghala and that Steven Carlyon was dead. So I concocted my clumsy demarche to Janine. I invited her to dine with me, broke the news to her and produced our friend here. I lent them my car for the evening and left them together. I was back in my quarters by ten o’clock that night.” He threw a wry look at Liz that she found delicious. “Good idea. The next night I didn’t hit the hay at all!”

  “And since then the secrecy has been my fault,” offered Janine. “I felt I must meet Gerhard—under Roger’s cover—just once again before I told Beth that we both knew we wanted to marry. I knew telling her would be difficult and I needed his help. But she has been so truculent and offhand that I couldn’t bring myself to it. So I planned that Gerhard and I would tell her together just before we told you, Andrew, and Liz and Chris.”

  She turned and went back to Beth. “If only, chérie, you had let me guess what you were suspecting and how hurt you were, instead of shutting yourself away from me as you did! I was wrong, I know. But in time you will forgive me—yes?”

  “Forgive you? In a very long time and at a very good distance, maybe!” Beth’s lip quivered. “You don’t imagine, do you, that I’ll stay here with you after this, to have everyone in Tasghala laughing at me? Daddy had relatives in England. I—I’ll go to them. You could at least have told me about Roger and Liz Shepard—of all people! I know she has
had a crush on him, but he—why he’s never even taken her out to dinner or dancing at the club. And don’t say I wouldn’t know if he had. Ask her!”

  “And yet you’ve just accused him of the lowest trick a man could play upon a girl in order to get her alone!” Janine reminded her.

  “Oh, that! I never supposed he was above flirting with her. Look at the way he let me think he was serious, and what good has that done me?”

  Janine sighed. “If only you had let me guess at the hopes you were building, I could have saved you all this. And later you are going to regret having caused it. Beth, dear—” she held out a hand “—what do you say to our taking each other home?”

  But Andrew stepped forward. “If Beth wants to go home, I’ll take her,” he said.

  “I don’t want to, and I won’t go!” Beth snapped, shrinking back into her chair.

  “No? Then why should you?” But he took her hand and pulled her upright. “D’you know,” he nodded, “I was rather hoping you would take pity on me?”

  “How?” Her tone was that of a sulky child refusing to be mollified.

  “Because it looks as if I’ve been cast for the role of odd man out tonight. I’m just not in this picture , and apparently I haven’t been in any picture for longer than I suspected. So as I don’t think you and I have ever had a téte-a-téte evening, I’m wondering if you’d honor me now?”

  “You only want to get me away, so that you can preach at me!”

  Andrew’s brows went up. “Over dinner? Wouldn’t that be in arrant bad taste, as well as ruinous to the digestion?”

  “You’ll still think it’s your ‘duty’ to moralize over me!”

  “Hand on heart, any sympathy or advice of mine shall be limited to choosing our menu. If you’d rather, of course, I’ll drive you straight home. But a new batch of chaps came in on leave from the site today, and I hear the club is laying on a floor show for them.”

  Beth’s inward struggle was almost visible in her face. At last, as if she realized she gained more dignity by going than by staying, she picked up her bag. “All right, I’ll come,” she said ungraciously, and swept from the room, not glancing at anyone.