by Isobel Chace
It was late when it was all over. The screen was rolled up again and shoved into the back of the Land Rover together with the batteries and the projector and the other mysterious objects that were all part of the equipment.
Last of all the doctor came for Katherine and she walked beside him to the vehicle, smiling at the men who had come to see them off. She was completely unprepared, though, for him to lift her clear off her feet and into her seat. His eyes glinted in the starlight and she could see the white of his teeth. She sat, very upright, on the edge of the canvas and tried to pretend to herself that she felt exactly the same as she had before. This was a dangerous country, she thought, with its long silent stretches of sand and a moon and stars one could almost touch. It would pay her to guard her heart well or she would be lost.
He drove her right home to her door and he came round to her side and handed her down. For a moment she imagined she had felt his lips against her hair, and she wished that it had been so. She trembled slightly and the grip of his fingers on hers tightened.
“Cold?” he asked her.
But she couldn’t answer him. Her throat was tight and it wouldn’t allow the words to come.
“Stupid!” he said lovingly. “Go to bed. And don’t forget to lock up well.” He gave her a little push towards her door and she went obediently, drawing her haik closely about her. He was still watching her when she closed the door and rammed the great bolts home, but she couldn’t see what he was thinking. She stood for a long moment with her back to the door and her heart hammering. She wasn’t sure she could manage a charming Dr. Kreistler. An impatient one she had got used to, but this —!
It took her a long time to get to bed that night. The moonlight was beautiful behind the dark patterns of the palm-trees and the scent from the creepers in the courtyard was heady and full of promise.
“Stupid!” she repeated crossly to herself, but even then she couldn’t hurry. It was a night that had been made for dreams and whispered longings, and it wasn’t her fault if all her dreams were of the same thing. Tomorrow she would be sane again and Dr. Kreistler would be his old, impatient self and the world would be normal once more. And, with a sigh, she got into bed.
The morning brought a letter from Chantal with the information that she and her brother would be arriving at Sidi Behn Ahmed that very day and trusting that their rooms would be made ready for them. Katherine thought of her own arrival with a certain wry amusement, and told Ali to make up the beds in the other two bedrooms.
It was the first time she had ever had an opportunity of playing hostess in her own house, and she rather enjoyed herself, making sure that everything was in order, that there were towels in each of the rooms and a little bouquet of flowers in Chantal’s. But once the preparations were over she began to wonder why they were coming and she knew that she was not looking forward to having the other girl arguing and sulking and planting her barbs. There wouldn’t be much peace in the atmosphere then! But perhaps Dr. Kreistler would be pleased to see her.
She heard them coming from a great way off, the dull roar of the engines echoing across the empty sand. They had come in two cars, the little mini-bus leading the way and Guillaume’s drop-head coupe following close behind. Katherine went out to meet them, suddenly overjoyed to see Beshir’s smiling face again. He sounded his klaxon in a triumphant solo and the two of them burst into laughter.
Chantal pressed her lips together and eased herself out of her seat on to the hot ground, her toes curling with distaste against her sandals. She looked, as always, immaculate, the creases down the legs of her trousers as sharply edged as ever.
“I had forgotten what a dump it is!” she said flatly, looking all round her. “If you have any pity you’ll lead me straight to a long, cool drink and a shower.”
Katherine laughed.
“I know just how you feel,” she sympathised. “Sand in your mouth and sharp prickles of salt all down your back!”
Chantal remained unsmiling.
“You seem to have got very tanned,” was all she said. “You look like a Bedu yourself.”
Katherine turned away to greet Guillaume as he drew up behind the mini-bus. He didn’t bother to open the door of the car, but stood on the seat and stepped over it.
“Katherine, my love,” he greeted her, “aren’t you glad we’ve come? Haven’t you almost died with boredom down here all by yourself?”
“She hasn’t been by herself,” Chantal interposed coolly. “She has had Peter for company.”
Was that why she had come? Katherine looked at her quickly.
“I can imagine it all,” Chantal said evenly. “The two of you leading virtuous, solid, dull lives, working until you drop and then working again. Now that I have arrived it will all be different however.”
Guillaume’s quick eyes rested for an instant on Katherine’s face. “It’s your fault that we came, you know,” he whispered in her ear. She looked up into his brilliantly blue eyes.
“Why did you come?” she asked him.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“What else did you expect us to do, without any money? We couldn’t even entertain our friends properly on that pittance you allowed us. We came down here, like you did, to economise!”
Ali stood in the middle of the courtyard with a sullen expression on his face. He took a dab at a trail of sand that had blown in the doorway and drooped back again into his previous half-sitting, half- kneeling position.
“How long do they stay?” he asked Katherine.
Katherine shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she said repressively.
Ali hunched up his shoulders and looked more miserable than ever.
“Lala will not come while they are here,” he informed her.
“Why ever not?”
He gave her a triumphant smile.
“Her husband will not allow it while you have a man staying in the house. All the women will stay away, and who will teach you Arabic then?”
Katherine sighed.
“I don’t know,” she said sadly.
She heard Chantal turn off the taps of the shower and a few seconds later the French girl appeared in the courtyard, languidly rubbing her hair.
“This place has become a hovel!” she announced. “The tap leaks, which is a shocking waste of water, and the plastic curtains are in shreds. How have you managed to put up with these things?” Katherine forbore to tell her that all she had to do was turn the tap off harder. Instead she found herself apologising for the lack of amenities and wondered what on earth she was doing. She hadn’t installed the plumbing!
Chantal gave her hair a final rub.
“I suppose I am in my usual room?” she said.
Katherine swallowed.
“You’re in the room next to the kitchen,” she told her.
There was an instant’s silence, and then the French girl turned on the still kneeling Ali.
“You know I always have the same room!” she shouted at him. “Always! Always! Always! Go and change the beds at once!”
He looked at Katherine, his dislike for Chantal open on his face. “Go and make some tea,” Katherine told him calmly.
Chantal stamped her foot, her slipper making a slapping noise against the polished tiles.
“I will not sleep in that horrid, poky little room!” she stormed. “The other is cooler and bigger.”
“But unfortunately already occupied,” Katherine said calmly. Chantal opened her mouth, thought better of it, and shut it again. She went to the bedroom Katherine had given to her, opened the door and slammed it shut after her. In a few seconds she opened it
again.
“You’ll regret this!” she said hoarsely. “Uncle Edouard may have left everything to you, but he didn’t intend this!” And the door slammed again.
Katherine sat down heavily on one of the wicker chairs and buried her face in her hands. The de Hallets had arrived with a vengeance! When she looked up, Guillaume was there
, his blue eyes mocking her.
“You’re silly to take her on,” he said simply.
“You’ll never win in the long run because you haven’t the heart for the battle.”
“It’s my room now!” Katherine retorted. “Why should she have it?”
“Why indeed?” he agreed. “But it wasn’t the room I was talking about.”
Katherine gave him an impatient glance, and was glad when Ali brought the tea. She poured out the golden liquid with trembling hands and handed Guillaume the lemon and the sugar.
Of one thing she was quite determined. Chantal could do what she liked at Hammamet, but down here it would be different. It was her house and she would run it exactly as she pleased, and she didn’t give a damn what Uncle Edouard had intended!
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHANTAL spent most of her time sunbathing. She would lie full-length in the middle of the courtyard, dressed in nothing more than a bikini, and let the sun turn her to the colour of mahogany. Ali pretended at first that he couldn’t see her and refused to bring her anything at all from the kitchen until she was fully clad. But, later, he became quite concerned about her.
“She will become silly from so much sun,” he said to Katherine. “Someone should tell the doctor and then he will stop her, yes?” Katherine was not bluffed by this anonymous someone; she knew it would have to be her. And yet she shrank from the task. Somehow it seemed a little like bearing tales, and who wanted to be accused of that? In the end she decided to say something to the other girl herself.
“You shouldn’t sit in the sun so much,” she began quite mildly. “It could make you very ill.”
Chantal gave her a languid look from her pale blue eyes.
“And what else do you suggest I do in this Godforsaken hole?” she asked.
Katherine tried to picture her doing any of the hundred and one things that she had found to do and failed dismally. Chantal had been in the country for years, but she still couldn’t speak a word of Arabic, and showing the women how to bath their babies properly and how to nurse them when they were ill would undoubtedly bore her to distraction.
“Why did you come?” she asked her lamely.
Chantal looked amused.
“You’re so innocent, my dear,” she retorted. “Peter is all man, and in your undiluted society he might even fancy himself to be getting fond of you.” She surveyed herself complacently. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like the competition?” she grinned suddenly, in an almost likeable way. “It is pretty hot, isn’t it?” she said.
“Very hot!” Katherine agreed dryly. “But you needn’t have worried. I’ve hardly seen Dr. Kreistler at all. A few moments here and a few moments there, but no more than that.”
Chantal studied her hands, fussing over a broken nail. It was funny how the dryness all around made it almost impossible to keep one’s nails all in one piece.
“Ah, but,” she drawled, “those few moments became so important, didn’t they? The highlight of every day!” She looked up suddenly and her eyes were bright and hard. “I am not a complete fool, Nurse Lane.”
Katherine bit her lip, horribly aware of her hot cheeks as she remembered the drive home through the desert after the film show. But then she hadn’t been denying that the moments had been important to her. It was him that Chantal was concerned about.
“I think you underrate your own powers of attraction,” she said, and felt very close to tears. She couldn’t even be amused by Chantal’s obvious and complete agreement with this statement. Somehow that hurt more than anything else, not because of Chantal at all, but because she was very nearly sure that Dr. Peter Kreistler
would have agreed with her. How could there be any comparison when the French girl was always chic and beautifully groomed and she herself was no more than a lost child with dust on her eyelashes?
It didn’t make matters any better when the first person she saw at the hospital was the doctor himself.
“Got a minute, Katherine?” he called to her.
He wasn’t very smart himself, really. He wore a shirt that had once been blue, but the sun and constant washing had long since changed it to a pale shade of grey. And his sand-coloured trousers were nothing to write home about either. It was the way he wore them that gave them that air of being better than anyone else’s.
At the moment he was frowning, his strongly marked eyebrows meeting in impatient displeasure. Katherine’s heart sank within her as she searched her conscience for something she had left undone, but there was nothing that she could call to mind. Nothing at all.
“Is something the matter?” she asked him quietly.
“What’s all this about your turning Chantal out of her bedroom?” he barked at her. “Surely the house is big enough for the three of you to live in it in peace?”
Her head went up proudly.
“Quite big enough,” she said stiffly.
“Well then?” he demanded.
“It’s my house!” she said crossly. “And how I run it is my own affair. If Chantal doesn’t like it, she can go back to Hammamet.”
His long, level look made her nervous. She was angry too, furiously angry that Chantal should have been to him because for once she hadn’t had her own way, and just a little bit angry because he had weighed in so willingly on the French girl’s behalf.
“Did you turn her out of her bedroom?” he asked at last.
“I don’t see that it’s any of your business!”
He put a hand on each of her shoulders and forced her to look at him.
“I’m making it my business! Did you?”
She held out for as long as she could, glowering up at him, hating him because he was so concerned. Then her eyes fell and she said:
“I didn’t see why she should have it. I had been sleeping there ever since I came.”
He let her go abruptly, and she stumbled backwards from him
until she was leaning against the surgical green wall of the corridor.
“Did it matter so much?” he asked. He sounded indescribably weary of the whole business.
She supposed that it had been rather childish, and yet she had had to draw the line somewhere, or else she might just as well have handed everything over to Chantal and gone back to England. Only it was impossible to explain such a thing. It wasn’t logical, it was just something one felt.
“I had to show her it’s my house,” she said, and thought how terribly inadequate she sounded. If it had been Chantal, she wouldn’t have had to show anyone anything. It just would have been so.
To her surprise the doctor smiled at her.
“I see,” he said, and then added: “Don’t let these possessions of yours go to your head, will you? There are other things in the world.” He ran a finger down the side of her cheek as he had done once before. “It doesn’t suit you to throw your weight about,” he said cheerfully, and, whistling a surprised little tune under his breath, he strode off down the corridor towards the maternity ward.
Katherine stood there, looking after him. Chantal was more fortunate than she knew, she thought, to have such a man fighting her battles for her.
Guillaume’s car became a familiar sight to the people of the oasis. They hardly bothered to look up now as he flashed past them, and even the children lost interest in the bored, restless man who seldom stopped to talk to them. Katherine fell into the way of going with him whenever she had nothing else to do. She never grew tired of looking at the ever-changing, ever-the-same qualities of the desert all around them; the grey-yellow of the sand and the bright green splashes of the oases. Others might long for cooler skies and soft green fields, but Katherine was quite content with the harsher scenery all around her.
Guillaume, on the other hand, hated everything about it. Sometimes she would find herself worrying about Guillaume. It seemed terrible to her that he should have nothing to do — no wonder the man was bored! She even found herself giving up her other occupations to go with him, and as Dr. Kreistler made
no comment about it — indeed she doubted whether he had even noticed! — she didn’t feel badly about not attending so many clinics with him. There were other nurses, after all. She wouldn’t admit, even to herself, that what she wanted was for him to insist that she accompanied him, that anything would have been better than his calm indifference as to what she did.
“Why don’t you go back to France and manage your own estates?” she asked Guillaume one afternoon, as he set the car down one of the lesser known tracks going south, deeper into the desert.
He laughed a trifle bitterly.
“And desert Chantal?” he asked. “She is my sister. I couldn’t leave her in Tunisia on her own. One day, when she marries, who knows?” He shrugged his shoulders fatalistically. “She is older than I am, and I have always done what she says,” he ended comically.
“Perhaps it would be better for her if you hadn’t!” Katherine couldn’t resist saying.
“Perhaps,” he agreed. “We are neither of us very nice people, you know. But I, at least, have my moments of compunction.” He looked at her earnestly until she wished he wouldn’t as the car slewed almost off the track. “Don’t take Chantal’s threats too lightly,” he warned her. “She wants the Hammamet property for herself and somehow she will get it. It is nothing personal, you understand. It is simply that she already considers it hers, and you are the usurper.”
As if she didn’t know that! But she didn’t like to say it was that very impersonality that she found so frightening, for there was nothing she could do to change it.
“And you?” she asked him. “Do you think of me as a usurper too?”
He smiled and his blue eyes were very bright. “I think of you as a very lovely girl, what else?” he said. “And lovely girls are my specialty. I never do anything to hurt them.”
Katherine stirred uneasily beside him. She had the uncomfortable feeling that Guillaume must have hurt a number of women in his time and that he considered them fair game when it came to kissing and running. How odd that she had never thought about him in that light before.
She began to tell him how she had seen them fertilising the date-trees by hand that morning, for the best dates were far too valuable for such an operation to be left to chance, and anyway, who knew what pollen might blow across to them from the more indifferent trees? She had admired the skill of the workers as they climbed the long bare trunks and had made the locals laugh when she had been concerned for their safety. As a change of conversation it wasn’t very successful. She might have known that Guillaume wasn’t in the least interested in dates and wasn’t to be so easily distracted.
