by Isobel Chace
She shook her head.
“Every time I get a little bit of knowledge in my head something else comes along and I’m back where I started. It was all so much easier when I was nothing more than an ordinary nurse. I think I was happier too in a way.”
He reached out a hand and squeezed one of hers.
“You will be again,” he whispered to her. “I can promise you that!”
And she would have believed him if Chantal hadn’t been waiting up for them.
“You look exhausted, Katherine!” she greeted her, with a quick breathless laugh. “Go upstairs to bed and recover from that dreadful animal and I’ll give the doctor a nightcap.”
Katherine glanced at Dr. Kreistler and he nodded to her.
“Yes,” he said, “go on to bed, my dear. You are already half asleep. I shall see you in the morning?”
She wanted to thank him properly for taking her out, but she couldn’t with Chantal there, listening to every word, and so she only smiled and started up the stairs.
“Peter darling,” she heard Chantal whisper behind her, “I thought you were never coming, and you promised that you wouldn’t be late and that you would take me for a walk in the moonlight.”
Kate gained the landing and slipped off her shoes from her aching feet. She did, after all, feel quite abominably tired and very, very much alone. She got quickly into bed and turned out the light. There were other things to think about besides the moonlight, and she would be wise if she turned her attention to them. Tomorrow she would go and call on Lala and have another Arabic lesson, and she would also find out exactly how many date-palms she really possessed. And that would be a start at least towards being a successful landowner, for if she couldn’t compete with Chantal in any other field at least she knew she could do better in that one! And she badly needed something to boost her confidence.
CHAPTER TEN
CHANTAL came in late. Katherine heard her creep up the stairs and enter her room, and a little while later she heard her light go out and knew that the other girl had settled down to sleep. She, on the other hand, lay awake, restless and dissatisfied. The moon had long since disappeared over the edge of the horizon and the night was so black as to be frightening. It was silent too. Uncannily
silent, without even a bird uttering, or even a camel spitting bad-temperedly at its mate.
Had Chantal locked the front door? The thought occurred to her with devastating suddenness and then she couldn’t get it out of her mind. She could picture someone out there pushing it quietly open and coming into the house. Don’t be silly, she told herself. What if they did? No one around here would want to hurt her or either of the de Hallets, would they? But it was no good, she would have to go down and see.
With a sigh she reached for her slippers and drew her gown over her shoulders. The cool night air was soft against her face as she padded down the stairs into the courtyard beneath, and she saw that not only had the door not been locked — it hadn’t even been closed. With a gesture of impatience she went towards it, and at the same instant a shape moved in the shadows. She froze to the spot where she stood, listening for the slightest sound, but all she could hear was her own uneven breathing.
“It’s all right. It’s me,” the doctor’s voice said quietly beside her.
And quite suddenly she was furiously angry.
“Haven’t you gone home yet?” she demanded. “If you must moon over Chantal, why don’t you go and do it somewhere else?” She could hear the gasp of his laughter.
“Why? Does it bother you?” he asked her.
“Of course not!” she denied crossly. “But I want to get some sleep tonight, if you don’t!”
“Ah, but how do you know that I was hanging after Chantal?”
She began to wish that she had put her dressing-gown on properly so that she didn’t have to hold it tightly together at the throat.
“I should have thought it was obvious!” she retorted. “Walking for hours together in the moonlight!”
He came very close to her and drew her into the circle of his arms.
“For a nurse,” he said softly in her ear, “you are very given to jumping to conclusions.”
Her knees felt weak, and she could feel her heart shaking within her.
“I believe the evidence of my own eyes!” she said tautly.
But he only laughed again, and he was so close that she could feel his breath against her hair.
“Let me go!” she demanded urgently. But his arms only closed more tightly around her and, despite herself, she could feel herself giving in to their pressure. In another moment, she thought, he would kiss her, and then she would be lost. He would know then exactly how she felt about him and it would be too late to pretend.
“Dr. Kreistler, will you please go so that I can lock up after you?” She had meant to sound firm, and was dismayed by the distinct note of pleading that had entered her voice. “Please, Peter!” she said more urgently.
His arms fell away from her.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he agreed gently. “There will be other times. Goodnight, my dear, sleep well.”
When he had gone she wanted to call him back. But she couldn’t do that. He had proved that he really did belong to Chantal and that was that. Other girls had had to cope with similar situations. There was nothing new about it, nothing to burst into tears about, so why was she crying? There were other men in the world besides Dr. Peter Kreistler — but there was none with quite the same indefinable charm and none who could stir her to the very depths of her being by saying her name in just that way. But then he was the only Hungarian she had ever known. If she did but know it they probably all said it in exactly the same way.
She bolted the doors with automatic fingers and was almost surprised to find that she had done so. There was nothing now to keep her downstairs, and yet she couldn’t bear to go back to bed.
It was funny really. She had left Hammamet because she had disliked living in the same house as Chantal, and yet how infinitely preferable that had been to having the French girl and the doctor together. That was something that she would have to grow used to, but she couldn’t stay to watch the affair blossom into love and marriage. Oh no, she would become a landowner in earnest and make pots of money. She would go back to Hammamet and begin her apprenticeship under Brahim, and later — a long time later — she would come to Sidi Behn Ahmed and learn all about dates too!
But she couldn’t help wishing that she had allowed Peter to kiss her just that once. It wouldn’t have meant anything to him, but she would have had it to remember all her life.
It seemed like fate the next morning when there was a letter waiting for her from Brahim. Guillaume tossed it down on to her side-plate at the breakfast table and made a face at her.
“More worries, Kathy?” he suggested.
She tore open the envelope and took out the single sheet of coloured paper within.
“Don’t call me Kathy,” she said automatically.
“Why not? It’s a pretty name.”
Katherine shrugged her shoulders impatiently, a gesture that she had caught from the doctor.
“Very pretty, but it doesn’t happen to be my name,” she said sweetly.
Guillaume looked at her closely, his blue eyes very bright. “You’ve changed since you came to Tunisia,” he said abruptly, and it was obvious from his tone that he didn’t think it was a change for the better.
“Perhaps you’re just getting to know me better,” Katherine suggested indifferently.
“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But I don’t think so. I think your dislike for Chantal and myself has hardened into a more positive thing. Is that it?”
Katherine hesitated, loath to hurt him.
“I think it’s just that we’re not each other’s kind of people,” she said gently. “I don’t dislike you, Guillaume. I don’t feel anything very much either way.”
He blenched.
“Well, you could hardly be more devastating than that!” he sai
d with a self-mocking laugh. “I hadn’t supposed I was quite so colourless.”
Katherine was horrified.
“But you’re not!” she insisted. “It’s just that no man really shows to advantage when he hasn’t anything to do. Does he?”
He smiled at her, his eyes sad.
“You are right as always. I shall go back to France before it is too late and marry a nice French girl who will think I am wonderful. Is that what you want?”
She nodded.
“That’s what I want,” she said.
“And Chantal?” he asked her.
Katherine’s eyes dropped back to her letter.
“Chantal will be marrying herself,” she said lightly. “You worry about her too much.”
“So it is she whom you really dislike,” he said with some humour. “Ah well, I suppose I cannot blame you for that. Chantal is not an easy person to love.”
It sounded worse, somehow, put into words. She didn’t like Chantal, in fact she actively disliked her, but she didn’t altogether like to admit the fact. To stop herself thinking about it she turned back to her letter.
“There’s salt in one of the water supplies feeding the orchards,” she announced fatalistically. “Guillaume, do you think I ought to go up to Hammamet and see for myself?”
His eyebrows shot upwards.
“Running away?”
She nodded bleakly.
“Very well,” he said, “there’s no need to ask. I’ll get us a couple of tickets on the railway and we’ll run away together. You to Hammamet and me to France.”
And in that moment she came nearer to liking him than she ever had done before.
Chantal didn’t come down until lunchtime. With a sinuous movement she sank into a chair and smiled with a superior air at no one in particular.
“Peter has promised to take us all to Tozeur tonight,” she announced in pleased tones. “We’ll all dress up and make whoopee, yes?” She turned to
Katherine. “I suppose you have an evening dress?” she asked in bored tones.
“Yes, thank you,” Katherine replied gently. She didn’t want to go. But oh yes, she did! She would give anything to have the
opportunity of dancing with Dr. Kreistler! She wanted that!
“Isn’t it rather a long way to go for a dance?” she asked.
Chantal shrugged.
“Peter knows how dull it is down here for me. Naturally he wants to keep me reasonably entertained. Otherwise he knows I’ll go back to Tunis and the bright lights, or even Hammamet.”
Not Hammamet, please! Katherine prayed silently but fervently. Anywhere else, but not on top of her, not any longer!
She still couldn’t quite believe that they would really go so far until she actually got into the car, squashed in beside Chantal, who naturally sat right in close next to Dr. Kreistler, from where she could whisper to him, just under her breath, in the most irritating manner. Really, Katherine thought, perhaps she had changed, for little things like that had never been able to disturb her patience so easily before. She refused to admit that it was because these particular little things concerned the doctor. It would be unwise to admit to a thing like that even to oneself.
The white salt of the Chott Djerid seemed endless. In daylight the glare was intolerable and after dark it was weird and rather frightening. Katherine began to wish that she had cried off the expedition. But she couldn’t have done that. Guillaume would buy their tickets as soon as they got to Tozeur and tomorrow she would be starting back to Hammamet. She flushed a little in the darkness as she remembered Dr. Kreistler’s amused surprise at the amount of luggage she had taken with her for an evening’s entertainment. If he had only known the suitcase contained practically everything she possessed!
Chantal was still talking in soft, intimate whispers when they arrived at the outskirts of the oasis. Katherine turned round to Guillaume, who was sitting perched on one of the seats behind. “Are you very stiff?” she asked him sympathetically.
“Not too bad,” he answered her. “How are you?”
The doctor grinned at him in the driving mirror.
“Don’t ask her!” he said. “We’ll all change round on the return journey and Katherine and I’ll share your perch. What d’you say, Nurse?”
There wouldn’t be any return journey! Katherine opened her mouth to stammer out some such thing, but Chantal’s cool voice
cut across her chaotic explanations.
“Katherine wouldn’t feel safe with you,” she said in a lingering note of intimacy. “Didn’t you know she was afraid of you?”
The doctor leaned right across her.
“Are you, Katherine?” he asked.
Her eyes met his and fell away again.
“Yes, I think I am — a little.” She caught her breath. “How ridiculous! No, of course I’m not afraid of you. I don’t understand you very well, that’s all it.”
“That is easily remedied,” he said gently.
Her hands moved uneasily in her lap and her mouth felt dry.
“But I’m not sure I want it remedied,” she said at last.
She could almost feel Chantal’s triumph, as though it were a living tangible thing beside her.
“There! What did I tell you?” the French girl exclaimed. “You see! You will have to content yourself with teasing me this evening, Peter. I can take it, for I understand you only too well, mon cher!”
“Quite so,” he replied smoothly, his voice completely devoid of all expression, “but where there is no mystery there can also be no fascination, don’t you think?”
Katherine’s startled glance met his, but there was no mercy in his eyes, no tenderness. Did he know? Was it possible that he knew how she felt? But no, that was ridiculous! She hardly knew how she felt herself.
“Never mind,” she heard him say, and all that customary impatience was back in his voice. “What does it matter? We came to dance, nothing more.”
But she felt that she had disappointed him all the same. But she wasn’t the kind who could flirt lightly and pass on her way. How she wished she was!
The hotel was floodlit, the yellow bricks standing out sharply against the deep black shadows that accentuated their patterning. Katherine looked for the boys who had been selling their dates and sandals in the entrance the last time she had come, but they had gone home for the evening. There was only one older man with a collection of postcards right inside the hotel, and he didn’t have the same glamour of his daytime counterparts.
“Shall we eat straight away?” Dr. Kreistler asked the party amiably.
“Must we? So soon?” Chantal pouted.
Katherine looked urgently at Guillaume and he smiled at her reassuringly.
“In half an hour,” he suggested easily. “I have one or two things that I must do, but then I shall be entirely at your disposal.” Dr. Kreistler looked from one to the other of them and his mouth tightened ominously.
“And you, my gazelle,” he said to Katherine, “what do you want?”
She didn’t feel very like a gazelle that evening.
The gazelle had got the water through her charm and grace and she felt only devious and cunning. She ought to tell the doctor that she was going back to Hammamet.
“Half an hour will suit me very nicely,” she said.
“Then you can come and dance with me meanwhile,” he said masterfully, and led her willy-nilly into the bar where some of the residents had rolled back the rugs from the floor and were amusing themselves dancing in time to some music from the wireless.
“What about Chantal?” she asked breathlessly. Her feet felt like lead and the music was strange to her. Besides, she was frightened of Chantal. She had been all along, ever since the French girl had dropped the phial of perfume she had given her on the pavement. Remembering it, she shivered slightly, and the doctor’s arms tightened angrily about her.
“Am I so very unattractive to you that you cannot bear me to touch you?” he asked her bitterly.<
br />
She stumbled against him, and it was a second before she recovered herself.
“Well?” he demanded.
“It was a goose walking over my grave,” she said in a shaken voice.
He gave her an exasperated glance.
“You say you do not understand me, but it is I who do not understand you!” he said angrily.
She blinked, hoping that she was not going to cry.
“It’s an expression,” she explained laboriously.
“An easy expression that means nothing! So handy to turn away the inquiries of a stranger, is that not so?”
She looked at him wearily.
“Perhaps,” she said. “I don’t know.”
His face softened unbelievably, and her tears spilled over and rolled slowly down her cheeks.
“It isn’t you! It isn’t you at all!” She looked up at him bravely, letting him see her tears. “I'm going back to Hammamet,” she said baldly. “And Guillaume is going back to France. He’s tired of having nothing to do. I can understand that, can’t you? He’s really very nice. I like him.” She was talking too much, she thought, and she stopped abruptly, wishing she had never begun.
“Yes, my sweet, I like him. And I think it is a good thing for you to go back to Hammamet. When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow.”
So he didn’t care at all. Naturally he thought it was a good idea for her to go away. He would be free of the responsibility for her then and he could concentrate all his attentions on Chantal — and she hated them both!
“We’re going up by train tomorrow — together! So you have no need to worry about my traipsing about the country without an escort.”
He smiled.
“That seems a very long time ago,” he said.
She sniffed.
“You weren’t very kind,” she told him.
His eyebrows flew up and his eyes were full of gentleness. “Wasn’t I? I thought I was very reasonable.”
She spluttered into laughter.
“You don’t know what it means to be reasonable! But don’t change!” Her fingers tightened against his arm. “Don’t ever change!”
He stopped dancing and looked down at her with the utmost seriousness.
“I rather think that rests in other hands than my own,” he said. Chantal’s hands? They wouldn’t leave him to work himself to death in an obscure oasis in North Africa. He would end up in Harley Street, or whatever the equivalent was in Paris, with his hair all smoothed down and a kindly bedside manner, and she wouldn’t like him one bit.
