Desert Doctor

by Winspear, Violet

  She was quite unaware that the African sun intensified the honey gloss of her hair and the fairness of her skin. To this nomadic couple she was as startling as they would have been in an English country lane.

  They were still staring after the car when it bowled away, further still into this land of sandy wastes and unexpected en-c counters.

  Madeline sat quiet, subdued by the thought of a young woman having to be treated so crudely for an abscessed tooth.

  “My surgical methods, I assure you, are far less primitive than my manners,” her companion murmured eventually. “I carry the very latest drugs and I was able to give that young woman an injection which eased her pain while I lanced and extracted the tooth.”

  “You extracted it!” Madeline looked shocked. “But you aren’t a dentist !”

  “Miss Page,” he looked faintly exasperated, “out here in the desert, dentists are rather scarce, and I think you will agree that plucking out a tooth is within the capabilities of a fully qualified ophthalmic surgeon.”

  “But it’s all so — so primitive.” Madeline shook a bewildered head, then broke slowly into a smile. “One grows spoiled in civilized cities, I suppose. Toothache is dreadful, and I daresay I’d submit to even your dentistry if I had to.”

  Her smile showed milk-white teeth, obviously cared for from infancy, and her companion gave her the kind of look he might well have given a petite fille — a little girl. “We have a long, rather monotonous drive ahead of us, so why not take a nap?” he suggested. “In a while we will stop at a restaurant for a meal.”

  The hot blue sky and shimmering desert were inducing a drowsiness in Madeline, and in a while she fell into a doze with her cheek resting against the leather of her seat. But when she awoke her head was at rest upon the hard warmth of her companion’s shoulder. Her hair had tumbled forward over her blue eyes, and as she put back its supple fairness with her hand, she inadvertently touched Victor Tourelle. The contact sent something electrical winging through her, and she realized that he made her aware of herself as she had never been before.

  She hardly knew whether she liked the feeling for vividly alive in her mind all the time was that look he had given her at the airport. There had been hostility in that look, she was sure of it. He was prepared to be polite, but not friendly.

  They entered a town of sorts and he braked in the sun-scorched square where a café boasted a few terrasse tables and French lettering above its shaded windows. Cuisine Francaise, Madeline read as she preceded her guardian into the cool, shady dining-room.

  A few customers sat at the tables and a slim, coffee-coloured waiter came hurrying over to them, clasping a snowy napkin like a diploma. “Bonjour, monsieur le docteur! Bonjour, mademoiselle!” He beamed a friendly welcome and led them to a table in a cool corner, where, after seating Madeline, the doctor scanned the menu.

  “My throat’s like charcoal,” Madeline said to him. “I’d love a long cool drink.”

  “Iced cordial?” he queried.

  “Mmm, yes !”

  They both had it, straight out of the glaciere and served with mint and a curl of lemon. Afterwards Madeline was ready to tuck into a tasty lentil soup, followed by aubergines stuffed with minced meat and onions, chased by a tangerine ice.

  She was conscious of being stared at by robed male diners at adjacent tables. It was a curiosity free of insolence, yet all the same she was glad of that large, dominant presence across the table. The wide spread of his shoulders, the bronzed strength of his throat, the tensile capability of his hands …

  how could she help but feel secure, shielded by them?

  She sipped her coffee and asked him about the house in which she would be living for the next few months. Was it as pretty as its name?

  “Une tres belle maison.” He rolled a cigarette with the dex-terity of an Arab and applied a match to it. “Mimosa tumbles upon its walls and there are terraced lawns. It has a French aspect.”

  Somewhat of the Riviera, his tone added, and Madeline caught back a smile and breathed the strong smoke of his cigarette. “Are you well acquainted with Mrs. Van Cleef?”

  she asked.

  “Madame Van Cleef is a woman of hospitality and generosity and much liked in Marrakesh.” His eyes held a sudden warm glint. “She has helped our hospital in many ways, and we now have a children’s wing, which was badly needed. Much of my eye work is carried out among children, for it is only if eye diseases are dealt with in infancy that we eliminate the possibility of adult blindness. The living conditions of desert people are not conducive to continual cleanliness, and germs, alas, are carried in many ways to young eyes. But I have an excellent team at the hospital and we are making headway —

  money is of course a continual problem, and we are fortunate to have the support of the good widow. She is, as you are probably aware, an extremely wealthy woman. It is a pity her nephew is such a lazy young hound, whom she unfortunately encourages in his idleness !”

  As a friend of Brooke’s, Madeline felt compelled to defend him, yet even as her lips opened they closed again.

  “What not say it?” Tourelle invited derisively.

  “Say what?” Her eyes fenced with his.

  “That the charming Brooke is a friend of yours and that I should keep my opinions to myself.”

  “I couldn’t ever imagine you doing that !” she retorted.

  “Ah, but you do not know me very well,” he mocked.

  Her glance flashed over his forceful, unrevealing face, masked in the smoke of his cigarette. She didn’t think she was going to be given the chance to know him very well. Something about her did not appeal to him … or it could be he had little time to spend on women.

  “You have enjoyed your lunch?” he enquired.

  She assured him it had been delicious and welcome.

  “Doubtless you would like to freshen up before we corn-tinue our journey.” He beckoned their Moorish waiter and spoke rapidly to him. The slim young man beamed and nodded, and Madeline was informed by the doctor that Daylis would take her to his private quarters where she was welcome to wash her hands. Madeline guessed that the café did not boast the kind of ladies’ room to which she was accustomed, and as she followed Daylis she reflected that for all his rather unapproachable manner Victor Tourelle was a guardian a girl could depend on. A tower of strength, she thought, her mouth crinkling into a smile.

  He awaited her at the wheel of his car, and as she slipped in beside him she brought with her the scent of freshly applied cologne. His glance dwelt for a brief moment on her glossy, combed hair, then he let in the clutch and they swung out on to the roadway.

  “I am now going to drive straight on to Marrakesh,” he told her. “We have some bottles of citronade and a packet of sandwiches for the remainder of our journey, so please help yourself whenever you feel disposed.”

  She thanked him and settled down comfortably in her seat.

  The car was rather hot, but she knew the desert air would start to grow cooler after four o’clock.

  They passed low Berber tents, dark crescents against the variegated tones of the rolling Bled, the great plain that surrounds Morocco and which is dominated by the sky-piercing peaks of the Atlas mountains. Flocks of sheep wandered hap-hazard over the road they travelled, conical thatched huts sometimes dotted the hot, stony plain, and more than once they were greeted by the waving cloaks of swarthy-faced herdsmen who recognized the doctor’s car.

  It was as the sun went down in flame that they sped across a bridge and drove past the blank, high-walled houses of a riverside village. Robed figures shuffled down cobbled alleyways and disappeared through mysterious oval doors, and Madeline now felt the real atmosphere of the East closing in on her. A muezzin wailed evening prayers from the balcony of a mosque, and in a while they skirted a feathery forest of palm groves and the terracotta Kutubia reared above the awesome red walls of Marrakesh.

  They entered the immense city centre, the Djema’a el Fna, grown quiet now its
teeming street vendors had drifted homewards. When Madeline commented with surprise on the modern buildings they passed, Victor Tourelle replied that they were mere icing on top of a rich brown cake.

  “The East seethes beyond them,” he went on. “Women are still confined behind the veil and to the rooftops of their houses, while policemen patrol the alleyways in pairs. The medina remains unchanged from century to century, and the twilight beauty of the East is a mirage thrown back to us from the dawn of history.”

  “You speak as though you love it, Dr. Tourelle,” Madeline murmured.

  “Love, say the Moors, is a silken leash leading a man to heaven or hell. They could be right, could they not?”

  A whimsical smile flickered across the face of this puzzling French doctor, then about ten minutes later he was braking the car in the courtyard of the Villa Mimosa. Madeline met the disturbing directness of his glance. His eyes were tawny as a tiger’s in the dashboard glow, while his Arab headwear intensified his affinity with their untamed surroundings. “Here you are, Miss Page, delivered safe and sound at the villa,” he said crisply.

  “Thank you for bringing me, Doctor. I’m very grateful.”

  She spoke her polite little sentences rather stiltedly, intensely aware that in a few more minutes she would be saying good-bye to him. She didn’t doubt that now he had brought her here, he would proceed to forget her.

  The arched door of the villa opened and light flooded the car.

  “Get the lalla’s cases, Zamil !” carolled a woman’s voice, and when Madeline alighted by the front steps her hands were caught in the friendly clasp of a tall woman wearing a brocade suit.

  “Welcome to Marrakesh, my dear !” beamed Mrs. Van Cleef. “I hope Victor has treated you all right? He’s a bit of a woman-despiser and I trusted you to him with reservations.

  Has he been kind?”

  She stood smiling at the Frenchman, who quirked a bold eyebrow but looked unrepentant about his misogynistic tendencies.

  Then someone else appeared in the doorway of the villa, standing slim and vivid in flame chiffon against a background of Moorish tiles and jewel-basket lamps on slender chains.

  “Bon soir, Dr. Tourelle !” the girl drawled.

  Her dusky eyes dwelt on him. A sparkling fillet secured her glossy dark hair, her small feet arched in priestess sandals. She possessed a coquetry both flippant and devastatingly feminine.

  Her voice was contralto and seductive … and French.

  “You’re surely going to join us for dinner, Victor ?” Mrs.

  Van Cleef said to him after he had returned the French girl’s greeting.

  “You are most kind, but I have a patient at the hospital about whom I am rather anxious.” His teeth glinted in a brief smile, his bow was entirely Latin. “Bonne nuit, ladies !”

  The door of the black car slammed on his tall figure. As the car roared away through the open villa gates, Madeline could feel her pulses humming. He was, without doubt, the most disturbing man she had ever met !

  Madeline was ushered into a high-ceilinged vestibule paved with lustrous tiles, pleased to find her employer such a pleasant woman, and unsurprised when she introduced the glamorous girl in chiffon as her niece, Donette Samson.

  Brooke had mentioned a cousin, Madeline recalled. Born in Paris of a French father, she evidently considered it worth while as well to visit her rich, childless aunt.

  “How was the trip from Casablanca, Madeline?” Mrs. Van Cleef scanned her young secretary with interested eyes. “I’m going to call you by your first name, it’s so pretty and fresh, like yourself.”

  “The trip was quite entertaining,” Madeline smiled, but was aware of the narrowing of Donette’s eyes at that remark of her aunt’s. “Dr. Tourelle performed a spot of roadside dentistry on the way, much to my alarm and his amusement.

  Is he always — well, not exactly arrogant —”

  “Like a hawk on the wing, eh?” Mrs. Van Cleef gazed at Madeline with eyes that were amused and yet touched with a faint shadow. “Victor’s one of those dedicated men who tie themselves to a profession. He gives most of himself to it —

  I think he knows that a man shouldn’t cut love down the middle and hand a woman the raw side of the deal. These Latins are darned knowing when it comes to women !” she added, leading Madeline up a balustraded staircase to an iron-latticed gallery.

  Madeline, for some reason, couldn’t resist a backward glance at Donette, who remained below in the colourful vestibule, twisting the slave bangle on her slender left arm. Her eyes locked with Madeline’s for a moment. They were antagonistic, and the chiffon of her dress made flames as she disappeared through the doorway of one of the lower rooms.

  “This is where you’ll be sleeping, my dear.” Mrs. Van Cleef threw open the door of a bedroom with a blue and gold ceiling, a bed draped with pastel netting and shell-ruched curtains over blue venetian blinds. An inlaid table beside the bed was provided with books and a small radio, while built-in closets gave the room a cool, restful spaciousness.

  “What a charming room ! ” Madeline exclaimed, delighted with her surroundings, and the deep carpeting underfoot.

  Mrs. Van Cleef looked gratified by Madeline’s sincere pleasure. “I’ve a feeling we’re going to get along just fine,”

  she smiled. “Brooke said you were a nice girl, but men as a rule have a different idea on that score from women. I’m relieved he’s showing a spark of common sense for once !”

  Madeline met her employer’s ingenuous eyes, which were a similar shade to Brooke’s, and a sudden jolt of uneasiness ran through her. Up until now she had been thinking of this job in Morocco as an adventure, but had she been entirely wise in coming to a strange country to work?

  She was bound to feel homesick now and again … and Brooke Van Cleef was a dangerous charmer !

  CHAPTER II

  MRS. VAN CLEEF was always at her most energetic during the morning hours, when she and Madeline would plough through her husband’s mass of archaeological data and make notes on the various chapters in to which the material was to go.

  Madeline found the work interesting. Amalia — her employer said she hated being formal and insisted that Madeline address her by her first name — had not spent twenty years with an archaeologist without learning a good deal about his work and why men thought it important to delve into the past.

  Henry Van Cleef had been the only son of a wealthy New Yorker, and that he had chosen to toil in the desert instead of enjoying a life of ease and luxury made his biography all the more fascinating.

  By high noon she and her employer would both be ready for lunch at the shady side of the villa. The previous owner of the big white house had planted a grove of tall cypresses that silted the desert sun while forming at the same time a natural pavilion, where at cane tables Amalia entertained various friends and acquaintances to lunch — European officials employed in Marrakesh, neighbours and members of the staff at the hospital where Victor Tourelle worked.

  A week had passed, but so far he had not put in an appearance at the villa, though Madeline knew that Donette had met him while out riding one morning

  She had returned in high fettle, swinging her whip, letting everyone know that she had gone home with him for croissants and coffee. She had also looked extremely attractive with her dusky hair tumbling to the shoulders of an open-necked silk shirt, tucked into narrow riding trousers. It would bring a glow to a girl’s eyes, Madeline reflected, to gallop across the desert just after dawn. Victor Tourelle would ride like an Arab, his eyes alight in his hawk face, at one with the untamed spaces he seemed to love.

  Curiosity about the man and his work often nibbled at Madeline’s mind, but she refrained from discussing him with Donette. The half-French girl was about a year older than herself, but there was something about her that put Madeline in mind of an intense and secretive child. She could be as gay as Brooke, but there were also times when she was moody and quarrelsome, so Madeline didn’t attempt to win th
e girl’s difficult friendship.

  Brooke joined Madeline for lunch, hobbling out to the pavilion on a stick, a Balmain scarf tucked into a sports shirt, his slacks impeccably cut to reveal his slender, athletic build. He wasn’t exactly good-looking, but he knew how to turn on the charm when he had his eye on a girl and was determined to wear down her resistance.

  Today as he sat enjoying coffee with Madeline, he invited her to go with him to the hospital. His ankle was to be X-rayed to make sure the bone was mending.

  “I’ve a batch of typing to do, Brooke.” Even as Madeline spoke, she felt glad she was wearing her sunglasses. She knew her eyes had lit up at the thought of visiting the hospital where Dr. Tourelle was in charge of the ophthalmic department, and that flash of eagerness irritated her. The man had blatantly shown her that she did not interest him.

  Brooke gazed across at her with his most coaxing smile.

  “You aren’t working for a slave-driver, honey. Aunt Amalia doesn’t work in the afternoons and I’m darn sure she doesn’t expect you to knock yourself up. Madeline mia,” he reached out quickly and closed warm fingers on her arm, “come and hold my hand.”

  “Brooke, you are a fool.” She tried to shake off his hand, but with masculine ease he had pulled hers across the table and was examining the little gold heart on the wrist chain she wore.