Meet the Sun Halfway

by Jane Arbor

  But his tone, when he spoke, was far from detached. It held cold rebuke as he said, without greeting, “You have no right to be here — do you know that? Your charges should, if you don’t, but I’d have expected you to be told.”

  Alice drew a sharp breath. “You mean - we’re trespassing?” “Exactly.”

  “But I didn’t know! How could I? How could anyone?” she protested. “There was no notice, no boundary fence, no gates. People can just walk in off the road, and the children chose it as a walk for us to take — down to the riverbed and back.”

  “There are other ways to the river, as they must well know. And I doubt very much that some one of them, if not all, didn’t know that every date plantation around here is forbidden to anyone who hasn’t business in it. Escorted, yes. Otherwise, no.”

  Alice felt her temper rising. “May we test that?” Looking about her, she caught the eye of the child she wanted and called to him -“Ali!”

  Ali came at the double, salaamed, “Seiyid Karim” and threw Alice a little uneasy smile.

  She said, “Ali, when you chose this way for our walk, did you know we were not allowed to come here?”

  He dropped his head, scuffed at (the ground with the toe of his sandal and said nothing.

  “Well, did you?” she pressed.

  Again a silence which to her dismay spoke for itself, and after a moment her companion snapped finger and thumb sharply, at which Ali looked up and scuttled away.

  “You see?”

  Alice said wretchedly to the note of triumph in that, “They shouldn’t have - They could tell I didn’t know.”

  Karim ibn Charles laughed shortly. “Forbidden fruit the sweeter, and trust the young to pull a fast one on an innocent if they can. But now, if you’ll kindly collect them, I’ll see you back by the way you came in.”

  Alice made a last counter-effort. “You don’t suggest they have done any harm or caused any damage, surely?” she asked.

  He looked mildly surprised. “Do I have to accuse them of damage in order to justify my insistence that you and they leave now and stay clear of any of my date-groves in future? No? Then may we be on our way?”

  Furious now with him, with Ali, with herself, she exploded, “There is no need for you to see us off, as if - as if we were criminals! I know exactly the way we came in, and I promise you we’ll take it.”

  “I intend to see that you do.”

  Ignoring that, she said, “Perhaps I had better get some thing else clear. If, as you told me, you own the whole district, are there any walks we can take without fear of being hounded off your property?” She had chosen the word “hounded” deliberately, but it seemed he wasn’t to be insulted. He said calmly, “Plenty. There are lanes and open country, mountain walks. And there are well-used paths through banana plantations and maize crops and orange groves to which you are welcome.”

  “Orange groves? I’m surprised you aren’t afraid the children might steal the oranges!”

  “In season, I’ve no doubt they help themselves. To almonds too, in their season.”

  “And you allow that? Then why —?” But, baffled by the apparent sheer inconsequence of this morning’s veto, she did not finish the question. If he wanted to throw his weight about, let him! Instead she beckoned to the children. “I daresay you would like them in a neat crocodile, two by two, wouldn’t you?” she asked.

  If he read the irony, he ignored it. “It might be as well, ” he said. “And you and I will bring up the rear.”

  And so the little procession trudged, hopped and scrambled its way back to the road where, with a courteous salute but no word to Alice, their escort left them and turned back into the plantation. And at Alice’s side, Zoe’s self-righteous little voice claiming, “I knew we were not allowed among the date-palms. I said I did not wish to go!” did nothing at all for Alice’s mortification. It seemed that Debbie’s prejudice against the man might have cause.

  Sorab, surprised by the early return of the crestfallen party, was full of apologies to Alice and scolding of Ali.

  “I daresay any one of the others might have done the same,” Alice pointed out. “Except Zoe perhaps,” she added as an afterthought. “She couldn’t wait to say ‘I told you so’.”

  Sorab agreed reluctantly as to Ali’s role as spokesman for an only too willing company. “And of course it is I, or Miriam, or Rachma, who are as much to blame. We should have warned you that the date-groves are forbidden to the children for their walks. Because, naturally, of the snakes.”

  “The snakes!” Alice’s echo was horrified, indignant. “How? Where? He - Seiyid ibn Charles - didn’t mention snakes! He just appeared, told me we had no business there and ordered us out.” Sorab said wonderingly, “He did not tell you that among date-palms there is always the risk of snakes?”

  “Dangerous snakes?”

  “Some of them. They lie in the sun and coil up the trunks to rest and watch for their prey from above. When the men hunt them for their skins, it is among the palms that they look first. It is of course safe enough if someone is there who knows the harmless ones from the others; which you couldn’t be expected to know.”

  “You think that is why Seiyid ibn Charles made a point of seeing us off himself?”

  “Undoubtedly. He was saving you from risk. And yet you say he did not tell you his reason?”

  “Not a word.” As she spoke Alice wondered a shade guiltily how much chance she had given him to explain. She remembered taunting him with stringency for the sake of it, and though she had begun to ask why, she had cut herself short, unwilling to plead with what she saw as sheer unreason on his part. But he could have told her straight out, counted on her good sense, made her listen — couldn’t he?

  She asked Sorab, “Do the children know about the danger from the snakes?”

  “Oh yes. It is not very good to give children orders without explaining one’s good reasons, do you think? But you know what children are — when their will and the chance to do some forbidden thing are leading the same way, do they ever count the danger? Do any of us, I wonder?” Sorab added musingly and unanswerably.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ON Sunday morning Alice woke to the pleasurable thought of her date with Doctor Renair. Added to that there was the spice of there having been, from an unexpected quarter, some competition for her first free afternoon.

  For yesterday there had been a telephone call from the Dar el Faradis - Seiyida Charles saying how pleased she and Karim would be if Alice could lunch with them on Sunday. Karim would call for her of course, at whatever time she would be free.

  An olive-branch from him? Or a genuinely offered invitation from his mother, who might have heard nothing of the date-grove clash? There was nothing by which Alice could tell, but in excusing herself from luncheon for the same reasons as she had given Yves Renair, she had found herself wondering whether, had she been free to do so, she would offer Seiyida Charles her afternoon hours instead. She thought not. If the man had had second thoughts about his high-handed behaviour, he needn’t suppose she would come running at his nod! But she had found the decision taken from her with his mother’s quiet suggestion of, “After luncheon then, perhaps? You might be able to come for an hour in the afternoon?” And that, of course, necessitated her explaining that she had promised to go for a drive with Doctor Renair. To which Seiyida Charles had replied, “Ah yes. Karim asked him to come to see you, didn’t he? Well, I’m sorry, as Karim will be too. But another day perhaps?” and had rung off, leaving Alice none the wiser as to whether she had rejected a peace-offering or not.

  When he called for her Doctor Renair had plans for their outing. They would take a mountain by-road which gradually dropped down to the plain leading south to the fringe of the Sahara, which they hadn’t time to reach, but they would explore one of the walled towns of the Souss valley, visit the Sunday market on the medan and drive back through the mountains with the setting sun behind them.

  The road across the plai
n was the continuation of that which the bus had followed before it had turned east into the mountains. Here again were the regimented rows of eucalyptus and starved-looking scrub, and when, farther south, the planted aisles of eucalyptus stopped abruptly, thereafter the road was bordered by thickets of argan trees, untidy, almost leafless top-heavy thorn-bushes, of which Doctor Renair remarked that they were one of the tourist assets of Morocco. Beside one of the thickets he slowed the car so that Alice could watch the phenomenon of the wayside herds of goats leaping, climbing, scrambling among the thorn-ridden branches in search of the hard yellow kernels which were the trees’ meagre fruit. Yves Renair made Alice laugh by surmising drily that any holiday season’s photographic film of goats in the argan trees would probably reach New York and back. “With assorted Aunties mounted on camels as a close runner-up,” he added, as Alice produced her camera and increased the quota by taking several shots of the goats herself.

  Across the flat terrain the red crenellated walls of M’ Oumine were to be seen a long way off. When they reached it they had to join the slow queue of cars, pack-mules, tourist coaches, mopeds, pedestrians, all filing and jostling through the main town gate into the wide dusty medan beyond where, in row upon row of market stalls and permanent shops, the latter narrow of entrance and deep as caverns, there seemed to be everything Moroccan - silver, copper, brass, ceramics, leather - for looking and bargaining and buying when, between seller and customer, the price was agreed to be right.

  The side alleys were a maze; children swarmed everywhere, the mingled smells were of mint and incense and newly-baked bread and the men’s pipe-smoke. The irregular roof-line of the buildings piled up against the sky; the minaret of the town mosque was topped by intricate crenellations that were a kind of lace in stone. To Alice’s eager senses it was all utterly alien - the “abroad” she had always longed to see.

  Yves Renair was the ideal companion for such an experience -patient when she wanted to linger, skilled in warning off touts and always ready to explain and interpret and advise. When at last they repaired to the arcaded terrace of the M’Oumine hotel to drink mint tea before they returned, she thanked him warmly for her day.

  “It’s not over yet,” he said, sounding pleased. “The light of the setting sun on the mountains is a display of its own, for colour and fantastic shadows and dazzle.”

  Over their tea, asking her permission, he slipped easily into calling her Alice, and although she didn’t use his first name, she found she was thinking of him by it. She told him of her humiliation at Karim ibn Charles’s hands, and found him a guardedly sympathetic listener.

  “Of course one must allow he had right on his side,” Yves demurred.

  “But he could have told me why he was so brusque; why he insisted on escorting us out” she protested. “He had only to say —”

  Her companion slanted a shrewd look at her. “I wonder, did you give

  him the chance?”

  That voiced a doubt which she had had herself, but not for the world would she admit it. “What makes you think I didn’t?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Except that, from your rather attractive enthusiasms today, I’d judge you to be a girl of spirit; a bit -no, I don’t know the English word I want.”

  By sheer luck Alice hit upon it. “Volatile, do you mean?” He agreed, “Yes, volatile, a bit wilful when you are roused. You thought Karim high-handed; responded on the same level, and in consequence so did he. Result - impasse. What do you think?”

  “Well, perhaps,” she allowed reluctantly. ‘You think he might have done the reasonable thing by me, if I had been less thorny with him?”

  “Very possibly, I’d say.” As Yves Renair refilled her tea glass and his own, he went on, “Though perhaps I should warn you that Karim doesn’t wholly approve of you - or rather, of the Home, what it stands for.”

  “Doesn’t approve of it?” Alice echoed. “Why not, for goodness sake?”

  “On the principle, I gather, that ‘East is East and West is West’; that he considers the Sisters in the Tetuan Order do their charges no good service by mixing the two.”

  “But that’s absurd! The Sisters don’t kidnap the children they care for. They remain Moroccan, and from all that Sorab bint Khaled tells me, they are trained so that when they leave the Tetuan Home, they can either take up a Moroccan trade or go into something European -tourism, hotel work - things like that. Just because he has turned his back on England -! Grrh!” With mock ferocity Alice ground for her teeth. “Just let me hear Seiyid Karim ibn Charles pontificate like that, that’s all!” she concluded darkly.

  Yves Renair laughed. “What did I say? Volatile indeed! Put a match within a metre of you, and you are afire! But seriously —” he laid a hand over hers, tapped it lightly with his fingertips, - “while none of us knows the cause of his prejudice, we haven’t the right to judge the man, you know. And you particularly should tread carefully. He is the Home’s landlord, after all.”

  “I can’t think why, if he dislikes what we are doing so much!”

  “Ah well, even though you find him a beast, perhaps he is a just beast.” Yves Renair paused to smile. “That, like ‘East is East’ is a Rudyard Kipling reference too, is it not? Or perhaps it is Seiyida Charles who persuades him to tolerate the Home, as it was already in being when he inherited the estate from his grandfather, Hadj Mohammed ibn Sadeq.”

  “How long ago was that?” Alice asked.

  “Six or seven years back, after he left college in England. As far as one knows, he hasn’t returned there since, and he cultivates no English friends here.”

  “Could it be that, considering his views, they don’t care to cultivate him?” enquired Alice tartly.

  A Gallic shrug answered that. “Who knows? Though I would say he could choose or reject any company he likes. He is wealthy, influential, unmarried —”

  “And an autocrat, very, very sure of his own power!”

  “That too,” agreed Yves Renair mildly. “Though to be sure of himself, of his own convictions, is that such a bad thing - in a man?”

  “As long as - oh, never mind.” Alice broke off, knowing that, though in a general way she agreed heartily, she resented such pride of self in Karim ibn Charles. She remembered a fleeting moment of rapport with him and wondered where it had gone - if he had been aware of it on his side, and if it hadn’t been entirely imaginary on her own.

  Yves Renair had made no idle promise of the beauty of the mountains as they caught the rays of the sinking sun, stabbing like silver swords between the crags and laying long shadows across the slopes. But all too soon for Alice’s delight, the luminous show was over and twilight had fallen by the time the journey was over.

  As the car pulled up outside the Home Sorab ran out, signalling to the doctor not to drive off when he had bade Alice goodnight. She spoke to him quickly in his own language, in which she seemed as fluent as in English, and he, replying with a couple of questions - “Il vomit? Depuis quel temps?”, reached for his bag and alighted with Alice.

  Sorab answered him, “‘Pendant deux heures au moins, ” and explained to Alice, “It is Omar ibn Souli. He retches with sickness and I tell Doctor Renair he has been so for two hours or more,” as the three of them hurried into the house and the doctor asked “Where?”

  “May I come?” asked Alice. “I am Red Cross qualified in Home Nursing,” and when he agreed “Of course”, they both followed Sorab’s lead to the little sick bay off the boys’ main dormitory.

  It was Omar of the funny faces who lay in the white cot, his forehead now beaded with sweat and his small body writhing. Doctor Renair spoke soothingly to him as he laid back the covers and gently probed his stomach. He asked some questions of Sorab and some of the little boy, replaced the blankets and straightened, telling Alice,

  “I suspect a grumbling appendix. If it is only grumbling, this attack will pass, an operation won’t be imperative - yet. But I’d like to have him in the h
ospital for observation for a few days. Can you get him ready, and I’ll take him in my car?”

  When Omar was bundled warmly and installed in the back seat, the doctor said it wasn’t necessary for either girl to travel with him. The little hospital wasn’t far and the two nurses could cope. But he would come back to report to Alice on Omar’s condition before going home himself.

  He was gone for something under an hour and returned to say that Omar was comparatively comfortable, just as Sarepta was insisting that if she couldn’t serve the evening meal within five minutes, it would be so spoilt that she might as well throw it away. Thus threatened, Alice asked her to bring it in and asked Yves Renair to stay and share it with them, an invitation which he accepted with alacrity, saying that his landlord, Benoit Paul, claimed to expect him only when he saw him, and not always then.

  In Alice’s humble view the meal - a fish soup, a tarjine of chicken -a kind of casserole - fresh fruit and a cheese - board couldn’t have suffered much by being held back. But it was delicious, and the three of them lingered long enough over it to show Sarepta how much it was appreciated. Yves suggested that Sarepta might be as impatient to clear it away as to serve it. But Sorab said No to that. If the food she cooked was despatched too quickly, the lady in question was apt to sulk that people who gobbled destroyed her art.

  When Yves Renair left Alice walked out with him to his car. He switched on and let the engine tick over quietly as he asked when Omar was due to go back to Tetuan.

  “He is one of the batch due to leave at the end of the week. But he won’t be going?” asked Alice.

  “I’d rather he didn’t. He can probably leave hospital in a couple of days and he may not have another attack for weeks. But I’d like to keep him under my eye for a little while. Can you fix it?”

  “Yes. I’ll ring Tetuan in the morning.” As Alice spoke they both lifted their heads to listen to the only sound, other than the purr of the car engine, which broke the deep quiet of the night - the even clop, clop of hooves, the approach of a horse and rider, both no more than black shadows in the darkness until they passed the stationary car and were caught in the V-glare of its headlights.