Meet the Sun Halfway

by Jane Arbor

  Elaine was soignee and slim in black, with an enormous cartwheel black hat - the one choice of colour calculated to lend her distinction against the exotic spectrum of reds and golds, blues, greens and purples which was the Moroccan idea of festive dress. She claimed to fear the crowds, asked Alice, “Don’t you ever feel stripped by the way some of these men look at you? I do,” and clung appealingly to whichever male arm came handiest when she was harmlessly jostled. Alice hoped she might be forgiven for suspecting her timidity was only one act in her repertoire of several. Her coolly assured appropriation of Karim’s attention in the garden of El Faradis had been another.

  Somewhat raggedly their party stayed together and Karim was close behind when Alice touched Yves Renair’s arm. “I could probably get the ribbon for the tambourines here. At this stall, do you think?”

  “Good idea.”

  As soon as they halted Alice was given no chance of decision, for or against. The Berber woman attendant was already proffering samples of her wares - bangles, pendants, the hanks of myriad-coloured wools which had caused Alice to pause there, and rough stone carvings.

  Yves told her in Arabic, “Ribbons. Link chains,” and as, with astonishing sleight of hand, she substituted trays of these for the other things, Alice heard Karim ask Yves why she wanted them, and heard Yves explaining.

  “To dress up the instruments of the children’s band she is forming.”

  “Instruments? What kind of instruments?”

  “Tambourines, triangles, drums, percussion things, more notable for beat than for music - a not uncommon quality in bands these days,” said Yves drily.

  “But has she got them - these instruments?”

  “Yes. She told me what she wanted, and I bought them for her down below.”

  “Made in Birmingham, no doubt?”

  Yves laughed. “Probably. I didn’t enquire, not supposing it mattered if they were.”

  “She should have come to me. I could have found her some genuine gipsy stuff with some tradition behind it. However, if she is satisfied —” Karim moved on and Yves chuckled to Alice, “I’m afraid you wounded his chauvinist pride by not consulting him about a bit of stretched vellum and a few drumsticks. Why didn’t you?” Alice laughed thinly and evaded the question. She paid what the woman asked for her purchases, put the parcel in her bag, and she and Yves followed the others.

  Their long progress through the sideshows brought them at last to the Fantasia arena where they found places among the people awaiting the display, crowded in elbow to elbow with their neighbours. Mrs. Rout even found a seat; the Captain stood beside her. The two men eased standing space for the girls and flanked them, Yves on Alice’s far side and Karim on Elaine’s.

  Karim advised her casually, “You will take off your hat?”

  She clamped a hand defensively to the back of its crown. “No, why should I?”

  “It spoils the view of the people behind you.”

  She glanced back over her shoulder. “So what? They haven’t paid for their places.”

  “Nor have we. Take it off, please.”

  “No.” She turned to Alice. “If the man had any idea of chic he’d realise it is part of an ensemble chosen to do him credit, wouldn’t he?” she appealed archly.

  He ignored the aside. Taking the brim of the hat between finger and thumb, he removed it, handing it to her gravely.

  Alice watched her control a frown. Then she dimpled up at him. “Woo-ee! Aren’t you masterful?” she cooed in an assumed childish treble. “Well, to pay you out for that, I’m not speaking, do you hear? I’m going to talk to Doctor Renair instead.” With which dire threat she wriggled behind Alice, thrust between her and Yves and by crowding Alice still further, managed to turn an aggrieved back upon

  Karim.

  Yves compressed his lips and lifted resigned brows at Alice. Karim asked her, “Have you room enough?” and laid a hand on her waist to manoeuvre her into the small space Elaine had left to her. From behind there were murmurs of approval for the disappearance of the hat; people shifted and settled and moved again, bought and ate sweetmeats from the vendors’ trays; small children ran out upon the sand of the arena and were harried back by their parents, and Alice wondered a little shamefully how many of the other girls in the crowd were as aware of the magnetic nearness of their men as she was of Karim’s, pulling at her will to resist an attraction which left him cold.

  Fortunately the mountain air was cool. The sun was beginning to drop down the evening sky; the moon which would light the night festivities was palely rising. Far down the track, beyond all head-craning in search of details, a huge cloud of sand dust hid the preparations for the start of the stampede. Then, almost as at a given signal or the rise of a theatre curtain upon a first act, the audience stilled to expectancy of the hoof-beats and jangle of accoutrements which soon followed.

  The first display by the horsemen was almost sedate - a slow wheeling and curveting and dressage and some involved diagonal crossings of ranks which reminded Alice of a musical ride at a tattoo. When this troupe at last retired down the track, other equestrian feats followed, each act increasing in tempo and thrill to its whirling climax, applauded by the crowds.

  In the interval before the sharpshooting finale Karim asked Alice what she thought of the display.

  “It’s fabulous,” she said, “I get the impression that the men and the horses aren’t separate creatures, but one, like centaurs.”

  He nodded. “Good comparison. They’ve been together since the dawn of history, and you could say that over the centuries our country has fought for and won its independence and its liberty with just two weapons - its mountains and its horses.”

  “I suppose they are pure Arabs?”

  “No. Though they have Arab blood, they are Barbarys — leaner and hardier than the Arab, and though not so fast, as surefooted as mountain goats and with much longer endurance than the Arab.”

  “Do you ride one yourself?”

  “Yes. As anyone who rides here does if he can.” He paused. “We are an equine-minded race. They say of any two or three Moroccans gathered together that their talk will be of horses, horses ... women ... and again horses.”

  “Putting women at a three-to-one disadvantage to the horses, in fact?” Alice asked lightly.

  “And possibly - in a general way as a sex - where they belong,” Karim agreed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE final charge of the Fantasia proved as breathtaking as Yves had promised and was wildly applauded by the crowds before, slowly accepting that the spectacle was over, they began to trickle back towards the town and whatever else of gala the night had to offer.

  Yves took Alice’s arm as they moved off. “Let’s lose the others and find ourselves some coffee or a drink before the parade of the Fiances,” he suggested.

  They settled for mint tea and took it at an open-air table under some plane trees hung with fairy lights and crude mobiles which danced and jangled in the light breeze.

  Yves apologised, “I’m sorry about that change-partners episode, but it was forced upon me, as you saw. I’m inclined to think,” he added reflectively, “that Elaine Kent is the type who, wanting something, screamed for it in her cradle, wheedled for it in her teens and either snatches it or sulks for it now. How did you get on with Karim’s obsession with his beloved Barbarys?”

  Alice related what he had told her about them, not omitting his gibe at her sex, and Yves laughed.

  “You should have quoted at him from de Gourmont, a French poet -to the effect that a man who rails against all women is only railing at his own failure with one!”

  “Though I should doubt if that is true of Karim,” said Alice slowly. “You mean you can’t see him being bested or refused by a woman?” Yves looked at her sharply. “You think he has too much charm?”

  She ignored the second question. “I meant I think he hasn’t much use for women. Debbie Martin warned me before I came that he didn’t get on with h
er, and he is cool, even with Elaine Kent.”

  “And with you?”

  “I feel he - keeps me at arm’s length.”

  “That’s not a great distance between a man and a woman. It is easily shortened.”

  Alice bit her lip. “You know what I mean.”

  “He did more than I asked of him by dining you at the Menoubia. And he was plainly jealous this afternoon that you had consulted me about your musical gadgets, instead of him.”

  “Jealous?” She wished she could believe it. “Of course he wasn’t!”

  Yves shrugged. “No? Vice versa, I should have been jealous of him.” He paused and waited until her eyes, raised to his, questioned his silence. Then he said, “And I wonder if you know what that says, do you?”

  His new intense tone would have told her. “You? Jealous of me?” she faltered. “Not - not that way?”

  He put his hand over hers, imprisoning it. “That way. I hoped you knew, had guessed. I thought women - did.”

  “Not in so short a time. It has only been a few weeks. I think I knew at once that you liked me, that we could get on. But there has been nothing to - know. You’ve never even —”

  “- even kissed you? Held you at less than arm’s length? But you can’t know how I’ve wanted to, and been afraid lest I should rush you. And what has time to do with it? A man meets and dallies with all sorts of girls, but when he meets the one woman for him, I believe he

  recognises her in a different way. As I recognised you, mignonne.” He stopped speaking and searched her face. “You say nothing. You show nothing,” he accused her. “Are you telling me that I am rushing you even now? That you do need time?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Then what? I must woo you with some gentle love-making before you will know your mind about me?”

  And he would be gentle, she knew. How different he was from Karim, who had been tempted to that one savage assault upon her lips and had despised himself for it afterwards! Afterwards, with Yves, if that was what she wanted of him, there would be shyness and ease and laughter. But she didn’t want it ... couldn’t give it, and she must tell him so, however much it hurt ... hurt both of them.

  She turned her hand under his and withdrew it. “Time wouldn’t help,” she said. “And if you had kissed me or did now, I shouldn’t want you to. Because my mind isn’t with you like that. I rely on you, want you as my friend, like to be with you, am grateful to you for wanting me. But that isn’t enough - is it?”

  Yves said, “I shouldn’t have the right to ask more, if I only wanted an affair with you. But I don’t, and no, it wouldn’t be enough for marriage, which is what I do want. Where does that leave me then -second-best to another man? You have never spoken of one, so I thought you were heartwhole. But there is one for you in England perhaps?”

  The form of his question allowed her a half-truth. “No, there’s no one like that,” she said. “There will be nobody waiting for me when I go home.”

  “Then it is just that I haven’t lighted any spark in you?”

  Distressed, she begged, “Don’t put it like that!”

  “How else? You are a desirable woman and I think you could be ardent, but not for me, you say. Though may I hope that you mean ‘not yet’?”

  “Don’t, please. There’s a limit to my time here, and after this you needn’t see me, except professionally at the Home, if you choose. It’s not going to be easy for either of us, but it won’t be for long, so pl ease let’s keep it that way.”

  His face shadowed. “You make it very hard for a man who is in love with you. But if you give me no choice, then I have none, and I promise not to embarrass you while I go on hoping. As I shall-” On that he stood up and held out his hand. “Come,” he said, “let’s go and watch the luckier men play peacock to their girls. Rather ironic - that I hoped I might myself be going back tonight a luckier man than when I set out!”

  She put her hand in his and let him lead her out from the shadow of the trees into the beginnings of moonlight. “I wish I could have been lucky with you. Please believe that, Yves,” she said, and thought again of the difference between him and Karim. Of how he had broached his courting and had accepted her refusal only in words, where Karim, neither knowing nor caring for the effect upon her, had stormed her heart in a momentary impulse that made no claim upon her love nor offered his own.

  And yet she could still shiver to the thrill of the memory of that kiss, however false. How long, she wondered guiltily, would she remember, after they had lost touch in a few weeks more, what Yves had said to her tonight, what she had said to him? Words weren’t the right language to satisfy love. They weren’t enough.

  Yves had promised he would not embarrass her, but Alice, fearing the effects of her own new lack of ease with him, rather dreaded their first meeting after the night of the Fantasia.

  However, she had not reckoned with the practised professionalism by which he could withdraw from personal issues with a word and at will. On his next visit to the Home she was its acting Warden and he was its appointed medical man. Over the coffee which they usually took together they discussed only his small patients, and it was only as he was leaving that he asked, “I suppose it’s no news to you that Benoit Paul has kept his pact with Karim? Sorab will have told you?”

  Alice said, “Yes. They joined the parade of the Fiances at the Moussem celebrations here, and they are going to be married in the autumn when Monsieur Paul has worked out the parole the Caid gave

  him. Rachma too,” she added.

  “Rachma?”

  “She and Hussein became engaged officially at the Moussem as well.”

  “Good. So now they will be allowed a little more privacy for their courting. When do they plan to marry?”

  “I don’t know. Not yet, I hope. I should miss Rachma sadly. Anyway, she has an older sister who is marrying first; quite soon, I think, though I don’t know when.”

  “Ah then, you can reckon on keeping Rachma for a while yet. A Moroccan wedding is apt to stretch the resources of both families to the limit and they need quite some time to break even again,” laughed Yves as he left.

  Alice’s next self-imposed task was Operation Percussion as she mentally called it - the allotment of instruments (all the boys wanted drums; all the girls, tambourines) and promoting rehearsal sessions.

  By telling Rassim that no one else had a mouth organ or his skill with it, she flattered him into considering himself the star artiste. Musically speaking, she had no such success with Xenie, who scorned a triangle, claimed that the clash of cymbals made her ears pop and tissue over a comb was “silly”. Coming only reluctantly to the handout, she was too late for a tambourine, but she did stay long enough to consider Alice’s suggestion that she should act as wardrobe-mistress, as it were, to the instruments. “With these and anything else you think would be pretty,” wheedled Alice, producing the ribbon-streamers and beads at the right psychological minute for Xenie’s persuasion.

  She hesitated - and fell. The next day the tambourines floated ribbons, the drumsticks were multi-colour wrapped like barbers’ poles, and though the triangles were still unadorned, they were to dangle from bead-chains. “Which I haven’t had time to thread as yet,” Xenie explained in apology when she turned up at the band practice and stayed to watch the effect of the fluttering ribbons and briskly wielded drumsticks. When she had furnished the triangle chains, Alice feared they would lose her co-operation. But surprising her one day, picking out with one finger on the playroom piano the tune of “Here We Come Gathering Nuts in May”, Alice grasped at the idea of suggesting she keep the unaccompanied singing in tune.

  “How do I do that?” Xenie glowered.

  “By giving us the right note to start on, and the note on which we ought to finish.”

  “I shall not know which.”

  “Yes, you will, for I shall tell you. Look - the keys have the names of English letters. This one is A, this one B.”

  �
��What names have the black ones?” asked Xenie, making difficulties.

  Alice hastily dismissed the problem of semi-tones. “Never mind the black ones,” she advised. “Just take these from here to h ere” spanning seven keys - “and learn their names. A, B, C, D, E, F and G, and I promise you we will begin on one of them and whatever we do with the singing in between, we shall try to finish one of them. If we don’t, you will put us right.”

  “How shall I?”

  “Like this

  At the end of several vocal exercises during which Alice deliberately went off key and was corrected, Xenie, if not fully won, was interested. She promised loftily, “Perhaps I shall come to the playing tomorrow,” with which, at the time, Alice had to be content.

  But she did attend at the next day’s “playing” and at each one after that. She harried Rassim punctually to every session and later she competed for, and won, the coveted role of deputy conductor to Alice, who deservedly congratulated herself on something she had hardly hoped to see - Xenie mixing with the others, helping them, respecting their rights and even slackening her apron-string hold upon Rassim. As Sorab said wonderingly of her, “The more that little one allows herself to know us, I think she learns that we are nice people to know!”

  The days marched forward. In less than a month now Alice’s stewardship would be over. She would not see the date harvest nor whatever the coming of winter meant to Tazenir. She had been allowed three months of its golden summer, and that was all. Just three months, and the greater part of them behind her! Sometimes she felt she must try consciously to savour every aspect of the present that was left to her - the sun, the carefree children, the flowers, the friends she had made, even the bittersweet of having learned to love where she was not loved. But of course she could not. Days dawned and were busy and full of practicalities until nightfall. One more gone ... and then another beyond recall. Soon they would all be yesterdays, their details forgotten, and only their highlights and their darknesses to be remembered with ecstasy or with pain.