Meet the Sun Halfway

by Jane Arbor

  Elaine sat forward and cut in impatiently, “Look, if you haven’t guessed, I’ll be frank with you. It’s as simple as this - when Karim was last in England, and as English mannered then as they come, we were pretty close. I wasn’t so committed, but he was mad about me, quite besotted. But we broke up. Soon afterwards he came out here, and though I’d been fond of him, I didn’t exactly pine. There have been other men since - But then, when I met the Routs and they spoke of him and asked me to come and stay with them, I revived quite a yen for him. I did want to see him, did flatter myself that it

  would take very little finesse to go on from where we left off. And of course we could. He used to be putty in my hands, and however he may have amused himself since, he isn’t courting any other woman, that I do know. But I can’t get near him. He holds me off, keeps me at bay, and she, the Saiyida, heads me off - oh, so subtly, so politely

  - but and how!”

  “You can’t get near him literally - or emotionally?” asked Alice quietly.

  “Literally - she tries to see to that, though of course she can’t. They have to entertain me for the sake of appearances. As for the emotional thing, she probably works on Karim on that behind my back. For he’s like a pillar of ice, though I know he hasn’t forgotten what we were to each other, that I still mean as much to him as ever. And yet he is fighting me ... fighting himself. Fighting his mother’s influence too, on the side. And that’s why I have to have help - to get through to him,” Elaine concluded.

  “In which I can’t possibly help you,” said Alice. “I don’t know Seiyida Charles well enough, and to suggest that anyone at all could interfere between you and Karim is just - just bizarre.”

  “Why is it?” Elaine persisted. “It needs a disinterested outsider like you to find out why he’s fending me off, when I know he wants me as much as ever.”

  “You’re sure of that? You haven’t thought that he might have put his love affair with you behind him by now?”

  “Of course I’m sure! So is his mother, or she wouldn’t be as wary of me as she is. And I knew him too well and too long not to recognise the signs - the look in his eyes, sort of cool and indifferent, when in fact he is afire. And his masterly way with me - ‘Do this, do that -because I say so,’ - which I used to find quite delicious, knowing as I did, that he was my slave, no less.”

  “And yet you broke up. Why?” asked Alice, feeling that in face of such uninhibited confidences, she had the right to ask.

  Elaine shifted position and her chin went up. “That? Oh - the silliest thing,” she said.

  “Only silly? How?”

  “Not just silly. Silliest. He asked me to marry him - not for the first time of many, I may say, and I always played hard to get. And that time I just laughed in his face and told him that when I seriously considered tying myself up with a handsome hybrid like him, I’d let him know, and he could go to the head of the queue.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Alice gasped. “You said that to him? How dared you?”

  “What do you mean - how dared I?” Elaine demanded. “He was in love with me - right? Up until then I could say anything to him, and he would take it on the chin.”

  “But you couldn’t call him a handsome hybrid and get away with it!” “Yes, well - that was what was so silly.”

  “Silly! You say he loved you. Didn’t you care for him at all in return?”

  A shrug. “I was taken with him. He was different. Yes, I fancied him quite a lot. Sometimes more than fancied.”

  “And yet you didn’t know him well enough to fear the consequences of your mocking at his loyalties to both his countries; to his parents on both sides!”

  “His father was already dead, and I’d never met his mother.”

  Alice scorned, “As if that mattered! He must have told you about them. You shared England together. But didn’t he ever talk to you about how deeply he cared for Morocco too?”

  “Oh, sometimes, I suppose. But on that subject I found him a shade boring. I only knew the English side of him - the Moroccan bit I could take or leave.”

  Alice shook her head. “Not from Karim ibn Charles, I think. When he asked you to marry him, he must have been offering you both, expecting you to want both if you wanted him.”

  “You’re saying that he dropped me flat, just because I called him a

  handsome hybrid? So that if I took that back and toadied up a bit, I might get him where I want him now? You know,” Elaine added patronisingly, “I had an idea that if I talked to you, you might come up with a clue, even if you couldn’t help me with the Seiyida.”

  “Thank you,” said Alice, not meaning it. “But I think you might also have to take back your greeting to him on the afternoon when you first met him again. If you remember, you taunted him with being in fancy dress.”

  “Oh, that! He couldn’t have minded that. I had to say something, hadn’t I?”

  “And you didn’t realise how much he minded by the pointed way in which he ignored it? It embarrassed the rest of us, and it would have withered me.” With every word she spoke Alice felt older and wiser and more mature than Elaine. It was a heady sensation of happy triumph and she savoured it to the full. She — she, the stranger to him, the outsider to Elaine Kent! — at last knew and understood him, his motives, his responses, his pattern, better than Elaine ever had or could. She remembered his sharp disclaimer to his mother’s suggestion that he ha d forgotten England either easily or for ever, and instinct told her now that he had loved his father’s country equally with Morocco until a woman - this obtuse woman opposite - had taunted him with being a half-and-half, belonging to neither. Aloud she went on to Elaine, “And I doubt very much whether your recanting on two — or maybe more -unfortunate remarks is going to get Karim back where you want him, as you put it.”

  Elaine shook her head. “No problem, I think. Now you’ve pointed out where I went wrong with such a sensitive plant, and I backpedal like mad, I shall hold most of the tricks, I’d say,” she claimed, mixing metaphors regardless of the sense they made.

  Feeling more superior than ever, Alice said, “What I mean is that I don’t think you realise how deeply you drove him into rejecting his English background and wholly adopting his Moroccan, instead of enjoying and valuing both, as he must have done until you - you did

  your worst to destroy them for him. He must have decided to keep one and live against it - thoroughly, and you can hardly wonder that he left the one which he had shared with you. Now you see only his ‘fancy dress,’ but his mother, his friends, his own people, though they haven’t known why he did it, respect him for whatever it cost him and for the courage and the work and the — the love he has brought to it.”

  She should have been warned by a sudden glint in Elaine’s blue eyes. After pursing her lips in the readiness of a whistle, Elaine murmured, “Really! Quite a speech! Do you know, it makes me wonder just what your interest in Karim is? Could you get so worked up, I ask myself, unless perhaps you wanted him for yourself?” She rose as she spoke, adding carelessly, “But that’s your business, and I don’t suppose you rate your chances very highly, do you?”

  “If you’re asking whether I’m in competition with you, the answer is no,” Alice said, hoping she conveyed the scorn she felt.

  “Though you obviously disapprove of me, and you would probably get a lot of smug satisfaction from running to the Seiyida with the story of why Karim and I broke up?”

  At that Alice’s patience snapped. “If you’re wise, and you care at all for Karim, you’ll tell her yourself how cruelly responsible you were for the break-up,” she retorted. “If you’re intent upon intrigue, that would be your best move.”

  “Go to work on her, instead of on Karim?” Elaine shook her head. “No, you could have done that for me, but I couldn’t myself. As long as I know what I’m up against, I can handle men; women, for some reason, tend to turn hostile at the sight of me. As you’ve done yourself, haven’t you?”

 
; “With reason, I’d say.”

  “But not with much wisdom,” returned Elaine silkily. “You may be the Seiyida’s favourite girl. But can you be quite so sure of Karim’s favours? For instance, this place” she looked about her - “a bit vulnerable to his whims, so gossip says? So, advice for advice, don’t make enemies of us both - will you?” she concluded.

  Alice let her go. She had invited herself, so she could show herself out! But inevitably the exchange had been disturbing, and though Elaine’s threats could have little substance Alice’s sense of triumph was brief. The enigma of Karim’s rejection of his birthright might be solved for her. But what was solved for his mother? For him? Clearly Elaine meant to do all in her power to woo him back to her. And if she succeeded, what then? Seiyida Charles would be happy for him to marry an English girl, she had claimed. But would she welcome his doing so at the price of his choosing Elaine whom, on Elaine’s own showing, she disliked?

  Yves volunteered the news of his leaving the next time he was alone with Alice. He had had to report his decision to the Caid in the first instance, and he wasn’t surprised that Karim had heard of it. In explanation he said,

  “When Benoit marries, he and Sorab will prefer my room to my company, and when they start a family they will need more room physically. But I had other, more pressing reasons. Need I tell you what they were?”

  “Karim said you felt you needed more scope than you have here,” Alice told him.

  “Yes, that too. But -” he held her glance, “my strongest motivation was my hope of you. All else being equal, I couldn’t ask you to bury yourself here for years. As a permanency, it is too bizarre a background for us Europeans, and even if you are a little bewitched by it now, I could show you a lovely face of France instead, if you would let me; if you would take me. On your own terms, if you must. But take me, and give me a chance. Alice -!”

  As his arms went round her, she thought how good it would be, how simple, how rewarding, if she could love him as he wanted, could say yes to his pleading, and for a moment she was tempted to yield to his protective hold. But when he had kissed her gently and held her off from him, he must have read her answer in her eyes.

  “No? It is still no?” he asked, releasing her.

  “I’m sorry, Yves.”

  “But it needn’t be the end?” he pressed. “When you go back to England, we could meet some time? There or in France?”

  “I’d like that, if you were willing,” she said.

  He smiled wryly. “One accepts crumbs, if the whole loaf isn’t on offer. It’s only in marriage that I’d want and expect the whole loaf to be there,” he said.

  When he left her that time she knew he didn’t mean to ask her again.

  A few days later Sorab reported that Elaine had taken up riding. Sorab had seen her out with Karim. (On a mount furnished by him too? Alice wondered jealously.) And in a chance encounter with Mrs. Rout, that lady mentioned Elaine’s intention to return for the winter skiing season. Elaine “working on” Karim with all her resources, thought Alice, uttering a pseudo-interested “Really?” to the news, the outcome of which she knew she wouldn’t be there to see.

  Meanwhile, since her day of acting as Alice’s deputy, Seiyida Charles often called in at the Home, bringing fruit for the children, or flowers for Alice’s desk, or to watch the children at play, or to take coffee with Alice. And on one such day she asked Alice how much longer she would be in Tazenir.

  “I go at the end of September,” Alice told her.

  “So soon now? You must go then?”

  “I’m afraid so. Miss Martin will be coming back, and my time will overlap for a few days while I hand over to her. But after that she will be in charge as before.”

  “Yes, of course. But I asked whether you must go, because I was hoping you might be persuaded to stay on for a little while as our guest at Faradis.”

  If only she could accept! But for more than the practical reason that on a rather tight time-table she had to return to her own job in the first week of October, Alice knew she must refuse. The temptation of sharing that lovely house and its gracious living with Karim and his mother had to be resisted. She couldn’t bear to make it her last memory

  of Tazenir.

  Seiyida Charles said, “I’m so sorry. We have seen so little of you -you are such a busy person. You haven’t even seen the whole of the estate! You may remember I was hoping Karim would show it to you on the day you lunched with me?”

  “Yes. But he-”

  “ - had to see the Caid. And afterwards Miss Kent arrived. Since then-” the Seiyida hesitated, as if choosing her words - “she has rather monopolised his time. But when I told him this morning that I thought you would soon be leaving, he wondered if you would care to drive over the estate with him one day. Now please don’t say no to that!”

  Temptation again - but a lesser one. And she couldn’t plead previous commitments for all her free hours until the end of the month. But in accepting, Alice wasn’t prepared for a rather strange plea which the Seiyida made before she left, promising that Karim should ring Alice and make a date. Again sounding unsure of how to express herself, she said, “I think that perhaps Karim needs to - to talk to someone. He has always gone his own way, made his decisions and stood by them, right or wrong. But now, for the first time in his life, I sense that he would consider guidance ... advice.”

  “Which he could ask of you and get it, couldn’t he?” suggested Alice.

  “He won’t ask it from me, I’m afraid. Nor, I think, from anyone. He is too proud to say, as it were, ‘I am at a crossroads; help me with the way I should take.’ But if he could talk, and someone would listen - If for instance you, my dear, alone with him, would let him talk if he will?”

  “You mean, as an outsider to whatever problem you believe he may have?”

  “Yes, or as-” The Seiyida broke off.

  Alice said slowly, “I can’t think he would want to discuss anything with me.”

  “All the same, listen if he does - that is all I ask. And don’t think that I shall press for your confidences afterwards,” promised the Seiyida. “They can remain between you and him.”

  Several days passed before Karim arranged to call for Alice one afternoon. Before he did so, she thought often of Yves’s allusion to “crumbs”. Her crumb of pleasure was that the Seiyida had said that the invitation had been his idea, which meant that he cared to spend an hour or two with her, when he could easily have let the promised trip go by default.

  Except for her visit to M’Oumine, to the city with Omar and to Alaksaar for the Moussem, she had only explored round Tazenir on foot or on a few short drives with Yves. The groves of banana and date and almond and the cereal plantations which were Karim’s property were new country to her. Comparatively speaking, the Tazenir plateau was small, but it was cultivated to its last square metre of fertile ground. Karim, driving slowly along the bordering avenues, was interesting about the growth, ripening and harvesting cycle of each crop. Alice asked questions; he answered them in patient detail. He was playing the efficient guide, no more than that, and at the end of two hours Alice wondered what personal confidences his mother had thought he might make to her. Clearly, thought Alice, he regarded the tour as a social duty he owed her before she left Tazenir. He had no intention of “talking” on any personal level at all.

  Then, within a kilometre or two of the town on the return journey, he asked, “Has anyone taken you to see the Veil of the Bride while you have been here?”

  Alice said, “No. But I’ve heard of it. It’s a cascade, isn’t it?”

  “Yes - named for the fall of the water, as a veil falls from the back of a bride’s head to her feet. You should see it. It’s not far out of our way.” At the next turn off the road he swung the wheel over and put the car to a steep climb up a winding track which led to a rough clearing beyond which there was no way ahead for a car.

  “We get out here and walk,” he said. “It is rather rough going
underfoot, so take care.”

  He went in front of her, putting a hand back now and then to put aside trailing brambles and to help her over slippery tree-roots on the path. Once he halted, searching the branches of a gnarled tree. “Figs,”

  he said. “Ripe ones. Would you like some?”

  Without waiting for her answer, he scaled the trunk, gathered and brought down a handful of the fruit, dark green and purpling, some of their skins broken, revealing the brown-purple pulp within.

  Alice bit into one, savouring its luscious over-sweetness, needing to trap its flowing juice with a finger to the corner of her mouth.

  Karim watched her. “You eat just like a child - greedily,” he smiled. She smiled back. “Sorry. But they are one of my favourites, and we see so few of them in England.”

  “No, they don’t travel, of course - except dried.”

  “And in my opinion a fresh fig wouldn’t own a dried one as its most distant relation!”

  He laughed at that. “I rather agree. Another one? I’ll carry the rest for you, and you can sit and finish them at the Cascade.”

  They came within earshot of its ceaseless music before they saw it. The uneven path led to a rock-strewn grotto where the water sprang from the crags at a neck-craning height and plunged, seething, into the deep pool which its force had cut into the grotto floor. For the whole of its length, it was white and scintillating and easily imaginable as a bridal veil. “Though what a very tall bride!” Alice commented, shading her eyes to peer upwards at the full sweep of the fall. “Where does the water go from the pool?”

  Karim chose a smooth-surfaced rock out of reach of the spray and invited her to sit. “It eats into the rock as deep as it can, and then spreads, I suppose. I don’t really know. I’m not a geologist,” he said.

  That prompted a question which she wanted to ask him. As she sat beside him, clasping her knees, she said, “What did you read when you were up at Oxford?” she said.

  “History. Modern History, with a slant towards the history of my own country under all the raiders and invaders it has suffered until it now owns itself.” He threw a pebble idly into the pool. “Not that either the French or the Spanish abused their protectorates; they built us roads and schools and fine enduring buildings, but we haven’t been free - free to make our own mistakes - almost since the dawn of time. Which is something you English have never known.”