Meet the Sun Halfway

by Jane Arbor

  “No.” On dangerous ground, she ventured, “But why do you say ‘You English’, as if you weren’t half English yourself? Whatever freedoms we have are yours too, if you would let them be.”

  He threw another stone, then turned his fine head to look at her. “And you think I should claim them?”

  She hesitated. “May I be frank?”

  “Please do. You’ve been so before at my expense - on the subject of European cultures for our Moroccan children.”

  “Yes, well - I do think you do your father’s memory less than justice by pretending you aren’t at least as English as he made you.”

  She watched his expression harden. “Even though England may have chosen to reject me?’

  “It hasn’t! It wouldn’t!”

  “Then say, if you like, that I rejected it when it choose to label me ‘hybrid goods’.”

  Alice shook her head. “I can’t believe you rejected it without a lot of pain and misgiving.”

  He looked her in the face again. “Well, what do you think?” he parried. “One doesn’t unlearn even a quarter of a lifetime of associations and habits and - loves without a lot of regrets.”

  She hurried in quickly, “Though all of it so unnecessary! All right, you are a hybrid, you can’t change that. But - well, aren’t the best roses hybrids? Don’t they have to graft vines on to alien stocks?” Though he wouldn’t be hers if she won, she was fighting Elaine for him now, and, desperate for a parallel which might convince him, she plunged on, “And your own Barbary horses - you said they were of mixed Moroccan and Arab blood - doesn’t that make them hybrid too?”

  She stopped speaking, not knowing whether to be daunted or encouraged by his continuing deep look.

  At last, not putting a question, he said slowly, “This isn’t on-the-spot argument. You’ve thought it out.”

  “Yes,” she said, admitting it.

  “Why?”

  With a finger she traced a curve in the dust on the rock. “Because I think it matters,” she said.

  “What matters? And why to you?”

  She dared not answer the second question. To the first she said, “I’ve been trying to tell you. What matters is that you seem to have let bitterness harden into a canker.” She paused. “Seiyida Charles once quoted a Moroccan saying to me - about needing to meet one’s sun halfway.”

  He nodded. “I know it. What’s the connection?”

  “Well, doesn’t it mean that the things one can’t alter one must learn to accept? Meet the inevitable halfway?”

  “The ‘inevitable’ being that I am a hybrid and so should come to terms with the fact?”

  “Yes. What is more,” she ventured, “I think you wouldn’t even be listening to me if you hadn’t begun to ask yourself whether you shouldn’t.”

  To that he said obliquely, "My mother has been talking.”

  “Yes.”

  “In confidence? If not, saying what?”

  “She thought you needed a confidant.”

  “Meaning a dispenser of advice? Many thanks, but I don’t.”

  “Not an adviser,” Alice snapped. “She knows you will always make your own decisions. She said so.”

  “Just as well. For I shall.”

  “All the same she wonders if you may have begun to doubt whether in the past you have always made the right one. That - something may have happened since to - to influence you.”

  He stood up then, drew himself to his full height and reached down a hand to pull Alice to her feet. Not addressing her, “Intuitive of you, mother mine,” he murmured. "Believe it or not, something has.”

  And if I asked him what? thought Alice, and he didn’t answer me in riddles, I know what he would say. That he has changed his mind about Elaine; wishes they hadn’t parted; knows that he must compromise to win her again.

  That is the “something” which is swaying him, and when he yields to its tug, Elaine will have won and I shall have lost.

  He may expect me to ask What?; may wonder why I don’t. But I’m not going to ask him. I can’t. Because I don’t, don't want to know.

  She went ahead of him out of the grotto, the silence between them broken only once, when she slipped on the treacherous path and his hands went protectively to her waist. “Steady there,” he said - as casually as to a stumbling child.

  And again, as they reached the car, he reminded her, “You didn’t eat your figs at the Cascade, and you’ve left them behind.”

  “Oh - yes,” she said emptily. “I forgot them.” She thought of them, abandoned to shrivel and dry to mere husks of skin under the sun, and felt guilty that she hadn’t valued his small gift more.

  The next morning he sent her by messenger a basket of ripe figs, bedded in damp moss and surrounded by their own leaves. With them was a card which read,

  “Thank you for the well-meant counsel. But it wasn’t needed. I had already decided that — by the parallel you quoted - I must go round to meet my sun - though not yet how or when or where. Wish me Bon Voyage — please.”

  She looked at the fruit, not valuing it at all, since it had almost certainly been gathered and so professionally arranged by the hand of the gardener who had delivered it. She sent it to the kitchen by Rachma, keeping the card to read again and again. She couldn’t destroy it, his only written message to her, even though she had to read it as virtually his farewell to her. Her reply, which she sent by post, was even more brief. “Thank you for the figs. And - Bon Voyage,” it said.

  She began to wind up her work in readiness for Debbie’s return. Sister Bernadine paid the Home another visit and expressed satisfaction with Alice’s stewardship, praising especially her seemingly successful tactics with Xenie and Rassim.

  “Sure, the little one is a different child,” she approved. Upon which, encouraged, Alice asked if she might keep the twins a little longer. But

  Sister Bernadine ruled that they must return with their batch, only, however, to ring Alice after her own return to Tetuan, to say that as the two children due to take their place had both gone down with mumps, the whole group, including Xenie and Rassim, must stay where they were until the risk of infection had passed.

  Alice was pleased with the reprieve. She was going to regret losing touch with all the children, but particularly with Xenie who, though sometimes as truculent and always as tenacious of her gaudy finery as ever, was developing a sense of responsibility beyond her years. She rebelled under discipline, but she blossomed to trust, and one of the new freedoms which Alice had lately allowed her was to send her alone or with Rassim on shopping errands to the village. Full of her own importance, she would accept her briefing from Alice, Sarepta or Sorab, arm herself with a pannier and presently return with her purchases, reciting everything she had paid after her shrewd “shopping around”, and with her money change correct to the last Moroccan cent.

  She had been alone on one of these forays when she returned to tell that Elaine, driving the Routs’ car, had given her a lift. Elaine had stopped once or twice, doing some errands for Mrs. Rout, and then had driven Xenie back to the Home. Xenie described Elaine as “the English El Anissa” who had visited Alice during one task hour, and Alice remembered that Elaine had idly noticed Xenie then.

  “That was kind of El Anissa Kent,” Alice said. “Did you thank her nicely?”

  “I gave her the flowers I had gathered on my way to the village. It was enough,” said Xenie with dignity, leaving Alice to wish she could have witnessed Elaine’s reaction to the gift of a probably wilting posy straight from Xenie’s hot little hand. Then she discounted and forgot a trivial incident which was to cast a long shadow.

  That week Seiyida Charles was staying in the city with friends, so that Alice was spared wondering whether or not she ought to confide what had passed between herself and Karim at the Cascade. The Seiyida had a right to know, but she had said she wouldn’t ask, and Alice was glad to postpone the telling.

  That week too Yves Renair had flown to France in connect
ion with his coming return there. They were both still away when Alice had a surprise invitation from Mrs. Rout to a buffet-supper and evening garden-party. “Informal dress” said the card, and Mrs. Rout had added a note saying that Karim would be going and he would pick Alice up and drive her home. Alice accepted, and when, on the morning of the party, she answered the telephone to Elaine, she supposed Elaine was ringing with a further message from Mrs. Rout.

  But Elaine’s purpose was her own. Her voice came curtly over the line, “I need to see you. Is it convenient if I come over straight away?” “Why - yes,” said Alice, surprised that after their acid parting at their meeting, Elaine should seek any further direct contact with her. She went on to remind Elaine, “But I shall be at Captain and Mrs. Rout’s party tonight, you know.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course I know,” snapped Elaine. “But this is urgent -and serious, and I’d rather not discuss it over the phone. So expect me, please, within half an hour.”

  Alice waited for her in her office, and when she arrived she went straight to the point. “Do you know,” she demanded, “that among the children you have here, you’re harbouring a thief?”

  Completely taken off guard, Alice echoed, “A thief? What do you mean? What makes you think so?”

  “I don’t think. I know. That she - the child, the girl I gave a lift to in the village the other day, has stolen from me.”

  Alice collected herself, remembering Xenie’s version of the encounter. “Yes,” she said. “Xenie, a nine-year-old. You had remembered seeing her when you were last here. She told me you had picked her up in the village. But that she stole anything from you, or even had the chance — that’s absurd, impossible!”

  “Is it?” insinuated Elaine. “Even though I know she must have done? Even though it was jewellery that she took? And even though you told me yourself that she’s a magpie for such things?”

  Alice’s heart sank, remembering the idle conversation and yet more significantly, the incident of Niraka’s talisman brooch to which Xenie

  had helped herself. “I like it, so I take it,” she had admitted without shame. But now! And real jewellery! Surely not?

  Elaine was waiting. As evenly as she could, Alice said, “I can’t believe it. But what was it that you think she took?”

  “A pair of pearl and sapphire earrings, from their nest in a jeweller’s box in the glove compartment. I had collected them from Carvin’s in the city, after having them changed from clip fastenings to loop. When I got back that day, the box was empty. As for her having the chance, she had plenty. She stayed in the car when I left it at least twice before I dropped her here. Well?”

  Alice fingered her lip in thought. “What I don’t understand,” she said, “is that if you found the box empty at once, you didn’t suspect Xenie at once. Why wait until now, days later, to accuse her?”

  “I didn’t find out at once.”

  “But you said - ‘When I got back ” Alice pounced.

  Elaine shrugged. “Did I? A slip. I meant I took the box back to my room that day. But I didn’t open it and find the earrings gone until this morning. Upon which I naturally concluded-”

  “That Xenie must have taken them, even though you can’t prove the box was empty as soon as you parted from her?” Alice questioned.

  “It’s been in a locked drawer in my room ever since. So what do I need to prove, and what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’ll question her about it, of course.”

  “Now? In front of me?”

  “If you wish. I’ll send for her,” said Alice, and rang for Binyeh.

  When the child arrived, she watched her closely for any sign of discomfiture at the sight of Elaine. But Xenie merely bowed her head in greeting to Elaine, murmured “El Anissa Kent”, and waited for Alice to speak.

  Alice asked Elaine, “Will you question Xenie? Or shall I?”

  “You can,” Elaine shrugged. “As long as I’m here to see that you do.” “Very well.” Alice swallowed hard upon the insolence, and turned to Xenie.

  “Xenie,” she began, “on the day when El Anissa Kent drove you back in her car, did you see or touch or open a little box, about so big sketching with her fingers the small measurement of a jewellers’ box -“which was in the glove compartment of the car?”

  Xenie frowned at the unfamiliar word. “Glove ... compartment?” she echoed slowly.

  “A little shelf, just in front of where you sat,” Alice explained.

  “It has a flap. She would have had to open it,” put in Elaine.

  “A little cupboard then, with a door. Did you open it and see the box inside?”

  Xenie shook her head. “I do not see any little cupboard.”

  “Nonsense!” exploded Elaine. “You opened both the cupboard and the box inside. And helped yourself to —”

  Alice intervened. “You allowed me to ask the questions, so please let me do it,” she told Elaine. “Xenie, El Anissa Kent thinks you opened the cupboard, saw the little box and took from it — and kept — the pretty earrings which were inside. You understand ‘earrings’, don’t you?”

  Of course. Like mine.” Xenie’s scornful toss of her head set her spurious gilt ear-hoops swinging.

  “Not like yours,” Alice corrected. “These were of pearls and blue jewels - sapphires - and were very valuable to the El Anissa. And as you had the chance to take them, if you saw them, did you, or not?” Xenie opened wide and - to Alice - convincingly innocent eyes. “I know pearls. I know sapphires,” she claimed. “When I am a woman my husband will buy them for me. And gold, and rubies, and much silver and - But if I have seen and taken these earrings, should I not have worn them in my ears, wanting everyone to say of me - ‘Look at Xenie! What fine jewels she has! Is she not grand?’ ”

  Thinking that even Elaine must be persuaded by such blandly logical reasoning, Alice felt her lips twitch both with relief and amusement. Xenie was no hoarding magpie. She was an exhibitionist, and pearls and sapphires in her hand would have been pearls and sapphires at her ears without delay! Alice began to Elaine, “I’m pretty sure that’s true.

  If she had taken your earrings, she couldn’t have resisted wearing them “And you believe her? On that evidence?” Elaine demanded furiously. “You’d take her word against mine? As if the little thief would flaunt them after she had stolen them! She admits she knows their value, and she could well have sold them by now. But at least you’ll have her things searched for them, I hope?”

  Alice said quietly, “I know her, and I think I can believe her. But if you insist, yes, we’ll do that, though I’m pretty sure we shan’t find your earrings.”

  “I’m not counting on it myself. She knows their value too well. She’ll have passed them to one of her disreputable relations, I daresay.” “She hasn’t had the chance. Except on walks with the other children, she hasn’t left the grounds since the day we’re talking about. But of course I’ll search her playbox and her locker, which is where-”

  But at that Xenie compressed her lips into a thick pout and almost shouted, “‘NO!”

  Elaine permitted herself a thin smile which Alice longed to slap from her lips. “You see?” murmured Elaine. “She’s afraid

  “I am not afraid! I am not —! But if you look in my jewellery box you will find - you will find - !” But Xenie choked on the last words, fiercely knuckled her eyes and fled from the room, her desolate howls echoing back.

  Alice, angry and baffled, said nothing. Elaine said, “Well, if you needed any proof -! But of course it’s too late, now you’ve given her the chance to destroy the evidence.”

  “You agreed with me that you doubted if we should find any. But do you want to come with me to make the search?” asked Alice.

  Elaine prepared to go. “No, I’ll leave that to you. I’ve heard and seen enough to convince me that I’ve waved goodbye to my property. But it leaves rather a nasty smear, doesn’t it, and it won’t trouble me if people get to hear of it. I think Karim, for one, mi
ght be particularly interested.”

  And you will tell him with gusto, thought Alice as she went in search of Xenie where she expected to find her, on guard over her collection of tawdry treasures. You saw fit to utter veiled threats against me and the Home once before. Now Xenie and I, between us, have handed you the chance to carry them out!

  As she had expected, Xenie was sitting on the floor by her bed in the dormitory, cross-legged, with her carton of trinkets on her lap. She clamped both hands firmly on it at sight of Alice. “You can’t look inside,” she said.

  Alice knelt beside her. “But I must,” she said. “I must be able to tell El Anissa Kent that her earrings aren’t in it - if they are not.”

  “You think they are!” Xenie accused.

  “How can I tell, unless you let me look in your box?”

  “No!”

  “Yes.” With stronger fingers than Xenie’s, Alice prised the box free of the child’s hold, and opened its flaps to the welter of junk within. She turned it all out on to the floor and spread it. As she had expected, there were no earrings amongst it. It was merely its usual mess of loose beads and tinsel and wire rings and a length of thicker wire, strung alternately with groups of beads the size of marbles and squares of jaggedly pierced silver and gold tin. Alice held up this weighty snake to Xenie. “What is this?” she asked.

  Xenie eyed the hideous object jealously. “It’s going to be a necklace,” she said. “For you. It - was going to be a goodbye present. But now you’ve seen it, and I didn’t want you to know about it, and now it isn’t a — a surprise any more. And you are cruel to make me show it to you, and the El Anissa thinks-”

  The rest of Xenie’s agonised outburst against a world turned enemy was lost in the sobs which caught in her throat and spent themselves in floods of tears.