The Other Miss Donne

by Jane Arbor

  He nodded. ‘Wise, I think. And now you’re getting your bearings?’

  ‘Exploring, yes. I think I’ve got a fair idea of the plan of the hotel.’

  ‘Well, if there’s anything you want to know or can’t find, I’m frequently available, or you can always ask Denise. Meanwhile,’ he added, ‘I’ll let you try your hand at your first job—of dealing diplomatically with a complaint. A Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Calvin—an English couple who came to Hassi Ain airport by the same flight as you—claim they have a grievance and they must be placated.’

  Carey looked her dismay. ‘Placated by me? But can I? I mean—is it quite fair—or wise of you, Mr. Quest, to expect me to deal with guests’ complaints even before I—?’

  He cut in smoothly, ‘You have to begin some time and you can try with this one, which hasn’t anything to do with administration. Briefing you—it’s the fact of their having come through to Hassi Ain instead of their picking up an Auto-Maroc car at Tangier for doing the last lap in considerably more comfort. Their mistake, or rather, their agents’. But as the client must always be seen to be right, suitable balm must be poured at this end.’

  ‘By our taking the blame, you mean?’

  ‘If you like. I leave the actual handling to you.’

  ‘And if they don’t accept it?’

  ‘They probably will. They may be ruffled, but at the start of a holiday people can usually be coaxed back into an indulgent, slightly euphoric mood. Besides’—as he paused, the trace of the smile which narrowed his eyes and crooked an eyebrow was conspiratorial—‘it’s surprising what a vintage champagne and the proverbial feminine touch can do in the matter of diplomacy!’

  Carey smiled back. ‘You’re sending them champagne?’

  ‘They already have it.’

  ‘And you’d like me to go to them now?’

  ‘Please. You won’t need the lift. Their suite is on the mezzanine; Number four. Turn to your right at the top of the main staircase. Yes, what is it?’

  Carey had glanced down at her sandalled feet, at the jaunty flare of her burnt-orange skirt. ‘This dress?’ she hesitated. ‘Ought I to be in uniform?’

  ‘In uniform? Good heavens, no,’ Randal Quest exploded. ‘My dear girl, you’re not in the wardroom now! Here you’ll blend, you’ll mingle; you’ll melt unobtrusively into the background when you aren’t needed and you’ll only step out from the crowd when you are. Uniform would simply emphasise you—not at all the image I want. Do I make myself clear?’

  Carey compressed her lips, swallowed and drew herself up. ‘Quite, Mr. Quest,’ she said, and turned away.

  A quarter of an hour later she left the Theodore Calvins’ suite feeling that though the champagne had admittedly done its part, she had acquitted herself reasonably well.

  At first she had been received frostily, but when, rejecting the idea of allowing the hotel to be blamed, she had enlisted their sympathy by telling them that she too had been the victim of her own agent’s directions, they agreed that the error had indeed been at the English end, not the Moroccan, and were at least partway won over.

  The, discovery that they had employed the same agent made a bond. And of course they remembered seeing her on that inferno of a local plane! If they had known she was bound for the El Gara, they would have suggested she should share their car. But she had been met privately, had she? And was joining the staff? As a social hostess? Now that was interesting. Helping to smooth the guests’ stay? Organising things? Dealing with difficulties which arose? Not that they had any complaint beyond this one which, it seemed, was not the El Gara’s fault.

  And this champagne! No more of a gesture, of course, than was their right, considering the inconvenience they had suffered. But not every management took the trouble—Miss Donne would take a glass with them, no doubt?

  But Carey, doubtful of Randal Quest’s reaction to her acceptance of an invitation to drink with his guests, had refused it. Downstairs again, she went to his office to report on her mission. But he was not there and she was not to see him again until later, in the dining-room, she was sharing a table with Denise Corel.

  Denise, in a black ankle-length caftan and an embroidered forehead band, looked her criticism of Carey’s day dress. ‘I should have told you, I suppose. People usually change for dinner,’ she said.

  ‘But I have changed. As I wasn’t expecting to stay the night here, day things were all I brought with me,’ Carey admitted.’

  ‘Oh well, as long as you know the drill—’ Denise broke off as, on their way to their own table, Mr. and Mrs. Calvin stopped to exchange a word with Carey. When they had gone, ‘Do you know them?’ she demanded.

  ‘Only, you might say, in the course of duty.’ Carey, describing her debut as a peacemaker, was unprepared for the other girl’s derisive hoot of laughter as she finished.

  ‘Well, I must say,’ Denise scoffed, ‘Randal hasn’t lost much time about paying you out!’

  Before she replied Carey concentrated on the avocado pear with which she had been served. Then, ‘Paying me out?’ she echoed. ‘For what?’

  ‘My dear, you don’t know Randal, or you’d guess. For all the bother you and your sister have caused him, of course. She got away, so he means to get his money’s worth out of you as soon as may be!’

  ‘Well, as he’s paying me, I suppose he has the right,’ Carey replied as equably as she could. (What had she done so early to earn such waspish hostility as sounded in almost everything Denise Corel said?) Changing the subject, ‘Do you dine here every night with the guests?’ she asked.

  ‘Usually, by Randal’s orders, unless I’m going out.’

  ‘Mr. Quest does too?’

  ‘Unless he is giving a party in his own suite.’ Denise lifted a hand to Randal Quest as, moving about the room, he turned away from the Theodore Calvins’ table.

  He came over, shook his head at the empty chair Denise indicated. ‘Later,’ he said, and then to Carey, ‘You did your work well. Our friends admit to being soothed.’

  Carey smiled up at him. ‘I daresay the champagne helped,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, no doubt,’ he agreed carelessly, and then, ‘By the way—this necessary shopping of yours. I have business in Tangier tomorrow, leaving not later than eight. I’ll drive you in if you can be ready. You can? Good.’

  He did not return to their table before she and Denise left it. But later an envelope containing a thick wad of Moroccan dirham notes was delivered to her room. The advance on her salary which he had promised her. She would have been glad not to need it. But she did, and evidently the man’s efficiency forgot nothing.

  The long open car travelled fast over the almost totally traffic-free road which was as featureless as that between the airport and Hassi Ain town, the colour of its bordering terrain derived only from the grey-green of cacti and an occasional rose-splash of wild oleander, and its sparse shade from gnarled cork-trees and dusty umbrella palms.

  Once Carey remarked of it to her companion, ‘You seem to have the best of the local scenery around the El Gara.’

  He glanced about him. ‘You don’t find this attractive?’

  ‘Not very. Do you?’

  He shrugged. ‘You could find it grows on you. I travel it so often that I look at it without seeing it. It’s only when someone criticises it that I concede they may have a point.’

  ‘Though without agreeing with them?’

  ‘Certainly without agreeing with them. For instance—that great fan of sky; inland—that way—when it’s clear, the outline of the mountains, the Riff, and beyond them, the High Atlas. And even that’—his nod indicated the white boulders and stepping-stones of a dry stream-bed below the road—‘in England wouldn’t you croon with delight at the sight of it? “See what a wonderful summer we’re having—even the rivers are dry!” you’d say. Well, wouldn’t you?’

  Carey laughed. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘All right, I’m already counting my blessings.’

  ‘You d
on’t have to,’ he returned indifferently. ‘I’m only pointing out that they’re there.’

  As they approached the outskirts of Tangier by a tree-lined avenue between white villas, he asked her whether, from her cruising days, she knew the city, and when she told him she had only once had a few hours ashore there, he drove slowly round the European quarter, explaining its layout, recommending various shops for her purposes and ordering luncheon for her at a garden restaurant on the Rue San Francisco before dropping her on the Boulevard Pasteur at the offices of Auto-Maroc where he would be occupied all day.

  ‘A woman can lunch alone at Guitta’s without remark,’ he told her. ‘Afterwards you can rest there until the shops reopen after siesta. Then, if you’ll call back for me at Auto-Maroc in the early evening, we’ll dine in the medina before going home.’

  Left on her own, Carey wandered about the main boulevards, indulging the innocent pretence that she could shop at their elegant cosmopolitan boutiques, though knowing her budget would stretch only to gap-bridging necessities from the cheaper stores. Randal Quest had told her to have her purchases delivered to her, c/o Auto-Maroc, and whenever she asked for this to be done, she was flattered by the attention the name evoked.

  When the shops closed at noon she walked up the Rue Belgique to its junction with San Francisco, lunched in the Guitta garden but did not linger there afterwards. Instead she took a taxi down to the Port, dismissed the cab at one of the main gates to the medina and set out to explore its narrow streets, its covered ways and its enchanting small squares.

  At that hour of siesta, alone and strolling, she attracted small notice. Now and again a sleepy stallholder offered her his wares, but when she smilingly refused them he did not pester her. Once she bought some flat unleavened loaves and fed them to a couple of hobbled mules—an operation watched by a small boy who afterwards approached her, asked her nationality and offered to act as her guide.

  He introduced himself as Absalom Seid. He was eager to practise his English on her, but if she had been French or Italian or German he could speak all of them too, he claimed proudly. Amused, Carey took him on and was subjected to a strenuous hour, being shown the various sights of the Kasbah which she could very well have viewed at more leisure by herself.

  Before they parted she treated him to a glass of mint tea at a Moorish cafe and asked him whether he meant to train as a tourist guide when he left school.

  He drew himself up haughtily. ‘I am already thirteen years old. I have left school,’ he announced.

  ‘You have?’ From his slight build and his childish voice she hadn’t judged him much over ten.

  ‘And so?’

  ‘And so I shall go to work in a hotel, as shoe-shine or porter or waiter or cook, and then when I know it all, I shall have a hotel of my own,’ he claimed.

  Carey smiled. ‘I very much hope you will,’ she told him, preparing to tip him, only to be surprised and touched when he refused to take any money.

  ‘I collect stamps,’ he said. ‘I have stamps from all over the world. And you, mees, when you return to England, you will send me a letter with an English stamp?’

  ‘Of course I will, though I’m afraid I shan’t be going back just yet.’

  He lifted a thin shoulder in a shrug. ‘No matter. When you go. You have paper with you in your bag? And a pencil to write my address?’

  Carey had both a card and a ballpoint. Tongue caught between his teeth, he wrote laboriously, read aloud to her an address in the medina, and watched her return the card to her bag.

  ‘You will not forget?’

  ‘No, I promise.’

  ‘Then goodbye. So long. See you. Au’voir. Arrivederci. Auf wiedersehen—!’

  Carey laughed aloud. ‘Absalom, you’re showing off!’ she accused him.

  ‘Yes. Oui, oui. Si, si. Ja, ja,’ he chanted, grinned all over his face—and ran.

  Ships that pass, thought Carey, watching him go, and found she must swallow on a lump in her throat.

  Back in the European quarter, she finished her shopping and went to keep the rendezvous at Auto-Maroc. Her parcels had been delivered to her employer’s room and he was awaiting her there.

  He took her to dine in an Andalusian restaurant just inside the medina. It was romantically lighted by candle lanterns; the wall frescoes were of hidalgos courting Spanish ladies at rejas; the dishes on the menu were typically Spanish or Moorish and there was an early floor-show of folk-music and dancing.

  Relating the success of her day over the meal, Carey was taken aback by Randal Quest’s reaction to her afternoon’s expedition to the medina.

  ‘You came down alone?’ he queried sharply. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

  Her eyes widened in surprise at his tone. ‘In broad daylight? Why on earth not?’

  ‘Because it’s not done by an unaccompanied woman. You might have been faced with all manner of embarrassments.’

  ‘Even though, at that hour of siesta, I had the whole quarter practically to myself? Besides, I’ve already seen the souks of Istanbul and Cairo and Algiers and—’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘No. On those occasions there were always other people—cruise passengers or crew—who were visiting them too. But anyway, this afternoon I wasn’t alone for long. I attracted a guide who refused to be shaken off.’

  ‘Well, there you are! What did you expect?’

  Carey smiled demurely. ‘A very small boy guide whom I took to be about ten, but who was in fact thirteen, he said; very knowledgeable, very honest; who settled for a glass of mint tea and the promise of a franked English postage-stamp as payment for his trouble, and whose life’s ambition is to work in a hotel. Or rather, to work up in a hotel from shoe-shine boy to owner, no less.’

  ‘You surprise me. I thought they all wanted to join a group and pop-sing these days,’ was her companion’s cool comment. ‘And how do you propose to supply him with an English stamped letter in the near future?’

  ‘He insisted on giving me his address, and he’s prepared to wait until I go back and write to him.’

  A nod dismissed the subject then, and they went on to talk of other things—the decor of the place, the mounting frenzy of the tarantella dancing and the raw, haunting music of the guitars. Candles guttered and spat; the smoke haze thickened and suddenly a guitarist stepped down from the dais to move among the dining tables on a kind of serenade.

  They watched him amusedly. He had the art of amorous suggestion to perfection; a wink shared between a couple dining together had the girl blushing furiously; the wicked lift of an eyebrow as he sang was as good as a nudge to the man’s elbow. Intrigued laughter followed him, and then he was at their own table, a slim-shod foot on an empty chair as he ogled Carey and somehow contrived to involve Randal Quest as well.

  The Spanish song had a lilt to it; each of its three short verses with the same repeated chorus. He sang it with delightful flair and at the end he bowed to Carey with exaggerated gallantry and moved on. From across the shadowed table Randal Quest caught her glance. ‘Did you understand all that?’ he asked.

  Something in his look embarrassed her. ‘Most of it, I think. Perhaps not all,’ she admitted.

  ‘Then let’s have your translation of it as a lingual exercise.’

  She shook her head. ‘Foreign songs of that sort sound so silly in English,’ she demurred.

  ‘All the same—Suppose I give you a lead. “To go fishing in the river a man must have a rod and line...” Now go on from there.’

  There was nothing for it. Carey supplied the rest of the verse, hesitated and added the chorus in a rush— ‘ “To go walking in the evening, he must find a pretty girl.” ’

  Arms folded on the table, watching her, Randal Quest approved, ‘Fine. And the second verse?’

  ‘It’s in the same vein—“To go riding in the mountains a man must have a mule—” ’

  ‘And so on. But there’s a switched word in the chorus. Did you get that?’

 
‘Yes. “To go dancing in the evening, he must find a pretty girl.” ’

  ‘Good. And verse number three?’

  His insistence was merciless. Carey said, ‘Much the same again, of course. “To go shooting in the forest, a man must have a gun.” And the chorus of that goes’—she hesitated again and then plunged—‘ “To go loving in the evening, he must find the prettiest girl of all.” ’

  Randal Quest sat back, subjecting her to that downward gaze which she found oddly disturbing. ‘Of which, in the present circumstances, you disapprove the sentiments?’ he suggested.

  She stirred uncomfortably. ‘N-no. But I’d have thought he would realise which of his patrons weren’t—’

  ‘—which of them would be receptive to his love-ditties, and which wouldn’t?’ Randal Quest shrugged. ‘You take mere nonsense too seriously, Miss Donne. You can’t blame the boy. It must be good for business to assume that a man and a girl dining together by candlelight have more than a professional relationship. After all, he can only judge by appearances—what else?’

  Carey took the cool rebuke in silence and was glad when he changed the subject. They finished their meal and left to return to the car. Some distance out on their homeward road he asked,

  ‘This lad in the medina—you say you have his address?’

  ‘In my bag—yes. Why?’

  ‘Always supposing he would be prepared to start his hotel career as a bellboy, I might be interested. One of ours is leaving at the end of the month—to join a pop group, as if you couldn’t guess. So, subject to my vetting this buddy of yours and getting a character for him from his school, there could be a job for him at the El Gara.’

  ‘Really? That would be fine. I’d be awfully glad if there were.’ Realising, from her companion’s swift glance her way, that her enthusiasm might sound overdone, Carey went on, ‘Well, it’s like that sometimes, don’t you think? A chance encounter—and you couldn’t care less if you never met some people again. Whereas others—though you’ve neither the power nor much reason for wanting to keep them—you know you’re going to regret for quite a long time having to see them go. It was like that for me with young Absalom Seid this afternoon—I felt quite desolate for a moment that we weren’t ever likely to meet again.’