by Jane Arbor
At this point Carey had a choice. Her official conduct of the outward journey being over, she could either accompany the party on its tour of the city, or she could leave it to the guides and arrange to rejoin it later, in time for the return journey to Hassi Ain.
On her first tour of duty and once or twice since she had chosen the former. But today she decided to prowl on her own. A meeting-place on the Plaza was fixed, and she set out alone, to window-shop and perhaps to buy in the European quarter and afterwards to find a terrace cafe table where she could watch the colourful coming and going while she lingered over an ice or the local mint tea.
She strolled, made one or two purchases of things she needed and was just turning away from window-gazing in a gown-shop when a minor disaster struck. She caught the heel of her sandal in a grating, wrenched to free it, and though she saved the heel from dropping through the grid, she did so only at the expense of tearing the heel from the sole.
‘Teh!’ Annoyed, with the heel in her hand, she was still standing tiptoe on one foot, when an open car, Auto-Maroc owned, pulled up at the kerb and a voice asked, ‘In trouble, Miss Donne? Anything I can do?’
She looked across, surprised by the voice of Auden Calvin, who had claimed overnight that the one place he meant to avoid today was Tetuan. She hadn’t liked him. He was about the last person she welcomed seeing. But as she could hardly ignore him, she limped over to the car.
‘It’s nothing. Just the heel off my sandal.’ She showed it to him. ‘I must find a shoe store and get it fixed.’
‘Going dot-and-carry like that? Lucky I happened along. Get in,’ he invited, leaning to open the car door for her.
‘It doesn’t matter. I know there’s a shop not far away.’
‘Then let me take you to it. Meanwhile, we’re holding up the traffic.’
There was nothing for it. ‘Thank you.’ Carey joined him and directed him. But the shop she hoped to find open was already closed for the long siesta break, and she realised others would be too.
‘I’ve another idea,’ she said. ‘If you’d be kind enough to drop me at the Hotel Los Angeles just around the next corner, I know a shoe-shine boy on the terrace there, and I’m pretty sure he can do the job for me more or less while I wait.’
‘Then we’ll wait together.’
Carey had seen it as a way of being rid of him. ‘Oh no, I mustn’t keep you,’ she claimed.
‘Don’t be difficult,’ he retorted. ‘Where’s this hotel? Is the boy you want employed there?’
‘No, but he’s almost sure to be there. He’s one of several who hang around, offering to polish people’s shoes while they have drinks. I’ve let him do mine. His name is Talik.’
‘Then we’ll have a drink while we wait for your job to be done.’ As he drew up outside the hotel and Carey did not move, he said impatiently, ‘Oh, look, I can’t park just here, and you can’t loiter about their terrace without having a drink. So if you’ll go and find your lad, I’ll join you in a minute.’
Reluctantly Carey alighted, handed over shoe and heel to an eagerly co-operative Talik and sat at one of the terrace tables. Over their drinks Auden Calvin told her that after the exodus for Tetuan, he had found the hotel dull and so had decided to sample Tetuan for himself. She answered his question as to why she was alone without her party until their later rendezvous, and they talked other commonplaces until Talik came back with the repaired sandal. Carey thanked him and paid him, forestalling her companion’s gesture at doing so, and made a movement to leave.
Auden Calvin stood too. ‘Where now?’ he asked. Hastily Carey invented an errand to a shop which she prayed might be open, and when he offered, ‘Show me where, and I’ll drop you,’ again she had no choice but to return with him to the car.
The shop she had chosen was closed. With dismay she saw its furled sun-blinds, and evidently Auden Calvin had noticed them too, for he hardly slowed the car. ‘Too bad,’ he said, and drove on at increased speed.
Carey turned to him urgently. ‘It’ll be open later, and while I’m waiting, I can do something else,’ she said. ‘Please stop.’
He ignored her. ‘And you’re doing something else, aren’t you? You’re taking a drive with me.’
She bit her lip in annoyance. ‘I’m not. That is, I can’t—Please, Mr. Calvin, stop and let me get out. I’ve still some more shopping I want to do, and I’ve got to meet my party.’
He drove on. ‘Nonsense. You shouldn’t have told me the time of your date with them—you’ve got bags of time on your hands.’ As they approached an ‘All Directions’ signpost he glanced at it and nodded. ‘Xauen. Another of the places you mentioned last night. I think we’ll go there.’
‘Xauen?’ She stared indignantly at his profile. ‘It’s seventy or eighty kilometres into the mountains. You can’t!’
‘What’s to stop me? This is a good car and the tank is full.’
‘But Oh—!’ she gestured helplessly. This is insufferable! You never meant to drop me at that shop. You planned the whole thing!’
He laughed unpleasantly. ‘Planned to hijack you? How could I? I wasn’t to know I was going to come on you, handily alone with a broken shoe, was I? I’m not clairvoyant, my dear.’
‘I am not your dear! And you know I meant you planned it since—’
‘Ah, that’s different,’ he conceded. ‘Since the Los Angeles bit, yes. But relax. It’s a hijack without a ransom involved. I’ll return you to base unharmed all in good time. In my good time, that is,’ he amended.
‘But why?’
The prominent cold eyes were turned her way for the first time. ‘Do you know,’ he invited, ‘I’d have thought you might guess? Why not as payment for the way you chose to snub me last night?’
‘If I’d known you had this kind of pettiness in you, I wish I had snubbed you a good deal harder,’ Carey muttered. ‘Meanwhile I hope you realise that if I don’t keep my rendezvous in Tetuan, I could be in danger of losing my job?’
‘You won’t be, if I put in a word for you to your respected employer.’
‘I wouldn’t demean myself by asking you to,’ she declared, hotly.
‘All right, all right, relax. You probably won’t have to creep to him, once he knows who it was who carried you off. Hoping for certain—advantages from me, our friend Quest, I think. But you wouldn’t be in his confidence about that, of course—’ He glanced at his watch and calculated. ‘Say a hundred and fifty kilometres out and back and time for a short tour under your guidance of this “artistic gem, nestling in the shadow of the mountains”—I’m quoting the guidebooks, of course! —and you’ll be duly returned in good order. Not punctually to your date, perhaps. But returned.’
Carey said nothing, making silence the only dignity she had left to her. Once or twice, out on the open climbing road, he called her attention to the scenery. But she would not respond. With every kilometre the car covered, he was causing her to hate a road which, on other occasions, she had travelled with pleasure. And when at last they reached Xauen, the spell of the little mountain fastness was broken for her too.
Auden Calvin drew up in a square bordered by orange-trees. ‘Well now. Is Courier Miss Donne going to be gracious enough to show me the sights?’ he asked.
Carey stared ahead. ‘I told you my services weren’t to be hired by the hour,’ she said coldly. ‘If you want to see Xauen, I’m afraid you must explore it for yourself. But now you’ve had your way so far, I hope you’ll take me straight back to Tetuan.’
He looked about him. ‘Pity,’ he commented. ‘Still, two birds killed with one stone—the place looks as if it might pay for a second visit with, say, a less starchy companion, and at least I’ve shown you that I don’t snub easily and that in the matter of quits, I rather have the edge on you. And so now we’ll go back.’
He drove fast and in silence and the return journey took less time than the outward one. But when they reached the Plaza de Espana the call to evening prayer was being made from
the city’s minarets and Carey was over an hour late for meeting her party.
She looked anxiously about her. There were no Auto-Maroc cars parked; no familiar faces on the hotel terrace that had been the arranged meeting-place. They must have given her up. Now what? At her long sigh of worry and exasperation Auden Calvin queried, ‘They haven’t waited for you? Too bad. However, I’ve relented. I’ll see you safe—’ He broke off at her sudden exclamation as a figure she did know approached from the terrace to halt at her side of the car. It was Randal, who acknowledged Auden Calvin with a nod and by speaking his name and then turned his attention to Carey.
Now, fleetingly, she noticed his car parked at the kerb and at the table he had left on the terrace, Frau Ehrens. He said levelly, ‘You are very late, Miss Donne. You’ve missed your party. Didn’t you arrange to meet it here, to pay a visit to the Tapestry Schools?’
‘Yes, I did. I’m very sorry. But—’
He cut in, ‘Well, they were still waiting when Frau Ehrens and I arrived, so I suggested they go on without you, or the Schools would be closed for the day. So now, If Mr. Calvin will be good enough to drive you, perhaps you’ll join them there. As it is, they waited so long that their time for seeing over the Schools will have been badly cut.’
‘Yes, I realise that. I ought to have been on time. But—’
‘Oh, cut the apologies, Miss Donne!’ This time it was Auden Calvin’s voice which interrupted. ‘Blame me, why don’t you? I asked her to come for a drive,’ he explained to Randal. ‘She came. We went further than she expected. Result—a belated bout of conscience which must have spoilt her day—it certainly spoilt mine. So does she now have to attend at some dreary school or other? Instead, why don’t we make it a foursome for drinks, after which I’ll finish the job and drive her back myself?’
To that Randal said curtly, ‘Sorry, Calvin, I’m afraid she must contact her party. They’re naturally worried as to why she didn’t show up, and she’ll be going back as she came—with them. So if—or no, on second thoughts I’ll take her to find them myself. Perhaps then you’ll keep Frau Ehrens company for me, and explain to her that I’ll be back?’
‘Willingly—if you must be so brutal to Miss Donne!’ As she got out of the car Auden Calvin added—maliciously, she felt—‘Thank me for the buggy-ride, won’t you, Miss Donne? And next time we play truant we must lay our plans to a better timetable, h’m?’
Ignoring him, she followed Randal to his car. It was only a short drive to the Tapestry Schools—one of the showplaces of Tetuan, where children, from tinies to teenagers, learned and executed an intricate weaving of carpets and wall hangings. Randal drew up, called Carey’s attention to the waiting cars, said, ‘There’s no point in your going in as late as this. They’ll be out very soon,’ and then said, ‘Well?’ on a note of question which she was only to eager to answer.
She explained what had happened and he listened in silence. Then he commented, ‘Xauen and back? Quite a drive. But even if, you say, you were tricked into it, surely in that distance you could have found some way of calling a halt?’
Carey said evenly, ‘I was tricked into it. And what should I have done? Threatened to jump out at a hundred kilometres an hour?’
‘Of course not. I simply meant I’d expect you to be equal, in the time at your disposal, to persuading Calvin that he was putting you in a very false position. After all, I’d remind you that you chose to take umbrage at my warning against this kind of indiscretion involving a guest. You certainly let me assume you had enough savoir-faire or experience or plain know-how to be able to cope.’
‘And as I wasn’t able to dissuade Mr. Calvin from his silly trick, are you implying that I couldn’t have tried very hard?’
‘How am I to know how hard you tried or what methods you used? I wasn’t there,’ Randal countered. ‘But all right—I’ll concede that once he had the bit between his teeth and you were under way, there may have been nothing you could do, and as he admits himself, the thing wasn’t a total success. But I do suggest you needn’t have let it start. My dear girl’—as if in sudden bafflement which she ought to enlighten he looked her swiftly over—‘haven’t you learned to recognise yet the signs of a man with time on his hands, all set to chance his arm with the first pretty girl who happens along?’
Carey protested hotly, ‘But it wasn’t like that! You make it sound like a common—pick-up! I had broken the heel of my shoe. Are you saying I ought to have refused Mr. Calvin’s help?’
‘Not then, naturally. But the drink with him, his reluctance to leave you when the job was done, his invitation to a drive—didn’t they say anything at all to your feminine radar system?’
‘Of his intentions? No, they didn’t,’ Carey retorted. ‘And I didn’t accept his invitation, except, I thought, as far as another shop. And however it may look to you, he wasn’t making a pass at me. Later he told me he had wanted to pay me out for having snubbed him at his aunt’s party last night.’
‘Indeed? And had you snubbed him? For what reason?’
‘He knew what my job was, and he suggested I was at Mrs. Calvin’s private party to pick up some professional tips. He also chose to be patronising about the hotel’s organised tours—he called them “going native in a huddle of people”—and I resented that too.’
‘And showed it? Not very tactful, was it? Not exactly the diplomatic approach you’re being paid to show?’
Carey flushed. ‘I see. The customer having always to be right, one has to swallow whatever he chooses to say or do?’
‘Not “whatever”. That’s reducing the maxim to absurdity, and you know it. But while we have the El Gara’s image to sell, we can’t indulge in mere touchiness. Calvin may well have meant his taunt of you as a joke, and if he doesn’t care for conducted sightseeing, he is free to say so as forcibly as he likes. What’s more, I very much doubt that he abducted you this afternoon for the reasons of petty revenge which you say he claimed.’
‘And if it wasn’t spite, what do you suggest it was?’ Carey retorted.
‘At a guess—a reaction to challenge which should flatter you. As I see it, somewhere along the line you had pricked Calvin’s ego—not seriously, but enough to stimulate him into answering back. There’s a difference between that and real malice.’
‘And with the result the same—that he embarrassed me and put other people out—where is the difference?’
‘Malewise, there is one, believe me. Any man who is provoked by a woman of spirit gets a reflex action which is as positive as an electric shock. It’s not lethal to his regard for her, but it does sting him into the need to “show” her—a process which he can quite enjoy, rather than not. As, similarly placed, I usually do myself. As I daresay Calvin did. As, if you had handled it a shade more subtly at the start, you might have laughed it off too,’ Randal advised coolly.
‘You think so? Well, I don’t agree there was any point at which I could have laughed it off—or wanted to. But I can’t win, can I? I’ve told you the truth exactly as it happened, and you’re still almost wholly on Mr. Calvin’s side. Why?’
Though Carey felt driven to the question, as soon as it was out she knew she dreaded the answer, lest Randal should confirm that he was touting for money from Auden Calvin and therefore couldn’t afford to offend him. Randal had every right to finance his projects as best he could. That was farseeing business. It wasn’t, either, that she resented being made his pawn in order to keep Calvin’s favour, as much as it mattered ... too much ... that Randal himself shouldn’t truckle to the man for any case in the world. Somehow she had become as defensive of Randal’s dignity as of her own; proud for him; involved.
Almost holding her breath, she waited. But when it came his reply said nothing that she feared it might.
‘Why?’ he echoed her question. ‘Probably, I’d say, because Calvin and I are both men, and I feel—“There, but for the grace of God—” and the rest.’
Carey worked that out. ‘You’re say
ing that in his place you might have behaved the same?’
‘M’m—not quite so crudely, I hope. Differently; with less public annoyance for you, but with much the same end result in view.’
‘That of showing me, as you call it?’
Randal’s glance went to her again, this time with the beginning of a smile narrowing his eyes. ‘Exactly. And without prejudice—taking considerable pleasure in showing you,’ he confirmed.
He couldn’t guess—why should he?—at the little leap of her heart which was her response to the oblique threat from which the smile seemed to take the sting. She felt disarmed; mollified. They could go on from there
But then he was looking ahead, towards the wrought-iron gateway from which her party was beginning to straggle in twos and threes, and at once she saw she had a problem.
‘They’ll all want to know what happened to me—why I let them down. What shall I tell them?’ she appealed to Randal.
‘The truth, why not, that you had broken your heel and had to get it mended?’
‘That couldn’t have kept me absent so long,’ she objected.
‘Then you mistook the place of rendezvous and were waiting for them somewhere else.’
‘For more than an hour? Very thin.’
‘No, either will do. For they, as a party, don’t know you were gone from Tetuan for several hours. They are not to know either that after they had left without you, you didn’t turn up almost straight away. Which you did,’ Randal added meaningly.
‘But I—’ Slowly comprehension dawned. ‘Oh—did I?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Hard on their heels. I didn’t ask you to follow them to the Schools until I was ready to bring you. By which time it wasn’t worth while your joining them.’
Carey looked at him appreciatively. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much.’
He opened the car door to enable her to get out. ‘Regard it as part of the service. But don’t overdo the gratitude,’ he advised drily. ‘I could be covering up for Calvin too.’
