by Jane Arbor
‘Not?’ Randal affected surprise. ‘Why not? With your affair well under way, wasn’t it a shade late for playing hard-to-get? Or was it caution that held you back? Belated conscience towards your unwritten agreement with me? A conscience which didn’t last long, or you wouldn’t be keeping this date with the man tonight—What time was it for?’ He shot the question suddenly.
‘Ten o’clock.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s now nearly eleven. Do you still expect him to show up?’
She shook her head. ‘Not now.’
‘Yet you actually hoped that he would? You must know he’s leaving tomorrow—to quote him, glad to shake the dust of the place from his feet—Considering that, you let him con you into thinking that a playboy of his type would willingly face a farewell scene to a passing, holiday romance! How do you suppose it would have gone? “Nice to have known you, honey! Fun while it lasted. Serious? Who, me? You must be joking!” And you—!’ Randal broke off his cruel mimicry to explode again, ‘You, Carey Donne—if the lout had had the common decency to keep your date—would have let yourself be written off, just like that? God!’—the single right and left movement of his head held despair of her—‘haven’t you any higher estimate of your value to a man than that?’
Rendered dumb in face of a reproach for which she had no one but herself to thank, Carey could only stare at him, and after a moment he raged on, ‘So you haven’t—for all the hauteur you accorded my warning against making yourself cheap with the guests? You’ve learned nothing at all from the experience of men which you claimed to have, thanks to your previous job? Nothing even from—?’ He broke off there to flash suddenly, ‘And kindly don’t flip back that it’s none of my business. Because with this’—the gesture of his hand indicated the villa—‘I’m afraid you’ve made it so. Not to put too fine a point upon it, you’re guilty of trespass.’
She flushed with shame. ‘I realise that. I’m sorry,’ she said. Momentarily she was tempted to retaliate in kind; to demand of him what was the difference between his own philandering and Auden Calvin’s. Hadn’t he claimed—and exercised—his male right to experiment at her expense? To—how had he put it?—to keep his amorous muscles in trim? But fearing he might well remind her that on that occasion he had thought himself encouraged ... invited, she refrained. Instead she made a movement towards the door, only to find him barring her way, his open palm outstretched.
‘You have Denise’s key, I think?’ he queried.
‘It’s in the lock. I left it there after I used it.’ As she spoke the hood over her hair slipped back. Reaching for it, she fumbled it and had to suffer the automatic courtesy of his drawing it forward for her.
‘Thank you.’ But he still did not let her pass. Looking down at her, he said, ‘I suppose you’re thinking that if I had a grain of chivalry, I’d be pitying you, not flaying you alive?’
She avoided his eyes. ‘Don’t, please—’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Talk of pitying me. You don’t understand—’
‘I’ll say I don’t!’ he retorted savagely. ‘Skip the pity too, for it’s a weakness I’ve no intention of allowing myself. And don’t ask me why, for you mightn’t relish my answer.’
Carey’s chin went up. ‘Could it be any more offensive than the contempt of me you’ve expressed already?’ she flung at him.
‘I’ve an idea you would find it a good deal more crude—even primitive. And so—if you’ll permit me the lesser offence of telling you that for the moment I’ve had just about as much as I can take of the sight of you—shall we go?’ he suggested, and stood aside.
She went past him in silence and outside would have given a great deal to keep her distance from him. But the path through the gardens was narrow and uneven and she had to endure the exquisite agony of a touch beneath her elbow which was as coldly dutiful, she felt, as the impersonal gesture with which he had adjusted her hood. Once, the frailty of her evening sandals caused her to stumble, but though as he caught her to him, she was aware of the deep, strong beat of his heart, all he said was ‘Careful!’ and relaxed his hold at once.
The gardens were sweet with night scents and on side paths and under the trees happier couples were strolling between dances. Meeting and greeting some of them on their way, Carey reflected that Randal and she must appear as intimate and relaxed as they did, instead of being the judge and the accused which they were.
She swallowed her pride to ask the question which had to be put. ‘After this, I suppose you will waive giving me notice, and ask me to leave at once?’ she said.
She heard the sharp breath he drew. ‘Waive notice? Expecting me to say yes to that? I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the answer is no,’ he said curtly.
‘You can’t mean that?’ She turned urgently to the dark face she could not see behind the torch-beam. ‘You must want me to go! The—the relations between us would be impossible! Besides, you let me understand just now ... at the villa, that you couldn’t wait to see the back of me, that you—’
‘Correction,’ he cut in. ‘I said “For the moment,” and it’s a disinclination which I daresay I can control in the interest of the obligations you still have to me and to your job. You’ll stay.’
‘You can’t keep me against my will!’ she retorted hotly.
‘And you can’t leave while your contract still runs. If you choose to, I’ll sue. I promise you that. But leave it for now. I’ll discuss our “impossible” relationship in the morning. In the meantime, perhaps you’d like me to excuse you for the rest of the evening?’
‘I shouldn’t dream of expecting you to!’
He lifted a shoulder indifferently. ‘As you please.’ Silence followed that until they came into the full glare of the lights which rayed out over the front terrace from the hotel foyer. Then Randal said, ‘Something I should have told you earlier. I’m sorry. My search for you began when you were being paged from Reception for a long-distance telephone call. Your sister, ringing from Ibiza.’
‘Rosalie? What did she want?’
‘I understand she rang off when you had been paged and weren’t found.’
‘Oh. Well, thank you. If I may, I’ll ring her back—’ Carey checked as she noticed she had lost Randal’s attention to a car which, after arriving at speed on the car-crowded terrace, was seeking a vacant place at the hotel entrance. There was none. The driver double-parked, halted, got out and reached the swing-doors of the foyer at the same time as they did themselves.
He was young, informal in the accepted jeans and open shirt of a tourist. He addressed Randal hurriedly. ‘This the El Gara—right? So whom do I contact about a couple of casualties I’ve picked up? Well, maybe they’re not real casualties—I’m no doctor, so I wouldn’t know. But they’re cut about and shocked—at least the girl seems to be. Left from here about an hour ago, I gather. The guy wasn’t too keen on my bringing them back, but the girl insisted, and what else could I do with them? Their own car out of control on the road up to Xauen—ditched, and pretty much of a write-off, I’d imagine. So I off-loaded them and the girl’s bit of nonsense-luggage and brought them back. The management will know, I suppose? They’ll cope?’
Randal said quickly, ‘I am the management. I’ll deal with it. Thank you, Mr.?’
‘Grainger. Bob Grainger’ the young man supplied.
‘And these two? Guests of ours? Or non-residents who had left after spending the evening here, did they say?’ Bob Grainger looked blank. ‘Search me. I judged they weren’t up to much questioning, and they didn’t utter a word to each other on the way back. Or no, I tell a lie—when I asked them where they’d come from and they said here, the girl did add that it was her home—’
‘Her—home? Randal’s incredulous glance went from Grainger’s face to Carey’s. ‘Denise?’ he breathed. ‘What the—?’ Then, followed by them both, he was striding across the terrace; was at the car as, first, Auden Calvin alighted heavily from it, and then Denise, in a daysuit,
her head bare and tousled for want of the stained silk headscarf which she held to one side of her face. On that side her eye was puffing and she swayed on her feet before Randal caught her in his arms and held her fast.
Bob Grainger was taking something from the car—Denise’s new dressing-case which Carey had last seen half packed in the girl’s room.
‘There’s this—’ the boy said.
‘I'll see to it.’ Mechanically she took the case from him, her thoughts in turmoil. But Denise had promised! Claiming she couldn’t get in touch with Auden Calvin, she had lied! Even as she handed over the key to the villa, she must have known which of the Hassi Ain bars she could telephone, in order to change the place of the assignation which she had pretended Carey had persuaded her not to keep! She had simply continued her packing, gone ahead with her plans. And I kidded myself I’d made her listen, thought Carey bitterly, and then in new bewilderment—But—the road to Xauen, Bob Grainger had said. Why Xauen? Denise had said they planned to make for Tangier!
Momentarily the little group around the car was in tableau, tense and still. Then Randal looked above Denise’s bowed head at Auden Calvin. ‘You hurt?’ he demanded.
The other man shrugged and brushed himself down. He flexed his thick neck. ‘Nothing to speak of. Maybe a bruise or two,’ he said.
‘Good. Your fault, this crash?’
‘Mine? No, hers. The little fool tried to snatch the wheel from me.’
‘Why did she do that?’
‘How should I know? Ask her.’
‘I’m asking you. She drives herself, so she’d hardly have done anything so daft without good reason. And so—?’
But at that point Denise lifted her head. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Randal, forget it,’ she protested. ‘And as for you,’ she spat at Auden Calvin, ‘get lost, will you? I’ve had you. I never want to set eyes on you again—never!’
His prominent eyes gleamed coldly. ‘And the same goes for you, fairy. Why did I waste my time?’ he sneered, and then, brushing past Bob Grainger without a word of thanks to him, he turned back to the hotel.
Bob murmured, ‘Charming type.’ And then, ‘Well, if there’s nothing more I can do, I’ll be on my way. Got a bed waiting for me—I hope!—at the Parador in Xauen. Or maybe’—he turned to Randal—‘I ought to show you where this car is ditched? Hired, our friend said. One of yours?’
‘Almost certainly, I should think,’ Randal said. ‘Thanks. If you’ll do that on your way to Xauen, I’ll get out my car. Meanwhile, come in for a drink, will you, while we get things sorted out? The main priority, a doctor for my ward here, and then—’
At that Denise flung away from him at arm’s length. ‘I don’t need a doctor! I’m all right!’
‘You’ll see Frenet, who happens to be here—and like it,’ he ordered, then looked beyond her at Carey. ‘And while I’m gone, you’ll get Denise to bed and stay with her until after Dr. Frenet has been to her?’
‘Of course—if she’ll let me.’
Routine question, formal answer. And yet there had been something unreadable in the glance he had sent her; a kind of promise—or of threat?—of other questions withheld, to which her own response had leapt, as at the touch of an electric spark.
What was he thinking now? Believing about her? Wondering? But then Denise, breaking free of him, was claiming her, clasping her by the arm in a frenetic grasp and crying, ‘Carey, I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’ve got to explain! You’ve got to let me, and forgive me if you can. I thought that by the time you found out, I’d be away and safe—in Tangier. Tangier? That’s a laugh—’ She broke off to glance wildly about her. ‘Oh, look. I’ve had just all I can stand of this. Can’t we go?’ she urged piteously.
Thankful to be wanted, Carey said gently, ‘Any time you’re ready. Now?’
Hand-in-hand they went into the hotel ahead of the two men.
Young Dr. Frenet, summoned from the dance-floor, had evidently had his discretion briefed by Randal. For he asked Denise the minimum of questions, merely treated her cut cheek, examined her for bruising, directed Carey to get her to bed and to see that she took the sedative he prescribed. He would look in again in the morning.
At first Denise did as she was told, showing something of the blind compliance of a sleepwalker. But reaction set in with Carey’s proffering of the sedative tablet. Oh yes, she would take it, she agreed stonily. Anything to stop her thinking—But not yet. It would only make her muzzy, and all she asked for the moment was for Carey to listen and to try not to blame her too much, while she talked the whole shaming thing out of her system—if she could.
But that said, she lapsed again into a moody silence, staring at nothing, until Carey, sitting at her bedside, prompted gently,
‘I’m not judging you, you know. You don’t have to tell me anything. But if you want to—why was it that you had this crash on the road to Xauen, Mr. Grainger said, not on the way to Tangier? I thought—’
‘Huh!’ Denise laughed shortly on an ugly note. ‘So did I. But Tangier was where that—that type said he had taken rooms for each of us at the El Minzah until we could be married by special licence. Xauen was where he meant all along that we should land up. For—just for—for the couple of nights he could spare me! He had booked out from here for tomorrow and wouldn’t be coming back. He had always rather fancied Xauen for a bit of a—a frolic, and anyway, what was my problem? I was my own mistress now, wasn’t I? And it wasn’t as if we’d leave any evidence behind us at Xauen. For we shouldn’t be using our own names. We’d be—oh, you can guess the rest!’ Denise dropped her face into her cupped hands.
Carey understood only too well. After a minute of silence she said, ‘And you didn’t suspect any of this until after you had left with Calvin this evening?’
Denise looked up wearily. ‘Not a thing—I swear it. Little idiotic fool that I am—I believed him. Can you credit that?’
‘Perhaps because you wanted to rather badly,’ Carey suggested.
‘Perhaps. Anyway, when you offered to go down to the villa in my place, I let you, and as I did know where I could reach him in the town, I phoned him as soon as you had gone, and arranged instead for him to pick me up on the road. And it wasn’t until we were—oh, several kilometres out—that it dawned on me we weren’t on the road to Tangier at all, and I told him so and asked him if he knew.’
‘And he said—’
‘He just laughed—nastily, and said he had been wondering when the penny would drop. I went all cold and said, “What penny?” and he said we were going to Xauen and told me all I’ve just told you. And—and he only laughed again when I ordered him to stop the car, and he wouldn’t.’
‘And then?’
‘I hardly know. I was so shocked, so mad, so—hurt. But the hurt didn’t last as long as my rage did. I remember sneering that I supposed that at Xauen we’d pass as Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and his saying No, as Monsieur and Madame Dupont, which was just about as common as Smith, but had a more cosmopolitan flavour, didn’t I think—and then I saw red and reached for the steering-wheel. I—I fought him for it and he fought back. But the car won, and we ran off the road and only just didn’t turn over.’
‘And we know the rest.’ Carey sighed. ‘I suppose it was all worth it, if you are cured of the man. But I do blame myself, for I could have told you what he is; he once tried to shanghai even me.’
‘Why even?’ Denise showed a gleam of interest. ‘You’re not exactly a wall-eyed dwarf, are you? I know, when you first came, and I was trying to impress Randal, I was pretty jealous of you. It was different with your sister. She was all taken up with Martin and if she had made any play for Randal, rival-wise I could have eaten her for breakfast. But there was something about you— or perhaps it was something that came over from Randal about you—Anyway, if I hadn’t grown out of him myself, I’d have been afraid of you, though now I’d give a lot to think he had the sense to want you instead of that overblown Frau. Pity, isn’t it, that you haven’t her
money, and that he isn’t more human?’
Carey said quickly, ‘I don’t think you have the right to assume Randal is only interested in money. Gerda Ehrens is far from overblown; she is glamorous and provocative and—’
‘—And an octopus, all tentacles flailing,’ Denise supplied tartly, switching then to add, ‘I was sorry about the villa, Carey. How long did you wait there before you gave up?’
‘About an hour. Long enough to conclude that Calvin had stood you up, and to be grateful that it wasn’t you who had been waiting for him.’
Denise nodded. ‘So you came away. And of course you thought then that you had made me see reason, and that I was still safely around—’ She broke off, her lips and chin quivering piteously. ‘Oh, Carey,’ she appealed, ‘why are men like that? Why do they? Flatter people, I mean. Exploit them. Sun themselves—why?’
Carey reached for the hand that was plucking restlessly at the coverlet. Holding it still, she said, ‘That’s just cynicism, and you’re too young for it. What’s more, on just the experience of one Auden Calvin, you’ve no right to it. Because most men aren’t “like that”. I know they—chance their arm with girls. But they are made like that—to be the hunters. But they still have standards—particularly standards for the girls. As I know Randal has for you. As Michael has—’
Denise pulled away her hand in order to brush it across her eyes. ‘Oh, Michael is just wet,’ she scoffed. ‘He puts people on pedestals!’
‘And what’s so wrong with a pedestal for a girl? It’s better than assuming she’s willing to share a gutter,’ Carey retorted crisply, and though Denise’s grudging, ‘You think so? Isn’t there a happy medium?’ was unrewarding, she hoped, as she rose to go, that she had made her point.
She had made Denise comfortable against her pillows and was offering the sedative again when there was a knock at the door and going to it, she opened to Randal.
He looked past her. ‘How is she? Asleep yet?’ he asked.
‘Not yet. She wanted to talk first.’
