Hotel Mirador (7 page)

‘Tangier.”

“It’s a sprawling, complex city. Have you got your friend’s address?”

She nodded. “I’ll tell you about it some time—if you’ll let me come again, that is. If not, I’ll batt
l
e through on my own.”

His glance flickered over her. He rea
c
hed out and stubbed his cigarette in the bowl. “Are you thinking of going to Tangier?”

“Not yet. If I do decide to go, I’ll find out more about It. May I come again, Mr. Ritchie?”

“It’s a waste of time, but please yourself,” he said ungraciously.

“Very well, I will. Tomorrow at ten—and please don’t try to fob me off with
mint
tea!”

“That’s the servant’s idea. Don’t you like mint tea?”

“It could grow on one, I suppose. It reminds me of tea in an English cottage—it’s so different.” She moved towards the door, and then turned. “I read an article of yours last night, and found myself smiling more than once. For a man with a sense of humor you’re horribly grim in the flesh, Mr. Ritchie ... or may I call you Mike?”

“Call me what you like,” he muttered, and closed his eyes.

Sally looked down at him with compassion, but knew better than to touch him or the chair. He had lived with his defeat for so long that even the smallest battle was exhausting. Still, he had to fight, and she knew that the first onslaughts were the worst; once past them he would smile again and gather courage.

“Goodbye,” she said softly, and went out into the blinding sunshine.

As the driver set the car moving away from the house, Sally tried to gauge whether she had accomplished anything. Very little, she decided, but Mike was stirred and that went to the credit side. He gave so little away that it was difficult to pin-point the things which would really get under his skin.

Yet she was sure that before his accident Mike had been a normally high-spirited and gregarious young man, inventive, lively and full of fun. It was going to be quite a task, though, to convince him that he could be his normal self again. The loss of the power to walk and drive had stripped him of self-confidence, and the girl in whom he had been interested at the time had let him down so badly that he imagined himself as being unattractive to women for the rest of his life; it ha
d
n’t been that particular girl who mattered—only the fact that she had abandoned him in his most sensitive moment. And there was his job. He was the type to have loved the dashing about in North Africa, the interviewing spiced with danger.

Sally vowed to do all she could for Mike. Physiotherapy, die thought, would be the least of it!

At the hotel she went upstairs and washed, looked out upon the now deserted swimming pool and told herself that she would swim before dinner tonight, in the dark. Though it was so hot she hadn’t yet bathed at all, simply because the beaches seemed to be used solely by men, and the swimming pool by the rich hotel guests. She would have to work it out

* *
*

The evening swim in the huge and magnificent pool was an excellent idea, Sally decided, as she took off her white bathrobe and pulled a cap over the bronze curls. The grounds were cool and scented, a faint breeze ruffled the water, and the only figures in sight were those of the servants moving between the balconies and the lower regions. She dived in and found the water warm and caressing, and far more buoyant than she had imagined. It was piped sea-water. She swam and floated, looked at the jewelled sky and told it she hadn’t a trouble in the world. At least, nothing really sizeable. There seemed to be one or two little things fretting at the back of her mind, and there were moments when she felt really anxious about Lucette, but on the whole she was beg
innin
g to find life almost tranquil here in Shiran.

She found herself accepting the foreignness of the place. The call of the muezzin was romantic at first, and then hardly noticeable, the smells became part of the atmosphere, and how could a coastal town of Morocco possibly be complete without the veiled women and the men in white and striped djellabahs, the comical camels, the street-venders and fortune tellers, the cobblestones and crenellated walls? Sally was willing to accept them all.

She lay on her back, moving her arms lazily in cartwheel circles and watching the droplets slide from her fingers in the darkness. Then, distinctly, she felt a tickling sensation at the sole of her foot, and she pulled up her knees and sank them, to come face to face with Dane. Dane, who looked like a wet, mocking mask carved from mahogany.

“Hallo,” she said. “I thought you swam in the mornings.”

“I do, but I came out on to my balcony ten minutes ago and saw something interesting in the pool. It turned out to be you.”

“Who did you think it was?”

“You.”

She laughed. “Such flattery, Mr. Ryland! You came
down to save bothering with a shower.”

“Maybe. Come on out. I want to talk to you.”

“Right now?”

“It’s possibly the only place and time we can’t be interrupted—everyone’s too busy making themselves handsome for dinner. Come to the side, I’ll pull you up.”

But Sally swam farther, to where her robe had been dropped, and by the time she reached the spot where Dane was crouching on the side of the pool and extending a hand. She took the leap and landed beside him, felt him sling the robe about her shoulders before he slipped down and sat as she did, with feet dangling in the water.

“I didn’t bring any cigarettes. Do you mind?”

“No. Talk away.”

“Give me time, little one. Even I prefer a few preliminaries occasionally. Is this your first dip in the pool?”

She nodded and pulled off her cap, shook back her hair. “It’s delicious, isn’t it? But I’m hoping to bathe in the sea some time. Your hotel guests don’t seem to bother much with the beach.”

“The Moors don’t care for scantily-clad women, so we discourage communal bathing, excepting in our own grounds. But there are some lovely wild beaches along the coast where people picnic and swim in families. I’ll take you some time.”

“Why, thanks! I’ll hope to deserve it.”

He gave her a sidelong, calculating glance. “What does that mean—that you were unsuccessful with Mike this morning? You didn’t report, so I took it you’d drawn another blank.”

Sally took the scuff of the terry-cloth robe between her fingers and rubbed an itch from her chin. “I don’t think I did, actually. Mike told me a few things and he didn’t tell me not to come again. He’s terribly touchy, of course, but so heartily sick of himself that I believe he’ll talk again. Why don’t you go up and see him more often?”

“I go almost every day,” he said briefly.

“But you don’t stay long. Were you and he good friends before his accident?”

“Of course, but I’m eight years older than he is, and you’d be surprised what that means between cousins. Mike just galloped through life without a care. When he made errors he laughed, and very often made them again. He was always convinced that he led a charmed life—till he found he didn’t. When he was younger I cured him of borrowing, but it took the smash to cure him of a craving for speed and admiration. He caved in.”

Sally said nothing for a minute. She dipped her toes lower and watched them, and at last said thoughtfully, “Under the dash and bravado he was sensitive, but no one ever found it out.”

“Mike’s not sensitive—never has been. Don’t kid yourself that because he writes he’s one of these tender, artistic souls. With him, writing was mere reporting with his own individual twist.”

She said stubbornly, “It’s the sensitive people who feel an incapacity like his so terribly. The reason he won’t make the effort to regain the use of his leg is that he knows it will never be absolutely right, and therefore life will never be the light and airy thing it once was. There’s no other kind he wants, so he doesn’t try.”

Dane snapped his fingers sharply. “For heaven’s sake don’t talk to Mike like that He’s quite sorry enough for himself!”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” she said crossly. “Have I got to be careful what I say to you, too? I’m simply trying to analyze what’s wrong with him.”

“Well, leave it alone and stick to muscles!”

“You said you wanted me to persuade him to have treatment in a hospital.”

“Do that, but don’t start dripping emotion all over him, or he’ll respond in a way you may not bargain for! You don’t have to restore his faith in women. He’ll do that for himself when he’s fit to resume the chase.”

“You bully, you,” she said quietly.

Dane was silent for a surprised second; then he laughed. “You’re an odd girl. I’ve always thought women were easy to understand, but you’ve a quirk in the usual feminine character. Maybe it comes of reaching the age of twenty
-
one without having wallowed in the usual calf-love affair.”

“Who said I’d never had an affair? When I was training I was terribly gone on one of our lecturers.”

“Really?” His tone scoffed. “Did he respond?”

“Vaguely. We tramped the moors a few times and he took me to an art show in York.”

“Then what happened?”

“It fizzled out. He was talking to us on hydrotherapy one morning and a sort of mist seemed to disintegrate between him and me and I saw him plainly for the first time. I noticed that he used a technical word over and over again and often pronounced it differently
...
and that he had an outsize Adam’s apple and skeleton fingers. And at the same time I realized he hadn’t a sense of humor.”

“Is that why you’re now so emphatic that the man you marry must have one?”

“Perhaps. As a family, we Yorkes invariably see the funny angle. When you grow up in a happy family you feel sorry for people who are too intense to laugh, but you couldn’t link up your life with them.” She paused. “I don’t suppose you know
w
hat I’m talking about.”

“You’re fairly lucid, and I’d already gathered you were used to a fair amount of harmless fun. Since you’ve been here, I’ve noticed for the first time in my life that it’s rather nice to hear a woman singing at seven in the morning.”

“Good heavens, is my voice that penetrating?”

“It’s soft, but it carries. My balcony is not so far from yours, and we both have the doors open. Don’t mind me. I like it.”

Though she was still cool from the swim, Sally felt heat stealing up from her neck. She thought of that other woman who sang in theatres and night clubs and wished to heaven she’d left the habit of singing while dressing at home in Cumberland.

She got back quickly to the subject of Mike Ritchie. “Your cousin swims, I suppose?”

“He used to. We’d often do a mile along the coast at weekends.”

“It would do him the world of good to swim again, but he can’t start in the sea and there are too many people about here at the pool. He wouldn’t come.”

He thought for a minute. “There’s a lagoon along the coast, but before you can get Mike to enter it you’ll have to persuade him to take the drive. Give it a couple of days and we’ll talk again.”

Sally knew that she should now get up and take her smiling departure, but something held her here, at Dane’s side. She did get as far as slipping her arms into the robe, but the reluctance to move was so extreme that she felt pleasantly heavy and drugged.

Dane shifted, and when he spoke she noticed that his voice had changed. “Do you prefer the food at Le Perroquet to ours at the Mirador?”

Sally had to adjust her thoughts before she could answer, “Oh, you mean last night. It was a change, that’s all.”

“Tony’s idea, of course.”

“Yes.”

“He probably told you that I heartlessly turned down his plea for a date plantation.”

“I understood his father was willing to buy, but you weren’t interested in forming
a company to make it a success.”

“That’s it, exactly.” He had withdrawn. “In your leisure time here you’re quite free, but I’m afraid I’ll have to insist on your staying away from such places as Le Perroquet”

“You were there later than I was.”

“I escorted Mademoiselle Vaugard. She has a contract to sing there at eleven each night, for two months.” A pause. “I also happen to be a man.”

“I didn’t see anything wrong with the place.”

“I doubt if you’d see anything wrong anywhere,” he said coolly. “You’re not in a village in England, you know. Moroccan women hardly ever go out let alone enter restaurants and night clubs, and the few French wives of the military and government officials are strict in their ideas and behavior. You’re a resident here for the present—not a tourist who can hit the high spots and pass on.”

“Very well, I won’t go again.”

“Good. And if I were you I wouldn’t see too much of Tony, either. He’s entirely without a sense of responsibility.”