Hotel Mirador (18 page)

Sally walked out of the room, followed by the two men. The Caid’s robes made a soft rustling sound as he went ahead once more and opened the doors. But he did not take them back to the reception room. Instead he opened the door of an astonishingly well-stocked library, which was certainly the brightest and gayest Sally had ever seen. There were two scarlet leather chairs, a desk and the inevitable tooled l
e
ather stool surmounted by a gold
-
tasselled cushion. The Caid bade his guests take the chairs and himself sat on the stool.

“Some tea?” he asked.

“No, thank you,” said Sally.

She looked at Dane and knew he would have accepted a whisky, if such a thing were available in this kasbah of non-drinkers. She didn’t know why he should, but he looked fed up, so she started the conversation herself. “Monsieur, when did your son have polio?”

It must have offended the Caid’s sense of propriety that he had to talk directly to a woman, for he stared straight at the opposite wall.

“It is nearly a year ago.”

“And when did the shoulder show damage?”

“About four months after. We called the doctor and he said that if the legs were not affected, the next most likely part was the shoulder.”

“Was your son paralyzed with polio?”

“Not after a few days. There was fever and pain
all over the body, but in three weeks he was quite well again. There was then nothing
...
until many weeks later he complained of pain in the shoulder. It grew worse, and stiff. Our doctor is old, he would not touch it
.
Either it would clear up of itself, he said, or it was a permanent disability from the polio.”

There was a silence, during which Dane shifted and made the chair creak beneath his weight. Obviously the Caid could not bring himself to question a woman, and Dane was not in the mood just yet to help him out.

So Sally said, “I’m not competent to give an opinion, monsieur, but I think you’ll find your son had polio only mildly. In paralysis, the bones go thin and brittle, but the little boy’s bones are slightly larger on the left than on the right shoulder. Also, the skin in a paralyzed area is bluish, but your son’s skin is healthy, and on that shoulder it’s the same color as the rest of his body.”

There was another silence, more tense this time. Then Dane said, with unnecessary crispness, “Go on, honey, tell us the lot. There’s more on your mind, isn’t there?” The Caid must have gained only the gist of this because it was spoken so quickly; he merely nodded. Sally felt as she had felt some time ago, when she had taken her Practical. Inwardly she trembled, but her words were clear and to the point.

“I can’t tell you what's wrong with the child’s shoulder, but I’ve felt the same condition in another child. At the Home in England where I work, we had a couple of children from a poor family. One had rickets; the other had a stiff and painful knee—he couldn’t walk. It was discovered that the knee had been badly wrenched and never been re-set.”

Dane leaned forward. “You think that may have happened to Safia’s shoulder?”

She shook her head quickly. “I can’t say, any more than you could. All I can say with certainty is that if he were a relative of mine I’d have him in hospital tomorrow.”

Stiffly, the Caid stood up. “You have been very good, Miss Yorke. I must thank you for the trouble you have taken.”

And that was all. He took them back to the rest of the guests, Sally sat between Lucette and Pierre de Chalain and watched more acrobats, dancing girls whose chief attraction were their sequined eyelids, and a snake charmer.

She was aware of Lucette leaning towards Dane, of Dane unbending a little and laughing with her, of Pierre smothering a yawn and murmuring that it was past midnight and they had an hour and half of driving before bed.

Then at last it was over. There were thanks on both sides, repeated again and again, the Caid bade everyone goodnight individually and took no longer over it with Sally than with anyone else. He went with them into a courtyard bathed in moonlight, where shadows were sharply etched in black and the rest was a stark unearthly
white. The nine guests were ready to get into the cars.

“Most of you might like a change of driver this time,” Dane suggested lazily.

“Oh, let me go with you!” begged Lucette. “I have such a ghastly feeling that I may have to leave Shiran soon, so I must make the most of it.”

“With Dane?” said someone. “How outspoken can the young get!”

Dane smiled, a little tightly. “Lucette was bo
rn
to flatter the male,” he commented. “Pierre, you might like to take Sally in the other car and two or three of you others can come with me.”

It was blatant dismissal, though none of the hot
el
guests was likely to realize it. Sally, feeling sick and wounded; turned straight away and got into the other car without help. She saw the silver and blue thing glide away and gather speed, smiled brightly at Pierre.

“For tonight you’re my gaoler, it seems. I hope you don’t mind very much.”

“It is my pleasure,” he said gallantly. Then he hesitated, and added very quietly, “Dane is angry about something. You are better out of his way. Mademoiselle Lucette can more easily deal with a man who is in a bad humor.”

Sally did not reply. She sat back as they drove away from the Caid’s house, gazed without curiosity at the mysterious little lanes where donkeys still munched in the doorways and an occasional camel sat and ruminated. They passed out of the kasbah and met the loose earth of the road. The evening was over.

* *
*

A couple of quiet days were a great help to Sally. She saw Mike twice each day at his house, and bathed with him in the Hotel Mirador pool each afternoon. Yes, Mike had at last consented to come again to the Mirador, though he would only bathe late in the afternoon, when the pool was almost deserted. For some reason he seemed to take a malicious pleasure in sprawling in one of the foam-rubber loungers and watching the holiday making rich, and he always commented upon them, rather loudly. Lucette waved to them once, and he urged Sally to call her over. But Sally refused.

“While you’re apart you two get along. I refuse to sit by and listen to an exchange of barbed remarks.”

“But I ought to get to know the girl better before she leaves,” he protested. “Perhaps I’ve misjudged her.
”

“
Forget it, there’s a dear. She’s not very happy, you know.”

Mike exaggerated his glance of surprise. “Why not? I thought she 'had everything—even Dane.”

Sally said, rather more firmly than was necessary, “Dane’s not falling for Lucette—not very far, anyway.
”

“
A pity,” he said. “I hoped he was getting it bad. Still, if she works on him for a few more days
...”
He left it at that.

Sally had never disliked a patient, but there were moments when she came near to disliking Mike. But immediately she became sorry for him, because he was torn between a desire to get whole again and a fear that the future might let him down as the past had done.

Early next morning a parcel was delivered at the hotel for Sally. It was addressed in a beautiful spidery hand, and carefully sealed. Mystified, she slit the wrapping and opened the square cardboard box. It was full of hand-made trinkets, each one swathed in a white silk square, and at the bottom of the box lay a card on which was written in French: “The Caid of Nezam instructs me to send the enclosed gift to Mademoiselle Yorke of England, and to thank her most sincerely for her kindness towards his son.” There was no signature, but somehow Sally was sure that the tutor she had seen in the boy’s bedroom had written the card.

She unwrapped a chased silver bracelet set with amethysts and zircons, another in the shape of a snake, with ruby eyes. There were also a signet ring, a chain necklace drooping a topaz, and several small charms made of jade and beryl. The whole must be worth quite a lot, and Sally was worried. What did one do about such a gift? It wasn’t as if her advice had been welcome to the Caid; he intended to ignore it. In any case, one couldn’t accept costly gifts from a stranger, whatever his position and race.

She read the card again, smiled slightly at “Mademoiselle Yorke of England.” It sounded Elizabethan. Then she sobered once more, and thought about the little boy with the lumpy painful shoulder, his bravery and the pity of it all. On an impulse she gathered up the box and its contents and went along to Dane’s suite. But at the door she had to collect her courage; the bright, stilted smile came to her lips and she knocked, quite firmly.

He opened the door at once, as if he had been on his way out, paused in the doorway and appraised her unsmilingly, then stepped back into the room and inclined his head to indicate that she must come in.

“Had breakfast?”

“Yes, thank you. I
...
just wondered what to do about this parcel. It’s from the Caid.”

She placed the box on the desk and took off the lid. The trinkets lay within, unwrapped, and Dane looked at them and picked up the amethyst and zircon bracelet.

“Pretty,” he remarked briefly. Then he read the card and dropped it on top of the articles in the box. “Leave them with me, will you?”

“If you like. What will you do with them?”

“I’ll thank him formally for you, and get rid of them.
”

“
Give them away?” she said blankly.

“It’s the best thing to do. The Caid doesn’t realize that it isn’t done for an English girl to accept this kind of thing from a stranger—but you and I understand it, don’t we?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t
.
If I’m not returning them to the Caid for fear of offending him, the least I can do is keep them myself, as mementoes. In fact, I’d rather like my family to see them.”

“All right.” He turned away. “If you’ve decided what to do, why did you come to me?”

“I thought you ought to know I’d received the gift, and I wasn’t
s
ure whether it would be possible to return it. It seems I did wrong in coming here. I apologize.”

But he had carelessly got between Sally and the door. “Has it occurred to you to wonder how you earned the little present?”

“I certainly didn’t earn it, but he’s a rich man and apparently generous. He felt he ought to pay for ignoring everything I said.”

Dane shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ll tell you something. The day before yesterday, a few hours after we’d got back from the kasbah, I wrote to the Caid thanking him for his hospitality. Right at the end of the letter I invited him to come here and bring the child. That way, he could consult Dr. Demaire, and a specialist if we can get hold of one, without insulting the old doctor at Nezam. The Caid hasn’t replied, even though this gift must have been brought in by messenger very early this morning.”

“What do you think it means?”

“The gift? It means that the episode is more or less closed. He thanks you in the only way he knows for doing your best
.
In a day or two I shall receive a courteous acknowledgment of my letter, and that will be the end of it.”

“The poor little scrap,” she murmured. “How can a father be so blind and stubborn?”

“Stop being mawkish about someone else’s child,” he said curtly. “I know the way he thinks; he simply has his code and sticks to it, however foolish it may seem to us. The old doctor at Nezam has attended the Caid’s family since before the Caid himself was born. To consult someone else would be dealing a death-blow to the man, and the Caid would never consent to deceive him. On the other hand, if the child were threatened with death there might be some chance of moving his father
...”
He broke off, and added, in quieter tones, “Leave it to me, Sally. Keep the damned stuff if you want it, but let me handle the thanks.”

“Very well,” she said coolly, and took a step or two towards the door.

But it would still have been difficult to get out of the room without asking him to move or deliberately reaching across him to the handle. She curbed the quivering, and the vexation.

He took the box from her hands and placed it on the wall table near the door. Then he held her elbow and led her on to the balcony, and they looked down at a couple of early swimmers, and at the bright umbrellas above empty tables. He stood there for a moment, his expression a little jaded.

“For the first time, I’m tired of the view,” he said. “Have you changed your opinion of it?”

“I don’t mind it, but I wouldn’t like it forever.”

“I thought not. You don’t sing in the mornings any more.”

She ran her finger along the stone wall. “Don’t I? Perhaps I’m afraid of waking Lucette.”

“Or maybe you’ve nothing to sing about. Yearning for Tony?”

She shrugged. “When I begin to yearn, I’ll run down and see him.”

“You haven’t been looking too merry since he left.
”

“
Oddly enough, I haven’t been feeling it,” she said. Let him make what he liked of that.”

His jaw tightened slightly, his eyes looked cold as the Channel in winter. “I’ve had a message from Mike this morning. He says he particularly wants to give a little party at lunch time, here at the Mirador. Know anything about it?”

“Nothing at all.” She paused. “It’s rather strange. Didn’t he give any reason?”

He turned back to the desk and took up the sheet of notepaper. “Just a list of guests—you and me,
Cécile
, Lucette and himself. Says he feels like branching out, and he intends to do it in a small way to begin with. I wonder what’s got into him?”

“Aren’t you pleased that he’s keen to get back into social life?”

“Of course.” But the reply sounded automatic. “Why the suddenness of it, though? I’ve invited him here only recently, but he wouldn’t come. He has something on his mind.”

Sally leaned back against the door frame of the french window and looked at him as he stood, tall and
wide shouldered
, behind the desk. “I think you’re right. He’s going to make an announcement, and I know what it is.
”

“
Yes?”

“Mike told me a few days ago that he was coming round to considering going to England for treatment.
”

“
Really?” He spoke sharply and a muscle moved in his jaw. “That could be good news. Why didn’t you mention it?”