The Lighthearted Quest (38 page)

In spite of these gloomy sociological reflections, she found time to keep an eye on her cousin and the mate of the
Vidago,
Clearly they were going ahead at a rate of knots—and presently Edina threw out, with elaborate casualness, that she had arranged for Mr. Reeder to accompany her as courier for her journey southward in search of camels. She would have to
pick up a photographer in Casablanca, but he would probably be some terrible dago, “or a Moor with sheik tendencies”. “One must have a man with one in these Moslem countries, Angus says,” Edina pronounced seriously—“and Mr. Reeder speaks Spanish. I had enough of Hispanidad at your pub, Julia, to last me for life.” Anyhow, she added airily, it would all go to expense account. Julia shot a glance at Reeder; he raised his thick eyebrows at her with a comical look of resignation—happy resignation. “What did I tell you?” those eyebrows signalled—Julia grinned sympathetically in response.

When the launch took the three guests ashore Julia was struck afresh by the calm, natural manner in which Edina sent Mr. Reeder to fetch a taxi; when it came—“I'm taking Julia home,” she said. “Where shall we drop you?” Mr. Reeder said he should walk—“Probably look in at Purcell's.”

“Give him my love,” said Julia.

In the taxi—“Do you like him?” Edina asked, her thumb beginning to jerk in and out.

“Yes, enormously—but do keep your damned joint quiet, Edina! It makes such a sickening noise!”

Edina laughed, and held her right hand in her left.

“It—it seems to be brewing up a bit,” she said, with unwonted hesitation, almost shyness.

“Brewing up! Edina, it's practically on the boil! But how do
you
feel?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I feel an inclination,” Edina said, at which Julia laughed loudly.

“J., don't be coarse,” her cousin protested.

“Sorry, dearest. I really do like him terribly.”

“And this trip,” Edina pursued, with more of her usual firm manner, “will give one an idea of what he's like to work with, and—well, of what he's worth.”

“Worth in what way?”

“Well, I've absolutely no use for men who try on extramarital relations; I know it's done, all the time, but I
despise
it. If he ‘propositions' me on this trip, which is a business arrangement, he's out.”

Julia pondered.

“A test, in fact?” Edina nodded. “Rather a stiff one, isn't it?”

“I want it to be stiff!” Edina said—there were centuries of Presbyterian ancestors in her voice.

The taxi drew up at the Pension.

“Come in and sit with me while I get into bed—we'll have a cuentra,” Julia coaxed.

“Isn't it rather late?”

“Eleven?—they'll only just be sitting down to dinner,” said Julia. “We keep
horas espagnolas
here!”

Upstairs—“But Edina, if you marry, what about your job?” Julia asked, peeling off her clothes and flinging on a nightgown. “Golly, how good it is to be in a bed again!” she exclaimed as she lay back on the pillows.

“Weren't you in bed last night?” her cousin asked in surprise.

“No—in a flea-bag in that tomb! Push the bell, Edina.” Natividad appeared on the instant—undoubtedly she had been hovering outside. “Cuentra, Nati—
prontito. La fiasca.”

“Julia, you're utterly mad! You said you had to leave Philip's party early last night because you were tired.”

“Well one has to say something. Anyhow bother me and the tomb—what
about
your job? Ah,
muchas gracias,
Nati. Pour out, Edina, like a kind creature—Thanks. Now go on—your job.”

“Being married and having lots of children is an infinitely better job than fooling people into buying things they don't really need,” Edina pronounced vigorously. “And besides”—she paused for a moment—“it might be a sort of double job. He—Philip—knows everything there is to know about running a place like Glentoran; so if we can't find Colin, or he won't come home if we do, he could do it perfectly—and what's more I believe he'd like to. Which would put paid to
that
worry. Oh, by the way,” she went on, with a rapid and (Julia
guessed) deliberate switch of subject, “Angus has a story that you thought you spotted Colin in Marrakesh just before the bomb.”

Julia hesitated for a moment. No, until Colin was willing to meet Edina she ought not to say anything about him.

“Well, yes, actually I thought I did, but just then I got blown up,” she said. They both laughed. “So now I'm a bit concussed about it all.”

Next day a note arrived from Lady Tracy, bidding Julia to a sherry-party two days hence. “The
Frivolity
party are all coming, and Angus Ross-shire tells me you have a most lovely girl cousin staying with you—do please bring her too. Pray ask her to excuse me for not writing to her, but I have stupidly forgotten her name. Hugh will be there, so you will meet him at last—I am so glad! And he says he is bringing a charming young friend of his, who goes with him on his botanical trips.” There was a P.S. “I do hope you are
resting.
Don't let Clémentine work you too hard in her enthusiasm—enthusiasts have no mercy.”

In fact Julia was resting that day. She found herself surprisingly tired after her broken night in the grave, and all the driving to and fro on top of it; the coffins were safe in the Museum, and she spent most of the day lying on her bed and writing to Mrs. Hathaway. She had told Edina not to come in the evening, so as to leave the field free for Colin, but he turned up about five. This second meeting was calm and easy; but presently Julia asked why Astridite had marks like the bark of a tree on it?

“How do you know that?” Colin asked.

For answer Julia drew her precious lump, which she had recovered from Paddy Lynch, out of her handbag.

“I say, you oughtn't to cart it round like that! It's radioactive, you know. How long have you had it?”

“Since we met the caravan.”

“Oh, only about a fortnight. All the same I shouldn't.” He
took it from her and tossed it out of the window, where it landed in a bed of freesias under a palm.

“Are you going to leave it there?”

“No—better not.” He ran downstairs and Julia saw him stamp it into the freesias with his heel.

“I'm not an expert, but it's stuff to be handled fairly carefully,” he said on his return. “I expect that's too small to do any harm, and it was in your bag anyway.”

“Oh, dear, I did like it! But Colin, if it's bad for me, what about the camels?—and the boat?”

“The camels only carry it for a few days, and it's always taken off them at night—and on board it's stowed well away from the living-quarters. We only handle it at longish intervals, too.”

“Still you haven't told me why it had marks on it like the bark of a tree,” Julia said.

“Persistent creature, aren't you? Because it
is a,
tree—fossilised. They get something like it in America too, a uranium phosphate, found in sandstones and near phosphate deposits—of course this country is stiff with phosphates.”

“But does it look like a tree when it's in the ground?”

“Not very, though you do find a bit of fossil bark now and again. No, it looks more like soft sandstone, so soft that one can chop it out in chunks; usually we bag it because it's so friable—and we bag the rich sand too.”

“What fell on the road in the Djebelet wasn't bagged,” Julia observed.

“No—the damn bags got mislaid on that trip.”

“How did you get the trousseau-coffers down from Fez to Ouarzazate or Tinerhir or wherever you were going? Surely you couldn't get enough into the camionnette, along with the shirts and nylons—after all, you had to have something to sell.”

He stared at her.

“How on earth do you know that we were in Ouarzazate and Tinerhir?”

“Well, that was Affaires Indigènes, actually.”

“And they told you about selling shirts and so forth, I suppose?”

“Did they? Oh, yes, M. Nussbaumer! But I'd heard that before, in Fez.” She explained about the
ex-cantinier
at her hotel there. “Perfect cover, of course, and taking you right into the area of the mines. Only what I'm still not clear about is how you get the coffers down from Fez, and where you keep them while you're grubbing out your fossil chunks.”

“Generally we send them down by lorry direct from Fez to a French
cantinier
who's in the thing.”

“Ah, and then pick up one or two at a time and cart them out to your little diggings, hidden under the gents' wear?”

“That's it. Oh Julia, I wish you could see all those places!—it's terrific country. Sometimes you come on huge gorges nearly a thousand feet deep, with a great river raging through, and the little thread of road looking as if it was disappearing into Hell's mouth! And scrambling slowly about among the scrubby herbs and bushes—most of them smell so sweet in the sun!—with the Geiger-counter—at right angles to the strike of the rocks, of course—till you think you've picked up another deposit; and then working round plotting it on a one-metre or five-metre grid to make sure. You'd love it.”

“Goodness, yes. But Colin, when you've bagged your ore, and crated it in the coffers, where do you assemble it for the caravan? Surely you can't keep a mass of it at a cantine?”

“Lord, no—there are far too many snoopers—like your Jew. No, that can be a problem. If there's a handy cave—often there is—we use that; if not we use our wits! One can't use the same place twice of course, though old St John's camel-men are very trustworthy as a rule—they'll do anything for him.”

“Did he tell you I was a spy?” Julia asked.

“Well he told Torrens so, but he gave your name, and of course I guessed then that you were just after me, and said so. But this job is so secret that it was damned disconcerting to
have anyone know as much as you'd obviously found out, you wretch!”

“But where can young Bathyadis stow trunks and trunksful of the stuff, till some ship comes in? His shop didn't look very big, and there were at least thirty camels in that caravan, with two trunks apiece, I suppose?”

“Yes, that has been another of the rather tricky things,” he agreed. “We try to arrange only to send it down when we know that a suitable ship is due—but ships aren't always very punctual.”

“You're telling
me,”
said Julia with feeling. “Are camels any better?”

“No—worse! But—you saw his shop?”

“Yes—just under the wall of the Old Medina, nice and handy to the harbour.”

“Exactly. And he's had a great hole scooped out in the thickness of that wall where he can stow the trunks quite safely, and if, for any reason, like a ship failing to call, we can't use Casa at all, there are always the tombs,” he said grinning.

“And the
Finetta.
I see. By the way, did you get this last lot off all right?”

“Yes—worked like a charm. If we're really stuck I take the yacht down to Casa to relieve young Bathyadis. It's a lovely run.”

Julia was still thinking it all out. It was wonderful to get the background to the problems which had been obsessing her for the last two months, but there was still more that she wanted to know.

“Why are you doing something illegally here, if you say it's legal in Paris?” she asked.

“You must ask the boss that—I'm not really in a position to say. These small lots that we've been getting out are only for experimental purposes—if the stuff does all the back-room boys hope, I imagine that there will be a proper international agreement, with concessions, all open and above-board. But
everything in Morocco is such a mess-up at the moment, with no one knowing whether the ex-Sultan will come back or not, or where the French will stand if he does, that I imagine
they”
—he grinned—“thought it better just to carry on quietly under the rose for a start. Mind you that's only my private guess.”

When Colin finally said that he must be getting along—

“When can Edina see you?” Julia asked. “You know what trouble there'll be if she meets you somewhere, and finds I've been keeping you hidden!”

“Why should she meet me anywhere?”

“Why shouldn't she? She goes to Purcell's.”

“Yes, but I don't, for the moment.”

“She may go up to see the Mendoub, and spot you on the roof of Mr. T.'s house, like I did,” said Julia gaily. The young man put down his béret, turned round, and stared at her.

“Did
you see me there?”

“Yes. That's how I knew you and he were together. It helped a lot, one way and another.”

He appeared to reflect.

“That might explain Bathyadis, of course, if you mentioned Torrens to him. Did you?”

“Naturally—at least I described him.”

Colin took up his hat again—and then suddenly gave her a boyish hug.

“You must have had a lot of fun!” he said. “Bless you, Julia love. I'll be seeing you. Look after your face.”

Lady Tracy's small sherry-party had developed, by the time it took place, into a rather large cocktail-party, as these affairs have a way of doing—if the household is going to be disturbed in any case why not work off as many social debts as possible?—and one can't really leave out the poor So-and-Sos, they would be hurt. So most of Tangier's small
Corps Diplomatique
had been invited, including the young vice-consul who had been nice to Julia; the Bunch, who were
residents of long standing, and the English head of the Sûreté branch of the Zone Police, a tall dour Highlander called MacNeill; Mme La Besse and the Professor, the Duke and all the
Frivolity
party, and many more. Arrival by car or taxi was a little complicated, since only one machine at a time could perform the difficult manoeuvre of reversing and turning at the edge of the cliff; but it was a fine night, and most people elected to get out some distance down the street on the landward side and walk the rest of the way—Moors in wild dress stood holding lanterns at intervals down the steep cement path to light the feet of the guests. This rather unusual approach to a social function delighted Edina. “
How
Old Testament!” she said, pausing.