Hidden Rapture Page 7

  Vivienne took care not to show any reaction, though her mind was working fast enough. How would she ever find Gary with Abdul tagging along? She replied coldly, ‘I’m a grown woman, Trent. I don’t need an Arab protector following in my footsteps every time I go out for a stroll.’

  ‘Take it or leave it,’ he said in clipped tones. ‘The grounds are big enough for taking the night air. If you’ve got a hankering for the bright lights, then Abdul goes too. You’re my responsibility with Rob the way he is.’ He finished harshly, ‘For his sake I intend to see that no harm comes to you.’

  Vivienne knew there was no point in arguing, but something in her wouldn’t let her acquiesce gracefully with this man. She tossed her head, the nostrils of her rather fine straight nose flaring a little as she purred, ‘Maybe you’ve got used to running Rob’s life. But don’t try it with me, Trent. I like to make my own decisions.’

  His hand came down on the knob of the door. Pausing before he opened it, his arm preventing her from leaving, he said suavely, ‘While you’re at Koudia you’ll have to forgo that luxury. My only concern is that Rob gets a fair deal. You’ve got time to make it up to yourself later; he hasn’t.’ Flinty irony was in his gaze as it raked her tumbling hair and slightly dishevelled look, then he said, opening the door leisurely, ‘If you’re going to be up bright and early as usual in the morning, it might be an idea to catch up on a little beauty sleep.’

  Out in the hall Vivienne answered his goodnight shortly and made straight for her room. There she paced the balcony until her breathing had subsided. It was true, she had almost bungled everything for Lucy tonight, but need Trent have been so overbearingly displeased about it? She had always felt that he would be a dangerous man to tangle with; now, rubbing her bruised shoulders, she. knew that she had been right.

  Vivienne slept late the next morning. She rose with a slightly guilty feeling and wanting to make it up to Lucy and to Robert, she showered and dressed with care. She found a daisy necklace for the round neck of her white tailored dress and clipped a matching daisy in each ear. Her hair, smoothed away from her temples, waved softly down to her shoulders and with a healthy bloom on her cheeks she congratulated herself that no one would suspect she had been up until after two last night.

  Breakfast had already begun when she arrived at the pool. As she walked across to the raised terrace it was impossible not to feel a lightness in her step at the sheer brilliance of the day. The sun, already increasing in heat, caressed her bare arms, tanned to a warm gold now through so much outdoor living. Vivid magenta bougainvillea vied with the deep and endless blue of the sky for colour, next to the royal blue of irises, delicate delphiniums and the red and pink glow of geraniums. A posy of pastel-tinted freesias decorated the breakfast table.

  Vivienne went up to Robert and dropped a kiss on his cheek, saying as blithely as she could, ‘Sorry I’m late, folks. All this sunshine must be making me extra drowsy.’

  ‘Hey, you should sleep in more often!’ Mischievously Robert grabbed her and turning his cheek jerked her back to him. ‘Do that again.’

  Notching one up for Lucy, she kissed him unhurriedly and he in turn ran his fingers along her arm and brushed his lips playfully along the tip of her nose.

  She took her seat at the table, her and Trent’s gaze not quite meeting.

  He poured tea for her into a delicate china cup and she prattled gaily on about it being a gorgeous day and how the scent of orange blossom was intoxicating. He quipped lazily that it was probably the flower of the tangerine that was making her punch-drunk, and she knew that he approved of her mood for Robert’s sake.

  The young invalid had his own reasons for feeling breezy.

  ‘Guess what?’ he told her as soon as the meal was under way. ‘Trent’s got an idea for putting a croquet lawn on the spare patch at the side of the house.’ He fiddled with his chopped grapefruit and shot her a facetious gleam. ‘He thinks we haven’t got enough to amuse you here at Koudia.’

  Vivienne met Trent’s gaze then and though their looks at each other spoke volumes she joked with oblique humour, ‘Sounds like the right kind of sport for these pool layabouts. Swinging a mallet should make a change from ducking defenceless females!’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Trent said with his tight grin, quick to take up the teasing with her. ‘These guys have it all their own way in the water. A bit of skill in the way of a ball and a few hoops could be the answer to cutting them down to size.’

  ‘Don’t go kidding yourself that I’m new to the game,’ Robert gave her a menacing smile, enjoying every minute of the ribbing. He flashed his brother a conspiratorial twinkle. ‘Trent’s seen me. There’s a croquet pitch at the hospital. I’ve played a few games with the convalescents. Tell her, Trent.’

  His brother confessed warningly with an amused glint, ‘I have to admit he packs a mean mallet.’

  Robert gave a satisfied grin. ‘Croquet’s not an old lady’s pastime, you know. There’s quite a few wheelchair champions.’

  ‘Help!’ Vivienne winced laughingly. ‘I think I prefer the swimming pool!’

  The banter continued throughout breakfast and long after the three of them had adjourned to the poolside, Vivienne put all she had into keeping the fun at top pitch. Trent joked as usual with his brother.

  Between them, she thought, they made a good team in creating a gay atmosphere. It didn’t matter that she and Trent didn’t get on; that behind their smiles was the fierce clash of personalities. Nothing mattered except Robert’s happiness.

  Work started on the croquet lawn the following morning. Berber labourers employed in the orchards came to transplant what they could of the ornamental bushes and level the land, and great lorry loads of smooth green turf were delivered. Vivienne watched the operations from her balcony with an acid smile. Trent had only to snap his fingers to get these jobs done. Running the casino took care of everything.

  In less than a week the lawn was laid and ready for use. It was a good spot to idle away the sunny hours. It was on the plateau overlooking the bay, and therefore tempered by sea breezes yet near enough to the house to pop indoors when one wanted a breather. For the first few days the croquet pitch was a source of fascination to the servants.

  Everyone was fond of Robert and they all worked hard in their different ways to show no pity at his condition.

  Momeen was the first to try his hand with the mallet. He tapped the ball as though he was lightly shelling an egg with a teaspoon, taking a dozen strokes to get to the nearest hoop, and Robert almost laughed himself out of his chair. Maurice came out, his hands full of flour, to give Vivienne a few pointers in the game. He had travelled extensively and he told her, his chef’s hat slanting in a rakish manner, that in America they took the game of croquet very seriously. Haroun propelled Robert’s wheelchair from hoop to hoop. It was agreed that the big Moor was best thus employed after he had swung the mallet like a sledgehammer thinking, with his big grin, that the idea was to try to hit the ball into the sea!

  The days passed much the same as before, but with one difference.

  Trent had had the wine-coloured car overhauled and polished and he drove himself to the casino in the evenings. The black limousine waited on the drive each night, and Abdul was on hand indoors should he be needed. At first Vivienne had been too nervous to make a move from her room. Then she got to thinking that if she didn’t go out at all Trent would think that she had something to hide. Besides, the urge in her was strong to continue her search for Gary.

  Sometimes she mused on her foolishness. After four years he could be married now with young children. Yet somehow she didn’t think so. Hadn’t he told her often enough during their summer together that he wasn’t the marrying kind?

  After a week she plucked up the courage to tell Abdul that she would be going out, soon after Trent had left for the casino one evening.

  She made herself ready in her room and came downstairs again to find the car engine turning over gently in th
e drive. Abdul was the one member of the staff she had never really got to know. He was Trent’s right-hand man, and apart from meeting him in the house when he supervised the work-boys from the orchards who came to polish the floors, she had had little to do with him. How she was going to cope with him tagging around all evening she couldn’t imagine.

  He was holding the car door for her out on the drive. Used to speaking French and knowing that she was fluent in the language, he asked politely, once she was settled in her seat, ‘What is Mademoiselle’s choice?’

  She hesitated, then spoke with a rush. ‘I thought it might be interesting to stroll in the little socco near the Grand Mosque. There’s a Moorish cafe there with Arab music and some of the shops might still be open.’

  He bowed slightly and took his place behind the wheel, leaving her to the unnerving privacy of the rear compartment of the limousine as they glided away. He knew just where to park in town and waited discreetly in the background until she made up her mind which way to go. Oddly, enough she soon got used to his presence a few steps behind her. In his smooth djellabah of tissue-fine linen, red fez, and heelless babouches of soft yellow leather, he made a commanding figure as he followed in her wake along the populated thoroughfares.

  And she had to admit he was useful in keeping the eternal supplicants who battened on to tourists at bay. Whining figures with hands outstretched, or clutching some gew-gaw for which they demanded a laughable sum, were exterminated like vermin by his sharp black-eyed gaze, and his biting stream of Arabic. Yet later when he ordered mint tea for her in the Moorish cafe, he smiled at her with his eyes in that remote, aloof way of his, and she saw all the pride of Arab stock in his saturnine, hawklike face.

  Of course she kept her eyes peeled for Gary the whole of the time, but with Abdul attached to her like a limpet, her movements were hampered. The Arab manservant had his orders from Trent and even if she. had run into a long-lost friend she doubted whether she would get as far as a handshake before he distrustfully stepped in wielding the little jewelled dagger he carried.

  However, he had no idea what she had on her mind and after a night or two of his company she began to wonder if it would do any harm to make a few discreet enquiries. She was amazed how easy it was when she tried it. She suggested a stroll along the Boulevard Pasteur and on the pretext of feeling like some refreshment dropped into the bar lounge of the Hotel Riadh. Later while Abdul paced in his soft-shoed way in the foyer she spoke a few low words with the receptionist at the desk. Yes, he remembered Gary playing in the hotel dance band. He hadn’t seen or heard of him for some time. All he could tell her was that he believed the man she was looking for had found employment after leaving the hotel in a small nightclub down by the port.

  Vivienne walked along the boulevard, elated. She had actually talked with someone who knew Gary. It could now only be a matter of time before she traced him. Another night she went down to the bar de nuit the receptionist had mentioned and found it a seedy little club, reeking with an odour of stale drink and Turkish cigarettes’. They remembered Gary. He had played there on and off on the rickety little dais where a blues pianist now stroked the keys in a melancholy stupor. But nobody knew where he was now. They could give her an old address of his. She accepted discreetly and hurried away, trying to give the impression, as far as Abdul was concerned, of having chosen badly in an attempt to review the night spots.

  And so she went on, following up the leads on Gary. At first she was blissfully optimistic as so many people remembered him and this was an improvement on just raking the faces of the passers-by, but as the clues thinned out and each one led her to a dead end she was hit by a feeling of despondency. One evening she arrived back at Koudia a little after midnight and after thanking Abdul went to her room and flopped in an armchair. She had combed the city of Tangier, the old and the new town. There was just nowhere else to look.

  She viewed the twinkling panorama from the balcony doorway.

  Could she resign herself to the fact that she would never see Gary again? Even though he might be one of those teeming millions down there? She rose sleekly and wandered to the outdoors. She would have to. She had run out of ideas.

  And it wasn’t just that. As she cast her glance over the dark, silent house, and strained her ears for sounds of a car coming along the orchard road, another worry was beginning to make itself felt. How near had she come to giving herself away in her reckless search for Gary? It was true she had taken all possible precautions when making enquiries about him, but supposing Abdul wasn’t as remote and detached as he appeared? And supposing he gossiped like any other manservant when he was alone with his master?

  A tiny pulse began to throb in her temple. Her behaviour, now, looked a little foolish and she was tormented with one nagging little doubt. How much did Trent suspect?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THURSDAY was Robert’s day for the hospital. How much he guessed of the discord between her and Trent, Vivienne didn’t know, but he made a surprise suggestion while they were leisurely taking breakfast that ‘morning.

  ‘Know what I’ve been thinking?’ The sun set alight the blond hair framing his tanned, handsome face and boyish grin as he cast a slightly anxious glance in his brother’s direction. ‘It’s an awful waste of a day, Viv, hanging around the house while I’m away. Why don’t you take her out somewhere, Trent? The two of you can drop me off at the hospital and call for me around six tonight.’

  Trent’s expression changed in no way. He said lazily, replacing the sugar bowl, ‘That would be for Vivienne to decide, Rob. I don’t know how she’d feel about taking a trip out with me.’

  ‘Well, ask her.’ Exasperation in his grin, he turned his anxiety her way and waited.

  Trent said casually, ‘How about it, Vivienne? Shall we do as Rob says and join forces in a little relaxation?’

  Vivienne’s heart had started on a wild tattoo. A whole day with Trent! The idea both appalled and fascinated her. She refused to be afraid of him and this seamed as good a way as any of showing it.

  And what would she have to worry about with no talk, of Lucy’s letters to trip her up? ‘I do get to feel a bit at a loose end here on my own.’ She looked at Robert rather than Trent as she spoke, and smiled, ‘How nice of you to suggest it.’

  ‘You deserve it.’ Robert reached out and took one of her hands in his, smiling too in a lopsided, grateful way. ‘A break from Koudia—and me—will do you good.’

  Vivienne kept her lashes lowered. He knew nothing of her nocturnal outings to the city. But Trent did, and for this reason she battled to keep the colour from her cheeks and studiously avoided his gaze.

  Later, upstairs in her room, she wondered what on earth had possessed her to agree to suffer the company of the tyrant older brother for several hours. And yet there was something of a challenge in accepting, so much so that to back out now, to send word downstairs that she had changed her mind, seemed a very dull alternative. She laid out a summer dress of blue flowered nylon.

  Though she couldn’t have explained why, she took more than usual care with her toilette.

  Abdul drove them to the hospital. Haroun took his day off on Thursdays and they dropped him off at the Cafe Central in town.

  There was amused speculation inside the car as to how the big Moor would spend his time in this fashionable rendezvous for Europeans, knowing as he did very little French or English.

  ‘Where he’s going communication is unimportant, except with the stomach,’ Trent said with a knowing gleam. ‘I bet he’ll head for the Parade restaurant in the Rue Goya. They’ve got a Belgian chef there who makes cous-cous like he never tasted in Marrakesh.’

  ‘Perhaps he just enjoys the tourist atmosphere,’ Vivienne suggested with a smile.

  Robert shook his head and grinned. ‘It’s all a blind. As soon as we’ve disappeared he’ll cut through into the Medina. From what I can understand of his Arab jokes I’d say he knows his way around with the women there.’


  The genial athlete with the big brown biceps gave his usual Insh’-

  Allah salute and moved off, taking his secret with him.

  Vivienne stayed in the car outside the hospital. Trent and Abdul got Robert into the wheelchair and manoeuvred him up the shallow flight of steps at the main entrance. They were met there by two distinguished-looking figures in white coats whom she took to be Robert’s doctors. After a brief conversation they all went indoors. For a while she passed the time admiring the smooth lawns and neat flower beds in the hospital grounds. When the waiting became a little tedious she got out and strolled to where a slight knoll looked on to a grove of olive and palm trees. She was making the most of the breeze coming over the rise when Trent returned. He offered her a hand to make it down the slope, the flimsiness of her dress blowing against him as he helped her. He said with an impersonal smile, ‘Sorry you had to wait, but the doctors kept me longer than usual this morning.’

  On the flat she shot him a quick worried glance. Was it to do with Robert? Was that what had taken so long? His face told her nothing.

  Searching it as he guided her to the car, she hadn’t the courage to ask.

  Beside her, he said, once they were in motion again, ‘It’s market day in the Grand Socco. Abdul can drop us off there. This afternoon we could take a run out to Tetuan. If the idea appeals?’

  ‘Sounds fine,’ Vivienne replied, adopting a distant tone. All at once she was struck with a feeling of regret that there could be no real camaraderie between them. She dared not risk being just herself when there was Robert and Lucy to consider. And Trent had always been distrustful of her. Strangely enough none of this showed when later they made their way up the teeming street and through the Bab el Fahs gateway that led to the Grand Socco. She couldn’t help noticing the kind of exclusive quality he possessed as they mingled with the crowd, both occidental and oriental. There was nothing exceptional about his clothes. He wore a pair of pale slacks and a sky-blue shirt, and he moved with an easy, withdrawn attitude. Yet there was something in his manner, in the strong, lean lines of his profile, that made him stand out from the rest.