Walk into the Wind

WALK INTO THE WIND Jane Arbor

When Craig Carolan, grudgingly, gave Adair the job of governess to his young ward in Tunisia, he warned her "If you've a head full of starry-eyed notions about the romance' of the desert, you need disillusioning on that..." But Adair was not the sort of girl who easily accepted defeat!

CHAPTER ONE THE sharp sunlight of the street made the hotel foyer too dark by contrast and Adair drew off her sunglasses as she crossed to the porter's desk to collect her key. Save for the distant chink of cutlery and china from the diningroom, the halls and lounges were silent - the hotel's patrons and its staff alike mostly having succumbed to the afternoon torpor which it shared with the whole city. Even the under-porter had an air of rousing only partially from his own siesta in order to produce Adair's room key and to add in French, 'Also a letter for you, mademoiselle - by hand', as he handed both key and envelope to her. 'By hand - for me? I don't think—' But the boy had already lost interest in her disclaimer, and as the envelope certainly bore her name, 'Miss A. Tracy', in writing she had come to know, she accepted it, for the moment only slightly baffled as to why her employer, occupying the first-floor suite next door to her own small room, should need to pass any message or instruction to her by way of the porter's desk. After all, she had only been out for an hour and Mrs. Candar, if not her husband, had known when to expect her back. So she did not trouble to open the letter before taking the selfworked lift to the first floor. The lift was a tiny box, lined on three sides by mirrors - a threeangled view therefore of the Adair Tracy it briefly confined; reasonably slim and long- legged, near-russet hair worn in a turnedunder pony- tail, lightly freckled skin just now dewy with heat, and under flyaway gold brows, eyes which in that somewhat tawny company of colour seemed surprised to find themselves blue. Or so Father used to tease her about them . .. long ago, when he and Mother had both been there to tease and be tender with her and with each other in turn...

Clank. The lift shuddered and opened its door. Ahead of Adair as she stepped out on to the long hallway was a man who must have bypassed the lift to come up by the stairs. She recognized his back. His room was exactly opposite to the Candars' and they had all nodded good morning whenever they met in the lift or about the hotel. This afternoon she watched him reach his door and appear to have trouble with its key - and then, shocked and incredulous at the scene being enacted outside her employers' suite, she forgot him. What on earth— ? True, the welter was a daily sight in any hotel. Crumpled bed-linen, used towels, wastepaper baskets for emptying and a vacuum-cleaner at the hum over bedroom carpets - the signing-off tune, as it were, of the departed guest; the making ready for the new. It was always happening, and all the time. And yet - to the Candors' rooms? To the cot which had just been wheeled out, stripped of its linen, where Adair's small charge, six-year-old Cecil Candar, should still be put down for his siesta nap ? No, it wasn't happening here. It couldn't be. They had decided suddenly to move to another floor. Very suddenly, since they had done it without warning her. Or had they - in the still unopened letter she held? But no. Somehow that so very empty cot told its own tale to Adair's brain. This was no interim move to another floor. It was a departing; a rupture of contacts; an end that had been planned, and without needing to open the letter they had left for her, she was convinced it would tell her so. Something of her chill of dismay must have shown in her face, for the buxom floor-maid directing operations yelled a 'Chut!' to the vacuum-cleaner, and as her underling switched off, the man across the hall left his key in the lock and came over. 'What's happening? Trouble? Anything I can do?' he asked.

She looked up at him, her view repeating its previous impression of his lean height, deep tan, unruly brown hair and flecked grey eyes. She shook her head. 'No, I don't think so. Thank you, all the same.' But as she turned to the floor-maid she was aware that he hadn't moved. Trying to keep surprise from her tone, 'When you've finished here, will you want access to my room too?' she asked in French. Apparently reassured by the calm question, the woman flicked a signal to the vacuum-cleaner to restart. 'Number 1619, madame? No, I have no instructions as to that.' 'And you don't know why—?' But of course the maid wouldn't. Only the letter could tell her that. 'Very well,' she nodded, and moved on the few yards to her own door, only to find the man had followed her. As she used her key she looked an inquiry at him which he answered in words. 'Something is wrong.' It wasn't a question. 'You weren't expecting that.' His backward jerk of his head indicated his meaning, and it seemed useless to lie. But she could still cover up. 'Not really,' she agreed. 'My employers must have decided rather suddenly to move somewhere else in the hotel. The cleaners wouldn't know where, but the desk will. I'll ring down, if there isn't a message in my room. I'm governess to Mr. and Mrs. Candar's little boy - you'll have seen me with him,' she added in polite explanation. 'I'd guessed as much. But "Somewhere else in the hotel"?' he quoted her, then shook his head. 'No - from your look of utter shock just now, I doubt if you believe yourself that any message in your room is going to tell you that.'

She had opened her door, but paused on the threshold to meet the flecked eyes with the blue gaze of her own. 'Aren't you assuming an awful lot from a mere look, Mr.—? I'm sorry, I don't know your name?' 'Carolan. Craig Carolan,' he supplied, and then with sudden impatience, 'Fair enough. Forget it. I jumped to conclusions. You weren't shocked. You weren't even surprised. You came down that corridor, knowing all about this moonlighting; you'd connived at it; you may even have helped to lay it on—' He broke off and again .shook his head in rejection. 'Oh no, young woman. Tell that to the Marines if you like - not to me!' Realizing she had blanched, Adair played for time. 'What - what did you call it?' she asked him shakily. 'A moonlighting. A moonlight flit. You know what that is?' A nod. 'I - think so.' 'And though, as I thought, you weren't in on it, you sensed at once from all this finality of cleaning-out that it was one; that it wasn't just a move to another floor; that the Candars had stood you up? How did you manage to cut through to that ? Feeling that was a question she should be demanding of him, she showed him the letter. 'I suppose - from their having left this for me at the desk.' 'Then I was wrong, and you did know when you came up?' 'No. I didn't open it straight away and I haven't yet.' 'Then hadn't you better do it now ?'

'Yes—' But as she made to step back into her room, his arm across the doorway barred it. 'Not alone, though. I've an idea you're going to need a little moral support on this,' he said. And then, as she stiffened in recoil, 'And you can forget that too. This isn't a cheap pick-up, however it may look. If it were, I could have made it yesterday, last week, any of the times I've crowded you in the lift. And so, that understood, I hope, I'm going to ring for tea to be brought to that little palm lounge round the next corner of the hall, and you can read the Candars' letter there - after I've told you something I know that you don't, but should.' With which he relocked her door, gave her the key and, a hand firm beneath her elbow, propelled her towards the lounge where no one ever sat, as it was no more than an alcove opening off the corridor. He pressed the bell there and ordered tea, then took the second of the two flimsy wicker chairs. 'And so,' he said, as if continuing a story already begun, 'I happened to be at the desk half an hour ago when your party checked out bag, baggage, your young charge - the lot—' He stopped at the sound of Adair's caught breath. 'Then they - have ? They did ?' 'On the evidence, I'm afraid so. I was queueing for attention behind them. There was some argument about their being liable for today's charges, but they didn't press it. They already had their bill; all they had to do was to pay it. They had been called away from Tunis unexpectedly. No, there would be no mail for them; they weren't leaving a forwarding address. And no, your room wasn't being vacated as well; they were paying for it until the end of the week, when no doubt you would make your own further arrangements.' Craig Carolan paused. 'You see? All perfectly in order and everyday - except for that look on your face as you came down the corridor.'

He leaned forward to tap the letter with a bronzed forefinger. 'So now you'd better read it, hadn't you ?' The tea had arrived and he poured it. Adair slit the envelope, turning out a single sheet of paper and a bundle of Tunisian dinar notes. The letter, without addressing her by name, had been written by Mrs. Candar— 'Regret we must leave Tunis urgently at a moment's notice. Your room is paid for until Saturday, and the enclosed money covers the salary owing to you to date. No doubt you can use it for your return journey to England. Cecil is going to miss you, but it cannot be helped.' That was all, and wordlessly Adair passed it to her companion, who read it, then pointed to the roll of notes. 'Is that right?' Adair counted it. 'Roughly, I think,' she said. 'Nothing in lieu of notice? They owe you that too. When you get back to England you'll have to dun them for that.' 'I doubt if I can. From this, and from what you heard at the desk, do you think they mean to be found?' 'Not at once, that's obvious. But you could reach them at the address from which they engaged you, surely?' She shook her head. 'I doubt that too. It was a small hotel in Kensington, and we left London together the next day.' 'References? Theirs?' 'I - didn't ask for any. It was all done in rather a hurry.' 'You didn't ask for any!' He made his echo a rap over the knuckles for her folly. 'But they'd have wanted some from you ?'

'I gave them - one from college and a couple of personal ones, though I don't think the Candars took them up. There wasn't time. I'd had no previous employer. I'd been living at - home since I left college two years ago. I'm Froebel trained, to teach small children and juniors.' He showed interest. 'Just kindergarten babes?' 'And up to prep school age - eleven or so. But I never had a school job, because I got engaged and went on living at Frayne, a country house near Malvern, that was my fiancé's home and had been mine too since I was twelve. That was about eleven years ago.' 'No people of your own ?' 'They were both killed accidentally in an ambush near Kuwait, where my father was a civil engineer and where I was born. My fiancé's people were sort of third cousins of his and I had to go to them.' A glance went to her ringless third finger. 'And what happened?' He meant to be kind. Adair told herself she mustn't resent the searching catechism. 'He - Miles was— He died after a car crash in fog at the end of last winter.' When she added nothing to that, Craig Carolan prompted after a moment, 'Don't want to talk about it, h'm ?' 'I'd rather not.' He nodded. 'Understandable. I'm sorry. So then—?' 'Then I stayed on at Frayne, helping in the house, until this autumn, when, about ten weeks ago, I answered the Candars' advertisement in a Personal Column for a child's tutor, to travel abroad with them

and act as babysitter when necessary in hotels. We went first to Tangier—' 'Tangier, eh? What did the Candar man do for a living?' 'He said he was in export-import.' 'Which covers a lot - like "company promotion". By any chance, did you leave Tangier suddenly too?" Adair thought back. 'Well, yes, we did rather. Why?' 'Because, on today's showing, I imagine they make a convenient habit of it when their affairs - whatever they are - get snarled up. Though why they saddled themselves with you must remain a guess. Just as I wouldn't know either why you took the job on. You're qualified; the pay must be better in a school—' Adair flushed. 'Finding a suitable school would have taken more time than I felt I had. I wanted too badly to - get away.' 'Running from? Or running to? Or just - running?' She dipped her head in weary agreement. 'That, I suppose.' 'And so ran blind into the coil you find yourself in now? Still, let's hope it has taught you some caution in your contacts in future.' He pointed to the roll of notes in her lap. 'You should have enough there for your return ticket to England. If not—' She riffled through the notes and put them in her bag. 'There would be, if I were going back to England. But I'm not,' she said. The flecked eyes narrowed on her. 'Rubbish. Of course you are. You can go back to this place, Frayne, until you find a job.'

'I'm not going back,' she insisted, and then, from a hollow need to hit out at something, at someone, she plunged on, 'Blind and foolhardy and in a hurry I may have been, and you make it very plain that you think so, Mr. Carolan. But at least I can stand by my mistakes, and I am not - repeat not - going back!' If she expected to pierce his sangfroid she was disappointed. He merely pushed aside the tea-tray and stood looking down at her. 'So you were running away,' he said, as if confirming something to himself. And then more briskly, 'Haven't you run out of clichés? I'd have thought you would want to add, "Like a whipped cur," or "With my tail between my legs". However—' a glance at his watch, 'I've affairs of my own to see to now. I must go. But if you aren't planning a moonlight flit of your own in order to avoid my interference, perhaps you'll join me at my table for dinner tonight?' Adair hesitated. 'You've been very kind, and I'm glad of the chance that enabled you to fill me in about the Candars' leaving. But really you needn't concern yourself with me any more.' 'Don't worry, I shan't. I can recognize mulishness when I see it. But I shall still hope to see you in the dining-room tonight - say, at halfpast eight?' Taking her agreement for granted, he strode away in the direction of his room without looking back. In her own room a few minutes later Adair knew she must think into and face the implications of the dire thing that had happened to her. She could stay here in the hotel until the end of the week. After that - what? A school teaching job in midterm wasn't likely. But what about private English lessons? Or as a stop-gap, the rusty French she had learned from her Corsican mother was polished enough from her recent weeks both in Tangier and Tunis possibly to get her a job in one of the city shops? It was damping to realize she might need a

local work-permit for anything she did. But on one point at least that man across the corridor was dead wrong - she was not going back to England, to Frayne or anywhere else. In England there was still too much to remember. Too much guilt . .. And there was no one in England who particularly needed her now. Her thoughts went to the Candars, remembering things about them which at the time she hadn't recognized for the pointers they were. Their haste to leave England; to leave Tangier, and now Tunis; Mr. Candar's reserve as to the nature of his business and a background which, as far as she could gather from Mrs. Candar's talk, had had little stability for years. They were - if no worse - footloose expatriates living on borrowed time, and why they had needed a governess was no mystery to Adair. In foreign hotels where, every night, they kept midnight hours and later, someone had to babysit with their child, and she supposed that if they hadn't suddenly had to cut their losses and move out from Tunis, they would have moved her with them until, in some other hotel, in some other city, they had decided, as they had now, that it would be cheaper to leave her behind. Mentally she could let them go without regret, though she was sorry for the six-year-old Cecil. He wasn't a lovable child; he was too spoilt by his mother. But he had the right to the security which all children needed and Adair could only hope for him that some time and at someone's hands, if not his parents', he would be given it. Dusk was falling now and she stood at her window, watching the quickening activity of the street below and seeing lights begin to wink out all over the city. She wondered about her knight-errant of the afternoon; what was his business in Tunis; what he did for a living. From the evidence of his tan, it was something virile and outdoor, and from his assumption

that she would keep their dinner date, she had the impression that he was used to giving orders which he expected to be obeyed. Was she going to accept? She still hadn't decided when the maid came to turn down her bed and close her shutters. But then, at the thought of the lonely evening and night closing in around her, without even the child to guard, she went to her bath, knowing that she would be in the dining-room at half-past eight. Just one dinner. He wouldn't have asked her if he hadn't wanted her company, and she owed him the small courtesy in return for his concern for her this afternoon. Besides, with his parting words he had written off any further interest in her future plans, and he was merely a fellow-guest in a hotel, as much of a 'passing ship' to her as she was to him. After tonight, if either of them chose, they needn't meet again, and at the end of the week, if he hadn't already left, she would be gone herself...

Three hours later, on the covered terrace of a hotel not their own they had reached the coffee stage of a most recherche meal. Craig Carolan, at their rendezvous before her, had said, 'We aren't eating here. We're going out,' and had called a taxi to take them across the city to this quiet backwater where the night roar of the streets was muted to a mere hum. During the meal he had kept his word to probe no more into her affairs. Earlier they had talked about Tunis; clearly, though he did not live there, he knew it far better than she did. Then he began to tell her what brought him there, and something about himself. He had come up from the region of Bou Larissa, an oasis township some eighty kilometres south-east of Tunis, where he was the Base Director of a team of 'forestry know-how chaps and oil boffins',

nose-down to the task of the reafforestation of the Saharan fringes against all hazards of wind and soil erosion and even sudden devastating flood, that the desert could throw up. Adair said, 'I've read something about it. It's all rather new, isn't it, since the oilmen found that blown sand could be "fixed" to enable tree seedlings to take root, by spraying it with crude oil or emulsified rubber or something?' 'Roughly. Though it's not so new that we haven't proved it can be done. And must be, with Old Man Sahara trying to encroach at the rate of a yard every ten minutes. But yes - it began with the lab. men experimenting with miniature wind-tunnels and finding that sand dunes sprayed with oil emulsion stayed put in gales of seventy miles an hour plus. Same thing, out on the first experimental fields in Libya and Morocco; seedlings which used either to be buried, washed away or scorched out, held fast and were healthy six- foot saplings nine months later. Now the thing is being .sponsored by every Government Forestry west from Morocco and given, say, ten more years, we'll have a green belt with scarcely a gap in it from here to there. Fifteen more years on to that, and—' He broke off. 'I'm riding a personal hobby-horse on this. But ever since I was sold on what it can mean in terms of work for men and fodder for livestock and food for hungry children, I've seen it as a kind of challenge that I daren't pass up.' It was his first appeal for her understanding and Adair warmed to it. 'I can see that. If it weren't more than a job to you, you wouldn't be so fired about its future in ten, fifteen years' time,' she said. 'I suppose you're in Tunis now on business to do with it?' 'Not this time. The oil company, Pan-Saharan, has an affiliate office here which handles the shipping of a lot of our supplies. But at our operations base we're mainly self-supporting - a team of about thirty mixed forestry wallahs like me, engineers and lab. technicians out

from Headquarters, and local labour for field work recruited from Bou Larissa - housed in a disused military building that's been leased to us. No, I'm here on a private headache that's been wished on me - the care of a ten-year-old named Tessa, who has all the makings of a problem with a capital P.' 'A child? Whose?' 'The daughter of a friend, Russell Holyoake. We were at school together and also neighbours at a mile or two's distance. I qualified in forestry; he married and went off, after his wife died, on a kind of roving commission journalistic tack. Following the news stories, though he called it being on the spot before they happened. How he dragged Tessa up and round with him, I wouldn't know. I hadn't seen him for years until he lighted here in Tunis - only to die and to leave Tessa to me.' 'But if you hadn't seen him in all that , time, how did he get in touch with you?' asked Adair. 'He knew where I could be found. When the project was hot news in the Press he came out and did some feature articles on us. Anyway, he could always reach me through Pan-Saharan.' 'And he made you the little girl's guardian?' 'Nothing so straightforward. He was too ill to arrange it by the time I found him. AH he was equal to conveying was that he'd like Tessa to go to her Aunt Grace - the only woman he could trust not to ship the child into a stuffy boarding-school and forget her - and that until Grace could take her on those conditions, she was all mine.' Adair felt puzzled. 'But if there is a home for her with her aunt, she is only—?'

'In transit, so to speak? I wish she were. But that's not so simple either. For her father was so out of touch that he didn't know Grace a doctor - had become a brain-drain item to America, and that as she is placed out there, she couldn't possibly take Tessa on.' 'Hasn't she any other relations who could?' 'None. There were just the three girls in the family - also vaguely neighbours of Holyoake's and mine. Grace, Elaine - Tessa's mother and Roma, an actress, who also couldn't give the child a home. Unmarried and usually on tour, how could she?' 'Which means that you— ?' Craig Carolan nodded. 'Exactly. That I cope - indefinitely. Tough assignment, h'm?' 'Yes. Where is Tessa now ?' 'Temporarily boarding at the day-school she has been going to here. But she can't stay there, any more than I can send her to some other boarding-school, if I'm to honour her father's wish to the letter. He'd hated school himself and he had a thing against them all his life. But the kid is short enough on education already; she's got to get some more somehow.' Adair said slowly, 'I'd have said that a home for her was as important, if not more so. Hadn't you considered keeping her with you - say, until some suitable arrangement in England could be made for her?' 'With me?' He stared his scorn of the suggestion. 'In a campful of men, the lot of us working all the hours there are? For heaven's sake, who do you suppose could look after a ten-year-old down there? And how would she spend her time ?'

'But if she can't be left here and while there's nowhere she can be sent in England, have you any choice? And isn't there anyone at your base who could care for her? No women at all? Who does your cooking and whatever housekeeping you need, for instance?' 'A middle-aged couple. He was a soldier - officers' batman type who came back here after the war and married the French girl-friend he had left behind. He had met her when she was a cook in the local N.A.A.F.I. Sure thing - they do well enough for us, but—' 'And this base building - it's only a sort of barracks ?' 'Mainly. It's reasonably mod. con. and air-conditioned and there's a handkerchief-sized swimming pool in the back courtyard. We - the team - sleep in cubicles and we eat communally, but there's a selfcontained annexe as well, which used to be the Colonel's quarters. Brian and Claudine - the couple - sleep there, and I use one of the rooms as my office.' 'Any other accommodation in it ?' 'Yes. It's by way of being a small villa—' he broke off, as the trend of Adair's catechism seemed to dawn on him. He shook his head. 'Oh no. If you're thinking I could turn one of the other rooms into a nursery for Tessa, that's out.' 'Then what are you to do with her?' 'I don't know.' In sudden irritation, 'Anyway, I told you it was my headache. What is it to do with you ?' Adair flinched. 'I didn't say that to you this afternoon over my problem. I was grateful for your help.' 'Up to a point. You flatly refused my honest advice.'

'That was my privilege.' 'As it's mine now. Bou Larissa is no place in which to put a child of Tessa's age to idle indefinitely. The fiendish climate for one thing.' 'Children are tough. I took the climate of the Persian Gulf in my stride until I was twelve. And supposing—' Adair drew a long breath and grasped the nettle with both hands - 'supposing she hadn't to be idle? If she were being supervised ... taught?' She saw from his sudden movement that he had understood. But he wanted it spelled out. 'In other words, you are suggesting yourself as a governess for Tessa? At Bou Larissa, for as long as she might have to be there -if I took her there. Is that it?' Adair met his eyes. 'As you said yourself - I'm qualified. And I'm out of a job.' 'And if I may say so, about as opportunist as they come.' She flared at that. 'You may not say so, Mr. Carolan! How dare you? You made me free of your problem and—' She felt she might choke. Surprisingly he said, 'I'm sorry. You took that on the chin. But still let's be clear, may we, that I've no intention of taking on either Tessa or you as a liability in a desert campful of men, who have to keep their minds on the job while they're on it? Particularly you. ... What's more, if you've a head full of starry- eyed notions about the "romance" of the desert, you need disillusioning on that. For there is no glamour to our view of the desert - not an almond-eyed sheik nor a silken tent in sight. The desert, out of range of the cities and the luxury coast resorts, is heat and glare and makeshifts, and cold nights and wind and pests and men fighting battles with it. Do I make myself plain?'

She gathered every shred of dignity she had. 'You do. Perfectly,' she said. 'But while you're set on judging that I'm looking for romantic contacts, just because I offered myself for a teaching job I know I could do, haven't you forgotten that it's not so very long ago that I lost my fiancé - tragically? For which reason you needn't fear I'm likely to be tempted to another romance for a long time - if ever. Any more than I'd be—' she chose a word deliberately - 'a menace to your men.' From the look he threw her she saw that he had forgotten about Miles. But he gave no inch. 'The verdict is still No,' he said. 'Then that's that, isn't it? I'm sorry. May we go back now?' She picked up her bag and slipped into the linen coat he held for her before seeing their waiter and calling a taxi. Sitting beside him in it, the flash of the street neons intermittently lighting first his face, then hers, she felt her anger at 'opportunist' seep away. She supposed she had asked for it. If only she had let the thought come first to him! But would it? No. She was as much of a 'passing ship' to him as she had thought of him this afternoon. He had done all for her that she had allowed him to, and then had written her off. Asking her to dine with him? That was nothing - a parting wave of the hand, and the silence between them now meant that he wasn't even going to ask her where she meant to go when she left the hotel. She found she was longing for, yet dreading, the loneliness of her room. Only a few minutes away now - as the taxi drew up. Only the length of the foyer - as they went across it -to the lift. Only as many steps as there were to her door - as they walked side by side down the corridor.

Arrived there, she took out her key. 'Well—' she began, prepared for as awkward and embarrassing leavetaking as she had ever faced. But 'Well—?' he said in reply, then waited as if demanding her attention. When he had it— 'Something, Miss Adair Tracy, I'd be interested to know. Have you always raced quite as recklessly headlong into your family's traditional wind as you did when you took on the Candars, and as you seem prepared to do now ?' Adair stared at him. An almost lost memory struck; the sound of a rarely quoted or remembered jingle. 'Wh - what do you mean? What do you know about that ? About us ?' she faltered. Craig Carolan laughed. She found it a good sound to hear. 'Way back - a long way back and certainly far enough not to make us kin - my mother's people were Tracys too. You see?' And then— 'All right, you win. Meet me in the foyer at, say, ten in the morning, and I'll take you along to see Tessa. Good night to you—' He took her key from her, opened her door for her and allowed it to slam behind her.

CHAPTER TWO SHE sank down upon her bed, fingering the clasp of her handbag with fingers that shook. Of all things! That a stranger, thrown into contact with her through the merest chance of timing in a hotel, should know all about the blight of fortune on the Tracy name; should distantly be a Tracy himself! That handed-down piece of doggerel which foretold the withering of the Tracy line every since its ancestor, the Sieur de Traci, struck the first murderous blow which had felled Archbishop a Becket before the altar of his own cathedral! De Traci and three others, so history related. But it had been de Traci's leadership which alone had earned the Tracy curse. Adair had not recalled it for years. What had it said— ? 'Wherever by sea or by land they shall go, The wind in their faces for ever shall blow.' —that threat of troubled fate which she had learned along with her nursery rhymes and which had lent her some dubious importance when her history class had been 'doing' the reign of Henry the Second at school. But Craig Carolan must have remembered it as soon as she had given her name; had been mentally summing her up in the light of it and had tossed the result of his judgment like a live firecracker into her lap. So he thought her rash and foolhardy? He had twisted the rhyme, making it sound as if the Tracys chose to walk into the wind of their fate. Whereas she had always thought it meant that the gale of their misfortune in being Tracys would ever veer against nature in order to seek them out and to harry them. Which made it more of a

courage than a folly to stand up and fight back; didn't it? She reminded herself that sometimes she must make him see that. As she stood up and began to make ready for bed, she was wondering about Tessa Holyoake. How much or how little schooling had she managed to get during her gypsy wanderings with her father? In a way she had as little security at her back as young Cecil Candar had, poor mite. Well, Adair thought, there was no more she could do for Cecil now. But for Tessa? How long might they have to get to know each other? How long would they need? The child was ten. It was an attractive age - just so far past childhood as to make communication and even friendship with grown-ups easy ... given any chance at all. But how slender a chance she might ever have of getting through to Tessa, she was to wonder often during the two days before Craig Carolan was ready to take them both down to Bou Larissa. That first morning he had broached to Adair the question of her salary, suggesting a figure to which she had agreed. It was overgenerous. He had said, 'And free time? I suppose you'll want that arranged?' But she had replied that she was willing to leave that to conditions, whatever they might be. And then, before taking her to Tessa's school, he had driven her to the Pan-Saharan Affiliate offices, where he had insisted she go in with him. He had answered her slightly puzzled question. 'Why? Should be obvious, I'd think - to anyone but you, perhaps. For reference, of course. How do you know I'm not set on kidnapping both you and the child down desert to a fate worse than death?' he mocked. 'You're going to meet the Chief and enough of his minions to guarantee my bona fides. Of which you should have

seen the necessity, I'd have expected - if you hadn't that Tracy strain.' Adair had laughed. 'Perhaps it was a case of one Tracy recognizing another; seeing safety in numbers, in the fact of their both being headed the same way - into the wind,' she parried. He shook his head. 'Not you. You hadn't a clue to me. How could you have had? No, you must have been desperate to get the Candar job and you were near-desperate to latch on to this one - for your own good reasons, into which I'm not inquiring. As you were at pains to point out, I'm between the devil and the deep blue sea in the matter of Tessa's care for the present. But references this time you shall have. Come along.' She hung back. 'You haven't any for me. You don't know—' The upward jerk of his chin was impatient. 'I know enough - for the moment - to get by. I'll skip them. Come along. I've no time to waste.' After that he took her to the school where he introduced Tessa to her and left them together in the austere little waiting-room where the child had been brought by a white-coifed nun. Tessa was tall for her age, a gangling four-foot-ten, brown-skinned and long-armed and with something that Adair read as profound distrust of her world in her dark velvet eyes. Their initial exchange wasn't encouraging. Tessa said, 'Is that right - what Craig said? That you're to be my governess ?' Adair's brows lifted slightly. ' "Craig" ?' she queried.

'Oh, you know Daddy always called him Craig, so I do. Well, are you ?' 'For a little while, yes. While you have to be at Bou Larissa.' 'But only babies have governesses! They're so much old hat.' Adair smiled. (The protocol of the young!) 'Tutor, then, if you like that better. What's in a name? At Eton people have tutors, you know.' Tessa accepted the parallel of Eton with a grunt. 'I want to go back to England to live with Aunt Grace. Why can't I ?' she demanded. 'Because, I understand, your aunt Grace has gone to America, hasn't she ?' 'What's that got to do with it? I've been most places, so why not America? Or why shouldn't I go to Aunt Roma? She's still in England, so don't pretend she isn't. She's on the stage and she'd get me into ballet school, because I'm going to do ballet when I grow up.' Adair clutched at the straw of ballet. 'Are you keen on it, then? Have you had lessons in it?' Tessa looked her scorn of the suggestion she had had opportunities for ballet lessons. 'How could I? Daddy and I never stayed anywhere long enough.' 'But you've seen some ballets danced?' 'M'm. "Sleeping Beauty" and "Sylphides". That was in Paris. I've just seen books of pictures about it, that's all.'

So the subject of ballet died, as did several others which Adair tried to broach. In a way, she thought with pity, Tessa, compared to Cecil Candar, was the greater victim to her gypsyhood. She was old enough to be aware of what she was missing in the way of security, and this was confirmed by the nun who lingered with Adair after Tessa had been sent back to her classroom. The Sister was English and had trained for junior school teaching at Adair's own college, some ten years earlier. She put Adair into the picture as to Tessa's level in the primary subjects, then sighed, 'Poor babe - and yet not so babe. It's been "over the face of the earth" for her with a vengeance. You'll need to be rather patient with her, Miss Tracy. She carries some scars and she's liable to hit but to defend herself from more.' The second day Adair spent mostly in the city's bookshops and stationery stores, buying classroom equipment for Tessa's work on Craig Carolan's account and secretly adding some books on her own - among them a simple history of classical ballet and a newly published collection of photogravure studies of the international stars, which she hoped Tessa hadn't seen. If she- had known the size of Tessa's long narrow feet or whether there would be a recordplayer at the Base, she would have been tempted to add a pair of ballet-shoes and, say, a record of 'Les Sylphides'. The next day, in late afternoon, she and Craig Carolan moved out of the hotel, collected Tessa from afternoon school and set out for Bou Larissa, their arrival timed, at Adair's suggestion, so that after the journey and supper Tessa could go straight to bed. They travelled by station-wagon, garaged for overhaul during Craig's stay in Tunis. Beyond the city boundaries the road remained well surfaced for a few kilometres, then gradually deteriorated into an impacted pebble track frequently under thin drifts of sand.

From a straggle of suburbs at first the terrain began to open out and become an undulating waste of starved vegetation - stunted thorn and grey-leaved thistle at which apparently ownerless, thin-flanked goats picked listlessly. For landmarks there were spaced cairns of stones - the traditional Saharan signposting before the motor age; other signposts printed 'Eau Bonne' indicating freshwater wells at so many metres ahead, and the rare huddle of hutments roofed in corrugated iron or straw, where the approach of the car brought dark- eyed children running to call 'Auto! Auto!' after it until their shrillness was lost on the wind. At that hour it was a daunting landscape. The sky was slightly overcast and the sinking sun was a vague orange Chinese lantern shrouded in cloud. Tessa, sitting behind the other two, announced, 'I'm cold.' 'Then put on your coat.' Craig spoke over his shoulder. 'I let Sister St. Agnes pack it. I thought the desert was going to be hot.' 'So it is, mostly, by day. The nights can be perishing. Didn't they teach you any local geography at the Convent? Sizzling days and Arctic nights at this season. And at all the seasons, wind—' he slanted a glance Adair's way, which she ignored. 'Khamsin, sirocco, meltemi, chehili - give a wind any fancy name you like and the desert's got it. However, if you rootle around behind you, you'll find a rug. No, there's an old anorak of mine. Find that and cuddle into it.' He turned to Adair. 'You all right for warmth?' 'Yes, thank you.' She had come prepared, having remembered how cold the desert nights could turn after sundown. But she blamed herself for not seeing that Tessa had a coat, and said so.

He brushed aside her vexation. 'They should have known at the school. Anyway, not much further now.' He pointed ahead and to the right. 'See those lights? That's Bou Larissa town. Base is eight kilometres east of it.' Tessa sat forward to peer at the lights. 'A real town? Streets and shops and things? Why can't I go to school there?' 'Streets and shops - of sorts. Mostly open markets. And to your other question - because I can't see you mucking-in with a lot of babes, sitting cross-legged on the floor and chanting all their lessons in sing-song. Not much future for your O-levels prospects there, my infant.' 'I'm not your infant!' she flashed. 'And I'll never get O-levels, anyway. I'll never be anywhere long enough.' He remained unmoved. 'Huh. You'd be surprised. Meanwhile, count your blessings - adult.' There was a pause. Then— 'By blessings you mean - Adair?' Tessa challenged pertly. There was another small silence. 'But of course I mean Adair. Who else ?' he countered. Tessa said nothing to that and he changed the subject to ask Adair, 'Do you know anything about cars? Do you drive?' She was reluctant to answer that. But - 'I did in England,' she told him. 'Could you handle this one? It could sometimes be at your disposal.' 'I expect I could, though I've only driven a Mini so far.'

'Your own?' 'No.' Ten minutes later the car drew up in the forecourt of a large white building with jutting wings in an E design. The different levels of its flat roof were just discernible against the darkening sky, and though it wore glaring neons on each wing and above its main entrance, such narrow windows as it had showed no light from within. The tessellated hall they entered was as harshly lighted as the exterior and as bare of furnishing as an empty bam. From behind a closed double door there were sounds of people dining, and from deep in the back of the hall a man and woman came hurrying. They were introduced to Adair. 'Brian and Claudine Watts, our wardens.' To the man Craig said, 'Could you get their things taken from the car to the annexe?' and to the woman, 'I expect their rooms are ready?' 'But of course, monsieur. And I thought that if the little one is tired, she would enjoy her supper in bed. I've prepared a tray.' Claudine Watts spoke with a faint French accent, sharing a welcoming smile between Adair and Tessa, who scowled. 'I daresay she would,' Craig answered for her. 'Thoughtful of you, Claudine. So would you take them along and do the honours of the annexe?' He turned to Adair. 'Perhaps you'll dine with me over here and meet some of the team ? How long will you need to freshen up ? Half an hour?' 'About. But I'd like to see Tessa settled first.' 'An hour, then,' he agreed. 'I'll come over for you.'

The annexe, white-walled and singled-storied, was reached by a covered way opening off the hall. It consisted of about half a dozen rooms, their function indicated by Claudine with a rap on their doors. 'Monsieur's office. Your room, Miss Tracy. The little one's. Ours mine and my husband's. And this one - for both of you by day - for the lessons and the playing perhaps?' - opening the door on to a small square room furnished with a table, two upright chairs and a wall cupboard. The narrow window was shuttered for the night and was innocent of curtaining. As were the windows of both the narrow rooms which were to be Adair's and Tessa's bedrooms. Claudine explained the lack with a smile. 'No frills. No - what is the English word - chintz? you are thinking? But the sun, you understand - it rots everything it touches when it is at full heat. We are in a barracks here, and we have to live as plainly as the soldiers did before us.' 'Of course,' Adair agreed. 'How hot is it likely to be at this time of year, Madame Watts?' 'Claudine, please. I am Claudine to all of you.' She answered the question with a shrug. 'So-so. Very hot to you, no doubt. But temperate, compared with high summer. Now, in a month or two, perhaps less, we shall be watching for the rains. Which may or may not come, as God wills.' They both saw Tessa to her room. She accepted their help with her unpacking, then manoeuvred them out, saying she could manage now, thank you, and shutting the door on them. Claudine's brows went up. 'Will she be all right?'

'I think so. She has had to grow used to being independent. We'll give her time to undress and wash, and if you could have her supper tray ready then?' said Adair. Like all children in bed, Tessa looked smaller and more vulnerable when they went back. She accepted her tray politely, but wrinkled her nose in distaste at the milk offered with her cornflakes. 'It's tinned!' Claudine admitted it. 'We have no cows in the desert, little one. One day, perhaps, when Monsieur and his team and all the other teams have had their way with it for a few years. They will grow trees first, then grass, then fodder for livestock - even rich enough for cows. But as yet we drink our milk from tins or from goats. Would you rather have goats' milk?' 'It doesn't matter.' Sulking, Tessa ate her cornflakes dry, then pushed the tray, ignoring the dessert of canned apricots. When Claudine had taken the tray and left them, she thrust down into the bed and turned her face to the wall. 'I'd like to go to sleep now,' she told Adair pointedly. 'You think you can? That's good. Shall I leave the light on or not?' 'Not, of course.' Tessa's voice came muffled. 'I'm not a baby.' Adair obediently flicked the switch, then stood for a moment in the sudden darkness. How used was the child to a good night kiss? she wondered, and decided against offering one. Tessa made no sign when she went out, closing the door behind her. She showered and changed and was ready for Craig when he came over for her. The dining arrangements were an assortment of small separate tables and a long one. At one of the separate tables one

bearded man sat alone; at another, two were sharing, but Adair and Craig joined the few still eating at the long one. She was introduced bewilderingly to engineers, field overseers, forestry experts, research technicians. The men were of several nationalities - English, American, one German, a couple of Australians, two French brothers - and she had to suppose that she would fit the right names to the right faces and jobs, given time. The only one she didn't meet was the lone diner, who sat with his back to the main table and did not glance its way, nor come over. Craig Carolan nodded in his direction, then asked his neighbour, a blond cliff of a man named Tom Jessop, 'Lander throwing one of his moods, hm ?' Tom Jessop followed the jerk of his chiefs head. 'You could call it that, I suppose. There are other names for it,' he said, an ambiguity to which Craig made no comment. The bearded man did raise a hand to them when he left a few minutes later. The other men moved out as they variously finished eating, but Tom Jessop lingered on to drink coffee with Craig and Adair. Their talk, as at the meal was about their work, the next day's operations plans, the labour potential and the condition of their mechanical gear. Technical shop which Adair barely understood. It struck her wryly that Craig Carolan needn't have worried that her arrival would disturb the camp's dedication to its work in the slightest degree. The men seemed to have accepted her - as he had himself, once he had agreed to engage her - as a necessary adjunct to his nominal wardship of Tessa. No romantic overtones to anything spoken or looked by any of them. None at all. She hoped he was satisfied. When she stood, saying she would go back to Tessa and to bed herself, both men stood with her. Tom Jessop said good night and

Craig walked back with her, saying he would put in an hour at his desk before turning in himself. At the door of his office she was ready to bid him good night when they both alerted to a sound which shouldn't have been breaking the silence. Sobs ... long-drawn ... choking. Then nothing. Then the creaking of a bed and again a sob which strangled to silence. Adair blanched. 'It's Tessa. She's crying!' She started down the hall, Craig following. 'Shall I come in?' he asked. 'No, better not. I can manage—' A few minutes more and she came back to him. 'She wasn't awake. She was crying in her sleep. She had thrown off most of the bedclothes, but I managed to cover her again without her waking. She's quiet now, but—' Adair broke off and wrapped both arms about herself as if she were suddenly cold. Craig looked down at her. 'But what?' he prompted. 'If you're blaming yourself for persuading me to bring her here, you can forget it. I wasn't swayed by you. I make my own decisions. The child is homesick, but that's to be expected. She'd have been the same anywhere she was moved.' 'Homesick for what? I shouldn't have thought she'd had enough security to be homesick for,' Adair retorted. 'Getting at her father for toting her around with him? I shouldn't, if I were you,' he advised coldly. 'A man has the right to live by any light he chooses. I've told you, I don't know why he lugged Tessa along everywhere he went, but at a guess it was because she was all he had of a wife he'd loved, but who had resented having Tessa. He probably felt he had to make up to her by keeping her with him, and

I'm not judging him for that. Besides, I'd remind you, you claimed yourself, in support of your case, that children are tough.' 'We were talking about climate. I meant physically tough. But if I seemed to criticize Tessa's father, I'm sorry. I suppose, if your three families were neighbours, you'd have known her mother too?' 'Elaine Farrar? Yes, well enough—' He broke off to lift his head and listen. 'All quiet now. You'd better get to bed yourself, hadn't you? Good night.' He turned back towards his study and went into it.

Adair's first waking of that night was in the small hours, when the very austerity of her cell-like room was unfamiliar, yet somehow reassuring; because it was real, tangible, and because her finger's touch on the bedside switch, brought it instantly to light, enabling her to tear free of the dark web of the nightmare she knew only too well by now. The dream dropped away, dissolved, But was it going to recur, she wondered, until memory itself dissolved? That night on the Malvern road, driving back to Frayne after Miles's debut in repertory at the Folk Theatre, herself at the wheel of his small car, because she had been unwilling to trust him to drive himself ... The night when Miles, riding high on his infatuation for someone else, had been brutally frank that between Adair and himself there was nothing left; even that there never had been anything; that they had engaged themselves to each other because they had grown up side by side; because it was easier to please the people who expected it of them than not. The night when, though her pride had been revolted at hearing it come from him, rather than from her, she had known it for the truth.

She and Miles had taken each other for granted. He - now she had faced it - seeing their engagement as an escape from the swaddling wraps of his adoring family, and she because it had become her life's habit to protect and shelter and be a prop for Miles. He had been right that night. They had never sparked to fire for each other; had never known the sweet pain of having to snatch just one more stolen minute together ... and another ... and another; had never felt as if they were halved when they were apart. But that he was right had done nothing at the time for the hurt of hearing him say it all with extravagant exaggeration and without kindness because, she had suspected, he had needed to drink too much before he had found enough false courage to say it at all. Perversely, she had known jealousy too. Jealousy of the elegant poise and dramatic flair of the guest star who was taking the lead in the company's play in which Miles had his first part. She was older than either Adair or Miles by several years - polished and scintillating as a diamond, a being from an entirely other world than the little provincial theatre being run on a shoestring by a group of enthusiasts. Miles had begun by admiring her and had died still her slave. And Romaine Charles, flattered by his worship while he was alive, had been graciously kind. After he was dead she had sent her deep regrets to his family, not to Adair. But she had not cared. As Adair's pride had done its best to convince Miles that night - he meant nothing to the great lady. She did not care. In patchy fog they had drawn aside on to the grass verge, accusing and quarrelling for a long time until Miles had lapsed into a withdrawn, haughty silence and she had taken to the road again, feeling her sense of rejection like a cold barrier between them. Once Miles had roused to remark sourly on how badly she was driving and that he had better take over from her, but she hadn't replied and had driven on.

Those were the facts of the night which she remembered quite clearly, and the nightmare never began there; k took on timeless, vague shape later. Sometimes it did not put Miles beside her; it could be a stranger or a neighbour or Miles's mother; sometimes no one. But the climax was always the same - the blindness of the suddenly thickened fog, the baffled halt and the gradual crawl forward, and then the great wrench upon the steering-wheel which was panic action so rash that it seemed not of her doing. And after that, collision course, the stone wall looming, her fight to correct the wheel and her shout of horror - 'No—!' which, whether she called it aloud or not, always dragged her free of the web to wakefulness. As it had not, in reality, freed her of the aftermath of horror that had followed - the searing pain of her broken arm, the wrecked car, Miles unconscious. Silent darkness for a while, then lights, people, an ambulance, hospital. Later still, Miles's failure to recover consciousness; the questions, the reconstruction of the accident; hearing her own admission that she must have swung over the wheel, though deep down she hardly believed it; the exoneration of the fog; the well-meant advice of friends to put the memory behind her, and later still, and going on and on, the atmosphere of unvoiced blame that became the everyday climate of Frayne. She offered no defence. They didn't know that Miles ever drank too much, nor that he had broken their engagement, nor the thing she didn't know the truth of herself. ... So while she saw it as a coward's trick to flee from Frayne, she stayed on. It was only when it dawned upon her that if she left, the people she left behind might have the better chance to live down the sorrow they had suffered at her hands, that she decided to go. And in judging so, it seemed she was right. The all-woman household - Miles's grandmother, his aunt, a soured, jealous

spinster, and his mother, a self- induced invalid - had gone through the motions of wishing her well, but they hadn't been sorry to part from her. She was her own mistress now; no doubt she would be taking a teaching job? She would have as a nest-egg such of Miles's small savings as he had left to her; she must act as she thought best, they had said. They had paid no lip-service to persuading her either that they needed her or that they felt they owed her some understanding and sympathy too. She couldn't blame them, feeling that some instinct told them that though she had been engaged to Miles, she had 'seen him clear and plain', never idolizing him as they had. However that might be, their withdrawal implied that they might have felt deeply for a blind sense of loss which matched their own. But, accident though it was, she had been the agent of Miles's death, hadn't she ? And so, if remorse was all she felt, they could do nothing for that. They had been willing to let her go, and she had taken the job with the Candars with headlong speed, not looking before she leapt. At intervals, usually after strain, the nightmare continued to plague her. But now the lighted room had dispelled it. Soon, she felt, after sitting up to listen for any sound from Tessa's room, she would be able to sleep again. And did, until there was a shaft of dusty sunlight at the closure of the window-shutters and, outside, the heavy tramp of feet, men shouting orders and argument and the revving up and staccato chatter of motor engines. Adair pattered in bare feet to open the shutters by a crack. Her window looked out on to the front courtyard where at first there was nothing to be seen. Until from round the side of the main building swept a cavalcade of vehicles - jeeps, tankers, a station wagon or two and a straggle of motor-bikes bringing up the rear. From the talk at the dinner table last night she concluded this was her first sight of

the spraying teams on their way out to the operations field. She watched the procession until the sound of its engines died away and until it was a mere snake of black ant-sized shapes on the far horizon. Then she went to Tessa's room. There was no answer to her knock. Tessa's bed was empty and her pyjamas were a knot of untidiness on the floor. Adair's heart missed a beat. Where—? The door of the bathroom they were to share was ajar and there was silence everywhere else. No doubt both Brian and Claudine Watts were already about their work in the main building. But as she could do nothing about Tessa until she had dressed herself, Adair threw on some clothes, ran a comb to little effect through her hair and ran through the covered way into the main hall. No one there. Out on to the courtyard and around the side - and Tessa was there, in faded blue jeans and a creased pink T-shirt, with Craig Carolan, bronze-torsoed in no shirt at all. He apologized. 'I've been down to it, coaxing a jeep to get going. Have you had breakfast yet? If not, I'll make myself decent and we could meet in the dining-room in a quarter of an hour. How's that?' He addressed the last question to Tessa, who nodded indifferently, then accused Adair, 'I thought you were never coming in to me. I'd been awake ever since it began to get light, and when you didn't seem to be going to make a move at all, I got up and came out. I was out here even before Craig was,' she added with some pride. 'Were you?' Adair deemed it wise not to mention she had been worried, sensing that in her present mood of recalcitrance, Tessa would be gratified if she knew. With a quarter of an hour in hand Adair left her to go back to do her own dressing properly, and found

both Craig Carolan and Tessa at a small table when she went to the dining-hall. As she had expected breakfast was coffee, bitter with chicory, rolls and tinned conserve. There was goats' milk for Tessa which, after a martyred sniff at the mug, she did consent to drink. Craig said, 'The team won't be back till sundown; there may be one or two people on off-duty rota in to lunch, but you'll mostly have the place to yourselves all day. What was your plan?' he asked Adair. She hadn't made one, feeling that Tessa might need to be eased, rather than driven, into the idea of regular lessons hours. So she agreed readily when Craig said that, as there'd be a station-wagon free for the morning, Adair might take it and Tessa into Bou Larissa and explore the town. 'But not alone? Somebody would come with us?' she demurred. 'Oh yes. Get Claudine to lend you Beni or Hassim to show you round. She'll probably have some marketing to be done, anyway. We get our main stores shipped out from Tunis, but we get fresh stuff from the town markets. And while you're about it, I don't suppose either of you has brought a pair of sand pattens along?' 'Sand pattens?' 'For getting around in sand with any comfort. High-soled, sturdy sandal jobs - you can't do without than in these parts, and you could shop for them in Bou Larissa. They'll only cost a handful of millemes if you let the boy bargain for them, and you should.' Craig drank only coffee without eating and left them before they had finished. Back in the annexe Adair imposed the small discipline of bedmaking and room tidying on Tessa, and then they were ready to set out for the town.

Adair was not looking forward to the journey. That question of Craig's last night - Did she drive? She had had to say Yes to it, unable to admit to him, who knew nothing of the way of Miles's death, that since that night her brain and her will had experienced a kind of mental block against handling a car again. Miles's car had been a write-off; her broken arm had precluded driving for her for some months; Miles's aunt had always been jealous of driving the Frayne household car, so that driving had not since been asked of Adair herself. This morning she could only hope Craig hadn't meant she should drive, though she dreaded that he had. In the open garage Beni, one of the two young Muslim waiters who had served dinner the previous evening, was waiting for them, standing by the station- wagon which had brought them from Tunis overnight. 'Good morning. You're going to drive us?' Adair asked him in French. Beni opened the passenger door for Tessa. 'No, you, mademoiselle. The Chief says so. I do not drive.' Adair hesitated. 'Well, I don't know if I can. That is-—' She was aware of Tessa's critical eye on her before the child said, 'You told Craig last night that you could drive. Why can't you today?' 'Just that it's a strange car to me. I thought—' Desperately she realized there was nothing for it. She had to make a showing. She took the driver's seat. Beni got in behind Tessa, and she went through the drill, praying she still knew how.

Gear lever in neutral. Switch. Choke. Starter, dutch. Bottom gear. Handbrake off. Accelerator - the engine purred for a moment, stalled and died. 'There! You don't know how!' Tessa crowed. 'Why did you say you— ?' But at that moment someone was standing by the car on Adair's side. 'Trouble?' drawled the newcomer in a deep lazy voice. 'Anything I can do?' It was the bearded man named Lander, who hadn't been introduced. Adair smiled at him in relief. 'Well—' she began. 'Well-what?' 'Nothing. It's just that the car is strange and I've stalled my engine.' 'Planning to go places, then ?' 'Yes, into Bou Larissa.' 'Care for me to take over ?' 'You mean—?' Believing she had read aright Torn Jessop's understatement 'There are other names for it,' Adair hesitated and something in her look brought a short laugh from the bearded man. 'As if I couldn't guess you'd have had it on the grapevine! You're calculating the degree of risk with me as your chauffeur. But not to worry. Mornings, I'm usually stone-cold sober, whatever you may hear to the contrary. So— ?' Embarrassed, Adair admitted, 'Well, it would help, just until I get the hang of it.'

'Move over, then.' Instead, Adair got out, gave him the driving-seat and made to join Beni in the back. But the newcomer had turned to Beni. 'We needn't bother you, boy,' he said in French. 'On your way. And you, madam,' he told Tessa, 'hop in behind and let the lady sit beside the gentleman up in front.' 'Why? I like it here.' He didn't look at her. 'Scram.' Reluctantly Tessa scrammed, taking Beni's place when he alighted and stood back. Adair protested, 'But he had some marketing to do. And he was going to help us—' 'Get him to give you his list and I'll do it for you.' With which he lifted a hand to Beni and waited for her to get in. After a few minutes of driving he said, ' "Lander" you'll know already, I've no doubt. Owen Lander in full. And besides "Tracy" which I know, what's the rest of you ?' 'Of my name? Adair,' she told him. 'Right. We're introduced. Now what else have you heard to my discredit, I wonder?' 'What-else?' 'Oh, come! You're not much of an actress, are you ? That look you gave me just now - breathalyser criticism written all over it! And how could you come by that if people hadn't told you ?' 'No one told me—!'

'Not even Beni or was it Hassim who helped me to bed last night?' 'Certainly not. I don't—' 'Don't gossip with the hired help? How prissy prim can you get?' he jeered. 'Also how incredibly deaf!' 'Deaf to what?' Adair felt irritated, both on Tessa's behalf and her own. 'Why do you suppose anyone would have gone out of their way to discuss your affaire with me, Mr. Lander?' 'Just because goodies thrive on discussing baddies with any goodies who'll listen, of course.' He glanced at Adair. 'No spark of interest yet? No curiosity aroused at all?' Adair felt it was time this empty banter was snubbed. 'Interested. Not curious,' she said. 'For instance, what's your job out here?' 'Meaning you wouldn't bid against anyone for my life-story? All right. Well, I'm not on the Operations strength. I'm a backroom boy. I'm supposed to play about with sand in test-tubes and come up with theories about salt-content and heat preservation and things like that,' he said carelessly. ' "Supposed to" ? And do you ?' 'From time to time, though I don't let my work cramp my style in other directions. Which is where we came in. With a glass in one hand, I'm digging my grave with the other. Acrobatic of me? But that's what you'll hear of me sooner or later, even if it's the truth that you haven't heard it already. Meanwhile, Bou Larissa in view. Hold on to your handbag in the market and let me do the talking at the stalls.' The town was a glare of white, flat-roofed buildings against an arid background of sand. The dusty palms bordering the approach road

they used became fewer and dustier towards the town centre - a wide market place thronged by men and darting children and loud with the shouts of the stall salesmen, a blare of transistor radios and the backfires of decrepit scooters which shot at speed across the square from one blue-washed alley leading off it to another. The scene was dominated by the lender grace of the towering minaret. There was an hotel and several cafe-bars, their pavements a clutter of outside tables. The goods of the stalls overflowed on to the pavements - clothes, cooking utensils, woven baskets, beaten brass and red earthenware were all literally underfoot, being fingered and rejected or finally bought to the tune of grumbles at the price. Beyond the main square was a smaller one, shadowed by tall houses, its surface deeply sanded, where the marketeers' mules and donkeys and a few lazily munching camels were tethered. There were very few women to be seen, but everywhere there were children - shrieking, playing ball, playing tag round the patient donkeys, and a few selling milk from strings of goats which they led for milking from house to house. They bought their sand pattens under Owen Landers guidance at one of the market stalls. To Adair's relief, the food stalls— piled with fruit, vegetables, meats and cheeses - were housed in a comparatively cool covered market hall where their guide took charge of Claudine's list and made short work of the bargaining it entailed. When he had finished small boys clamoured for the right to carry the produce to the car. The stuff was loaded in; the boys scrambled for the shower of coins he tossed among them and Adair, loving their bright eagerness to please, waved them a gay au revoir. Owen Lander drew up outside the hotel. 'One for the road, I think, don't you?' he invited.

Adair shook her head. 'No. Please don't let's stop. We ought to get back.' His frown was ugly. 'Rubbish. Who's waiting for you with a stopwatch? Besides, you owe me the time for a drink.' 'I don't—' 'Yes, you do. He offered to drive us when you couldn't. Besides, I'm thirsty,' put in Tessa in support of the opposition. 'There you are,' claimed Lander. 'Two against one; we're both thirsty. So what are you going to do about that?' 'We're not stopping.' 'And supposing I'm not going until I'm good and ready? Are you taking over? Or do you propose to hump the greengrocery on your back and walk?' he taunted. Vexed and nonplussed, Adair snapped, 'Neither. I hope you're going to be sensible and—' She broke off at the sight of a figure she knew - Craig Carolan crossing the square to an open car parked in the next lot. She saw him glance at the station wagon, look again, then alter course in its direction. She drew a sigh of relief. At that moment she couldn't have been more glad to see anyone.

CHAPTER THREE CRAIG CAROLAN looked a question at Adair, then at Owen Lantler who sketched a jaunty salute. 'Hey, Chief, three's a party; four is an orgy. Join us, won't you, in a modest dill water at the bar?' The invitation was ignored. Craig asked Adair, 'What has happened? Where is the boy - Beni or Hassim - I said was to come with you to the town? And why aren't you driving the car?' 'I was going to, but I didn't manage it very well. And when Mr. Lander offered to drive us and said we didn't need Beni as well, I accepted,' Adair told him. 'I see. And have you done the shopping you came to do?' 'With Mr. Lander's help, yes.' 'Then as I've finished my business too, perhaps you and Tessa will transfer to my car and I'll drive you back. Have you done any shopping for the kitchen too?' 'Yes. It's in the back.' As Adair and Tessa alighted - Tessa grumbling stormily that she was thirsty, and wasn't she going to get a lemonade - he beckoned to a hovering urchin to carry over the pile of goods and addressed Owen Lander for the first time. 'I take it it's your intention to spend the rest of the morning in the town ?' he asked. The bearded man shrugged. 'How did you guess? The morning, the rest of the day - does it matter?' he said, his tone an insolence.

'Only that you happen to be using Base transport which might be needed before the day is out.' 'Which is all the thanks I get for rescuing a damsel in distress!' Craig Carolan returned coolly, 'That could have been ironed out without your intervention, I daresay. Meanwhile, may I remind you that the report on the Deva Dunes potential which you promised days ago still wasn't on my desk this morning ?' Owen Lander alighted and slammed the car door. 'It wasn't finished. It'll be with you tomorrow.' 'I hope so.' They parted, Owen Lander to a table on the hotel's narrow terrace, the other to join Adair and Tessa. Except for a question or two as to their impression of the town, the return journey was made in comparative silence. Adair sensed that Craig's censure of Owen Lander somehow included her, and even Tessa was overawed by the peremptory manner of their transfer from one car to another. Back at the Base, he told Tessa to run to the kitchens to ask Claudine for a citron presse, but stayed Adair from getting out too. 'Just a minute.' She thrust back into her seat and waited. 'You'd accepted drinks from Lander when I arrived?' he asked. 'No. I'd just refused.' 'Why?' 'Because it was getting hotter in the town minute by minute, and because I thought we ought to get back.'

'I see. But why did you ditch Beni, when I'd said you were to take a boy along ?' 'I didn't ditch Beni. That was Mr. Lander's doing. He said we didn't need him.' 'Thereby creating a virtual tête-à-tête for you and himself. You didn't get the message of that?' Adair bridled. 'A tête-à-tête? We had Tessa along!' 'Tessa - who could be happily parked with a lemon squash at a terrace table when Lander asked you to adjourn with him to the bar. Look—' Craig swivelled in his seat to face her, 'let's be clear about one or two things, may we? One - that wasn't an idle suggestion that you should take Beni with you. It was an order, and it holds. For a time at least you'll always have him or Hassim or Brian Watts with you wherever you go from Base. Understood? And two - which I thought was already understood between us - I'm in charge here of a team of about thirty variously skilled men for whom, while they're on duty, there are to be no romantic interludes, nor the makings of any. Whatever distractions they find in the town or on leave in Tunis or at the coast are no concern of mine. But here the value to the project of their time overrides everything else. Here they are to be regarded as so many insulated robots, and if any one of them tends to forget it, I'd be grateful if you'd make your lack of co-operation, if not of interest, quite plain. Rather more so, I hope, than I imagine you did this morning to Lander.' 'Because I accepted his offer to drive us into Bou Larissa? I'd gathered last night that you work on a rota system, so how could I have known he wasn't off duty and free to take us?' Adair protested.

Craig nodded. 'True. You couldn't have known about that. But for the rest—' he leaned across to open her door for her - 'just a word of warning in season - I think you'll know what I mean.' She did, though why he should suspect she had encouraged the man Lander, she did not know. As he left her and drove away to the garage, she supposed she could only be thankful that he hadn't criticized her in front of Tessa. Except for one or two men who were already eating when they went in, she and Tessa had the dining hall to themselves for the midday meal. To Adair's relief, Tessa showed some appetite for the indifferent veal and was accustomed enough to taking a siesta to be willing to go to her room afterwards. 'What am I going to read?' she demanded. 'I always read.' 'I don't know. Did you bring anything with you?' asked Adair. 'Only my exercise books that Sister St. Agnes said you would want to see. I didn't have any books of my own at the Convent.' 'Well, wait a minute.' It seeming a good moment for producing the book on the ballet, Adair fetched it and was gratified by its reception. Tessa fell upon it eagerly, read its tide aloud - 'The Ballet. How It All Began' - and looked up at Adair. 'Where did you get it? Is it yours?' she asked. 'At a shop in Tunis where they sold some English books. I got it for you.' 'Really for me, because I told you—? Coo, thanks! Do you mean I can read it now?'

'That was the idea,' Adair smiled. Promising to come back in an hour when they would have a swim in the courtyard pool, Adair left Tessa to it. In her own room she changed into a swimsuit under a towelling tunic, added a wide-brimmed straw and went out to the pool which, like the dining-room, was deserted until, when she had swum its brief length once or twice and floated idly, the big blond man named Tom Jessop came and joined her. He lifted a friendly hand to her, plunged and came up beside her, wiping back his hair. 'Hello. All alone? Where's the che-ild?' he asked. Adair told him. Not meaning to stay much longer, she swam to the side and climbed out. Tom Jessop came too and sat on the surround, paddling his toes while she towelled dry. 'Aren't you out on Operations today?' she asked him. 'I was, but my jeep went on the blink and I had to . get a tow back. The mechanics are working on it now. How did you and the infant spend your morning?' 'We went into Bou Larissa to see the town and to buy ourselves some sand pattens.' 'On your own?' 'No. We were to take one of the boys, but I made a hash of starting the car and Mr. Lander came to the rescue and took us instead.' 'Owen Lander did? And brought you back under his own willing steam?' 'Well, no.' Adair made a brief story of Craig Carolan's intervention and their return with him, and Tom frowned.

'The Chief shanghaied you and left Owen standing?' He shook his head. 'When will the man learn, one asks oneself?' 'What do you mean? Learn what?' 'Why, that a snub like that is all Lander needs to send him off on a prize jag. Odd that, too,' Tom reflected aloud, 'the flair Craig has for winkling the best out of most people, and yet he has this blind spot about Lander. Not a clue, it seems, that the chap's to be led, not driven, or he'll dig in his heels and refuse to give an inch. It doesn't make for harmony in the home, believe me!' Adair said awkwardly, 'Well, I sensed there was some sort of tension between them, but—' 'Tension? The makings of dynamite! Lander's history is that he was a Headquarters man, and when Headquarters wouldn't wear him any more, Craig offered to take him on to do field research out here. But it isn't working out.' Tom glanced diffidently at Adair. 'You get the general drift of him, maybe ?' She read Tom's graphic gesture aright, and nodded. 'He hinted as much himself to me,' she admitted. 'He seemed to think that I must have heard gossip about his slackness and his drinking, and was almost offended when I told him I hadn't.' 'That's right - a persecution complex, giant offer size,' Tom agreed. 'The hand of the unjust world against him, and he's just not trying. And yet he's no lightweight at bottom. He's a brilliant technician letting himself go to seed. Age no excuse, either. He's a year younger than the Chief, who's thirty-five.' 'Then why is he going to seed, as you call it?' 'Sees himself as being hardly done by. At Headquarters, although he already liked the bottle too much, he thought he was firmly in line

for a big step up. Another man was promoted over his head and from there out Lander began to do as little work as would keep him from the gutter. The Company warned him; Craig reprieved him, and to hear him, you'd think the privilege was Craig's. But he didn't tell you anything of this ?' 'No, he only wanted to probe whatever I might have heard about him. And Mr. Carolan didn't discuss him with me.' 'No, he wouldn't. Lander is his problem, and he's not canvassing anyone's advice on his "Haul yourself up by your bootstraps, man" policy that he hasn't sold to Lander to date. Meanwhile,' Tom concluded, 'the rest of us cover up for the chap where we can, if only to keep the peace. You could help too perhaps, if you would?' 'I might? How?' As Adair gathered her things, prepared to go, Tom plunged back into the pool and came up to say, 'Dunno exactly. Be a little kind, maybe. The famous "woman's touch". The old tea and sympathy routine - you know. The chap doesn't deserve a break, but if getting one would take the jaundice out of his eye, anything's worth trying. And you never know - the feminine approach might do it!' And Tom ducked again, having no idea, Adair reflected wryly, of just how far his advice conflicted with his Chief's ruling that she wasn't to use "the feminine approach" towards any member of his team.

The next morning she began lessons with Tessa in the day-room of the villa. She had already planned a timetable, but the practical experience of those first days showed that, Tessa's temperament being what it was, it could not be adhered to too rigidly. Tessa's education, Adair found, had all the gaps and all the precocities of the cosmopolitan child. For instance, the theory of the

simplest arithmetic was so much Greek to her, yet her grasp of the currencies of different countries matched that of a travelled grownup. She had a smattering of several languages without a clue to any rules of grammar; such history as she had she gained from museums and showplaces, and her geography was a matter of having 'been there' or not. And over all there was her moody inability or her refusal to concentrate beyond a certain point. Only when she and Adair were reading together was any lesson safe from her sudden despair of 'I can't!' or 'I don't know what you're talking about', or 'You're only confusing me - you're trying to!' followed by the flung-down pencil and the storm of angry tears. At first, unwarned of their onset, Adair was distressed by these scenes, especially when Tessa raged through her sobs, 'Serves you right. Serves you both right. If Craig had let me go back to England and go to ballet school, you wouldn't have had to try to teach me things I can't learn and never shall!' But as soon as Adair began to be able to read the restless, irritable signs of revolt, she scrapped the timetable, letting each lesson last only as long as it held Tessa's interest, and thereby cutting their conflict of wills to a minimum. Then Tessa made friends with the younger of the two French brothers on the team, Paul Sarasin. Among her practicalities she had a flair for mechanics and when she was not in the school-room, she spent much of her spare time in the garages, watching and lending a hand to any 'tinkering' that was afoot. And it was there, helping Paul to take down the carburettor of his aged motor-bike, that she learned such of his story as she was eager to retail to Adair.

'He's twenty-two, and his home is in Grasse - where they make scent, I've been there with Daddy - and he's engaged to be married, and do you know how he chose the girl?' Adair did, having heard all about Paul's bizarre courtship from Tom Jessop, the main stem of the camp's grapevine. 'Didn't he send a love-letter back to Grasse with directions to the postman to deliver it to the first pretty girl he met on his rounds?' she asked. 'Oh, you know ? Yes, well - so the postman did, and this girl wrote to Paul. And he wrote back to her - her name is Lucille - and she wrote back to him, and they met on his last home-leave and they're going to be married on his next. But what's a lot more important than all that - Paul knows about ballet. He's got a record player and heaps of ballet records, and his sister got a scholarship to a ballet school in Paris and she's there now. Could I get a scholarship like that, do you think?' Adair wished she hadn't to dampen the hope. 'I doubt it. Even in England I think you have to show a great deal of talent and have had a lot of lessons first,' she said. 'If I went to England I could have lessons!' 'You can't go to England just now.' 'If I wait until I can, I shall be too old. They took Paul's sister when she was only a year older than me.' Adair shook her head. 'You still can't go to England yet.' 'I shall write to Aunt Grace.' 'Mr. Carolan has already written to her in America and she has agreed that's it's best you should stay here.'

'Then I shall write to Aunt Roma. She'll listen and take some notice—' and Tessa flung away, slamming every door in her path before Adair could attempt to pour oil by suggesting that she, Tessa and Paul Sarasin should get together for a session of ballet records without delay. 'You sparked this off. Now you can cope with it - and like it,' she adjured the absent Paul, wondering what sixth sense told her that a threesome with Tessa and Paul was likely to pass muster with Craig Carolan, where the same situation, engineered by Owen Lander, had not.

The days gained rhythm, punctuated by the morning departure and evening return of the operations team and in between, for Adair and Tessa, the morning schoolroom session, the afternoon siesta and their daily swim. Tessa was always up and out early enough to see the team off, but it was their returning which held fascination for Adair. If there was cloud haze, it was heralded only by a far-off hum, turning to a roar, but when the sun flamed down towards a clear horizon, casting pale pink stripes across the sky from west to east, it was possible to see the leading vehicles of the convoy in black antlike silhouette a long way out on the piste, the stone-compacted track across the sand. The sight of them beat the sound of their engines by a few minutes. Then they were roaring in file into the courtyard; there was noise and dust and a clamour of orders and counter-orders, and tired, thirsty men at the end of their day. Not so very different really, Adair sometimes thought whimsically, from the homing to the shelter of oases and tents of desert caravans all through the ages. (Or was that, according to Craig Carolan, seeing romance in the desert where there was none?)

Her usual evening routine was to see Tessa to bed before she went to the evening meal in the communal dining hall. There was no shape or regularity about who would be there or when. Sometimes Adair ate at one table, sometimes at another. When Tom Jessop was there she usually joined him. Craig often ate late and went to his office afterwards, but on an evening when he was early, he took a chair at the long table next to Adair. At first they talked about Tessa, then Craig said, 'I've been thinking that you might care to be put in the picture of what the rest of us are doing all day. At meals you're in on our shop talk without ever having seen the shop, as it were. What about it? Would you like to go out on a rota some time?' 'I should, very much.' 'Tomorrow?' 'Well, Tessa—?' 'It's Saturday, isn't it? Give her a break. Claudine can keep an eye on her. So if you'd care to see where the action is, be ready to go out when we are in the morning.' 'What shall I wear?' He looked her over dispassionately. 'M'm - slacks, a shirt, covering for your head. You could add a light coat too.' Although she wasn't late, most of the team had already left when she arrived in the courtyard the next morning. Only two or three jeeps were still there, and as she adjusted her sunglasses to the glare, she saw that Craig was waiting for her by one of them. He motioned her into it and got in himself. 'A to Z,' he remarked. 'We'll take in the seedling nurseries first and go out to the field later.'

On the way he described the whole cycle of the project, from seedling to mature tree. 'We plant continually, by the thousand, in fibre pots; nurse them until, ideally, they're six months old. Meanwhile we've prepared the planting terrain by spraying it with crude oil or rubber emulsion; we spray again after the planting-out, which we do at a gallop, all hands on deck, just before the seasonal rains.' 'And supposing they don't come?' Adair asked, remembering the awful rigours of drought when there should have been rain in the Persian Gulf. 'Just one of those things. Then we may have to irrigate artificially, which I deplore. If watering isn't continuous, it's worse than useless. Encourages the little monsters to get lazy and to depend on it, instead of buckling-to and sending down their roots in search of underground water, of which there's plenty, even under the Sahara. Turns them into lightweight layabouts, all self-pity and wilt.' (For whom you'd have very little use, would you, thought Adair, remembering Tom Jessop's graphic summing-up of her companion's robust attitude to broken reeds, whether they were lazy seedlings or victims of circumstance, like Owen Lander.) She heard him going on. 'Against that again, there's the risk of flood. With the surface rockhard, water absorption is almost nil. So any abnormal rainfall makes for flooding that's catastrophic - to plantations, people, houses, herds and whatever. And of course, always the wind.' He smiled wryly. 'Must sound to you as if we couldn't win?' 'But you are winning ?' He nodded. 'We must. But it'll get easier as we go, when Nature begins to take over some of the work from us.'

'How do you mean?' 'Well, it's a kind of give-and-take. Enough trees, densely enough planted, will mine their own water; give it off as moisture through their leaves; so increase the air humidity; result, cloud and rain. You see - full circle? Or a straight case of God helping those who help themselves.' 'And what kind of trees answer best to the treatment?' 'Acacia, eucalyptus, tamarisk. Ground crops under them — castor beans, rye and mesquite. Poplars could follow. And fruit - mulberry and fig and even citrus things.' As he spoke he was turning in at some gates on the right of the track. 'Nurseries coming up,' he said.

He had given a fair part of the morning to showing Adair the thousands of saplings being tended by dozens of dark-skinned workers, chattering over their tasks of filling fibre pots with soil, dibbling seeds and deftly pinching out weakling shoots from sturdier thrusting growth. The whole nursery area was comparatively cool and verdant, an oasis in miniature, though no 'natural', Craig said. Only seven years earlier it had been rescued from the desert's greedy encroachment by the project's pioneers, and even its mature trees had been the first experimental seedlings of those days. Later she saw some plantations just coming into their first season's growth, others in the strong established vigour of two and three years' standing. A few failures too; casualties to freak weather conditions and the lack of manpower or the time to save them. Yet even they had their uses, Craig remarked drily - as awful warnings or 'controls' for the backroom boffins to prove something from.

Then, under a pitiless noonday sun, they had reached the current operations field - a vast floor, ribbed and pock-marked underfoot, ashimmer with heat farther out and not even all sand-coloured; in patches it was red with iron-content, white with salt; and grey. Nor was it table-flat. Like an English down- land, its nearer contours rolled into low hills and dipped to gentle slopes, and against the skyline the dunes were sugarloaf mountains and sharp cut escarpments, deeply shadowed. Here there was a different activity from the ordered concentration of the nurseries. Jeeps scurried, giant tankers lumbered out to horizons and back, oil feed hoses choked and gurgled, lying in snake coils on the sand, and orders shouted from man to man were amplified by loud-hailer. The men themselves, doing this or that to whatever purpose, were dwarfed by the immensity of terrain and sky; tiny Davids pitting their cunning against the desert Goliath. They ate their packed lunch in the shade of a jeep and in the company of the driver and his mate, and Craig described the method he planned for the higher dunes. 'Known as the banquette system as an extra guard against erosion of the slopes. Roughly, necklaces of trees around the contours in a special form of trenching in. We've surveyed that one, for instance ...' he pointed to one of the conical shapes on the skyline. 'If you'd care to go out there after lunch, there's a passable track that my jeep can take to about the last half-kilometre, after which we'll have to go on foot, and you'll see why.' Adair did when, a quarter of an hour later, they left the jeep and began to climb the side of the dune in sand so loose and deep that her progress would have been at the rate of one step forward to two back, were it not for Craig's steadying hand beneath her elbow. 'Too much for you?' he asked after a while, and paused.

'No.' She panted deeply. 'I'm only thinking it would be easier on all fours!' He nodded. 'Could be. I've had to resort to them myself before now. But it's not much further to the top. Take a rest before we go on.' He sat down, facing out to the way they had come, and patting the sand beside him. They were far out of sight of the team's activities and the only thing alien to the infinity of sand and sky was the black shape of the jeep and its shadow where they had left it below on the track. They sat for a while, then stood to go on. But presently Craig halted again and turned to scan the great fan of the sky behind them, his sudden immobility, his stance, his lifted head, almost that of a fine animal alert to the scent of an enemy. Adair watched him. 'What—?' she asked. 'Wind. The chehili. Not a word about it on Tunis radio this morning. But that sky...' She looked at it; in the space of minutes it had taken colour, yellow, darkening almost to copper. And already, far off, there was a howling. Craig went on, 'We must go back. And fast.' 'Back?' 'To the jeep.' He touched her shoulder bag. 'Have you got the coat I told you to bring in there?' 'No. I left it in the jeep.' 'Tch! What's the good of it there? Still - come on.'

As he spoke he was pushing her downhill at a pace she couldn't take after a few yards. She stumbled, almost fell and halted. 'Please,' she begged. 'I can't!' 'You must. When that wind hits us, minutes are going to count.' If only to gain a moment's breathing-space she asked, 'Which direction is it coming from?' 'All over. You won't be able to tell. We've got to make that jeep some—' He did not finish. In that moment the wind was upon them, as inexorable as a stone wall and as terrifying as a host of demons, shrieking, roaring, whistling and whipping the sand into man-height spirals, kept erect as if by some invisible, devilish hand. Adair could not stand against it and fell to her knees. Craig stood over her, tore off her head-scarf and wrapped it tightly round her nose and mouth before dragging an outsize handkerchief from the pocket of his shorts and making it into a triangular bandage for his own. She shook her head at him in distress. 'I - can't - breathe—' 'You won't be breathing long if you don't keep it on.' His voice came muffled as he crouched beside her, peering into the fog of sand behind which all sight of the track below and the jeep was hidden. He straightened, stood upright, leaning back against the gale and forward on it as he turned this way and that, sensing whatever prevailing direction it might have. Then he reached a hand down to Adair. 'We can't hope to make the jeep. We'd be heading straight into trouble. No, don't talk—' he forbade her. 'There's a bluff not far east

of here if I can find it. Once round that, there'll be some shelter in its lee. Come—' She got to her feet and went, hand in hand with him, gasping, stumbling and once or twice, blinded by whirling sand to her next step, falling to her knees. The third time this happened she heard his smothered exclamation, and with a sudden powerful plunge he dragged her up and into his arms, his hold on her shoulders and beneath her knees as hard and painful as the grip of a vice. She kicked feebly. 'You can't—' 'Keep still, for pity's sake—' As he fought on, head down so that his forehead rested almost on her waist as he carried her, she could feel the pounding drive of his heart like the beat of a giant hammer. Ashamed of her weight, she lay as still as she could, trying to ease it for him; trying too to resist the almost overpowering impulse to tear the suffocating folds of silk from her nose and mouth. At last his heavy, slow progress stopped and he put her down, still steadying her with a hand against her back. Eyes closed against the cruel prick of the sand, she had been blind to his turn inward under a beetling of sandstone cliff. A few steps out from it the storm raged on; close in under it there was comparative peace, a square yard or two of safe anchorage. Craig thrust her to sit with her back against the cliff and sat himself in front of her. He pulled down the scarf from her face and took down his own. 'Sorry about that,' he said. 'But you might have choked to suffocation point without it.' He bent forward to put his fingertips very lightly to the rise of her cheekbone. 'Sorry,' he said again as she flinched from their touch. 'You're whipped pretty raw there. Got anything in that bag of yours that would help ?'

She pulled forward her bag and fumbled in it, conscious now of the windburn of her cheeks, yet even more conscious of her inner response to his rough concern for her pain. Was it gratitude — or something more? Some impulse to give back kindness for kindness? Touch for gentle touch? She dug deep and brought out a stick of colourless lip-salve. 'That's all I've got,' she said. He approved it. 'Better than nothing. Smear it on and powder over it on the principle of keeping air from an ordinary burn. Sponge it off when you get back and forget make-up until the place is healed.' She used the salve and powder and sat back on her heels beside him. She said awkwardly, 'I don't know how to thank you. I couldn't have gone much further under my own steam. I'd no idea—! Even at the Gulf I never experienced a wind or a sandstorm in real action like this.' 'I should hope not, at the age you say you were in Kuwait. But you wouldn't have been at the mercy of it today if there'd been the slightest warning on the air.' 'On the radio, you mean?' 'No. Literally "on the air". To be smelt or sensed in time to run for cover. That's where camels score over the internal combustion engine. Camels can sense a storm long before it rises. On the other hand, they're apt to panic and bolt when it does strike. So, transportwise, I suppose we do break even, using jeeps.' 'How soon can we get back? How long might it last?' He looked up at the obscured sky. 'Anyone's guess. It'll probably die away as suddenly as it rode up. Let's hope before sundown.' He halfglanced her way. 'Worried about being compromised by nightfall catching up on us, hm?'

She flushed. 'I hadn't thought about it!' He nodded. 'Just as well. For if we were benighted at this time of year, we'd have weightier problems than moral ones. Cold, for instance. Meanwhile, I've a couple of headaches as it is. One - the effect of this unexpected lot on our latest plantings. Depending on the wind direction and how badly it has hit down there, it'll mean full inspection and first-aid for the younger stuff, just at a time when the spraying of the new ground should be at its peak.' As he spoke he retied the bandage over his face and stood up. Adair looked at him in surprise. 'Why?' she asked. 'You're not going out into it again?' 'Not by choice. But headache number two — the jeep. I've got to try to get a sighting on it, and if necessary, dig it out. If it gets totally buried, we might not find it this side of the night. Anyway, you're staying here. I'll be back as soon as I can. You can't come to any harm if you don't venture out. And don't.' 'If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have to come back,' she said guiltily. But he didn't hear. She watched him fight his way round the corner of the bluff and he was gone. The infinite loneliness of the wind-harried desert out there; here, under the overhang of sandstone, no company for Adair but one or two big sand-spiders appearing as if from nowhere, burrowing hastily and disappearing again. Even the raucous-voiced birds of the desert must have run for shelter before the wind, for there were none to be heard. Adair found herself thinking about vipers ... and scorpions. Did they live at this latitude? If she had ever known, she had forgotten. Spiders were very small beer by comparison .. . She forced herself to speculate about Craig instead, trying to calculate how long he might be gone. But desert distances were

baffling, and after he had picked her up to carry her, she had lost all sense of direction. Besides, the time he would need for digging out the jeep was an unknown quantity. And supposing he didn't find it ? Or, having found it, couldn't get back— ? She lived with that fear for a long time, turning it over, recognizing it as fear for him, not for her own abandonment where she was. When the wind dropped she could find her own way back, and there would be search-parties out for them both. Perhaps were already. But supposing the search for Craig began too late ? Supposing somewhere out there he was battered, choking, suffocating? For far longer than at first she thought she could, she suppressed the fear by calling it hysteria which she was convinced he would despise. But when at last she could bear it no longer, she readjusted the scarf over her mouth and nose and crawled out on hands and knees around the bluff. She stood up. Nothing to be seen but the low fog of eddying, dervish-dancing sand. Nothing to be heard but the roar of the wind that commanded the dance. No sign of Craig ... Adair struggled a hundred yards or so in what she believed must be the right direction, then saw the hopelessness of her quest and turned back. It took her half as long again to get back to her shelter, and when she reached it little sobs of spent energy were rasping in her throat. Head down to the wind, she wasn't aware of Craig until, close under the overhang, his hand suddenly shackled her wrist and shook it. 'Where have you been?' She heard the jagged edge of anger in his voice. 'I told you not to move from here. Why did you ?' 'I - went to look out for you. You'd been so long away. I - got frightened.'

He released her wrist, almost flinging it away. 'Long? I've been less than two hours. What do you suppose I was out on — a picnic ? I said I'd be back for you. You had only to wait. What were you frightened of?' 'Nothing, of course - for myself. But I began to be afraid - for you.' 'For me?' He stared at her. 'My dear girl, be your age! I don't play games with the Sahara unless I'm pretty sure I can win. When I suspect I can't, I give it best. But this wasn't one of those times. And I gave you an order.' She nodded. 'Yes, I know. I'm sorry. But I began to picture your not reaching the jeep. Or, having found it, not getting back. Silly, I know—' As a way of telling him that fear for someone else - powerless fear — did not think, but plunged to an abyss of panic, that sounded lame. But he accepted it with a grudging 'Silly? You can say that again!' and then answered her question as to how she had missed him by telling her that he had come up on a kind of tacked course, by another way. 'I found the jeep half-buried and I had to dig her wheels free. But the good lass started at a touch and I eased her on to the sandmats I always carry, so she should be all right.' He took from the pocket of his shirt a small foil-wrapped bar of chocolate. 'Hungry?' he asked. She shook her head. 'Heavens, no. I couldn't. My teeth are gritting together.' 'Well, you'll have heard the one about having to eat a peck of dirt, and this should help to get your today's ration down. Here—' He broke the bar meticulously and gave her half. She pulled a face, but bit into it and watched him do the same with his. Then suddenly he was lifting his head and listening.

Adair listened too, heard the roaring wind lessen and watched as one angry scurry of sand after another whipped up as if for a last defiant fling before it calmed and lay still. Craig went outside their retreat. 'Gone off to the north — just like that,' he said. 'Come along. On our way.' He offered her a hand. Back at the jeep after half an hour's heavy trudging, they had to sweep the seats and bonnet clear of more sand. They got in and Craig started the engine, but let it idle quietly. 'There's a local legend,' he remarked, 'that says pompously - Let's see, how does it go? - "With whomsoever a man weathers a chehili and comes through, he makes a friend for life". So after today's caper, where does that put us, would you say?' Adair met his glance. 'Does it put us anywhere? I don't suppose a woman counts, do you?' 'Oh, I don't know. Mightn't a point be stretched to cover an intrepid Tracy woman like you ?' 'Don't you mean a foolhardy Tracy woman who doesn't look where she's going?' she parried. He laughed shortly. 'So that stung, did it? At the time it was meant to. However, there's also another folklore bit that says, "Break bread alone with a woman in the desert, and at your life's end she will still be at your side." What about that?' Adair looked straight ahead. 'It sounds rather more like a threat than a promise. Anyway, that doesn't apply either: We haven't "broken bread" alone with each other, have we ?' He slanted an unreadable glance at her. 'We've gone halves with a bar of chocolate,' he said, and put the jeep in gear.

CHAPTER FOUR WHEN they got back to the operations field Craig went into dynamic action. All spraying had perforce been abandoned, but he called the scattered units together, detailing a few men to get the tankers back to the Base and making a team of the rest to take over to the seedling plantations on whatever rescue work might be needed there. Adair, feeling something of a nuisance, effaced herself as best she could. She assumed Craig would be sending her back, but she thought he had forgotten all about her until, just before he was ready to set out with the other convoy, he looked across to where she was standing and beckoned her over. 'Tom is in charge of your lot. When he's ready to go, he'll tell you which of the jeeps can take you. And a message for Claudine - if we find a lot of trouble, we could stay out until moonrise and after, so she's warned about dinner. And tomorrow it'll be everyone out, so it'll be packed lunches as usual, as if it were a weekday. Got that? Well, don't forget to pass it on—' Adair saw she had lost his attention as he leaned out from his jeep to signal to the head of the convoy - 'Right. On your way.' When they arrived at the Base, although the courtyard was ankledeep in drifted sand, they found it had suffered only the fringes of the storm. 'Like that, the chehili,' Tom told Adair as they went in together. 'So darned "regional" sometimes that it just isn't true. Meanwhile, my number one priority is a drink. What's yours?' 'Mine ? A bath,' Adair said fervently.

'You'll be lucky! There'll be a queue that long. Oh no - of course you've got a tub in the villa.' Tom moved over to the hatch that served as a bar counter. 'Have a drink first, all the same ?' But Adair went instead to deliver Craig's message to Claudine, who was gratifyingly ready to sympathize with Adair's first experience of a sandstorm, but frowned over Craig's edict that the next day, Sunday, must rank as just an ordinary working day for the team. 'Still, if he says so—' she shrugged. 'Once before, when this happened, I dared to tell him the men should be allowed to rest on Sunday, and all he said was, "Then pass the word to Mother Nature, will you, to keep her emergencies strictly for mid-week." And when I grumbled to Brian he only reminded me of the parable about the ass that fell into a pit on a Sunday. So you see,' Claudine finished with a chuckle against herself, 'I got no - what do you say in English? - no small change at all!' Adair laughed with her. 'Well, I must say they both had a point!' Then she asked, 'Where is Tessa? How has she been ? Good, I hope ?' Claudine hesitated. 'Good enough. But ennuyee, the little one. Bored and rather cross and asking why had she been left behind. Her papa had always taken her with him wherever he went, so why couldn't she have gone with you ?' 'My goodness, I'm thankful she didn't!' breathed Adair. 'Well, of course,' Claudine agreed. 'But she didn't like it either that I had to tell her she must not swim. The pool! You should see it! The debris, the rubbish that's blown into it — unspeakable! Brian must clear it out tomorrow without fail!' 'Tomorrow ?' Adair hinted slyly.

'But of course tomorrow! As soon as may be!' Then Claudine saw the joke. 'Ah, now you have me too, Miss Tracy! But the little one she has been quiet for an hour in her own room. She said she was going to write a letter.' 'Oh yes. To her aunt in England.' Adair had hoped that Tessa had abandoned the idea of appealing to her actress aunt. Craig had definitely ruled out the feasibility of sending Tessa into her care, and Adair feared the effect of the child's own appeal coming to nothing. She went over to the villa by the covered way and met Tessa coming out of her room. Her letter, already in its envelope, was in Tessa's hand. She looked Adair over. 'Coo, you're pretty dirty,' was her comment. 'What happened?' Adair described the storm in graphic detail. Tessa said, 'You had an Adventure. You might have let me go too.' 'You wouldn't have enjoyed it, believe me. I didn't. But you would have liked seeing all the rest that Mr. Carolan showed me before it blew up. He's going to be pretty busy for the next few days, I think, but later I'll ask him if you could go out to the , nurseries and the plantations too.' Adair gestured towards the letter. 'Do you want an airmail stamp for that? I think I've got one, if you do.' Tessa looked at her letter. 'Yes, please. But only if you'll give me the stamp. If I give you this to post, you'll want to see what I've said in it to Aunt Roma.' 'Why should I?' 'Because grown-ups always want to read children's letters. Daddy never did, but—'

'Probably because he knew he could trust you to write a sensible one on your own. As I'm sure I can too. Anyway, you can always seal it, can't you ? Then I couldn't read it.' 'I've known grown-ups to open children's letters,' Tessa said darkly. 'Besides, I don't want to seal it yet. I might want to change what I've said. So I'll have the stamp if you don't mind. If you've got it handy,' she added in a belated sop to good manners. Adair took a stamp from her bag, handed it over and went on to her own room. She would have been gratified if Tessa had wanted to show what she had written to her aunt. But she felt she had gained a point with her lack of curiosity; by not being as typically 'grown-up' as Tessa had expected. She supposed later that the child had consigned her letter to the mailbox in the main hall, but she didn't ask any more about it. The returning team's report on the plantations was favourable. There had been time only for a cursory survey of the first-year saplings, but even they had held their own against the ravages of the gale, with the exception of some scorching and uprooting of weaklings on the plantation's exposed fringe. However, Craig's edict held; the whole man-strength of the Base, technical backroom boys and all, were detailed for field duty until every transplanted row of trees had been inspected for damage, and that Sunday's exodus from the Base was as thorough as any weekday's. The aftermath of the storm was perfect; a quiet air, not tiresomely hot. During the morning Tessa helped Brian Watts to clear the pool of its unwelcome flotsam and they were able to swim in the afternoon. The team came back at sundown and it was a little later, when Adair was in the dayroom of the villa, getting ready some apparatus for Monday's lessons, that she was aware of the noisy altercation coming from Craig's office across the hall.

Both room doors stood ajar. Before Adair could leave what she was doing to close her own she couldn't help hearing the raised voices. Craig's, searing - 'When I said "Everyone", that meant everyone not excepting you.' Owen Lander's, drawling, insolent - 'Really? And why should I suppose it included the lab. staff? I'm a technician, I'd remind you. Not a navvy.' 'You're as much a navvy as the rest of us when I choose,' Craig's voice rasped. 'You've got a spine and shoulders and eyes and a pair of hands, haven't you ? You'll put in your stint tomorrow.' 'Shall I? And who says?' 'I say.' 'Or else—?' Owen Lander taunted, but at that point Adair quietly closed her door. She went back to her pencil and ruler, but found she was not concentrating on her scale-plan of a Norman castle. She was doodling instead ... and thinking. She knew herself to be on Craig's side and she could imagine the anger that the other man's insolent nonchalance must spark from him. But she thought Tom Jessop's verdict on their friction was right - Craig made no allowances; drove where he would be wiser to lead or even jockey for position against Lander. But who could tell him so? Or find him heeding? Instinctively she knew that for Craig black was black and white, white; his code would have little use for greys - And from there, at a mental leap, she found she was wondering and caring - about his likely reaction to the ugly facts of her own story. She remembered his 'So you were running away', which had disconcerted her badly when he flung it at her. Now she wished she

had been frank with him, instead of evading the issue of how Miles had died. But he hadn't probed, and at the time it had seemed no concern of the stranger he had been to her then. She hadn't known how could she? - that his regard, his opinion of her, was going to matter quite a lot. Far too much, now he had entrusted Tessa to her and now she knew him better, for it to be possible to confess to him her share in Miles's death now. It could have been told to a stranger without repercussion. But now she knew she was too vulnerable to the chill of his criticism; wanting to stand well with him; wanting him to believe in her for the very little while they were likely to be sharing each others' lives. It was too late now ... The next morning Tessa was up as usual to see the team go out and she was at breakfast with Adair. But she wasn't in the dayroom at nine o'clock, nor was she in her own room when, after waiting for nearly half an hour, Adair went to look for her there. She wasn't in the kitchens with Claudine. Perhaps she was at the pool, Claudine suggested. Or in the garage, her husband offered. But there was no Tessa at the pool, nor anywhere in the courtyards. The team's quarters in the main building were out of bounds to her, so, although the whole strength of the Base was out and there would be no one she could be with in the garage, that was Adair's last resort. But before she reached it she met Hassim, the other houseboywaiter. Like Beni, Hassim had a little English and he was able to offer a clue. Yes, he had seen and spoken to Tessa, he told Adair. At about nine o'clock in the front courtyard she had asked him whether he was going into the town that morning and he had told her No. 'Did she tell you why she asked you?' queried Adair. 'She says she has a letter she would ask me to post for her.'

'A letter?' Adair frowned. 'Did you tell her she could post it in the mailbox here ?' 'I do. But she does not wish to do that. Then she asks me, when I go to the town to see my parents, how do I go. And I tell her that I—' Hassim broke off to grin and to jerk a thumb in the classic hitchhikers' gesture - 'or I walk.' 'And then?' 'Then she says nothing and she goes to sit on the front wall there— Hassim pointed. 'I have then to go back to my work, but when I look out of the door later, she is gone.' 'Oh dear—' Adair thanked Hassim and let him go. Unable to believe that Tessa could have set out to walk the eight kilometres to Bou Larissa alone, she pinned her hopes to finding the child in the garage after all. But though there was someone in the garage it was not Tessa. It was Owen Lander, doing something mechanical to his big motor-bike. Owen Lander? Then he must have defied Craig! He hadn't gone out with the rest of the team. But Adair's present worry was Tessa, and when Owen straightened and came to meet her, she passed on to him what Hassim had told her. 'You think she may be heading for Bou Larissa on foot, the silly young so-and-so ?' he asked. 'Well, I hope not, but—' 'Want me to hit the trail in search of her, in case she has?' Adair hesitated, looking round the empty garage. 'How can you ? What in ?'

'Not "in". "On". On the only transport I've got - the bike.' 'But supposing you did find her, how—?' 'There's a pillion. A double pillion, if it comes to that. Take you out with me and tote the two of you back if we find her. What's your problem? She can't have got very far.' 'I suppose not, and it's very good of you—' 'Well, make up your mind. Do we go or not?' Adair made up her mind. Craig had said— But this was an emergency that his laying down of the law hadn't foreseen. In fact, she would be to blame if any harm came to Tessa and she had refused Owen's help. 'Yes. Please let's go,' she said. 'Right. Give me five minutes more with the bus.' He went back to his job on his bike while Adair stood by, watching. 'I suppose I was lucky to find you here. I thought you'd be out with the team.' He looked up at her briefly, his expression hard. 'Oh?' he said. 'So just how wrong can you get?' Seeing that as the snub he obviously intended, Adair made no reply. A few minutes later he cleaned off his hands on a rag, told her to get on the pillion and mounted himself. He unslung his crash-helmet from the handlebars and handed it back to her. 'Put that on,' he told her. 'No, it's yours.' 'If we crash, I shall live,' he said laconically. 'You'll drown in it, but wear it.'

They curvetted out of the garage, across the courtyard and away along the open road at a speed which Adair calculated should have caught up with Tessa within minutes if she were walking that way. But by five kilometres out there had been no sign of her and Owen pulled up abruptly. 'A wild goose chase, this. She can't have got so far.' Adair agreed worriedly, 'No. Though at her age children often run.' 'In this heat? And this far? No, you must make a better guess than that. I'll take you back.' Owen Lander turned his machine. They were within a kilometre of the Base again when, glancing across the rough scrubland to the left of the road, Adair tapped him on the shoulder. 'Mr, Lander, could you stop, please? Over there—' she pointed - 'I'm sure I saw something. Something pink. And Tessa is wearing pink pants.' He balanced astride the bike and followed the direction of Adair's finger towards the landmark it indicated. It was the derelict ruin of an old mill about three hundred metres off the road. Whatever branch track had once led to it must long ago have yielded to the greedy sand and the purpose it had served had long been lost. Only the fact of its being where it was showed that at one time, somewhere in the neighbourhood of it, there had been local grain for it to grind; growing corn that now grew no more, no doubt the last of it choked by sand and eroded by wind. The building clung to the side of a steep fall to a wadi, a dry river bed, which was out of sight of the road. But from the road Adair could see the broken stairway that climbed to the tumbledown erection at the top. And now on the stairway was unmistakably a

small pink-legged figure, hands down to each rough stair, like a baby learning to crawl. 'Well, she's there all right. Give her a yell, shall I ?' Owen asked. Adair's relief fought with her anxiety and vexation. 'Please do, for goodness' sake,' she begged. But though he made a loud hailing cup of his hands, the wind must have carried his voice away. For Tessa, giving no sign of hearing, continued on her climb. Owen alighted. 'I'll go over and haul her back.' 'Shall I come too?' Adair offered. 'No. It's pretty rough going. I'll be quicker alone.' As she watched him go Adair felt guiltily glad of the defiance of Craig's orders which had put him in the way of helping her to find Tessa. This morning he was being as practical as she could wish, and if Craig had to hear of Tessa's escapade, which she hoped he might not, she pictured herself weighing in in Owen's defence. She saw him reach Tessa. He propelled her firmly down by the way she had gone up and five minutes later they were both back on the road. Adair administered brief but sharp reproof. Tessa scuffed the toe of her sandal in the sand. 'Hassim says he walks to Bou Larissa when he goes there,' she offered sulkily. 'Hassim is used to walking long distances in the sun. You didn't bother to wear your hat.'

'If I'd gone in for it, you'd have wanted to know why, and you'd have stopped me. And I needed to go into the town.' 'Then why the detour?' Owen put in lazily. 'Why the - what? Oh, you mean that old place? Well, I sort of noticed it and I thought I'd go and Explore,' said Tessa, in whose speech any important word sounded as if honoured with a capital letter. 'Making a nuisance of yourself to Adair and a thorough bore for me. Now I've got to lug you both back when I want to be on my way.' 'On your way where?' 'Where I've already been more than halfway already. To the town where else ?' 'To Bou Larissa? Oh, then would you take a letter to post for me there? A rather Urgent letter—' But Adair had seen the chance of some condign punishment which she felt Tessa deserved. 'No,' she told the child. 'We aren't troubling Mr. Lander any more—' 'Oh, come down off the stage! I answer to my first name too, believe it or not,' he put in. 'Well, thank you,' Adair said awkwardly. 'But I was going to say to Tessa that she can walk back from here with me. It isn't far and there's no reason why we need keep you.' He shrugged indifferently. 'If you say so. Have it your own way,' and kicking his machine to a roar, he wheeled about and was gone, leaving Tessa to wail emptily after him - 'Take my letter!' and Adair to realize with dismay that she was still wearing his crash-helmet.

As they turned themselves Tessa said, 'I'd asked him. He might have remembered to take my letter.' But Adair retorted, 'At the rate he rides, it could matter a good deal more that he forgot his helmet. As for your letters - I suppose it's the one to your Aunt Roma? - you can post it in the mailbox, as you could have done last night.' 'It's a very Private letter.' 'And also sealed, I daresay? Going to have a whale of a time, steaming it open when I raid the mailbox at dead of night, aren't I ?' said Adair, trying irony where persuasion failed. Tessa glowered up from beneath her eyebrows. 'You're poking fun at me!' she accused. 'I wouldn't dream of it! No - I'm a Queen-pin professional robber of the mails, didn't you know? My speciality - very private letters to people's aunts. What's more—' Adair didn't finish. She was cut short by Tessa's delighted crow of laughter. 'You aren't! You aren't! You're just being funny. And if you're being funny,' she reasoned, 'you're not terribly cross with me any more ?' 'You shouldn't count on that,' Adair warned drily, but felt that her strategy had paid off when Tessa latched companionably on to her arm and began to ask about the old mill - what it was, and why it was there. Adair made a miniature object lesson of her reply, telling how it was known that the Sahara had once been fertile enough to grow grain and even forests, and that at the dedication of teams like Craig's it promised to be so again. Tessa's questions showed her interest and before they reached the Base she reminded Adair of her promise to ask Craig to take her to the nurseries 'to see the baby trees growing'.

And as soon as they entered the building she posted her letter in the box in front of Adair, with an air of making handsome amends. They and the Watts were the only people in for the midday meal which was served by Hassim. Beni, on his half-day off, had gone into Bou Larissa on his bicycle. 'Well, if Beni has a bicycle, why don't you borrow it to go there instead of walking on your day off ?' Tessa asked Hassim, whose reply was to the general effect that he wouldn't risk life and limb on the old ruin that was Beni's bicycle. He preferred to walk, thank you, he said with dignity. Though when he had gone back to the kitchen Claudine laughed, 'Ah, les raisins sont trop verts! As you say - the grapes are sour. Beni has a bicycle. Hassim has not. Therefore Beni's bicycle has no value in Hassim's eyes. It is as simple as that.' 'Not that it's exactly a racing model Mark V at that,' put in Brian Watts. 'Beni bought its wheels and its frame separately in the market and put them together himself,' - which made them all laugh. Adair had seen Tessa to bed and was in the main hall on her way to the dining-room when the team came back after sundown. Most of the men gathered round the bar-hatch; Craig and Tom Jessop came in behind the rest. Tom asked easily, 'What'll you take for it, Chief?' But Craig, his expression thunderous, said, 'Presently. Not now: I can wait for a drink. For the showdown I have in view with Lander, I can't.' 'Always supposing he's among those present. He might not be,' suggested Tom. 'He'd better be.' Craig caught Adair's eye as she passed. 'Seen anything of Owen Lander during the day, have you ?' he asked. Adair wished she hadn't. 'Well—' she began, then broke off as heads turned at the heavy thud of the door leading from the kitchen

quarters. Brian Watts and Beni shouldered together through it and came over to Craig. Brian Watts said urgently, 'The boy, sir. Just back from the town on his bike. Says he came on Mr. Lander's motor-bike on the road three . . . four - how far out, did you say, Beni?' Beni calculated. Then, breathless - 'Four kilometres, I think. And not on the road, the machine. Off - so!' His arm made a wide fork from his body. 'Fifteen ... twenty metres ... more. And broken; the lamp smashed and the handlebars twisted — so, and the front tyre burst— ' Craig said sharply, 'A skid? Right off the road? But where was Mr. Lander?' Beni shook his head and Brian Watts answered for him. 'That's the odd thing, sir. He wasn't there. Beni looked round for him without finding him, and he says he called without getting an answer. So, as for all he knew, Mr. Lander could have abandoned his bike after the spill and come back on foot. He came back himself and he's just arrived.' 'And isn't Mr. Lander back?' 'Not so far as I know. And after a spill on that scale, he'd have wanted some help, I'd say.' 'You'd think so, though he could be in his room. Tom—?' Craig's expressive jerk of his thumb sent Tom through to the cubicle quarters at the double. Tom came back. 'No sign of him, Chief.' 'Right. Well—' Craig made his plans aloud - 'you come with me, and you, Watts, take Beni along to show us where.'

One of the team stepped forward. 'Do you want anyone else, Chief ?' Craig shook his head. 'Not this round, I think. But you - fetch a couple or three accident lamps from the garage - it'll be dark in an hour. And bring a first- aid kit and a flask of brandy out to my car. We'll take two, in case I need to send one back for more help.' He left behind him a buzz of talk at the bar which Adair did not wait to hear, though she could guess the burden of it. People would be saying - as they still were when they began to drift into the diningroom - that whatever disaster Owen Lander had bought, he could be said to have asked for it, and what was meant by that was all too clear; Owen on his way back after spending any day in the town was a doubtful risk, as his team mates knew only too well. Adair ate alone at a small table and left as soon as she could, having kept to herself the guilt she knew she must admit to Craig if anything had happened to Owen from which the helmet he had lent to her might have saved him. If only he had asked her for it this morning! If only she had remembered to give it back to him! She had had little appetite for her meal and in her own room again she could not be rid of the worry that mounted in direct relation to the time the search party was away. She had to wait up until it returned; she would hear the cars come back, she told herself. But in fact she did not, and it was Claudine's knock at her door that brought her the news. 'I saw your light under the door, and I thought you would like to know—' Claudine explained her whisper by a lifted finger pointed at Tessa's closed door - 'they found Monsieur Lander in the scrub, quite some way from his wrecked machine. They think he must have wandered in a daze after he went off the road, but he was unconscious when they found him, and Monsieur Carolan and Monsieur Jessop took him to the White Sisters' hospital in Bou Larissa.'

Adair caught her breath. 'Was - was he very badly hurt, did they know ?' 'They couldn't tell. But concussion, they supposed - from hitting his head. They didn't find his helmet, which was strange—' 'And have they - Mr. Carolan and Mr. Jessop come back?' 'Not yet. Only Brian and Beni. Mr. Carolan said that if necessary, he might stay the night, so we may not hear any more until the morning.' 'Well, thank you for telling me. I've been very worried.' Claudine agreed, 'We all have been. When they were so long away but you'll go to bed now, won't you ? It's very late.' 'Yes.' Adair watched Claudine tiptoe to her room, then softly closed her own door and dispiritedly began to undress. She went to the bathroom and came back and was about to get into bed when she found she had left her watch on the bathroom shelf. It would need winding before the morning; she must fetch it. Slipping again into mules and the light silk kimono that served her for dressing-town, she padded again to the bathroom and was back at her door just as Craig came through into the hall from the covered way. Craig! So he hadn't stayed the night at the hospital after all! Did that mean—? Or—? Forgetting everything but that, for her guilt's sake, she must know what it meant before she could sleep, she drew his attention by her quick step towards him as he opened the door of his office without having seen her. He turned. She saw his quick frown and the glance that took in the fact of her undress - the hair loose on her shoulders and the filmy nightgown which the silk of the kimono made no pretence of

covering. Too late she tried to draw the kimono edge to edge as, 'You - still up? Do you know what time it is?' he asked. She showed him by her glance at the watch in her hand that she did. 'I was just going to bed,' she told him. 'I'd heard from Claudine that you had found Mr. Lander unconscious. But she said you might not be back tonight. So when you came in I wondered whether you had been able to bring him back with you, or whether—' 'I left him in hospital,' Craig cut across her hesitant question. 'He'd come round, but they're keeping him in for his head to be stitched; a possible broken wrist to be X-rayed and his concussion to be watched for any delayed consequences.' Adair nodded. 'Concussion? Yes, Claudine said you thought—' 'We were right. I understand it accounts for a not uncommon result. A kind of super activity that took him nearly a half kilometre from the crash and across the scrub before he collapsed. Which solved something that puzzled Watts and me, though not the mystery of our not finding his crash-helmet either on or off his head or anywhere near his wrecked bike. If he'd been wearing it, he—' The kimono fell open as Adair's hand went defensively to her throat. In a small strangled voice she said, 'It's a mystery I'm afraid I can solve. He wasn't wearing it because this morning he lent it to me and I hadn't given it back. I know he went to Bou Larissa without it.' Craig moved down the hall towards her. 'He lent it to you ? What on earth for ?' 'I went pillion behind him and he made me wear it.' She found Craig's continued scrutiny unnerving. He looked as if he doubted his hearing. 'You went joyriding with Lander - and not even in a car? On his motor-bike?'

'We weren't joyriding. I'd lost Tessa, though Hassim said she might have left the Base to walk into the town. So I was grateful when Mr. Lander offered to take me in search of her. And we found her—' 'Just a minute. Hadn't you passed on to Tessa my rule that neither of you was to go out without Watts or one of the boys or one of the rest of us going too - by car, or on foot or however?' 'I hadn't thought it necessary. I knew your rule about it, and I meant always to be with her, I suppose. No, I hadn't told her in so many words.' 'And you saw fit to skip it yourself? All right—' Craig's raised palm checked the hot protest she was about to make - 'you had a problem on your hands. Tessa had disappeared. So why didn't you go to Watts?' 'What could he have done? The team had taken every bit of transport - even the station-wagons.' 'He could have gone out with Lander instead of you. Come to that, Lander could have gone alone.' Adair flashed, 'Which might have meant his carrying Tessa back by pillion. Would that have been preferable to his taking me? Anyway, it never occurred to me not to go with him. I'm responsible for Tessa, aren't I? And when we found her not long afterwards, trying to explore the old grain mill, I made her walk back with me, and there'd have been no great harm done if only I'd remembered I still had the helmet after he had gone off to Bou Larissa.' 'Which, though a pity, is hindsight that can't be remedied now,' Craig remarked. She shook her head. 'That's only a bromide for the awful guilt I feel. As if mere guilt were ever enough,' she added after a moment of

pause, remembering how powerless and too late to help Miles all her remorse and self-reproach had been. Craig said sharply, 'What do you mean - guilt not being "enough" ? That you feel you owe Lander something warmer by way of amends? Such as? "You poor boy" pity? Hand-holding sympathy? Or more?' 'Well, more than something as barren and negative as guilt. Kindness, at least. Making allowances for—' she hesitated. 'You'd be wasting your spirit. Men with chips on their shoulders the size of Lander's don't sit up and beg nicely in response to mere kindness from women. They exploit it instead to its limits and play for an injection of something stronger next time.' Not meeting his eyes, Adair said, 'Do you know, I find that unworthy of you. And very unjust.' 'Unworthy of what in me?' Without making her answer that, Craig went on, 'As for injustice, I claim a longer view of Owen Lander — longer in every sense — than you can have, from what you know of him so far. No, my advice is, you could regret being committed even to kindness to him.' She looked up then. 'You're only advising me? I thought you'd already issued me an unwritten order that I wasn't to become emotionally involved with ... any of you ?' 'So I did. And as I remember, you agreed to the condition at the time.' 'I did more,' she corrected. 'I told you just why you could rest assured I could regard you as so many insulated robots; why I was one myself.'

He lifted an eyebrow. ' "Insulated robots" ? Wasn't that my choice of phrase to warn you against underestimating pressures from which you claimed to be immune ?' 'As I still am.' 'And as equally convinced you don't cause any disturbance to the rest of us ?' 'Well, do I ?' she retorted. 'Have I ? By anything I've said? By anything provocative I've done - with any of the team ?' His eyes travelled over the revealing lines of her scanty attire. 'No?' he questioned meaningly. And then, as if in apology to her swift flush, 'But I forgot. At this hour I have no right to be here, have I ? Though I'd remind you that, to work mischief with a man's work, the kind of provocation I meant doesn't have to be active or even wilful. It - happens, as you should know.' 'Well, active or passive or whatever, I don't think I'm guilty. And even supposing anyone were in danger of falling for me, couldn't you be relied upon to deal with that?' she challenged. 'I daresay you'd find me doing my best.' 'I'm sure of it. So what's your problem ? What have you to fear from me ?' He moved several steps nearer, as if to bring her into focus at almost touching distance of her. He regarded her thoughtfully. 'D'you know, I doubt if I could expect you to know, if your cocooning from men is as thorough as you claim?' he said. And then, forestalling her reply, 'However, this bit of parley is about as bizarre as our timing of it. I mustn't keep you. I've some work to do, but I'll try not to disturb you when I leave.'

Turning on his heel, he went back to his office. In her own room again Adair looked across at her mirror, seeing there her reflection and remembering his shame- making, sceptical - 'No?' He had passed it off, but supposing he had thought that, hearing him come in, she had deliberately met him in the hall, dressed - or rather undressed - like that? Even if he hadn't, his look and that caustic doubt were going to take a long time to forget.

CHAPTER FIVE AWARE as she was of Craig's warning against intimacy with Owen Lander, during the two or three weeks of his convalescence Adair found it difficult to avoid him. When he sat or lay alone in a sheltered corner of the courtyard or sunbathed by the pool, it would have been churlish to refuse him some time and some talk. A little time at first and as few words as she need say in inquiry as to how he was or whether there was anything she could do for him. Then more time, and, at his assumption that whenever she appeared, he had the right to her whole interest, she began to find herself the reluctant confidante of the defeatism that he coloured with bravado and tart, offensive comments on his world. In the mornings she had Tessa and the schoolroom to help her; Tom Jessop usually joined her for dinner. But in the afternoons, while Tessa was resting and she was free, Owen expected to monopolize her, and her conscience towards him - after all, she was indirectly responsible for his smash! - made her give in. In her more tolerant moments she even found him appealing; able to see him as a child, hurt by his own folly, covering up with the defiance of - 'Who cares? I meant to do that!' Then, though he wasn't a child and hadn't the right to expect a child's comforting at her hands, she warmed to him and did what she could to brace him, though without much success. At such times she found herself remembering Miles and comparing Owen with him, both of them in the same need of a morale-booster when their own was low. The difference was that she had mostly succeeded with Miles; Owen seldom gave her the satisfaction of feeling she did anything to help him at all. After a few reluctant sessions in his company she appreciated Craig's warning; Owen was indeed a kind of vampire for sympathy without giving anything in return. She was, she was

convinced, no more to him than a captive, listening ear. Which was to make his ultimate studied move to embarrass her a piece of calculated, jaundiced malice. If he had meant anything warm by it! If it had been a sudden impulse! However cool her own reaction, she could have forgiven him either motive. But to admit he had done it for pure mischief that was too much! That afternoon they had both been silent for a while. Owen, 'hounded' by Craig, he claimed, to get back on his job, had on his lap a loose-leaf folder of geological reports on which he had made a show of working. Adair, watching him idly skittering his ballpoint back and forth between his fingers, had one eye on the time when she could decently escape, but was remembering meanwhile Tom Jessop's dictum that Craig usually kept the problem of Owen to himself. Tom had said that Craig was above open criticism of Lander; that whatever the feud between them, Craig conducted his side of it alone. Why then, she wondered, had he overstepped his rule in order to be so downright in his condemnation of Owen to her? Couldn't he trust her to be able to judge Owen for what he was, once she knew him as well as Craig claimed he did? Why—? But that question got no further as, at a sudden unguarded flick of Owen's pencil, it caught the folder, knocked it from his lap and sent its papers scattering beside his sun-lounger on Adair's side of it. He swore mildly and swung his feet to the ground. But Adair was already on her knees, retrieving the sheets. 'It's all right. I was just going, anyway,' she told him as she squared them off and returned them to the folder. But she was still on her knees when he leaned

forward, held her firmly by her upper arms and pressed a long, purposeful kiss on her unresponsive mouth. His grip on her arms had surprising strength and she could not struggle against it. She tried to get to her feet without avail, and when at last he released her lips she saw that he wasn't even looking at her, but beyond her, over her shoulder at something ... or someone facing towards him, though well behind her, to judge by the focus of his eyes. It was someone. Craig. Standing on the back terrace of the main building in its deep shadow. Adair saw him with dismay as, Owen's hold slackening to let her go, she turned and scrambled to her feet, thrusting back her hair. It was still damp from her afternoon swim, and over her swimsuit she wore only her short towelling robe. She couldn't see the expression on Craig face - only his still figure, standing, until without giving a sign that he had witnessed the scene, he crossed the courtyard diagonally in the direction of the garage. Panting, Adair glared down at Owen, who hadn't stood when she did. 'How ... how dared you . .. force me like that? What on earth did you mean by it?' she demanded. He looked up at her through narrowed eyes. 'Mean by it? Nothing in particular. Unless of course you'd like it to mean more than it did. In which case, for mateyness' sake, I might consider obliging again,' he drawled. 'I want it to mean something - from you ? What do you think ?' she flashed. 'Exactly. Not on that beam, are we, you and I? So as you're not going all melting on me and it served my purpose, no great harm done. No call for umbrage over a bit of byplay that called for split-

second timing on my part and - from that distance - what must have looked like quite passable co-operation on yours - hm ?' Adair glanced across to the spot where Craig had stood. 'You mean,' she said, 'you wanted the Chief to see you kissing me ? Why ?' Owen shrugged. 'For mild kicks, you might say. To show him we're not as vacuum-packed as he'd like to think. If he imports a pretty girl with time on her hands, he's only got himself to blame if someone sits up and notices her.' 'Well, I haven't got time on my hands, as you'll find from now on!' Adair raged. 'I've only joined you every day because I thought you needed company. And a bit because I felt I was partly to blame for your accident, through having kept your helmet.' 'That? My dear girl, spare yourself the sackcloth! I wasn't in any state that night to know whether I was wearing it or not. Forget it.' 'Thanks, I will. Anyway, about this - you admit you haven't "noticed" me, as you call it. And as I've never given you the slightest idea I'd fallen for you, what was it in aid of, will you tell me?' she demanded. 'I have told you. To give our Great Panjandrum something to think about. That corny old gag, Romance, lifting its head in his camp? Oh, fie!' Owen sneered. 'Not to be countenanced for a moment, whatever he and the rest of us may do about it when we're off duty.' 'Well, by all accounts you do something quite different when you're off duty.' Adair despised the gibe, but couldn't resist it. 'Me? Oh, I don't count. The wine is as good in Bou Larissa as anywhere else. But for other tastes, there's Tunis thataway' - he jerked a thumb northward — 'and Hammamet or Sousse, luxury playgrounds, both, according to the brochures - only sixty

kilometres away on the coast. Not to mention a rest- bungalow thoughtfully laid on by the Company at Hammamet. Not been down there yet? Oh, you should—' He broke off to throw her a shrewd glance. 'Anyway, why so nasty? Are you afraid you could be for it, for playing Eve, apple and all, to me ?' Adair's chin went up. 'Certainly not. That's something I could deny in no mean fashion if I had to, don't worry.' 'Then why all the pique with me, just over a clinch? Can't you take a joke? Or I wonder — could be you've fallen so hard yourself there that you can't bear to tarnish your image ?' 'Fallen hard where?' she demanded, her heart pounding. Owen laughed. 'Oh, come off it, girl. I've got eyes. The man has only to smile and you blush with pleasure; he only need frown, and not even always your way, and you tremble—' 'I do nothing of the kind!' she flung at him. 'All right, all right. My mistake.' The movement of his hand was falsely soothing. 'You don't. But if you do - just supposing - you should be grateful to me, not huffed. Actually I've probably done you a service—!' 'I'm glad you think so!' 'Well, haven't I? When you're up against a sales- resistance that doesn't seem to want to know, just enough competition to enhance the value of the goods has been known to work wonders, I'm told. So keep your fingers crossed, dear. Any day now you may find him realizing that, girl-wise, you actually exist.' But the latter part of that taunt was spoken to Adair's back as she plunged away, almost running ... escaping not so much from him as

from the truth Owen had blundered upon, the truth she didn't 'want to know', because there was no future for it, because it hurt too much. Out of Owen's sight, she slowed to a walk. She had things to do, the first being to get Tessa up from her rest. Tessa would expect to swim, but as Adair felt nothing would induce her to return to the courtyard while Owen was likely to be still there, she was casting around for an alternative to suggest to Tessa, when she met Paul Sarasin in the main hall. Paul lifted a hand to her. 'What about some music?' he asked. 'I have promised Tessa I would give her a long session of ballet the first day I was free, and now I am.' 'Lovely,' Adair agreed. 'But on your free day, are you sure you want to spare the time ?' Paul looked his scorn of the question. 'For music I can always spare time,' he said. 'Shall I collect my record player and the albums and bring them to the villa?' 'Please. To the day-room, and I'll tell Tessa.' As she hoped, Tessa was only too willing to forgo a swim for a session with Chopin and Tchaikovsky and Gounod and Saint-Saens. Paul was tirelessly patient, telling her to listen for particular passages like the Cats' sequence in The Sleeping Beauty and the dying cadences of Saint-Saens' 'Swan'. She liked the modern ballet composers less well, and when she seemed to have had enough of them, he played other records from his collection, some of them asked for by Adair, some of them his own choice. Tessa had lost interest and had wandered off on other ploys when Paul put on another record and poised the stylus over it.

'And this one,' he announced, 'I demand shall be played at my funeral. I shall put it in my will.' Adair laughed. 'Well, let's hope your mourners have a long time to wait to hear it. What is it?' 'The "Liebestod" from Tristan and Isolde. Do you know it?' As Adair nodded, 'I've heard it and I love it,' Paul went on. 'Then listen to it now. Hear how the ecstasy mounts ... and mounts to its peak. And then say whether or not I am right - that a man who couldn't reach Heaven on that glory of sound should not deserve to go!' Adair smiled, 'I'm listening.' And she was, though knowing her response to the passionate rapture of the aria would be different from Paul's. For him — his wryly expressed hope of Paradise gained. For her - until now - a longing for a love she feared she would never know ; a door opening from her outer cold, allowing her to look in. No more than that - letting her catch a glimpse of the love on other people's faces ... in their happy eyes - a love she had never felt, had never inspired. For since Miles had died she had shuddered to think that they might have married without it; with no more between them than long habit. How could they ever have thought it was enough? And what experience had taught her since the wisdom that neither she nor Miles had had then ? For now she did know what it was to love. Now she was inside the door. Where Isolde had been. And Tosca. And - and Elizabeth Browning. And Petrarch and Laura. And Paul Sarasin too, for love of his Lucille. And Adair Tracy now, not merely looking in any more; craving to know the heights that Isolde knew, yet wanting, knowing she could be content with, so many more things that love

was — the little everyday things, A passing touch. A look exchanged. The sound of a beloved voice ... She looked across at Paul, seeing the bright excitement in his eyes as the swelling notes soared to their climax and began to fall. Under cover of them she allowed herself the murmur of a name - 'Craig.' Craig who didn't know, who mustn't guess. Craig, who had opened the door .. . Silence; Paul lifting the stylus. 'Eh bien? You understand what I mean?' he asked. 'I - understand what you mean,' she said, her voice not quite in control. 'Another one? Anything else you would like to hear?' She shook her head. 'Not after that.' 'I agree.' He closed the record player and began to put the records into their sleeves. 'Tessa? How much hope has she of being able to learn any ballet?' he asked. Adair sighed. 'Very little, I'd say, as things are at present.' 'And it could soon be too late. Children who show any talent for it should be having dancing lessons at six, and serious classes at ten.' 'I know. It can only be a dream for Tessa, because she has never had any lessons at all.' 'And because she knows it will soon be too late - that is why she writes so urgently to her aunt in England to beg her help ?' 'Yes. That is, I suppose so. I didn't see what she wrote.'

'No? Well, she tells me. Only her Aunt Roma can help her. Only her Aunt Roma cares.' Paul paused and tilted a thoughtful head. 'Which - though I say nothing to her -1 doubt. For - three weeks? - a month now? - and as far as one knows the aunt who cares has not replied, and I think the poor little one loses hope.' It was something that Adair herself feared. There were, of course, no postal deliveries to the Base. The mails were brought out from Bou Larissa by anyone who had been to the town, and days before she could reasonably hope for a reply from her Aunt Roma, Tessa had begun to hover hopefully at the table where they would be laid out. She was still hovering a week, a fortnight, three weeks after she could have expected to hear, and Adair had run out of suggestions as to why an answer hadn't arrived. As a kind of proxy to the child's despair, she found herself disliking this aunt without reason. Surely she could have written something, if only a picture-postcard? The letter that didn't come; the telephone that didn't ring - did the people who could telephone, who could write, ever envisage the heartache they caused to the one at the other end? At first Tessa had been impatient to write again. That's what came of trusting that old mail-box! Anything could have happened to her first letter. Now if she had been allowed to take it to the town herself—! Then she was willing to listen to Adair, counselling patience, and later she only looked her disappointment when she came away from the post table empty-handed. But she turned listless and inattentive at lessons and was more critical than ever of her food. And though she hadn't cried again in her sleep, so far as Adair knew, Adair was grateful when Craig suggested a change for her and Adair. It had been strange ... heart-in-the-throat disturbing, to face Craig again for the first time after his witness of that mortifying scene with Owen. If, that is, he had witnessed it. For the> next time they met he gave no sign that he had, putting her to the tension of not

knowing whether he had or not, and cheating her of the chance to explain it away, if he had. If he had, she would have expected him to add a sequel to their last exchange on the subject of Owen Lander. Why didn't he? She would have given much to know. And seeing him now in the new light of knowing she loved him for what he was, for himself, she knew that even his criticism would be no high price to pay for his seeming to care what she did with whatever sympathy she had to give; warning her again, perhaps, against Owen's misuse of it; concerning himself with her to a point of quarrel, as he had done before. For wasn't that one part of loving - that you were grateful for crumbs and that even conflict was better than no sparking of will against will; no flashpoint of danger at all? Craig's plan for Tessa was that she and Adair should go to the coast at Hammamet for a weekend. The Company's rented chalet was one of several in the grounds of the Hotel L'Horizon which serviced the chalets and provided meals in the hotel itself. Tom Jessop would drive them down and he or some other driver would bring them back. By comparison with the desert scene and primitive Bou Larissa, Hammamet was self-consciously elegant; a sub-tropical playground for all the foreigners able to winter there; a magnificent sweep of bay, broad white sands, modern hotels with swimming-pools and sun- terraces, and a night-life of a pretty wide choice. The chalet was a white dolls' house - two tiny bedrooms, a showerroom and a living-room opening on to a small balustraded balcony. Tom said that when larger parties of the team than two men came down, the overflow brought their own bedding and camped on the balcony. That morning they arrived just before midday. Tom stayed to show them round and to have luncheon with them; then he left

them to drive back. 'Have fun,' he waved with a grin. 'It's later than you think!' When he had gone they swam in the hotel pool and explored the gardens which were a fascinating maze of secluded corners and paths which were equally liable to lead either somewhere or nowhere. When it was cooler they went down to the beach, where Adair sunbathed in the last of the day's sun and Tessa made friends with some English children on holiday. Listening to their talk, Adair was amused by the degree of prestige Tessa gained with her airy throw- away gossip about all the places she had been to which were only so many magical foreign names to them. The sun went down. A rendezvous on the beach was made for the next day, and Adair and Tessa went back to the hotel for an early dinner. Afterwards they sat in the lounge for a while until Tessa's bedtime. Adair saw her to bed in the chalet and, unable to leave her, sat out on the little balcony in the quiet night. She dispensed with lights. There was no moon. The stars were lamp enough. From the hotel snatches of music drifted down - now with a nostalgic lilt, now with a swinging, insistent beat. Other people having fun with people of their own; sweethearts, honeymoon couples; strangers who would meet and dance and perhaps fall in love while she, Adair, had only the darkness for company. Darkness - and an ache of longing that was as sharp as a physical hunger .. . was a physical hunger of the heart to be needed, wanted by one man, as she wanted him. And that was in every sweet way that the night knew all about, and in every enduring way of loyalty and outgiving there was. One man. Craig. Her all-in-all, for whom she was at best a necessity thrust upon him by his care of Tessa, and at worst what? Longing to know, yet fearing to know what he thought of her since seeing her in Owen Lander's arms, was a canker that spoiled the peace of the night.

The next morning they walked in the streets of the Old Town which huddled behind and beside the modern hotels and villas facing the bay. They sat in the shade of palms, drinking iced mint tea and watching the tourists shop in the market square for beaten brassware and embossed leather and rose de sable paperweights. In the afternoon they kept Tessa's date with the children on the beach. That was to be their last full day; Tom would be coming for them some time during the afternoon of Monday, he had said. They reluctantly left the beach at sundown and were walking up the avenue of palms which was the hotel's drive when a car they both recognized passed them with a touch on the horn. 'That was Craig!' Tessa said unnecessarily. 'Yes—' He was out of the car and waiting for them when they reached the front of the hotel. Tessa scowled at him. 'We aren't supposed to be going back until tomorrow. You haven't come to take us tonight?' He ruffled her hair. 'That wasn't the idea, no. Back tomorrow, yes. But tonight I'm playing truant myself, if they can find me a room.' 'If they can't, you could have mine in the chalet and I'd sleep on the little balcony. It'd be Exciting. Tom says—' Craig slanted a glance at Adair. 'Thanks, but I don't think that would be very popular with the management.' 'You mean the hotel people? They needn't know, and anyway, the chalet belongs to you, doesn't it?' Tessa reasoned.

In a sense, yes. I didn't mean the hotel management, but let it pass. I daresay they can put me somewhere, and if not, L'Horizon isn't the only hostelry in the place,' He addressed Adair directly. 'How do you like Hammamet?' 'Very much.' 'What "very much" in particular? The luxe or the bay or the Old Town ?' 'The mixture, I think.' In fact, though she didn't say so, her imagination was caught far more by the wild aridity of the desert fringe than by the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the resort. She added, 'Though when they've developed it a lot more, I suppose you'll hardly see the rest for the luxe." Craig's nod agreed. 'Probably not. But it's the luxe that brings in the money, and the rest isn't likely to quarrel with that.' He paused to add, 'What are your plans now?' 'Well, to the chalet first to freshen up - we've been on the beach all the afternoon. Then dinner, and then bed for Tessa and—' 'And then for you ?' 'I shall stay at the chalet with Tessa.' 'Nonsense!' 'I did last night.' 'Nonsense again. There was no need. If you had asked, they would have told you at the desk that they lay on ba—' Craig corrected himself hastily - 'I mean, evening sitters for people who go to bed early. I'll see to it, and when you come back, we'll all have a drink before dinner, and after it I hope you'll spend the evening with me?'

One night, no more, of truancy from the Base and he was offering it to her! Gulping down her surprise, Adair said, 'I'd like that very much, but—' she glanced at her rumpled playsuit - 'I didn't bring anything very dressy with me. No evening things, I mean.' 'It doesn't matter. No one dresses, these days. Almost literally, at that,' he added as a two-inches-on- the-hipbone bikini slinked past. They laughed and parted, he for the reception desk, Adair and Tessa for their chalet. While Tessa showered Adair savoured the unique feminine pleasure of dressing and grooming specially for a special man ... for the man; anxious to sun herself in the praise of his eyes — if they praised her, however impersonally. From the three she had brought with her she chose a white sun-dress with a deeply cut square back and ribbon-narrow shoulder straps which showed her golden tan at its best. She untied her ponytail and experimented with allowing her hair to hang loose, then found in a pocket of her suitcase a hair ornament she had sometimes worn in the evenings at dinner with the Candars. It too was white, and unusual. She had bought it from a stall in the souk in Tangier - a spring bandeau which clasped the back of her head low down from the crown, each end of its length coiled ornamentally to give the effect of earrings at the lobes of her ears. Cobweb stockings, slingback sandals, a flat white evening bag - and she was ready to meet her evening ... and Craig. His appraisal of her was to be forced on him by Tessa. Settling to an aperitif citron presse, she demanded of him, 'Adair looks nice tonight, doesn't she?' Craig's glance travelled. 'Very nice,' he said. 'Much nicer than she ever does at the Base, don't you think?'

He laughed. 'One of those loaded questions! Well, as good as - shall we say ?' Tessa scorned him with a look. 'You must be joking! Can't you see she's specially party-nice tonight? At the Base she wears any old thing - like me. How do you think I look myself ?' He studied her crisp middy blouse and brief pleated skirt gravely. 'D'you know, I never realized you had girls' legs,' he pretended to marvel. 'You're always in some kind of pants. Mm, a nice change. As seductive as Adair in your way.' Adair caught a quick unguarded breath, but he wasn't looking at her. Tessa discarded a bent drinking-straw and took another. 'What's seductive?' she asked. 'Work it out. Or look it up. It's intended as a compliment. Anyway, how's your English grammar coming along? What part of speech is it - a noun or an adjective or an adverb or what?' Tessa threw a glance of appeal to Adair. Her lips moved. 'A noun is the name of something,' she gabbled to herself. 'Well, I don't think it's a noun,' she hazarded. 'Then what?' It was a question destined to go unanswered. For at that moment the other two saw the child's eyes caught by something she had seen across the lounge. Then her feet scuffled; her lemon drink, overturned, made a pool on the table and she was plunging, dodging between people, ducking under their arms, and calling 'Aunt Roma! Aunt Roma—' in a shrill treble that arrested the whole busy room's attention. Adair exchanged a bewildered glance with Craig and they both stood, by which time Tessa had reached her quarry - a woman, not

too plainly to be seen for the crowds, except that she was almost; as tall as her escort beside her, and that she had turned in some annoyance at Tessa's clamour and the beat of the child's small fists at her waist level. Craig breathed, 'The kid's right - it is Roma Farrar. What on earth— ? You must excuse me,' he threw at Adair over his shoulder as he started in Tessa's wake. He didn't get far. For already Tessa had darted back. 'It's Aunt Roma! Instead of answering my letter, she came herself! As a Big Surprise. And she'll take me back with her, and I'll be able to go to ballet school and—' But before Adair could question how all this had been conveyed in the few seconds of the meeting between niece and aunt, the latter was close behind Tessa, offering her hand in greeting to Craig and sparing a cool glance of appraisal for Adair, before introducing the man with her to Craig - 'Courtney Foulds. The Courtney Foulds, you know. Or would you, in these backwoods of yours? Anyway, we're casing the joint, as the saying goes, with a view to my doing a film for him. Not that I've promised him yet—' The husky voice, the flash of the brilliant eyes, the straight-arm handclasp for Craig were all pure theatre, the studied charm of a woman for whom the instant capture of her audience was her stock in trade. At sight of her Adair felt her own blood freeze. For she knew Roma Farrar; had been entranced by her on the far side of the footlights; had once met her briefly backstage after a rehearsal; had been jealous of her, hurt by her, indirectly snubbed .. . but had known her, as Miles had too, as - Romaine Charles! Her stage name, of course, which by chance Adair had never heard, either from Craig or from Tessa. For Tessa she was a kind of lodestar. For Craig she was - Adair racked her memory — yes, a

boy-and-girlhood neighbour, whose sister Elaine had married Russell Holyoake, Tessa's father. For Adair she was the Great Lady who had briefly condescended to the Malvern Folk Theatre, who had captivated Miles and who knew about and had judged Adair's complicity in his death, by making no sign of sympathy towards her when she might have done. As their eyes met in a second glance Adair saw that she had been recognized. Roma Farrar's brows drew together. 'Don't I know you? Haven't we met?' she queried. 'Yes. At Malvern, last winter.' 'Of course. And you are - oh dear, I'm so hopeless at names!' 'Adair Tracy. We only met once.' 'That's right. You came backstage after a rehearsal with that charming boy, Miles .. . something, who was killed in a car-smash, the first night of that show. Don't I remember he told me you were his girlfriend?' 'I think he would have told you we were engaged.' Adair could not resist the small correction. 'Yes, well, I daresay he did. You must forgive me. On tour, or as guest-star in these little theatres, one meets so many people who don't register terribly clearly. I doubt if I should have remembered your Miles if it hadn't been for— Such a waste, and he wasn't even to blame, I understand. Only a passenger in the car, wasn't he—? Yes, darling child, what is it?' As Roma broke off to answer Tessa's insistent tug at her hand, Adair was left with the feeling she remembered far more about both Miles and herself than she had told. After all, how could she not remember Miles and the way he had laid all he had of devotion at her feet? And aware as she was of their hearers, Adair found she wished profoundly she had been more

frank with Craig about her own part in Miles's death. For some inner sense told her that whatever version he might hear from Roma would not err on the side of charity. Tessa was clamouring, 'Aunt Roma, if you meant to answer my letter by coming for me, why didn't you write to me as well ? Then I could have been Looking Forward all this while!' 'Your letter, darling? Oh yes, you did write, didn't you ? Such a clever girl, I remember thinking when I got it!' 'And when you did, you decided to come and fetch me instead of writing back ?' 'To fetch you, my pet? Why no, you see I was coming out to Tunisia anyway—' It was painful to watch the truth dawn on Tessa. 'You mean you didn't? You haven't—?' Her lip quivered. 'Well, naturally not, dear. Of course I was thrilled that you wanted to write to me. But you're with Uncle Craig in his camp, and with Miss Tracy to look after you and give you lessons, aren't you? And I'm a terribly busy person, you know. I couldn't—' But there, to Adair's relief, Craig took a hand. 'I think we'd better talk this out some other time,' he said. 'Meanwhile, if you haven't dined, neither have we. So shall we make a party for dinner together?' 'Lovely,' Roma agreed, without reference to her escort who, 'the' power he might be in his own sphere, seemed content to be eclipsed by the sun of 'the' Romaine Charles. And the meal which followed was not so much a friendly shared occasion as a one- woman performance by the latter.

Not that she did all the talking. But she had brought to a fine point the art of inviting talk about herself; making a show of shrugging off flattery, but appearing bored whenever her companions' attention focussed elsewhere. Eyes fixed on her plate, Tessa ate in almost complete silence, and when the pleasant French hotel nurse came for her, went to bed without protest. She went ignored by Roma except for an airily thrown good night kiss, and Adair, for whom the evening spent with Craig had fallen to pieces in her hands, would willingly have gone with her. But she had to stay. Roma had plans for the remainder of the night. They would dance. Adair must console Courtney for her own desertion of him while she gossiped with Craig whom she hadn't seen in - how long? And afterwards, surely Craig knew some nightspot they could go on to? An early start for his old camp in the morning? Nonsense. She had scarcely a glimpse yet of darling Tessa! Craig insisted ? Then he must drive down again next weekend and bring Tessa with him. She must (subtly dispensing with Adair) be allowed a little time to herself with the child while she was here. Alternatively, she would make Courtney take her out to this Bou Larissa place of Craig's to see what it was all in aid of. Meanwhile, wasn't the night still young? They spent it as she wanted. In the dim, candlit cellar that was currently Hammamet's smartest nightclub, she monopolized Craig, leaving Adair to make small talk with Courtney Foulds in between his deep, trance-like silences when she supposed he was taking mental notes on his bizarre surroundings, seeing them as the backcloth of the glamour film he planned, with Roma for its star role.

At last it was over. They left Courtney and Roma at the hotel and Craig walked down with Adair to the chalet. His arm lightly in hers in the darkness was poor solace for her lost evening. On the way he told her he had agreed to leave Tessa behind in the morning. 'She'll move into the hotel, of course, and Roma will be responsible for her. Roma said your staying too wasn't necessary.' (As if I hadn't guessed!) Aloud Adair asked, 'How long will Tessa be staying ?' 'A few days. Possibly until next weekend. Roma has a right to see something of her, and she has promised to try to reconcile Tessa to staying here while she must.' Craig paused. 'You had a shock tonight, meeting Roma yourself? It brought back to you your own tragedy, I daresay?' 'Yes. For the moment. Somehow I'd missed out on hearing that Tessa's Aunt Roma was Romaine Charles, whom I knew.' 'Though only slightly? I gather your fiancé - Miles - knew her better ?' 'Oh yes. As you'll have heard us say, he had a small part in the play in which she was the leading lady.' 'That's what I understood. I'm sorry it had to be recalled to you quite so sharply, simply through my never mentioning to you that Roma was Romaine Charles on stage.' 'It's all right. As you say, it did bring it all back, but—' Adair broke off, still lacking the courage to confess to him the guilt that Roma had recalled for her; the double guilt of the travesty her engagement to Miles had been and the part she had had in his death.

Craig finished the sentence she had left in the air. 'But by now you're coming to terms with your loss?' he prompted, misunderstanding her .. . being kinder than she deserved. 'I - suppose so.' 'I hope so. It does happen, you know. And when it's time for the sting to drop away, it's only false martyrdom to try to hang on to it.' 'Thank you. Yes, I'll - remember that.' They had reached the chalet and she went ahead of him up the shallow steps to the balcony. Now for their goodnights and her murmur of thanks for the disastrous evening. But, about to face him, it was his hand on her shoulder which turned her round. 'There's more,' he said, his voice a little thick. 'When the time comes, you'll find you still have an awful lot to offer to another man. So don't settle for the second- rate. Don't waste yourself, Adair Tracy—' Momentarily he studied her face; then, to her utter surprise, put his lips lightly to hers. As her own responded willingly, he allowed the kiss to firm and linger. If she had meant anything to him, it would have been putting a question ... But the small hope died as he released her and stood back. Self-possessed, cool, disowning the incident, he said, 'If you'll send Nurse Conine out, I'll walk her back to the hotel.' Adair nodded. 'Thank you. I'll do that,' she said.

CHAPTER SIX BACK at the Base without Tessa, Adair used some of the time on her hands to prepare some sets of lessons. For the rest, Paul lent her his record-player and some records and twice that week she drove Claudine Watts to do the marketing in Bou Larissa. To her relief, Owen Lander was working again, so that her afternoons were once more her own. In the town, while Claudine bargained for fresh vegetables and fruit and goats' milk cheeses, she explored the narrow streets and alleys which rayed off from the market square, savouring their 'foreignness', their Eastern smell, and wondering about the life which went on behind the studded doors set in blue-washed walls, and in the glimpsed courtyards where the communal well was not only apparently the centrepiece but the neighbourhood debatingchamber too. As on her first morning in the town Adair was surprised at the number of children of all kinds of school age running free. She asked Claudine about it. 'Ah, there are so many, they can't all go to school at once,' Claudine explained. 'The school is small, you understand. So about half of them go from first light till mid-morning; the rest from then until siesta hour at about two o'clock. After that they work for their parents. The boys milk the goats and serve at the evening markets and the girls weave cloth and help to cook for the family.' 'What will they do when they leave school?' Adair asked. 'The girls may learn nursing or go to the coast or to Tunis as hotel servants, or they'll marry early. The boys will mostly go to Europe as waiters or porters, though a lot more of them will be able to stay here and work when, thanks to Monsieur Carolan and his like

there'll be crops to plant and harvest, and herds to tend in the desert,' Claudine declared loyally. Adair was watching a complicated game that seemed to be a cross between Hopscotch and Tag, played to the public danger in the middle of the traffic. 'They all look happy enough,' she commented. 'As children have a right to be.' 'Yes.' Thinking of Tessa, Adair mused aloud, 'I'm wondering - Tessa needs children of her own age. I suppose it wouldn't be possible to lay on a party at the Base for some of these children and for her? She's got her eleventh birthday coming up soon, and I'd like to mark it for her somehow.' Claudine acclaimed the idea. 'But of course she must have a party! When is it - the little one's fete day?' Adair told her. 'Then we must have the party on the nearest Sunday. It shall arrange itself.' 'Will Mr. Carolan mind?' Adair demurred. Claudine bridled. 'Why should he mind? Who will be cleaning and cooking and clearing up after the party — he or I ? Besides, sometimes I think this Chief of ours tries too hard to drive out Nature, with a pitchfork,' she added sagely. 'For a time, yes - a man may be expected to live by the light of his work alone. But not for ever. He won't himself, when he knows what it is to love, as of course he will, one day. Meanwhile, though he frowns on wives and sweethearts at the Base, he and the other messieurs can put themselves out for just one day to make a little fun for a few children. Leave it to me!'

'A "few" children! That's just it. We can't possibly have them all, and how do we pick them from the lot there are ?' Adair queried. 'We have a problem there, yes,' Claudine agreed. 'But I think we must take the advice of Beni and Hassim, who will know which families have children of Tessa's age or anyone specially deserving a treat.' 'And how will they get out to the Base and back?' 'Why do you suppose I say the party must be on a Sunday?' Claudine parried. 'Our own transport will fetch and carry them, of course.' Adair laughed, 'I'll hand it to you - you think of everything.' Claudine looked pleased. 'But it is you who first think of the party,' she allowed. From what Craig had said, Adair expected he meant to bring Tessa back from the coast at the following weekend. But on Friday, while the operations team was out, she and Roma arrived by hired car, which Roma dismissed after having the driver unload some personal luggage of her own as well as Tessa's holdall. When the car had gone she drew off winged dark glasses in order to inspect the dusty forecourt and the stark façade of the main building with distasteful eyes. 'What a dump!' she murmured. 'Well, I admit Courtney warned me I'd probably be slumming, and naturally I wasn't expecting the Ritz. But this! What on earth could Craig have been thinking of, bringing Tessa here?' Adair stiffened. 'At the time, he hadn't any other choice,' she said.

'But of course he had a choice!' snapped Roma. 'He should have left her where she was - in boarding school in Tunis. Or sent her to England to another.' 'She couldn't stay where she was. It was a day- school. And any boarding-school, I understand, was dead against her father's wishes. As far as was possible, he wanted a home life for her, with someone of her own.' 'A home life ! That's good! He gave her a lot of it while he was alive, didn't he?' Roma scoffed, then called sharply to Tessa who had picked up her holdall and was on her way towards the villa, 'Wherever you're going, don't go empty-handed, child. Take one of my cases with you. You can manage this light one.' Tessa turned, her face a thundercloud. 'I'm not empty-handed.' She swung her holdall to prove it. 'You brought all that cissy gear — carry it yourself,' she retorted rudely and, turning again, broke into a run. Adair bit her lip with vexation. 'One of the boys will come for your luggage,' she told Roma, and then, 'I'm sorry. I hope Tessa has behaved better than that while she has been with you ?' 'Not much, I'm afraid. I'd meant to keep her until Craig came for us both at the week-end. But I really couldn't. She throws silly moods at the drop of a hat, and she seems to think she has a grievance against me. And I haven't set eyes on her since she was so high.' It was news to Adair that Craig had invited Roma to stay at the Base, though of course it explained the two dressing-valises and the outsize beauty case. She said quietly, 'She is not very stable, I'm afraid. She is moody, and at times she can be rude, I know.' 'And you allow that?'

'I'm coming to terms with it, I think. You haven't had time to, perhaps. And you see, she had set great hopes on you; a lot of store by what she was confident you could do for her, and when—' Adair caught back a criticism which instinct told her Roma Farrar would not take kindly from her. Roma took her up. 'And when I made it quite clear I couldn't possibly have her, you let her blame me?' 'We did nothing of the sort!' Roma crooked an eyebrow.' "We" ?' 'I mean, Mr. Carolan never let her suppose for a moment she could go to England unless her other aunt were there.' 'Which Grace isn't. So where does she go from here ?' But Adair was not risking another snub like that 'We'? 'I think you'd better ask Mr. Carolan what his ultimate plan for her is,' she said. And then, 'I'll call Beni to carry your bags, and I'll tell Mrs. Watts, the warden, that you've arrived.' But though she supposed Claudine would have been warned to expect Roma at the week-end, Claudine had not. 'It is lucky that we have the one spare room in the villa. But it is not ready for a guest. Really, the Chief should have told me!' she worried, causing Adair to wonder whether it was possible that Roma had invited herself. It seemed she had. For to a satisfaction which Adair admitted was petty of her, Craig's greeting to Roma proved it.

Roma had changed into a black trouser suit and had piled her blueblack hair becomingly. She was already at the bar-hatch with Adair when the field team straggled in and Craig came over to them. She half turned on her stool and threw back her head to look him over. 'Enter the horny-handed son of toil with a vengeance!' she murmured. 'You're filthy, Craig. But I forgive you. Suitably pleased to see me, I hope ?' 'Suitably surprised to see you,' he corrected. 'I'd have laid long odds against your ability to persuade Foulds to bring you out. Why didn't you let me know you were coming? I'd have given the day to you. Where is Foulds, by the way?' 'Courtney? He isn't. That is, he didn't bring me. I left him brooding and digging for local colour like mad. He wanted me there to hold his hand, of course. But Tessa—' momentarily Roma's glance met Adair's - 'well, she made it clear She had had enough of Hammamet, so I hired a car and brought her back, and your Mrs. Who's-It has contrived to furnish a cave for me.' 'Then you're staying?' Roma threw him a provocative glance from her brilliant eyes. 'D'you know, I was under the impression that you had asked me ?' 'Though without expecting you to accept, considering that "how the other half lives" has never been of particular interest to you, as I remember,' he returned dryly. She pulled a face at him. 'Now, now, Craig dear, don't hark back! It's churlish of you. Just be grateful that I have come, that I promise to goggle with wonder at your whole scene and that in face of your Spartan odds I'll make forbearance my middle name.'

'Meaning that you've already suffered some of our domestic shortcomings?' Her expressive hands made a wide gesture of tolerance. 'Well, let's face it, you've got some, haven't you? Tepid bathwater; one candlepower light in my room— Tell me, and be quite frank, won't you - have I made a terrible botch of my face, doing it practically by gloaming?' Craig studied the exquisite profile she turned to him. 'As a critic, I'm out of practice on make-up expertise,' he said non-committally. 'Boor!' she pouted at him. 'And do you realize you haven't told me yet whether I'm welcome ?' 'As you remind me, I asked you to come, didn't I ? So I'll look into the matter of the bathwater, though as regards the lighting, I'm afraid we're at the mercy of a dynamo-plant that's liable to go on the blink. And if you can work up an interest in the rest of the scene I'll show it to you in all its crudity. Tomorrow, if you like ? We should be out all day.' 'I can hardly wait!' Craig turned to Adair. 'It's a jaunt I've promised Tessa. So if you'll let her, she may as well come along too.' 'I'll tell her.' The words clashed with Roma's murmured, 'Big deal two conducted tours for the price of one! Oughtn't you to make it a Triple Bargain Offer, Craig, and include Miss Tracy too? Or has she already had one all to herself?' 'In fact, she has - one that I think she won't forget.' 'Oh? Sounds intriguing. What happened?'

'We were marooned for two or three hours by a sandstorm.' 'Just the two of you ? How exciting. Can you lay on a sandstorm for me ?' 'I don't think you'd enjoy it. Adair didn't.' Craig turned away. 'I'll go and change and meet you for dinner. In the meanwhile Adair can introduce you to anyone who's around.' Adair did so, then excused herself to return to Tessa, whom she had left reading for the last half hour before her bedtime. As she feared, Tessa's reaction to the next day's expedition was obstructive. 'If Aunt Roma is going, I don't want to go too,' she declared. 'Nonsense. You know you've been looking forward to it.' 'With Craig. Not with her. It'll only be Hammamet all over again. She wouldn't take me to the beach herself, and she wouldn't let me go alone or play with other children. She's a person who Breaks Promises too,' Tessa concluded glumly. Adair knew this to be a cardinal sin in children's eyes, but she did her best for Roma. 'Grown-ups can't always help themselves, you know,' she said. 'Something unexpected may crop up, and they may be forced to break some promise they've made beforehand.' 'And pretend they never made it?' Tessa parried. 'That's what Aunt Roma did. On Tuesday there was to be some folk-dancing in the Square, and fireworks and balloons and things, and when the evening came she and that Mr. Foulds had laid on a party at the hotel and she pretended she had never said I could go to the Square. And tomorrow it'll be just the same — she'll try to leave me out and have Craig all to herself. But tell you what, Adair - if you'll come too, I'll go. If not, I won't.'

Adair bit back the flat 'Yes, you will,' which was on her tongue. Instead she queried, 'And be forced to explain to them why you aren't going?' 'Let them guess. Or you can tell them.' 'Not me.' Adair shook her head. 'It's a problem you've thought up for yourself. You'll deal with it.' Tessa looked her blank dismay. 'You mean you'd make me explain to Craig ?' 'You could change your mind and go instead. Then you wouldn't have to, would you?' retorted Adair, hoping that 'blackmail' wasn't yet in Tessa's vocabulary. Seemingly it wasn't, for Tessa didn't accuse her of it. She agreed sourly, 'All right, I'll go. I shall hate it, and Craig will explain everything to Aunt Roma, not to me, and I shall be just Three's a Crowd, and they won't care—' On which note of grudging surrender Adair thought it wise to change the subject to the question of what Tessa would like to have for supper.

As it happened, the morning brought its own solution. For it was Roma who cried off the trip on the score that she had a headache and felt she couldn't stand the long day in the sun. 'Another time, Craig. You do understand?' she murmured. 'Of course. I'm sorry. Why don't you go back to your room and lie down in the dark all day? Have you anything you take for such things?' he asked.

'Oh yes. And I will lie down until it goes off. For all I know, it may not take long, but—' As she turned away, Tessa's jaw dropped. She rounded on Craig. 'Does that mean we aren't going? That you won't take me ?' 'Did I say so? It's Saturday, isn't it? No school?' He looked at his watch. 'I'll give you five minutes from now, and if you're not out on the courtyard, booted and spurred, in that time then you won't go. So on your mark — move!' 'Oh, Craig, you angel!' Tessa sprang at him, bumped his nose in a misplaced kiss and 'moved' in a hurry. Craig lingered. 'Care to blot out our last fiasco and come along today?' he asked Adair. But Adair wasn't risking spoiling Tessa's expectation of his exclusive attention. Though she would have given much to say Yes, she said, 'Not today. If Miss Farrar isn't well, perhaps I'd better be here, don't you think?' 'I daresay Claudine could cope if Roma wanted anything. But as you please,' he said, sounding indifferent as to whether she went or stayed ... not caring either way. Later Roma made no secret of the fact that her headache had merely been an excuse. She did not reappear all the morning, but after asking for a luncheon of cigar soup to be taken to her room, she joined Adair at the pool. She peered at the water with distaste and flinched at the stark heat coming off the concrete surround.

'If Craig is all that keen on planting trees, he couldn't do better than plant a few here for shade. How on earth do you stand it? It's positively volcanic!' she complained. Adair said, 'I'm getting used to it. But if you've a headache, ought you to come out, do you think ?' 'A headache? Oh, that— It was only that I didn't want to snub Craig outright. But I felt I couldn't face yet another whole day playing nursemaid to Tessa— Look, is this thing supposed to work? Or is it?' 'It does sometimes. Let me—' Adair adjusted the bleached canopy of the spare sun-lounger and Roma stretched out on it with a martyred air. 'Besides,' she went on, 'I didn't know how much of her time Tessa usually spends tagged on to you, and I needed some privacy for a talk with you.' 'With me?' Adair asked carefully. 'About Tessa, you mean?' 'Among other things, yes. For one, about the whole peculiar set-up; why Craig should have brought you and Tessa out here at all ?' Adair looked her surprise at the question. 'But I told you why last night,' she said. 'It was because it was the only thing he could do with Tessa.' 'So you said - though are you sure he wasn't over- persuaded about that?' Adair's jaw dropped. 'Over-persuaded ?' she echoed. 'By whom ?' Roma drew down her dark glasses, looked over them, replaced them. Her long-drawn, 'Well—?' made her meaning quite clear.

'You think I had some interest in his bringing Tessa here?' 'What am I to think? The whole thing is bizarre, fantastic. A child of ten; a single girl; imported into conditions like these. No, even Craig couldn't be that mad.' Roma withdrew her glasses again and held Adair's glance. 'So tell me - will you swear that the plan to bring you both here really was his? That it was his suggestion to you, not yours to him?' Adair thought back to the night in Tunis and scorned to lie. 'I can't swear that,' she said. 'In the very first place, the idea was mine.' 'So I was right. How come ?' Adair said, 'I'd have expected Mr. Carolan would have told you how he came to engage me. But if he didn't — I was in Tunis, where my job as governess to another little boy had folded suddenly, with no notice to me from my employers, and Mr. Carolan was kind in helping me to sort things out.' 'You'd been ditched by these other people, and Craig happened to offer some handy cover?' 'He did what he could to advise me. Until then we'd only met by sight, through being in the same hotel. He asked me to join him for dinner and in the course of talking he told me about his dilemma over Tessa and how he was placed here, and I—' 'And you leapt in with a glad cry of "What's your problem? You have a child in need of a governess; I'm a governess out of a job. Simple!" Whereupon Craig fell for it - just like that ?' 'Very far from just like that,' said Adair coldly. 'He had to agree that I qualified, but he made the same objections as you have about bringing us here. And even though Hold him I understood desert conditions through having lived in Kuwait as a child, he turned me

down, and I took his answer as final. Then, before we parted that night, he told me he had changed his mind.' 'Really? At what consideration, I wonder?' Adair flushed to her hair-roots at the slur of that; had to force herself to reply levelly, 'At no inducement at all. Between his refusing to consider the idea and his change of mind, the matter wasn't even mentioned.' 'Which isn't surprising - if you'd both found more absorbing topics meanwhile. However, if you say so - Craig, adamant at one end of your cosy evening, and putty in your hands at the other - I must take your word for it that his change of heart was all his own. And so all businesslike and above board; salary discussed; references exchanged. And naturally you were frank with him about the rest of your background?' Again Roma's meaning was clear. 'About my part in my fiancé's death?' Adair queried. 'No, I didn't consider I owed Mr. Carolan the details of that. And he dispensed with references.' Roma's raised eyebrows made it a damning admission. 'So he still doesn't know what I heard later by a side wind — that you had run out on your fiancé's people, probably to escape from your conscience in that affair? Too bad, when something like that is left dangling on a thread of doubt — people will talk so. ... However, though Craig mightn't care at all now for your not having come clean about it then, there's no reason why he should ever hear it, if you'll co-operate with me in convincing him that this set-up for Tessa mustn't go on. Certainly not beyond my stay out here, which obviously can't be indefinite.' Adair shook her head. 'I'm not making bargains, Miss Farrar. Whatever you feel Mr. Carolan should know about me, you must

tell him. I'm certainly not promising to work on his decisions for Tessa as you suggest.' 'How did I guess you would refuse? Of course, it would mean the loss of your job, wouldn't it? And perhaps of other things you had in view? But obviously your conscience works overtime. So would it really let you stand in Tessa's light, if there were an acceptable alternative for her ?' 'I understood there wasn't one ?' Roma lay back under the canopy and linked her hands behind her head. 'Showdown,' she murmured almost to herself. 'Cards on the table and all that. So we're all agreed that England is the best place for the child. She wants to go, and boarding-school is the price she must pay. But for the rest - there could be a permanent home for her as well. With me — and with Craig, as proxies for her Aunt Grace while Grace can't take her on.' 'With you . . . and Mr. Carolan? But—?' 'Oh, married, of course!' Roma sat forward, her lips twitching as she added mock-primly, 'All the proprieties observed, I assure you.' There was a moment of pause. Then Adair said, 'I - see. That would alter Tessa's case, if— But how could Mr Carolan be permanently in England, when the whole of his work is here ?' 'Phooey!' scoffed Roma. 'Once back in England, he'd have the whole Forestry Board falling over themselves to get him. Anyway, when he came out here originally, he was only running away from me.' 'From you ?' 'After I'd turned him down six - yes, around six years ago. He'd fallen hard, but he did a sour grapes act and came abroad, and has

never come near me again since. But equally he has never married which says a lot. And when I decided to look him up after all this time, he's making the "Keep Out" sign so obvious that it says a lot more. Or hadn't you noticed how he tries to fend me off - playing hard to get?' Feeling a little sickened, Adair swung her feet to the ground and stood up. 'I hadn't noticed, but I didn't know there had been anything between you previously,' she said. 'There was enough, believe me. With very little farming it should take fire again,' said Roma complacently. 'I know Craig; he's arrogance itself; he doesn't give himself easily. But all that throwaway offhandedness with me says only one thing.' She paused to look up at Adair through half-closed lids. 'Meanwhile, bargain or no bargain - no obstacles in my way, please?' Adair turned away. 'I think you must know there are none I could put,' she said. 'Certainly there are none you ought to put, if you care about Tessa's future. A pity about your job, of course, though by the way—' Roma's pause was so prolonged that Adair's glance came round again. 'Yes ?' she invited. Roma shrugged. 'Only that your education of Tessa strikes me as being a shade offbeat in small ways. Take a word like "seductive", for instance. Or is it very square of me to wonder that a child of ten should know what it means ?' 'Does she claim that I taught her what it means?' 'Oh no. But she knows. She says Craig applied it to you in her hearing .. .' Roma paused again. 'Very naughty of him - fostering hopes he hasn't the slightest intention of honouring—'

Adair made no reply.

From those cross-currents the childhood world of schoolroom and lessons and time spent with Tessa were a comparative haven for Adair. Now she had to dread not only the occasional necessary contact with Owen Lander and with Roma, but her heart's hunger had to avoid Craig too. True, Roma made the latter no problem, by her own monopoly of Craig. She staged no more diplomatic headaches. On the Sunday he drove her to Tunis for the day; she chose her own day for going out to the operations field; on every other evening she was waiting, polished and elegant, for the team's return, and she and Craig would dine together at one of the tables for two. How they spent the later evening Adair did not wait to see. As soon as she could decently escape after the meal she went back alone to the silence of the villa, leaving to the riot of her imagination the shared memories they must be recalling, the 'enough' which Roma claimed they had once had, the fire she had only to fan, for it to flame. . . During those days of Roma's stay at the Base, for Adair the enigma was Craig. For her instinct told her he was not the sour grapes type Roma had called him. When he lost, he would break clean, she felt; never look back, stoop to no tricks once he had bowed to Roma's No. Adair would have given much to know why Roma had refused him then; what made her so confident of his surrender now, and even more, if he married Roma, how much of his devotion to his work he would give up for her. But of all that there was nothing to be learned from him. No doubt, when he and Roma had laid their plans, both Tessa and her governess would be told what Tessa's immediate future was to be.

Meanwhile for Adair there was some measure of sanity and refuge from thought in the everyday world that she and Tessa shared. Though for how little more time might it continue to exist for either of them ?

CHAPTER SEVEN DURING the following week Tessa talked of little but her field day with Craig. For some reason, the near- miracle of the team's battle with the desert had caught at her imagination, and even her preoccupation with the ballet was temporarily in eclipse while she plied everyone in sight, including Adair, with a stream of 'How's?' and 'Why's?' and 'When's?' as she demanded confirmation of all that she had heard from Craig about the gigantic project. Was it really true that there had once been forests in the Sahara? Where elephants had been able to live? Actually? Craig said the people's goats and camels and things had eaten the forests. Was that true? And how long, and how many goats and camels would it take to eat a whole forest? And why didn't the people see what was happening and plant some more things the next year, as proper farmers did, instead of moving on to the next forest and letting the goats eat that? And when did the sand itself start eating the land as well ? Who first thought of trying to stop it ? How did they know that spraying the sand with oil would work? And if it did, why couldn't they save time by putting the seeds straight into the sand, instead of all that to-do with little pots in the nurseries? Though that was the part she had liked watching best. They had let her try, and she had planted some seeds herself and Craig had had the pots labelled 'Tessa Holyoake' and let her bring one back to the Base, to water and to tend until the seed showed as a little tree. Craig said he had learned all about planting trees at a college in England, but as trees all had Latin names, he'd had to know a lot of Latin. Was Latin very hard to learn? And did they ever teach girls to

plant trees? Because she wouldn't mind doing that when she grew up. Especially if she could do it out here where everything grew so fast that, Craig said, you could practically watch them at it. He was only joking, of course, but— Amused, Adair had checked the flow by asking rather wickedly just where a course in practical forestry was going to tie in with a career in professional ballet. Would Tessa be able to find time for both? Tessa frowned. 'Oh - ballet,' she said flatly. 'Yes, well— Perhaps I'd have to make time. Or perhaps—' She broke off, still scowling, making Adair regret she had ventured to joke on a subject so dear to Tessa's heart. Her party was planned for the following Sunday. Craig had judged it a good idea. Claudine Watts had all the arrangements in hand. Beni and Hassim had rounded up the eligible guests and had issued the invitations. Shuddering with distaste, Paul Sarasin had organized a whip-round of the team to buy a supply of pop records and a sound amplifier for his record- player. The local wizard, combining snakecharming with conjuring, was engaged. Tom Jessop supervised the decoration of the main hall and the dining-room. The necessary transport was detailed for duty. And Roma expressed her horrified disapproval in no mean fashion. 'What can Craig be thinking of to allow it?' she raged to Adair. 'Have you seen this place, Bou Larissa? But of course you have. So you must know the kind of thing these hordes of shimmies could bring with them - dirt, disease, the lot!' Adair kept her temper with difficulty. 'Why should they bring anything awful with them? A certain amount of dirt is in the line of country of any children, and from what I've seen of them in the town, they look a pretty bonny lot. Anyway, most of those slick, dapper waiters in the Tunis and Hammamet hotels come from the

same sort of homes as they do, according to Claudine,' she pointed out. 'That's as may be. Presumably they've had some elementary hygiene knocked into them on their way up. But just let Tessa catch anything from this rabble, that's all! Don't say you weren't warned. One thing at least - I shan't be forced to witness the horrid spectacle. Craig is driving me back to the coast and staying for the week-end,' Roma concluded, then changed the subject to add, 'And by the way, you're not too popular with Craig at the moment, did you know? Only an impression, perhaps, but I gather he doesn't wholly approve of the intimacy you and that beardie - what's his name? - Lander, seem to be indulging just now.' Adair flinched. 'Intimacy? What intimacy?' she echoed sharply. 'My dear, how should I know? Except that I've noticed you usually dine with him at night.' 'Last night and the night before,' Adair corrected. 'I was late into the dining-room both evenings. Owen Lander was eating alone, as he often chooses to. He asked me to join him and as there were no other places free, I did. Hardly any guilty intimacy to be read into that, would you say?' 'As I did say to Craig - "What's your worry? They both have to eat somewhere and at least they're doing it in public." But I know Craig, and from what he didn't say to that, I gathered there was more to your affair with Lander than he was telling me. So as far as he was concerned, I left it there and just thought I'd drop you a word of warning - in case he says his piece to you himself.' 'Thank you.' The formality almost choked Adair. That night she made a point of being early for the meal and sitting next to Tom Jessop at the long table.

The talk going on around them was all of Owen Lander's latest default. On a supposedly practical survey of soil conditions he had turned in a set of figures so patently in error that a check by another technician showed that he had conducted no physical experiments at all. His report was based on the merest guesswork, and the general verdict of his fellows was that he had forfeited his last chance of Craig's forbearance. 'He's had it this time.' 'If the Chief stands for this, he should have his head examined.' 'How come Lander was fool enough to try it on, when by rights the Chief could have handed him his cards at least X times already ?' 'He'll have bought it now, that's for sure.' But Adair gathered no one knew all the facts. It was to be left to Owen Lander to tell her. By dining early she hoped she had escaped him. But on her way back to the villa after leaving Tom with a bunch of his cronies at the bar, Owen waylaid her at the door to the covered way. 'Going to gnaw a crust with me again tonight?' he asked. 'No. I've had dinner.' 'Couldn't wait to get your fork round the tinned spaghetti - or avoiding me? I was good enough for you last night and the night before. Why not tonight?' 'Both nights I was late, and the only place left was at your table. It would have been rather pointed, wouldn't it, if I had refused to join you ?'

'As you say, extremely snubbing. Just necessity, eh? And I was hoping you were showing a bit of healthy spirit in face of the competition you've collected lately. I warned you, didn't I? And put myself out to help you ? But that woman's technique sparks from her very fingertips; if you wanted Carolan, you should have gone overboard for him sooner. No - too timid and too late, that's you, I'm afraid, my dear,' Owen taunted. Adair compressed her lips and made to pass him in the doorway. But he turned, fell into step and went through with her to the dayroom in the villa. Leaning back against the door jamb, he watched as she began to collect things she needed to prepare a lesson for Tessa - textbooks, a jotting pad, pencils, pen. 'Tell me, has it reached the grapevine yet that I've been given the boot ?' he asked. Adair looked up quickly from her search for her fountain pen which she hadn't found. 'No, I hadn't heard so,' she said. 'You will.' He waited. 'At least you could register something, couldn't you? If only relief at being rid of me?' She ignored the gibe. 'I'm sorry about your job—' she began. 'Stout effort, but you can dry your tears for me.' He offered the French cigarettes he always smoked and when she refused them, lit his own. 'What's more—' he paused, watching the curl of smoke he had blown - 'if you want to be first with the news to the grapevine, I'd be obliged if you'd mention that I'm being kicked upstairs, not down.' Adair worked that out. 'You're only leaving here, not the Company, and you're being promoted somewhere else?'

'At Headquarters in England. To second-in- command of a lab. And, believe it or not, at my late respected Chief's recommendation.' 'At his—? I mean, I'm very glad,' Adair finished lamely. 'You're not glad. Any more than you're sorry I'm leaving here,' Owen contradicted. 'You may as well come clean - your only genuine reaction is surprise, hm?' 'Well—' 'Fair enough. Mine too. I fall down on the job; the man has no personal use for me - and yet he gift- wraps me and sends me up for promotion with no strings attached.' Owen shook his head in disbelief. 'It doesn't figure at all. Something phoney about it — though what?' 'Mr. Carolan could dismiss you? He has the authority to do it ?' Adair asked. Owen nodded. 'But doesn't. Why not?' 'I don't know. You seem to have asked for it.' Adair drew some idle lines on her jotter. 'I suppose,' she went on slowly, 'you couldn't give him the credit for trying a different approach to you? The - well, the carrot in front of your nose, instead of the stick behind?' Owen rejected the idea. 'That's not on. He's always relied on the stick until now.' 'Which hasn't worked with you, has it? All right,' Adair agreed a little wearily, 'perhaps it was only a thought that I could convince you he just might be showing you a generosity you haven't earned.' 'As you say, just a thought. A wishful thought, because he's your shining knight, and so generosity to the enemy has to be one of his

virtues, eh?' Owen thrust himself upright. 'Sorry, no - he has to have had a phonier motive than that.' Chin upon her hand, Adair looked up at him. 'You don't believe much in anyone's goodwill towards you, do you, Owen?' 'Not Carolan's, for sure. Leopards don't change their spots overnight.' Owen chain-lit a second cigarette and held out his hand. 'File closed. I'm off at first light in the morning, to catch the noon plane out from Tunis. Wish me Bon Voyage, if no more?' Adair gave him her hand. 'Good luck,' she said. 'And - try to like people a bit more. And your work. After all, one spends so much of one's life doing it that one might as well, and you are good at yours, they say, when you'll let yourself be.' He withdrew his hand. 'Huh! Me, take to work for its own sake ? That'll be the day!' She managed a smile. 'Leopards have been known—!' 'Not this leopard.' He made it his last word. Would anyone ever get through his crust of cynicism? Adair wondered, as she listened to his footsteps receding before beginning another search for her pen. ^ She had to go to her bedroom to find it in her handbag. Turning back at the door of her room, she met Roma on her way to hers. Roma lifted her fine nostrils to the unmistakable aroma that hung about the hall. 'Gauloises! I didn't know you smoked them ?' 'I don't.' 'As I thought. Then—' Roma's glance went back up the hall - 'do I make two and two into five? You in your room; your friend Lander,

smoking a Gauloise on his way out. Are you being quite as discreet as you should, do you think?' Adair flushed with annoyance. 'I gather you met Owen Lander on your way in ?' 'In that covered passage that only leads here. I came to fetch a wrap - Craig is taking me in to Bou Larissa for a drink.' 'And you may have noticed that I left the dining- room only about a quarter of an hour ago - certainly not more? During which time Owen Lander has been with me - in Tessa's schoolroom. What's so indiscreet about that?' 'This time, nothing, I daresay. I don't think you should make a habit of it, that's all.' 'As far as I know, this is the first time he has set foot in the villa since Tessa and I arrived. And I can hardly make any future habit of inviting him, can I, considering he is leaving the Base in the morning?' 'Oh, you know that? I did, but I didn't realize Craig had made it public. No, of course you won't have any more opportunity to encourage Lander, will you?' Roma paused with her hand on her own door. 'And by the way - about Tessa. By the time I come back again from the coast, I think Craig and I may have agreed on our plans for her. So if you'd like to begin making other arrangements for yourself - such as waiving notice or needing some help with your fare to another job or to England - he'll be willing to meet you, I'm sure.' She made the secondhand message sound like the dismissal of an under-servant, and there was only one reply which Adair's pride would allow her to make. 'Thank you,' she said tautly. 'But I'm quite prepared to wait for Mr. Carolan to choose his own time for telling me his plans for Tessa.'

'You'll have to hear them some time,' Roma warned. Adair moved on down the hall. 'I'll still wait,' she said.

But during the night, between restless sleep and waking, she changed her mind. She would not allow Craig to dismiss her! Before Portia Farrar had come back into his life, he had been as frank as she could ask with regard to Tessa, and if he couldn't share with her even so much of his confidence still, her sore spirit craved the only retort that was open to her. Before he had the chance to give notice to her, she would offer her own to him! It was a gesture her pride demanded, she argued. According to Roma, he would 'meet' her. Well, she would meet him instead. She would tell him she would stay on with Tessa as long as the child remained at the Base. But face him across a desk one morning and suspect that it was Roma's seal on his discharge of her, she would not! Dignity wouldn't stand for it, and love, which would pay almost any price to remain near him ... in his sight, mustn't be allowed to stand for it. Later she must be able to tell herself - At least I had the courage to break free. Fully awake in the morning, she had doubts. Was she planning her own execution without cause? Supposing Roma wasn't as sure of Craig as she claimed? That she was sure, Adair feared in her very bones; feared it for Tessa almost as much as for herself. But supposing Craig insisted on choosing his own time for being rid of her? He was capable of it, she knew. Or supposing he saw her own move as a betrayal of Tessa; accused her of breaking faith with the job she had taken on? She couldn't bear that—

Perhaps it was the glimpse, through Roma's bedroom door, of Roma's elegant luggage, already half- packed, that decided her. If she were going to give Craig her notice, she must do it before he went with Roma to Hammamet. Without giving herself any time to waver she went to knock on the door of his office. There was no answer, but as she turned away he came through from the main building. 'Hullo? Wanting me ?' he asked. 'For a few minutes, please.' She walked under the arm which pushed open the door for her. He followed her in. 'Yes?' he invited. She wished she had rehearsed her opening. It came out haltingly. 'I wanted to see you, because Miss Farrar tells me you and she have arrived at some plans for Tessa, and—' Craig's glance had gone to some papers on his desk, but he looked up quickly. 'Arrived at some?' he echoed. 'No, that's not so. That is, we're discussing feasibilities, but they're still very fluid. Anyway, if and when any change for Tessa is on, naturally I shall put you in the picture at once.' 'Thank you. I'd always supposed you would.' 'And you thought I hadn't? However, you're satisfied now that I will ?' Adair nodded. 'Yes, of course. But what I wanted to say was that if there's more than a slight possibility of an end to my job with Tessa before very long, I'd like you to accept my resignation now. When you engaged me, we didn't discuss notice, but I'd thought of suggesting, say, a month, if that would suit you?' Watching him as she spoke, seeing the swift flicker of his lids over the flecked eyes, she realized that she was dreading a reaction from him — kindness, for instance - that might disarm her resolve.

She needn't have worried. He wasn't kind. He said curtly, 'This is a pretty sudden decision, isn't it? When did you come to it, may one ask?' 'Last night.' 'On Roma's mere suggestion of a possibility we might have a change in view for Tessa?' 'She gave me to understand it was more than a possibility - that it was as good as settled.' 'Well, it isn't. Though it could be shortly.' He broke off to glance again at his desk. Momentarily he toyed with one of the papers under his hand, then flicked it aside with a forefinger and looked straight back at Adair. 'So you're offering a month's notice ? Have you any other job lined up?' 'Already? Of course not. I couldn't start looking for one until I'd spoken to you.' 'Why couldn't you?' 'Etiquette. In teaching, you resign one job before you look for another.' 'Yet you wouldn't have a qualm at leaving Tessa out on a limb, supposing nothing had been settled for her within your stated month?' 'But of course I'd have qualms! That is, I wouldn't dream of leaving her in that case! I just said a month. But I certainly meant you to understand that I'd stay longer - or less long - if it suited you,' Adair protested a little wildly.

'I see. Thank you. I'll be letting you know what suits me.' Craig paused. 'Does Tessa know anything of all this from you? No? Then don't tell her, please.' 'Even though she may hear of it from her aunt and may question me?' 'You must use your diplomacy. I don't want her disappointed if nothing comes of it for her.' Adair doubted Tessa's disappointment over the withdrawn prospect of a return to England that threatened both boarding-school for her and a home shared with Roma, even if Craig were there too. But she said nothing and Craig went on, 'And what about your own plans? You'll be going back to England ?' 'I expect so. Yes, I'm pretty sure I shall.' They had both been standing, but now he hooked a chair towards her and sat down himself. 'So you've had a change of heart since, a few months ago, you were flatly refusing to go back ?' 'I suppose so. When I leave here, I shall go, I think.' He offered cigarettes and lit hers and his own. 'And even against the hundred-to-one chance that I'd ever be the wiser, don't you think that sometime since, if not at once, you owed me the truth of what had brought you running headlong from England in the first place?' he asked quietly. So her refusal to bargain had given Roma carte blanche for this petty revenge! Adair said, 'I take it that Miss Farrar has told you what she knows about it? But no, I didn't consider I owed it to you myself.'

'All right. Cancel "owe". Let's say instead that I'd have appreciated it if you'd trusted me with your own account of your part in your fiancé's death.' 'I'm sorry. Perhaps I should have told you. But you know it now, and my story would differ very little, if at all, from Miss Farrar's.' 'I'd still like to hear yours, if I may. You crashed the car — fatally for your fiancé. But it was his car, wasn't it ? Why were you driving it ?' 'I did sometimes.' 'I'm surprised he let you, on the bad winter's night Roma says that one was.' 'He didn't want to let me. He hadn't a very high opinion of my driving. But I insisted.' She hesitated. 'It had been his first night on stage professionally, and there had been rather a hectic cast party after the show. He wasn't — equal to driving.' 'Whereas you considered you were?' 'I was. I'd known I'd probably have to, and I'd been on soft drinks all the evening.' 'But according to Roma the accident happened long after you should have got back to - what was the name of your home - Frayne? I suppose you stopped somewhere on the way?' 'Yes. By the roadside.' She forestalled the question in the glance Craig threw her. 'To quarrel, in fact. To break our engagement.' His brows went up. 'That sounds like a pity,' he said.

She had told him the truth so far and she felt impelled to tell him the rest. 'It wasn't,' she said. 'It had been inevitable for some time. Miles didn't spare me much. He didn't love me, he said. He never had. And he had fallen hard for - someone else and was hoping for an affair with her. But if I'm honest, it was only my pride that he hurt. Because I didn't love him either.' She could sense the criticism in Craig's short silence. 'But if he hadn't cried off, you'd have gone through with it to marriage ?' he asked. 'Yes, probably.' 'Why?' Her memory knew. 'Miles knew why for both of us,' she said bleakly. 'He didn't mince facts that night. It was because we were used to each other; his people expected it of us, and he'd always found the line of least resistance the easiest - until then. And it was much the same for me. I'd always been there for Miles; making him do things he hadn't the spirit for himself. He .. . needed me a lot. 'And so . . . you as the leaning-post and he as the leaner - you saw that as a workable basis for marriage ?' 'We got engaged on it. After all, we'd grown up together that way. I'd always been a kind of buffer- state to him. And when people count on you to be behind them, you mustn't fail them,' Adair said, stating a fact. 'Which, in a woman, I'd say was taking quixotry a sight too far. Nature never meant them to be in sole charge of the reins of any marriage,' was Craig's dry comment. 'But that night, your showdown over, you went on your way ?'

'Yes. We were angry and not speaking, and presently Miles fell asleep. It had been foggy and was getting worse. But I was coming through until - though I'll never know why - I suddenly swung the wheel right over and crashed into a wall, and Miles's side of the car buckled like—' She broke off, biting her lip. 'And you were entirely sober, you say?' She nodded, unable to speak. 'And afterwards?' She brought her voice under control. 'Owing to the fog, I was exonerated. But I couldn't escape from my conscience, and I knew Miles's people were judging me. They knew nothing about our break-up, nor its cause. They had idiolized Miles and I wanted them to go on doing it. And when I couldn't bear the atmosphere any longer, I left Frayne. They didn't mind seeing me go.' 'And so to your job with those phoney fly-by-nights who abandoned you in Tunis. Well, thank you for the facts; Roma, naturally, didn't know them all, and if you had favoured me with them when you might have done, I'd have understood you earlier and misjudged you less. And perhaps forgiven you a lot,' Craig added in afterthought. Adair's eyes widened in pain and bewilderment. 'Forgiven me what ?' He seemed to consider the question. 'If I said - For your continuing to be such a dyed-in-the-wool Tracy product that you almost deserve all you ask for, would you know what I meant ?' 'I think so. You're implying again, as you did once before, that I court trouble when you think I needn't.'

'And I could have saved my breath, couldn't I ? You weren't listening then, and when you still choose, you're as deaf to words of one syllable as you're dense to the kind of direct action that amounts to a shout in your ear—' He broke off and stood, as Roma appeared in the doorway. Roma sent a calculating glance at them both. She spoke to Craig. 'Shouldn't we be leaving? To escape the worst heat? You said—' At once his attention was with her and withdrawn from Adair. 'Yes, I'm ready, if you are,' he told her. 'Then come along.' She went ahead, elegant in the expensive simplicity of a white halter-necked dress that left her back, arms and shoulders bare. As she went she put on the cartwheel-brimmed straw hat she carried and pivoted round to face Craig just behind her. 'Will I do?' she asked provocatively. His eyes travelled over her. 'As always,' he assured her, then turned again to Adair, 'We'll talk again when I come back. You and the Watts and Tom can cope with Tessa's party between you ?' 'I hope so.' Adair heard him ask Roma if her bags were in the car; then they were gone. For Adair, left behind, there remained a feeling that Roma's interruption had cheated her of a moment of truth with Craig that she would have valued. He had accused her of being dense. Dense to what? The perplexity nagged. But she was glad that, in telling Miles's story, she hadn't betrayed Roma's heartless part in it to Craig. Roma wouldn't want

him to know it or to judge her on it, and it did something for Adair's self-esteem that he hadn't heard it from her and now never would. At the door of her own room she met Brian Watts with a letter for her. 'From Mr. Lander. He asked me to give it to you after he had gone,' said Brian. 'Oh, thank you.' As Brian left her she slit the envelope. The few lines Owen had written read— 'On the off-chance that leopards do, I'm giving your pet the benefit of the doubt and you the credit for meaning me well, by going all out after that carrot. Sluggard Lander today; new leaf Lander tomorrow - surprise, surprise for you all! Meanwhile, good hunting - and how you'll have to work at it! Convey the glad tidings of my intended reform to Carolan, will you? Or no, on second thoughts I'll be in touch myself. O.' Adair re-read them once and then tore the sheet across. Did leopards? Would he? She knew she wanted to believe so.

CHAPTER EIGHT TESSA'S party took off to a slow start, gradually became a veritable Babel of chatter in half a dozen local dialects as well as in French, and finally achieved a riotous success. The jeeps discharged their cargo in the forecourt and the cargo stood about, sucking its thumbs, its hair-plaits or its party strings of beads according to which came handiest or afforded most moral comfort. There was awe, a few forlorn tears, some blank refusals to budge from chosen spots and a general air of distrust of the cargo's fate at the hands of the foreign strangers. Claudine Watts was undaunted. Crooning, 'Les pauvrets - the poor little ones, they are only shy!' she almost literally carried off a bunch of times to be given milk, and sent Beni and Hassim among the others to offer mule-rides round the block and tickets to be drawn from a goatskin for the assortment of presents to be given out later. As on the beach at Hammamet Adair was struck by Tessa's easy social flair. Without a trace of shyness in her make-up, she didn't recognize it in others. She went about among her young guests as if born to hostess-ship, bandying with them a mixture of French and English and graphic mime which soon brought their defences down. The men of the team too - as if they were hungry for the family contacts they had left behind or hadn't yet made - grudged nothing in the way of clowning and horseplay that might bring shouts of laughter from the children. They boxed, they handstood, inviting competitors; they wore false noses and devil-masks with chilling effect, and Paul Sarasin and his brother, sharing a muleskin as a pantomime horse would have stopped the show on any London stage. Presently there was 'tea' - goats' milk and lemonade and tinned fruit juice; tarts and cakes for the sweet-tooths, little platters of sausages

or cous-cous for the savoury-minded, and icecream and date-andhoney sweetmeats for everyone. The wizard did his sleight-of-hand stuff and had his audience rolling in the aisles. There were balloons and music, and presents to be shared out. If the gaiety were to be measured by sheer weight of noise, there was a crescendo of it until, at sundown, the cargo had to be reshipped for its return home, and the silence it left behind was almost a tangible thing. Tom Jessop tucked a companionable arm into Adair's as they turned back into the building. 'I think they enjoyed themselves, don't you?' she said. 'Sure thing,' he agreed. 'It'll be the talk of the market for weeks, and should send up our stock with the locals like crazy.' Tessa's reaction was characteristically downright. 'I shall tell Craig we must give another party soon, for all the children who weren't chosen to come this time. Say, for your birthday, Adair. When is it?' Adair told her. 'July? Oh, that's much too far off. For Craig's then, or Claudine's - or for nobody's, as long as we have another party soon. Why not one every month - a sort of regular Happening for the children to Look Forward to and come to in batches - like sittings at meals in trains and ships ?' Adair teased her, 'Give you your head, and you'll be ordering giltedged cards engraved, "Miss Tessa Holyoake - At Home Every Third Thursday" like a Victorian society dame!' Missing the irony, Tessa pondered 'Every Third Thursday', then decided aloud, 'Well, perhaps not every three weeks. Craig might

think that a bit much. No, I'd settle for every four - or even, say, six, if he wanted to be stuffy about it.' Several weeks ago, at a bedtime for Tessa which Adair liked to remember as red-letter, Tessa had invited a good night kiss and since then had expected one as her right. But kissing her this evening, Adair felt a pang of guilt. As she adjusted the mosquito-net and left her, she was sorely tempted to defy Craig by breaking to Tessa the news of Roma's plans for her which were going to make nonsense of her own confident planning ahead. For - six weeks from now; perhaps only four or less - where would Tessa be by then ? Where, for that matter, would Adair be herself ?

Throughout the week-end the heat and humidity had mounted steadily, but the night of the party turned icy and the next morning, lowering and wind- racked, was as cold as any European winter's day. 'The rains are coming,' Claudine forecast to Adair. 'They are late this year.' 'How long do they last when they do come?' 'There's no saying. Long enough, one hopes, for the plantings to be made. Three weeks would do; a month would be better. And when they do come it will be warmer than this, though not too hot. You and the little one should find it much more comfortable,' Claudine consoled, unaware that if the rains delayed for long, neither Adair nor Tessa might be there to see their coming. That morning Tessa refused breakfast, complaining that she was much too cold to eat. She crossly rejected Adair's joking suggestion

that the aftermath of the party might have more to do with her lost appetite than the cold. 'I didn't eat too much yesterday. I tell you I'm cold. And - and sort of hot too, at the same time. And I feel sick.' That alarmed Adair. Hearing it, looking more closely and taking Tessa's pulse, she recognized the symptoms of fever, and her reading of the child's temperature confirmed it. The clinical thermometer gave a figure of a hundred and two degrees. Fever! Caught how? Putting Tessa back to bed and calling on Claudine's help, Adair was remembering Roma's fears which she had turned into a threat. The party! All those children! Was it hideously possible that one of them — and it would only take one — had innocently carried some seed of disease to the Base, and Tessa had fallen victim, as Roma had warned? Guilt came down on Adair like a cloud. Tessa was only too ready for her bed, but not long after she was there she was seized by an abdominal cramp which doubled her up and brought beads of sweat to her forehead. 'Like - like stitch - only much, much worse,' she managed to whimper in answer to Adair's frightened questioning. 'No, leave me alone. I've got to stay bent like this. Lying straight out, I can't bear it.' The spasm passed momentarily, then gripped again. 'We must get a doctor to her as soon as we can. What do you think it can be?' Adair begged of Claudine, her own agonized guess ranging from acute food-poisoning to malaria; from polio even to the greatest dread of the sub-tropics - cholera.

Claudine said, 'Brian shall go into Bou Larissa and bring out a doctor from the hospital. I don't know what it is, but you mustn't think the worst yet. To me it looks more muscular than internal, and if it is, it might respond to a pain-killer. I have some in the medicine- chest in the men's sick-bay; we'll give her a half-tablet and another half in a couple of hours, if the doctor hasn't come by then.' To Adair, sitting by Tessa, wiping her face and holding her hand when the child needed comfort, the time of waiting for the doctor seemed endless. She continued to blame herself. On Roma's warning, however uninformed, she should have gone to Craig and asked him what risks might be involved in letting Tessa mix so freely with the local children. If he had said they were negligible she could have referred Roma to him. As it was, knowing as little as Roma of the dangers, she had made nothing of Roma's qualms, and now, if Tessa were indeed critically ill, Roma was not likely to spare her blame of Adair any more than Adair would spare herself. It was noon before Brian Watts returned with the doctor, who was also Bou Larissa's general practitioner and who had been out on his rounds. Adair and Claudine voiced their fears to him and asked if there were any epidemic in the town which Tessa might have caught. 'Nothing serious,' he assured them. 'Just a rather steep rise in bilious attacks this morning.' He had heard about the party from Brian. 'But your young charge's trouble sounds rather different. I'll take a look at her, shall I?' While he was examining Tessa, she had another griping attack of pain, which Adair was glad he had witnessed as it evidently satisfied him as to its cause.

Outside Tessa's room he told Adair, 'It's something which you, mademoiselle, have probably never seen. But you, madame—' he addressed Claudine - 'should surely recognize it? The child has desert cramp.' Claudine clapped a hand to her mouth. 'But of course! Yesterday the cruel heat; this morning - the cold and the wind, like hunters out for the kill! Naturally I should have realized, even though I have never seen a case of it, and have not heard of it in a child,' she told the doctor. 'Probably because the children of the region grow a resistance to it. Europeans have little, and the unlucky ones usually suffer at least one attack before they get acclimatized.' He turned to Adair. 'It is due to the extreme and swift temperature range within a matter of a few hours. It is the body's protest; the muscles knot against the adjustment that is asked of them; there is a lot of pain and there may be fever. But the attacks grow less severe in a few hours and we have drugs which fight it. You can nurse the child here, I take it?' 'Oh yes.' 'Good.' He gave directions for Tessa's relief and sedation, said that she would almost certainly be immune, once she recovered; her convalescence would not take long, but while it lasted, she must be shielded from any dramatic weather changes which the forthcoming days might bring. Adair thanked him, and, parting from him, Claudine gave him the equivalent of the English, 'What a cold morning!' or 'Nice weather for ducks.' 'The rains are coming, Dr. Lemaire,' Claudine told him. He glanced up at the sombre yellow sky. 'Indeed, yes may Heaven be praised,' he said.

* The next day Craig returned alone from the coast, by which time Tessa was almost herself once more, after nearly fourteen hours' sleep, and in no more pain. Craig was able to endorse the doctor's diagnosis. 'I experienced the thing myself - just once, in my first sandstorm. If I had been here, I could have warned you, but the coast doesn't suffer the runaway changes that the desert serves up. When I left it this morning, it was enjoying the kind of gentle winter's day you might get in Torquay. Which is just as well for Roma's image of the sub-tropics where there is eternal sunshine, scarcely any rain and where wind is only a legend belonging to Fastnet, Lundy and Rockall.' He turned a wry smile on Adair across the table where he had joined her for dinner. 'At least, thank goodness, I hadn't to waste time disabusing you of any such romantic notions,' he said. The smile she gave him in return came from a small glow within her. 'You thought at first that you were going to have to,' she reminded him. 'Yes.' He looked at her thoughtfully. 'And just how wrong can you get - about a lot of things,' he said, though without seeming to invite any answer. For all the amateur forecasting of 'the rains', they seemed in no hurry to fall, but the Base and the nurseries prepared to go into top gear action in readiness for them. The whole strength of the nurseries was detailed to load the season's potted seedlings on to lorries for transportation to the planting areas; the whole strength of the Base suspended spraying operations and fell instead to the task of planting - so many seedlings to the row, so many rows to the hectare - the lorries serving the planters with their freights of pots by human conveyor-belt and shuttling back to the nurseries for more.

All the available casual labour of the region was recruited; at this season there wasn't an able male hand that need be idle. These latter workers wanted to be paid by the day, and in consequence there were queues outside Craig's office until long after full dark. During this time-race against the imminence of the rains, Adair saw little or nothing of Craig. When he ate, rested or how he spent such little spare time as he must have, she did not know, and she found herself often wondering how, if Roma had really reclaimed him, he could possibly be so enslaved to her that he could think of abandoning to her whim all the work that lay to his hand out here. How could he ? But short of asking him point blank there was no answer to that, and while there was no news of Roma's promised return to the Base, Adair admitted she did not want to know . .. While Roma was absent, and until Craig defined their plans for Tessa, there was still a little hope to be worn ... to be cherished. Brian Watts, Beni and Hassim had all been roped in to help with the planting, so while Tessa was convalescing, Adair helped Claudine with jobs in the kitchen and doing .the town marketing; servicing the mailbox and collecting the Base's incoming mails from the post office in Bou Larissa. Once, in the same batch of mail, there were two in the same handwriting - a picture postcard for her and a letter for Craig which she left on his desk, both of them from Owen Lander, posted in London a day or two after he would have arrived in England. Her postcard showed the Battersea Power Station and said laconically— 'Or is this old hat ? Would you have preferred the latest in matchbox-on-end office blocks going up in the City? How is the hunting? For me, it's Carrot Ahoy at tomorrow's dawning - and the darned rootcrop had better be worth my effort, that's all.'

There was no address. Evidently he didn't expect her to reply and she had no intention of trying to do so. But for the second time since their paths had first crossed, she realized she genuinely wished him well. She wondered what he had said in his outgoing message to Craig. Not that she was ever likely to learn. Nor, she found when she had taken on the villa's dusting one morning, had Craig so far troubled to find out for himself. Among a pile of second class mail which he had left unopened for some days was Owen's letter, also still sealed; evidently unimportant enough in Craig's eyes to have to await his leisure for opening it. During that time young Paul Sarasin had a personal interest in the delay of the rains. For not until the first of them could be seen to be settling in the seedlings and the after-planting spraying under way could he be released on leave to marry his Lucille. 'The church, the wedding dress, the cake, the wine - they are all ordered. For Easter, we hoped, though who can tell now when I shall be there?' he grumbled to Tessa and Adair. Tessa, watering 'Tessa Holyoake', had her own solution. 'Easy,' she told him. 'You'll have to marry her by - oh, what is the word when people get married, with one of them not there ?' she appealed. Adair supplied, 'Proxy.' Paul yelped in dissent. 'I'll do no such thing!' 'Why not? Everyone knows you let someone else choose Lucille for you,' Tessa reminded him. 'That was different. Next you will suggest that I appoint a proxy for the honeymoon,' he accused Tessa with dignity, at which they all laughed before Tessa went off in search of a larger pot for the sapling's already greedily spreading roots.

'How long a leave will you have when you get it?' Adair asked Paul. 'I have some extra due to me. A month in all,' he told her. 'And afterwards? Will you be able to bring Lucille out here?' She might have known the answer to that. 'Not possible yet, except on a visit perhaps,' Paul sighed. 'But that is the price we pay for work we believe in - that our wives must be lonely for us some of the time. Besides, it will not be for ever. Soon and somewhere, if not here, what we are doing will enable living towns to be built where there will be room for our wives and children to be near us.' 'And until then, you are content to have it so?' 'As long as the work says it must be so.' 'But supposing,' Adair asked gropingly, 'that Lucille didn't agree? Supposing she insisted that she must come first with you, would you consider giving up your job in order to be near her ?' Paul looked at his watch. 'If she were that kind of girl I should not be marrying her. Since she is Lucille, she will not ask it of me,' he said. Yet Roma Farrar could ask it of Craig and was seemingly sure of the answer she wanted.

That talk with Paul took place on the morning of a day Adair was always to remember as one of release for her ... release from the guilt she had worn too long ... release - by the merest flick of chance - which she was to gain, utterly improbably, at Craig's hands.

Since the intense sudden cold there had been a climb again to heat a sunless, brooding humidity which, people said, marked the last lull before the rains. There was no cool shade anywhere, but Adair usually sought what she could out of doors; she felt imprisoned by thick walls and the dark of shutters which kept out any stir of air there might be. That afternoon in the courtyard there was none. She stretched out on a sun-lounger, consciously relaxing every muscle, allowing her hands to trail limply down, her head to loll, hoping for the sleep which might or might not come. At first it did not. Then, when she shifted position and turned her cheek into her palm, she was grateful to feel it begin to wash over her. Light sleep at first, only just below waking level. Awareness still of the conscious world; thought that turned woolly but was still thought, not dreams. Then nothing at all. And then - as never before in a daytime doze - the nightmare again, the horror that hitherto had only lain in wait for her in the pit of the small hours; never by day. There it all was again. The miasma of the fog; the road she had to travel but could not see; the shadowy, nameless figure beside her; then the steering-wheel wrenching over; her own cry - 'No!' - and this time, as never before, something else. Something else her dream-self shouted after the 'No!' Something she called aloud; something half-heard by her waking ears as she tore free of the web to find she was no longer alone. Craig, on one knee, stooping beneath the canopy, had her by both hands, pulling her upright, shaking her awake. She opened her eyes, then closed them to the mystified alarm she read in his. But of course she would have to explain—

When he released her hands she sat forward and cupped her face in them, fighting for control. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It - happens. A kind of nightmare.' 'A nightmare? In broad daylight? My dear girl—!' She nodded, sharing his disbelief. 'I know. Silly word. But always before it has happened in the night, you see.' 'Always? You've dreamed the same thing before?' 'Yes. It's always the same.' 'You were shouting aloud before I shook you awake!' 'Yes, I do, I think. I believe I've heard myself. But that's always the end of it, and I wake up.' 'And you always shout the same thing - "No! No, Miles! Don't!" ?' She ran the back of her hand across her eyes, then looked beyond the man beside her into memory. 'No—' she said slowly, working it out, 'not all that. Just "No". I - I've always stopped there—' She broke off, realizing Craig could have no clue to the dark horror of the dream. 'It's about the night when I crashed the car and - and killed my fiancé. I've told you about it. But unless— That is, I think you must be mistaken in what you thought I said. Because in the dream I'm never sure that it is Miles beside me, and I've never called out "Don't!" Just that one "No", that wakes me,' she repeated, as if saying so often enough had the power to deny the truth of that night; the reality she had thrust from her and was still reluctant to know. Miles was dead. Miles couldn't defend himself. It had never been fair to face what might be the truth - that it had been Miles, rousing

from his half-stupor, still resentful, still despising her driving ability; his own judgment bemused - who had made that panic wrench upon the steering-wheel, making him, not her, to blame for the crash. So even the nightmare had stopped short of the reality - until now when it had betrayed her into blurting it aloud to Craig. To Craig who already knew enough of the story to have the right to question the rest. He looked at her critically. 'Are you all right now? Would you like me, to bring you a drink or anything?' 'No, thanks. It was silly of me. I suppose I ought to have stayed in my room.' 'Might have been wiser,' he agreed. He reached for a cushion and sat on it, cross-legged, beside her. He said almost casually, 'I think we'd better break this nightmare of yours, don't you ?' 'Break it?' 'Or whatever is the jargon for taking a cool look at this sort of recurring thing. For instance, it sounds to me as if your dream self knows more of the truth of that night than you want to admit. So you were driving. The car crashed - fatally. But whose hand was on the wheel at the moment it did ?' She did not look at him. 'Well, mine, of course.' 'Only yours? Or at a guess, your passenger interfered; reached for the wheel himself and wrenched it over? In your alarm you yelled, "Don't!" or "No, don't", but by then it was too late to straighten out and you were on a collision course? Could be, don't you think, that admitting as much, even to yourself, has been a mental hurdle you've baulked until now?'

He paused, waiting. But when she did not reply he surprised her by laying a hand over hers. 'Come,' he urged. 'I'm only guessing, but it's possible I'm right?' She longed to turn her palm into his and to hold on, but she did not. She lay back, feeling trapped by the pitiless thrust of his reasoning, and yet - strangely at the same time - freed by it for ever from doubt, from fear ... from guilt which was falling away like a discarded cloak. She would always know sadness for Miles, and all the fruitless 'If only's—' of regret for him. But no cruel, ill-judged, action of hers had killed him. Craig was right. The nightmare had known the truth, and now that her conscious mind knew it too, the nightmare in whole or in part, would not plague her again. She had never felt more sure of anything than that. At the hands of Craig's probing, conscious certainty had taken over from the dream, setting her free. As her eyes met his she wondered how much of her thought showed in her face. She nodded slowly. 'I don't know how you guessed. And deep down, I think I may have known it too. Only—' 'Only you've made yourself deny it, even to yourself? Why?' The question rapped out. She thought back. 'Because Miles's people had quite enough to bear without - that. For his mother especially, the sun rose and set with him, and I hadn't the right to spoil her memory of him.' Craig nodded. 'That I understand. You saw it as your last generosity towards him, and it's all of a piece with the rest of the crazy relationship you've described to me. This thing of seeing yourself as a kind of groyne against whatever tide was running against him!

Tell me, did your mother-wit never slip you a hint that it's the man's job, not the woman's, to do the shielding for two?' Her lip quivered. 'That's not fair! I can't bear being less than people expect, and Miles wasn't a strong person. He needed me—' Craig's flecked eyes sparked. 'Exactly. He battened on you and, turning you loose, conditioned you as heaven's gift to the next weakling to cross your path— Ah no, Adair - please!' He broke off and in one swift movement was again beside her, imprisoning first one of her hands and then the other with which she was vainly knuckling away the springing tears which had moved him to his protest. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'What is it? I caught you on the raw? Is that it?' She looked at him through drowned eyes. 'Nothing you said. I don't know. Just - things,' she finished lamely, and made to. pull at least one hand free. He held on. 'Things? What things? Memories? Fears ? Want to tell me—?' Want to tell him! She shook her head at the cruel irony of the question. She said nothing. He waited. The last tear she had been powerless to fight back fell on the pile of their hands in her lap - and it was so that Roma found them as, unheard by either, she crossed the courtyard to stand near by, her whole poise expectant of the surprise and attention her arrival demanded. Craig came at once to his feet. 'Roma! Where did you spring from ?' 'Spring?' The trained cadence of her voice made nonsense of the word. 'In this temperature? I came by the one hired car in Hammamet that boasts a cooling- fan. Sorry if I'm intruding as—' her glance swept Adair who had also stood - 'rather evidently I am!'

Craig ignored that. Adair bent to collect her things and turned away. 'Where are you going?' he asked her sharply. Tempted as she was to answer him over her shoulder, she turned back, lifting her face so that Roma should be in no doubt of the traces of her tears. It was only the ultimate humiliation after all! 'I'm going to get Tessa up from her rest. It's time,' she said, and went.

That evening, for the first time since she had come to the Base, Adair pleaded a headache to Claudine and asked her to see Tessa to bed. No, she told Claudine, she wouldn't be going to dinner. Yes, she would be grateful for the glass of iced goats' milk Claudine would bring to her room. No, nothing else she wanted at all— Nothing but the answer to the small hope that Craig might question her absence and come to find her - a hope which kept her on edge and still dressed long after she would have been grateful to sink into bed— But he did not come. Trying to sleep at last, her thoughts were a tumult. The end must be very near now. The end, both for her and for Tessa. Why hadn't Craig allowed her to break the news gently to Tessa? This afternoon he had been understanding and kind - kinder than ever yet. He had worked a miracle of release for her; without knowing what his slightest touch meant to her, he had still known what a handclasp could say to the bereft ... the forlorn. He had held her hand. Two memories she would keep of him - that he had once cared to kiss her good night and today had wanted to comfort her—

Off at a tangent of thought - It must be very late. Yes. The illuminated hands of her bedside clock said past midnight. Would she still be awake to hear Roma come to her room? She had not come yet. What did that say ? What did it not say ? Roma and Craig ... No. That hurt too much. She must close her ears to listening for Roma. Try to sleep— On the very edge of sleep at last her brain was remembering something Craig had said ... was asking a question. What had he meant - that Miles had conditioned her to fall willing prey to the next lightweight type she met? Sounded as if he believed she had. What did he mean? Much later the answer came in an intuitive flash which brought her starting from sleep as if roused by a thunderclap. Owen Lander! Craig had seen Owen kiss her, thought she saw Owen as a second Miles to comfort and bolster and encourage against all wisdom! Absurd. But so he must have read her occasional defence of Owen and - the important thing - had cared enough to warn her against Owen the taker, Owen the entirely unlovable where she was concerned. Well! Almost lightheartedly she settled back to sleep. Tomorrow she must disillusion Craig on that score. Tomorrow. No - two o'clock in the morning made it today. She could hardly wait. But three o'clock in the morning, when the first heavy, far-spaced drops of rains fell, made it a today in which explaining away Owen Lander to Craig wasn't to be of major importance. The day that brought the rains at last had more in store for them all.

CHAPTER NINE HER long hours of wakefulness overnight caused Adair to sleep late. She woke feeling grateful to Claudine for not disturbing her. Tessa would long since be up, of course. It was past their usual breakfast time, but after coming-to Adair lay for a few minutes more, listening to the long awaited drumming of heavy rain and sensing the unwonted darkness of the morning beyond the shutters of her room. She dressed more warmly than yesterday and hoped Tessa had done so too, though of course they wouldn't be venturing out today. Tessa's door was open and so, to Adair's surprise, was Roma's, giving an almost full view of a room that, subtly, was not empty of Roma as Tessa's was empty of Tessa - the bed unmade, a towel abandoned, a hairbrush askew on the dresser. For Roma's room was neat. There was no discernible waft of her familiar perfume. Nothing on dressing-table or shelf or floor to show her occupation of it. Unless Claudine or Roma herself had freshly made up the bed - unlikely - it had not been slept in last night. Which meant—? Adair wrenched her thoughts away from all it might mean. Tessa was not in the day-room, nor in the dining- room, nor in the kitchen where Adair went to report her late surfacing to Claudine. Claudine said of Tessa, 'She was here a little while since. I told her she must not go even to the garage, and she understands.' And then asked Adair, 'You slept ? And no more headache this morning ?' 'No. It's quite gone, thanks.' 'And you see we have the rains at last?' Claudine's tone implied that a tardy guest had graciously decided to turn up after all.

'Yes. And I suppose everyone is out on the job - coping?' Claudine spread two graphic hands. 'All! All! Tout le monde out on patrol - seeing the work is not undone for them before it is scarcely done. Later, when the rains are heavier, they must leave the plantings to their fate until they ease; meanwhile, they keep watch.' Adair had another question to ask. 'And Miss Farrar?' 'Madame ? But she is gone!' 'Gone? I thought—' 'She left last night. Of course you wouldn't know. I think she was not too pleased that the Chief should tell her that if she did not go then, as soon as the rains came, she might not get through. She had dismissed the car she came in, intending to stay. But after dinner Monsieur Carolan himself drove her back to the coast. He didn't return until the small hours, I think, and he was up and out with the team at dawn. You would like your breakfast now, I expect ?' 'Just coffee, please. I'll drink it here if I may, before I go and track down Tessa.' It was to prove an empty search of all Tessa's usual haunts except the garage where, with all the men out she would have no reason to be and where Claudine had told her not to go in the rain. There remained only her own room and Adair went there last, to find no Tessa, but now - since her last glance in at the door - a letter addressed 'Adair' propped against the mirror. Adair snatched it up, tore it open. In Tessa's script it said without preamble— 'It's not fair. You must have known, and you could have told me. I heard them talking last night in Craig's office. She was angry with

him about something and he was trying to make her promise to wait in Hammamet to take me back to England with her as soon as he was able to send me to her. 'She said she wasn't making any promises, and let him send my little governess type to England with me, why not. He said, "Adair? I'm not releasing her until I've seen Tessa into the hands of someone of her own. Which you are, and you're going back to England, and it isn't as if you were going to have the sole care of Tessa for very long—" Or something like that. Anyway, I told you so. It's a plot you've all hatched against me to get me back to England with HER. Well - (heavily underlined) - I'm not going. I'll run away, rather. And I'm going out now - in the rain, because that will annoy the lot of you, and I don't care. There was a defiant postscript. 'Anyway, I don't want to do ballet now. Paul says it's too late for me to begin, and I've changed my mind. I'm going to be a lady forester and learn Latin and all about trees and come out to the desert and plant them. So there.' It was a screed which would have made Adair smile, if it hadn't been so eloquent of the childish despair behind it and all that it told Adair of her own worst fears. But this was no time for self-pity nor even pity for Tessa. Now action must find her wherever her blind revolt had taken her this disastrous morning when, as once before, finding her and bringing her back devolved upon her, Adair. And only upon her. This time, no Owen Lander to come to her aid and, this time, the risk of consequences for Tessa whose convalescence, the French doctor had warned, was not to be exposed to any weather extremes. Yesterday's overbearing heat; now today's chill, a rising wind and the deluge of the rain— In panic Adair began a search for the only protective clothing she knew Tessa had - a chair-store type plastic coverall and a plastic hood.

At least both had gone with her — for whatever they were worth against anything but a summer shower. Adair herself had no plastic hood and only a light coat, but she snatched up the latter and a headscarf from her own room before going back to Claudine. She knew Craig would regard the issue of Tessa as a private one, so she only told Claudine, 'I'm afraid Tessa disobeyed you. I found a note in her room, telling me she had gone out into the rain.' Claudine's eyes rounded in horror. 'La mechante! I told the naughty one—!' Adair nodded. 'I know. It isn't your fault. She can't have got far, but I shall have to go after her. How long is it now since she was with you ?' Claudine calculated. 'Half an hour perhaps - or a little more. Did she say which way she meant to take?' -'No, but when she went off on her own once before she began to walk to the town, and in this' - Adair's jerked head indicated the drumming of the rain - 'she couldn't dream of taking to anything but the only road there is.' 'She has a long start. You will both be soaked through before you catch up with her.' 'That can't be helped, though I hope there'll be a car I can take. Something I can drive.' 'Tch! There won't be. With all the extra labour to transport, the team takes everything with it these days. There's only Beni's old bicycle I saw him go out on one of the jeeps.' Then I'll have to borrow that,' Adair decided.

'You can ride it? It barely holds together,' Claudine warned. 'I shall have to try. Where is it? In the garage?' 'No. Here under the lean-to. Beni has the same waterproof gear as the team, so you can take his oilskin hooded cape too.' The cape Claudine produced was stiff with disuse, but Adair buttoned it gratefully and pulled its hood over her head. Under Claudine's anxious eye she mounted the bicycle, wobbled this way and that before she got control of it; Claudine called after her, 'I shall have hot milk and baths ready for you both when you come back,' and then there was only the blinding drive of the rain, the heavily rutted road and the decrepit bicycle to keep on its course. History still repeated itself. There was no sign of Tessa for far further than she could have walked in the time. Head down to the wind, Adair pedalled almost to the point at which she and Owen had turned back that earlier time. But then she had not been frightened, merely annoyed, since she had known fairly certainly that Tessa had been bound for Bou Larissa post office with her letter, and the weather had held no threat. But now she didn't know where to look for the child, and now there was the rain. She wheeled round in the road. On the outward journey she had not forgotten the old grain mill. But it was shrouded by a rain curtain and she could not think that Tessa would have ventured out to it today across the treacherous bog of pools and hummocks which the rain had already made of the track which led to it. But then she had hoped every minute to see Tessa trudging ahead on the road, and now she wasn't so sure. Back again, level with the mill, she dismounted, used a roadside cairn as a bicycle-stand and making a trumpet of her hands, called Tessa by name in the direction of the mill.

There was no answering shout. She hadn't really expected one. Last time Tessa hadn't heard Owen's call from the road, but on the offchance she might have taken refuge there again, Adair knew she must investigate. She had to go on foot. The bicycle would never make it. Plunging and stumbling, she set out, marvelling that so short a distance could appear so long, but rewarded at last by the gaunt outline of the ramshackle building. She had never been out to it before. Close below it, she saw its construction was entirely of wood, much of it long rotted, its planking askew and gaping, and its tattered outside staircase a thing of tilted rungs, no rungs at all and a broken handrail which at some time had been joined by looped rope. But the crazy structure which topped it had a roof and walls of a sort. It must have been the miller's living quarters when the mill had been in use, and if Tessa had managed to climb up to it, she would at least be dry there. Before calling again Adair paused at the foot of the stairway, listening to a sound she could hardly credit - the rush and tumble of water in the hitherto dry course of the wadi above which the mill stood. Filling and racing and roaring like that in - how many? - only about six hours of rain? Adair could hardly believe it. Nor, until she looked in there through a broken wall plank, that the ground floor of the building was already slightly awash. She called up the stairway and this time to her mingled relief and dismay, there was a choked shout of 'Oh, Adair, is that you?' and Tessa came out on to the top platform. Adair craned up at her. 'And that's you - making a thorough nuisance of yourself. Come down,' she ordered.

Tessa shuddered. 'I - I can't,' she faltered. 'You went up, didn't you ?' 'But I can't come down. I daren't. The steps are all rotten and giving way and I should Fall.' 'Well, you can't stay there, can you ?' 'If you'll come up and help me down, I - I'll try.' 'Handsome of you, I'm sure,' Adair returned drily. But she was already on the first broken rung and pulling heavily on the creaking handrail to haul herself up to the next. She made it, but as she gave a giant upward stride to reach the third, the second split under the weight of her foot and was a usable rung no more. Adair went on up, but when she was near enough to the top to gasp to Tessa, 'See what you mean. This thing has known better days,' the only handrail there was rope on which she missed her hold. She made a frantic panic grasp on the next rung up; felt the whole flimsy structure pull out and away from the main shell of the tower and sensed a fire of pain in an ankle and foot as she flung herself at the platform on which Tessa was crouching and grunting with the effort of dragging her to safety on it. Kicked and abused by Adair's gymnastics, what was left of the stairway hung drunkenly by its rope, clamped nowhere; a thing of splintered, rotten wood; as a 'way' - up or down - finished for good. For a few minutes Adair lay where she had fallen forward. Tessa, round-eyed, near to tears, panted, 'Oh, Adair, I'm so sorry! You did that for me. You're Brave. You're not hurt, are you ? But now how do we get down?'

Adair turned and sat up, passing her hands over her right ankle, feeling the angry puffing of the flesh and wincing afresh at the dagger stabs which ran through it. 'No. Yes. That is, I think I stuck my foot through that last step and wrenched when I felt it giving way. Looks like a sprain. I don't know - you tell me.' She answered each question in turn, then excusably vented both pain and apprehension on Tessa. 'And now one for you, my girl. What on earth were you thinking of, haring off from the Base and now this? Why? Tessa evaded the issue. 'We're getting wet out here. It's drier inside. There's a roof, and it doesn't leak - really!' 'You don't say?' Adair could not stand, but she humped and 'sat' her way into the musty interior through a low hatchway under which, upright, she would have had to stoop. Inside, the flooring was whole and dry enough to sit on. Tessa had already taken off her wet outer things. Adair shrugged out of Beni's cape and hood before she plied Tessa again, 'Well, why ?' The child's face puckered. 'I - I told you why! Didn't you find my letter? Because I was miserable and angry and I wanted you to worry about me. You and Craig and - and Her. But especially you, because you could have told me, and you hadn't.' 'Told you what?' 'Why, what they've been plotting, of course!' 'And do you know any more than you learned from listening to talk not intended for you?' 'People shouldn't talk about people who might be around to overhear them,' Tessa claimed. 'Craig's door was open and I heard enough.'

'And apparently more than I've been told myself.' Tessa stared. 'You mean you weren't in it? You didn't know Craig is going to send me to England to live with Her and go to boardingschool and everything?' 'I haven't been told so. And neither do you know all that for certain. Only that your aunt will probably be taking you to England when she goes back herself. And that's what you used to want.' 'That was when I was in a hurry to get to ballet school and I thought Aunt Roma would help me. Now I've changed my mind. I told you in my letter. I want to learn to do what Craig does—' Tessa broke off. 'Anyway, what did he mean when he told Aunt Roma she wouldn't have to look after me alone for long?' Adair looked away. 'I don't know,' she said. There was a pause. 'I believe you do, and you're not telling me,' said Tessa shrewdly. 'I don't.' Adair faced the child, weighing decisions. 'But supposing— Well, would it help you not to mind so much if Craig were going to be with you in England, as well as your aunt ?' Tessa looked her scorn of the suggestion. 'Don't be silly. How could he be? You're only guessing that's what he meant.' 'Yes,' Adair admitted. 'What's more, if you weren't so upset by your eavesdropping bit, I shouldn't be guessing aloud to you. In a way I'm breaking a confidence. Do you know what I mean by that?' 'Telling a Secret that you shouldn't?' Tessa offered. 'Telling a guess that possibly I shouldn't. But you see, Craig could share the care of you in England with your aunt if they were

married, and she gave me to understand that they probably would marry before long.' Tessa gaped. 'Aunt Roma told you that? But they can't get married to each other! I mean, she lives in England and he lives here. They couldn't. I don't believe it. Craig works here and he loves it. He's told me so. No, I know he'd never marry anyone who wanted to lure him away. So if you and Aunt Roma aren't any better at guessing than that, you'd better stop trying, that's all I can say,' she concluded stoutly. 'All right. I told you it was only a guess.' Adair was thankful and somehow oddly heartened by Tessa's staunch faith that there could be no conflict for Craig between two loves. She would have given much to believe it too. Meanwhile there was their own plight to be faced. She looked anxiously at Tessa as the child suddenly shivered and slowly, despairingly, belied her bravado by beginning to cry. 'Oh, Tessa love, don't!' Wincing at the pain of her ankle, Adair moved over and gathered her into her arms. 'We can't do anything to help ourselves at the moment. But Claudine knew I came out to find you and she'll lay on some plan to get us rescued when we don't go back soon.' 'She won't know where we are. N-nobody will.' 'That's what you think. I guessed, didn't I? Besides, I came on Beni's bike, and I left it propped up out on the road for anyone to see. So what's our worry? We're dry here at any rate,' Adair retorted. (She would not dwell on how long that spreading flood on the ground floor might take to rise). Tessa sniffed inelegantly. 'There's your poor ankle, and it's my fault. And I'm getting awfully hungry,' she mourned.

'Huh, you're no Crusoe. Mean to say you didn't bring any provisions along?' Adair teased her. 'I was too Angry. Oh - well, there's this.' Fishing in the pocket of her jeans, Tessa produced a soggy mass which pulled apart rather than broke as she proffered half to Adair. 'It's a date bar that Hassim gave me and I forgot it. Shall we share it now?' Swallowing her distaste, Adair bit into the wet stickiness and munched. 'This reminds me of the day Craig and I got caught by the chehili,' she said. 'Except that, that time, it was a bar of chocolate instead.' 'Whose chocolate was it? Yours or his?' 'His.' 'Did you go halves with it, as we're doing?' 'Yes.' (Break bread alone with a woman in the desert, and at the end of your life she will still be at your side.) Ah, that had been before she knew she loved Craig. If only - if only she could believe it true now!

Several hours and countless games of 'I Spy' later, Tessa fell asleep. Adair sat listening to the rain, straining her ears for any welcome human sounds which would mark the end of their ordeal and, hearing none, faced the fact that it was fully possible no search party would go out for them until after the team's normal return at sundown. And by then—? Claudine was alone at the Base with no means of getting in touch with the operational fields, and only chance would bring any of the men back before the day's patrol was finished.

Adair tried to remember whether Claudine had known where she and Owen had found Tessa on her first truancy from the Base; blaming herself for neither thinking of nor mentioning the mill to Claudine this morning. Of course there was always Beni's bicycle which she had abandoned out on the road. At least Claudine knew she had used it, and once it was spotted, surely someone would see it as a clue to their whereabouts? Odd, she thought wryly, to have to depend on that decrepit piece of old iron to provide the only readable S.O.S. on which their rescue might depend! Tessa woke up, flushed and complaining she was 'damp all through'. They played more games of 'I Spy' and 'Guess the Tune' and once or twice Tessa went out through the hatch to report on the state of the terrain between the mill and the road. 'It's a sort of lake with islands in it,' she came back with once. Later - 'I think the water is getting deeper; there's hardly any ground showing now.' But the next time she hurtled back. 'We're saved! We're saved! There are people... Men coming over ... I can't see who. They're wading and they've got a ladder. It takes three of them to carry it, it's so long—' She darted out again, came back and snatched up Adair's headscarf. 'I'm going to wave it and shout, and then they'll Know—' A minute or two later she called to Adair, 'They've heard me and seen me, and it's Tom and Paul and some other men. Oh - and Craig!' Things happened confusedly after that. There were shouts from below; Tessa's answering incoherencies. Adair heard the mounting of the rescue operation by excited relay from Tessa . .. 'They're setting up the ladder now. It's not going to reach — Oh, it is - just. But they're having to lash it. It's standing in water. And so are they— Oh, Paul has slipped and fallen in. I think he's swearing a bit in French. They've got the ladder firm now and they're coming up—'

She broke off and ducked in again under the hatch. 'I've just thought - Craig is going to be terribly angry with me, isn't he? And I Deserve it. But don't let him send me to England with Aunt Roma, Adair dear -please? Then the men Were also there - the four or five of them making a steamy crowd in the confined space. There were hurried, urgent exchanges of What and Why and How. By the one outside chance for which Adair had hoped, Craig and a few of the team had returned to the Base in mid-afternoon, to find Claudine at a point of desperation in which she was about to set out herself on foot in search, of the girls. Instead, the men had taken over. Claudine had not thought of the mill, but Paul had. A sortie, and field-glasses trained on the building showed that the stairway had gone. A ladder and ropes were brought up and the terrain between the road and the mill negotiated. Craig directed operations. 'Adair can't, because of her ankle. But I can go down the ladder myself,' Tessa claimed. 'And swim when you get to the bottom? Tom will carry you, young woman. No argument, please,' Craig told her. 'Hudson, where's that first aid kit you brought along? Good. I'll deal with Adair's ankle. Meanwhile, you and Joe and Paul get down below, and I'll bring Adair myself.' 'D'you want any help, Chief?' 'No, I'll manage. Tom, I'd like to suggest you drop Tessa at least once on the way; she has earned a good ducking for all this. But get her over to the jeep straight away. The others can dismantle the ladder after we're down, and I'll carry Adair myself. O.K. ?' When they were alone he knelt to Adair's ankle and was swift and deft over its bandaging. He sat back on his heels. 'A bit of an

"Ancient Mariner" syndrome -"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to—" make a cold compress with. But it'll serve. Can you stand?' he asked her. 'If you'll help me.' He stood himself and drew her to her feet, his watch on her face more intent and his breathing heavier than the task called for, she felt. When she was up and easing the weight on her injured foot, he continued to hold her hands. 'Ever suffered the indignity of a fireman's lift?' he asked. She smiled. Her own heart was thudding too. 'No. But I've practised doing them. I was an earnest Girl Guide,' she said. 'Then you'll know the drill. Position One - Your arm and hand over my shoulder as far as you can get it; my one hand grabs yours and the other - No!' Suddenly, as she leaned against him both his arms went round her in an embrace which almost took her breath away and he was murmuring brokenly, 'Oh, Adair, Adair - my girl! Why in the name of conscience have I been fool enough to wait so long?' And then some little muttered endearments that she could hardly hear. Waited so long? So long for what? Ah, it was she who had done the waiting for this incredible thing to happen, and lest it weren't really happening now, she let herself go on the tide of it while it lasted, carried away on a yearning that was as vivid as great pain. Held close against his body, she could only inhale tremulously on a little choking sigh. She heard her voice making small wordless sounds, half in protest, half in invitation, and when after a moment he sought her lips and found them, he could have been in no doubt of the response of hers.

They clung together. The silence was full of their heartbeats. Then Craig held her back from him, and for one panic instant she thought, Is this all? Just one sudden impulse to kiss me? Nothing more—? But - 'Look at me,' he ordered. She looked, shyly meeting the incredulous wonder in his eyes. 'Then it's true?' She nodded. 'Of - you too?' The sideways movement of his head was heavy. 'For a lot too long,' he said. 'But why? I don't understand—?' 'Neither do I - a lot of things. About myself. About you. About - But I'll settle for this as an instalment.' Brisk again, he kissed her lightly above an eyebrow. That bandage has taken a long time to fix. So now what price the fireman's lift?' Happily she looked from him to the four-foot height of the arch of the hatch. 'No room to haul me like a sack of potatoes through that,' she pointed out. 'How right you are! You'll have to lean on me and hop. Out with you.' Hand in hand they crept out on to the platform surround. Below, the three thigh-booted men stood knee- deep in water, steadying the ladder in readiness for Craig to step on to it. Adair found she was pitying them because no magic had been worked for them in the last

few minutes - only for the deadweight load of girl about to be hauled and draped over Craig's shoulder.

That was the beginning of the miracle, and waiting for the rest of it to happen was a sweet agony that Adair was going to remember all her life. Before she and Tessa had been handed over to Claudine's anxious ministrations, Craig had said briefly, 'You and I are going to dine together in the villa tonight. Wait for me.' And now, hustled into a hot bath, dosed with brandy, dressed again and her ankle splinted and re-strapped by Claudine, she was watching Beni lay the schoolroom table for the meal and thinking that she wouldn't change the Base's everyday cutlery and glass for gold plate and the finest crystal. Dinner for two people who had just discovered they were in love! There ought to be flowers and candles in branching silver candelabra and champagne sitting on ice. Instead there were no flowers and only a harsh neon for light. There would be tinned soup and almost certainly veal escalopes and the inevitable young red wine of the region to drink - and she couldn't, couldn't care less! Claudine had viewed the unusual arrangement with approval. 'Naturally, with your ankle so, you could not go to the dining-room in comfort, and Monsieur does not want you to dine alone.' And Tessa, likewise dosed and bathed, had chosen the better part of valour by going willingly and early to bed. While Beni worked Adair thanked him for his unwitting loan to her of his bicycle. He was gracious about it. 'It is nothing,' he shrugged. 'It is a poor old thing and you were welcome to it, mam'selle. And at the end of the season I shall have money, and I shall buy myself a scooter instead.'

'A scooter? My word! Then you certainly won't need your bicycle any more, will you ?' 'Indeed, no. I shall sell it to Hassim, who hasn't one.' 'To Hassim? But I thought—' Adair began, then checked. Not for her to spoil a good sale by reporting Hassim's high scorn of Beni's machine! She changed the subject to ask Beni if he knew how the plantings were standing up to the rains. His face lit up eagerly. 'Oh, holding!' he said. 'All we have patrolled so far, holding firm; holding their own. There are many, many hectares of them, of course. But those who know say it should be the same for them all. After the rains they will have roots enough to hold against even a bad chehili. As we say of our palms' he switched to the dialect of the region for a few words - 'that means "They have their feet in water and their heads in the sun", mam'selle. And so it will be for all our trees. We make forests, no less!' Beni finished the table to his satisfaction and went. The minutes ticked by. Craig had said he would come, and he would. But when he did, so much to ask, to learn about - and about - and about, as he had said. Only, for now, just one thing to marvel at, to cherish— Then he was there, his back to the door, closing it . .. coming over to her, his arms wide for her, her own ready for him. 'Adair!' 'Oh, Craig!' They spoke each other's names as if they were a spell with the power to draw them into a charmed circle which was theirs alone. Within it they shared the same needs, the same hungers, the same gratitudes; not understanding fully how the delight had happened for them; only content to let touch and kiss and look tell each other that it had-

They drew apart, smiling shyly, as if they were children none too sure that a coveted gift were really meant for them. Craig gestured towards the table. 'Do you want to eat yet ?' he asked. Adair laughed shakily. 'At the moment I don't care if I ever do!' 'Same here. Much more pressing matters on hand.' He sat close beside her, his thumbs gently stroking her upturned palms. 'Adair— ?' 'Yes?' 'This— Before Lander left, did he give you any hint of what he meant to write back to me after he reached England?' 'Owen? His name, the thought of him, were such intrusions on the moment that Adair frowned. 'No. That is, I knew he had written to you. I put his letter on your desk myself, though I noticed days later that you hadn't opened it.' 'And nearly didn't at all. But when I did - very early this morning, after I'd returned from taking Roma back to the coast, do you know what he had chosen to tell me in it ?' 'Well, I hope the same as he had promised me - that he meant to try to make good in the job you had got for him.' 'Oh yes - that, for what it's worth, though he may be sincere this time. But he also said that I'd be a fool if I chose Roma instead of you - or rather, if I let a glamour doll like Roma choose me. And that if I didn't know by now that you were in love with me, then I was certainly a fool past praying for if I let you escape me, and he, for one, wasn't putting in any overtime praying - Adair, tell me, you didn't realize Lander knew?'

She hesitated. 'I knew he had guessed - about me. Do you remember seeing him kiss me once by the pool ? You made no sign, and I never knew whether you had seen us or not.' Craig's mouth took a grim line. 'I had - and drew my own conclusions.' 'Yes, well, you should know the cynic Owen was. He knew I cared, and it amused him to pretend that "competition" as he called it, would make you more interested in me. But that he meant to tell you - no. I'd have died of shame if I'd known.' 'And I nearly died of pride and hope that it might be true,' Craig claimed. Adair looked down at their hands. 'You could have asked me if it was true.' 'Huh! Knock, knock on your bedroom door in the small hours. "Woman, from information received, I understand you love me?" I should have made myself popular, shouldn't I? Besides, I needed time to think; to work a bit at the wonder of it supposing it were true. So I went out with the team as usual. I thought I needed to watch you in a new light for a very little while, instead of how I'd been seeing you for too long. Do you realize why, when I couldn't take Lander here any more, I still recommended him for a step-up in England?' 'No. He called it a phoney move he didn't understand. I hoped it might be because you thought he might react better to encouragement than blame.' 'It was, partly. A change of tactics that just might work when nothing else had. But mostly it was for your sake. If you had fallen for him and were going to marry him, I didn't want either of you here, but I had to see he had a decent job to go back to in England;

good enough to support you on. And when, on the very day he left, you gave me your notice, that clinched it. You were going to join him, and nothing I could do was going to stop you.' 'Oh, Craig, you had only to say one word! Ask me just one question!' 'Such as "Are you going to marry Lander?" Spelling it out? Look, could you be quite truthful about this? Whether or not I had seen him kiss you, had I ever left you in much doubt I'd got the message that you saw yourself as the answer to most of Lander's problems? Well, had I ?' She met his eyes frankly. 'This is the truth. For a long time, if I had ever suspected it, I wouldn't believe you could think so. But last night - only last night! - it sort of dawned. Reasoning back from Miles, you thought I was nursing Owen along as I had nursed Miles, and that you cared enough to warn me made me - awfully happy. I didn't need warning. There was utterly no parallel, and I could hardly wait to tell you so. But, like you, I couldn't come knock, knock either - "It's all right. I'm quite safe from Owen. He means nothing to me." But I meant you should know it today.' Craig looked at his watch. 'Pity we didn't both set out and meet halfway. We'd have saved something like twenty valuable hours. Adair, how do you suppose Lander cooked up that crazy idea about Roma and me ? You didn't believe it too ?' 'Do you think I wanted to, even when she told me it was so? That you were both picking up the threads of an old affair which wouldn't break again this time?' 'Roma told you that?' he marvelled. 'Well, I knew she was an accomplished actress, but I hadn't realized she was quite so long on imagination too!'

'But didn't you leave England and come out here after she had turned you down? Do you mean that wasn't true?' 'My sweet innocent, nothing less so. Roma Farrar has never spelled anything romantic for me or I for her. You must believe me, for it's true.' Adair demurred, 'You allowed her to monopolize you all the time she was here.' 'She is the kind of woman who makes demands on a man's attention. Being a star actress has conditioned her to expect it, and it's a bearable situation - just so long as it's temporary. Besides, she is Tessa's aunt. Elaine Farrar was her sister, and—' Craig paused - 'I'd been in love with Elaine.' Adair echoed wonderingly, 'With Elaine Farrar? Tessa's mother? Then—?' He nodded. 'Just so. Roma switched characters in an old story - to impress you, one can only suppose. And it was already an old story. I'd been pretty broken when Elaine chose Russell Holyoake instead of me - I've told you about our three families being friends - but there was nothing left of the affair long before I left England. Except, when Russell died, a rather special feeling for young Tessa. Do you mind?' 'Mind? She made use of no words to show him how little she minded the deep cause of his 'rather special' feeling for Tessa. But in a minute or two she added, 'I still wish you weren't sending Tessa to England with her aunt. Because that's what sparked off today's escapade, you know. It was her rebellion against that.' 'She knew nothing about it!' Craig denied.

'I'm afraid she eavesdropped on you and Roma in your study last night. You haven't seen her letter to me. I've still got it in my bag Yes, read it.' He did so, frowning. Then - 'Talk of pitchers with ears a sight too long for their own comfort! This bit' - he tapped the paper - 'about Roma's not being responsible for her for long. She is to go to Grace, as her father always meant she should.' Adair drew a sharp breath. 'To—? I don't understand! I thought—' 'That Grace was an American fixture? No, she has terminated her contract in order to return to England. She has got a junior consultancy to a Berkshire hospital and she is already in process of settling in to a house in Reading where Tessa can join her. Which,' Craig added dryly, glancing again at the letter, 'should be handy for Tessa's Degree in Forestry at Reading University when the time comes.' 'Always supposing she hasn't been sidetracked into modelling or dress-designing or air hostessing by then!' Adair laughed, adding a shade accusingly, 'But you must have known about Dr. Grace Farrar's plans before last night ? I wish—' 'Guilty there,' Craig agreed. 'In fact I had Grace's latest letter about them on my desk on the morning you gave me your notice. But I dug in my heels. If you couldn't be frank that your real reason for leaving me was Lander, then you could whistle for any further confidence of mine. In other words, in Tessa's elegant phrase - so there!' Adair laughed again. 'You weren't liking me very much that day, I knew. But about Tessa - does the arrangement for Roma to take her to England have to stand now?' 'You'd rather it didn't ?'

'I'm sure Tessa would rather it didn't—' 'I was asking you.' Craig threw her a shrewd glance. 'At a guess you've the right to a very real grudge of your own against Roma, haven't you?' 'Of my own ?' Her echo was blank. 'Just a hunch. Reading from the shock in your face the night that Roma turned up in Hammamet - you remember when I mean ?' 'Yes. The night you walked me back to the chalet and - and kissed me.' 'The first night I kissed you. There'll be others. Anyway, when you two met, I felt in my bones that Roma had brought pain for you with her. I didn't know why. It was only later that I wondered whether she could have been the "someone" who had been pretty ruthless with your fiancé - and as treacherous to you as they come. Am I right ?' Adair nodded. 'I thought you loved her. I didn't mean you should ever hear it from me.' 'Ah, in some ways I was wiser to you than you knew - and just about as dumb in others, I admit. And so we'll let Tessa off the hook. I'll tell Roma I'm making other arrangements for her.' 'I could take her to England, couldn't I?' Adair offered. 'You? Alone? You'll do nothing of the kind. After the rains we'll both go with her. Will you marry me in England or out here ?' 'May I choose?' 'It's your privilege.'

'Then out here, please. I haven't many ties in England now. But afterwards, Craig - you'll let me stay here with you ?' 'My heart, where else? I'm here, aren't I? Although—' he paused, choosing his words - 'this we have to face, woman mine. Here it's possible for us to be together. But in the future it may not always be like that. There'll be places for me where you can't follow, and there'll be times - I hope - when it wouldn't be right to keep you with me.' 'You hope ? What times do you mean ?' He shook his head at her, his smile a caress. 'Just a shade obtuse this evening? My darling - children are going to be in our programme ... some time, aren't they?' he said. 'Oh—!' He watched her take in the wonder of that promise. Then he said, 'Just so. And for nomads like us, they're going to pose some lifesize problems, believe me. But while they're still trailing clouds of glory - and all that, there's a blessed Now for you and me that we mustn't waste. We've got to use it and enjoy it and taste the sweetness of it now. For there's no way - is there? - of saving up love for a rainy day? You've got to spend it while you can?' Her answer to that was in the eager, hungry response of her lips to the urgent desire of his. For the long, long moments of their embrace all thought seemed to stop; all sight. Only touch and breath and their seeking of each other remained. At last Craig said thickly, 'You know - I want you very much.' 'And I want you—'

There was danger in the silence which followed, and they both knew it. Then Craig said suddenly, 'No!' - and Adair could have wept with gratitude that he had had the courage to speak for them both. She smiled at him tremulously. 'You called us two nomads just now. But I've just thought - we're also a couple of those Tracy types - all headed into wind!' 'You'd be surprised. For two Tracys of our quality in harness, a raging tornado will dwindle to a dapper little halcyon of a breeze,' Craig retorted - and kissed her again.