Alarm, p.4
Alarm, page 4
“And if the lady has a friend?” Bentley enquired, reaching for a towel.
“That’s different!” his first-lieutenant decided, and leaped for the door. “Boat alongside in ten minutes!”
The sand was not as fine as Bondi or Manly, nor was it as white: and the silken rustle of the tideless sea was no compensation for the oncoming crash of green and white Pacific rollers. But the water was wet: it was cool.
They were both big men, splendidly muscled and in the full vigour of youthful manhood. They sported and gambolled and swam and ducked each other with the exuberance of schoolboys in a truant creek. And they were watched.
Shortly—for the Mediterranean Sea, being enclosed, is even more salty than most—their tiring thoughts turned to liquid refreshment, internal variety. Side by side they swam back towards the beach, long powerful strokes, their brown bodies gleaming in the while froth of their fast passage. They ran up on to the beach, shaking the water from their eyes. Then Bentley saw her.
It could have been that the swim had suddenly exhausted him: it might conceivably have been that the sight of her, standing twenty feet up the beach in front of them, had dragged his feet almost to a stop.
She was standing up: she had just pulled off her green bathing cap, and her hair had tumbled to her shoulders in a soft disorder of chestnut rippled with spun gold. Her red mouth seemed to be of the quality that triumphs even over salt water; and the knotted bit of nothingness she had on left room for no deception about the perfection of her slender, sun-gilt figure.
He walked slowly on, and she watched him come towards her, as she had watched them swimming. There was not the slightest hesitation in his mind that he would speak to her, just as he knew he would not be rebuffed. He stopped in front of her.
She looked back at him. Her steady grey eyes held a tentative gleam of mischief, soberly checked at that moment of initial meeting and yet incorrigibly seeking for natural expression, which for one fleeting instant worked unpardonable magic on his breathing.
The moment of their meeting hung like this between them.
“You swim very well,” the said softly.
He showed her his teeth, while he marvelled at the low huskiness on which she had delivered her judgment.
“He’s the beltman of the Bandywallop Beach Brigade,” said a different kind of husky voice beside him. “And we’re on our way to wash the salt water out!”
Bentley ignored this churlish remark with the pointedness it deserved.
“I wonder if you’d care to show us where we can find some lubrication?”
The scarlet wound of her lips opened a little to reveal a seed-bed of white pearls. She nodded, and flicked the water from her cap. It flicked instead from her fingers and dropped to the sand.
They went down for it together, but, as she had the advantage of awareness that the cap would demonstrate the law of gravity, she was a trifle ahead of him. They squatted on the sand, their heads almost touching, with Bentley’s eyes on a level with the upper, and lesser, portion of her bikini. Something like a breath of frozen feathers strolled up his spine. Their fingers took hold of the cap together and, locked thus, they came upright.
Randall, whose view had unfortunately been obscured by the chestnut cascade of her hair, watched the familiar sight of his captain’s descent into the pit dug for him with growing impatience.
“I know where the bar is,” he said.
“Oh, hullo Bob,” said Bentley absently, as if he had forgotten his friend’s existence—which he had. “Ah ... this is Lieutenant Randall. My name’s Bentley—Peter Bentley.”
It was not a particularly subtle approach, nor did it have to be. She answered at once.
“I am Loretta Boyd.”
“I am thirsty,” advised Randall.
“You’re English, of course?” Bentley asked, and the look in his eyes was of such concentrated intentness that a bystander might have been excused for thinking Randall was in Madagascar.
“M’mmm.” He was fascinated by the deprecatory twist of her moist mouth. “Born in England—but I’ve been in Egypt most of my life.”
“Then,” said Randall, and his tone was of that heaviness which demands attention, “you will know the dehydrating effect of the country’s heat and salt water.”
She smiled suddenly and widely up at Bentley.
“I think your friend wants a drink,” she discovered brightly.
“M’mmm!” said Randall, but his friend found no particular fascination about his delivery of that familiar syllable.
“Then we’ll join him, eh?” grinned Bentley, and he took her arm. She let him keep it.
On the veranda of the pavilion, cool with coloured blinds and green palms, Bentley fingered an Egyptian waiter over. He intimated that a 50-piastte bill might change ownership if that table in the corner under the palm were reserved, receiving a teeth-baring grin of understanding.
“I’ll give you five minutes to change,” he told Loretta “We’ll be at the table.”
“Can do,” she smiled, and walked to the dressing-room.
Randall had been speaking for fifteen seconds before he realised he was not in contact with a brain whose eyes were locked on a moving rhythm of slender brown legs and thighs and waist. Bentley was about to elevate his gaze and his thought and pleasurably take in the set of her shoulders and the tilted-back carriage of her head when a bull voice finally penetrated his absorbed consciousness.
“Damn it all! Will you listen to me?”
“Sure, Bob, sure,” Bentley murmured, and turned his head as Loretta disappeared through a door. “I’m all yours, brother.”
“Then listen to me! How long are we going to muck around with this siren? I thought we came ashore for a swim and a bull session in the bar.”
“Well?” enquired Bentley gently, and began leading him towards their dressing-room.
“You know damned well what!” said Randall somewhat ambiguously. “We’re all set for a nice quiet drunken evening and you get tangled up with this skirt ...”
“Ah,” smiled his friend, and held open the swing door. “That’s just it. She had no skirt. And you must admit the garment is unnecessary—criminally so, in fact.”
Randall peeled of his trunks with fierce gestures. He stepped under the shower.
“I warned you. I told you back aboard there was to be no mucking around! It happens every time. We’re all set to enjoy ourselves and some dame opens her blinkers and in you jump, boots and all. I knew this would happen! I should have had my damned head read when I suggested we ... hell!”
Bentley had reached in and turned the hot water on.
They had been dressed and waiting at the table for ten minutes. Randall had dominated the conversation. Bentley let him growl on. His own compensation lay in the promise of the lovely limbs and mischievous grey eyes of Loretta. They had downed two drinks when Randall said;
“It was the same in Durban—and in Bombay. Makes a man sick the way you fall for a bit of leg. Hell. I’d hate to be married to you!” Bentley united tolerantly at this possibility. “There are other things, you know,” Randall went on morosely. “Dames are okay, in their place. But not all the time. Seems to me you’re incapable of knocking back a slinky bit of flesh. I tell you, one day you’re going to end …”
Bentley had his glass hallway to his lips. He looked al Randall. What he saw in his face made him bump his glass on the table and crane round in his chair towards the dressing-rooms.
Loretta was coming towards them. And she had a companion.
Bentley was biased toward the chestnut, of course. Even so, the companion rated pretty high marks in his practised and expert judgment. She was dark and pretty, with big dark eyes, smooth dark hair, a bright skin, and a slim figure. She was wearing white, a gleaming sheath of a thing that left her salient points ... salient.
Bentley eased back to a normal position in his chair and said, vengefully:
“You still keen on that bucks’ session?”
A less intimate acquaintance than Bentley might have decided Randall was not. He got up from his chair—staggered might be a better description—almost knocking it over backwards.
“I’m sorry we kept you waiting so long,” smiled Loretta. “But Ecolette couldn’t find—you know, one of those things?”
They didn’t know, but it was a pleasant exercise to guess. Bentley pulled out two chairs, and Ecolette snaked down into one of them.
“Where,” asked Bentley, “did you spring from?”
“We were together on the beach.” Her voice had that slight accented note which English-speaking people, insular Australians in particular, find so fascinating—at least till the novelty fades. “And then I came up from the beach to dress. Loretta, she stayed.”
Bentley’s finger gave the executive advance order to the hovering waiter.
“I stayed on the beach,” Loretta said blandly, “so that I could catch you when you had finished your swim. We have been watching you for some time, and decided that it should be you two who would provide our night’s entertainment.”
“Hell!” ejaculated Randall, and fumbled in his pocket to pay the waiter. Bentley merely grinned.
“I’m not sure if you’re fair dinkum or nor,” he laughed. “In any case, it matters little. I think we can come to some equitable arrangement. Er ...” he added hastily, “I mean you could earn your night’s keep by acting as our guides.”
Randall stared at him, but said nothing. Both of them knew Alexandria as well as Sydney; possibly better, considering the difference in moral tone between the two cities.
“That will be very nice,” Ecolette smiled. She sipped her drink with the delicacy to be expected of the body into which the pink liquid flowed. Randall watched her eagerly. Bentley watched Randall with a smile in his eyes and his lower lip pressed upwards.
“Okay, then,” Bentley said matter-of-factly, “as you’ve detailed yourselves as our guides, what’s the programme for tonight?”
“That’s easy.” Loretta told him, and looked at her friend.
Ecolette placed her glass on the table and looked at them eagerly.
“Yes,” she said. “Tonight a girl of the Ouled Nael dances.”
She said this with a solemn and wide-eyed emphasis. Bentley and Randall put appropriate expressions on their faces. Judging they had appeared impressed for long enough, Bentley ventured:
“Ouled Nael, eh? But don’t they hail from Algiers?”
“Yes. Very seldom do they leave there. That is why we must see this girl dance tonight.”
Ecolette was leaning forward on the table, her face eager, and Bentley found it difficult to maintain the direction of his gaze on her. He leaned back, to make it easier.
“I’d certainly like to do that,” he said, and meant it. From time to time in his watery career he had heard men speak of the girls of the legendary Ouled Nael, but he had never seen one, and certainly not their famed dances.
“In the meantime,” Randall put in feeling himself out of all this, “we’ve got a couple of hours before dinner. Same again?”
He addressed his question particularly to the French girl. She acknowledged his attention with a dazzling smile and a crinkling of her dark eyes that made his mouth suddenly in need of liquid lining.
The breeze stiffened suddenly, flipping the ribbon in Loretta’s chestnut hair so that she put up both hands to secure it. That particular gesture was one of the most feminine things a woman could do, to Bentley’s mind. Her back straightens, her breasts push forward, her head comes up, her arms curve like the handles on a Grecian vase. Even a homely woman looks different when she is fixing her hair. Loretta Boyd wasn’t homely.
Bentley breathed in so that his chest pushed his own shirt to tightness. He felt extremely content. And recognition of the feeling made him realise that, after their vicious night-action, and the danger of the unexploded bomb, he could do with a modicum of relaxation. This, he thought, with an inward grin as he lifted his glass and drank in Loretta’s beauty, is just as much part of the naval picture as blasting guns and leaping torpedoes. For battles are as much battles of men as of machines, and the men needed building-up. He thought he might enjoy tonight’s recuperation ...
They dined at a restaurant in Mohammed Ali Square, then came out in the warm darkness and got into Loretta’s sports car. Bentley pushed away a child with a precocious, young-old face who was trying to sell him dirty postcards and dirtier paperback books and settled his bulk down beside Loretta.
He looked at the long, low bonnet.
“You do all right, my girl,” he remarked. “How do you make it?”
She fiddled with the ignition key and looked sideways at him.
“I work in a French perfume shop,” she said frankly. “So does Ecolette. My father also manages the French-Egyptian Bank.”
“I see,” Bentley murmured. “Now that I know I won’t have to foot the bill for a drive yourself buggy—let’s go!”
They were impeded at first, as always in the city’s activity by the bustle and swarm of people and their slowly moving vehicles. And then, as the car came closer to the outer suburbs, it gathered speed towards Cairo. As it sped on, Bentley relaxed. He saw that Loretta was an expert driver. He thought once or twice of the ship which, although inoperative, still held the most significant part of his thinking. He felt the satisfaction a captain feels when he is not taking recreation too far from his ship. It was actually no further than a telephone.
They didn’t talk much in the wind hurtling over the windscreen and curving down on their faces. It was comfortable, or perhaps delightfully uncomfortable, Bentley reflected, as the pressure of her thigh increased when she changed gears.
By now they had broken out of the city’s white stone glare, and were running swiftly parallel with the Nile, the car lights vacillating with every rut in the road.
“Just here,” Loretta said suddenly, and braked the car into the roadside. He opened the door, and she slid across the seat to follow him. He felt her hard against him. “Is the door jammed?” she asked him mockingly.
He flicked her an answering glance as she jumped out beside him. Randall and Ecolette beside them, they walked towards a clump of trees. They crossed the river, narrow here, on a wooden bridge. Bentley knew, without knowing why, a sense of increased awareness. Randall, too, he saw, reflected the same apprehensiveness.
Perhaps ten minutes later they came to the top a dune, white in the moon and stippled with tiny shadows in the bulk of minute, wind-whipped hillocks. Below them stood a clump of palms, silent, their leaves silver and still, and below these the oasis.
The white spire of a mosque arose mysteriously in the centre, pointing at God knew what. There was nothing else all around but the wide white desert, glooming off to the far and empty horizon.
As they walked through the first circle of palms they came to a courtyard surrounded on three sides by the walls of the mosque. The light here came from wavering torch brands.
Arabs, squatting silently, and watchful without appearing to be watching, smoked their narghiles. Those who watched without watching made no sign of recognition, but once, as they passed an ancient, bone-like post that probably was a tether-point, a very old man nodded to Ecolette.
The Arabs sat on yellow mats, while cushions had been provided for European visitors. A small group of tourists, Bentley saw, stood grouped together in the nearer shadows. The Arab women stood and squatted apart from their men; they were clad in veil-like robes and wore many copper ornaments, which jiggled and tinkled as they moved.
Ecolette whispered: “When the moon crosses over the tower.”
They sat in the cool sand. Loretta moved softly to catch the point of Bentley’s shoulder and so rest her head in its curve. As Bentley moved an arm to cup the top of her shoulder, a girl appeared from the tower’s arched frontal doorway.
The fabric she wore, light and supple, sheathed her dark brown body like a coloured wind. She walked in the trained light manner, to a jingle and flash of ornament.
Soft, tiny slippers were on her feet, whispering as she walked over the sand. A crimson spot, some local mark, blared on her right cheek. The folds of her garment moved, and so did the lighter ornaments, glittering and trembling at every step.
All who watched sensed the mystery of the thing, the age-old haunted knowledge—or near-knowledge—of the ancient cultures of the older lands of earth. In some of us is the capacity to almost see through the long tunnel of the centuries, back through the forgotten vaults of years and on into the magic of an earlier time.
Here, in this oasis, as the girl came to where she would perform, there was a breath of that insight. In those in whom it glowed, it stirred like a near-dead coal by a forgotten wind, it was manifest in a restlessness, a shifting of ankles and hands in the ancient sand.
The girl came abreast of them, stood still, stared not at them but beyond them. Behind Bentley, Randall shifted uneasily.
Slowly the white moon rose and cast her immobile shadow over them, until it seemed she was a part of them, and them of her. A minute passed, another, and more, in heightened silence, before she stepped forward.
The thin garment she wore slid down to her hips, baring her brown breasts. Like carved statuary slowly given life, her arms rose up, lifting the fruit of her body. She stood thus for a moment, head thrown back, dark eyes searching far into the centuries beyond the night sky. She was a child of the desert, but old, so old in her knowledge of the invisible world.
Very slowly she began to dance. The delicate veil swayed and wove the body-loom’s sensual pattern around her hips and legs. The fall of light and shadow across her dark body increased the magic of the senses. She saw no person, heard no sounds other than those voices of the past which came to her in a language for which there are no recorded symbols. It was simply that as she danced, she understood, and in some way communicated even with those who knew no more than the strangeness of the setting.
