The Strange Land Page 3

  ‘Is there any hope for him?’ she asked as the taxi turned and started back down the hill.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The sea looks pretty bad down there. But if the boat comes in close…’ She was looking at me and there was a desperate pleading in her eyes, so that I felt her fear as though it were my own. ‘Why does he mean so much to you?’ I asked gently.

  ‘He is my husband.’ She said it so quietly, so softly, that I scarcely caught the words, only the meaning. And then in a sudden rush she added, ‘We were engaged before the war. Christmas, 1938. And then in March the Germans came and, because he was a scientist, they forced him to go to Germany. We didn’t see each other until after the war. Then he came back and we were married. We were married two years. Then the Russians came and he escaped to England. We only had those two years.’ There was no bitterness in the way she said it, only a sort of hopeless resignation.

  It seemed odd her talking about him whilst the man himself was fighting for his life down there in the bay and we were careering down the hill to be there when the boat struck. ‘Why didn’t you go to him in England?’ I asked. ‘If you could get to Tangier …’ I felt the sentence unfinished, for she was staring at me, sudden fear and suspicion in her eyes.

  ‘Who are you? Why are you here, waiting for him?’ It was the same breathless rush of words, but difficult now, harder and more withdrawn.

  ‘I’m Philip Latham,’ I said. And then I began to explain about the Mission and my need of a hospital and how we had so little money that I had despaired of ever getting a doctor out from England. And before I had finished, the taxi had swung off the road on to a track that ran down through a squalid, mud-walled village and finished on the banks of the oued.

  The police jeep was parked there. And beside it was a big American car, its chromium glinting in the moonlight. She gave a little gasp and clutched my arm. She was staring at the jeep. ‘Why can’t they leave him alone?’ she whispered. I stared at her, not understanding the cause of her outburst.

  It was the car that puzzled me. The village was half a mile away and there was no villa near. ‘Do you know whose car this is?’ I asked Youssef.

  But he shook his head. ‘There are many American cars in Tangier, m’soor. Very expensive, very nice. Per’aps I have American car one day.’ He grinned at me from beneath the hood of his djellaba. An American car was the dream of every Arab in Tangier.

  We pushed past the jeep and hurried along the path that ran beside the oued. The pounding of the sea was hurled at us on the wind and soon a fine spray was drifting across our faces. Then we were out on a little bluff that was all coarse grass and sand, and there, straight ahead of us, was the yacht, its jib bellied out as it ran for the shore with the wind and sea behind it. A lone figure stood on the edge of the bluff, curiously insubstantial and ghostly in the driven spume and the moonlight. He turned as we came up. It was Kostos.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I shouted to him.

  His long face smiled at me. But he didn’t say anything, only turned and stared out across the surging, foaming surf to where the boat was piling in, its bows lifting to a wave and then creaming forward on the break of it.

  ‘Who is that man?’ the girl asked me. ‘He was there in the cafe. What does he want?’

  ‘His name is Kostos,’ I said. ‘I think he’s waiting for Wade.’

  ‘Wade?’

  ‘The owner of the boat.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ She was staring down at the beach where a little group of officials stood at the water’s edge, watching the boat. It was in the broken water now and I wondered how the poor devils who sailed her expected to get ashore through those thundering acres of surf.

  A hand gripped my elbow and I turned to find Kostos at my side. ‘Why do you come here, Lat’am?’ he shouted at me. ‘What is your interest in the boat?’

  ‘What’s yours?’ I demanded.

  He stared at me hard and then asked about the girl.

  ‘She’s come here to meet Kavan,’ I told him.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dr Kavan,’ I shouted.

  ‘Kavan? But there is only Wade on the boat.’

  ‘No. A Dr Kavan is with him.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ He stared at me. ‘Why should he bring Kavan? He would not be such a fool.’ And then he caught hold of my arm. ‘What do you know about this, Lat’am?’

  But my attention switched to the boat then as she lifted high on the curling crest of a breaker. I thought for a moment that she was going to broach-to; she swung almost broadside and then twisted back on to her pell-mell course of destruction, steadying in the surf and driving forward through the broken water, her bows half buried by the press of canvas for’ard. She was surging straight in towards us and I realised that the man at the helm had seen the channel cut by the oued and was driving her towards it. But the oued was only a trickle. The channel did not extend into the sands.

  The tall mainmast quivered as she struck. She held there for a moment, her waterline showing like a red wound in the backwash, and then the next wave had piled in on top of her, jerking her forward, covering her with a seething cataract of foam like a half-submerged rock. And as the wave receded, a lone man fought his way for’ard to the bows. He wore a life jacket and for a moment he stood there, his head turned, watching the next wave climb and curl above the stern of the boat. I heard the girl give a cry that was as wild and forlorn as a sea bird’s, and then the wave was breaking and the figure of the man plunged into the surf of it and was lost.

  I ran down to the sands then. The little group by the water’s edge had a rope, but they were arguing and gesticulating. They weren’t going to risk their necks in that sea. I stripped off my clothes and seized the end of the rope and tied it round my waist. I could see the swimmer’s head now. He was halfway between the yacht and the beach and he was being swept out again in the backwash of a wave. ‘Hold that,’ I shouted to one of the gendarmes, thrusting the end of the rope into his hand. And then I was wading out through the warmth of the water, letting the backwash carry me towards the dark head of the swimmer where he was being sucked into the break of the next wave.

  I called to him as my legs were swept from under me, and then I was swimming. I met the on-coming breaker with my body flat, spearing through it, coming up with my ears singing with the rush of it, and then swimming hard with the rope tugging at my belly.

  The yacht wasn’t far now. It shifted in the break of a wave. The waves seemed huge in the moonlight. They piled in, one after the other, growing, white-capped mountains that rose up as though from some subterranean commotion, rose up to impossible heights and then toppled and fell with the crushing weight of tons of water. Their surf piled over me, flinging me shorewards, filling mouth, ears, eyes and nose full of the burning, sand-laden salt of the water.

  I prayed to God that they would keep a firm hold on the rope, knowing no swimmer could get ashore through this unaided, and then I came up gasping for breath, searching desperately for the man I’d come in after. The tug of a backwash got me, tossed me into the maw of a breaker, which toyed with me and spewed me up out of its creaming back, and there he was, lying like a log not twenty yards to my left.

  I put my head down and began to swim. Another wave piled over me and then I was seaward of him, treading water, waiting to hold him in the backwash. I caught him just as the next wave engulfed us. I got my fingers into his life jacket and kicked with all my strength. And as we broke surface, I felt the rope tighten round my body, biting into my flesh as they held the two of us against the back-surge. And then they were dragging us in, my lungs fighting for breath against the constriction of the rope and the tug of the man’s waterlogged body.

  After what seemed an age there came a wave that rolled us forward like logs before a wall of broken water, engulfed us and then subsided to leave my feet scrabbling desperately in a moving tide of sand.

  After that there wasn’t any danger any more, only the leaden weakn
ess of my legs as I forced them to drag myself and my burden clear of the pull of the surf. Where the sea ended and the sands showed hard and white in the moonlight I staggered and fell forward on to my hands. I was completely drained of energy, utterly exhausted. They dragged us higher up the sands to safety and then fingers unknotted the rope from around my waist and began to rub my body to restore the circulation.

  Slowly the blood pumped energy back into my limbs and I pulled myself into a sitting position. I saw the bay and the white surf in the moonlight and the lank hair lying across the man’s bloodless face. He was short and thick-set and he had a round head set close into broad, powerful shoulders. One arm was bent across his chest. He looked like a little bearded Napoleon.

  And then everything was blurred and I retched, emptying myself of the sea water that was in my lungs and stomach. I was sweating suddenly and very cold.

  One of the Spanish Customs officers helped me to my feet. And then Youssef was there. He had slipped out of his djellaba and he thrust it down over my head, whether to cover my nakedness or to keep me warm I don’t know. The cloth was soft and it kept out the wind. I pulled it close round me, trying to control the shivering of my body. The girl was still standing up there on the bluff, her hands clasped together, her body leant forward as though she were on the point of rushing down on to the beach; but yet she did not move. She stayed up there as though her feet were somehow rooted to the spot.

  The officials were all bending over the man I had pulled out of the sea, One of them had turned him over on his face and had begun to work on him, kneeling astride him and pressing rhythmically with the palms of his hands against the man’s shoulders, thrusting down with all his weight. Kostos hovered uncertainly in the background. One of the police, a sergeant, caught hold of my hand and pumped it up and down and slapped me on the back as though by shaking my hand and congratulating me and telling me I was a brave man he could absolve himself from his failure to enter the water.

  And all the time I stood there, feeling dazed, staring down at the face of the stranger that was pressed against the sand. It was a round, white face under the dark stubble of the beard, the lips slightly parted, blowing frothy bubbles. Then the eyes opened and they were bloodshot and wild in the moonlight. He began to retch with a ghastly concentration, and a pool of water appeared where his mouth touched the sand and trickled away under his body. He groaned, shook himself, and crawled slowly to his feet, swaying slightly and blinking his eyes. He stared at us for a moment, rubbed at the salt in his eyes with his knuckles, and then looked back at the yacht where it lay, canted over, the waves thundering across its decks.

  ‘What about the other man?’ I asked him.

  He didn’t seem to hear, so I caught him by the arm and repeated my question.

  He looked at me then. There was blood trickling down from a cut on his head, a bright scarlet runnel of blood in the sand that covered his temple. His eyes were half closed and his mouth was a thin line as though compressed by pain. Then he looked past me at the police and the Customs officers and his eyes were wide open and I saw that he was fully conscious, his brain alive again.

  The sergeant saw it, too. He stepped forward. ‘Your name please, senor?’ he asked in Spanish. The man didn’t reply and the sergeant said, ‘Are you Senor Kavan? Senor Jan Kavan, a resident of Great Britain?’

  The man made some sort of sound, inarticulate as a grunt, as though somebody had punched him in the solar plexus. He was staring at the police, swaying slightly, his eyes immensely blue and wide open, dazed with shock. And then Kostos pushed his way through the little circle of officials. ‘You are Mr Wade, yes?’ He gripped the man’s arm, shaking him. ‘You do not bring anybody else with you, eh?’

  The man shook his head dumbly.

  ‘Good. I thought not. You are very fortunate man, Mr Wade. One time I do not think you make it. But now, everything is all right, eh? I am Kostos.’

  The man stared at him with the same concentration with which he had stared at the police. He was puzzled and uneasy. The sergeant cleared his throat and addressed Kostos. ‘You know this man, Senor Kostos?’

  ‘Si, si.’ The Greek nodded emphatically. ‘He is Mr Roland Wade - an Englishman. The yacht out there is called Gay Juliet. He has sailed it direct from England.’

  ‘Is this correct, senor?’ the sergeant asked.

  The man I had pulled out of the sea stared wildly round the group, half-nodded and pushed his hand wearily through his hair. ‘Please, I am cold. I must get some clothes. I’m very tired.’

  The sergeant was sympathetic, but he was also correct. ‘Have you anything by which to identify yourself, Senor Wade? Your passport? The certificate of registration of your boat? Entry into the International Zone of Tangier, you must understand, can only be permitted on production of the necessary passport.’ It was really rather ridiculous, the pompous little sergeant demanding a passport from the poor devil there on the sands in the roar of the wind and the sea.

  The man moved his hand in a vague, automatic gesture towards his breast pocket and let it fall limp at his side. His eyes closed and he swayed. I thought he was going to pass out. So did Kostos. We both caught hold of him at the same time. ‘Can’t you settle this in the morning, sergeant?’ I said. ‘The man is in no state to go through the immigration formalities now.’

  The sergeant hesitated, frowning. He stared at the stranger, whose body sagged heavily between the two of us. His eyes ceased to be impersonal, official, became sympathetic. ‘Si, si.’ He nodded energetically. ‘The formalities will be dealt with in the morning. For the moment, senor, I permit you to land.’ He made an expansive, accommodating gesture, and looked round for confirmation from the Customs officers, who nodded agreement. They crowded round him then, bowing and offering him their congratulations at his miraculous escape from death.

  ‘Help me get him out of here, Lat’m,’ Kostos hissed.

  ‘Mr Wade.’ He shook the man’s arm. ‘I have a car waiting for you. Can you walk to my car?’

  The officials had broken away from us and were going down the beach to recover their rope. The man seemed to pull himself together. ‘I’m all right,’ he mumbled. He had his eyes open again and was standing more firmly.

  ‘What about the other man?’ I asked him again.

  ‘What other man?’ His voice was slurred, almost inaudible against the sound of the surf.

  ‘There were two of you on the boat.’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘No. Only myself. I am single-handed - all the way from England.’ He spoke quickly, violently.

  ‘You see,’ Kostos said to me. ‘It is as I tell you in the cafe. There is only Wade on the boat.’ He tightened his hold on the man’s arm. ‘I have been expecting you.’

  ‘Expecting me?’ The man stared at him, his expression one of bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I tell you. I am Kostos.’

  ‘Leave it at that,’ I said. ‘He’s about all in.’ ‘You keep out of this, Lat’am. Mr Wade.’ But the man had turned and was staring up the beach. And then he saw the girl and stopped. She was standing about ten yards away. She had her back to the moonlight and I couldn’t see the expression on her face, but her hands were held slightly forward, her body too, as though she were entreating him to say he was her husband.

  And for a moment I thought he knew her. His eyes had come suddenly alive and his mouth opened, but all he uttered was a sort of groan and then his eyes closed and his knees buckled slowly under him. The police sergeant ran forward, clicking his tongue. He bent over the man’s body lying there in the sand and then he looked up at the girl. ‘You know Senor Wade?’ he asked. She backed away slowly and shook her head. ‘No. I do not know him.’ Her body seemed suddenly slack as though all the strength had gone out of her with the realisation that the man was a stranger. She turned, slowly, reluctantly, her head bowed, and walked back alone across the bluff, back towards the taxi.

  So Kostos was right. Kavan wasn’t
on the boat. I went and got my clothes and pulled them on. By the time I was dressed, the little party of officials, carrying the unconscious body of the man I had rescued, was climbing the bluff. Only Kostos still remained there on the wet, gleaming stretch of the sands. He was staring after the little cavalcade. I stared at them, too, wondering about Kavan. Had he changed his mind? Had he decided at the last minute not to sail in Gay Juliet? I felt tired and dispirited. And as I walked up the beach, I wasn’t thinking about the girl. I was thinking of myself, of the people of Enfida and the mountain villages who needed a doctor, of the fact that the way to their confidence, to the success of my work, lay through medical aid.

  Youssef was waiting for me at the foot of the bluff. I gave him his djellaba and we climbed through the wet sand. At the top of the bluff, I turned to look at the yacht again. A glint of metal caught my eye. Kostos was still there on the beach and he was ripping open the discarded life jacket with a knife. As I watched him, he flung the jacket down and started up the beach towards us.

  I glanced at the yacht. The starboard shrouds had already parted and the mast was swaying wildly. It was only a matter of time before the whole thing broke up. It was cold there in the wind and spray and I turned and hurried after Youssef along the path beside the oued. We caught up with the others just as they reached the cars. They had halted beside the jeep, the half-conscious man held up between them. He was shivering violently and I suggested that he’d better come with me in the taxi. It would be warmer. The sergeant nodded. ‘You will take him to the hospital, senor?’

  Apparently the poor devil understood Spanish, for he caught hold of my arm in a quick, urgent movement. ‘Not a hospital,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me; I just want some sleep, that’s all.’ He was scared of something. It was there in his eyes. They were imploring like the eyes of a stray dog. And I heard myself tell the sergeant that I would take him to my hotel. He asked me the name of it and I told him the Hotel Malabata. He glanced at the man and then nodded and climbed into his jeep.