Hammond Innes - The Strange Land

We patched him up as best we could and then drove him down the piste to the nearest point to his village and escorted him to his house. Afterwards we drove back to the camp and had a meal. That night I insisted on Jan moving into Ed White’s tent. The American was the only one of us who had a gun. I had Julie lock herself in her own compartment and I was just settling down in the passenger seat where I should be within easy reach of the controls, when the door was flung open. It was Jan. He was half-undressed. ‘What is it?’ I said, for he was excited about something.

‘This.’ He threw something into my lap.

It was a small blue book — a British passport. And when I opened it I saw that it was Wade’s. ‘Where did you get this?’ I asked him.

‘It was in my suitcase.’

‘But — ‘ I stared at it. ‘How could it be in your suitcase?’

‘I think Kostos must have put it there this morning. You remember there was nobody at the camp that first time he came here. We were up in the gorge.’

‘But why should he return it to you like that?’

‘I don’t know. That’s what I wanted to ask you.’

It occurred to me then that Kostos, suspecting Jan of murder, was getting rid of the one piece of evidence that involved him.

I didn’t tell Jan this, but long after he’d gone back to the tent I was still thinking about it.

The passenger seat made an uncomfortable bed and I slept little. Nothing happened during the night and when dawn broke and showed me the empty expanse of desert leading down to the palmerie, I transferred myself to the bunk and slept through till almost midday.

By the time I had washed and shaved and had some coffee, Jan and Ed White were coming down out of the gorge for their midday meal. They were talking together and laughing as though they had known each other all their lives. Julie came out of the cook tent and stood beside me, looking up the track, watching them approach. ‘I’m glad,’ she said. I glanced at her and she added, ‘If Ed hadn’t been as nice as he is … it could have been horrible here if they’d hated each other. They’re so completely unalike.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘They have things in common. They’re both strangers in a new country. And there’s the mine. They’re both absorbed in Kasbah Foum.’

‘Philip!’ Jan’s voice reached me on the light breeze. He seemed excited. ‘We’ve found it,’ he shouted to me. ‘We’ve found the entrance to the mine. There’s just one corner of it exposed now, but by tomorrow we’ll have cleared it entirely.’

‘Fine,’ I said and sat down on the step of the bus and lit a cigarette, looking down across the sand and the dusty green of the palmerie to the Post gleaming white in a sudden shaft of sunlight. I was thinking that Legard would be back and wishing I had Jan’s power of concentration, his ability to shut his mind to everything but the immediate problem.

‘Jan’s right,’ Ed said. His eyes, too, were aglint with excitement. ‘I guess we’ll have the entrance fully exposed by tomorrow. After that, all we’ve got to do is to clear the rock fall inside the shaft.’

Their enthusiasm should have been infectious. But I felt strangely flat. Whether it was the place or just the fact that I saw the situation too clearly, I don’t know, but my gaze kept turning away from the gorge down the piste towards the Post.

It was an odd sort of day, almost English. Julie had laid the table out in the open under the fly of the big tent. The air was cool, despite the periodic bursts of sunshine, and there was a lot of cloud about, especially towards the west, where it was banked up in great cotton-wool piles of cumulus. ‘I’ve been ransacking your stores,’ Julie said to Ed. ‘I opened up some of your tinned turkey. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Why should I?’ Ed laughed. ‘That’s what it’s there for — to be eaten. Besides I owe you people a debt of gratitude anyway. If Jan hadn’t turned up when he did, it would have been a week or more before I found the entrance.’

Julie was standing over the table. ‘You boys are so interested in what you’re doing, I’ll bet you haven’t any idea why I’m serving a turkey dinner.’ There was laughter in her eyes.

Jan stared at her with a puzzled frown. It was Ed who suddenly laughed out loud. ‘I got it,’ he cried. ‘I got it.’ And he thumped the table with his fist. ‘By God, it’s Christmas Day.’ And he jumped to his feet and dived into his tent, coming out with a bottle of cognac. ‘Merry Christmas!’ He was laughing as he held the bottle up.

‘Do you mean it’s the twenty-fifth today?’ Jan’s voice sounded surprised, as though time had crept up on him unawares.

Julie put her hand on his shoulder. ‘And tomorrow will be the twenty-sixth. Your wife will be in Ouarzazate tomorrow. Remember?’

He nodded. ‘Tomorrow.’ He repeated the word as though it were something unattainable and I saw him glance towards the Post.

Julie turned to Ed. ‘Afterwards, I’ll drive you down to the Post. There’s probably some mail for you.’

‘Oh, don’t bother.’ He turned to Jan. ‘We got more important things to talk about.’

‘But you must have your mail on Christmas Day,’ Julie said. ‘There’ll probably be some presents — ‘

Something in the expression on his face stopped her. He was standing with the bottle in his hand looking round at the tent. ‘I’ve been too much of a rolling stone, I guess. And I’ve no family anyway.’ He came over to the table. ‘Come on, let’s have a drink.’ And he began to pour us each a cognac.

We drank a toast and then we started to feed. Every now and then Jan glanced uneasily down the piste towards the palmerie. It was as though he were waiting for something to happen, for tomorrow — the future — to catch up with him.

About halfway through the meal he suddenly stopped eating, his eyes staring down towards Foum-Skhira. I turned in my seat and saw a little puff of sand scurrying along the edge of the palmerie. It was a French truck driving fast along the piste towards us. ‘Do you think Legard is back?’ he asked me.

The truck drew up by the tent in a cloud of sand. The bearded orderly from the Post was at the wheel. ‘Bureau,’ he shouted, pointing urgently towards Foum Skhira.

I got up and went over to him. ‘Who wants us to go to the Bureau?’ I asked the Berber.

But he insisted on sticking to his limited French. ‘Bureau,’ he repeated. ‘Vite, vite, monsieur.’ It was clear that for official business he regarded French as the only language to talk to Europeans.

I asked him again who wanted us, whether Legard was back, but he remained obstinately silent, merely repeating, ‘Bureau, monsieur.’

‘fa va,’ I said and went back to the others. ‘I think we’d better go and see what’s happened,’ I told Jan.

He nodded and we continued our meal in silence, whilst the orderly sat stolidly waiting for us in his truck. When we had finished I got to my feet. ‘I’ll drive you down, shall I?’ Julie said. Ed sat watching us. His freckled face was puckered in a frown. Jan drew me to one side. ‘I’m just going to have a word with Ed,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll join you. We’ve come to an understanding — a sort of gentleman’s agreement. I want him to realise that whatever Legard’s instructions about me, he’s free to go ahead on his own.’ He turned back to the table then, and Julie and I went out to the bus.

As we climbed in, she said, ‘I’ve got something for you, Philip. I wanted to give it to you before the meal, but I couldn’t because of Ed.’ She went through into her section of the caravan and came out carrying one of George’s canvases. She turned it round so that I could see it. It was a painting of the ravine at Enfida, showing the Mission house as a small white building above the green of the olive trees. ‘It’s just to remind you of us — to hang in your room when you build your new Mission.’