Hammond Innes - The Strange Land

But she said nothing and her face remained quite blank. I let her go then with a feeling of hopelessness. Years of living in a police state had taught her this one refuge — silence. But surely there was some way I could persuade her. ‘You’re not in Czechoslovakia now,’ I said. ‘Please try and understand that I want to help you.’

She remained quite still, her lips tight shut. It was as though I hadn’t spoken. She was as obstinately silent as Jan had been earlier. I felt a sense of futility and exasperation. ‘Can’t you understand how the police — ‘ I stopped there, for footsteps sounded in the passage.

‘You are ready, monsieur?’ It was Bilvidic. He had paused by the open door, waiting for me. I glanced at Karen. There were tears welling from the corners of her eyes. I was shocked. I’d never seen her cry before. ‘Tell him now,’ I said.

But she turned her head away. It was a movement of denial, a final refusal. ‘Come, monsieur,’ Bilvidic said.

I turned then and went to the door. There was nothing more I could do. ‘Madame,’ Bilvidic said, speaking to Karen. ‘I have arranged with Mademoiselle Corrigan for you to travel with her. There is not room for more than four in the Citroen. She will take you to Ouarzazate.’

Thank you, monsieur.’ Her voice was no more than a whisper.

Bilvidic hesitated. Then he touched my arm and led me out to the car. ‘La pauvre petite,’ he said and his voice was softened by sudden pity for her. ‘She had hoped so much that her husband wasn’t dead.’

I didn’t say anything. There was no longer any point. The two of them together had effectively convinced Bilvidic. I was glad Karen was going with Julie, It might help, and anyway it meant that she and Jan wouldn’t be sitting side-by-side for hours on end in the enclosed space of the car stubbornly refusing to acknowledge each other. When we reached the Citroen Jan was already seated in the back with the second police officer. It was raining and the wind was thrashing through the palmerie. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The forts, the souk, the track leading down to Ksar Foum-Skhira — it was all empty and lifeless.

‘It is strange weather for this country,’ Bilvidic said. ‘I have never known such a winter.’ He said it for the sake of making conversation. He motioned me into the passenger seat and went round to the other side of the car. He glanced towards the mountains, his eyes

THE STRANGE LAND

shuttered against the rain. Then he shrugged his shoulders and climbed in behind the wheel.

Jan was sitting, staring straight in front of him. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything. His eyes were quite blank and he seemed to have withdrawn inside himself as his wife had done and again I was conscious of this as something learned in a country that was outside of my experience, in a police state. It was as though the line of mental contact between us had been suddenly cut.

The engine roared and we swung round, slithering on the wet sand, spraying it up behind us. I glanced back and saw Julie and Karen walking out towards the bus. I looked at Jan again. But he hadn’t moved. He was staring straight ahead; not at the piste, nor at the mountains — rather at the future that was in his mind. A jagged line of lightning stabbed the darkness of the sky above the gorge and the noise of thunder went rumbling through the hills. Then the rain came down and the mountains were blotted out.

A gust of rain swept over us as we went out past the Foreign Legion fort. It drummed on the bonnet and stabbed into the sand. A grey murk enveloped us. Looking back I saw the old bus turn and begin to lumber along in our wake. The rain came in gusts. Nobody in the car talked. The only sound was the click-click of the windscreen wipers. The wheels spun in a soft patch, flinging sand up in sheets like a brown spray. I wondered how the bus would behave on the sticky surface of the piste. It was a heavy vehicle for a girl to drive and the going would be bad through the mountains unless the rain eased up. ‘You should have let me go with Mademoiselle Corrigan,’ I told Bilvidic angrily. I was thinking of the section of road overhanging the gorge where the road gang had been working.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I am sorry. But it is not possible. They will be all right.’

A heavier gust hit the car. The wheels slithered and spun. The rain was turning the powdered sand of the piste to a thick, red paste. The mountains were blotted out entirely. I glanced back. I could see nothing but wet sand and rain through the rear window. The bus, like the mountains, had disappeared from sight and I cursed the Frenchman under my breath. It was no weather in which to make two girls drive a heavy vehicle over mountains on a narrow, treacherous track. Once more I tried to persuade him to let me change places with Karen and keep Julie company in the bus, but he shook his head. ‘Non, monsieur. We must be in Casablanca by this morning.’

‘You’ll never make it in this weather. You might just as well…’ The full weight of the storm hit us then and the rest of the sentence was drowned in the roar of the rain. It sheeted down, bouncing on the bonnet, drumming on the roof, cutting visibility to practically nil. The wheels churned in the mud of the piste. The car slithered and swayed. And then the rain slackened again and there were the mountains right ahead of us.

We reached the harder surface at the foot of the mountains and began to climb. Away to the left I saw the watch tower above Kasbah Foum, and the debris of the ruined city gleamed blackly through the rain. Sections of the track were running with water and in places there was a soft surface of mud. The car had front-wheel drive and the engine laboured as the wheels spun in the soft patches. We reached the spot where the road had been repaired and I looked down into the black gulf of the gorge. The whole place seemed to be streaming with water and, on the remote fringe of visibility, I saw the towers of Kasbah Foum looking withdrawn and hostile as they stood guard over the entrance to the gorge.

‘If we could have had two more days.’ There was a note of bitterness in Jan’s voice as he said this and he was leaning forward in his seat, peering down the mist-wrapped length of the gorge.

Then we had turned the corner under the cliff overhang and the gorge was behind us. Far below us down the mountain slope, I glimpsed the bus nosing its way across the flat valley floor. Then it was lost in a curtain of rain. ‘They’ll never make it,’ I said as the Citroen’s wheels spun again on a soft patch and Bilvidic fought the wheel to regain control of the car.

‘Then they will stop and wait,’ he replied impatiently. ‘The girl is not a fool. She will not try it if it is not possible.’

But I wasn’t sure. Julie knew it was important for her to contact the British Consul. She’d go on as long as she thought there was a chance of getting through. And Karen was with her. Karen would want to go on, too. ‘I think we should stop,’ I said.

‘No.’

‘They could go over the edge in these soft patches.’

‘Stop worrying, monsieur. They will be all right. They will be going uphill. Downhill, it would be different.’

‘You forget that the bus has rear-wheel drive. You can easily skid the back wheels….’

‘They will be all right, I tell you,’ he repeated angrily. And then he was fighting the wheel again and suddenly the whole road ahead was blotted out by another storm.

It swept down on us like a cloudburst, drumming on the car, beating at it as though trying to flatten it into the mud of the piste. A little spill of stones slithered in a trickle of water down the bank to our right. It had become very dark and all we could see was the rain and a few yards of mountain stretching ahead of us. The rain was solid like a million steel rods thrust at an angle into the ground. The car juddered, the engine roared. Mud spurted up past my window as the wheels clawed at the surface.