The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [129]
“At last,” thought Miss Ferry with satisfaction, and she began to hurry Mrs. Moresby toward the cab. “Oh, what a shame!” she said aloud. “It’s really terrible. But you’ll certainly get it back.” The driver opened the door and they got in. From the curb the mechanic looked anxiously after them. “It’s funny,” went on Miss Ferry. “The desert’s a big place, but nothing really ever gets lost there.” The door slammed. “Things turn up sometimes months later. Not that that’s of much help now, I’ll admit.” She looked at the black cotton stockings and the worn brown shoes that bulged. “Au revoir et merci, ” she called to the mechanic, and the car started up.
When they were on the highway, the driver began to speed. Mrs. Moresby shook her head slowly back and forth and looked at her beseechingly. “Pas si vite!” shouted Miss Ferry to the driver. “You poor thing,” she was about to say, but she felt this would not be right. “I certainly don’t envy you what you’ve just been through,” she said. “It’s a perfectly awful trip.”
“Yes.” Her voice was hardly audible.
“Of course, some people don’t seem to mind all this dirt and heat. By the time they go back home they’re raving about the place. I’ve been trying to get sent to Copenhagen now for almost a year.”
Miss Ferry stopped talking and looked out at a lumbering native bus as they overtook it. She suspected a faint, unpleasant odor about the woman beside her. “She’s probably got every known disease, she said to herself. Observ ing her out of the corner of her eye for a moment, she finally said: “How long have you been down there?”
“A long time.”
“Have you been under the weather for long?” The other looked at her. “They wired you were sick.”
Neglecting to answer, Mrs. Moresby looked out at the darkening countryside. There were the many lights of the city ahead in the distance. That must be it, she thought. That was what had been the matter: she had been sick, probably for years. “But how can I be sitting here and not know it?” she thought.
When they were in the streets of the city, and the buildings and people and traffic moved past the windows, it all looked quite natural-she even had the feeling she knew the town. But something must still be quite wrong, or she would know definitely whether or not she had been here before.
“We’re putting you in the Majestic. You’ll be more comfortable there. It’s none too good, of course, but it’ll certainly be a lot more comfortable than anything down in your neck of the woods.” Miss Ferry laughed at the force of her own understatement. “She’s damned lucky to have all this fuss made about her, ” she was thinking to herself. “They don’t all get put up at the Majestic.
“As the cab drew up in front of the hotel, and a porter stepped out to open the door, Miss Ferry said: “Oh, by the way, a friend of yours, a Mr. Tunner, has been bombarding us with wires and letters for months. A perfect barrage from down in the desert. He’s been very upset about you.” She looked at the face beside her as the car door opened; at the moment it was so strange and white, so clearly a battlefield for desperate warring emotions, that she felt she must have said something wrong. “I hope you don’t mind my presumption,” she continued, a little less sure of herself, “but we promised this gentleman we’d notify him as soon as we contacted you, if we did. And I never had much doubt we would. The Sahara’s a small place, really, when you come right down to it. People just don’t disappear there. It’s not like it is here in the city, in the Casbah….” She felt increasingly uncomfortable. Mrs. Moresby seemed quite oblivious of the porter standing there, of everything. “Anyway,” Miss Ferry continued impatiently, “when we knew for sure you were coming I wired this Mr. Tunner, so I shouldn’t be surprised if he were right here in town by now, probably at this hotel. You might ask.” She held out her hand. “I’m going to keep this cab to go home in, if you don’t mind,” she said. “Our office has been in touch with the hotel, so everything’s all right. If you’ll