Mademoiselle La Roche laughed cheeringly. She took a few rapid measures and led Hilary into a big apartment with built-in cupboards. There were clothes here of every description, made of good material and excellent cut and in a large variety of sizes. When Hilary had selected the essentials of la toilette, they passed on to the cosmetics department where Hilary made a selection of powders, creams and various other toilet accessories. These were handed to one of the assistants, a native girl with a shining dark face, dressed in spotless white, and she was instructed to see that they were delivered to Hilary's apartment.
All these proceedings had seemed to Hilary more and more like a dream.
"And we shall have the pleasure of seeing you again shortly, I hope," said Mademoiselle La Roche, gracefully. "It will be a great pleasure, Madame, to assist you to select from our models. Entre nous my work is sometimes disappointing. These scientific ladies often take very little interest in la toilette. In fact, not half an hour ago I had a fellow traveller of yours."
"Helga Needheim?"
"Ah yes, that was the name. She is, of course, a Boche, and the Boches are not sympathetic to us. She is not actually bad looking if she took a little care of her figure; if she chose a flattering line she could look very well. But no! She has no interest in clothes. She is a doctor, I understand. A specialist of some kind. Let us hope she takes more interest in her patients than she does in her toilette - Ah, that one, what man will look at her twice?"
Miss Jennsen, the thin, dark, spectacled girl who had met the party on arrival, now entered the fashion salon.
"Have you finished here, Mrs. Betterton?" she asked.
"Yes, thank you," said Hilary.
"Then perhaps you will come and see the Deputy Director."
Hilary said "au revoir" to Mademoiselle La Roche and followed the earnest Miss Jennsen.
"Who is the Deputy Director?" she asked.
"Doctor Nielson."
Everybody, Hilary reflected, in this place was doctor of something.
"Who exactly is Doctor Nielson?" she asked. "Medical, scientific, what?"
"Oh, he's not medical, Mrs. Betterton. He's in charge of Administration. All complaints have to go to him. He's the administrative head of the Unit. He always has an interview with everyone when they arrive. After that I don't suppose you'll ever see him again unless something very important should arise."
"I see," said Hilary, meekly. She had an amused feeling of having been put severely in her place.
Admission to Dr. Nielson was through two ante-chambers where stenographers were working. She and her guide were finally admitted into the inner sanctum where Dr. Nielson rose from behind a large executive's desk. He was a big florid man with an urbane manner. Of trans-Atlantic origin, Hilary thought, though he had very little American accent.
"Ah!" he said, rising and coming forward to shake Hilary by the hand. "This is - yes - let me see - yes, Mrs. Betterton. Delighted to welcome you here, Mrs. Betterton. We hope you'll be very happy with us. Sorry to hear of the unfortunate accident during the course of your journey, but I'm glad it was no worse. Yes, you were lucky there. Very lucky indeed. Well, your husband's been awaiting you impatiently and I hope now you've got here you will settle down and be very happy amongst us."
"Thank you, Dr. Nielson."
Hilary sat down in the chair he drew forward for her.
"Any questions you want to ask me?" Dr. Nielson leant forward over his desk in an encouraging manner. Hilary laughed a little.
"That's a most difficult thing to answer," she said. "The real answer is, of course, that I've got so many questions to ask that I don't know where to begin."
"Quite, quite. I understand that. If you'll take my advice - this is just advice, you know, nothing more - I shouldn't ask anything. Just adapt yourself and see what comes. That's the best way, believe me."
"I feel I know so little," said Hilary. "It's all so - so very unexpected."
"Yes. Most people think that. The general idea seems to have been that one was going to arrive in Moscow." He laughed cheerfully. "Our desert home is quite a surprise to most people."
"It was certainly a surprise to me."
"Well, we don't tell people too much beforehand. They mightn't be discreet, you know, and discretion's rather important. But you'll be comfortable here, you'll find. Anything you don't like - or particularly would like to have... just put in a request for it and we'll see what can be managed. Any artistic requirement, for instance. Painting, sculpture, music, we have a department for all that sort of thing."
"I'm afraid I'm not talented that way."
"Well, there's plenty of social life too, of a kind. Games, you know. We have tennis courts, squash courts. It takes a week or two, we often find, for people to find their feet, especially the wives, if I may say so. Your husband's got his job and he's busy with it and it takes a little time, sometimes, for the wives to find - well - other wives who are congenial. All that sort of thing. You understand me."
"But does one - does one - stay here?"
"Stay here? I don't quite understand you, Mrs. Betterton."
"I mean, does one stay here or go on somewhere else?"
Dr. Nielson became rather vague.
"Ah," he said. "That depends on your husband. Ah, yes, yes, that depends very much on him. There are possibilities. Various possibilities. But it's better not to go into all that just now. I'd suggest, you know, that you - well - come and see me again perhaps in three weeks' time. Tell me how you've settled down. All that kind of thing."
"Does one - go out at all?"
"Go out, Mrs. Betterton?"
"I mean outside the walls. The gates."
"A very natural question," said Dr. Nielson. His manner was now rather heavily beneficent. "Yes, very natural. Most people ask it when they come here. But the point of our Unit is that it's a world in itself. There is nothing, if I may so express myself, to go out to. Outside us there is only desert. Now I'm not blaming you, Mrs. Betterton. Most people feel like that when they first get here. Slight claustrophobia. That's how Dr. Rubec puts it. But I assure you that it passes off. It's a hangover, if I may so express it, from the world that you have left. Have you ever observed an ant hill, Mrs. Betterton? An interesting sight. Very interesting and very instructive. Hundreds of little black insects hurrying to and fro, so earnest, so eager, so purposeful. And yet the whole thing's such a muddle. That's the bad old world you have left. Here there is leisure, purpose, infinite time. I assure you," he smiled, "an earthly paradise."
Chapter 13
"It's like a school," said Hilary.
She was back once more in her own suite. The clothes and accessories she had chosen were awaiting her in the bedroom. She hung the clothes in the cupboard and arranged the other things to her liking.
"I know," said Betterton, "I felt like that at first."
Their conversation was wary and slightly stilted. The shadow of a possible microphone still hung over them. He said in an oblique manner,
"I think it's all right, you know. I think I was probably imagining things. But all the same..."
He left it at that, and Hilary realised that what he had left unsaid was, "but all the same, we had better be careful."
The whole business was, Hilary thought, like some fantastic nightmare. Here she was, sharing a bedroom with a strange man, and yet so strong was the feeling of uncertainty, and danger, that to neither of them did the intimacy appear embarrassing. It was like, she thought, climbing a Swiss mountain where you share a hut in close proximity with guides and other climbers as a matter of course. After a minute or two Betterton said,
"It all takes a bit of getting used to, you know. Let's just be very natural. Very ordinary. More or less as if we were at home still."
She realised the wisdom of that. The feeling of unreality persisted and would persist, she supposed, some little time. The reasons for Betterton leaving England, his hopes, his disillusionment could not be touched upon between them at t
his moment. They were two people playing a part with an undefined menace hanging over them, as it were. She said presently,
"I was taken through a lot of formalities. Medical, psychological and all that."
"Yes. That's always done. It's natural I suppose." "Did the same happen to you?"
"More or less."
"Then I went in to see the - Deputy Director I think they called him?"
"That's right. He runs this place. Very capable and a thoroughly good administrator."
"But he's not really the head of it all?"
"Oh no, there's the Director himself."
"Does one - do I - shall I see the Director?"
"Sooner or later I expect. But he doesn't often appear. He gives us an address from time to time - he's got a wonderfully stimulating personality."
There was a faint frown between Betterton's brows and Hilary thought it wise to abandon the subject. Betterton said, glancing at a watch,
"Dinner is at eight. Eight to eight-thirty, that is. We'd better be getting down, if you're ready?"
He spoke exactly as though they were staying in a hotel.
Hilary had changed into the dress she had selected. A soft shade of gray-green that made a good background for her red hair. She clasped a necklace of rather attractive costume jewellery round her neck and said she was ready. They went down the stairs and along corridors and finally into a large dining room. Miss Jennsen came forward and met them.
"I have arranged a slightly larger table for you, Tom," she said to Betterton. "A couple of your wife's fellow travellers will sit with you - and the Murchisons, of course."
They went along to the table indicated. The room contained mostly small tables seating four, eight or ten persons. Andy Peters and Ericsson were already sitting at the table and rose as Hilary and Tom approached. Hilary introduced her "husband" to the two men. They sat down, and presently they were joined by another couple. These Betterton introduced as Dr. and Mrs. Murchison.
"Simon and I work in the same lab," he said, in an explanatory fashion.
Simon Murchison was a thin, anaemic-looking young man of about twenty-six. His wife was dark and stocky. She spoke with a strong foreign accent and was, Hilary gathered, an Italian. Her Christian name was Bianca. She greeted Hilary politely but, or so it seemed to Hilary, with a certain reserve.
"Tomorrow," she said, "I will show you around the place. You are not a scientist, no?"
"I'm afraid," said Hilary, "that I have had no scientific training." She added, "I worked as a secretary before my marriage."
"Bianca has had legal training," said her husband. "She has studied economics and commercial law. Sometimes she gives lectures here but it is difficult to find enough to do to occupy one's time."
Bianca shrugged her shoulders.
"I shall manage," she said. "After all, Simon, I came here to be with you and I think that there is much here that could be better organised. I am studying conditions. Perhaps Mrs. Betterton, since she will not be engaged on scientific work, can help me with these things."
Hilary hastened to agree to this plan. Andy Peters made them all laugh by saying ruefully,
"I guess I feel rather like a homesick little boy who's just gone to boarding school. I'll be glad to get down to doing some work."
"It's a wonderful place for working," said Simon Murchison with enthusiasm. "No interruptions and all the apparatus you want."
"What's your line?" asked Andy Peters.
Presently the three men were talking a jargon of their own which Hilary found difficult to follow. She turned to Ericsson who was leaning back in his chair, his eyes abstracted.
"And you?" she asked. "Do you feel like a homesick little boy too?"
He looked at her as though from a long way away.
"I do not need a home," he said. "All these things; home, ties of affection, parents, children; all these are a great hindrance. To work one should be quite free."
"And you feel that you will be free here?"
"One cannot tell yet. One hopes so."
Bianca spoke to Hilary.
"After dinner," she said, "there is a choice of many things to do. There is a card room and you can play bridge; or there is a cinema or three nights a week theatrical performances are given and occasionally there is dancing."
Ericsson frowned disapprovingly.
"All these things are unnecessary," he said. "They dissipate energy."
"Not for us women," said Bianca. "For us women they are necessary."
He looked at her with an almost cold and impersonal dislike.
Hilary thought: "To him women are unnecessary, too."
"I shall go to bed early," said Hilary. She yawned deliberately. "I don't think I want to see a film or play bridge this evening."
"No, dear," said Tom Betterton hastily. "Much better to go to bed really early and have a good night's rest. You've had a very tiring journey, remember."
As they rose from the table, Betterton said:
"The air here is wonderful at night. We usually take a turn or two on the roof garden after dinner, before dispersing to recreations or study. We'll go up there for a little and then you'd better go to bed."
They went up in a lift manned by a magnificent-looking native in white robes. The attendants were darker-skinned and of a more massive build than the slighter Berbers - a desert type, Hilary thought. She was startled by the unexpected beauty of the roof garden, and also by the lavish expenditure that must have gone to create it. Tons of earth must have been brought and carried up here. The result was like an Arabian Nights fairy tale. There was the splash of water, tall palms, the tropical leaves of bananas and other plants and paths of beautiful colored tiles with designs of Persian flowers.
"It's unbelievable," said Hilary. "Here in the middle of the desert." She spoke out what she had felt:
"It's an Arabian Nights fairy tale."
"I agree with you, Mrs. Betterton," said Murchison. "It looks exactly as though it has come into being by conjuring up a Djin! Ah well - I suppose even in the desert there's nothing you can't do, given water and money - plenty of both of them."
"Where does the water come from?"
"Spring tapped deep in the mountain. That's the raison d'être of the Unit."
A fair sprinkling of people was on the roof garden, but little by little they dwindled away. The Murchisons excused themselves. They were going to watch some ballet.
There were few people left now. Betterton guided Hilary with his hand on her arm to a clear space near the parapet. The stars showed above them and the air was cold now, crisp and exhilarating. They were alone here. Hilary sat down on the low concrete, and Betterton stood in front of her.
"Now then," he said in a low nervous voice, "Who the hell are you?"
She looked up at him for a moment or two without answering. Before she replied to his question there was something that she herself had got to know.
"Why did you recognise me as your wife?" she asked.
They looked at each other. Neither of them wished to be the first to answer the other's question. It was a duel of wills between them, but Hilary knew that whatever Tom Betterton had been like when he left England, his will was now inferior to her own. She had arrived here fresh in the self-confidence of organising her own life - Tom Betterton had been living a planned existence. She was the stronger.
He looked away from her at last, and muttered sullenly:
"It was - just an impulse. I was probably a damned fool. I fancied that you might have been sent - to get me out of here."
"You want to get out of here, then?"
"My God, can you ask?"
"How did you get here from Paris?"
Tom Betterton gave a short unhappy laugh.
"I wasn't kidnapped or anything like that, if that's what you mean. I came of my own free will under my own steam. I came keenly and enthusiastically."
"You knew that you were coming here?"
"I'd no idea I was coming to Afric
a, if that's what you mean. I was caught by the usual lure. Peace on earth, free sharing of scientific secrets amongst the scientists of the world; suppression of capitalists and warmongers - all the usual jargon! That fellow Peters who came with you is the same, he's swallowed the same bait."
"And when you got here - it wasn't like that?"
Again he gave that short bitter laugh.
"You'll see for yourself. Oh, perhaps it is that, more or less! But it's not the way you thought it would be. It's not - freedom."