Tom Day and Jo Henniger

Tom Day and Jo Henniger’s relationship begins to form amid the shock of the accident, when Jo is trying to understand what has happened and Day steps into the space left by David’s absence. Their encounter moves between concern, humor, and physical closeness. Jo welcomes some of that attention, but Day’s private view of flirtation is more calculating than his easy manner suggests. The scene establishes an attraction and an opening between them, not a settled account of what either will make of it.

An Encounter in the Aftermath

Jo meets Day along the wall of the ksour, where he is taking photographs. He is absorbed in his task and does not notice her until she is close; then he rises, greets her, and jokes about his straw porkpie hat, which he says he bought in Casablanca and which was made in China. Jo decides quickly that she likes him, finding him affable and solid, and imagines that they may be the only two people present with their attention fully engaged. The ease of this first impression contrasts with her agitation about the crisis around them.

Day asks whether Jo is all right. Her answer makes clear that ordinary reassurance cannot contain what she is experiencing: she says she is lost and compares the situation to going through the Looking Glass. She also notes that she has not seen Richard that day. Day tells her that he thinks matters have been settled and that she will need to complete forms, but Jo privately rejects this as a resolution. She remembers briefly waking with the sense that the previous events had been a dream, only to find herself returned to the knowledge of the accident and to the question of how they could have acted so foolishly.

Comfort, Humor, and Closeness

Day touches Jo’s arm and suggests going down for lunch, adding that blaming herself will not help. She does not immediately move; her eyes fill, while her body remains fixed against the wall. Day waits rather than pressing her to respond. His gesture and his patience offer a form of immediate companionship, although his assurance that everyone speeds also shifts attention away from the particular circumstances that Jo is struggling to face.

They walk back toward the house together. Jo’s yellow dress brushes against Day as they go, and he interprets her manner through his own assumptions about women who seem half-interested in life and might be drawn in by bawdy humor. He recounts an evening in Casablanca, where he says he played Ping-Pong with a sex worker at a beach club. Jo protests in surprise, and their exchange becomes playful. Day’s account of himself as someone with a decaying-money smell turns wealth into a joke and presents him as an irreverent, worldly companion. Jo laughs at his performance, a response that matters to her because laughter has become unexpectedly available amid distress.

Attention at the Party

Later, while moving through the large Berber tent where jazz is playing, Jo looks for Richard. Day briefly takes her hand to guide her through a group of people. She is not startled enough to pull away, and he leads her onward to the bar, where they get drinks. The contact is small and practical in the immediate circumstance, but it also marks a growing ease between them: Jo allows him to guide her physically through a crowded room when she is feeling bewildered and detached from the party.

Other guests approach Jo to express sympathy about the accident, touching her shoulder and telling her how horrible it is. She has no answer for them. The gathering continues around her, with food, drinks, fans, and music, while she feels increasingly lost and irritated. Unable to find David, she stays close to Day and asks him to take her outside again. With borrowed parasols, they walk toward the shaded pool. The party’s dresses, jazz, and champagne strike her as out of place, and the guests’ ability to continue their weekend makes her feel more isolated. Day becomes a temporary point of orientation, though Jo is still unsure what his attention means or what he wants from her.

Attraction and Unequal Intentions

Jo does not mistake Day for a serious suitor. After thanking him, she turns back to ask whether he will go to the pool that afternoon; he replies that it is better than horse riding. She notices his interest and understands that he is an unserious womanizer. Even so, she regards him as a welcome compensation. In London, she feels that people rarely look twice at her, and she believes David’s friends pity him for having married her when he supposedly could have had anyone. Day’s attention therefore answers not only her loneliness in the immediate crisis but also a longer-standing sense of being overlooked.

That response does not erase the disparity in their positions. Jo is grieving, unsettled, and trying to make sense of a death and its consequences; Day, by contrast, privately categorizes her as someone who might respond to a particular style of charm. His thoughts treat flirtation as a practiced technique and marriage as no necessary obstacle. The scene thus places genuine relief and amusement beside a distinctly self-serving way of reading Jo. Her willingness to laugh, accept his hand, and seek his company establishes a connection, but it does not show that she shares his assumptions or that the relationship has yet become an affair.