The Sycamore Song

by Elizabeth Hunter

  “I’m sure it will do very well,” Victoria murmured, accepting the challenge implicit in her words. She turned and looked full at Tariq, who had come out of the tent behind Juliette. “As long as it’s far away as possible from Mr. Fletcher’s,” she added meaningly.

  He didn’t look in the least bit guilty. Indeed, she might have fallen into the trap of thinking he hadn’t heard her if it hadn’t been for the quickly suppressed twitch of the corner of his mouth. “I thought we were on first name terms,” he said.

  She looked at him with a flash of anger. “Which one would you like me to use? It may take me time to get used to Torquil.”

  “Tariq will do,” he returned. “I’ll show you to your father’s tent,” he added abruptly. He put his hand on her elbow, anticipating her refusal and, when she tried to win free, increased the pressure of his fingers until she gave way and consented to go with him. “I want to talk to you,” he said in her ear.

  “Well, I don’t want to talk to you!” She waited until she was sure they were out of earshot before continuing: “How dare you even speak to me? You could have told me you were Torquil Fletcher, instead of leaving me to find out from someone like Jim Kerr!”

  “So you don’t like him,” he murmured. “I wonder why not?”

  “That’s none of your business,” she snapped.

  “I thought you’d have more faith in me,” he said.

  She felt unaccountably guilty. “I haven’t made up my mind about you. Tariq, what am I to do?”

  “Nothing’s changed, ya habibi. Either you trust me, or you don’t.”

  “I have to trust you,” she sighed. “There isn’t anyone else.” She forgot to look where she was going and fell heavily over one of the guy-ropes of the tent, letting loose a cry that would have done credit to a banshee. She got to her feet and examined the grazed palms of her hands, wincing as she pulled out a sliver of stone out of her wrist.

  “Let me look,” Tariq said wearily.

  “No!”

  “Don’t be a fool!” He grasped her arm and swore under his breath when he saw what she had done to herself. “You’d better have some disinfectant on that. Come into the tent and I’ll do it for you.”

  “I can quite well do it myself,” she said with a pugnacious lift to her chin.

  He didn’t bother to answer that. Taking a firmer grip on her arm, he hurried her before him into the tent, ignoring her astonished cries of pleasure as she saw the beauty of the interior. He splashed some water out of a jug into a bowl and added a measure of disinfectant with a liberal hand. Then, standing behind her, he pushed both her hands, palm downwards, into the mixture, wincing himself at her indignant gasp of pain.

  “Do you have to be so brutal?” she demanded.

  He smiled, his face very close to hers. “I’m sorry, but it would be far worse if it went bad on you. There now, is the smarting wearing off?”

  She nodded. “You’re enjoying this!” she accused him.

  “It makes a nice excuse for getting you back in my arms,” he said mockingly. He turned her round to face him and kissed her on the cheek, letting her go with apparent reluctance. “I should have told you who I was,” he admitted. “I can’t think why I didn’t. The quarrel with your father was such a pointless business. It should never have been allowed to bedevil our friendship as it did, but it did, and it’s no good crying over spilt milk. I’d like to know who told him about it, all the same!” He went to the door of the tent with the bowl of disinfectant and tossed the fluid on to the sand. “I’ll leave you to settle in. I’ll have your suitcase brought to you in a few minutes. Okay?” Victoria thanked him, her voice cooler than she had intended.

  He turned his head, pausing for a moment in the entrance of the tent. “Thanks for going on trusting me,” he said.

  “I don’t know that I do,” she responded. “But I do trust Omm Beshir and she vouched for you. Besides, I gave you my word, and I take that sort of thing seriously. Do you?”

  “I’m learning to.” He came back inside the tent. “I didn’t know, Victoria, how involved your father was with Juliette. I’d like you to believe that.”

  She did believe him, but the thought of him with Juliette hurt all the same. “You don’t have to tell me about it,” she said.

  “Your father isn’t here to tell,” he replied. “If I’d known he’d take it so badly, I’d have thought twice about trying to laugh him out of it. I’m not particularly proud of the incident.”

  “Juliette is a very attractive woman, though,” Victoria observed. “You probably thought it worth it at the time.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “She was there, that was all.” He gave her a thoughtful look. “There’s no malice in Juliette, so I have only myself to blame. I knew she was a hedonist and would take her pleasures where she found them. It didn’t mean a thing to either of us. It would have made more sense if it had. But I couldn’t persuade your father of that. Whoever told him about us had already twisted the knife in the wound to pretty good effect. He wouldn’t listen to a thing I said. He just kept repeating that he wanted me off the site and that I wasn’t to come back.”

  “Perhaps somebody else wanted you off the site too,” Victoria suggested. “My mother always said that once he’d got an idea into his head there was no getting it out again. He probably wasn’t liking you much anyway for that article you wrote.”

  “Well, I’m back now,” he said. “This time they may find it harder to get rid of me.”

  “They’ll be too busy trying to get rid of me!” Victoria sighed. “Jim Kerr has already suggested that I get the licence put in his or Juliette’s name.”

  “And are you going to?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have the address of my father’s solicitors in Cairo. I shall probably take their advice over most things. What else can I do?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Did Jim say why he had stayed on?”

  “Not that I remember.” She pursued up her lips, flexing her grazed hands and wincing as she did so. “Tariq, you are still working for the government, aren’t you? What is your exact position with them?”

  “I’m working for the Egyptian Antiquities Department.”

  “And that’s a fact?”

  “Yes, my dear, that’s a fact. It gives me the right to ask you to consult me before you do anything, anything at all, here on the site. I’d like to think you’d do that anyway—”

  “I’ve said I will,” she murmured.

  But still he hesitated. “There’s nothing now between Juliette and myself,” he said abruptly. “Whatever anyone may tell you, and they probably will.”

  “Tariq, it doesn’t matter.”

  He tipped up her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Doesn’t it?”

  “No.”

  His eyebrows shot up, making him look more like a bird of prey than ever, and it suddenly mattered very much indeed, and she knew that he knew it too.

  “I should have guessed yesterday you were Torquil Fletcher,” she said. “Whoever heard of an Englishman called Tariq? My wits must have been scattered!”

  “Or you didn’t want to believe it. You didn’t want to like someone your father obviously hated.”

  Her lips kicked up into a smile. “Perhaps I don’t like you. Have you thought of that?”

  His eyes glinted. “I don’t have to,” he said. “Look after yourself, Victoria, it’s getting so that I can’t do without you!”

  And he walked out of the tent and away across the sand, whistling.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Victoria opened her eyes slowly and for a long moment thought she was still dreaming. Then she remembered that she was in Sakkara and that this was her father’s tent. She had thought when she had first seen it that it was beautiful, but it was only now that its full glory was brought home to her. The whole of the inside was elaborately embroidered with applique work in brilliant colours, representing patterns and what she took to be texts fro
m the Koran, the sacred book of Islam. The greens, reds, and blacks stood out against the white background, a maze of colour and design that led the eye from one part to another in the most satisfying way. She wondered briefly if it had all been done by hand and promised herself to ask Tariq about it when next she saw him.

  She yawned and stretched herself, glancing at her watch to find out the time. She hoped that today would be better than the day before. It had to be, she thought gloomily, for it could scarcely be worse! Juliette had lost no time in insisting that they should discuss the financial future of the excavation, brushing aside Victoria’s suggestion that nothing could be done until they had cleared up the matter of the licence to continue to dig. It had proved a long and exhausting session, and in the end nothing had been decided between them.

  Victoria was afraid her own ignorance had had something to do with that. Juliette had refused to explain anything on the grounds that Victoria wouldn’t understand what she was talking about anyway. In vain did the younger girl point out that she had taken the trouble to read all her father’s papers before coming to Egypt, though perhaps they had not meant as much to her as they should. Afterwards, she had come to the conclusion that she would have to re-read the lot and hope to learn a little bit more about what had been going on, and she had spent most of the evening doing exactly that, doing little sums to find out the potential cost of each of the projects that her father had hoped to carry out, and getting into a hopeless muddle as to what was conceivably possible and what was not.

  That had been when she had decided that the time had come for her to pay a visit to her father’s lawyers in Cairo. Her natural instinct was to turn to Tariq for advice, but further thought had suggested to her that that would place him in an intolerable position with the others who already viewed him as little better than a government spy. No, if Tariq was going to direct the excavation, even indirectly through her, he had to be given the powers and the respect that went with the position. So, for the moment at any rate, it had to be the solicitors or no one. She had already asked Juliette if she could borrow the car that everyone to do with the expedition used when and as available, and first thing that morning she would ring up the solicitors and make an appointment to see them.

  Through the gaps in the ties of the flap over the tent’s entrance she could see the grey light of the pre-dawn morning. If she wanted, she thought, she could go back to sleep for at least another hour, but she had never felt less like sleep and her strange surroundings outside called to the spirit of adventure within her. Not only that, but she had missed the sunset again the evening before, she had become so involved with her father’s papers, and she was blowed if she was going to miss a perfectly good sunrise if she could help it.

  She pushed back the bedclothes and jumped out of bed, remaking the bed swiftly before she pulled on her underclothes, jeans, and a shirt. When she had dressed, she ran a comb through her long black hair and tied it back behind her head out of her way. She would have to change before she went to Cairo, she supposed, for she was not sure how the Cairenes would approve of having trousered young women in their midst, though Juliette had been wearing a trouser suit when she had come to the hotel at Giza, and so had many of the women she had seen walking along the streets from the car.

  An orange glow spread across the desert from the Nile when she stepped out of her tent. It was also very cold and she was glad she had brought a sweater with her. She climbed to the top of a ridge just outside the camp and looked about her, listening to the astonishing silence all about her. The Step Pyramid took on a rosy glow, and most of the other pyramids looked far more impressive in the half-light than they had in the glare of the midday sun. They rose in majesty, pointing upwards to the rose-washed sky. Apart from herself, only the animals were taking advantage of the early hour. A young fox chased its own tail in a mad game of its own; desert rats peered out of their holes, making the most of the last few moments of the night before they retired to sleep through the day; and the dogs of the neighbourhood, without benefit of pedigree or grooming, met in little groups with waving tails to discuss the events of the night that had passed since they had last seen one another.

  The sun rose in a large red ball, changing colour so quickly that Victoria felt obliged to keep her eyes firmly fixed on the eastern hemisphere of the sky until the rays grew too strong for her to go on watching. The desert lost its glow of pink mystery and reverted to being stony sand, and the beautiful moment was lost, merging into the eternal silence of the wilderness.

  But Victoria was still sitting on the ridge, loth to admit to herself that there was nothing more to wait for, when she saw Jim Kerr coming up the hill towards her. She considered moving before he should see her and engage her in conversation, but she didn’t want to be thought unkind. Her first dislike of the man had strengthened into actual aversion the day before when he had spoken to her about his part in the excavation. He had patronised her unbearably, edging towards the idea that she should promote him over Juliette’s head because the workers would work more happily for a man than a woman. When she had told him it was unlikely they would be allowed to continue on any terms, he had fallen into a sulk and had accused her of playing favourites and that she would soon change her mind if he chatted her up and paid her compliments.

  “Is that what Tariq does?” he had roared at her. “Where is he now?”

  But Victoria hadn’t known. She hadn’t seen him again after he had walked, whistling, out of her tent. “G’morning, Victoria.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Kerr.”

  He sat down beside her, scratching his beard. “Make it Jim, lass. I’m not one to bear a grudge, even if you won’t be sensible and let me run things for you. Made up your mind what you’re going to do?”

  Victoria shifted a few inches away from him. “I have a few ideas on the subject.”

  “Oh?” He scratched himself some more, pushing his fingers through a hole in his sweater. “Must mend this some time. I suppose you wouldn’t like to do it for me?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.” She saw his wry expression and relented towards him a little. “You wouldn’t think much of my efforts if I did. My idea of mending holes is to cobble the two sides together and hope for the best.”

  “Botch it, do you? You’re about to make a botch of this job too, if you don’t mind my saying so. You’ll never get the men to work for Juliette, she rides them on far too tight a rein, and they don’t understand what she’s aiming at. She knows her stuff as far as Egyptology is concerned, but human nature is a closed book to that lady!”

  Victoria wriggled a little further away. “Juliette has her own work to do. My father didn’t want her worried by financial considerations. If she can’t take control of the excavation, it’s up to her to say so.”

  Jim laughed unpleasantly. “Leaving Torquil Fletcher to scoop the pool. Your father would have loved that!”

  “Nobody is going to scoop the pool, certainly not Tariq, and certainly not me. The terms of my father’s will don’t allow it. My father didn’t leave me one penny as his daughter.”

  “But he gave you the controlling interest in his financial affairs or you wouldn’t be here?”

  “I suppose so. It would have been my husband if I’d had one. But yes, I suppose I can dictate how the money is spent within certain limits. That’s why I’m going to Cairo this afternoon to talk to my father’s lawyers. I think it would be better if we all agreed to abide by their professional advice. One day has been quite enough to convince me that I’m no financial wizard!”

  “And you won’t ask Fletcher to take over?”

  “He works for the government, whatever you may think, not for me!”

  Jim put a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t mind, do you, Vicky?”

  “Victoria,” she corrected him. “Why should I mind? It’s my decision to go to the lawyers and ask their help. At least they know how many piastres go to make up a pound, and the conversion rates between the English and E
gyptian pounds, which is a great deal more than I do. By the time I’ve converted sums back and forth, all I have is an absurd muddle!”

  “You could get someone to do your sums for you.”

  “But that’s what I am doing,” she stated firmly. She got lightly to her feet and stood looking down at him. “I’m getting hungry,” she said. “I think I’ll go back to breakfast.”

  “In your own tent again? Not even your father had all his meals alone. He used to invite Juliette to share most of them with him, particularly - er - breakfast. Are you going to keep up the family tradition?”

  “No,” Victoria said. “I would have joined you last night if I’d known what time you were eating. Abdul brought me a tray because that was the way my father liked it, but I shan’t make a habit of it.”

  Jim stood up too. “Pity. You could do worse than stay away from the lower orders. You’d soon get tired of our eternal bickering. Though even that’s better than watching Fletcher and Juliette billing and cooing at one another like they did last night! We’ll have to give them some competition in that department. That might make them sit up and take notice!”

  Victoria barely repressed a shudder, hoping he intended washing his hands before he appeared at the breakfast table. She wondered if he liked being dirty and, if so, why? If he shaved off his beard and washed his hair, he would have been quite good-looking. Yet she didn’t think it was his hairiness that she objected to, but the grimy look to his skin and the distinct odour that came from his body. Other shaggy young men she had both liked and admired. It was only this one she couldn’t abide, neither hair nor hide of him!

  “What made you work with my father?” she asked him.

  “I thought I’d have a free hand to work more or less on my own. I should have known better. Saving your presence, my dear, he was a self-satisfied prig. He wasn’t half as good as he thought he was.”