The Sycamore Song

by Elizabeth Hunter

  “We’re not dealing with the sophisticated citizens of Cairo here,” he agreed. “You made quite an impression, nevertheless. They told me they thought you beautiful and that I was a lucky fellow to be married to you!”

  “Have they gone?” she said on a sigh.

  “They’ll be back tomorrow. We’re going to lay a trap for our friend Jim Kerr.” He shrugged his shoulders as if he were sloughing off a burden that had been weighing him down too long. “I’ll be glad to be done with it all.”

  “I suppose I shall have to stay out of the way?” Victoria enquired.

  “I wish I thought you would!”

  She averted her face. “I will, if you say I must, but it was my idea—”

  He sat down on the edge of her bed, smiling at her rebellious expression. “I didn’t think you’d think it fair. I told the police as much, pointing out that English women don’t like being kept in the background.”

  That brought her head round sharply to look at him. “But I don’t want them to think less of you because of me!”

  The look in his eyes made a sudden spurt of warm happiness flood through her. “They won’t do that,” he said certainly. “Even Abdul has nothing but good to say of you.”

  She was absurdly pleased by his praise. “I suppose you’ve discussed me with him? Men! How you all hang together!”

  “And women don’t, I suppose?” he retorted.

  She lay back against the pillows, her eyes shy. “What have you decided to do? How are you going to catch Jim Kerr?”

  “The police are going to wait for him in the shaft that we went up this morning. They agree it would be better to catch him in the act because he could quite well pretend that he had only just come across the tomb himself and, after what he tried to do to you, he’s not going to get away with that!”

  There was no escaping his meaning. Victoria wished for the umpteenth time that her father had been less vindictive where Tariq was concerned. “Was it very bad being turned off the site?” she asked him.

  “Bad enough! Largely because it was my own silly fault!”

  “But the Department believed in you?”

  He stood up, going through the curtain to his own side of the tent. “Yes, they did. Largely because Omm Beshir made me go and see them the very next day. It was one hell of an interview and I began to think I never wanted to have anything to do with Egypt again. But then they told me that the thieving was still going on, despite your father’s conviction that I was behind it all. I thought I might as well sit it out and see what happened. Then George died, and I was worried about Juliette, but she didn’t want to know any longer.”

  Victoria opened her eyes wide. “Some other man?” she asked.

  “Not a man, no!” His voice sounded bitter, as though the memory still had the power to hurt him. Damn Juliette! “What she wanted was your father’s prestige and money without any strings attached. But he thwarted her ambitions nicely by introducing you to the game!” He appeared round the curtain, looking very handsome in a suit and with his hair slicked down against his head. “That was the best thing he ever did!”

  “I’m glad you think so,” she said, nettled by his tone. “What do you want me to do tomorrow?”

  “Will you find Jim Kerr and tell him that digging is going to begin again the next day? I want him to think that I told you in confidence and that you’ve let it slip out by accident. It’s important he should think that no one else knows. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Shall I post your letter for you?” He picked up the envelope and read the address on it. “Your mother?”

  She nodded, thinking how much the rather ‘with-it’ cut of his trousers suited him. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’m taking Juliette to dinner. That young lady has a great many questions to answer!”

  Victoria sat up, crossing her legs in front of her. Jealousy twisted like a knife within her. Whenever she felt herself to be getting close to Tariq, Juliette was always there between them. Victoria didn’t believe that the French girl would turn Tariq down if he wanted to resume their affair either.

  “Take me with you too!” she begged him.

  He didn’t move a muscle. “Not tonight,” he said. “I have to see Juliette alone. I want answers, and she won’t give them to me with you there.”

  Victoria turned her back on him, hiding the tears that had flooded into her eyes. “I hope you enjoy yourself!” she said coldly.

  “I always try to do that. Sleep well, habibi, and don’t wait up for me. I’ll try not to be late.”

  But he would be, she thought. Juliette would see to that!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The urgency of the hand on her shoulder startled her into wakefulness.

  “What is it?” she whispered. She turned over and saw that it was Tariq. There was no mistaking the stocky strength of him, even in the darkness, and her heart jerked within her. “What do you want?”

  He cupped her face in his hands. “Victoria, wake up!”

  “I am awake!” She retreated a little down the bedclothes. “What have you done with Juliette?” she asked him nastily, and was immediately ashamed of herself.

  He gave her a playful slap. “You sound jealous,” he said. “Are you?”

  She took a deep breath, preparing to defend herself, but at the last moment she couldn’t pretend to him, or to herself, any longer. “Yes,” she admitted. She stared at him through the darkness. “What do you want?” she asked again, suddenly breathless.

  He stroked her cheek, leaning a little closer to her. “You smell of lotus blossom,” he said. “I like it!”

  “Abdul put some essence in my bath and I wore some of Omm Beshir’s scent at lunchtime, but I thought it would have worn off by now. You didn’t notice it then!”

  “I didn’t say anything then,” he corrected her, “but I noticed all right. I notice almost everything about you.” He balanced himself on the edge of her bed. “I woke you up to tell you about Juliette.”

  “I don’t want to hear!”

  “Victoria, you have to hear about it. It concerns you, and I don’t want you to find out about it from anyone else.”

  She felt as though he had struck her. She was cold from head to foot, and she knew that the bottom had finally fallen out of her world. “Wouldn’t the morning do?” she managed to ask.

  “No, it won’t!”

  She huddled under the blankets, pushing him away from her. “I won’t listen!” she defied him, very close to tears.

  “Oh yes, you will!” He scooped her up into a sitting position just as if she had been a recalcitrant child. Her shocked gasp drew no more than a mirthless laugh from him. “Victoria, don’t be daft, love! Is it likely I’d wake you up in the middle of the night to tell you I’d stolen a kiss from Juliette? If I had, you’d be the last person I’d want to know about it! Now will you listen?”

  “I suppose so.” She turned her head away to hide her tears. “Why wouldn’t you want me to know?”

  “That would be telling,” he drawled. “But I did tell you that you had no need to worry where that young woman is concerned.”

  “Yes, but you also told me that she wasn’t in love with you - and she is, as much as she’s in love with anyone!”

  “Which isn’t very much.” He pulled the scarab he had given her from under her nightdress by its chain and began to play with it. “She told me you’d guessed her husband had treated her pretty badly. Can’t you see that she doesn’t want to be hurt again? Nobody, but nobody, is allowed that close to Juliette Mercer. Not even your father!”

  Victoria sniffed. “Not even you?”

  “I was there, habibi, and the nights can be cold in the desert. It was no more than that!”

  At his words, she stopped shivering inside, and managed a rather watery smile. “You didn’t have to tell me,” she began. “I mean, you’re free— ”

  “Even a sharei court wedding gives you some
rights. Are you going to listen now?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Tariq, I didn’t mean to pry. I know Juliette is a friend of yours and you have a perfect right to see her, only it wasn’t much fun here by myself with only Jim Kerr there for dinner. I spent the whole afternoon on my own too—”

  “And you wanted to be with me?”

  She put a hand up to the scarab. “It was fun finding the other tomb - and everything, wasn’t it?”

  “I thought so.” He flicked her nose with his fingers, smiling at her. “I don’t think Juliette enjoyed her dinner much either, if that’s any comfort to you. She didn’t much care for my brand of questions.” He took her hand in his, curling his strong fingers into her palm. “You see, when I left the site there was no way into that burial chamber or I should have known about it. Maybe they found it soon after I’d left, or maybe after your father had died, but Jim Kerr couldn’t have been the only one to know about it. He couldn’t have kept that kind of knowledge to himself! We’ll never know if George knew, though I suspect he didn’t. Goodness knows, he made enough fuss about the things which were disappearing as it was, and he’s never been known as anything else but honest. Everybody who’s ever worked with him says the same. That left Juliette, and she had to have known! She spent weeks here without much to do, and it wasn’t likely that she never went into the mastaba in all that time, if only to look round. And of course she had!”

  Victoria pulled at her hand. “Did you warn her?”

  “I suggested that she took the first available plane out of Egypt.” He tickled her palm with his forefinger. “It wasn’t auld lang syne, at least not entirely, but I wouldn’t like to think of any woman languishing for long in the prisons here, and that would probably have been her fate if she hadn’t gone.”

  “Oh no!” Victoria exclaimed. “How horrible! Poor Juliette,” she added softly.

  “I hoped you’d feel that way about it—”

  “Yes, well, I quite like Juliette as a matter of fact,” she cut him off. “I don’t believe she’d do anything very dreadful.”

  “She certainly wouldn’t admit that she had had anything to do with ransacking either tomb. She said that anything of value had been taken centuries ago as far as she knew, and that she would hardly be flat broke if she’d been selling odd pieces on the black market. I believe her about that. But she knew what Jim Kerr was up to all right. Apparently he made it his business to find out about her husband, discovered he was in a mental home, and accused Juliette of putting him there to get rid of him. That was near enough the truth to hurt, especially as she had never bothered to get a divorce from him and she thought that if George found out he’d have had nothing more to do with her. Your father could be as rigid as the next man about some things and, after he had sent me packing, she was even more afraid that she would be thrown out after me, and she wasn’t at all sure that I’d want to take her in. We both knew it had been over between us long before I went.”

  Victoria made a little sound of sympathy. She felt as sorry for Juliette then as she had felt for herself earlier. “What will she do?” she asked.

  “She’s going to South America. She had an invitation to join an excavation there some time ago and now she thinks she’ll take it up. The snag was they wanted her to put some money into the venture, quite a lot of money.” He was silent for so long that Victoria began to think he wasn’t going to tell her the rest.

  “And?” she prompted him.

  “And so I gave her your father’s money. Every last cent of it. I gave her a letter to take to your solicitors before she caught her plane.” He rubbed the side of his nose and she had a vivid picture of what he must have been like as a small boy. “It seemed the only thing to do. Your father had meant her to have it in the end, and it didn’t mean much to you.”

  Victoria swallowed. “Will they accept your letter?”

  “Why not? When you married me, you gave me control over all your possessions according to Egyptian law.” He smiled in the darkness. “You gave me all sorts of rights—”

  Victoria lay back against the pillow, beginning to enjoy herself. “It hasn’t made much difference to me,” she complained. “Why don’t you show me?”

  His arms slipped about her. “Are you angry with me for giving it all to Juliette?”

  She put a hand up behind his neck. “Of course not,” she whispered. “I don’t want to think of Juliette in prison any more than you do. I hope she likes South America very much, and stays there for a long, long time!”

  And then his mouth found hers and his kisses, gentle at first, deepened into a vortex of feeling that took her by storm. It was, as she had always known it would be, sheer delight to be loved by Tariq. She abandoned herself completely to his embrace with a sigh of relief. She had no doubts that he wanted her now as much as she wanted him.

  “I’m glad I married you,” she said.

  He sat up, almost throwing her away from him. “That wretched marriage! I wish it were over and done with!” He put a hand on either side of her head, leaning up on his elbows, and kissed her again with a desperation that was echoed in her own response.

  “Victoria Lyle, I divorce you for the first time!”

  And he kissed her again, his lips warm against hers, while she clung to him, hating him for what he had said, but quite unable to resist the surge of passion that swept through her. But this time when he pushed her away, she knew she had lost, and the knowledge was like a bitter taste in her mouth. He stood for a moment looking down at her, and then he was gone, and the slight movement of the curtain between the two sides of the tent was all that was left to her of his visit.

  In the morning he was still asleep when she dressed herself and went in search of Jim Kerr. She peeped round the curtain at him, knowing that his sleep had been as restless as her own. His blankets lay-strewn across the floor and she picked them up and tucked them in round him with loving hands.

  “Divorce me, would you?” she muttered to his sleeping form. “Well, you needn’t think you’re going to get rid of me so easily. Now that I haven’t any visible means of support, I’ll build a willow cabin at your gate, ya habibi, and sit it out until I haunt your heart, sleeping and waking, and what will you do then?”

  His lips twitched and for a horrified instant she thought he was awake, but he only mumbled and turned in his sleep, and dropping a light kiss on the top of his head, she left him.

  She ran into Jim almost at once. He leered at her with heavy humour, patting the sand beside him in an invitation for her to sit down.

  “I see the sunrise still has the power to bring you away from the marriage bed,” he said. “Or is it that you are still engaged in spying on all your father’s old colleagues? What made you decide it wasn’t Fletcher, my dear? His beaux yeux? Very much in love with him, aren’t you? But is he with you? That’s the question, isn’t it? Didn’t I see him departing for dinner in Cairo with our Juliette last night? That must have been a nasty blow to your pride!”

  Victoria bit back an icy comment. Her thespian talents were limited and he was no fool, though he might want everyone to think him one.

  “My marriage was a business arrangement,” she told him. “Only Tariq could get the licence to continue from the Department, and the only way he could get his hands on my father’s money was to marry me.” She looked up at him and smiled. “I shouldn’t really tell you this, but you have to know soon anyway. Only don’t tell Tariq I told you, because he’d be furious with me. He wants to tell Juliette first - you know how it is between them—”

  He caught her by the arm and shook her. “They’re starting work again soon? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  She kicked him hard on the shin, forgetting her role in her fury at his handling of her. “I’m not trying to tell you anything! Let me go at once!”

  He put a hand over her mouth. “You’ll wake your sleeping lord!” he said nastily. “And that would never do, would it? He has a nasty, possessive na
ture, that husband of yours. He may not want you himself, but woe betide you if he found you in the arms of another man! Now, tell me quickly! When are they starting work again?”

  He lifted his hand to allow her to reply and she kicked out at him again. “Why does it matter so much to you?” she bit out at him.

  “I work here, or hadn’t you noticed?” he hissed in her ear.

  “Tomorrow! They’re starting tomorrow!” she brought out. “Tariq is getting the licence today. It’s all arranged.” Her dislike of him was like a bad smell in her nostrils, and then she thought that this was literally true, she could smell something! Her eyes widened with the recollection of where she had smelt that particular smell before. “It was you who pushed me!” she accused him. “But why?”

  Jim Kerr let her go, laughing at her. “You’ll never prove that, Miss Victoria Lyle. Who would ever believe it? Are you coming to breakfast? I feel particularly hungry now that I’ve met you, and I think I’ll break my rule and eat breakfast with the rest of you. Care to come along and pour my coffee?”

  The prospect gave her no pleasure, but she wanted her own breakfast and so she went with him. Abdul greeted her with disapproval. It was obvious he thought she should have waited for Tariq and not pleased herself when she came for her meals. In his own way, she reflected, Abdul was a born romantic!

  “How beautiful your camel is looking,” she said, hoping to appease him. She nodded her head towards the new covers on the saddle and the brightly coloured flag that decorated the rear of the wooden frame that fitted over the animal’s hump.

  “The Sidi Tariq is riding her this afternoon.” He gave her a look that told her he thought it served her right. “He is going into the desert to be alone, away from the chatter of women, and the troubles we have had here!”

  Victoria’s determination stiffened. She eyed the camel thoughtfully, and nearly died at the thought of being perched up there on the saddle, with her feet at the same level as a man’s head.

  “I’m going with him,” she breathed. “Order me a camel too, Abdul.”