Singing in the Wilderness

by Isobel Chace

  SINGING IN THE WILDERNESS

  by

  ISOBEL CHACE

  Stephanie had thoroughly enjoyed working for her father in Persia, until he was ordered home under strange circumstances. Surprisingly she was instructed to stay and continue working for the new man who was arriving to take over.

  Things became rather difficult when the “new man” turned out to be the man Stephanie had just fallen in love with at first sight!

  ... and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness—And Wilderness is Paradise enow!

  The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (translated by Edward Fitzgerald)

  CHAPTER I

  Stephanie Black had never thought of herself as beautiful. On the contrary, she had long ago made up her mind that she was destined to be the practical support of her impractical father, a role that her delightful mother had never thought of as her own and was only too glad that her only daughter should take over as soon as she was old enough to do so.

  Accordingly, Stephanie had looked after her parents’ home from a very early age and, as soon as she had been old enough, she had taken a secretarial course and had begun to look after her father in his work as well. Desmond Black worked for an international company specialising in telecommunications and other similar products. He had never risen very high in the firm—Stephanie had sometimes thought that he had never wanted to—and nobody had been more surprised than himself when the company had landed a contract in Iran and he had been sent out to Isfahan to co-ordinate the work of laying the cables and supplying the necessary equipment.

  Stephanie had gone with him. She had enjoyed the few weeks she had spent so far in Persia. There had been very little work to do and she had come and gone from their temporary offices as she had thought fit, languidly typing a few letters for her father whenever he had asked her to do so.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that her father should have been doing more. It takes time to settle in, he had told her, and she had believed him. At least, at first she had believed him, but as the days turned into weeks and still they seemed to be getting no further forward, she had become more and more concerned.

  ‘We’ll be here years if we don’t get started soon,’ she had reproached him.

  ‘You enjoy yourself while you can,’ he had answered. ‘I know what I’m doing! Surely you don’t doubt me, do you?’

  Frankly, Stephanie did, but she was enjoying herself too much to try to prod him into further action and had done a little less herself, and then hardly anything at all, until, in fact, that very morning when the blow had fallen. Her father was to return to the United Kingdom on the first available flight and, worse still, she was to stay on and work for his successor until the contract was fulfilled.

  ‘But I’ve never worked for anyone else but you!’ she had protested, more than a little upset by her father’s grey face and—could it have been relief that the work had been taken out of his hands?

  ‘Maybe, love, but officially you work for the company, not for me. As you know what’s going on, it’s reasonable that you should stay on with the next fellow. You’ll probably like having more of a challenge than I was able to offer you.’

  ‘I don’t know that I can work for anyone else!’ Stephanie looked at her father with something very like panic in her hazel eyes. ‘It hasn’t been like working at all being with you!’

  ‘That’s probably why I’m being sent home,’ her father had returned gruffly. ‘Will you keep on the apartment?’

  ‘How can I? The new man will want it. It wasn’t hired by the company for a mere secretary, but for the boss! I’ll get a room somewhere—if I have to stay. But I’d much rather go home with you, darling!’

  But her father had been unexpectedly firm about her staying on in Persia. ‘Your mother and I will have to learn to manage without you some time,’ he had said heavily. ‘We depend on you far too much. Why, good heavens, Stephanie, you could have made a better job of getting this contract started than I have! The equipment hadn’t arrived and I should have made a fuss about it sooner, but I was sure it would turn up in time—Oh well, no good crying over spilt milk, my successor will probably listen to you when you advise him to do something instead of letting things slide. I’ve been rather tired, though, recently. To be honest, I’m glad to be going back to England.’

  All of which had only served to make Stephanie more than a little guilty. It was true that she had suggested that her father should have been more active, but she hadn’t nagged at him until something had been done. She had been only too glad to follow his example and do next to nothing herself!

  ‘They can’t force me to stay!’ she had repeated under her breath.

  ‘No, dear, they can’t. But I can, and I’m going to. It’s time you had a life of your own, and you like it here. It won’t be for long, but it will give us all the break we need. You’re my daughter, Stephanie. I already have a wife and it’s time we got to know each other all over again.’

  Stephanie had been hurt. ‘But Mother doesn’t want to know—’

  ‘Because you’ve done it all for her. A marriage is between two people and they have to make it work themselves. Not even their children can carry the burden for them. We’ve put upon you too much in the past, but you have your own life to live. It isn’t right that you should try to live your parents’ lives for them. I should have seen it before and perhaps I did, but I’ve always hated changes and having to make decisions that affect other people. It will do you good to get away from us for a bit and allow us to stand on our own feet without you. Will you stay for my sake?’

  There had been nothing else to do but to give way. Yet now that she had time to think and to realise that she was going to be left behind in Persia, completely on her own, she acknowledged to herself that she was scared stiff. She had never worked for anyone else but her father, just as she had never lived anywhere but with her parents, looking after their comfort and cushioning them from the harsher realities of making ends meet and seeing that the bills were paid on time.

  What would they do without her? Common sense told her they would muddle through somehow, but her whole being revolted at the chaos they would make between them of their daily life. Her father would never get to work on time, and her mother, charmingly vague as always, would turn night into day and sleep away the daylight hours without making any attempt to reduce the piles of washing-up that would await her in the sink.

  Stephanie sighed, making an effort to put her parents out of her mind. Her father had been surprisingly effective on her behalf since he had made his decision to leave her behind in Isfahan. He had arranged for her to have a smaller apartment in the same block where the company hired all its employees’ accommodation, and had insisted on packing up his own things while she went out and spent her last afternoon of freedom before her new boss arrived.

  ‘Buy your mother a small souvenir that I can take with me,’ he had bade her, pressing a few notes into her hand. ‘She’ll like to know you thought of her. I’m afraid she’ll take it rather badly that you haven’t come home with me.’

  ‘I’m still willing to come,’ Stephanie assured him, hope rekindling that she might be able to persuade him after all.

  ‘Your work is here,’ he had insisted. ‘Be off with you, my dear, and make the most of the last few hours you’re officially working for me. Your next employer may not be so generous in giving you as much time off as I have. Not if he wants to keep his job,’ he had added with a touch of bitterness. ‘It always was beyond me, if the truth was known.’

  And Stephanie had been unable to comfort him, because she had known that it was beyond him for the first day they had taken possession of the office the company had made available to them.
Her father had been afraid of the problems the new telecommunications network had thrown up and, like the proverbial ostrich, he had hidden his head in the sand and hoped they would all go away while he was looking the other way.

  In the end she had obeyed his wishes and had gone out, leaving him to do his own packing. The day was brighter than her mood and, for once, her surroundings failed to delight her. The first time she had seen Isfahan, she remembered, she had been overcome by its beauty. It was not only the buildings, magnificent as they were, it was something in the air, something even in the way the inhabitants walked and talked with an elegance not achieved elsewhere. Today, though, she scarcely noticed where she went, and was rather surprised to find that she had walked as far as the Maidan, the huge square where the Persians had once played polo in the days when Isfahan had been the capital city of the country.

  Stephanie walked the whole length of the square, ignoring the covered maze of the bazaar at the end where she had come in, preferring to seek a gift for her mother at the other end where the Royal Mosque was situated and where there were a number of shops selling handmade artifacts of various types, all of them distinguished by the delicacy of which the Iranian is master.

  She chose a nicely glazed pottery bottle decorated by a long-tailed bird in muted shades of grey and pink and blue. The owner of the shop wrapped it for her in a piece of paper, taking elaborate care to fasten it with string so that she could dangle the package from her fingers. When he had done, he bowed her out of his shop as if she had been visiting royalty and she didn’t notice that at the same moment someone else was trying to come in. They met in the narrow doorway, jammed up against each other. The man took a quick step backwards, put both his hands beneath Stephanie’s elbows and lifted her bodily out of the shop and on to the pavement outside.

  Breathless, she became aware of his height and the solid impact of his body against hers. He had very bright blue eyes that sparkled in the sunshine and a mop of auburn hair that stood on end above an intelligent, bony face that appealed strongly to her. She found herself smiling up at him, her eyebrows raised in astonishment at his extra inches and the ease with which he had disposed of her.

  ‘Goodness!’ she said.

  He grinned at her, his eyes amused. ‘You were on your way out, weren’t you?’ he reassured himself.

  ‘Yes, I was, though rather less precipitately. If you’ve broken my—’

  ‘I haven’t broken anything.’

  She felt her mother’s bottle with cautious fingers. ‘No,’ she agreed, ‘but I’m beginning to know how the ball feels in a Rugger scrum.’

  He laughed. ‘How does it feel?’

  She made a face at him and shrugged her shoulders. Nobody, but nobody, had taken such a liberty with her since she had been a small child and had appealed to every man who came to visit her parents to swing her right off the ground by her hands. She had grown out of such pleasures, of course she had, but she had been surprised to discover that there was still a childish bliss to be discovered in the helpless sensation of being swept off one’s feet.

  He took her package out of her hand, hooking the string round his fingers and tucked her hand through his arm. ‘What now, honey? Have you any more shopping to do?’

  She made a tentative motion of withdrawal, but, when he didn’t seem to notice, she changed her mind and spread her fingers on the fine texture of the cloth of the shirt he was wearing.

  ‘I thought you were going inside?’ she reminded him demurely.

  ‘That was before I met you,’ he returned, his gaze openly admiring her hazel eyes, the thick, dark lashes that surrounded them and which contrasted sharply with the pale gold of her hair, and the sweet, full lines of her mouth. ‘What are you doing in Isfahan?’

  She hesitated before answering, wondering who he was. She had never met anyone before who had given her such an instantaneous sensation of delight as this huge man. If she had been a child again, she would have yelled at him ‘More! More!’ exactly as she had then when she had wanted to be swung off her feet again. But she wasn’t a child, and she had no business to feel like that.

  ‘Are you a tourist?’ she asked him abruptly.

  ‘No, I’m here for a while. Is that what you’re doing? Seeing the country?’

  She shook her head. ‘I work here,’ she proffered shyly. And how glad she was that she did! How awful it would have been to be flying home with her father now! She caught up her thoughts, the colour running up her cheeks, and she averted her face from his bright blue eyes.

  ‘What do you do?’ he enquired. ‘You must have a very easy employer, to be free at this hour.’

  ‘It’s a special occasion. Until today I worked for my father, but he’s going back to England today, or rather tomorrow. He’s flying up to Tehran this evening.’

  ‘I see. And you’re staying on?’

  She nodded. ‘The work he was doing isn’t—finished. I’m going to stay on with the new man. I’ve been here from the beginning of the contract.’

  ‘A very valuable person,’ he congratulated her. ‘I could do with my predecessor’s secretary in my job. I’m coming in right in the middle of things. It’s my speciality, you might say, clearing up the mess other men leave behind them. I don’t like staying anywhere too long, and that, coupled with a determination not to get involved locally, helps to put most of our less efficient projects back on their feet.’

  ‘I’ve always heard Americans are ruthless business men,’ she observed. ‘You are American, aren’t you?’

  ‘We believe in getting things done,’ he answered. ‘I’m Casimir Ruddock. Most people call me Cas.’

  The Ruddock part had a familiar sound, but Casimir made him seem something strange and exotic. Casimir! What kind of a name was that?

  ‘My name is Stephanie Black,’ she told him.

  He picked up her left hand in his. ‘Miss Stephanie Black,’ he said with obvious satisfaction. ‘Well, Miss Stephanie Black, how about having dinner with me this evening and showing me the sights of the city? Would you have time after you’ve seen your father off?’

  ‘Tonight?’ she repeated. ‘I have to move into my new apartment—’ She broke off, staring up at him with wide eyes. ‘Yes, please, I’d like to. I’d like to very much.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. He gave her an amused look. ‘Was it such a difficult decision to make?’

  ‘In a way,’ she acknowledged. She didn’t want him to know how inexperienced she was at allowing herself to be picked up by strangers. He was the kind of man who knew many women and he wouldn’t have any time at all for the insecure, the gauche, or those who couldn’t look after themselves.

  ‘Am I such a bad risk?’ he pressed her.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looked about her. ‘I’ve never known a Casimir before!’

  ‘Don’t hold it against me,’ he smiled at her. ‘I come from Polish stock on my mother’s side.’

  Stephanie herself was English through and through. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Does it put me outside the pale?’

  She blinked. How could he think that? Belatedly, she realised he was teasing her and that he knew very well how she was feeling. She made a studied effort to retrieve the situation. ‘Why should it?’ she said. ‘I’m fairly broad-minded.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ll remember that!’

  She took a step away from him, feeling dwarfed by his great height. ‘I ought to be getting back to my father,’ she tried to assert herself. ‘I’ve stayed out for longer than I intended.’

  He put a friendly arm round her waist and a fountain of joy began to play inside her that he had no intention of letting her go so easily. It was delightful to think that he could hold her beside him with such a minimum of effort. She doubted if he would even feel her attempt to break free—if she were to make one, and she didn’t think she would. Not yet, at any rate.

  ‘I usually pack for him,’ she explained in a rush. ‘Neither of my parents is much good at that sort of
thing. I’m the domesticated one in the family.’

  ‘You’re too pretty for that!’

  She smiled. ‘Pretty? You must be prejudiced in favour of—’

  ‘Honey-coloured blondes? I never thought about it before.’ He considered the matter carefully, smiling down at her. ‘I’ve always had pretty catholic tastes when it comes to the fair sex, but you’ll do for me. Indeed you will!’

  She didn’t know how to answer that. It would have been trite to remind him that he didn’t know anything about her. She knew nothing about him either, but she wanted to. She wanted it more badly than she had wanted anything for ages.

  ‘But I’m not pretty,’ she told him.

  ‘Aren’t you?’ He was quite definitely amused now. ‘Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Haven’t you ever heard that?’

  ‘But one knows about things like that,’ she stammered. ‘I’d know if I were pretty!’

  ‘If you say so.’ He hugged her closer to him. ‘I’ll see you home if you really have to go, then I’ll know where to pick you up later on. But first, how do you feel about acting as my photographic model for a few minutes? The sun’s just right now for a view of the domes at this end of the Maidan and I want a figure in the foreground. Will you stand over there?’

  ‘Me?’ She was enormously flattered. ‘You won’t really be able to see me, will you? Not if you stand far enough away to get in the whole of the outside of the mosque.’

  ‘I’ll know it’s you,’ he said.

  She did exactly as he told her, standing in the portal of the mosque and looking up at the splendid tile-mosaics that side of the doorway. Each colour had been fired separately for the exact length of time that suited it best and made to fit the next-door piece until the whole intricate pattern was complete. It was a lengthy process, too lengthy for the impatient Shah Abbas who had ordered the mosque to be built, and on the other side of the portal the haft-rangi (‘seven-colour’) tiles had been used to speed up the work. These tiles were square and made up of several colours which were all fired at the same time. They served their purpose of covering the walls with colour quickly and economically, but they lacked the brilliance of the mosaic and their colours had faded a little over the years, not enough to matter, but enough to be noticed by a discerning eye.