by Lynne Graham
A baby. She felt ten feet tall. His baby! Exultancy claimed her. She was flooded by the dizzy joy of what this news would mean to Raschid. Then a shadow briefly fell over her rapturous, sun-filled outlook. Would he mind that it was her and not Berah? No, of course he wouldn’t mind. He would be simply floored by the shatteringly wonderful discovery that he was about to become a father. She couldn’t wait, she just couldn’t wait to tell him and see his reaction.
Having abandoned all hope of receiving an intelligible sentence from his patient, the doctor opened the door to usher in Raschid. He beamed benevolently. ‘Nothing to worry about. The most natural thing in the world, and she’s in excellent health. Your wife is expecting a baby.’
Overhearing the announcement, Polly was shot from her blissful anticipation. She sat up, agonisingly disappointed by the man’s thoughtlessness. Raschid’s back was turned to her. It must have taken him thirty seconds to speak, and she didn’t catch his response, for he was showing the doctor out again. Impatiently, expectantly she awaited his return. He’d be in shock—naturally he would be.
Raschid shut the door almost clumsily behind him. He lodged by the window, his dark head slightly averted. Too overcome to look at her? Then suddenly he moved. He smashed a clenched fist with punishing force against the carved window frame. Something cracked. If her life had depended on it, Polly couldn’t have produced a vocal sound.
‘When were you going to tell me?’ He faced her now, ashen in complexion, every harsh lineament of his bronzed features rawly defined. Silver eyes beat into hers, metallic arrows dipped in the poison of violent repulsion. ‘How do you look at me still? Have you no shame?’
‘Sh-shame?’ she echoed.
‘You think perhaps that I am so stupid that I might believe that it could be mine? Or did you think I would be so desperate to believe that I would credit that the impossible could be possible?’ He could hardly get his tongue round her language, but every cruelly destructive word hit its deadly target. ‘Then I grant you reason to doubt my intelligence. Though you have never told me the whole truth about him, I believed you when you said he hadn’t touched you, and now…to be presented…with the proof of your…’ His English failed him altogether as he struggled for mastery of himself.
Polly had turned to stone. Her backbone was ice, her eyes blank as an accident victim’s. Blood dripped from his bruised hand; he could have bled all over the carpet and she could have watched in numb inaction. Something indescribably breakable had snapped inside her. Something indefinably precious had been wrenched from her. The loss of faith, hope and charity was the least of the damage.
‘It’s your baby.’ She hated him for forcing her to make that demeaning contradiction. By the simple expedient of mentioning just how pregnant she was, she could have vindicated herself. But a freezing cold and alien anger was hollowly filling her. Would Raschid have done this to Berah? Would he have doubted her fidelity? Would he have flatly and finally pronounced that he could not be the father of her child? All the bitter resentment that Berah’s unassailable position in his heart had ever aroused in her had a stranglehold on her now when her wondrous gift was repudiated with sordid and unforgivable condemnation. He was hanging himself, and a twisted, unfamiliar part of her earned an embittered satisfaction from a ringside seat on the execution.
He was breathing fast and shallowly. ‘I am neither desperate nor stupid. Sterility is irreversible.’ He turned away from her. He was shaking, and then he turned back. ‘Comfort!’ he thundered at her, his eyes razors on her pinched profile. ‘Now I know what you feared—the consequences of your treachery. Is this why you came to my bed willingly here? Did you already suspect your condition? I see this all now…in its foul clarity!’
The depth of calculation he laid at her door stunned her. He didn’t want to believe because he didn’t want her baby any more than he had ever really wanted her. Had he cared for her at all, he would have wanted to believe no matter how hard it was to believe. Tremulously holding on to her composure, she whispered, ‘I don’t think that we can have anything left to say to each other. I’ll be on the first flight home.’
‘Home?’ The savage impact of his repetition struck her like a blow from a mailed fist. ‘You will never see him again, you will never go home!’ He swore that like a blood oath in the hot stillness of a seething silence. ‘Until I have decided how to deal with you, you will stay here.’
Polly wouldn’t defend herself. Exoneration was within her reach at the mere recall of the doctor, but she wouldn’t do that unless she was forced to it. The longer Raschid harboured his filthy suspicions, the harder he would fall when the truth came out, as inevitably it must. But it would be too late then for him to develop an interest in fatherhood. Nothing would change the way she felt now. This was her baby, and by hook or by crook, she would take it home to England with her. Raschid could do whatever he liked. She was finished with him. Furthermore, getting upset wasn’t good for her now. She had her baby to consider. Impervious to his unbelieving stare, Polly carefully settled herself back against the pillows and rearranged the covers, ignoring his lowering, dark presence.
When he swept out, she stared into space for a long time. Then she rolled over and the hot tears coursed down her cheeks. If there was a prize for consistent stupidity, it ought to be hers. Raschid had been determined to give their marriage a front of contented respectability. He had found the magic formula by making a fuss of her for a few days. How easily she had been deceived! How amused he must have been by the speed of her surrender! The bitterness infusing her was venomous and vengeful. It was like no feeling she had ever experienced before. It was implacable. Stifling her tears, she refused to recognise the enormous pain bottled up behind her anger. Stonily she listened to the dulled whine of the plane taking off, relieved at least that Chassa and Asif had left the day before. Now she was on her own. Suddenly she sat up again as it dawned on her that Raschid had to be sharing the flight with Mr Soames, who was as likely to refer to the baby as Raschid was unlikely to show his emotions. She smiled a not very pleasant smile. There was a strong possibility that Raschid might be back before nightfall.
But nobody came. It was the next day when she learnt that Ismeni had passed peacefully away in her sleep the night before the doctor arrived. Polly learnt quite accidentally. She had been using Raschid’s room, and when she went down into the harem she walked into a hive of activity. A crate was being packed with Louise’s surviving possessions. Polly’s shocked response to a death which surprised no one else made Zenobia anxious.
‘This lady, she was very, very old and not well in the head,’ the little maid murmured uncomfortably. ‘The doctor said it was her heart.’
The desktop was piled high with a mound of yellowing envelopes. As a hand moved to them, Polly gasped, ‘Leave them. I’ll deal with those.’
Heaping them in a box, she left the servants to their work. Upset by the news of the old lady’s death, Polly could not bear to stand by and watch them dismantle Ismeni’s shrine to her beloved mistress. But no doubt the servants, long hampered by Ismeni’s authority, were keen to springclean a majestic suite of rooms which had probably lain unused until Polly’s arrival. Since the palace had enjoyed only occasional use as a hunting lodge, there couldn’t have been many important female guests here over the years.
Raschid had laughed when she told him about the untouched room, and he had laughed even harder when she confessed her foolish fancies. She had had no fear of ghosts while she slept in his arms. You weren’t happy here, Louise, and I am, she had thought. Had the djinns that whispered out in the lonely places of the desert overheard her vainglorious boast? Just like Louise, she was discovering the dangerous folly of loving unwisely. And just like Louise she had been left at the Palace of the Fountains in splendid isolation.
Upstairs in the salon she flicked through the letters she had saved from the wastepaper basket. Indecipherable Arabic penned by the same hand covered every envelope, and there were do
zens of them. Polly replaced them neatly in the box. Someone in the family ought to examine them in case there was something of importance in them. As she set the box aside the hum of a helicopter coming in to land disturbed the quiet. Expecting Raschid and having coolly kept away from the windows, Polly was sharply disconcerted when Asif was ushered into the salon.
‘Are you your brother’s messenger?’ she demanded glacially.
Asif looked at her momentarily as if she had lost her wits. ‘Raschid does not know I am here. He wouldn’t thank me for interfering like this, and I hope that we can keep this visit of mine between ourselves,’ he breathed tautly.
Polly frowned. ‘I can’t think of a single reason why you should have come to see me.’
He took a deep breath and then dug out a cigarette. Lighting it, he inhaled slowly. ‘Look—it was I who was having the affair with Francine, not Raschid,’ he said abruptly. ‘You know what I am talking about, you don’t need to pretend. Jezra told you about her. It is the only thing that I could think of which could have caused this trouble between you and Raschid.’
Dealt the unexpected and, what was more, the most embarrassing of the unexpected, Polly felt her passage slowly down into a seat, her stunned eyes pinned to his flushed face. ‘You were having an affair?’
‘It is over now. You have no need to look at me like that,’ Asif muttered defensively. ‘When Raschid returned without you, he looked even worse than he looked when Berah died. If he has been stupidly honourable and chosen to be secretive for the sake of my marriage, then I must speak up.’
She swallowed, wondering how to tell him that he was barking up the wrong tree. ‘Asif, I really…’
He straightened his shoulders. ‘You must believe me, Polly. At least let me explain. She was a secretary in our Paris Embassy. I was infatuated with her. I moved her into an apartment, using Raschid’s name without his knowledge,’ he admitted heavily. ‘When rumours reached my father’s ears, Raschid was forced to cover up for me.’
‘You have a fine, upstandingly moral brother!’ she interposed in disgust.
Taken aback, he stared at her. ‘It wasn’t like that. He did it to protect Chassa. He did it to stop me doing something foolish and breaking up my marriage.’ His gaze flickered from hers as his voice dropped in volume. ‘And he did it because I fear our father’s anger. He is very fond of Chassa, considerably less fond of me. He also expects all of us to maintain strict standards and guard against scandal. I had been in trouble before, and my father is not a forgiving man. For a long time I have been working with Raschid to persuade him that Chassa and I need not live here all the time. If he had learnt it was I who was involved with Francine, all hope of that freedom would have been gone for good.’
‘I understand.’ Polly’s shocked anger on Chassa’s behalf was softened by a brief spasm of pity for Asif. He had abandoned his dignity in his mistaken belief that this woman Francine was at the bottom of her separation from Raschid. He had no idea of what was really wrong, and she had no intention of telling him.
‘And you believe me?’ he pressed impatiently.
Hurriedly she nodded. ‘Yes, I believe you.’
‘I have trusted you with a confidence that could destroy my marriage,’ he breathed. ‘Chassa doesn’t know about Francine and she must never know about her. I love my wife, Polly. I have come to my senses, and I will not risk losing her again. I am asking you to keep this a secret.’
Now that Polly had the entire story, she was quite convinced that Asif’s request was unnecessary, for she suspected that Chassa had known all along that there was another woman in her husband’s life. Chassa had also assumed that Polly would be in Raschid’s confidence. Ironically, Polly was grateful that she had not been. The awareness of Asif’s infidelity would not have relaxed her in Chassa’s company. She forced a soothing smile. ‘Naturally you can rely on my…discretion.’
‘I knew you would be an understanding woman.’ His fear allayed, he smiled brilliantly at her. ‘With a sensibly short memory. If you have falsely accused Raschid, you had better make the first move.’
‘Indeed?’ she murmured expressionlessly.
His wandering attention had fallen on the box of correspondence resting on a small drum table. He lifted one of the envelopes and without hesitation extracted the notepaper within while saying, ‘Be generous, else you will wait forever. You could get blood out of a stone quicker than you could get my brother to an apology, and after all, he has made a lot of firsts for you…’
‘What?’
Fixedly studying the letter in his hand, he glanced up absently and then grinned. ‘Furniture warehouses, flowers, meals in hotels, the swimming pool. Do you think my brother makes a habit of these things? He’s about as modern as my father, but recently he’s been behaving out of character. You’ve led him quite a dance, Polly,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ve never enjoyed anything quite so much as I have enjoyed watching Raschid having to pursue a woman for the first time in his life, and he’s basically rather shy…’
Polly reeled. ‘Sh-shy? Raschid?’
Asif was back with the evidently fascinating letter. ‘Deep down. Of course, the military education and my father soon put paid to that, but he’s anything but a womaniser. Never had the opportunity until that demented woman died, and after eight years of her, I expect he had gone off the notion…boy, is this hot stuff! Whoever would have thought it?’ he muttered, heading on to a second letter with appetite. ‘Where did they come from?’
‘Your grandmother’s desk.’ Polly wasn’t interested in the letters. ‘What did you mean by demented?’
‘I really shouldn’t be reading these,’ Asif commented. ‘But I know what I’ll be doing on the flight back. Wait until my father sees them! It’s the dates when they were written that have the shock value.’ He was tugging out more letters to examine them.
In frustration Polly said, ‘Will you forget those stupid letters for a minute? What did you mean by demented?’
He stared at her. ‘Do you know what these letters are? They’re love letters written by my grandfather, and he was obviously getting replies. I always understood that my grandparents separated long before she died, but they must have made it up, even though she stayed here.’ Finally appreciating that he did not have her full attention, he frowned. ‘What do you mean by what do I mean by demented? Didn’t you know that she ended up in one of those clinics for the mentally disturbed?’
She had turned pale. ‘No, I had no idea she was really ill.’
‘Raschid didn’t tell you? It’s not the sort of thing anybody wants to talk about, I guess,’ he conceded dubiously. ‘Berah was diagnosed as a manic depressive a couple of years before she died. Raschid went through hell with her.’
Polly’s surprise was unhidden.
‘If I’m not very charitable about her, it’s because she threw herself down those bloody stairs in front of Raschid, and I know what that did to him, and I lived with what that did to Chassa,’ Asif murmured roughly.
Polly looked at him strickenly. ‘She committed suicide?’
‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault, least of all Raschid’s. She was supposed to be in the clinic. It was her father who took her out of it. Achmed would never accept that she was really ill, and when he realised that my father was trying to persuade Raschid to divorce her…well, obviously he didn’t want that,’ he said. ‘He went off to Switzerland, decided off his own bat that she was normal and brought her home so that she would be there when Raschid returned from New York. What he didn’t know was that Chassa was pregnant. Berah heard the servants gossiping and she’d been off her medication for twenty-four hours. Raschid was always her audience. She died in his arms.’
Polly felt sick. Ashamed of every carping thought she had ever had about Berah in her ignorance, she whispered tearfully, ‘He didn’t tell me.’
Asif sighed. ‘Don’t blame him for that, Polly. Nobody wants to remember a nightmare. He would never have divorced her. She was as obs
essed by him as she was about kids. When she died, Raschid blamed himself, although he had done everything possible to help her.’
She sucked in air chokily. ‘He blamed himself because he couldn’t give her a child.’
Asif shifted uncomfortably. ‘I don’t believe a child would have made any difference. That instability must have been in Berah. It would have come out in some other way even if there had been children. I hope that Raschid accepts that now. He suffered enough with her when she was alive.’
Polly was fumbling for a handkerchief. Shorn of the smug sense of martyred piety which had buoyed her up from Raschid’s departure, she wanted to put her head down and cry.
‘I ought to be going.’ Uneasily Asif lifted the box and she pulled herself together long enough to see him out to the plane.
How could she have believed that Raschid was not suffering too? Only now would she let herself acknowledge the agonised pain he had struggled blindly to contain in front of her. She could have turned that whole confrontation round, but she hadn’t. Hatred could lie a hair’s breadth from love, and she had hated him for his lack of faith. She had wanted him to suffer. She had wanted to punish him for not loving her as he had loved Berah.
He had cause to condemn her for consistently avoiding telling him the whole truth about Chris. Raschid wasn’t stupid; he had suspected that there was more. She had fostered a fertile breeding ground for his suspicions to leap back to the fore. She should never have let him leave her believing those terrible things; two wrongs did not make a right.
It was early the next day when she heard the plane. Instinctively she knew that Raschid was on it. She was still in bed and she jumped up, calling for Zenobia and instructing her to say that she would be upstairs in fifteen minutes. But Raschid didn’t wait. Polly was brushing her tangled hair when he appeared. He halted six feet from her, and she looked even though she didn’t want to look. Senses parched of his vibrancy overwhelmed her poise, sapped her control as she set down the brush and took a seat on the ottoman behind her.
