Rapture of the desert

by Violet Winspear

  "So you are admiring my second greatest treasure, eh, child?" Madame came into the morning-room at that moment and Chrys nodded and gave her a warm smile.

  "What is your other treasure, madame? May I be impulsive and ask to see that as well?"

  Miroslava chuckled and gestured with a ringed hand at her grandson. "By all means take a good look, matushka. I brought from Russia just two things that meant my very life to me, my marriage goblet and my unborn baby. There stands the son of the child I bore in the desert, who was destined never to know his father. I am grateful to the powers of heaven that Anton knew his own father as a boy. He was a fine man. Anton, of course, is more of a devil, but what woman is proof against a devil who has charm?"

  "And what man is proof against Vera and her magical hand with French-fried potatoes?" he smiled, coming to the table as Vera wheeled in the food trolley and pulling out a chair for his grandmother. Chrys replaced the goblet on the sideboard and quickly took her own chair The sun was now streaming through the lancet windows and making delightful patterns across the lace tablecloth and picking out the silver lights in the cutlery and the toast rack.

  "I never partake of a big breakfast," said Miroslava. "Toast and coffee are sufficient for me, but I enjoy watching young people at work on good food."

  "We aim to oblige you in every respect, Grand'-mere." Anton broke a roll and helped himself to butter while Chrys was busy helping herself to eggs, slices of gammon with the fat all crinkly, and puffed chips as golden as new pennies.

  Vera joined them at the table after she had brought in the coffee, and it was a light hearted meal, with Madame and her companion full of tales about the old days in Russia. Chrys enjoyed this hour because she felt secure ... it was being alone with Anton that shook her composure and made her feel as unsure of herself as she felt of him.

  "You are not returning to London straight away ?" Miroslava enquired of Chrys, her dark eyes roving the fair hair of her young guest, lit by the sunlight and softly loose on her shoulders. "It would be such a pity, for you have no rehearsal to dash to. Why not spend the day with us ?"

  "With you ?" Chrys spoke eagerly. "Yes, I should enjoy that. You can tell me all about the Russian Imperial ballet . . ."

  "Ah, but I did not mean for you to stay cooped up indoors." Miroslava glanced in Anton's direction. "It will be good for my grandson to have the company of a nice girl for the day. You can drive into Applegate and take with you a basket lunch to enjoy on the beach. You can forget ballet for once, matushka, and relax in the sun. All work and no play is not good for a pretty girl. It is against nature."

  "But —"

  Anton quirked an eyebrow at Chrys. "But is a word invented by the mule to excuse his obstinacy. You like the seaside, no?"

  "Yes," she admitted. "But I don't want to bother you by expecting you to take me sightseeing."

  "I assure you it will be no bother." And as he leaned forward to help himself to marmalade, his eyes looked into hers and held a ray of amused awareness. "Even nice girls can be quite distracting, and I have nothing else to do."

  A remark which in itself struck her as the height of decadence. Nice men worked for a living; they didn't play at cards for money, or gamble on the horses.

  "Anton means that he is idle when he is here in Eur-

  ope," Miroslava said, as if she had noticed the way Chrys had looked at him, a hint of censure in her blue eyes. "There is work enough at El Nadir, so don't pretend, Anton, that you are lazy and improvident. I never brought you up to play all the time, now did I? I taught you that play is the reward for hard work, as it is in ballet. Now confess to this girl that you are not a rake, for I believe she has the idea that you are."

  "Confession, this early in the day?" His eyes laughed, and with a swift supple movement he was on his feet, around the table, and on his knees to Chrys —who gazed at him with fascinated blue eyes despite herself. His face seemed to her to be almost frightening in its male beauty, like the golden mask of a tombed prince ... as if indeed there were things buried in his soul which he had kept hidden a long time and would not reveal ... unless like a stroke of lightning love came to him and made him reveal himself.

  "Oh, do get up off your knees! " The words broke from her, half-laughingly. "You make a mock of everything."

  "Better than making a gloom of it, surely?"

  "I — I suppose so." She sat there as tense as a cat confronted by a tiger, aware in all her nerves that he wasn't as playful as he made out to be. "Well, what do I have to do? Stroke you to make you purr?" she demanded.

  "Would you like to stroke me?" His eyes were wickedly amused, and yet a soft, beckoning lambency had crept into them, and she felt her clenched fingers uncurling and the oddest, most maddening urge was creeping through them. To offset this she struck at his shoulder and felt the hard muscle and warmth of him. "You haven't the frame of a layabout, milor."

  "I fence and I ride," he drawled. "The pastimes of a rake."

  "True, but if you stay down there on the rug much longer you'll have housemaid's knee, and I understand that it's rather painful."

  He gave a laugh and in one supple movement was standing over her. Then he glanced at Miroslava. "You see how it is, Grand'mere ? The English girl remains elusive and hard to catch because she refuses to surrender her independent right to have a mind and a will of her own. She is the cat that bristles instead of the minx that flatters. She is a challenge, eh?"

  "Well?" Miroslava studied Chrys, who sat there with a characteristic tilt to her chin, and the elusive outline of a dimple near her lips. "Are you pleased to be a challenge to a man who has been wooed by two European princesses, a Romanian countess, and the daughter of one of the richest oil sheikhs ?"

  "My unsophistication is the challenge, madame. I amuse him — for a day or two."

  "You think so?" Miroslava studied her grandson, and then she changed the subject until breakfast was over and they went into the salon, where Madame took a dark Russian cigarette from a box and fitted it into an ivory holder. Anton lit it for her, and then she sat down on a divan and gave a little satisfied sigh. "You are going to the beach, you two?"

  "Of course." He didn't wait for Chrys to agree or disagree. "I must bathe in English waters before I make my return to the desert. What a memoir du coeur, what coolness to remember under that hot sun — that of the English sea and a girl like Chrysdova. The combination is irresistible."

  "I really think that I should be getting back to London," Chrys said, in a cool voice. "My sister will be worried about me —"

  "You can telephone to let her know that you are perfectly all right," he said, and there was a sudden note of iron in his voice, a warning that his mind was made up for her and that she would be unwise to argue with him. "Come, the phone is in the hall, and while you give Dove a ring I will go and make sure that Vera packs a perfect lunch for us."

  He took her by the wrist and she knew it would be

  useless to appeal to Miroslava, who sat smoking dreamily, as if the scent of her cigarette awoke memories which she didn't wish to have disturbed. His fingers were like steel about her wrist, and she cast him a furious little glance as he made her go to the phone. "I suppose," she said, "this is how you treat your desert women?"

  "Invariably," he drawled. "I am always dragging one or the other around by the hair."

  Chrys glanced at him, and when his lip quirked she had to smile herself. "A harem would bore you, wouldn't it, milor? You like to go out and hunt your prey; you don't like tamed birds."

  "The ennui of anything tame would be impossible to endure." He gestured at the telephone on the little round table. "Go ahead and ring your sister. Tell her you are in perfectly safe hands."

  "You must be joking! " Chrys scoffed. "You forget that Dove has seen you."

  "You think I am entirely what I appear to be?" "Aren't you?"

  "No more than you, cherie." And lightly, as if to soothe her ruffled feelings, he passed a lean hand over her silky hair. "Soie
sauvage, a golden banner of your spirit and your courage. You are well named, Chrysdova. Now," his tone of inflexibility lay under the velvet, "inform Dove that you will not be home until tonight."

  "Tyrant," muttered Chrys, as she dialled London and the number of the office where her sister would be at work. Anton watched her and waited long enough for her to be in speaking contact with Dove, then he sauntered in the direction of the kitchen and left her to explain that she was down in Kent still and would be staying the day as the weather was so good.

  "Are you alone with him?" Dove's voice echoed along the line with a thrill of curiosity and indignation in it. "Are you being quite wise, Chrys? I mean, you know what he is! His reputation is awful where

  women are concerned! "

  "It isn't quite true." Chrys was surprised by the cool authority of her assertion. "I don't know how it ever got about that he's women-mad — actually he isn't a Casanova at all but much more of a lone wolf."

  "Still a wolf, darling, so mind he doesn't eat you up." Dove gave a laugh. "Do you like him, Chrys? Come on, open up to your sister at least. Do you find him good-looking?"

  Chrys thought of the lean, wicked distinction of his face, in which were set those mercurial grey eyes, slanting outwardly, and densely lashed "Yes," she said briefly. "The fact of the matter is that I'm here as the guest of his grandmother, so for heaven's sake, don't go jumping to any romantic conclusions, Dove. She's a wonderful woman and has danced in ballet herself, so we have plenty to talk about." Chrys knew she was fibbing a bit, but she really didn't want Dove to get the idea that a romance was about to bloom between herself and a man who was merely using her as a distraction. A man who had been wooed by titled women didn't fall in love with a girl such as herself.

  "Oh, so he has a family here in England?" said Dove, surprised and just a little note of disappointment in her voice, as if she had half-hoped that Chrys was in danger of a romantic seduction. She had often asserted that Chrys was too cool about men and needed to have her heart shaken up. "I didn't know about that."

  "Well, you know now, sister dear, and you can return to your typewriter and your thoughts of Jeremy without being anxious about me and my honour." Even as Chrys used the word she rather wondered if it would still be intact at the end of the day. Was she quite certain that she could handle a man like Anton? Her nerves quivered, forcibly, as he suddenly appeared in the alcove from the interior of the flat and stood there silently, framed by the arch in his dark

  narrow pants and his soft white shirt, his eyes narrowed like a pleasured cat.

  "Bye, Dove! Yes, I shall be sure to make the most of the sunshine." The receiver sang as Chrys laid it in the cradle, and thrusting her hands into the pockets of the hip-length jacket she stood there daring those grey eyes that glinted behind the double lashes that were black as soot. Her heart beat quickly — had he caught the word she had used a moment ago? She hoped to goodness he had not. It might give him ideas! If he needed any?

  "The food basket will be ready in a while," he said blandly. "We can buy you a swimsuit at the beach, and possibly some suntan oil. Your skin is very fair and must be protected. How easy, Chrysdova, to protect the outer covering, but always what is inside us must remain vulnerable, eh?"

  "You don't strike me, milor, as being at all vulnerable," she rejoined. "You have remarkable assurance, which I believe it would take a lot to shake."

  "You think I am hard and arrogant?" His expression didn't change, but she saw the sudden flexing of his forearm muscles, as if he controlled an urge of some sort — perhaps to shake her, a mere slip of a girl who dared to say honestly what she thought of him. Far too many women had flattered him, and so made him contemptuous of them. Did he desire to be contemptuous of her? Was this his reason for making her stay the day with him? Was he out to prove that she was like all the rest — out to get a man.

  She tilted her chin and the pure contours of her face revealed the pride she felt in her independence. "Les extremes se touchent," she said in French. "We are so extreme you and I that we are bound to clash as individuals. I think you have great charm and that you use it deliberately to play games with people. People think of you as a sort of modern-day Casanova, but you don't really love women, do you? You really like to be cruel to them in revenge —" There she broke off and

  colour stormed into her cheeks. What was she saying? Whatever had led her to speak like this? Was she attempting to reform the man ?

  "Don't stop there," he drawled, "just as you were about to tell me that I am not a great lover at all but really a great fraud."

  "Well, you are," she flung at him. "All the time you are secretly laughing at women for falling for you. You judge them all by your mother — except for Miroslava, and she, of course, is an exceptional person. Such people are rare."

  "Are they, Chrysdova ?" His direct stare was very disconcerting. "So rare, do you think, that I am never likely to find one for my own?"

  "Not if you go on looking in all the wrong places," she rejoined. "I think in your heart that you distrust love and so you avoid it be meeting people you know you don't really like. Sophisticated people —"

  "Like my mother, eh?"

  "I imagine she was like that."

  "Lovely and heartless — the mirage and never the real oasis."

  "Yes — but it really isn't any of my business." Suddenly she was in desperate retreat from the subject and wished she had never mentioned it. She cast him a quick, almost appealing look, and then hastened in the direction of the salon. Miroslava was there to offer a little protection from him for a little while longer.

  An hour later Chrys was inevitably alone with Anton for the rest of the day, beside him in his car as they drove through the sunlight in search of the sea and the sandy beach at Applegate.

  The warm breeze blew her hair from her brow and played caressingly about her neck. She had to relax from this maddening tension which had built up between herself and Anton, and closing her eyes she willed the relaxation of the ballet dancer just before the curtain rose out there on stage. She coaxed each toe, each finger, each separate muscle to uncoil, and she

  told herself that the best way to get through this day with Anton was to pretend to herself that it was a piece of theatre and not to be taken seriously for one moment. She must enjoy it as she would a pas de deux with a particularly expert dancer, and not allow anything he said or did to impose itself on her inner self. She knew him for what he was. She knew that he came to Europe in search of fun and that his real life lay in the desert.

  The old dancing discipline imposed on herself she allowed her eyes to open and met the sun with a smile. "It is an enchanting day," she said. "It really would have been wasted in stuffy London."

  "I understood that it had become swinging London," he murmured. "I must say that on this occasion I have noticed some oddly dressed, and rather shaggy young people around the town. They all seem to have diddy bags with them and to look in a perpetual trance, as if they never stop walking."

  "I believe a lot of them are tourists from other countries," said Chrys, and her smile deepened. "Tourists of a slightly different calibre from yourself, milor. One could never say that you are oddly dressed and ungroomed, and I am sure your worldly possessions would not fit into a diddy bag, as you call it."

  "I have fitted them into a desert tent before now," he rejoined. "We have our herds at El Kadir and I have more than once followed them into the hills with the men."

  "What is it like," she asked, "to be the lineal head of a desert tribe? I gather that you are."

  "I am. My father was accepted as almost a son by the Sheik who befriended Miroslava, and when he died a hero in the war it was almost by mutual consent of the various clansmen that I take his place. The Sheik's workers and servants had been in his family for generations; born and bred to his leadership, and his own sons died as boys. His workers loved my father, and it seemed natural enough that I take his

  place. The people bring their debts and
sins and troubles to me, and I sit in judgement on them. This may sound arrogant to you, but it is a natural way of life in the desert. I take responsibility, and when I am absent the job falls to my deputy who has the impressive name of Haroun bin Raid."

  "Tell me about Belle Tigresse." She had relaxed almost unaware, for in the strangest way he seemed much nicer when he took on, in a manner of speaking, his desert cloak.

  "It is a large, white-walled house with a central dome, set within a walled garden that shelters it from the desert winds and the summer khamsin. It has shutters of blue, and the doors are painted blue — to ward off the evil eye." Anton gave her a quick side-glance. "Did you know that blue is the colour the Devil cannot tolerate? That he hides from it as if it might blind him? It is the colour of heaven, sky and sea. The colour of the Madonna's cloak. And the colour of the Son of God's eyes. Did you know, mutushka?"

  She shook her head, and tried not to believe that his words had also shaken her heart.

  "What are the social events in the desert?" she asked quickly.

  "Births and marriages are our main events." Now a thread of amusement ran through his voice. "These are much celebrated, and my chef makes a huge coucous d'honneur to send to the family in which a marriage or a birth has taken place. The head of the family sends to me in return, as Sidi of the tribe, a huge slice of wedding cake, or a box of sugared almonds from the baptism of the child. This is called baraka, the good will between man and master."

  "Don't you attend their parties?" she asked, for a sudden picture of him all alone in his white-walled house arose in her mind, stretched on a divan, grey eyes half-closed against the smoke of a narrow strong cheroot.

  "Occasionally. Arab weddings are odd, erotic af

  fairs, but sometimes in the evening of a christening there will be a fire dance, which is to say that bonfires are lit and couples dance around them, and the old half-Spanish, half-Moorish songs are sung, for most of the musicians that attend these festivities are from the cities such as Fez and Morocco. They are marvellously evocative songs. You should hear them, matushka. You would enjoy them."