I perked up. “What makes you say that?”
“You’ve been stuck on the first page for the last two days. You’re brooding. And from the way you’re toying with your wedding ring on that chain, I’d say it has to do with Gabriel.”
I dropped the chain as if I’d been burned. Since I had been waiting to divorce Gabriel when he was lost, I didn’t have the right to call myself his widow, I reasoned, no matter what society and the law said. But I hadn’t the heart to chuck the ring away, either. I had worn it on a chain since the day of his funeral, tucking it securely into my décolletage even though it brought back the most painful memories of all. I hadn’t expected a wedding ring. We had eloped, and it had seemed like a particularly romantic bit of conjuring that he had managed to get me a ring. He pulled it off my finger on our wedding night to show me the inscription.
“When did you have time?” I had demanded.
He smiled. “It’s mine.” He held up his hand and I saw that the slender gold band he’d worn on his smallest finger, tucked under his Starke signet ring, was missing. “I found a jeweller to inscribe it this afternoon while you were looking for a frock to wear to the wedding. Have a look inside.”
I peered into the ring, puzzling out the script in the dim light. “Hora e sempre,” I read aloud.
He gave me a mock-serious look. “It’s Latin.”
“Yes, I may not have gone to university, but I’m not entirely uneducated,” I said, giving him a little push. “Now and forever.”
He dropped the ring back onto my finger. “I mean it, you know,” he said, his tone light, but his eyes desperately serious. “I suspect I’ll be a rotten husband, really frightful, in fact. I’m not very good at living up to anyone’s expectations but my own, and I’m abominably selfish.”
I looped my arms about his neck. “Yes, you’re a monster. I still married you.”
In spite of my teasing tone, he didn’t smile. Some melancholy had come over him and he put his hands to my wrists, pinning them gently.
“Damned if I know why. What I’m trying to say, Evie, is that my best is a bloody poor thing. But I’ll give you that best of mine, now and forever. Just don’t expect too much, will you?”
I had thrown my arms completely around him then, as much because I couldn’t bear the look of hunted sadness in his eyes as from passion. Some hours later, when he slept heavily, one leg thrown over mine, his face buried in my hair, I closed my hand tightly so I could feel the ring bite into my hand. Now and forever. We had lasted four months....
I let my gaze slide back to the passing Balkan countryside. “Those are particularly nice cows.”
Aunt Dove gave a sigh and took a seat, her beads still clacking. “If that’s meant as an encouragement to me to mind my own business, it’s feeble. Try again.”
“Mind your own business,” I said, smiling.
She shook her head. “It isn’t good for a woman to brood, you know. I think you need a man.”
“Of one thing I am certain, I do not need a man.”
Her expression was sympathetic. “Darling, I know you love Wally dearly, but I think there’s something you ought to know.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, heavens, Dove! I know that already.”
She gave a sigh of relief. “Thank God for that. I thought I was going to have to explain to you about boys who go with other boys. Did you figure it out for yourself or did he tell you?”
“A little of both,” I admitted. “One night we had rather too much gin and not enough to eat. I told him the whole story of Gabriel and sobbed a bit in his arms, and then he was holding me. Everything went sort of soft and blurry, and we fell into a kiss. I realised after about two minutes that neither of us had moved. It was what I imagine it would be like to kiss a brother. Or Arthur Wellesley. Just nothing there at all.”
“Really? Curious. One of the best kissers I ever knew was a poof—but he was royal. Perhaps it makes a difference,” she said consolingly. “But that doesn’t change anything, child. You need a proper seeing-to.”
“A ‘seeing-to’? What on earth—” I held up a hand. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
She pursed her lips. “Sex, dear. I’m talking about sex. You need some. And badly, I should think.”
“Aunt Dove, we are not having this conversation. Not now, not ever.”
She pretended not to hear me. “It isn’t your fault, my dear. I imagine after a man like Gabriel Starke, I’d be a bit choosy about my male companions, as well. But just because you won’t find someone to...er, fill his rather large shoes, so to speak, doesn’t mean you can’t have a perfectly pleasant time of it.”
“How do you know he had large shoes to fill?” I demanded. The fact that she was entirely correct was beside the point.
She smiled. “Because for the duration of your brief marriage you looked like the cat that ate the canary. Now, you fought like tigers and he was a crashing failure as a husband. That leaves the bedroom. Clearly, things were satisfactory there. More than satisfactory, if I’m any judge of these things, and I think I am. But just because you are still pining for Gabriel, that’s no reason not to have an interesting time of it. In fact, I think you should. A woman’s insides need lubrication, you know. They’ll go all dry and stick together otherwise.”
I ignored her vague grasp of biology and seized on something else. “I’m not pining for Gabriel. I can’t imagine why you’d think so.”
She rose and kissed the top of my head. “Child, you’re transparent as glass.” She went to the door. “I seem to remember the last thing Gabriel Starke ever gave you was a copy of Peter and Wendy. Interesting that you named your aeroplane the Jolly Roger.”
She closed the door before my shoe hit it, neatly marking the glossy wood.
The brooding over my failed marriage had taken its toll by the time we reached Constantinople. I was snappish and tired, with dark circles under my eyes, but the photographers were waiting. I powdered my face and painted my lips with the brightest crimson lipstick in my box and posed for photographs with a smiling Aunt Dove and a moulting Arthur. He shed bright green feathers all down the train platform, but by the time we had settled in for the last leg of the journey to Damascus he had perked up. Aunt Dove flirted her way through Customs outrageously and as a result, our bags weren’t so much as opened, much less searched. She plied me with pistachios—which I was darkly afraid had once been intended for Arthur—and in due course we arrived in Damascus. The approach to the city was not the finest. For that we ought to have come from Baghdad, crossing the desert to find Damascus shimmering in its oasis with the snowy bulk of Mount Hermon looming up behind. But rolling through the orchards of olive and lemon, pomegranate and orange, we saw Damascus standing on the plain, a gleaming, jewelled city of white in a lush green setting. It smelled, as all ancient cities do, of stone and smoke and donkey and spices, but over it all hung the perfume of the flowers that spilled from private courtyards and public gardens. Sewage ran in the streets, yet to me it would always be the city of jasmine, the air thick with the fragrance of crushed blossoms.
We collected a taxi at the station and after a harrowing ride through narrow streets, the driver deposited us neatly on the walk in front of the Hotel Zenobia, a new establishment in a very old structure. Once a pasha’s palace, it had been only recently converted to a private hotel. It was decorated in the traditional Eastern style with courts fitting together like so many puzzle boxes, each with its own staircases and tinkling fountains where gilded fins darted through the pale blue petals of the lilies. Outside, the manager—a tall, elegant Belgian—was waiting. He bowed and kissed Aunt Dove’s hand, murmuring something into her ear. She dropped her eyes and gave him a doelike look from under her lashes, and before I knew what was happening, he snapped his fingers for porters and in a very short time we were ensconced in the largest suite in th
e hotel. It was a delicious mixture of Damascene luxury and European sensibility with a wide veranda and comfortable sitting room linking our bedrooms. The bedrooms had modern furniture, but the sitting room was fitted with traditional Eastern divans, long and low and thick with tasselled silk cushions.
The maids bustled, unpacking and hissing at one another in French and Arabic, occasionally breaking into giggles when they discovered something unexpected like my leather aviatrix suit or Aunt Dove’s French underwear. But I merely stood and surveyed the surroundings while Aunt Dove flipped through the post that had been waiting for us.
I gave her a suspicious look. “Do you know the manager? From before I mean?”
Her expression was determinedly innocent. “Who? Étienne? Oh, our paths have crossed from time to time.” Before I could ask more, she took me in hand. “We’re travel-fatigued,” Aunt Dove pronounced. “It happens when one passes too quickly from one culture into another. I’ve always said trains were uncivilized. One ought only ever to travel by steamship or camel.”
“So sayeth the woman who has learned to fly my aeroplane,” I remarked. A large bowl of orchids had been placed upon a low table between the cushion-strewn divans and I bent to sniff it.
Aunt Dove waved off my remark. “That is entirely different. Aeroplanes are novelties, not real travel. No one would ever want to use them for anything other than publicity. Now, I want a beefsteak and a cigarette and a stiff whisky, not necessarily in that order. Go and wash for dinner, child. It’s time to see Damascus.”
* * *
Thanks to a broken strap, I was ten minutes later than Aunt Dove in getting ready and found her in the crowded lobby. She was wearing a gold turban with her great paste emerald brooch and an armful of enamelled bangles that clattered and clinked as she gestured. The lobby was one of the many courtyards of the hotel, this one furnished with the usual divans and endless pots of flowering plants and palms. Soft-footed servants trotted back and forth with trays of cocktails and little dishes of nuts while a discreet orchestra played in the corner. The place was thronged with international visitors, most of whom were craning to get a look at Aunt Dove. She was chatting animatedly with the handsomest man in the room. There was nothing unusual about either of those things. She often dressed with originality, and one of her greatest skills was finding the most attractive and charming men to do her bidding. She caught sight of me just as I descended the stairs and waved an elegant hand.
“Evie, darling, come and meet Mr. Halliday. He’s a British diplomat posted here to keep an eye on those wily French.”
I extended my hand and he took it, staring at me intently with a pair of delightfully intelligent grey eyes. “How do you do, Mr. Halliday? Evangeline Starke.”
“Miss Starke,” he said, shaking my hand slowly and holding it for an instant longer than he ought.
“Mrs.,” I corrected gently. “I am a widow.”
A fleeting expression of sympathy touched his features. “Of course. The war took a lot of good men.”
I didn’t bother to correct him. Gabriel had died during the war—just not doing anything useful like actually fighting.
He glanced to Aunt Dove. “Lady Lavinia was just telling me about your Seven Seas Tour, but she needn’t have. I’ve been following your exploits in the newspapers. It’s dashed thrilling. Will you be doing any flying here?”
“Not just yet. My plane is still in Italy. Aunt Dove and I are here for pleasure. We mean to relax and revive before we move on to the Caspian for the next leg of our tour.”
“Damascus is the place for that,” he assured me. “Lots of picturesque sights and loads of delicious gossip, but it’s just the spot for shopping or lounging in a bathhouse or lying by a fountain and letting the world pass you by.”
Those pursuits would interest me for about a day, but I smiled. “I’m very interested in how the interim government is faring, as well. I know the French are determined to meddle, and I’m curious how their efforts compare to the British presence in Palestine.”
Mr. Halliday’s brows lifted in delighted astonishment. “I say, beauty and brains. What a refreshing combination! Most women only want to talk tea and scandal, but if you really want to know the truth of the political situation, I am more than happy to give you the lay of the land, so to speak.”
Aunt Dove smelled the opportunity to make a new conquest and leaped on it. “How very kind of you, Mr. Halliday. My niece and I were just about to go to dinner. Won’t you join us as our guest?”
He accepted quickly, extending his arm to Aunt Dove. I followed, watching him as he deftly negotiated the crowds to secure a taxi and handed her in. He turned to me and I put my hand in his.
“Mrs. Starke,” he murmured.
“Evie, please,” I told him.
To my amusement, he blushed a little. To cover it, he gave swift and fluent instructions to the driver and turned to us with a beaming face. “I think it’s going to be a devilishly good night.”
* * *
In fact, it was an extraordinary night. The restaurant where we dined was very new and very French with exquisite food and wine. Aunt Dove was at great pains to be charming to Mr. Halliday, who himself was a delightful companion. A tiny European orchestra was tucked behind the palms, playing popular music, and as the evening progressed, bejewelled couples rose and began to dance. I was tired from the journey—or perhaps it was too much champagne—but the whole of the evening took on an otherworldly quality. It seemed impossible that I had come so far in search of a ghost, and as I sat sipping at my bubbling wine, I began to wonder if I were making a tremendous fool of myself. The war was over. And on that glittering night, it became quite apparent that the world had moved on. Why couldn’t I?
Mr. Halliday was charming company. He was an expert storyteller, and his anecdotes about the expats and officials in Damascus ranged from the highly amusing to the mildly salacious. But he’d chosen his audience well. Aunt Dove loved nothing better than a good gossip, and much of our meal was spent chatting about her travels in the South Pacific, an area Mr. Halliday longed to see.
“Oh, you must go!” Aunt Dove instructed. “If nothing else, it’s a lovely place to die.”
Mr. Halliday burst out laughing then sobered as he looked from Aunt Dove to me. “She is serious?”
“Entirely,” I admitted. “Auntie won’t travel anywhere she thinks would be unpleasant to die.”
“That’s why I don’t go to Scandinavia,” she said darkly. “It’s far too cold and bodies linger too long. I’d much rather die in a nice warm climate where things decompose quickly. No point in hanging around when I am well and gone.”
Mr. Halliday looked at me again and I shrugged. “Ask her about her shroud.”
“Shroud?” His handsome brow furrowed.
Aunt Dove smiled broadly. “Yes, a lovely tivaevae I picked up last time I was in the South Pacific.”
“Tivaevae?”
“A quilt from the Cook Islands,” I explained. “Auntie travels with it in case she dies unexpectedly. She wanted something nice for her cremation.”
“You ought to come up and see it,” she told him, leering only a little. “It’s quite the loveliest example of South Pacific needlework—all reds and aquas and a green so bright it matches Arthur perfectly.”
“Arthur?” Mr. Halliday looked well and truly lost.
“My parrot, Arthur Wellesley,” she replied.
She beckoned the waiter over for another bottle of champagne, and Mr. Halliday threw me a rather desperate look. “I wonder if I might prevail upon you for a dance, Mrs. Starke? Lady Lavinia, if you will excuse us, of course.”
Aunt Dove waved us off and I rose and moved into his arms for a waltz. He was a graceful dancer, but not perfect, and it was those little missteps that made me like him even more. He apologised the second time he t
rod on my feet, pulling a rueful face.
“I am sorry. I don’t seem to be able to concentrate very well this evening.” But his eyes were warm and did not leave my face.
“All is forgiven, Mr. Halliday,” I said.
“John,” he said automatically. “Your aunt is an entirely original lady,” he said. “Like something out of mythology.”
“She can be,” I agreed. “By the way, if you haven’t any interest in sleeping with her, you ought to know what she means when she asks you to come up and look at her shroud.”
He tripped then, and it took him a full measure of the waltz to recover.
“Mrs. Starke—Evie. Really, I would never presume to believe that I would behave in so ungentlemanly—”
I cut him off. “Mr. Halliday, it’s none of my business what you get up to. I just wanted to offer a word of warning in case her intentions came as a surprise. They often do.”
“Often?” His voice was strangled.
“She is affectionate by nature,” I explained. “Demonstrably so. And while many gentlemen are receptive, it can be a trifle unnerving when some poor soul goes to her rooms actually expecting to see her shroud or examine her stamp collection.”
He smiled, almost against his will, it seemed. “Does she have a very fine stamp collection?”
“She doesn’t have one at all.”
“Oh,” he said faintly.
“Sometimes gentlemen misunderstand her intentions,” I explained. “It occasionally results in unfortunate events. I shouldn’t like to see a repeat of the Aegean.”
“The Aegean?”
“There was a young man who thought she was actually kidnapping him. It was all a tempest in a teapot, I assure you, but he happened to be the son of the local magistrate, and things got rather out of hand. That was when I took up drinking as a hobby.”
He smiled deeply, and I saw he had the suggestion of dimples. It wasn’t fair, really, to compare them to Gabriel’s. His had been so deep a girl could drown in them when he smiled. In repose, Gabriel’s face had been decidedly handsome, but when his mouth curved into a cheerful grin and his dimples flashed, the effect had been purely devastating.
City of Jasmine Page 3
