A House for Sharing

by Isobel Chace

  Rupert laughed delightedly.

  “And you prefer your meat fresh and wholesome?”

  She met his eyes bravely.

  “Yes, I do, don’t you?”

  He laughed again.

  “I do indeed!” he agreed. “I’m sorry, Felicity, I’m afraid you’ll never change the English!”

  The Frenchwoman pouted slightly.

  “You make me feel very foreign,” she complained. “But at least you will admit that we do have delectable sauces!”

  He grinned.

  “I’ll admit anything you like, my dear,” he said.

  But he wouldn’t be so easily forgiven, Rosamund thought, glancing across at Félicité; she hadn’t liked him siding against her even in so trivial an argument.

  She was glad when Rupert got out the car to run the Frenchwoman home. She put the dishes into soak for Yamina to do in the morning and went gratefully up to bed. Her dress, that she had liked so much, had been too warm for the evening and she felt hot and sticky. It was pleasant to slip into a delightfully cool nylon night-dress with a robe to match it over her shoulders.

  “Have you done anything about the bathroom gas?” she called out to her stepfather.

  Jacob looked guilty.

  “I’ll try to remember in the morning,” he promised her. She was still in the bathroom, cleaning her teeth, when Rupert came home. She could hear him whistling to himself as he locked the doors and came running up the stairs. He sounded very pleased with himself. He probably had reason to be, for she didn’t think Félicité would have been less than generous in her leavetaking, and somehow the thought didn’t please her.

  She whirled out of the bathroom and through the old harem bedroom, to come face to face with him. He raised his eyebrows slightly when he saw her in her night attire and grinned at her. “Are you still hating me, or can I ask you a favour?”

  She stood quite still, holding her gown tightly about her, and waited.

  “I’d be grateful if you would be nice to Félicité,” he said in a sudden spurt, as though he wasn’t at all sure that he had any right to ask it of her. “She lost her husband very recently and I think she’s rather unhappy.”

  She didn’t answer him. She didn’t believe for one moment that the Frenchwoman was missing her husband, but she thought it was rather sweet of him to think it.

  “Well, will you?” he asked in more his usual take-it-for-granted tones.

  “If you want me to,” she said, and hurried away from him into her room.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE knock on her door was repeated twice before Rosamund was sufficiently awake to answer it. She pulled her robe closely around her and pattered across the floor in her bare feet, peering round the half-open door. Rupert smiled at her sleepy face. He himself was already dressed and as immaculate as ever, leaning against the wall on one shoulder, and looking unnecessarily dark and handsome against the white wall.

  “Good morning,” she greeted him cagily.

  His smile broadened.

  “Good morning,” he drawled. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  She flushed slightly, knowing that it was part of her duties to get the two men their breakfast before they went off to work.

  “Is it as late as all that?” she demanded.

  “No, it isn’t late at all.” He looked slightly surprised.

  She felt annoyed with herself for having shown how anxious she was to please him, and retreated into her room.

  “I’ll come down,” she said.

  She dressed as rapidly as she could, banging on her stepfather’s door as she went past.

  “Is it time to get up already?” he demanded crossly.

  “It is,” she assured him firmly.

  He groaned.

  “And no hot water to shave with!” he complained.

  Her expression softened.

  “I’ll bring you up some,” she promised him. “But do see to the gas today, won’t you?”

  He sighed gustily.

  “It’s a promise,” he agreed.

  They smiled at each other with all of their old mutual understanding, and Rosamund wondered if she had been imagining the threatened gulf between them.

  “Breakfast will be in ten minutes,” she told him lightly, and laughed as he groaned audibly.

  She sped down the stairs, still in her bare feet, liking the feel of the cool tiles. The back door stood open and a single curious hen was standing in the entrance pondering on whether to come in. Rosamund shushed it away indignantly and firmly fastened the door, then went slowly into the kitchen. Rupert was standing by the lighted gas, cooking himself fried eggs with a nonchalant air.

  “If you’ll sit down at the table, I’ll finish that off for you,” she offered. She lit the second gas jet and placed a saucepan of water on it for her stepfather.

  Rupert gave her a quizzical look.

  “Sit down yourself,” he retorted calmly. “You don’t have to mother me too! I’ve been fending for myself ever since I left school.”

  She wouldn’t sit down, though. She stood and watched him as he flipped the eggs on to a plate with a single neat movement. “Those do you?” he asked her.

  She hesitated.

  “I—I don’t think I want a cooked breakfast first thing in the morning,” she protested weakly.

  “Nonsense!” he retorted. “This is the time when one wants to eat, before it gets too hot to bother. Sit down and eat it.” She obeyed him, not daring to make any further protest even when he added a large, thick slice of ham to the pile on her plate. “Good?” he asked her as she tasted her first mouthful.

  Her eyes twinkled with sudden mischief.

  “You do like to have your pound of flesh, don’t you?”

  He considered the point seriously.

  “Perhaps I do,” he admitted at last. He turned out his own eggs and sat down opposite her across the narrow table, watching her as he ate.

  “It’s nice to know you’re just as lovely first thing in the morning,” he said thoughtfully. “You girls are so clever with make-up nowadays it’s difficult to tell how much is real and how much is let’s pretend!”

  Rosamund looked at him with real dislike.

  “I consider my looks are my own business!” she said stiffly. He grinned.

  “Then you still have a great deal to learn,” he said lightly. “That sounds like Jacob yammering for his hot water. Shall I take it up to him, or will you?”

  She put down her knife and fork as tidily as he would have done and carried the boiling water carefully up the stairs. Jacob met her at the top and took it from her.

  “Bless you, my dear,” he said thankfully. “This house is damp. All my razors are rusty—every single one! Do you think you can remember to get me a packet today?”

  She nodded.

  “You are happy here though, aren’t you Jacob?” she asked him in sudden anxiety.

  “But of course!” he said, surprised. “Between you and me, I thought I might have been considered too old for this job. It means a great deal to me to have been chosen. It’s important work, Rosamund! Really important!”

  “I’m glad,” she said simply, and went downstairs to get his breakfast and to do the washing up.

  It was only just as the two men were leaving the house that Rupert remembered to tell her that Félicité had said she would be calling in for coffee that morning so that she could get to know Rosamund better.

  “At what time?” Rosamund asked him with a failing heart. She didn’t think she could possibly cope with the Arab maid and Félicité at one and the same time and there were so many things she wanted the maid to do.

  Rupert shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s no good trying to tie Félicité down to a time,” he said easily. “Give her some coffee and some Arab cakes and leave it at that.”

  Which was very easy for him to say, she thought afterwards, but she hadn’t the slightest idea where the Arab cakes came from, and it would mean
making proper coffee, for she was reasonably sure that Félicité wouldn’t drink instant coffee as she always did when she was on her own.

  Yamina was late that morning. She arrived at the back door with a baby under either arm and a flood of Arabic by way of explanation. Rosamund couldn’t understand very much of it, but she was completely captivated by the two dark-eyed children, who played and giggled with each other quite happily in one corner of the courtyard with the minimum of supervision.

  The morning passed speedily away and it was well after twelve o’clock before Rosamund realised that the Frenchwoman still had not come. It was unlikely, she decided, that she would come now, and it was difficult to tell whether she was pleased or sorry. She surveyed her preparations (which did not include Arab cakes!) and bade Yamina clear everything away. She was free for the rest of the day, she thought with a rising sense of excitement. Free to explore her surroundings, free to do whatever she pleased.

  She stood and gazed out of the window at the changing colours of the sea below, with the mountains beyond, on the other side of the bay, hazy and purple in the intense heat. It must be possible to find somewhere to swim, she thought. Somewhere where she would be offending nobody, but could get pleasantly, gloriously cool in the sea.

  She turned abruptly and went into her room, rooting out her swimming things, and called to Yamina.

  “Where,” she asked her, “can one go swimming here?”

  It was a moment or two before the maid understood her. She giggled when she saw Rosamund’s regulation black suit and pounced admiringly on her large figured towel, exclaiming on its unusual design.

  “I will walk with you to the road you must take,” she said finally, and wrapping her veil about her she escorted Rosamund round the back of some square blue and white houses and pointed down the road towards La Marsa.

  “You will find a fine beach down there,” she said.

  It was a very steep road, dropping straight down from the hill-top of Sidi-Bou-Said to the small town beneath where the President had his palace, out of the intense heat of Tunis itself.

  Rosamund found her way quite easily and in a few minutes had reached the wide sweep of golden beach that reached out to the navy blue sea. It was reasonably crowded with visitors from the nearby hotels and with the local young men who were not working. There were few women, but those who were there were smart and lovely to look at, their honey-coloured bodies gleaming in the sun.

  Rosamund found a reasonably secluded part of the sands and changed rapidly into her swimming things, making a little camp of her clothing so that she could find them easily when she had finished bathing. She was searching for a heavy stone to put on the top to hold them in the light wind when she became aware of a man’s shadow across her path. She looked up quickly, a little discomfited at being watched without her knowledge, but smiled when she saw him.

  “ ’Ullo,” he greeted her.

  She smiled, watching him carefully as he came a few steps closer towards her. There was no doubt that he was French, despite his deeply tanned skin and the slightness of his stature.

  “Hullo,” she responded cautiously. She knew that her looks were apt to attract any and everybody, but she liked the look of this particular man, and there was no doubt that it was very much more fun swimming with a companion.

  “You are English!” he smiled at her. “I thought you were a mermaid who had landed on the beach by mistake.”

  “On the contrary, I haven’t even been into the sea yet!” she retorted.

  He shrugged his shoulders, squatting down easily beside her. “Mermaids look just as lovely dry as wet,” he suggested humorously. “My name is Louis Dornant and, for the rest of the day, I am entirely at your disposal.”

  Rosamund hid a smile. His enthusiasm made a very pleasant change from Rupert.

  “How rash,” she said dryly.

  “Isn’t it?” he agreed. “I have some friends just over there—some Tunisians—perhaps you would care to join us? We are thinking of going out along the Bizerta road for a picnic.”

  She looked over to where he was pointing and saw a group of people, both men and women, happily sunning themselves on the baking sand.

  “I’d like to very much,” she admitted, “if your friends won’t mind. But I can’t be very late. I have to cook dinner for my stepfather, and—”

  Louis Dornant’s eyes crinkled with laughter.

  “A stepfather I can manage,” he said lightly. “As long as there is no jealous husband waiting for you?”

  She shook her head.

  “But I don’t speak Arabic,” she told him with a sudden loss of confidence. “I don’t even speak French very well.”

  “But I speak English beautifully!” he said in complacent tones. “You will have to talk to me all the time and I shall like that very much, so there is no need to worry, is there?”

  She laughed, tossing her head so that her hair fell back behind her shoulders.

  “No need at all!” she agreed.

  The Tunisians accepted her with a quiet dignity. The fairness of her colouring appealed to them and they were very easy and friendly, making her speedily feel one of themselves.

  “I have seen you in Sidi-Bou-Said,” one of the girls told her. “Don’t you find it the loveliest place in the world to live?”

  Rosamund met the girl’s laughing eyes squarely and forgot the almost complete discomfort of the house where she was living. “It’s beautiful!” she agreed warmly.

  The sea was warm, the tideless sea breaking gently against the sand in little pools of cream and white foam that disappeared again into the green and navy of the water. Rosamund swam until she was cool and then dried herself in the hot sun, brushing the salt off her arms and legs with her towel.

  “I think it is time we were moving,” one of the men said at last, and reluctantly they all changed back into their clothes and made their way over to the two cars that had been neatly parked at the edge of the beach. Both were grey and had been bleached in the hot sun until no shine remained to the paint and odd brown patches from the red undercoat were beginning to show through.

  Louis Dornant hooked his arm through hers and led her to the bigger of the two.

  “I am very flattered that you should trust yourself to my care,” he said to her. “I never expected to have such luck on any holiday!”

  She was amused.

  “You are on holiday now?” she asked him.

  “That’s right. Three weeks of lovely sunshine and then back to the sugar factory.”

  “Do you produce sugar here?” She was surprised, for she had never heard of sugar growing in North Africa.

  “Beet sugar. We process it just outside Paris. I’m only in Tunisia on holiday, worse luck! I could live on this heat for ever!”

  “But it does not last, mon ami,” one of the Tunisians interrupted. “One day soon we shall wake up and the heat will be over and winter, will have arrived. Then the rains will come and everything will become green.”

  Rosamund looked at him in disbelief.

  “I don’t believe it could ever be cold here!” she exclaimed. The Tunisians laughed.

  “You wait and see!” they invited her.

  They drove at breakneck speed out of La Marsa and down the wide avenue that led past the salt lake of Tunis and the airport into Tunis. There was some argument as to which was the better way through the city, but soon they had safely navigated their way through a series of narrow, one-way streets, past some new housing estates, and out again on the road for Bizerta. The hot humid air blurred the scenery like an old and faded film and even the well-fed, chubby donkeys looked hot and washed out with the heat.

  With all the windows open the air still hardly moved within the car, and Rosamund was glad when they drove off the main road into the entrance of a large farm. The house was French in conception, shuttered and foursquare, but with Arab touches in the decorations, and with a ceramic tiled hallway that could just be seen through the open
door.

  “We are expected,” one of the Tunisian men told her, “but I shall tell the women we are here and they will bring us food into the gardens.”

  Rosamund felt a little thrill of anticipation at the thought, and she exchanged a glance of pleasure with Louis.

  “It will be an orchard rather than the garden you are expecting,” he warned her. But he looked pleased, and she thought how nice he was and how very different from Rupert.

  “It was nice of you to bring me,” she murmured.

  He opened his eyes very wide.

  “My dear, with your looks I can hardly think this is the first time someone has tried to pick you up. You would enhance any group!”

  She blushed.

  “I suppose you did ‘pick me up,’ ” she admitted. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. I was just glad to see a friendly face.”

  His hand covered hers in a friendly gesture.

  “I was too,” he admitted. He smiled suddenly. “I have my own girl-friend back in France, so you see you are quite safe with me! In fact I shall be looking to you for advice as to what to take her back with me.”

  Rosamund returned the pressure of his hand.

  “I should be proud to,” she said with dignity.

  It was nice, she thought, to have someone she could relax with, someone who didn’t make her feel that she had to apologise for being beautiful and guilty because she was herself—as Rupert did. She pulled her mind away from him with an effort. It was silly to let him encroach into her thoughts! It would be time enough to think of him when she had to!

  The young Tunisian came back from the house and led them all through narrow, stylised gardens to the orchards at the back. An olive grove, with trees as thick as young oaks, and orange orchards with the large green-golden globes still hanging from the branches, looking as artificial as any Christmas tree. And further on the lemons, the apricots, and the vineyards that had only recently been stripped of their grapes. Beyond, the terra-cotta hills rose towards the sky, broken into lines by the terracing of their lower slopes to hold the young, new trees that would bring life back to their soil.