A House for Sharing

by Isobel Chace

  A Bedouin family, left over from the scores that had come up from the south to pick the grapes, watched them curiously from a distance, the vivid scarlet and purple of their clothes showing up clearly against the greeny-grey of the olive leaves. They returned the greetings that were called out to them and then departed, the women carrying their water-pots on their shoulders as their bare feet moved silently over the sandy soil.

  Grass woven mats were laid out in the shade of the trees and the Tunisians sat down, their feet stretched out before them, and waited for the food to be brought out of the house. Rosamund and Louis sat at one end, propping themselves up against a couple of handy trees and letting the peaceful atmosphere seep into them as they half-listened to the bright chatter that went on all around them.

  A number of women came out from the house, carrying plates and laden trays of food which they laid down carefully on the woven mat and smilingly withdrew. There were cut-up chickens, meat and parsley balls, a variety of cakes and pastries and glasses of booza, a kind of custard made from sorghum and flavoured with almonds and hazel-nuts.

  “Taste everything!” they all insisted to Rosamund. “These are all Tunisian things and very good! I think you will like them!”

  It was true, they were all excellent, though the cakes were too sweet for Rosamund’s taste. The afternoon passed so quickly that she was surprised when the shadows began to lengthen and the colours began to come back to the distant views as the land cooled down.

  “What’s the time?” she asked Louis. “I mustn’t be late home.”

  He got swiftly to his feet.

  “Then I had better take you back now,” he offered. “Most of my friends are going on to Bizerta to dine and dance—”

  “But don’t you want to go with them?” Rosamund asked him.

  He grinned a trifle cheekily.

  “To be honest, I’d much rather see you home,” he told her.

  Rosamund blushed.

  “And what would your girl-friend say to that?” she demanded, laughing up at him.

  He looked puzzled for a moment and then smiled wryly.

  “I think she’d like you,” he said.

  She was pleased, more pleased than she would have been if he had offered her any other compliment. She took his outstretched hand and allowed him to pull her up to her feet. Louis Dornant, she thought, was the salt of the earth, and she was glad, very glad she had met him.

  The Tunisians crowded round the car, loth to see them go, laughing and chatting with one another, half in French and half in Arabic.

  “We shall see you again!” they called out to Rosamund.

  “See you in Sidi-Bou-Said!” one of the women added. Rosamund noted her carefully, for she had already learned how important it was to a Tunisian to be seen and recognised in the street, even on the briefest of acquaintances. The woman smiled, her whole face lighting up into something that was nearly beautiful. “Your next-door neighbour, Menena, is my sister,” she explained. “Perhaps you will see me there.”

  In the softer evening light, the beauty of the land was more apparent. The towering purple hills were immense, even in the distance, and the colours of the red and sandy soil and the greens of the trees were almost brilliant. The oranges were gaudy and could have been lit from within, and the sky became almost green before it darkened to mauve and the vivid pink of the dying sun.

  The heat and noise of the narrow streets of Tunis were cooling into long, shadowed passages where whiterobed figures, both male and female, glided in and out of the half-hidden doorways—an eastern scene, broken by the staccato clangour of the younger generation, Westernised in clothing and behaviour, who roared through the main streets in search of entertainment.

  But once out of the city there were few cars to be seen. The still waters of the Lake of Tunis reflected the sky and a flock of long-legged flamingoes stalked through the stinking weeds in their endless search for food.

  “I am afraid we may be rather later than we intended,” Louis warned her.

  Rosamund blinked. There was no reason for it to matter, she assured herself, and yet she didn’t like the thought of not having everything ready the moment Rupert set foot over the threshold. It was her reason for being in the house, after all.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said aloud.

  But she was glad when they came in sight of Sidi-Bou-Said, standing at the top of its promontory, the white houses quite pink in the last of the evening light. Louis swung the car up past the more fashionable houses that looked out across the bay and round into the cobbled main street. Rosamund thought for one awful instant that his car would be too wide to make the narrow side street where Rupert’s house was situated, but it just slid through with only inches to spare on either side.

  Rupert’s car was already standing at the end of the cul-de-sac, competently parked out of the way of other users and looking clean and very English in this land of unpolished vehicles. So the men were already home.

  With a sinking heart she opened the door of the car and slid out on to the dusty road.

  “Will you come in?” Rosamund asked Louis.

  He hesitated.

  “Please,” she said.

  He smiled, and she knew that he understood perfectly just how reluctant she was to go in and face Rupert alone.

  “I believe you’re scared of your stepfather!”

  “Oh, nobody could possibly be scared of Jacob!” she exclaimed.

  His eyebrows went up in a teasing glance.

  “Then it must be the other fellow.”

  Rosamund felt as though she had been caught out in some disloyalty.

  “He’s too perfect to be true,” she muttered shamefacedly, and then corrected herself. “No, he isn’t at all really! It’s just that he makes me feel so incompetent—just another useless female!”

  Louis laughed at her impatience.

  “But surely you are lovely enough not to have to care?” he teased her.

  “That’s exactly what I mean!” she said angrily. “What has the shape of my nose got to do with it?”

  He laughed.

  “We are led to believe that the shape of Cleopatra’s had quite a bearing on events. Why not yours?”

  She glared at him and pushed open the front door with more energy than judgment, and they both entered the house on a note of laughter.

  Rupert was standing at the top of the stairs. He had already changed into a loose silk shirt and some pale lightweight slacks that fitted him exactly, and he was holding a drink in his hand.

  “Come in and have a drink,” he called down to Louis.

  He could be very charming indeed, Rosamund thought. She watched Louis mount the stairs with eager feet, his very French smile making him look younger and somehow gauche. She turned resentfully to Rupert and met his eyes squarely, wondering how it was that he made all the people around him seem lesser beings than himself.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” he asked her. Laughter lurked in his eyes and she knew he had a pretty fair idea of what she was thinking and that he was amused rather than annoyed.

  With a heightened colour she made the introductions and stayed long enough to see Rupert pour out a generous drink for the Frenchman and another for himself, before she crept down the stairs again to see what she could do about the dinner. She stood for a long moment in the centre of the kitchen in a mood of silent rebellion, cross with herself for being quite unable to come to terms with Rupert and indignant at the prospect of being expected to wrest yet another meal out of thin air without any proper tools.

  Yamina had left all the vegetables neatly prepared and she saw that Rupert had brought home some thick steaks of a large fish that she didn’t recognise, and, with some misgiving, she put these in a pan and began to fry them slowly through on a very low gas. From upstairs she could hear the sound of laughter and knew that the two men had found something in common to discuss. She wondered what it was, for she couldn’t imagine Louis taking anything ver
y seriously, not even his sugar refinery, and Rupert, with his emphasis on the letter of the law, must surely be as maddening to him as he was to her.

  She put the lid on the frying-pan and went upstairs again. Rupert rose to his feet, his. manners as immaculate as everything else about him, and poured her out a drink, waving her into the one comfortable chair.

  “So you went on a Tunisian picnic?” he said with a grin.

  She took her drink from him with a quick smile.

  “Yes,” she said. “Félicité didn’t come.”

  He frowned and turned away from her, back to Louis.

  “Perhaps we shall see more of you some time?” he said pleasantly. It was an obvious, if pleasant dismissal, and Louis took it as such.

  “I’ve enjoyed meeting you,” he said with obvious sincerity. He drank down his drink and put it down with a bang on the glass-topped table. “I’ll be round again as soon as possible, if I may?” He stood up and grinned at Rosamund. “Coming to see me off?” he asked her.

  She preceded him down the marble-tiled steps with as much dignity as she could command, uncomfortably aware of Rupert’s dark eyes following her every movement. Of course he didn’t know that Louis had a perfectly good girl-friend back in France, and she wasn’t sure that she was going to tell him. He could think exactly as he pleased, and she didn’t care a rap!

  She held the door wide open for Louis and smiled at him.

  “It’s been a lovely day,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

  He chuckled softly, in the back of his throat.

  “Thank you, my dear,” he said, and bent forward, kissing her lightly on the lips. “You didn’t tell me half enough about Rupert Harringford,” he whispered. “Or what he is to you! However, I think I passed as a suitable friend for you!”

  Rosamund looked at him in an outraged silence.

  “You mean he asked you—?”

  Louis laughed.

  “Don’t hold it against him,” he said. “He has your welfare very much at heart!” He smiled again. “He’s a very nice chap,” he insisted.

  An insistent smell of frying fish reached the small hallway, and with a. hurried wave to Louis as he got into the car, Rosamund went flying into the kitchen to rescue it.

  But how dared he vet her friends? she wondered angrily to herself, as she turned the fish over in the pan. How dared he? And she disliked him more at that moment that she had ever disliked anyone in her whole life. She heard footsteps coming across the patio and prodded the fish viciously with a fork. But it was not Rupert at all. Jacob stood apologetically in the doorway, his lip twitching in triumph.

  “The man’s come to instal the new bottle of gas,” he announced proudly. “Shall I take him upstairs?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DISLIKING Rupert was an unsettling, unsatisfactory experience. Rosamund watched him closely as he neatly served the pile of fried fish on to the three plates and passed them round the table. His hands were strong and he used them well and with confidence. Rosamund accepted her own plate from him and put it carefully down in front of her with a feeling of triumph. The fish were beautifully cooked! Could it be that at last she was mastering that horrible stove? She felt a little glow of satisfaction that was immediately obliterated as she became aware that Rupert was handing her one of the vegetable dishes.

  “Thank you,” she said coolly.

  His dark eyes looked amused.

  “What have I done to annoy you now?” he asked. “You’re a prickly piece, despite that soft mouth!”

  Rosamund flushed. It was a completely unexpected comment, and she was all the more embarrassed by it because her stepfather was present and apparently thought it very funny. But Rupert went straight on, not waiting for an answer.

  “I suppose you know that Jacob has to go out to the site tomorrow?” he asked her quizzically. “That leaves you and me to quarrel here to our hearts’ content.”

  Rosamund was shocked.

  “I don’t quarrel!” she denied hotly, and saw the delighted laughter in his eyes. “Well, not much,” she amended, “and only with you. You have the most unfortunate effect!”

  He laughed out loud.

  “So I’ve gathered!” he agreed.

  Jacob Dane looked from one to the other of them, smiling benignly.

  “It will only be for one night,” he assured Rosamund. “I’m only driving over to see how everything is going. It will make a very pleasant break from Tunis.”

  She would have liked to have gone too, but she wouldn’t ask with Rupert there, watching her every reaction. He would say that the whole project was private and confidential and that she should mind her own business. But it was going to be awkward, being left behind, alone in the house with Rupert. She wondered uncomfortably whether it had occurred to anyone else that there would be nobody else in the house at all, and whether she ought to offer to go back to the hotel for the night.

  “What time are you leaving?” she asked.

  Jacob’s lip twitched excitedly.

  “Very early! It’s quite a long drive to Tabarka. Right across the country. It will be delightful! I believe that the scenery is very fine on the way, lots of cork forests and mountains that have snow in the winter—things like that. And of course it will be very much cooler.”

  Rosamund smiled at him, glad that he was looking forward to the trip so intensely.

  “Do you want me to call you?” she asked him.

  Rupert smiled too.

  “I’ve already volunteered to do that,” he said quietly, and she said no more in case he began to make pointed remarks about her needing her beauty sleep. She didn’t think she could bear any more in that vein at the moment.

  “I see,” she said.

  Rupert’s eyes rested lightly on her face.

  “You don’t see at all, but never mind. I’ve begged a bed with one of the men from the office tomorrow night, so that needn’t concern you. And I’ve asked Félicité to come over and keep you company.”

  Rosamund detached a piece of fish from the backbone with care. So it had all been thought out and arranged by the two men before they had seen fit to even tell her about it. Even a week ago Jacob would have rushed home to tell even about the prospect of such a trip. He would have sat on the bed and watched her pack for him, and he would have told her all about it and made her feel a part of the excursion. It was unhappily different now, and she wished again that they had never agreed to live under Rupert Harringford’s roof.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” she said sharply. “I had already asked Louis to dinner, and I don’t in the least mind about spending the night here alone—in fact I think I should enjoy it!” Her eyes swept up and met Rupert’s squarely. His remained dark, amused and enigmatic.

  “I don’t expect she’ll want much entertaining,” he said lightly. “She’ll enjoy meeting Louis—” he paused, a touch of mischief lighting up his face—“and I think I’ll invite myself to dinner to make the numbers even. You don’t mind that, do you?”

  “It’s your house!” she said.

  “But I’ve made you free of it!” he retorted. “I shan’t come unless you want me to.”

  “But you’ll invite Félicité—”

  He smiled as though he were speaking to a very young and awkward child.

  “I think it better that you should have someone with you in the house,” he replied. “I think, when you think about it, you will yourself.”

  Which was all very reasonable, for, when she did think about it, she knew she wouldn’t really have liked to have slept all alone in the house. When the wind got up it made strange noises against the ill-fitting windows, and she knew quite well that while the back door certainly had a bolt on it, someone would only have to lean rather heavily on it and the door would fall open. She shivered slightly.

  “Perhaps it is better,” she admitted in muffled tones, “but—”

  Again Rupert’s eyes looked amused.

  “But Félicit�
� is not the guest you would have chosen? Nevertheless you will be her hostess for the night, so you will do everything you can to make her feel welcome!”

  He said it very charmingly, but there was no doubt that it was an order. Rosamund flushed slightly.

  “What time will she be coming?” she asked.

  Rupert shrugged his shoulders.

  “She muttered something about tea-time,” he replied.

  Rosamund said nothing more, but she couldn’t help feeling that it was going to be a long, long evening.

  She was awake when her father left the house. It was not quite light, but it was no longer dark with the darkness of night. She heard his grunt of protest as he rolled out of bed and the two men’s laughter as Rupert cracked some joke. It was abundantly obvious that they didn’t need her, and so she turned over and tried to go back to sleep again, but she was only half successful, falling into that dreamy state that is neither waking nor sleeping and which leaves one tired and dissatisfied for the rest of the day.

  It was an effort to get up when it was time to get Rupert’s breakfast, and she could hear the gas roaring in the bathroom, telling her that he was running himself a bath, long before she could bring herself to actually get dressed and go down to the kitchen.

  He looked very nice, she thought, when he came downstairs.

  The whiteness of his shirt against his clean tanned skin made her the more conscious of his quiet muscular strength. There was spare flesh anywhere, nothing that wasn’t hard and tough and masculine, and she was very conscious of him as he stood in the doorway and watched her as she put his eggs on a plate. “What are your plans for today?” he asked her.