by Isobel Chace
Rosamund was still cleaning up the bathroom when the front-door bell went. Jacob had left it exactly as she had thought he would. His dirty clothes were in a pile in the centre of the floor, exactly where he had dropped them as he took them off, and his towel lay in a sodden mass beside the pipe that disappeared into an open hole in the centre of the floor, sometimes carrying the waste water away and sometimes not. She pushed the lot into one corner and rushed hastily down the stairs again, throwing open the front door with an eager gesture. Standing on the lower step was Rupert. She was nonplussed for a moment, wondering what he was doing there at that time of the day.
“Hullo,” she said, almost shyly. “Did you forget your key?”
His dark eyes smiled at her.
“I gave it to Félicité,” he said. “It didn’t seem quite proper for me to have it when you two were alone in the house.”
Rosamund felt more bewildered than ever.
“Oh,” she said.
He looked amused.
“Oh!” he repeated, laughing at her. “Is that all you have to say?”
She pulled herself together with an effort.
“Jacob is back. Did you pass his car?”
Rupert nodded, the smile still tilting up the corners of his mouth.
“He seems to have come back full of fight!” he observed humorously. “He was quite sorry that I wasn’t waiting for him at the office, I think. Did he have hopes of having a tilt at me?”
Rosamund’s eyes swept up to meet his.
“Would anyone dare?” she asked him innocently.
He chuckled.
“Quite a few have!”
She considered this, her head on one side and with one hand still on the door-handle.
“But did any of them come off best? That’s the point, isn’t it?”
He looked a bit surprised. “I’m not infallible, you know, my dear.”
He took the door from her and firmly shut it, turning towards her and taking both her hands into his.
“If you go and put on a pretty dress, I’ll take you out to tea,” he suggested.
She pulled one of her hands free and swept back her fair hair from her forehead in a puzzled movement. She was dismally conscious that she hadn’t bothered to put on any make-up since Félicité’s departure and that the jeans she had dragged on first thing that morning had indeed seen better days.
“But why?” she asked.
He gave her hair a friendly tug.
“Why not? You can say it’s a reward for being a good girl last night, if you like.”
She was still uncertain of his motives, but she could find no hint of mockery in his smile.
“All right,” she said, and then, in case she had sounded ungracious when she hadn’t intended to be: “Thank you, I’d like that.”
His car was larger than the one Jacob used. She suspected that the seats were covered with real leather and the dashboard had a finished, polished look that spoke quietly of money. Rosamund settled into her seat with satisfaction, noting the soft, efficient click of the door as he shut it before he went round to his own side.
She had taken pains with her own appearance and she was naively pleased with the result. She had never been self-conscious about her beauty, if anything she had found it slightly tiresome, but today was something different. She was glad she was lovely to look at; glad, for once, that people grew quiet when she entered a room just because real beauty is so rare; glad because it didn't awe Rupert as it did some men she knew, but he appreciated it all the same as she could tell by the careless, sidelong glances he gave her, which told her little of what he was really thinking but gave her confidence all the same.
“Is this dress pretty enough for you?” she asked, hoping to pin him down, to make him admit in words that he found her something rather special.
He grinned.
“It’ll do,” he grunted. “Is it another of the ones you made yourself?”
She was disappointed. It wasn’t in the least what she had wanted to hear.
“Yes, it is,” she said crossly, and then added curiously, “who told you?”
He laughed.
“Why, Jacob did. It’s a source of great pride with him that you cost so little to keep. Didn’t you know?”
She suspected that he was teasing her.
“Jacob is never mean!” she snapped.
“No,” he admitted easily. “I gather it’s you who are far more thrifty than he is. You hold his purse-strings pretty tightly, don’t you?”
She was hurt to the quick.
“I don’t do anything right in your eyes, do I?” she said wearily.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “You have other attributes.” She wouldn’t ask him what they were. She wouldn’t! That would be asking for trouble, and she knew it. For a second she bit back the question, but it came out all the same.
“And they are?” she asked casually.
She could tell he was amused by the slight tightening of the muscles in his cheek. Did he always have to laugh at her?
“You have the attractions of the honey-pot,” he said.
So that was all he thought of her. She had asked him and he had told her, and there was absolutely no reason why she should be so disappointed. She had known all along, hadn’t she? He didn’t like her and he didn’t approve of her, and even if he did find her beautiful it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference. He kept his friendship for hard-boiled widows like Félicité who would take and take and never give him anything at all in return, and he wouldn’t even care, because he didn’t want anything from a woman anyway.
“But not all men have a sweet tooth,” she observed dryly.
He cast a curious look at her.
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that!” he retorted.
The walls of the houses were pink in the setting sun and the blue paint of the windows and doors made the shadows a rich purple. Sidi-Bou-Said sat, eastern and mysterious, welcoming the coming night. Only a few veiled women were still in the streets. It was the time of the men now and they thronged the narrow routes and the entrances to the cafes, some of them doing the shopping, some of them only out to pass the time of day. Most of them were dressed in the clothing of the west, but there were still a number who preferred the baggy camel-trousers of their ancestors and the long white robe that was so much cooler and so much easier to wear.
Rupert set the car easily down the steep slope of the main street, waving and nodding to the people he knew as they slipped past. He knew a great many people. Rosamund thought. One or two of the crowd she could pick out herself. The man who came to the door bringing fresh vegetables for sale on his donkey; and the man who walked through the streets every morning selling doughnuts dipped in honey. He was eating one himself now, holding it fastidiously between his finger and thumb and disposing of it with a single neat movement that told of many years of practice.
“I thought we’d go to an Arab cafe in La Marsa. I think you’ll like it,” Rupert told her as they cleared the outskirts of the little town. “They have a camel there.”
Rosamund forgot all about her annoyance with him.
“Actually inside the cafe?” she demanded.
He nodded.
“He draws up the water from the well,” he explained. “You’ll see for yourself. He’s quite a tourist attraction.”
“I should think he would be!” Rosamund agreed. It was a matter for regret that she hadn’t seen more camels in Tunisia, but they were mostly in the south where man-made machines had not as yet ousted them from their supreme position.
She noticed too that the policeman saluted him as they passed the President’s palace and she thought how very nice it was to be so important. It came almost as a shock to her, but, despite his low opinion of her, she enjoyed being with Rupert and she wanted the afternoon to go on for ever. She would have to be very careful, she thought, or she would be falling in love with him, and that would never do! That way lay nothing but heartbre
ak and disillusionment. No, she would be as distant as he was himself, enjoying his society when he was there and not caring at all when he wasn’t.
Armed with this new resolution she felt suddenly lighthearted and gay, and when Rupert had parked the car in a little side-street, she hooked her arm eagerly in his and said:
“Come on, then, show me this camel of yours!”
He fell in easily with her mood as they walked towards the small square by the mosque where the cafe was. He pointed out to her the small boys escorting their grandfathers round the shops so that they could read to him the prices and work out for him how much he should pay, making sure of the correct change, their small, earnest faces intent on their task, not in the least conceited by their new learning, but accepting it as their grandfathers accepted their lack of it. He showed her also the stalls where one could buy a small loaf of bread, split open and filled with tuna fish and olives, for a few pence.
“If you buy one,” he warned her, “be careful. The Arabs like their food very well seasoned and you might find it rather hot.”
Rosamund watched a small boy demolishing one with gusto and smiled.
“I think I’ll wait until I’m really hungry before I make the attempt,” she said.
The cafe took up the whole of one side of the square. It was wholly Arab in style, being built round an open patio where the patrons sat round small tables and drank coffee and gossiped. Green creepers climbed all over the walls and had been trained to cover some of the patio as well, keeping it cool and fresh in the hot summer evenings. But it was the middle of the patio that was the centre of attraction. The well was large and covered with pot plants, and round it, blindfolded and as fat as butter, went the camel, the long wooden shaft protesting as the water gushed out and ran into the containers provided. Just so have wells been worked since the beginning of time.
Rosamund watched fascinated. It was such a very well fed camel that it was slightly ridiculous in its lumbering walk round the endless circle. It looked both proud and pompous, and yet it had a charming face and the longest, most beautiful eyelashes that Rosamund had ever seen.
“They quite take the shine out of mine, don’t they?” she said laughingly to Rupert. “Did you ever see such gorgeous things?” But to her surprise he didn’t laugh with her. He found a free table and seated her on the better chair of the two, flicking his fingers for the waiter to come and take their order.
“What will you have?” he asked her.
She didn’t know what she wanted, for the selection was strange to her, so she left it to him to decide, content to try anything so long as it was authentically Arab. He ordered two green teas and then sat back in his chair and observed her carefully.
“You know, I think Félicité is right about you,” he said at last. “You never really forget that you’re beautiful, do you?”
She gazed at him for a long moment in mute dismay.
“I might have known it would be something unpleasant,” she said at last in even tones. “I can’t think why you bother with my society at all, Mr. Harringford!”
“Oh dear,” he said. “Must I apologise again?”
She was icily calm. “Please don’t! I’m not at all sure that I should think you sincere if you did!”
His eyebrows rose in a delighted self-abasement.
“Touché,” he said. “I asked for that and I got it. Perhaps I should amend my statement to other people can never quite forget that you’re beautiful.”
“That’s hardly my fault!” she said stiffly.
“No,” he agreed. “But would you have it any other way?”
She laughed, feeling once again at home with him.
“Only sometimes,” she admitted. “Mostly when people are silly enough not to look further than skin deep.”
His eyebrows shot up again.
“And am I dismissed into that category?” he asked.
She laughed again.
“I’m not sure,” she said honestly. “I can never quite make up my mind.”
He smiled, but he looked shaken too.
“Well, at least I can be glad of the doubt,” he said in a surprised sort of voice. “I shall try to dig deeper in future!”
Which might also be very uncomfortable, she thought. All she wanted was a nice quiet relationship with him that would make it possible for them to live under the same roof without stress. At least, she thought that that was what she wanted, but Rupert wasn’t that kind of a person! Being with him was like living on the side of a volcano, and that had its attractions as well.
She was very aware of those attractions when the two glasses of tea came and he scooped a spoonful of little white nuts into one of them for her and handed the glass to her.
“I don’t know if you’ll care for it,” he warned her.
She didn’t very much. It was very sweet and tasted strongly of mint, but it was pleasant to sit idly in the midst of the throng and to watch the world of the Arabian Nights go by.
When they rose to go it was almost dark and the call calling the faithful to prayer was booming out through the streets, magnified a hundred times by a microphone attached to the mosque. The liquid vowels of the ancient Arabic rose to a crescendo and fell away again into silence. In the cafe there was a moment’s silence and then the babble of conversation started again. Night had fallen.
There was a coolness in the air as they walked back down the street towards the car. Rupert held out a hand, palm upwards, to the sky and grimaced.
“It will rain again tonight,” he said. “Another week and it will be winter.”
“How can you possibly tell?” Rosamund asked him. It was difficult to believe that the weather would ever break, that there would ever come a day when the sun wouldn’t bear down on them in a great haze of heat.
“It’s already raining in the west,” he told her. “They’ve had floods at Tabarka holding up the work. We shall all have to go over and help with the spraying in a day or so. Want to come?”
It was a second or so before she could believe that he had really offered it.
“Oh yes,” she said. “I want to come. I want to see it all!”
He smiled down at her.
“Then you shall,” he said.
Jacob was already home when they got back. He came down when he heard the car and opened the door for them, a rather surprised look on his face.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
Rupert grinned.
“I took Rosamund to the Cafe Saf Saf to see some of the local sights,” he said. “How was the office?”
Jacob scowled.
“They blame all the delays on the rain,” he said. “But it’s not raining now! It’s wasting money having all that vast labour force standing idle, even if it is only for a couple of days.”
Rupert nodded his head decisively.
“I agree with you,” he said quietly. “We’ll get behind them and push tomorrow, and the following day we’ll go over and give them a hand.”
Jacob’s face brightened visibly.
“That seems a sensible plan,” he agreed. His eye fell on Rosamund’s dress. “You’re very smart,” he said. “Are we expecting company?”
She shook her head.
“Only ourselves. Rupert wouldn’t take me out until I got dressed up!”
She went through the patio to the kitchen and put on her apron. The meat looked far too freshly killed and very tough. It would have to be stew again. She sighed. It would have been nice to have had something rather special to round off the evening, but she doubted if the men would have really noticed. They were once again happily discussing the ways and the means of forwarding the project.
She was still cutting up the meat when her stepfather came into the kitchen. He stood in silence, watching her for a moment, and then he said:
“Did you ask Harringford to take you out?” Curiosity was blatant in his voice, and she was amused.
“No, he suggested it,” she replied.
<
br /> Jacob looked thoughtful.
“I wonder if he came home early especially?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly.
Jacob smiled.
“Anyway,” he said with an air of relief, “you can’t say he doesn’t make you welcome if he takes you out, can you?”
Rosamund felt guilty. Had he really been worrying about her? She looked at him with affection.
“I expect I imagined it,” she said. “We’re much better off here, as you said. It was different from what we’ve done before, that’s all. I expect that was why I didn’t like it.”
He accepted that gratefully, glad that he didn’t have to feel responsible for the situation any longer.
“I thought you’d come round to the idea,” he said happily. “You know, this project is about the most interesting I’ve ever been on. It will be such an achievement for us all if it’s a success. I wish you could see it for yourself.”
Rosamund looked up from the chopping board and smiled. “But I am going to see it! I’m going with you to Tabarka next time!”
His upper lip quivered excitedly.
“Shall I ask Rupert for you?” he suggested painfully.
She shook her head, unable to entirely conceal her feeling of triumph.
“Rupert himself told me I could go.” She giggled suddenly. “He’ll probably live to regret it, but at the moment there’s a truce between us!”
CHAPTER SIX
ROSAMUND was ironing one of her stepfather’s shirts when the front-door bell rang. She balanced the iron on the top of the refrigerator (it would barely reach the table, so short was the flex) and sped through the patio, opening the door with a flourish, helping it over that one place where it was inclined to stick with the inside of her knee. It was Louis.
