A House for Sharing

by Isobel Chace

  “Am I welcome?” he asked her.

  She grinned at him, her excitement obvious in her bright eyes. “As the flowers in May,” she said flippantly.

  He came in and shut the door behind him, shutting out the strong sunlight and the white, dusty road.

  “Well,” he said, “tell me the news. Have you found a house of your own? Or are you going back to England?”

  She was a little put out.

  “Neither. I love it here in Tunisia, why should I want to go back to England?”

  He laughed.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I thought the relief of not having Rupert Harringford breathing down the back of your neck might have brought that flush of victory to your face!”

  She was silent as they walked back through the patio.

  “I don’t dislike Rupert,” she said at last.

  The glint of laughter in his eyes mocked her.

  “Oh, come off it!” he said. “We all know you’re oil and water together. He likes his women to be doormats, and you’re just not the doormat type!” He surveyed her efforts at packing spread over the floor of the patio. “You are going away,” he accused her.

  “Yes, but not for long. We’re all going to Tabarka to look at the project.”

  Louis whistled softly under his breath.

  “Are you?” he said. “How did you manage that?”

  She hugged herself with glee, smiling up at him.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But I’m so glad, glad, to be seeing it for myself. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it!”

  He laughed again.

  “I can see that for myself!” he said.

  She went back to her ironing and he turned round one of the chairs and sat on it astride, watching her.

  “And is that terrible woman going with you?” he asked her. She made a face at him.

  “No,” she said. “At least I hope not. So far there’s been no mention of her.”

  “I’m glad.” He shrugged his shoulders apologetically. “I am sorry to say it of a countrywoman of mine, but she is not very nice, is she?”

  Rosamund laughed at his attempt at English understatement. “I don’t like her at all!” she said firmly. “I’ve tried, but I can’t.”

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t think there’s much there to like, other than that extremely polished exterior.” He chuckled. “She doesn’t much like being put in the shade by real beauty, does she?”

  But Rosamund couldn’t find it amusing. She was still hurt that Rupert should have found her vain about her looks.

  “I sometimes wish I were downright ugly!” she said gruffly.

  Louis hooted with laughter.

  “Tell that to the birds!” he teased her. He rose and hugged her to him with an affectionate gesture. “You’d better put me to work,” he suggested. “What else do you have to pack?”

  He was a very useful person to have around, Rosamund discovered. He knew exactly where to buy the lemonade and beer that Rupert had asked her to get and he threw himself into the preparations with his usual gusto, thoroughly enjoying himself as he poked about the house, sorting things and throwing other things into suitcases.

  “Do you always pack for your stepfather?” he asked, when they had spent ten minutes looking for a spare pair of Jacob’s nylon socks.

  Rosamund smiled at him with a touch of wickedness.

  “Always,” she said.

  “At least Harringford seems to keep his things in order!” he commented. It was true too. There was no difficulty in packing for Rupert. It was merely a matter of opening his drawers and transferring the things into his suitcase. She could have wished that her own packing were as easy, but she found it complicated by not knowing exactly what to take, and by the time she had changed her mind once or twice, it took her nearly as long to pack her own things as to pack Jacob’s.

  When at last they had finished they sat in the patio and drank julep drinks that Louis had learned to make from an American friend of his. Rosamund sat in a deck-chair and listened to his idle chatter and she thought he was a very pleasant person to know.

  They took Rupert’s car because it was bigger and because it was more comfortable for the long drive across the country to Tabarka. The little fishing village was the last place in Tunisia of any note before Algeria and the customs and the frontier police had made their home there in almost total obscurity, but adding a touch of prestige to what would otherwise have been forgotten except by a few tourists in the season who went to swim off the golden beaches, or to dance at one or other of the two main hotels. The roads leading there were adequate, but apt to suffer in the rains from subsidence and other troubles, which meant re-making them often, and that in turn meant a great many diversions cut across the open spaces—bone-shaking roads along which one moved in a cloud of dust to come back with relief to the official tarmac for some respite before the next diversion.

  The first part of the road Rosamund knew. It was the same as the one Louis had taken her on for the picnic. It looked strangely different though, for even after the little rain that they had had, green shoots had sprung out of the ground and what had been barren before was now green and fertile. It made it very plain what water could do to the rich soil and how little was needed to make it productive.

  She sat beside Rupert on the front seat, her stepfather behind, kept company by the crates of beer and ginger ale, and she was very conscious of the strength of the sun as it poured into the car. She was frankly envious of Rupert’s dark tan and the toughness of his skin. Her own was fair enough to burn and the heat was almost unbearable.

  “We’ll stop at Béja and have some lunch,” Rupert promised her, and from then on she watched the sign-posts anxiously, counting the kilometres between her and it as though her life depended on it.

  When Béja came though, it came as something of a disappointment. The lower town was uninspiring and dirty and the higher part stood hidden behind its walls, mysterious and a little threatening. It hardly seemed the prosperous town of her imagination, famous when Rome had conquered the area for both the quality and the quantity of the wheat that grew round about. The wheat still grew in abundance, but little sign of the prosperity had reached the town.

  It soon became apparent that it was impossible to get a European meal there. The only restaurant was an Arab affair with large, steaming cauldrons in the entrance and the minimum of furniture inside.

  “It will be very clean,” Rupert told them doubtfully. “Are you willing to try it?”

  Rosamund blenched a trifle at the prospect. The paintwork was really very dreary and the concrete floor was still wet from being washed. There was too a basin in the corner that had a dripping tap that had left a stain across the bowl.

  “Of course,” she said bravely.

  He didn’t give her time to change her mind. He shepherded her and Jacob into the restaurant and found them a bare, scrubbed table and a couple of rickety chairs, then he went off to have a long discussion with the owner about the various different stews while they sat in a dazed silence and looked about them.

  “At least it’s cooler in here,” Jacob said at last.

  Rosamund nodded gravely.

  “But I’m terribly hungry,” she confessed. “I do hope I shall like their food better than I like their tea!”

  Jacob grinned reluctantly.

  “You always said you’d try anything once!” he reminded her a trifle smugly.

  The bread came first, half a loaf of heavy, bitter bread that was surprisingly good. This was followed by enormous bowls filled with meat and vegetables heavily seasoned with harrassa, which was quite as hot as any curry that Rosamund had ever tasted, but with a quite different flavour. She dipped her fork into the stew and timidly took a piece of meat to her mouth. To her relief she found it very good indeed, though hot enough to bring the tears to her eyes.

  “I like it,” she told the two men in triumph, and they smiled at her.<
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  “Have some water,” Rupert suggested. “It will help to wash it down.”

  There were other customers who came and went as they were eating. Most of them were nearby workers who came in every day for a bowl of soup, or stew if they could afford it, and then went out to brew tea with their friends on the street in the smallest teapots Rosamund had ever seen. She doubted whether many of them held even one full cup of water. But they drank it in tiny glasses and didn’t mind how often they had to brew it up again, sitting round the small charcoal stove in a circle, gossiping away the rather lengthy lunch hour.

  They all washed as they came in, drying their hands on the enormous table-napkins provided, and then spreading them out as a tablecloth, beneath their plates, using the free end to wipe their mouths and to keep their clothes free of drips of gravy. They ate with a certain dogged relish that told of their hunger, one arm on the table and the other manipulating their spoon or fork. They enjoyed their food and they laughed a great deal, getting noisier and noisier as their appetites were appeased.

  The proprietor was pleased to have European guests in his restaurant. He came himself to ask them if they had everything they wanted and offered to send out for a bottle of wine for them if they were nervous of drinking the water, but Rupert shook his head, telling him not to bother.

  “How are the roads between here and Tabarka?” he asked him.

  “There have been storms over there,” he said. “Many cars that were expected here have not yet arrived. But who knows? Perhaps they have already done the necessary repairs.”

  “How much rain have they had?” Rupert asked.

  “I cannot say. But they say it rained for thirty-six hours without stopping. The summer never goes without a struggle, but I am afraid the winter will soon be upon us.”

  He moved away to serve his other customers, pulling his robes closer about him as though he could already feel the first chill of winter on his body.

  “One thing,” said Jacob, “the water will soak straight through the sand. It shouldn’t hold things up much, if they have the stuff to spray on the ground.”

  “If!” Rupert grunted. “Come on, we’d better get going. If we’re going to have difficulty getting through, I’d prefer not to have to do any travelling after dark.”

  He paid the bill with a single note, exchanging the customary elaborate courtesies with the proprietor. Rosamund stood in silence behind him as befitted a woman in a Moslem country, and they collided in the doorway, both of them trying to get out at the same moment.

  They righted themselves, Rupert apologised to her and she apologised to him. But his body was hard, she thought, as hard as wood, and she wondered why she liked the strength of him so much.

  She was silent as Rupert drove the car through the outskirts of the town and out once again on to the open road. The prickly pear along the edge was patchily in fruit, absurd red growths sticking out at angles from the fleshy leaves that were covered with prickles. Occasionally they would pass a man, his cotton robes swathed tightly around him, sitting sideways on a donkey as it plodded along, carrying him home from his fields. There were few other cars on the road.

  “Is the rain serious?” she asked at last.

  “It will be if they can’t get the stuff through,” Jacob said fussily. “I can’t think why they didn’t send it earlier!”

  Rupert grinned.

  “I shall consider it even more serious if we have to spend the night in a ditch!” he laughed.

  But as yet there seemed little danger of that. The roads were still in good repair and the oueds, the river beds that dried out in the long drought of the summer, were mere trickles of brown, muddy water, though each one seemed fuller than the last.

  “They’ve only had showers here,” Rupert explained. “The heavy rain has all been further west.”

  The words sounded ominous, but Rosamund couldn’t quite believe that there would really be any difficulty, for the roads were still very good.

  Much of the land they passed through was being reclaimed for agricultural use. The sides of the mountains were planted with young trees and the first of the great dams that were being built to conserve the water of the Medjerda River began to appear on the signposts. At long last something was being done to prevent the lifesaving waters from escaping down to the sea. Rupert and Jacob enthusiastically pointed out the various features of the reclamation schemes, and the excitement grew in their voices as they explained what the government was trying to do. Rosamund’s own imagination was caught by the National Tree-Planting Festival on the last Sunday in November, when the whole population went out and planted trees, five million of them in one day, as a gesture of faith in the good things to come. It was difficult to believe that the torrential rains, in the past, had damaged anything up to a hundred and seventy-five thousand acres, each time they had poured over the alluvial plain that was the delta of the river.

  “What made you choose Tabarka for the project?” Rosamund asked.

  “Oh, ask Rupert!” Jacob told her. “He chose it for us.”

  Rosamund looked enquiringly at Rupert. His dark glasses hid his eyes from her, though they were always enigmatic as far as she was concerned. She doubted if she would ever learn to read them.

  “I guess I didn’t have enough work to do,” he said slyly. “I was bored with only the normal quota of oil-wallahs to look after.”

  They began to climb soon after, leaving the dry lands and entering the cork forests that clung to the sides of the hills. The trees had recently been treated, the cork being cut away anything up to seven feet up the tree, stripping the parasite away to the ground. They looked very strange, the inner bark very red and new, as though they had been ring-barked and left for dead, rather than patiently farmed for their valuable crop.

  “It’s a good thing Félicité isn’t with us,” Rupert remarked. “It always wrings her heart to see the trees newly cut.”

  Rosamund didn’t like to say that she thought that that was sheer affectation, so she said nothing. Jacob was not so inhibited.

  “Since when has it done them any harm?” he demanded.

  Rupert cast Rosamund a sidelong glance.

  “Since when have women been logical about these things?” he asked.

  Rosamund met his eyes indignantly.

  “We’re not all given to silly sentimentality!” she said hotly.

  He glanced at her again. She suspected that his expression was one of indulgence, but his eyes were too enigmatic for her to see clearly.

  “I wasn’t complaining,” he said gently.

  No, he wouldn’t be! But then he liked Félicité! She found that quite incomprehensible, but it did mean that he probably liked women to be a little silly. Perhaps it all helped him to feel even more superior and aloof!

  “There are times when I dislike you very much!” she informed him loftily, but he only laughed.

  “You forget, we’ve cried a truce,” he reminded her.

  She smiled a little reluctantly.

  “So we have,” she said.

  “Anyway, it isn’t you she dislikes so much,” Jacob put in from the rear. “It’s Félicité who really rubs her up the wrong way.”

  Rosamund could feel Rupert’s dark eyes on her again and she blushed.

  “Is that so?” he drawled.

  She forced herself to smile at him.

  “I can’t see that it matters one way or the other,” she said stoutly.

  He smiled lazily.

  “Can’t you?” he asked her. “Well, perhaps it doesn’t matter very much at this stage.” He paused thoughtfully. “Félicité will probably be coming out to the site too later on. She and her husband used to go to Tabarka a lot and I think the place holds happy memories for her.”

  It was disappointing. Rosamund knew as surely as she breathed that the Frenchwoman would take all the fun out of the expedition, and she didn’t for a minute believe that Félicité would be mourning her husband in Tabarka. Far from it! S
he looked down at her lap and was surprised to find that her fists were clenched—hard! It came to her as something of a shock to discover that it wasn’t so much Félicité that she minded, and it certainly wasn’t Rupert, it was the combination of the two of them together that so dismayed her.

  The effect of the rains on the road was more plainly visible now. In patches the foundations were completely undermined, leaving large potholes in the surface that it became increasingly difficult to avoid. Rupert slowed down until he was never doing much more than twenty miles an hour, and still it seemed more than fast enough, skidding over the hidden patches of mud or crashing into a hidden pothole filled with water.

  Indeed, it was as well that they were going so slowly, for they rounded a particularly nasty corner and found that the bridge in front of them had completely given way, leaving only a few feet of crumbling surface where the road had been. Rupert drew up by the hastily erected danger sign and they all got out and went to the edge, looking down at the water below, swilling round the landslide and forcing its way on through what remained of the bridge.

  “We’ll never get over that,” Rosamund said dejectedly. She could see the jagged edges of the tarmac and the vivid red soil beneath it that was already dry and sandy, kept up only by the tar that had bound the surface to it.

  Jacob walked right up to the bridge and kicked one of the supports over.

  “The foundations have been completely washed away,” he reported. “They’ll have a job rebuilding that in a hurry.” He walked back to the car to hide his disappointment, his hips stiff and awkward after sitting for so long, the first sign of aging that Rosamund had ever seen in him.