by Isobel Chace
Urgently the train rattled its way through Carthage and La Goulette and on over the narrow causeway that had been built for it across the Lake of Tunis. The flamingoes, forming pink clouds on the water, moved about in the misty rain and the flattened water and then disappeared from sight as they entered the suburbs of Tunis itself. Within a few minutes she had given up her ticket at the barrier and was walking down the Avenue de Habib Bourghiba towards the market.
It was difficult not to stop and admire the flower stalls as she went past. The tawny hues of the autumn flowers seemed brighter than ever against the dark green of the trees. Occasionally one of the vendors would try to tempt her to buy, but she shook her head resolutely. She would have loved to have filled the whole house with them, but that had not been one of the items on Rupert’s neat housekeeping list! She smiled at the memory of it, and she was still smiling when she saw its author coming towards her—and he was smiling too.
“Hello there!” he greeted her. “Surprised?”
She laughed.
“Of course,” she agreed demurely. “I thought you worked all the time you were in Tunis.”
“Sometimes I do!” he retorted. “But today I thought I would come marketing with you. If you don’t mind, that is?”
“No, I don’t mind.” On the contrary, she was delighted. She was so glad to see him that she couldn’t understand it, but she kept thinking to herself that he wasn’t going to marry Felicity after all, and that made her feel happier and happier all the time.
“Good. Then you’d better give me the basket to carry.” He took it from her and tucked her hand into his arm with a slightly distracted air that amused her.
“Are you sure you want to come?” she asked him. “I could meet you afterwards?”
“After waiting all this time for you to come?” he demanded. “Are you serious?”
She coloured slightly.
“I didn’t want to impose—” she started to explain, but he stopped her with a look.
“The whole idea is that I should act as horse,” he said quietly. “I’ll not have you lumping heavy loads today of all days! You gave me quite a fright last night.”
She looked away from him to hide her disappointment. Of course she might have known that it would be something like that, only she had so hoped he had wanted to see her just for herself.
“I know,” she said, “I was so ashamed of myself. But I’m all right now, really I am. I was just tired.”
He ran his hand through his hair in an exasperated gesture and she saw that it was quite wet with the rain.
“That’s just my point!” he exclaimed in an angry voice. “You were tired out! Proving that you didn’t have to be plain to be capable, or something equally silly! I could have kicked myself!”
She was so startled that she nearly missed her step.
“But why?” she asked him.
“Because I should never have teased you over your beauty in the first place. I should have seen that you hadn’t either the confidence or the conceit to look after yourself!”
Rosamund stopped dead in the street.
“Well!” she said indignantly. “You make me sound about as strong-minded as a—as a kitten! I’ll have you know that I’ve been looking after myself for years and years! Successfully too!”
His expression softened.
“I guess you have at that!” he conceded.
“And so I was tired. So what?” she pressed home for advantage.
He chuckled.
“So you look very lovely when you’re cross,” he told her. He began to stride off down the pavement. “But not so lovely,” he added over his shoulder, “as you did when you were asleep and defenceless!”
Speechless, Rosamund followed him in an outraged silence. She was thoroughly nettled that he had somehow managed to have the last word. He was the most irritating, arrogant creature she had ever met! If she could only, just once, get in a final, crushing retort, she wouldn’t have minded so much, but it was too bad that he always came off the winner in all their skirmishes, when she wanted to win so much that she could have wept! He stood and waited for her at the corner of the pavement, swinging the basket idly in one hand.
“What are we going to buy?” he asked.
She searched in her handbag for the list.
“Mostly vegetables,” she said. “They’re cheaper here than at Sidi-Bou-Said.” She sounded a little stiff, she thought, but she didn’t care. Let him see that he had upset her!
“Right,” he said. “To our muttons, as Félicité would say!”
They entered the market by a side entrance and were immediately caught up in the flow of people who were buying Italian cheeses and spaghetti in one of the half-dozen stalls that stocked little else. Rosamund would have passed them by, but Rupert paused and bought a couple of cheeses that appealed to him. It was the same the whole way through the market. She herself delighted in the piles of freshly scrubbed vegetables and fruits. She liked the way they were set out in patterns, and the way the vendors sat up on their stalls, with their legs crossed in front of them, surrounded by their wares. But she wouldn’t have allowed herself to be half as extravagant as Rupert was.
“I’ve never been in here before,” he told her. “Let’s buy a kilo of those dates!”
She shook her head at him.
“I’ll never be able to carry all the stuff you’ve bought home,” she complained.
He looked down at the piled-up basket with an air of surprise.
“I’ll throw them in the back of the car. I wouldn’t have let you carry them anyway.” He smiled at her, almost apologetically, and her heart turned over. “It’s fun, isn’t it?” he said.
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. It was more than fun for her. She couldn’t help thinking what it would be like to do this often with Rupert. It was something that it didn’t do to dwell on. If she went on like this she would soon begin to think that she actually liked sparring with him!
Rupert bought flowers too, and she wondered whether he had seen her looking at the ones in the street. Great bunches of dahlias were given to her to carry until she could hardly see where she was going for them, and their harsh, bitter smell filled her nostrils. Their rich colouring showed off her own fairness to great effect, and again and again people stopped to watch her go by, taking pleasure in the picture she made. But Rosamund herself barely noticed their glances until she realised that Rupert also was watching her, and that made her self-conscious as she had not been before.
“Do you think we’ve earned a cup of tea somewhere?” she suggested to him longingly. “Oh—or perhaps you haven’t got the time?”
He smiled, his eyes as always quite enigmatic.
“I’ll make the time,” he drawled. “But I can’t promise you a proper cup of tea, unless you’d like a mint tea, very sweet and short?”
She shook her head.
“Coffee,” she said firmly.
It was raining hard when they got outside. The streets were running with water and the wind was whipping up the tops of the trees so that they made a strange and exciting noise that offset the swishing of the traffic below. The Arabs huddled into their voluminous robes, winding the cloth round their heads for protection, and hating the water all around them. Rosamund sympathised with them. She didn’t want to ruin her shoes in the swirling water and she paused for an instant in the doorway before making herself go out into it. Only Rupert didn’t seem to care. He took her firmly by the hand, so that she almost dropped half the flowers, and pulled her after him up the street towards the nearest café.
He found a table and stacked their belongings beside it, pulling out a chair for her to sit down on.
“Sit down, my lovely,” he bade her, “and tell me which of those delicacies over there you fancy.”
They all looked strange to Rosamund, so she left the choice to him, amused by the care he took in selecting stuffed dates and the sugared almonds that he wanted. When he came back to her s
he was smiling. He sat down opposite her and studied her face in silence, noting that the shadows of fatigue had completely disappeared.
“Did Félicité turn up with her washing?” he asked her.
She nodded, playing surreptitiously with one of the sugared almonds, a silver one, that had stood out among the white ones with a rich, pristine attraction.
“Did you know she was getting married?” she burst out impetuously.
Rupert smiled grimly.
“I did,” he said briefly.
Rosamund summoned up all her courage.
“And you don’t care?” she asked him.
He seemed to be a very long time in answering.
“On the contrary,” he said at last. “I think she’s making a great mistake.”
“So you know the man too,” she said in almost a whisper.
“I don’t have to,” he said harshly. “I know Félicité!”
Rosamund ate the sugared almond and found it good. She reached out for another.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t like her more than I did,” she said gently.
To her surprise, Rupert laughed.
“I don’t suppose she wanted you to,” he told her. “Félicité has always been her own worst enemy. Let’s hope the new husband is man enough to beat her into being a nicer person!”
Rosamund stared across the table at him with indignation.
“Rupert! What a terrible thing to say!”
He laughed again, handing her yet another sugared almond.
“Oh, you’re too soft-hearted for anything!” he said. “More coffee? Or shall we make a push for the station? You should just catch the next train nicely.”
The whole way home Rosamund sat in state in a practically empty compartment. She gazed out of the window at the rain with unseeing eyes and pondered on what Rupert had said. It was just the sort of arrogant thing he would say, and yet there was a certain justice in it too. But the nicest part about it was that he couldn’t possibly be even the slightest bit in love with the Frenchwoman if he felt like that about her. And, for some reason, that filled her with such satisfaction that she almost ran up the hill to the house, completely forgetting to look and see if Félicité’s washing was still out on the line.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE front door had swollen in the rain and Rosamund had to push quite hard to ease it over the place where it always scraped anyway. She polished the marble tiles thoughtfully with her foot, but there was no damage done and, relieved, she shut the door again and went upstairs. The walls, she noticed, were already quite wet and water was streaming in through all the windows on the windward side of the house. Of course that was the trouble with almost every Mediterranean house; they were built for the long hot summers and were quite simply not capable of keeping out anything but the mildest of showers. Rosamund sighed and went downstairs again, dashing out across the open patio to the kitchen to get some rags to try and sop up the worst of the puddles that were slowly spreading their way across the floor of the salon.
When she had finished the rather thankless task, she stopped to glance out of the window. Great black clouds hung low over the mountains, almost concealing them from view, and the wind was violent now, whipping the tree's and tearing at their branches. One or two young saplings had been pulled right out of the earth and were being blown up and down the side of the nearest hill. It was one of the worst storms Rosamund had ever seen, and though she wouldn’t admit to herself that she was scared, her mouth felt dry and her skin prickled with the electricity in the air.
She would make herself some tea, she decided, and went down to the kitchen to do so just as someone banged on the front door.
“Lella Rosamund! Mademoiselle!”
Rosamund hurried to the door and found her next-door neighbour trying to shelter against the wall.
“Come in, please,” she said hurriedly. “Quickly.”
The Tunisian woman jumped into the hallway, laughing breathlessly as she shook some of the water off her veil.
“What an evening!” she exclaimed. “The winter has begun! I called to see if you were alone. It is not very pleasant, no? I thought you might like to keep company with us?”
“How kind of you!” Rosamund looked at her pretty neighbour, touched by the thought. “I’m not nervous exactly, but it is quite a storm, isn’t it?”
The. Lella Menena didn’t answer. She swirled her veil around Rosamund so that it covered the two of them and prepared herself for the dash back to the next-door house.
“Ready?” she asked.
They pulled the door shut after them, but didn’t bother to lock it, and ran the short distance, arriving breathless at the open door. Menena rescued her veil and hung it up to dry, talking all the time while she did so in French.
“We are all women, gossiping together to pass the time,” she explained quickly. “I am afraid that some of us don’t speak any French, but don’t let that bother you. They will all want to look at you anyway,” she added frankly. “We have all heard about your visit to the bath, the hammam, you see!” She laughed gaily and, taking Rosamund by the arm, led her into the salon.
It was an odd collection of women that met her eye. Most of them were clad in dressing-gowns with their veils loosely cast about them. Others were very smart, their jewellery very much in evidence, and their perfumes strong and exotic. But they were obviously all great friends, being much of an age and by far the greater number of them being in some stage of pregnancy.
“Welcome to the harem!” one of the more sophisticated of their number said dryly. “I am so glad Menena thought to ask you over. Please sit beside me here and we can keep an eye on the tea together.”
Rosamund looked where she was pointing and saw one of the minute Arab teapots boiling merrily on a small charcoal fire. Her hostess added a clump of mint and a mound of sugar and left it to boil some more while she set out a number of tiny glasses on the table.
Rosamund began to enjoy herself. She liked the gay friendliness of the women and their unabashed curiosity. She was amused, too, that they knew all about her. They questioned her closely about her trip to Tabarka and gently took her to task for doing her own shopping in the local shops. A long discussion took place as to the differences between their own way of life and hers and, as all this had to be translated into Arabic as they went along, it seemed no time at all before the time had gone and Rosamund thought she ought to go back to start getting a meal for Jacob and Rupert.
It was well after six when she began to peel the potatoes. She could hear the thunder still growling overhead and she was doubly grateful for the kindness of the women in including her in their gathering. It would have been a very lonely hour or so if she had been by herself in the storm.
She turned the tap on to swill the vegetables, and heard an explosive noise followed by a hiss at her feet. It took her a while to track down the noise. The rough brick flooring felt wet to her touch and she realised that a fine spray of water was coming from what looked to be a solid lead pipe carrying the water up to the sink. She looked round for a stop-cock to turn it off, but there was none. Exasperated, she searched in all the corners and tried to follow the pipe back to its source, but that proved to be impossible too. With dismay she saw that the spray was turning into a shower, pouring out into the room and out into the patio.
She ran up to the bathroom to see if there were any cocks up there, but there was nothing, and in the cloakroom it was the same story. Anxiously she watched the steadily mounting water and hurried back to her next-door neighbour to ask her what she should do.
Menena came to the door immediately.
“The water?” she repeated blankly. “But of course we share a meter, did you not know that?”
Rosamund looked at her helplessly.
“Would you mind very much if I turned it off?” she asked abruptly.
Menena laughed.
“But you must!” she agreed immediately. “I’ll show you where it is.”
<
br /> It was no wonder, Rosamund thought, that she hadn’t been able to find it. Menena led the way to the house on the other side of Rupert’s and pointed to a hole in the wall.
“The meter is in there,” she said. “Shall I find someone to turn it off for you?”
Rosamund pulled open the flap that covered the meter and saw the all-important tap. Eagerly she grasped it and, despite its stiffness from lack of use, succeeded in turning off the water completely. With a sigh of relief she stood up straight again.
“I’m so sorry to have brought you out into the rain,” she apologised sincerely. “As soon as the men get home I’ll get them to do something about it.”
Menena smiled, her white even teeth just showing between her lips.
“Don’t you worry about it. My husband can see to it. He knows the plumber and so he will come more quickly for him. I will arrange everything for you.” She smiled again, her eyes dancing. “The Sidi Rupert will be impatient enough to be home, without having to go out again!”
Rosamund smiled back in complete bewilderment.
“I don’t think he would mind,” she said.
But Menena dismissed the whole idea with a charming gesture of her hand.
“There is the Sidi’s car now! Hurry, or you will be late to greet him!”
As if that mattered particularly, Rosamund thought. Rupert wouldn’t mind whether she was there or not. But the thought that he might, just a little bit, sent her hurrying back into the house and out of the rain.
It seemed to her distressed gaze that there was water everywhere. The patio was awash and even the cloakroom was at least an inch under water. Rosamund took off her shoes and waded across the patio towards the kitchen. Perhaps if she got a brush she could sweep the worst of it out of the back door. She seized the broom firmly in one hand and started back into the patio just as the back door opened.
