by Mary Stewart
‘How do I know?’
‘“No art to find the mind’s construction in the face?” Well, I agree, of course, but what was your impression?’
‘Not a bad one. I told you he was a bit off-putting at first, but if Hamid’s right he wasn’t back on the beam properly, and in any case it’s obvious he was only doing what Aunt H had told him to. After he’d seen her he was all right. She probably told him he’d nothing to fear from that strange little thing, however much she resembled the handsome boy.’
He didn’t smile. ‘Then you did think he might be feathering his nest?’
‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ I admitted, ‘once Hamid put it there. We both agreed we had unpleasant natures. Does it matter?’
‘Hardly, as long as it’s her idea as well as his.’
‘I don’t think you need worry about that. I got the impression that she did exactly as she liked about a hundred per cent of the time. I doubt if he could stop her doing anything she’d set her heart on.’
‘So long as that’s true …’
‘I swear it. You know, there’s no sense in trying to build up something out of nothing. She simply changed her mind since she wrote that letter. It’s perfectly possible she really had forgotten how devastating you were. People do.’
‘You must tell me about it some time.’ He stirred. ‘Oh, God, I don’t care what she’s up to or how her mind’s working, as long as things are going the way she wants them. It’s just that she’s as old as the seven hills, and alone except for this chap we know nothing about, and what you said about the hashish-smoking didn’t sound too cheerful to me. He may be all right now, but he’s on the road to nowhere, you must know that.’ He moved again, restlessly. ‘No doubt if she’s lived here all this time she knows how many beans make five, and you say you got the impression she could deal with him—’
‘Six of him.’
‘Yes. I’d have liked to see for myself, that’s all. You have to admit that last night doesn’t exactly chime in with this letter of hers.’
‘Would you expect it to? I wouldn’t have thought consistency was her middle name.’
‘No, but – she gave no reason whatever for her embargo on me?’
‘None whatever. I honestly did just get the impression that, having seen me, she’d satisfied her own curiosity, and now she wanted to get back to her own life, whatever it is. I told you, she seemed perfectly normal for long periods, then she’d suddenly look as if she were miles away and say the queerest things. I’ve never met anyone who was cuckoo before, so I wouldn’t know how to tell, but I’d have said nothing worse than old and absent-minded. All I can tell you is, I quite like John Lethman, and Aunt H did seem perfectly happy and contented and not ill, apart from wheezing a bit. But as for knowing what she was thinking about, don’t forget I hardly know her at all, and in any case at the time I wasn’t feeling too good myself, what with that ghastly tobacco, and the stuffy room, and that rather revolting bubbling noise she made with her pipe. Oh and Charles, I forgot completely – there was a cat in the room, and I didn’t know it. It must have been behind the bed-curtains. I was feeling as queer as all-get-out, and thought it was just the stuffy room or something, but that must have been what it was.’
‘Cat?’ His head jerked away from the pillar, His turn to stare. ‘Sweet Christ, was there?’
I was rather flattered than otherwise at the blasphemy. So Charles hadn’t forgotten the thing I had about cats, or the real horror it was for me.
Now, a phobia can’t be explained. And cat phobia – the genuine article – is something so grotesque as to be not quite believable. I admire cats; I love their looks; pictures of them give me pleasure. But I cannot be in the same room with them, and on the rare occasions when I have tried to kill my fear and touch a cat, it has almost made me ill. Cats are my nightmare. When I was a child at school my dear little friends found out about this, and shut me into a room with the school kitten. I was rescued, a screaming jelly of hysteria, twenty minutes later. It is the one vulnerable thing about me that Charles, even at his most horrible stage as a boy, never tortured me with. He doesn’t share the phobia, but he is close enough to me to understand it.
I smiled at him. ‘No, I haven’t got over it, I don’t know if one ever does. I saw it just as I was leaving the room. It sneaked out from behind the curtains and jumped on the bed beside her, and she started stroking it. It can’t have been there all the time, or I’d have felt rotten earlier, and I’d have guessed. It occurred to me there must be another door into the room that I didn’t notice. Stands to reason there would be, in a room that size.’
He said nothing. I went back to studying the letter in my hand. ‘Who’s Humphrey Ford?’
‘Who? Oh the letter, yes. He’s Oriental Studies, Professor Emeritus. “Sadly absent” is the mot juste, I may say. He had the reputation of giving the first lecture of term, then sloping quietly off to Saudi Arabia for a sort of perpetual Sabbatical. Before my time, praise be to Allah, but he was still around the place, and had me to breakfast once or twice, and even occasionally recognised me in the street. A nice old chap.’
‘Why hadn’t you told her yourself you were coming?’
‘I wasn’t sure when I’d get here, and I thought it might be better to play it by ear once I was in Beirut.’
‘And Samson? Is it Samson, there’s a blot? The cat?’
‘Dog. Tibetan terrier. She got him when she was home last – he used to belong to one of the Boyd cousins who died, and she scooped him up and brought him back here as a mate for Delilah. He was originally called Wu or Pooh or something equally Tibetan, but she changed it to Samson, guess why.’
‘Too subtle for me.’ I handed the letter back. ‘I never saw the dogs, they were shut up except at night. John Lethman said they were dangerous.’
‘If Samson had taken a dislike to him, he was probably protecting himself, not you.’ He folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. I got the impression that he was talking slightly at random. ‘He was a savage little brute, as I remember, except with the family. You’d have been all right: don’t they say there’s some sort of family voice or smell or something that they recognise even if they’ve never seen you before?’
‘Do they?’ I laced my fingers round a knee and leaned back with my face lifted to the sun. ‘You know, Charles, that letter might work both ways … if she’s forgotten what she’d written in that letter when she saw me, she’s probably forgotten now what she said about your not coming. See what I mean? In any case I told you, John Lethman said he’d talk to her, and if his bona fides are okay, he will, Even if they’re not – or is it “it’s”? … Even if it’s not he’ll not dare just ignore you. It sounded as if he wasn’t planning to; he talked about getting in touch with you. In that case you can produce Aunt H’s letter and make him let you in.’
‘I suppose so.’ But his voice was absent, and he was making rather a business of lighting another cigarette.
‘Or look, for goodness’ sake, why don’t you just come back with me here and now, because I am genuinely stuck here and have to go back? We can show John Lethman the letter now, and see if you can’t bulldoze your way in to see Aunt Harriet tonight. He can hardly stop you if you’re on the very doorstep … Charles are you listening?’
I don’t think he was. He was looking away from me, down the bright distance of the valley towards the palace.
‘Look over there.’
At first I could see nothing except the crumbling ruin sleeping in the heat, the fixed dazzling pattern of the rock seamed with violent shadows, the green of distant trees greyed by the heat haze. There were no clouds to move, or wind to move them. No sound.
Then I saw what he was watching. Some way from the palace, among the rocks and tangled bushes that marked the lip of the Adonis gorge, there was a movement which presently resolved itself into a man in Arab dress making his way slowly on foot towards the palace. He was almost indistinguishable from the countrysi
de, for his dress was dust-coloured, and his headcloth brown, and if Charles and I had not both had abnormally long sight I doubt if we would have seen him at all. He moved very slowly, disappearing from time to time as his path took him behind rocky outcrops or through the thick undergrowth, but presently he emerged on the open rock of the plateau behind the palace. He carried a stick in one hand, and seemed to have some kind of bag over his shoulder.
‘Looks like a pilgrim,’ I said. ‘Well, he’s in for a disappointment if he’s making for the palace, and I don’t see where else he could be bound for. The faun must be right, there’s a path there.’
‘There’d have to be, wouldn’t there?’ said my cousin. ‘Did it never occur to you to wonder how John Lethman got back to the palace before you did yesterday?’
‘Silly of me, I never thought of it. Yes, and I remember now, there was something about the palace being on the old camel route down from the High Lebanon to the sea. In that case there must be a reasonable track.’ I grinned at him. ‘But not, Charles my love, not for me.’
‘On the contrary,’ said my cousin, ‘I’m beginning to think – Just a minute, keep your eye on that man.’
The ‘pilgrim’ had reached the back wall of the palace, but instead of turning north to skirt the Seraglio wall, he went the other way, making for the corner where the walls literally grew out of the cliffs of the Adonis gorge. There was a clump of trees marking the drop, and into these he vanished.
‘But he can’t get round that way!’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s the way my bedroom looked. It’s a sheer drop into the river.’
‘He’s got a rendezvous,’ said Charles.
I narrowed my eyes against the brightness. Then I saw them among the trees, the Arab, and another man with him, this one in European dress. They came out slowly between the trees, obviously deep in talk, and stood there, tiny foreshortened figures at the edge of the dappled shade.
‘John Lethman?’ asked Charles.
‘Must be. Look there’s someone else, I’m sure I saw someone else move among those trees. In white, this time.’
‘Yes, another Arab. That’ll be your doorman, Jassim, I suppose.’
‘Or Nasirulla – oh no, I’d forgotten, he couldn’t get over today. Then it must be Jassim.’ I knitted my brows. ‘I don’t understand, have they been waiting out there for him all this time? I haven’t been watching, particularly, but if they’d come round from the front gate, you’d think we’d have seen them.’
‘There is a way round?’
‘Yes, round the north side below the Seraglio arcade. The path goes through the trees above the Nahr el-Sal’q and skirts the palace wall.’
‘If they’d come that way we’d certainly have seen them. No, it’s obvious there must be a back door. Stands to reason there would be. It must be hidden somewhere among those trees.’
‘Tradesman’s entrance?’ I said. ‘I suppose you’re right. Look, he’s handed over his pack, whatever it is. He’s going now. Will they see us if they look this way?’
‘Not a hope. We’re in the shadow of this pillar, and what’s more, the sun will be in their eyes. I wish we had a pair of field-glasses, I’d like to see your Mr. Lethman. Yes, he’s going. Watch the others. My bet is we’ll never see them disappear.’
Made tiny by distance, the little scene had a silent, curiously dreamlike quality. One moment there seemed to be three men standing beside the trees below the wall, then the next moment the travelling Arab had turned and was making his slow way back among the rocks, and the other two had vanished under the shade of the trees.
We waited in silence. The Arab had gone, the other two did not come out from the grove. There must indeed be another way into the palace. The distance was clear, the colours bright, but it still looked a very long way away. I thought with weariness, and then with irritation, of the long trek back down the gorge of the Nahr el-Sal’q.
I said suddenly: ‘I quite honestly don’t want to go back there. Can’t we scrub it?’
‘Decided you’d rather try the pilgrims’ way into the High Lebanon?’
‘No, but couldn’t you somehow convey me across the Eiger after all? It looked terribly easy.’
‘Did it?’ He grinned. No further comment.
‘You couldn’t?’
‘No, love, I could not. What’s more I wouldn’t, even if I could. It’s obviously the will of Allah that you should go back to Dar Ibrahim, and for once the will of Allah is perfectly timed. By which I mean that it coincides with mine. You’re going back – and I’m coming with you.’
‘You are? You mean you’re going to show John Lethman that letter now, and get him to let you in?’
‘No. John Lethman has nothing to do with it. You’re going to let me in yourself.’
I sat up abruptly. ‘If you mean what I think you mean—’
‘Probably. There’s a back door, a postern.’
‘So?’ I asked sharply.
‘I’ve been thinking …’ He spoke slowly, his eyes still on the distant sprawl of the palace. ‘The place where we met this morning, the ford … that was out of sight of the palace?’
‘Yes. But Charles—’
‘And you said that when you first saw me coming down the slope below the village, you thought I was your driver?’
‘Yes, but Charles—’
‘Now, they’ve seen your driver, but they’ve never seen me, and anyway they wouldn’t be expecting me any more than you were. If they were looking out at all this morning, all they would see was you going down to the stream to meet your driver, who was walking down from the village. Fair enough?’
‘Yes, but Charles, you can’t! Are you really thinking—?’
‘Of course I am. Now shut up and listen. I want to get into this place for myself and see exactly what’s going on, and I want to get in now, not wait on Lethman’s problematic good will. All right, it looks as if this flooding of the river has provided a heaven-sent chance; the will of Allah, plain and clear. Your part of it’s perfectly simple and straightforward. You go back there now to the palace, ring for old Jassim again, and tell him what’s more or less the truth. Tell him you couldn’t cross the stream, and neither could your driver, but that you both went up the Nahr el-Sal’q as far as you could, to see if there was a place to cross. You got right up to the source, and there wasn’t any place you could cross, even with the driver’s help.’ He grinned. ‘Couldn’t be truer so far. So you told your driver to go back to Beirut, and call for you again tomorrow when the stream had had a chance to go down. You also gave your driver a message for your cousin Charles, to say you were staying here another night, and that you’d join him tomorrow at the Phoenicia.’
‘But, Charles—’
‘They can hardly refuse to take you in. In fact, it sounded to me as if your Mr. Lethman was quite glad of your company. Who could blame him? If you had to live in a place like that you’d welcome the Abominable Snowman.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. So, you get back into the palace. You told me they said you could explore anywhere you liked except the Prince’s rooms. Well, do just that. You’ll have hours of day-light this time. See if you can find this back door; you said it went from your end of the palace anyway.’
‘It must do. I told you about the man walking through the Seraglio Garden last night. Whoever it was, I’ll swear he didn’t come past my room to the main door, so he must have got in and out another way. But – you’re serious? You’re really planning to break in?’
‘Why not? If you can find the door, see it’s unlocked after dark tonight, and Mohammed will come to the mountain.’
‘And if I can’t find it?’
‘Then we’ll have to think of some other way. No windows at all looking back on the plateau – no, I can see that from here; there aren’t. Well, but you said there was an arcade of sorts on the north side facing the village, and a path underneath?’
‘There is, but the windows are all barred. Don’t
forget it was a harem.’
‘You said the place was falling to bits; aren’t any of the grilles broken? Or could they be broken?’
‘Yes, I think so. But they’re right up high in the wall, and—’
‘Well, I can climb,’ said Charles. ‘If the wall’s in bad repair there’ll be plenty of footholds. I’ve always wanted to climb into a harem.’
‘I’ll bet. But why not try the direct approach first? With me, I mean, at the main gate?’
‘Because if it doesn’t work you mightn’t get in either, and then there’d be no chance even of a break-in. And I’d sooner by-pass Lethman in any case.’
I started to ask why, saw my cousin’s face, and decided to save time and energy. I know Charles. I asked instead: ‘Well, once you’re in, what then? What if you’re caught?’
‘All that’ll happen is a bit of a row, or at worst a turn-up with John Lethman, and I’ll risk that. It won’t worry me, and at least I’ll get to see Aunt H, if only to have her tear a strip off me.’
I regarded him. ‘This I just don’t get. I mean, curiosity is one thing, but this sudden outburst of devotion … No, Charles, it simply isn’t on. It’s all very fine and large, but you just can’t do this sort of thing.’
‘Can’t I? Look at it this way. You’ve got to go back tonight. You don’t want to. Wouldn’t you rather I was there too?’
‘Under the circumstances,’ I said, ‘I’d be glad of the Abominable Snowman.’
‘Thank you. Well then, sweet Christabel—’
Of course I protested further, and of course he won in the end, as he always had. Besides, his last argument was the most cogent of the lot. However ‘romantic’ my last night at Dar Ibrahim had been, I had no desire to repeat it alone.
‘Then that’s settled.’ He got decisively to his feet. ‘I’ll climb back across now, and in due course, if they’re interested, they’ll see me going back towards the village. Now, you said you’d finished supper by about ten, and Aunt H didn’t send for you until about twelve. Just in case she decides to receive you again, we’d better say that I’ll be at the back of the place any time from ten-thirty on. If you can’t get the postern unlocked, I’ll give a couple of barks like a hill fox under the wall, and if it’s all clear for me to climb up, hang a towel out, or something light-coloured that I can see. Soap-opera stuff, I know, but simple ideas usually work out best. In fact, if it’s climbable, I’d prefer the window, if the hounds get the run of the place at night.’
