The House of the Scissors

by Isobel Chace

  “Me?” Arab stared at her, the pain in her foot temporarily forgotten. “For me?” The aggrieved expression on Hilary’s face sharpened her temper. “Do you know how worried I’ve been, young lady? I’ve been half out of my mind all day, telling myself you were with Ayah, until I saw her and she told me she hadn’t seen you all day either. You, Hilary, have some explaining to do! And a lot of guff about love potions isn’t a very good beginning!”

  Hilary went white. “I didn’t think you’d worry,” she said in a small voice.

  “Of course I worried! Your mother and Lucien had gone out for the day, or they might have come looking for you. As it was, I couldn’t even drive the car—”

  “How did you get here?” Hilary asked.

  “Jacques drove me.” Arab was on the point of telling the child what a disaster that arrangement had been, when she realised that perhaps she had better not. “He’s waiting in the Mini-Moke for us on the other side of the compound.”

  Hilary screwed up her face. “I think he might have saved you having to walk all round the village!” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Arab, truly I am. I meant to find out what time the bus went back to Malindi, but it was going and I had to run to catch it, and then I didn’t think of it again until we were nearly here.”

  Arab grunted. “You shouldn’t go on buses by yourself!”

  “I have to!” Hilary appealed. “I can’t drive—ever!”

  “You could have taken Ayah with you,” Arab pointed out “And what use is a love potion anyway?”

  Hilary grinned, quick to see that Arab’s curiosity was getting the better of her temper. “It was for you! You see, if you make Lucien some tea and put the potion in his cup, he’ll love you for ever!”

  “But—” Arab protested.

  “For ever and ever,” Hilary repeated. “The witchdoctor says so. Then you’ll never have to go back to England, but you can stay here with us. It cost me five whole shillings, Arab, but I think it’s worth it, don’t you? It might not have worked,” she went on thoughtfully, “if Aunt Sandra had been here, but with her away, anything might happen!”

  “Anything!” Arab agreed with mounting exasperation. “But, Hilary, don’t you see that you can’t interfere like that? If Lucien loves Sandra, your love potion won’t change it. People have to be allowed to make up their own minds about these things.”

  “Don’t you love Lucien?”

  Arab swallowed hard. “Yes,” she admitted.

  “Then why should Aunt Sandra have him? She doesn’t love him! She doesn’t love anyone!”

  “Because Lucien loves her. He has the same right to feel as he does as you and I have.”

  Hilary looked appalled. “But then he won’t ask you to marry him! That would be awful! When Mummy goes away, I always stay with Lucien, and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t, if Aunt Sandra were there too!”

  “You may have to,” Arab said.

  “I won’t!” The small girl stamped her foot. “I won’t! If you won’t give Lucien the love potion, then I will! I won’t have him marrying Aunt Sandra!”

  Arab sighed, feeling quite as dejected as Hilary. “Come on,” she said. “We have to get back to the airport to see them all off to Nairobi.”

  “I wish you hadn’t come and found me! I don’t want to see Aunt Sandra off!”

  “What about Jill?” Arab reminded her.

  “I don’t mind Jill,” the child agreed. “But she would understand. Have you seen Aunt Sandra and Mr. Silk talking together? He looks as though he’s about to eat her up.” She looked sulkily up at Arab. “And I don’t like Jacques either!” she announced for good measure.

  “Why ever not?” Arab gasped, chiding herself for encouraging Hilary to express these outrageous views.

  Hilary shrugged. “He’s never serious. I don’t like people who say I’m going to be a peach when I grow up, and silly things like that! How does he know what I’ll be like? I won’t be in the least like a peach! I’m going to be clever and an anthropologist like Mummy, and he wouldn’t like me at all because he isn’t clever, is he? At least I don’t think he is.”

  Devastated by the solemn air of candour with which this speech was delivered, Arab felt bound to try and defend him; “He’s on holiday,” she said. “He only wants a bit of fun!”

  Hilary drew herself up to her full height. “Lucien doesn’t like him!” she dismissed Jacques. “Lucien says he wishes he could put you in a veil, then you wouldn’t attract so many undesirables to your side!” She giggled suddenly. “He must like you to say a thing like that. Don’t you think?”

  Arab refused to answer. The conceit of the man! “Hilary,” she began uncertainly, “don’t say anything about this love potion to anyone else. They might not understand—”

  “I won’t. It won’t work if Lucien knows about it anyway. I might tell Mummy though. She’d be interested in whether it has the same ingredients as the ones in Ethiopia. You wouldn’t mind my telling her, would you?”

  Arab did mind, but she couldn’t very well say so. She gritted her teeth and prepared for the walk back across the compound to the car. If Jacques had been in another mood she would have asked him to drive round the village to pick her up, but she knew that he wasn’t inclined to indulge her and that there was nothing for it but to make her way somehow to him.

  It took her a long time. Hilary walked slowly beside her, exchanging laughing remarks with half the village as they went. Arab herself felt too tired even to raise a smile for most of them. Her face was grey with pain and fatigue by the time they reached the car. Hilary fussed round her, trying to devise some easy way for her to get into the cockpit of the Mini-Moke, casting dark looks at Jacques at intervals who merely sat where he was, watching them.

  “Jacques, we’ll be late at the airport,” Arab said at last a trifle desperately. “Please help me!”

  “It will put the tariff up,” he warned her.

  “I don’t care!” she retorted with total indifference. She had no intention of paying anyway. “Only please hurry! I haven’t got time to change now as it is.”

  “I don’t know that I care to have you in my car smelling like a goat,” Jacques said, holding his nose with two fastidious fingers.

  “Oh, shut up!” said Arab. “I’ll manage without your help!”

  She did so, but it cost her dear in effort and pain. Hilary helped her all she could, but she was not strong enough to take the burden of Arab’s weight as she slung her good leg into the car. Hilary seized her plastered foot and lifted it with more enthusiasm than accuracy back on to its cushion.

  “Are you all right, Arab?” she asked repeatedly. “You look awful!”

  “Yes, doesn’t she?” said Jacques.

  “I know, I know. I wish I had time to change,” Arab muttered ruefully. “Still, Jill won’t care.”

  Jacques raised his eyebrows. “You are a funny girl to be a model,” he said. “Sometimes you look gorgeous and golden, and now you look—”

  “Like a street arab!” Hilary supplied with a little giggle. “That’s what Lucien calls her. It’s a pun on her name,” she added in case Jacques had not seen it “Lucien likes her jeans—”

  “How do you know?” Arab asked quickly.

  “You’re wasting your time!” Jacques shot at her.

  “I know,” she admitted.

  Hilary jumped into the back seat “He does like them!” she claimed. “He said so! It was when Aunt Sandra said they were a disgrace and he said they were cute!”

  Arab could feel herself blushing. “Do hurry up!” she commanded Jacques. “We’re going to be late, I just know we are!”

  They were. They were in sight of the airport when the Fokker Friendship aeroplane lifted into the sky and turned towards Nairobi. Arab watched it go in a stricken silence. Jill would know where she had gone and would understand, she thought, but the others would think that she hadn’t been interested enough to come and wave them goodbye. They had been good to work with and she was sorry
that they would think badly of her. It hurt. It hurt too that Lucien and Ruth would have been looking out for her when she hadn’t been there.

  “Never mind!” Hilary tried to comfort her, aware of Arab’s deep disappointment. “You can write to Jill, or better still you can ring her up tonight. Lucien will get the number for you.”

  “Very cosy,” Jacques put in. “But before that, chérie, there is the little matter of the payment you owe me.”

  Arab shrugged. “Not now, Jacques,” she said. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Are you ever? This was a gentleman’s agreement, ma mie. I thought the English always kept their word?”

  “But it’s ridiculous!” Arab protested. “I don’t want to kiss you!”

  “You should have thought of that before,” he drawled.

  “Why has she got to kiss you?” Hilary demanded, poised to jump out of the Mini-Moke. “I’m going to find Mummy and Lucien.”

  “Bonne idee!” said Jacques. “Bella and I will wait here. Yes, ma belle?”

  It would be making too much of a foolish incident to ask Hilary to stay, Arab thought. If she had to kiss Jacques at all, she would kiss him quickly and have done.

  “Very well,” she said.

  She was quite unprepared for the strength of his arms, or for the vicious way his mouth came down on hers. She attempted to get free of him, but she could not with the handicap that her foot presented. It was an uncomfortable experience, but she did nothing to help him. She no longer resisted him, but nor did she respond in any way to the warm pressure of his lips.

  “You have a bad idea of paying your debts!” he grumbled against her throat.

  “I didn’t intend to pay at all!” she retorted.

  “That was very obvious. You’re not paying now in any way that counts. You could give me one good kiss—just to say goodbye, non?”

  Arab smiled faintly. “Oui,” she said.

  His arms closed about her again and this time she made some effort to respond to him, though he had no more effect on her than he had on the beach on the night of the dance. How different it had been with Lucien! She longed for the feel of Lucien’s arms and the touch of his lips, but Jacques was nothing like Lucien and she felt only empty and dissatisfied. When at last he let her go, she put up a hand to wipe her lips and found herself looking straight into Lucien’s furious eyes.

  “We were too late for the plane,” she said, her heart pounding. The mere sight of him made her shrivel up with guilt. “I—I didn’t even change.”

  “So I see,” Lucien said in icy tones.

  Jacques jumped out of the Mini-Moke, grinning. He put up a hand and slapped Lucien on the shoulder. “Jealous, mon ami?”

  The contempt in Lucien’s eyes scorched Arab to the bone, but had no effect on the Frenchman. Jacques merely laughed again.

  “You are welcome to her,” he said easily. “Bella is not at her most attractive this evening—a little difficult, shall we say? If you will help her out of my car, I will be getting back to the hotel.”

  Lucien said nothing. He put an arm about Arab and hooked her neatly out of the Moke, carrying her over to his own car where he deposited her, none too gently, on the front seat.

  “I’m sorry,” Arab said.

  He didn’t even look at her. “Jill damned nearly missed the plane herself! She went by the Villa Tanit expecting to find you there and waited for as long as she possibly could. Couldn’t you have left a message, Arab?”

  “I thought I’d be back in time—”

  “What you mean is that you didn’t think at all!” he snapped. “You preferred to go out with your French boy-friend and that was that!”

  “It wasn’t!” she protested.

  “Then why did you go with him?”

  A lump formed in the back of Arab’s throat. “I—I—” she began in a tight, constricted voice.

  “Don’t bother!” Lucien advised nastily. “I saw the finale, remember? If you want someone to kiss you, my dear, I thought I’d made it clear that I’m both willing and available!”

  “He was saying goodbye,” Arab attempted to explain. Lucien’s head blocked off her view of the airport. That he was very angry she had no doubt whatsoever She uttered a strangled gasp, but there was no way of escaping his kiss. But her own quick temper came to her rescue. She would not be kissed by Lucien because he despised her, or because he thought to punish her. How dared he treat her like that! She pulled back her hand and hit him as hard as she could across the face.

  He drew back immediately, clasping both her hands in his. With a last desperate movement, she tried to get free of him, succeeded in freeing one hand and hit out at him again.

  “Oh no, my dear!” he said in remarkably mild tones. “Once I’ll allow you to get away with, but not twice!”

  But Arab was beyond reason. She twisted her arm to one side and cast another wild blow at his head. But this time it was he who slapped her face and her face stung scarlet with the imprint of his hand.

  “How dare you?” she cried furiously.

  He smiled down at her, his own anger completely evaporated. “You asked for it, Arab. Now, suppose you calm down and tell me all about it?”

  Arab chewed at her lower lip. “There’s nothing to tell!” she denied.

  His eyebrows shot up. “Nothing? D’you mean to tell me that affectionate scene was in aid of nothing?”

  “I don’t mean to tell you anything!” Arab shot back at him. “It’s none of your business!”

  “Okay, have it your own way. I have something to tell you. Jill is going to see your parents as soon as she can. I’ve sent a letter with her asking them to come out here for a visit. Do you think they’ll come?”

  Arab shook her head. “They’d love to,” she said, “but they’d never be able to afford the fares. Anyway, they don’t have to come. I’ll be going back to England myself as soon as I can get a seat on a plane.”

  Lucien gave her a laconic smile. “There’s no hurry. Wait and see how you fed about things when you get that plaster off your foot.”

  “I can’t wait till then!”

  “Why not?”

  The colour surged into her cheeks. “I can’t go on staying with you for ever. It’s—it’s embarrassing to—to—”

  He didn’t answer her directly. He traced the mark that his hand had left on her cheek with his forefinger, smiling directly into her eyes. “We’ll talk about it some other time,” he said. “At the moment you look about ready for bed!”

  Ruth, when she came out of the airport building with Hilary clutching at her hand, was the first to agree with him. She took one look at Arab and hurried her daughter into the back of the car.

  “Dinner in bed for you!” she said firmly to Arab. “Ayah can help you out of those clothes the moment we get home. You were looking so much better too! Did you have to go tearing round the countryside in the heat of the afternoon?”

  Hilary poked her mother in the ribs. “I was telling you,” she began.

  “Jacques has to go back to work soon,” Arab broke in quickly. “I couldn’t resist going for a jaunt with him in the Mini-Moke. I miss not being able to drive myself round. We were longer than we thought we’d be, though. I’m sorry to have missed Jill, but she’ll understand.”

  “She wouldn’t have approved of the romantic finish!” Lucien drawled. “I thought she’d warned you off that young man!”

  Arab lifted her chin. “What if she did? I’m old enough to have my own friends. I’m quite capable of looking after myself!”

  “It looked like it!” he taunted her.

  Arab flushed. “He kisses very nicely,” she claimed.

  His sardonic eyes met hers. “My dear girl, I doubt you have enough experience to tell!”

  “Lucien!” Ruth’s outraged voice came from the rear. “That was unkind!”

  “I don’t feel kind!” he retorted.

  “Well, don’t take it out on my guest!” Ruth said sharply. She studied Arab’s averted
face with troubled eyes, noting the red mark on her cheek. “Even if you are jealous!” she added.

  Lucien laughed shortly. “What did you have to say to Sandra that took so long?” he countered.

  So that was who he was jealous of, Arab thought miserably. He had wanted to say goodbye to Sandra himself and when he hadn’t been able to get her to himself, he had taken his temper out on her! Well, she didn’t care! He could love whomever he liked and she wouldn’t care at all!

  “She is my sister-in-law,” Ruth said mildly. “I wanted to make sure that she was happy about—things.”

  “And is she?” he demanded.

  Ruth hesitated. “She isn’t a happy sort of person,” she hedged. “But I think this time she knows what she wants.”

  “That’s the first step in the right direction,” Lucien said. Arab studied him carefully to see what he was thinking, but he gave nothing away. His eyes met hers with a look of enquiry and she looked hastily away. She put her head back wearily and closed her eyes, longing for bed, and more than ever conscious of the tight knot in her stomach that only Lucien’s touch could assuage.

  It was only a few minutes’ drive back to the Villa Tanit. Hilary chatted happily all the way, making it unnecessary for her elders to say anything at all. She had particularly noticed a whole lot of new people who had flown in from Nairobi and she wanted to know all about them.

  “Don’t you know any of them?” she asked her mother.

  “One or two of them,” Ruth answered her. “I was talking to them when you came in to fetch me.”

  “You didn’t introduce me!” Hilary complained.

  “No,” her mother agreed. “I was afraid that smell of goat was coming from you.”

  Hilary chuckled. “It was,” she admitted without resentment. “Arab smells even worse!”

  Lucien made a play of twitching his nose in Arab’s direction. “So she does!” He glanced at her and back to the road ahead. “So you had a chaperone after all!”

  “Some of the time,” Arab said.

  “But you’re still not going to tell me about it?”

  Arab smiled, “No.”

  She could almost hear Hilary’s breath of relief and wondered if Lucien had too. Silly child, she thought. She would have them all asking questions if she looked so guilty!