“That is what they hope will happen. The girls at school and those I spent my time with when I first left my home always talked about men just as if they were some strange animal they have to catch and, having caught them, tie them down with a wedding ring so that they could not escape!”
Royden laughed.
“That is exactly what I thought they were doing. I can assure you that is why I ran away from every ambitious mother I could see approaching me and dragging beside her a young girl who was interested, not in me but in my title and, of course, my bank balance.”
“Now you are too unkind,” Malva replied. “Every girl wants to get married sooner or later and it is always their family who tell them that if they are pretty they must find a man with a title and enough money to keep her in the style that she wants to be kept in.”
“Then why are you so different?” Royden asked.
Malva thought for a moment as if she was choosing her words very carefully.
Then she said,
“If I am different, as you say I am, it is because my mother and father were so happy and so much in love that I knew what they felt for each other was something I must feel one day.”
She hesitated for a moment before she went on,
“My mother was determined to concentrate entirely on making the house revolve round Papa rather than her. It made him feel important and he admired my mother in a way I find sadly lacking amongst the smart set in London today.”
Royden did not speak and she continued,
“They are the women who are unfaithful to their husbands. They run as craftily as they can after someone as handsome and as prestigious as you and are not particularly concerned in turning their home into a place where a man would want to live and linger and be alone with his wife and children rather than with anyone else.”
“I can hardly believe you are saying all this,” he said. “When you should be thinking, as your father has told you, about getting married yourself and, of course, because he is so aristocratic, having what is known as ‘a brilliant marriage’.”
“I am only surprised that Papa should agree with your father that you should be married whether you want to or not and that I was the right sort of wife for you,” Malva replied.
“How could he possible know that when I have seen so very little of you?”
“Exactly,” Malva agreed. “He was merely looking at it from a Social point of view that I should acquire your title together with the most outstanding and beautiful house in England thrown in for good measure.”
“Surely that is what you must have wanted.”
“I just knew you would say that,” Malva answered. “That is why it must have come as quite a surprise for you when I told you truthfully that I had no wish to marry you.”
She paused before she went on,
“Although I have liked you ever since I was a child, I am not the least in love with you and I refuse to marry anyone unless I love him as my mother loved my father and as they loved me in the same way.”
She laughed lightly as she added,
“Even if he was the Prince of Wales, I should say ‘no’ and no one could make me change my mind.”
“Except, of course, this miraculous man when you find him,” Royden countered slightly sarcastically.
“I am quite certain he is to be found somewhere,” Malva replied. “Therefore I will be on the lookout for him on this voyage just as, if you are wise, you will be looking for the perfect woman who is waiting for you somewhere in your life although you have not yet found her.”
“The perfect woman exists, I am quite certain, only in my imagination. Although I have hopes I might find your magical man for you in the middle of the desert or on top of a mountain. But I think perhaps that both of us are dreaming dreams which will never come true.”
“But they have to,” Malva cried. “Because we are clever we will find what we are seeking and I am quite certain that the beautiful lady you will love is, at this very moment, looking up into the sky and praying that God will send her the man of her dreams.”
She spoke in a soft voice that was almost hypnotic.
Royden then stared at her again until he said almost abruptly,
“I only hope you are right, Malva, but the betting is one hundred to one against us finding anything of the sort on this voyage or indeed anywhere else.”
“The unexpected often happens when we are quite certain that it is unobtainable. Therefore, while you go on sneering at the idea, it may creep up beside you when you least expect it and I will go on wishing on the stars and I am certain that one day the man I am dreaming about will drop down on me from Heaven.”
There was silence for a moment.
Then Royden broke it,
“In which case I will wish you good luck and good hunting, but I would not mind betting that we will both go home empty-handed.”
Malva did not speak for a moment.
Then she said with a twinkle in her eyes,
“As I don’t want to lose any of my money, I will not accept your bet!”
CHAPTER FIVE
The sun was shining and the sea was glittering with its rays.
As they proceeded slowly down the coast of Africa, Royden insisted that they should stop at small bays where they could swim.
“I love the sea,” he said. “But, of course, you need not join me unless you really want to.”
Malva smiled at him.
“I enjoy the sea too,” she asserted. “I will race you the first time we find a place to do so.”
Royden thought that she was boasting.
He was most surprised when they had anchored and she began diving straight off the yacht into the sea.
He had been astonished when Malva appeared in a rather pretty bathing suit, but with nothing on her feet or her head.
He had never met a woman who was not fussing about her hair when she was at sea.
But Malva dived deeply into the water and came up brushing the curls from her eyes.
Fortunately her hair was cut short and when she dried it, it looked as pretty as it had been when they left London.
They then raced each other in the sea.
But Malva insisted that Royden should give her a good start.
“It’s only fair,” she said, “because I am not only a woman but also smaller than you and so have to take more strokes than you do.”
Royden could not argue about that.
But while he expected to beat her easily, he found that he had to exert himself to keep up with her and then to win at the last moment.
She laughed when he did so and observed,
“You would be very annoyed with yourself if you lost to a woman and you will never be quite certain if I had allowed you to be the victor or if you really were one.”
“That is the most crooked way of putting things I have ever heard,” he replied. “I will be very annoyed if you did not acknowledge that I am a superior swimmer at the end of this voyage.”
“I will only do that if it is true,” Malva answered. “You must remember that, while you have been practising in the sea, I have only had the lake at home to swim in which I admit is very different from the swell that we are enjoying here.”
She looked at the sea as she spoke and added,
“I want to pat the waves and tell them that they are making us happy just by moving up against us or carrying us forward with them.”
Royden chuckled.
“I have never heard of anyone being affectionate with waves before,” he said.
“Then you must know a lot of very silly people,” Malva retorted. “The waves are one of the most beautiful sights in the world and I have always thought that we were particularly lucky because we live on an island and the sea, as you know so well, has protected us English from many enemies throughout the centuries.”
“I have never thought of it that way,” he replied, “but, of course, you are right. It would be a great mistake for us to ever join up
with the Continent of Europe and then cease to be an independent nation.”
“Exactly. That is what we want to be as we are English, to be able to decide what we will do for ourselves and not be bossed about like so many countries are by their Police or their Royalty.”
“Yet we need both,” Royden argued, “simply to keep us independent.”
“All right, I give in on that point,” Malva said. “At the same time the sea is so important to us as a country and I am its most ardent admirer.”
She did not wait for Royden to reply, but plunged into the next wave as it rolled towards them.
As he saw it envelop her, he thought that no woman he had ever known could be so totally unselfconscious of her looks.
And at the same time so attractive.
He had to admit that her long fair hair, and it was naturally curly, looked even lovelier when it was rubbed dry after swimming than when it was arranged for dinner in the evening.
He did not say so aloud because he thought, strange though it was, Malva did not expect compliments.
Most women not only expected them endlessly, but demanded them all the time.
As they sailed slowly down the coast, Malva asked Royden,
“Have you been to Dakar before?”
“I have and I hope you will find it as attractive as I did. I thought that we might stop before we actually reach Senegal and take a look at the desert. I went there once several years ago and found a tribe of Bedouin headed by a Vizier who was very hospitable to me.”
Melva gave a cry of delight.
“African Bedouin and a Vizier! Oh, please, please let me meet them. I have read so much about them, but never thought I would actually meet them in the flesh.”
“Of course you can do so if it interests you,” he promised. “They live some way out in the desert, but, if you have never visited a Vizier’s house, I am sure you will find it as fascinating as I did and far more comfortable than one expects.”
Malva clasped her hands together.
“That is just what I want to see,” she said. “I have read about how well their women dance and how they have fought many battles in the desert.”
She sounded so enthusiastic and so excited at the prospect of meeting them that Royden went and talked to the Captain.
He knew, as he might have expected, exactly where the Bedouin tribes in that particular part of Africa were to be found.
Also where they could anchor as near as possible to where the Vizier was currently living.
“The tribes move about all the time,” the Captain said, “and one never knows where one will see them next. But there is a Vizier who lives near here who has a grand Palace. Everyone who has visited there has told me with awe and admiration how impressed they were with their surroundings.”
“And the Vizier welcomed them?” Royden asked.
“Yes, monsieur,” the Captain replied. “He is much more civilised, I believe, than a number of others and has built himself a Palace which is the admiration of everyone who sees it.”
“Then I must certainly take my sister to visit it. It will be easy for her to converse with the Vizier because she speaks fluent French.”
“As you do, monsieur,” the Captain said, “and it is a pleasure to have you aboard.”
Royden smiled at the compliment.
He realised that the Captain who was well educated often found the journeys boring unless he had someone who could talk to him fluently in his own language.
He told Malva what he had learnt from the Captain and she was thrilled at the idea of meeting a Vizier and, of course, of seeing where he was living with his tribe.
“I have often thought they must find it trying,” she said, “to wander about and have nowhere permanent where they can keep their families.”
“You are out of date,” the Royden told her. “The modern Bedouin, I am told, likes to settle down if possible in what we would call a ‘hamlet’. So the Bedouin Viziers have taken to rivalling each other with the best possessions and naturally the most beautiful women.”
Malva laughed.
“I wonder which comes first in their minds?” she mused aloud.
“I am sure you will be able to see that for yourself if the Vizier is kind enough to entertain us, which I am told he will do quite readily, even though we are pretending to be quite ordinary travellers.”
“I shall be very grateful for even a little hospitality because I am so curious,” Malva replied. “I have just been thinking that one of us should certainly write a book about this delightful journey into the unknown.”
Royden smiled.
“You had better keep it for your old age otherwise someone might guess the real reason why it has taken place and that would be disastrous.”
“It would indeed,” Malva agreed. “I only hope that Papa and your father are not telling anyone at home that we are married.”
“I am quite certain we can trust them both. They are well aware that Her Majesty would be furious at you breaking the rules which she had kept herself for years and years and your father, if no one else, is well aware of how she expects to be obeyed by everyone from the smallest to the largest order she gives at Windsor Castle.”
Malva laughed.
“They are all terrified of her. I believe, although you seem so cocky about it, that you are frightened too.”
“Shall I say I have a great respect for the Royal Family and have no wish to offend them in any way.”
“That is a very fine speech,” Malva said teasingly. “But, if it came to a crisis, I know you would bow down and obey her command just like everyone else!”
Royden realised that this was more or less true and so he changed the subject.
*
They reached an enchanting little bay that night and anchored as close as they could to the land so that the yacht was hardly moved at all by the waves.
Malva woke early.
Putting on her bathing dress she ran up on deck and as she half-expected Royden was already there climbing into the water.
“We had better not dive here,” he said, “as it is not very deep and you might find yourself hitting your head on the bottom.”
“I think that is unlikely. However I will not take the risk, Royden.”
She followed him down the rope ladder and then jumped into the water.
With the sun glinting on her golden hair she looked, Royden thought, like a mermaid as she swam out to sea obviously thrilled by the waves and the sunshine.
She swam so fast that it took him a considerable effort to catch up with her.
Then she turned round smiling and called out,
“This is wonderful! I have never enjoyed a holiday more.”
“I admit we are very lucky with the weather and the attention we receive from the French sailors on my new yacht,” he replied.
“I thought at first that you were very extravagant,” Malva said. “But now I think you have made an excellent purchase and, even though it was expensive, it is obviously cheap at the price!”
Royden laughed.
Then he said,
“I want you to enjoy Africa which I have always found most attractive. I have already told the Captain that we want to go ashore and he will organise a conveyance which will take us out into the desert.”
“Oh, you are kind!” Malva exclaimed. “I want to do that so much, but I did not want to pressure you.”
“I assure you that I am not being pressured and I will enjoy it just as much as you do,” Royden replied. “I suggest we have luncheon early and then drive out into the desert. We will then see if my friend the Vizier is still in residence. He was certainly in excellent form five years ago when I last visited him.”
“I cannot wait to make the acquaintance of a real Vizier,” Malva said excitedly. “So I will swim back to the yacht to make myself look presentable as, of course, you would expect your sister to be.”
She did not wait for him to answer, but swam off at a tre
mendous pace until she reached the yacht.
As she climbed up the rope ladder, she saw that Royden was following her but not hurrying in any way.
She was thinking that he had done all this before and it was not as exciting for him as it was for her.
But she was exceedingly grateful to him for doing what she wanted even though it was nothing new where he was concerned.
Because she thought it was very necessary for her to look her best, she put on one of her prettiest summer gowns and arranged her hair neatly on top of her head.
She felt that a hat would look out of place amongst the Arab women who never wore one and, should the sun be very strong, she had a pink sunshade to protect her from burning.
Luncheon was a quick meal that they ate without talking very much because their conveyance, which was a very strange-looking vehicle drawn by two horses, arrived before they had finished the first course.
“I am afraid you will not be very comfortable,” the Captain said when he told Royden that it was waiting for him. “But most people in this part of the world journey only on their feet and it was the best they could provide at a moment’s notice.
“I am sure it will take us to where I want to go,” Royden said. “My sister has never seen the desert before and that in itself will be an experience for her.”
“Of course it will, monsieur,” the Captain agreed. “At the same time I should take two cushions to sit on as there are a great number of stones in the sand round here.”
They did as the Captain suggested and the moment luncheon was finished they drove off.
The horses were rough-looking but fast.
When they reached a more sandy part of the desert the cart or carriage, or whatever they called it, was not really as uncomfortable as Royden had feared.
There was a cover over the part where they were seated and at first Malva thought it unnecessary.
Then, as the sun in the afternoon grew stronger and hotter, she found the protection it gave her was something she really needed.
They drove across the desert with nothing to break the sand and the streams they passed occasionally were not large enough to give any floridity to the landscape.
They must have driven on for nearly two hours and had said very little to each other.
Danger in the Desert Page 9
