Though she had seen it a hundred times, Leila gasped at the beauty of it all and, in a momentary osmosis, Jay understood something of why her friend had thrown away her previous life to live in that spot with Salem.
In the gardens of the hotel, hidden lights came on, illuminating the pathways between the trees. There was a discreet whisper of Arabic music from the small restaurant where the cook was preparing kebabs beside an open-air fireplace.
‘You should have come to visit us earlier,’ said Leila.
Jay shook her head. ‘To tell the truth, this is the first real break I’ve had in a long while.’
‘The tough schedule of success?’
‘Something like that. In the last three months I spent fifteen nights in my own bed.’
‘I know.’ Leila sipped her glass of water. ‘I talked to your damned answering machine every day for a month until you called me back and promised to come here.’
Jay smiled at the recollection of the increasingly abusive messages. ‘And you didn’t give up until I told you the flight number and date of my ticket.’ She leaned across to her friend’s chair and planted a kiss on Leila’s cheek. ‘I’m glad you persisted.’
They watched the lights of a car on the road winding its way up the hill to Tel el Sultan.
‘That’ll be Salem,’ Leila announced. ‘I’m sorry he wasn’t here to greet you. He had to go and pick up another guest.’
They heard the car doors slam and the sound of Salem’s feet running along the tiled paths between the shrubs and trees. He greeted Jay with a kiss on both cheeks, obviously pleased to see her. ‘I’m so glad you have come,’ he grinned. ‘Leila talks about you a lot.’
‘She’s looking wonderful, Salem, and I just love your hotel.’
He raised a glass of wine. ‘L’chaim as the Jews say. It’s the best toast in the world. I drink to the life in Leila’s belly and to make sure you come here again.’
‘I certainly hope to, Salem.’
He put down the glass and looked stern. ‘Hope to is not good enough. Hope to is a European being polite. In Lebanon a promise must be fulfilled.’
‘Then I promise as a Lebanese,’ said Jay solemnly.
He relaxed. ‘You know, when the child is born we are going to call her Jay and you will be her godmother, so you must come back often to watch her growing up.’
‘It’s going to be a girl?’
‘Of course,’ said Salem. ‘I know these things.’
He sat down beside Leila, patted her belly and took her hand in his.
‘He’s just hoping,’ she smiled at Jay. ‘If it’s a boy, we’ll call him Merlin.’
Jay looked away. ‘I suppose he’s been here, to stay in your hotel?’
Salem laughed. ‘Many times. Merlin also likes it here.’
He kissed Leila’s hand. ‘Shall we tell her our secret?’
Leila was watching Jay’s face closely. ‘Merlin is here right now. He was Salem’s passenger in the car.’
There was a long pause before Jay asked: ‘Does he know I’m here?’
‘When I told him,’ said Salem, ‘he refused to come.’
‘What!’ exclaimed Leila.
‘It’s true,’ said Salem. ‘For you, my love, I have driven halfway to Jerusalem to find that man and his film crew in the middle of a desert. There I argued for two whole hours with the most stubborn person I know. And I had to drive him back here in my car to make sure he didn’t change his mind on the way.’ He finished his drink. ‘Come,’ he said to Leila. ‘It is time we dress for dinner. Tonight is a very special occasion.’
After they had gone, Jay sat in the darkness alone. She did not have long to wait. The familiar footsteps stopped short of her and Merlin’s voice said, ‘This charade wasn’t my idea.’
He stood looking at the back of Jay’s head, silhouetted against the sea of lights below. Instead of turning round, she said, ‘I know. Salem told me.’
‘He and Leila set us up.’
‘Yes.’ Jay heard Merlin take two paces closer but she did not turn round.
‘I followed your tour dates,’ he said, ‘and read all the notices.’
‘You never answered my letters.’
‘I had to be sure,’ he said.
‘Of what? What more could I have done or said or written, Merlin?’
She heard him sigh. ‘Sure that I was me and not William. That I wasn’t going to louse up this relationship like every other one I’ve had. And a thousand other things. How could I put all that in letters?’
‘And are you sure now?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘So why didn’t you call me?’
‘I wanted to, but I was scared that this time you’d say no.’
At that moment the overloaded electricity supply system gave up the unequal struggle and a power cut wiped out all the lights of the city. On the outskirts there were a few fires where nomads were encamped. In the city itself only the lights of cars pierced the gloom, while out on the sea acetylene flares showed where fishing boats were working.
The lights in the hotel garden went out too, leaving Jay and Merlin in darkness. The cook was cursing in Arabic and Leila was calling to Salem to bring candles for the tables set for dinner. Jay felt Merlin’s hands on her shoulders. A frisson of electricity ran through her and made her gasp as though he had touched every intimate part of her body. She put her hands over his and squeezed.
Merlin gave a sharp intake of breath that told her that he was feeling the same. ‘It’s not going to be easy,’ he said huskily.
‘No.’
‘And it’s going to cost us fortune in air fares.’
‘Yes.’
‘But we have to find a way of being together, don’t we?’
Jay raised her face and saw the stars, partly blacked out by Merlin’s head coming closer to kiss her. Between the whirling constellations was the void where her spirit had dwelt while Eleanor walked the earth in her flesh. If there was any music of the spheres, she had not found it. But there was no loneliness any longer, for she knew that she would always be able to hear the faint echo of a seagull’s cry borne on the wind, whether the north-east gale or the solar wind of eternity.
‘Merlin,’ she said. Saying his name again after the months they had been apart was like a pain that cut her soul open. ‘Oh, Merlin. Merlin. Merlin.’
And, one by one, the stars went out.
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