A Canopy of Rose Leaves

by Isobel Chace

  ‘But I didn’t know you were in Teheran! How could I have known?’

  ‘Didn’t Maxine tell you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I expect she forgot,’ she murmured. ‘She isn’t particularly coherent just now either.’

  Roger heard this in silence. ‘I see,’ he said at last.

  She didn’t think that he did. ‘I thought you’d forgotten about me,’ she declared. ‘You never came to see me before either!’

  ‘No. I think I knew even then that I could easily go in at the deep end over you, and I didn’t want it to happen—not if the sort of person you cared about was, brother Ian!’

  ‘I like Ian—’

  ‘You’ve made that abundantly clear! It’s a pity you’re not young enough to be run in as being in need of care and protection, for what use you think Ian will be to you I can’t imagine! Good heavens, sweetheart, you must know the kind of man he is. He’s ditched you once already, and what for? You don’t have to draw me a picture of Anne, I can see her as clearly as if I’d known her all my life. She saw the possibilities of Aladdin’s Cave at a glance, and if anyone can do it, she’ll push Ian into being a great success. And don’t you dare feel sorry for him! He may resent her drive. Most weak men do resent their womenfolk being more able than themselves, but he’ll cling to her because she’ll build him up in the eyes of his friends as being someone in his own right. In his weaker moments he’ll think of you as the sweet alternative, but he’ll always go back to her when the going gets tough. He’s my father all over again!’

  ‘How do you know that?’ she asked him, rather put out that he should have read his brother’s character so accurately when she, who had known him all her life, had only just discovered what Ian was really like.

  ‘I see my father from time to time. Ian’s mother is probably very like Anne. She made my father what he is and she had even less to work with than Anne has with Ian. My father has plenty of surface charm, but he suffers from the fatal flaw of being totally insensitive to the motives and ideals of those around him. When he married my mother I think he really did love her. He was like a healthy ivy getting a stranglehold on a pine tree. The pine tree soon rejected the parasite, but the handy oak was only too pleased to give him shelter. When you look at them now, it may be the leaf of the ivy that catches your eye, but the whole edifice is held up by the wood of the oak underneath.

  ‘You’re too nice a tree to be smothered by Ian, my dear. The ivy kills the oak tree in the end if it’s allowed to thrive unchecked. Do you want to end up like Ian’s mother? Glassy-eyed and with all feeling deadened in the all-consuming drive towards material success?’

  Deborah managed a little smile. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I think your mother is more like a holly bush than a pine tree,’ she added.

  ‘Prickly? Well, yes, but it’s the pine tree that stands aloof and alone in altitudes where lesser beings freeze and fall apart. Ivy couldn’t hope to survive at her level.’

  Deborah’s attention was momentarily diverted. ‘I didn’t know that you liked her as much as that, but you do, don’t you? I’m glad.’

  ‘By which I gather that you like her too?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. I can see why you compare her to a pine tree, but I still think she’s more like the holly. She reminds me of the legend of how the holly got its red berries. When the Christ-child was newly born and cold, the trees of the forest were asked to give their branches to make a fire to keep him warm. They all had the best excuses as to why they shouldn’t do so; all except the holly, which didn’t seem to have any particular use in the world. So the holly willingly gave its branches to the flames to keep the Child warm, and the scarlet berries are an eternal reminder of how it sacrificed itself. Isn’t that just the sort of thing your mother would do?’

  ‘Could be—if she saw it as her duty.’

  ‘Exactly, that’s why I wish she could marry her John properly. She’ll go through the ceremony as a legal requirement, but she’ll know that it isn’t true for her. As far as she’s concerned, she’s still married to your father. I know she does, because I’d feel exactly the same way myself!’

  His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Tell me more,’ he invited her.

  Deborah was only too glad to do so. ‘I think you were her branches. She was afraid you would suffer for her sins.’

  He smiled. ‘Even clever women can be incredibly stupid,’ he remarked. ‘Forget about my mother and the past, love. Suppose you tell me instead what you’ve been up to yourself?’

  She cast him a swift glance from underneath her lashes. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean exactly what you think I mean,’ Roger retorted. ‘If you feel like that about marriage, wasn’t it a trifle convenient to forget that Ian is a married man?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Precisely! Oh! What were you hoping to gain?’

  She found to her surprise that her hand was still in his and she clutched at his fingers as though her life depended on it. ‘You,’ she said.

  His eyebrows rose. ‘Me?’

  ‘Please don’t be angry again,’ she begged him. She tickled the palm of his hand with her forefinger and looked imploringly across at him. ‘It was a mistake. You see, I didn’t know you were in Teheran. Couldn’t we just forget all about it?’ She sighed, seeing the answer to that written on his face. ‘You frighten me when you’re angry—’

  ‘Rubbish! You’ve never been the least bit afraid of me!’

  ‘Well, perhaps not afraid,’ she amended, ‘but you’ve made me feel pretty uncomfortable once or twice.’

  ‘Only once or twice? My dear girl, I marvel at my self-control if it’s only been once or twice! A more exasperating female it has never been my privilege to meet! I could have murdered you when you got yourself carried off by the Qashgai. I probably would have done if you hadn’t looked so pleased to see me. And you were glad, weren’t you, my foolish darling?’

  She nodded silently.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ he teased her.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll be angry again—’

  ‘Very likely! But not as angry as I was then, when I thought I might be too late to extract you from some kind of wedding with Reza Mahdevi. If necessary, I’d have kidnapped you back myself.’ His eyes looked deep into hers. ‘What would you have done if I had?’ he asked curiously.

  Deborah felt a strong feeling of regret that he hadn’t carried her off by force. Her eyes fell before the brilliant inquiry in his.

  ‘You know what I wanted,’ she murmured. ‘When you didn’t make love to me I thought I didn’t appeal to you—not enough for you to be more than chivalrous about it. You’d come, but only as you would have come for any girl who’d got herself in the same pickle. I thought you didn’t like me much. Only, at Persepolis, I thought you sounded a bit jealous of Ian, and—’

  ‘Ah yes, Persepolis.’ His fingers tightened round her wrist. ‘At Persepolis I had despaired of persuading you that you were as much in love with me as I was with you. I couldn’t wait for you to get it together any longer, not if I wanted to hang on to my sanity. I made up my mind that as wooing you was getting me nowhere, I’d try another tack and hurry you into marriage with me so fast that you wouldn’t have time to indulge any further nostalgia for the might-have-been with Ian. But then my mother turned up and you were so relieved to see her that I felt a brute. When I came back from Teheran and found your bombshell waiting for me I thought I’d lost you. Have I, Deborah?’

  ‘I thought I’d lost you too!’ she said slowly.

  ‘And that hurt?’

  ‘It still does! If I’d known where you were it wouldn’t have been so bad, but I thought you were in Shiraz and didn’t want to see me. I thought you’d decided that I didn’t measure up to your standards, not—not in a nasty way, but that I wasn’t worth giving up your freedom for.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I made Ian send that cable. He didn’t want to, but I spoke to Anne and she made him do i
t.’

  ‘At a price, I imagine she would,’ Roger put in, and she thought, though it couldn’t be true, that he was trying not to laugh out loud at her. ‘What did you bribe her with?’

  ‘My share of the shop.’

  He did laugh then, a great sound of joyous triumph. Deborah gave him a startled glance and then began to laugh herself.

  ‘I thought you’d be angry.’ she said, still not quite believing that he wasn’t.

  ‘How could I be angry about anything so beautifully, so gloriously right? Ian is welcome to it!’

  ‘Yes, but it was all I had,’ she reminded him. ‘Without it I haven’t got a penny in the world. What kind of security is that?’ She sat up very straight and looked straight ahead of her down the deserted street. ‘I hoped you’d put your foot down if you thought I was going back to Ian. I hoped that you’d be jealous enough to want me yourself. It was an impulse, a long-growing impulse, to tempt you to come to my rescue again. I even thought you might like it! But it wasn’t a very nice thing to do and I was ashamed immediately afterwards, but it was too late then to change my mind.’

  ‘Poor darling! Never mind, it’s the very last windmill you’ll be throwing your bonnet over, for one thing because I won’t allow you to waste your talent on such a futile occupation, and for another, I’m scared stiff I may fumble the catch one of these days and I don’t like the thought of anyone else being on hand to field it for you—not Ian, not Reza, nor anybody who takes it into his head to want even the smallest part of you!’

  There was a hint of mischief in the look she gave him. ‘Won’t allow?’ she queried, her voice trembling a little.

  ‘That’s right, won’t allow.’ She saw that he was completely serious and forbore to tease him any further. Was it possible that he still wasn’t completely sure of her? He took her hand to his mouth and kissed the palm. ‘Darling, I meant to give you your head, to go very slowly and gently towards convincing you that I am the only man in the world for you.’

  ‘But I knew that the first time you kissed me!’ she told him.

  ‘No, Debbie, you didn’t. You were still hurting from Ian’s defection and perhaps a little worried that you weren’t hurting more. Any man would have done to help you break free of the past and I happened to be on hand. Even when I came for you at the Qashgai encampment you still weren’t sure that you could be completely happy with me.’

  ‘But I did know! We had our fortunes told at the Hafez tomb and I knew then that it had to be you for me. He said I was already known to the man who would possess my heart and that it was too late for me to draw back. Who else could that have been but you?’

  ‘I daresay Reza was hoping it was he,’ he said drily.

  Deborah looked completely shattered. ‘Reza? He couldn’t have done I He knew I wasn’t in the least bit in love with him!’

  ‘He wanted you all the same,’ he reminded her.

  ‘But I didn’t want him! Roger, you must believe me, I don’t want anything or anyone but you!’

  He touched her cheek with a gentle hand. ‘Did I ever tell you what a kissable mouth you have?’

  She nodded, her eyes wide, and pulled his hand away with her own. ‘I love you very much!’ she said.

  ‘Enough to marry me? I want you to think about it, Deborah, because I love you too much to let you go once you’re mine. I shan’t be an easy husband, and I may well ask for more from you than you want to give. I’ll ride roughshod over your feelings when I should consider you more, and expect you to keep up when I have no right to expect you to, but I shall always love you more than any other woman in the world. Will that be enough for you?’

  ‘Oh, Roger, it would be heaven to be with you for the rest of my life. You can try all you like to make it sound like a bed of nails, but it looks remarkably like a bed of roses to me!’ She took his hand again and kissed it, slowly and deliberately. ‘Don’t you know I’d only be half alive with anyone else?’

  His answer made her gasp as he pulled her into the circle of his arms and kissed her lips with a tenderness that made her ache with love for him.

  ‘This is only the beginning,’ he said.

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ he said at last, ‘that there is nowhere in Shiraz where I can be alone with you.’

  ‘Can’t we go to your place?’

  ‘It wouldn’t do. I’ll take you there as my wife. Don’t Maxine and David ever go out?’

  Deborah smiled. ‘Not often. Not that they’d notice us being there, they wouldn’t care at all! But Toobi—’

  ‘Enough said,’ Roger sighed. ‘I refuse to do my courting under her critical eye!’

  ‘Toobi approves of you, so you don’t really have to worry. She thinks you’ll keep me in order and not let me fall into silly scrapes. She hasn’t much confidence in my ability to look after myself.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ he told her.

  But she was surprised that Toobi’s view of her future with Roger should seem so eminently satisfactory to her too. She had never thought she would tolerate anyone else making her decisions in life for her, but where Roger was concerned, she positively welcomed it.

  ‘Supposing,’ she said, testing the ground with extreme caution, ‘that I hadn’t given away my half of the shop—’

  She knew without being told that he knew exactly what she was thinking. ‘Would I have allowed you to keep it?’ he finished for her. ‘No, my darling, I would not. I prefer to support my own wife.’

  ‘Yes, but you couldn’t object to my helping to support myself, could you?’

  ‘I’d object to brother Ian having any say in my wife’s future. That’s for me to worry about.’

  Deborah chuckled, burying her face in his neck. ‘You sound as if you don’t believe we were equal partners any more than Reza did!’

  ‘Not entirely,’ he admitted. ‘Anne would have crowded you out sooner or later. You’d always have ended up being the junior partner in that outfit.’

  ‘You make it sound very undesirable,’ Deborah murmured. ‘But it would have been awful if you hadn’t wanted me. I kept telling myself that I would have to start a new life anyway and so it wouldn’t matter, but it felt very naked to have nothing at all between me and starvation.’

  He gave her a curious look. ‘What were you intending to do if I hadn’t come running?’ he asked her.

  ‘I meant to ask your advice,’ she confided, ‘and then I would have thrown myself on your mercy. I thought you might keep me for a little while even if you didn’t marry me. Half a loaf would have been very much better than no bread at all.’

  Roger was silent for a minute, then he said, ‘You’ve grown up, little Deborah,’ and he smiled his very sweetest smile.

  ‘But I’m not the perfection you sought, am I?’

  ‘You’re perfect enough for me! I’m going to be very proud of my wife—especially as she counted the world well lost for me! Oh, damn and blast, there’s someone coming! Don’t laugh woman, there must be somewhere where I can kiss you in peace!’ He clapped his hand to his head in sudden triumph. ‘I’ll take you to the Bagh-i-Khalilil.’

  He helped her out of the jeep, keeping her hand firmly in his as they walked through the streets towards the garden he had in mind. It had been laid out by the father of the present owner, and the door stood open for any passer-by to enter and enjoy the flowers within. It was one of the most beautiful gardens Deborah had ever seen. She particularly liked the pretty little verandahed pavilion that Roger told her was typically Persian in style. The carved ceiling reminded her of Spain and the tooled leather of Morocco.

  ‘How lucky that we have it to ourselves,’ she said demurely, pausing to admire a vista that was lined with bougainvillaeas of every possible hue.

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ Roger returned courteously. She hurried across a small bridge and stood on the other side looking back at him, her eyes full of her love for him.

  ‘These are my days of jasmine, roses and celebrations, and it’s you w
ho have given them to me. What can I give you back in return?’

  He joined her where she was standing and put an arm round her waist. ‘How about yourself?’ he suggested.

  She nodded abstractedly. ‘I want that too,’ she said. ‘But if you can wait, I’d rather we were married first.’ She turned into his arms. ‘I want the gift to be complete and irrevocable. Do you mind?’

  ‘Still unsure?’ he asked her.

  She shook her head. ‘I want to be yours more than anything in the world.’

  ‘Then we’ll wait, darling.’ His eyes glinted at her. ‘It won’t be for long because I intend to marry you as quickly as possible, here in Shiraz, just as soon as I can make the arrangements.’

  Deborah opened her mouth to protest that her parents would want to be there to see their only daughter married, but she knew that they would expect her to be married in England and that Roger would not relish having Ian and Anne as guests at his wedding. ‘Yes, darling,’ she murmured.

  His amusement made her feel shy of him. ‘Very biddable!’ he commented. ‘I wish I thought you’d always give in so gracefully to my suggestions for you!’

  ‘I want to please you. You do believe that, don’t you?’

  He kissed her cheek. ‘Yes, I do. I want to please you too, that’s what loving is all about.’

  He led her by the hand to a small arbour covered by a tiny yellow rose, known as Shower of Gold,-or Lady Banks’ rose, and seated her on the delicate wrought-iron bench within. When he shook the woody stem some of the petals fell on to her hair and he plucked a few of the roses and put them in her hand.

  ‘Oh, Roger,’ she exclaimed, ‘it’s exactly how Hafez said it would be I Do you remember quoting him to me?’

  He threw some more petals over her, smiling. ‘And o’er her head the minstrel of the night shall fling a canopy of roses, score on score,’ he quoted, again. And he reached down to her and took her back into his arms.