Tawny Sands

by Violet Winspear

  She held out her plate and held on to her smile. 'You don't look much like an Eve, senor. Gracias.'

  `You don't believe that Adam was the innocent one ! Your opinion of the male species seems to be that they are dangerous to know.'

  `I imagine some are more dangerous than others,' she said demurely.

  `And I wonder who heads the list?' he drawled.

  She smiled and ate her segments of orange, finding them as sweet as honey. Were they this enjoyable because he had touched them? Not daring to meet his eyes, she let her gaze wander to the desert and saw that in daylight the sandstone rocks were a shade of red so that in contrast the sandhills looked like mounds of gold dust. Now the sun was really ablaze, spilling its warmth with such abundance that Janna could hardly believe the night had been so cold. She had snuggled down in the quilting of her sleeping-bag like a squirrel in its hideaway.

  Now after her second cup of coffee she felt wide awake and ready for the trip ahead. Though apprehensive about meeting the Princess Yamila, she felt sure she would find El Amara a place after her heart. It was where Don Raul

  had grown up; where he had roamed the fruit groves, rode the Arab horses, and rebelled against the idea of having his wife chosen for him.

  `If my kind of man is strange to you,' he said, quizzing her face as he lit a cigarette, 'think how much stranger your kind of woman is to me.'

  She looked at him with eyes as wide and blue as the sky. `I know I seem an oddity to you, senor. I wasn't trained from a child to please a man. I was taught to polish floors, to cook plain food, and eat humble pie.'

  `Janna .. He spoke her name so deeply, made her desperately aware of the wonder of his eyes and their power to move her heart. She wanted to be taken into his arms, to be crushed and kissed, even if love was not his drive. She wanted to be shown affection, but even as she felt her need she was on her feet and bundling things into the hamper as if the sirocco had suddenly hit them.

  He laughed, not heartlessly but with a kind of puzzlement. 'I am half inclined to keep you in the desert a few more days,' he said. 'I begin to glimpse what you are like beneath the icing.

  `I don't think I'd fancy a diet of pigeon.' She marched to the car with the hamper and rug, calling over her shoulder : `You might help a girl ! I told you I'm no doe-eyed slave who lives only to please a lord and master.'

  He came to her side with the rest of the camping gear, and she felt him smiling as he loaded the things into the car. 'You never know, chica. You might fall in love with a young man of El Amara and be only too eager to obey his every wish.'

  `Life for such men must be quite a little heaven,' she said, infusing a tart note into her voice. 'They are made a fuss of by their women, but if anything displeases them they can say a few words of repudiation and the poor woman is divorced. I'll stay a spinster and open my tea-shop, if you don't mind?'

  `I think I do mind.'

  `Oh?'

  `A girl without any relatives should have a desire for a family of her own.'

  `I'll adopt a couple of cats,' she said lightly. And the next instant her attention was caught by a cloud of dust which seemed to be heading their way. 'What is it, senor? A sandstorm?'

  He shielded his eyes with his hand and studied the approaching haze. Abruptly his face was stern and he spoke a word that sent a cold thrill down Janna's spine. 'Locusts ! A horde of them, and heading for these palm trees, which they will strip bare!'

  Even as he spoke he was thrusting Janna into the car and slamming the door. He had just reached the other side of the car when the locusts descended, a whirling cloud of winged monsters, making the strangest din as Don Raul threw himself in beside Janna. The creatures dived around the vehicle, covering the windows like a dust-sheet and making it impossible for the occupants to drive off.

  `How awful!' Janna gasped. She covered her ears against the shrieking insects and watched as the windshield wiper began to hammer them back and forth without dislodging more than a few of the mass. Some had flown in through the windows before she had had time to close them, but Don Raul quickly disposed of the intruders.

  `Fancy being out there in that seething whirlwind!' she whispered.

  `Hide your eyes against me.' He pulled her head to his shoulder. 'They will be gone as soon as they have gorged on everything in the oasis.'

  `I hope they aren't heading for El Amara.' She felt the warmth of his shoulder against her cheek, but it made her go cold to visualise that horde of greedy insects stripping bare the fruit trees of his home.

  `One can't tell. They may be an isolated group flying through the desert on a foray, but if they are part of a larger more destructive force, then the groves could be in

  danger. Precautions are taken, the trees are sprayed with an insecticide which kills the creatures, but a dense mass of them can still cause a great deal of harm to the fruit harvest.'

  `Oh, Raul!'

  There was an acute silence within the car, a tenseness surrounded by the hungry clamour of hundreds of desert locusts. Janna's heart turned over ... she had only spoken his name and yet she had felt at once the stillness of him, a shock-wave almost, as if she had taken a liberty.

  She drew away from him and stared from the window of the car ... the locusts were flying off, leaving the trees they had stripped of every leaf. Slowly the air cleared, their noise died away, and everything was still again. Like the calm following a whirlwind the silence was unbelievable, and then Janna gave a nervous start as the engine of the car sprang to life and they drove over the sand to the highway.

  They were on their way; on the final lap of the journey to El Amara, and she was acutely aware of having touched a nerve when she had spoken his name without using the formal senor. She had made him aware of her as a person, perhaps, and not just as the girl hired to wear his ring, who amused him without touching his heart as he had touched hers.

  He drove swiftly and silently, and Janna could not take her eyes from the grip of his hands on the wheel of the safari car. The knuckles showed taut and white under the sun-tanned skin.

  She bit her lip. People weren't easy of understanding at the best of times, and Raul Cesar Bey was more complex than any of those she had met and known. She felt the pain of suppressed tears in her throat. Didn't he care for her sympathy? Didn't he want anything from her except the pleasure of teasing her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THEY had been driving for several hours when the hot, tawny sands gave way abruptly to great kasbahs of rock. Feathery trees and flower-clumped vines hung in veils down the rocky walls of the canyon, and the shade and coolness was welcome after the miles of unrelieved heat.

  Janna breathed excitedly, sensing that at last they drew near to El Amara. They drove out into the sun again and she blinked at the dazzle ... and then gave a murmur of delight as she caught sight of white-walled houses clinging like cubes of sugar to the lion-coloured hills It came as a surprise to see civilised dwellings after so much space and emptiness, and only the occasional encampment of black bedouin tents.

  `Soon you will see the groves of El Amara.' There was a note of expectation in the deep voice at her side. 'Because they repose in a valley, surrounded by all this rock which gives them shade and protects the moisture in the soil, they are unexpectedly lush and green.'

  `I never dreamed of more than a large oasis, senor.'

  `You are in for a surprise.' He laughed like a boy homesick for what he loved. 'El Amara is the most unexpected place. Now we glimpse the first of the trees ... you see, the groves are like an immense fruit bowl.'

  And there they were, massed abundantly around the steep, curving sides of the valley, filling it to the brim with the heady scents of citrus and tangerines, and the honey of a thousand ripening dates. A green wonder after the almost arid desert, and from the road above so immense Janna pictured herself in that maze of fruit trees, wandering lost and never finding the way out.

  `Senor, it's the most fantastic orchard I ever saw!'

  `The ric
h green heart of El Amara. The source from which we draw our living and our sense of pride. From the harvest of fruit grows all the rest, the houses, the hospital,

  the school, the chapel, and the mosque. We are a mixed community; the bells of the chapel mingle with the cry of the muezzin.'

  `It's all so strange, so sudden,' she murmured, and now like .a fly at the rim of a great fruit bowl the car was circling the groves in their natural valley. She had the sensation of holding on, and then realised with a catch of her breath that she was clinging to the edge of her seat. If their wheels should slip they would plunge over the rim of the road into that deep fragrant bowl.

  Instead they turned suddenly and took a track that led into the sun again; the engine purred louder, they were going uphill and the houses were clustering in larger groups, curiously secretive, as if veiled against the eyes of a stranger. Janna felt bewildered. Where were the people? And then it came to her that most Eastern houses were enclosed by a wall, and that within the walls were tiled and flowery patios, women at their cooking and cleaning, children at their play, guarded from the world outside by the oriental love of mystery and intrigue. Only in their markets, in their public places, would these people meet to bargain and talk; to laugh and argue. In the evenings the women would lounge upon the flat roofs and eat honey cakes, while ibises flew gracefully against the pink sky and found nests on the rim of walls and in rock fissures.

  `Thank heaven the locusts flew in another direction.' Janna felt dark eyes upon her profile, and tension crept back between her and the man who must soon present her to his family. She felt the falsity of her position more acutely than ever. It seemed that he wasn't yet ready to be called Raul by the girl he was supposed to desire.

  `What is it, Janna? Are you nervous about meeting my grandmother?'

  `Desperately. I—I don't want us to tell her an untruth. She doesn't deserve it.'

  `You would rather I told her that her ward ran off with someone else, afraid of me because I am the grandson of a

  Moorish princess?'

  `In the end the Princess Yamila must be told.'

  `The full story was never necessary and I won't tell her. She is a proud woman, with all her hopes centred in me. Better she believe an untruth than be hurt.'

  `You need not tell her the whole truth.'

  `She would find a way to learn it, perhaps from Rachael. I must protect them both.'

  Because he loved them both, and Janna was only the girl he meant to use in his intrigue. He needed time in which to find the way to explain his true needs to his grandmother, and Janna would fill the gap and employ the mind of this proud old lady, who was looking forward to meeting a girl he might agree to marry. Even the Princess could not force his hand entirely, though Janna suspected that she tried. And loving his grandmother he strove to be as gentle and patient as his bold nature allowed.

  Janna was tense with nerves, and at the same time beguiled by the magic of this place . . . her heart turned over when at last the car came in sight of the House of the Pomegranate.

  It was more like a white-stoned palace set upon the ramparts of lion-coloured rock. Its walls gleamed among green palms and beaten-gold allamanda; it sprawled like a pasha among myrtles, plumbago and sheets of bougainvillea. And there along its high walls clustered the pomegranate trees, the red-gold fruits agleam among the leaves like hidden treasure.

  A castle of dreams built on shifting sands for Janna, and she dared not voice her admiration. She must from this moment look unmoved by What her whole being longed to respond to.

  `It's very nice,' she said politely.

  Don Raul shot her a sharp look, and drove the car beneath a great stone archway into a courtyard fronting an immense door. A huge iron knocker hung in the centre of the door, and solid as a fortress were the walls in which it

  was set. There was no indication of the sumptuousness which Janna sensed behind that great arched entrance. The hanging gardens could not be seen from beneath the brow of the porch.

  Dark as well were the brows of her pretence lover as he faced her, an arm resting on the wheel, the engine silent now but still giving off the warmth of their long drive. She looked at him from beneath her lashes and saw a rather sardonic twist to his lips.

  `Welcome to El Amara,' he said. 'This house and its roof are at your feet, senorita.'

  `How extravagant, senor!'

  `We are extravagant people, so I hope when you see the interior of the house you will be a little warmer in your manner. The Princess will expect it. She lives in lovely surroundings, but that does not mean that she takes them for granted. She is Moorish. Her people like to give and receive compliments. It makes life more gracious.'

  `I—I don't know when I am right and when I am wrong.' Janna gave voice to words that had simmered in her for the last miles of their journey. 'Am I to be cool or warm? Myself or someone else? Alice in the palace, or a chic young thing from the blue coast whom you pretend to fancy?'

  He stared at her, his eyes narrowed to an unsmiling glitter. 'It isn't like you to be flippant, the usual sign that a woman is hurt and angry about something, but determined not to show it. What have I said or done to hurt your feelings?'

  `I—I'm just a bit bewildered.' She tilted her chin and looked right at him, bracing herself against the usual shock to her feelings when his eyes looked into hers; so dark, holding tiny points of fire, and with a faint slant to the lids that made his glance so disturbing. It concealed more than it revealed, aided by the density of his lashes.

  `And why are you bewildered, nina?'

  `I don't know what you really want of me.'

  `I want you to be yourself.'

  `You mean it won't matter if I tell your grandmother I am a typist without any family?'

  `She will be intrigued, and will want to make you welcome in our family circle.'

  `Have you never brought home a girl like me before?' `Never,' he drawled. 'It was not a practice of mine to bring home my girl-friends.'

  `In case your grandmother saw one of them as your potential wife?'

  `Do you imagine there were so many?' He leaned a little nearer to her, and she had that dizzying sensation of falling into his eyes. 'It would be enlightening to see inside your funny young head, where the cogs are busily spinning away, weaving sensational affairs for me out of a few casual remarks. Would you believe that Raul Cesar Bey has been more a lover of good horses than houris?'

  `I'm not implying that you are a rake, but you are so—' There she broke off in confusion, while slowly his eyes filled with teasing laughter. Laugh creases formed attractively about his mouth, and the tip of her finger could have fitted into his chin cleft.

  `Do go on, chica. I would give a diamond—a large one—to know what you really think of me.'

  `Y—you know yourself that you aren't the most ugly man around.'

  `There have been many men who were great lovers despite an odd sort of face. Some women, too, who were adored despite unattractive features. Good looks are not the sign of a Casanova nature. But I take it that because I happen to be the grandson of one of the most beautiful women in Morocco, I am therefore a bit of a libertine?'

  `No.' The word broke from Janna. She wanted to touch his face—that dark, striking face that most women must look at with desirous eyes—and at the same instant she shrank from giving herself away to him. It would be embarrassing for both of them if he suspected that she had lost her heart to him. She would sooner pretend that he

  meant no more to her than a sort of employer for whom she had agreed to work for a while.

  `Don Raul, as if I'd have come this far if I thought you that sort of man. I just took it for granted that an attractive man of means had lots of girl-friends . . . I didn't mean to imply that you had lots of love affairs.'

  `What would have been your reaction if I had turned out to be that sort of man? A cynical and sated satyr, and you alone with him in the desert?'

  She broke into a laugh. 'I should have been terr
ified.'

  `As it was, chica, you were nervous of my every glance. Do you imagine a man thinks of nothing but flirtation and lovemaking?'

  'No, of course not !'

  `You are blushing like mad.'

  `Y-you are shameless, the way you tease a poor girl. You might remember, Don Raul, that I have never been so alone before with a man. I'm bound to find it a confusing experience—after Mildred.'

  He laughed, and opened the car door beside him. 'Come, we will go indoors and present ourselves to the Princess. Someone will have seen the car approaching and she will be awaiting us with impatience.'

  He held out a hand to Janna, who hesitated before allowing his lean fingers to clasp hers and draw her from the car into the hot sun falling on to the courtyard. She walked with him to the great front door of his home, and as if someone had been waiting on cue it swung open with a loud important clang and there in the aperture stood a porter in white. He bowed first to Don Raul, and then to his young companion, a flicker of quickly veiled interest in his eyes.

  Don Raul spoke to him in Arabic, pointing to the car and indicating that their luggage be brought into the house. Then with a hand beneath Janna's elbow he led her across the interior patio of the house, around which in a crescent was built a cool, cloistered arcade with rooms beyond the fretted archways.

  There were many flowers, twining around the tree-trunks and spilling from great stone jars. There was vivid tiling around the arcades and the picturesque fountain, with lotus buds afloat on the water of the basin. There was a sense of seclusion and beauty, ancient and Moorish, and yet appealing at once to Janna, the English girl who had known so much austerity and had never dreamed of seeing a place like this. A place out of an Arabian fable, unreal, and yet when she breathed, when she touched, when she looked, taking in everything with enchanted eyes, it was so alive, and the man beside her was plucking a mauve flower from a strange-looking tree.