Arabesque

by Geoffrey Household

  “But—”

  “No, not a harem. You see, he put me up when I’d run away from my husband. And that was a bit awkward. So when Xenia came along, what was easier than to put her up too? And now there’s you.”

  Armande involuntarily looked round the flat. There could not possibly be more than one bedroom.

  Carry smiled at her bewilderment.

  “Toots sleeps there,” she said, pointing to the second door, “and Xenia and I doss down in here. And if you’ll join us.

  It seemed to Armande that the last word had been spoken there’s a third divan for you.” with unnecessary firmness.

  “I’d love to,” she answered, “for a day or two. Where is Xenia?”

  “She was crying on Toots’ bed. But I think she has gone to sleep now. Shall we have a look?”

  Carry got up, carefully balancing her Martini, and opened the door of the bedroom. Xenia was huddled up with her back to them, gently snoring. Armande’s first impression was of a mass of coarse black hair spread over the pillow and a mountain of fine, peasanty bottom, in the shortest of slips, occupying the rest of the bed. She put down Carry as a highly civilised cat, who had known perfectly well that no one, for at least twenty-four hours, could get over such an unfavourable introduction.

  “She’s fallen in love with Toots,” Carry explained.

  “It wouldn’t be difficult.”

  “But don’t. It’s useless.”

  Armande smiled sympathetically. A slight bitterness on the ironical face of her temporary hostess showed that she too had fallen or, more probably, wanted to fall in love.

  “Don’t misunderstand me. He’s an angel,” Carry Laxeter went on. “But you never know how far it is just pity. And then there’s no privacy. An impossible man. Darling, if ever there were only one woman here, you can bet two of his pals from the desert would drop in and camp in the hall.”

  When Major Honeymill returned from the private staff work of his private war, he brought with him an Arab officer. Lieutenant Rashid Abd-er-Rahman ibn Ajjueyn looked more like a soldier than any man Armande had ever seen. Not for him were the puzzled, the deliberately firm-lipped, the heartily virile expressions of European officers in days of science and Geneva Conventions. He was an Arab d’Artagnan, doubtless full of religious and social conventions of his own, but obviously capable of whipping off an enemy’s head without a change in his merry, velvet eyes or his straight carnivorous smile. Armande considered that if Major Honeymill had foreseen, as he probably had, some restraint in his domestic relations, he could not have chosen a better diversion.

  “But this is delightful!” exclaimed Toots, as soon as the introductions were completed.

  With a wave of his hand he implied his pride at seeing two such women in his room, and his satisfaction that Armande should be confidently mixing drinks.

  “How is Xenia?”

  “Xenia is here,” answered a thrilling voice from the doorway of his bedroom.

  Xenia was very much there, one hand on each portal of the door, her head sunk upon her left shoulder. She was wearing an astonishing négligé of lace and white satin which clung to the more voluptuous curves of her young body, and cascaded everywhere else.

  “Grandmamma’s wedding dress,” said Carry in a stage whisper. “We are clever with our fingers.”

  “Xenia, my sweet!” cried Toots. “Come and join the party!”

  “I vas veeping,” announced Xenia solemnly, as if it had been an employment which needed serious concentration.

  “Did you have a nice sleep, darling?” Carry asked.

  “I dream you come to me,” said Xenia to Toots, ignoring Carry.

  Armande decided to have no more of this from either of them. Dreams? Who hadn’t dreamed? And who had not wept in the morning that love was no longer in her world.

  “Xenia and I have not met yet,” she reminded Carry.

  “Xenia, this is Armande Herne. She has come to this asylum to stay. I use the word in its proper sense, Toots—a refuge from the world.”

  “It is rather like a bughouse, isn’t it?” said Toots proudly.

  Xenia stared at Armande for an embarrassing moment; then, as if encouraged by the quiet smile, she slipped a plump arm under the tense, slim muscles of Armande’s and entered the room under her protection.

  “You vill be my friend, yes?”

  Armande, though faintly disgusted, felt the girl’s need. Xenia was ridiculous. She evidently said whatever came into her head, and said it with quite unnecessary drama. Yet that was no reason for dislike.

  “I do hope so.”

  “You are kind. Ve vill both love him, yes?”

  Toots and Carry went off into ripples of laughter. Armande, seeing the girl was not in the least offended, squeezed her arm.

  Lieutenant Rashid observed the scene with a genial smile. He seemed perfectly at ease.

  “Give him a drink, Mrs. Herne,” said Toots.

  “Make it Armande,” she replied, “or I’ll feel like a dowager around here.”

  “Lovely Armande, then. Rashid, you look like a Cheshire cat.”

  “What is a Cheshire cat?”

  “It grins. It remembers all the canaries it has swallowed.”

  “Do I smile? Well, I was reminded of my father’s beyt.”

  “How many wives had he?” asked Carry.

  “We don’t mention those subjects,” Toots warned her.

  “Oh, I don’t mind!” Rashid declared. “The ways of my host are my ways.”

  He drained the Martini which Armande offered him at a single gulp.

  “El-hamd Illah! My father had six wives—what you would call wives.”

  “And did they get on together?” Carry asked.

  Rashid glanced merrily at Armande, as much as to say that she should excuse him for answering silly questions.

  “We have a saying that the female of all creatures is the meeker—except mankind,” he answered.

  “What’s in the larder, Carry?” Toots asked.

  “I expect Mahmoud didn’t leave anything. Shall we go out?”

  “I wondered whether Armande mightn’t be too tired to go out after her journey,” said Toots diffidently. “So Rashid and I brought a porcupine.”

  “Where’s it going to sleep, darling?”

  “It’s a—well, it’s a dead porcupine, Carry. I thought we’d eat it if there weren’t any eggs.”

  Rashid sprang joyously into the entrance hall, and returned waving the porcupine by its hind legs. It was naked of spines. Its nose was very long. Its throat gaped horribly from the Mohammedan knife.

  Carry looked at it with resignation.

  “They brought home a baby camel last time,” she said. “It hung about for days.”

  “Sucking swine!” exclaimed Xenia enthusiastically. “With fingers! Yes, please?”

  “With fingers and on the floor in the Beduw manner,” Toots agreed.

  “Then I change my dress. You come!” she ordered Armande, compelling her gently towards the bedroom.

  Xenia flung off her imperial négligé and looked at herself in the mirror.

  “Am I beautiful?” she asked.

  “You are young,” Armande replied.

  In the contemplation of her own body the girl’s vitality seemed to subside as suddenly as it had been aroused by the offer of barbaric and unrecognised food.

  “And nobody loves me! Nobody!”

  “Oh, I’m sure they do,” said Armande weakly, embarrassed by so much flesh and emotion.

  “Nobody! He say, come and live with Carry and me! I think first I be servant. Then I think I be loved. I do not know, I do not care. He is so kind. I come. My mother dead, my father prisoner. What shall I do? I come. Then I find—nothing to do. I am just nice friend. I hate this Carry. I say, I go. He tell me not to be silly. I stay.”

  “I shall speak to Toots about it,” said Armande severely.

  Too much kindness—that was what was wrong with the man! Could anybody have too
much kindness? Possibly not, towards a person of the same sex; but kindness to the opposite sex—as every woman knew, though it mightn’t be so obvious to men—was very swiftly limited by nature or good sense.

  This flat, she saw, was by no means the delightfully irresponsible loony bin that it seemed in the first few hours; its eccentricity had developed from Toots’ character and his first impulsive hospitality to Carry. Carry was a delightful and amusing companion who could make the unconventional fashionable all by herself; nevertheless, she or he had been strained by so much intimacy. So then, moved one day by Carry’s loneliness and Xenia’s destitution, he had offered his hospitality to Xenia as well. That upset both of them, and Armande (hadn’t he praised her sense of humour?) had been called in to keep order. She hoped that Toots’ gift for impromptu planning was of use to G.H.Q. as to maidens in distress.

  She returned to the living-room with Xenia, now all bouncing in a pinafore. Carry was draped gracefully against the entrance to the kitchen. The two men had removed their tunics and were happily at work: Rashid squatting on his heels by the open back door and blowing at a charcoal brazier, Toots struggling to disjoint the porcupine.

  “Let me do it,” said Armande. “I’m a professional.”

  “You? I thought you were so …”

  “Helpless?”

  “Never! Ethereal! Dew and rose petals in the dusk,”

  “But not for dinner. This is a rotten knife. Rashid Bey, lend me yours.”

  Rashid grinned and stood up. Armande was sure that so boyish a character would have a good blade in his pocket; she expected him to go to his tunic and fetch it. Instead, he undid collar and tie, and lifted over his head a string of camel hair on the end of which was an eight-inch knife in a soft leather sheath. He laid the knife on the dresser for Armande to pick up.

  “Good God!” exclaimed Toots. “I never knew you carried that thing under your shirt!”

  Rashid, still grinning, watched Armande. She was absurdly proud to notice that he showed no sign of anxiety as she felt for the unfamiliar joints with the thin and precious leaf of damascened steel.

  “And rose petals with it!” said Carry admiringly. “Darling, you are a dangerous woman!”

  And from her own sex this time. Dangerous? Incompetent! Drifting to Egypt at the will of the fortress. Drift into this crazy place. Drift into marriage. Futile whenever she tried to strike out for herself, as in her choices of Calinot and David Nachmias. What was the cause of this false impression she gave? Merely because she was intelligent? Merely because she was reserved? What did they think she was keeping herself for? What was she keeping herself for? Nothing.

  Armande took refuge in polite detachment. She knew it must be obvious to all of them that her gaiety had vanished, but determined to be an appreciative guest even if unavoidable thinking of past and future prevented her from being a contributor.

  The spirits of her companions did not, in any case, require assistance from her. Rashid carried in the joints of porcupine, aromatic of herbs and charcoal, resting on a mound of rice. They put the dish in the middle of the floor, and gathered round it on a ring of sofa cushions. Xenia, excited by alcohol and great gobbets of the supposed sucking pig, burst into Jugoslav song until, with startling suddenness, she fell asleep. Carry became more lavish with her terms of endearment, the more pungent her wit. Rashid flashed his merry, watchful smile, but said little. Either his habit of downing a cocktail in a single draught, or the pious Arabic exclamation which followed, seemed to act as an antidote.

  At midnight Rashid carried on a courteous and conventional argument with Toots—Toots protesting that he must stay the night. Rashid swearing that it was the desire of his heart but impossible. They went at it, partly in English, partly in Arabic when English politeness was inadequate, before and after Rashid telephoned for a taxi, and again when the taxi was at the front door.

  Toots was more decisive when Rashid had gone. He came back yawning, and produced for Armande a pair of the finest linen sheets and a heap of rough army blankets. Then he said good night, and vanished into the bedroom.

  “What are the arrangements for the morning?” Armande asked Carry.

  “We all pretend to be asleep, darling, while Mahmoud brings Toots his breakfast in bed.”

  Armande unpacked her suitcase, and went to bed. Carry turned out the light, but remained sitting by the mosquito curtains which stirred gently in the night air.

  “Good night,” said Carry. “And I’m sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “Whatever I said that reminded you. I think that in these days every woman in Cairo has a word—you know, a sort of talisman—which will spoil her mood.”

  Armande slept soundly, food and drink overcoming the exhaustion that might have kept her awake. At dawn she saw, though never heard, a Sudanese servant in white robes—Mahmoud, she presumed—flitting back and forth to the bedroom with eggs and toast. Then she fell asleep again, and woke to hear the soft scream of the kites hovering over the pepper trees across the road. It was too gentle and sugary a mewing, yet it reminded her of the call of curlews in her childhood. She was very homesick.

  That mood or, at any rate, its keener ache vanished amid the memories of the preceding night. If that was a typical Cairo evening, she was going to like Cairo. Probably it was not at all typical. So often one arrived in a new town or country to be offered, at once, a rich experience of things and people, never again to be repeated. Rashid, she hoped, could be repeated. Though they had exchanged no serious conversation, he gave to her the flattery that she loved best of all; he had looked at her as if she were the only person in the room whose opinions really mattered. By all she knew of Arabs, he ought to have been more strongly attracted by the outrageous Xenia. Damn Xenia anyway! She was crying quietly, and something must be done about the child’s hang-over, and Carry, though wide-awake and smoking a cigarette, showed no intention whatever of getting up.

  Chapter Twelve

  Escape

  “I have got to earn my living,” said Armande. “This can’t go on.”

  “Don’t hurry. It seems only yesterday you came here.”

  Toots leaned forward to flick the ash off his cigarette, and smiled with sudden, charming intimacy as his face passed through her territory at the other end of the sofa.

  “It’s three weeks since I came here,” she insisted.

  “What’s three weeks in a lifetime? Do take a bit more time to look around.”

  “I have looked round.”

  It was true; and the looking round, even with good introductions, had been depressing. The business world of Cairo seemed to be organised into unions for mutual aid. A Copt, a Greek, a Jew, a Lebanese or an Italian—if too harmless for internment—could always get a small salary from a firm of his or her sect and nationality. For an Englishwoman, without any technical qualifications, there was no possible paymaster but the army. Neither to Toots nor to any prospective employer could she bring herself to explain why the army could not do.

  “I want you to stay on in the flat when I go,” he said.

  “No, I won’t, Toots. My dear.”

  “Who’ll look after Carry and Xenia?”

  “What on earth makes you think that they can’t look after themselves?”

  “Perhaps I haven’t thought of that enough,” he said courteously, but evidently considering her unkind.

  “You haven’t thought of it at all, Toots. You’re just holding them as prisoners.”

  “But they are so lost.”

  “How long will you be away?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Depends on Rommel. We might fetch up anywhere.”

  “Then let Carry stop here alone, and find herself. But Xenia is no more lost than a bird. She sorrows and flutters and mates and dances, and goes through joy and agony every day of her life. Get her a job in one of the Jugoslav camps, Toots. So long as she has a lover and can be useful, she is fulfilled.”

  “That goes for you, too.”<
br />
  “Does it? Yes, I suppose so.”

  “And I can get you twenty useful jobs at G.H.Q. tomorrow, only you won’t let me.’

  “And arrange a lover for me too?’ she asked ironically, quickly avoiding all discussion of jobs.

  “I’d even leave Rashid behind for you, if you’d stay here,” he answered.

  “Poor Rashid! He’s so easy for a woman to live up to, Toots. A knight, and I am his unobtainable lady. He writes me poems in Arabic which he refuses to translate. He’d never forgive you or me if he guessed you had left him behind deliberately. I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more—can you say that in Arabic, Toots?”

  “Yes, you can, and mean it. Armande, why are you crying?”

  She clung to him in sudden terror of the unknowable future, of this lonely passing from one life to another. But all she could capture was a vivid, composite memory of every sentimental, unsatisfactory flirtation in Beirut and Jerusalem.

  “That was so sweet,” he said.

  “What a lovely voice, Toots! I wish you meant it.”

  “Armande!” he answered reproachfully.

  “Oh, my dear! It’s me, don’t you see? It’s as if I were always in love and couldn’t forget. I’m death to all emotion. Death.”

  She was exhausted by her struggle not to allow this flat to become another Beirut for her. She knew that the Armande of assured background and easy future was smashed and finished. The alternatives before her were to hang on to unreality, accepting, like Carry and Xenia, any impossible situation so long as it provided shelter with honour, or to enter the Praylean world of adventurous individuals who could take in their stride crook employment agencies and hopped chemists and any other beastliness.

  “You must stay here,” he insisted. “I can’t leave you like this, accusing yourself of all sorts of impossibilities. Get some money from London, and wait till you are surer of what you want.”

  “I will not get money from London.”

  “I don’t mean from your husband. From you mother.”

  “Never from my mother!”

  “All the same,” he persuaded her, “help in trouble is what mothers are for.”