Coming down the road from the villa was a high vehicle fitted with a strong searchlight, which swung from side to side, revealing a large area of the land on either side of the road. It was only a question of seconds, Melina thought, before the light would pick them up and reveal them standing defenceless on the raised ground.
Bing’s white tuxedo and her pale blue evening dress were silhouetted against the trees and the darkness of the sky, then, as something like terror crept over her, she was knocked off her feet.
She felt herself falling, felt the ground hard and painful beneath her shoulders as the weight of Bing’s body sprawling on top of her left her breathless.
For a few seconds she was unable to think, unable to realise anything except the hurt of her shoulders and the difficulty she was having in breathing.
For a moment, she decided later, her senses were almost blacked out.
Then she was aware of Bing’s arms round her, of his body pressing hard and still harder against her breasts and her legs, and of a light, brilliant and searching, playing on the trees above them.
‘They must see us, they must!’ Melina thought desperately and knew with the sharpness of fear that this was indeed the danger Bing had warned her about.
She held her breath as she strained her ears to listen, then tried to breathe again and heard a rasping sound come from between her lips.
“Quiet!” Bing murmured the word between his teeth.
Melina heard him and was rigid again.
Now there were voices coming nearer to them, two men talking together in Arabic.
They had found the car, she thought in a panic and with a kind of dull despair, for the men had only to look upwards to see them both.
She realised now that Bing had thrown her down into a kind of trench or ditch made, perhaps during the rainy season, but at the moment filled only with sand and stones. It was not deep and she was terrified lest Bing’s white tuxedo should be visible.
The voices beneath them were loud and clear. It was obvious that the men were standing by the car and, although Melina could not understand what they said, she could guess by the intonation of their voices that they were discussing the ownership of the empty car and were suspicious of its presence there.
She was aware of Bing’s heart beating against her breast and she knew by the manner in which he strove to press her lower and yet lower into the ground, that he too was afraid.
She began to think that her whole body would break beneath him.
The pain of his weight and the stones piercing her shoulders and back were almost unbearable, until she heard the voices beneath them receding and knew that the men were walking back to their own vehicle.
She heard the engine start up and then, suddenly, the light that had enveloped the trees and terrain above them was gone and there was a darkness that brought a relief too great for words.
Melina felt Bing draw a deep breath which seemed to come from the uttermost depths of his being and for the first time she looked up at him, his face directly above hers, their eyes only a few inches apart.
The searchlight no longer illuminated everything, but in the light of the moon she could see the dark outline of his head and his eyes shining as they looked down into hers.
“Good girl.”
His words were very low. She felt herself glow at the praise in his tone and then suddenly and so unexpectedly that her whole body was tense with surprise, his mouth was on hers.
He kissed her harshly. His lips were hard and seemed to have no warmth in them, but hers were soft and unresisting because she was breathless and utterly unprepared.
It seemed to Melina that his kiss was almost a blow, given without desire and yet with a passion that was somehow part of the danger they had just passed through.
“Bing!”
She was able to breathe the word as his lips were lifted from hers and then, before she could say more, he was on his feet dragging her up after him.
She wanted to stop and think, but this was obviously not Bing’s intention. He pulled her, her feet slipping and slithering in the sand, behind a clump of trees.
Hiding there, he whispered,
“I won’t be a few minutes.”
“What are you going to do? Oh, Bing, don’t leave me!” Melinda pleaded. But she found herself speaking to the air, for he had already gone.
She crouched down behind the tree trunks, feeling that there were eyes everywhere. At any moment, she told herself, the vehicle with the searchlight might return and then she would be mesmerised like a rabbit in the headlights and, unable to escape from them, be mown down.
Now there was only silence, except that far away in the distance she fancied that she could hear faint sounds of music. It seemed as if, on leaving the villa, she had cut herself off from civilisation and now she was at the mercy of the savagery of the jungle.
She put her hand to the back of her left arm and found that it was bleeding. A stone would have done that, she thought, and imagined that her back was in the same state. Her whole body ached.
She was conscious, too, that her mouth felt as if it also was bruised.
She raised her hand as if to touch her lips and, as she did so, was acutely conscious of the silence and her own isolation.
Bing? Where had he gone? Why had he left her alone? By what seemed an almost superhuman effort she prevented herself from springing to her feet and calling out his name. Why was he so long?
She had a sudden vision of herself being left alone because Bing thought that he could travel more quickly or obtain his objective better without her. She imagined herself waiting for him until the dawn came and she was discovered by Moulay Ibrahim’s men and taken back to the villa to be interrogated by him.
She remembered the Sheik’s face, the cruel lines of his mouth, the hardness of his eyes.
She closed her eyes and could imagine all too clearly by what methods he would obtain any information he required.
“No, no, don’t leave me!”
She whispered the words into the night and opened her eyes to find that Bing was already at her side.
“Why have you been so long? What have you been doing?”
In her relief at his appearance, she was angry rather than glad to see him.
In answer, he threw a bundle down at her feet.
“Get into this and quickly.”
“What is it?”
She looked at the shapeless white bundle on the ground and realised that he had another in his hands.
“It is a djellabah,” he answered, “You’ll find a yashmak there and also a pair of baboush.”
Melina unrolled the bundle and saw a black yashmak and a pair of worn native slippers and raised her face to Bing.
She thought that he was watching her, but, instead, he had already taken off his white tuxedo and was pulling at his collar and tie.
Obediently, because she did not want to hinder him, Melina picked up the djellabah and began to put it on.
Fortunately her father had possessed a yashmak and various other articles of women’s clothing amongst the souvenirs he had brought back from many places in the East and she had often amused herself when she was a child, by dressing up and being told by him exactly how such garments should be worn.
She had always found herself defeated by the Indian sari, the folds of which never looked as graceful on her as they did on those who were born to wear them. But the shapeless Moroccan costume, which made all women look like bundles of washing with a towel over their heads, had been the easiest disguise of all.
Melina slipped the gauze veil below her eyes and found also in the folds of the djellabah a metal circle that held the headdress in place. This only left the baboush and, as Melina picked them up, she heard Bing’s voice sharp and authoritative, saying,
“Get your stockings off and give them to me with your shoes.”
Melina lifted the djellabah, undid her suspenders and pulled off her nylons. She had a moment’s regret as
she held them out to Bing, remembering they were her best pair and then, with something like a grimace, she thought how ridiculous it was to think of anything so trivial at a moment like this.
Bing was digging a hole in the sand with his hands and when it was deep enough he pressed the white tuxedo down into it. He covered it up and dug another hole into which he put Melina’s evening shoes and stockings.
He stood up and she saw that he was already dressed in native costume, a long black burnous covered a robe of grey striped cotton. There was a turban wound round his head and in some curious way his face had assumed the calm inscrutability of an Arab.
“Come!”
Bing held out his hand and drew Melina from the trees. She followed him, feeling strange and uncomfortable in her enveloping robe. She was conscious a moment or so later that the yashmak was cutting into her nose and making her feel hot despite the fact that a few moments earlier she had been cold with fear. The baboush slapped against her feet and she was in danger of losing them, until she remembered the shuffling walk of the native women and tried to copy it.
They moved along the top of the bank to where the trees were before Melina asked,
“Are you going towards the villa? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“On the contrary,” Bing replied. “You can see there is a crowd hanging round the gates to watch the guests arrive and depart. Two other curious natives will not be noticed. Keep your head bowed modestly and your hands hidden. Remember you always walk a few paces behind me as befits an obedient and submissive wife.”
“What about the car?” Melina asked.
“Forget it!” Bing said briefly. “We have no further use for it.”
There was something in his voice that seemed to give her a little pang of pain or perhaps it was apprehension.
He was so unconcerned about something costly he now had no need for. Would he be like that about anyone he knew – a friend or even someone he loved?
As she asked herself the question, Melina knew that the answer was of vital importance to her personally. Bing had loved Lileth Schuster. Would he be ruthless where she was concerned now that she wanted and needed him? Would he be equally ruthless to any other woman?
They were moving slowly towards the villa. In a few moments they would reach the main road and could walk more easily towards the gates.
It seemed to Melina as if this private question within herself superseded all the danger and even the terror and fear of Moulay Ibrahim and those like him. Bing might be fighting them, but, for her, he had become not someone dedicated to a mission, not a fighter pitting his strength against frightening and unknown odds, but a man who had kissed her.
Under the cheap gauze that hid her mouth she could feel her lips throbbing and burning because they had known the touch of Bing’s mouth.
Why had he done it? He was not in love with her, she knew that. Up to now he had not even seemed to be attracted to her and yet, hard and harsh though his kiss had been, it had awakened a flame within herself that she could no longer deny.
Did she love him? Had she loved him long before this happened? Had her very fear of him been part of her love?
She could find no reply to these questions. She only knew with a kind of madness that her lips wanted to touch his again, that she wanted to feel his heart beating against her breast.
They reached the road. It was a relief from the sand and frequent stones to feel the smooth hard surface of it, but it was a very temporary relief. Bing crossed the road and, taking once again to the rough terrain, turned away from the villa and started the downward descent of the hill that led towards Fez.
“Do you think anyone noticed us?” Melina breathed.
“If they did, we shall know in a few seconds,” he replied.
But there were no shouts or cries after them nor the sound of a motor-bicycle coming from the villa where Melina could see, quite clearly now, a great crowd of natives gathered as spectators.
“The party is over as far as we are concerned,” Bing said, with a touch of laughter in his voice.
Melina wondered how he could be so gay, but it was difficult to question him as she was intent on keeping her baboush on her feet and, at the same time, trying not to fall headlong over the boulders and cactus plants that were hard to see, even in the moonlight.
After what seemed to her hours of pain and exhaustion, they finally reached the outside of the great high age-old wall that encircled the native town. Once in the shadows Melina stopped and lifted up one of her feet to rub it ruefully.
“My back was bleeding after lying in the ditch,” she said. “Now both my feet are in a disgusting state. Give me a moment to catch my breath.”
“I am sorry if I have rushed you,” Bing replied.
“Your legs are longer than mine,” Melina explained. “And I have walked into at least a dozen cacti. Where are we going, now?”
“To find the child,” he answered, and she knew by the way he said it that his thoughts had been of no one else.
“How do you know where he has gone?”
“Someone will tell us,” he replied. “Are you better now? We don’t want to hang about here.”
She heard the impatience in his tone and knew that he resented her weakness. Because she wanted approval from him more than she had ever wanted it before from any man, she replaced her aching, bloodstained feet in the slippers and said meekly,
“I am ready.”
They walked a long way round the wall until they came to a gate ornamented with the flags of the Arab Republic, which led directly into the Medina. It was not the gate Melina knew, which was nearest to Rasmin’s shop and her heart sank at the thought of the long walk down the twisted cobbled alleys.
But, after traversing only a few of the dark lanes with their shops shuttered for the night, Bing stopped in a doorway and rapped with his knuckles on the door.
Looking up, the high, windowless grimy house appeared to be in darkness. Melina longed to ask where they were and who they were calling on, but she was wise enough not to speak, for behind the closed doors of the inscrutable tall houses who knew who might not be listening?
In the door a tiny grille covered with iron bars was opened. There was a glint of light and then they could see the eyes of a man looking at them inquiringly.
“By the Hand of Fatima,” Bing whispered.
The grille was shut and the door opened just enough to allow them to pass through, then it was hastily closed behind them and Melina heard the sound of a bolt being driven home.
They were in a narrow passage, but she could see nothing until a curtain was pulled aside at the far end and she found herself following Bing into a small room which was furnished only with the low leather cushions of the East and an oil reading lamp beside one of them on which rested a book.
Melina turned to look at the man who had let them in. He was young. He wore glasses and she had the quick impression that he was a student who was annoyed by their arrival, which had interrupted his studies.
“Your father told me to come to you if it was absolutely necessary,” Bing said in French.
“He told me to expect you,” the younger man replied. “As a matter of fact he is here himself. He had a premonition that you would need him.”
“He is right,” Bing answered. “We need him badly.”
“I will fetch him.”
The young man went from the room and Bing turned to Melina.
“Things are going well,” he said. “Almost too well. I am a little afraid of our good fortune.”
“But I cannot see anything good about it,” Melina said. “What are we going to do now without a car, without any luggage?”
“It will all be seen to,” Bing said lightly.
She felt almost irritated that he could speak with such inconsequence, but there was no time to say anything more because the tall youth returned to the room.
Behind him came Rasmin.
“Hamdullilah,” Rasmin ejaculated, which
Melina knew meant, “Thanks to the Lord”.
“We have to work quickly,” Bing answered. “I saw the child, but was unable to do anything and now they have taken him away. Where will they have gone?”
“One of my friends reported what had happened half an hour ago. You have been a long time getting here,” Rasmin replied.
“I had to move slowly,” Bing replied with a little smile in the direction of Melina.
Thinking of her torn and bleeding feet and of the way they had almost raced down the side of the hill towards the City, Melina could have hit him but, before she could say anything, Bing asked quickly,
“Where have they gone?”
“To Marrakesh,” Rasmin replied.
“You are certain of this?”
“The chauffeur who drove the car was told to have enough petrol in his tank for such a journey.”
“That is good enough,” Bing approved. “But how do we get there?”
“The roads are being watched,” Rasmin answered.
“I am sure of it,” Bing replied. “A vehicle with a searchlight on the top nearly discovered us. It is stationed at the crossroads.”
“So everyone who leaves the villa must pass it,” Rasmin muttered. “As we all know, there is no other road.”
“Do you think that they will suspect us of having come here on foot?” Bing asked.
“Not here,” Rasmin replied, “but there is a beggar outside my door who has been there all day. That is why I visited mv son by a route known only to myself, over the rooftops.”
“And as we cannot go to Marrakesh over the roofs, how then?” Bing enquired.
“By bus,” Rasmin replied.
“Rasmin, you are a genius!” Bing exclaimed. “But our disguise has to be good.”
Melina found the eyes of all three men on her. After a long scrutiny Bing said slowly,
“Many Ruffians have, like the Irish, red hair, blue eyes, snub noses and freckles. Give her kohl round the eyes, henna her nails and the palms of her hands and she’ll pass without much difficulty. But my outfit had better be perfect.”
“Abdullah will see to that,” Rasmin answered.
Love Is Dangerous Page 13
