by Isobel Chace
‘You can’t stop me going!’ she challenged him, sure that he would if he could.
‘I could, but I won’t.’
‘Just because I’m staying at your castle, it doesn’t give you the right to say what I can and can’t do!’
‘You’re staying at the castle as my employee,’ he reminded her with crushing emphasis. ‘Paying your fare out here and your salary for the next few weeks means that your time belongs to me while you’re here and I intend to get good value for my money. Now, for heaven’s sake, let’s talk about something else!’
He sounded tired and irritable and for the first time she wondered if his book was going badly. Of course he wasn’t paying her any salary, Mrs. Hartley was doing that, but the temptation to point this out to him was lost in her new anxiety about his work.
‘Is that why we’re going to Madaba?’ she hazarded. ‘Is there something about it in your book?’
His smile was bleak. ‘Not really, though Madaba is a Christian city. The descendants of the Crusaders were moved there from near Petra. The most famous of the mosaics is in the Greek Orthodox church there.’
‘But if it isn’t in your book—’
‘I wanted to see your face when you saw the mosaics,’ he cut her off abruptly. He pointed through the windscreen across the barren ground all round them towards a small town that hugged the brow of a hill on the horizon, its steeples and minarets poking up above the houses. ‘That’s Madaba,’ he said.
CHAPTER V
The church looked quite ordinary on the outside. There was a concrete path that led up to the door which appeared at first to open on to a staircase and not into the church at all. Marion, already self-conscious in case Gregory should be disappointed by her reaction to the mosaics, turned an embarrassed face towards him and shrugged her shoulders. He pushed another door open beside her and smiled sardonically down at her. She felt completely witless and rather resented that he should have that effect on her.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’
‘I’ve been here before,’ he mocked her. He allowed the door to swing shut behind them and led her firmly up the main aisle of the church. The Christian guardian of the church came puffing along behind them, followed shortly afterwards by a sergeant in the tourist police.
‘Ahlan was-sahlan,’ the policeman said to Gregory. ‘Welcome, madame.’
‘Ahlan bekum,’ Gregory murmured. He shook hands with both men, responding to their many questions about his welfare with evident pleasure. ‘The policeman is a Moslem,’ he said in an aside to Marion. ‘The two men are forever arguing as to whether they can expect to see each other in Paradise.’
‘It’s true,’ the policeman agreed, and smiled admiringly at her. He had the most perfect teeth Marion had ever seen, even in Jordan where nearly everyone seemed to have better teeth than most.
‘I don’t think anyone will be left out,’ Marion smiled back at him. ‘Not even we women.’
He laughed at that. ‘It would not be Paradise without you,’ he agreed lightly. ‘Mr. Gregory would want to come straight back to earth if that were so!’ He turned warm, teasing eyes on the man beside her. ‘It’s the first time he has brought a young lady with him here.’
Gregory turned away the implied question with a quick remark in Arabic. Marion would have loved to know what he had said, but nobody offered to translate for her benefit, and only the sly interest with which the guardian looked at her told her that it had been something about herself.
The mosaics weren’t kept with any particular care. The guardian kicked aside the grubby coverings and handed a long wooden pointer to the policeman to help him give his exposition. He didn’t hesitate to walk on the ancient map that was revealed to their gaze himself, and he was amused and showed it when Marion refused to follow his example.
Large portions of the map had been lost over the centuries. Some of it had fallen victim to the rebuilding of the church, some of it had been torn up to be used for something else. Only recently had the value of the mosaic been fully recognised not only because it was a thing of beauty in its own right, but because the Greek place-names had revealed the whereabouts of many places whose exact location had been long since forgotten.
The most famous portion was Herod’s Jerusalem, complete with the seven city gates and maze of tiny streets all faithfully reflected. Above it was the River Jordan, optimistically filled with fish which have certainly never seen the light of day in its saline waters, which led into the Dead Sea. There were Bethany, and Bethlehem; Calvary and the Mount of Olives; the Sinai Desert and even Cairo straddling the River Nile.
‘Does it come up to your expectations?’ Gregory asked her.
She squatted down on an island of concrete and examined the chips of stone with care, noting how they had been placed in position, here to make the leaves of a palm-tree, there to form the letters of a place name.
‘It’s fantastic,’ she said. ‘I wish it were complete.’ Her joy in it was written clearly on her face and she had forgotten that she had meant to draw a decent veil over her emotions when Gregory was anywhere on the horizon. She laughed up at him, her mobile features alight with sheer delight. ‘Was it you who told my father about the mosaics here?’
‘It may have been,’ he admitted. ‘It’s earlier than the period I’m interested in, of course.’
She chuckled. ‘It’s too late to pretend that yon haven’t very catholic interests, Gregory Randall! Oh, thank you for bringing me here!’
His smile wasn’t disapproving at all. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet,’ he said drily. ‘There are some very creditable floor mosaics in the museum, but well have a cup of tea first at the Rest House.’
‘Isn’t it a pity to go inside?’ she objected.
‘We can sit in the garden if you like, but the sun will feel hotter by the Dead Sea. It’s always warm down there.’
But it seemed a shame to Marion to waste a moment of the sunshine. She was still at the stage of hoarding up the sunny hours as though there might not be any more on the morrow. It was warm now, but it was still winter and it had to rain sometimes, even in Jordan.
The man who ran the Rest House was plainly devout. He held his prayer-beads in one hand, feeding than through his fingers two at a time, even when he talked. He turned off the radio as soon as they came in, humming happily to himself.
‘If you wait a few minutes I’ll make you something to eat,’ he almost pleaded with them. To have no more than a cup of tea was a slight on his hospitality. Surely they would wish to consume something more than that?
‘I’d really like a fresh orange-juice,’ Marion smiled at him.
The beads flashed through his fingers faster than ever. ‘I will bring some Kanafa for you also,’ he insisted.
Marion looked enquiringly at Gregory. ‘It’s a kind of cake, filled with white cheese and served with a hot syrup, and sometimes with nuts as well. It’s a speciality of Nablus. Khazim came originally from there. It’s delicious,’ he added, nodding his consent to the man. ‘You’ll like it.’
Marion did, as she had liked all the food which had come her way in the last week. She found it pleasant, too, to sit on a crumbling wall in the garden of the Rest House and wonder about the mosaic floor at her feet that was beginning to break up in the open air.
‘This is better than working,’ she said to Gregory. In that moment she wasn’t frightened of him at all. Indeed, his presence warmed her and made her feel at one with the whole world.
‘Much better. Are you going to swim in the Dead Sea?’
She shook her head. ‘I might paddle to find out what it’s like.’
‘Are you always so cautious?’
She laughed. ‘I like to keep well within my depth,’ she confessed. ‘But I don’t mind if you want to swim.’
‘You can’t sink in the Dead Sea,’ he comforted her. ‘I wouldn’t let you drown in any circumstances, but you don’t have to worry in
water that’s twenty-five per cent saline.’
She gave him a curious glance, wondering if it were only the Dead Sea he was talking about ‘It’s easy for you to talk,’ she said. ‘It would have to be pretty deep for you to get out of your depth!’
‘You might enjoy the excitement of coming out to my level?’ he suggested, smiling.
But she was less than convinced. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she offered.
‘Do that,’ he agreed. ‘You may surprise yourself.’
She pondered about what he had meant by that all the time they were looking at the mosaics in the museum. The authorities had taken over three houses that, until quite recently, had had ordinary families living in them, and had done their best to preserve the delightful mosaics that they had inherited from their ancestors of many centuries before. One had to step down to get inside the houses. It was a reminder that Madaba was built on a hill that had been formed by previous townships that had gone before. It had been mentioned in the Book of Numbers, and who knew what its history had been before that?
She pondered, but she didn’t come to any firm conclusion. Not even when they left the museum and went back to the car. Perhaps, she thought, he tried to make his mark with every girl he met, and most of them, she had no doubt, encouraged him with everything they had. If she had thought there was any future in it, she might have been tempted herself. But she knew her limitations. Men like Gregory Randall didn’t, in her experience, interest themselves for long in girls who were five foot nothing in their stockinged feet, and the pain of parting would be all on her side, for her defences against him were already tumbling into dust, whereas he had hardly noticed the collision that had caused the damage. It was frightening to think a kiss could be no more than a kiss, or it could be a catalyst after which nothing would ever be quite the same.
He put his head very close to hers. ‘Shu fee?’ he said in such warm, sympathetic tones that she was quite undone.
‘What? What did you say?’
‘What’s the matter? You look as though you have the cares of the whole world on your shoulders.’
‘Do I? I was thinking.’ But she wasn’t going to tell him what she had been thinking. ‘I was wondering how my mother was getting along.’
‘I don’t think you need worry about her. She has courage, and the ability to make the best of things wherever she is.’
Marion put her head on one side, conjuring up a mental picture of her mother. ‘Why did you make her go and stay in your house in Devon?’ she asked.
He looked amused. ‘I thought the change would do her good. You were lucky in your parents, Marion Shirley.’
‘Yes, wasn’t I?’ she said immediately. ‘I’m glad you like her,’ she added. Her eyes brimmed over with sudden mirth. ‘She thinks you’re dishy too!’
‘And what does her daughter think?’
The laughter sobered into fright, a panic that whirled round her ears and left her feeling weak inside and not quite herself. ‘I don’t know you well enough to say,’ she said.
‘That’s not what your mother told me?’
She turned questioning eyes to his. ‘What did she say?’
‘That you didn’t like me,’ he said shortly. ‘Isn’t that what you told her?’
‘I told her you didn’t like me. I couldn’t remember anyone having disliked me before.’ Oh dear, she thought, now he would think she was conceited as well ‘They may not have liked me much,’ she hurried on, ‘but they didn’t actually dislike me, so that I could feel it when they looked at me. But I told her you were handsome too.’ she ended up to sweeten the pill.
‘People must have felt strongly about you before,’ he remarked with a mildness that betrayed his lack of interest.
‘Not like that!’ Nobody had ever made her feel so aware of their presence in a room before that she would have known they were there if she had been struck both deaf and blind. ‘Why don’t you like me?’ The words confused her by their stark brevity. It wasn’t the kind of thing one asked, and now she knew why. Whatever he said could only add to the burden of pain she had carried since first meeting him.
‘Liking is too tame for you, too indifferent. You can’t expect many men to like you until you’re an old, old woman, my dear.’
Her eyes opened wide, her heart hammering against her ribs. ‘I think that’s a compliment,’ she said. And then, when he didn’t contradict her, ‘I wish I were taller and as sophisticated as a dry Martini!’
His glance swept over her, raising her colour as she wished the words unsaid. ‘I might like you then,’ he agreed. ‘If it’s liking you really want?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘What else?’
‘From me?’ He considered the matter. ‘I could think of one or two things, but I don’t think you’re ready to hear about them.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Some people think a taste for dry Martinis is rather old-fashioned nowadays,’ he told her.
‘Do you?’ The words were out before she had thought what their impact might be. ‘I mean—’
‘Cocktails were never to my taste,’ he answered her. ‘I prefer the desert and the simple life.’
Yet he had found her too unsophisticated to bother with again after she had accused him of playing games with her. But then there was more than one meaning to the word “simple”. It could mean that it wasn’t capable of being analysed, and that meaning suited Gregory very well. She didn’t think she’d ever get to the bottom of him if she were to stay in his castle all her life—
She took a quick intake of breath. ‘Oh, look!’ she said. ‘Is this where Moses died?’
‘It’s where he’s alleged to have made his last gesture towards the Promised Land,’ he confirmed. He parked the Land Cruiser in the lee of a wall and came round to her side, lifting her bodily out into the boisterous wind. ‘You’d better hang on to my hand,’ he bade her. ‘We don’t want you to blow away!’
Moses’ spirit had retained a violence that was enough to flatten most of his visitors to the ground.
‘Is it always like this?’ Marion gasped
‘It always has been every time I’ve come here. Come and look over the edge and see if you think it was worth spending forty years in the wilderness to get there.’
The hills fell in folds down the valley below, which was green but which she doubted had ever been the rich pastureland that was implied in the description of a land flowing with milk and honey. Gregory pointed out Jerusalem and Jericho to her, and she was able to see the Dead Sea for herself, dominating the view, the lowest spot on earth, and the beginning of the great rift in the earth’s surface that had buried Sodom and Gomorrah and which spread right down through East Africa to Malawi in the south.
‘I always felt sorry for Moses,’ she said, ‘but I don’t any longer. I’d be quite content to die in a place like this.’
‘Away from England and the people you love best?’
‘I’d find someone to love out here,’ she declared, positive that it would be so.
‘Could you?’ he insisted. ‘Wouldn’t you pine at all?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s rather awful, isn’t it? There must be all sorts of things I’d miss, but I feel quite at home here. It has a familiar feel. I can’t explain any better than that!’ The wind, tearing at her clothes, blew her words away and she was almost sure he hadn’t heard her. It didn’t matter. Why should he care whether she felt at home here or not?
‘What about your mother?’ he mouthed at her.
It was a shock that she hadn’t considered her mother at all. ‘I make a poor substitute for my father. He was her whole life. She’s bored as well as lonely without him.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said.
Marion went a little nearer to the edge, meeting the full force of the wind as she stepped out of Gregory’s wake. She felt quite dizzy for a moment and when she felt his strong hands on her shoulders, anchoring her down, she was conscious only of relief that he was still there.
&nbs
p; She turned her head and smiled at him. He looked as secure as the Rock of Gibraltar standing there and she found herself wishing that she had some right to his continued care. She could not recollect that she had ever wanted to lean on anyone else’s strength before, not even her father who had had strong ideas about women being as independent as their brothers nowadays and who would have told her sternly that she had two quite adequate feet of her own to stand on. And so she had. She had received an education that had been every bit as good as it would have been if she had been the much desired son both her parents had wanted; and that, coupled with her own ability, meant that she was earning as much if not more than most of her contemporaries. But Gregory Randall could outdistance her in every field, and that was a novelty in itself.
‘What is your Promised Land?’ she asked him.
His answer was as unexpected as she had half known it would be. ‘O my America! my new-found-land.’ He looked amused. ‘I’ll settle for that.’
She had placed the quotation at once as coming from John Donne, but it seemed to her to be quite out of context. ‘But he was talking about a woman,’ she objected. And more intimately than most clerics would have done, she could have added.
‘So was I,’ Gregory told her.
‘Oh!’ she said, shocked, and then again, ‘Oh!’
‘You shouldn’t jump to conclusions,’ he rebuked her. ‘You did say my promised land, not one I already had in my possession.’
He was being flippant, she knew, but she couldn’t laugh it off as she would have done with anyone else. What woman? Did he mean Denise? Or had he changed his mind about Judith? Or was it someone she had never heard of? Whoever it was, she hated her with a viciousness that was quite foreign to her usual sunny nature.
