by Chris Dolan
“Let me think about that. We should be getting a visit from our friends outside soon, I would have thought. Give me the old battery if you can, and we shall see what we can do. Now, Captain – eat and rest!”
Haldane did eat but decided not to rest. He was curious about the woman he saw. He would scout the gardens and the paths back to the house. Whoever she was she must come home eventually, and her quarters could only be in some part of the buildings. There was nowhere else inside the barbed high walls for her to rest and shelter.
Twice now he had tried to open the heavy doors at the old main entrance. They were not simply locked but looked out of use for many years, barred and bolted, boarded up. So far he had only seen two other ways of entering and leaving the house – through the French windows of the great chamber or the little doorway he had just discovered at Ma’ahaba’s herb garden. Perhaps the mysterious woman used that route. But now, exploring the porch between the pillars he noticed that, next to the ancient doors was a smaller side door. He had seen that before, but on closer inspection there was a door within a door. Not deliberately concealed – there was a substantial enough handle on it – but just not obvious to the stranger. He pushed on the handle and thought at first that it was locked too. Applying more force didn’t budge it, but tinkering with the angle of what must be a loose latch, eventually the handle turned and the door opened.
Haldane stepped inside. Although, he calculated, he couldn’t be as much as a hundred yards from the part of the house he already knew – a wall or two separating them – he felt as if he was in a completely different dwelling. There were settles and ottomans, what looked like a church pew, at the foot of a grand staircase. The steps were not in the middle but curled up the left hand side of the hall. To the right of them the hall itself extended into the gloom, but he could see a couple of doors. One, he gauged, must lead, somehow, through to the newer part of the building with the great room, the library, dining room and up to his own quarters. The other, presumably, towards where he had seen Ma’ahaba reading and out onto the herb garden.
He decided to climb the stairs, but not without some hesitation. The place did not alarm him, despite its austerity and dusty silence. But because, again, he felt he was sticking his nose where it did not belong. Perhaps Duban was right. Why try and uncover information that was of no direct use to him? Duban and his niece were looking after him to the best of their ability, keeping him safe from murderous rebels, and helping him escape. If indeed there were mysteries in their home, and an inmate was being kept from him, then they would have their reasons. Yet something else clicked into place in his head. Something, he thought, that may have to do with his military training. A need to understand the lie of the land, calculate possibilities and threats. So he mounted the stairs slowly.
There were more portraits on the wall, ascending the stairs. All men, some in army uniforms not unlike his own, some in ceremonial robes, a few with hats similar to that which Duban wore but more decorative. They shared a clear family resemblance. Handsome faces, or at least once handsome – they all seemed to have been painted in the later stages of life, once they had earned respect and fame. High forehead, brown hair, deep-set eyes. They had all been painted by the same hand, though that was not possible – judging by their clothes, and by the age of the canvases and frames, these men were spread across centuries. Each of them had been told to look directly at the artist, and they were all deadly serious. This perpetual painter was not, to Haldane’s mind, particularly gifted. He hadn’t managed to catch the individuality or life in any of his subjects. Their eyes seemed as dead as the alabaster sockets in the statues outside. A series of portrayals of a single self-important, mirthless bully.
As he made his way up he thought he heard a sound similar to that he’d been hearing at night – a rhythmic whisper. But he couldn’t trust his own ears. The sound was so quiet and seemed too distant even for a house this size. He stopped just before he reached the upper landing. Like the hall below there were pieces of furniture, more family portraits, unlit candles and lamps. The whispering, if he’d heard it at all, seemed even further off now. Perhaps it was simply a draft somewhere below. Feeling ever more ashamed for his invasion into a private family space he stepped up onto the landing and made his way towards the first door, to his left.
If he opened it, what would he find? An empty room which wasn’t his to be in. Or, conceivably, the mystery woman who clearly did not want him there.
He felt he had done enough for the moment. He had found the other – and greater – part of the house, and the probable location of the woman. No need to rush things. He made his way downstairs as quickly and as lightly as he could. Just as he was stepping out into the heat of the late afternoon, he thought he heard someone speak. Gently, and at some distance. It occurred to him that if you could hear a smile that would be its sound. He realised he had been tense, exploring the secret house, but that sound put him at his ease again.
Back in his room, after opening the radio up and managing to remove the dud battery, he lay on his bed, the open window offering no cooling breeze. Closing his eyes he saw the face of his father.
“He who is lost to shame, is lost.”
Whether it was a memory of his father actually saying these words or he was half-dreaming them, Haldane couldn’t say. In his mind’s eye he was standing in front of his father’s desk, with its piles of books and papers, his collection of sermons in their red ring binder, and Haldane remembered now what the argument was about. It was the day he had told his father that he had decided to join the army. A decision that he had known full well would astound and distress the older man. But whatever words passed between them were drowned now by the sound of a helicopter plunging, engine grinding, and men crying.
When he woke, dusk thickening, he found that the bandage on his leg had been changed.
The Maid’s Tale
Haldane sat in the clearing where he had first seen Ma’ahaba sunning her thighs and shoulders. There was a little stone bench there, beside a softly flowing channel of the irrigation system, warmed already by the morning sun. He closed his eyes and heard her voice for the first time.
“You will go away.”
At first he thought he was dreaming again. The voice was so delicate and the words faint and feathery that perhaps Duban was right, he was hearing the air speak. He turned around, without knowing in which direction to look, for the words seemed to have come out of nowhere. He stood up and held his hand over his eyes, the sun blinding him.
There was no one there. No movement, other than the usual swaying of branches and flitting of birds. He moved towards where he had thought the words came from. A group of high bushes or rushes. Though perhaps they hadn’t come from there, but from the more formal line of fruit trees. It made no difference. Everywhere he looked there was nothing to suggest that anyone had been there. The words, it seemed, had come out of nowhere.
That night he was invited into the dining room again to eat with Duban and Ma’ahaba. Haldane decided not to speak of what he had heard, or believed he had heard. Not because he might anger Duban and Ma’ahaba, though that concerned him too, or that they might question his sanity, but because the voice now seemed like his secret as well as theirs. Or a different secret altogether.
“You changed my bandage, Duban. While I slept. Thank you.”
“Not last night, Thomas. The bandage was changed a day or so ago. You must only have noticed it today.”
“Strange. It worries me that I have no memory of it whatsoever. Doesn’t bode well for my convalescence.”
“Or perhaps it is simply a tribute to my ministry,” Duban said, glowing.
“You seemed to be at least half awake, Captain,” Ma’ahaba said as, this time, Duban served her.
“You were there too?”
“Merely to assist the physician. Duban tended to you, I held the water and the ointment.” She held up her palms in innocence. “I promise I did not touch you.”
“You’ve been busy too, Thomas! You retrieved the battery from the radio and you’ve managed to make a few other little repairs on the apparatus. I had a look while we bandaged you. We spoke about it, but you were, it is true, a little dazed.”
“I got the impression,” Ma’ahaba said softly, “that your home situation is not unlike my own.”
“Ma’ab. No need to pester our guest with that.”
“I’m sorry. How do you mean?”
“You live, or at least did until I’d say relatively recently, with an older man, who was holy and wise and whom you respected but did not always agree with. Out in the country, no? With few like-minded people within easy reach. Probably, though, our lives are in stark contrast. The moment you could, you got out. To find adventure in the big world. Whereas I sang and danced in the world but returned.”
“And perhaps Thomas will do the same.”
“Hopefully,” Haldane spoke to Ma’ahaba, “the war will end, and you can resume your life.”
“I said nothing, Captain, of my life being halted.”
Duban spoke before he could answer. “When you speak of your early life, Thomas, you never mention your mother. Only your father.”
“Now that you mention it. I can see him clearly. But not her. That’s surprising, isn’t it?”
Ma’ahaba laughed. “Perhaps you’re a man’s man. You became a soldier after all.”
The next morning Haldane returned to the little stone bench in the clearing and positioned himself exactly as he had done the day before. Time passed but no voice came out of the trees or the air. Thinking back he worried. He had heard nothing. Or, worse, he had misheard – she, whoever she was, had said “Go away” and not “You will go away.” The phantom voice was unhappy with him, troubled by his presence. He was not welcome here.
And then he wondered if the voice, just possibly, now that it was so faint in his memory, could have been Ma’ahaba’s? That possibility hadn’t occurred to him at the time. It sounded nothing like her and anyway why would she hide herself from him. If it was indeed Ma’ahaba, then that at least solved the mystery. But the idea saddened him. Because it meant there was no mystery: the world was just the way it seemed and there was nothing more to discover. And because he had grown to like Ma’ahaba very much.
His neck began to ache. He closed his eyes, and slumbered. A dreamless sleep, not even darkness. Not even nothing; no awareness of nothingness.
He woke with a jump, and wondered how long he had been out for. He had been fast asleep, that was sure, because he found it difficult to wake himself properly. His sight was blurrier than ever, his limbs heavy and bloodless. When he managed to look up the sun seemed to be in precisely the same position it had been before he had dropped off. But he felt he had slept for some hours. Was it possible an entire day had passed? His memory was shot. If he couldn’t remember Duban and Ma’ahaba dressing his wounds then it was also possible he had lived out the entire previous day but couldn’t now bring it to mind.
His energy returning, he shook his head and scolded himself. Obviously he had simply dozed for a few minutes. But as he walked out from the clearing in the copse he heard the voice again.
“Soon.”
And this time he was sterner with himself. Such a short word, it could indeed be the rustling of leaves, or the water playing over stones in the stream. Yet he felt he had heard it so clearly. Soon.
He returned to where he had been and scanned the area, turning a full 360 degrees, alert to every movement, every bird on every branch. The sun was still strong. Blinking and narrowing his eyes, looking over to his left he found her.
She was standing a few yards deeper into the garden, beside a tree, its branches and yellow fruits fanning and half-concealing her. She was, as he’d glimpsed her before, mistaking her for Ma’ahaba, dressed all in white, a cowl over her hair and her neck and lips veiled. He had no idea what he should say to her, nor whether he should approach or remain seated. After a moment, the woman spoke again.
“My name is Aliyyah.”
“Captain Haldane, at your service.”
Aliyyah laughed, just as he had heard her do in the house: the sound of a smile, of mildness. She stepped out from behind the boughs of the tree. “I have been watching you.”
“And I have been trying to find you.”
“I know.” And this time when she laughed he heard the family resemblance – although the laugh of a young woman it reminded him of old Duban’s merry giggle.
“Will you get into trouble?” he asked.
“Are you worried that I might? Or that you might, Captain Haldane.”
“You’re right. Both, I suppose. Your… family, have been very kind to me. I don’t wish to upset them.”
“But not enough to refrain from prowling and prying?”
“I’m sorry,” he said though he had detected no hint of criticism in her tone.
Now that she had taken another step or two towards him, Haldane stood and got the measure of her a little more. She was young, yes, but not a girl. Perhaps only a couple of years younger than himself. The wisps he could see of her hair were chestnut brown, and her eyes the most striking green. The green of a forest in late summer. Her brows arched, inquisitive. And though she kept the mantle on below her eyes it was diaphanous enough for him to see that her expression was calm.
She dropped her head for a moment, then turned to go.
“Aliyyah? Am I to say that I have met you?”
She considered this briefly, her brows furrowing. “I see no point in lying.”
“And will I see you again?”
“That would be pleasant, Captain.”
When she had gone he was left only with the echo of her voice, like water, he thought, running over smooth stones.
“Aliyyah introduced herself to me today.” Haldane was working on the radio, but absent-mindedly, not really attempting to fix it, when Duban had knocked and entered his room.
“So she said,” Duban replied and Haldane could not detect whether the old man disapproved or not. But it was unusual for Duban to come to his quarters or to seek him out.
“Why was she such a big secret?”
“No secret, my friend. Just the way we live here. If Aliyyah decided that the two of you should meet, then that is a matter for herself.”
With that the old man turned and left the room. Some minutes later Haldane followed him down and found him in his library, searching the lower shelves, until he found the book he was looking for. At the back of the room there was a tiny window, round like a porthole. Ma’ahaba was standing there, looking out into the falling night.
“So we may speak, Aliyyah and I, without either of us getting into trouble?”
Ma’ahaba laughed. “You sound like a child,” she said without turning round. There was, Haldane knew, displeasure in the way she stood, one arm around her own waist, the other smoothing her hair.
“You are free to come and go in our house, Thomas.” Duban’s expression relaxed a little, “I imagine you will not have much time to spend together.”
Whether he meant the soldier’s departure was imminent or that Aliyyah would not make, or be given, time for him, Haldane chose not to ask.
“Nor do I think,” Ma’ahaba opened the door to the gardens, “that the two of you will be good for each other.” And she stepped out.
The following morning Haldane was on his way back again to the clearing, but he saw that Ma’ahaba had beaten him to the spot. Like the first time he had seen her, she seemed dead to the world, her head resting on a tree behind her, eyes closed, thighs and shoulders exposed to the sun, breathing deeply. And again, as he turned away, he thought he caught her smiling, perhaps smirking, aware of his presence and his eyes.
Striking what he thought might be eastwards into the orchard along a path he could not remember walking before, he arrived at an old fountain. There he s
at and he waited, and before long he heard Aliyyah in the trees behind him. She was singing quietly, to herself, and in a tongue Haldane did not recognise. Soft vowels over sharp consonants. Then, at the end of her song, as she neared, he understood a few words… “The captain whose soldiers are blossoms.”
She was dressed just as she had been the day before, and this time she stepped closer to him.
“Will you sit, Aliyyah?”
“Yes,” she replied but did not move.
The scarf round her neck – made of silk or chiffon, Haldane didn’t know – was so fine that though it covered her lips he could see her expression and at the moment she had, he thought, the faintest of smiles.
“I feel I ought to make conversation,” Haldane said, “but knowing so little about you, or even if I should talk to you at all, makes it difficult.”
“Isn’t there something civilised about pauses in conversation? It means we are thinking.”
Haldane laughed. “In order to pause don’t you need to begin?”
Aliyyah turned away and walked towards the trees she had appeared from. But she stopped and turned her head and he understood it to mean that he was to follow. Walking a few paces in front of him, Aliyyah asked: “Where do you come from, Captain?”
“You are like Ma’ahaba. Insisting on titles.”
Without turning she repeated, “Where do you come from, Thomas?”
“Tom. My friends call me Tom.” He smiled, “but I’m not sure I ever liked it.”
“Then I shall call you Tom! What is Tom’s land?”
“I was raised in a place called Shaws.”
“I had heard your memory was bad.”
“Only for some things. Especially what brought me here.”
“The only journey is the one within,” Aliyyah said and laughed happily, as if remembering something.
