There was silence. The pipe bubbled, rather sickeningly, and she blinked at me through the smoke. The air was acrid, and stuffier than ever, and I felt waves of heat coursing over my skin. I pulled myself upright on my stool.
‘You – you do remember Charles, Aunt Harriet? You’ll not have forgotten him even if you had forgotten me – he was always your favourite.’
‘Of course I haven’t forgotten him. How could I? A handsome boy. I always liked handsome boys.’
I smiled. ‘I used to be jealous, let me tell you! D’you remember that time – the last time I saw you – when you came to stay, and you brought the parrot and all the dogs, and you gave me an ivory fan, and you gave Charles the incense burner and the joss-sticks, and he set the summer-house on fire, and Daddy was so furious he said he was going to send him home, only you said if he went you’d go too because the rest of the family were as dull as ditchwater, and anything Charles did shone like a bad deed in an insipid world? I only remember that because it’s a sort of family quotation now.’
‘Yes, I remember. The way time goes. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow … and the things one remembers … and the things one forgets. A handsome boy … yes, yes.’ She smoked for a while in silence, nodding as if to herself, then relinquished the mouthpiece of the pipe to Halide without looking at her. The black eyes lifted again and fixed on me. ‘You’re like him.’
‘I suppose I am. Not really any more, now we’re both grown up … though I suppose you remember him fairly recently. Something must persist. We’ve the same colouring.’
‘Very like him.’ It was as if she hadn’t heard me. She was still nodding to herself, the black eyes veiled and absent, her hands unsteady with her shawl.
‘Lady Harriet,’ said John Lethman, abruptly. ‘I really must insist you take your tablets now, and rest for a little. Miss Mansel—’
‘Of course,’ I said, getting to my feet, ‘if Great-Aunt Harriet will tell me what I’m to say to Charles?’
‘You may give him my regards.’ The whisper was harsh as the rustle of dry leaves.
‘But—’ I regarded her a little blankly. ‘Don’t you want to see him? He’ll be in Beirut at the Phoenicia with me, probably tomorrow. May he come up to see you on Monday? Or if it’d be less bother, he could come up tomorrow evening after dinner and wait till you’re ready to receive him? He has his own car; he wouldn’t need to stay, like me. I’d love to come with him myself and see you again, but if two people are too many—’
‘No.’
‘You mean we can both come? Oh, that’s marvellous! Then—’
‘I mean I won’t receive him. No, I have received you, and it’s been a pleasure, but this is enough. You may take what news you have of me to my nephews Charles and Christopher, and be satisfied with that.’
As I opened my mouth she lifted her hand and added, more kindly: ‘All this must be strange to you, but I’m an old woman and I have chosen my way of life, and it seems to me that the only good thing that age brings is the right to be as arbitrary as one wants, and to live as one wishes as long as one can afford it. However outlandish and uncomfortable you may think it is here, it suits me, and you can tell them at home that I’m perfectly well, and quite content with my way of life and the privacy I bought when I bought these high walls and that dumb fool at the gate and what service Halide chooses to offer. So we’ll have no more protestations.’
‘But he’ll be desperately disappointed! And what’s more, he’ll be furious with me because I’ve taken his turn with you, so to speak. You were rather his favourite relative, you know. And as a matter of fact, I think it was rather important for him to see you. I don’t know whether you knew, but there’s a plan under way for opening a branch of the bank in Beirut, and Charles’ll probably work there – at least for a time – so while he’s out here now I know he wants to make all the contacts—’
‘No.’
‘Aunt Harriet—’
‘I have spoken,’ she said, rather splendidly, with a flashing gesture of the ruby which was meant to obliterate me, and did.
I gave up. ‘All right, I’ll tell him. He’ll be glad I found you so well. Is there anything you’d like us to send you from England? Any books, for instance?’
‘I can get all I want, thank you, child. Now I’m tired and you may go. Take my messages to your people, but don’t think I want a spate of letters, because I don’t. I shan’t answer ’em. When I’m dead John will let you know. No, you needn’t kiss me. You’re a pretty child and I’ve enjoyed your visit, so now go.’
‘I’ve enjoyed it, too. Thank you for letting me come. Good night, Aunt Harriet.’
‘Good night. John, you’ll come straight back here when you’ve seen her to her room. Halide! Is that stupid girl going to take all night with those pills? Oh, there you are. Now don’t forget what I’ve said, John, come straight back here.’
‘Of course,’ agreed Mr Lethman, sounding relieved. He already had me half-way towards the door.
For a final parting, it had the strange note of casualness which seemed exactly right. I paused for a moment in the doorway and glanced back. Halide was once more at the dressing-chest, shaking something from a small bottle into her hand. Beyond her, behind the orange glow of the lamp, the bed was towering obscurity. As she turned to mount the steps once more, something moved in the black shadows at the foot of the bed, something small and grey and quick-moving. For one flesh-creeping moment I thought there were rats even in the bedroom, but then I saw the creature leap on the bed, and the large pale hand came from behind the curtain and stroked it. A half-grown cat.
Half-wild as well. As Halide sat down on the edge of the bed the cat leaped aside and vanished. The girl, shimmering in her green silk, leaned forward towards the hidden figure of the old woman. She was offering her water in a tall, chased goblet. The scene looked like something remote and improbable, on a badly lighted stage. It could have nothing to do with me and Charles and daylight.
I turned and hurried out in the wake of John Lethman’s torch.
The beam flicked upwards for a moment to light my face. ‘What is it? Are you cold?’
‘No. It’s nothing.’ I took a deep breath. ‘It’s wonderful to get out into the air. You were right about that tobacco, it’s a bit much.’
‘Was that all it was? I got the impression that the interview upset you.’
‘In a way, I suppose,’ I admitted. ‘I must say I found it all a bit odd, and she wasn’t exactly easy to talk to.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, heavens—Oh, but I suppose you’re used to it! I meant inconsistent, and forgetful, and the way she tried to needle me at the beginning. And – well, she looks so outlandish, and then that pipe…! I’m afraid I was a bit tactless once or twice, but I’d always heard she hasn’t much time for yes-men, and I thought it was probably best to tell the truth, flat out. I thought I’d upset her, the time she started muttering at me, but I hadn’t, had I?’
‘It takes more than that. Take it from me, she meant it when she said she was enjoying the conversation.’
He was, I thought, a bit curt. But any sour reflections I might have had about this were shaken as he went on: ‘I wish you’d told me earlier about this cousin Charles. I might have managed to persuade her.’
‘Yes, it was silly of me. I think I’d some idea of finding out first how the land lay. Is she likely to change her mind?’
‘Heaven knows. Frankly, I’ve no idea. Once she’s made a decision it’s pretty hard to shift her. I sometimes feel she’s obstinate just for the hell of it, if you know what I mean. I don’t know why she suddenly stuck her toes in like that.’
‘Neither do I. She adored him, you know – he was the only one of us she’d any use for.’ I added, ruefully: ‘Well, he’s going to be furious with me for queering his pitch, which is what I seem to have done, goodness knows how! He’s really pretty keen to see her – and not just out of curiosity like me. I don’t know what he’ll say.
She must have talked of him to you, surely?’
‘Oh, yes. If I’d only known he was here … Look out, mind that step. How long’s he going to be in the Lebanon?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Well, if he has time to spare, tell him to leave it for a few days, will you, at least till after mid-week. I’ll do what I can, and get in touch with you at the Phoenicia.’
It seemed there wasn’t much else I could do except trust to his good offices.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell him. When she’s had time to think it over, I’m sure she’ll change her mind.’
‘Stranger things have happened,’ said John Lethman, rather shortly.
6
Thy promises are like Adonis’ gardens,
That one day bloom’d and fruitful were the next.
Shakespeare: I Henry VI
IN the night it rained.
I had got back to my room at some time between half past one and two in the morning. The night had been dry then, very black and perfectly still, with nothing to suggest a storm to follow. Mr. Lethman saw me as far as my bedroom door, where I had left the oil lamp lit, said good night, and withdrew. I carried my lamp along to the hammam, washed as well as I could in a trickle of cold water, and then went back to my room again. There was no key, but I saw a heavy wooden bar on the inside of the door. I dropped this carefully into its sockets. Then I took off my outer clothing, turned my lamp down rather inexpertly and blew out the wicks, and climbed into bed.
Even though the hour was late, and I was tired, I lay awake for some little time turning the recent scene over and over in my head. I imagined myself telling Charles, telling my mother and father, and somehow none of the words seemed to fit or be right. ‘She seemed odd, she seemed ill, she’s getting old, she’s going to town a bit on this recluse thing—’ none of these phrases seemed to fit the decidedly off-beat tone of the interview. And if she really was going to refuse to see Charles …
Well, that was Charles’s problem, not mine. I slept.
I’m not sure whether it was the flash of lightning or the almost simultaneous crack of thunder that woke me, but as I stirred in bed and opened my eyes the sound of rain seemed to obliterate all else. I have never heard such rain. There was no wind with it, only the cracking of thunder and the vivid white rents in the black sky. I sat up in bed to watch. The window-arches flickered dramatically against the storm outside, and the portcullis squares of the grille stamped themselves on the room over and over again with their violently angled perspectives of black and white. Through the window that I had opened the scents of flowers came almost storming in, vividly wakened by the rain. With the scents came, more palpably, a good deal of the rain itself, hitting the sill and splashing on the floor in great hammering drops.
Reluctantly, I got out of bed and padded in my bare feet across the chilly floor to shut the casement. Even while I groped in momentary darkness for the catch, my arm was soaked almost to the shoulder by the slashing downpour. I slammed the casement shut, and while I fought to fix the stiff and squeaking catch I heard, from the direction of the main gate, the sudden keening howl of a big dog.
It is one of the weirdest of all sounds, bringing with it, I suppose, race memories of wolves and jackals and such, overlaid by countless legends of death and grief. The first hound’s voice rose in a throbbing wail, to be joined by the long tremolo of the other. The watchdogs, of course, upset by the storm; but I felt my hand instinctively clench stiff on the soaked iron of the window-catch, while I listened with cold prickles running over my skin. Then I jammed the thing shut and reached for my towel to rub my arm dry.
No wonder a howling dog was supposed to foretell a death … As I scrubbed at my wet arm and shoulder I thought of the legend Charles had reminded me of, ‘gabble ratchet’, the Gabriel Hounds, Death’s pack hunting through the sky … Certainly all hell seemed to be loose up there tonight, full cry. In the old days anyone in the palace might well have believed the hounds of the storm to be crying death.
In the old days. And you’d have been superstitious then, and believed in that kind of thing. Whereas now … oh, nonsense, there was nothing wrong …
I flung the towel down and padded back to bed.
About five seconds later I discovered something a good deal more disturbing than any Gabriel Hounds. The roof was leaking. Moreover, it was leaking in the corner right above my bed.
I discovered this – it being dark, in the simplest possible way, by getting back into bed straight into the middle of a soaking patch, and by receiving at the same moment a large gout of water squarely on the back of my neck. It was followed almost immediately by another, and another …
I hurled myself back on to the cold marble, and started a frantic hunt for my shoes. Perversely, the lightning had stopped almost as suddenly as it had begun, and it was now quite dark. I found one shoe eventually, and stumbled about looking for the other, but couldn’t find it. I would have to light the lamp. This, of course, meant finding my handbag, and the matches I hoped I was carrying – and by the time I had done this another pint of so of water would have emptied itself into my bed. I suppose it would have been sensible to drag the bed straight away from the danger point before starting the hunt for my effects, but from what I had seen of the palace appointments, I wasn’t prepared to manhandle any of their furniture about the floors in the dark. So I hopped about, blasphemously groping, until I had found my matches, and then it took me another five minutes or so to manage the lighting of the oil lamp.
Once the room was lit it was the work of moments to find my other shoe and throw something on over my near-nakedness. Then I recklessly dragged the bed away from the wall. It came across the cracked marble with a dot-and-carry-one screech of broken castors. With it out of the way, the water dripped steadily on to the floor. It was only after some moments that I realized how loud the dripping was. The rain had stopped.
I went back to the window. As suddenly as if a tap had been turned off the rain had ceased. Already I could see stars. I pulled open the casement to find that in the wake of the storm had come a small erratic breeze, which was clearing the clouds and whispering among the trees of the gorge. After the chill of the soaking storm the breeze was warm, so I left the casement wide. Then I turned back to deal with my problem.
Most of the bedcovers were still dry, having been pushed back out of the way when I got out of bed myself. I heaved these off the bed, put them gingerly on the dry part of the window-seat, then, more gingerly still, turned the mattress. It was of thick horse-hair, with a fresh cover of unbleached cotton, and I could only hope that it would last me the rest of the night before the wet soaked up through it. I discarded the sodden sheet, piled the dry bedcovers back on, put out the lamp and lay down, clothes and all, to pass what remained of the night.
But not yet in sleep. The steady dripping just beside me on the marble floor seemed as loud as a drum beat. I stood it for perhaps ten minutes, then realised I would get no sleep until I stopped it. So once more I rolled out of bed, groped for and found the crumpled and soaking sheet, and put it down under the drips. In the blessed quiet that followed, another sound from outside caught my ear, and I straightened up and stood listening.
No hounds of Death now; they were quiet. This was a bird singing in the garden, full and loud and echoing from the water and the enclosing walls. Another joined it. And then a third, waterfalls of song rinsing the clear air.
I unbarred the door and padded out across the arcade.
The surface of the lake was faintly shining, lighter than the dim starlight it reflected. Spatters of rain shook intermittently from the bushes as the breeze wandered. The nightingales’ song filled the garden, welling out of the tangle of soaked and glittering creepers.
A pair of white pigeons rocketed out from their roost in the western arcade and vanished with a clap of wings over my head. Something – someone – moved in the darkness beneath the arches. A man, walking along under the arcade. He
was moving very softly, and above the noise of the birds and the rustle of the leaves I couldn’t hear him, but this was no white-robed Arab. It must be John Lethman. Probably he’d come along to see how I’d made out in the storm.
I waited a few moments longer, but he didn’t come, and I saw nothing more. The garden, but for the song of the nightingales, was quiet and still.
I shivered suddenly. Five minutes’ Nachtmusik was more than enough. I padded back into my room, crossly shut my door against the nightingales, and rolled back on to the bed.
I woke to blazing sunlight and a tapping on the door.
It was Halide with my breakfast, a plate of thin unleavened bread, some cream cheese, the inevitable apricot jam, and a big pot of coffee. The girl looked tired, and still eyed me sideways with that sulky glance, but made no comment on the disorder of the room, the sodden sheet on the floor, or even the bed shifted four feet out from the wall. When I thanked her for the tray and said something about the wild night, she only nodded sullenly and went out.
But everything else was cheerful this morning, even the hammam, with sunlight pouring down through the blue and amber glass bells in the ceiling, and lighting the alabaster basins and pale marble walls in a swimming subaqueous light. The water trickled – colder than ever – out of a dolphin’s mouth into a silver shell. I rinsed my face and hands, went back to my room and dressed, then carried the tray out into the blazing sunshine at the edge of the pool.
The golden heat, the high blue sky, made it difficult to remember last night’s storm of pouring rain, but here and there on the path where the flagstones had sunk, or in the wells dug round the tree-roots to catch the rain, the water still stood glittering, inches deep. The weeds between the stones looked already half as long again, the flowers brighter, the bushes glossy and refreshed. Even the water of the pool looked clearer, and beside it a peacock stood studying his reflection, with his tail fully spread, looking entirely artificial, like something from a picture-book, or a jewelled bird by Fabergé. Some other bird, small and golden, flirted over a rose laurel. The little kiosk on the island, freshly washed, showed a gilded dome and a glimpse of bright blue tiling. One of the nightingales was doing overtime in the roses.