City of Jasmine (2 page)

“It was like I never even knew him at all,” I told Wally as I stared at the photograph. “He just escorted me to the ship as politely as if I were an acquaintance and lifted his hat in farewell.” I broke off, swallowing hard. “It’s absurd, but I always hated to think it was the last memory I would ever have of him.”

“You were divorcing him,” Wally pointed out.

“Yes, but it was so unlike him, at least it was unlike the man I thought I married. That moment when I stood on that deck watching him leave was the very worst of it. It was like saying goodbye to a stranger.”

“I don’t suppose most divorces are terribly amicable,” he said reasonably. “After all, no one likes to get chucked away like last night’s dinner.”

“I suppose.”

“And weren’t you the one who asked for a divorce?”

“Yes, but—oh, never mind! I’ve wasted too many years thinking about him already. Let’s just forget this and get on with the trip. Hand me the map book, will you? I want to plot the course across the Caspian.”

I rose hastily and threw the photograph into the fire in a savage gesture then snatched it back almost as quickly. The burned edge of it singed my finger and I sucked at the tender skin, cursing under my breath. I couldn’t bring myself to completely destroy the photograph, and I didn’t want to think too hard about what that might mean. I walked to the wastepaper basket and dropped the photograph inside. “Damn him.”

Wally rose calmly and retrieved it. He put it into my hand, folding my fingers gently around it.

“What did you do that for?” I demanded.

“Because it’s time you stopped running, Evie. For you, Gabriel Starke is past and present, and somewhere, I don’t know how, perhaps your future, as well. You’ll never be free of him if you don’t go and find out.”

“Go?”

He sighed. “Woman, you try my patience. To Damascus. You must go to Damascus and find him if he’s there.”

I blinked up at him. “But why? For what possible purpose?”

“That’s up to you, my dear. Strike him, swear at him, kiss him or kill him, I don’t much care. But you will never bury your dead so long as there is a chance he is still alive in this world.”

I looked at the photograph. The edge was charred, but the image was clear. Gabriel’s expression was as inscrutable as I remembered. “No,” I said finally. “Oh, it’s tempting, I’ll grant you that. But we still have the tour to finish.”

I waited for Wally to contradict me, but he didn’t. A change of subject was in order.

I nodded towards his own letters. “What did your father have to say?” I asked.

He slumped further into his chair, crossing his long legs at the ankle and staring up at the ceiling. “Much as I expected. I must marry. I must have sons.”

“Same song, second verse,” I said lightly.

He lowered his head and smiled. “Oh, a new tune, though. He’s threatening to cut off my allowance.”

He passed me the letter and I skimmed it quickly. Certain damning phrases jumped out at me...
wasting your life...feckless...dishonour to the name...not much time...doctor not optimistic.
I gave it back to him.

“I’m so sorry, Wally. What will you do?”

He shrugged. “What can I do? I must go home to Mistledown. I can hold him off for the last leg of the trip, but no more adventures after that, I’m afraid. Egypt will be the end of the road for me, love.”

I slipped to the floor and put my head on his knee. He ran an absent hand through my short curls. “I ought to take him at his word and marry you,” he said after a while.

“That’s the whisky talking.” I turned my head to look at him. “Have you ever considered telling him the truth?”

His smile was sad and distant as a martyred saint’s. “Telling the Right Honourable Viscount Walters that his only son and heir is a poof? Have a heart, dear girl. He’s already got one foot tickling the grave. That would finish him off.”

“I imagine you’re right.”

He sipped thoughtfully at his drink. “I suppose we could get married, though. I would get respectability and you’d have a lovely title to lord over all those nasty people who have nothing better to do than gossip about you.”

I slipped my hand into his. “Putting one over on the society cats is hardly reason enough to get married.”

“With you I could provide the estate with an heir,” he mused.

“But would you want to?”

He reached down and kissed my cheek. “No. Not even with you, and I adore you. I’ll simply have to go back to Mistledown and make the best of things. I shall be a proper lord of the manor, and when the time comes, it will all pass to a feeble-minded cousin in Ireland.”

“Is he really feeble-minded?”

“Well, he’s Irish, so it’s difficult to tell,” he said with a twinkle. I slapped at his leg.

“Don’t be catty.” I picked up the photograph. “I can tell you think I’m an awful fool for not going to Damascus.”

“Yes, I do.”

“But why?”

Wally leaned down and put his cheek against mine. “Because somewhere in your very large, very tender heart, you are hoping it was all a terrible mistake and that he is alive.”

I reared back as if he’d struck me. “Hoping! What an extraordinary thing to say.”

“But a truthful one. Evie, everyone else sees the brave face. Everyone else sees the big smile and the plucky girl who flies her little plane and waves for the cameras and flogs boots and face cream. But I see everything else. I see the shadows under your eyes when you’ve sat up half the night thinking about him. I see the hunted expression you get anytime his name is mentioned. And I see that somewhere beneath the sophisticated, glamorous façade of the barnstormer who crosses the globe with nothing but her dancing slippers and her best lipstick is the heartbroken girl whose husband called her bluff and left her sitting on a ship when she thought he would come crawling back.”

I blinked back unshed tears, my throat tight and hot. “Damn you.”

“People are always damning me,” he said with a sigh. “And it’s always because I’m right.”

I looked at the photograph again. “Do you really think he’s there?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea. The point is it doesn’t really matter, dear girl. What counts is that you find some answers once and for all. You’ve spent the last five years running away from everything, dashing off on another trip just so you wouldn’t have to think about how you were going to pay the butcher or the baker.”

“You forgot the candlestick maker. And you’re quite wrong, you know. Those trips were
how
I paid the bills.”

“Nonsense. You could have learned to type and taken a nice job in an office somewhere. You could have married again. You could have accepted the annuity Gabriel left you. There were a hundred other ways to keep a roof over your head, my love, and you managed to choose the only way that kept you running. Well, it’s time to stop. Face down your ghosts. Exorcise them once and for all. Forgive them, forgive yourself and get on with the business of living.”

I thought a long moment. “And what if Gabriel isn’t a ghost? What if he really is alive?”

“Then you must find him and demand answers. You deserve them.”

“I suppose so,” I said slowly. “I imagine I could get one of the newspapers to underwrite a detour before the Caspian flight. Aunt Dove’s most successful book was her memoir of travels in the Levant in the ’80s. I could tell them we’re retracing her steps, meeting up with old friends, that sort of thing. I could promise some camel caravans and desert nomads for local colour. They’d lap that up. And I know she would love to see her old friends. I could tell her I want a little rest before the rigors of the Caspian trip.”

“See? You’re two steps ahead as usual, winkling out the difficulties. You’re halfway to Damascus already.”

I smiled. “You’re right, of course. I do deserve an end to it. If Gabriel’s gone, I ought to be able to put him behind me once and for all. And if he’s alive...” I hesitated then gave him a broad smile. “If he’s alive, I’ll let you hold him down while I thrash him.”

“Excellent notion. I’d love nothing better than to get a few licks in myself. I’ve always hated him.”

“Why should you hate him, Wally? You never even met him.”

He shrugged. “He had everything I ever wanted in life and left it on a ship out of Shanghai. I could kill him on that score alone.”

I jumped up and kissed him on the cheek. “You don’t really want me,” I reminded him. “I am not at all your type.”

“Oh, but how I wish you were.”

Two

The next day the editor of a newspaper in Los Angeles came through with tickets for the Orient Express, and Aunt Dove began to pack. She insisted on bringing Arthur along—“Roman air is insalubrious to parrots, dear”—and I left her to go in search of Wally. He was still tinkering with the
Jolly Roger,
whistling a bit of jazz as he worked.

“How’s my darling?” I called, patting her wing. It had been my idea to paint her to resemble a pirate flag. The black highlights lent her a certain gravitas while the dazzling white skull and crossbones on her tail said I meant business.

Wally looked up from the engine. “Your aeroplane is fine and so am I, thanks for asking.”

“Can I fly her to Venice?”

“Depends. Do you feel like landing her in the lagoon? Venice is water, pet.”

I pulled a face. “Not the Veneto. There’s a darling little airfield where we can get some smashing pictures before Aunt Dove and I catch the train to Constantinople.”

He considered then nodded. “She’ll be fine for that, but no further. I’ll take the train up to Venice and finish working on her there. As soon as she’s able, I’ll hopscotch her down to Damascus. There’s a small airfield just outside the city and the ambassador has already contacted the authorities for you, although I’m surprised he knew who to ask. Are we still in charge over there or is it the French now?”

I rolled my eyes. “Wally, do you ever actually read the newspapers we get? It used to be a vilayet of the Turks. We liberated it and there’s an interim Arab government now. The French are hanging around to act as advisors and we’re out.”

He shrugged. “Makes no difference to me and they change their minds every week. I think it’s a conspiracy on the part of mapmakers to sell their wares.”

“More like another souvenir of the war,” I reminded him.

At the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire, once stretched tautly from North Africa east to the Silk Road and north to the Balkans, had been shattered into a thousand pieces. Britain and France had swept up the choicest bits for themselves, leaving the crumbs for others. Unfortunately it had meant breaking a slew of promises to the native Arabs that they could have a country of their own after the war in exchange for their help in throwing off the Turks, the largest and most powerful of the German allies. These accords had left the whole of the region seething with rebellion and resentment with British and French overlords attempting to maintain an uneasy peace, while Arabs rightfully demanded autonomy. The trouble was the French had been meddling in the Holy Land ever since the Crusades and the British authorities weren’t about to be left out of the oil fields in southern Mesopotamia—particularly not since Churchill had set his heart on building an air force.

“Will you have trouble getting through Constantinople?” he asked.

“Shouldn’t do, although Aunt Dove is insisting on giving me a six-shooter to carry. She says Turks can’t be trusted.”

His expressive brows inched upwards. “A six-shooter?”

“Goodness, I don’t know what it is. Something that makes a bang and persuades people to stop doing things you don’t want them to do. It looks like a child’s toy actually, small enough to fit in my palm and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I feel quite like a gangster’s moll.”

“Did she mind the change in plans?”

“Not at all. In fact, she’s rather happy to get Arthur Wellesley out of Rome. She said he’s picking up Popish habits. She heard him reciting the Paternoster in Latin this morning. In any event, it might not be a bad idea for you to keep the ambassador’s details handy. We might need a little diplomatic assistance if Aunt Dove decides to misbehave.”

He rolled his eyes to heaven. “Saints preserve us.”

I patted the
Jolly Roger
lightly. “Mind you tighten everything up. I have a little surprise.”

The surprise was a series of barrel rolls I pulled off over the Piazza San Marco. As I heard it later, the Italian authorities were not amused and the pigeons in the square flapped about irritably, but Aunt Dove thought it was all great fun and the reporters lapped it up like kittens with cream. The only one who protested seriously was Arthur, who kicked up a tremendous racket and then played dead for the better part of an hour while Aunt Dove fussed over him with warm brandy. He feebly opened his beak when she spooned the brandy into it, and when she cracked some pistachios for him and drizzled them with honey he hopped around, fluffing out his feathers and making a queer chortling noise that meant he was very happy indeed.

We rested in Venice a day before boarding the Orient Express, and I blessed the instinct that had caused our friend in Los Angeles to book two compartments. Aunt Dove was delightful company, but she snored like a fiend, and Arthur tried my patience at the best of times. I spent most of the journey reading up on the political situation in the region—as pretty and fickle as a spring thunderstorm—and the rest of the time staring out the window at the passing Balkans. It was hard to imagine that this peaceful, beautiful countryside had been the start of such a bloodbath, I mused as I watched hill town and pasture roll past. There were stunning mountain gorges and pastoral and village scenes like something the Brothers Grimm might have conjured out of a storybook. And with every passing mile, I found something new that I would have liked to have shown Gabriel.

Damn.
There he was again, hovering at the edge of my life like a ghost that just won’t quit. When he’d first been reported missing and presumed dead at the sinking of the
Lusitania,
I had spent months catching glimpses of him out of the tail of my eye. Psychosomatic, Aunt Dove had pronounced firmly. She’d prescribed demanding war work and long country walks to clear my head. She’d even found me a job working at a convalescent hospital run by Wally’s mother at their estate at Mistledown. Because his mother was a viscountess and an unrepentant snob, she insisted on taking only pilots as her patients and she wanted a very select group of nurses to attend them. She gave us splendid uniforms of crushed strawberry-pink with clever little caps designed to show off our hair. Most of the girls worked there only to catch a husband, but I had other ideas. I made friends with the lads, and within a few months, I understood the rudiments of flying. And that was what saved me when I thought I would drown in regret after Gabriel. For the first time since he’d been lost, I slept whole nights through, and I didn’t see him around corners and in shadows. I learned to say goodbye, to get on with the business of living.

But now, the nearer I got to Damascus, the closer he felt. I slept badly and dreamed of him when I did. And when I had time alone, I found myself remembering.

I was staring out the window of the Orient Express, a book open on my lap, thinking of the last time I’d seen him, when the door to my compartment opened and Aunt Dove slipped in, a dozen necklaces of polished glass beads clacking as she moved.

“That’s Baroness Orczy’s newest effort, isn’t it?” she asked with a nod to the book in my lap. “I heard it’s quite amusing. Pity you’re not enjoying it.”

I perked up. “What makes you say that?”

“You’ve been stuck on the first page for the last two days. You’re brooding. And from the way you’re toying with your wedding ring on that chain, I’d say it has to do with Gabriel.”

I dropped the chain as if I’d been burned. Since I had been waiting to divorce Gabriel when he was lost, I didn’t have the right to call myself his widow, I reasoned, no matter what society and the law said. But I hadn’t the heart to chuck the ring away, either. I had worn it on a chain since the day of his funeral, tucking it securely into my décolletage even though it brought back the most painful memories of all. I hadn’t expected a wedding ring. We had eloped, and it had seemed like a particularly romantic bit of conjuring that he had managed to get me a ring. He pulled it off my finger on our wedding night to show me the inscription.

“When did you have time?” I had demanded.

He smiled. “It’s mine.” He held up his hand and I saw that the slender gold band he’d worn on his smallest finger, tucked under his Starke signet ring, was missing. “I found a jeweller to inscribe it this afternoon while you were looking for a frock to wear to the wedding. Have a look inside.”

I peered into the ring, puzzling out the script in the dim light.
“Hora e sempre,”
I read aloud.

He gave me a mock-serious look. “It’s Latin.”

“Yes, I may not have gone to university, but I’m not entirely uneducated,” I said, giving him a little push. “Now and forever.”

He dropped the ring back onto my finger. “I mean it, you know,” he said, his tone light, but his eyes desperately serious. “I suspect I’ll be a rotten husband, really frightful, in fact. I’m not very good at living up to anyone’s expectations but my own, and I’m abominably selfish.”

I looped my arms about his neck. “Yes, you’re a monster. I still married you.”

In spite of my teasing tone, he didn’t smile. Some melancholy had come over him and he put his hands to my wrists, pinning them gently.

“Damned if I know why. What I’m trying to say, Evie, is that my best is a bloody poor thing. But I’ll give you that best of mine, now and forever. Just don’t expect too much, will you?”

I had thrown my arms completely around him then, as much because I couldn’t bear the look of hunted sadness in his eyes as from passion. Some hours later, when he slept heavily, one leg thrown over mine, his face buried in my hair, I closed my hand tightly so I could feel the ring bite into my hand.
Now and forever.
We had lasted four months....

I let my gaze slide back to the passing Balkan countryside. “Those are particularly nice cows.”

Aunt Dove gave a sigh and took a seat, her beads still clacking. “If that’s meant as an encouragement to me to mind my own business, it’s feeble. Try again.”

“Mind your own business,” I said, smiling.

She shook her head. “It isn’t good for a woman to brood, you know. I think you need a man.”

“Of one thing I am certain, I do
not
need a man.”

Her expression was sympathetic. “Darling, I know you love Wally dearly, but I think there’s something you ought to know.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, heavens, Dove! I know that already.”

She gave a sigh of relief. “Thank God for that. I thought I was going to have to explain to you about boys who go with other boys. Did you figure it out for yourself or did he tell you?”

“A little of both,” I admitted. “One night we had rather too much gin and not enough to eat. I told him the whole story of Gabriel and sobbed a bit in his arms, and then he was holding me. Everything went sort of soft and blurry, and we fell into a kiss. I realised after about two minutes that neither of us had moved. It was what I imagine it would be like to kiss a brother. Or Arthur Wellesley. Just nothing there at all.”

“Really? Curious. One of the best kissers I ever knew was a poof—but he was royal. Perhaps it makes a difference,” she said consolingly. “But that doesn’t change anything, child. You need a proper seeing-to.”

“A ‘seeing-to’? What on earth—” I held up a hand. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

She pursed her lips. “Sex, dear. I’m talking about sex. You need some. And badly, I should think.”

“Aunt Dove, we are not having this conversation. Not now, not ever.”

She pretended not to hear me. “It isn’t your fault, my dear. I imagine after a man like Gabriel Starke, I’d be a bit choosy about my male companions, as well. But just because you won’t find someone to...er, fill his rather large shoes, so to speak, doesn’t mean you can’t have a perfectly pleasant time of it.”

“How do you know he had large shoes to fill?” I demanded. The fact that she was entirely correct was beside the point.

She smiled. “Because for the duration of your brief marriage you looked like the cat that ate the canary. Now, you fought like tigers and he was a crashing failure as a husband. That leaves the bedroom. Clearly, things were satisfactory there.
More
than satisfactory, if I’m any judge of these things, and I think I am. But just because you are still pining for Gabriel, that’s no reason not to have an interesting time of it. In fact, I think you should. A woman’s insides need lubrication, you know. They’ll go all dry and stick together otherwise.”

I ignored her vague grasp of biology and seized on something else. “I’m not pining for Gabriel. I can’t imagine why you’d think so.”

She rose and kissed the top of my head. “Child, you’re transparent as glass.” She went to the door. “I seem to remember the last thing Gabriel Starke ever gave you was a copy of
Peter and Wendy.
Interesting that you named your aeroplane the
Jolly Roger.
”

She closed the door before my shoe hit it, neatly marking the glossy wood.

The brooding over my failed marriage had taken its toll by the time we reached Constantinople. I was snappish and tired, with dark circles under my eyes, but the photographers were waiting. I powdered my face and painted my lips with the brightest crimson lipstick in my box and posed for photographs with a smiling Aunt Dove and a moulting Arthur. He shed bright green feathers all down the train platform, but by the time we had settled in for the last leg of the journey to Damascus he had perked up. Aunt Dove flirted her way through Customs outrageously and as a result, our bags weren’t so much as opened, much less searched. She plied me with pistachios—which I was darkly afraid had once been intended for Arthur—and in due course we arrived in Damascus. The approach to the city was not the finest. For that we ought to have come from Baghdad, crossing the desert to find Damascus shimmering in its oasis with the snowy bulk of Mount Hermon looming up behind. But rolling through the orchards of olive and lemon, pomegranate and orange, we saw Damascus standing on the plain, a gleaming, jewelled city of white in a lush green setting. It smelled, as all ancient cities do, of stone and smoke and donkey and spices, but over it all hung the perfume of the flowers that spilled from private courtyards and public gardens. Sewage ran in the streets, yet to me it would always be the city of jasmine, the air thick with the fragrance of crushed blossoms.