City of Jasmine (21 page)

“How do the women fit into it?” I asked. Gabriel narrowed his eyes at me.

“Evie—”

Sheikh Hamid smiled indulgently. “It is not an offence to ask a question, Djibril.” He turned back to me. “Our women do not have the same obvious freedoms that the Englishwoman has. For this you look at her and you feel pity. Because you do not live her life, you do not see her compensations.”

“Compensations?”

“A Bedouin woman is never alone. She does not toil without help. She does not weep without the support of her sisters. There is always a pair of hands to aid her and always a shoulder upon which to cast her burdens.”

I thought of the scene in Sheikha Aysha’s tent when I had let my own tears flow. It had felt glorious to give myself up to the care of the Bedouin women and their gentle kindnesses. Of course, having another woman to help milk the goats or dry one’s tears was small payment for having to wear a face veil and having all decisions taken out of one’s hands, but I understood his point a little better.

I smiled. “We shall not agree upon this, but I thank you for explaining. And we English have not come so far down that road as we ought. We women still aren’t even allowed the vote, at least not all of us.”

He lifted his brows. “Then you might prefer to be a Bedouin woman. They do not sit on our councils or speak their opinions publicly before men, but there is not a man in our tribe who does not know precisely what his wife thinks on any subject. Much persuasion may be done when heads are close upon a pillow,” he added with a meaningful smile.

I thought on what he said, and realised Gabriel had spoken the truth: there were no easy answers in this part of the world. They were resentments and blood feuds a thousand years in the making, and everything the Westerners had done—from the Crusades to the recent peace conferences—had only complicated matters. I smiled at Hamid. “Yes, well, I suppose if you’ve been doing something successfully for three thousand years there isn’t much reason to change, is there?”

“You’re both rather missing the significance,” Gabriel said irritably. “If I might draw you back to the matter at hand—that is, Faisal’s declaration of kingship. The French aren’t very well going to take this lying down, you know.” He turned to me. “Things are only going to get worse now that Faisal has declared independence. There will be a price to pay for this and it’s going to be a bloody one.”

I suppressed a sigh. “Do you suppose just once you could consider something without counting your own risk of bodily injury?”

Sheikh Hamid turned to me, his expression clearly one of astonishment. As we had just discussed, no Arab woman would have spoken to her husband in front of others with such disrespect, I was sure, but I was fed up to the back teeth with Gabriel’s skulking around the desert and hampering our entire adventure with his endless carping about danger.

“But,
sitt...
” Hamid began.

Gabriel folded his arms lazily over his chest. “Don’t bother, Hamid. Really,” he said with a sharp glance at his friend.

Hamid shrugged.

“I apologise,” I told him. “It’s discourteous of us to share our marital woes with you.”

“Yes,” he said gravely, “Djibril tells me that you will divorce. It is a complicated thing for the English with your courts. It’s easier our way,” he remarked to Gabriel. “You just tell a woman she is no longer your wife and it is done. She goes back to her people.”

“I ought to have been born a Bedouin,” Gabriel replied, his tone thoughtful.

“My brother speaks truly.”

I cleared my throat. “I thought you were the one who wanted to get back to the matter at hand. When can we leave? Not that your hospitality hasn’t been absolutely grand,” I hastened to assure Hamid, “but I am rather anxious to get back to Damascus.”

The sheikh shrugged. “When it is safe to go.”

“When will that be?” I persisted.

Hamid looked at Gabriel, who merely threw up his hands.

“Sitt,”
Hamid said with great patience, “it is not the job of a man to change the stars or the wind. These things belong to Allah. We will go when we may go. Until it is safe, you will remain here as my guests.”

I stared from one to the other. “You must be joking,” I said, spreading my arms to encompass the furthest reaches of the desert as I thought about the empty miles stretching between us and the Cross. “Can’t you let us have a few men and some horses or camels to ride?”

Hamid spread his hands. “It pains me to refuse you,
sitt.
But not even for my brother can I do such a thing. I will not open my men to attack. The French are angry now, and any Bedouin they see they are likely to fire upon. This is not our fight.”

“How can you say that?” I demanded. “King Faisal is fighting for a united Arab state here.”

Hamid shrugged again with the cool indifference of a desert dweller whose perspective is shaped by the vast land at his feet. “Governments come and governments go. Yes, I hope that King Faisal succeeds. But I have sacrified many of my men already in this cause. If the fight comes to us, we will take up arms for a united Arab state. Again,” he said pointedly, a sharp reminder that they had fought for a free state and had it snatched back by European hands. “But we will not go to the fight. It must come to us. There is a band of deserters, men from the French Foreign Legion who have made their way here. They are brigands, I believe, and desperate men without honour. But if I attack them without cause, I will give the French in Damascus the excuse to post troops here. It is better to wait and give them no reason to disturb the peace of my people. They will go away, and then, when these men have moved on and it is safe, I will lead you out and you will have the best of everything I can offer you—horses and camels and men. This is a fair offer, is it not?”

I looked to Gabriel, who was watching me closely. There was something coldly assessing in his eyes, and I knew he was waiting for me to blunder in and offend his friend. “Very well,” I said calmly. “I understand and accept your generous hospitality. I have heard there is no more generous friend in all the world than a Bedouin.”

“It is true,” Hamid said, giving me a wide smile. “You will see. Now, I think it is time for you to go to your tent. You will want rest.”

He rose and stepped back to make sure I did not touch him as I passed. Gabriel was behind me, and when I hesitated at the flap, he pointed. “That one,” he said, gesturing towards a smaller tent a little distance away. When I got there, I stopped, startled to find Gabriel right behind me. I huffed a little at him.

“Don’t fuss, Gabriel. I don’t require a bodyguard. You yourself said the Bedouin were the most hospitable folk on earth. I’m hardly likely to get into trouble on my own.”

“What you do is not my concern,” he said blandly. “But you’re blocking the way.”

“To my tent.”

“To
my
tent,” he corrected with a lazy smile.

I folded my arms. “Absolutely not.”

He stepped close, his voice pitched low. The lazy smile was still in evidence but there was no mistaking the tone. “You are my wife. In this culture that means one thing—you are my property and my property stays with me.”

“Your property? I don’t see anything that marks me as yours,” I retorted.

He lifted his hand, and with agonising slowness, stretched a fingertip to the neck of my robe. He slid it down, lightly skimming the skin between my breasts, then stroked upwards.

“Don’t you?” he asked softly. Dangling from his fingertip was the chain with my wedding ring. He dropped it abruptly and gave me a cold smile. “Don’t screech, woman. You sound like a particularly unattractive species of Patagonian monkey. And yes, you heard me correctly. You sleep here with me.”

I crossed my arms and planted my feet firmly. “I refuse. Categorically and emphatically.”

He shrugged one broad shoulder, clearly bored with the conversation. “I don’t see what bother it makes. You’ve spent the last few nights with me.”

“As abductees,” I pointed out. “I had no choice.”

“And you have no choice here. There is no place for you. The other women will be with their families.”

“Then I can sleep outside.”

“You cannot. They would be scandalised, and I’ll not have you offending my friends by implying there is something wrong with their customs.”

“But—”

Something in his face stopped me. He would take any amount of abuse at my hands, but not if it were directed at his friends, and I understood why. To insist upon different sleeping arrangements would seem critical of their ways, and even though I was raging at Hamid’s reluctance to take us back into the desert, their hospitality had been profound. Lifesaving, in fact.

“Fine,” I said stiffly. I turned on my heel and went into the tent. It was furnished simply with more of the silken Turkish rugs on the ground and a pierced lantern to give light. A carved chest stood in the corner, and the top of it had been laid as a sort of dressing table for Gabriel with razor and toothbrush and bowl for washing. There was a decanter of something that looked suspiciously like whisky and a
nargileh,
as well. Thickly padded silk blankets had been left for us on a sort of pallet, and I took one and rolled myself into it as far away from Gabriel as I could. I heard him groaning a bit and turned back to find him struggling with his boots.

“For heaven’s sake,” I muttered. I got up and went to him, cupping my hands behind his heel. I yanked off the first boot then the second.

“Bless you,” he murmured, easing himself onto his side and closing his eyes.

I hesitated. “How is your back? Do you need more salve?”

He shook his head without opening his eyes. “No. Hamid’s fellow larded it with something and it feels miles better. Stung like hellfire, but since then the pain has been almost nothing.”

He opened his eyes suddenly, a spark of something brilliant and mocking in that forget-me-not shade.

“Don’t come over all wifely now, Evie. It doesn’t suit you.”

I repeated one of the bad words he used so liberally and went back to my pallet to roll up in my blanket. Within minutes I heard him breathing the slow deep breaths of the heavy sleeper, but I lay for a long time, staring into the darkness of the woolen tent and thinking.

Thirteen

The next few days crawled past with the slow, measured effort of life in the desert. Each day Sheikh Hamid and his men rode out a little way to assess conditions in the desert and hunt, and each evening someone of their acquaintance—a neighbouring tribesman or scout—would come into camp and add his observations. I was sometimes included in these conversations, but as they were conducted in Arabic, I took my cues from Hamid’s patient expression.

“Not yet,” he would say after each of these men left.

So the days passed in acute boredom. I followed the women about, helping to fetch water from the well or bake bread, but I hadn’t the knack for either. I spilled more water than I carried back, and I managed to burn the bread. I irritated the other women by breaking the rhythm of the coffee-grinding song, and when I attempted to spin wool, I ended up with a snarled mess that Sheikha Aysha untangled with patient fingers. It was she who finally set me to gathering camel dung for the fire, supposing even I couldn’t bungle that. Of course, she hadn’t reckoned on my spooking Hamid’s prize
naga,
or camel mother, just as she was about to give birth. He politely discouraged me from going near the camels after that, and I spent hours just sitting in front of the tent, staring out at the desert.

Each night we ate with Sheikh Hamid and afterwards, Gabriel and I retired to our tent to pass yet another night in excruciatingly polite silence. Those long quiet nights were almost the only time we spent together. During the day I was left with the women while he slept, claiming he needed the rest to heal, or sat in on timely discussions of the political situation. As a result, he was enjoying a rather relaxing holiday and hearing the latest from Damascus, while I played endless games of charades with the women in futile attempts to make myself understood. They taught me several new words, a few of which I tried out one evening on Gabriel after we’d retired to our tent.

He stared at me in openmouthed shock. “Yes, I know that word. And you are
never
to repeat it again, particularly in mixed company.” He busied himself lighting the
nargileh
, drawing in a deep breath of the sweetly scented smoke then exhaling it ever so slowly through barely parted lips. There was something hypnotic about the process, and I looked away quickly, plucking at a loose silken thread on a pillow.

“This isn’t mixed company,” I pointed out sullenly. “It’s only you.” He settled himself against the cushions, one hand tucked lazily behind his head as the other worked the pipe.

“Still, I am a man,” he countered, his expression a little wounded. “And no man wants to think that women discuss such things. We’d never have the courage to face one again. My God, is that really what they talk about?”

“All the time. You’d think they’d be more interested in their children or what’s going in the cookpot or the fact that King Faisal has declared their independence. But no—nothing but sex, sex, sex.”

He shook his head slowly. “I knew the men were inclined to be frank with one another about such things, but the women...”

His voice trailed off and I gave him a keen look. “What do the men say?”

His expression turned stern. “None of your business.” He took another deep pull from the
nargileh,
his big body relaxing as he blew out the smoke.

It was deeply fragrant stuff, and the scent of it filled my head, clouding my thinking a little. I felt slightly euphoric and not a little relaxed. I flapped a hand at him with an insouciant gesture. “Gracious, Gabriel, I don’t remember you being particularly prudish. In fact, I can think of one or two things you demonstrated on our honeymoon that still make me blush.” He choked a little on the smoke but recovered himself nicely, puffing furiously for a moment as I talked. “Besides, it can’t be any worse than what the pilots talked about when they thought I wasn’t listening. The words I learned from them would curl your hair.”

“Don’t tell me,” he instructed, taking a long, deep breath of smoke that he blew directly over me like a slow caress. “I’d rather keep my pretty illusions if it’s all the same to you.”

I shrugged. “Have it your way. But I hope something happens soon. The waiting is playing havoc with my nerves. All I do is sit in the tent and struggle with verbs and nod while I understand one word in a hundred.”

“And apparently only the obscene ones,” he commented. He switched from long, lazy draws on the pipe to quick little bursts complete with elegant little smoke rings as he exhaled.

I pulled a face. “Show-off.”

“Oh, come now,” he said, mischief lighting his eyes. “You could make yourself useful. Why not learn to bake bread like a good wife? Or weave me a nice blanket?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, because women ask no more of life than to make the perfect pie or starch a proper collar.”

He puffed another smoke ring. The atmosphere was getting thick with the fragrant smoke, and my head began to swim a little. “You could always borrow a child and see if you come over all maternal.”

I shuddered. “The children are all right, I suppose. They’re terribly sweet and even their English is better than my Arabic, but I didn’t realise how often they needed a good nose-wiping. I haven’t any clean handkerchiefs left,” I said darkly.

He held up a commanding hand, looking for all the world like a pasha ordering his harem about. “Not another word. You forget I was gently reared. I shock easily.”

“They’re quite well, you know,” I said softly.

He roused himself. “Who?”

“Your family. I know you’re thinking of them. That’s the same expression you always had when you talked about them. Do you ever miss them?”

He shook his head. “No. Too many years trying to please the old man and coming up desperately short. It was rather freeing to let them all think I was dead and not have the bother anymore. Now I only worry about disappointing myself.” He paused still smoking thoughtfully. “Were they awful to you? After I ‘died,’ I mean?”

“Yes, frightful, actually. They opposed the annuity you’d arranged for me and questioned every detail about the funeral itself. We even quarrelled about the music.”

“Really? Who won?”

“I did,” I told him with noticeable satisfaction. “I insisted upon Palestrina with a lovely bit of Purcell to finish.”

A slow smile curved his mouth. “Good girl.” Wordlessly, he handed me the mouthpiece of the pipe and I took a puff. I coughed a little—this mixture was stronger than the one Daoud had favoured. But the second puff was smoother, and by the fourth, I felt nothing but silken smoke slipping down my throat. I handed it back as my head buzzed.

“You needn’t look quite so pleased,” I told him. “I gave way about the monument. There’s a bloody great pile of stone with your name on it in a churchyard in Norfolk.”

“But no cherubs,” he pleaded. “Please tell me you didn’t let them have cherubs.”

“Enormous fat ones with wreaths of stone roses and a particularly gruesome dove that looks as if it might have a wasting disease. It really is the most revoltingly sentimental thing I’ve ever seen.” I paused. “But I had an inscription of my own carved into the back.”

There was a moment where he said nothing, as if weighing whether he dared ask. But he put aside the pipe and held my gaze levelly with his own.

“What does it say? Not some bloody Psalm, I hope.” He attempted a light tone, but there was an edge of something sharper there as he must have steeled himself.

“It says, ‘We hope our sons will die like English gentlemen.’” Nine words, but each one a laceration to a boy who’d grown up waiting for the Lost Boys to walk the plank and make good ends.

He mouthed a word and looked away. When he looked back, he had mastered himself. “Well done,” he said, the edge still in his voice. “I thought you might try to break my heart a little.”

“Only a little,” I said, venturing a small smile. “It’s funny. When I was sailing home from China, I always thought if I ever saw you again, I’d want to torture you, to pay you back pain for pain what you inflicted on me.”

“And now?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I’ve lost the habit of hating you. At first, I couldn’t because you were dead and it’s so difficult to hate the dead. So I tucked it away and promised myself I’d take it out for a good airing later. I thought after a proper amount of time had passed, I could indulge myself and hate you lavishly. But there was war work, and then I discovered flying—the only thing I was really good at.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said mildly as he picked up the pipe again. “I think you could probably do just about anything you set your mind to.”

It took me a moment to realise he had just paid me a compliment, but the camaraderie between us was so new, I didn’t dare to draw attention to it. After another few breaths of pipe smoke I was floating a little, wrapped in a velvety warmth that seemed to come from within my own blood.

“Flying is the only thing I’m good at,” I repeated. “Well, that and posing for those wretched photographs. I loathe dealing with sponsors. Nothing but grabby hands and silly slogans—as if it makes the slightest bit of difference which brand of tea biscuits I buy. But somehow people think it’s important, and I can only afford to fly if I have sponsors, so it all gets muddled up somehow. But it’s that sort of blurry dishonesty I loathe. I tell people I use things and so they go and buy them, but I hate myself for it. And I hate them for believing it.”

“So what would you do if you chucked it all?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest. This trip will be over soon. We’ve only the Caspian left. That will finish us, provided the
Jolly Roger
makes it that long. And then it’s back to England to find something new.”

He had smoked more than I had and his voice sounded drowsy. “Is the
Jolly Roger
so elderly?”

I smiled. “She’s on her last legs, poor lamb. She flew like a bomb in the war, and I’ve asked so much of her. But she’s held up beautifully thanks to Wally. If I can coax one last big flight out of her, she’ll have earned a happy retirement.”

“And what becomes of you after that?”

“I haven’t thought of it. I haven’t thought beyond this trip. It helps keep the nerves at bay, you know. If I think too hard about a particular bill or what I’ll have to do next, I can’t sleep for the worry. So, I put it all aside in a neat little box and tell myself I’ll take it out when the time comes and worry over it then.”

“Does that work?”

“Of course not. I fret myself to ribbons, anyway. But it keeps me from running mad all the time.” I paused. “But I think I’d like to do something different, something nice and clean, where I won’t have to pose for photographs or tell lies about soap flakes. And I want the same for you. Whatever trouble you’ve been in, it’s never too late for you to go straight, Gabriel. It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

His face was thoughtful as he pulled on the pipe but he said nothing.

He rose, and I noticed for the first time that he had done so without wincing. The constant sitting on the ground was playing hell with my knees, but Gabriel was sinuous as a cat.

“Your back must be healing up,” I told him. “You’re not making those awful old man noises anymore when you move.”

He rolled his shoulders experimentally. “Healing, yes, but it itches like the devil. The healer fellow, Faiz, gave me more salve, but I haven’t bothered to put it on.”

“Why are men always so perfectly stupid when it comes to taking care of themselves?” I demanded of no one in particular. “Take off your robe and turn around.”

“Yes, Nanny,” he said with a smile that managed to be meek and mocking at the same time. He handed over the tin of salve and stripped off his robe. He had dressed like a Bedouin since our arrival, wearing the long loose robe they favoured. I don’t know what their men wore underneath, but he had on a slim pair of trousers, and I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed. He dropped his robe to the ground and turned to show me his back. The lash marks were still there, the slashes freshly pink against the olive flesh. But they had closed up and were healing nicely. He would scar, but not deeply.

I scooped up a bit of salve and began to work it gently into the marks. He sucked in his breath sharply, the sleek muscles jumping under the skin of his back.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No,” he said in a strangled voice. “Just get it over with.”

I sighed. “I know you’re upset that I insisted on going after the Cross. And I know you blame me for everything that’s happened. And you’re quite right. I was thoughtless and I didn’t consider the consequences properly. But I want you to know I am sorry you were hurt. It was never my intention.”

“I know that. Careful, pet,” he said with a wince. “That one’s deep.”

I softened my touch and went on. “And I want you to know I understand. I’ve had a lot of time to think out here, nothing but time,” I added wryly, thinking of my long hours staring at the camels. “And I’ve realised what I ought to have seen before. Marriage frightened you. We rushed off into it, and I don’t know if you were already up to nefarious deeds or if that came later, but it all happened so fast—the elopement and then the expedition to China. I think it only came home to roost then that you had to be responsible for me. And I suppose it scared you terribly. But I don’t blame you anymore. It isn’t your fault.”

A stillness came over him, stiffening his muscles.

“It’s not my fault that I’m a coward?”

“No. Some men just don’t handle responsibility well. They break under the pressure of it. They simply can’t bear having to take care of another person. And it makes perfect sense in your case considering your willingness to turn to crime. Clearly your character is just lacking somehow. It’s actually quite understandable when you think about it like that.”

He said nothing and I finished rubbing the salve into his back. “There, is that better?”

“Quite,” he said, biting off the syllable as if it tasted bitter in his mouth.

“Now, Gabriel, you’re not sore, are you? Because of what I said? I’m trying to show you I understand what you were going through. And I’m not angry at you anymore because it doesn’t make sense to be angry at someone for something they can’t help. It’s like being angry with a person because they’re left-handed or tone deaf. It’s simply who you are.”