Pure Juliet (32 page)

‘I knew it,' Hugh muttered. ‘Back to town for spares, stored in Michigan.'

But the driver, with smiling eyes above the snowy material hiding his lips, adjusted some device, and out came an ample canopy, which shaded the limp occupants.

He resumed his seat, and they bumped on, passing through a minor sandstorm, which thinned away to reveal rolling dunes of a darker hue than the surrounding pallor. The Rolls did its honourable best to glide, but succeeded only in shaking and banging. The road wavered ahead in a blackish line, the acacias and, more surprisingly, the mountains, had vanished.

Again the car stopped.

‘We'll sleep now,' the driver announced. ‘Hottest hour of the day approaching. Too much sun to go on. I'll put up the tents. We eat and drink as well.' His hidden smile widened.

With the enthusiastic help of Piers, to whom all this was decidedly preferable to maths under old Scuggers, two large tents of thin black stuff were quickly slung up on poles; cool
water and dryish food produced from the Rolls' boot; and everyone, after eating in almost complete silence, retired to the tents and slept for hours.

When they awoke, the sun was rushing down towards the line of the horizon, defined and sombre in the dying light, the air was noticeably cooler, and the sky above them a divine blue-violet.

‘We drive until ten o'clock. Nice and cool now,' the driver said. ‘Then we sleep. And at five o'clock we wake up and eat and drive on.'

‘I say, are there any wild animals?' asked Piers, who had been reflecting that the black stuff of which the tents were made was on the thin side and that many carnivores are nocturnal.

‘No. Nothing for them to eat. Rock doves in the mountains, scorpions, spiders in some places. Big ones starve. They wander out here, they starve. Soon learn.'

‘You won't bother to cook, will you? If we're getting to Qu'aid in the afternoon, one doesn't want much in this heat,' Clemence said.

‘Oh, I cook. You like to tell your friends you dine in the desert,' with the usual half-hidden smile, but different in quality. Could it be mocking?

*

Juliet was lying full length on the cooling sand, and staring up at the sky. She had been silent since they left Oued, and Frank wondered if the heat was making her feel ill. But her expression was serene and she glanced from side to side as if interested in the pallor and unending monotony. He wondered
how she saw it; for so many years he had taught her to see detail, but here there was none.

He thought with satisfaction of the raven Hrothgar, generally regarded by the Pennecuicks as a menace because it bit. Juliet had announced her wish for a raven on a family visit to the Tower of London, where she had first seen Hrothgar's peers, and had exerted herself to find one, seeking out a London pet shop (she had ended, on recommendation, by going to Harrods) and insisting upon taking it back to Hertfordshire by hired car.

It had been the first time, in Frank's nearly twenty years' knowledge of her, that she had broken through her pattern of absorption in her work to go out after another living creature – except when she had rescued wounded birds or animals. From these exceptions had grown her interest in the menagerie which lived with her, together with their numerous smells, seeds, scraps and noises.

The sky quickly darkened. From dim argent points, the stars steadily enlarged until they were rounds of burning silvery gold, hanging in loops and clusters and sprays, or throbbing in solitary splendour: the travellers' eyes returned again and again to them, and when they spoke, their voices were hushed: and, now that the faint, pathetically hoarse sighing of the Rolls' engine had ceased, such a silence surrounded them as matched the overwhelming majesty above their heads.

‘I feel as if I'd never seen them before,' Emma said at last, her lifted face illuminated by the mysterious light. ‘If everybody could see them like this, surely they must believe in God.'

‘Or not,' Hugh muttered. Excess in any shape embarrassed him.

Hugh and Piers helped the driver bring bundles of chopped wood out of the Rolls' boot. The others lay about or roamed, between the dim, softly coloured endlessness and the throbbing splendour overhead. A fire was started, and soon an iron pot seated skilfully upon it was breathing out the smell of vegetables blended with tarragon, sage and what Alice described as ‘nameless herbs'.

‘They've got names, ass,' Edith corrected. ‘“Nameless” is sloppy and romantic. It's just that we don't know the names.'

‘Oh do shut up. I wish there was someone to dance with,' and Alice whirled, as gracefully as was possible in khaki shorts. ‘Isn't it all exciting? Bedouins, perhaps!'

‘I do rather wonder he doesn't have a decent picnic kit; it's all part of the same stinginess,' Hugh grumbled as they sat cross-legged round the fire.

‘Who? (I say, this is ravvy),' Emma said through her first mouthful.

‘The Emir, of course.'

‘Ne parlez pas de lui avant le domestique,' his mother warned.

‘Non, ce n'est pas convenable ni prudent,' observed a calm, if muffled voice from where the domestic was seated at a respectful distance; the tone was full of laughter.

‘I wish Edmund could have come,' Frank said presently. ‘How he would have revelled in all this.'

‘Well, it's his awful old Maida,' said Alice.

‘I'd have liked Artie, too,' Juliet murmured, sounding half asleep.

‘Well,
that
was
his
awful old Brenda. What ghastly females our male friends do take up with,' said Alice.

‘Any man who has the arrogance to assume the responsibility for a woman's life and self-fulfilment must be prepared to give up his own petty inclinations.'

‘Edith, dear,' Clemence said, ‘I hope this is only a phase. It really does rather dampen ordinary conversation.'

Frank slowly lifted his head and took a long stare at the heavens. Silence fell.

Presently Juliet raised herself from the sand and wandered off into the starlit dimness; but she had not gone fifty yards before the driver uncoiled himself.

‘I'll go after her – that's dangerous,' he said, and quickly followed the slight, pale figure now hardly distinguishable in the bewildering hollows and shadows.

The others sat staring.

‘Why? There aren't any animals or terrorists,' said Piers at last.

‘I can see why it might be dangerous. It all looks alike. She could wander on and on—'

‘She could always see our fire.'

‘Not if she was thinking about something else, as she usually is.'

Frank was on his feet, and staring anxiously towards a towering dune beyond which the two had disappeared.

The driver caught up with Juliet. ‘Miss Slater—' He put out a long slender hand and touched Juliet's shoulder, and she turned slowly. ‘Come back, please. It's dangerous to wander off like that; you can become lost easily, so easily.'

She stood, looking at him absently. ‘Sorry, I've never seen anything like this before. It's like – what's in my mind.'

‘Yes, but we must not lose our award-winner. Come.' And keeping a slight touch upon her arm, he led her back to the camp.

‘Oh there you are. We were getting worried,' said Clemence, hearty and relieved.

‘Mum.' A head round the open flaps of the tent, silhouetted against paleness and blazing stars.

‘Ssh, you'll wake Daddy. What is it?'

‘Well, I know this seems a mad sort of question, and sorry to wake you up, and I know a lot of brainy chaps have been chewing it over for centuries,' the breathy whisper went on earnestly, ‘so it's no use asking really, but . . . You believe in God, don't you?'

‘Of course,' said Clemence, wondering if she did. But of course she did; hadn't He given her everything she wanted?

‘And does Daddy?'

‘Not churchily. You know he calls Him the Star Maker. But he does believe.'

‘Oh. Well – thanks. Sorry, again.'

‘Well, you'll be all right in the morning. Go to sleep now – night-night, love.'

A kiss, accomplished by much cautious crawling, was pressed rather wetly upon her, and with, ‘Thanks, Mum, it was the stars, they're a bit much, you know,' Piers was gone.

The driver suddenly announced: ‘Look – Qu'aid.'

They had seen it on the horizon for some moments before he spoke, but had supposed it to be an unusually high and dark-coloured dune; it was half veiled in a sandy haze.

Now, the road having become suddenly smoother and wider, they realized that it was a wall, at least a hundred feet high, and built of some material that was either rose-tinted with grey, or grey-tinted with rose; it was not easy to decide. It was circular; its great bulk curved away on either side into the sand-filled dimness; it looked like one of the Wonders of the World, and Frank muttered as much.

‘It
is
one of the Wonders,' the driver said warmly. ‘I'll drive slowly to the gate, so that you can see.'

The towering height consisted of bricks so small as to suggest that their origin might be Roman; their grey-rose hue suggested coolness, beneath the pale and glaring sky. Very ancient appeared the great wall of Qu'aid, and very forbidding; its majestic, stupendous curves were unbroken by tower or loophole. Perhaps for the first time, the party from the West realized how great and how strange was the honour that had been bestowed by this astounding place upon the engine-driver's daughter from North London.

‘You're all frightened,' the driver suddenly announced, still smiling behind that veil.

Frank did not quite know how to answer.

They drove round a mighty curve, and stopped before a wooden gate reaching to the wall's summit, bleached to silver by the sun, and, even as they gaped again, the driver sent out a long, arrogant note on the Rolls' horn.

After a pause, there began a creaking sound which conveyed an impression of extreme age, and the gate split without haste down the middle, the crack widening to reveal a vision of tall, flat-roofed buildings made of that same rose-grey brick lining a narrow street, the windows framed in dazzling white stone, leading the eye away into a vista of booths draped in green and silver, piled with glowing fruits, and covered by canopies of the same dark blue as the sky.

‘Those green and silver flags are in honour of you, Miss Slater,' the driver said, and when Clemence muttered ‘Really?' because she could think of nothing else to say, he drawled, ‘Yes, “really”,' adding, ‘Are you pleased, Miss Slater?'

Juliet only stared. ‘I like the desert best,' she said at last. ‘But it's nice of them.'

‘Good, good,' he said oracularly, and turned to watch a tall, slack figure in white European dress who had emerged from a kind of porter's office attached to the wall like a swallow's nest, about halfway up the height of the gate. In leisurely fashion, the man descended a ladder.

‘Hullo, Audley,' the driver said, and, turning to the English party, added: ‘May I present Mr Mark Audley, His Highness the Emir's personal secretary and aide-de-camp,' and followed this with a run-through of their names. His eyes were mocking.

Mark Audley said, ‘How do you do – I have the honour, on behalf of His Highness the Emir Abdul Ahmet, to welcome Miss Slater and her friends to the City of Qu'aid,' and suddenly, from the crowd of people who had been thrusting slowly forward, from booth and dark doorway, something flew across and struck Juliet's shoulder.

It was a rose, of so dark a red as to be almost black, and drenched in some spice-like scent. She deftly caught it, with something of the quickness of her youth. And then a soft, continuous striking together of dark palms began – the Qu'aidans were not precisely clapping, the gesture and sound were too languid to be expressed by the Western word. But undoubtedly it was an approving noise; undoubtedly it was admiring.

‘Could anyone have had a lovelier welcome!' Emma exclaimed. ‘Juliet, aren't you
thrilled
?'

Juliet breathed in the scent of her rose and did not reply.

‘I hope we are to have the pleasure of meeting His Highness,' Frank was saying to Mr Audley. ‘You must forgive us if we're rather overwhelmed – it's like walking into
The Arabian Nights
.'

Mr Audley, who seemed sleepy, said that the first sight of Qu'aid was apt to leave that effect upon the hundred tourists who were allowed, by ballot, into the city every year, and then suggested that they might like to go to their quarters.

‘Should I not! I'm one mass of sand,' but Alice's smile glided off Mr Audley's somnolent features without return.

‘Well, Audley, I'm off,' said the driver and, with a sweeping gesture that included the whole party, a pause, and a lower inclination to Juliet, his white robes vanished into the mass of green, blue and silver.

‘Odd type,' observed Hugh.

‘Mum, did you see the old man?'

‘No.' They were following the aide down the curving narrow street lined by the softly clapping crowd. ‘Was there one?'

‘He put the Rolls away' (Piers' interest in the Rolls was decidedly anthropomorphic) ‘in a sort of shed made in that wall. Cripes! He nipped down that ladder like a kid. I expect he looks after the Rolls and the gate. That's the kind of job I'd like – but fat chance,' he ended resignedly.

Juliet walked on, over cobblestones flattened to smoothness by a thousand years of footsteps. The smell of her rose pleased her, the subdued clapping flattered her, the heat warmed her cool blood, but she was wondering how Hrothgar fared, and
thinking that in the hawthorn hedges of Leete the berries must be red. This place did not seem real to her.

‘This is all jolly well' – as in a dream, she heard Edith's incisive voice behind her – ‘but you just let one of their own women try it on, some piece of intellectual work I mean, and see what she gets.'