Pure Juliet (34 page)

‘Mum! They've put us by ourselves at that little table because we're
women
! It's an
insult –
can't you tell that Audley—'

‘Edith! Be quiet at once.' And Edith, who was (in spite of ardent feminism, and an unusually good brain, and an obstinacy amounting to a form of genius) only fifteen, was quiet.

And then, to Clemence's relief, they were comfortably seated and Frank was settled on the right of the Emir, with Hugh a few places away and Piers . . . why, Piers had been shown to a little table where sat a boy of his own age, all green robes and sparkling inquisitive eyes. Hands were before her own eyes, holding out food on trays which (and her eyes took nearly a minute to take in the fact and to believe it) were made of gold.

So was the fretted surface of the table. Clemence clawed a small handful of something exotic out of the great tray and put a piece of it into her mouth, and wished that she were at home, reading
Mrs Pepperpot
to Josh. The feast proceeded, for her, like a dream, beautiful to look at and disagreeable to experience. Edith muttered indignantly at intervals, Frank was conversing animatedly and apparently interestedly with the Emir, Piers and his bird-eyed companion were exchanging
sentences and grins. Dish after dish appeared, was tasted, and vanished. The air remained cool; the stars burned larger, and the doctors continued to stare at Juliet, composedly eating, and she stared back.

Finally, sweetmeats and bowls of scented water appeared. When all had nibbled, and dried their fingers on fine linen napkins, the Emir rose, bowed to the party from the West, and left, followed by the doctors in a tottering procession with no signs of farewell to anyone.

They disappeared down a dimly lit corridor. Piers waved enthusiastically to his table companion, who replied with a gesture which caused them both much amusement, and which his mother resignedly supposed to be mildly obscene and native to the universal world of boyhood. The servants stood like statues in their green and silver, and the lamps flickered in the faint wind blowing from the desert.

Mark Audley lounged towards them.

‘I expect you'd like to get to bed,' he suggested.

‘Oh please!' Clemence's exclamation was irrepressible, though faces of dismay were exchanged among the young.

‘I'll come back with you for twenty minutes, if that's all right? And put you in the picture for tomorrow.'

‘We'd rather hoped we could wander round in the morning and sight-see,' Alice said, using her lovely eyes. ‘What time is the – the ceremony?'

‘At noon – after the muezzin.'

‘Oh, then if we got up early?'

They were all straggling down the same corridor by which they had entered, now.

‘The university is the thing to see; you shall be taken over that, if you like. The ordinary tourist isn't allowed inside,' Mr Audley went on.

‘The Emir speaks excellent English, I greatly enjoyed our talk,' Frank said.

‘I am certain that His Highness did too. Most of the VIPs who are allowed into Qu'aid are thundering bores and he just won't see them. That's my job.'

By now they were back in their living-room and feeling that Mr Audley, odd though he was in some ways, was an old friend.

‘I'm sleepy,' announced Piers, and fell onto some cushions.

‘Yes – off you come.' And Clemence, with an apologetic smile at Mr Audley, whisked him away.

‘It's a short ceremony, but formal,' Mr Audley turned to Frank. ‘It would be appreciated if your ladies wore long dresses and – er – jewellery . . . if they have brought any.'

‘Oh – no – we were looking forward to buying—' Alice checked herself.

‘The markets in Qu'aid do not sell to tourists.'

‘Oh. Yes, of course.'

‘Mr Audley, what else?' asked Frank.

‘At half-past eleven a small guard will come to escort you to the university.'

‘Is it those towers you can see from the windows, not exactly towers, round golden things – domes?' Edith asked.

‘Yes, Miss Edith, that is the University of Qu'aid. The sands come up to its gate, which faces towards the desert. To get into it, you will have to walk round the wall – er – I'm afraid it may be rather hot, but sunshades will of course be provided—'

‘Ravvy – I adore sunshades.'

‘Alice, will you please be
quiet
.'

‘—and we shall join the assembly in the great hall, the students will of course be present, all five hundred of them, from all over the Muslim world. There is great curiosity,' turning to Juliet, ‘to see and hear Miss Slater.'

‘
Hear
me? Have I got to say a speech or something?'

‘It would be appreciated. I shall translate for you.'

‘But what'll I say? I've never done a speech before.'

‘Something, certainly, about the immense honour you are receiving,' said Frank. ‘Because it
is
a great honour, you know – equal to the Nobel Prize.'

‘S'pose so,' she said amiably.

The door leading into the University of Qu'aid was of cedarwood, protected from the sun by a sloping hood of thin green marble in which was thinly incised a sentence in Arabic. The bronze tracery covering the wood was curved, flowing, intricate beyond the power of the eye to follow; the door was twenty feet high and it looked out at the shimmering, undulating desert.

The guard halted, dropping their rifle butts with imprecision on the sand. Their uniforms were not impeccable, and their demeanour far from alarming; there was the usual staring and smiling.

Mark Audley turned to the party beneath the sunshades.

‘Miss Slater, will you pull that, please,' and he indicated a green silk rope hanging from the marble hood.

‘I say, Mr Audley,' said Piers, ‘will there be anything to drink? People
die
of thirst, don't they?'

‘After the ceremony, old chap.'

‘What does that say?' Piers went on, indicating the Arabic rune above their heads.

‘Allah is Great, and Learning, beneath His Hand, is All. Miss Slater, please . . .' for Juliet was looking away into the desert.

‘Learning damn well isn't, when you're thirsty . . .' Piers' mutter was checked by his father. who whipped out a flask and handed it to him.

‘Miss Slater?'

Juliet turned slowly and looked at him.

‘The bell, please. All right, guard. Er – dismiss.'

He nodded to the half-dozen, who slouched, rather than marched, away around the wall's vast curve and were at once lost to memory as they were to sight.

‘Do I look all right?' Alice whispered to Hugh; her lacy white dress suggested a transparent cloud in the sunlight. Hugh took no notice.

‘Emma!
Do I look all right
?'

‘Yes, truly. It's one of your pretty mornings.'

‘You are an angel. More than some people are.'

Juliet pulled the cord. There was silence. And then, far away, somewhere behind the door, a sweet and solemn tolling began – full, majestic, and suggesting the heaviness of years.

The door slowly swung wide, and revealed an old, old man with a broad snowy beard. Robed in flowing green sashed with purple, he bowed almost to the sand.

Their gaze travelled beyond him, across a vast courtyard, paved in white and purple mosaic, shining in the sun. All around stood buildings in the rose-grey rock of Qu'aid, towering into flat roofs or gold bubbles against the blue-black of the sky. There was no one in sight. The final echo of the bell died into silence.

The old man bowed again; three times; to Frank, to Hugh, and finally to Piers. One glance, faltering and guilty, went towards the women, then the wrinkled eyelids were lowered. He said something to Mark Audley.

‘He is asking me to tell the visitors from the West that his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, as far back as the
written records are preserved, were porters to the door,' the aide explained. ‘The office is hereditary.'

Smiles of genuine wonder, admiration and kindness were bestowed upon the ancient, who, while continuing to bow deferentially, emanated a kind of modest pride.

‘Where are all the students?' Edith demanded, in a voice less confident than usual, as they began to cross the great courtyard.

‘In the Hall of Mathematics. They have a day without learning because of your visit, Miss Slater.'

‘I bet they're pleased,' from Piers.

‘Indeed, no. It is looked upon as a sacrifice, made in honour of the Law and its discoverer.'

‘Yes,' Juliet said suddenly. ‘The Law was here, you know. I only discovered it.'

‘This is perhaps the one place in the world where that fact will be continually kept in mind,' Mr Audley said, with unaccustomed seriousness and an air of genuine admiration.

Edith, a little recovered from the unfamiliar awe imposed by respect for Juliet's Law, said, after a pause: ‘No
girls
here, of course.'

‘Oh no, Miss Edith. But you wouldn't expect that, would you?'

‘No, I certainly shouldn't!' A mutter. ‘And do the boys ever protest? Stage sit-ins? That kind of thing?'

Mr Audley uttered a slight laugh, and for a time there was silence. The shadow of a vast, gold-domed building began to creep over them.

The silence and the absence of human beings were beginning to irritate Clemence. She would have welcomed crowds and chatter, even television cameras. It was as if Qu'aid was
deliberately demonstrating to them that here was the way for human beings to live: in remoteness, in simplicity, and slowly.
But it's only because the Emir owns an oilfield
, she thought,
and we couldn't live in the rather odd way we do if it weren't for Frank's money.

She recalled the explanations, which she had by now reduced to a formula, that had to be made to new acquaintances, and sighed. Then she noticed the delicious delicacy of Alice's appearance, and saw Piers obviously resisting an impulse to do a handstand on the historic mosaic, and knowledge of her children rushed over her with grateful love.

Mr Audley was pulling another silk cord, and this time another and less impressive door opened into a smallish room brilliant with mosaic, and crowded with smiling, interested faces. Everyone broke at once into that soft clapping, and Clemence thought:
This is better
.

There followed many presentations of the smiling faces to Frank and Hugh, with benevolent nods to Piers.

Clemence and her daughters stood slightly apart, Alice and Emma respectively flirtatious and cheerful, and Edith more or less successfully concealing indignation. No one was introduced to them, but two or three of the students, and one elderly man of a distinguished appearance and manner, ventured to present themselves on the male side in admirable if formal English.

At length, Mr Audley inconspicuously gathered his party together, and led them, followed by the other guests, along another long, mosaic-lined corridor.

The oval tops of windows, the shafts of light, the soft slap of slippers on stone seemed to continue for an hour. The girls' slippers, silently handed to them on entering the reception room,
were crimson, sewn with silver thread, but Alice regretted her pretty heels. It was the longest corridor yet.

We must be going somewhere very important
, Clemence thought. She was prepared for the size of the hall into which the corridor at last opened: vast, rounded, where snow-white mosaic walls were traced with Arabic runes in purple and the dull gold dome high, high above their lifted heads shed a dim glow. And the hall was full of men; hundreds upon hundreds of white turbans bound with purple cords swayed towards the English party as they entered a small gallery set high in the wall, curtained and furnished with chairs.

But where was Juliet?

The Pennecuicks were glancing round, a little alarmed.

‘Audley's taken her down to the platform,' soothed Hugh.

‘God, what a place!' his father was saying without irreverence.

They arranged themselves on the ebony and mother-of-pearl chairs, Edith looking more and more critical as she realized that, except for her mother, her sisters and herself, there was not one woman present.

‘There's Juliet!' Piers exclaimed. ‘Gosh, she does look sandy!'

‘She always does. Do be quiet. I want to look,' from Emma.

‘Wouldn't it be ravvy if one of the old fogeys had a stroke at the sight of her?'

‘Edith! That really is – not on, saying that sort of thing.'

‘Well, I hate them, and when I get home I'll start my campaign.'

‘When you get home, dear, if you like. But not here, please,' her mother said quellingly.

The cedarwood platform was paved with squares of white and purple mosaic, inlaid, as Frank pointed out, ‘with mathematical symbols, and these are the mathematical colours'.

Six of the old doctors sat in a half circle on one side of an empty chair; five on the other; the last place on the right was empty. There was another empty seat, which Emma whispered was ‘rather gorgeous', set slightly above the others and apart from them.

‘I bet that's for the Emir – I bet he wishes it was on his state camel, I bet he rides splendidly,' said Piers.

‘
I
bet you'll fall over, if you fidget like that . . .'

There was a stirring in the vast audience, and it swayed to stand as the Emir entered, wearing the plainest of white flowing robes. Clemence noticed how dark and slender his fingers looked, as, seating himself, he spread them delicately upon his knees, and turned his fierce young profile attentively to Mr Audley.

Standing beside the Emir, Mark Audley had begun to speak slowly in Arabic, with occasional pauses and glances towards the box where the Western visitors were sitting; his voice sounded indolent, low and very clear, as the perfect acoustics of the place wafted it to and fro. He ceased, then turned fully to the gallery, and began again, this time in English.