Singing in the Wilderness

by Isobel Chace

  She couldn’t be sure if he meant it or not but, as her eyes met his, she thought perhaps he did.

  ‘But—’ she pulled herself together with difficulty. ‘I’ll clear up the camp,’ she volunteered.

  He put a hand on her breast and smiled as he felt her thudding heart. ‘Tell me first that you still love me.’

  She shivered with a desire she couldn’t hide from him. It was humiliating that he could arouse her so easily without once telling her that he loved her, or felt any tenderness for her. ‘Sometimes I think I hate you!’ she declared.

  ‘Like last night?’

  She tore herself free of him and got unsteadily to her feet. ‘If you lay one finger on me, I’ll—I’ll sue you for assault!’

  He lay back, looking up at her, his expression an enigma to her. ‘Don’t you mean,’ he said, ‘for daring to upset my wife’s beloved dignity?’

  ‘Nobody’s ever—ever smacked me. She looked down at him uncertainly. ‘You wouldn’t, would you?

  For a big man he could move very quickly. Stephanie found herself caught by the ankles and fell in a heap on top of him. His arms held her hard up against him and she had no choice but to submit.

  ‘Shall I make love to you again now? he asked her. His caressing fingers on her back were very seductive.

  ‘Somebody might come,’ she havered.

  He kissed her on the lips, pushing her away from him. ‘You won’t always have the dark to hide your real self in Mrs. Ruddock. You’re too tempting a piece for me always to wait for night to fall!’ He gave her a slow sidelong smile. ‘Poor little Stephanie, you don’t know if you’re on your head or your heels, do you? Do you really think I’d risk bruising that luscious skin of yours? I only wanted to stop you fretting and tearing yourself to pieces because you’ve found out a little of what goes on inside you. Did you doubt that you were less passionate than Amber, for instance?’ He spoke the name deliberately, watching her closely.

  ‘I suppose you know all about her too,’ she said, fighting to hold back the tears. ‘As if I don’t know that you do!’

  ‘Then you know more than I do! Amber has never been my mistress.’

  Stephanie winced at the term. ‘Why not?’ she blurted out.

  ‘For two very good reasons. One, she’s very much in love with her own husband, and two, she doesn’t appeal to me in that way. I like her very much, and I admire the way she’s coped in the last couple of years even more. Life hasn’t been kind to her, but I’ve never heard her complain. She’s a nice person.’

  Stephanie made an involuntary movement towards him. ‘Fatemeh said her husband used to travel with her, but he doesn’t any more. She spends a lot of time away from him.’

  Cas nodded. ‘They used to appear together. Then he got blown up by a bomb that went off in the street where they live and lost the use of his legs. He couldn’t go on with his act, so he decided to go back to school and set up in electronic equipment instead. Amber’s been supporting him until he’s fully qualified. She must have told you that she’s going to retire next year and go back to being a wife and, she hopes, mother. She can hardly wait to be reunited with Gregor!’

  ‘But she’s so beautiful,’ Stephanie murmured. ‘I don’t believe she’s indifferent to you. I don’t see how she can be!’

  Cas laughed, pulling her back into his arms. ‘Idiot! Is that why you insisted on comparing yourself to Amber all the time, and always to your disadvantage? I thought you knew about her husband?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t know she was married until Fatemeh told me yesterday.’ She pleated the front of his shirt beneath her fingers. ‘I thought that was the reason you married me?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t have Amber?’

  She veiled her eyes from him. ‘Not as your wife,’ she amended carefully.

  He forced her head up and his blue eyes blazed into hers. ‘My peculiar American morals allowing me to marry you in such circumstances, I suppose?’

  ‘But, Cas, she’s so lovely! How could I blame you for wanting her?’

  ‘And what about yourself?’ he demanded in a funny, tight voice.

  ‘I’m your wife. It’s me you’re taking to America with you. I thought I could build on that. Only I was afraid too! I’m not beautiful like Amber is, and I haven’t much to offer you. I’ve always been alone—’

  ‘Not much to offer! Since I first saw you I haven’t touched anything that hasn’t been you! Even when you’re out of sight and sound, you’re still there inside me, driving me out of my mind because I need you so much! I had to marry you, honey, to get some peace!’ He fondled her gently. ‘I thought last night you knew something of what I’ve been feeling?’

  She went as white as a sheet. ‘I didn’t know,’ she whispered. She had only known how she felt about him. How could she have known?

  ‘I had to keep you with me,’ he went on. ‘Even if I couldn’t make love to you, I had to know you were there. You’ll never be alone again, my diffident darling, not if I can help it! You’re mine for ever!’

  Stephanie flung herself closer into his arms, nuzzling her nose against his ear. ‘Oh, yes please, Cas! Yes, please!’

  Stephanie heard the approaching vehicles as a faint rumble in the ground beneath her. She stirred reluctantly lifting her head to see who was coming. The plume of dust in the distance told her that they were coming towards the deserted village at speed. She was immediately concerned at the state of the camp and struggled to her feet, packing things away in a sudden fever of activity.

  ‘Cas, someone is coming! Get up! They’ll think it odd to find us still sleeping at this hour!’

  He chuckled. ‘I don’t suppose they’ll find it odd at all!’

  Scarlet in the face, she pulled the quilt away from him and folded it carefully, her back towards him. He shook his head at her rigid stance, smiling at the prim set to her head.

  ‘They all knew why I wanted you to myself,’ he laughed at her. ‘We could have shared their camp otherwise. That would have been an experience for you to remember! Have you ever slept on a korsi?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it is.’ Her prudish tones were so much at variance with the passion that still lingered in her eyes that it was impossible not to tease her further.

  ‘It’s a kind of communal bed,’ he told her. ‘It’s made of rough boards on legs, under which is a pail of hot charcoal with a perforated lid. You sleep on it like the spokes of a wheel, with your feet towards the heat and your head looking outwards. How does that appeal?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said primly.

  ‘It has its points when it’s cold.’ He stretched himself and jumped to his feet, going over to the stove and examining the coffee he had made earlier. With an expression of disgust, he poured it out on to the ground. ‘Shall I make some more?’ he asked her. ‘What will you have with it?’

  She set about folding up his bedding as fast as she possibly could. ‘I like the flat bread that Idries brought yesterday, though it was better when it was crisp and hot.’

  Cas grinned at her. ‘A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—’ He raised his eyes to heaven. ‘And Wilderness is Paradise enow!’

  It had been for her too. She stowed the bedding away in the Range Rover and came back to him. ‘I’m glad we came here,’ she said.

  He looked up from where he was squatting in front of the stove. ‘You think old Omar Khayyam knew a thing or two after all?’

  She shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t have done for me at all. I prefer Casimir Ruddock.’ She smiled shyly at him. ‘It wouldn’t have been paradise without him.’

  What he might have said in reply was lost in the noise of the approaching vehicles. ‘Aga! Khanim! Har che zudtar beya!’ The shouted words were cut off by a wave of the hand from Idries. ‘Aga, Madame, we have news for you! It came over the wire for you! You must come as quickly as possible to speak to Khanim Amber! She says her husband’s equipment worked very well—’

  Cas stood up
straight, shutting his eyes against the glare from the sun. ‘So soon,’ he said softly. ‘Thank God for that!’

  Stephanie jumped with sudden glee. ‘Was that why she was at the office yesterday? Cas, please tell me it was!’

  ‘She helped me set it up,’ he answered. ‘With any luck we’ll have photos, everything, of anyone who went into your office last night. And once we know who, we’ll know why!’

  ‘Gloria!’ Stephanie stated with certainty. ‘But I don’t see why.’

  ‘Probably Gloria,’ Cas agreed more cautiously. ‘She seems the most likely candidate. Something must have brought her out here, something other than the travel which she isn’t the type to enjoy. Maybe she was sent out here by someone else. Who knows?’

  Stephanie was beside herself with excitement. ‘A spy! she breathed.

  ‘More a successful nuisance,’ he drawled. ‘Spying is too dramatic a name for the limited amount of sabotage that’s been done to us.’

  ‘Limited? What about my father?’

  ‘He’d lost the zest one needs to enjoy a challenge like putting this contract into effect, love, long before this happened to him. He’ll be happier back in England with his wife. The company realised that some time ago. It wasn’t by chance that I was available to come here in his stead. His was always meant to be a holding operation until I arrived.’

  Stephanie felt more confused than indignant. ‘No one told me that. Didn’t they think I’d be interested?’

  ‘I guess they left it to your father to tell you. He obviously thought you’d be better off working for someone else.’ He grinned at her. ‘You don’t regret it, do you?’

  ‘I don’t exactly work for you any longer,’ she retorted.

  ‘Not exactly,’ he agreed.

  One day, she vowed, she’d have the last word between them and it would be he who retired embarrassed. That would be a day to remember! The glint in her hazel eyes told him what she was thinking and he laughed out loud, not a bit afraid. The message was clear: she could try to get the better of him any time she wanted to, he had her measure, and the seeds of her defeat lay in herself. He could overwhelm her physically any time he chose, and it was she, as much as he, who relished the fact.

  Idries took a step closer to Cas. ‘Aga, you must come at once. The Khanim Amber is waiting. Do we go back to Isfahan?’

  Cas nodded briefly. ‘Put the rest of this stuff in the Range Rover. No, I’ll drive! Hop in, Stephanie, and hold tight! Ready? Let’s go!’

  Stephanie giggled, thinking he sounded like the hero of an American film, but she did as he told her, bracing herself into her seat with her legs, and she was glad she had, for he took off across the rough, pitted ground with a speed she found both frightening and exhilarating. She had confidence in his ability, though, and after the first few moments she relaxed a little, more interested in what they would find when they got there than in how they got there.

  ‘Tell me more about Amber,’ she said to him. ‘I wish I’d been nicer to her, but—’

  Cas cast her a swift, teasing look. ‘You’d better tell her. She thought you didn’t like her.’

  ‘Well,’ Stephanie murmured dryly, ‘I’m still not sorry she lives in Beirut. It’s a long way from West Virginia.’

  ‘Tell her that too,’ he advised her. ‘She’ll like that almost as much as Casimir’s dreamboat. She hasn’t had much to make her laugh recently.’

  ‘Where did you meet her?’ Stephanie wanted to know.

  ‘Still jealous? I was at College with her husband, Gregor. He introduced me to her and he knows I’ve taken her out to dinner once or twice in Isfahan, in case you’re wondering. Amber telephones him practically every night.’

  Stephanie blinked. ‘Won’t he ever get better?’ she asked.

  ‘Depends what you mean by better, honey. He’ll never walk again, but he manages pretty well in his chair. Amber wants him to go to England to see what can be done for him, but he wants to finish qualifying first.’

  ‘Electronics is a closed book to me,’ Stephanie admitted.

  ‘It has its uses. He sent some pretty sophisticated gadgets along to cover your office. Bugging devices, cameras that are tripped off by the heat of a body coming close to them, all sorts of things. Amber was thrilled to bits that he could fix it all up for us.’

  Stephanie sat in silence for a long moment, then she said, ‘Cas, it must have cost a bomb? Did the company pay?’

  ‘My interest in clearing my wife and father-in-law is rather greater than theirs. But, if it’s come off, it will have been worth it! Every last cent of it!’

  ‘Was it very much?’

  He slowed to negotiate an awkward hump in the ground. ‘Don’t you think you’re worth it?’ he teased her.

  ‘I thought you’d made up your mind that I had to be guilty,’ she confessed. ‘I thought that was why you wouldn’t let me go inside yesterday to see Fatemeh. Oh, Cas, I thought you didn’t trust me not to do something else awful! I didn’t know you’d do—that for me!’

  ‘But, sweetheart, I told you—’

  ‘I wasn’t listening,’ she said with regret. ‘Cas, was it terribly expensive?’

  ‘I’m not complaining—especially not if it’s come off! I happen to care about my wife, little one. Too much, to have her living under a cloud of suspicion if there’s anything I can do about it, no matter what the cost! Satisfied!’

  ‘Oh, Cas!’ she exclaimed. ‘I wish I could do something for you too!’ She put her hand on his knee. ‘Thank you, darling,’ she said.

  He covered her hand with his own. ‘My pleasure, Mrs. Ruddock.’

  ‘Oh, Cas, I’ll never doubt you again!’ Two tears rolled down her cheeks and she brushed them impatiently away. ‘I’m such a fool! I wish I’d done as you told me and trusted you to look after everything right from the start, but I’ll make it up to you if I possibly can.’

  He came to an abrupt halt, almost stalling the engine. He put his arms round her and kissed her hard on the lips. ‘You already have!’ he told her.

  Stephanie had never seen anyone make a telephone call from the middle of nowhere before. One of the men helped Cas up the nearest pole, fitting him out with a leather belt so that he could lean back and use both his hands without falling. The receiver was a more workmanlike edition of the kind that was used in telephone booths every day. Cas seemed quite at home up his pole and after a while Stephanie forgot her first anxiety about him when he had first shinned up to the top. He had obviously done this often before.

  ‘Do we go back to Isfahan?’ she asked him when he came down again.

  ‘It would seem so.’ He sounded grim and more than a little angry.

  Stephanie watched him cagily, not wanting to risk turning his wrath in her direction by asking him too many questions that he didn’t want to answer. ‘It was Gloria Lake, wasn’t it?’ she hazarded.

  ‘She was there,’ he answered her. ‘But she wasn’t alone. There was someone else there too.’

  Stephanie’s eyes widened. ‘Who?’ she whispered.

  ‘Ali,’ he said with some bitterness. ‘No wonder she found it so easy to come and go! Now the interesting tiling will be to find out whom they were both working for and, after that, it will be my pleasure to sack the two of them personally.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Okay, Isfahan, here we come! Poor love, it isn’t much of a honeymoon for you, is it?’

  She looked at him with eyes that glowed with mischief. ‘It’ll do—for starters!’ she said very much in his. style. ‘Is Idries coming with us?’

  ‘I think not,’ he said dryly. ‘We’ll have to come back again when this is all over and he may as well wait for us here.’

  Stephanie found that Idries’ absence had its advantages and its disadvantages. Against the incomparable advantage of having Cas all to herself, the disadvantage was that she had no excuse not to sit in the far seat from him, but perhaps that too was an advantage once the full heat of the day made itself felt in the Range Rover and any co
ntact was almost too much to be borne.

  They didn’t stop for lunch on the way back. Cas bought some hot bread from a wayside baker and they nibbled it as they went along, augmenting it with the white local cheese that was obtainable everywhere.

  ‘How about a Coke?’ he asked her when she confessed that something to drink was far more important to her than something to eat.

  She made a face at him. ‘I have a long way to go, haven’t I? Do you think they have any lemonade?’

  ‘I’ll find you something,’ he promised. ‘As long as you take to hamburgers, American style, you can be as English in your tastes as you like!’

  He was as good as his word, bringing her back a sparkling, fizzy drink that tasted of nothing very much but which was deliciously cool against her dry throat and tongue. He opened the bottles with a flick of his wrist and then looked at her again, his blue eyes sparkling in the sun.

  ‘Want to drive for a while?’

  ‘If you like,’ she responded. ‘I don’t drive as well as you do, though, so don’t be too critical, will you?’

  He stepped into the passenger seat, putting his feet up on to the dashboard in front of him. ‘Such words are balm to my spirit! I’ll take over when we get nearer to the big city. Okay?’

  ‘Right,’ she said.

  It was strange to be behind the wheel of such a large vehicle, but it drove so easily that she gained confidence at every mile and she had to admit that it gave an added interest to the journey to have something to do for a while. She stopped to exchange places with him just outside Isfahan, in sight of the bridge where he had first kissed her.

  ‘Are you going straight to the office?’ she asked. ‘Will you take me with you?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll take you home. This is something only I can do, honey. Do you mind?’

  She tried not to let it show that she did. Women and children were always having to wait around for their menfolk, she thought bitterly. Then she thought how little cause she had to complain and managed to summon up a jaunty smile.