Hidden Rapture

by Lane, Roumelia

  They passed a domed summerhouse brilliantly white and of Moorish design and mosaic benches tucked away in arbours of oleander blossom and fragrant pelargonium, and through the trees one caught glimpses of the fruit orchards, a calm backwater above the city noises rising from among the towers and bastions of the medina.

  In the orange groves Vivienne could see Berber women working among the trees. The smile playing about her lips had a tartness about it. Trent must be very satisfied with the niche he had carved for himself here in Tangier—with other people’s money. Living on the proceeds of the casino didn’t appear to trouble him at all.

  There were banks of azaleas and asters and snow-white viburnum where the gardens sloped away to the orchards, but Robert wasn’t interested in the view. He braked the wheel of the chair at a spot where a patch of blue sea was visible through the trees and turned.

  Vivienne felt her heart start to accelerate. Now they were alone, and he would want to pour out his heart to her. She could see it in his eyes.

  ‘Viv!’ He grabbed her hand. ‘At last we’re together. Do you know how long I’ve hungered for this moment?’

  For the first time she caught a glimpse of fear and uncertainty in his blue gaze, a plea for help that touched at the very centre of her being so that she replied warmly, ‘Robert, I want nothing but your happiness.’

  ‘Kiss me, Viv. I need your love. Oh, how I need you here beside me!’

  He pulled her down to him and claimed her lips with passionate intensity. Vivienne recoiled, but only inwardly. The feel of a man’s lips after all this time was like the flick of a whip on her emotions.

  Vivid pictures of Gary flew into her mind. Gary making some light remark and drawing her close to him. Gary brushing his lips lingeringly against hers. The torment of knowing that this wasn’t Gary but someone else was almost too much to bear, and then at last Robert released her. Giving her a quizzical look as slowly she drew away from him, he said, his grin resuming its boyish slant, ‘Not as forthcoming as your letters, but it will do for now.’

  To hide the strain in her smile she ran her fingers through his blond thatch and asked, ‘Who cuts your hair? You look like a well-fed island castaway.’

  ‘Haroun chops it when it gets in my eyes in the water.’ He thrust a hand through it. ‘But you can cut it now. I promise to sit still like a good boy.’ There was mischief in his eyes and yet gazing down into them she saw something else too, something much deeper. And as she stood drowning in the boyish sincerity there, with a catch at her heart she was sure of one thing. He mustn’t be hurt. No matter what, Robert mustn’t be hurt.

  ‘I like it as it is,’ she said, smoothing a hand over the corn-coloured locks, ‘I don’t want to change anything about you.’ Groping for words as she was, she realised she might have said the wrong thing, although Robert gave no sign of having noticed. He took both her hands in his in that fervent yet gentle way of his, bottled-up emotion in his tones. ‘Viv, my sweet, we’re going to have a great time together. I’m not much good like this,’ he looked down at the wheelchair, ‘but wait till you see me in the pool. The water takes my weight and I can move as fast as anyone—so you’d better watch out!’

  Aware of the glint in his eye, she responded playfully, ‘I move pretty well myself. Maybe you won’t catch me.’

  ‘Oh yeah! ‘I’ve an idea that’s just bravado. I seem to recall you telling me in one of your letters that you didn’t handle yourself too well in the water, apart from paddling around in the shallow end.’

  Vivienne met his teasing look, hiding the minor jolt inside her with an appropriate smile. Why couldn’t she remember what she had read in Lucy’s letters? She would never win any medals for memorising facts, that was for sure! ‘I’ve been doing quite a bit of practising,’ she said airily. ‘Now I’m quite a competent swimmer.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ He eyed her with bemused wonder. He still held her hands in his and drawing her gently down to sit on the arm of his chair he changed the subject, with a satisfied grin. ‘When did you first know you were in love, with me?’

  Vivienne hoped he couldn’t feel the blood thumping through her.

  When? When? She searched distractedly in her mind and replied lightly, ‘Oh, very early on. Almost from the start.’

  A look of disappointment passed fleetingly over his face. ‘You can’t have forgotten that week!’ His grin was lopsided. ‘I sent you a sprig of orange blossom, remember? And you pressed it beside some winter lavender and sent it to me in a booklet of poems … To hear the lark begin his flight and singing, startle the dull night,’ he quoted softly.

  Vivienne had never heard the words. She laughed flounderingly.

  ‘Well, of course! But I’m here now and I’m more concerned with the present.’

  Luckily she had saved the situation by saying what came naturally.

  Robert put an arm around her waist and squeezed her against him.

  The smile he gave her was still somewhat lopsided as he remarked, ‘For a girl who’s so good to look at you’ve got a lousy memory. But I won’t hold it against you. I love you anyway.’

  She brushed her lips against his temple, partly with relief and partly, strangely enough, with a choking feeling of affection. But the subject was altogether too dangerous to pursue and as casually as she could she manoeuvred the conversation on to other things. ‘Do the women always water the trees like that?’ She pointed to where the plump, swathed figures were building up little bastions of mud.

  ‘They do it to deflect the flow from one channel to another,’ Robert nodded. ‘That way every tree gets its share.’ He went on to tell her about work on the estate generally, how the plum orchard would soon be a riot of blossom, and about the marketing of a special, heavily-scented narcissus. And Vivienne listened eagerly. While the talk remained general she had no worries. It was only when Robert, still finding it hard to contain his excitement at having her with him, occasionally swung the conversation back to them. But during these precarious moments she managed to carry things along by chattering about what they were going to do in the days ahead, and so avoiding further blunders.

  The sun was high overhead when they made their way back to the house. Robert showed her a different route which took them through a mildly mysterious and altogether enchanting area where high crumbling walls, festooned with blossom, surrounded a ruined pavilion. Tall and slender and of pink sun-baked brick, it was curiously Mongol in appearance with what must have been big glazed windows and other features clearly defined. The third floor had the air of a summer house and probably commanded quite a view of the city.

  ‘Trent says it’s a minzah, built in the old days for the entertainment of guests,’ Robert smiled at her enthralled look and indicated the agitated fluttering from within. ‘Right now the only guests are the local pigeons.’

  They left the birds in peace and went through a festooned opening.

  Here the dark waters of a square pool reflected the surrounding overgrown greenery, stone urns sprouting weeds and on the far side the slender pillared archways of another crumbling interior. The silence was overwhelming. In the antique simplicity of the place Vivienne could imagine a dancer of the past clad in colourful veils, flitting alongside the pool on her way to entertain the guests in the minzah.

  They took a path through a mimosa thicket and were soon back at the house. Vivienne handed Robert over to Haroun and went upstairs to her room limp, not with exhaustion, for she had experienced no difficulty in guiding the wheelchair along the level paths, but with the strain of saying and doing all the right things. There was little time for shedding the tension, however, for no sooner had she freshened up and run a comb through her hair than the lunch gong, a muffled oriental clang, sounded through the house.

  Where they were to eat she had no idea; she only prayed that Trent had business to attend to, or that he would be lunching in some other part of the house.

  Robert was waiting for her downstairs with Haroun, who flashed h
er his amiable grin, in attendance. They went along the hall which ran parallel with the front of the house to the adjoining tower in the Moorish mansion, passing painted chests and Berber sculpture and catching glimpses through open doorways of the shady archways lining the front terrace. It was in the left wing, in a richly furnished circular room with an outlook on to a small private garden fragrant with roses and gardenias, that the meal was to be taken. And Vivienne’s heart sank when she moved into the room. Trent, his usual urbane self, greeted them pleasantly, ‘Had a good morning?’ and guided her to a chair at the table.

  She noted the elegant display of china and crystalware, the central sweet-smelling posy, and guessed that all this was done for Robert’s sake; the constant changes of scene to ward off the staleness of being confined to the house, the gay touches to keep his spirits up. In other words no expense was spared to provide him with pleasing distractions. She felt a flicker of irritation course through her. Why couldn’t Trent run true to form? He didn’t mind taking money from gullible gamesters, yet beneath that suave veneer he watched over his ailing brother with a tenderness and affection that was, darn it, almost touching.

  The food, naturally, the best in French cuisine, suffered no loss of flavour on its journey from the kitchen in the other wing. Vivienne knew vaguely that every forkful melted in the mouth, but she was too on edge wondering what would crop up in the conversation to come anywhere near to enjoying it.

  Their morning together had put Robert in a buoyant mood.

  Fortunately he appeared quite content to spar playfully with his brother. ‘How was business last night, Trent? Spot any duchesses in disguise at the Cafe Anglais?’

  ‘Not a one. Unless I slipped up on the guy in the turbanned headgear of a camel driver,’ Trent said with a grin like his brother’s, Vivienne thought, only more worldly.

  Robert told her, ‘Trent’s casino is typically Moroccan—caged parrots on the wall, fringed lampshades over the tables. I saw it when we first arrived. And the clientele’s a mixture of fez-wearing Arabs and European jean-clad royalty.’ He toyed with the buttered aubergines on his plate and added impishly, ‘You can get anything from a cup of tea to a stiff French brandy at the Cafe Anglais and have a flutter in the adjoining gaming rooms with chips ranging from ten pence to a thousand pounds in the local currency.’

  ‘All on a one-way journey into the family coffers, of course,’

  Vivienne put in lightly, flashing a spirited look Trent’s way.

  ‘Meaning that fools and their money are soon parted.’ Just as lightly his smile matched hers for veiled antagonism. He shrugged.

  ‘Everyone has a fair chance. The bank can win, but it can lose too.’

  ‘And it’s not shackled with principles,’ Vivienne tacked on smoothly.

  ‘It doesn’t concern itself with, say, ruined homes and bankrupt businesses.’ Despite her efforts to appear in joking mood for Robert’s sake, she felt her insides trembling at this clash with Trent.

  He helped himself to more claret before replying lazily, ‘Gambling is coeval with human nature. I twist no one’s arm. In running a casino all I do is provide a means for the sport.’

  ‘I think I would call it a subtle pandering to the weaknesses of humanity.’ Her breath was coming fast. She wished she didn’t feel so strongly about what didn’t concern her anyway.

  ‘You’re eloquent in your argument, Vivienne,’ Trent commented suavely. ‘Unfortunately you’re a woman and the fairer sex invariably see a gaming club as a House of Sin … a magician’s trap for catching souls,’ she felt that he was teasing her in a steely way, ‘whereas to a man it has something which appeals to all the senses.’

  ‘Except, perhaps, common sense.’ To disguise the jarring note between her and Trent, though she had a feeling that Robert wasn’t fooled, she added laughingly, ‘And I insist on having the last word.

  Anyway, to my mind Tangier is too nice a place to be spoiled with that kind of entertainment.’

  The sting in the tail of her comment was quashed urbanely by Trent’s smiling reply, ‘Every Eden has its serpent,’ and his implication, of course, that he meant to have the last word.

  Robert intervened at that moment to bring the time to their notice.

  ‘Hey, it’s almost two! Tell Momeen to chop-chop with the sweet, Trent. I want to show Viv how I can move in the pool.’ With his mind on the outdoors the conversation was spasmodic after that, and less harrowing, for Vivienne at least.

  Haroun returned from his own meal and Trent insisted that Robert be wheeled away for his usual after-lunch rest before venturing near the pool. Vivienne managed to snatch a little time to herself in her room, but the hour flew by and soon she was hunting through her things as Robert yodelled up from below that he was on his way.

  Lucy had flung everything she could find in the suitcase, and that included a satin bikini and a lime-coloured figure-moulding swimsuit. In the latter under a towelling robe Vivienne made her way to the pool. Robert was already in the water , and she suspected he hadn’t wanted her to see Haroun carrying him from the wheelchair.

  Now the big Moor padded around the pool’s circumference with orders, no doubt, to be ready at a moment’s notice should his young charge require assistance.

  Vivienne felt shy of disrobing, especially as Trent was sitting at his table near the sun umbrellas quietly flicking through business papers.

  But Robert, treading water and showing off, was noisily insistent and she had no choice but to drop her things on a chair and go and join him. With her hair wet and plastered in curls about her face, there was no room for worry after that. A pair of muscular arms scooped her up and tossed her playfully over the glistening surface, and laughter spurted from her as she set about giving Robert a run for his money.

  His brute strength astounded her. Though she swam with all the force she could muster, fairly zipping up the length of the pool, he was ahead of her, bobbing up in no time and extracting strangled laughter from her as she wrested from his powerful grasp to beat him to the side. That was only the start of his antics. He was determined, it seemed, to show her every trick he knew in the water, which inevitably involved a ducking for him or for her.

  Being chased, tossed up and down, and losing every race, she was exhausted but curiously light. It came to her that there was no fear of saying the wrong thing splashing about hilariously in the water; no dread of making a disastrous reply to one of Robert’s remarks, or tripping up where Trent was concerned. It was pleasant to trundle on one’s back and gaze up at the blue sky and for the first time since arriving at Koudia some of the agonising strain left her.

  But like all good things the afternoon came to an end. Vivienne and Robert lounged in inflated armchairs in the pool and drank long drinks, but it was obvious that he was tiring and as the sun started to lower Trent rose and holding her wrap called, ‘Come and dry off, Vivienne. It will be cool in another half hour.’

  His tones brooked no argument and meekly she left her chair and swam obediently to the side. He reached a hand down to tug her up and with her fingers in his firm grasp she felt the vitality in him course through her. He threw the robe round her shoulders, holding it there as though to dry her. Her gaze locked momentarily with his.

  When she turned Haroun had his charge in the wheelchair and in his soft-footed, hefty manner was leisurely making his way round to them.

  Robert was happy, but a little grey-faced and clearly quite resigned to retiring to his room. ‘See you tomorrow, Viv. It’s been a wonderful day. I can’t wait for sun-up!’ He pulled her down to him and kissed her on the lips, after which she felt obliged to follow him and Haroun to the house. She was hopeful that she too could withdraw to the blissful sanctuary of her room for the night until Trent’s formal tones came from behind, ‘Dinner will be at the usual time, Vivienne. I’ll see you then.’

  Up in her room she knew, with a grim little smile, that he intended to keep her under the microscope of his attention until he was
satisfied with her motives. She washed the pool water out of her hair and while it dried she tried to take an interest in the magazine she had bought on the journey out, without much success. When the time came to go down to dinner she was still battling to overcome her trepidation at having to dine alone with Trent. Drat the man! Why did she allow him to unnerve her like this? It was true she was playing a game of deceit, but not for the reasons he suspected.

  She found him waiting for her in the room overlooking the dimly-lit rooftops of the Casbah, where they had dined last night. He was dressed for the Casino in faultless evening wear. Her white skirt and sleeveless coffee-coloured blouse seemed a little out of place beside so much polish, though she didn’t let that worry her as he came to draw out a chair for her at the table.

  She knew that she had not been apprehensive without cause, for no sooner had they sat down to face each other across the gleaming expanse than he was saying with his razor-edged smile, ‘Congratulations, Vivienne. You appear to have Robert in the palm of your hand.’

  The resentment seethed in her. She was itching to make a retort that would deflate his judicial conceit, but keeping the image of Lucy firmly to the forefront of her mind she replied evenly, ‘I’m glad you approve.’ He filled her glass with wine, and she saw the glint of irony in his eyes at the smooth way she had sidestepped the issue.

  Momeen, in Eastern jacket of lurid design, was as usual on top form, marching in and out with dishes that gave him a pride to serve. He had no qualms in front of Trent and prattled away in French about the excellence of the soupe au pistou and the perfection of the croquettes Parisienne.