The Saffron Gate

by Holeman, Linda

  ‘Its name — D’jemma el Fna — means Assembly of the Dead, or Congregation of the Departed — some such grisly thing,’ Mr Russell went on, sitting down again but turning in his chair to continue speaking to me. ‘They used to display decapitated heads throughout the square, warnings of some sort. The French put an end to that when they arrived.’

  ‘Thankfully,’ Mrs Russell added.

  ‘Have you been here long — in Marrakesh?’ I asked.

  ‘A few weeks,’ Mr Russell answered. ‘But it’s far too hot now. We’re leaving next week. Off to Essouria, where we can enjoy the sea breezes. Have you been yet?’

  I shook my head. The name gave me an unpleasant start; it had been there, in Essouria, where Etienne’s brother Guillaume had drowned in the Atlantic.

  ‘Charming seaside town. Charming,’ Mrs Russell added. ‘Famous for its thuya carvings and furniture. The aroma of the wood can fill a whole house. I hope to find a small table to have sent home. Don’t you love the design here? I feel as though I’m in a pasha’s palace.’

  ‘You haven’t, in your time here, run into a Dr Duverger, have you?’ I asked, not answering Mrs Russell’s question. The hotel was obviously full of wealthy foreigners; perhaps Etienne had stayed here. Or was here now. My heart gave one low, heavy thud, and I quickly surveyed the room again.

  ‘What was the name of that doctor we met on the train?’ I heard Mrs Russell say to her husband, and I looked back at them.

  Mr Russell shook his head. ‘It was Dr Willows. I’m sorry. We don’t know a Dr Duverger. But you should ask at the desk if you think he may be here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I will.’ It hadn’t occurred to me to ask the pompous Monsieur Henri if Dr Duverger had stayed here recently. How could I not have thought of such a simple question? And yet I’d been in a small state of shock when we arrived. Perhaps I still was.

  ‘The garden …’ I waved my hand towards the window.

  ‘It used to be some sort of park, ages ago,’ Mrs Russell said, before I had a chance to comment further. ‘There are lovely gardens like this all throughout Marrakesh, outside the medina walls. Apparently it was the custom for the reigning sultan to give his sons a house and garden outside the medina, as a wedding gift. Many of the French hotels have been built in the midst of what were once these royal gardens. This one goes on for a number of acres. You must take a walk through it, later, as the scents of the flowers appear to become stronger in the evening, when the heat has lifted. And it’s walled, so quite safe.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes. I will.’

  ‘I’d suggest you try the Napoleon for dessert. It’s crafted beautifully; the hotel has a very talented French pastry chef,’ Mr Russell said, then, turning in his chair ever so slightly, so that I knew the conversation was over, ‘We do enjoy it, don’t we, darling?’ he said to Mrs Russell.

  After I’d finished my dinner, which sat uneasily in my stomach in spite of the fact that it was lightly prepared, I wandered out through huge glass doors into the garden. Many of the guests were now dancing in one of the ballrooms I had passed, and the empty paths of the garden were lit by flaming torches. There were orange and lemon trees and thousands of rose bushes amassed with bright red roses. I thought of the petals everywhere in my room. Nightingales and turtledoves nested in the palm trees that lined the pathways. There was an abundance of sweet-smelling mimosa, and plants that were surprisingly like many I knew from my own garden at home: geraniums, stock, snapdragons, impatiens, salvia, pansies and hollyhocks.

  Suddenly my memories of home — and my former life there — were so distant. It was as though the woman who had lived that simple life, so out of touch with the world beyond Juniper Road, couldn’t possibly have been me.

  Under new skies, I was no longer that Sidonie O’Shea. Since I’d left Albany, the things I saw, that I heard and smelled, touched and tasted, had been unexpected, unpredictable. Some had been beautiful, others frightening. Some tumultuous and disturbing, some serene and moving. It was as if all the new scenes were photographs in a book, photographs I’d captured within my mind. I could look at them as if slowly turning pages.

  I carefully passed the images of the hotel room in Marseilles. It was too soon to look back on those images. Far too soon.

  And the enormity of my final challenge — the one I had journeyed this distance to confront — still lay ahead. The thought of how I might face it, perhaps as soon as tomorrow, filled me with such anxiety that I had to sit on one of the benches.

  After a while I looked up at the night sky, listening to the quiet rustling sway of the palms in the sweet night breeze, and the distant, yet insistent, sounds from the square.

  The Assembly of the Dead. I had a sudden dark premonition, and shivered in the warmth of the air.

  And then I hurried back through the paths towards the hotel, wanting to return to the safety of my room.

  THIRTEEN

  It was in early February, eleven months after my father died, that I realised what had happened. By then, Etienne and I had been lovers for five months.

  I waited an extra week to make certain before I shared the news with Etienne. I didn’t know how he’d react; he had made a point of assuring me that I wasn’t to worry about any consequences of our lovemaking. I understood. He was a doctor; he knew how to prevent it. But somehow, in spite of his reassurances, his precautions had failed.

  I was excited and nervous, wanting to find the right moment to tell him this unexpected news. We lay facing each other in my bed, our bodies still heated, although our breathing had resumed the normal rhythm. It was the perfect time, I knew then, a moment of openness and emotion. I smiled, running my hand up and down Etienne’s bare chest, and said, ‘Etienne. I have something to tell you.’

  He leaned over and kissed my forehead, murmuring sleepily, ‘What is it, Sido?’

  I licked my lips, and perhaps my hesitation made him lean up on one elbow and study my face. ‘What do you have to tell me, with this expression? You look pleased, and yet shy.’

  I nodded, taking his hand. ‘It’s unexpected, I know, Etienne, but …’ I could barely say it, such was my joy and wonder. ‘It’s a baby, Etienne. I’m expecting a baby.’

  I held my breath, waiting for his reaction. But it was not as I expected. In the pale shafts traced on his face by the cold winter moon through the windowpane, he lost all expression. His skin took on the texture and colour of a bleached fossil. He pulled his hand from mine and sat straight up, looking down at me with his mouth slightly open.

  ‘Etienne?’ I said, sitting up to face him.

  ‘You’re certain?’ he asked. Cinnabar, still surprisingly nimble in spite of her age, jumped on to the bed beside Etienne; he pushed her off with an uncharacteristically brusque sweep of his arm. I heard the soft thump as she landed on the carpet, and knew she would twitch her tail in indignation and slink under the bed.

  I nodded.

  ‘But I use the … what … la capote, the rubber, prophylactic,’ he said. ‘Always I use it.’ He was still frightfully pale, and, for a completely unknown reason, had switched to English.

  I was stunned. ‘Etienne?’ I finally said, a terrible sensation growing in me. ‘Etienne? Aren’t you … don’t you …’ I stopped, not knowing how to continue.

  Now he stared over my head at the window and the darkness beyond, as if he couldn’t bear to look into my face. ‘You see a doctor? ‘Without waiting for an answer he turned in the other direction, reaching for the pill bottle on the bedside table; he said he suffered headaches, and he also had difficulties sleeping. I hated when he took pills to make him sleep. Only the first two times he spent the night with me did he not take them, and although neither of us fell into a deep sleep, I thought this was only because we weren’t used to sleeping together. I was so aware of his touch and was so full of awe at having him beside me that I revelled in the feel of his body pressing against mine when he shifted and turned in my narrow bed. After the second time, he took his
pills, and slept a hard, empty sleep, with no movement except for the slight muscling of his jaw, the tiny rasp as he ground his back teeth. Those drug induced sleeps left me feeling alone, even when lying beside him.

  He opened one of the bottles and dumped three capsules into his hand. They would be for a headache; he wouldn’t take a sleeping tablet now, surely, not with what I had just told him. He tossed them in his mouth and washed them down with the remains of the bourbon still in his glass.

  I didn’t know whether it was worse having him look at me or busy himself with his pills and drink.

  ‘I ask you, you have see the doctor?’ he repeated, turning back to me but again looking over my head at the window, still speaking that stilted English.

  ‘No. But I know it’s true, Etienne. I know my body, and the signs are unmistakable.’

  Finally he looked at me, and there was a heavy, dull thud in my stomach. ‘No. C’est impossible. Perhaps there is other reason for the symptoms. On Thursday — one day behind the next day — I have the late … what is it … the shift. I take you, in the morning, to the clinic I know, in the next … next place, county … and you will be examine,’ he said, his tongue tripping on every word. It was as though he had forgotten how to speak the proper and rather formal English diction he had used until he’d switched to speaking French with me. ‘Not at my hospital.’

  His strange way of speaking, combined with his almost blank stare, made me feel that I might be sick. This wasn’t what I had envisioned, the hundreds of times over the last few weeks I’d imagined myself telling him this remarkable news.

  He was the man — the only man — I had ever shared myself with. My life was entwined with his. Until Etienne had come into my life, I had assumed and accepted that I would live out my days alone. Of course my adolescent promise to God and the Virgin Mary about keeping myself pure was just that — a youthful, naïve promise, made out of desperation. And in the life I had carved out for myself there were few opportunities to meet a man I might look at with a certain curiosity, and I had never before sensed that a man might be attracted to me.

  Not until Etienne.

  He added a dimension to my life I didn’t know I was missing. I now saw it — that former life — as a grey twilight, empty and colourless.

  And when I realised there would be a child … there was no choice but for us to marry. He was a man of substance, of integrity. I hadn’t doubted, for even a moment, that he would immediately propose, and we would marry without delay. I had mapped it all out in my head over the last few weeks, with an ecstasy I could barely contain: he would leave his rooms and move in with me. We would buy a new, bigger bed and move into the larger bedroom. My old bedroom would become a nursery; I could set up my paints in a corner of the kitchen. But now … I swallowed, and knew that even though it was close to midnight, I would be sick, as I was most mornings now. I rushed from the room, retching over and over in the bathroom.

  When I had finished, I shakily washed my face and rinsed my mouth, and then returned to the bedroom. Etienne was already dressed, sitting on the bed tying his shoes. He looked up at me with such an unreadable expression that something like fear came over me. Again my stomach heaved, although it was empty now.

  I put my hand over my mouth.

  He stood. ‘I’m sorry, Sidonie,’ he said in French. ‘It’s … it’s just the shock. I need to think. Don’t be hurt.’

  Don’t be hurt? How could I not be hurt by his reaction? ‘Won’t you stay with me tonight? Please?’ I said. I needed him to put his arms around me. I shivered, partly from chill, in my light nightgown, and partly from my anxiety. But he didn’t. I stood in the doorway, and he near the bed. Only a few yards separated us, but it felt like a mile.

  ‘I’ll come on Thursday morning then, at nine, and take you to the clinic. For a professional opinion,’ he said.

  ‘But … but you’re a professional.’

  ‘It’s different,’ he said. ‘A doctor doesn’t treat his … shouldn’t diagnose those he’s close to.’ He came to me; he couldn’t leave the bedroom with me in the doorway. I didn’t step aside to let him pass.

  ‘Etienne,’ I said, putting my hands on his arms. I tried not to dig my fingers into his sleeves. I needed to hold on to him, to keep him with me.

  He did pull me to him then, pressing my head against his chest. I heard his heartbeat, too fast, as though he’d been running. And after too brief a time he gently moved away, stroked my hair once, and then was gone.

  The rest of that long night, and all of Wednesday, had been endless and confusing and filled with distress. I wouldn’t let myself think that I had been wrong about Etienne’s feelings for me. I couldn’t. I couldn’t have been so wrong.

  The almost silent ride to the clinic — where my pregnancy was confirmed — had been bad enough, but as we approached the outskirts of Albany I could bear it no longer.

  ‘And so, Etienne?’ I waited, desperate to have him say something to comfort me. ‘I know it’s a surprise. For both of us. But perhaps we should view it as fate.’

  Staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel so intensely that his knuckles were white, he said, ‘Are you saying you believe in fate, Sidonie?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Etienne. But … in spite of it being a surprise … Etienne, these things happen. They happen.’ I didn’t know what else to say. Of course I knew how I wanted him to react, what I wanted to hear. I wanted him to smile at me, to say that we would share the joy of this child. I wanted him to say, right now, Marry me, Sidonie, marry me and we will spend our lives together. With our child. With our children. Over the last few weeks, when I knew with certainty I carried a baby, I had created scenes that I had never imagined could be a part of my life. Etienne and I, playing with our child on a grassy knoll on a summer day. Christmas, with a decorated tree and gaily wrapped gifts: painted dolls or hobby horses, pretty smocked dresses or little vests and trousers. Tottering, tiny steps, birthday parties, the first day of school.

  I had created a portrait of myself as a traditional woman, with a husband and children. Me, a doctor’s wife, a mother. And that vision looked huge, and within my reach.

  In the silent car I saw, with something close to desperation, how I did want it — this gift — more than I had wanted anything in my life. Unexpectedly I thought of the Karner Blue butterfly, its wings quivering as it landed lightly on the wild lupin.

  Now Etienne pulled the car to the side of the road and stared through the windshield. Snow came down, gently, and the edges of the road ahead and the dark, bare branches of the trees on either side grew soft, blurred. ‘I’m sorry, Sidonie,’ he said, his tone unreadable. ‘I know I’m not behaving in the way you hoped.’

  I looked out the side window, seeing how the long dead grass at the side of the road poked, brittle and yellow, through the snow. I was so confused. Did he not wish to have a family? I wanted to say it, to ask, Don’t you want a child, Etienne? A child with me? Don’t you want to marry me and be a husband and father? So many emotions: shock, and sadness and disappointment, and also, yes, also anger, all combined in a swirling fusion of dark colours.

  I looked at him again. ‘So what will we do, Etienne?’ I spoke slowly, clearly, my voice low and controlled. ‘I know it’s not what we planned. But … but I want this baby. I want it more, than anything,’ I repeated, more loudly, and then closed my lips before I could say anything further, because I wanted to say, And I want you more than anything. I want you to want me in the same way.

  I wouldn’t allow myself to beg.

  He looked at me then, for the first time since we’d left the clinic, and for an unknown reason, I felt something like sympathy. I suddenly knew how he would have looked when he was a boy, unsure and frightened.

  I thought it was how he would have looked upon hearing of his brother’s shocking death. And because of this look I was able to speak more rationally than I had felt only seconds earlier.

  ‘You owe me nothing,
Etienne,’ I said, quietly. ‘You didn’t seduce me. I knew what I was doing.’ My heart was thudding as I spoke the next words. ‘You are free to go, if you wish.’ They were brave, false words. Not about the seduction — that part was true. What was bluff was my dismissal of him, telling him he didn’t have to stay with me. Didn’t have to marry me.

  And the bluff was taking a huge chance. What if he said yes, yes, you’re right, Sidonie, we shall part company. Surely it is for the best.

  What would I do? I knew absolutely nothing about children. I had never even held a baby. And what of my dwindling bank account? How would I support this child? I saw myself bent over a sewing machine, like my mother. I thought of not being able to give my child the things it needed. I tried, in those few moments of silence, to imagine my life in the house on Juniper Road with an illegitimate child. And I saw myself, an ageing recluse, a dark stain on the righteous community because of my fatherless child. Could I bear to watch that child be treated with disdain because of my sins?

  Finally he spoke. ‘Do you really believe me to have such a low character, Sidonie?’ He picked up my hand from where it lay between us on the seat. His fingers were cold as they closed loosely around my own.

  I looked down at his hand, holding mine in that unnatural, stiff way.

  ‘Of course we will marry,’ he said, his voice hoarse, as if his throat was too tight, and then his face softened, and, using his other hand, he cupped my chin. ‘Of course, ma chère Sido,’ and at that a sob caught in my throat. Tears came to my eyes, tears of relief, and he pulled me to him.

  I cried against his lapel.

  He did love me. He would marry me. It was not the proposal I had hoped for, but it would be all right.