City of Palms

by Pamela Kent

  When she got into bed at last, she lay watching the star-studded sky through the windows that opened outwards on to her balcony, and listened to the music that floated up to her, muted by distance. It was the sort of lilting music that, taken together with the breathtaking beauty of the night outside, was enough to awaken vague longings in the heart of any young woman of her age who had known a man like Mehmet Bey for a little under two weeks.

  Only two weeks!... And yet already he seemed to fill her world. Or he would do if she didn’t take herself in hand and read herself a stern lecture before it was too late.

  The General’s widow had said that he could be brutal. Well, let her accept that and believe that could be brutal, and not only brutal but arrogant, demanding, harsh, unreasonable, domineering. He could be all those things, she felt certain, and to love such a man would surely become in time a torment. It would be like dying of thirst in the desert, and never finding water to assuage it. It would be a constant source of anguish and uncertainly because one would never know which part of him was likely to be in the ascendant at any given moment—the harsh, or the tender. And just as certainly as she knew that he could be harsh, she knew that he could be tender.

  But how long would that tenderness last? He probably loved Jacqueline, but there was not very much evidence of it in his expression when he looked at her. She had the feeling that Jacqueline herself, seeking to make such an impression that he would forget the reluctance that had prevented him from marrying up till now and take advantage of her widowhood, had the frustrated sensation sometimes that striving to make that impression was like battering herself against an unyielding wall of rock.

  An unyielding wall of rock! ... But if only one could penetrate that wall!...

  Susan tossed and turned, and then forced herself deliberately to think of Ayse, who was downstairs dancing—with Armand? With Nick Carlton?

  Susan hoped it was not Nick Carlton. But, somewhat to her astonishment, Ayse had exhibited few symptoms of being still in love with Nick, and in fact her behavior towards him was strangely dignified and controlled for one so young, who admitted that she had once been in love with him. And whether because he had been warned off or not, Nick appeared to have no particular interest in her. If he had once had a particular interest, it must have withered in the fire of resentment he felt towards her brother.

  Or had been extinguished by a new interest!...

  Susan heard a door open and shut, and realized that Ayse had come up to bed. A few minutes later Ayse herself peeped into her room and, discovering that she was awake, asked whether there was anything she wanted.

  Susan, with absolutely no sleep in her eyes, smiled at her.

  “You’re not very late,” she said.

  “No.” Ayse sank down on the side of the bed and looked a little dispirited. “I decided that I’d had enough.”

  Susan wished she could think up words to comfort her, but knowing that there were none, thought it best to say nothing at all.

  “Would you like me to get you some aspirin if you can’t sleep?” Ayse suggested. “Or shall I pour you a drink?”

  There was a large jug of lemon squash beside the bed, but so far Susan had not touched it.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Do you mind if I have a glass? I feel terribly thirsty for some reason.”

  “Do,” Susan replied at once.

  When Ayse had left her, after thoughtfully turning her pillow for her and once again offering to fetch her aspirin, Susan shut her eyes and tried to force herself to go to sleep. The music had ceased in the big lounge, and only a desultory murmur of voices reached her from somewhere below her balcony, but otherwise the night was very still. It was that all-enveloping stillness and silence of the desert, with not even a faint breeze to stir the palms and set their dry fronds rustling. It was a silence, like the jewelled magnificence of the night, that lay crouched over everything.

  Susan wondered what it would be like to be a Bedouin and sleep in a tent near some lonely oasis. Zor Oasis was lonely enough, but there were far lonelier ones. To be the wife of a Bedouin and share his lot in such lost and forgotten surroundings. To be a nomad and wander on and on, surviving the fierce heat of desert days, the biting cold of desert nights, especially around the hour of dawn, when the stars began to pale.

  To be the wife of a man like Raoul Mehmet Bey, who had Arab blood in his veins and must feel the pull of those primitive places sometimes.

  At this point she fell asleep. But she was awakened about an hour later by Ayse once more opening her door. Only this time Ayse looked pale and dazed, and she was clinging to the handle of the door. The sight of her so shocked Susan, when she switched on her light that she sprang out of bed.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with me!...” Ayse got out, and Susan only just managed to catch her as she collapsed.

  She got her over to her own bed and revived her before summoning assistance. Jacqueline came, and Raoul came, and, in fact, everyone who was staying in the villa, as well as a large number of the women servants, seemed to fill the room at some time or other during the hours that intervened before dawn gilded the edges of the palms in the silent world outside. And dawn also brought a doctor from Baghdad, who had been dragged out of his bed and speeded to the oasis in Raoul’s high-powered car. A fussy little Frenchman, he was quite quick in making a diagnosis, and having done so he worked hard over Ayse.

  By sun-up she was already looking less grey, and the agonies she had been enduring had ceased. The room was empty of everyone save the doctor, who was drying his hands after washing them in the adjoining bathroom, and Susan, who was bending over Ayse and gently dabbing her forehead with eau-de-Cologne.

  “A drink?...” Ayse begged, through cracked lips, and Susan turned at once to the covered jug of lemon squash beside the bed. But it was no longer there. Someone had removed it.

  “Oh, well, I’ll get some fresh,” she thought, and then suddenly stood still and stared at the spot on the bedside table where the jug had stood. The doctor had stated unequivocally that Ayse had been poisoned. It could have been food poisoning—in fact, that was the only explanation. And in such a spot, and such heat, in spite of all the modern kitchen equipment Jacqueline had had installed in her house, poisoning of that sort was an ever-present danger.

  But, for some reason, Susan was concerned by the discovery that the jug of lemon squash had vanished. In the midst of so much excitement why should it have vanished, and why should anyone have bothered to remove it? It was quite a large jug, and it was protected from pollution by a suitable covering.

  And it had been provided for her, Susan...

  “Well, well!” the doctor said, as he fussily approached the bed. “I think she’ll be all right now.”

  But Susan answered absent-mindedly, disturbed down to the roots of her being. In spite of the growing power of the sun, actually feeling a little cold.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THEY returned to Mehmet Bey’s house that same day. Although she was still looking and feeling exhausted, Ayse expressed a wish to be taken home as soon as possible, and Susan was heartily glad when Raoul agreed with his sister that she would be happier in more familiar surroundings.

  Jacqueline tried to look as if the disturbance during the night had not upset her in the least—although while the excitement and anxiety were at their height she had expressed the utmost concern for Ayse. But now, at the moment of their departure, apart from a suggestion of being tightlipped, she was merely the polite hostess giving voice to regret because the week-end had not been an entire success.

  “Next time you come,” she said to Raoul, “you must endeavor to persuade Miss Maldon that her horsemanship is not yet up to joining the rest of us, and we’ll hope that Ayse, poor darling, will escape being taken ill.”

  Raoul, at the wheel of the car, did not look at her as she stood waving beneath the pillared portico of the front entrance. She was looking particularly lovely in a flowered sil
k dress that left her honey-colored back and shoulders bare to the kiss of the sun, her curls almost blue-black in the same white light, but for some reason he had been completely preoccupied ever since the beginning of the grim hours of the night before. Susan had been amazed by the extreme tenderness he had lavished on his sister, and the way she had clung to him. And it was only because she had clung to him that he had refrained from fetching the doctor himself. But, whether because of his concern or not, he was looking somewhat unlike himself this morning. He looked grim, for one thing, there was a certain tautness about the set of his lips, and his bronze was not quite so noticeable.

  If he and Ayse had been twins, Susan thought, she might have understood it better.

  She was glad when they swept out of sight of the figure standing waving to them in the front of the house, and she was glad when she had Ayse comfortably installed once more in her own room, with her own familiar things about her.

  The doctor had said that he didn’t anticipate any recurrence of the trouble, and that unless he was sent for he would not visit her again, but that she was to rest and take things very easily for a few days.

  Susan constituted herself her nurse, and was strongly tempted to have everything brought to her in the way of food carefully examined before she permitted her to eat it. And then she told herself that she was no longer beneath the roof of the Villa of Stars—and that was as far as she went in probing a matter that secretly frightened her.

  On the fourth day after their return, Ayse was looking much more like herself. She insisted on joining the others in the patio, and she was there reclining in a long cane chair, looking pale but exquisite, when Dr. Nicholas Arnwood drove a hired car into the entrance courtyard, and then was brought through to the patio by a servant.

  Susan, who had been guiltily remembering that she hadn’t yet answered his letter, and thinking that she must send some form of acknowledgement to the address she had given her, was so surprised by the sight of him—almost as elegant as Carlton in his white drill, but much more distinguished-looking—that she stood up impulsively, and then rushed to meet him.

  She gave him both her hands, and he held them tight, looking down at her smilingly. But he shook his head at her just the same.

  “Out of sight and out of mind!” he accused her. “I’ve been waiting for a letter, but it appears you weren’t very anxious to see me.”

  “But of course I was, Nick! Oh, Nick, of course I was!” She went on clinging to his hands. “It’s wonderful to see you!”

  “Perhaps,” Raoul Mehmet Bey suggested quietly behind her, “you’ll have the goodness to introduce your friend, Susan.”

  His voice was like a shower of ice in that enervating atmosphere, and it had the same chilling effect. She turned and looked at him with swift apology, but his expression was extremely reserved.

  “This is Dr. Arnwood—Dr. Nicholas Arnwood.” She didn’t know why she included the Nicholas, but it came out almost mechanically. “He is staying in Baghdad, and he wrote to me a few days ago to tell me so. I’m afraid I didn’t answer his letter...”

  “Which is typically Susanish, because you never were a good correspondent, were you, Sue?” Nick smiled, inserting a finger beneath, her chin and lifting it as if she was still no more than a little girl. “But I forgive you,” he added. “You’re looking delightfully tanned, and if you’re thinner, I expect the heat’s responsible for that.” He held out his hand with a charming gesture of easy friendliness to the tall, arrogant-looking man who was looking down at him from his superior height with an expression that was difficult to read on his face. “You must be Mehmet Bey, Susan’s employer? I hope you’ll forgive me for taking you by surprise like this,” he apologized.

  “But of course.” Mehmet Bey’s voice was smooth, and his manner punctilious. “Any friend of Miss Maldon’s is welcome to visit her at any time they find convenient. Any particular friend is always welcome. May I introduce my sister Ayse?”

  Susan felt herself coloring like any confused schoolgirl, because, there was no doubt about it, the “particular friend” was carefully emphasized, although she couldn’t imagine why. Unless it was because of that familiar manner of chucking her under the chin on Nicholas Arnwood’s part.

  So great was her confusion, and so perturbed did she suddenly feel, because, in spite of his urbanity, Mehmet Bey was not feeling really urbane, she felt sure, that she missed the manner in which Ayse and the doctor looked at one another for the first time. Although she had secretly planned this meeting for some distant future date, she didn’t notice the way the color rolled up under Ayse’s clear skin, so that her cheeks were glowing suddenly like a damask rose, or the almost startled look that leapt into her dark eyes. She didn’t observe the sudden softening of her old friend’s face as he bent over the hand held out to him, or the concern that flashed into his glance.

  “You have been ill recently, Miss Ayse?” he said gently. “Or is it the effect of the strong sunlight?”

  She explained that she had just had an attack of food poisoning, and he looked at her sympathetically.

  “That’s bad,” he said. “But I imagine in a climate like this, it’s not always easy to avoid that sort of thing.”

  “It’s the first time my sister has suffered from it, anyway,” Raoul observed, rather shortly, as if he was defending his own climate. “And so far Miss Maldon has not been affected.”

  “Then I sincerely hope she remains immune.” Dr. Arnwood accepted one of the comfortable chairs, and smiled in the easy manner of a man who was not affected by clipped rejoinders. “I’ve known Susan ever since she had pigtails: hanging down her back, and although she can be surprisingly tough when she likes. I wouldn’t wish anything of that sort on her. She’s not plump enough to be pulled down very much, are you, Sue?”

  Susan smiled back at him nervously.

  “I hope you’re not suggesting that I’m too thin.”

  “Not too thin—but you look a little spiritual sometimes.”

  Mehmet Bey leaned forward, his hands clasped behind his knees.

  ‘So you’ve known Miss Maldon for a long time! ... Did you by any chance present her with the absorbing volume that occupied her during the flight out from England?” he enquired silkily.

  Nick Arnwood looked amused.

  “Oh, that!” he exclaimed. “I was afraid you might find it rather heavy going, Sue. But if it helped to while away the time during your journey I’m not sorry I gave it to you.”

  “Oh, it did,” she assured him, but looking at Mehmet Bey she knew she would hear more of the book that he had rescued from the floor of an airliner.

  When they went in to lunch, to which Mehmet Bey politely pressed the guest to remain, Ayse was looking more like herself—unless it was that her color was still high. And throughout the meal her customary habit of imposing silence on herself while others at the table talked was broken for once, and she actually found the courage to ask the Englishman quite a lot of questions about himself and his mission to Baghdad, and in particular she seemed anxious to find out how long he was staying. Whenever he addressed her, his voice was several degrees softer than it was even when he spoke to Susan—whom he seemed to regard with affectionate amusement—and there was no doubt about it, whenever he looked at Ayse a strange sort of compulsion quite obviously overcame him to go on looking at her.

  Susan felt certain that, as the meal progressed, the fact that his sister and the English doctor were discovering things about one another that could lead to their desire to learn still more did not pass Mehmet Bey unnoticed. But, perhaps because he could not approve of an Englishman about whom he knew nothing betraying interest in the financially secure Ayse, his expression did not relax at all, and he was no more than civil during the meal.

  Afterwards, although the other three sat in the patio talking desultorily until it was time for tea to be served, Dr. Arnwood insisted on Ayse’s retiring to her room and resting for a while, and when she reappeared in t
ime to do the honors at the tea-table he had a suggestion to make.

  “I was going to ask Susan to have lunch with me in Baghdad,” he said, “if some sort of transport could be provided for her?” He looked questioningly at Mehmet Bey as he spoke. “Or, if not, I can come and collect her myself—and, of course, bring her back! And if you would—if you would care to be my guest also, Miss Ayse”—looking at her, although he probably didn’t realize it himself, just a little pleadingly—“I would be delighted.” Susan, amazed because the apparently impervious Nicholas Arnwood was betraying such obvious symptoms of not being impervious after all, listened with secret eagerness for Ayse’s reply, while the fountain plashed musically in its marble basin, and the pigeons made fluttering movements about their heads.

  “I should be—delighted, too,” Ayse answered, at last, and even her lips seemed to discover an extra glow of color as she looked at the man who had issued the invitation.

  Mehmet Bey looked in a bored way at the tip of his cigarette.

  “In that case, I’ll have you both driven in,” he said. “And there will be no need”—lifting cold dark eyes to the other man’s face—“for you to bring them back!”

  Nicholas Arnwood lay back in his chair and regarded him as if he found him all at once an interesting study.

  That night, after dinner, Ayse announced her intention of retiring early to bed, but when Susan would have followed her example, Mehmet Bey told her that he wished to talk to her if she could spare him a few moments. Although he put it as a request, Susan realized that he was giving her no opportunity to refuse. One look at his dark, determined face, with its slightly lowering brows and noticeable jaw—to say nothing of the cool compulsion in his eyes—convinced her that it would be worse than useless to think up some excuse for going to bed early.