Blue Jasmine

by Violet Winspear

  Hassan gazed at her a moment in his inscrutable way, then he withdrew quietly, leaving her alone in the cool dimness of the tent. With a sigh she reached for a cigarette and lit it, and it was inevitable that the aroma should bring visions of the Shaikh. Why had she warned him about the scorpion? Its sting would have released her, yet she had hesitated, been appalled to think of that ugly black thing bringing to his knees the strong, arrogant desert man. She puffed smoke and told herself she was soft like most women, hating to see pain inflicted though she had to bear it herself.

  As the day waned, she grew bored with the tent and its trappings. After a solitary dinner she wrapped herself in her cloak and made her way to the oasis. She was aware that a lean figure followed her as silently as a shadow and she fought the exasperation that boiled up in her. Why should the Shaikh care if she ran off into the desert and was not heard of or seen again? To him she was but a toy to adorn with a chain of pearls.

  A means of amusement at the end of his day ... one more woman he would forget in an hour.

  She found her favourite palm tree, whose reclining trunk made it restful to lean against. The night was moonless and everything was still but for the rustling of the palm leaves, shaped so curiously like human hands. The starlight etched their gestures, and a few frogs croaked in the well.

  When she caught the whiff of cigarette smoke and saw the pale gleam of a burnous she took the man for Ahmed. She was deeply startled when he spoke to her, in French with an accent as clipped as the Shaikh's.

  `Do not be alarmed, madame. I have hoped to speak with you all day, but Hassan informed me that you did not wish to be disturbed. I am Omair ben Zaide.' He gave her a courteous bow and she caught the gleam of curiosity in a pair of dark eyes. 'I am a doctor and in the course of making my rounds of the camp I learned that my friend the Prince Kasim had a guest —a lady with wondrously fair hair.'

  She detected no hint of irony in the words, but her cheeks burned in the dimness. She felt a wild urge to rush away, but with an effort she subdued it.

  `It must have surprised you, Doctor, to learn that his guest was English. I am sure that when you have been here before his tent has been the home of a girl of Araby.'

  There was an acute little silence and she saw the end of the doctor's cigarette glow brightly, revealing for a brief moment a lean face whose features were strikingly regular. Omair ben Zaide was far more Arabian to look at than his friend the Shaikh, but at

  the same time he looked far less haughty and commanding.

  `When I have been here before, madame, Kasim has not been fortunate enough to have a pretty woman with him. I have been told by one of my patients, whose small child would have choked on a bead if you had not taken the imp by the heels and shaken her, that you have golden hair. Arabs see few people who are truly fair.'

  `That is beside the point, Doctor.' She drew herself up and added icily : 'Did your friend's people omit to tell you that he forces me to stay here? Do you fondly imagine that I am his willing companion? I detest the man!'

  `Yet I have learned that you ride with him, that you practise archery together, and play chess. I am told, madame, that he treats you as an equal.'

  She gave a scornful laugh. 'How does he treat his other women?'

  `What other women?' asked Omair ben Zaide, a note of stiffness in his voice.

  `Doctor, would you have me believe that before I came here he lived the life of a monk?'

  Not a monk, madame. He is a man of fastidious tastes.'

  `Your fastidious friend, doctor, thought nothing of throwing me across his saddlebow and riding off with me as if I were no more than a gazelle he had caught.' The burning words were out, and she was able to give voice to them because it was dark and because this man was a doctor.

  `Sometimes a man is blinded by beauty to what is right. Kasim is the only son of a powerful Emir and I fear he is accustomed to having his own way.'

  `How can you make excuses for him?' she asked, frozenly.

  `I admire him, and perhaps if I were not a doctor I might resort to riding off with a woman I—wanted.' He dropped his cigarette end to the ground where it glowed a moment and then died. 'To people who live in the desert, who are ruled by the sun and governed by a sense of fatalism, there is no tomorrow, madame. There is only today, the moment to be grasped as if it were a flower or a fruit. Desert people are called the children of the stars ... they burn with the same incandescent force.'

  `Whatever they burn with,' she said, 'it is no excuse for altering the course of someone else's life to satisfy a passing attraction. The Shaikh whipped a man for stealing a horse, but I gather the same laws don't apply for stealing a woman?'

  `It is true to say, madame, that my friend the Shaikh does make laws of his own.' A tinge of amusement ran among the words. 'He controls many wild tribesmen, so I suppose it is natural in him to control a young and lovely woman. Can you say he has been cruel to you, madame?'

  `He has not raised his whip to me,' she said tersely. But there are other ways of being cruel ... he brought me here against my will !'

  `I understand.' Now she caught a brooding note in the doctor's voice. 'To a man of any land a woman is one of life's adornments, to please the eye, to give solace from care. The cares of the Prince Kasim are

  not small ones. His father is not a well man, and I think Kasim looks forward with regret to the time when he must give up the desert life he loves so much. He must in the course of time take his father's place, and perhaps in his need to forget the inevitable he turns to you, madame.'

  `And as a mere woman I must not mind that I have been snatched away from my own kind and forced to endure a life that is still very strange to me?' Lorna gazed at the enormous stars through the palm trees and remembered how she had wanted to pluck one in the garden of the Ras Jusuf ... so long ago, and yet only weeks ago. From among the tents drifted the sound of Arabian music, a repetition of melody, a lament, and a barbaric plea, reminding her of the reed flute of the sand-diviner.

  `It is to be expected of the desert that it brings out the primitive in people.' A graceful spreading of the hands followed this observation of the doctor's. But don't you find enchantment in the desert at dusk, the lighting up of the stars and the brushwood fires? Does not the desert dawn make you aware of the beauty hidden in the heart of the savagery?'

  She met in the starlight the almond-shaped eyes of Omair ben Zaide. His robes fell in sculptured folds around his lean figure and he wore a shemagh that was very white against the darkness of his face. He was purely Arabian. The Prince Kasim was much bigger built, and only the skin of his face, throat, and arms was deeply bronzed. He liked the pleasure of kissing a woman on the lips, and Lorna was aware that such a caress was foreign to the pure Arab.

  A little shiver ran over her skin as she remembered the feel of his warm, demanding lips.

  `Like everyone else,' the words broke from her, 'you think me honoured to be the woman in the master's tent. I detest him for the slave he has made of me!'

  `Slave?' Omair ben Zaide laughed softly. 'You hardly strike me as a slave, madame. You speak your mind. You go among his people and make friends with them. You must be aware that they like you? They call you Theldja—white as snow. They think you as graceful as the little moon. They are not surprised that their Shaikh wanted you.'

  Again she shivered. She wanted only her freedom I

  `Your friend may not have broken his own laws,' she said, gathering her cloak around her, 'but he has broken those I was brought up to respect. Don't you realize, Doctor, that he keeps me here as if I were some young tigress he enjoys taming!'

  The doctor drew in his breath sharply, as if struck suddenly by the fact that she was an English girl who had not consented to her own abduction.

  `Would it help, madame, if I said that fate plays a large part in all our lives? Things happen and we despair. Time passes and we realize that an unseen hand leads us in and out of the dangers and delights of the maze of life.'

>   Omair ben Zaide leaned a little forward and held Lorna with his dark eyes. 'Something beckoned you into the desert, eh? You followed and everything conspired to hold you there. Think back, madame. Those who hear the call of the desert hear it long before they see the reality.'

  It was true what he said, she had followed a strange and haunting call into the golden realms of the desert

  but she hadn't dreamed that such a call would lead her into the captivity of a man who never listened when she asked for her freedom. Who commanded her obedience. Who charmed her or was stern, just as if she were a golden sand cat he kept for a pet ! She would never forgive such arrogance!

  `It grows late, Doctor,' she said in a cool voice.

  `I will escort you to the grande tente, madame.'

  When they reached the great double tent, she asked him in for a cup of coffee, but to her amazement he backed away from her as if stung. 'You are kind, madame, but no.' He shook his head. `Kasim would not be pleased if I took coffee alone with you at nightfall. It would not be proper, you understand?'

  `He alone can ride over all the rules,' she retorted. `What if I fall sick, Doctor? Will you be allowed to attend me?'

  `In my capacity as a medical man, of course.' His teeth flashed in a smile. 'In everything else I am Arabian.'

  `You believe in the veil and the harem?'

  `I believe in respecting the household of a friend.' He bowed politely. 'I am very happy to know you, madame, and I hope we shall be friends.'

  `I hope so as well,' she said, but was made doubtful by his loyalty to Kasim, who could do no wrong in his eyes. Everyone, even this charming, educated man, seemed bound to the Prince by some deep and abiding bond of affection. 'I'm a little tired, Doctor, so I'll bid you goodnight.'

  `Emshi besselema, madame.'

  He went silently away, wrapped in the white burnous that glimmered among the dark tents and then was lost. It had been a strange encounter, and they had talked so frankly because the darkness placed a mask over the face, and from behind a mask even the shyest person could speak about herself. Was that why these men of the desert liked their women veiled? Did the veil reveal the woman

  Lorna stood alone by the entrance of the tent, a slim, cloaked figure, reluctant to enter her lonely prison. At last she went inside and breathed the sandalwood, the lingering aroma of Turkish tobacco, and the saddle polish. These scents would have always the power to evoke her captor.

  Hassan—the perfect servant—had left coffee simmering on the Primus stove, and on a tray there was a dish of honey cakes and almond fingers. She made a small supper and flipped through a magazine. It was French and there were photographs of some of the places she had seen with her father. Once they had dined at the Silver Tower and it was there she had tasted champagne for the very first time.

  `May each bubble in your glass be a bubble of happiness,' her father had said.

  She sighed and wandered about the tent, only too aware that the Prince was away and yet keyed up to expect his sweeping entrance at any moment. He was so vital that he left part of his presence behind him. She could almost see his lounging figure on the black divan, a lean hand reaching forward to move a chess piece, or to entwine itself in her hair, gently enough but with admiration gleaming in his tawny eyes.

  Tawny as the desert itself !

  One by one she put out the lamps, and the bead curtain clattered behind her as she entered the harem. It felt strangely cold tonight and she threw upon the ottoman bed the tawny leopard skin. Outside in the night a camel grunted, a fire hissed as someone damped it down, and then slowly the encampment settled down for the night.

  Lorna lay wakeful in the low, wide bed, covered by the leopard skin, haunted by images that would give her no rest.

  She turned from side to side, trying to shut out the dark and handsome face; trying not to hear his voice as he hummed Apres l'amour. Trying not to feel him bending over her to see if she slept, touching with a fingertip a tear on her check, brushing it away with his lips and leaving his warm breath against her cheek.

  She gave a little moan and pressed her face into her pillow. She had to get away ! Dare she take the chance tomorrow? Early, before daybreak, while Ahmed still lay sleeping in his tent?

  There were always spare saddles lying about, and bridles. She could fill a water-bottle from the bedside jug, and there were plenty of cakes left from her supper to take with her. Her heart beat fast. She knew that with the dawn she could escape ... there was no one to stop her ... no hard brown arm to imprison her, to hold her.

  She stared into the darkness. She breathed the

  sandalwood. By this time tomorrow she might be again in Yraa, miles from the desert encampment.

  She could barely wait for the night to pass . . . for dawn to come stealing into the tent and move lightly the beaded curtain of the harem.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHE was away and riding with the winds of dawn!

  How easy it had been to creep from the tent like a shadow and take a horse, any horse, for no animal without speed and stamina was bred in the stockades of the Prince Kasim. The horse had been skittish at first, a fleet young mare with a saffron coat and white socks. Now Lorna felt in perfect accord with the rhythm of her mount, whose pace was long and supple.

  The dawn air was like wine, mingling with her sense of freedom to make her feel heady. She galloped headlong across the sweeping curves of sand, putting as much distance as possible between her and the camp, hopeful that the desert wind would soon erase the deep tracks her horse left in the sand.

  What a wind! Cool against her face and her eyes, which had felt heavy after an almost sleepless night.

  She laughed exultantly. She was free and she had not forgotten a single essential. She had water in a leather bottle, food in a satchel, a woollen cloak against the cold that always came with nightfall, and a muslin shesh to wrap about her head when the sun arose and burned over the desert.

  She knew she was heading in the right direction,towards the hills of Yraa that were as yet pinpricks in the distance. She was not intimidated. She was riding swiftly away from the man whose frown could make her more afraid than all these endless stretches of sand and rock, and an occasional hovering hawk.

  The light that was spreading over the sands had a lemony tinge, and she urged her mount to even greater speed. With daylight her disappearance from camp would soon be noticed. Zahra would take coffee to the tent and find her gone. She would raise the alarm, and Ahmed would ride in pursuit of her; spurred on by his fear of the Shaikh he would leave no rock unturned, miss not a hoof-print with his hawk's eyes, race the heart out of his horse in his determination to find her.

  The wind billowed her cloak, and scattered the sand over the tracks her mount was making. The wind was her blessed ally ! It was covering up behind her, and in her relief she neither wondered nor cared that it was extra strong this morning and the sunrise strangely coloured.

  In the saddle Lorna found solace from her thoughts, and as the hours passed the spaciousness of the desert had a numbing effect on her nerves. By the time she took a brief halt, in order to rest her horse, she was feeling almost relaxed. She smoked a cigarette and held on tight to the bridle of the mare . . . this time she was not running the risk of being stranded in the desert.

  She gazed around her and saw that the sands were darkening in patches. She glanced up at the clouding sky and became aware of how still and quiet it was, so

  that the rustling of the sands seemed louder in the stillness.

  `A woman is like the desert,' the Shaikh had said on one of their rides together. 'So many secrets dwell in the heart of each. Both give peace, but turbulence is never far away.'

  Yes, a secretive place. A person could dwell in it a lifetime and yet never reach the heart of it.

  Holding on firmly to the bridle of her mount she peered ahead to the range of hills that she hoped to reach before nightfall. They were blue-etched by the desert atmosphere, so near and yet still so far a
way. She climbed into the saddle and once again the saffron mare reared up and wheeled about like a circus performer. Lorna gripped the reins and dug in her heels. She rapped out some of the words the Shaikh used to a skittish horse, and with a snort the mare settled down and broke into her supple gallop.

  It was about half an hour later when sudden spots of rain fell on to Lorna's face. Soon it was raining steadily and once or twice Lorna thought she heard thunder, far away, beyond the hills of Yraa.

  A storm in the desert would be unnerving, but she would face anything rather than be caught and taken back to the man she had fled from. She couldn't bear the thought of his anger. She couldn't face any more the torment of being with him. She was not loved by him. She was merely amusing for a while . . . when the novelty palled, or when duty to his father recalled him to Sidi Kebir, he would soon rid himself of her.

  In running away like this she kept her pride. He had not quite humbled her and she could start life

  anew, somewhere far away from the betraying beauty of the desert.

  The rainfall ceased abruptly, but the sky stayed overcast and the atmosphere was very sultry. The sand began to swirl about in small flurries, and in the distance a haze was veiling the hills that were Lorna' s goal. She felt a nervous tightening in her throat. If a sandstorm should arise, then everything would be blotted out in a rage of dust that might last for hours, even an entire night.

  The very thought was enough to spur her on, and she crouched low in the saddle and let the mare gallop at full speed.

  The atmosphere grew gloomier and yet hotter with every passing minute, and Lorna began to feel as if a helmet of bronze was pressing down on her tired head. She heard a strange, wind-driven sound from across the desert spaces . . . a wailing that made her go cold despite the heat.

  Her instincts warned her that the storm would come suddenly, and she looked around for somewhere to shelter when the winds began to whip the sands without mercy.

  Not so far distant she saw a clump of boulders and headed her mount towards them. Surrounding them was a straggle of thorn-bushes, dark and patchy against the sulphur colouring of the sands, and she was thanking her stars for this promise of shelter when lightning flared livid across the landscape, not only startling Lorna but the mare as well.