by Liz Fielding
‘Because you are married? This Steve Mason is the man you married?’
‘Yes. You know him?’
‘No. I’m simply surprised that you do not use his name.’
‘It’s a long story, Han, and you have work to do.’
‘Even poets take coffee breaks,’ he said, but the last thing he wanted to talk about was her marriage, her husband. Instead he turned to the telephone beside a small love seat and immediately saw the wet, muddy smear on the edge of one of the cushions. So the mystery of the bell was explained. Ameerah had been here again and, protective of the child, Lucy had not been prepared to betray her.
He asked for coffee to be sent up, then turned and sat down facing his guest. ‘So, you are rested, Lucy Forrester and impatient to see the garden?’
Startled by the abrupt change of subject, she said, ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I assume you summoned me to take you for a walk.’
Lucy had been wondering how she was going to save Ameerah from the consequences of her trespass into the forbidden area of the pavilion. She wasn’t exactly keen to tell Han the sorry tale of her marriage either and, tossed a verbal lifeline, she seized it gratefully.
‘You’re right. I crave fresh air. A book. A shady seat.’ Then, because it had been bothering her, she said, ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘What do you wish to know?’
‘How did you find my address? In England. I know my memory, in the aftermath of the accident, became a little muddled, but I can’t recall giving it at the hospital. Or insurance details, come to that.’ He didn’t immediately answer and, certain she was right to press it, she said, ‘Everything was destroyed, you said.’
‘It was,’ he assured her, then turned to welcome the arrival of a servant with coffee. He dismissed the boy, served her himself and offered her a plate containing small sticky cakes. ‘They are very good,’ he said. ‘The almonds are grown here.’
Lucy did not have a sweet tooth, but she took one and tasted it. ‘Delicious,’ she said politely. ‘And the honey? Is that produced here too?’
He glanced at her a little sharply, as if suspecting that she was teasing him, then said, ‘I did not say; I thought you might think me boastful.’
‘On the contrary, I believe you to be the most modest of men,’ she said, resting the cake in the saucer of the coffee cup he’d placed beside her.
It was true. His robes were plain, dark, simply cut, without adornment, and the keffiyeh he’d been wearing when he’d rescued her was the kind worn by desert tribesmen rather than those made from fine white voile and worn with the elaborate gilded camel halters favoured by the rich.
Then, persisting, ‘You didn’t ask me for my address, Hanif. Yet you knew it.’
‘You were in shock, in pain, when we arrived at the hospital and you were not making a great deal of sense. We needed to find your friends, so I had my aide make enquiries, first, as I told you, with the company whose vehicle you were driving and then, when that proved a dead end, he spoke to the immigration department. Fortunately the officers on duty when you arrived remembered you.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘Your hair, I understand, made a considerable impression.’
‘Oh.’ She normally wore it in a French plait or coiled in a bun to keep it out of the way, but in her agitation, her rush to get to the airport, her fingers had refused to co-operate and she’d simply dragged it back from her face, fastened it at the nape with a clip, leaving it to hang loose down her back. Then, ‘Your aide?’
‘Zahir al-Khatib. A cousin. He’s in Rumaillah this morning.’
‘Making further enquiries?’
‘Replacing your wardrobe. Or, rather, delegating the task to one of his sisters.’
Lucy suspected this was a distraction, tossed into the conversation to avoid more questions. No doubt she was supposed to exclaim with horror, tell him that he could not do that, but she didn’t waste her breath. If he’d decided she needed clothes, then clothes she would have. And, unless she was prepared to travel home in his late wife’s nightdress, she was going to have to accept them. But not as charity.
‘I did have travel insurance,’ she said. ‘It will cover the replacement of my clothes.’
‘Are you sure? I suspect that if they discover you were driving a stolen vehicle when you lost your possessions, you might find the company disinclined to pay out.’
Oh, good grief, she hadn’t thought of that. ‘If, as you say, Bouheira Tours deny all knowledge of the vehicle, that shouldn’t prove a problem. I will pay for my clothes, Han.’
Lucy saw him bite back an instinctive response.
He must know that even in Britain it would be inappropriate to buy clothes for another man’s wife. Here, she suspected, such liberties might get a man killed, although the truth was that he’d gone way beyond any such barrier even before he’d removed her from the hospital; the fact he hadn’t known she was married would be no excuse.
But he was safe enough. She doubted Steve would come looking for satisfaction—not unless he thought there was money in it.
‘There were traveller’s cheques too,’ she said. Not many. She could not afford to be extravagant. Actually she couldn’t even afford to be cheap… ‘And my return ticket. Will the airline issue a replacement?’
‘If you give me what details you can remember, Zahir will deal with it for you.’
‘The same Zahir who was able to bypass all red tape and get my address from immigration? He must be a handy man to have around.’
‘The population of Ramal Hamrah is small,’ Han said. ‘The immigration officers will have known him.’
‘Is that enough? I can’t imagine being an acquaintance of an immigration officer would get you access to that kind of information in England.’
‘This is not England. This is Ramal Hamrah.’
A country rich in oil, with a thriving offshore banking industry and a growing tourist sector. A very foreign country. One where marriages were arranged, where a man could take more than one wife if he had the wealth and the stamina, and where daughters had no value.
‘So if they knew your cousin, it follows that they would know you.’ His shrug was imperceptible. ‘Why does the name Khatib seem so familiar?’
‘The Khatibs are an old Ramal Hamrah family.’
That didn’t explain it, so she came at it another way. She had already learned the importance of names. That a first-born son was named for his grandfather…
‘You are not your father’s oldest son,’ she said, ‘or your name would be Khatib bin Jamal bin whatever.’
‘That is the name of my oldest brother,’ he confirmed, but offering her nothing more.
He wasn’t exactly hindering her, but she sensed a mystery, that she was missing something.
‘If I were a Ramal Hamrah, if I lived here, your extended name would be enough to tell me who you are and your place within the family.’
‘I am the third son of Jamal,’ he said. Then, apparently taking pity on her, ‘Perhaps, if I show you a photograph of my father, you will understand.’
Family photographs? Her heart skipped a beat… ‘I should like to understand.’
He summoned the farraish who was sitting cross-legged in the hallway waiting to take away the tray when they were finished, gave him an order. It seemed for ever before he returned, not with a photograph, as she’d expected, not even a portrait, but with a small piece of coloured paper, folded in two. He offered it to Han, who indicated that he should give it to Lucy.
He offered it with both hands, bowing low, taking care not to look directly at her, before backing out of the room.
‘It’s a Ramal Hamrah bank note,’ she said, confused. ‘A hundred riyals.’
Han said nothing. Obviously she’d missed something. She turned it over and that was when she saw the engraving of the Emir.
‘Oh,’ she said, finally remembering where she’d seen the name before—on the website when
she had been researching Ramal Hamrah. ‘I rather wish I hadn’t asked that question. Why didn’t you tell me straight away?’
‘Because it was not important. I’ve only told you now because you pressed the matter and I wished to reassure you. Zahir was only able to learn your name so easily because he was asking for me. No one else will find you.’
‘No one else is looking,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Han, but Steve isn’t about to turn up and take me off your hands.’
For a moment she thought he might question her about that. About Steve.
‘In that case it is even more important to assure you that you are safe here. You will be cared for. As soon as you are ready, Zahir will take you to your embassy so that you can arrange for new papers and, when you are fit, able to manage on your own, he will make whatever arrangements for your return home or, if you wish, your continued stay.’
‘Why? Why are you doing this?’ She didn’t wait for one of his enigmatic replies, waving it aside before he could tell her that it was traditional courtesy to a stranger in need. This was more than that. ‘You could have sorted all that out at long distance, Han…’ Her voice wobbled on his name. The man was the son of the Emir, local royalty, and she was talking to him as if he were someone she’d known all her life. ‘You could have left it to Zahir. Or even handed me over to the embassy.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘I could have done that.’
‘So why did you bring me here? You did not have to take me in, look after me yourself.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, after a silence that seemed endless. ‘Maybe I needed to do it.’
Lucy opened her mouth, then closed it again and not just because the question that had rushed to her lips—Why?— seemed insensitive, intrusive. As his forehead creased in a frown she sensed that his response had been in the nature of self-revelation and for once this desert lord—and her instincts, so lacking where Steve had been concerned, had not let her down this time—appeared almost vulnerable.
Instead of challenging him, she turned away to give him time to gather himself. Picking up the cake, she concentrated her entire attention on it.
Eventually he stood up and left the room and the breath she’d been holding left her body in a rush. Her hand was shaking as she let it drop to her lap.
‘Ready?’
She looked up. Han had returned with a lightweight wheelchair.
‘No,’ she protested. ‘I can walk.’
‘It is too far. We will take your crutches and once we have reached the summer house you can explore the garden, if you wish.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked, feeling horribly guilty, and not just because she’d lied about wanting to sit in the garden, although actually, now the possibility was offered, she couldn’t think of anything she’d like more. But she didn’t believe he’d brought a wheelchair from the hospital for her convenience; this was a state-of-the-art machine and clearly it had been used by his wife when she’d become too sick to walk.
She knew that everything he was doing for her must be bringing back dreadful memories, but she couldn’t say that.
‘If you’re sure,’ she said feebly. ‘I don’t want to disrupt your work.’
‘The west has waited four centuries to read the beauty of Abu Jafr’s words—another hour or two will make no difference.’
To protest further would embarrass them both and she surrendered, accepting a hand so that she could move from the couch to the chair, sweeping her hair to one side as she sat down.
‘I don’t suppose Zahir will think to buy hairpins, will he?’ she asked. ‘I usually wear it tied back. Did the hospital give you my things? There should be a large clip amongst them.’
Han knew there was not, but even if he hadn’t looked through her pitifully few belongings he would still have known. When he’d found her, Lucy’s hair had been tumbled loose about her like a shawl.
‘There was nothing salvageable.’
‘Well, that’s it,’ she said, with the air of someone who had made an irrevocable decision. ‘I’m going to get it cut the minute I get home. Really short.’
‘But why?’ he asked. He could understand why a child might cut off hated plaits, but for a grown woman to deprive herself of such glory seemed perverse.
‘It gets in the way. It’s a nuisance. I meant to have it cut right after my grandmother’s funeral, in one of those flirty little bobs,’ she said, flicking at it. She’d wanted to do it before the funeral, to shock all those miserable old biddies who’d helped make her life a misery until she’d been old enough to refuse to do more than deliver her grandmother to the church door and collect her after the service.
‘Your grandmother could not have stopped you from doing what you wanted with it these last ten years, surely?’
‘No. She could not have stopped me; in fact, she expected me to cut it.’ Just as she’d expected to be abandoned, to have revisited on her all the misery she’d dished out over the years. ‘Was waiting for it. Instead, once I had control of the housekeeping money, I bought good shampoo, conditioner, a soft-toothed comb. Wore it loose.’
‘To torment her?’
‘I told you I was not good.’
‘So you did.’ He lifted a handful of her hair and let it fall slowly before her eyes in a shimmer of palest gold. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me if I suggest that you did it a little for yourself too.’
Her lips parted on a protest. He didn’t know what he was talking about.
The words didn’t come.
‘I will find some pins for you,’ he said, tugging on the leather cord tying his own hair back, looping it around hers in a bow to keep it from falling over her face. ‘In the meantime, perhaps this will help.’
Neither of them said a word as they descended in the small, ornate lift that took them to the ground floor, or as he wheeled her through blue-tiled cloistered arches and out into the dappled shade of the willows and Judas trees that overhung the sparkling rill of water. But as the warmth wrapped itself around them like a comfort blanket, Lucy sighed with pleasure.
‘You’re right, Han,’ she said, glancing up at him. ‘In comparison with this, England does seem cold and uninviting. Did you spend much time there?’
‘School, university,’ he said. ‘Do not misunderstand me. Your country is a place of great beauty and I loved it. But the rain…’
‘I know, but I’m afraid all that greenery comes at a price.’
‘At first it was a novelty,’ he said, encouraged by her laughter. ‘I ran outside just to feel it on my face.’
‘I’ll bet you soon got over that.’
He parked her in the shade of an extensive rose-covered summer house set beside a large informal pool and placed a small leather-bound book on the table beside her.
She picked it up, opened it.
‘Some of the translated poems of the Persian poet, Hafiz,’ he said. ‘He uses the imagery of the garden to express love in all its forms.’
‘I can’t think of anything more perfect to read in such a place.’ She glanced up from the page. ‘You know you don’t have to stay, Han.’
No. He did not have to stay, but for once in his life he was in no hurry to return to his study. To sit beside Lucy while she read the poems of Hafiz, share lunch with her, was a far more appealing prospect.
‘I have your book, the garden,’ she said. ‘I’ve disturbed you enough. Please don’t let me keep you from your work.’
She did more than disturb him. She stirred him.
Injured, unhappy, she still brought with her a breath of something rare, something forgotten. It was anger that had brought her flying to Ramal Hamrah on the heels of her husband, passion that had driven her to steal a vehicle, risk everything to chase him across the desert.
He almost thought that if he held her, touched his mouth to hers, took in the breath as it left her body, he would feel it too, would begin to breathe again, feel again.
‘Go,’ she said, laughing, opening the book, glancing at t
he pages as she sought some word, some phrase to catch her eye. ‘I promise I won’t do anything stupid, like falling in the water.’
It was her laughter, the echo of other, infinitely precious days, that brought him to his senses. This was where he’d sat with Noor, reading to her as the child she loved more than him sucked the life out of her, knowing that with every breath she was slipping away from him, knowing that no amount of money, power, could save her…
‘With that guarantee, I will leave you in peace,’ he said abruptly.
Lucy waited until he was out of sight before she lifted her head from the book. She couldn’t believe how hard it had been to send him away. How the presence of a man she barely knew could make her feel so precious, so special.
But, no matter what Steve had done, how he had betrayed her, she was not free to feel this way. Even so, she could not stop herself from looking back along the path he’d taken to the pavilion. The air was filled with the scents of herbs where he’d brushed past them as they spilled over on to the warm stones.
A dragonfly hovered, darted over the water, and still she looked, half expecting him to return.
Instead, after a while, a young servant came down the path, bringing jugs of water and juice. Her crutches too, in case she wanted to explore. He plugged in a telephone and set it beside her. Finally, he offered her a note written on thick cream paper.
The hand was bold, strong, the words brief.
Lucy, if you need to make calls home, please just lift the receiver and press 0 and you will have a line—the international code for the United Kingdom is 44. Leave out the first 0 in the number. If you need anything else, just press 1. Han.
She sighed.
She really should call the estate agent she’d instructed to sell the house. Tell them to put it back on the market.
It had been her intention to use the money to buy something small, modern, with central heating and hot water whenever she wanted it.
She should have done it before she’d left on this wild goose chase, but she’d still been fooling herself that it was all some kind of mix-up. Some mistake.