by Mary Stewart
‘Palace?’ I said, startled. ‘Who does she think she is? Lady Hester Stanhope?’
‘Exactly that. Models herself on the story, one gathers. Even calls herself Lady Harriet, and as you and I well know, we’ve had a lot of queer things in the family, but never a Lady.’ He stared, not flatteringly. ‘What do you know about Lady Hester Stanhope?’
‘Didn’t I tell you? When we spent last Christmas at your house they put me in your room, and I read some of your books. You’ve an awful lot about the Middle East. Have you really read all that Arabian poetry and stuff? And the Koran?’
‘All through.’
‘Well, you might say it was your library that gave me the idea of seeing this part of the world in the first place. We always did go for the same things, didn’t we – or maybe you’d say I tagged along where you went …? I’d always had vaguely romantic ideas about Petra and Damascus and Palmyra, but never thought about really coming here; then I saw the advert for this package tour, so I thought I’d join up, find my way about, then stay on after they’d gone and take my time filling in a few extras. One of them was Djoun, Lady Hester Stanhope’s place.’
‘It’s a ruin.’
‘I know, but I still thought I’d like to see it. She was quite a girl, wasn’t she? I read everything you had about her, and nice snappy reading it was, compared with some of those tomes of yours. I had flu just after Christmas and was stuck indoors for a fortnight, and Mummy hadn’t time to rake round the bookshops for something more my weight.’
He grinned, undeceived. ‘Don’t work so hard at not being clever. I’m not one of your muscle-bound blonds.’
‘Neither you are,’ I said.
Our eyes met. There was a tiny silence, in which the fountain sounded oddly loud. Then my cousin got up and reached a hand. ‘Come and see the water lilies now the sun’s gone. They shut while you watch.’
I followed him down into the now coolly shadowed court. The lilies were pale blue, held on stiff stems a few inches above the water, where their glossy leaves overlapped the still surface like tiles of jade. Gold fins winked here and there below them, and a gold bee sipped water at a leaf’s edge. A powder-blue petal shut, and another, till one by one the lilies were turbaned up, stiff and quiet for the night. Another late bee, almost caught by a folding flower, wrestled his way angrily out of the petals, and shot off like a bullet.
I watched half absently, my mind still busy with the recent fragments of information Charles had flung at me, the intriguing picture of the eccentric old lady who had dropped so long ago out of family reality into family legend. The picture Charles had just given me of her blurred and blended in the imagination with the vivid mental pictures I had built up during that Christmas period of enforced reading. It was true that I had found some of Charles’s books heavy going, but the accounts of the eccentric Lady Hester had been extremely readable, not to say racy.
She had gone out to the Middle East in the early eighteen hundreds, an Earl’s daughter in the days when rank counted for almost everything, a masculine peremptory woman who, as Pitt’s niece, was also accustomed to political consequence. After travelling round in considerable state with a retinue which included lover, slaves, and attendant physician, she had decided to settle in Syria (as it then was) and eventually purchased for herself a mountain-top fortress near Djoun, not far from Sidon. There she had lived in Eastern state, dressing as a Turkish Emir, and ruling her household of servants, Albanian guards, Negro slaves, companions, grooms and personal doctor with a rod of iron and at times, literally, a whip. Her fortress, perched on a hot bare hilltop, was described by a contemporary as ‘an enchanted palace’, and was a world in itself of courtyards, corridors as complex as a Chinese puzzle, walled gardens approached by winding stairs, secret exits cut in the rock where the Lady’s spies came and went, the whole exotic with murmuring fountains and luxuriant gardens. It was a deliberate re-creation of an Arabian Nights’ wonderland with all the fantastic properties of Eastern fairytale solidly at hand. Roses and jasmine, mute black slaves and nightingales, camels and sacred cats and Arab horses, she had them all. Fearless, utterly selfish, arrogant and eccentric, and growing with the years beyond eccentricity into megalomania, she meddled in local politics, defied the local Emirs, and placed herself – with some success – above the law. She finally seems to have believed in her own mystical destiny as Queen of the East who would one day ride crowned into Jerusalem at the side of the new Messiah.
The end came as it comes to the determined puissante et solitaire – she died alone, old and destitute, her fortune spent, her fortress rotting around her, her servants robbing and neglecting her. But she left – along with her debts – a legend that persists to this day.
It was certainly intriguing to think that it might be persisting in one form in the person of my own Great-Aunt Harriet. From what I knew of the lady, I thought she would (apart from the rank) fit into the role quite well. She had wealth, considerable personality and some scholarship, and had travelled widely and with a retinue which, though not quite as impressive as Lady Hester Stanhope’s in 1820, had created quite as much stir and trouble a hundred years later. She had married an archaeologist, Ernest Boyd, and thereafter accompanied him on all his working journeys, hanging over and (it must be confessed) superintending his ‘digs’ from Cambodia to the Euphrates Valley. After his death she gave up active work and returned to England, but continued to take deep interest in the Middle East, and financed one or two expeditions that stirred her fancy. Two years of England’s weather had been enough. She had said goodbye to the family (this was the last visit that I remembered) and gone off to the Lebanon, where she had bought her hilltop refuge and settled down (she told us) to write a book.
From this fastness she had made one sortie, four years ago, just after my side of the family had gone to Los Angeles. She had come, she said, to settle her affairs – which meant removing her considerable assets to the Lebanon – pick up a mate for her revolting (Charles said) Tibetan terrier Delilah, and shake the mud of England off her skirts for good. This was the last I had heard. Whether she had in fact written anything at all during her fifteen years’ exile nobody had any idea, except for the occasional re-makes of her Will, which the family read with pleasure and then disregarded. We could get along as well without Great-Aunt Harriet as it appeared she could without us. There was of course no resentment on either side; my great-aunt merely personified in herself the family’s genius for detachment.
So I still regarded my cousin doubtfully. ‘You think she’ll see you?’
‘Oh, she’ll see me,’ he said calmly. ‘My mother was always pretty sarcastic about Great-Aunt Harriet’s penchant for young men, but I see no reason why we shouldn’t trade on it. And if I tell her I’ve come to demand my rights, viz. the Gabriel Hounds, it’ll appeal to her; she was always a tough egg who liked people who stuck out for their dues. If I can get to Beirut by Sunday evening, what do you say we make a date of it together for Monday?’
‘I’m on. It sounds intriguing, if I thought one could believe a word of it.’
‘Sober truth – or as near sober truth as you’ll ever get in this country,’ promised my cousin. ‘Don’t you know what they say about it? That it’s a country where anything can happen, a “country of prodigies …”’ He quoted softly: ‘“The men inhabiting this country of prodigies – those men of rocks and deserts – whose imagination is higher coloured and yet more cloudy than the horizon of their sands and their seas, act according to the word of Mahomet and Lady Hester Stanhope. They require commerce with the stars, with prophecies, miracles and the second sight of genius.”’
‘What’s that?’
‘Lamartine.’
‘Makes it sound as if even Great-Aunt Harriet might be normal. I can hardly wait. But I’ll have to go now.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘Heavens, yes, it’s dinner-time.’
‘I’m sure Ben would want you to stay. He’ll be in any minute. Can’t you?’
�
�I’d like to, but we’ve an early start tomorrow, and I’ve things to do.’ I stooped to retrieve my handbag. ‘And you’re going to drive me home, dear boy, and no mistake. I’m not venturing through the dark streets of Damascus for you or anybody – even if I could find the way which I probably can’t. Unless you simply lend me the Porsche?’
‘There are some risks I will take,’ said my cousin, ‘and some I won’t. I’ll drive you back. Come along.’
We crossed the court quietly together. Someone – the Arab boy, probably – must have brought a lamp in and set it in a niche near the door. It was an Aladdin lamp of some silvery metal which was probably in daylight hideous; but in the dusk, and holding the small orange buds of flame, it looked quite beautiful. The deep blue oblong of sky above the open court was pricking already with brilliant stars. No ugly diffusion of city lights spoiled the deep velvet of that sky; even hanging as it was above the glittering and crowded richness of the Damascus oasis, it spoke of the desert and the vast empty silences beyond the last palm tree. The courtyard itself was quiet. The far murmur of city traffic, no louder than the humming in a shell, made a background to this still quiet, where the only sound was the trickle of the fountain. The well in the desert … A fish moved below the surface, and the flick of gold, caught by the lamp, seemed to underscore the beauty of the living water. One could almost hear the fish moving. A bird settled itself crooningly to sleep above the arcade in a rustle of leaves.
‘A turtle dove, do you hear it?’ Charles’s voice, quiet as it was, made me jump. ‘The poets say she calls all the time for her lover – “Yusuf, Yusuf”, till her voice breaks in a sob. I’ll ring you Saturday evening then, at the Phoenicia, to tell you when I’m coming.’
‘I’ll be waiting. I only hope that after all this we get our Arabian Nights’ Entertainment at Dar Ibrahim. Oh, you probably will, fascinating creature that you are, but is there the faintest reason why she should want to see me?’
‘She’ll be delighted to see you,’ said my cousin generously. ‘Damn it, I was even quite pleased to see you myself.’
‘You must be slipping, paying me compliments like that,’ I said, preceding him to the doorway.
2
Adonis
Who lives away in Lebanon,
In stony Lebanon, where blooms
His red anemone.
James Elroy Flecker: Santorin
I SUPPOSE I had assumed Charles to be exaggerating the Dar Ibrahim ‘legend’, but it seemed he was right. I found it quite easy to get news of my eccentric relative in Beirut, In fact, even had I never heard of her, she would have been brought to my notice.
It happened on Saturday, the day the group left for London, and I moved myself to the Phoenicia Hotel to plan my brief independence and wait for Charles. On what was left of the Saturday I wanted to get my hair done and do some shopping; then on Sunday I planned to hire a car and driver to take me exploring up into the Lebanon range to the source of the Adonis River.
It was when I approached the desk clerk in the hotel, to ask him to lay on a chauffeur-driven car for this trip, that I came across my great-aunt.
The clerk entered into my plans with enthusiasm, almost managing to conceal his private thoughts about the inexplicable whims of tourists. If a young woman was eager to incur the expense of a car and driver to go up and look at a few dirty villages and a waterfall, then of course he would help her … and (I could see the expert assessment of my clothes, my room number, and my probable bill) the more expensive the car the better.
‘And I understand,’ I added, ‘that right up at the Adonis Source there’s the ruins of an old Roman temple, and another smaller one not too far away, that I might visit.’
‘Yes?’ said the clerk, then hurriedly changing his intonation: ‘Yes, of course, temples.’ He wrote something, passing the buck with some relief. ‘I will tell the driver to include them in the itinerary.’
‘Please do. What do we do about lunch?’
Now this, it seemed, was talking. He brightened immediately. There was the famous summer hotel – I had heard of it, no doubt? – where I could get an excellent meal, and with music. Oh, yes, there was music in every room, continuous music, taped round the clock, in case the mountain silence got you down. And a swimming-pool. And tennis. ‘And then, of course, if you make a slight detour on your way back you’ll be able to see Dar Ibrahim.’
He misunderstood the surprise on my face, and explained quickly: ‘You have not heard of this? Oh, Dar Ibrahim’s a palace where an English lady lives, a very old lady who used to be famous, and she bought this palace when it was falling into ruin and filled it with beautiful things and planted the gardens again, and in the old days famous people would go up to stay with her, and it was possible to see over some parts of the palace, just as today you can see Beit ed-Din and the Crusader Castles. But now, alas … she is old now, and they say a little—’ he made an eloquent face and touched his forehead. ‘The place is shut up now, and she sees no one, and she never leaves the palace. But I have heard what a wonderful place it used to be, and I have myself seen her riding out with her servants … but that is all changed, she is old, and it is a long time since anyone has seen her.’
‘How long?’
He spread his hands. ‘Six months, a year, I cannot say.’
‘But she’s still there?’
‘Certainly. I believe I heard talk of a companion, but this may only be rumour. I think there are still two or three servants with her, and once a month supplies are sent from Beirut up to Sal’q – that’s the nearest village, and taken across by mule.’
‘Isn’t there a road?’
‘No. The road goes along the ridge above the valley, and to get to Dar Ibrahim from the village one must walk, or go by mule.’ He smiled. ‘I wasn’t suggesting you should do this, because of course it’s not worth it now, you can’t get in. I was only recommending the view. It’s very fine. In any case, Dar Ibrahim looks all the better from a distance.’
I said, trying it out: ‘Actually, I had heard of the place. I think I know some relatives of hers in England, of the old lady’s. I’d thought of trying to see her. I’d wondered if perhaps I might write her a note and ask if I could visit her.’ Something – I’m not quite sure what – forbade me to explain to the clerk my own relationship with his local legend.
He shook his head doubtfully, but with a gleam of curiosity in his eyes which told me that my reticence had probably been wise. ‘I suppose you could try, but when she would get it, or when you would get an answer … There is a porter at the gate’ – he shrugged – ‘but they say he lets no one through at all. He takes in the supplies and pays for them, and if there are letters, or if she has written letters, they are handed over at that time. But for a long time now she has received no one – no one, that is, except the doctor.’
‘The doctor? Is she ill?’
‘Oh, no, not now. I believe I did hear of something last year – about six months ago, in the autumn, and the doctor going up each day. But she recovered, and now is well enough.’
She had certainly been well enough, I reflected, to draft another snappy Last Will and Testament at Christmas. ‘A doctor from Beirut, was this?’
‘Yes, an English doctor.’
‘Do you know his name?’ I added, rather apologetically: ‘If I can’t see her, I might get news of her from him.’
The clerk could not remember the doctor’s name, but he promised to find out for me, and indeed the next time I passed the desk he had it ready, a Dr Henry Grafton with an address somewhere near Martyrs’ Square. I thanked him, and went back upstairs to my room, where I picked up the telephone directory and found Grafton, H. L.
The number was there. After a little trouble I managed to get it, and a man’s voice answered in Arabic, but when we had sorted ourselves out through his excellent French into his even better English, he had to disappoint me. No, Dr Grafton was not here, Dr Grafton had left Beirut some time back. Yes, for good. If he
could help me …?
‘I was just making some enquiries about a relation of mine,’ I said, ‘a Mrs. Boyd. I understand she was a patient of Dr Grafton’s a few months back when he was in Beirut. I wonder – is she perhaps now on your list? The thing is—’
‘Mrs. Boyd?’ The voice was puzzled. ‘We don’t have anyone of that name, I’m afraid. What’s the address?’
‘She lives outside Beirut, at a place called Dar Ibrahim. I believe it’s near a village called Sal’q.’
‘Dar Ibrahim?’ The voice quickened. ‘Do you mean the Lady Harriet?’
‘Why, yes, I – I suppose I do,’ I said, feeling rather foolish. ‘I – I’d forgotten … yes, of course, the Lady Harriet.’
‘As far as I know she’s fine,’ said the voice, ‘but she’s certainly not my patient. In the normal way I would have attended her after Grafton left, but she wrote to tell me she had made other arrangements.’ Some undercurrent, perhaps of amusement, in the smooth voice made me want to ask what these were, but this was hardly possible. Probably (I thought) a letter renouncing the world, the English, and the medical profession, or at least another Last Will and Testament. ‘May I know who is calling?’ asked the voice.
‘Lady Harriet’s great-niece. My name is Christabel Mansel. I’m here in the Lebanon on holiday, and I – none of us has heard from my great-aunt for some time; in fact, I’d got the idea she was dead. But then I heard she was still alive, and someone at the hotel here – I’m staying at the Phoenicia – told me Dr Grafton had attended her, so I thought I’d ring him up to find out anything I could. You say he’s left Beirut. Is he still in the Lebanon? Would it be possible to get in touch with him?’
‘I’m afraid not. He went back to London.’