Beloved Rake

by Anne Hampson

  ‘Tom would guess it was my husband.’

  ‘You told him you were married?’ Dirk seemed surprised and she thought of the blonde he was with. He would not mention the fact of his marriage, she felt sure. How had he explained his action, though? Not that it mattered, for those were clearly good-time girls and as long as Dirk went back they would not worry too much about his private affairs.

  ‘Certainly I told him I was married.’

  ‘Then how did you explain the fact of your being alone?’ Dirk sounded a little angry and she assumed a nonchalant manner.

  ‘I told him I liked being alone.’ Which was the truth, for she had used those very words.

  ‘And yet you agreed to go out with him and his friends?’

  She gave a tiny sigh, feeling she was being tied up in knots.

  ‘I didn’t really like being alone; I just said I did, so that Tom wouldn’t think it strange that you had gone off without me.’ She picked up a piece of apple and put it in her mouth.

  Dirk allowed the matter to drop and a few minutes later they were all in their rooms, changing before going on to the beach, where it had been decided they would spend the afternoon.

  That evening they dined at their own hotel, as on the previous evening, and afterwards Dirk and Charles went off on their own.

  ‘Stay in your room,’ warned Dirk, having taken Serra up himself. ‘Read in bed, or something.’

  She nodded, then stared at the closed door for a long while after he had gone. It would be different when they got to England, she told herself. She would make friends and be able to go out and enjoy herself. She stood by the window, looking out on to the lights and bustle of the city. Beirut had been called the ‘Paris of the Orient’ and she could see why, for although she had never been to Paris she had often seen it on the films. There was movement and gaiety and colour everywhere. The crowds were cosmopolitan; many languages were spoken there, among the carefree tourists who made up nine-tenths of the laughing, chattering throng.

  At last Serra moved away, thinking of last night and wondering if, had she been more circumspect, Dirk would have let her go out again with Tom and his friends. She had seen them and apologized. They had regarded her oddly but retained their affability towards her. She felt sure they would have been only too pleased to have her with them again.

  As there seemed no point in sitting on her bed, or in the chair, Serra got undressed and after taking a bath, slipped between the cool white sheets, where she lay, wide awake, thinking about Dirk and Charles and wondering if they had met the same two girls again or whether they had found two different ones. She fell to musing on whether Dirk and Charles danced all the time or whether they went off with their respective girls to find some secluded spot...

  Was Dirk a rake? He had made no protest to the contrary when it was mentioned—when she, Serra had asserted she did not mind in the least if he were a rake. She gave a little sigh and turned over on her side. Putting out a hand, she snapped off the light. If only she had been brought up in England she would have married for love—and her husband would not have been a rake. ‘But I must be grateful for having gained my freedom,’ she said. ‘Father always declared that it was sinful to desire what was out of reach.’

  The following day they set out early in a hired car, making for Baalbeck. Dirk drove, with Charles sitting beside him and Serra in the back. Travelling along the famous Damascus highway, they spiralled up the precipitous slopes of the Lebanese mountains, glimpsing all the time the magnificent panorama of hill and plain and sea far below. The umbrella pines shone, brilliantly green under the fierce Eastern sun. They looked like huge mushrooms, and there seemed to be thousands and thousands of them. Serra sat happily gazing through the window, absorbing everything but talking seldom, for Dirk and Charles were all the time making conversation of their own, conversation which did not include her. They passed apple and apricot orchards, all arranged on immaculate terraces cut over countless years in the sides of the mountain.

  After crossing Dahr-El-Baidar the vast upland Plain of Bekaa lay before them, hemmed in by the two flanking scarps of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon Ranges. The word Bekaa in Arabic meant ‘depression’, Dirk was saying over his shoulder, and the Bekaa Plain was a northern continuation of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa. It was a region of lush vegetation, being fed by two rivers coming down from the mountains protecting it.

  Their first sight of Baalbeck, lying about midway between Jerusalem and Palmyra, came when they had almost spanned the plain, the columns of its mighty temples appearing between a screen of leafy poplar trees, rising like sentinels to a flawless Eastern sky.

  Parking the car close to the acropolis on which the great Roman buildings stood, Dirk slid from his seat and, opening Serra’s door for her, handed her out. It was the first little attention he had afforded her and although she had the impression that it was an automatic gesture she experienced a little thrill of pleasure and rewarded him with a swift and dazzling smile. His eyes flickered lazily over her face. He seemed to discover things he had not before troubled to notice and the little silence became tense. But Charles’s voice broke into it as he told Dirk that he had locked the door at his side of the car. Dirk locked his own door and they all moved away on to the acropolis, the Greek name for any high city.

  As with the more famous Acropolis of Athens, a propylaea led into the area where the temples were situated, the great Temple of Jupiter—the Roman equivalent of Zeus, king of all the Greek gods—had six massive columns left, that was all, but they were impressive in their incredible height, being the loftiest columns in the world.

  ‘They seem to support the sky!’ gasped Serra. ‘Ours at Athens look like dwarfs to these!’

  ‘Do I detect a note of jealousy?’ Dirk asked in a teasing voice, and Serra laughed, a tinkling laugh like music echoing from a distant place.

  ‘Ours is more famous—the most famous in all the world.’

  ‘And it’s older,’ supported Charles, smiling at her.

  ‘Yes, this is only Roman,’ she said disparagingly.

  ‘You are jealous of those columns.’ Dirk threw her a perceptive look, cocking his head on one side in a small gesture that she found attractive. ‘Those at Athens are less than half the height of these. The Romans obviously considered their Jupiter to be more exalted than your Zeus.’

  ‘They were showy. And they copied all our styles of architecture. These columns are Corinthian.’

  ‘You should be gratified that they—and many others remember—copied the Greek style. The greatest form of flattery is imitation.’

  She nodded, tilting her head to look to the top of the columns, which were surmounted by a fragment of frieze and cornice. The original gleaming crystalline limestone had weathered to a rich tawny-gold, while some of the other ruins had weathered with a slight difference, running through several shades of grey to fawn and a warm and attractive yellow-ochre. The other forty-eight of the original fifty-four columns in the Temple of Jupiter lay fragmented on the ground, demolished by earthquakes occurring sporadically over a long period of time. The second magnificent specimen of the Greco-Roman site of Baalbeck was the Temple of Bacchus, larger than the Parthenon at Athens but, in ancient times, called the ‘little temple’ because it was dwarfed by the enormous Temple of Jupiter, standing close but isolated from it.

  ‘This is beautiful,’ declared Serra, gazing at the temple in rapt admiration. ‘It’s so wonderfully preserved. I wonder how it’s come to stand when others have been dashed down by earthquakes?’

  ‘One of the mysteries of nature,’ said Dirk seriously. ‘It’s so often the case—one thing stands while another falls.’

  ‘This is said to be the finest Corinthian building of the entire Roman world,’ Charles told them, perusing the guide book.

  ‘Can we go up this staircase?’ Serra was saying a few minutes later. They were inside the temple and Dirk nodded.

  ‘Of course we can—let me go first; you ca
n be in the middle.’ It was a spiral stair, and Serra had never seen one of these in Greece.

  ‘This is certainly magnificent.’ They were above the temple now and from this new angle the roofless proportions of the interior appeared more beautiful than ever. They were viewed against the backcloth of a scarp on the Lebanese mountain, on which a vestige of snow still remaining glistened in the sun.

  The sides of the temple were lavishly decorated with Corinthian ornaments—flowers and fruits, sheaves of wheat and vines. There was the god Pan, and Vulcan with his hammer; and Bacchus, the god of wine, covered with grapes. There was Diana the Huntress shooting an arrow; and Mars, the Roman god of war, clothed in armour. All these, and many more, were exquisitely carved in stone and could be seen clearly despite the fact that weather had resulted in the wearing a way of most of the clear-cut outlines that must originally have enhanced the carvings.

  ‘I always wonder how long these things took to do?’ They were on ground level again and Serra was staring at the gate, although her words pertained to the whole magnificent complexity of the entire site.

  ‘There were slaves, by their thousands. Remember, there were only two classes of Romans, the patricians and the plebeians, the latter being the slaves.’

  ‘Not at this period.’ Serra spoke firmly and with authority. Her husband looked at her in some amazement ... and with a certain amount of respect.

  ‘Oh? Tell us some more.’

  ‘These buildings date from a later period than that of which you speak, Dirk, a much later period—there’s a gap of about four hundred years, in fact.’ She was a different person, far removed from the timid little girl Dirk had met on the steps of the Parthenon only a week ago. She was assured and confident because she was fully conversant with her subject, having been interested in Greek and Roman history since she was very young. ‘I admit there were numerous slaves, but the plebeians themselves were merely an inferior class who, eventually, obtained equality of status with the patricians.’

  Dirk continued to stare at her, with growing respect despite the fact that he was piqued at the idea of being corrected by his wife. He had spoken without thinking, his interest being engaged mainly with the lovely carvings. The last thing he expected was to have his statement pulled to pieces in this authoritative manner.

  ‘The plebeians were the descendants of captured people, though,’ he said. ‘They never did achieve equality in that they themselves were classed as patricians.’

  She agreed with this.

  ‘There was class distinction until the end, but the plebs themselves owned slaves.’

  ‘I say,’ intervened Charles at last, ‘can either of you tell me what this is all about? Who the devil cares, anyway? These pats and plebs have been dead two thousand years.’

  Serra laughed, but made no answer. Dirk said, in a faintly piqued tone,

  ‘Serra evidently could not resist correcting my mistake,’ and he added, ‘You should listen, Charles, you would learn something.’

  Serra looked uncertainly at her husband.

  ‘Did I sound pompous—?’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘Is that the right word?’

  ‘It is. And you did.’

  She was not sure how to take him and she forced a shaky little laugh. To her surprise he responded to her laugh and said she must tell him some more later, because he was interested. He was sincere, she realized, and a sudden warmth entered into her. It was strange, but up till now she had not foreseen an occasion when she and Dirk would talk as equals. He appeared to her as someone a world apart, superior, disinterested in her as anything other than the object of use to which she had been put. When visualizing her life in England she saw herself as living a totally separate existence from that of her husband. He had stated he wished to carry on as if he were not married; he wanted no interference—that was why he had been reluctant to marry this Clarice, obviously. And so Serra had not visualized even entering into casual conversation with him. Perhaps she was attaching too much importance to the fact of his wanting her to tell him some more about the history of the people who had built this sanctuary, but she did not think so. It would be nice to talk with him sometimes, she thought, looking up at him as he stood by one of the columns, touching the stone with slender brown fingers. How handsome he was! Suddenly she felt he really was her husband—and a thrill of pride entered into her. Not many girls were possessed of a husband as good-looking and distinguished as hers.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Charles wanted to know as he saw her glowing expression.

  ‘It was nothing important,’ she evaded, but involuntarily her eyes strayed to Dirk again. He had taken the guide book from Charles and was glancing at one of the illustrations, but he glanced up at Charles’s words.

  ‘You look as if you’ve come into a fortune,’ he remarked, rather too casually, Serra thought, and lowered her eyes. For some incomprehensible reason she did not want her husband to read her expression.

  ‘The Temple of Venus next,’ he said, returning his attention to the guide book. ‘It’s over there.’

  ‘It’s always difficult to reconstruct, mentally, the ancient scene,’ Serra was saying half an hour later as they were preparing to leave the site. ‘There would be a grand stairway along which the procession would approach for the worship of the god—they always had this. Then a courtyard would be entered through a huge colonnaded portico. And can you imagine all the magnificent statues, in gold and bronze and shining white marble? It must have been a most impressive scene.’

  ‘And all for the worship of some heathen god,’ put in Charles with a hint of disgust.

  ‘You used to worship heathen gods,’ she reminded him, but Charles would not have that.

  ‘We never did!’

  ‘Don’t let us have an argument,’ interrupted Dirk as Serra, with a little lift of her chin, opened her mouth to say something. ‘It’s time we were moving on.’ They were including Damascus in the day’s tour and now Charles took the wheel as they began to drive through the Anti-Lebanese chain of mountains. Contentedly Serra leant back, gazing around her and remembering that she was in the region of the world where Adam had lived, and in one of the valleys of the Anti-Lebanese mountains Abel had been slain. Baalbeck was believed by many people to be the oldest city in the world, having been founded by Cain as he sought for a haven where he could escape the curse of God. Later, Abraham lived in the city of Baalbeck for a considerable length of time.

  With about half the distance covered they stopped for lunch, spending as little time as possible on it before resuming their journey to the ancient city of Damascus, one-time capital of an empire reaching from Spain practically to the borders of China.

  ‘I’m lucky!’ exclaimed Serra, clasping her hands in a little gesture of ecstasy. ‘I never thought I’d see all this!’ They were standing, shoeless, in the Great Mosque of Omayad, one of the most magnificent mosques in the world. A guide was telling them of its former stupendous glory, when it had six hundred lamps suspended on golden chains from the high ceiling, when its walls were decorated with murals and mosaics of gold encrusted with precious gems. He indicated the shrine standing in the centre, telling them that here had reposed the head of John the Baptist. They listened, with other tourists, and when he stopped speaking Serra repeated her exclamation. Charles laughed and said,

  ‘Better than being married to Phivos, eh?’

  ‘Phivos! I would have had to sit at home and do my embroidery all my life!’

  ‘No doubt you would have been engaged in other pursuits as well,’ commented Dirk with a dry smile. His implication being evident, Serra blushed; Dirk’s eyes wandering over her slender figure did nothing to help her get over her disconcertment. But she lingered over his words, seeing the dull life to which she would have been condemned, and with a frown she presently put it from her and dwelt on the pleasures to come.

  There had been no opportunity, during her two brief days of marriage, of discovering much about the home that would be h
ers in England, but as they walked out into the great court of the mosque along with the other tourists following in the wake of the guide she found herself separated from Dirk. Charles was walking beside her and she seized this chance of questioning him about it.

  ‘Dirk lives in a mansion, standing in magnificent grounds. Also in the grounds is the Dower House, where his mother and sister live. Jenny’s always been close to Dirk—adores him, almost, and she wasn’t at all pleased when it seemed he would marry Clarice.’ Charles stopped, and looked at Serra ruefully. ‘Don’t know if he’d be wanting me to talk like this to you, but you’ll have to know what to expect, it’s only fair.’

  ‘Have you been his friend a long while?’ They were different, she thought, with Charles opening and talkative, while Dirk was reserved—a deep thinker, she decided, and wondered, quite without reason, whether he would always be a rake. Some day, when he was older, he might not want to be gadding about with ravishing blondes, but might prefer to settle down and be a stay-at-home. That would be awful, she thought, frowning, for then he could just want her to settle down as well, and this she had no intention of doing. She was free at last and she meant to enjoy that freedom until she was very old.

  ‘We’ve been friends a long while, yes. We went to school together—though Dirk is a little older than I, as you know.’

  ‘Tell me some more about his house and his family.’ She paused a second. ‘I don’t know much about the reason for his having to get married,’ she ventured, sending him an uncertain glance from under her long dark lashes. They were walking very slowly along the colonnaded court and Serra was struck by the unbelievable glory of her surroundings. Yes, she was lucky! It was like a dream come true.

  ‘His father was disgusted with his wild ways and left him his fortune only on condition that he married within six months of his death. The old man was told, a year ago, that he had only a few months to live.’