Arms for Adonis

by Charlotte Jay

  Wakefield Press

  A R M S F O R A D O N I S

  Charlotte Jay was born in 1919 in Adelaide, where she now lives after many years of travelling and writing in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific. The famous American critic Dorothy B. Hughes has described her as ‘one of the most important writers of far-off places and their mysterious qualities.’ She spent time during the 1950s in Lebanon, where she set Arms for Adonis, a thriller that is alive with the sensuality and political chaos of a land she loves.

  Wakefield Press

  16 Rose Street

  Mile End

  South Australia 5031

  www.wakefieldpress.com.au

  First published in 1961 by Collins, London and Harper, New York

  This revised edition published in Wakefield Crime Classics in February 1994

  This edition published 2014

  Copyright © Geraldine Halls 1961, 1994

  Afterword copyright © Peter Moss and Michael J. Tolley, 1994

  All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

  Edited by Jane Arms

  Cover designed by Design Bite, Melbourne

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Jay, Charlotte.

  Arms for Adonis.

  ISBN 978 1 74305 328 7 (ebook: epub).

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  For Jenny Hayes

  ADONIS: A mythological Greek Hunter, son of Cinyaras and Myrrhams, beloved of Aphrodite. He was slain by a boar, and descended to the lower world; Aphrodite sprinkled nectar on his blood and from it sprang the anemone.

  He is represented as the type of masculine beauty, and as such appears in poetry. See Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ also Shakespeare’s ‘Venus and Adonis’.

  Everyman’s Encyclopedia

  C H A P T E R 1

  Sarah awoke, and lying under a sheet only—for it was already hot—sampled the flavour of that Lebanese April morning. She decided after a moment’s thought that she did not like the taste of it.

  She erred in her prognostications, because she thought the day her own, whereas it was to become public property, her private drama soon to be drowned within it.

  Outside, the day was of an auspicious brilliance. The city of Beirut lay like a pile of bright golden stones at the sea’s edge, and on the slopes of the mountains the olive groves shone like beaten silver. There was nothing extraordinary about this weather; almost every day in Lebanon touches perfection, and birth and death, festivals and revolutions take place alike in a shower of crystal sunlight. The heavens, in this matter, it would seem, do not discriminate, and neither do the Lebanese, who take whatever befalls them—their troubles and pleasures—with a consistent lightness of heart.

  Since the days of Roman Syria, when the city of Berytus became a garrison town, honoured with the title Colonia Julia Augusta Felix and the headquarters of a detachment of the Third Legion, pleasure has been one of Beirut’s consuming concerns. Now, practically nothing of Roman Berytus remains—a few stones built into a house in the old part of the town, a broken gateway, granite columns from a demolished temple set into the harbour well—yet perhaps, in spirit, Beirut has not greatly changed. It is still a place where the wealthy come from all over the Middle East for amusement and good living. Night club, racecourse and restaurant have replaced the baths, the theatre and the arena of ancient times, and those native to the city dine and dance and swim in the sea that laps their shores and, like the Romans before them, when the first figs ripen, leave the stifling coastal plain to pass the summer in their mountain villas.

  All of which is to say that Beirut can look back upon a long history of gaiety and good living. Visitors declare, after a day or two, that there is something superficial about it. It may be, but there is also something idyllic. And it can hinder any attempt to list its attributes by further contradictions: it is both antique and up to date, floating, with a certain feckless disregard for realities, upon the present but rooted soberly in the past. To add to its complexity, it is both European and Asian and must perforce face both ways—or, at any rate, it cannot afford to alarm its own divided nature by looking too fixedly in one direction.

  Such, then, is Beirut—beautiful, voluptuous and gay. It attracts both admiration and envy. Tourists visit it to taste its luxuries and look at its antiquities. Refugees flee to it from the more turbulent and less tolerant lands on either side. The unscrupulous go to it to appropriate its wealth and the covetous, to engineer its destruction.

  The visitor, after a week or two which is usually spent moving at high speed from picnic spot to swimming club or restaurant, realises that the Lebanese are afraid, that they wait, anxious and hesitant, in constant expectation of seeing their paradise tumble to the ground around them. Sarah, for instance, who had now been in the country for ten months, had quickly become aware of this nervousness and shared in it for the sake of a people who, she felt, deserved better. But she had quickly adapted herself to local ways and had become used to living on edge.

  For the Lebanese take even their fear lightly. They are optimists, living from day to day and hoping for the best. They shrug off the scramble of elections; they are used to a few dead; it always, they declare philosophically, happens like this. The abuse of neighbouring governments, the incitation to murder and violence. What can we do, they ask, we are so small … and put up with it. But though cynical and tolerant, they are alert and undeceived by the apparent innocence of an April morning.

  Sarah lived in Dhat Rhas, a small village at the foothills of Mount Lebanon, a mile back from the Sidon Road. From her bedroom window she could look westward to Beirut over acres of olive groves. The city was about six miles away but, in the clear Mediterranean air, where every stone looks so distinct it seems precious, it appeared much nearer. The tallest buildings stood out against a sea as blue as the wild iris that a month ago had bloomed on the stony hills. Even in the short time she had been in Lebanon, Sarah could notice here and there an alteration in the skyline because, with American aid and Saudi Arabians pouring money into the place, hotels and blocks of flats were shooting up everywhere—it was said that one Saudi had put up a twelve- storey block of flats for no other reason than to shut out the view from a rival sheik’s window. Indeed it had been to escape the discomforts of the new boom that Sarah had persuaded Marcel Gautier to take an apartment in Dhat Rhas rather than in Beirut itself, though Marcel, being half-French and half-Lebanese, had not noticed the incessant din of the Beirut streets until it had been pointed out to him.

  Dhat Rhas, between sea and mountain, provided them with the best of two worlds. They were not far from Beirut, yet pine forests swept down to their back door; in spring the scent of almond blossoms filled their bedroom; they woke to the sound of sheep bells in the early morning. Others, like Marcel and Sarah, it is true, had fled from the town and the landscape was quickly being spoiled to accommodate them. Old stone houses were being knocked down to make way for concrete flats, and Sundays were a nightmare of motor horns and the screeching of tyres as the Beirut taxis swooped wildly up the narrow roads; but one could still escape into the silence of the pine woods, and parts of the village planted with fruit orchards, steep winding stairways and stone farms remained unspoiled.

  Even now, as Sarah glanced out of the window, black and white goats were nibbling at the new almond leaves in the orchard alongside the house, and a donkey trotted up the road, the bells on its bridle tinkling, and red poppies dropping down to the road from the bundles of cut grass that flopped about on
its back.

  Sarah turned away from the window and sat down at her dressing table, murmuring admonishments at her reflection in the looking glass.

  The glass showed a face which, in its colouring and spirited expression, somewhat resembled a Siamese cat. Fine slate-brown hair cut short; a creamy skin with little colour in the cheeks but of delicate transparency; the eyes large, long-lashed, a truculent blue. The remarkable size and vivid colour of Sarah’s eyes rendered them noticeable over quite a distance, and by some purely physiological accident they seemed often to register an expression of inquiry or supplication, so that perfect strangers found themselves drifting towards her under the impression that she had asked a question or called for help. She was rarely allowed to be alone for long. It was perhaps for this reason that she was able to make reckless, uncompromising decisions and carry them out, as today, for instance. Recognising, without conceit, her ability to fall on her feet, she had had so far little sense of insecurity, though her life since the death of her father six years ago had conspicuously lacked stability. But she was twenty-seven and mused that morning with a new sobriety that this kind of thing had been going on quite long enough. Only a year ago she had burnt her boats—English boats that time—and come to Lebanon.

  ‘Jeanne!’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’ Jeanne, a pretty girl, who had been washing the floor with a bucket of water and a rush broom, appeared in the doorway, damp and barefoot.

  ‘Bring me the large suitcase from the back room.’

  Jeanne, restive with curiosity, handed out dresses from the wardrobe while Sarah packed them away.

  ‘You are going away, Madame? What a lot of clothes you are taking.’ And a moment later, as Sarah pointed to a woollen dress, she said. ‘You won’t want that, Madame. It will be hot even in the mountains. Are you going to the Cedars, Madame?’

  ‘No.’ Sarah searched a drawer. Where was that green scarf. The little bitch, I suppose she’s pinched it. Well, I never liked it much …

  ‘Madame, are you going to America?’ Jeanne imagined the world outside the Middle East as largely taken up by America; a cousin had gone there and married a Greek who kept a restaurant and sent money back to her family in Lebanon. Jeanne had ambitions of going there too with her brother, who could leave the army then and would not have to be killed by Jews, Egyptians or Kuwaitis.

  ‘You are going home to your mother,’ cried Jeanne, as another woollen jacket went inside the suitcase. ‘You are going away! Oh, Madame!’ And she burst into tears.

  The silly little fool, thought Sarah. What’s she crying for? She hates me. And began to cry too. She’s not a bad little thing. I shall miss her. And what a cook. I wish I’d found out how she does those stuffed aubergines.

  ‘Now listen, Jeanne, there’s nothing to cry about. I’m going into town now. As soon as you’ve finished your work I want you to ring up a taxi, but don’t say anything to anyone. This is none of your business. Then take this suitcase and leave it at Dobbies in El Hamra—before twelve. I’ll pick it up there. I’ll be back in a few days,’ she said, thinking, better to say that and stop all the fuss. How like an Arab to make your life miserable for six months and then weep all over you when you’re going away. Jeanne was not Arab, she was Lebanese, but Sarah was in no mood for such fine distinctions. ‘Here’s the money for the taxi. Now do you understand?’

  But Jeanne was not so easily deceived. ‘Oh! pauvre Madame … pauvre Monsieur!’ she wept, clutching the note. ‘Your beautiful dresses,’ she added irrationally.

  ‘You can have those two over there. I was going to give them to you.’

  ‘Merci, Madame,’ said Jeanne, quietening down and wiping her eyes.

  Sarah was going through the contents of her handbag: her passport, her wallet and thirty pounds sterling in traveller’s cheques—all the money she possessed—comb, compact, lipstick, an old tousled letter from Marcel … She opened it. It contained little to awaken tender regrets. ‘Meet me at the swimming club, 5:30—Marcel.’ Since the time of their meeting nine months ago they had been almost constantly together and there were no love letters to destroy, so Sarah destroyed the note instead, leaving the torn pieces ostentatiously on the dressing table. Then taking pen and paper she wrote to him, swiftly, a dry little letter concerned mainly with salary owing to Jeanne. Sealing the letter she propped it up against Marcel’s hairbrush.

  It was 9:30 when she walked down the flight of stone steps that led from the house onto the road below. Old Dr Chamoun, who with his wife and married daughters lived on the ground floor, was pottering about among his rose bushes—a tall bony figure in pyjamas and slippers—for like most of the men of Dhat Rhas he not only slept but spent a good many of his waking hours in this attire.

  His daughter, who was standing at the front door buying fruit from a farmer with a donkey, called out a greeting to Sarah as she passed. A handsome woman, running to flesh, she wore a black silk dress, high-heeled shoes and pearls, for the ladies of Dhat Rhas were ready at nine in the morning to receive visits from those of their neighbours and relatives with whom they were on speaking terms and spent a large part of the day playing trictrac, sipping small cups of thick Turkish coffee and passing the hookah back and forth.

  These social habits had little appeal for Sarah and she had kept aloof from these Lebanese women; in spite of their elegant French clothes and big American cars, a hint of profitless indolence from the old Turkish life clung about them and repelled her. But they were gentle and warm-hearted; she felt free to enter their homes whenever she wished and yet won no censure from them for rarely doing so.

  As she crossed the road and continued down the steps toward the centre of the village, she thought of them with affection and regret. She knew so little about them—an opportunity had been missed, and now it was too late.

  The charm of Dhat Rhas, of all Lebanon, for Dhat Rhas might have been any Lebanese village perched up on the terraced hills, pressed painfully upon Sarah that morning. She was conscious of a nostalgic ache for what she was leaving; seeing no danger in it she made no effort to defend herself.

  The stairway descended steeply between old houses built from large blocks of dressed stone, the bright golden stone of the Middle East, that devours the sunlight. Bougainvillea, hanging in a crimson arch, flung its shadow on the stairway and, among the sticky, scented leaves of the fig trees, green fruit, though still hard, was swelling.

  The stairway turned and twisted through a narrow lane between two houses. St Joseph’s, the Maronite church, came into view in the village below. Children wearing black pinafores with starched white collars, each carrying a candle and a posy of flowers, were going in through the gate.

  Another Feast Day, thought Sarah, shading her eyes with her hand, for in spite of her sunglasses, the light was violent, surging back like a palpitating force from the golden stone. The young leaves on the vine trellises quivered in the glittering air and the shadows of wrought-iron balconies slanting on the walls looked as solid as wrought iron itself. Below, the small white dome of the church belfry shone like silver.

  I shall never get used to Gothic again, she thought. The church, though built quite recently, looked antique and primitive with its straight, undecorated walls, small narrow windows and domed roof. It seemed to embody the pagan temple, the mosque and the church—an Oriental and Mediterranean synthesis. One would not have been surprised to find the red flower of Adonis strewn on its altars or to hear the name of Mohammed called out from the little minaret-like belfry.

  The stairway led into the centre of the village where three roads met by a row of old houses, now accommodating a café and shops. This was a busy corner and a dangerous one, cluttered by a pile of stones that had been lying spilled out on the edge of the road ever since Sarah had been in Dhat Rhas, and by the posteriors of a donkey and a dirty sheep, which were invariably tethered to the steps of a grain-shop verandah; people waited here for the Beirut buses and the clients of the café sat with their chairs halfway out
on the road playing trictrac and smoking hookahs; every now and again there would be flocks of sheep or funerals, schoolchildren or a political rumpus. But these not infrequent hazards were never anticipated by buses or taxis which swept around the corner at breakneck speed. Sarah, that morning, had barely stepped down onto the road when a taxi filled with dark faces and flapping white keffiyehs shot into the narrow road from the upper part of the village. To avoid it she stepped back into the gutter by the butcher’s shop.

  The taxi whirled on, just missed the sheep on the corner and disappeared, its horn blaring insanely. Sarah glared after it and shouted, ‘You fool!’ ineffectually in English. Someone else was cursing in Arabic and she turned to see the butcher making gestures of an unfriendly nature with a blood-stained chopper. The freshly killed carcass of a cow dripped from a big steel hook on the shop’s ceiling. She recoiled from it in distaste.

  There had been water in the gutter … She could feel moisture seeping into her sandal. But it was not water; the gutter ran with blood. Sarah shuddered.

  And yet, strangely, those fierce-eyed men, their white cotton keffiyehs framing their swarthy faces, and the blood in the gutter, only added weight to her regret. They were part of a picture and of an ambience of which the sunlight, the old stone farms and the early summer flowers were another aspect.

  Take part, take all, she thought, with an odd sense of exhilaration and tolerance toward Beirut taxi drivers that can only be entertained on a day of parting from them forever.

  Beirut offered a heady mixture that can seduce the soberest heart. It seemed to Sarah that to leave that day would be like getting up and going out in the middle of an exciting play. She felt cheated of the end.

  There was no bus and Sarah waited by the grain shop talking to Mrs Hourani, a plump, harassed woman who had come recently from Cairo.

  ‘How can I look upon Lebanon as my home, Madame?’ she was inquiring angrily. ‘I have lived all my life in Egypt—my family—for five generations. Isn’t that Egyptian? Are they more Egyptian than I am? What is an Egyptian, I would like to know. We who have worked hard and gained influence do not now qualify for the name. They’ll say the Copts are not Egyptian next’