He followed her down towards the beach, reaching the picnic spot, which he’d set up with such care and excitement earlier that morning. Now it looked far less romantic.
Particularly with a tall, red-headed woman sitting straight-backed, cross-legged and arms folded in the middle of the carpet.
‘It seems I must apologise,’ he said, sounding stiff and stilted for he still didn’t understand. ‘If I have embarrassed you I am sorry, but let us put it behind us and enjoy the rest of the day. We will eat and talk of other things,’ he told her, although in his head he wanted to yell at her, to demand to know what was so bad about his suggestion. What use was his power as ruler if he couldn’t take a mistress should he wish to?
She settled on the cushions, close enough for him to touch, but at least he had the fortitude to not touch—not right now. They ate and talked of other things, the history of his people, the nomadic tribes now calling Fajabal home, the sorry state of a world where there was always war somewhere.
Then suddenly, surprisingly, she reached out and touched his scar.
‘You must have loved Abed very dearly to have done so much for him,’ she said, her voice soft, her eyes looking at him but not, he thought, seeing him.
‘We are brothers in the truest sense, though not by blood,’ Yusef told her honestly, thinking of how having Abed by his side had got him through some tough and lonely years.
‘Maybe if I’d had a sibling,’ she said quietly, ‘someone to show me love, then this would all be easier.’
Gemma turned so she could look out past the dhow towards the sea as the words spilled out.
‘But because there was no one, for a long time I assumed I was unlovable—my grandfather and later the man I thought I loved, neither of them loving me—but I’ve matured enough to know that’s not right, to know that like everyone in the world, I deserve love.’
Yusef shifted slightly and she turned to face him.
‘That’s why I won’t be your mistress—why I won’t be second best. It took me a long time to work out that accepting second best just wasn’t good enough, and I’m not going to go back on it now.’
What could he say? Offer marriage and risk chaos in his country? She seemed to understand he couldn’t do that, for she wasn’t asking it of him. And, strangely, although she was refusing his offer, she was now kissing him, kissing him gently at first but with increasing passion, taking the lead in their love-making with firm insistence, so he could only follow where she led, revelling in the erotic sensations she aroused in his body, following her as the pace increased until they rocked and gasped and fought each other for the ultimate release, a wild storm of physical delight that left them depleted, beached on the rug amid the cushions, as still as driftwood flung up on the shore.
Nothing more was said about the proposition and though Yusef felt a little foolish for having assumed she’d accept—and definitely put out that she’d turned him down—he set his feelings aside to make the best of what was left of the day. They swam again, and talked of the plans for the mobile clinics and for vaccination programmes for the children, even talked of Fajella and what lay in her future as far as schooling was concerned.
‘Maybe one day she’ll be running the clinic, or setting up new health services,’ Gemma said. Was she aware she’d ruined the day when she’d turned him down? Was this chatter her way of pretending all was well between them? ‘Who knows where fate will lead a child?’
‘I thought fate was more influential in our way of life than in yours,’ he said, and saw pain flash across her face.
‘When you grow up without your parents, you have to believe in fate, otherwise you blame yourself,’ she said, turning to face him with her arms full of bright cushions for they were packing up to leave. ‘And believing in fate gets you through bad times—you reason that although it might be picking on you now, surely it must have something better saved up for you in the future.’
He took the cushions out of her arms and drew her close, thinking of the tragic loss she’d suffered.
‘And did it?’ he asked huskily, and Gemma looked up at him and smiled then rested her head on his shoulder as she said, ‘It took a while, but eventually. The success of the centres, me getting involved with them, that’s been a huge reward. Even coming here, to this magical place, that’s special.’
Yusef brushed his hand over her wet and tangled hair, and felt something shift inside his chest. Never had he met a woman so unselfish, so giving of herself for others, and seeing the success of her own efforts as enough reward. Could it be love he felt for her?
And if it was love, then wasn’t it a good thing she’d turned down his proposition? One didn’t love one’s mistress…
She eased out of his arms and picked up the cushions he’d dropped, carrying them down to the dhow, then she returned and, turning her back, pulled on her clothes, signalling the day was over, the magic of it gone…
Was she mad, refusing his offer? Gemma pondered as she pulled on the loose trousers she’d had specially made for her adventure in Fajabal. Turning down an offer to stay on in this fabulous land? Turning down an offer of security for life?
All because she wanted some ephemeral thing called love?
She shrugged off the questions, because there were no answers. Yusef didn’t love her—couldn’t love her—and that was that.
They sailed back to the mainland, Abed appearing as if by magic as they docked.
‘I phoned him earlier,’ Yusef explained, seeing her surprise.
‘Of course,’ Gemma said. ‘You do tend to think of everything.’
‘Not quite everything,’ he said, so sombre that for a moment she wondered if he’d been expecting her to agree to his proposition and was disappointed.
Maybe just a little disappointed, she decided as he touched her lightly on the shoulder by way of farewell. But that was probably more to do with the fact that he was used to getting his own way than with her refusing him.
‘Go with Abed, he will take you safely home.’
Gemma turned and looked at the man who was, in fact, saying goodbye. There was so much she wanted to say to him, but there were no words for the emotions tangled inside her chest. She nodded her acceptance of his farewell, and moved towards Abed, feeling the strings she’d always felt between herself and Yusef breaking, one by one, hearing the echoes of their twanging in her mind…
It was a blessing that she was so busy, so caught up in setting up the women’s health service she had no time to dwell on the emotional storm she’d thrust into the very darkest corner of her mind. There was enough angst back there for it to hide, so much pain and desertion that one more lot hardly mattered.
What did matter was getting the service right. She knew from experience that the whole operation would be useless and the women wouldn’t use it unless she got it right.
In her endeavours, she’d found a champion in Yanne, who had turned up at the hospital one day and announced she’d come to work.
‘I have given the stall to my cousin, it is time she learned to run it. I will be your manager here.’
Gemma didn’t hesitate to welcome her, assuring her she could have the job. Yanne may not have typing skills, or know her way around the internet, but she knew the women the clinic would serve, and Gemma could hire other people to type, and chase up references and information on the internet.
So it was with Yanne that she first explored the desert sands Yusef had spoken of with love and longing, and though she felt pain as she stared out at the golden dunes, she hoped she hid it well.
Their second trip into the desert, three weeks after her visit to the island, brought them to the camel breeders’ camp, an area the size of a football field covered with big black tents. Yanne yelled a greeting and dark-visaged men with odd, folded turbans on their heads called back to her, apparently in welcome for she and Yanne were soon sitting by a fire, drinking strong tea, camel butter floating in it.
Gemma was wondering how muc
h of it politeness would insist she drink when a woman came hurrying towards them, calling out to Yanne, her hands moving in the air as if illustrating whatever she was saying.
‘So, we are here, our first mobile clinic, for a birth,’ Yanne said to Gemma. ‘Come, you will see now how it happens.’
The woman led the way to a smaller tent right at the edge of the encampment.
‘It is the birthing place,’ Yanne explained. ‘Like the room I suggested we set aside in the women’s house at the old palace.’
They ducked inside the tent, and found the woman in labour squatting in the middle of it, her hands clenched on a tightly bound bundle of reeds that curved like a new moon and hung suspended by leather straps from the frame of the tent. Two women crouched, one on either side of the straining woman, each holding down one of the woman’s heels.
‘It gives an anchor for her body, holding her like this,’ Yanne said, and as they watched the baby slid into view, a third woman not assisting at all but catching the newborn. ‘The baby must make his own way out, it is the custom because it proves his strength and cleverness,’ Yanne explained.
Gemma nodded, then couldn’t believe it when the woman who had caught the child, handed it, wrapped in black swaddling clothes, to her, smiling and nodding at Gemma, urging her to take the gift.
‘It is good luck to have a stranger hold the baby, but only for a short time. Now the mother will suckle him and she will stay here for forty days, while these other women care for her and for the baby so the mother gets plenty of rest.’
Forty days—it was a set period of time that recurred again and again in history, a period of time that existed in stories and beliefs in all cultures. She thought of the young mothers who, these days, often had to go back to work within weeks of having their child, and the stories of some peasant women who gave birth in field, wrapped the infant onto their back and kept working. No forty days of rest for them.
‘Will you thank them for me,’ she said to Yanne, ‘for letting me experience something so special.’
Yanne rattled off the thanks and they left the camp, Gemma feeling again the tug of longing for a child of her own…
Yusef’s child?
He was the only man she’d ever love, she knew that now, so…
Returning, weary and travel-stained to the compound, Gemma bathed, then, wrapped in one of the indigo gowns she had grown to love, she sat down to compose a report to send to him, a report, laying out all she’d seen and learned and how the plans were developing with each new experience. A practical report, although she remembered him once talking of poetry and wished it could be otherwise.
Emailing it, she checked on emails from home, then considered going to the women’s house to see if Fajella was still awake—perhaps read her a story.
Or are you hoping to run into Yusef? her head demanded, putting a stop to that plan.
Had she been wrong to turn him down? Was she foolish to have dreams of love?
She knew enough of the ways of Fajabel now to know that marrying Yusef was impossible, quite apart from the scandal it would cause and the unrest it could provoke. Marriages here were arranged, and most were political, the marriage of two people bringing together tribes in a political alliance.
So her heart would have to ache—for him and his little daughter and for her own loss—and she would learn to live with it and trust in fate, and a lot of hard work, to provide a wondrous success with the women’s and children’s centre so the excitement of that success would help ease her pain.
These thoughts haunted her as she went to bed, and stayed with her through the night so her sleep was restless, her body remembering the bliss it had shared with Yusef’s, her mind twisting and turning through a maze that had no end.
So she was pleased when the phone by her bed rang just before daybreak, releasing her from the trap her thoughts had woven.
‘I need a doctor. Can you come?’
Abed’s voice, and enough urgency in it for her to react immediately.
‘Of course,’ she said, springing out of bed, wondering where, and when, and why, but answering his desperation.
‘I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes, you know the helipad at the back of the palace.’
‘Helipad?’
Gemma’s echo was so faint Abed would probably not have heard it, but he’d hung up anyway, the phone going dead in her hands.
Helipad?
He was going to take her in a helicopter?
He was asking her to fly?
She couldn’t do it, but she had to dress and meet him there anyway. Maybe he was just flying in and from here they’d go by car to wherever it was.
Gemma was brushing her teeth, bundling her hair into a knot and wrapping a scarf around it, washing her face and dragging on clothes while fearful questions circled in her head.
A helicopter?
It must have been the tenth time it repeated itself that the real issue struck her—it wasn’t the helicopter she should be worrying about but the fact that Abed needed a doctor. For whom?
And why her, when his brother was a doctor?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE helicopter landed as Gemma hurried towards the helipad, clutching her scarf as the downdraught threatened to snatch it away. Abed climbed out as soon as the skids touched down, ducking under the still turning blades.
‘It’s Yusef,’ he said, taking Gemma’s arm and hustling her towards the little aircraft, and with those two words killed Gemma’s determination to remain on stable ground. ‘This is our rescue aircraft and I fly it often, volunteering, but I can’t get a doctor from the hospital for no one must know.’
He was yelling this in her ear, against the muted roar of the engines, but as he pushed Gemma up into a seat, he motioned to a headset and she put it on, understanding that they could talk more easily through the device.
Yusef needed a doctor but Abed couldn’t use one from the hospital? And a helicopter? Where was Yusef? Was he even alive?
It seemed to take for ever for Abed to regain his seat at the controls, and lift the little craft into the air, Gemma locking her hands in a death grip on the seat. Now he put on his headset and Gemma could ask questions—but what to ask first?
‘Yusef?’
Abed shook his head and Gemma read the pain and worry on his face.
‘There was an argument. He usually handles things better but lately he’s been unsettled, tense, upset.’
Abed didn’t add ‘since the day at the island’ but Gemma felt it in the air between them.
‘Yesterday a meeting with his brother escalated into argument and in the end, to clear the air, Yusef suggested they go out to the desert, fly the falcons for a while. It was a sport we all enjoy but he gets little time these days.’
‘Falcons?’
She was back to echoing again.
‘Hunting birds, but that’s beside the point. Yusef didn’t come back. Hassim, his brother, swears he left him with the falconer, but the falconer tells me he caged the birds and drove away while the others were still there.’
‘What others?’ Gemma asked, anxiety coiling like a spring in her stomach.
‘Hassim and Maka, who is Hassim’s shadow brother. You know about that?’
Gemma nodded, then turned towards Abed as she realised what he suspected.
‘You think they might have harmed him? Injured Yusef?’
Abed looked grim.
‘I cannot see it of Hassim, no matter how much Hassim might want the crown, but Maka, he is a strange man. He has affiliations with the oil world that I suspect are more lucrative than straightforward business deals would be.’
A chill settled around the coiled spring in Gemma’s body, and she peered out at the endless dunes rolling away below them like a golden sea.
‘But where can we look? How can we find him, just the two of us? Shouldn’t there be a full-scale search? Can’t this man be made to talk?’
‘I don’t want to start a panic,’ Ab
ed told her. ‘If the press knew he was missing, maybe dead, there would not only be an outpouring of speculation and misinformation but the power struggle that has been going on beneath the surface would erupt. Although the people’s respect for Yusef and his policies is growing every day, and the people grow to love him, they are still in wait-and-see mode as far as his ability to rule is concerned. The last thing he needs right now is a media circus.’
‘You know where he’s likely to be?’ Gemma asked, thinking they should forget the publicity angle and have a fleet of aircraft looking for him.
‘I know the area he likes to fly the falcons—and we should be able to see his vehicle.’
And that was that, Abed now concentrating on flying the machine, Gemma realising that one fear can cancel out another, for her mind was totally focussed on finding Yusef now, although she was resolute in not looking out the window of the helicopter.
‘Now, start looking. A black Range Rover.’
‘Aren’t they all?’ Gemma muttered, and she tightened her grip on the seat, told her stomach to behave, and peered out through the window. For a moment the world tilted crazily, her head swimming with the old terror, but finding Yusef was far more important than falling apart over a flight, so she steeled herself and looked again, peering down onto the waves of red-gold sand dunes, seeing ahead of them the outline of the rugged black rocky mountains.
‘We won’t see the car against the rocks,’ she said, despairing how they‘d ever find anyone in this sea of sand.
‘When the sun gets higher the shadows will shift,’ Abed told her, sweeping the helicopter this way then that, dropping lower and lower all the time, until the downdraaught sent sand spinning into the air and they had to rise again to get a clearer view.
They spotted the vehicle an hour later, when Gemma was beginning to despair and Abed was muttering about fuel problems. It was parked close to the rocky mountains, barely visible, almost hidden. Abed brought the helicopter into land about a hundred metres away, explaining that if he’d landed closer, the vehicle and anyone near it would be buried in sand from the downdraft.
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