Oasis of the Heart

by Jessica Hart

  They were walking through a bizarre landscape of scattered boulders and vast pillars of rock, eroded by the wind into fantastic shapes. There was no path and Cairo couldn't help marvelling at how easily Max moved among the stones, always knowing-exactly where he was going. He walked with a cat's deliberate, instinctive grace, never hesitating, never stumbling or puffing or puzzling over whether to go to the right or the left. He didn't seem to notice the heat. He just kept on walking with that sure tread, a quiet, capable figure that seemed part of, rather than intimidated by, the harsh surroundings.

  Panting behind him, Cairo envied him his utter confidence. She was sure that she must look quite, quite alien out here. Still, the desert was somehow less threatening today. After the barren, looming gorge, this part of the plateau seemed full of life. 'It rained here about a month ago, for the first time in thirty years,' said Max when Cairo stopped to exclaim at a clump of brilliant yellow flowers growing out of bare rock. 'You're lucky to see it like this.'

  After that, Cairo noticed clumps of flowers everywhere among the stones, and in the wadis, where the water had run, there were even great bushes of pink dog roses apparently thriving in the parched ground. Butterflies danced in the air, and for a few yards Cairo was accompanied by what looked suspiciously like a cabbage white, far from the English gardens where she was used to seeing them.

  If only she hadn't been accompanied far more persistently by Max's disapproval, she might even have been enjoying herself, Cairo thought in some surprise as she followed his lean figure out of a narrow passage between the rocks and stopped in delight at the sight of a pale green field spread out before her.

  'How lovely!' she exclaimed and walked forward with a smile, only to stare in horrified disbelief a moment later as the "grass" began to rise up around Max as he moved through it ahead of her.

  Looking down, Cairo realised that she was standing at the edge of a carpet of insects, and she gave a strangled cry of revulsion as she clapped her hands to her eyes and took a rapid step backwards.

  'What is it?' Max demanded impatiently, turning round.

  'These... these things!' she stammered in horror as she lowered her hands cautiously. 'What are they?'

  'Locusts.' He cast a dispassionate eye over the swarm. 'They'll have started breeding with the rain. Looks like they might have the making of a plague here, doesn't it?'

  'How can you be so casual about them?' Cairo cried. 'It's like some kind of horror story! They're absolutely revolting!'

  'On the contrary,' said Max. 'The locals grill them on skewers as a delicacy.'

  He glanced at her and grinned. 'Want some for supper tonight?'

  Cairo screwed up her face. 'Ugh, how disgusting!' She threw him a pleading look. 'Do we have to walk through them? Couldn't we go round?'

  'No, we couldn't.' Max gestured at the carpet of insects stretching out towards the sides of the valley. 'It would take hours to find an alternative route, and I'm not going out of my way just because you can't cope with a few perfectly inoffensive creatures.'

  'A few! There are millions of them!'

  'Don't be so pathetic,' he said unsympathetically, setting off once more.

  'Come on, they won't hurt you.'

  'I can't!'

  'Yes, you can,' he called over his shoulder. 'If you can deliberately strand yourself in the desert and climb that gorge without complaining, you can do this.'

  Cairo looked after him in surprise. It was the nearest he had ever come to a compliment, and it was enough to make her screw up her courage and take a tentative step into the loathsome mass of insects. The baby locusts sprang out of the way of her feet and, disturbed, the older ones rose up with a whirr around her knees. She shuddered as they brushed against her bare legs. If only she had some trousers instead of these shorts!

  Max had turned round and was watching her halting progress with a resigned expression. 'Hurry up!'

  'I'm coming,' she snapped, and then cringed as one of the locusts flew up around her face. 'Ugh!'

  Max sighed, exasperated. 'For heaven's sake!' He strode back towards her through the locusts and seized her hand, practically dragging her along with him. 'We'll never get anywhere at this rate.'

  Cairo clung to him, pathetically grateful for the reassuring clasp of his fingers. His hand was strong and cool, calloused against the softness of her palm, and she focused on the feel of his fingers around hers as the locusts sprang and whirred around them.

  She must have clutched at him, for he glanced down at her tense face. 'All right?' he asked.

  Cairo nodded without speaking. She was staring straight ahead, concentrating on not looking down at the mass of insects around her feet.

  'Poor Cairo; I don't suppose you counted on locusts when you planned this trip.'

  At the unaccustomed note of sympathy in his voice, Cairo did look up. His expression held a strange mixture of exasperation, resignation and reluctant amusement, and the colour rose in her cheeks as her gaze dropped.

  'I didn't count on any of it,' she admitted. She certainly hadn't counted on Max Falconer. 'You must be delighted.'

  'Why?' Max sounded puzzled.

  'Every time I make a fool of myself, you must think I'm just proving your point about how useless I am,' she said a little bitterly.

  'Your trouble is that you're just not designed to survive somewhere like this,' said Max, not ungently. 'You've got that gloss of a creature made for luxury.'

  'It doesn't take long for the gloss to wear off when you can't have a hot shower or wash your hair,' she sighed, and Max gave one of his unexpected, heart- shaking grins.

  'This is obviously going to be a character-building experience for you, Cairo. Surviving swarms of locusts and not washing your hair for a few days. What greater test of character could a girl have?'

  'I don't want my character built,' Cairo said, a shade sulkily, hating the fact that he was finding her loathing of these horrible insects so amusing. The air was filled with the strange click and hum of millions of wings, and, in spite of herself, her fingers tightened around Max's hand.

  'I think you might find it getting built anyway,' said Max with some amusement. 'Still, if you think you don't need any help...' He made as if to release her hand, and Cairo gasped, clutching frantically at him.

  'Don't let me go!'

  She spoke instinctively, and regretted it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. They seemed to hang in the air, charged with hidden meaning. Max had raised one eyebrow, and Cairo met his gaze, her green eyes mute with appeal. 'I mean...please...?'

  Max gave a strange, rather twisted smile and took a firm grip of her hand once more. 'Don't worry, Cairo, I'll keep good hold of you.'

  They crossed the plain in silence. Cairo was humiliatingly aware of how pathetic he must think her, but she clung to his hand until at last the swarm thinned and then cleared. Once back on clear, stony ground, Max stopped and looked down at their linked hands.

  'Are you OK now?'

  'Yes.' Cairo's cheeks beneath her hat were scarlet. 'Thank you,' she muttered.

  She felt stupidly lop-sided walking on her own without Max's fingers clasped impersonally around hers. He walked ahead of her, and she watched his back, trying to ignore the absurd tingling of her hand where he had held it.

  She must pull herself together, Cairo scolded herself. She was supposed to be doing a job up here, not mooning along wishing Max was still holding her hand. She took her camera out in an effort to convince herself, and Max, how professional she was at heart, and took several shots as they went along to give Haydn Deane some idea of the scenery, but deep down she was beginning to think that Max was right. Now that she had climbed the plateau for herself, she could see that there was no way they could do a shoot up here. It would be impossible to get everyone up here, and, although she supposed she could hire some mules to carry up the equipment, she could just imagine how it would go down when she told the fashion team that they would have to sleep out with the jackals. Th
ey were used to five-star hotels, not a sleeping mat under the stars. Just like her.

  Cairo looked around her at the dramatic rockscape and tried to visualise a shoot in progress. Expensive outfits on elegant girls, boxes of make-up, cameras, people with clipboards; they would all be bizarrely out of place, she realised. Max thought the same thing about her, she thought with an unconsciously wistful sigh.

  Depressed at the thought that this whole nightmare trip might have been for nothing, Cairo trudged after Max. The worst thing was knowing that she couldn't just give up and go home. She would have to stick with him until he decided to go back down to the camp.

  Max had stopped in the shade ahead and was waiting for her. Cairo had yet to get used to the fact that a landscape which consisted exclusively of rocks could be so varied. Sometimes it was flat and rubbly; at others they had to walk through narrow crevices between high rock walls. One minute they would be picking their way around enormous boulders, and the next crossing a plain studded with tall, thin pillars of rock, with huge round stones perched precariously on top, as if some giant had been amusing himself in seeing just how big a boulder he could balance on each narrow base.

  Max was waiting below a massive outcrop that jutted out above his head.

  The cliffs here were fissured with crevices and narrow gulleys. Cairo glanced down them as she passed. Some disappeared into darkness, other opened out into a warren of rock passages and clearings.

  Max's eyes narrowed slightly as he saw Cairo's dispirited expression.

  'What's the matter?'

  'Nothing,' Cairo sighed as she dropped into the shade, glad to escape the hammering sun. 'At least, nothing more than usual. I was just thinking how impossible it's going to be to organise a shoot up here.' She looked up at him, green eyes bright with a touch of her old defiance. 'Well, go on, say "I told you so"!'

  Max squatted down beside her and pushed his hat back on his head. His cool eyes were light with amusement. 'I told you so,' he said obligingly.

  Cairo shot him a sour look. 'I'll have to find some alternative locations, I suppose, but I can't do that while I'm stuck up here with you. When are you planning to go back down?'

  'When I'm good and ready, Cairo, and not before,' said Max unhelpfully.

  'You are, as you so graciously put it, stuck up here with me until I've finished what I came up here to do. I don't need to remind you that you weren't invited, do I?' The grey eyes looking into hers were implacable.

  'No,' she muttered sullenly. 'I got myself into this, so now I'll just have to lump it.'

  'I couldn't have put it better myself,' said Max with a grim smile as he straightened. 'I want to check out this area, so I'll leave you to feel sorry for yourself. You'll feel better about things after a rest, anyway. Stay here and, whatever you do, don't wander off where I can't find you again. I won't be that long.'

  Cairo nodded dully and watched him disappear down one of the crevices, her mind already worrying away at the problem of what to do about a location for the shoot. She would have to be very careful not to set up any backs at Haydn Deane by telling them that the idea of using the plateau for a shoot was totally impractical. The best thing to do would be to come up with some alternatives and take back the arrangements as a fait accompli ... but when was she going to have the time to do that? Max was quite capable of keeping her here for longer than he needed to just to teach her a lesson!

  Somewhere in the distance, she could hear him whistling unconcernedly. It was all right for him. He didn't have to report back to Haydn Deane next week. Piers had grandly promised that she would come back with all the arrangements in place, and they were unlikely to be impressed if she turned up late with nothing to show for her recce but sore feet!

  Cairo's mind circled fretfully around the problem until the timeless silence of the desert began to take effect. She couldn't do anything about it at the moment, she realised, and leant back against the cool stone. She wondered what Max was doing. He must be delighted that she had had to accept that he had been right in the first place. Still, some men would have crowed a lot more, Cairo admitted fairly. He had been much nicer today, now she came to think about it. Once or twice she had surprised that amused look in his eyes, and he really looked quite different when he smiled...

  There was something reassuringly capable about him, too. He had kept her warm last night, and helped her through all those horrible locusts, although he could just have easily told her that she would have to cope by herself. He had been pretty dour yesterday, but it wasn't surprising that he hadn't welcomed the idea of some hopeless female foisting herself upon him, Cairo went on to herself in large-minded spirit. She had been argumentative too.

  No wonder he had been so grumpy. It wasn't his fault she had made such a rash decision. From now on she would be quiet and accommodating, and perhaps he might realise that she had learnt her lesson and change his mind about staying on the plateau.

  It was very quiet. Cairo sat quite still, speculating about Max and whether, if she got to know him any better, he would turn out to be much nicer than she had given him credit for up to now, until, like a cold trickle running down her neck she realised she hadn't heard Max's whistle for some time.

  She glanced at her watch. She had been sitting here for nearly an hour.

  Surely he should have been back by now? The silence seemed to intensify until it was like a dead weight, and she got to her feet in a sudden rush of panic.

  'Max?' she called in a thin, high voice, but the only answer was a deep, mocking silence. 'Max?' she called again, more urgently this time.

  Nothing.

  She forced herself to wait for five more minutes while her heart thudded apprehensively. She had never felt so alone; even the butterflies seemed to have deserted her. She wouldn't even have minded seeing a locust right then.

  At least it would prove that she wasn't the only creature alive on the planet.

  Her ears strained to hear some indication that Max was near by, but the harder she listened, the more deafening the silence became.

  When the five minutes were up, she moved hesitantly towards the crevice where Max had vanished. He had told her to stay where she was, but what if something had happened to him?

  Cairo peered down the crevice and called his name once more. It echoed eerily off the rock, and she shivered in spite of the heat. The thought of disappearing into an opening like this was all too reminiscent of the horror films she had seen where the heroine went off on her own. Cairo had always groaned and knew she would never be that stupid.

  'Oh, pull yourself together,' she snapped out loud and stepped cautiously into the crevice. Max might be lying hurt while she dithered around out here.

  It was dark and narrow inside, but she felt her way gingerly through to the far side where she came out suddenly into a blaze of light. She found herself in a large well, strewn with boulders. A number of passageways led off from the sheer cliffs that rose up all around. Max might be down any of them!

  Cairo pressed her hands to her cheeks and tried to think sensibly. She mustn't panic! She moved warily into the light just as Max materialised from a cleft in the rock. •

  'What are you doing here?' he demanded behind her.

  Cairo's nerves were so taut that she screamed and spun around, both hands clasped to her throat, green eyes wide with shock.

  Max raised an irritable eyebrow. He looked solid and distinct against the pale rock and his hat was tilted back on his head. 'What on earth's the matter with you?'

  'You startled me,' she gasped. Her heart was hammering so hard she could hardly breathe.

  'You shouldn't be wandering around here,' Max said sternly. 'I told you to stay where you were. Can't you ever do as you're told?' The lightness of his grey-green eyes unsettled Cairo every time. They were so unexpected in that severe, sunburnt face. It wasn't even as if he was particularly handsome. The angular planes of his face were too hard, the line of mouth and jaw too uncompromising. There were creases a
t the edges of his eyes, as if he had spent too many years narrowing his gaze against the glare.

  Suddenly realising that she was staring, Cairo wrenched her eyes away from his face, embarrassed to realise how joyful she was to see him again. 'I came to look for you,' she explained awkwardly. 'You'd been gone so long, I thought something might have happened to you.'

  'I'm quite capable of looking after myself,' he said ungratefully. 'Which is more than I can say for you. You could easily have got lost wandering around these crevices. In future, please do as you're told and stay where I can find you.'

  'Well, when you're trapped somewhere with a broken leg, don't expect me to come and find you!' Cairo snapped, quite forgetting her earlier appreciation of how difficult she had made things for Max and her resolve not to aggravate him any more. 'I won't waste any effort worrying about you in future!'

  'There's no need to get on your high horse,' Max retorted. 'If you bothered to think at all, you'd realise that I'm merely concerned about your safety.'

  They glared at each other, tight-lipped, until Max took off his hat, ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of exasperation, and jammed the hat back on his head with a sigh. 'Since you're here, you might as well come and see what I've found.'

  He led her down the cleft to another, smaller clearing. 'Look over there,' he said, pointing towards an overhanging rock. It sheltered a series of primitive rock paintings done in ochre. Hunters, women and children, giraffe and cattle and dogs and abstract figures covered the rock, sometimes overlapping each other.

  Cairo stood silently before them, marvelling that such simple lines could be so expressive of life and movement. 'Who painted this?' she asked at last.

  'We don't really know,' said Max quietly. The brittle tension between them had subsided as quickly as it had exploded, and they stood close together, awed by the vivid images of a vanished past. 'The Sahara used to be a much more fertile place,' he went on. 'We assume that there were nomadic tribes who passed through here thousands of years ago, but we don't know for sure.' He pointed towards a painting of a man clearly running with a spear. 'It looks as if they were hunters, but these paintings are almost all they left behind. You can find them all over the plateau. Most of them are still to be discovered; I only came across these by accident.'