The House of the Scissors

by Isobel Chace

His eyebrows rose, but still he said nothing.

  “I model clothes,” she added. “So you see, I do know about them!”

  His continued silence completely unnerved her. She stood up, agitatedly scratching the back of her leg with the toe of the other. “I’m very good at it!” she claimed.

  She read the contemptuous amusement in his eyes and flushed angrily, subsiding back on to the sofa, her ego completely deflated.

  “I must look out for you next time I see a copy of Vogue,” he drawled.

  “Oh,” she gasped, gnawing at her lower lip. “You might not see me in Vogue exactly. I-I do more with the off-the-peg manufacturers.”

  “I suppose you haven’t been at it very long?”

  “N-not very,” she admitted.

  “How old are you?” he asked her again.

  She wished that she could put him off with some witty, sophisticated remark that would take the mockery out of his eyes and replace it with something—warmer and kinder.

  “I’m twenty,” she said. “Very nearly twenty-one.”

  “A great age!” he teased her. “No wonder Hilary has taken to you. She’s all of eleven!”

  Arab gave him a dignified look. “There is a difference—”

  He cut her off with an explosive laugh. “There doesn’t seem to be much to me!”

  Arab straightened her back and threaded her fingers together. “Then you can’t be very observant,” she remarked.

  “Touché,” he murmured, his expression as derisive as ever. “I can see I shall have to watch you carefully.” Tea and Hilary arrived together. The African servant put the tray carefully down on one of the carved tables in front of Arab, turning the handle of the teapot towards her with a gnarled, pink-tipped hand. The cakes he put beside Hilary with a knowing grin at her uncle, turning his black face into a mirror of Louis Armstrong’s. His bare feet pattered on the wooden floor and he was gone, shutting the door carefully behind him.

  Hilary chose to ignore the tea tray. She pirouetted in front of Arab, looking dolefully down at the very pretty dress she was wearing.

  “Do you think it’s too long?” she demanded.

  Arab went on her knees beside the child, frowning as she concentrated on what she was doing. The hem was too long. She raised it to just above the knee, pinning it neatly, and sat back to have a look. “What do you think of that?”

  “It’s much better!” Hilary exclaimed, pleased. “Could you pin it all round for me? Ayah can put it up for me tonight, but if she can do it wrong, she probably will, so you need to put in a lot of pins.” Arab obediently began to pin up the hem. “I’ll do it for you while we have tea,” she offered. “I expect Ayah has enough to do without giving her a whole lot of sewing to do.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Hilary enthused. “There’s a needle and cotton in that bag with the pins.”

  She waited with difficulty while Arab finished pinning and then tore off the dress and climbed back into her jeans and T-shirt, pulling at her uncle’s arm and looking hopefully at the cake.

  “I suppose you’re hungry,” he said resignedly. He cut the cake and offered Arab the plate. “Are you really going to sew up the brat’s hem for her?” he asked her.

  Arab nodded distractedly. She helped herself to a piece of cake, putting it on the floor beside her, and threaded her needle, bending her head over her work.

  “You’d better put your cake on the table,” Hilary advised. “When the dogs come in, they’ll gobble it up down there.”

  Arab grinned at her and obligingly put her cake up beside Hilary’s. “I didn’t know you had any dogs,” she said.

  “Lucien says they aren’t real dogs,” the child returned knowledgeably. “They belong to my mother. Lucien likes big dogs, but these are only sausage dogs. They’re called Jake and Tod.”

  “They’re a living lesson in the advantages of being wholly selfish,” her uncle added. “If I dare to turn them out of the best chairs they retaliate by a concentrated session of the fidgets, or by yapping their heads off, until I allow them back up again.”

  “How odd,” said Arab, with gentle malice. “Especially as their names sound masculine.”

  Mr. Manners leaned forward in his chair. “Could I trouble you to pour the tea?”

  Arabella looked up sharply. “Certainly, Mr. Manners. Do you take milk and sugar?”

  “No sugar.” He accepted his cup and smiled blandly up at her. “I feel I ought to make some such remark as that I’m sweet enough, but you’ll probably contradict me if I do.”

  “Very probably,” she agreed.

  She went back to her sewing, sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa, her knees brought up in front of her, to hold the weight of the dress she was altering. She had always been clever with her needle and her fingers flew as she made a series of neat little stitches, turning the cloth at intervals to make sure that they didn’t show on the other side. At intervals she sipped at her tea and filled her mouth with cake, impatiently pushing her hair back behind her ears.

  Hilary lay flat on her back beside her, amusing herself by looking at her uncle upside down.

  “What colour do you think Arab’s hair is?” she asked him. “She says it’s auburn, but that’s red, and it isn’t very red, is it?”

  “Red enough,” he grunted.

  “Only in the sun. I think it’s more brown, like those polished figures that the Kamba carve.”

  Lucien made a play of studying Arab’s hair, until the colour rose in her cheeks and she pricked herself on her needle.

  “It’s like dull copper,” he said finally. “When the sun is on it, you can see what it would be like burnished—”

  “How do you burnish hair?”

  “You don’t,” he said regretfully. “But dull copper is quite enough to add pepper to its owner’s temper.”

  Arab glared at him over her sewing. “I thought dull copper was green,” she remarked.

  “As green as you are,” he agreed promptly.

  Arab bent her head lower over her sewing, wondering at the rage that consumed her. She knew he was deliberately baiting her and she resented the fact that she rose so easily to his teasing, when she would have liked to have been dignified and aloof, instead of young and flustered whenever he addressed her.

  She had finished about three-quarters of the hem when a light, feminine voice called “Hello,” in the hall outside. Lucien Manners leaped to his feet, sweeping open the door, a delighted smile on his face.

  “Come in, my dear,” he bade the unknown visitor. “I didn’t know you were back yet. How’s Nairobi?”

  “Bearing up with difficulty in your absence,” the female voice answered, laughing. “I missed you, Lucien.”

  “Is that what brought you back?” he drawled.

  “If you must know, yes,” she said.

  She stood in the doorway, her hand halfway up to her hair, to push her curls back into position. But her surprise at seeing Arab there stopped her. She gave Lucien a quick look of enquiry, and then came on into the room.

  Arabella rose slowly to her feet, feeling a fool, with Hilary’s dress hanging from her fingers, and completely overcome with self-consciousness about her tatty jeans and not very clean shirt. It would have been better if the newcomer had been different. But, despite the hot day, she looked cool and beautifully groomed. Her cool green dress could have been ironed just a few seconds before, and her shoes were so white and clean that they might never have seen any dust. Her hair was elaborately arranged in a series of curls and ringlets that framed her beautifully made-up face. Her features were not naturally beautiful, far from it, for she had indeterminate, flat features and her eyes were pale and rather small, but she certainly made the best of herself with a strong eye-liner and a make-up that made her skin look like matt silk.

  Lucien Manners took her by the hand and drew her over to one of the leather chairs.

  “I expect it’s too late for you to have tea,” he said with a gaiety that Arab had n
ot thought him capable of. “Have a drink?”

  “Mmm, I will. Something long and cool. Hullo, Hilary, what have you been doing with yourself?”

  Hilary squirmed farther away from the girl and closer to Arab. “Nothing,” she said.

  “Hilary, come and greet me properly! You don’t want me to tell your mother that you shouldn’t stay with Lucien until you learn to be a nice, good-mannered little girl, do you?”

  Hilary looked genuinely frightened. She went forward and kissed the woman on her cheek, her lips trembling.

  “Leave her alone, Sandra,” Lucien said, taking Hilary’s hand in his own and smiling down at his niece. “You can’t make children like you. Leave them alone and they come to you.”

  “If you say so, darling. Hilary is certainly devoted to you.” She turned to Arab expectantly. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  “Miss Burnett, a friend of Hilary’s—”

  “Of course, dear. Miss Burnett?”

  “Miss Arabella Burnett. Miss Burnett, this is my sister’s sister-in-law, Sandra Dark.”

  Arab held out her hand to Miss Dark, who rather pointedly ignored it. “Do you make your clothes as you go along?” she asked in light, amused tones.

  “It’s my dress!” Hilary burst out. “Arab is altering it for me.”

  “I should have thought you were old enough to do your own sewing,” Miss Dark smiled. “Did Ruth send it to you?”

  “No.” Hilary looked decidedly sulky. “Mummy isn’t anywhere near any shops. She’s in Ethiopia.”

  “I know that!” Sandra Dark eyed her niece with dislike. “But they must have some shops around—in Addis Ababa, for instance. Don’t they, Lucien?”

  “Not where Ruth is.”

  “Oh well, how was I to know? She does such queer things.” She shivered. “I wouldn’t bury myself amongst a lot of savages without a strong man to protect me. You should have stopped her going, Lucien.”

  “It’s her job,” Lucien said, with such superb indifference that Arab was left wondering if he cared at all for his sister.

  “She ought to marry again,” Sandra Dark opined.

  “She’ll never marry again!” Hilary almost spat at her.

  Sandra surveyed the child’s furious face and shrugged. “She’s certainly handicapped having you hanging round her neck,” she murmured.

  Hilary subsided on to the floor, looking bereft and lost. Arab gave her a little nudge and asked her quietly to hold the dress for her while she finished off the last few stitches.

  “There you are! One dress, altered and ready for the wearing.” She hugged Hilary to her. “Thanks for having me to tea, poppet, and for coming to my rescue at Mambrui.”

  “Are you going?” Hilary asked, near to tears.

  “It’s getting dark,” Arab pointed out. “My friends will worry about me if I don’t get back.”

  “I’ll see you out,” Lucien offered.

  He couldn’t get rid of her quickly enough, Arab thought, and she felt sorry for Hilary, whose dislike for her aunt was so obvious, a dislike that equally obviously wasn’t shared by Lucien Manners.

  She didn’t look at him as he walked beside her through the hall and stood waiting quietly as she jumped into the Mini-Moke and backed it with some difficulty around Sandra Dark’s scarlet sports car. She swore inwardly at the inconsiderate way the sports car had been left, right across the drive, making it almost impossible for Arab to get out at all. When she had finally succeeded in getting clear, she lifted a hand in salute to Mr. Manners, only to find that he had been joined at the front door by Sandra, whose voice carried clearly through the still, evening air.

  “My dear,” she said, “do you think she’s a suitable friend for Hilary? She looks dreadful!”

  Lucien’s reply was lost on her, for Arab put her foot down hard on to the accelerator and the Mini-Moke charged down the narrow drive and away through Malindi to her hotel.

  Arabella went straight to her room. The bed had been turned down, ready for the night, and the air-conditioning had been turned down in expectation of the cooler night air. Arab turned it back on flat out and the fan as well for good measure. It made a terrific racket, but she didn’t mind that. The last thing she wanted was silence in which to think.

  She stood in front of the looking glass and took a good look at herself, moving her hair this way and that to see if she looked any better some other way than hanging down her back. Her clothes, she was prepared to admit, were a disgrace. She remembered her mother telling her that shabby clothes were one thing, but there was no excuse not to be clean, and she sighed, for her jeans were far from clean and her adventures in Mambrui had done nothing to improve them. Her mother would say that Lucien’s reactions to her appearance were all her own fault, and her mother was undoubtedly right, but for some reason, that didn’t lessen the hurt that gripped her in the stomach, or her fury at that last parting shot from the expensively-clad Miss Sandra Dark.

  A knock at the door was followed immediately by Jill’s entry. The other girl flung herself down on the nearest bed, puffing with heat.

  “Where’ve you been, honey? I began to think you really had been carried off!”

  Arab frowned at her reflection. “I made friends with someone and they invited me back for tea,” she explained.

  “Until this hour?”

  Arab nodded distractedly. “I’m sorry if you were worried,” she said.

  Jill smiled comfortably. “I guess I feel a bit responsible for you,” she excused herself. “That’s what being an old married lady does for one! What are you going to wear down to dinner? They’re showing a film in the hotel tonight and I’m told the whole of Malindi will be there.”

  Arab turned round, her eyes lighting up. “Let’s dress up then, Jill, and give them all a show! I’ll wear the gold dress and you can wear the scarlet.”

  “Okay, honey, I’m agreeable. We’d better hurry up, though, if we don’t want to skimp dinner. Are you going to shower?”

  It didn’t take them long to shower and change and it was only a few minutes later when they made their way down the startlingly white outside stairs to the courtyard below. Two Frenchmen, on holiday from their space programme just off the coast, whistled when they saw them and came rapidly over to them.

  “We were so bored!” one of them said graphically. “And now you have come to rescue us, no?”

  “No,” Jill replied.

  “Mais si,” said the other one, glancing down at the wedding ring on Jill’s finger. “I too am married, but we can still amuse one another while these two make eyes at each other. My name is Jean-Pierre Dufey, and mon ami here is Jacques Bouyer.”

  Jill smiled slowly, smoothing down her scarlet skirts. “I’m Jill Gleason,” she introduced herself. “This is Arabella Burnett.”

  Arab found herself being warmly embraced by the handsome Jacques and tried not to mind when he linked her arm in his, apparently oblivious of the sweltering heat of the evening. It was hard though to resist his gaiety and when he swept her, laughing, into the dining room, holding her chair for her as she sat down, she felt a swift lightening of mood and began to enjoy herself, putting Lucien’s dismissive contempt for her at the back of her mind.

  It was not destined to stay there for very long, however. The first course had only just been taken away, and they were waiting for the curry they had ordered to be brought to them, when Jill suddenly nudged Arab’s elbow.

  “Look at that!” she whispered urgently.

  Arabella turned, looking over her shoulder to see where Jill was pointing. Coming in through the door of the restaurant came Lucien Manners and Sandra Dark.

  The oriental arches with their concealed lighting, highlighted them for an instant before they stepped forward, following the head waiter to their table. Arab had a brief glimpse of Sandra in a cream-coloured silk dress, but it was Lucien who really took her eye. He looked taller than ever in his tight black evening trousers, over which he wore a jade green coat
with lapels and piping in a darker green velvet. With his dark good looks, made the more striking by the harshness of his expression, every other man in the room paled into insignificance.

  “That’s Lucien Manners,” Arab told Jill.

  Jill was immediately impressed. “The Lucien Manners? The one who appears on those highbrow programmes on T.V., telling us all about bygone civilisations? What is he? Not just an archaeologist. I’m sure that’s too tame a description!”

  “I don’t know,” Arab confessed.

  “And who is that creature with him?” Jill went on, feasting her eyes on the exotic pair as they took their seats.

  “Sandra Dark,” Arab supplied dryly. “His sister married her brother.”

  Jill’s eyes swivelled round to rest on Arab’s face. “You know a great deal about them!” she accused.

  Arab made a face at her, aware that both the Frenchmen were looking at her curiously. “The niece was my friend of the afternoon,” she confessed. “You’ll probably meet her, because she wants to come along and watch us work one day. She’s sweet!”

  “You say that as though the uncle isn’t sweet at all,” Jill remarked.

  “He isn’t,” Arab said. She turned her back on the table where Lucien and Sandra were sitting and tried to recapture her earlier pleasure in the evening. “He’s the most ill-mannered brute I’ve ever met!”

  Something in Jill’s eyes should have warned her, but Arab was remembering exactly how he had looked at her and how he had referred to her gamin charms with such contempt.

  “He thinks women should have nothing better to do than please men!” she added bitterly. “Any woman who isn’t obedient to his every wish, meek and admiring, a—a sycophant, in fact, is an object for his masculine derision and scorn—”

  “Miss Burnett!”

  Arab dropped her fork and choked. His hand came down hard on the small of her back, depriving her of all breath. “How dare you?” she gasped. “Creeping up behind me—”

  His mocking eyes brought the colour flying into her cheeks. “I wasn’t sure it was you at first,” he said. “Fine feathers make fine birds. Borrowed plumes, Arab?”

  “N-not exactly,” she muttered. “There are perks with every trade.”