by Isobel Chace
“He took the morning off,” Hilary told her cheerfully. “It doesn’t matter! He can work on his book any time. He said so.”
“His book?”
“About the ruined cities on the East Coast,” Hilary supplied. “He knows a tremendous amount about them. All about the Chinese, and the Arabs, and the Portuguese, and later on the British. I think there were Persians too, but they’re called something else, so I’m not sure.”
“Oh!” said Arab, and then again: “Oh!”
“Lucien says,” Hilary began, “that you’re not his idea of a clothes-horse—”
“I don’t want to hear what Lucien says!” Arab snapped.
Hilary was not in the least put out. “He says—”
“Hilary!”
“But it’s interesting, Arab! Truly, it is! He says you were born for better things. What better things, do you suppose?”
“Waiting on men like him, I daresay,” Arab retorted.
“Would you like that better?” Hilary asked. “I think I should. I hate having to change my clothes all the time. I don’t think I want to be a model. I shall be an anthropologist like my mother.” She hesitated, giving the matter some intense thought. “If Lucien says I may,” she added.
Jill came to the door of the chalet, holding out her hands to Hilary. “What have you done with your handsome uncle?” she asked her.
“He’s got to go home,” Hilary told her. “He has to have lunch with Aunt Sandra. He can never get any work done when she’s here,” she went on with a remarkably adult air of fatalism. “She has to be taken everywhere! I wish she’d go back to Nairobi and leave us in peace, but Lucien says we have to be nice to her because she means well.”
“And does she?” Jill enquired, intrigued.
Hilary gave a slow, dramatic shake to her head. “I think she wants to marry him,” she said. “Mummy thinks so too. She doesn’t like either of us, and I don’t like her!”
Jill and Arab exchanged glances. “Yes, well,” Arab said, “I don’t think we ought to talk about her behind her back, do you?”
Hilary’s unblinking stare was turned full on her. “She talked about you,” she pointed out, her sense of justice much exercised by this point of morality. “She went on and on about you!”
“Poor Lucien!” said Jill, laughing.
“She did!” Hilary insisted. “She always does! She used to go on and on about Mummy, but I don’t pay any attention. Lucien says women always talk too much. He says you have to look for the meaning behind their words because they get carried away by the sound of their own voices!”
Arab made a dash at her small friend, pulling her headlong into the chalet. “Lucien says—!” she mocked her.
Hilary grinned, completely unrepentant. “He says you don’t talk too much yet because you’re no more grown up than I am!”
“So much for you, honey!” Jill chuckled, enjoying Arab’s outraged discomfiture. “No wonder he jumped to the conclusion that the gold dress was borrowed!”
Arab began taking off the hated grey dress, allowing it to slip over her hips and on to the floor. “I think,” she said loudly, “that if one can’t say something pleasant, it’s better not to say anything at all! And,” she added to Hilary, “you can tell Mr. Lucien Manners that I said that!”
“All right,” Hilary agreed obligingly. “What are you going to wear now? How about this one?” She pulled out the only evening dress of the collection, if it could be called a dress at all, for it consisted of a pair of harem trousers, made of a see-through material and lined in a contrasted colour, and a tunic of the diaphanous cloth, slim and belted. “This one would suit you, Arab.”
“How about me?” Jill protested.
But the child shook her head. “I think Arab ought to wear it. It looks Arabian!” She searched through the dresses and came up with another one, white and silver and very plainly cut. “You could wear this one,” she suggested to Jill. “The jewellery would look silly on Arab, but I think it would look nice on you.”
“Very well chosen,” Jill congratulated her. “But I think we’re doing the swim-wear next.”
“Oh, good! Are we going to actually swim?”
Jill crowed with laughter. “I doubt it! In our job, our bathing suits seldom get wet!”
There was a sharp knock at the door. Hilary ran across the room and pulled the door open, her excitement showing clearly in her face.
“Hullo, young ‘un,” said Sammy. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m visiting Arab,” Hilary told him importantly. “Do you want her?”
“Could be. Are you attached to that man who is sitting in the bar at the hotel, by any chance?”
Hilary swelled visibly with pride. “That’s my uncle, Lucien Manners!”
“Ah!” said Sammy. “The owner of the house?”
Arab pulled her robe about her and came pattering out of the bathroom where she had taken refuge. “Sammy, I told you, I can’t ask him. He wouldn’t like it, tripping over our fripperies in his own house! Please don’t make him say no!”
Sammy looked at her in surprise. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you today, Arab. I’m not asking you to ask him. I thought I’d go across and have a talk with him, that’s all. I’m calling it a day here anyway, girls. Some sand has got into the camera. For something that looks so pretty, I’d say it was one hell of a pest!”
Arab watched him stomp away across the sand to the hotel. She made a gesture of helplessness. “I wish he wouldn’t!” she sighed.
“Why, honey? You make him sound like a recluse! He’ll probably enjoy all the fuss of having us about. And if he doesn’t like the idea, he only has to say no!”
“I don’t think it’s fair to ask him!” Arab almost sobbed.
Even Hilary thought Arab’s protective attitude towards her uncle a little misjudged. “Lucien will make mincemeat of that man if he doesn’t like him!” she announced. “Don’t worry, Arab, I’ll tell him it wasn’t your idea.”
That wasn’t precisely what Arab wanted, but she began to see that she was in danger of making a complete fool of herself, so she went back into the bathroom and dressed herself in her own clothes as quickly as she could.
“Arab,” Hilary said, sitting on the edge of the bath, “did you know that the sea here is a national park? Nobody can kill any of the fishes and you have to have a licence to look at them. There are glass-bottomed boats that one can go in. I’d love to go in a glass-bottomed boat, wouldn’t you?”
Arab put a dusting of powder on her nose and grinned at Hilary in the glass.
“This afternoon?”
The little girl nodded enthusiastically. “I’ll ask Lucien! I’ll hurry, in case he’s gone to pick up Aunt Sandra, because I’m not allowed to do anything unless I tell him first.”
“Not even visit Mambrui?” Jill put in from the doorway.
Hilary chuckled. “No,” she admitted, “but Lucien forgot to ask me about that when he saw Arab. He thinks she needs looking after!”
“Well, well,” Jill drawled, as Hilary flung herself out of the chalet. “You seem to have made some impression, even if it wasn’t the one you wanted!”
“I do, don’t I?” Arab agreed with a touch of desperation. “He really is the end! What makes him think that he’s such a superior being? I feel sorry for his poor sister! I even feel sorry for Sandra Dark!”
“She was looking reasonably healthy on his treatment of her last night,” Jill remarked.
“Only because she’s as bad as he is!”
Jill whistled softly. “Honey, are you sure you dislike Lucien Manners?” she asked.
Arab tossed her head. “I don’t know what you mean!” she said. But she did know, even while she thought Jill was being ridiculous. She certainly didn’t like Lucien. Far from it! But he did have a peculiar fascination for her, if only because he scared her stiff! She had never met a man who was so self-centred, so apt to dismiss others, especially herself, as mere adjuncts
to his own comfort. No, she was in no danger of liking Lucien Manners. But she couldn’t help hoping that she would be around when some woman came along and upset his applecart. That woman might be Sandra Dark, but Arab didn’t think so. He would marry Sandra because she wouldn’t ruffle his existence, but Arab couldn’t help hoping that someone else would come along, charming and elegant, who would knock him and his ideas for six! She couldn’t quite imagine such a woman, but she was certain that such a fabulous being must exist and she, Arab, would be rooting for her all the way!
She walked with Jill over to the hotel, wincing away from the heat of the midday sun. She could hear Sammy’s voice from a long way off, telling some joke that he had heard the week before in London.
Lucien stood up as the two girls came into the bar. Arab searched his face, trying to find some sign as to whether Sammy had asked him about his house and what his reaction had been. His eyes met hers and he raised his eyebrows a fraction.
“What will you have to drink?” he asked Jill. “Arab, I’m sure, will join Hilary in having lemonade.”
Jill smiled. “I’ll do the same,” she said, amused by Arab’s indignant face.
Lucien gave the order and sat down again. “You were saying, Mr. Silk,” he said.
Sammy’s customary morose expression lifted for a triumphant moment. “Am I a fool then to question my good luck? I shall be thankful to get off this beach, I can tell you, Mr. Manners. If you want the final say in which dresses Arab models, that’s okay with me—and with her! I’ll just be glad to get myself inside, out of this flaming sun!”
Arab jumped. “Wh—what did you say?” she demanded hoarsely.
Lucien paid for their drinks, glancing at his wrist-watch. “I must be off, or Sandra will come gunning for me!”
“But, Lucien, what about the glass-bottomed boat?” Hilary pleaded with him.
Lucien stopped immediately, smiling down at his niece. “If Arab wants to take you, that’s all right with me! Perhaps Jill will go with you, to make sure you don’t drown each other?”
Jill cast him a flashing smile, such as she usually reserved for her much loved husband. “How kind of you to think of it, Mr. Manners,” she said. “I’d love to go with them!”
CHAPTER FOUR
HILARY was delighted when Sammy Silk, Jill, and Arab all agreed to go home with her for lunch
“We’ll come back later and go out in the glass-bottomed boat, but I’m hungry now, aren’t you?” She looked round the assembled group. “It will be fun having you around all the time!”
Sammy Silk patted her shoulder with a pudgy hand. “We’re looking forward to it, sweetheart. We owe you a big debt for getting Arab out of trouble at Mambrui, you know that?”
Hilary preened herself. “You’ll love Lucien’s house!” she said.
Sammy did. Arab watched him uncertainly as he prowled round the ruined rooms at the back of the house. It was the first time she had seen them herself and she was quite overcome by the graceful arches, the flower-covered courtyards, and the crumbling pools where once the ladies of the household had bathed amongst the waterlilies.
“Is it what you wanted?” she asked Sammy.
“You ask me that? Have you no eyes in your head to see what we have here? This is going to be the best work I’ve ever done, and that’s saying something! Arab, duckie, you may not have it all, but you certainly have something! And it’s all laid on for us by the great Lucien Manners! You’ve never worked better, sweetie, believe me! Nice work!”
Arab felt slightly sick. “I didn’t do anything,” she muttered.
Sammy shrugged his plump shoulders. “Have it your own way! Have everything your own way! What a place! What good fortune!”
“But I didn’t!” Arab felt impelled to insist. “I wish you hadn’t asked him, Sammy.”
“Want to keep him all to yourself, eh? Don’t worry, we shan’t do anything to cramp your style!”
“I don’t even like him,” Arab said. “I’m only a friend of Hilary’s.”
Sammy laughed. His whole body heaved with the effort. Arab couldn’t recall that she had ever seen him laugh before, and she turned her eyes away from the spectacle, glad that he didn’t laugh more often.
“You’re a deep one!” he chided her.
“Don’t, Sammy!”
He stopped laughing and looked puzzled instead. “Okay, my sweet, I won’t. I’m grateful enough to you for making it possible for us to come here. This is some place!”
Arab was relieved to see him turning back into the morose, rather unhappy man that she thought she knew. He had always been kind to her and lie had never said anything out of the way in her presence, though she knew that his language was not always so moderate, and in a way she liked him. She liked him because he didn’t worry her, and she didn’t want things to change now for no better reason than that she had become friends with Lucien Manners’ niece.
“I can’t understand why he allowed it!” she exclaimed. “He can’t realise what it will be like, having all our gear all over his place for days on end!”
Sammy gave her an odd look. “Don’t you? Wake up, Arabella! Or perhaps someone ought to set about waking you up. I think I’d be doing this Lucien fellow a favour at that!”
“I don’t understand what you mean!”
Sammy heaved a sigh. “That’s what I mean! Don’t you know that you’re a charming—”
“Gamin charm!” Arab interrupted him heavily.
Sammy surveyed her briefly. “I reckon that’s quite an apt description at that. Is that what he said to you?”
Arab nodded. “It isn’t a compliment.” she assured him. “I looked it up in the dictionary. It means a neglected boy—a street arab!”
“Perhaps that’s what he likes about you?”
Arab rejected the suggestion out of hand. “No, he likes his women soignée and sophisticated, like Sandra Dark.”
“Did he also tell you that?” Sammy asked.
“He didn’t have to,” Arab replied. She hesitated, wondering how she had ever begun such a conversation—and with Sammy of all people! “I don’t like superior people! I don’t think he’s so marvellous!”
“Don’t you, Arab?” Sammy sounded amused, and Arab was afraid that he might laugh again and she looked away hastily in case he did. “I think, maybe, you have some growing up to do.”
“I am grown up!” Arab declared.
“Let’s see how much.” Sammy put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her towards him. Arab winced away from him in a fury, but it was to no avail. He was stronger than she was and he had had the advantage of surprising her. He did not kiss her, though, as she expected. He merely hugged her and let her go. “I’d say you still have some growing to do,” he said.
Arab turned on her heel and hurried back into the inhabited part of the house, feeling as though the bottom of her world had dropped out. What was the matter with everyone? It was all Lucien Manners’ fault! He had begun it all by making her self-conscious, which she had never been in her life before. And he had finished it off by agreeing to the unit using his house, making it necessary for her to see more of him than she would do otherwise. And, what was worse, he would probably come along, as if by right, and watch her work, with that contemptuous look in his eyes that made her feel smaller than the smallest insect, and a repulsive insect at that! No wonder he squashed her whenever he opened his mouth!
Jill was lounging in one of the leather chairs in the sitting room, her mouth slightly open as she studied the carved ceiling.
“You have to admit that the man suits his background!” she said, without bothering to look at Arab. ‘‘I’m flat with admiration for both of them! I can’t wait to tell my better half all about it!”
“Sammy seems pleased,” Arab said.
“Pleased! Darling, he’s ecstatic!” She sat up straight, eyeing Arab’s face curiously. “What’s the matter, hon?” she asked. “Afraid we’ll tread on your toes?”
Arab sho
ok her head. “Of course not! I’m tired of telling everyone that there’s nothing to tread on anyway! I just don’t like him. Isn’t that enough?”
“Could be. I’d say only you and he know that.”
“You’re as bad as Sammy!” Arab accused her.
“Well, dear, what can you expect? He may treat you like a child—okay, I’ll admit that he does treat you like a child. But he seems to be going all out to protect you at the same time.” She laughed, pulling down the corners of her mouth in mock envy. “No more grey dresses for you, love!” she teased.
Arab’s hands fell to her sides in a dejected gesture. “I can’t understand it!” she said. Her eye kindled as she thought about the absent Lucien Manners. “But I’ll get to the bottom of it, if it’s the last thing I do!”
Jill looked concerned, but then she smiled. “You do that, love! It should make for a really interesting conversation!”
It was difficult for Arab to keep her anger at the boil, though, throughout that afternoon. She had seldom enjoyed herself more. The meal was perfect, with Hilary sitting in her uncle’s beautifully-polished carver at the head of the table, playing the part of hostess to perfection. The servants played up to her too, enjoying her small triumph as much as the child did. Even Sammy, who was more at home in an English pub with a half of bitter in one hand, made gallant noises about the food and drink and told Hilary that she had the same poise and charm as her uncle.
Hilary was highly flattered. “Lucien says I’m very like my mother,” she told him politely. “He says—” Arab caught her eye and the child choked with laughter. “But he did! He says my mother will approve of Arab—”
“I don’t believe you!” Arab said, opening her eyes very wide.
“He did! He did! And I think so too!”
Jill laughed and then she stopped. “Do you tell your uncle what Arab says too?” she asked Hilary.
The child shook her head, looking wary. “No,” she said.
Arab grinned at her. “I can breathe again!”
“Why not?” asked Jill.
Hilary took a deep breath, eyeing Arab uneasily. “Because he told me Arab wouldn’t like it!” she said with a rush. “But he doesn’t mind because he’s used to being quoted and he thinks twice before he says anything.”