The House of the Scissors

by Isobel Chace

  “Perhaps.” Ruth blinked at the picture of her sister-in-law drawing Sammy Silk’s arm through hers. Sammy was scowling and Sandra pathetically eager to please him. “Poor Sandra!” Ruth said again.

  “Oh, but,” Arab began, “she hasn’t any long-term plans in the rag trade. She—she’s coming back. She wants to look at Lucien’s house in England.”

  Ruth’s eyes widened. “Lucien’s house? That’s rubbish, my dear. Our parents live in the only house the Manners have in England, and they and Sandra are like chalk and cheese! I doubt very much if she’ll even visit them!”

  “But she said—” Arab sounded flustered and a bit hurt. “I suppose she was trying to be kind—”

  Ruth flashed her a quick look. “Sandra has never bothered to be kind. It would never occur to her. But I must say, this fellow doesn’t look very kind either. I hope Sandra doesn’t get hurt!”

  “Sammy wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

  “You may be right.” Ruth turned her back on the garden. “It looks to me as though Sandra may have to pay dearly for taking your job. Is this Sammy married?”

  Arab shook her head. “He’s a widower. Jill is the only married person in the outfit. She’s been staying here with me ever since I broke my ankle,” she said hastily. “I’d have gone back to the hotel otherwise.”

  The twinkle came back into Ruth’s eyes. “Can you stagger out into the garden?” she asked. “I think I’d like to meet your friends. Hilary’s letters didn’t say much about them.”

  “They wouldn’t!” Arab retorted. “Every paragraph would begin with ‘Lucien says—just like her conversation!”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” Ruth defended her daughter. “Every other paragraph began with ‘Arab says’! So there!”

  Arab blushed scarlet, wondering what she could have said that would have been interesting to Hilary. “I hope I haven’t been misquoted,” she said in a stifled voice.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” Ruth teased her. “Hilary is almost always accurate, especially when she likes the people concerned. I think she’s quite astute for her age.”

  Arab wished she knew what Hilary had said about her, but as she couldn’t very well ask, she struggled on to her feet and began to propel herself across the room towards the french windows. Sammy had shaken off Sandra and was standing a little apart from the others, staring gloomily at a hibiscus flower. Arab, who had never looked at him in any other light other than as an employer, thought suddenly that despite his weight and build there was a romantic air about him. He had a dissipated, Byronic look that might appeal to Sandra. Was that what Ruth had seen? Arab felt a stirring of interest, but her spirits refused to respond. It was too good to be true! Sandra would work on Sammy for her own ends, but she would be back to reclaim Lucien as soon as she was ready, and there was nothing that Arab could do about it.

  “I thought you’d be rejoicing, Sammy,” she said to his back. “I want you to meet Lucien’s sister.”

  He turned, frowning. “Oh yes?” He dismissed Ruth with a scowl. “I have to talk to you, Arab. We’re flying to Nairobi tomorrow evening, ready to fly home the day after.” His frown became directly addressed to her. “You’re not coming with us. I’m taking Sandra instead.”

  “But you can’t!”

  His mouth turned down at the corners. “You must have seen it coming!” he said angrily. “Sandra is of more use to me than you are in your present state. Besides, you’ve got yourself a comfy job for the moment. Why not settle for that?”

  “Because I came out here with you and I mean to go home with you!”

  “You can follow, when you’re feeling better. It isn’t the end of the world, duckie. Am I an ogre now, for you to be looking at me like that?”

  Arab winced. “You don’t understand! I can’t stay here!”

  “You’ll have to! There isn’t another seat on the plane. This is the tourist season and all the planes are full—”

  “Why can’t Sandra wait for a seat?” Arab pleaded.

  “Because I want to work with her as soon as we get back to England,” Sammy declared brutally. “Heaven knows when you’ll be working again! You look wretched after that bout of malaria and you’re so thin, your bones are showing. I’m doing you a favour, love. This work was never really in your line anyway.”

  Arab threw all caution to the winds, her temper rising. “I suppose I can thank Sandra for that last judgement too?” she suggested.

  Sammy glared at her. “She noticed you were looking poorly. Surely you don’t resent that? What’s the matter with you? Always you’ve shown far too little temperament and now, when we can do without it, you look mad enough to be a full-blown star!”

  “I won’t be left behind!”

  Sammy shrugged his shoulders. “If you can find yourself a seat, come by all means!”

  Arab went very white. She limped away from him as fast as she could, blindly looking about her for some kind of refuge from his cruelty. How could she stay? It had not been fair to Lucien in the first place, when he had taken her in because she was ill, but to do this to him was too much. It put them both in a false position. And what on earth were her parents going to say?

  Jill watched her move away by herself, feeling bitter that Sammy should have found it necessary to hurt anyone so vulnerable. She thought she had a very good idea of how Arab was feeling, but at least she would be safe with Lucien Manners. He wasn’t the kind of man to take advantage of someone as innocent, so downright young as Arab! She sighed and went over to her.

  “He told you at last, honey?”

  Arab nodded. “I know it’s his fault, but somehow I can’t help blaming Sandra even more. She’d better not come anywhere near me this evening—I could tear her limb from limb!”

  Jill suppressed a smile. “You look fierce enough to do it, but I fancy that she can run faster than you can at the moment!”

  “Just as well!” Arab grunted.

  “Yes, that’s all very well, but weren’t your parents going to meet you, hon? Why don’t you write them a nice long letter and I’ll give it to them the moment we arrive. They’ll be worried about you and it will ease their mind if I can tell them you are all right.”

  “I’m not all right.”

  “Of course you are, love. I’ve just been talking to Hilary’s mum. Now, she’s a darling—quite unlike that sister-in-law of hers! She’s agreed to take over where I leave off as far as you’re concerned, so I’ll be able to tell your parents that at least.”

  “Oh no!” said Arab.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you like her?”

  Arab nodded helplessly. “Of course I do! But I wish you could get it out of your head that I need a permanent bodyguard. I shall be twenty-one in one week’s time!”

  But Jill refused to take any such protest seriously. “More a nurse than a bodyguard!” she smiled. “You keep a tight hold of nurse, my pet, or you will be finding something worse!”

  “It couldn’t be worse! What will Lucien think? How can Sammy do this to me?” Arab’s voice rose in a crescendo of humiliation. “I don’t even know how long I have to foist myself on him!”

  Jill looked smug. “But that’s what I’m trying to tell you, if you’d only listen, instead of feeling sorry for yourself. You’re staying here from now on as Mrs. Dark’s guest. It has nothing to do with Lucien. And that, my hot-headed friend, was her idea, so don’t go blaming me for it!”

  “Really?” Arab’s relief knew no bounds. She saw Ruth Dark standing by herself on the other side of the lawn and, grasping Jill by the hand, she began the painful journey across the grass to her side.

  “You manage that ankle of yours pretty well!” Ruth congratulated her.

  Arab took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she burst out. “Sammy shouldn’t have done it! I’ll go on the first available plane, I promise you!”

  Ruth put her hands on her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll love having you! And unless my dear sister-in-law
has changed a lot, I daresay this was all her idea and that poor Sammy is merely being played along. The joke is that Sammy looks quite like a shark and big game fishing is outside Sandra’s usual league.” She tried to look penitent and failed. “I’m not usually catty,” she added. “It’s one of the less delightful side-effects of being anywhere near Sandra, I’m afraid!”

  “And you don’t mind?” Arab insisted, still white with misery.

  Ruth’s eyes twinkled mercilessly. “It’s one of the reasons I came flying home,” she assured her. “Hilary wrote that Lucien had said—”

  It was Jill who groaned. “Oh no! Mrs. Dark, I’m devoted to your daughter, but her hero-worship for your brother is very hard to bear!”

  “That’s nothing,” said Ruth. She grinned, looking very like Lucien indeed. “You haven’t heard me quoting my brother yet! I hero-worship him too! And I have strong hopes of another convert!” She chuckled. “Hilary says—” she began.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ARAB hadn’t seen Hilary all day. All afternoon she had been hoping that the child would come and find her, because she wanted her to go with her to Malindi’s minute airport to see the others off on the first leg of their journey to England. She had decided that she had , to go, although she could easily have missed seeing either Sammy or Sandra ever again. But Jill had wanted her to be there to wave her goodbye, and Arab hadn’t had the heart to refuse.

  Ruth had proved to be an easy hostess. She had kept Arab entranced with her stories of her doings in Ethiopia. At breakfast, she had told them all about a young girl who had walked a hundred miles to obtain a love potion to give to her ancient husband.

  “That’s nothing!” Hilary had said with contempt. “There’s a man who lives near here who has eighty wives. He’s a witch-doctor!”

  Her mother had laughed. “He sounds a successful one!” she had agreed.

  Even Lucien had listened closely to his niece’s romancing about this man. “Where did you hear about him?” he had asked her.

  Hilary had grinned. “They were talking about him in the African market,” she had said. “They have a very good line in gossip down there.”

  It was shortly after breakfast that Hilary had disappeared. Ruth and Lucien had gone out for the day with friends.

  “Take a taxi to the airport,” Lucien had bidden Arab. “We’ll pick you up there and bring you home.”

  “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” she had murmured, anxious not to be a nuisance.

  “Ruth wishes to go,” he had answered. “I think she has something to say to Sandra.”

  Arab had frozen. “All right,” she had said, “I’ll see you there. I’ll go in the same taxi as Jill.”

  “I thought you might,” he had drawled.

  The house had been very quiet after they had gone. Arab had spent the morning working. Lucien had left her a whole lot of notes on the ancient trading of the Indian Ocean, long before the European had made his mark on that area. It was a fascinating saga of brave men, ships, gold, silver and ivory. East African metals were superior to those of India and the best swords were those which were fashioned from them. Later, when the Europeans had taken over most of the trade, they became convinced that their civilisation had always been superior to those of the Indian Ocean. The many surviving monuments in India had been an uncomfortable reminder that this was not so, but along the East Coast of Africa the cities had fallen into ruin and had been swallowed up by the surrounding vegetation. European superiority had reigned supreme.

  But even this story, with the side issue of the slave trade coming and going to reveal the darker side of ancient trading, failed to enthral Arab as it usually did. The house was too silent.

  She had her solitary lunch to the accompaniment of the wireless. She tried asking the African servant where Hilary was, but he didn’t understand her question. By the time she had finished her meal she was really worried. She told herself that Hilary would be out somewhere with Ayah, .but she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that something was wrong.

  With some difficulty she crossed the garden, her book in her hand, intending to find a shady place in the ruined harem which she hoped would be cooler than inside the house. It took her a long time to hobble over the rough ground and once she nearly fell. She recovered herself, ruefully staring down at the plaster on her foot, when a lazy call from under a nearby mango tree made her look up. She was astonished to see Ayah reclining on the ground, smiling broadly at her.

  “Ayah!” she exclaimed. “Where’s Hilary?”

  Ayah yawned sleepily. “Memsahib Kjana has her mother to see to her today,” she answered somewhat huffily.

  “But Memsahib Dark has gone out with the Bwana!”

  Ayah’s eyes grew round with panic. “You sure of that? You sure?”

  Arab nodded. “I haven’t seen Hilary since breakfast,” she said. “There was no sign of her when the others left.”

  “But where she gone? She very naughty girl to go without telling Ayah. I have something to say to that girl when she get back!”

  “Yes, but where could she have gone?”

  Ayah shook her head, her eyes now starting out of her head. “She a bad girl! Never say to Ayah where she go! She take a bus somewhere! She get Ayah into bad trouble!”

  Arab sighed. She remembered how she had first come across Hilary at Mambrui. The child had been playing truant on that occasion. No doubt there had been many other occasions! But surely, now her mother was home, there was no need for Hilary to go off by herself in search of adventure.

  “We’ll have to find her!” she said aloud to Ayah.

  “I don’t know where she gone!”

  “I don’t know either,” Arab said patiently. “Let’s try and think where she might have gone.”

  “I not know!”

  Arab sat down heavily on a piece of broken wall. “If I could only drive!” she wished uselessly. “I feel so helpless!”

  “She come back,” Ayah muttered. She settled herself more comfortably against the trunk of the mango tree and closed her eyes.

  “No! It won’t do. We can’t leave an eleven-year-old running around on her own! Anything might happen to her!” A pang of anxiety made her recoil from her plastered foot and she stood up with sudden decision. “I shall find someone who can drive!” she declared. “I’ll telephone to the hotel.”

  This was easier said than done, but eventually Jill came to the phone.

  “I’m packing, love. What is it?”

  “Hilary has disappeared!”

  “How long?”

  Arab sighed with relief. It was something just to share her anxiety with another person and Jill could be relied upon to understand without asking a whole lot of useless questions.

  “It’s awful!” she said. “She might have gone anywhere! And I can’t go and look for her with my foot, Jill, you couldn’t drive me, could you?”

  There was a brief silence at the other end. “I would, honey, but you know I can’t drive!”

  “Oh, Jill! You must be able to!”

  “No, truly, I never have driven anything, not even a bicycle! You’ll have to get someone else, pet. Wouldn’t Sandra—” Her voice trailed off as though even she could see that Sandra was unlikely to spend the day looking for her truant niece. “I’ll ask the French boys!” she suggested with a flash of inspiration. “Will you hold on?”

  “Yes,” said Arab.

  There followed an endless wait. Arab pulled a chair over to the telephone, almost tripping herself up as she did so. She sat down, with her leg stuck out in front of her, and wondered that she had managed to get the plaster so dirty in such a short time.

  “Are you there, ma belle?”

  “Jacques! Oh, Jacques! I thought you might have gone back to work—”

  “Not yet, ma mie. Your friend Jill said you wished to speak to me. Have you changed your mind, Bella?”

  “Changed my mind?” Arab repeated. “Oh, that!” She was immediately emba
rrassed. “Well, no, I’m afraid not. I’m beginning to think that stardust isn’t much in my line. But, Jacques—?”

  “Yes, I am still listening,” he assured her.

  “Hilary has disappeared. Are you doing anything?”

  “But of course I am doing something. When your friend came to find me I was teaching the most beautiful woman in the whole of East Africa to swim in the pool here. My true love has rejected me, but I am not one to mope alone with my broken heart! Did you think I would?”

  “Idiot!” Arab said with real affection. “Seriously though, will you drive me if I go and look for her?”

  He hesitated. “Where will you go?”

  “To Mambrui,” she said. “She might go there. There’s a bus she could have taken that goes from the harbour.”

  “D’accord,” he agreed immediately. “Do I come and pick you up? I and Jean-Pierre have hired a Mini-Moke between the two of us. If he is not using it just now, I shall be with you in about ten minutes.”

  Arab clutched the telephone to her ear. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “It is nothing. I am glad that you ask me to do this for you.” She could hear that he was smiling. “I could wish that it was something more valorous, you know, something to make you lose your heart to me. But I am the realist, you understand, and your heart, it no longer belongs to you! Calme-toi, petite! We shall find her very soon. You will see!”

  “I hope so,” Arab sighed.

  She went out into the drive to wait for him, forgetting her original intention of changing first so that she would be ready to go straight to the airport the instant Hilary was found. She was wearing her old, frayed jeans again, because she could get them easily over the plaster cast on her foot. At the moment she was so hot that they stuck to her flesh. If only Lucien were here, she thought, he would know where to find Hilary! She longed for him to appear, to sweep her along in his train as he took charge with all his usual confidence. But of course he did nothing of the kind. The trees rustled over her head, but otherwise there was no sound to be heard anywhere.

  Jacques came storming up the drive, drawing up right beside her. He grinned at her, raising his eyebrows at her jeans.