In the short time since her wedding, she had already begun to wonder, too late, if her marriage had perhaps not been overhasty. Such a good catch, James Palmer had seemed; courteous, well-connected—and well-off, something that Ursula had been taught was of paramount importance in a husband. She knew now that he was essentially cold and reserved, and humourless, too. He was tall and thin, handsome enough, and his only disadvantage, it had seemed to Ursula, was an Adam’s apple that seemed to have a life of its own. She had decided she could learn to ignore that disconcerting lump of cartilage, and also the fact that he was twenty years older than she. His lack of warmth and humour, his pomposity, however, were things she didn’t think she would ever get used to.
As time went on, longing for the smiles and laughter that had hitherto been a natural part of her life until then, she began to throw herself into the pursuit of amusement, easy enough to find in the cosmopolitan Cairo of those days. It was 1938. Somewhere, beyond Egypt, the world was preparing for war, but here expatriate European society carried on as though it would go away if they ignored the possibility. Her time was filled with countless dinner parties, afternoon tea at Shepheard’s, gossip, charity functions, tennis parties if the weather was supportable. When James was away, there was always someone to escort her, to take her dancing and dining every night.
But fun of this sort turned out to be an ephemeral gratification. For a while, she had believed such frenetic activity could obliterate the loneliness and dissatisfaction with her married state, but it very soon palled. Increasingly, when James was away and she was left entirely to herself, a pensive melancholy fell upon her. As an oriental export merchant, eldest son of his family business, he travelled all over the Middle East in search of carpets, carved wooden furniture, alabaster and metalwork to ship to England, and it had pleased him to furnish this old house he had bought with the best of what he had found, so that one had to accustom oneself to reclining on couches and eating off low tables, as if one were a woman in a harem. Indeed, her disappointment with the life she had let herself in for made Ursula reflect ironically that James might have been better pleased if she had been such a woman.
Spending most of her time listlessly in this very room, which was open entirely to the air on one side, drinking thick Egyptian coffee or mint tea, longing for Earl Grey, which could be bought if one knew where to look, but never, for some mysterious reason, in sufficient quantities, she had gazed over the balustrade to the barren expanse of sandy earth around the edges of the courtyard, the drifts of dust obscuring the lovely colours of the tiles, wondering if this was all life had to offer. Not even a sign of a child as yet, though her mother, in her weekly letters, constantly assured her there was plenty of time.
Time, it seemed, stood still, an hour as long as a day. A huge expanse of space, and inside its infinity, she sat alone, while the friendly chatter and laughter—and noisy, if short-lived, quarrelling—sounded above the continuous wailing Arab radio music that issued from the kitchen quarters and made her feel more alone than ever. What was she to do? Nothing, it seemed, but assume a stiff upper lip and get on with accustoming herself to the inescapable facts of her new life. The food, for one thing: the tough, unidentified meat she was tempted to think might once have been a camel, the sugary cakes that set her teeth on edge, and the unleavened bread. She must get used to the heavily chlorinated water that James insisted upon, too. The flies. The beautifully ironed napkins, so fresh from the dhobi that they were still damp. And especially to the khamsin that blew from the south-west, hot and dusty, giving her a nasty, tickling cough that wouldn’t go away. Oh, that eternal dust and grit that insinuated itself everywhere!
When she had first arrived, she’d been determined to emulate her mother and maintain an orderly English household, with the dust outside, where it belonged, but she was defeated. In their attempts to clean, the servants insisted on using whisks, whose only effect was to distribute the dirt from one place to another. The grit ground itself into the beautiful mosaic floor tiles and the silky carpets under your feet. The cushions gave off puffs of dust whenever you sat on them. Even simple tidiness was beyond her capacity to convey to them, and theirs to accept. Elbow grease was a substance as entirely unknown as the Mansion Polish and Brasso she ordered from Home. Gradually, despite all her natural inclinations and her mother’s training, inertia overcame her and she began to think: what does it matter, why fight the inevitable? Perhaps the servants were right, perhaps it was as Allah willed, inshallah.
Even more did she feel that now, sixty years later, when ghosts, and her own perceptions of violent death, were everywhere.
Sometimes, for air, she used to sit in the cool of the evening on the flat roof of the house, overlooking the expanse of the lighted city, watching the achingly beautiful sunsets over the Nile, with the ineffably foreign domes and minarets of the mosques piercing the skyline, as the darkness mercifully masked the seething squalor of the ancient, dun-coloured city. There was an especially low point on one particular night, when she almost considered throwing herself off or alternatively taking to the bottle, but she was made of sterner stuff and didn’t really take either proposition seriously. Instead, when it eventually became too cold for comfort, she took herself down the stairs to her usual position overlooking the courtyard, where she faced the fact that, unless she did something about it, her life would dry up as surely as the brittle leaves on the single palm that gave shade to the dusty square below, that she might as well take to the chador and veil. Despite the lateness of the hour, she went outside and, picking her way over the rubbish that seemed to arrive by osmosis, stared at the gritty, trampled earth and thought of her father’s hollyhocks and lupins and night-scented stock.
‘Of course the courtyard’s dark,’ James said when she later began by mentioning, tentatively, how the walls seemed to close in on her. ‘That’s its purpose. Oriental houses are traditionally built around the concept of high walls providing shade. The natives like nothing more than to live outdoors whenever they can, and the shade makes it bearable.’
‘No one lives outdoors in this establishment,’ Ursula pointed out.
‘We are not natives, Ursula. And while we’re on the subject, it’s not a good thing to get too friendly with the servants. They’ll lose all respect for you.’
It wasn’t the first time she’d been tempted to laugh at his pomposity, but she knew that it would have been a mistake. She didn’t laugh now, she was only half listening, anyway, absorbed by her new idea. She didn’t bother to point out that the only friend she had in the house was Nawal, the one female amongst all the other servants who, as one of Yusuf the cook’s extended family, had been brought in to work for her. At first sulky and unco-operative, she had gradually accepted Ursula’s friendly overtures. Now she was all wide Egyptian smiles and good humour; she delighted in looking after Ursula, making her bed, taking care of her silk underclothes, and being allowed to brush her mane of thick, red-gold hair. She brought magical, if foul-tasting, syrup for Ursula’s cough when it became troublesome, and had become fiercely protective of her, pitying her, so far from home and with no family around her, no one except that cold and distant husband.
The next day, Ursula obtained—with difficulty—a spade, a garden fork and a hoe, took them into the courtyard and began to dig the hard, flattened earth around the edges of the tiles, where surely there had once been plants and trees growing—and would be again, after she’d arranged for a delivery of rich alluvial soil from the banks of the Nile, in which anything grew.
James predictably disapproved strongly when he’d got over his first disbelief at this crazy notion of actually tackling the making of a garden, alone. It was unnecessary. She could occupy herself more profitably elsewhere. Why not take up sketching, or Byzantine art, his own particular passion? But Ursula’s inclinations didn’t lie either way; she couldn’t draw for toffee, and she found Byzantine art far too stylized to be either comprehensible or interesting. For once her stubbornn
ess overcame his disapproval. Very well, he said reluctantly, but had she considered how such eccentricity would reflect on him in the eyes of their European acquaintances? They needn’t know, said Ursula. And neither was it, he could not resist reminding her yet again, ignoring her interjection, something calculated to enhance her authority with the servants.
And of course, he was right about this last, as he always contrived to be. They came out in full force to see what she was doing and laughed behind their hands at the prospect of an English lady wielding a spade, even sometimes going down on her knees, getting her hands filthy, grubbing in the earth for all the world like one of the fellaheen. She didn’t care, but was nevertheless a little discouraged. Digging in the heat was harder work than she’d anticipated; and meant she could only do it for short periods. It did not seem as though her garden would progress very fast.
On the third day, she saw the boy watching her. He watched her for a week. She didn’t know who he was, why he was here, how he’d arrived. If she spoke to him, or even smiled, he melted away. He appeared to be about sixteen or seventeen, slim and tall, liquid-eyed, with curly black hair and skin as smooth as brown alabaster. A beautiful youth in a galabeya white as driven snow, with a profile straight off a temple wall.
‘Who is he?’ She asked Yusuf, at last.
‘He Khaled,’ Yusuf said dismissively, and Ursula, intimidated, asked no more questions. She wondered if Khaled were dumb, or perhaps not entirely in his right mind, but dismissed this last, recalling the bright intelligence in his face.
The first time he spoke to her was early one morning, when he said shyly, ‘I deegiéd the kennel for you.’ His face was anxious. Kennel?
Following his pointing finger, she saw that the first of the series of blocked irrigation channels, which led from the source of the fountain, had been cleared. He had anticipated her intention, to clear the conduits so that she could draw water for her thirsty new plants. She smiled. He smiled back, radiantly. He took up the spade and began on the next one.
Miraculously, he persuaded the fountain to work. Water began to jet into the basin again, and at once the courtyard was transformed with possibilities: colour and scent, visions of lilies and lavender, marguerites, blue delphiniums and phlox in white and pink swam about in her head. Roses, roses, roses. She saw her dream of a lush and opulent garden coming true at last, the tiles clean and swept and glowing with colour, with the reflection of light and shade dappling through the leaves on to the dark walls, under the burning blue sky, the cool, musical playing of the water into the basin.
He came most days after that to help her, unselfconsciously tucking his galabeya up between his legs. She discovered he had a sly wit, and they laughed together, sharing their youth as well as the work—she was not, after all, so many years older than he. He sensed quickly what she wanted done, but shook his head when she showed him the plant catalogues her mother, overenthusiastically, had sent from England. Roses, yes, Khaled made her understand—his English was picturesque, but adequate as a means of communication, and he learned quickly—roses would flourish. Were not the first roses bred in Persia? But lupins, hollyhocks, phlox—no. She thought it might be worth a try, however, if she reversed the seasons, pretended the Egyptian winter was an English summer, then for the fierce summer heat planted canna lilies and bougainvillea, strelitzia, perfumed mimosa, jacaranda and jasmine, oleander . . . The names were like an aphrodisiac.
She arranged, mistakenly as it turned out, to pay Khaled for his work, and though it seemed to her pitifully little, after some hesitation he accepted gravely, while making her understand he would have done it for nothing. ‘It help pay my bookses,’ he said ingenuously.
Nawal, with a blush and a giggle and a lowering of her eyes whenever she spoke of Khaled, had told Ursula that he was hoping to attend the University of Al Azhar, to study architecture, in order some day to build good, clean houses for poor people, both of which ambitions his uncle, Yusuf, regarded as being impossible and above his station. Nor was Yusuf, it seemed, pleased with her arrangement to pay the boy. Shouting issued from the domestic quarters shortly after she had made him the offer. When she asked Nawal what was the matter, Ursula was told that Yusuf, while able to shut his eyes to the help Khaled gave freely, could not entertain the idea of his accepting payment for it. The noise of the altercation in the kitchen was so great it brought James from the house’s upper fastness, where he immured himself whenever he was at home. After a few incisive words from him, an abnormal quietness was restored. He then turned to deal with Ursula.
‘When will you learn?’ he shouted, marching out into the courtyard, his face red with anger, his Adam’s apple wobbling uncontrollably, his patience at an end. ‘Don’t you see that paying him money, when he freely offered his services, is tantamount to an insult? You will abandon this ridiculous project at once, do you understand? No wonder the servants look down on you, working out here like a peasant! If you want a garden so much, I can have one made for you, dammit! There’s no need to make such an exhibition of yourself!’
‘No! You’ve missed the point, that isn’t what I want at all!’ Now that she had found her raison d’être, something that gave meaning to the enforced idleness and aridity of her life in Egypt, Ursula was in a panic at the thought of losing it.
Khaled had followed them outside. He had endured Yusuf’s shouting with equanimity, but when James turned on Ursula, those liquid eyes of his flashed, simply flashed. He plucked out the garden fork that was driven into the earth nearby and for a terrified moment she thought . . . But he merely dashed it to the ground with a dramatic gesture worthy of the wrath of God. Before anyone could say anything, after another murderous look, he was gone.
And that’s the last I’ll see of him, Ursula thought sadly.
She had no prescience then of the dark future, otherwise she would have left, too, taken the next available ship. Left Egypt then and there and gone back to England, as James had been urging her to do for some time, in view of the ever-increasing talk of war in Europe. But that would have been admitting failure, and a certain innate stubbornness was keeping her here, a refusal to admit defeat. A tacit awareness by now had arisen between herself and her husband that their marriage was not a success, but divorce in those days was not to be contemplated lightly. Paramount was the scandal, as far as James was concerned. As for Ursula, it would have felt as though she were being sent home in disgrace, like a child, for not being good, which she knew was unfair. She had been too young for what she’d had to face, and her marriage had been a foolish leap in the dark, but no one had attempted to warn her. And for another, although James simply would not, or could not, understand, Ursula was not going to abandon her project at this stage. He could not make her give it up.
The garden had become an obsession. Ignoring his disapproval, she worked every day, until the perspiration poured off her and her thick hair became lank as wet string, until the sun or the khamsin drove her indoors. Sometimes she was so hot she took off her hat in defiance of the sun and her fair skin got burnt. Her English rose looks faded and she was in danger of becoming permanently desiccated and dried, as English women tend to be under the sun. It was obvious that James was beginning to find her less than attractive. But her garden was starting to take shape.
She had been wrong about Khaled. Eventually, without explanation, he returned. Nothing was said, he simply took up where he had left off. Ursula bought him books and gave them to him as presents, so that honour was satisfied. James, surprisingly, said nothing. Perhaps he hoped the garden would be completed all the more quickly and Ursula would regain her sanity. Then, one day, he announced, ‘I’ve found a live-in companion for you.’
‘What?’ She was so furious she could scarcely speak, in a panic, imagining a stringy old lady who would torment her with demands to play two-handed patience, and prevent her from gardening. How could he do this to her?
But the stringy old lady turned out to be a bouncy and athletic young wo
man not much older than Ursula, called Bunty Cashmore. Three months out of England, with short, dark, curly hair, hockey player’s legs and a healthily tanned complexion enhanced by the fierce Egyptian sun rather than ruined by it, unlike Ursula’s. And then Ursula understood the reason for James’s sudden concern for her friendless state.
Rather than regarding the brisk bossiness of her new companion as a threat to his own authority he seemed amused by it, and showed not a trace of disapproval of her, or impatience with her meaningless chatter. In fact, he paid more attention to her than to Ursula, no matter that she showed enthusiasm for the garden project. But then, Bunty was enthusiastic about everything, most especially when it came to learning something of Byzantine art, about which she cheerfully admitted she was ignorant.
She knew nothing about gardening, either, but it didn’t prevent her from interfering—or pitching in, as she cheerfully put it. She pulled up tiny, cherished seedlings, believing them to be weeds. Oops, sorry! Surveying the garden through its haze of dust, which was hosed off each night when the garden was watered, she informed Ursula that she needed bedding plants to provide more colour in the courtyard, that the yucca in the corner, chosen for its architectural form, was ugly and should go. She suggested that ‘the boy’ was no longer needed, either, now that she was here to help Ursula, now that the garden was at last almost finished, apart from the very last strip of bare earth which Ursula was reluctant to deal with, since that would leave little else to do but tend the garden while waiting for it to mature.
Khaled bent over his work at hearing what was proposed for him, hiding his thoughts and the resentment in his eyes.
And Nawal, meanwhile, noted every look that passed between Bunty and James, enraged on behalf of her mistress, fiercely jealous of the time Ursula was now forced to spend with the usurper, Bunty.
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