The Desert Castle

by Isobel Chace

  ‘Me!’

  ‘Well,’ Lucasta admitted, ‘it was my choice to begin with. I thought it wouldn’t be too bad with you, but my mother said you weren’t old enough—she protects my uncle from anybody who might fall in love with him, at least that’s what she calls it. She’s jealous of him really. But my uncle said you’d do very nicely and that you could fly out to Amman with me and that he’d pay your fare himself. So will you come?’

  ‘Amman? When? You can’t mean it, Lucasta!’

  ‘But I do! You wouldn’t have to do anything, Miss Shirley, except make sure that I don’t run away with the nearest oil sheik.’ She pursed her lips in obvious imitation of her parent. ‘My mother intends that I shall make a suitable marriage when the time comes and she will not have me running around with anyone who is not suitable in case the worst happens meanwhile. But she’ll brief you about that herself. Though what she thinks can happen to her ewe lamb in the middle of a desert, heaven only knows!’

  ‘Lucasta!’

  ‘Oh, don’t pretend, Miss Shirley. I can see you think it as ridiculous as I do, but my uncle is not to be trusted. He goes behind her back, and does all sorts of other devious things—’

  ‘Lucasta!’

  Lucasta grinned. ‘He’s nice. And quite the ladies’ man! You’d better do as my mother says, Miss Shirley, and batten down your heart well in advance. If he weren’t my uncle, I’d fall for him myself and my mother wouldn’t stand an earthly of showing me the door!’

  Marion tried not to laugh. ‘It’s very kind of you to ask me, Lucasta, but I’ve already made my plans for these holidays. My mother—’

  ‘I don’t think you have to worry about her, Miss Shirley. My family is very efficient when they make up their minds to something and they’ll see to everything for you. All my mother asks is that you come home with me today to meet her. It has to be today because she’s off to the Bahamas tomorrow and she’s only in London for twenty-four hours. You will come, won’t you?’

  Marion had already made up her mind to say no, but the look in Lucasta’s eyes prevented her. The girl was scared, really frightened that Marion might refuse, and she knew, as clearly as if Lucasta had spoken, that if she didn’t produce the Art Mistress for tea her life would be unbearable for the next few hours. Well, it wouldn’t hurt her to go and see Mrs. Hartley for herself. It would be more fitting to explain to her why she couldn’t pack up at a moment’s notice and take off for somewhere in the Middle East, leaving her mother, so recently widowed, to fend for herself over the next few weeks.

  ‘Yes, all right, Lucasta, I’ll come. I’ll meet you at the bus stop, shall I?’

  Lucasta’s glance was distinctly mocking. ‘When my mother’s at home, she sends the Rolls to collect me. My family travels first class, Miss Shirley, and so shall we, if and when they bother to remember that we exist at all!’

  Marion frowned. ‘Do you think you ought to talk about your family like that?’ she asked gently.

  But Lucasta only shrugged, and opened her eyes very wide. ‘You should hear what they say about me!’ she retorted.

  The rest of the day passed in a whirl for Marion. She tried to telephone her mother at lunchtime, but there was no answer. Marion was glad. It meant that her mother was beginning to go out again, and that was a good sign, for Marion knew that if she was missing her father. Mrs. Shirley had known desperation at being left alone while still a comparatively young woman. She had needed all her courage to take a hold on her life again without her husband, and not even Marion could guess at the lonely battle she had fought with herself in the long, cold days after Henry Shirley’s sudden death.

  Lucasta Hartley was standing at the school entrance, scuffing her toes on the gravel drive. She looked younger than her seventeen years and painfully vulnerable. Marion had heard in the staff room that she had been sent out of class during the afternoon and wondered a little wearily why Lucasta had to antagonise everyone whom she felt had been put in authority over her. It was only in the art class, where Marion made a point of leaving the older girls as much as possible to their own devices, that Lucasta shone at all. She couldn’t draw for toffee-nuts, but she had a nice sense of colour and a real feel for fashion and the way clothes should be worn, taught to her no doubt from an early age by her mother.

  She looked up as Marion approached and scowled at her. ‘The Rolls is late,’ she blurted out.

  ‘I can’t say I’m sorry,’ Marion consoled her. ‘I’d rather go on the bus anyway.’

  The girl’s brow cleared as if by magic. ‘But we really have got a Rolls-Royce, and a Jaguar too!’

  Marion managed a smile. She couldn’t help thinking Lucasta sounded more like a boastful ten-year-old than very nearly eighteen. ‘What kind of car are you going to have?’ she asked.

  Lucasta gave her a look of pure outrage. ‘I’ll never have a car!’ she declared. ‘I’m not going to add to the pollution problem. No cars, no babies, and a vegetarian diet is the best way to live.’ She glared overhead at a vapour trail in the sky. ‘And no aeroplanes! I think I’ll walk anywhere I want to go.’

  ‘You could buy a bicycle,’ Marion suggested.

  Lucasta’s face fell. ‘I never learned to ride one,’ she mumbled. ‘Oh, look! There’s the car! I’m afraid you’ll have to suffer a chauffeur-driven ride after all.’

  The younger girl stepped into the luxurious interior of the Rolls as if it were no more than a baby Fiat. Marion rather envied her her assurance, especially as the chauffeur tucked a rug in over her knees and saluted smartly before getting into his own seat in the front.

  ‘Heavens!’ Marion exclaimed under her breath.

  Lucasta looked at her earnestly. ‘Do you know how many miles to the gallon this car does? My uncle thinks it’s as awful as I do. He prefers to walk too!’

  But Marion was in no mood to think about anything that might have spoilt the sheer bliss of sweeping through the London traffic almost as if the rush hour didn’t exist for that one day of the year.

  The house where the Hartleys lived on the rare occasions they were in London was of large, gracious proportions in a quiet cul-de-sac in Kensington.

  ‘Don’t let it throw you,’ Lucasta advised as they waited for the chauffeur to release them. ‘Just keep remembering that it’s more than a roof over the Hartley heads, it’s a suitable background for the Hartley daughter to be reared in.’

  ‘Very nice too!’ Marion approved.

  Lucasta looked at her curiously. ‘But you’re not envious all the same, are you?’

  ‘No, I like my own home too much for that.’

  Lucasta looked up at her home, twisting her lips together. ‘One day, when I’ve gone away too, the squatters will find out how often it’s empty and move in. What’s more, they’ll have all my sympathy when they do.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Marion said. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if the homeless had houses of their own?’

  ‘But it isn’t fair for some people to have a lot and others nothing at all.’

  ‘That’s rather an extreme view,’ Marion returned. ‘Most people have something and, fortunately in my opinion, all people don’t want the same things. I don’t particularly want to have to look after a whole lot of possessions and have to remember when the Rolls needs servicing, but I expect your parents enjoy having nice things, and why not?’

  Lucasta raised a rather sour smile. ‘They don’t have time to enjoy anything. You’ll find out!’ She raised the knocker as if to give emphasis to her threat and the door was opened by a timid young woman in a black dress.

  ‘Your mother says you’re to take Miss Shirley into the drawing-room, miss,’ she breathed in heavily accented English. ‘I bring the tea.’

  Mrs. Hartley remained seated in the corner of a velvet-covered sofa as Marion followed Lucasta into the room. She was much smaller than her daughter and looked considerably younger than her years. She smiled only with care, so as not to disarrange the perfect contours of her face. Marion found hers
elf wondering if she had had her face lifted and, if so, whether it had been recently enough to hurt her when she laughed.

  ‘I see you’ve come,’ Mrs. Hartley addressed her. ‘I may as well tell you at once that I would prefer my daughter to have had the company of a much older woman, but my brother made himself so disagreeable about having her at all that I felt obliged to give way to him over you.’

  ‘Is he here now?’ Lucasta demanded, looking eagerly over her shoulder as if she expected him to walk in at any moment.

  ‘No, he’s out. I’m thankful to say that it looks as if he has at last found the ideal girl for him to marry and settle down with. She has no more time for his extraordinary domestic arrangements than I have, and she’s all set to persuade him to come back to live in England. It’s so inconvenient not to have a relation here to look after Lucasta when my husband and I are away.’

  ‘Where does your brother live now?’ Marion asked, horribly aware of the giggle that was building up inside her.

  ‘In Jordan. He’s borrowed a ruined castle which leaks like a sieve whenever it rains, which at this time of year is all the time, and employs a couple of Tannin servants who sound as though they’re completely undisciplined.’ She shivered fastidiously. ‘It’s strictly not my scene, but I dare say you’re accustomed to a little discomfort, Miss Shirley, and will manage very well. My brother is paying your fare himself, but my husband wishes to ensure that you have adequate pocket money to keep pace with Lucasta. He thought about twenty pounds a week in cash, of course. My brother will meet you at Amman—he’s flying out tomorrow, unless Judith changes his mind for him tonight. You will leave on Sunday.’

  ‘I’m not sure—’ Marion began.

  Mrs. Hartley cut her off with a flourish. ‘I forgot. Your mother! Didn’t she tell you that my brother called on her? He knew your father, or something. Anyway, your mother is going down to his house in Devon and she’s going to work for him a few weeks, putting all his papers in order. Apparently she’s accustomed to that kind of work. My brother seemed to think she could do with the money.’

  Marion stiffened. ‘My mother and I manage very well—’

  ‘I’m sure you do, but it would be unkind to upset all her arrangements now, wouldn’t it? You leave from Heathrow Airport, Miss Shirley. Lucasta will expect to find you there at the Pan-Am desk shortly after eight o’clock. Oh, and you’ll need a visa. You’d better give your passport to Parsons when he runs you home and he can see to it for you. There, I think that’s all. I can’t think why my husband thinks women are no good at business. Look how quickly we arranged all that!’

  “We” was an exaggeration, Marion felt. The amusement inside her surfaced as a quick smile. ‘Who is your brother, Mrs. Hartley?’ she asked in a shaken voice.

  ‘But I thought I told you,’ Mrs. Hartley reproached her. ‘My brother is Gregory Randall. The writer, you know?’

  CHAPTER II

  ‘Mother, how could you?’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs. Shirley, ‘I had a feeling you were going to be angry, but he was so persuasive and it will be lovely to have something to do again. I’ve felt so old and useless these last few weeks. There’s absolutely nothing here I have to do! Gregory wants me to do for him what I used to do for Henry: put all his papers in order and re-type those pages that need it, and put a bit of polish on his house which has been shut up for years— ‘

  ‘He’s getting married.’ Marion sniffed. ‘And since when has it been Gregory?’

  ‘Since I first saw him. He never knew his own mother and I would rather like to have had a son as well as a daughter, so we agreed to adopt one another as honorary relations. I could hardly call him Mr. Randall after that!’

  Marion’s eyes kindled. ‘And what does he call you? Mother?’

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but I asked him to call me Helen. He always wrote to your father as Henry and it seemed the best solution.’

  Marion choked. ‘None of my business!’ she exclaimed. ‘I like that! You can’t foist an honorary brother on to me and then tell me it’s none of my business! It isn’t—it isn’t decent!’

  Mrs. Shirley looked wise and very knowing. ‘What a curious word to choose,’ she said mildly. ‘And it has absolutely nothing to do with you. It’s my relationship, and I’m very pleased with it. If you want to be related to him too, you’ll have to make your own arrangement with him—’

  ‘Mother!’

  Mrs. Shirley laughed, delighted. ‘I’d forgotten for the moment how easy it is to shock the young, or perhaps I thought you older than you really are. I thought you told me he’s about to get married?’

  Marion nodded. ‘To a girl called Judith.’

  ‘Well, is that anything to look gloomy about?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Marion denied. But she hadn’t liked the sound of Judith and she thought it would be a pity if she succeeded in putting a collar and lead on Gregory Randall and turned him out of his ruined castle in the desert. ‘If I’m gloomy about anything, it’s the discovery that my mother can be downright sly. Father always said you couldn’t keep a secret no matter how hard you tried, and now look at you! Meeting strange men behind my back—’

  ‘Henry would have known.’ Mrs. Shirley saw the hurt in Marion’s eyes and smiled at her. ‘Don’t mind, darling. You’re my daughter, not my husband, and you can’t wrap me up in the cotton-wool of your protection for the rest of my life. You have your own life to live and I’m the first to be glad whatever you want to do. Won’t you be glad that Gregory has made it possible for me to have a niche of my own too? I like that young man so much. He doesn’t waste time wondering what the fuss is all about He’s like Henry in that. Henry too, would have done something about his friend’s widow, and he, too, would have probably have forgotten to say a single word about how sorry he was.’

  ‘And you don’t mind my going to Jordan?’ Marion pressed her.

  Her mother gave her a surprised smile. ‘Why should I? I know you’ll be quite all right with Gregory to look after you.’ The smile turned into a flash of laughter. ‘He’ll find some work for you to do too!’

  ‘I am going,’ Marion said with dignity, ‘to look after Lucasta. Nobody has to look after me!’

  ‘No, dear,’ her mother teased. ‘Perhaps you’ll be able to impress Gregory with your twenty-four years more than you do me. He didn’t know you when you were only two, or when you were only two minutes old.’

  It wasn’t an argument that Marion was likely to win, so she stuck out her tongue at her mother and went off by herself to start her packing.

  Lucasta accepted the five-hour flight as a boring necessity. She reminded Marion to put her watch on a couple of hours in lofty tones and then disappeared behind one of the Sunday papers that the red-clad hostess handed round amongst the passengers. Marion tried to do likewise, but she found her attention wandered, back to the safety checks they had come through to get on the plane at all, and forward to what awaited her on their arrival at Amman when she would come face to face with Gregory Randall once again.

  It was hard to tell the nationality of their fellow-passengers. Some of the women in saris were plainly Indian, or Pakistanis on their way to Karachi and presumably, the men who were with them were their husbands. Of the others, some were plainly too dark to be British, but others confused her by being quite as fair as herself, though possibly more sunburned, yet they spoke Arabic with a fluency that she thought could only mean they were Jordanians.

  The five hours went more quickly than she would have believed possible. Lucasta emerged from behind her newspaper to eat the excellent lunch that was served to them and rather grudgingly admitted that travelling by air did save a tremendous amount of time and trouble.

  ‘That’s the trouble. It’s never one’s own pollution one bothers about, but other people’s. If I do it, it’s quite all right,’ she added, the cares of the world resting heavily on her shoulders.

  ‘I expect this flight would have gone ahe
ad without us,’ Marion observed. ‘I shouldn’t feel too badly about it, if I were you.’

  ‘That’s what everyone says,’ Lucasta retorted, and went back to her newspaper.

  It was half-past five, local time, when they came in to land and the sun was still shining, warming the atmosphere and adding its welcome before disappearing for the night. Lucasta, with an excitement that she couldn’t quite hide, gathered up all the hand luggage and pushed Marion out of the plane ahead of her with a surprising efficiency.

  ‘Gregory doesn’t like it if one’s last off,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘He hates hanging about for anyone.’

  ‘But we still have to wait for our suitcases to come off,’ Marion protested after receiving a particularly sharp jab in the back.

  ‘He’ll see to that. All we have to do is get our passports checked and show our visas to the police.’

  Marion found she was quite right. Gregory was waiting for them just inside the airport and a handsome tip found a porter who claimed their luggage and argued with the customs official for them just as if it were his own. It was all much easier than Marion had imagined. What was not easy was gathering herself together to greet the man himself once he had emerged from Lucasta’s enthusiastic embrace.

  ‘Hullo there, Miss Shirley,’ his deep voice claimed her attention. ‘Aren’t you going to show any pleasure in your arrival like Lucasta here? I think you can do better than that!’ He ignored Marion’s outstretched hand and swept her up into his arms, kissing her as warmly as he had his niece. ‘Ahlan wa sahtan! Welcome to Jordan!’ he laughed at her.