Court of Veils

by Violet Winspear

  At breakfast time she joined Tristan and they feasted together on cold slices of melon, hot croissants and coffee. He always had plenty to talk about and they were fast becoming friends ... to Isabela’s rather mocking amusement.

  Isabela had also been invited to stay at Dar al Amra for as long as she wished. Just at present she had no operatic commitments, and being Portuguese she had a natural love of the Sun, and was always prepared to sing for Tristan whenever he wished her to.

  They had become acquainted, he told Roslyn, when Isabella had sung in his opera Ar Mor, a legend of Brittany which he had set to music and which had proved his first big success on the operatic stage.

  ‘I believe that is all the girl wants from my Tristan, the lovely arias he can compose for her,’ Nanette said one morning to Roslyn, as the gorgeous sound of Isabela’s singing echoed through the house. ‘In a way I am glad. I should not wish a grandson of mine to waste himself on a girl wrong for him.’

  Roslyn glanced up from Nanette’s album of theatrical memories. She didn’t think Tristan was in love, but his grandmother must think so or she wouldn’t have spoken in that vein. ‘One can understand the attraction,’ Roslyn said casually. ‘Isabela is stunning with her golden skin and dark hair.’

  ‘Tristan feels an attraction for her, petite,’ Nanette spoke from her escritoire where she was doing the household accounts, ‘but you must have noticed that it is my desert barbarian who has caught her Latin eye?’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid of seeing him in her coils?’ Roslyn bit back a smile and studied a photograph of Nanette in a tricorne hat trimmed with ospreys.

  ‘Mais non,’ Nanette gave the laugh that was curiously more robust than she looked. ‘Duane can take care of himself in any situation, but Tristan is sensitive, an idealist. He might run away with the idea that Isabela has a nature to match her voice, but Duane is too canny to be fooled. Even should the girl succeed in leading him to the altar, it will be he who will take the lead for the rest of their lives. I know. I was the wife of his grandfather.’

  ‘He is such a cynic about women.’ Roslyn was gazing at Nanette wide-eyed. ‘Do you really think there is a chance of him marrying Isabela?’

  ‘Though a cynic about women, and therefore marriage, he will be obliged like other men to be a realist.’ Nanette peered keenly at Roslyn over halfmoon spectacles. ‘Only devils or saints can live alone, and though Duane is much of a devil, he is much more a man. A man who needs a woman to love and depend on him.’

  ‘What of Isabela’s career?’ Roslyn asked. ‘Do you think she would be prepared to give up the adulation of the crowd in order to live in the wilds? I am sure your grandson would never agree to live in a city.’

  ‘The idea is amusing, isn’t it?’ Nanette chuckled and set aside her pen. ‘Duane in a city would be like a lion in a cage. His grandfather would have been the same, that is why I gave up my career and came to Dar al Amra to live with him. I was even more famous than Isabela, you know. Those were the days of wit and wine and gallantry, and I adored them. The elegant clothes I wore on and off the stage, champagne by the magnum, handsome men to flirt and dance with. Paris was at my feet, petite, but there was no resisting Armand when he strode into my life. The type of man of whom I could expect few concessions. Here at El Kadia his tent was struck and, like Ruth, whither he went I had to follow.’

  ‘You never regretted your decision, Nanette?’ Roslyn asked, always deeply interested when her hostess talked of the past.

  ‘One must never regret a deep love, no matter what pains or sorrows it brings with it.’ Nanette removed her spectacles and slid them into a velvet case. Then she came to sit beside Roslyn’s curled-up figure on the cushioned daybed. The anchusa-blue eyes wandered over the girl.

  ‘Three weeks with us and you begin to look less fragile. That is good!’ She nodded, pleased. ‘You feel better, my child? Less nervous of us, more settled in your mind?’

  ‘I feel heaps better,’ Roslyn assured this gracious woman who had been so kind to her. ‘Your desert air is a wonderful tonic.’

  ‘Tristan must take you out riding in the desert now you are no longer convalescent.’ Nanette took hold of Roslyn’s left hand and studied its slim bareness. Armand’s ring no longer blazed on her third finger; she had locked it away in a drawer with the Juliet cap ... somehow they seemed to belong together.

  ‘It hurt too much to go on wearing the ring?’ Nanette murmured.

  ‘It was rather loose on my finger and I was afraid of losing it.’ Roslyn hesitated, then added: ‘Nanette, would you let me return it to you? I was told it was yours - that you gave it to Armand when he became twenty-one.’

  ‘Ah yes, a romantic conceit of mine that each of my grandsons give a ring I had loved to the girl of his choice. A ring blessed by love should be lucky - or so I thought.’ The anchusa eyes dimmed with pain. ‘No, the ring is now yours, petite. All that you have of Armand ... yet not all! There are things in the play-den used by him and Tristan when they were children. Diaries in which they wrote. Oddments they collected. Tristan must show you! It might help if you could touch those things, his books and boyish possessions. They might help you establish a link with him.’

  Roslyn should have welcomed the suggestion, instead it made her feel cold. It was almost as though she were afraid of the lean, dark ghost who might haunt the play-den.

  Each day Nanette inspected the house with the Arab boys to ensure that they were doing their work properly, and upon being left to her own resources Roslyn mounted the staircase that led to the harem tower. It had become a favourite retreat of hers. At any time she liked sitting up there among the tubbed flowers and bits and pieces of sun-faded furniture. The desert could be seen for miles, an expanse of amber that ran into combers like the sea; changing and beckoning, exciting her one minute, then giving her an illusion of peace the next.

  The other day Jakoub had called it the Garden of Allah, when he had brought her a glass of orange juice and some of the star and crescent-shaped biscuits made from a harem recipe from the old days, when veiled girls had taken their leisure on the tower.

  The Garden of Allah, Roslyn mused, as she sat in an old wickerwork chair and let her fingers play with some nearby flowers. Her shade hat was pulled well down over her eyes, for during the daylight hours you couldn’t look directly at the sunburned sands without getting tears in your eyes. The vista was one of splendid savagery, rising in the distance into the burning peaks of the Gebel d’Oro, where Barbary brigands were said to have a stronghold.

  It sounded too fantastic to be believable in this day and age, but like all legends and fables it appealed to the imagination. Peaks of petrified fire, where djinns and storm-gods had their abode ... would Tristan take her as far to see them? she wondered.

  Then, all at once she was leaning forward, her attention caught by an Arab on horseback, galloping like the wind across the sands, his dark cloak billowing into a wing that seemed about to lift rider and horse into the blue.

  When they were gone, the desert seemed strangely empty. A silence after a paean of music, that was how it felt. Roslyn brooded under her shade hat in the silence, then she reached for the book she had brought with her and buried her nose in it until lunchtime.

  Duane Hunter had turned up in his sudden fashion. It seemed he had something to discuss with Nanette, a wage dispute that might cause trouble at the packing sheds when the harvest was ready to be gathered.

  ‘You have my authority to settle these things as you see fit,’ Nanette said to him as they sat at lunch. ‘You know what you are doing, Duane, when it comes to business. And I have a suspicion that your real reason for turning up like this was that you felt the need for some feminine company. Come, admit that I am right!’

  He didn’t admit anything, but there was a smile edging his mouth as he poured wine for his grandmother. ‘What a trusting woman you are, Nanette,’ he drawled. ‘Aren’t you afraid that I shall take over the business behind your back?’

&
nbsp; ‘You are far too British for tricks of that kind,’ she said tartly. She stared sideways at him, then added: ‘Take a holiday, Duane. A day away from the plantation will not hurt you, or the trees. It would make a nice change for all four of you young people to go into the city to look at the shops, to sail on the lake, and dance in the evening at a club. How long is it since you danced, mon cher?’

  ‘Can he dance?’ Isabela laughed, a gleam of excitement in her eyes, Roslyn noticed. ‘Duane, please agree to Nanette’s suggestion. It sounds like fun.’

  Isabela’s red mouth held her plea like a kiss, and Roslyn saw Duane’s brown skin tauten over the bones of his face; his eyes on those seducing lips were green as a wolfs.

  ‘What of you, Tristan?’ he drawled.

  ‘I think the idea an excellent one.’ Tristan was busy with his cold lamb in mint aspic.

  ‘And what of our little girl lost?’ Duane glanced at Roslyn.

  She flushed and hated him, and wished she might see the city of El Kadia with Tristan alone. She half turned to Tristan, as though seeking his protection, and he looked up and flashed her a smile. ‘Roslyn is coming, of course,’ he said, and that settled the matter.

  Luncheon grew gay, because the prospect of an outing had put Isabela in a sparkling mood. She talked about Portugal where she had danced and sung in the wine. ‘I love to dance almost as much as I love to sing. You will dance with me, Duane. Promise!’

  He looked at her, his expression enigmatic.

  Isabela gazed back at him, too sure of her own beauty to doubt that she could replace with her substance the shadow of another woman. With a graceful, audacious gesture she plucked a red rose out of the bowl upon the table and threw it straight at him. He caught and crushed it in his hand, the scent of it sudden and strong in the air.

  ‘Saturday will suit me best,’ he said. ‘We’ll start early and go in the Renault wagon.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ Tristan was looking mischievous over the rim of his wine glass. ‘Why do we not make a whole week-end of this outing? We could put up at a hotel and not have the bother of driving home in the dark. Besides, the girls will be tired.’

  Duane looked as though that wouldn’t have worried him in the least, but with a sudden lazy, laugh he gave in to the idea, added that he couldn’t stay for coffee and strode across the room to pick up something from one of the divans. A dark riding cloak, Roslyn saw. The kind an Arab would wear!

  It was Duane whom she had seen on horseback from the harem tower, so at one with the desert, the sun and the fire-coloured mountains, that Isabela was going to have to use every artifice in order to lure him away from them. Duane said au revoir, and Roslyn watched him sweep out of the room with Isabela at his side. She was smiling up at him, chattering away, vivid as a jay-bird beside a hawk.

  ‘What has come over our Duane?’ Nanette chuckled. Do you suppose, Tristan, that he can be falling in love?’ Tristan shrugged and handed Roslyn a peeled orange. ‘As the Arabs say, grand’mere, a pretty woman is a snare into which the most wary of men is likely to fall.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ROSLYN admitted to herself that a week-end trip into the desert city of El Kadia would be interesting. She looked forward to a roam through the souks, and at this time of the year flamingoes were said to be seen on certain parts of the Temcina Lake.

  It was Friday evening. Friends of Nanette’s had come to Dar al Amra to dine and play cards, and Roslyn had slipped away now dinner was over to the seclusion of the harem tower. Her amnesia had been a topic of conversation at dinner, and talking about her loss of memory had left her feeling despondent.

  Other people might find it intriguing to meet someone devoid of personal memories, but to Roslyn it was still frightening to have half her mind lost in a fog that just wouldn’t lift. Sometimes she seemed almost to glimpse a ghostly outline, that stole into view out of the mist and then vanished again before the details of the place or the person became clear enough to be recognized.

  It was maddening, bringing her close to tears, for she knew that one clear recollection would banish the fog and she would be a whole person again instead of - as Duane Hunter ironically put it - a little girl lost.

  She wandered restlessly about the tower, the smoky chiffon of her dress giving an illusion of the veils worn by the girls of the harem. A moon had started, an Eastern crescent of fine silver, scattering stars from the tilting end of it. The night was warm and the palm fronds hardly stirred.

  Space, and more space, Roslyn thought, gazing across the desert that created a peaceful forgetfulness that was not tortured like that of her amnesia. The desert was a garden of mystery, where moon-made shadows and low sounds drifted and died.

  Then she grew still, unmoving and enchanted as there stole across the tower the haunting strains of II pleut dans mon coeur, played on the guitar.

  The music died away and she turned to face Tristan as he came to join her at the parapet, his guitar on a band across his shoulder. He was dark, tall and chivalrous as the troubadours of medieval Brittany, from whence the Gerards had sprung long ago. He had discarded his evening jacket and wore over his white shirt a jerkin of kid-skin. She smiled warmly, thinking how different he was from his cousin, soothing and yet also gay, with eyes dark as blaeberries.

  ‘I loved that song,’ she said. ‘It suited my mood.’

  ‘Are there tears in your heart, Roslyn?’ He lounged beside her, the moonlight gleaming on his dark head. ‘Naturellement! How could it be otherwise for you? Love doesn’t die as easily as people, and I saw at dinner that our talk was upsetting you.’

  ‘I feel so lost, Tristan,’ she admitted. ‘Sometimes I go groping after memory in such a panic, for I have to know about yesterday before I can be sure about tomorrow. You do see that?’

  ‘Of course,’ he gave an understanding nod. ‘But it will do no good for you to worry. Your mind has etched indelible impressions of people, places and events in the past. At the moment they are obscured and naturally this is very troubling, but be sure they are there and one day they will suddenly emerge and you will know where you have been and where you are going.’

  ‘You’re very reassuring,’ she said, with a little sigh that was like that of a comforted child. ‘Play some more music, Tristan.’

  ‘I don’t know whether I should.’ He was studying her face, a pale triangle, neither pretty nor plain but with something pixieish about it. ‘The guitar is the instrument of nostalgia and I don’t want to send you to bed in a sad mood. Early tomorrow we are off on our week-end jaunt You look forward to it, Roslyn?’

  ‘Very much,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been into an Eastern market.’

  ‘The bazaars are fascinating, warrens of oriental craft and graft. I will introduce you to mocha coffee, and take you to the top of a minaret.’

  ‘Sounds exciting.’ She gave a little shiver of anticipation. ‘Do you - do you suppose your cousin minded that I am going ?’

  ‘Why should he mind?’

  ‘He - doesn’t like me.’ She fingered the rough stone of the crenellation where she stood; large emerald fireflies shone like gems in the milky dark. ‘I believe he thinks me a fraud.’

  ‘You?’ Tristan smiled and touched her cheek, briefly. ‘You would not know how to begin a deception, let alone carry one through. No, there is an abrasive quality in Duane and anyone sensitive is bound to be hurt by him. He is not a bad fellow, when you get to know him. A rough diamond out of the jungle.’

  ‘No, a jaguar,’ she said. ‘He got wounded once, and now he takes no more chances on whether a friend or a foe confronts him.’

  Tristan smiled in his wry, attractive way. ‘Perhaps so. Like lightning, love is not always lethal, but sometimes when it strikes it leaves its mark for many years.’

  Roslyn studied her companion as he brought his guitar round in front of him and begun to strum softly the love theme from his new opera. Haunting, holding a plea that grew gradually fierce until all tenderness seemed a
bout to be lost, but wasn’t quite lost as the final chords died away.

  ‘It’s lovely, and barbaric,’ Roslyn said. ‘It caresses and bruises.’

  ‘Like loye, of course.’ His Gallic eyes smiled down at her. ‘Love is subtle, a weapon and a web. Love is the madness that keeps men sane, though the emotion to a man is not quite the same as it is to a woman. A woman is bewildered if a man has several facets to his personality; a man on the other hand is charmed by a chameleon, a changing creature, a mistress, mother, counsellor and courtesan.’ Tristan turned his dark gaze to the desert. ‘You are easy to talk to, Roslyn, and also dangerous. Those grey eyes of yours draw out of a man the thoughts he usually keeps to himself.’

  ‘I suppose I’m just a good listener,’ she smiled. ‘Anyway, what you have to say is always interesting.’

  ‘Roslyn,’ his hands touched her shoulders, ‘you are a kind child, and I am sorry life had to hurt you so soon.’ She gazed up at him. They were within kissing distance, a girl and a man lost in a different way to each other, seeking the way home and driven in their search towards a passing haven. Tristan’s lips found hers and he was holding her in his arms when high heels sounded on stone, and they broke apart to find Isabela looking at them.

  The silver dipper of a moon poured its light on to her lovely face and Roslyn saw the scorn in her eyes. She had no use for Tristan’s kisses, but he wasn’t supposed to give them to another girl!

  ‘Well, Isabela?’ Tristan’s arm stayed firm around Ros-lyn’s waist.

  ‘I thought it would be cool up here after that warm salon filled with cigarette smoke,’ Isabela flicked a look of disdain over Roslyn. ‘Evidently it is even warmer up here.’

  Roslyn’s cheeks were burning, yet there had been no passion in Tristan’s kiss. What first kiss holds passion? It is a question seeking an answer, and Isabela had interrupted before that answer had been established.

  Indian file, the three of them crossed the tower and went down the stairs. In the corridor Roslyn said good night and hastened towards the vermilion door of her room. Inside the room she didn’t switch on the light but stood with her back to the door, listening to her heartbeats and trying to recall her own emotions during the course of that kiss. Had she responded to it because Tristan resembled his brother Armand? Had she needed comfort, and men have only the one way of giving it?