Court of Veils

by Violet Winspear

  They were almost home and dry - Roslyn could all but taste that cup of coffee - when suddenly a rock broke loose under her feet and she slipped and hung suspended in space from Duane’s belt.

  He staggered as he took her weight, then lunged upwards and caught swiftly at some overhanging shrub. ‘Try and grab me around the legs with your other arm,’ he threw over his shoulder. ‘That’s it... don’t let go. Use me to lever yourself up ... there, are you making it?’ Obeying blindly, she gripped his left thigh and pulled herself in against him, kicking at the cliff for a foothold. She found one, thank heaven, and rested for a moment with her head against Duane’s hip, her heart thumping in her chest, a lurid picture of the pair of them plummeting through the air, crashing over and over down the cliffside.

  It had almost happened! Her full and unexpected weight on Duane’s belt had very nearly jerked him away from the cliff.

  ‘S-sorry about that,’ she panted. ‘It’s a - a good thing your reactions are quick ones.’

  ‘Force of habit,’ he rejoined. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. What about you? Your belt - it must have cut into you.’

  ‘You aren’t that heavy,’ he chided her. ‘Come on, we haven’t much farther to go. You said you were dying for a cup of coffee and a wash, remember?’

  ‘Putting it like that was tempting Providence.’ She strove, to speak lightly. ‘All I want now is to reach that headland and have my feet on solid ground.’

  They began the final lap of the climb, and at last they lay regaining their breath on the coarse grass of the headland. ‘Well, we made it,’ Duane said at last.

  ‘Thanks to you.’ She sat up and inspected her person. Her shirt was torn, her trews blotched by soil and mud, and her hair clustered sweatily at her temples and nape, She must look a wreck. Duane, beside her, looked more of a desperado than ever.

  He jumped to his feet and gave her a hand up. ‘You’re spunky yourself.’ He grinned and patted her cheek, as though she were a child. ‘Now let’s go and get that coffee.’

  She glanced back once, before she followed him. Lake Temcina glittered, reflecting the shadows of birds. A place she would not forget... unless when she awoke from her amnesia her memories of El Kadia faded like a dream.

  When she caught up with Duane, he was inspecting his watch. ‘It’s still early,’ he said. ‘We may manage to sneak in without being seen.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ Roslyn took a breath, ‘are you suggesting we don’t tell anyone where we’ve been - all night?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t any of their business, is it?

  ‘But down on the shore - you said—’

  ‘Forget what I said, down there.’ The entrance of the hotel hove in sight, no signs of activity to be seen. ‘You see, I’ve just realized something, up here.’

  His eyes met Roslyn’s, a startling green in his brown, unshaven face. ‘I don’t want Isabela to know about our little adventure - not if it can be avoided.’

  And by some miracle of chance they did manage to get back to their rooms without being seen. Roslyn at once set about having a proper wash, and ten minutes later an Arab appeared at her door with a pot of coffee on a tray, a large cup and a small jug of cream.

  Had Mr. Hunter ordered it for her? she asked as she took the tray. The Arab nodded, then bowed, and was gone.

  Duane Hunter was certainly a puzzle, Roslyn thought, as she sipped her second cup of delicious coffee and pondered the events of their strange night together.

  It could almost have been a dream, except that she still remembered the girl with the silvery hair and the gay laughter ... and her own tears, springing from a subconscious knowledge that her friend had died in the plane crash.

  Poor, pretty thing, she would never again dance round the willow trees, the ends of her shoulder-length hair wet from their dip in the lake that was supposed to be out of bounds.

  Her coffee finished, Roslyn stretched out on her bed, relishing its comfort after a night spent cramped in a punt beside a long pair of legs. She was no longer sure that it was wise to keep the adventure a secret. She and Duane would look far more guilty in the eyes of everyone if the secret leaked out later on.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IN the days that followed Roslyn was glad that Duane was kept busy about the plantation and she saw him so infrequently. They shared a secret. They were conspirators. But the feeling this gave her was an uneasy one.

  Tristan was busy with his opera most of the daytime. In the cool of the evening he had a couple of horses saddled and he and Roslyn took rides together. She had needed lessons, but he was a good instructor and soon she was at home in the saddle and able to enjoy the dusky desert all around them as they rode; also their discussions about his musical ambitions and his travels.

  They wore the Arab cloaks that were not only picturesque, but warm. For both of them these hours alone on horseback were happy, companionable ones. J’aime être avec vousy they could say to each other with truth. I like being with you.

  Roslyn thrust to the back of her mind her adventure with Duane. It suited both of them to forget the episode, and she was determined not to feel guilty about it. And she didn’t feel guilty with the exotic beauty of the North African night all about her, doubly cloaking her. Strange vibrations seemed to pulse in the air, and her laughter joined Tristan’s as he recited an anecdote from his life among singers, musicians and all those who created the drama and fantasy of a stage production.

  ‘We of that world are all inclined to over-dramatize,’ Tristan told her. ‘Sometimes I wonder if we grow away from reality and become the heroes and heroines of opera. There is, you see, no other art form that exaggerates to such an extent the emotion of love, and the lengths to which jealousy and hatred can lead a person.’

  ‘I can’t remember if I have ever seen an opera,’ she mused. ‘I like your music and the way Isabela sings it. She has a superb voice.’

  ‘A voice for declaiming all the emotions,’ he agreed dryly. ‘Yes, she has a great deal of vocal talent, and she is also an excellent actress.’

  ‘Have you known her long?’

  ‘About three years. We met in Paris while she was performing in Carmen. I had just completed Ar Mor and thought her perfect for the leading role. Fortunately she agreed with me, and I consider that Ar Mor achieved its overnight success because of her performance.’

  ‘Do you also admire her as a person, Tristan?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not nearly as much as I admire you as a person,’ he said frankly.

  She flushed in the darkness. ‘But you know so little about me,’ she argued. ‘I might be capable of anything -of deception, for instance.’

  ‘Most women are,’ he laughed, with a hint of Gallic cynicism. ‘So are most men. It is a human condition, and one we must accept or remain friendless.’

  She liked his answer. It withdrew the hook from her heart and allowed her to breathe again. ‘You’re a very mature and understanding person,’ she said.

  ‘That is because I am French,’ he replied.

  She studied him in the star-glow, not in the least Arab-looking in his cloak, though Duane in the same sort of garment looked a hawk of the desert.

  ‘Do you intend to live in France one day?’ she asked. ‘You must love all this, the desert, the sense of freedom, the big icy stars.’

  ‘El Kadia is in my blood to a certain extent,’ he lifted his dark eyes to the stars and then let his gaze roam the shadowed sands, ‘but Brittany is where I should like to settle down. I should like to buy a house near the sea, one with gables, a grapevine that clambers everywhere like Jack’s beanstalk, and big oaken doors set in rough-cast walls. The evenings in Brittany are warm and wild with the sound of the sea, and one eats spitted woodcock, roasted over the fire and smoke of vine roots, washed down with a vin sauvage. Or rock lobster stew, followed by prune pie covered in sugar.

  ‘It is the part of France I find most congenial, alive with old legends and fisherfolk laments
. There are grottoes and caves, beaches, and forests to wander in. I stayed there when I wrote Ar Mor. One day I shall go back and buy my house.’

  His words echoed in her mind as they rode home to Dar al Amra. Duane, in the darkness, had spoken with nostalgia of a far more distant place - a place to which he would not return, for his memories were painful ones.

  Sometimes he rode up to Dar al Amra for a nightcap and a sandwich. He would talk with his grandmother out under the old charmed tree that guarded the Court of the Veils, she in her ocelot cape. Now and again he laughed at a tart remark from Nanette, and Isabela, grown restless in the salon, would saunter outside ... evidently jealous of the attention he was paying another woman, even though that woman was his grandmother.

  Tristan would shoot an amused glance at Roslyn from his seat at the piano, and she would recall that Sunday morning on the headland above Lake Temcina and Duane remarking that he didn’t want Isabela to know about their ‘little adventure’. Isabela Fernao must have an unnaturally jealous nature if she couldn’t bear even Nanette to amuse him!

  How could anyone help falling under Nanette’s spell? She was so warm-hearted and generous, with a gay sense of humour that had not soured with the years.

  Roslyn went to her room each morning to enjoy a chat with her. ‘I breakfast in bed because I am lazy,’ she said, but there were times when she looked very fatigued, with a faint of blue about her lips, and Roslyn would feel a clutch of anxiety.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Nanette asked one morning. ‘That one day your own fair hair must turn white, and your smooth young skin become wrinkled? Does the prospect of old age worry you, my child?’

  ‘Not if I could wear my years as gracefully as you, Nanette.’ Roslyn smiled to hide her anxiety at how fragile Nanette was looking this morning. She had picked at her breakfast, now she was lying back against her blue pillows instead of going through her mail, or studying the latest fashions in Vogue and Elle.

  ‘Grace comes with good memories,’ she mused. ‘I have many. They are strung like the beads of a rosary and each one gives me joy, sometimes sadness, and very often pleasure. It pleases me to remember how I stood ankle-deep in flowers after my first big stage triumph. A very distinguished young man took me to supper after the show and we had caviar and champagne. At that time, you understand, I had not met Armand. If I had never met him, I think I should have married my distinguished diplomat and become a leading light of Paris society.’

  ‘I don’t think you’d have been half as happy as you have been, Nanette,’ Roslyn said with conviction. ‘You married for love.’

  ‘Yes, my romantic child, I married for love - though I tell you now that I had my misgivings about doing so. Other men seemed more understanding than Armand. They were happy to give in to my whims, to be led rather than followed. Armand gave in to nobody. A woman either accepted him as he was, knowing he would cherish her or be cruel as the mood took him, or she turned her back on him and chose a more moderate man for a husband. My family and my friends thought him a barbarian. He was not given to hand-kissing, you see, or paying compliments. He was a man of the soil, rugged as the trees he planted, and unpredictable as the desert winds.

  ‘Each time I saw him I wanted to run away, but,’ Nanette gave a nostalgic laugh, ‘I ran in circles from him, like a doe from a stag. I had to show some fight, even when the circles narrowed to the circumference of his arms.’ Nanette’s eyes dwelt on the girl seated beside her on the canopied bed. Her thin young face was serious, her eyes a lucid grey. ‘You have a very untouched look, my child,’ the older woman spoke thoughtfully. ‘Your heart, I think, has not felt love as I felt it at your age. You would not forget that, no matter what other fury you passed through.’

  The anchusa-blue eyes were so searching that Roslyn had to avoid them. She looked down at her folded hands, the left atop the right, no longer wearing the engraved ring whose stone blazed as love should. ‘Perhaps your Armand was unique,’ she tried to speak lightly. ‘As strong and compelling as the feelings he awoke in you.’

  Nanette put out a hand and tilted Roslyn’s chin. She slowly shook her head and smiled. ‘No, I have met his match - in all but one respect. My husband was never reserved. He hid nothing from me. This other - he has arrogant reserve. He keeps locked within him the things that hurt him, and this is not a good thing to do. If he were a boy, I might persuade him to confide in me, but he is a man - very much a man - and he guards his secret.’ Nanette sank back against her pillows and her eyes grew shadowed. ‘I feel in my bones that it concerns a woman, and I believe he still loves her despite the pain she has caused him.’

  The man’s name had not been mentioned, but Roslyn knew that Nanette was referring to her half-English grandson.

  ‘Men from boys harbour a lot of romantic illusions about women, but if these are shattered in a painful way, something tender and boyish is killed in the man.’ Nanette drew a sigh. ‘This has happened to the man to whom I refer - bah, now I am being secretive. I speak of my grandson Duane. Did you guess as much, my child?’ Roslyn gave a quick little nod.

  ‘Astute of you, petite.’ There was an ironical glint in Nanette’s eyes. ‘Duane has the authority and self-assurance of a bashaw. To most outsiders he reveals little sign of a hurt sensitivity.’

  ‘Mr. Hunter is cynical about women,’ Roslyn spoke formally, perhaps because of being called an outsider. ‘You are the only person he loves and admires. You are his goddess, Nanette. He has told me so.’

  ‘I am flattered,’ Nanette smiled. ‘Tell me, do you call him Mr. Hunter to his face?’

  Roslyn flushed slightly and thought of some of the things she had called him - to his face.

  ‘He is not a charmer like Tristan, eh? You are never formal with him, I have noticed. Does Duane ever join you and Tristan on your desert rides?’

  ‘No - I mean, he’s always busy about the plantation. Anyway, I’m sure we ride a little too sedately for him.’ ‘Very likely. He is an Arab in the saddle of that rakish bay of his, and he would spoil outings which you find congenial. He is not easy to know, is he, child? Or to like. A fortress of a man, with no openings left for the assaults of - friendship.’

  Roslyn pleated the lace cover of Nanette’s bed, then realizing what she was doing she hastily ironed out the pleats with her fingers. ‘I do find Tristan good company,’ she admitted. ‘This afternoon he’s taking me to see some historical cave-drawings at a place called Ajina.’

  ‘I am sure you will enjoy your history lesson,’ Nanette said dryly. ‘Isabela takes a beauty nap while you two are out riding, eh? She is like a golden cat, that one. Lazy and sensuous.’

  Yes, Roslyn thought. But she couldn’t imagine a man calling her Miss Puss.

  Roslyn and Tristan set out for Ajina at three o’clock that afternoon. It was hot, the lion-coloured sands rolling away in sunshot combers towards the mountains, forcing Roslyn to pull the brim of her hat well down over her eyes to shade them. She wore a long-sleeved blouse to protect her arms from the sun. Across her saddle her cloak lay folded, for when they rode home at dusk-fall the air would have cooled considerably.

  They rode along in a companionable silence, and this gave Roslyn a chance to realize that during her chat with Nanette she had not been warned to beware of Tristan’s resemblance to Armand ... Nanette no longer seemed to think that she would identify him with his dead brother. He had become a person to her in his own right, congenial, full of knowledge, and always kind.

  When they reached the caves, they tethered their mounts to some nearby tamarisks and Tristan produced a torch. They entered the caves, the beam of light stirring the bats that clustered in sleeping groups under the roof. ‘They are timid creatures,’ Tristan assured her. ‘They won’t fly at us.’

  She hoped not, for they looked furry and rather horrid, like mice with wings. Then she forgot them as she and Tristan examined the chiselled drawings on the walls of rock. There were tusked animals, some of them longnecked and very predatory-l
ooking; hunting scenes and family fire-circles.

  ‘I wonder,’ Roslyn murmured, ‘if we of today are so very different from those people, squatting in a circle, exchanging gossip and food - and affection.’

  ‘Fundamentals don’t change,’ Tristan was tracing one of the engraved figures with his finger. ‘The human appetites are still very basic. Man must hunt, eat, generate, and die. It is possible, however, that these primitives were happier than we the so-called civilized. They were probably less competitive, for each man could satisfy his aggressions as a hunter and provide his woman with ample furs, steaks and cave-man embraces.’

  Roslyn gave a laugh that echoed along the tunnels. ‘Do you think women still go for cave-men?’

  ‘You are a woman,’ his dark, smiling eyes met hers. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d care to be dragged into a wolf-skinned lair by my hair,’ she laughed. ‘It’s a little too short at the moment, anyway.’

  ‘I hope you are going to let it grow again. You must look like Alice in search of Wonderland with your fair hair on your shoulders.’

  ‘At the moment I am Roslyn in Wonderland.’ Her eyes grew serious. ‘I’ve been at Dar al Amra five weeks, and I begin to think that I ought to return to England. Perhaps it would be better - seeing familiar scenes might bring back my memory.’

  ‘You have no people in England, but here you have Nanette, and myself,’ Tristan reminded her. ‘Think how I would miss you.’

  ‘But I can’t go on imposing myself on Nanette’s hospitality,’ she protested. ‘Not indefinitely.’

  ‘Nothing is for ever, chérie,’ he smiled quizzically. ‘You are not unhappy at Dar al Amra, are you? We do our best to make you feel at home.’

  ‘Tristan, it isn’t that—’

  ‘I wonder if you really know what it is. Come,’ he caught at her wrist, ‘we will ride through the village of Ajina on our way home. It is a rather quaint place and I am sure you will be interested in the houses and their inhabitants.’