A Canopy of Rose Leaves (13 page)

‘So this is Deborah Day,’ she said, rising from the chair she had been seated on. ‘How do you do?’

Her eyes were very like Roger’s. They crinkled at the corners and they had the same piercing, all-seeing expression. Deborah’s heart bumped within her, but she managed a rather nervous smile and returned the greeting.

‘Whatever have you been doing with yourself?’ Mrs. Derwent asked. ‘You look as though you’ve been pulled through a bush backwards, but if Roger had anything to do with it, you very likely were. I’ve never travelled
comfortably
with him anywhere yet.’

‘It wasn’t his fault this time,’ Deborah replied. ‘It was he who came to my rescue, and very grateful I am to him too.’

Mrs. Derwent’s eyebrows rose. ’It’s more than I am.’ She turned to her son. ‘What was I supposed to do with that extraordinary little woman who came to see you? Iran’s gift to Women’s Lib went straight back to Shiraz, leaving her stranded. As I was in the same state, I said she’d have to wait until you turned up again, but she wasn’t very happy about it. I couldn’t persuade her to sleep in a bed like a Christian, so she slept on the floor and snored her head off. I do not intend to share my room with her again tonight.’

‘No,’ Roger agreed. ‘You’ll be sharing it with Deborah.’

‘
What
?’

Deborah put a hand on Roger’s sleeve. ‘Is Toobi really still here? Please may I see her? I want to thank her myself, only will you please translate for me, because I want her to know that I’ll never be able to repay her. Do you think I should give her something?’

Mrs. Derwent looked inquiringly at her son too, a gleam of mockery at the back of her eyes. ‘I suggest a box of chocolates. I can tell you for a fact that she has a very sweet tooth. When she was not snoring on the floor last night, she was chumping her way through every lump of sugar I could lay my hands on. Fortunately, I always keep an emergency supply in my bag. They never give me enough where I work.’

‘I’ll see her,’ Roger sighed. ‘A box of chocolates? Perhaps the shop sells confectionery—’

Deborah pulled harder at his sleeve. ‘Yes, but I haven’t much money with me,’ she told him. ‘I can’t pay you back for the hotel until we get back to Shiraz. And your mother wouldn’t have stayed here two nights if it hadn’t been for me, would she? Can’t we all go back to Shiraz and take Toobi with us?’

‘No. You’re going to have a bath and bed and Toobi can stay on here and look after you.’ He smiled faintly. ‘She’ll prefer to be with you rather than earning her keep in Shiraz.’

Deborah looked at him quickly. ‘Thank you,’ she said with unusual meekness. ‘You’re being very kind.’

Mrs. Derwent watched her son walk across the foyer away from them. ‘Shall we have some coffee?’ she suggested. ‘Or would you prefer tea? The coffee comes in little packets, unless you have it Turkish style, but the tea is excellent.’

‘I’d like some tea,’ Deborah agreed. She stopped and retrieved one of Mrs. Derwent’s scattered pins, returning it to her with a smile. ‘If you can put up with me looking like this?’ she added.

Mrs. Derwent merely shrugged. ‘I was expecting you to be an exotic flower without a brain in your head. You make a refreshing change, whatever you look like.’

‘It’s possible I can look a bit better than this—’

‘I’m sure you can!’ Mrs. Derwent said with unusual warmth. ‘I didn’t mean to put your back up. I always put my foot in it sooner or later, and I meant to be so tactful for once!’

Deborah laughed. ‘I think we’re in the same boat,’ she confessed.

Mrs. Derwent opened her eyes wide. ‘I liked your mother too. She told me not to build a wall between myself and Roger because I was unhappy myself. I’m afraid I didn’t take her advice.’

‘I’m glad someone was nice to you,’ said Deborah.

‘If they weren’t, it was my own fault. I was bored out of my mind being a wife and mother and I took it out on everyone all round me. It was the best thing I ever did to retire in favour of Ian’s mother.’

‘For Roger too?’ Deborah asked gently.

‘Yes, I think it was. It wasn’t that that hurt him.’ She stopped abruptly. ‘How is your mother?’

Deborah regarded her thoughtfully. ‘Did you know I was engaged to Ian but that he was married to someone else? My parents were rather upset about that, but my mother will love to hear that I’ve met you. Why don’t you visit her some time?’

Mrs. Derwent ran a hand wildly through her hair. ‘Oh, I couldn’t! She wouldn’t want to see me! I wouldn’t have stayed to meet you if I hadn’t been stranded here without any choice in the matter. I’m not too good with people.’

‘I can’t believe that,’ Deborah maintained.

The older woman turned a mottled red. ‘You’re in love with Roger,’ she stated as a fact. ‘Didn’t he tell you that I don’t interfere with his affairs? You don’t have to get on the right side of me. Roger lives his own life.’

Deborah accepted a cup of tea from the waiter. ‘You’re attractive,’ she said. ‘Did you never think of marrying again?’

‘Don’t believe in it,’ Mrs. Derwent told her. ‘As far as I’m concerned I am married.’ She changed the subject abruptly. ‘Tell me about you and Roger. Are you going to marry him?’

Deborah shook her head. ‘He doesn’t think love lasts.’

Mrs. Derwent looked her straight in the eyes. ‘And you blame me for that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Deborah. ‘Should I?’

‘Possibly. It was nothing to do with his father. It was much later, when Roger was well on in his teens. I fell very much in love with someone.’ She hesitated. ‘After a year or two he went back to his wife. It was what I’d told him to do all along, but without much conviction because I didn’t care if anyone else got hurt. It was my turn to be the winner. It was my fault that he went. One can’t change one’s convictions and I knew that what we were doing was wrong, but I suffered terribly when he had gone. I shut everyone out, Roger included. I told myself he didn’t need me and that I didn’t need him.’

‘But he would have supported you—if you had let him?’

Mrs. Derwent took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ she said. ‘But you wanted to know, didn’t you? You
need
to know. I saw Roger’s face when he went off last night. I haven’t seen him like that since he was quite small. I’ve been thinking about it on and off ever since. The academic world is rather closed in on itself, and all our friends sided with John’s wife. I was bitterly condemned as the other woman who had ruined their marriage. I didn’t mind when I had John. I knew he had been miserable for years and that he wasn’t miserable with me, but you can’t tell other people that, can you? I was never popular, but after that I was completely ostracised and, in a peculiar way, I welcomed it for myself. I didn’t approve of what I was doing either. It wasn’t charitable, but it was justice, if you know what I mean. But not for Roger. You see, they wouldn’t have anything to do with him either.’

‘Because he’s your son?’

Mrs. Derwent nodded. ‘There was only one thing for me to do and I did it. I cut myself off from him in every way I could, so that he could make his own way, without having to stand all the time in my shadow. It wasn’t as hard as you might think. John is the only person I have ever really cared about and I’d sent him back to being miserable with his wife. I didn’t want to be involved with anyone else.’

‘But Roger blamed John?’

‘I’m afraid so. He thought he’d abandoned me to my enemies and he never forgave him for it. First his father, and then John. He couldn’t remember the first time and I suppose he imagined it was as terrible as when John went. I tried to tell him once or twice, but he wouldn’t believe me. It seemed to him that John had got off scot free when he was welcomed back to the fold by all his old friends and that I had been the only one to suffer because I wasn’t welcomed back anywhere. He was convinced after that that the one thing every woman ought to have is emotional security.’ Deborah swallowed the last of her tea. ‘He’s right,’ she observed.

‘Maybe. Most of the women he’s had wouldn’t know what to do with it if it was staring them in the face. All they wanted was to be free to do their own thing. Perhaps that’s why he chose them.’

Deborah thought it was only too likely. He had practically told her so. ‘Mrs. Derwent, how can I persuade him that the only security I care about is love? I don’t want anything else from him.’

The older woman was shocked by the question. ‘Good heavens, child, how should I know? I’ve told you what happened because I felt it was only fair to you to know the facts as I see them. What you do with that knowledge is your own affair. It’s got nothing to do with me!’ She fiddled awkwardly with the book on her lap, obviously longing to escape back into its pages. ‘You have excellent wits, girl. Use them I I’m not going to do your thinking for you!’

Deborah smiled. ‘I can’t begin to compete with you and Roger when it comes to brains!’

Mrs. Derwent turned her sharp eyes on to Deborah’s face. ‘In a way you’re luckier than either of us,’ she remarked. ‘You like people and I’ve always thought that a great blessing. You even like that ridiculous bundle who descended on us last night, don’t you?’

‘Toobi?’ Deborah began to laugh. ‘I don’t just like Toobi, I’ll love her for ever for finding Roger yesterday!’

‘You’re welcome to her!’ Mrs. Derwent assured her acidly. ‘She not only snores and eats sugar, but she weeps as well. I got someone to come along and ask her what was the matter she looked so miserable, but it turned out that she was weeping over you. I didn’t entirely understand why, some nonsense about Roger not thinking your dowry was worth putting up with such a headstrong wife! Tonight, I don’t care what you and Roger say, that woman sleeps somewhere else well away from me!’

Roger came back to them and dropped into the vacant chair beside his mother.

‘If you’re talking about Toobi, I’ve just destroyed her faith in life,’ he said. ‘I told her that nothing would induce me to touch a penny piece of any money Deborah has in that shop of hers, or anything else that Ian has to do with, come to that. I’ve left her calling on God in the middle of the kitchen. I rather think the chef may cut her throat if somebody doesn’t take her away soon, and I for one won’t blame him.’

‘Oh, poor Toobi!’ Deborah exclaimed. ‘She must have misunderstood.’ She coloured guiltily. ‘She doesn’t approve of shilly-shallying and I’m afraid she thinks that both Ian and Reza were all your fault—’

‘In what way?’ Roger demanded dangerously.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ Deborah prevaricated, ‘but I think she thinks you too easy in your ideas, letting me run around so much on my own. You see, whatever I tell any of them, they all think you’re responsible for me just because I was engaged to your brother. They don’t think I ought to go on working for him, if you really want to know, and they blame you for that too!’

‘Do they indeed? Well, I don’t approve of you working
with
him either, or anyone else like him! Tell her that!’

Deborah looked at him in surprise. ‘Don’t you?’ she asked. ‘But how else would I earn my living?’

‘Do you really need Ian’s help to do that?’ he said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Toobi
was full of chatter. Much of it Deborah didn’t understand, but some of it she did. Some of it she understood only too well. Toobi was quite sure her protégée’s future was now satisfactorily settled and that Roger had matters firmly in hand. Once or twice, Deborah tried to tell her that Roger thought of himself as a friend and not as her future husband, but how did one explain such a complication when they had no language in common?

As soon as Deborah had entered the hotel kitchens, an anxious individual in attendance, Toobi had stopped her wailing. Her pleasure at seeing Deborah again was touching, and Deborah had no difficulty in extracting her from the chef’s fury with profuse apologies on all sides. Safely upstairs, Toobi scuttled along the corridors ahead of her own limping steps and opened Mrs. Derwent’s bedroom door with a flourish. In the privacy of the room, she cast a withering look over Deborah’s appearance and went off into the bathroom to run her a bath, peeling off her clothes with hands that were unexpectedly gentle.

Deborah had never had the benefit of a personal maid before, but she soon found that Toobi knew exactly what she was about. She massaged her tired body and dressed her blistered feet with a quiet professionalism that brought quick relief. Only once, when Deborah protested that she could manage quite well by herself, did her firm touch become the sting of a slap, accompanied by a burst of words that even Deborah could interpret as meaning that she now had a duty to Roger to look her best—and as quickly as possible.

Left alone in the darkened room to sleep, Deborah found that she could not. She went over every word that Roger had ever spoken to her, and over and over again all that his mother had said that morning. How sad it was that people should be hurt by those who loved them best. As Roger was hurting her, for there would never be any other man for her. She wanted him and, if she couldn’t have him—what would she do then? Somehow she didn’t think her share in Aladdin’s Cave would satisfy her. It would be even less satisfactory than Mrs. Derwent had found her retreat into the academic life. The tears crept out beneath her lids and she wept out her loneliness and disillusion into her pillow, finally falling into an exhausted sleep where an angry, impatient Roger haunted her dreams.

The brief sleep refreshed her more than she had expected. When Toobi woke her for lunch, she found she could move without every muscle screaming a protest and her feet, shod in shoes that were little more than moccasins, were able to bear her weight with most of their customary grace.

‘Tashakor,
Toobi,’ she said as she went to find the others in the dining room.
‘Merci.’

The old woman chuckled and patted her cheek, murmuring over the set of her hair and making encouraging noises in which Roger’s name figured more and more frequently. The last accompanying gesture of this monologue was so explicit that it was with heightened colour that Deborah ran down the stairs to the foyer of the hotel below, running slap into Roger at the bottom. His hands on her arms prevented them from actually colliding and he held her away from him, looking her over from head to foot.

‘You look better,’ he said. ‘Very pretty!’

‘I feel better,’ she told him. Her voice had a huskiness that made her swallow.

His hand slipped beneath the curtain of her hair and took a firm hold on the nape of her neck, giving her a little shake. ‘How do you do it, Deborah? You make us all your slaves!’

‘Not you,’ she denied. ‘You’re well able to resist my blandishments. Roger, I’ll never be able to thank you enough for coming for me last night, but I am very grateful—’

‘Well-mannered to the end?’ he observed. ‘I’ll take it as read, Deborah Day. If you want to repay me you know exactly what to do.’

‘Yes,’ she said with a remarkable lack of conviction. She veiled her eyes with her lashes, still hesitating. ‘What happened to John?’

His jaw dropped in astonishment and then he laughed. ‘He went back to his wife. Surely she told you that?’

‘Well, yes. But what happened to him after that?’

‘He went to the States. Good riddance, in my opinion. He broke my mother up. I was glad when he went.’

‘And you’ve never heard of him again?’

He smiled, shaking his head at her. ‘It must be witchcraft! Yes, I did hear quite a bit about him, as a matter of fact. His wife became more peculiar than she was already and went into several nursing homes suffering from acute depression. To give the fellow his due, he did his best for her. He did that even when they were living apart. She killed herself about a year ago and he took it rather badly—’

Deborah’s eyes swept to his face. ‘Does your mother know?’

‘No.’ His face tightened with pain. ‘I deliberately saw to it that she didn’t know. He’d hurt her enough already.’

‘And she him,’ Deborah said quietly. ‘Your mother has very strong ideas about living in sin as she would probably put it. It might be different for her if she knew she wasn’t hurting John’s wife. I think you ought to tell her.’

His fingers played in her hair. ‘You’re sweet, but too naive to be true, little Debbie. People fall out of love as easily as they fall in love with one another. He left her for the simple reason that he had no further use for her. The magic didn’t work any more.’

She shook her head so violently that his fingers caught in a knot and the pain of it brought the tears to her eyes. ‘I don’t believe it was like that at all! And even if it was, I still think you ought to tell her. It’s her decision, not yours! If she doesn’t go back to him, it’s far more likely to be because she still feels married to your father than through any lack of love between her and John!’ She glared at him, deliberately making her point. ‘You ought to know better than to jump to a conclusion before you’re in possession of all the facts! If you ask me, your ideas about love and marriage are no more than half-baked! They’re unworthy of you!’

His delighted laughter was plainly audible right round the foyer and several people turned their heads to look at him.

‘Afraid of nothing! Oh, my word, but the Khan was right about you! David tackling Goliath had nothing on you!’ he murmured in her ear.

Her air of injured dignity made him laugh again.

‘Oh, I hate you!’ she snapped.

‘That sounds a healthy reaction,’ Mrs. Derwent said over her son’s shoulder. ‘He always was a bully. Is anyone else hungry, or am I having lunch on my own?’ If she noted their start of surprise at her sudden arrival, she said nothing. Instead, she made a point of keeping Deborah close to her by taking her arm in hers. ‘You look well enough to go with us to Persepolis after all,’ she congratulated her. ‘It’s a place I’ve always wanted to see and this afternoon is my last opportunity. I have to fly up to Teheran first thing tomorrow and on to London the next day. It was silly to come for such a short time, but I wanted—London can be a lonely place!’

Deborah gave Roger a meaning look, undaunted by the mocking gleam in his eyes, and he put his hand on his mother’s shoulder, giving it a little squeeze.

‘There may be a surprise waiting for you when you get back,’ he said with a winning smile. ‘No, I’m not going to tell you what it is, nor give you any clues as to what it might be, except to say that I disapprove. This is Deborah’s doing, so when it all goes wrong, you’ll know whom to blame!’

Mrs. Derwent sat down awkwardly at the table. ‘If it goes wrong it will be my fault—’

‘No, it won’t be,’ Deborah cut her off with calm certainty. She took the open book out of the older woman’s hand and put it on the other side of the table where she couldn’t reach it. ‘It won’t be anyone’s fault, it’ll just be one of those things. I’m certainly not going to feel guilty just to please Roger, so why should you?’ The look on his face boded her no good, but she had tried being meek with him and that hadn’t worked either. Perhaps it was as she had first thought and that while he was physically attracted to her, he didn’t really like her at all. She eyed him uncertainly, but she could tell nothing from the enigmatic expression that had settled over his features. How could she love him with such a painful longing if he didn’t care for her at all?

Persepolis had a majestic charm that disappointed none of them. Roger had visited it frequently before, but even he had to pause at the bottom of the Apadana, the Audience Hall where Xerxes and Darius had received the greetings of their subject peoples whom they had ruled with a dignity and tolerance that was unusual indeed in the ancient world.

The steps that led up to the city were shallow enough to allow horses to go up them with ease, and, once at the top, there were two ways to go, turning right if you were a Mede or Persian, or going straight on if you were part of one of the many delegations who had come to pay their respects to the King of Kings, the same title which the Shah of Iran bears to this very day.

For Deborah one of the main glories of Persepolis was the loneliness of the place. There were no guides, no vendors pressing their wares on all sides, and not even many sightseers, most of whom came by the coachload, losing themselves in the immensity of the place and disturbing its peace hardly at all. Roger and his mother both had guidebooks and they argued happily together about the various features of the ruined palaces that were spread out before them. Deborah, less versed in history and a much less experienced traveller in the classical tradition, contented herself with meandering through what was left of the buildings, only returning to the others when she wanted to know something that she couldn’t guess at for herself.

She became familiar with Ahuro-Mazda, still worshipped as the divinity of the Zoroastrians and Parsees, his long horizontal wings giving drama to his appearance, as he held the ring of kingship in his hand. But, like everyone else who has seen them, she thought the true glory of Persepolis was the carvings that decorated the grand, ceremonial staircases, bearing lifelike portraits of the men and their animals who had preceded her there in their own lifetime, many centuries before.

Now and again she heard snatches of the conversation of the other two and marvelled at the way they discussed the talked-about Achaeminid Kings as if they were old friends.

‘Darius declared that he loved righteousness and hated iniquity,’ Roger would say. ‘There are not many rulers who have lived up to that.’

‘God’s plan for the earth is not turmoil but peace, prosperity and good government,’ Mrs. Derwent quoted back. ‘And what else is this monument but the proof of how well he succeeded? Imagine it? Not a single slave used in its building, they were all paid a just wage for what they did! What a polyglot crew they must have been too: Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, every known people of the world at that time!’

Deborah wandered away from them again, retracing her steps to the Gate of all Nations, hoping to get a better view of the stork that was nesting on the double headed capital of one of the pillars. She found she was too close up to it to get a good view and backed away down the corridor where the foreign delegations had travelled on their way to have audience with the king. The stork rose on its nest, stretched and clapped its bill together before taking off into the air and circling slowly round the tented city below which had been used to house the visiting royalty and dignitaries during the twenty-fifth centenary celebrations a few years before. Deborah waited a few minutes, hoping for the stork’s return, but when she had lost sight of it, she turned away, catching sight of a fallen capital that was half hidden from her in an enclave that had been dug out of the side of the hill beside her.

The creature was meant to be a bird. It might have been an eagle, but if so, she had never seen one quite like it. Yet she had seen it before. She stroked the high polish on the bird’s beak, wondering that the artisan who had created the creature had taken so much trouble over something that, perched on the top of a pillar, would never have been seen.

Then suddenly it came to her what the bird was and where she had seen it before. It was the Homa bird, the symbol of the Iranian Airways, a mythical bird, similar to the phoenix, who renewed itself in the fires of death.

‘I wondered if you’d find it,’ Roger said from the bank above her. He jumped down beside her and stood, admiring the stone carving, his head a little on one side. ‘The personification of your philosophy of life!’ he observed. ‘Well, what do you think of it?’

‘I’ve never seen a bird with ears before.’

‘Perhaps it’s more open to reason than you seem to be!’ He put his hands beside hers on the shiny beak. ‘Deborah, what are you going to do with your life? The partnership with Ian in the shop won’t work and you know it. Ian will never be able to cope with you and Anne bickering over his body. It’s up to you to get out and leave them to make their own mistakes.’

‘There’s nothing else I can do,’ she answered. ‘Anne doesn’t come into the shop, so I don’t see why we should clash. I’ll always be fond of Ian, you know.’ ‘And what does that mean? Grow up, Deborah! It’s unlikely that Ian will ever be able to satisfy one woman, let alone two! Are you going to be content for ever to pick up the crumbs from Anne’s table?’

No!
Her whole being revolted at the thought. She shut her eyes, putting her arm round the Homa bird’s neck and hugging herself closer to it. If she went back to England she might never see Roger again!

When she opened her eyes, Roger was still looking at her. What did he want from her? She stared back at him, her eyes wide.
Could it be that Roger was jealous of Ian?
And, if he was jealous, it must be because he had some feeling for her. For a moment she could scarcely believe that it could be true. She must have misinterpreted the look in his eyes. She must have! And yet supposing she had not? She shut her eyes again hastily in an attempt to blank out the idea that was slowly being born in her mind. It was a terrible thing to do! She had never in her life deliberately planned to manipulate events and people to suit herself, but if it didn’t come off, whom would she be hurting besides herself?