A Canopy of Rose Leaves (3 page)

‘I don’t want to live just anywhere,’ she said firmly.

‘I want to live right in the city or on a bus route—’

‘You’ve got it all worked out, I see.’ He felt in his pocket and produced a piece of paper setting it down on the table before him. ‘I think both these addresses are fairly get-atable. The choice is between a Persian family who will probably want you to conform more or less to their way of life, or a young American couple who won’t be shocked at anything you do, but who won’t be able to give you the same insight into the country. Which would you prefer?’

Deborah opened her mouth to speak. The Persian family sounded just right to her. It would be exciting to see how Iranians lived when they were at home. But if their ways were very different would she be free to find her own way round the city, making her new contacts? She hesitated, unsure of herself, and was lost. ‘Which do you think best?’ she asked him.

‘Reinhardts—the Americans. They’re a brother and sister from California. He’s on an exchange from Harvard and is finding things a bit tough. His sister is an artist of sorts and came along to be inspired by one of the oldest civilisations in the world. She has more life in her little finger than most people have in their whole bodies. If you could keep her out of the worst kinds of trouble while you’re with her, both her brother and I will be eternally grateful to you!’

‘Me?’ she said, startled.

‘Maxine gets bored easily. It will give her something to do to help you find what you need for your shop. You’ll find her useful too. She has an eye for that sort of thing.’

It was easy to see that he liked Maxine all right! Deborah doubted she would share his enthusiasm, but perhaps her brother would be more to her taste.

‘What’s he like?’ she asked.

‘Howard? He’s not for you,’ he declared. ‘He’s large, plays golf whenever he can and has a fiancée back home who has enough money to buy them both the best things in life. As an academic he’s second-rate.’

Deborah put her fork down on her plate, not looking at him. ‘Your judgments are too harsh for comfort. I’d hate to know what you think of me.’

‘You know already,’ he told her.

‘Only the inessentials,’ she said grandly. ‘I’m sure Maxine is much more your cup of tea!’ She gave him a curious look. ‘Does she give you an academic argument of the required standard before you kiss her goodnight?’

He didn’t look angry at all, which was something of a disappointment to her. She had wanted to make him angry. She had wanted to know if he would apply reason and objectivity to his snub if he were fighting mad, or whether he would lose his temper just like any other man and hit out with the first thing that came into his head.

‘I wouldn’t describe Maxine as academic. She has other attributes.’ He smiled reflectively. ‘They’re more physical than intellectual, but none the worse for that!’

‘I can’t wait to meet her!’ Deborah declared.

‘Mm,’ he agreed, ‘I think you’ll like her. You have a great deal in common!’

‘Oh, surely not!’ she exclaimed. ‘How could we have?’

His eyes swept over her as he rose languidly to his feet. ‘I should have thought Ian would have told you that!’ he retorted.

Deborah signed for his breakfast with a hand that trembled. Did he mean that he found her physically attractive? She couldn’t believe it! Besides, Ian had always played down that side of their relationship. He had had all sorts of reasons for doing so; how often had he told her that they had to work together and that it was a mistake to make too much about how much they felt for each other? It hadn’t stopped him wanting to anticipate their marriage, but he had said that that was because it was a normal thing to do, whereas she had built it up into something strange and wonderful and was bound to be disappointed.

‘Why bother to get married at all?’ she had asked him, made miserable by his insistence.

‘Oh, grow up, Debbie!’ he had flung back at her. ‘We suit one another and we have the shop to consider, but this is something else. Surely you know better than to suppose that it always leads to a respectable, settled relationship? One likes a bit of variety, and why not? I shan’t ask you any questions about your past, if that’s what’s worrying you!’

‘I don’t want to!’ was all she had been able to say. She had never thought that Ian and she could be such strangers to each other’s deepest feelings and she had felt quite cold with shock.

‘Then don’t complain when I go out by myself!’ he had shouted at her. ‘I was trying to be kind! You haven’t got what it takes, if you want to know!’

It hadn’t been long after that that he had gone to Spain and had come home with Anne. That had been the lesser hurt of the two. That had dealt a wound over which the clean scar tissue had already begun to grow; the other still festered and hadn’t begun to heal. It was there at the back of her mind all the time, as hurtful now as it had been then.

Roger Derwent had already left the dining-room when Deborah rose to follow him. It took all her resolution to force herself to precede him out of the door of the hotel and she turned blindly towards the roses so that he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes.

‘You’ll have to get used to people mentioning Ian,’ he said behind her shoulder. ‘Does it still upset you so much?’

She shook her head. Please God, he wasn’t going to be kind to her. If he said anything more she wouldn’t be able to stop from crying, and men, she knew, were always embarrassed by women’s tears.

‘It isn’t Ian,’ she said.

‘No?’ He turned her face to his, cupping her chin in the palm of his hand. ‘If it isn’t Ian, who is it?’

She jerked her head to be free of him, but he would not allow her to escape. ‘It isn’t anyone!’ she said. ‘At least, it was Ian, but not in the way you mean. This happened before—before he went away. I don’t want to talk about it!’

‘Not all men are as clumsy as that brother of mine,’ he told her.

‘But he wasn’t! It was I who failed him!’

He touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘You make a bad liar, Deborah Day. You’ll have to do better than that if you want to deceive me!’ He bent down to pick a small pink rose that he threaded through the buttonhole at her neck, putting his whole mind to the simple task. Then he touched her face with a masterful hand. ‘Hafez said it all:
“Oh, weep no more! For once again Life’s Spring Shall throne her in the meadows green, and o’er Her head the minstrel of the night shall fling A canopy of rose leaves, score on score.” ’

Was he the minstrel of the night? She put up her hand to the rose he had given her, but he shook his head at her.

‘I haven’t the right romantic touch,’ he said at once. ‘A woman is more likely to receive a bed of nails than one of rose petals from me. I lead my own life and follow my own desires. I’m not prepared to load myself up with the responsibility for the needs of anyone else.’

‘It sounds lonely to me,’ Deborah commented.

His mouth twisted into a cynical smile. ‘Companionship is cheap. I have all of it I need. Better a lonely night or two than being constantly torn in two by irreconcilable demands on one’s time.’

‘Perhaps she wouldn’t want to compete with your other interests,’ Deborah suggested. ‘She might be content just to be there when you need her.’

‘Like my father expected my mother to be?’ he countered roughly. ‘What kind of a woman would she be to be content with that? No, my dear, marriage is for other people, not for me!’

‘Perhaps it isn’t for me either,’ she said.

‘It would be a pity if you came to that conclusion. You were made to make some man happy and be loved to distraction by him. He’ll be a lucky man!’

‘I don’t think I’d love a man like that,’ she said positively. ‘If he were too predictable, he’d probably bore me to death.’ She turned to him, bright-eyed. ‘I expect that’s why your mother parted company with your father, if the truth were known. It probably wasn’t him at all, but she who was bored stiff with living with him. I’ve never thought about it before, but Ian’s mother has a sort of glassy-eyed look as though she hasn’t allowed a new thought to enter her head for at least ten years!’

‘And you accuse me of harsh judgments!’ he admonished her. ‘How my mother would love you!’

‘Would she?’ Deborah’s moment of confidence vanished and she beat a swift retreat. ‘I’ve known Ian’s mother ever since I can remember. She’s very nice really.’

‘A charming woman,’ he agreed.

She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Your mother had few friends,’ she ventured. ‘My parents were rather scared of her.’

‘Does she frighten you?’

The thought of her did. She had only heard her mentioned once or twice and had hardly connected her with the Derwent family at all. The Mrs. Derwent she knew had been in full possession of her husband long before Deborah had been born.

‘I’ll probably never meet her,’ she said.

Roger Derwent smiled a slow, cool smile. ‘I hope you don’t. I have a feeling you’d form an alliance that would be impregnable even to one of my calibre. I’ll be much safer if you become fast friends with Maxine and play around with her and her dozens of young men who always surround her wherever she goes.’

Deborah thought his mother sounded more interesting. ‘Where does your mother live?’ she asked him.

‘She’s in Canada at the moment—’

‘But she’s coming to Iran?’

‘You’ll have gone home by then!’ he assured her. He looked meaningly at his watch. ‘If we don’t go now, I won’t be able to take you to Maxine’s before lunch. I have to work for my living, even if you don’t.’

‘But I do!’ she said quickly, and then, seeing his mocking look, ‘I think I’d like your mother after all. I’m not afraid of her son, so why should I be afraid of meeting her?’

CHAPTER THREE

Shiraz
looked different from the way it had the day before. The shadows that had brooded over the streets were gone, cleared away by the magic of the sun and the company she was keeping. Walking beside Roger Derwent, it would have been poor-spirited indeed to have been nervous of anything.

‘Do you mind going through the bazaar?’ he asked her.

She would have minded last night, today it was a glorious adventure. ‘Is that the quickest way?’

He nodded. ‘Maxine found this place behind the bazaar and made Howard rent it for her. It’s some way from the university, but he has to put up with that. Maxine is really enjoying herself there, and why not? I envy them a little being in such a Persian district. We’re more cosmopolitan where I’m living.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Near the new university buildings.’

Deborah wondered if he would ever invite her there. Probably not. He would see her settled in with his American friends and then he would leave her severely alone. He had already made it plain that he didn’t want to get involved with her, not in any way at all. She would be a fool if she didn’t take the hint and leave him alone—and she was not a complete fool, not yet she wasn’t!

The bazaar was fun. At first Deborah had eyes only for the crowded humanity that rushed to and fro past the tiny shops and stalls, many of them lit by strip-lights fashioned in a complete circle. They sold hand printed materials and shopping bags, silks and satins, delicate miniature paintings on ivory and camel-bones, nuts, fruits and spices, hideous furniture, and more beautiful carpets of every description than Deborah had seen in her life before. Porters, carrying huge loads on their backs, rushed hither and yon, shouting a warning to the innocent shoppers who were likely to be knocked down by them. Here and there, a small boy, scenting a possible sale, would advance and beg her to enter this or that shop, claiming that only there would she find exactly what she wanted at a reasonable price.

Roger Derwent hurried her past even the best-looking bargains. ‘You can come back later,’ he said again and again. ‘Come on, Deborah! I have a lecture to give before lunch and I’m not going to be late for it. Stop dawdling and come along!’

It was at that moment that Deborah looked up and saw the covered roof, made entirely of brick, culminating in a series of domes that were quite beautiful. She stood stock still and stared upwards, pleased by the intricate patterns that the bricks made.

‘You didn’t tell me about that!’ she complained.

‘I hoped you weren’t going to notice,’ he confessed. ‘This is known as the Regent’s Bazaar. It was put up by Karim Khan Zand, who also built the Regent’s Mosque, the Masjid-e Vakil, which is just by the entrance. Maxine will take you there if you want to see it.’

Maxine again! It was useless to want to be taken everywhere by Roger, but he might have been a little more forthcoming. She suspected that he had a love for Persian architecture that Maxine had not and she would have liked to have benefited from his knowledge, if nothing else.

She sighed. ‘What is your lecture about?’ she asked.

‘English Literature.’

So he wasn’t going to tell her about that either. She sighed again. ‘I haven’t any degrees to prove it,’ she said, ‘but I am thought to be quite well read by my friends.’

She had his full attention then. ‘My dear girl, I never doubted it!’ he mocked her. ‘But I’m no Ian to enjoy your adulation. I don’t like being quoted, and I don’t like secondhand opinions of any kind.’

‘I suppose you’d prefer it if I didn’t have any opinions at all?’ she retorted, hurt.

‘It might be more honest,’ he said drily. He smiled a little at her woebegone face. ‘Cheer up, my dear, there are plenty of others who will be only too willing to be impressed by your erudition, if that’s what you want.’

‘You know it isn’t!’ She stiffened her backbone until her muscles ached. ‘You think you know everything, but you don’t! You don’t know anything about me! You may be very clever, but it takes more than cleverness to be a decent human being!’

His eyebrows rose. ‘You think I’m inhuman?’

‘Yes,’ she said definitely. ‘I’m glad you’ve decided I’m beneath your notice. The exalted slopes where you have your being are too cold and lonely for me. I
like
other people, ordinary people like myself, and I don’t think it’s the least bit clever to look down on them!’

‘Ah,’ he congratulated her, ‘a genuine opinion at last! Well done, Deborah Day!’

She walked on, feeling more uncomfortable by the minute. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I had no right—’

‘Deborah, I warn you, defeat me in argument if you must, but don’t patronise me by apologising for doing so!’

She was astonished. ‘It wasn’t exactly an argument and, even if it was, that doesn’t give one a licence to be rude. I expect I don’t understand how someone like you feels about—about people who don’t get the hang of things very easily.’

‘Are you by any chance referring to yourself?’

She nodded, waiting for the blow to fall when he agreed with her. His laughter at first shocked her and then made her more than a little indignant. ‘I can’t help it if I can’t compete with you—’ she began.

‘You don’t have to,’ he said.

She drew herself up. ‘I wouldn’t want to
bore
you, Mr. Derwent.’

‘There’s not much danger of that!’ The rueful slant to his mouth brought the excitement rushing through her veins again. ‘If I didn’t think you’d get hurt, I’d have a lot of time for you, Miss Day. But I think we want different things in that direction, so be grateful I’m still sufficiently human to consider your tender feelings enough to allow you to escape my attentions.’

She wasn’t at all grateful! A storm of rebellion shook her that he should be able to dismiss her so easily. ‘You flatter yourself!’ she said, her tone as dry as his. ‘Have you forgotten that I was engaged to Ian until quite recently?’

‘No.’ He didn’t seem inclined to remember it now.

‘Well then?’ she prompted him.

‘I find it very difficult to take that particular love affair seriously,’ he murmured. T could make you forget all about that young jackanapes in a few minutes if I chose.’ He turned to face her. ‘Shall I choose, Deborah?’

That was putting the ball in her court with a vengeance, and she took fright as she suspected he had known she would. She met his eyes with as much equanimity as she could muster, and, as their eyes met, she saw a flash of disappointment in his, but it was gone so quickly that she wondered if she had imagined it.

‘I might not be the easy game you suppose,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t find it as easy to turn my head as you think. Ian isn’t the only man I’ve ever known! I’ve always been able to pick and choose—’

‘Among the boys,’ he interrupted her. ‘I’m sure you had them hanging on your every word and enjoyed every moment of it. I’m not a boy—I doubt if I ever was in that way!—and there are some experiences it’s better for a sweet young girl not to have had.’

She turned on him then, angry at the picture of her he had conjured up with such mocking insistence.

‘You’re far too conceited to appeal to me I’ she claimed. ‘I wouldn’t fall in love with you if you were the last man left on earth!’

She stopped at a stall that was selling some of the carpets made by the nomadic Qashgai tribes, appalled to see among their number a gaudy representation of an American pop star. The proprietor hastily covered it up with a pile of more traditionally designed rugs and it vanished from view.

‘Did you see that?’ Deborah demanded, incensed, her quarrel with Roger Derwent temporarily forgotten.

Roger’s lips quirked momentarily. ‘I think you’re too young to fall in love with anyone,’ he said. ‘You and Maxine will make a fine pair!’

Deborah dragged herself away from the shop with difficulty. They had come to the end of the bazaar and were faced with an unsavoury-looking passage that could have led anywhere. Roger merely glanced down it, smiled at someone he knew, and turned to the left down another passage, lit by a single naked electric light bulb, that was completely empty except for a group of schoolboys playing some kind of football against its walls.

‘It isn’t far now,’ Roger encouraged her. Toil did say you wanted to live in the centre of the city,’ he added.

‘Do people really live down here?’ she countered. ‘It’s a bit gloomy without ever seeing the sun, isn’t it?’

But almost immediately they came out of the covered passageway and into a cluster of narrow streets made up of the windowless, anonymous-looking houses favoured by most Moslems, with only the relative grandeur of their doors to betray the wealth or otherwise of the families who lived inside.

Roger paused outside a particularly fine studded door, painted a rich green that had not yet had time to be faded and cracked by the hot sun. The knocker could have been solid silver and was formed in the shape of a female hand. Later, Deborah was to discover that all the fittings, the lamp too that lit the courtyard within, were made of silver, and she took over the task of cleaning them herself, distressed that anything so beautiful should be left to tarnish as if they were of no account.

The door opened and a young woman stood framed in the entrance, her hair as fair as a child’s and her smile as welcoming.

‘Darling Roger! I’d practically given you up!’

She reached up to embrace him, turning her face to meet his kiss so that it landed full on her mouth and not on her cheek as he had intended. She was dressed in a pair of jeans, frayed to the knees, and a man’s shirt that was several sizes too big for her. The warmth of her personality shone like a beacon out of her tall, long-legged frame. It would be hard for anyone to dislike her, Deborah thought.

‘Deborah doesn’t hurry for anyone,’ Roger explained. ‘I’ll have to rush off almost immediately if I’m not to be late. Do you think you two can manage?’

Maxine Reinhardt extended a much-ringed hand in Deborah’s direction. ‘We’ll try not to get into too much trouble until you get back. By the way, Howard wants to talk to you. Do you mind, Roger?’

‘He can come out to my place tonight,’ Roger suggested.

‘No, he can’t. I want to see you too.’ She put a second, more possessive hand on Roger’s arm. ‘I wilt when you neglect me, sweetest, you know I do. You promised you’d be around more often and I’m relying on you to make good your word on that score! Howard only wants to talk about some beastly poet. You can do that any time.’

Roger smiled easily. ‘Which poet this time?’ he asked.

Maxine laughed. ‘Since we came to Shiraz there only are two as far as Howard is concerned. It’s your own fault for telling him to read them in the original! His Farsi isn’t good enough and he doesn’t get the right nuance—or that’s what he says. I think he wants to pick your brains for his next essay on whichever one of them it is he has to write about this time.’

‘He should find Saadi easier than he found Hafez.’

‘I do,’ Deborah submitted, not looking at Roger. ‘Not in the original, of course, but in translation. I find Saadi’s stories much easier to understand, but less beautiful than Hafez’s imagery.’

Roger’s interest was caught. ‘You can interpret Hafez at a number of different levels, which makes him more difficult. Some people open his books at random and try to tell their fortunes from whichever lines they find there.’

‘Like you did for me?’ she said.

‘That wasn’t fortune-telling.’

Deborah was aware of the interested speculation in Maxine’s eyes. ‘What was it, then?’ she asked. ‘It sounded as though you were giving me a pointer as to my ultimate destiny.’

‘I shouldn’t have done so had I known you as well as I do now,’ he remarked.

‘Roger!’ Maxine protested. ‘You’re being unkind!’ He looked at Deborah. ‘Am I?’

She shook her head. ‘I told you I’m not as romantic as you thought me.’

‘Rather more so,’ he observed, ‘and much greener too!’

Deborah put her head on one side, making a face at him. ‘You shouldn’t be deceived by appearances. I may have found your “minstrel of the night” a pretty thought, but I don’t believe he’ll ever come along!’ Maxine’s look of outraged horror made her want to laugh. Too many people admired Roger too much, she thought. He probably didn’t notice that most of them did, but she wasn’t going to make that mistake herself. It was time he met someone who wasn’t impressed by his every lightest word—or at any rate didn’t show him that she was.

‘Didn’t anyone tell you that Roger is
renowned
for seeing beneath the surface of things?’ Maxine asked her in appalled tones.

‘He did,’ Deborah admitted, ‘but that doesn’t mean I necessarily have to agree with him.’

Maxine gaped at this impertinence, recovered herself with some difficulty, and turned impulsively to the man beside her. ‘I never thought anyone would say such a thing about you!’ she declared. ‘The only other person who might have done so is your mother, and you know what I think of her! Roger, are you sure you want me to take her in?’

Roger glanced at Deborah’s unrepentant face. ‘It’s your decision,’ he said to the American girl. ‘Perhaps you’ll get on better without me.’ He put a hand on the small of her back and embraced her fondly. ‘I’m glad I have you on my side anyway.’

Maxine looked pleased. ‘I’ll always be on your side,’ she promised him. ‘But I guess you know that?’

Roger gave her a gentle pat without committing himself either way. He stepped back, flicked his fingers about an inch from the end of Deborah’s nose, and went out the door, straightening his shoulders as though he was glad to go. Deborah smiled at the American girl, trying to look at her ease, but Maxine made no effort to smile back. She watched Roger go with her whole heart in her eyes and shut the door behind him with such reluctance that Deborah began to wonder if she would ever let go of the latch.