Only in the Night (13 page)

The look of surprise on the other guests’ faces made Eliza believe that they had been warned of having to dine with a frump of an administrator on her way to organise a hospital in Upper Egypt. Mario looked like the cat who had swallowed the canary, he was so pleased with the surprise he had given them.

Aside from being dazzlingly good-looking and well turned out as a group, they were a fascinating collection of people: French, Italian, Swedish, Egptian, a Saudi Prince, and a former American Secretary of State. Eliza was a new face in a small but elite social set, who adored welcoming any interesting stranger, especially if they were attractive, into their midst. The women were just as charming as the men to Eliza, and once they learned of her Italian-English lineage and the estates in Tuscany and the Cotswolds, as being her background, London her city, that she spoke both Italian and French as fluently as she did English, that she adored horses, they embraced her as if she was already a part of their circle, thinking her an adventurous spirit for taking on a job in such a remote place.

It was with a happy heart that she left the embassy with several of the guests, who took her on to another party on a house boat on the Nile. Not only had she had a good time, she had managed to impress several of the guests with her reasons for giving up the good life she’d been living in favour of one of isolation and hard work. Few would forget the way the attractive, sensuous and still young at heart Eliza Flemming had told them, ‘I needed a job and to create a life of my own, just for
me.
’

Few listening had missed the pathos in her voice, the real hurt in her eyes. Several of the women had been there too, had wanted to do as she was doing, and were aware that they had not had the courage of Eliza Flemming, that touch of English eccentricity needed to do as she was doing nor the will to conquer a strange country as well as find a new and better life. They offered admiration and friendship as well as the calling cards they gave her, telling her to call on them if she was in need of help. The Ambassador looked pleased with her and whispered, ‘Well done.’

The incessant ringing of a telephone brought Eliza out of a deep and dreamless sleep. ‘Mrs Flemming, are you ready? The earlier the start, the easier the ride.’

‘No, I am not ready. And who are you? And ride to where?’

‘My name is Antonio Rinaldi. I am the doctor in charge of the Nile Hospital and Clinic. I’ll explain everything once we’re on our way. I’ll pay your bill and check you out to save time.’

‘Coffee?’

‘OK, I’ll get someone to organise that. How long?’

‘Twenty minutes,’ Eliza told him.

‘Faster if you can. I hate begging favours and I had to, to get us a flight,’ he told her, his voice already fading as if he were about to put down the telephone.

She was quick. ‘Stop! Don’t hang up. How will I know you?’

‘Oh! You’re quite right. Six foot two inches, slim, wearing bone-coloured linen trousers, white shirt, a tan linen jacket. You won’t miss me, I’ll be waiting at the bank of lifts in the lobby.’

When Eliza stepped out of the lift she saw a man with the looks of a mature cinema star talking to an Egyptian while casually leaning against a column, his eyes on every person leaving the lifts. Eliza was quite taken aback by how very attractive she found him. It was a purely physical attraction as she felt that sense of sensual desire for a man other than a husband which had laid dormant in her for so many years suddenly rekindle. It was such a good feeling, like an old friend come home, it made her smile. She was thoroughly enjoying getting in touch with herself again.

Eliza was amused when she saw Dr Rinaldi straighten up and take several steps towards an aggressive-looking, somewhat sour-faced woman in her fifties dressed in something from a catalogue of safari wear. A look of relief crossed his face as the woman took one glance at him and passed him by. Eliza, who was quite used to admiring gazes, received one from the doctor but he made no move towards her.

Feeling much too tired from travelling, partying and the excitement of being in Egypt, she had no inclination to play games with her employer. She
went directly to him and the man standing with him, and introduced herself.

‘Well, you’re certainly not what I expected,’ he told her as he shook her hand.

‘Do you know, that’s all I’ve heard since I stepped off the plane. It’s getting to be a bit much.’

Doctor Rinaldi began to laugh and slipped his arm through hers. ‘Well, buck up, you may have to hear it at least one more time when my friend Anwar Whabi, who is flying us to Asyut so as to cut our driving time to the clinic, sees you. This is Ahmed, his Man Friday, whom he always lends me as a Mr Fixit when I come down to Cairo. Ahmed arranged for the clinic’s new Range Rover to be loaded with medical supplies and driven away last night to meet us in Asyut, and he has breakfast waiting for you in the car. Your first time in Egypt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Egyptians are the sweetest of all the Arabs except for a few extremist fundamentalists.’

The traffic was sparse before six o’clock in the morning but the drive was terrifying for the speed at which Doctor Rinaldi streaked through the city in Anwar Whabi’s Jaguar, while in the back seat Ahmed served Eliza her breakfast spread out on a white napkin placed between them: croissants; hot coffee from a Thermos, strong, black and sweet; a mushroom omelette, no longer hot, rolled into a sausage shape which Ahmed served as finger-food, partially wrapped in a white paper napkin.

‘How did you do this, Ahmed?’ she asked with a smile of delight because in fact she was quite hungry as well as needing a shot of caffeine to get her going.

‘Quite easy. The Nile Hilton coffee shop.’

Eliza had trouble steadying her cup, trying to see everything flying past the window, and adjusting to the heat which was already, at 5.45 in the morning, something to deal with if you had just arrived from an English summer where seventy degrees Fahrenheit and a three-day stretch of sunshine are the most that can be expected. Eliza whispered to Ahmed, ‘Does he always drive like this?’

‘Always. Doctor Rinaldi was a rally driver in Italy,’ Ahmed whispered back.

‘Are you registering a complaint against my driving, Mrs Flemming? I can assure you, you are as safe as can be. I didn’t bring you all the way to Egypt to kill you.’

‘You are fast and incredibly skilled but your driving is not conducive to eating breakfast.’

He laughed and admitted, ‘No, I suppose not.’ But he failed to slow the car. He liked her for not backing down when he put her on the spot. Instead he placed his foot down harder on the accelerator and asked, ‘What hospital were you with when Cousins head hunted you?’

At that moment a line of flat carts being pulled by donkeys began crossing the intersection the Jaguar was approaching. Doctor Rinaldi gave warning to Eliza to watch her coffee cup – he was about to make a rather abrupt stop to let the traffic pass. When they were stationary he turned in his seat to face her. ‘Well?’

‘I was never head hunted,’ she confessed.

‘And you have never worked in a hospital?’

‘No.’

‘Then how, pray God, do you come to be here?’

‘Because I was all that Doctor Cousins could get,’ was the answer she gave while trying to ignore the anger and disappointment in his voice. The look of disdain in his eyes was much too evident.

‘I knew when you introduced yourself you were too good to be true,’ he told her.

Eliza took a long sip of her coffee, and bit into the rolled omelette she was holding in her hand. She ate with Antonio Rinaldi still glaring at her, took another sip of coffee, and having decided that she was going to start off as she meant to go on in this job and with the man she would be working directly under, told him, ‘Doctor Rinaldi, I have been married to two doctors, one of them with a penchant for keeping me cut down to size. That is, the size he preferred me to be. As we are going to be working together, I suggest you do not make the same mistake my first husband did. I don’t intend to stand for that from you or any man again, not in my working
or
my personal life. You’ve got me, now bloody well work
with
me and not against me. I’ve had a life-time of prima donna doctors.’

All was silent except for the sound of donkey bells and the clip-clop of their hoofs on the Tarmac as the last of the line of carts passed in front of the car. It was Antonio Rinaldi who broke the silence. ‘I could do with a sip of that coffee and a bite of that omelette, maybe even share your croissant?’

They didn’t smile at each other or say anything more. For a very few minutes while the intersection cleared they shared the food and became aware that they liked each other and would work well together.
A relationship had begun and they were enthusiastic about working together. Antonio turned in his seat to take the wheel again and they sped on towards their rendezvous.

EGYPT

Chapter 7

It was one of those carnal attractions that can happen at first sight. This had not happened for Eliza for many long years and now that it had it was like no other attraction she had ever felt for a man before. She was at a stage in her life where she had a history of experience behind her, had been through love and commitment; she needed no man to direct her feelings, and indeed knew to the marrow of her bones that no man would ever again take advantage of them. She was free, mistress of her own destiny.

Mario Derotti’s flirtation had amused and flattered her, caught her interest in the erotic and sex for its own sake alone. The decided undercurrent of sex being lived on many different levels and always to the full: in secret, with intrigue; the more than possible illicit affairs hanging like a seductive perfume in the atmosphere of the embassy dinner party, had whetted Eliza’s carnal appetite. On first seeing Antonio Rinaldi what had stirred her desire had been the aura of sexuality about the handsome doctor. Her imagination had for a moment taken flight. How delicious to be riven by such a man, how sublime to come in strong and frequent orgasms with Antonio Rinaldi. Eliza relegated such thoughts to the back of her mind so that she might
forge a different kind of relationship with the man she would be working with. But with Anwar Whabi, Eliza concealed nothing.

That first gaze into each other’s eyes inspired a mutual understanding, lust, a carnal togetherness. It was inevitable, it would be sublime, and no other emotion would come into it for them: not love, nor greed, not even fidelity. For them it would begin and end in freedom and sexual bliss.

The Jaguar arrived at the small private air strip, cutting through fields green with vegetation running parallel to the Nile. Eliza’s first sight of Anwar Whabi was when Antonio drove to within a few feet of the six-seater Gulf Stream and screeched to a halt. Anwar Whabi nonchalantly lowered a newspaper from in front of his face and rose from a wicker chair placed under the plane’s wing to keep him out of the sun.

Eliza was stunned by the physical beauty and elegance of his face. How sensual he was, and yes, there was something incredibly decadent about him: the tall and slender body, and the way it moved – slowly, like a sleek panther. He was a lovely colour: like cognac with the sun shining through it, his skin as smooth as silk. And then his gaze when Eliza had alighted from the car: eyes like dark sensuous pools, emitting looks that could liquefy a lady’s soul and most certainly her heart. His nose was straight, and reminiscent, as were the sensuous lips, of ancient wall paintings. Anwar Whabi had a princely bearing.

He wore a pair of old jeans with a wide leather belt whose impressive buckle was wrought in gold and silver. He wore it like a miniature sculpture, which
indeed it was, having been made for his father by Pablo Picasso and passed down to Anwar. Eliza thought that she had never seen a finer, more sexy-looking white cotton shirt. Long sleeved and rolled up to just below his elbows, it was collarless and he wore it with several of the small mother of pearl buttons undone.

When introduced, he kissed her hand. She felt as if his lips, warm and soft, were burning her flesh. She sensed herself melting from the heat of his sensuality. When Eliza was able to look away from him, a stolen glance in Antonio Rinaldi’s direction revealed that he had missed nothing of that first look that passed between his friend and his new colleague. Eliza felt some embarrassment that she should have allowed her erotic side to show in public.

Anwar spoke English with a British accent, having spent five years studying at Oxford. He spoke flawless French thanks to nannies and tutors. His Italian he had learned while living with an Italian actress in Rome. All that had been teasingly revealed by Antonio Rinaldi before the three of them even boarded the plane.

Eliza’s first words to Anwar were, ‘Please don’t say I’m not what you expected.’

‘How about, what a pleasant surprise?’ he asked, a smile on his lips.

‘That will do. In fact, it’s quite enough,’ the doctor answered for Eliza, and then continued, ‘I know you, Anwar. You are not to sweep Mrs Flemming off her feet and into that decadent and delicious life you like to lead. I don’t want to lose her before I even get her to the hospital.’

‘Whatever the distraction, Doctor Rinaldi, I don’t
intend for you to lose me,’ she declared rather provocatively.

Antonio Rinaldi and Anwar Whabi all but raised their eyebrows in surprise at the boldness of that little remark, and the not-too-subtle intimation that Eliza expected at some time or another to have an affair with Antonio but not one that would make an impact on her working life. It made the doctor take a closer look at Eliza and ponder for the first time on what sort of woman he would be working with. At last he acknowledged her as more than a workmate when he told her, ‘I think I would prefer to call you something other than Mrs Flemming, and when were off duty – well, you must call me Antonio.’

He was the first to board the plane. He stowed Eliza’s luggage safely, then strapped himself into his seat. For a few minutes more Anwar and Eliza remained on the grass runway, studying each other with slow deliberation. Anwar’s delight showed openly on his face. But we are talking here about a master seducer whose greatest pleasure was the chase. To encite her to lust, lead her into an erotic world where she had hitherto never been, was his aim. An extra bonus for Anwar was a willing woman, one who was looking for adventurous sex and was great fun to play with. Once more he raised Eliza’s hand and gallantly kissed it, then caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. He liked the way she trembled under his touch, the way she blushed with anticipation for what they both knew was sure to happen for them in another place, at another time. He boarded first and offered a helping hand to her so as to pull her into the plane after him.

Anwar flew them low over the Nile, following the river all the way to Asyut. Antonio closed his eyes and was fast asleep almost immediately. Not so Eliza. She was enchanted by the glorious Nile with its wide band of green vegetation to either side, spreading out into the desert. The further behind they left Cairo, the more beautiful was the countryside. Feluccas, their white sails catching the soft warm wind, sailed slowly, appearing almost to be standing still. It was as if time too was standing still and schedules were non-existent. Men in white robes and turbans, their women draped from head to toe in billowing black muslin, walked along the banks, their many children skipping along behind them. The occasional traveller rode a donkey. Women carrying metal or clay water pots or massive bundles of green grass on their heads waddled provocatively rather than walked. There was no rush, no fuss. Egypt was a place with all the time in the world where everything was according to God’s will:
Inshallah.
Adults and children alike waved and shouted greetings to the plane and its passengers, clapping their hands with delight. Some shaded their eyes from the sun, gold bangles sparkling on the women’s wrists. Anwar dipped his wings towards them sometimes, to one side and then to the other.

They followed the Nile for over two hundred miles into Upper Egypt and after they had landed in Asyut and Eliza and Antonio had thanked Anwar for the ride, they climb into the Range Rover, which was loaded to the roof inside and piled high on the roof rack outside with medical supplies. Only when they had been on the road for half an hour did Eliza realise how luxurious it had been to travel thus far by plane.

The ride from Asyut to Luxor was hot, dusty and bumpy, with Antonio driving at top speed, swerving in and out to pass anything on the road in front of him. Eliza sat uncomfortably squashed between cartons, her knees practically up to her chin thanks to having her feet resting on a crate containing a supply of morphine ampoules. It was more than three hundred miles to Luxor and by the time they were a third of the way she was dizzy with the heat and the dust, incredibly queasy from the rough and tumble of the ride, dehydrated, and terribly dozy. She would fall into short but deep dreamless sleeps, only to wake up feeling completely disorientated.

Eliza felt herself coming alive again, being pulled up out of the depths of one of those sleeps. Incredibly they were not moving but were parked on a narrow dirt road facing the river. The heat was beating down on the Range Rover, perspiration running in rivulets down Eliza’s body. She heard voices approaching, and laughter, and tried to wake herself out of a strange and disconcerting torpor, but her body seemed unable to move. She felt as limp as the old Raggedy Ann doll she used to play with as a child back at home in Little Barrington.

Antonio appeared at the open window next to her, looking fresh and cool. Several country women smothered in black, faces half hidden and eyes black and laughing, hovered around him. He opened the door, and after removing a carton from her lap, scooped her up in his arms. ‘You’ll feel much better after this,’ he told her, to the sound of the accompanying ladies twittering like a small flock of birds.

Before Eliza even realised what was happening, she
was on her feet and shocked into wakefulness by the first huge pot of cool water that had been emptied over her head by Antonio, who jumped back so as not to get splashed. The women took over bathing her while he watched Eliza come alive. He was clearly enjoying the sight of her nakedness showing through the clinging wet cotton. She could not understand the comments in Arabic directed to him but she did sense that they were teasing him about her and decided she couldn’t care less. All she could think about was how deliciously cool she was feeling, how she seemed to be able to breathe again, be her own self. She danced around, and laughed with the joy of a child, enchanting everyone. When the water had stopped flowing, she smoothed down her hair with the palms of her hands.

Antonio went to her and presented her with what she recognised as one of her own cotton shift dresses. ‘I took the liberty of opening your case and fetching something fresh for you to wear. You were in such a deep sleep, and I didn’t want to waste time.’

He was not a man to complicate his life willingly but he forgot his scruples when he reached out to undo several of the bone buttons of her dress, so enchanted was he by the voluptuous sight of her full rounded breasts and erect nipples showing through the wet material which clung to her like a second skin. He was saved from his carnal feelings for her by a small boy in a tattered but clean robe who was pulling at his trouser leg, asking Antonio to return to his family’s mud hut. The boy’s father was calling for him. Antonio tossed the dress to one of the waiting women and instructed them to dry Eliza off and help her change. Then, turning back to Eliza, he told her,
‘These are some of the clinic’s patients – the sort of people you will be making contact with all the time. Let them help to dress you, they long to see your body. Your acceptance of them and their help will create a bond of sorts with them. They will be less intimidated by you, or by the nurses and doctors seeing theirs. They’ll feel as if they are doing something for you. You don’t, of course, have to, it’s not part of the job, but it would be good public relations.’

‘Antonio!’

‘I’ll be back in a few minutes and we’ll have some lunch. Nothing special, nothing to linger over. We have still a long way to go.’

He was pleasant but matter-of-fact, obviously covering up for that moment when she had felt his long slender fingers working the buttons of her dress and a lascivious look had come into his eyes. Eliza had wanted to say something to reassure him that she liked what she was seeing in his eyes. She had wanted to indicate to him in some way that she found him an exciting and thrilling man, but the moment had passed, her chance was gone. He snatched it away from her and she could understand why.

It was a very peculiar experience, standing in high grass on the banks of the Nile, stark naked in the sun, while a flock of women cosseted her with their attention: drying her off with rough towelling none too gently, wringing out her long blonde hair and arranging it. Several of the women touched her breasts and bottom, not provocatively but curiously, making remarks of admiration. They teased her with their eyes and hand gestures and nodded in Antonio’s direction. Eliza jumped back when one of the women
boldly touched her very blonde triangle of pubic hair. They all twittered and lowered their eyes, behaving like children caught in a naughty act. Eliza understood nothing but got the message – they were match making. They slipped her fresh dress over her head and did up the buttons. Eliza had the most disconcerting feeling that they were playing with her as if she were a live Barbie doll. A scarf was produced: black with a row of tiny glass beads thickly sewn along the edges. It was wound around her head and tied in a turban. The women clucked their approval and looked very pleased with themselves as they walked her to the Range Rover’s side mirror. She did look rather fetching, she had to admit.

The scarf was a gift. It took her some time to realise how insulting it would be for her not to accept it. Finally she felt the generosity and the sweetness of these women and was appalled at her own behaviour, so very English, embarrassed at receiving such open generosity that she knew they could ill afford. From her purse she took a pretty hand mirror, a pair of tortoiseshell combs, a lipstick, a white linen handkerchief edged in lace, and passed them out among the first of the many friends she was to make in Upper Egypt. They were kissing her hand in thanks, placing hands over hearts, their way of saying thank you.

Antonio went to her, slipped his arm through hers and told Eliza, ‘You’ve enchanted them. They’ll spread the news that the new administrator at the hospital is something special, someone to know and listen to. Then they’ll brag that they have seen your pussy. Now, come and have some lunch.’

There were purple figs and slices of Parma ham and
crusty bread, a bottle of cool wine which Antonio fished from the river where he’d had it cooling on the end of a very long piece of heavy cord. They had their meal under a lean-to of palm leaves facing the river. ‘I raided the Italian Embassy’s stores while you were partying,’ he told her, a smile on his lips.