Singing in the Wilderness (14 page)

‘My, my,’ he teased her, ‘I never thought
I’d
see the well-organised Miss Black looking as scatty as a schoolgirl on her first date!’

She sniffed reproachfully, hoping that she didn
’
t disgrace herself entirely by bursting into tears. ‘Please, Cas, she whispered.

‘You’ll be all right with me, Stephanie, and you know it. Surely you trust me enough to see that nothing awful happens to you while I’m looking after you?’

‘But I don’t know why you should want to look after me
?
’

He cupped her chin in his hand, making her look up and meet the full force of his blue eyes. ‘I’ll say one thing for you, honey, you don’t suffer from conceit! Don’t you know how pretty you are
?
’

‘But not in the same league as Amber—’

‘It depends what you’re looking for,’ he murmured, a muscle pulling at the corner of his mouth. ‘In some leagues I reckon you might have the edge even on the luscious Amber!’

‘What league?’

‘Which league would you like to be top of?’

There was no mistaking the amusement in his voice, or the urgent need she discovered in herself for him to take her seriously. She wanted to be top of his league! Who could possibly want anything else?

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I keep telling myself that beauty is only skin deep, but she’s nice too, isn’t she
?
’

‘Very nice!’

She swallowed, more miserable than ever. ‘I think she’s in love with you too!’ she blurted out.

‘If she is, it’s a very sisterly affair,’ he answered, smiling, and she wondered how it was that men could be so blind in their dealings with women.
‘
Not
to be taken too seriously, I think!’ he added. ‘But I’ve told you that before. You ought to listen more, Stephanie, and jump to conclusions less, but I suspect you’re too feminine to do much logical thinking, and I wouldn’t really have you any other way!’ He patted her cheek and released her, giving a gentle tug to the scarf round her neck. ‘This afternoon, honey, the stage is all yours, and you alone will be the leading lady, so you might look as though you’re going to enjoy it!’

It was a masterly touch, she thought ruefully, for there was no doubt as to whom the director of the piece was to be. She might be cast as star, but the production would be kept firmly in his own hands—as ever!

‘Yes, but, Cas, supposing I don’t get my lines right?’ she asked in a sudden panic.

‘You’ll manage,’ he said. ‘All you have to do is repeat them after me!’

It was too far to walk, he decreed, so they would take a taxi to the Friday Mosque, and what was more he succeeded in finding one with a minimum of trouble, which was slightly unfair when Stephanie thought of the difficulties she had had in getting herself a taxi on innumerable occasions. Either they were of the kind that you shared with other passengers going the same way, and she could never understand where they were going at all, or else they were non-existent whenever they were needed.

Stephanie stepped into the cab first, sliding across the seat to make room for Cas. Her powers of conversation had deserted her and she could think of nothing to say to him at all as they made their way round the huge central square and northwards towards the old part of the town where the Friday Mosque had dominated the surrounding life for a thousand years.

At last inspiration came to her. ‘I hope you won’t be disappointed,’ she said politely, ‘the Friday Mosque isn’t as colourful as some of the others. But the brickwork is fantastic—and the arches! I find it beautiful.’

‘Top of the league?’ he suggested.

She nodded. ‘But you may not think it as beautiful as the Royal Mosque. Some people don’t.’

‘What makes you think I haven’t the same discernment as yourself?’ he asked, tongue in cheek.

She mumbled something, not knowing how to answer him, and was considerably put out when he laughed at her, taking firm possession of her hand that was nearest to him. ‘I like colour, but I share some of your passion for order and line too,’ he told her. ‘It can be more satisfying
in the long run—and not only in buildings!’

She didn’t know what he meant by that and she was too shy to enquire. She heaved a sigh of relief as they arrived in the rather poor street from which the entrance to the Mosque was visible.

‘Over there,’ she said vaguely, because she was still turning his last remark over in her mind, ‘is the Jewish quarter. The best jewellery shops are there.’

‘Is that a hint?’ he teased her.

‘Certainly not!’ she retorted, shocked. But, even so, she couldn’t resist a sidelong glance towards one of her favourite shops that stood on the left side of the entrance and was stuffed full of gold and silver objects of every kind, together with a few less valuable ornaments such as a bracelet made from old British halfpennies and one of half-sovereigns that she had looked at long and lovingly only a few days before.

She became aware that he was watching her and hurried through the narrow entrance into the vaulted passage that led the way into the great court of the Mosque. As always the drama of the building built up the excitement within her and her face shone with a personal pride as she felt the big man beside her respond to the beauty of the endless line of arches in a like manner.

The bright sunlight in the main court hit them like a sledge-hammer. Stephanie pulled her hand free of Cas’s and arranged her scarf over her head. A crowd of schoolgirls came surging into the area around them, intent on trying out their few words of English on the foreign visitors. Stephanie would have indulged them if she had been alone, but Cas soon tired of their chatter and led her firmly away towards the
iwan
which covered the entrance into the main prayer hall.

His silence in the face of the enormous domed chamber, flanked by arcades built of bricks in an astonishing variety of pattern, made her look up at him. Only then did she really believe him that he felt as she did about these things. The huge dome towered above them, edged with the praises of Allah written in the picturesque Kufic Arabic script that lent itself so well to the chaste ornamentation that was all that was necessary to complete the marvellous concept of the architect.

‘You were right,’ he congratulated her. ‘A marvellous restorative to put any troubles we might have into their proper perspective. How could one help but feel better in such surroundings
?
’

‘There’s another dome on the other side,’ Stephanie told him. ‘A little smaller, but beautiful too. It was built in 1088, and some people say the mathematics of the stresses and strains were worked out by Omar Khayydm. He’s better known in Persia as a mathematician than as a poet.’

Cas was more than willing to follow her round the building, out into the court again and through the western
iwan,
into an enclosed prayer hall-cum-seminary that was entirely lit by alabaster windows. Then into another hall which contained one of the finest
mihrabs
in the world, incredibly intricate and decorative, its original use as a pointer towards the direction of Mecca enhanced by the fantastic ingenuity of its design.

‘Where now
?
’ he asked as they came out into the full glare of the sunshine in the paved court.

‘You still haven’t seen the second dome,’ she reminded him.

She took her time wandering through the vaulted arcades on the north side of the building. Standing in ten rows, they were deeper than those on the southern side, but were their rival in complexity of design, leading the eye from one arch to another with satisfying grace.

Stephanie took particular pleasure in showing him the little shrine close beside the smaller dome, where those who had been cured of any diseases which beset them left their mementoes of gratitude, perhaps a leg wrought in silver, perhaps a man in a motor-car who had recovered after smashing himself up in a crash, or perhaps a girl in a surprisingly short, modern skirt whose illness could have been anything. It was so exactly like those similar shrines that exist in so many Mediterranean Catholic churches that she thought it would please Cas too, but he was surprisingly indifferent to the human suffering the shrine represented and contented himself with turning one of the burned-out candles over in the palm of his hand, a strangely watchful expression on his face.

It was comparatively dark, almost gloomy inside the domed chamber.

‘Stephanie,’ Cas began, coming up close behind her, ‘are you ready to talk?’

She was thrown into confusion. She averted her face, not knowing how to answer him.

‘Won’t you trust me even now?’ he prompted her.

‘Oh
yes
!
’
she exclaimed.

‘How much, I wonder? Enough to marry me?’

She turned to face him then, her heart in her mouth. ‘Marry you?’ she repeated. ‘But, Cas—’

‘I know it’s too soon,’ he said. ‘Too soon for both of us. But how else am I going to keep you here in Persia? I shan’t bother you, or force myself on you, unless you yourself should want it. It would be what they used to call a marriage of convenience, giving me the right as your husband to look after you until we’ve got everything sorted out.’

She thought it a cold-blooded arrangement. ‘I don’t know,’ she said foolishly. ‘I’d have to have time to think about it. I can’t believe you really want to marry me!’

He smiled. ‘Why should that be so difficult to believe
?
’

She spread her hands in an expressive gesture. ‘You know why! There must be dozens of girls you could marry, Americans like yourself, or—or beautiful and romantic like Amber.’ Her voice descended to a whisper on the other girl’s name and she bit her lip. ‘You don’t know
me
at all! I’m—I’m prosaic by nature!’

It was hard to resist the distinct twinkle in his eyes, but she did so nobly, shaking her head at him. ‘You can’t
want
to marry me!’ she insisted.

‘I very seldom do anything I don’t want to do,’ he assured her. ‘And as for you being prosaic, you’re about as prosaic as that dome up there! A constant and lasting delight to me!’

‘You can’t know that!’

‘Why not
?
’ he countered, his eyes bright and challenging
.

‘You
know
why not!

‘I don’t know anything of the sort! If you really think that I am the wrong man for you, I am, of course, open to being convinced of that. I happen to think that I could make you very happy. I should certainly do my best to
do so.’

‘But what about
you?’
she asked in a little rush.

‘I’m not a boy,’ he said. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

The temptation was very strong to give way to him then and there. If he had said that he was in love with her, she would have done her best to believe him, because that was what she wanted more than anything else in the world. But he hadn’t said anything like that! All he had said was that he wouldn’t bother her—a marriage of convenience, he had called it, but convenient for whom?

‘Cas, I don’t know what to do!’

He was kind as always. ‘I know, love, but we haven’t time for a long, leisurely courtship. If you hadn’t found those letters, or if somebody hadn’t brought them forcibly to my notice, you could have gone on working for me as my secretary until you were ready to see me not only as your employer but as a man you wanted to marry. Now, we’ll have to get married first and come to terms afterwards. Is that such a bad idea
?
’

She shook her head. ‘But marriage is more than that!’

He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘That side of things can wait until you’re ready. All I want you to do now is to agree to go through a form of marriage with me so that you can stay on here as my wife. We’ll be going on tour almost immediately, where there won’t be anyone to ask any awkward questions of either of us. By the time we get back, I hope to have found out more about these letters. We can sort ourselves out when we’ve got that trouble behind us. Okay?’

She coloured brilliantly and was glad of the gloom all around her. ‘Can you wait until then
?
’ she asked him.

‘I can try.’

‘And what happens if I don’t marry you?’

He shrugged. ‘I won’t have any option but to send you back to England. I’ll follow you there as soon as I can, but I have to stay on here until our contract is fulfilled. It will be a long time before I can come to you.’

‘But you would come?’

He stood up very straight, looking impregnable and rather intimidating. ‘I mean to marry you sooner or later,’ he said.

Her throat felt stiff and dry and her voice didn’t sound like her own at all. ‘Then it may as well be sooner,’ she said.

How strange it was, she thought, that something momentous could happen, and yet the world could go on looking just as it had before. The schoolgirls were still crowding together in the central courtyard and the sunshine sti
ll
blazed down in sharp contrast to the cool, shadowed interior.

Stephanie walked beside Cas, a stranger to herself, someone she didn’t know at all, someone so far removed from the orderly person she knew herself to be that she was shocked into silence by her own unnatural behaviour. She, who had always imagined that she would follow the usual logical sequence of meeting some man, getting to know him, falling in love with each other, and only then thinking about getting married, had committed herself to an incredible gamble, that at any other time she would have said was insane, of disrupting the usual order of things, marrying Cas while she could, and hoping against hope that she could persuade him to fall in love with her after the deed was done. She could only conclude that she had gone stark, staring mad! But she couldn’t bring herself to regret it! The quivering joy that fountained up inside her whenever she was with Cas rose to a spring tide of happiness that nothing could quench.

‘Have you decided you can trust me after all?’ Cas asked her as they emerged back into the teeming street.

She managed a rather prim little smile. ‘I’m not as fragile as you think,’ she told him. ‘I—I liked it when you took me to the Khajou Bridge!’

‘I liked it too,’ he mocked her.