The House of the Scissors (10 page)

This time she donned shocking pink sailcloth trousers, with wide bell-bottoms that flapped satisfactorily about her ankles. With them she wore a crisp white cotton shirt and a coral necklace she had bought in one of the Indian shops near the harbour. She had some pretty, rather fragile sandals that completed the outfit.

Even Jill thought she looked nice. Her eyebrows shot up meaningly when she came in to breakfast to find Arab already seated at their table.

“You look good enough to eat, honey, you really do!” she drawled as she sat down. “Surely this isn’t to impress Jacques, is it?”

Arab shook her head. “I’m going out with Hilary and—and Lucien,” she reminded her.

“So you are! How nice for you! At least Lucien will look after you!”

“I don’t need looking after!” Arab retorted. “I’m old enough to look after myself!”

“Okay, if you say so. I’m going to spend the day by the pool, counting the hours until we go home. This lotus-eating existence begins to get rather boring after a while.”

Arab was shocked by such a programme. “But there are
heaps
of things to do!” she insisted. “I’ve wanted to go to Gedi for simply
ages
! And you could go down to Mombasa—”

“Spare me that in this heat!” Jill pleaded.

“But it doesn’t feel half so hot if you do something!” Arab expostulated.

Jill grinned. “You have a way of making me feel positively middle-aged,” she complained. Her eyes met Arab’s fleetingly. “Let’s hope today is everything you want it to be, hon, and a whole lot more! But leave me in peace to get through the day my own way as best I may. Okay?”

“Okay,” Arab agreed. She shrugged her shoulders, laughing. “You’re slipping, Jill! Here I am, going out with Lucien for
the whole day
, and you haven’t uttered a single dark warning of the horrors that await me!”

“Oh, Hilary will make an adequate chaperone for anyone,” Jill returned. “Besides, I have a feeling that Lucien won’t allow you to get into any trouble. You’ll have your work cut out there if you want to make much of an impression!”

Arab blinked. “You’ve met Sandra Dark?”

Jill nodded, “That’s right, love. Enough said!”

“Hilary doesn’t like her,” Arab volunteered.

“I shouldn’t think many females do,” Jill answered. “I can’t say I found her very likeable myself, but successful! Even Jean-Pierre was hoping to get a dance with her!” She frowned thoughtfully. “I’m surprised that anyone like Lucien Manners should get caught up in her toils, but I expect she presents a different face to him than she does to lesser fry like ourselves.”

Arab helped herself to some more coffee. “I wonder if truly selfish people can make others happy?”

Jill shrugged. “Never thought about it,” she said.

They had almost finished eating when Hilary came into the dining room in search of Arab. She came and stood beside Arab’s chair, stealing a lump of sugar from the bowl in the centre of the table.

“Lucien is outside in the car,” she announced. “He sent me to get you. Haven’t you finished breakfast
yet?”

“It is Sunday,” Jill pointed out.

Hilary grinned. “Ayah can’t tell one day from another,” she said. “At least she
says
she can’t! She knows when her day off is, though. The only difference on Sundays is that I have breakfast with Lucien. Usually he’s already had his by the time I come downstairs. He says as you get older you tend to have breakfast earlier and earlier!”

He would! Arab surveyed the breakfast table with a feeling of displeasure. It wasn’t very late, but she knew that he would see it as another straw in the wind that she was more suited to Hilary’s company than his own. She stood up so quickly that she almost knocked her chair over backwards. Hilary rescued it for her, staring at her with surprise.

“Are you cross about something?” she asked her.

Arab forced a
smile
. “Of course not. Can you wait a minute while I run upstairs and get my bag?”

Hilary nodded. “I’ll finish that piece of toast while you’re gone—that is, if you don’t want it?”

“No, you go ahead.”

“Good,” said Hillary. “I like cold toast. It’s nice and chewy.”

In a matter of minutes Arab was ready to go. Rather to her surprise, Hilary put her hand in hers as they walked out of the heavy studded doors of the hotel into the formal, sweet-smelling garden outside. Lucien, in white trousers and a white shirt which set off his dark good looks, got languidly out of the front seat of his estate car and held the door for them to get in.

“Can I sit in the front too?” Hilary asked him.

He shook his head with decision. “It’s too hot to all crowd together,” he answered.

“I don’t mind,” Arab put in. It might be a good
thing
, she thought, to have Hilary as a barrier between them, or at least between her jumpy nerves and the source of her discomfort.

“But I do,” Lucien returned. “Hop in, Hilary!”

The child climbed into the back seat, making a face at Arab over her shoulder. “Mummy lets me sit in the front!”

“Which goes to show you have a daft woman for a mother!” Lucien teased her.

Hilary giggled. “It would be a strange thing if I had a daft
man
for a mother!”

“Strange indeed!” Lucien agreed with a smile. “But probably not so daft!” His amused eyes slid on to Arab’s face. “Wouldn’t you agree?” he mocked her.

Arabella refused to be drawn. “I don’t know Mrs. Dark, so how can I say?” she answered gently.

His smile made her tingle with an unnamed and rather frightening emotion. “But you would allow her to sit in the front too, wouldn’t you?” he pressed her.

“If she wanted to,” Arab agreed. “I don’t feel that I have to force my will on everyone around me all the time.”

His smile died and was replaced by a fierce frown. “Meaning that I do?”

She opened her eyes wide, looking innocent. “Do you always take remarks personally?” she asked him.

“
Touché
,”
he muttered. “But if I weren’t in such a good humour, you wouldn’t escape so easily! As it is, I’ll allow you to have the last word—this time!”

“But you haven’t!” she pointed out.

He laughed out loud at this sally. “I think you had the last winning shot!” he told her. “I concede you the point!”

She was inordinately pleased. She couldn’t remember that she had ever got the better of him before. Her satisfaction was spoiled though by the knowledge that he was amused by the pleasure she had got from besting him. He might even have allowed her to win, she thought suspiciously. It was just the kind of patronising thing he would do!

“No, I didn’t hold back,” he said suddenly. “You did it all by yourself, so there’s no need to look like that!” Nettled by his easy reading of her mind, she smiled at him, feeling more at ease than she had with him before. “Was I crowing? I didn’t mean to,” she said.

“I don’t suppose you did. You’re a nice child, Arab.”

She took a deep breath. “I suppose it would be useless to point out that I’m not a child?” she hazarded.

He looked surprised. “I didn’t mean to disparage you,” he apologised. “I suppose it’s because you’re so much younger than either Sandra or Ruth—”

“How old is Sandra?” Arab asked, guiltily aware that Sandra would be furious if she ever heard that Arab had sought to know her age.

“I don’t know exactly. She must be about thirty-five. She’s a year or two older than my sister, I believe.” Arab digested this in silence. Thirty-five would be the lowest that she would put it at, and that made Sandra older than Lucien. She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

“Are you talking about Aunt Sandra?” Hilary demanded from the back. “She’s thirty-eight.”

“And how do you know that, young woman?” Lucien asked furiously.

“It’s in her passport,” Hilary answered. She sensed she was on dangerous ground, for she went on immediately, “I didn’t pry, Lucien, I promise you I didn’t! She was asking me to admire the photograph she had had taken for her new passport, and it was there!”

Arab giggled, unable to stop herself.

“Well?” Lucien threatened.

“Vanity goes before a fall,” she drawled.

“Very witty!” he crushed her. “My God, you’re both as bad as one another! I suppose you don’t like Sandra either?”

“N-no,” she admitted.

“Well, let me tell you, she’s a good deal better natured than you are. She doesn’t dislike you and she doesn’t hold it against Hilary that she needles her at every opportunity—”

“She isn’t aware that we exist!” Arab insisted.

“She even suggested that you had more style than I had given you credit for,” Lucien went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Why else would anyone employ you as a model?”

“How kind of her!” Arab exclaimed sarcastically.

Lucien glared at her. “It was kind of her,” he said. “She knows what she’s talking about, as your Mr. Silk would be the first to realise if she had followed her first instincts and had asked him for a job.”

“She wouldn’t have got one!” Arab exclaimed.

“Think again, Arab! Sandra has had more experience at showing clothes than you’ve had hot meals!”

“Then what stopped her asking Sammy for a job?” she demanded.

“Your friend Jill, if you must know. Sandra overheard her telling the young Frenchmen at the dance that Mr. Silk had only allowed you to come because another girl fell ill at the last moment—”

“Jill
said that?” Arab’s eyes filled with angry tears. “I don’t believe it!”

Lucien gave her an impatient look. “Jill offered to look after you if you came,” he went on. “You’re very young and inexperienced to be in a strange country on your own. It seems that your employers thought you too young and would be only too glad to have a good excuse to pack you back to home and safety.” His impatience gave way to sardonic amusement. “Are you going to cry and prove their point?”

“No,” she sniffed. “I never cry!”

He laughed, thereby proving once and for all that he was completely heartless and unbearable.

“Too much of a tomboy?” he teased her.

Arab struggled silently with the lump in her throat. After a few minutes she sniffed again. Lucien silently proffered his handkerchief and she accepted it with dignity, blowing her nose hard and long.

“It isn’t that,” she said. “It’s only that I’m quite a good model and I thought they really wanted me! I photograph nicely, but not so well that I detract from the clothes. It was quite a leg up, getting this job with Sammy.”

Lucien took his handkerchief back and pocketed it calmly. “I don’t find myself looking at the clothes when you’re inside them,” he remarked.

Arab gasped and choked. “But—”

He shook his head at her. “Nor Sammy either,” he added dryly.

Her cheeks flamed. “But Sandra—I mean Miss Dark—would dominate any picture!”

“I think you make too much of her,’ Lucien suggested. “She isn’t half as bad, or half as anything else, as you think you know.”

“I—isn’t she?” Arab said uncertainly.

“No, she is not. She is just a rather lonely woman with too much time on her hands. She would be better off if she had taken up some profession, instead of dabbling in fashion shops in Nairobi, and other such ventures.”

Arab stayed very, quiet, turning over in her mind the incredible fact that Lucien had actually paid her a compliment. That it had been back-handed, she was prepared to overlook, because she was fairly sure that it would be the only one she would ever get from him. But for a moment it had sounded as though he didn’t always see her as a ragamuffin after all. And that was something wonderful to her, it was balm to her bruised spirits.

“I don’t mind really that they didn’t want me much,” she said, sitting back in her seat with a dreamy expression on her face. “It’s nice that I came, though. I’d never have heard about Cheng Ho in England!”

Lucien’s sidelong glance was as sardonic as ever. “Africa’s got you pretty badly, hasn’t it?” he said.

She nodded, suddenly tense and aware of that familiar knot of anxiety inside her whenever she talked to him. “I shall hate to go home! I can’t bear to think about it! Supposing I never come back?”

He put a hand on hers in her lap, in a sympathetic gesture she never would have expected from him.

“If you want a thing badly enough, it
always
happens!” he said.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

“ARAB, don’t dawdle!”

“But I want to see everything. Besides, I’m not dawdling! I wish you wouldn’t address me as though I were ten years old!”

Lucien’s eyes glinted with humour. “All right, my rare, long-legged bird, my little street arab, but may we start to look at the actual site?”

“Oh yes, I suppose so.” She glanced at him, veiling her eyes with her long lashes in case he should guess how disturbing she found him. “May I just look at these?”

“It will be more interesting when we’ve seen the houses that they came out of,” Hilary put in, standing on one leg and looking bored. “They aren’t
very
interesting, are they?”

Arab smiled at her. “Don’t you think so? But look at the porcelain bowl! It’s just like the ones we saw in the pillar tomb at Mambrui! And look at these quaint scissors. They must be terribly old. Look at the way the metal has been eaten into by time. I wonder where they were found.”

“In the House of the Scissors,” Lucien supplied. “Most of the houses are called after something of interest that was found there. The House of the Sunken Court; the House of the Wall; the House of the Iron Lamp; the House of the Venetian Bead; the House of the Ivory Box; the House of the Scissors: those are just a few of them.”

“But it must have been a huge place!” Arab exclaimed.

He nodded. “The original town covered an area of some forty-five acres. Not all the houses were built of coral rag, red earth and coral lime. The poorer dwellings would be of mud and wattle, with thatched roofs, and there would be nothing left of them, of course.”

Hilary, who had been closely examining the scissors in the case in the little museum, looked up at her uncle with a grin. “Tell her about the mystery of Gedi,” she commanded him. “I like to hear about it.”

“What mystery?” Arab demanded.

“The mystery,” Lucien explained, “is what the town was doing here in the first place. Why was it built here? It’s about four miles away from the sea and two miles from Mida creek. All the other Arab towns were built right on the sea, or at least on water of some sort. We know that Gedi was not its original name. That was more likely to have been Kilimani. Gedi means ‘precious’ in the Galla language, and it was during the Galla advance from Somalia that the town was sacked. That was in the early seventeenth century.”

“After the arrival of the Portuguese?”

“That’s another mystery,” Lucien told her. “The Portuguese never mention Gedi at all. The town was founded in the late thirteenth century, reaching its greatest period in the fifteenth century. It may be that something happened and it was abandoned for a time in the sixteenth century, perhaps it was destroyed by the punitive expedition that was sent against Malindi after they had helped Nuno da Cunha destroy Mombasa in 1529. That would account for it not being mentioned by the Portuguese when they were in Malindi in the second half of that century, because if it was in ruins no one would have paid any attention to it.”

Arab frowned. “But a lot of those pieces of porcelain are marked as being late sixteenth century,” she objected.

“It must have been re-settled by then, but not for very long, for in the seventeenth century all the Arab-African settlements between the Juba river in Somalia almost down as far as Mombasa were abandoned and left to fall into ruins. Most of them can still be seen, but this is the only one which is kept as a National Monument.”

“What happened to the Galla?” Arab asked.

“They fell into decline in the nineteenth century and were attacked by the Masai and Somali. The Arabs from Lamu, under the protection of Zanzibar, reoccupied the coastal strip, which officially belonged to the Sultan of Zanzibar until Independence. The British had some kind of an arrangement with him.” He grinned suddenly. “A rather one-sided arrangement,” he added dryly.

Arab thought she knew how the old Sultan had felt. Any arrangement one made with Lucien would be
one-sided
too, and one would find oneself agreeing to it, even
wanting
to agree, for no particular reason except he always sounded so reasonable—just like the British! The idea amused her, and she was smiling when Lucien at last pushed both her and Hilary out of the museum and down the path towards the excavated site of the old city.

The silence was uncanny. Arab found herself listening to it more and more, as they penetrated deeper under the shady trees. No bird sang, no monkey chattered in the trees; it was as if there was no animal life anywhere near the ruined walls of the forgotten town.

“Why is it so quiet?” Hilary asked in a whisper, slipping her hand into Arab’s. “I can hear my own footsteps!”

“I don’t know, pet,” Arab admitted. “Is it always like this?” she added to Lucien.

“Whenever I’ve been here. It’s strange, because it’s so beautiful, with the ruined walls and the arches, and the sun glimpsing through the leaves of the trees, and the warm black earth, but the animals don’t seem to like it.”

“Not even snakes?” Hilary asked anxiously.

“I’ve never even seen a snake,” he confirmed. “Are you frightened?”

“Not frightened,” Hilary denied. “Not exactly frightened, but it is kind of scary, isn’t it?” She held Arab’s hand more tightly than ever. “I shouldn’t like to be here by myself, would you?”

“Not much,” Arab agreed.

Lucien laughed. “Beginning to regret your interest in history already?” he teased her.

“Of course not!” she denied. She wished she had enough courage to put her hand in his as easily as Hilary had clung close to her. She cast a swift look at him and found he was watching her closely, his eyes amused. Supposing, she thought in a panic, supposing he could read her thoughts? She looked away with determination, pretending she hadn’t noticed the way he had raised his eyebrows enquiringly, nor the way he had allowed his eyes to travel over her, not missing a detail of her appearance.

His smile held nothing but mockery, however, as he held out his hand to her, taking possession of her wrist between his strong, tanned fingers. His touch made her tremble and she concentrated very hard on the path ahead of them.

“Poor Arab,” he said.

“Why? Why is she poor?” Hilary chanted, her spirits recovering as they came nearer to the inner wall of the ruins.

“Because she doesn’t know what she wants,” Lucien answered easily.

“I know what I want!” Hilary said immediately. “I want to go on a picnic every day. Having Arab with us is almost as good as having Mummy, don’t you think?”

“Very nearly,” Lucien agreed. “Of course she doesn’t know as much as Ruth, but she’s willing!”

Arab gasped with fury. She wrenched her wrist away from him, rubbing it automatically as if it were bruised. “I’m not in the least bit willing!” she denied.

Hilary chuckled, adding insult to injury. “Not willing to go picnicking with us? But you are, Arab! You know you wanted to come!”

“You’ll never get her to admit as much,” Lucien drawled.

Arab’s brow cleared. “I’m willing to go for a picnic,” she muttered cautiously. “I thought—”

Lucien threw her a look of polite enquiry. “Yes?” he prompted her.

Arab blushed. “It doesn’t matter.” She searched blindly for something, anything that would serve to change the subject. Her eye fell on a large oval tombstone with some writing on it, cut in plaster. “Oh, do look! What’s that?” she asked with such obvious relief that Lucien laughed out loud.

“Willing for what?” he tormented her.

She pursed up her mouth with a look that was deliberately provocative. “I’m not willing to be the butt of all your jokes!” She caught the flash in his eyes and retreated into dignity, standing very straight and wishing that she could control the flood of colour that crept up her cheeks. “Wh-what does it say on that tombstone?” she asked him hastily.

“That,” he told her, still enjoying her discomfiture, “is the Dated Tomb. Look, you can just read the date here:
a.d.
802, the equivalent of
a.d.
1399. It’s useful because it provides a fixed date from which the other houses can be related.”

Arab peered at it, glad to have something else to concentrate on. “Why is it in this position? Are there other tombs here?”

Lucien showed her the Tomb of the Fluted Pillar, going straight on to the Great Mosque, where he picked out the original walls for her to inspect, and gave her a brief idea of what the building had been like. She stood for a long moment beside the
mihrab
, the niche in the prayer room that tells the faithful which way they should face to be looking towards Mecca. It was the best preserved bit of the Mosque and had once been decorated by the now familiar porcelain bowls. Beside it, on the right, stood a pulpit, or
minbar
, of three steps. Hilary climbed the stairs with a suitably devout expression on her face. A minute later she had collapsed into giggles. “At least you don’t have to take your shoes off
here”
she said to Arab. “It’s just as well. If you cut your feet on that coral rock, it would never heal!” She hesitated. “Would it, Lucien?”

“It would take a very long time,” he agreed. “It’s tricky stuff.”

“There you are!” Hilary exclaimed.

She jumped down the steps and went running off, climbing over the walls of the nearby palace, pausing only to shout to them over her shoulder that they wouldn’t be able to keep up with her so she would meet them on the other side. Lucien and Arab followed more slowly, going into the palace through the entrance and wandering from courtyard to courtyard until they finally came to the annexe, where Hilary rejoined them.

“Is this where the women lived?” Hilary asked her uncle.

“I expect so,” he said. “Where are you going now?”

Hilary made an expansive gesture with both arms. “About,” she answered. “I want to go and look at some of the other things.”

Arab watched her as she made her way across the ruins. She felt quite envious of her for her freedom and half thought of following her, rather than being left alone with Lucien. She edged her way out of the palace and walked round the wall, her hands in her pockets, past a pillar tomb, and into a block of houses, where she tried to make out the streets. It was difficult to see what it had been like from ground level, though, so she made her way to one end, climbing up on to one of the walls to see if she could get a better idea from higher up. Lucien came and joined her.

“Are you all right up there?” he asked. “It’s a long way down!”

She nodded impatiently. “I can’t tell one house from another,” she complained.

“I’m in the House of the Cowries.”

“Cowries? Aren’t they a kind of shell?”

He nodded. “The kind that you can hear the sea in, if you hold them up to your ear—if they’re big enough. Some of them are tiny. You’re just by the House of the Scissors.”

Arab looked down at the house below her, trying to imagine what it had been like. Lucien came close to where she was standing. He glanced up at her, shading his eyes from the sun.

“This house has an interesting well,” he began to tell her. “It shared with the House of the Ivory Box over there. It used to be the dangerous type of well, with the top at ground level, making it easy for the person who was drawing up the water to fall into it. Later it was converted and given a parapet—” He broke off, walking towards her. “Come down,” he commanded, “and I’ll show you.”

She thought he was going to reach up and help her down and her breath caught in the back of her throat, making it impossible for her to move in any direction. She took a blind leap at what she hoped was a solid ledge of rock, missed her footing, and fell heavily against Lucien, wrenching her foot as she did so. His arms closed tightly about her and his mouth closed on hers in a long, hard kiss. For a breathless moment she tried to wriggle free, aware of a shooting pain in her ankle, but he held her closer still, his lips moving from her mouth to her cheeks, to her eyes, and back again.

“I’ve wanted to do that ever since I first saw you!” he murmured in her ear. His hands moved over her, caressing her, until her own arms went round the back of his neck and she was kissing him as hard as he was her. Then suddenly she was free. She sat up, pulling nervously at her crumpled shirt.

“But you can’t have done!”

He pulled her back into his arms, more gentle than he had been before. “It was those ridiculous jeans,” he told her, then sighed. “It would be easier if you were a little older, my lovely Arab. I feel as though I’m taking advantage of you.”

She hid her face against him. “How old do I have to be?”

He touched her face with one finger, marking the line of her jaw and the soft bow of her lips. “Old enough to know your own mind. I feel you’re more kissed against than kissing—”

“Oh, Lucien!” she exclaimed.

He kissed her very gently on the lips. “You see,” he said, “you’re not ready yet to have a hectic affair with me, are you?”

She bit her lip. “Must it be an affair?” she whispered.

“What else, darling? You’re going back to England in a few days and I shall still be here. I can’t take off until Ruth comes back and reclaims Hilary, and you can’t stay here.”

“I could come back.”

His arms tightened about her, crushing her to him. She met his embrace eagerly, overwhelmed by the strength of the emotion he stirred within her and against which she had no defence. All she knew was that she loved him and that this short interlude might be all she would ever have of him. She had never known such delight, nor been filled by such sadness because it would have to end.