The House of the Scissors (15 page)

“And you don’t mind?” Arab insisted, still white with misery.

Ruth’s eyes twinkled mercilessly. “It’s one of the reasons I came flying home,” she assured her. “Hilary wrote that Lucien had said—”

It was Jill who groaned. “Oh no! Mrs. Dark, I’m devoted to your daughter, but her hero-worship for your brother is very hard to bear!”

“That’s nothing,” said Ruth. She grinned, looking very like Lucien indeed. “You haven’t heard
me
quoting my brother yet! I hero-worship him too! And I have strong hopes of another convert!” She chuckled.
“Hilary
says—” she began.

CHAPTER TEN

ARAB hadn’t seen Hilary all day. All afternoon she had been hoping that the child would come and find her, because she wanted her to go with her to Malindi’s minute airport to see the others off on the first leg of their journey to England. She had decided that she had , to go, although she could easily have missed seeing either Sammy or Sandra ever again. But Jill had wanted her to be there to wave her goodbye, and Arab hadn’t had the heart to refuse.

Ruth had proved to be an easy hostess. She had kept Arab entranced with her stories of her doings in Ethiopia. At breakfast, she had told them all about a young girl who had walked a hundred miles to obtain a love potion to give to her ancient husband.

“That’s nothing!” Hilary had said with contempt. “There’s a man who lives near here who has eighty wives. He’s a witch-doctor!”

Her mother had laughed. “He sounds a successful one!” she had agreed.

Even Lucien had listened closely to his niece’s romancing about this man. “Where did you hear about him?” he had asked her.

Hilary had grinned. “They were talking about him in the African market,” she had said. “They have a very good line in gossip down there.”

It was shortly after breakfast that Hilary had disappeared. Ruth and Lucien had gone out for the day with friends.

“Take a taxi to the airport,” Lucien had bidden Arab. “We’ll pick you up there and bring you home.”

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” she had murmured, anxious not to be a nuisance.

“Ruth wishes to go,” he had answered. “I think she has something to say to Sandra.”

Arab had frozen. “All right,” she had said, “I’ll see you there. I’ll go in the same taxi as Jill.”

“I thought you might,” he had drawled.

The house had been very quiet after they had gone. Arab had spent the morning working. Lucien had left her a whole lot of notes on the ancient trading of the Indian Ocean, long before the European had made his mark on that area. It was a fascinating saga of brave men, ships, gold, silver and ivory. East African metals were superior to those of India and the best swords were those which were fashioned from them. Later, when the Europeans had taken over most of the trade, they became convinced that their civilisation had always been superior to those of the Indian Ocean. The many surviving monuments in India had been an uncomfortable reminder that this was not so, but along the East Coast of Africa the cities had fallen into ruin and had been swallowed up by the surrounding vegetation. European superiority had reigned supreme.

But even this story, with the side issue of the slave trade coming and going to reveal the darker side of ancient trading, failed to enthral Arab as it usually did. The house was too silent.

She had her solitary lunch to the accompaniment of the wireless. She tried asking the African servant where Hilary was, but he didn’t understand her question. By the time she had finished her meal she was really worried. She told herself that Hilary would be out somewhere with Ayah, .but she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that something was wrong.

With some difficulty she crossed the garden, her book in her hand, intending to find a shady place in the ruined harem which she hoped would be cooler than inside the house. It took her a long time to hobble over the rough ground and once she nearly fell. She recovered herself, ruefully staring down at the plaster on her foot, when a lazy call from under a nearby mango tree made her look up. She was astonished to see Ayah reclining on the ground, smiling broadly at her.

“Ayah!” she exclaimed. “Where’s Hilary?”

Ayah yawned sleepily. “Memsahib Kjana has her mother to see to her today,” she answered somewhat huffily.

“But Memsahib Dark has gone out with the Bwana!”

Ayah’s eyes grew round with panic. “You sure of that? You sure?”

Arab nodded. “I haven’t seen Hilary since breakfast,” she said. “There was no sign of her when the others left.”

“But where she gone? She very naughty girl to go without telling Ayah. I have something to say to that girl when she get back!”

“Yes, but where could she have gone?”

Ayah shook her head, her eyes now starting out of her head. “She a bad girl! Never say to Ayah where she go! She take a bus somewhere! She get Ayah into bad trouble!”

Arab sighed. She remembered how she had first come across Hilary at Mambrui. The child had been playing truant on that occasion. No doubt there had been many other occasions! But surely, now her mother was home, there was no need for Hilary to go off by herself in search of adventure.

“We’ll have to find her!” she said aloud to Ayah.

“I don’t know where she gone!”

“I don’t know either,” Arab said patiently. “Let’s try and think where she might have gone.”

“I not know!”

Arab sat down heavily on a piece of broken wall. “If I could only drive!” she wished uselessly. “I feel so helpless!”

“She come back,” Ayah muttered. She settled herself more comfortably against the trunk of the mango tree and closed her eyes.

“No
! It won’t do. We can’t leave an eleven-year-old running around on her own! Anything might happen to her!” A pang of anxiety made her recoil from her plastered foot and she stood up with sudden decision. “I shall find someone who can drive!” she declared. “I’ll telephone to the hotel.”

This was easier said than done, but eventually Jill came to the phone.

“I’m packing, love. What is it?”

“Hilary has disappeared!”

“How long?”

Arab sighed with relief. It was something just to share her anxiety with another person and Jill could be relied upon to understand without asking a whole lot of useless questions.

“It’s awful!” she said. “She might have gone anywhere! And I can’t go and look for her with my foot, Jill, you couldn’t drive me, could you?”

There was a brief silence at the other end. “I would, honey, but you know I can’t drive!”

“Oh, Jill! You
must
be able to!”

“No, truly, I never have driven anything, not even a bicycle! You’ll have to get someone else, pet. Wouldn’t Sandra—” Her voice trailed off as though even she could see that Sandra was unlikely to spend the day looking for her truant niece. “I’ll ask the French boys!” she suggested with a flash of inspiration. “Will you hold on?”

“Yes,” said Arab.

There followed an endless wait. Arab pulled a chair over to the telephone, almost tripping herself up as she did so. She sat down, with her leg stuck out in front of her, and wondered that she had managed to get the plaster so dirty in such a short time.

“Are you there,
ma belle
?”

“Jacques! Oh, Jacques! I thought you might have gone back to work—”

“Not yet,
ma mie.
Your friend Jill said you wished to speak to me. Have you changed your mind, Bella?”

“Changed my mind?” Arab repeated. “Oh, that!” She was immediately embarrassed. “Well, no, I’m afraid not. I’m beginning to think that stardust isn’t much in my line. But, Jacques—?”

“Yes, I am still listening,” he assured her.

“Hilary has disappeared. Are you doing anything?”

“But of course I am doing something. When your friend came to find me I was teaching the most beautiful woman in the whole of East Africa to swim in the pool here. My true love has rejected me, but I am not one to mope alone with my broken heart! Did you think I would?”

“Idiot!” Arab said with real affection. “Seriously though, will you drive me if I go and look for her?”

He hesitated. “Where will you go?”

“To Mambrui,” she said. “She might go there. There’s a bus she could have taken that goes from the harbour.”

“
D’accord
,” he agreed immediately. “Do I come and pick you up? I and Jean-Pierre have hired a Mini-Moke between the two of us. If he is not using it just now, I shall be with you in about ten minutes.”

Arab clutched the telephone to her ear. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“It is nothing. I am glad that you ask me to do this for you.” She could hear that he was smiling. “I could wish that it was something more valorous, you know, something to make you lose your heart to me. But I am the realist, you understand, and your heart, it no longer belongs to you!
Calme-toi
,
petite
! We shall find her very soon. You will see!”

“I hope so,” Arab sighed.

She went out into the drive to wait for him, forgetting her original intention of changing first so that she would be ready to go straight to the airport the instant Hilary was found. She was wearing her old, frayed jeans again, because she could get them easily over the plaster cast on her foot. At the moment she was so hot that they stuck to her flesh. If only Lucien were here, she thought, he would know where to find Hilary! She longed for him to appear, to sweep her along in his train as he took charge with all his usual confidence. But of course he did nothing of the kind. The trees rustled over her head, but otherwise there was no sound to be heard anywhere.

Jacques came storming up the drive, drawing up right beside her. He grinned at her, raising his eyebrows at her jeans.

“Can you get in by yourself?” he asked her.

Arab made a half-hearted attempt to do so, wishing she had remembered to change while she had waited for him. “I don’t think I can,” she said.

He jumped out of the Moke and lifted her bodily into the passenger seat, arranging the foot on a cushion on the running board that went all round the cockpit of the car.

“The roads are murder,” he warned her. “Shall I go and look for the child by myself?”

“No, I must go!” she insisted. “Jacques, you don’t think anything bad could have happened to her?”

“To Hilary? Never!”

“I wish I could be so sure!” she muttered. “I’m really worried! She hasn’t been seen by anyone since breakfast time. She
is
only eleven years old!”

“Is there no one else to worry about her?” Jacques asked in matter-of-fact tones. “What about the uncle?”

“Lucien is out. So is Hilary’s mother. We all thought she had gone somewhere with her
ayah.”

“I see.” He shrugged. “Very well. Mambrui, here we come!”

The road, as he had said, was much rougher than she had remembered it. It was one thing to drive along such a road oneself, it was another to be driven. However careful Jacques was, her ankle came in for some rough treatment and, by the time they had crossed the bridge and had started along the worst part of the road to Mambrui, her foot ached abominably.

Mambrui was practically deserted. A few women sat in the doorways of the houses, but there was no one that Arab felt she could ask if they had seen Hilary. Then, just when she had begun to despair, she saw the old man who had taken such exception to her entering the tomb of their holy man in her shoes. Her first instinct was to hope that he hadn’t seen her, but then she knew that she would have to ask him, for he at least had seen Hilary before. He even spoke a few words of English, though he had been reluctant to use it. She signalled to Jacques to stop the Mini-Moke and, immediately, half a dozen small boys swarmed round them, hoping to collect a few coppers from the strangers. Arab chose one who looked lively and intelligent and asked him to go over to the old man and tell him that she wished to speak to him.

The old man shook his head, refusing to so much as lift his head. His prayer beads rattled through his fingers in time to the nasal chant of the names of Allah that the old man kept up without pausing. Arab beckoned to the boy to come back to her and spent some time explaining what had happened before and why the old man disliked her.

“Tell him that I am sorry—that I didn’t know,” she said to the boy. “I was very sorry to offend him—and see, I have been punished for it, because now I have broken my ankle, as he can see for himself!”

The boy went back to the old man, repeating all she had said in Swahili with a great deal of laughter. Finally, the old man wheezed out a laugh too and stood up, wincing at the pain in his bones as he moved slowly over to the Mini-Moke. He put out a bony hand and poked the plaster on Arab’s foot, cackling with glee at her explanation of her accident.

“I have not seen the Memsahib Kjana,” he said finally in English. “I know the child. She is fond of stories and I have told her many in the past.” He lifted his head and his eyes met Arab’s briefly. “I will ask at the mosque,” he said.

Jacques was frankly impatient as they watched the old man creep away down the narrow street, feeling the rough sides of the houses as he went to keep his balance.

“That’s the last we’ve seen of him!” he grunted. “Shall I go after him?”

But Arab shook her head. “He will come back. It was courteous of him to come over. Last time I was here, I did a dreadful thing—”

Jacques grinned at her. “I heard,” he murmured. “How were you to know?”

“Lucien said I should have found out about local customs before flinging myself into breaching them,” Arab said ruefully.

“Lucien said
! I see Hilary is not the only one to quote the great man!”

Arab blushed at his teasing. “He was right, though,” she observed, forgetting how cross she had been when he had said it to her.

“Did you tell him so?” Jacques asked, a wicked glint in his eyes.

“No,” Arab admitted. “He’s quite conceited enough!”

The Frenchman chuckled. “There is hope for you yet, Bella, if you can still see that!”

Arab lifted her chin. “I don’t know what you mean!” she declared.