The House of the Scissors (16 page)

Happily she was rescued from his giving her any explanation by the old man coming back towards them, still chanting as the beads slipped through his fingers.

“She has been seen,” he panted, as he came up to them. “She is not here, but it is thought that she has gone to the Swahili village on the other side of Malindi. It was said in the market place that she has gone to see the witch-doctor—”

“
Alone
?”

The old man’s eyes, blue with blindness, stared dully into hers. “The Kjana is alone. She speaks with the witch-doctor about her friend.”

Arab gasped, blushing fiercely. “About me?”

The old man patted her plaster cast, neighing with silent laughter, and then tottered off down the street, collapsing into the nearest doorway. His grizzled hair had been cut so short that his black scalp gleamed in the sunlight, damp from the effort he had made. Arab wondered how old he was. She thought he must be a great age and she was glad that they were no longer enemies.

“Do you know this village?” she asked Jacques.

He gave her an odd look. “Do you intend to go there?” he countered. “It sounds to me as though Hilary knows what she’s doing. She won’t come to any harm!”

Arab looked stubborn. “She might!” She threaded her fingers together nervously. “I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to her!”

Jacques shook his head at her. “She’s not your responsibility, Bella!”

“I think she is!”

He shrugged his shoulders with a Gallic gesture. “My dear, have you thought what you are doing? You are too beautiful to give up your work, did you know that? As a model, you have prestige, and dresses like the one you wore to the dance—” He broke off, annoyed to see that she was laughing at him. “Well? What is so funny?”

“You are!” she giggled. “You don’t know anything about being a model!”

“It brought you out here—to me!”

“Not to you!” Arab frowned. “And this was the best thing that’s happened to me. Mostly, it’s nothing but changing clothes, rushing round in taxis in a constant fever in case one is late for an appointment, and talking clothes, clothes,
clothes
, until you wish they’d never been invented! If it isn’t clothes, it’s dieting, because most of us have to worry about our figures all the time too. At the end of a day, I could often scream with boredom!”

“I don’t believe you! Why did you become a model if this is true?”

Arab grinned. “Because being a shorthand-typist was worse, or so I thought. Recently, since coming out here, I’ve begun to wonder if I’m really cut out for the independent, liberated life, but there isn’t much choice in the end, is there?”

Jacques looked serious. “
Cherie
, let’s leave Hilary to her own devices! Come with me, and I shall persuade you that you will find happiness with me. I earn very good money, I assure you! There would be no need for you to work any more. All you would have to be is my golden goddess, and I should adore you, no?”

Arab wriggled uncomfortably. “But I’m not a golden goddess,” she objected.

“Today, you are my Cinderella, full of family worries that are nothing to do with you! But we wave a wand, and you are dressed for the Ball. I have seen you when you are beautiful! You must not forget that!”

“That’s not the real me,” she said. She was irresistibly reminded of the time when Lucien had kissed her in the House of the Scissors. He had said it was her ridiculous jeans that had first made him want to kiss her. He hadn’t required the glamour of a golden dress! Tears started into her eyes. If only it were he and not Jacques who was beside her now!

“It’s real enough for me!”

“Please don’t!” Arab said abruptly.

“But, Bella, it is silly for you to cry for the moon when the stars are all yours for the taking!”

“I don’t happen to want any stars!”

“Did you dislike my kisses so much?”

Arab nodded, chewing at her lower lip. “I’m sorry, Jacques.”

He spread his hands out before him. “I am a very stubborn man,” he warned her. “You will grow to like my kisses.”

“No, I won’t. Please, Jacques, don’t go on about it! You don’t know me at all, and I don’t think you would like me very much if you did. I’m just ordinary me and I don’t want to be anybody else.” She shifted her foot with immense care. “Certainly not Madame Jacques Bouyer!” she added.

“How about Mrs. Lucien Manners?” he drawled.

Arab winced. “Lucien isn’t looking for a wife,” she answered. “And I don’t think I should be very happy with anything else.” She laughed shortly. “I shall get over it—I hope!” Arab shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“But not with me?”

She was dismayed to see the tightness about Jacques’ mouth and she wished that she hadn’t had to refuse him. Jill had said he was looking for a flirtation, but he had wanted a wife after all. What a pity she couldn’t feel the same way about him! How simple everything would be, if she could only have fallen in love with Jacques Bouyer! She waited for him to start the engine, but he sat in the driving seat with his hands on the wheel, making no effort to move. After a while Arab became restive. She tried a light laugh that didn’t quite come off. “Hadn’t we better be going?” she said.

Jacques gave her an angry look. “I wouldn’t have come if it was only a chauffeur you were wanting!” he said sourly. “If you want me to drive you around, you’ll have to pay me for it.”

“Pay you?” Arab exclaimed. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“You know very well,
ma mie.
Shall we say a kiss a mile? Or I shall leave you here to get home by yourself!”

Arab controlled her temper with difficulty. “Don’t be ridiculous! I have to be at the airport at five!”

“You should have thought of that before!” Jacques mocked her with a cruel twist to his mouth.

Arab took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “A kiss a mile it is. Now let’s get going.
I’m worried about Hilary and I want to get to her as quickly as possible!” She noted the surprised look on Jacques’ face, followed by a quick gleam of triumph. “I had not expected you to be so—amenable,” he murmured. “Perhaps I need not have offered you marriage after all?”

Arab only grunted. She was busy thinking about how she was going to get out of paying him. It should be easy enough, she decided. She would put him off until they arrived at the airport and then there would be too many people around for it to matter!

“Please, let’s go!”

Reluctantly, Jacques turned the ignition key and backed the Mini-Moke towards the sea, roaring the engine as he changed gear and sped through the narrow streets, scattering people and animals in all directions with a lack of concern for others that jarred harshly on Arab’s nerves.

By the time they arrived at the Swahili village, Arab could only think of one thing: the gnawing pain in her ankle that was growing steadily by the minute. Jacques parked the Mini-Moke in the shade of a tree and she sat there, without moving, for a long moment, hoping that the pain was going to subside. It soon became obvious that it was there to stay. The sweat formed in drops on her face and her clothes felt tight and damp.

“Will you help me out, please,” she asked Jacques. He lifted her out of her seat and set her down on her feet.

“I think I’ll take the first instalment of my payment now,” he began.

Arab pulled herself away from him. “I’m too hot and sticky!” She looked about her. “Have you ever been here before?”

“What for?” Jacques countered cautiously.

Arab glanced at him sharply, She knew quite certainly that he had been to the village before and that he didn’t want to tell her about it. Oh well, she thought, it was none of her business what he did! But it gave her an uncomfortable feeling that she didn’t know Jacques as well as she thought she had. She turned away from him, idly watching a bevy of small children who had gathered about the car.

“Tour,
memsahib
? Tour of village? I best guide!”

Arab’s eyes met those of a small boy and she pointed to him. “
Jambo
,” she said to him, pleased with her one word of Swahili.

“
Jambo
,
memsahib
. You want to see the village?”

Arab nodded. “I’m looking for a girl who might have come here today. Have you seen her?”

The boy’s head fell forward and he shuffled his feet in the dust, pretending not to have understood her. Arab sighed. There was nothing for it, she thought, but to make the tour of the village and hope to see Hilary on the way.

“She’s eleven years old,” she said slowly and clearly, in case the boy hadn’t understood her. “She has yellow hair,” she added.

The boy looked up, his eyes wide. “Tour,
memsahib
?”

Arab looked over her shoulder at Jacques. He had got back into the Mini-Moke and had pulled out a paperback which he was studying with interest. Arab felt quite exasperated. It would have been easy enough for him to have made the tour of the village, whereas she wasn’t sure that she would be able to walk that far.

“Are you coming?” she asked Jacques.

“No,” he replied.

Her guide was surprisingly helpful. He told her to stand still where she was and, in a few seconds he was back with a stout walking stick in his hand. With the help of the stick and the boy’s shoulder, Arab found she could swing along fairly well. She might even have enjoyed it had it not been for the nagging ache in her foot which obstinately refused to go away.

Everybody in the village was friendly. There was the sound of laughter echoing round the trees and there were no suspicious eyes watching everything she did such as she had noticed at Mambrui. Her guide showed her the cashew trees, where small boys hurried to pick the nuts and toast them over mangrove charcoal, urging her to try them. He pointed out the cups at the top of the palm trees to catch the palm juice that is the basis of the
tembo
drink that they all drank with relish whenever they could.

“Have you a witch-doctor here?” Arab asked her guide.

He nodded eagerly. “Yes,
memsahib
. Very powerful man!”

“I’d like to see him,” she said.

The boy looked upset. “This village is famous for dancing,” he trotted out. “We make very good drums. I show you?”

Arab agreed that she would like to see the drums. Everybody, it appeared, could play them in the village. Their four fingers and the ball of their palms became a blur as they beat out the intricate rhythms on the skins pulled tight over various hollowed-out pieces of wood.

“You try,” the boy urged her.

She did so, but she wasn’t very good at it. If she concentrated hard, she could beat out a simple melody, but the counter-beat was beyond her, and the giggles that her attempts to do better produced made her nervous.

“I want to see the witch-doctor,” she repeated.

A woman who was nursing her baby nearby called out something to the boy at her side. “That is my mother,” he told her. “She is one of the wives of the witch-doctor. She will take you to him.”

The woman got to her feet with unconscious grace. She handed the baby over to his brother, rearranging the single sheet of material that she wore round her hips. When she smiled, Arab was astonished to see that she had perfect teeth and that her tongue darted in and out of her mouth every time she laughed, which was often. She beckoned to Arab to follow her, pausing every now and then to allow Arab to keep pace with her.

She led the way across the main compound of the village towards a hut that was a little larger than any of the others. With a gesture, she bade Arab wait outside while she drew back the curtain in the doorway and, ducking her head, entered into the gloomy interior.

Arab eased her foot into a more comfortable position, leaning heavily on the walking-stick. She felt quite sick with pain and her head ached. She hoped it was not a recurrence of malaria and put the thought away from her quickly in case it should be true. A goat came round the side of the hut and stood, stock-still, trying to make its mind up if she were an enemy to be butted or a friend to be ignored. Arab whistled to it through her teeth, hoping for the best, and the beast went slowly away, pausing only to take a mouthful of cloth that was hanging from a piece of string from another hut nearby.

Arab blinked at the sun and tried to move into the shade. The curtain twitched beside her and Hilary came rushing out.

“Arab! I’m so glad you came! I didn’t see how you could! It was easy getting here, but I couldn’t imagine how I was going to get home. But I got it! And he promises that it works—really it does! And it isn’t poisonous, because I’ve tried a little of it myself and I’m still alive. It cost five whole shillings!”

Arab tripped over her walking-stick and fell heavily to the ground.

“What cost five shillings?”

Hilary flung herself on to her knees beside her, pulling the stick out from beneath her.

“The love potion!” she said.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

“A
love potion
?” Arab repeated. “Whatever for?”

Hilary helped her to her feet, frowning with concentration. “Mummy gave me the idea,” she said. “You know, at breakfast this morning. I think it’s a very good idea, don’t you?”

Arab balanced herself with difficulty against the wall of the hut. If her jeans had been disreputable before, they were now in a very sad state indeed.

“It seems plain daft to me!” she said shortly.

“But it isn’t, Arab!” Hilary looked hurt. “I got it for you,” she explained. “I thought you’d stay with us for ever then.”

“
Me
?” Arab stared at her, the pain in her foot temporarily forgotten. “For me?” The aggrieved expression on Hilary’s face sharpened her temper. “Do you know how worried I’ve been, young lady? I’ve been half out of my mind all day, telling myself you were with Ayah, until I saw her and she told me she hadn’t seen you all day either. You, Hilary, have some explaining to do! And a lot of guff about love potions isn’t a very good beginning!”

Hilary went white. “I didn’t think you’d worry,” she said in a small voice.

“Of course I worried! Your mother and Lucien had gone out for the day, or they might have come looking for you. As it was, I couldn’t even drive the car—”

“How did you get here?” Hilary asked.

“Jacques drove me.” Arab was on the point of telling the child what a disaster that arrangement had been, when she realised that perhaps she had better not. “He’s waiting in the Mini-Moke for us on the other side of the compound.”

Hilary screwed up her face. “I think he might have saved you having to walk all round the village!” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Arab, truly I am. I meant to find out what time the bus went back to Malindi, but it was going and I had to run to catch it, and then I didn’t think of it again until we were nearly here.”

Arab grunted. “You shouldn’t go on buses by yourself!”

“I have to!” Hilary appealed. “I can’t drive—
ever
!”

“You could have taken Ayah with you,” Arab pointed out “And what use is a love potion anyway?”

Hilary grinned, quick to see that Arab’s curiosity was getting the better of her temper. “It was for you! You see, if you make Lucien some tea and put the potion in his cup, he’ll love you for ever!”

“But—” Arab protested.

“For ever and ever,” Hilary repeated. “The witchdoctor says so. Then you’ll never have to go back to England, but you can stay here with us. It cost me five whole shillings, Arab, but I think it’s worth it, don’t you? It might not have worked,” she went on thoughtfully, “if Aunt Sandra had been here, but with her away,
anything
might happen!”

“
Anything
!” Arab agreed with mounting exasperation. “But, Hilary, don’t you see that you can’t interfere like that? If Lucien loves Sandra, your love potion won’t change it. People have to be allowed to make up their own minds about these things.”

“Don’t you love Lucien?”

Arab swallowed hard. “Yes,” she admitted.

“Then why should Aunt Sandra have him? She doesn’t love him! She doesn’t love anyone!”

“Because Lucien loves
her.
He has the same right to feel as he does as you and I have.”

Hilary looked appalled. “But then he won’t ask you to marry him! That would be
awful
! When Mummy goes away, I always stay with Lucien, and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t, if Aunt Sandra were there too!”

“You may have to,” Arab said.

“I won’t!” The small girl stamped her foot. “I won’t! If you won’t give Lucien the love potion, then I will! I won’t have him marrying Aunt Sandra!”

Arab sighed, feeling quite as dejected as Hilary. “Come on,” she said. “We have to get back to the airport to see them all off to Nairobi.”

“I wish you hadn’t come and found me! I don’t want to see Aunt Sandra off!”

“What about Jill?” Arab reminded her.

“I don’t mind Jill,” the child agreed. “But she would understand. Have you seen Aunt Sandra and Mr. Silk talking together? He looks as though he’s about to eat her up.” She looked sulkily up at Arab. “And I don’t like Jacques either!” she announced for good measure.

“Why ever not?” Arab gasped, chiding herself for encouraging Hilary to express these outrageous views.

Hilary shrugged. “He’s never serious. I don’t like people who say I’m going to be a peach when I grow up, and silly things like that! How does he know what I’ll be like? I won’t be in the least like a peach! I’m going to be clever and an anthropologist like Mummy, and he wouldn’t like me at all because he isn’t clever, is he? At least I don’t think he is.”

Devastated by the solemn air of candour with which this speech was delivered, Arab felt bound to try and defend him; “He’s on holiday,” she said. “He only wants a bit of fun!”

Hilary drew herself up to her full height. “Lucien doesn’t like him!” she dismissed Jacques. “Lucien says he wishes he could put you in a veil, then you wouldn’t attract so many undesirables to your side!” She giggled suddenly. “He must like you to say a thing like that. Don’t you think?”

Arab refused to answer. The conceit of the man!
“
Hilary,” she began uncertainly, “don’t say anything about this love potion to anyone else. They might not understand—”

“I won’t. It won’t work if Lucien knows about it anyway. I might tell Mummy though. She’d be interested in whether it has the same ingredients as the ones in Ethiopia. You wouldn’t mind my telling her, would you?”

Arab did mind, but she couldn’t very well say so. She gritted her teeth and prepared for the walk back across the compound to the car. If Jacques had been in another mood she would have asked him to drive round the village to pick her up, but she knew that he wasn’t inclined to indulge her and that there was nothing for it but to make her way somehow to him.

It took her a long time. Hilary walked slowly beside her, exchanging laughing remarks with half the village as they went. Arab herself felt too tired even to raise a smile for most of them. Her face was grey with pain and fatigue by the time they reached the car. Hilary fussed round her, trying to devise some easy way for her to get into the cockpit of the Mini-Moke, casting dark looks at Jacques at intervals who merely sat where he was, watching them.

“Jacques, we’ll be late at the airport,” Arab said at last a trifle desperately. “Please help me!”

“It will put the tariff up,” he warned her.

“I don’t care!” she retorted with total indifference. She had no intention of paying anyway. “Only please hurry! I haven’t got time to change now as it is.”

“I don’t know that I care to have you in my car smelling like a goat,” Jacques said, holding his nose with two fastidious fingers.

“Oh, shut up!” said Arab. “I’ll manage without your help!”

She did so, but it cost her dear in effort and pain. Hilary helped her all she could, but she was not strong enough to take the burden of Arab’s weight as she slung her good leg into the car. Hilary seized her plastered foot and lifted it with more enthusiasm than accuracy back on to its cushion.

“Are you all right, Arab?” she asked repeatedly. “You look awful!”

“Yes, doesn’t she?” said Jacques.

“I know, I know. I wish I had time to change,” Arab muttered ruefully. “Still, Jill won’t care.”

Jacques raised his eyebrows. “You are a funny girl to be a model,” he said. “Sometimes you look gorgeous and golden, and now you look—”

“Like a street arab!” Hilary supplied with a little giggle. “That’s what Lucien calls her. It’s a pun on her name,” she added in case Jacques had not seen it “Lucien likes her jeans—”

“How do you know?” Arab asked quickly.

“You’re wasting your time!” Jacques shot at her.

“I know,” she admitted.

Hilary jumped into the back seat “He does like them!” she claimed. “He said so! It was when Aunt Sandra said they were a disgrace and
he
said they were cute!”

Arab could feel herself blushing. “Do hurry up!” she commanded Jacques. “We’re going to be late, I just know we are!”

They were. They were in sight of the airport when the Fokker Friendship aeroplane lifted into the sky and turned towards Nairobi. Arab watched it go in a stricken silence. Jill would know where she had gone and would understand, she thought, but the others would think that she hadn’t been interested enough to come and wave them goodbye. They had been good to work with and she was sorry that they would think badly of her. It hurt. It hurt too that Lucien and Ruth would have been looking out for her when she hadn’t been there.

“Never mind!” Hilary tried to comfort her, aware of Arab’s deep disappointment. “You can write to Jill, or better still you can ring her up tonight. Lucien will get the number for you.”

“Very cosy,” Jacques put in. “But before that,
chérie
, there is the little matter of the payment you owe me.”

Arab shrugged. “Not now, Jacques,” she said. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Are you ever? This was a gentleman’s agreement,
ma mie.
I thought the English always kept their word?”

“But it’s ridiculous!” Arab protested. “I don’t want to kiss you!”

“You should have thought of that before,” he drawled.

“Why has she got to kiss you?” Hilary demanded, poised to jump out of the Mini-Moke. “I’m going to find Mummy and Lucien.”

“Bonne idee
!” said Jacques. “Bella and I will wait here. Yes,
ma belle?”

It would be making too much of a foolish incident to ask Hilary to stay, Arab thought. If she had to kiss Jacques at all, she would kiss him quickly and have done.

“Very well,” she said.

She was quite unprepared for the strength of his arms, or for the vicious way his mouth came down on hers. She attempted to get free of him, but she could not with the handicap that her foot presented. It was an uncomfortable experience, but she did nothing to help him. She no longer resisted him, but nor did she respond in any way to the warm pressure of his lips.

“You have a bad idea of paying your debts!” he grumbled against her throat.

“I didn’t intend to pay at all!” she retorted.

“That was very obvious. You’re not paying now in any way that counts. You could give me one good kiss—just to say goodbye,
non
?”

Arab smiled faintly. “
Oui
,” she said.

His arms closed about her again and this time she made some effort to respond to him, though he had no more effect on her than he had on the beach on the night of the dance. How different it had been with Lucien! She longed for the feel of Lucien’s arms and the touch of his lips, but Jacques was nothing like Lucien and she felt only empty and dissatisfied. When at last he let her go, she put up a hand to wipe her lips and found herself looking straight into Lucien’s furious eyes.

“We were too late for the plane,” she said, her heart
pounding. The mere sight of him made her shrivel up with guilt. “I—I didn’t even change.”

“So I see,” Lucien said in icy tones.

Jacques jumped out of the Mini-Moke, grinning. He put up a hand and slapped Lucien on the shoulder. “Jealous,
mon ami
?”

The contempt in Lucien’s eyes scorched Arab to the bone, but had no effect on the Frenchman. Jacques merely laughed again.

“You are welcome to her,” he said easily. “Bella is not at her most attractive this evening—a little difficult, shall we say? If you will help her out of my car, I will be getting back to the hotel.”

Lucien said nothing. He put an arm about Arab and hooked her neatly out of the Moke, carrying her over to his own car where he deposited her, none too gently, on the front seat.

“I’m sorry,” Arab said.

He didn’t even look at her. “Jill damned nearly missed the plane herself! She went by the Villa Tanit expecting to find you there and waited for as long as she possibly could. Couldn’t you have left a message, Arab?”

“I thought I’d be back in time—”

“What you mean is that you didn’t think at all!” he snapped. “You preferred to go out with your French boy-friend and that was that!”

“It wasn’t!” she protested.

“Then why did you go with him?”

A lump formed in the back of Arab’s throat. “I—I—” she began in a tight, constricted voice.

“Don’t bother!” Lucien advised nastily. “I saw the finale, remember? If you want someone to kiss you, my dear, I thought I’d made it clear that I’m both willing and available!”

“He was saying goodbye,” Arab attempted to explain. Lucien’s head blocked off her view of the airport. That he was very angry she had no doubt whatsoever She uttered a strangled gasp, but there was no way of escaping his kiss. But her own quick temper came to her rescue. She would
not
be kissed by Lucien because he despised her, or because he thought to punish her. How dared he treat her like that! She pulled back her hand and hit him as hard as she could across the face.

He drew back immediately, clasping both her hands in his. With a last desperate movement, she tried to get free of him, succeeded in freeing one hand and hit out at him again.