The House of the Scissors (5 page)

So intent was she on her dislike for him that she very nearly ran straight into him. He was exactly as she had remembered him in her mind’s eye, his eyes mocking and contemptuous.

“Don’t say it!” she almost shouted at him. “I
know
it’s a terrible dress! I hate it too! And I don’t need you to tell me—”

“Did I say anything?”

“You didn’t have to!”

He looked amused. “You shouldn’t put ideas into my head. It is indeed a terrible dress! Tell me, Miss Burnett, do you always work as intimately with that pudgy little man?”

“Sammy?” Arabella was astonished for a moment, then her cheeks flamed with embarrassed colour. “How long have you been here?” she demanded.

“Longer than you,” he returned. “Hilary believes that it’s the early bird that catches the worm. We didn’t realise that the morning would be almost over before you started work.”

“I must change,” Arab muttered, feeling harassed. “And I wish you could think of another metaphor sometimes, other than birds!”

His eyes glinted with laughter. “Complaining again?”

“No, but I’m tired of your references to borrowed plumage and—and being too lazy to get up in the mornings—”

“They suit you, Miss Burnett,” he drawled. “A rare, long-legged bird—”

“And I particularly object to being referred to as a bird, even a rare, long-legged one!”

His eyebrows shot upwards. “Was I referring to you?”

Hilary looked from one to the other of them. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about!” she complained. “Arab, what are you going to wear next? May I come with you and watch you change? Will you show me
everything
?”

“Absolutely everything!” Arab agreed. She met Lucien’s eyes in a long, level look. “If your uncle will allow you to waste your time on such a parasitic industry as ours!”

Hilary giggled. “Lucien doesn’t care,” she said. “It’s Aunt Sandra who doesn’t think it’s proper work. Lucien said she was jealous, because nobody has ever asked her to model anything!”

Lucien’s innocent expression mocked them both. Arab blinked, disconcerted by this piece of information. “I thought her clothes beautiful,” she managed.

“Oh, very,” Lucien agreed. He flicked his niece’s excited cheek with his fingers. “Don’t be too long,” he warned her. “I’m getting bored with the view from the bar and Ayah is expecting you back to lunch.”

Hilary made a face. “Can Arab come to lunch? And everyone else? Please, Lucien?”

“If it keeps you out of mischief.” He glanced down at his watch. “I shall have to be going in a few minutes,” he said to Arab. “Will you bring Hilary home? I’ll have to take her with me otherwise. But only if you bring her back yourself, I don’t want her cadging lifts from all and sundry. Understand?”

Arab moved her shoulders restively. “Jill and I will bring her home, Mr. Manners,” she agreed.

He nodded briefly, casting a meaning look in Sammy’s direction. “Good,” he said.

Arab held Hilary’s hand tightly as they walked away from him, across the dry white sand, towards the chalet. “How long have you been here?” she asked the little girl.

Hilary screwed up her face thoughtfully. “We had breakfast
very
early,” she answered. “I didn’t want to miss anything, you see.”

Arab thought she could see only too well. She had a vivid picture of an excited Hilary nagging her uncle into an expedition he obviously hadn’t wanted to make, and her spirits lowered correspondingly. “Didn’t your uncle have to work?” she murmured.

“He took the morning off,” Hilary told her cheerfully. “It doesn’t matter! He can work on his book any time. He said so.”

“His book?”

“About the ruined cities on the East Coast,” Hilary supplied. “He knows a tremendous amount about them. All about the Chinese, and the Arabs, and the Portuguese, and later on the British. I think there were Persians too, but they’re called something else, so I’m not sure.”

“Oh!” said Arab, and then again: “Oh!”

“Lucien says,” Hilary began, “that you’re not his idea of a clothes-horse—”

“I don’t want to hear what Lucien says!” Arab snapped.

Hilary was not in the least put out. “He says—”

“Hilary
!”

“But it’s interesting, Arab! Truly, it is! He says you were bo
rn
for better things. What better things, do you suppose?”

“Waiting on men like him, I daresay,” Arab retorted.

“Would you like that better?” Hilary asked. “I think I should. I
hate
having to change my clothes all the time. I don’t think I want to be a model. I shall be an anthropologist like my mother.” She hesitated, giving the matter some intense thought. “If Lucien says I may,” she added.

Jill came to the door of the chalet, holding out her hands to Hilary. “What have you done with your handsome uncle?” she asked her.

“He’s got to go home,” Hilary told her. “He has to have lunch with Aunt Sandra. He can never get any work done when she’s here,” she went on with a remarkably adult air of fatalism. “She has to be taken
everywhere
! I wish she’d go back to Nairobi and leave us in peace, but Lucien says we have to be nice to her because she means well.”

“And does she?” Jill enquired, intrigued.

Hilary gave a slow, dramatic shake to her head. “I think she wants to marry him,” she said. “Mummy thinks so too. She doesn’t like either of us, and I don’t like her!”

Jill and Arab exchanged glances. “Yes, well,” Arab said, “I don’t think we ought to talk about her behind her back, do you?”

Hilary’s unblinking stare was turned full on her. “She talked about you,” she pointed out, her sense of justice much exercised by this point of morality. “She went on and on about you!”

“Poor Lucien!” said Jill, laughing.

“She did!” Hilary insisted. “She always does! She used to go on and on about Mummy, but I don’t pay any attention. Lucien says women always talk too much. He says you have to look for the meaning behind their words because they get carried away by the sound of their own voices!”

Arab made a dash at her small friend, pulling her headlong into the chalet.
“Lucien says
—!” she mocked her.

Hilary grinned, completely unrepentant. “He says you don’t talk too much yet because you’re no more grown up than I am!”

“So much for you, honey!” Jill chuckled, enjoying Arab’s outraged discomfiture. “No wonder he jumped to the conclusion that the gold dress was borrowed!”

Arab began taking off the hated grey dress, allowing it to slip over her hips and on to the floor. “I think,” she said loudly, “that if one can’t say something pleasant, it’s better not to say anything at all! And,” she added to Hilary, “you can tell Mr. Lucien Manners that
I
said
that
!”

“All right,” Hilary agreed obligingly. “What are you going to wear now? How about this one?” She pulled out the only evening dress of the collection, if it could be called a dress at all, for it consisted of a pair of harem trousers, made of a see-through material and lined in a contrasted colour, and a tunic of the diaphanous cloth, slim and belted. “This one would suit you, Arab.”

“How about me?” Jill protested.

But the child shook her head. “I think Arab ought to wear it. It
looks
Arabian!” She searched through the dresses and came up with another one, white and silver and very plainly cut. “You could wear this one,” she suggested to Jill. “The jewellery would look silly on Arab, but I think it would look nice on you.”

“Very well chosen,” Jill congratulated her. “But I think we’re doing the swim-wear next.”

“Oh, good! Are we going to actually swim?”

Jill crowed with laughter. “I doubt it! In our job, our bathing suits seldom get wet!”

There was a sharp knock at the door. Hilary ran across the room and pulled the door open, her excitement showing clearly in her face.

“Hullo, young ‘un,” said Sammy. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m visiting Arab,” Hilary told him importantly. “Do you want her?”

“Could be. Are you attached to that man who is sitting in the bar at the hotel, by any chance?”

Hilary swelled visibly with pride. “That’s my uncle, Lucien Manners!”

“Ah!” said Sammy. “The owner of the house?”

Arab pulled her robe about her and came pattering out of the bathroom where she had taken refuge. “Sammy, I told you, I can’t ask him. He wouldn’t like it, tripping over our fripperies in his own house! Please don’t make him say no!”

Sammy looked at her in surprise. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you today, Arab. I’m not asking you to ask him. I thought I’d go across and have a talk with him, that’s all. I’m calling it a day here anyway, girls. Some sand has got into the camera. For something that looks so pretty, I’d say it was one hell of a pest!”

Arab watched him stomp away across the sand to the hotel. She made a gesture of helplessness. “I wish he wouldn’t!” she sighed.

“Why, honey? You make him sound like a recluse! He’ll probably enjoy all the fuss of having us about. And if he doesn’t like the idea, he only has to say no!”

“I don’t think it’s fair to ask him!” Arab almost sobbed.

Even Hilary thought Arab’s protective attitude towards her uncle a little misjudged. “Lucien will make mincemeat of that man if he doesn’t like him!” she announced. “Don’t worry, Arab, I’ll tell him it wasn’t your idea.”

That wasn’t precisely what Arab wanted, but she began to see that she was in danger of making a complete fool of herself, so she went back into the bathroom and dressed herself in her own clothes as quickly as she could.

“Arab,” Hilary said, sitting on the edge of the bath, “did you know that the sea here is a national park? Nobody can kill any of the fishes and you have to have a licence to look at them. There are glass-bottomed boats that one can go in. I’d
love
to go in a glass-bottomed boat, wouldn’t you?”

Arab put a dusting of powder on her nose and grinned at Hilary in the glass.

“This afternoon?”

The little girl nodded enthusiastically. “I’ll ask Lucien! I’ll hurry, in case he’s gone to pick up Aunt Sandra, because I’m not allowed to do anything unless I tell him first.”

“Not even visit Mambrui?” Jill put in from the doorway.

Hilary chuckled. “No,” she admitted, “but Lucien forgot to ask me about that when he saw Arab. He thinks she needs looking after!”

“Well, well,” Jill drawled, as Hilary flung herself out of the chalet. “You seem to have made some impression, even if it wasn’t the one you wanted!”

“I do, don’t I?” Arab agreed with a touch of desperation. “He really is the end! What makes him think that he’s such a superior being? I feel sorry for his poor sister! I even feel sorry for Sandra Dark!”

“She was looking reasonably healthy on his treatment of her last night,” Jill remarked.

“Only because she’s as bad as he is!”

Jill whistled softly. “Honey, are you sure you
dislike
Lucien Manners?” she asked.

Arab tossed her head. “I don’t know what you mean!” she said. But she did know, even while she thought Jill was being ridiculous. She certainly didn’t like Lucien. Far from it! But he did have a peculiar fascination for her, if only because he scared her stiff! She had never met a man who was so self-centred, so apt to dismiss others, especially herself, as mere adjuncts to his own comfort. No, she was in no danger of liking Lucien Manners. But she couldn’t help hoping that she would be around when some woman came along and upset his applecart. That woman might be Sandra Dark, but Arab didn’t think so. He would marry Sandra because she wouldn’t ruffle his existence, but Arab couldn’t help hoping that someone else would come along, charming and elegant, who would knock him and his ideas for six! She couldn’t quite imagine such a woman, but she was certain that such a fabulous being must exist and she, Arab, would be rooting for her all the way!

She walked with Jill over to the hotel, wincing away from the heat of the midday sun. She could hear Sammy’s voice from a long way off, telling some joke that he had heard the week before in London.

Lucien stood up as the two girls came into the bar. Arab searched his face, trying to find some sign as to whether Sammy had asked him about his house and what his reaction had been. His eyes met hers and he raised his eyebrows a fraction.

“What will you have to drink?” he asked Jill. “Arab, I’m sure, will join Hilary in having lemonade.”

Jill smiled. “I’ll do the same,” she said, amused by Arab’s indignant face.

Lucien gave the order and sat down again. “You were saying, Mr. Silk,” he said.

Sammy’s customary morose expression lifted for a triumphant moment. “Am I a fool then to question my good luck? I shall be thankful to get off this beach, I can tell you, Mr. Manners. If you want the final say in which dresses Arab models, that’s okay with me—and with her! I’ll just be glad to get myself inside, out of this flaming sun!”