The House of the Scissors (8 page)

To her chagrin he only laughed at her. “Perhaps on Sunday I’ll find out!” he threatened and, turning on his heel, he went straight back into the house.

CHAPTER
FIVE

BUT, before Sunday, there stretched the rest of the week. Arab liked the early mornings best of all. She was woken promptly at seven by the African who cleaned her room, who brought her tea and orange juice and wished her a good day in his country. He told her that he came from up country, but that his wife was one of the local tribeswomen, so he had moved down to the coast. It was very hot, but he liked the work in the hotel. He liked, he said, to watch people enjoy themselves. Arab tried to explain that she was working and not on holiday, but his rather limited English broke down at this point and he hurried off about his duties.

Breakfast was a feast left over from the best of the Colonial era. Arab felt it gave an importance to the day that she had never achieved by grabbing a cup of coffee on her way out of the room she shared with a girl-friend in London. Here, there was a whole table laid out with a choice of cereals and tropical fruits to which one helped oneself, and this in turn was followed by a choice of bacon and eggs, or sausages, or smoked haddock, toast and marmalade, and coffee or tea. It gave one a sense of well-being that surprised Arab. She had not thought that her creature comforts were particularly important to her, and yet here she was, lapping up the luxury of her surroundings just as though she always ate breakfast in style.

The only people who were up when Arab had breakfast were the two young Frenchmen.

“Come dancing tonight with us, Arab?” they begged her. “We’ll ask Jill too, to make it all respectable. You come,
out
?”

“Oui,
she agreed. “I’d love to. But they don’t have dancing here, do they?”

“Not here. At one of the other hotels.”

Jacques’ warm eyes caressed her. “Will you wear that gold dress for me, little Arab?” he whispered in her ear as he went past her table.

Arab blushed and nodded.
“
You won’t forget to ask Jill, will you?” she asked them, concerned that they might leave the other girl out.

“Mais non
,
petite
! We are not as bold and bad as we look!”

Arab finished her breakfast and went outside to walk along the beach before it became too hot. The sky was like an iridescent pearl, waiting for the sea breeze to sweep the trailing clouds away and reveal the royal blue sky and the burning orb of the sun. Then the clouds would cling to the horizon, little cotton-wool balls that constantly changed their shape as they moved towards the high lands of the interior.

From the beach of the hotel one could only just see the wall of Malindi harbour where most of the fishing boats sheltered. The Europeans had brought their own motor-driven launches to make deep-sea fishing safer and quicker, but the natives kept to their own traditional boats. There were the
dhows
, which had first come down from Arabia so many centuries before. These were smaller than those that set out to cross the Indian Ocean and return again on the winds of the monsoons. These were only about twenty to thirty feet in length, with a crew of three to five men, who stay out all day, setting traps for those fish that live on the bottom, such as tafi and lithrenedae. Perhaps the most popular of the local boats was the
hori
, which is little more than a dug-out canoe, mostly imported from Malabar, though they are made of mango wood which is readily available locally. They are used for trolling, with one of the crew attaching the line to his big toe, while the other crew member balances the frail craft in the bucketing waves. On good days they will catch as much as two hundred pounds of fish in the five hours they are out at sea.

The
o
ther two craft are not so popular in these days. The
mashua,
the largest of them all, go out shark fishing with nets. Sometimes they are joined by some of the Lamu fleet, who concentrate on snappers. The crews of these boats sleep on board and at night their lights can be seen for miles along the coast. The fourth kind of boat is the
ngalwa
, an outrigger canoe that probably originated in Indonesia and perhaps came to Malindi by way of Madagascar. Their decline has been brought about by their heaviness which makes rowing very hard work when the sails can’t be used. They are often hired out by tourists because they look so picturesque. Mostly they are used for catching squid for bait, and then the squid is used for catching the same fish as the
dhows.

Walking along the beach, Arab could see the fishing fleets at work. She wondered if Lucien ever went fishing and had a breathless vision of his asking her to go with him. Of course it would never happen. She didn’t want it to happen! But she would have loved to skim over the tropical waters in such a romantic craft with—She caught herself up with a jerk.
Not
with Lucien! But she would like to go with Jacques perhaps, if he would take her.

She was reluctant to come down to earth and return to the hotel. She had been a model for more than a year now, and she never remembered a time when she had not wanted to hurry off to her work. She had enjoyed it, all of it, from the very first moment. But she knew, as surely as she knew her own name, that she was not going to enjoy working in Lucien’s house.

Jill, on the other hand, gave every sign of looking forward to it. She was ready, waiting in the passenger seat of the Mini-Moke, when Arab went to look for her.

“I can’t wait to have another look at that super house,” he confided as Arab climbed in beside her. “Someone was telling me that all that carving in the ceilings must have been done by hand. It must have taken simply ages!”

“I suppose so,” Arab said.

Jill glanced at her, raised her eyebrows thoughtfully, but she said nothing. “Do you really want to go dancing with those French boys tonight?” she asked instead.

Arab shrugged her shoulders. “It might be fun.”

Jill sighed. “Look, love, Jacques has been away from home for a long time. Are you sure you want the same kind of fun?”

Arab started up the engine in silence, backing the Moke out of the covered parking spaces that the hotel provided, and out into the main road.

“Jacques only wants to dance,” she said at last. “You make him sound like a lonely wolf!”

“I know,” Jill confessed. “I don’t know what it is about you, honey, but you don’t look as though you know where you’re going! I had Jean-Pierre as my partner during the film the other evening, remember? He said Jacques had high hopes of making the most of this leave, even if it meant going down to Mombasa. I think Jean-Pierre was a bit envious because Jacques hadn’t a wife to account to for all this experience he hopes to gather. I don’t think you’re the type to be used as experience. What do you think?”

“I think you’re exaggerating,” Arab answered. “Jacques isn’t the leering type! He never even tried to kiss me, if you must know!”

“I’d be happier if he had,” Jill retorted. She frowned at Arab’s rebellious expression. “Okay, okay, I’ll shut up! If you only didn’t look so defenceless and vulnerable, you wouldn’t stir them all up, appealing to their protective instincts against everybody else but themselves!”

Arab laughed, “I think you’ve got me confused with Sandra Dark!”

“My dear child, you must be
joking
! Sandra doesn’t need anyone’s protection! She comes armour-plated with her own self-confidence! I don’t imagine even a Frenchman on the loose would mistake her for a luscious morsel, waiting for him to gobble her up!”

“Oh, really, Jill!”

“You take the word of an experienced married woman and have a long, cool look at Jacques tonight before you go walking with him in the dark.”

“All right, I will,” Arab chuckled. “Though if I’d known you were going to take your duties as chaperone so seriously, I might not have insisted that they asked you as well!”

Jill smiled lazily. “Am I supposed to thank you?” she said teasingly. “I like Jean-Pierre, but I can take him or leave him alone, you know. My heart is safely locked up in England!”

“So is his,” Arab reminded her. “I heard him telling you all about his wife!”

Jill sobered, looking suddenly sad. “That’s what I like about him,” she said. “He feels as depleted as I do, and I didn’t think anyone could.”

“It won’t be for much longer,” Arab tried to cheer her up. “I expect Sammy will be as keen as anyone to wrap it all up as quickly as possible. He can’t expect Mr. Manners to put up with us for ever.”

But Sammy hadn’t even arrived when they turned into the drive of the Villa Tanit. Arab and Jill stood helplessly in the open doorway of the hall until Lucien’s African butler, tall and white-coated, rescued them and took them out into the garden where Lucien was seated, a typewriter on the table in front of him. Arab caught his quick frown at their unexpected appearance and winced.

“I’m sorry—” she began.

“There’s no need to apologise. I invited you here, if you remember?”

Arab coloured. “But we’re interrupting you,” she blurted out.

Lucien looked her straight in the eyes. “I knew you were going to,” he said indifferently. “Mr.
Silk has not yet arrived or he would have been brought out here. Will you have some coffee? Orange juice?”

The two girls refused. Arab edged closer to the table at which Lucien had been working, trying to read some of his work. He watched her, smiling faintly.

“Why don’t you ask outright?” he asked her.

She jumped and blushed again. “I just wondered—I thought perhaps it was about Gedi, or—or—”

“Mambrui? Malindi?”

“Yes,” she said. “Or even about the Chinese who came here.”

He went over to the table, searching through the papers that lay on it. “Are you really interested?”

She nodded, chewing on her lower lip. She didn’t like Lucien, but she respected his knowledge of the history of the East Coast, and she thought she would find it fascinating if she could learn enough about it.

“All right,” he smiled. “I’ll tell you the story of Cheng Ho, the most famous of them all. He was known as the Three Jewel Eunuch. He began his voyages in 1405. He was a Muslim of Yunnan, and he reached quite high office at the Imperial Court during the Ming Dynasty. Chinese eunuchs were the usual choice for these great-ventures ever since the reign of Wu-ti in the second century, so Cheng Ho wasn’t the first by any means. He made seven great voyages in all, in charge of a whole fleet of ships and many thousands of men. He visited India, Indonesia, Cochin and Siam. In 1414 he went as far as Ormuz in the Persian Gulf. Three years later he came to Malindi, perhaps it was to Gedi, which may have been old Malindi, though it’s by no means proven. He came here to escort some ambassadors home to Malindi who had gone to Peking in 1415, though he was probably more impressed with Mogadiscio, farther north, which was said to have houses several storeys high. But in the end, there was a row back in China at the Imperial Court and Cheng Ho’s travels were brought to an end. The Chinese burned all their ships
and dismissed all their great captains. And that was that.”

“But he actually came here?” Arab prompted him.

“Yes, we know he was here. Unfortunately most of his log books were burned or lost at the same time as they burned the ships, so we know dismally little about him really, or any of the great Chinese mariners come to that.”

“Did Cheng Ho bring those porcelain bowls that are in the pillar tomb at Mambrui?” Arab asked with bated breath.

Lucien’s harsh gaze met hers. “It’s possible,” he said.

Arab thought for a minute. “I don’t care if he didn’t!” she exclaimed. “It’s a wonderful story! Malindi must have been an important place to be sending ambassadors to Peking. It’s as romantic as Marco Polo!”

Lucien laughed shortly. “Did you think they were all savages here before the great white man came?” he asked.

She nodded, a little surprised at herself. “I suppose I did. I’d always imagined Vasco da Gama discovering Malindi.”

“From a European point of view, he did,” Lucien returned. “But it’s quite possible that some of Solomon’s gold came from here. There was a flourishing trade with the Ancient Egyptians, and with the Indians after that. Gold and silver and ivory—”

“And slaves!” Jill put in.

“A few slaves,” Lucien agreed. “It was a part of the life of the times.”

“Oh, come on! There were more than a few slaves!” Jill retorted. “Even I’ve heard that Zanzibar was the biggest slave market in the world!”

“One is constantly being told it,” Lucien admitted. “It’s partly based on a misunderstanding of what was happening along the coast at the time of Livingstone, and partly it was a necessary sop to the European conscience—”

“Why? We put slavery down!”

“We also transported all those slaves from the West Coast of Africa.”

“But so did the Arabs—”

“Look,” Lucien pointed out, “it couldn’t have been on anything like the same scale. If it had been, where are the minority Negro populations in Arabia, India, or China? They simply aren’t there! Yet one can’t escape seeing them in America and the West Indies.”

Jill struggled with the implications of this piece of information in silence, leaving it to Arab to say, “But there still is slavery in the Middle East!”

Lucien cast her a glance that made her flesh tingle. “True,” he drawled. “You’ll have to be careful that you’re not stolen away some dark night!”

“Who would steal me?” she scoffed.

He watched in silence as the deep colour stained her cheeks. “Someone,” he suggested, “who could provide the right setting for a ragamuffin with tarnished copper hair? Perhaps someone with a house like this one?”

“As a friend for Hilary, I suppose!” Arab retorted, hurt.

“Why else?” he murmured.

Why else indeed? Arab couldn’t have told him if she had tried. She stirred uneasily, aware that he was still watching her expectantly, waiting for something, though she didn’t know what. She fiddled with her fingers and wished that Sammy Silk would come so that they could get on with their work.