I didn’t know whether I would be expected to kiss her. The idea was somehow repellent, but another glitter from the ruby, indicating a stool near the foot of the bed, halted me thankfully.
‘Hullo, Aunt Harriet, how are you?’
‘Well, Christy?’ The voice, little more than a whisper, had a strained, asthmatic breathiness, but the black eyes were live enough, and curious. ‘Sit down and let me look at you. Hm. Yes. You always were a pretty little thing. Quite a beauty now, aren’t you? Not married yet?’
‘No.’
‘Then it’s high time you were.’
‘Have a heart, I’m only twenty-two!’
‘Is that all? One forgets. John tells me I forget things all the time. I’d forgotten you, did he tell you that?’
‘He said it was quite likely.’
‘He would. He’s always trying to make out that I’m getting senile.’ She darted a look at John Lethman, who had followed me up the steps and was standing at the foot of the bed. He watched her steadily, and I thought uneasily. The sharp gaze came back to me. ‘And if I did forget you, it’d be hardly surprising. How long since I saw you?’
‘Fifteen years.’
‘Hm. Yes. It must be. Well, now I come to look at you I suppose I would have known you. You’ve a look of your father. How is he?’
‘Oh, he’s fine, thank you.’
‘Sends his dear love, I suppose?’
The tone, still sharp, was wantonly provocative. I regarded her calmly.
‘If he knew I was here, I’m sure he’d send his regards.’
‘Hm.’ She sat back abruptly in her corner against the pile of pillows; retreating into her cocoon of draperies with the little settling motions of a broody hen spreading herself down on to eggs. I thought the monosyllable was not unappreciative. ‘And the rest of ’em?’
‘All well. They’ll be terribly pleased when they hear I’ve managed to see you, and found you well.’
‘No doubt.’ No one could have called the dry whisper senile. ‘An attentive family the Mansels, wouldn’t you say? Well?’ And again when I didn’t speak: ‘Well, girl?’
I sat up straight on my stool. It was very uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Aunt Harriet. If you think we should have come to see you before, you could always have asked us, couldn’t you? As it is, you know quite well you’ve been sending us all to the devil, solo and chorus, about twice a year for fifteen years. And if you’ll forgive my saying so, I wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms today!’ I added crisply: ‘In any case, you’re a Mansel, too. You can’t tell me my people don’t write to you just as often as you write to them, even if it’s only to thank you for the latest edition of your Will!’
The black eyes glittered. ‘My Will? Ha! So that’s it! Come to collect, have you?’
‘Well, I’d have a job, since you’re still alive, wouldn’t I?’ I grinned at her. ‘And it’s a heck of a long way to come for sixpence … But if you like you can give me my sixpence here and now, and I won’t bother you again.’
I couldn’t see her expression, just the eyes, shadowed under brows and turban, watching me from the pillows. I caught a glance from John Lethman, half amused, I thought, and half apprehensive, as she stirred suddenly, plucking at the coverings. ‘I could have died out here for all they’d have cared. Any of them.’
‘Look—’ I said, then stopped. Charles had implied that she liked to be outfaced, and certainly up to now I had had the impression that she was trying to needle me. But the Great-Aunt Harriet that I had remembered wouldn’t have talked like that, not even to provoke a retort. Fifteen years seems a lifetime to the young: perhaps at the other end it’s a lifetime, too. I ought to be feeling, not discomfort and irritation, but compassion.
I said quickly: ‘Aunt Harriet, look, please don’t talk like that! You must know quite well that if there was anything you wanted – anything you needed – you’ve only got to let Daddy know, or Uncle Chas, or any of us! My family’s been in America for four years, you know that, and I suppose we’re a bit out of touch, but in any case it was always Uncle Chas you wrote to, and I understood from him – I mean, I thought you’d always made it so very clear that you wanted to stay out here, live on your own terms …’ I made a vague, wide gesture that took in the neglected room and beyond it the dark confines of the sleeping palace. ‘You must surely know that if there was anything – if you were ill – if you really did want someone to come here, or needed help of some kind—’
Deep in its shadowed corner the bundle on the bed was so still that I faltered. The lamp had been burning low, but now some trick of the draught or unevenness of the wick sent up a tongue of light, and I saw the quick glitter of her eyes. It wasn’t pathos at all. The instinct that was forbidding me to feel compassion had been right.
‘Aunt H!’ I said roundly. ‘Are you sending me up? I mean, you’re just teasing, aren’t you? You must know you’re talking nonsense!’
‘Hm. Nonsense, is it? Meaning that I have got a devoted family?’
‘Well, heavens, you know what families are! I don’t suppose ours is any different from any other! You must know quite well you could cut us all off with sixpence till you’re blue in the face, but we’re still your family!’
‘Hear that, John?’
He was looking, I thought, acutely uncomfortable. He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut across it:
‘You know quite well what I mean! Just that if you needed anything, or anything happened to you – well, London to Beirut only takes six hours, and someone would be here and raising the place before you even knew you wanted them. Daddy always says that’s what a family is, it’s just collective insurance; as long as you’re alive and well it just goes ticking along and takes no notice, but let anything go wrong, and the company moves in. Heavens, I do what I like, and nobody stops me going where I want to, but I know quite well that if I was in the least spot of trouble and got on the phone to Daddy, he’d be here in three seconds!’ I looked up at John Lethman, hesitated, then added decisively: ‘And don’t start teasing Mr Lethman as well. It doesn’t matter what you say to me, but I might as well make something else clear here and now, even if I may be speaking out of turn … Everybody’ll be as pleased as Punch that he’s here with you, so you’d better be nice to him, because the longer he stays the better! For goodness’ sake, we’re not neglecting you – we’re just letting you get on with it the way you want to, and you seem to be making a pretty good job of it, if you ask me!’
She was laughing openly now, the cocoon heaving to the wheezing breaths. The big hand went up, and the ruby flashed. ‘All right, child, all right, I was teasing you! A fighter, aren’t you? I always did like a fighter. No, I don’t make it easy for people to get in to see me; I’ve had too much trouble that way, and say what you like, I’m getting old. You were very insistent, weren’t you? If you’re so full of this “live and let live” of yours, why did you come?’
I grinned. ‘You’d be annoyed if I said it was family feeling. Call it curiosity.’
‘What had you heard to make you so curious?’
‘What had I heard? You must be joking! I suppose you’re so used to living in a place like this and hedging yourself with legends like a – well, like a—’
‘Superannuated Sleeping Beauty?’
I laughed. ‘Bang on! I mean, yes, if you like to put it that way! But seriously, you’re a celebrity, you knew that! Everybody talks about you. You’re one of the sights of the Lebanon. Even if I’d been no relation I’d have been told all about you and urged to come and look at Dar Ibrahim; so when I realised I had a copper-bottomed excuse to call to see you, and even bull-doze my way into the palace – well, boiling oil might have stopped me, but nothing short of that.’
‘Make a note of that, John; boiling oil is what we need. Hm, you’re a Mansel to your claw-tips, aren’t you? So everybody talks about me, do they? Who’s “everybody”?’
‘Oh, this was just some
one in the hotel in Beirut. I was planning a trip—’
‘Hotel? Who were you chattering about me to in a hotel in Beirut?’ She made it sound as if it were a brothel in Cairo.
‘Not exactly chattering. It was the desk clerk, as it happens. I was planning a trip up to the Adonis Source at Afka, and he told me I’d be passing near Dar Ibrahim, and—’
‘Which hotel?’
‘The Phoenicia.’
‘It’s new since you were in Beirut,’ put in John Lethman. It was the first time he had spoken. He still seemed ill at ease. ‘It’s the big one I told you about, on the harbour.’
‘The what? Phoenicia? All right, go on, what were they saying about me in this hotel?’
‘Nothing much, really,’ I said. ‘The desk clerk didn’t know I was a relation of yours, he was just telling me this was an interesting place, and he said I might as well get my driver to come back by Sal’q and stop so that I could get a view of the palace. Then I told him I knew your family – I still didn’t tell him who I was – and asked how you were and if he’d heard anything about you.’
‘And what did he tell you?’
‘Only that as far as he knew you were perfectly all right, but that you hadn’t been outside the palace for quite a time, and he told me you’d been ill a short while back, and had a doctor from Beirut—’
‘He knew that?’
‘Well, heavens, it was probably in all the papers! You’re one of the local legends, after all! Didn’t Mr Lethman tell you, I rang the doctor’s house up to try to get news of you—’
‘Yes, yes, yes, he told me. A lot of use that would have been. The man was a fool. A good thing he’s gone, a very good thing … Much better now, much better.’ The shawl had slipped; she pulled at it with a sort of flouncing irritation, suddenly pettish, and I heard her muttering to herself what sounded like ‘Ringing up about me,’ and ‘Chattering about me in hotels,’ in a whisper which was all at once not dry and sharp at all, but vague and blurred. Her head shook, so that the turban was dislodged even further, exposing a little more of that shaved scalp.
I looked away, repelled, and trying not to show it. But wherever I looked was a reminder of a slovenly eccentricity; even the clutter of medicine bottles on the chest was dusty, and dust gritted under my shoes as I shifted my feet on the floor. The room, big as it was, felt stuffy, and my skin prickled. I found myself suddenly longing to escape into fresh air.
‘Christy … Christy …’ The wheezing mutter jerked my attention back to her. ‘Stupid name for a girl, What’s it short for?’
‘Christabel. It was the nearest they could get to Christopher.’
‘Oh.’ She plucked at the covers again. I got the sharp impression that the eyes watching me from the shadows were by no means forgetful; that this was a game she played when it suited her. The impression wasn’t pleasant. ‘What were we talking about?’
I pulled myself together. ‘The doctor. Dr Grafton.’
‘I was not ill; the man was a fool. There’s nothing wrong with my chest, nothing at all … In any case, he’s left the Lebanon. Wasn’t there some chatter about him, too, John? Some scandal? Didn’t he go back to London?’
‘I believe so,’ said Lethman.
I said: ‘They told me so when I rang up. They didn’t say anything else about him.’
‘Hm,’ she said, and all the dry malice was back in her voice. ‘Probably put his plate up in Wimpole Street by now and making a fortune.’
‘I never heard any scandal, but it’s true he’s gone. They say his practice went to a very good man.’ John Lethman gave me a quick, speaking look, and then leaned forward. ‘Now don’t you think you should have a rest, Lady Harriet? It’s time for your tablets, so if you’ll allow me, I’ll ring for Halide, and see Miss Mansel back myself—’
‘No,’ said Great-Aunt Harriet uncompromisingly.
‘But, Lady Harriet—’
‘I tell you, boy, stop fussing. I won’t take the tablets yet, they make me sleepy. You know I don’t like taking them. I’m not tired at all, and I’m enjoying the gel’s visit. Stay where you are, child, and talk to me. Entertain me. Tell me where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing. How long have you been in Beirut?’
‘Only since Friday evening. Actually, I came with a package tour …’
I started to tell her about the trip, making it as amusing as I could. I wouldn’t be sorry when the interview was over, but the old lady seemed back on the beam now, and I had no intention of letting John Lethman, on whatever excuse, winkle me out of the presence chamber until I had, so to speak, introduced Charles. He wouldn’t want to miss this bizarre set-up, and he wouldn’t be likely to be put off by what I had to tell him. I wondered in passing why she hadn’t spoken of him herself, but I would soon discover that, and it was up to my cousin to fight his own way in past the opposition if he wished to.
So I kept clear of his name, and talked away about Petra and Palmyra and Jerash, while Great-Aunt Harriet listened and commented, apparently well entertained, and John Lethman waited in silence, fidgeting nervily with the bed-curtains, and with his head turning from one to the other of us like someone at a Wimbledon final.
I was in the middle of describing Palmyra when she startled me suddenly by reaching out a hand and yanking at a bell-pull which hung among the curtains of the bed. The building echoed to the familiar clanging peal, and then to the noise of the baying hounds.
I stopped talking, but she said almost snappily: ‘Go on. At least you can talk. Did you visit the hillside tombs?’
‘Heavens, yes, there was a conducted tour, we had to: I suppose that’s not the right thing to say to an archaeologist, but one tomb looks very like another to me, I’m afraid.’
‘True enough. What happened to the party?’
‘They went back to London on Saturday morning.’
‘So you’re on your own now? Is that suitable?’
I laughed. ‘Why not? I can look after myself. And as a matter of fact—’
‘Not much doubt of that. Where’s that stupid girl?’
She snapped it suddenly at John Lethman, who jumped. ‘Halide? She can’t be far away. If it’s your pills, I can—’
‘Not my pills. I told you I’ll not take them yet. I want my pipe.’
‘But, Lady Harriet—’
‘Ah, there you are! Where the devil were you?’
Halide came quickly across the lower part of the room. She could not have been far away when the bell rang, but she breathed fast and shallow as if she had been running. Her face was sallow, and she looked scared. She didn’t spare me a glance as she crossed the floor and mounted the steps towards the bed.
‘You rang?’
‘Of course I rang,’ said Great-Aunt Harriet irritably. ‘I want my pipe.’
Halide looked uncertainly from her to John Lethman and back again, and the old woman made one of these flouncing impatient movements in the bed and barked: ‘Well? Well?’
‘Get it for her, please,’ said Lethman.
The girl threw another scared glance at the bed, and scurried down the steps to the dressing-chest. I looked after her with a touch of surprise. Nothing so far had led me to think that she would be easily frightened, and it wasn’t easy to see how my great-aunt could frighten her, short of the methods used by Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept a whip and club by her bed to use on her slaves, and who when service was poor had treated them all – her doctor included – to a purge she called the Black Draught, forcibly administered. I looked at the ‘Lady Harriet’. She was sitting hunched like some peculiar Eastern jinnee in her welter of silks and blankets, and might, I thought, inspire nervousness, but not fear. But then something caught my eye on the wall above the bed. There were two sets of pegs in the wall, half hidden by the bed curtains, and across one of these lay a stick, and across the other a rifle. I blinked at these in disbelief. There were surely, in the mid-twentieth century, limits to what could be done even here …?
I really
must get out of here soon. I must be more tired than I had thought. Or perhaps the strange food at supper …? As I pulled myself together to go on with my story, I heard Great-Aunt Harriet saying, perfectly pleasantly: ‘Just a small pipe, my dear. And I’ll have the amber mouthpiece.’
The girl, hurrying with clumsy fingers, pulled open a drawer and took out a wooden box which appeared to hold tobacco and mouthpiece. These she brought to the bed, and fitted the mouthpiece to the tube of the apparatus that the Arabs called the nargileh, or hubble-bubble pipe. As she passed out of Great-Aunt Harriet’s view behind the bed-curtains I saw her throw a quick inquiring glance at John Lethman, and receive a rather irritable nod. This, then, was the cause of her nervousness; she was in the familiar, awkward position of the servant being bidden by one master to do what she knew the other would disapprove.
Lethman said in my ear: ‘I can’t offer you a cigarette, I’m afraid, she won’t allow anyone else to smoke in here. In any case she only approves of herbal tobacco. I’m afraid it smells vile.’
‘It doesn’t matter, I don’t want one.’
‘What are you muttering about?’ asked Great-Aunt Harriet sharply, peering. ‘All right, Halide, it’s going very well.’ Then, to me: ‘Well, go on, entertain me. What did you do in Damascus? Tramped round the Great Mosque, I suppose, like a lot of gapeseeds.’
‘Exactly like gapeseeds, Aunt Harriet.’
‘Are you laughing at me, gel?’
‘Well, it’s such a gorgeous word. What are they?’
‘God knows. Probably aren’t any anymore. The world isn’t what it used to be.’ She sucked at the pipe. ‘Did you like Damascus?’
‘So-so. I didn’t have enough time to myself. But something rather nice happened there, I ran into Charles.’
‘Charles?’ Her voice was sharp, and I thought I saw Halide and John Lethman look at one another again, quickly. ‘Here?’ asked Great-Aunt Harriet. ‘What’s this, a family convention? What the devil’s my nephew Charles doing in Damascus?’
‘Oh, not Uncle Chas,’ I said quickly, ‘I meant Charles, my cousin – my “twin”. He’s on holiday over here, too. He was to have come up with me to see you, but he probably won’t be in Lebanon till tomorrow, and I’m afraid I stole a march on him. As a matter of fact it was he who sent me to see you in the first place; he’s terribly keen to come himself, and I’d probably never have dared to barge in like this if he hadn’t put me up to it.’