Sweet Revenge (4 page)

“Phil.” As always, pleasure lit Mary’s eyes when she looked at him. Such a handsome boy with his narrow, scholarly
face and golden hair. She didn’t, as many women might have, feel a pang as she saw the man she’d loved so fiercely, and so briefly, reflected in the boy’s face. Philip was hers. All hers. He’d never given her a moment’s trouble, not even as a baby. Not once had she ever regretted her decision to have him, though she’d been alone, without a husband, without family. Indeed, it had never occurred to Mary to seek out one of those tiny, flesh-colored rooms where a woman could rid herself of a problem before it became one.

Philip was a joy to her, and had been from the moment of conception. If she had a regret, it was that she knew he resented the father he’d never known and looked for him in the face of every man he saw.

“Your hands are cold,” he told her. “You should be wearing your gloves.”

“Can’t make change with gloves.” Mary smiled at the young woman who had a boy by the nape of the neck. She’d never had to corral her Phil that way. “There you are, dear. Enjoy the show.”

She worked too hard, Philip thought. Too hard and too long for too little. Though she was coy about her age, he knew she was barely thirty. And pretty. His mother’s smooth, youthful looks were a source of pride to him. Perhaps she couldn’t afford Mary Quant, but she chose what little she had with care and an eye for bold colors. She loved to look through fashion and movie magazines and copy hairstyles. She might mend her stockings, but Mary Chamberlain was anything but a frump.

He kept waiting for another man to waltz into her life and change things for her. He looked around the tiny booth that smelled forever of the exhaust from the street beyond. He was going to change things first.

“You should tell Faraday to put more than that rickety old heater in here.”

“Don’t fuss, Phil.” Mary counted out change for two giggling teenage girls who were desperately trying to flirt with her son. Mary passed the coins through the chute and muffled a laugh. She couldn’t blame them, really. Why, she’d even caught her neighbor’s niece—twenty-five if she was a day—making over Phil. Offering him cups of tea. Asking him to come in and fix her squeaky door. Squeaky door indeed.
Mary slapped change down hard enough to make a round-faced nanny grumble.

Well, she’d put a stop to that right enough. She knew her Phil would leave her one day and it would be a woman he left her for. But it wouldn’t be some fat-breasted cow a dozen years his senior. Not as long as Mary Chamberlain drew breath.

“Something wrong, Mum?”

“What?” Catching herself, Mary nearly blushed. “No, nothing, luv. Would you like to go in and watch the movie? Mr. Faraday wouldn’t mind a bit.”

As long as he doesn’t see me, Philip thought with a grin. He thanked God he’d long ago eliminated Faraday from his list of possible fathers. “No, thanks. I just came by to tell you I have some errands to run. Want me to pick up anything at the market?”

“We could use a nice chicken.” Mary blew absently on her hands as she sat back. It was cold in the booth, and would get colder yet as winter set in. In the summer it was like one of those Turkish baths she’d read about. But it was a job. When a woman had a boy to raise and not much schooling, she had to take what she could get. She started to reach for her imitation leather purse. It would never have crossed her mind to nip a pound note or two from the till.

“I’ve got some money yet.”

“All right, then. Be sure the chicken’s fresh.” She passed four tickets to a harassed woman herding two squabbling boys and a young girl with big teary eyes.

The show would start in five minutes. She’d have to stay in the booth another twenty in case there were any stragglers. “Be sure to take the price of the chicken out of the tin when you get home,” she told him, knowing he wouldn’t. Bless him, the boy was always putting money in instead of taking it out. “But shouldn’t you be in school?”

“It’s Saturday, Mum.”

“Saturday. Yes, of course, it’s Saturday.” Trying not to sigh as she arched her back, she picked up one of her glossy magazines, already well thumbed. “Mr. Faraday’s going to have a Gary Grant festival next month. He even asked me to help him choose the films.”

“That’s nice.” The little leather bag was beginning to weigh heavy in Philip’s pocket, and he was itching to be off.

“We’re going to start off with my very favorite.
To Catch a Thief.
You’d love it.”

“Maybe,” he said, looking into his mother’s guileless eyes. How much did she know, he wondered. She never asked, certainly never questioned the little extras he brought into the house. She wasn’t stupid. Just optimistic, he thought, and kissed her cheek again. “Why don’t I take you on your night off?”

“That would be lovely.” She resisted the urge to stroke his hair, knowing it would embarrass him. “Grace Kelly’s in it. Imagine, a real-life princess. I was thinking about it this very morning when I opened up this magazine to an article about Phoebe Spring.”

“Who?”

“Oh, Philip.” She clucked her tongue and folded the page out. “Phoebe Spring. The most beautiful woman in the world.”

“My mother’s the most beautiful woman in the world,” he said because he knew it would make her laugh and blush.

“You’ve a way with you, boy.” She did laugh, hugely, robustly, as he loved to hear her laugh. “But just look at her. She was an actress, a wonderful actress, then she married a king. Now she’s living with the man of her dreams in his fabulous palace in Jaquir. It’s all right out of a movie. That’s their daughter. The princess. Not quite five years old but a regular little beauty, isn’t she?”

Philip gave the picture a disinterested glance. “She’s just a baby.”

“I wonder. The poor mite has the saddest eyes.”

“You’re making up a story again.” His hand closed over the pouch in his pocket. He’d leave his mother to her fantasies, her dreams of Hollywood and royalty and white limousines. But he’d see she rode in one. Hell, he’d buy her one. Maybe she could only read about queens now, but some fine day soon, he’d see she lived like one. “I’m off.”

“Have a good time, dear.” Mary was already engrossed in her magazine again. Such a pretty little girl, she thought again, and felt a maternal tug.

Adrianne loved the suqs. By the time she was eight, she had learned to appreciate the difference between diamonds and sparkling glass, Burmese rubies and stones of lesser color and quality. From Jiddah, her grandmother, she learned to judge, as shrewdly as a master jeweler, cut, clarity, and color. With Jiddah she would wander for hours, admiring the best stones the suqs had to offer.

Jewels were the security a woman could wear, Jiddah told her. What good to a woman were gold bars and paper money stored in a bank? Diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, could be pinned on, clipped on, strung on so she could show her worth to the world.

Nothing pleased Adrianne more than watching her grandmother bargain in the suqs while the heat rose in waves to make the very air shimmer. They went often, clutches of women cloaked in black like a band of blackbirds to finger ropes of gold and silver, to push polished stones onto their fingers or simply to study the gleam of gems through dusty glass while the smells of animals and spice hung in the still air and the
matawain
roamed in their straggly henna-tipped beards ready to punish any infraction of religious law. Adrianne never feared the
matawain
when she was with Jiddah. The former queen was revered in Jaquir. She had borne twelve children. When they shopped, the air would be crowded with sound, the squawks of bargaining, the bray of a donkey, the slap of sandals on the hard ground.

When prayer call sounded, the suqs would close. Then the women would wait while men lowered their faces to the earth. Adrianne would listen to the click of prayer beads, her
head bowed like those of the other women. She was not yet veiled, but no longer a child. In those last days of the Mediterranean summer, she waited, poised at the edge of change.

So did Jaquir. Though the country struggled against poverty, the House of Jaquir was wealthy. As the first daughter of the king, she was entitled to the symbols and signs of her rank. But Abdu’s heart had never opened to her.

His second wife had given him two daughters after Fahid. It had been murmured in the harem that Abdu had flown into a rage after the second girl and nearly divorced Leiha. But the crown prince was strong and handsome. Speculation ran that Leiha would soon be pregnant again. To insure his line, Abdu took a third wife and planted his seed quickly.

Phoebe began to take a pill each morning. She escaped now into dreams, sleeping or waking.

In the harem, with her head comfortably nestled on her mother’s knee, her eyes lazily narrowed against the smoke of the incense, Adrianne watched her cousins dance. The long, hot afternoon stretched out ahead. She had hoped to go shopping, perhaps to buy some new silk or a gold bracelet like the one Duja had shown her the day before, but her mother had seemed so listless that morning.

They would shop tomorrow. Today the fans stirred the incense-laden air while the drums beat out a slow rhythm. Latifa had smuggled in a catalog from Frederick’s of Hollywood. The women were pawing over it and giggling. They talked as they always did, and the talk was of sex. Adrianne was too accustomed to the frank words and excited descriptions to be interested. She liked to watch the dancing, the long, sinuous movements, the flow of dark hair, the twists and turns of bodies.

She glanced over at Meri, the third wife of her father who, smugly content with her swollen belly, sat nearby discussing childbirth. Leiha, her face pinched as she nursed her youngest daughter, surreptitiously eyed Meri. Fahid, a sturdy five, trotted over and demanded attention and without hesitation Leiha passed the baby away. Her smile held triumph as she took her son to her breast.

“Is it any wonder they grow to abuse us?” Phoebe murmured.

“Mama?”

“Nothing.” Absently, she stroked Adrianne’s hair. The beat of the drum pounded in her head, monotonous, relentless, like the days she spent in the harem. “In America babies are loved whether they are boys or girls. Women aren’t expected to spend their lives bearing children.”

“How does a tribe stay strong?”

Phoebe sighed. There were days she no longer thought clearly. She had the pills to blame, and to thank, for that. The latest supply had cost her an emerald ring, but she’d gotten the bonus of a pint of Russian vodka. She hoarded it in the most miserly fashion, allowing herself one small glass after each time Abdu came to her room. She no longer fought him, no longer cared to; she endured by focusing her thoughts on the solace to be enjoyed from the drink she would have when he was done with her.

She could leave. If she only had the courage she could take Adrianne and run away, run back to the real world, where women weren’t forced to cover their bodies in shame and submit themselves to the cruel whims of men. She could go back to America, where she was loved, where people crowded into theaters to watch her. She could still act. Wasn’t she acting every day? In America she could give Adrianne a good life.

She couldn’t leave. Phoebe shut her eyes and tried to block out the sound of drums. To leave Jaquir a woman needed written permission from a man of her family. Abdu would never give it to her, for as much as he hated her, he wanted her.

She had already begged him to let her go, but he had refused. To escape would take thousands of dollars, and a risk she was nearly ready to take. But she would never make it out of the country with Adrianne. No bribe was large enough to tempt a smuggler to give illegal passage to the daughter of the king.

And she was afraid. Afraid of what he might do to Adrianne. He would take her away, Phoebe thought. There would be nothing she could do to stop him, no court to plead
to but his court, no police to go to but his police. She would never risk Adrianne.

More than once she had thought of suicide. The ultimate escape. She thought of it the way she had once thought of lovemaking, as something to be desired, treasured, lingered over. Sometimes on hot, endless afternoons she stared at the bottle of pills and wondered how it would feel to take all of them, to drift finally, completely, into the fuzzy world of dreams. Glorious. She had even gone so far as to pour them into her hand, to count them, to fondle them.

But there was Adrianne. Always Adrianne.

So she would stay. She would drug herself until reality was bearable, and she would stay. But she would give Adrianne something of herself.

“I want the sun,” Phoebe said abruptly. “Let’s walk in the gardens.”

Adrianne wanted to stay where she was, lulled by the scents and the sounds, but she rose dutifully and went with her mother.

The dry heat surrounded them. As always, it hurt Phoebe’s eyes and made her long for a Pacific breeze. Once she’d owned a house in Malibu and had loved sitting by the big, wide window and watching the water swell with waves.

Here there were flowers, lush, exotic, and dripping with perfume. The walls rose high, to prevent a woman who walked there from tempting any passing man. Such was the way of Islam. A woman was a weak sexual creature without the strength or intellect to guard her virtue. Men guarded it for her.

The air in the garden oasis was alive with birdsong. The first time Phoebe had seen this garden, with its tangle of rich blossoms and heady scents, she had thought it straight out of a movie. All around the desert sands shifted, but here there were jasmine, oleander, hibiscus. Miniature orange and lemon trees thrived. She knew their fruit, like her husband’s eyes, was bitter.

Irresistibly, she was drawn to the fountain. It had been Abdu’s gift to her when he had brought her to his country as his queen. A symbol of the constant flow of his love. The love had long since dried up, but the fountain continued to play.

She was still his wife, the first of the four his laws
entitled him to. But in Jaquir her marriage had become her prison. Twisting the diamond circle on her finger, she watched the water tumble into the little pond. Adrianne began to toss in pebbles to make the bright carp swim.