A Canopy of Rose Leaves (7 page)

He grinned. ‘Don’t you want to know why the Persians used Ta’liq and Nasta’liq, and the Arabs didn’t?’

She did, but she hesitated to admit it. She would never measure up to his standards, she thought, and she couldn’t bear the thought of all that her failure might entail.

‘If you want to tell me about it,’ she compromised.

‘Oh, I do. If you’ve finished looking round in here we’ll go through and have a cup of tea and I’ll tell you all about it.’

Finished? She had hardly started! There were so many things to see in the crowded room, things that she badly wanted to look at so that she would be better able to judge the modern examples she might want to buy.

‘You can come back,’ Roger told her gently, ‘but come and have some refreshment now. I suppose you prefer sherbet as Maxine does?’

‘It’s too sweet,’ she answered. ‘I’d rather have tea.’

He gestured her towards a door she hadn’t noticed before and Deborah found herself preceding him round an awkward corner and into the
chai khane
itself. It wasn’t nearly as grand as the one in the square, but it was just as comfortable and with a whole lot of things hanging on the walls, some of which she could only guess at what they could have been used for.

She sat down quickly on the delicate furniture, her hands and feet feeling at least two sizes too large. Roger sat down beside her, turning a little to face her.

‘Tell me about the scripts!’ she bade him, sure that he was about to say something personal that would add to her discomfort. She wondered if he had taken Maxine out often and where they had gone. Did he find the American girl a more adult companion than herself?

‘Okay. Aesthetically the choice was the right one. In Arabic, the definite article, represented by two parallel verticals, lends a recurring beat and a shape to the rhythm of their writing. But the Persian language has no definite article and the undulating waves of the Ta’liq and Nasta’liq scripts compensated for this.’

‘Oh,’ she said. She sighed, feeling a little lost. If she wanted his interest she had a lot to learn, she thought. More, possibly, than she could cope with.

It was something of a relief when the waiter came for their order. He brought the tea at once, set out on a wooden tray with two charming little bowls for them to drink out of. Deborah handed one of the bowls to Roger.

‘There isn’t any milk,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know if you take sugar?’

‘Thank you, no.’

That seemed to be the end of the conversation. Deborah cudgeled her brains for something intelligent to say, but her wits had deserted her.

‘You’re not enjoying this much, are you?’ Roger observed at length.

‘Yes—yes, of course I am!’

‘Still mourning your engagement with Ian?’

‘No,’ she said expressionlessly. ‘I hardly think of him at all.’

‘Good.’ His eyes flickered over her averted face. ‘Who do you think about?’

‘I have my work,’ she said. ‘I think about that a great deal.’

‘I see.’

She wondered if he did. She didn’t have to look at him to see in her mind’s eye the way his hair curled into his neck, the beautifully moulded lids to his light grey eyes, and the firm, almost cruel look to his mouth. The odd thing was that she could hardly remember what Ian looked like. She would recognise him if she saw him, of course, but his image wasn’t burned into her consciousness in the way that Roger’s was. If she never saw him again she would never forget a single detail of how Roger looked!

She jumped visibly, thinking he had said something, but he was not even looking at her.

‘Reza’s mother—’ she began, glad to have finally found a subject that they could safely talk about.

‘Don’t get too involved with Reza,’ he cut her off. ‘His mother may be an American, but he is from a different culture. Sooner or later, he’ll want more than you’re prepared to give.’

Deborah sat up very straight. ‘I think I can manage Reza without your advice. He’s very—biddable, and I like him very much!’

Roger made an impatient gesture. He leaned forward and replaced his empty bowl back on to the tray.

‘His view of women is not what you’re used to,’ he told her abruptly.

Deborah’s already tense nerves dissolved into a hot, angry fire in her blood. ‘I prefer it to yours!’ she declared. ‘I understand it better too!’

His eyebrows rose. ‘Do you now? I didn’t think I’d left any room for misunderstanding in my dealings with you?’

Her anger turned to defeat. ‘It must be nice to know you’re only worthy of the best—
perfection
! I wish you joy of it!’

‘You sound as though you hope it poisons me,’ he returned, obviously not minding.

‘That too!’ she agreed.

‘Would you like me any better if I started an affair with you?’ he asked in exactly the same conversational tones he had used earlier. ‘Or is it, as I suspect, that unresolved commitments don’t hold muck appeal for you?’

She didn’t know how to answer this. ‘Does it have to be unresolved?’ she asked him at last.

‘With me it does. I’ve told you that all along.’

To be fair, he had, but she had shut her ears to everything but what she had wanted to hear. She could imagine none other as her particular ‘minstrel of the night’, none other who would spread rose petals over her head for her delight, whom she would not think foolish to make such a gesture.

‘Is that why you think me a child?’ she asked.

‘I think you can do without that particular gloss of sophistication,’ he drawled. ‘You’re a much nicer person as you are.’

She looked at him then, a quick puzzled look, and then her eyes fell to the bowl of tea she was nursing again. ‘I don’t think you’re nice at all!’ she told him.

His laughter crashed like thunder in her ears. ‘Drink up your tea, Debbie, and I’ll take you home,’ he commanded her. ‘Maxine will be wondering where you are.’

‘Does it matter?’

He put a hand over hers, threading his fingers through hers. ‘Not to me,’ he said. ‘I have no reputation to lose in that direction. But it would matter to you, and rightly so. You want a young man you can be sure of, who’ll think you the sun and the moon and the stars! Someone who won’t put you in a quake every time you open your mouth in case you haven’t said the right thing.’

She was astonished that he should know so well how she felt. ‘You’ll have a hard job finding another woman who’s an academic like your mother, and everything else as well!’

He stood up suddenly. ‘I’ll see you home,’ he said. He put some coins on the tea-tray and reached down a hand to her, pulling her up on to her feet.

‘Reza isn’t ashamed of me,’ she said, as a parting fling.

‘How do you know I am?’ he retorted.

‘Aren’t you?’

His hand tightened on hers, refusing to let her go. ‘As it happens, I rather enjoy the tough quality of your mind,’ he answered her. ‘I like the way you face up to things and go on seeking an answer no matter what difficulties are put in your way.’ He smiled slowly. ‘I like the way you look and move even more, but that’s another story. You may not realise it, young woman, but I’m being kinder to you than I am to most of your sex. I’m allowing you to be the one who got away!’

If she had been quite sure that this was what she wanted she might have been amused. As an example of kindness, it was typical of him, she thought. He had made the decision, just as he had made up his mind what kind of man would be best for her regardless of her own expressed wishes, and he was completely sure he was right to do so.

‘Roger, suppose Maxine isn’t at home? What should I do then?’

‘She will be,’ he said with calm certainty. ‘If she’s not, we’ll send your maid out to look for her. I told her not to go there—’

‘But she isn’t the sort of girl to meekly accept your proscriptions about that sort of thing. She has too much spirit!’

‘I’d call it something else,’ he retorted.

‘Yes, I know,’ she said, ‘but I admire Maxine for making up her own mind about these things. One should never take anything on trust without questioning its validity for oneself. Should one?’

‘Deborah—’ She waited for him in the doorway, an innocent, questioning look on her face. ‘Deborah,’ he said again, ‘if you’re not very careful, I’ll forget all my good resolutions about you and give you a little of what you deserve!’

Her lips trembled. ‘And what would that be?’

He let the curtain fall and they were alone on the awkward stairs. She turned to face him, her eyes bright.

‘I’m more likely to beat you,’ he warned her.

She moved closer. ‘I’ll take the risk,’ she whispered.

‘Not with me you won’t!’ He shattered the intimacy of the moment by running lightly up the steps and out into the sunlight.

She followed him almost immediately, managing a half-smile as the strength of the sun dazzled her eyes for a moment. She took the
chador
he was carrying for her and tucked it under her own arm.

‘When Reza has taught me enough Farsi to get by,’ she said brightly, ‘I’ll let you know. I’d like to be able to read and write too.’

She felt his gaze on her face.

‘Don’t be pushed into being alone with Reza,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to him.’

‘Is that an order, or your considered advice?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I’ll make it an order if you like,’ he drawled.

‘I don’t like! Like Maxine, I can run my own life without any help from you!’

‘And I mean it when I tell you not to be alone with him, Deborah. Make sure his mother or Maxine is around when you have these lessons of yours—’

‘And what sort of fool should I look if I got the jitters whenever they were not there? Reza wouldn’t do me any harm!’

‘I was thinking,’ Roger said carefully, ‘of the harm you might do him.’

‘But how?’ She looked at him quickly. ‘What harm could I do him?’

‘Think about it. His mother is an American and lonely. If you were in her shoes, what kind of daughter-in-law would you prefer?’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘But Iran’s a man’s country! He wouldn’t listen to her!’ She shook her head at him, convinced he was teasing her. ‘Anyway, it’s Maxine he’s taken a fancy to!’

But he didn’t smile, or look in the least bit amused. ‘I doubt if you have the sense to know what he has in mind, and I doubt even more it will be Maxine he’ll want to marry!’

And with that, he banged on the door with a force that brought Toobi running across the courtyard to open it, bowed politely to Deborah and, turning on his heel, walked firmly away from her, back towards the bazaar.

CHAPTER SIX

Maxine
was only mildly curious as to where Deborah had been.

‘It gives me the willies to think about it! They made me feel
ashamed
I’d ever gone near the beastly place!’

Deborah managed a rather weak grin. ‘Roger would say you had come by your deserts!’ she commented. ‘Had he really warned you not to go?’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Maxine sniffed.

‘How would you put it?’

Maxine stared at a point over Deborah’s head, her colour high. ‘Well, if you must know, he did send me an off-hand message through Howard reminding me that if I wanted to get into trouble by myself that was one thing, but if I made you do the same silly things, I’d have him to answer to. It made me as mad as a hornet! What’s so special about you?’

‘I was almost his sister-in-law. I can’t think of any other reason,’ Deborah said, puzzled.

‘Neither can I!’ Maxine declared. ‘He hasn’t been near us ever since you got here!’

It was impossible after that to tell her that she had just had tea with him, Deborah decided, so she kept her own counsel and inquired instead as to what had happened to Maxine at the Shah Cheraq.

‘They put me out,’ she said briefly. ‘That fellow with the silver mace would have loved to have bopped me over the head with it, but I threatened to cry blue murder if he did anything of the sort. I think they would have thrown me into prison, or something equally dramatic, but I suddenly thought of Reza and the mere mention of his name made them let me go.’ She gave Deborah an apologetic shrug. ‘I didn’t wait around for you because I thought you’d got away with it and I didn’t want to spoil it for you. I guessed you’d come home as soon as you could.’

‘Yes. Yes, I did,’ Deborah agreed. And she hurried off into the kitchen to return Toobi’s
chador
to her, marking the incident closed in her own mind. She wouldn’t, if she could help it, give Roger another thought for a long, long time to come, but that proved to be more difficult than she had thought. He didn’t need her permission before taking up residence in her mind and, if he had, she doubted that he would have asked for it. As it was, he seemed to have become as much a part of her as the breath in her body.

She passed the rest of the day in listless indifference, arid the next day threatened to be as bad until she decided that she could not go on like that any longer. There was only one answer to the condition she was suffering from, and that was work. Lots and lots of hard work and no time to indulge herself with useless dreams of what Roger might be doing, or what he would have to say about this or that. It was time to be sensible.

When Reza came that evening she insisted they should start on her language lessons. ‘I can’t afford to do nothing,’ she told him primly. ‘It’s a strain on the business for me to come here at all. I can’t spend my time dawdling around enjoying myself!’

Reza only shrugged. ‘My mother will see to all that for you. There is no need for you to upset yourself. It will all come right in time.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Deborah turned on him, her suspicions aroused.

‘It’s easy to see you are unhappy,’ he said. ‘Miss Maxine should not have told me, I know, but when I asked why you had this tragic look, she explained to me that you had been engaged to marry some man who had married someone else.’

‘There’s no reason why she shouldn’t have told you,’ Deborah replied. ‘It isn’t a secret exactly, only I don’t like people feeling sorry for me. I think we both had a lucky escape.’

It was obvious that Reza thought she was being brave rather than truthful. ‘But it had all been arranged between your families,’ he went on. ‘You had put your money in this shop of his! I don’t see how you can go on working for him! What is your family thinking about to allow you to do so?’

‘It has nothing to do with my family!’

‘When this man has the use of your dowry—and yet marries someone else?’ Reza’s scandalised tones made her want to laugh. ‘It seems very strange behaviour to me!’

Deborah tried to explain it to him. ‘My part of the boutique isn’t my dowry!’ she exclaimed. ‘It has nothing to do with getting married at all. It was money left to me by my grandparents to do with what I liked. I’d tried working for other people and I wanted to work for myself. Ian and I share the business, but we didn’t have to share anything else. That’s the way it is in England. He was quite free to marry Anne if he wanted to, though it might have been better if he had told me first.’

‘You own this business equally with this man?’

Deborah nodded. ‘Of course. Why not?’

‘It would never happen like that in Iran,’ he answered her. ‘It is my mother who manages all our purchases from the Qashgai, and who arranges everything, but she only does so with our consent. The money she makes was my father’s before his death, when he was head of the family. Now it comes to my brother.’

‘Well, if your mother doesn’t object—’ Deborah began.

‘There can only be one head of the family,’ he retorted. ‘It’s a position of great responsibility to have to make all the decisions for all these people. But this is the way we have always managed things in Iran. Your position makes great difficulties! Nobody will understand that this man has no say in your future!’

Deborah could not understand. ‘Does it matter?’ she asked. ‘In England now almost everyone has to earn their own living, women included. Plenty of women do here too, I’m sure. If isn’t as strange as all that!’

His dark eyes looked uncertain. ‘It’s a complication,’ he said. ‘I must have time to think about it!’

‘Well, if you want to,’ Deborah said with a flippancy she was far from feeling. ‘But I can’t see that it has anything to do with you. Your mother won’t be fussed by such a thing if she’s an American. She may live according to Persian customs because she married your father, but in America women are even more liberated than we are in Europe. She’ll hardly be shocked by my being the co-owner of a shop with Ian!’

Reza gave her a diffident smile. ‘But my mother is not the only one to be considered.’ He appeared to turn the matter over in his mind for a while. ‘Tell me,’ he said at last, ‘does Miss Maxine know this fact about you?’

Deborah turned surprised eyes on him. ‘Why?’

‘I think she may have mentioned it to me if she had.’

Deborah shrugged, half-laughing. ‘Don’t be daft! She probably didn’t think it worth the mentioning. Why should she? She works for herself too!’

‘No, but that is not quite so,’ Reza contradicted her. ‘Miss Maxine lives here with her brother and she paints only with his consent. Is this not so?’

Deborah did laugh then. ‘My dear Reza, you’re talking out of the back of your hat! Nonsense,’ she added, taking pity on his puzzled expression. ‘Maxine doesn’t pay any attention to anything Howard says! She has her own money! She doesn’t have to sit around and wait for his consent to anything!’

‘No?’ The dark eyes burned with a fire that she mistrusted. ‘I had not understood that Miss Maxine was so independent. She is very beautiful.’

Deborah was glad to agree. ‘I have often wished I was really fair, as she is, or really dark. Little Miss In-Between, that’s me!’

‘I find you most beautiful!’ the Persian exclaimed. ‘More beautiful than she! I have told my mother all about you and she can hardly wait for me to arrange your visit to her.’

‘Yes, but we’re taking Maxine too, aren’t we?’ Deborah said hastily. ‘I wonder where she’s got to? She said she’d only be gone a few minutes. I feel I’m wasting your time just sitting here and talking English with you. Perhaps we’d better begin our Farsi lesson without her?’

‘If it pleases you,’ he murmured, and this time there was no mistaking the fire in his eyes. ‘We can walk through the bazaar and I shall tell you what all the different things are called. I shall show you the Regent’s Mosque also, yes? You would like that?’

Deborah was not keen on visiting any more mosques, but her interest was caught when Reza went on to say that the mosque was only in use on special occasions and that, between whiles, anybody could visit it with the goodwill of the whole town.

‘Well, all right,’ she temporised. ‘Toobi can tell Maxine where we’ve gone when she gets back and she can catch us up.’

‘I will tell her,’ he agreed.

He said a great deal to the maid, some of which Deborah thought Toobi didn’t like at all. Once, the old woman made a quick motion of protest, but at a word from the doctor, she lowered her eyes and said nothing further.

‘Why doesn’t she want me to go with you?’ Deborah asked him as they crossed the courtyard towards the street door.

‘She doesn’t like the thought of you being alone with me, but I have told her that that means nothing to Western girls. It isn’t as though anyone has the right to be angry with you, and Miss Maxine will soon catch us up and accompany us for the rest of the way.’ Deborah wondered if Roger would be angry if he got to hear about it. But he had less right than anyone else she knew to take her to task for going to the bazaar with Reza. It was a public place when all was said and done, and what could possibly happen to her in such a crowded thoroughfare?

It was fun looking at the shops with someone as knowledgeable about the various Persian crafts as Reza was. The jewellers opened up their glass counters with a flourish, pointing out the hundreds of turquoises, polished and mounted in silver and gold settings, or unpolished, of all shapes and sizes, and kept in happy profusion in a series of wooden boxes.

‘You like?’ Reza asked her. ‘You think turquoise is something you would like to have?’

‘They’re beautiful,’ Deborah agreed. She liked looking at them, but she had no desire to own them.

‘
Haile gashang
,’ he pronounced carefully. ‘Beautiful! You must say it in Farsi, no? Say it after me!
Haile gashang
.’

She repeated the words obediently, her attention beginning to wander.

‘Which stones do you like best?’ Reza persisted. ‘Do you prefer gold or silver?’

‘Turquoise would suit Maxine, but it doesn’t suit me,’ Deborah said firmly. Something in the shopkeeper’s face told her that he was expecting to make a sale, and life was complicated enough without Reza trying to make her expensive presents.

‘Not turquoise,’ he agreed readily. ‘But you would like to see our tribal carpets, yes? You should have one beside your bed and it would have the honour to feel your bare feet last thing at night and first thing in the morning. I will give you the most beautiful one we can find!’

‘Indeed you will not!’ Deborah exclaimed. ‘If you can’t behave yourself, I’m going home!’

‘But it’s only a little thing between us,’ he pleaded. ‘Look, come and see how fine our carpets are! It’s the custom for every girl when she comes to a marriageable age to make one of these carpets and then it is sold and the money she makes becomes her dowry. If she makes a good sale, she will have her choice of the young nomads who are looking for a bride.’

He led the way quickly to one of the rug stalls before she could change her mind, and began piling them up around her feet, pointing out the best features of each one in a torrent of words that opposed any interruption on her part.

Mostly, the rugs had a simple geometric design, but the bright colours made the patterns shine like jewels against the darker surrounds. Some of them had real merit, and Deborah wished that Maxine would have caught them up as the American girl would have appreciated them as much as she did.

‘I shall buy you the dozen you like best!’ Reza promised. ‘It’s my duty to do so, for many of the girls are known to me. See, you can see their special marks so that one rug will not be confused with another. It is very important to the girls that they should make a good sale. You would not deny them a happy future, would you, Debbie?’

She met the appeal in his voice with a blank stare. ‘If Maxine doesn’t catch us up in the next five minutes, I’m going home,’ she declared.

He was immediately contrite. ‘You think my present is dishonourable?’ he tested her. ‘Not so! I wish only to give you pleasure. Is there something else you would prefer?’

‘I don’t want you to buy me anything!’

‘
Nothing
?’ He shrugged his shoulders, his mouth drooping with disappointment. ‘You are angry with me? But truly, I wish only to please you!’

‘Yes, I know,’ Deborah said gently. ‘But it isn’t right that you should buy me anything of value. You wouldn’t spend your money on a Persian girl like that, would you?’

‘
But of course not
!’ He gave her a surprised look. ‘She would be embarrassed by such a thing!’

‘Then please don’t embarrass me,’ Deborah pressed home her advantage.

‘You are joking?’ he countered, but he was a lot less sure of himself than he had been. ‘It is true that you don’t want my presents.
Taroof nisti
.’

‘I’m not joking,’ she insisted. ‘Believe me, I wouldn’t joke about a thing like that!’

What Reza might have said and done then she was never to know for, to her inordinate relief, she saw Maxine coming towards them through the bazaar, an anxious expression vividly reflected on her fair face.

‘It was mean of you to start without me!’ she said sharply to Deborah as she caught up with them. She smiled a blinding smile in Reza’s direction. ‘I’m not blaming you,’ she added. ‘I’m sure
you
would have waited for me if you could.’