The House of the Scissors (18 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

BUT in the morning Ruth insisted that Arab should have her breakfast in bed and it was nearly lunchtime when she finally got dressed and went downstairs, clutching on to the banisters in lieu of a crutch. Having gained the sitting room, she sank into the nearest chair, listening to the voices of Hilary and Lucien as they floated in to her from the garden. After a few minutes though she had caught her breath and she went outside to join them in the shade of the trees.

Hilary danced over to her immediately. “You can have my chair,” she offered. “I don’t want to sit down any more.”

Arab thanked her demurely. She had dressed with enormous care, choosing a light green dress with puritan collar and cuffs. In it she looked cool and fresh, and anyway, it made a change from her jeans. But as soon as she met Lucien’s mocking gaze, she knew exactly why she had chosen that particular dress and, worse, she knew that he knew it too. It was a dress which stressed her feminine appeal and left no doubt that she was a fully-grown woman.

Hilary draped herself over the back of Arab’s chair. “Did Mummy give it to you? Have you used it yet? Have you, Arab?”

“No. I told you, I’m not going to!”

Hilary looked sulky. “I thought you might. The coffee tasted funny at breakfast time and I thought—”

Arab laughed. “That I’d been creeping round the house at crack of dawn—with
this
?” She pointed to her broken ankle. “It takes me a good ten minutes to get downstairs, I’ll have you know!”

Hilary sighed. “I’d do it for you, but it might not work then.” She thought for a moment. “It’s your birthday present, you know, because I can’t afford to get you anything else, so I do think you might use it!”

Lucien smiled across at his niece. “What present is this?”

Hilary instantly became more cautious. “It’s a secret,” she said, “between Arab and me.”

Lucien’s amused gaze swung on to Arab’s face. “I see,” he drawled. “I suppose you bought it yesterday?”

“Yes, of course,” Hilary nodded. “I went on the bus.” Arab cast her a quick look of warning, but the child paid no attention to her. “I like going on the bus.”

“How did you get home?” Lucien asked.

Hilary licked her lips. “Mummy knows all about it,” she said.

Arab stirred restively under Lucien’s interested gaze. “Will—will you drive me to the airport some time?” she asked him. “I want to enquire about when I can get home to England.”

“No, I won’t!” he said shortly. “Well, Hilary?”

The child capitulated. “Arab came and got me,” she admitted.

“Before lunch?”

Hilary shook her head. “There wasn’t a bus coming the other way,” she explained. “I didn’t know what to do, though they were all very kind and nice and one of the witchdoctor’s wives gave me a sweet potato to eat.”

Lucien didn’t look at all angry. “Didn’t you get any lunch?” he enquired sympathetically.

“No. I didn’t get any tea either, because Arab insisted that we rushed to the airport, and then Jacques was being silly and he made her kiss him because he’d driven her round looking for me—”

“Really?” Lucien drawled. “Why didn’t you get Jill to drive you?” he demanded of Arab.

Her face flamed. “Jill doesn’t drive,” she answered uncomfortably. If she had been normally fleet of foot, she would have run away then, leaving Hilary to face her uncle on her own. But her foot tied her to her seat and the only weapon that was left to her was her tongue. “As Hilary said, your sister knows all about it, so I don’t see that it’s any business of yours!” she declared.

Lucien merely grinned. “I’m making it my business. I’m very interested in this French boy-friend of yours. I thought you were old enough to deal with him?” he added slyly.

“I am!”

“It doesn’t look much like it!
When
are you twenty-one?”

“You know perfectly well!” Arab snapped. “If you won’t drive me to the airport, I’ll ask Ruth if she will. I intend to spend my birthday in England!” She very nearly added ‘so there!’, but the last thing she wanted was to give him an opening so that he could accuse her of childishness, so she restrained herself, contenting herself with glaring at him with as much dignity as she could manage under the circumstances.

Lucien got leisurely to his feet. He came over to Arab, imprisoning her by leaning a hand on either arm of her chair.

“When you’re twenty-one—” he began.

“I’ll be in England!” she said faintly.

“No, my darling little street arab, you’ll be here with me, whatever you like to think.” He ducked his head and kissed her briefly on the mouth. “Well?”

Arab heard Hilary’s happy chuckle beside her and her heart missed a beat. “When I’m twenty-one I still won’t have an affair with you!” she said desperately.

He laughed. “Don’t be too sure of that!” he whispered, and he kissed her again, a fleeting, tantalising kiss that made her want him more than ever.

“I’m quite sure,” she replied.

“Such confidence!” he teased her. “Will you be so cool and sure of yourself when I take you to see the Giriama dancers tonight?”

“T—tonight?”

He stood up straight, ruffling her hair as he did so.

“Tonight,” he said solemnly. “You’re near enough to twenty-one!”

It was inevitable that Hilary wanted to go too. She did everything she could to persuade her uncle, even offering to tell him what her present to Arab had been, but he would not be moved.

“I think you’re mean!” she told him at the lunch table.

Lucien made a face at her. “This is something you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to help along,” he smiled. “Why try and spoil it now?”

Hilary gave him a puzzled look. “But I don’t want you to go by yourselves!” she objected. “Why can’t Mummy and I come?”

Lucien laughed out loud. “Because I’m going to steal your present and turn the tables on Arab!”

Hilary’s eyes widened. “You know what it is!” she accused him.

“It won’t work for you,” Arab assured him blithely, not knowing whether it would or not. “And I wouldn’t
stoop
so low—”

“Only because you don’t have to!” he retorted, amused by this display of spirit. “You use a different alchemy, like a pretty dress and a new lipstick.”

“I haven’t got a new lipstick!” Arab denied, but she blushed all the same, remembering how Hilary had told her the first time they had met, that Lucien didn’t like women to wear trousers! It was an uncomfortable thought, that he knew she had worn this particular dress for him.

Hilary, who had been silent during this exchange, gave a sudden whoop of laughter. “I don’t mind not coming after all!” she announced. “Mummy and I can go some other time.”

“Oh, but—” Arab objected.
“But—”

Ruth’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “I really believe my daughter is learning a little tact,” she observed. “You’re surely not going to spoil it, Arab?”

“Arab will do as she’s told,” Lucien cut in. “Methinks she protests too much anyway!”

“And I think you’re quite
beastly
!” Arab told him, temper coming to the aid of her stuttering tongue.

His eyebrows shot up. “Do you now?” he drawled. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you, my love, that a spoonful of honey catches more flies than a whole barrel of vinegar?”

“Who wants to catch flies?” she retorted.

Hilary gurgled with laughter. “He means himself!” she explained to Arab. “Don’t you want to catch him?”

“No, I do not! Why should I want to? All he ever does is make personal remarks and work me to death! It will be a holiday, being back in England. My mother will nurse me back to my usual rude health, giving me my breakfast in bed—”

“You had breakfast in bed today!” Hilary interrupted, frowning.

“And my friends will all be glad to see me,” Arab went on breathlessly, not daring to stop. “They don’t care
what
I wear! And they all agree that my hair is auburn. They even respect my opinions about—things!”

“What things?” Lucien taunted.

Ruth gave them both a confused look. “But isn’t your hair auburn?” she asked Arab.

“Of course it is!” Arab declared. “Only your daughter says it isn’t red enough to be auburn, while your brother—” She cast him a look of burning indignation—“says it’s dull copper!”

“To match your temper,” he added lazily. “You’ve forgotten that bit!”

“I have not!” She broke off, hotly embarrassed that she had revealed how well she remembered every word he had said to her. “It isn’t in the least bit funny!” she went on in the face of Ruth’s laughter. “I want to go home!”

Lucien’s eyes filled with amusement. “Do you?” he mocked. “What about my notes that you haven’t finished yet?”

“There you are!” Arab declared triumphantly. “I knew you only wanted me here because I can type!”

“It’ll give you something to do this afternoon,” Lucien agreed promptly. “It will keep you from missing me while I’m away.”

“Away?” she repeated, fighting the tide of dismay that rose within her and which she knew was, humiliatingly, reflected on her face.

Laughter danced in his eyes. “I have to get the tickets for tonight—and something else. Can you bear it?”

Arab lifted her head and looked him straight in the face. “Easily!” she boasted.

In fact the afternoon passed slowly. She worked on Lucien’s notes and was intrigued to discover that the Assyrian horn of power had had the same significance amongst the first rulers of the East African coast. There was an ivory horn extant in Lamu, and one in Zanzibar that had belonged to the African ruler, long before the coming of the Arab Sultan. It was strange to think of the various strands that had gone to make up the ancient trading world, and which ones existed now, while others had long since fallen into decay.

But even her interest in Lucien’s work was dulled by the long wait for the evening to come. The pile of neatly-typed sheets of paper grew at her elbow, but her heart was not in it. Not even a reference to Cheng Ho could rouse her from the feeling of sheer panic she had every time she thought of Lucien.

A lilac-breasted roller came into the garden at tea time and had a dust bath close to where she was working, its green back fluffed up, almost hiding the fantastic shades of blue and mauve of its breast. Then she moved her foot by accident and the bird flew away, its round, black eye suspicious of her and the clacking typewriter in front of her. The incident brought home to her how much there was of beauty in Africa. Not only the birds, but the gay, flowering shrubs, and the bright cannas in the flower beds. It would be hard to be satisfied with the more muted colours of an English garden after this, even if she were lucky enough to ever have one.

But the sun eventually faded from the sky, the scarlet, gold and vivid green of sunset giving way to the velvet blackness of the night, and Ruth came out to help her in with the typewriter and Lucien’s notes.

“You’ve just got time to have a drink before changing for dinner,” she announced. “Do you want a hand, or something?”

“No, thank you,” Arab assured her. Despite the length of the afternoon, she still wanted time to think which dress she was going to wear, and whether she should put her hair up to herself look older, or leave it hanging down her back as she usually did.

Ayah came in to help her dress. “You lookin’ pretty,
memsahib
!” she exclaimed as she wound a stole about Arab’s shoulders. “As pretty as I seen you! Bwana Lucien very lucky man!”

Arab looked at herself in the glass, carefully applying some eye-shadow and just the right amount of powder to hide the freckles on her nose.

“I hope so,” she said. “I almost wish Sandra hadn’t gone to England, though. Do you think he would be taking me to see the Giriama dancing if she had been here?”

Ayah rolled her eyes and giggled, her massive body shaking up and down. “You jokin’,
memsahib
?”

Arab shook her head. She thought she looked pale despite her make-up, but it was too hot to wear anything greasy.

“You not jokin’? Don’t you know that the Bwana told her to go away. He say to her that she do your job very well and why don’t she try it. He don’t want her hanging round the house. He tell her flat! He even tell her to use your seat on the aeroplane. You stayin’ right here with him, he say! Don’t you know that?”

“No, I didn’t know,” Arab said.

“And he send for Memsahib Ruth,” Ayah continued, well away now she had got started. “He send for her to come right home at once because he met you and want you to stay!”

“But she didn’t say anything about it to me!” Arab protested.

“Why else you think she come?” Ayah demanded belligerently. “She come quick!” She threw back her head and roared with delighted laughter. “Ayah knows! Ayah hears many things!”

That Arab could believe! She glanced at the large African woman in the glass, smiling mischievously, while she screwed her ear-rings into her ears. When she had done, she stood up and hugged the massive woman in a sudden excess of joy.

“Will you help me down the stairs?” she said.

Lucien was waiting for her in the hall. He was wearing his jade green dinner jacket and was as handsome as he had ever looked. He was holding a pair of crutches in his hands and he smiled up at her as she slowly descended the stairs.

“I thought these might make you more mobile,” he said. “You can try them out this evening, as long as you don’t use them to run away from me!”

“Why should I?” she retorted, her head erect “I’m not afraid of you!”