changing the rooms round twice.’
She didn’t make the usual disclaimer, but this may only have been because her English wasn’t good enough for polite skirmishing.
‘You have seen the bathroom?’
‘Yes, thanks. Is the water drinkable?’
‘Yes, but there was water on the supper tray. I will leave that. If there is nothing else—?’
‘I don’t think so, thank you. It all looks very nice, and I’m sure I shall be comfortable. Oh, would you show me how to turn the lamp higher, please? Mr Lethman said I might look at his books while I was waiting.’
Back in the other room she obliged, lifting the lamp down and setting it on the table among the books. I thanked her, and examined them while she began to stack the used dishes on the tray. She said nothing more, but I saw how she watched me, and it wasn’t imagination to read a wary hostility into those quick sidelong glances. Irritated now, and wishing she would finish her job and go. I concentrated on selecting a book. As light reading for whiling away an hour or two they were hardly promising. An Arabic grammar, a few books on Syria and the Lebanon which I had already read during my convalescence in Charles’s room, anda collection which might be said to represent John Lethman’s homework – some volumes (also familiar to me) about the original Lady of the Lebanon: Joan Haslip and Roundell and Silk Buckingham and the three old volumes of Dr Meryon’s diary about his redoubtable patroness. I looked at the fly-leaves. As I thought, they were Great-Aunt Harriet’s own copies, presumably lent to her latter-day ‘Dr Meryon’ for his close study … I skipped along the row. T. E. Lawrence’s
Crusader Castles
, Guillaume’s
Islam
, the Everyman
Koran
, King-lake’s
Eothen
… all Aunt Harriet’s. No medical textbooks, which were presumably too bulky to carry on field work. The only things which carried his own name were – interestingly enough – Huxley’s
The Mind Changers
, Fraser’s
Golden Bough
, and a newish paper-bound copy of Théophile Gautier’s
Le Club des Hachachiens
. No novels except Dostoevsky’s
The Brothers Karamazov
and Margery Allingham’s
The Tiger in the Smoke
.
The last volume in the row was de Quincey. I turned the pages idly while Halide stacked the dishes rather loudly on the tray.
‘The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities, or aspirations: he wishes and longs, as earnestly as ever, to realise what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely out-runs his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare …’
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
. It was exactly what Hamid had said. I put the opium nightmare back as Halide lifted the tray and went with it to the door.
‘I’ll shut it for you,’ I said, moving to do so, but she paused in the doorway and turned.
‘You are really the daughter of the Lady’s brother’s son?’
I worked it out while she stared at me across the dishes.
‘Yes.’
‘Your father is also here in the Lebanon?’
‘No.’
‘He is dead?’
‘No,’ I said, surprised. ‘Why?’
‘Then you travel alone?’
‘Why not?’
She ignored this, too. She was intent on some line of her own which I couldn’t follow, but which was obviously intensely important to her.
‘You – you stay here long?’
Curiosity made me less than truthful. ‘As long as she’ll let me,’ I said, watching her.
She said quickly: ‘She is not well. You will have to go in the morning.’
I raised my brows. ‘That’s for her to say, surely?’ I added, with innocence concealing a flicker of malice: ‘But of course in a place this size I needn’t be in her way. Mr Lethman asked me to stay as long as I liked.’
The black eyes flared, whether in alarm or anger it was impossible to say. ‘But that is not possible! He—’
Jangling, imperative,
She didn’t make the usual disclaimer, but this may only have been because her English wasn’t good enough for polite skirmishing.
‘You have seen the bathroom?’
‘Yes, thanks. Is the water drinkable?’
‘Yes, but there was water on the supper tray. I will leave that. If there is nothing else—?’
‘I don’t think so, thank you. It all looks very nice, and I’m sure I shall be comfortable. Oh, would you show me how to turn the lamp higher, please? Mr Lethman said I might look at his books while I was waiting.’
Back in the other room she obliged, lifting the lamp down and setting it on the table among the books. I thanked her, and examined them while she began to stack the used dishes on the tray. She said nothing more, but I saw how she watched me, and it wasn’t imagination to read a wary hostility into those quick sidelong glances. Irritated now, and wishing she would finish her job and go. I concentrated on selecting a book. As light reading for whiling away an hour or two they were hardly promising. An Arabic grammar, a few books on Syria and the Lebanon which I had already read during my convalescence in Charles’s room, anda collection which might be said to represent John Lethman’s homework – some volumes (also familiar to me) about the original Lady of the Lebanon: Joan Haslip and Roundell and Silk Buckingham and the three old volumes of Dr Meryon’s diary about his redoubtable patroness. I looked at the fly-leaves. As I thought, they were Great-Aunt Harriet’s own copies, presumably lent to her latter-day ‘Dr Meryon’ for his close study … I skipped along the row. T. E. Lawrence’s
Crusader Castles
, Guillaume’s
Islam
, the Everyman
Koran
, King-lake’s
Eothen
… all Aunt Harriet’s. No medical textbooks, which were presumably too bulky to carry on field work. The only things which carried his own name were – interestingly enough – Huxley’s
The Mind Changers
, Fraser’s
Golden Bough
, and a newish paper-bound copy of Théophile Gautier’s
Le Club des Hachachiens
. No novels except Dostoevsky’s
The Brothers Karamazov
and Margery Allingham’s
The Tiger in the Smoke
.
The last volume in the row was de Quincey. I turned the pages idly while Halide stacked the dishes rather loudly on the tray.
‘The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities, or aspirations: he wishes and longs, as earnestly as ever, to realise what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely out-runs his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare …’
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
. It was exactly what Hamid had said. I put the opium nightmare back as Halide lifted the tray and went with it to the door.
‘I’ll shut it for you,’ I said, moving to do so, but she paused in the doorway and turned.
‘You are really the daughter of the Lady’s brother’s son?’
I worked it out while she stared at me across the dishes.
‘Yes.’
‘Your father is also here in the Lebanon?’
‘No.’
‘He is dead?’
‘No,’ I said, surprised. ‘Why?’
‘Then you travel alone?’
‘Why not?’
She ignored this, too. She was intent on some line of her own which I couldn’t follow, but which was obviously intensely important to her.
‘You – you stay here long?’
Curiosity made me less than truthful. ‘As long as she’ll let me,’ I said, watching her.
She said quickly: ‘She is not well. You will have to go in the morning.’
I raised my brows. ‘That’s for her to say, surely?’ I added, with innocence concealing a flicker of malice: ‘But of course in a place this size I needn’t be in her way. Mr Lethman asked me to stay as long as I liked.’
The black eyes flared, whether in alarm or anger it was impossible to say. ‘But that is not possible! He—’
Jangling, imperative,
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