“Yes.”
“Really?”
She placed her hands on his miniature shoulders. “Why so astonished, little chum?” “My mother’s … father’s … mother?” “Yes.”
His mouth formed a great 0, revealing diminutive, absolutely white teeth, sharp and ridged. Without trying to free himself from her gentle embrace, he leaned backward, as if to give himself a better view. “You must be very, very old,” he said slowly, delivering the result of some inner debate. “Very. I am a dinosaur.”
For a long moment they surveyed each other in silence and immobility, smiles prepared behind the scenes but not quite ready to play. Then she swept him up into her arms with laughter in which other voices joined.
“You are Colin Raleigh,” she said to the man who had come around the front of the car and was standing a few feet away.
“Yes. So pleased to meet you at last, after hearing so much about you.”
Celestine laughed. “I’ll bet.”
She liked his tousled look, for his thick hair was still standing up from the draft of air through the window, some of it falling in tendrils across his sun-broiled face, and it softened him. She could sense that he was sometimes tough, sometimes hiding his fear beneath a brittle shell, yes, but often just tough. And was he—the thought made her squeeze Robbie’s legs without meaning to—was he hard on the boy? Leila could take care of herself, but Robbie … Celestine would have no mercy for those who brought their anger to bear on him.
Somehow, during this brief exchange, she had managed to hitch Robbie onto her shoulder. He kept his hands clasped around her neck, head thrown back as if he could not quite believe what he saw when he looked at her. Those wet cherry lips were smiling, though, and he rested against her in perfect trust. It was one of those magic bonds that took seconds to form and a couple of lifetimes to mature. Both of them, in their vastly different ways, seemed to know this.
“Do you want to go to your papa?” she asked him. But he shook his head, smiling a teasing smile at his father before burying his head in the hair behind her ear, whence he could peek out to ensure that Colin, though not quite wanted, was not quite absent either.
“What a marvelous house,” Colin said as she led the way inside.
“It’s good,” she agreed. “But it needs life. I’m glad you could come.” “
I was intrigued.”
“Frightened, perhaps?” She had taken them right through the house, into the garden, and was finding a comfortable place for herself and Robbie among the cushions on her sofa swing, beside the marble-lined pool. Colin stood with hands in pockets, looking down at them. His smile tautened as he heard her words.
“Azizza was … unexpected.”
“Where did she catch up with you? Masser?”
“Yes.”
Celestine plumped Robbie down on a particularly fat cushion and asked him, “Did you like the cedars?”
“Cedars?” He squinted up at her. “Do you mean those big old trees?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head from side to side, pouting his lips.
“They are very old. More than a thousand years old, like me. And like most old things, they can be boring. Were you bored?”
“Yes. I wanted to go to the beach. But Mummy was busy.”
At that Celestine and Colin exchanged amused looks. She hoped he approved of her sending Azizza to trail them, for without such a stratagem she would never have been able to penetrate Feisal’s defenses and bring her great-grandson here. Did Colin know, she wondered, how much she longed to see Leila too? Why hadn’t she come; why was she “busy"?
Ah, of course: Leila and Colin must have quarreled. And with the answer to the earlier questions came another doubt: would those two be able to stay the course? Looking up at Colin now, Celestine found it impossible to guess.
“Were you surprised when Azizza introduced herself?” she asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“But you trusted her—after a week or so with Feisal, I’m surprised.” “
She was different.”
“Do sit down, please.”
Colin lowered himself into a wicker chair set at an angle to the sofa, thus forbidding Celestine sight of more than his profile.
“In what way, different?” she asked.
“Your letter. And Azizza, she … she looks one in the eye, I suppose.”
“And Feisal doesn’t. Nor does Halib. Don’t look so surprised, I know what that house is like. Anyway, thanks for trusting her.”
“She’s very persistent.”
“She knew what I wanted, you see. Getting me what I want matters so much to her. Did she tell you she was my housekeeper? She’s my oldest friend: a friend who happens to keep my house.”
Now he turned to look her full in the face. “We’d have come even if Azizza had been a dragon.”
“Because you wanted to know if anyone could really be as horrible as they described me?”
When he laughed she found herself liking him more.
“Well, I’m worse,” she said.
“So I see.”
Now it was her turn to laugh. Robbie plucked her arm. “Would you like to see a drawing?” he asked.
“Your drawing?”
He nodded solemnly.
“I’d love to.”
“I have to draw it first.”
Azizza was hovering in the doorway. Now Celestine beckoned her over. “Robbie needs paper and some crayons. Do you think we have any?”
Azizza did not refer to the assortment of paints, toys, games, puzzles, and books that the two women had been accumulating ever since they first got wind of the Raleighs’ visit. Instead, she pretended to consider it.
“I
think
so,” she said, after a pregnant pause, during which Robbie gazed at her in anguish. “Let’s go see.”
Celestine gave the boy a little push, and he ran off to join Azizza, who took his hand and led him inside. A moment later, however, she reappeared, carrying two glasses and a frosted green bottle.
“He’s happy,” Azizza said. “I left him on the floor of Leila’s old bedroom. There’s a lot of space there.”
“Good. Thank you, Izza. Do you know this wine, Colin? It’s called Ksara.”
He accepted a glass, raising it in a toast to both Celestine and Azizza before he drank.
“Yes, I know it. A wonderful wine. We must take some back with us.”
“Are you looking forward to going home?”
His hesitation was somehow expressive. “We’ve been well looked after,” he said diplomatically. “Well protected.”
“Ah. Colin, I hope you can understand about Beirut. It’s like one big party. Do what you like, spend what you can, use any language, we all speak everything. The only price we pay is to beat war the whole time.”
“Rather an expensive price.”
“Oh, there’s hardly any killing at the moment. We’ve almost united against the outsider, you see.” Celestine made a wonderful face. “The Palestinians.”
“You’re not fond of them, I take it?”
“I’m sorry for them. How not? But I don’t want them here. They don’t pay for the telephone or the electricity they use—did you know that?”
Colin sipped his wine, saying nothing.
“If they stay, they’ll cause a real war. With Israel. Then we’re finished.” She waited for his reaction. “You don’t agree?”
He was obviously weighing his words. When they came, they were not what she’d expected.
“I don’t agree with anybody, actually: Palestinians, Jews.”
“Israelis.”
He stared at her.
“You said Jews when you meant Israelis. Go on.”
“Sorry.” But she could see he didn’t begin to understand. “Anyway … I’ve read up the politics, a little. Kind of complicated.”
“No, simple. But depending which side you’re on, totally different.”
“Doesn’t that worry you? The polarity, I mean.”
She shrugged. “We, this family, are nominally Shia Muslims. I say ‘nominally,’ because our ID cards say we’re Shiites so that’s what we are. And yes, to forestall your question—of course we resent the way the Maronite Christians lord it over us. The ‘polarity,’ as you call it. But there are ways of coping.”
“Such as?”
“Such as making sure that we take our two percent from every deal the Christians make. And keeping the Levantine spirit alive.” Celestine folded her hands in her lap. “Colin, we have our friends, people we feel we can do business with, often the same people. Greek Catholic, Jew, Maronite, Druze—what does it matter? The politicians say it matters.” Another of her fancy shrugs. “Bully boys, assassins, men who couldn’t get a decent job if forced to it…. Isn’t it the same in England? Do
you
listen to your politicians? Anyway, enough: I didn’t invite you to this house to be tiresome on the subject of your wife’s politics.”
He didn’t feel the sting of her last remark at once. When it dawned, his face flushed an even deeper shade of red. “You think I’m just parroting Leila?”
But before she could tell him what she thought, Robbie ran out of the house, trailing a sheet of paper behind him and calling, “Daddy … Celestine!”
“What is it, sweetie?” she cried. “Come show the queen of Yarze what you’ve done.”
Robbie hauled himself up onto the sofa swing and smoothed the paper into her lap.
“Gracious!”
The exclamation was forced out of Celestine, substituted in the nick of time for something less polite. He had used dramatic blocks of color to create a representation of a sprightly lady in a kaftan recognizable as the one she was wearing today. Her cheeks had, for some reason, turned blue, and she wondered if her hands could ever really be that peculiar mauve color, but the striking thing about this portrait was the way the lines coalesced to make an identifiable human face—through all the childish muddle, it was so clearly
her.
“May I keep this?” she asked softly. “Please.”
He sat hunched forward, elbows on knees and his chin cupped in his hands. “If you want.”
She folded it into four, then tucked it between one of the cushions and the side of the swing. Later she was to transfer it to her handbag, wherein it would travel the world until, years afterward, it fell apart, its folds creased and recreased by so many inspections whenever Celestine needed reassurance that she had blue cheeks and mauve hands and so, to one young person in the world at least, was real.
Azizza brought tea and cakes for the boy. While he munched away, Celestine continued to study him, sometimes looking shrewdly at his father.
“He’s like you above the nose, and Leila below.”
“That’s what everyone says. I can’t see it, myself.” “
Who do you think he takes after, then? Someone on your side?”
Colin shook his head. He seemed reluctant to answer. At last he said, quietly enough to be sure Robbie wouldn’t overhear, “I thought I could see a touch of Halib in him. The eyes.”
Celestine sucked in her lower lip. “Oh.”
“Listen, it’s not my wife’s politics that I spout. Or rather—”
“She speaks the words, but they start with someone else.” “
Halib.”
“And their father. Yes, Colin, I know.” She raised a hand from her lap and shook it at him. “Be careful.”
“You think they’re dangerous?”
“I do. Remember, Beirut
crackles
with danger! Feisal works on the hottest part of the grid and Halib worships him. How do they treat you?”
“Okay.” Colin wasn’t looking at her. His eyes followed Robbie as the little boy trotted away to inspect some flowerbeds, with Azizza in tow. Celestine saw the anguish in his gaze and felt her guts clench.
“You’re worried for the boy, aren’t you?”
“Not exactly worried …”
“What then?”
“It’s just … Feisal’s rages. When he loses his temper … one minute all smiles, the next … look, I really shouldn’t be talking to you like this.” He managed a smile. “Excuse me.”
“Because I’m his mother? Forget it! Has he threatened you?”
“No.”
He stood up and turned his back on her, seeking the child. Celestine stared down at her hands, wretchedly wondering how to retrieve the situation. Hearing raised voices, she looked up to see Colin over by the grove of fig trees, grasping Robbie’s arm while Azizza looked on in disapproval. Father and son were arguing.
“I don’t
want
to go home,” Robbie cried.
Celestine rose and approached them as quietly as she knew how.
“Mummy’s at home,” Colin said. His voice was low but taut; she could tell that he was focusing all his patience on the boy, determined at any cost to avoid that most British of all diseases: embarrassment.
“I don’t
want
Mummy, I want Celestine.”
Don’t rush in, she warned herself; it’s not your business.
“We can’t stay here forever, Robbie.” The first hint of petulance crept into Colin’s tone. “Be reasonable.”
“Please, Daddy.” Robbie rubbed his eyes. “Don’t make me go back. Mummy can come up here.”
“She can’t.”
“She can, she can,
she can!”
Robbie burst into a fit of sobbing. Celestine clenched her hands underneath her thighs, ground her teeth, and remained silent. Colin squatted down beside the boy, grasping his shoulders.
“It’s all right, darling. Don’t cry. Here, Daddy’s got a handkerchief.”
He wiped Robbie’s eyes before sweeping him up into a tight hug. Celestine felt a little of the tension drain out of her. He was a good father, after all.
“Don’t leave me alone with that horrible man again. Promise!”
“What horrible man?” Celestine had not meant to intervene, although now the words were out she didn’t regret them. “Robbie—who’s been horrible to you?” She took the boy into her arms. “Tell me,” she murmured.
“Halib.” He was sleepy now, after so much emotional effort; when he rubbed his eyes this time it wasn’t to wipe away tears but to keep them open. He leaned back onto her shoulder and whispered in her ear, “I don’t like him.”
“Why, dearest?”
“He’d hit me if Mummy wasn’t there. Or Daddy.”
“There, there, precious. No one’s going to hit you.”
She pivoted slightly, the better to see Colin, and indicated with a look that he should wait for her inside the house. When she joined him a moment later she took him by the arm and half led, half dragged him into her study. She strode to the desk that once had been her husband’s and fiddled inside one of the drawers until the hidden lock snapped back, revealing a cavity.