The Weeping Desert (16 page)

“Let her go,” said John evenly. “Leave Khadija alone. You’re hurting her.”

Ahmed Karim slackened his grip, but not enough to free the girl.

His dark eyes glinted like bright nuggets.

“Let us go somewhere more private. I have many things to discuss with you, John Cameron,” he said smoothly.

The young sheikh strode through the dancers, keeping Khadija in front of him. His two henchmen prodded John forward. The music had changed to an even louder beat number, and the dancers swayed and jerked like animated puppets in the semi-gloom.

A pretty blonde dancing with James watched the strange procession leaving the room. “Are we going to play games now?” she asked him sweetly.

James caught at his brother’s arm. “John, what’s going on? Who are they?”

“Friends of Khadija’s. I’ll handle it.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“Stay out of this,” said John sharply. “Don’t get involved. But call the police if I don’t reappear in half an hour.”

Ahmed Karim kicked open a door from the hall and flicked on the light. With one glance he took in the leather couch and neatly folded blanket, the locked cabinets, the desk, the washbasin, and above all the clean, fresh smell of antiseptic.

He laughed loudly. “I could not have chosen a more suitable place. A doctor’s surgery! All the right tools on hand. Though nothing really beats a good sharp knife.”

Khadija wrenched herself out of his grasp and fell on her knees. The pearls in her hair tinkled like fairy bells, and the tiny plaits swung around her shoulders as she bent her head.

“Ahmed Karim, I beg of you,” she whispered. “By all that you hold sacred, please do not harm him. He is not to blame.”

“What foolish words are these?” said Ahmed Karim, taking a cigar from a slim gold case and lighting it. “The words of a silly girl. Do not harm him, she pleads! He steals my betrothed! Marries her. Takes her to his own land. And now my countrymen are laughing at me, the most fearless sheikh in Shuqrat, insulted by a poor English engineer!”

He looked as if he could have plunged a knife straight into John’s body there and then. He spat out the words, his lean brown fingers curling round his cigar, the rage reaching down to his fingertips.

“It is not his fault,” wept Khadija. “He knew nothing of it. I am to blame. It was I who arranged the marriage.”

John scarcely heard her words. He was thinking desperately of some way to outwit the Arabs. There must be chloroform somewhere in the surgery, but his careful father would have locked it away. What about the oxygen cylinder? The telephone was a handy weight, but, no, violence was not the answer. And there were three of them.

“Ahmed, please,” Khadija sobbed. “Please let John go free. I will do anything you say. Have you not already so much, Ahmed Karim? My father has made you his heir. All the millions of Shuqrat will be yours when my beloved father dies. All that wealth and power—what does one woman matter when you have so much within your reach?”

“Heir? Heir to Shuqrat?” Ahmed Karim spoke with venom. “Yes, I am your father’s heir, but this was before he took himself another wife, Princess Miriam. What if there is issue from this marriage?”

“My father is old,” Khadija faltered.

“But this Englishman is not old!” Ahmed Karim pushed Khadija aside and stood threateningly in front of John. “No, John Cameron is young and healthy. If you have a male child, your father will make this grandson his heir. How much wealth and power for Ahmed Karim then?” he demanded.

In a flash of silver and pink, John saw Khadija dart across to the desk and seize the bronze paper knife. As she flung her arm up into the air, ready to plunge the knife into Ahmed Karim’s back, John’s muscles snapped and he threw himself at the Arab. They both staggered sideways. The knife missed by inches, ripping the sheikh’s sleeve before falling harmlessly from Khadija’s trembling hand. His two servants leapt to protect him, but Ahmed Karim spoke rapidly in Arabic and the two men dropped back, looking bewildered. Things were happening too quickly for them to follow. They looked at each other.

“Why save me?” Ahmed Karim gasped. “Why save my life?”

“I wasn’t saving your worthless life,” said John coldly. “Far from it. I was stopping Khadija from doing anything which might ruin her future.”

Khadija stood with her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. John did not dare to go to her. The atmosphere was too tense. The young sheikh was breathing heavily, trying to control his fury.

“It was very clever,” he hissed. “Do you realise that I cannot kill you now? I cannot harm a man who has saved my life. It is against my creed. But I will take back what is rightfully mine!” He wrenched Khadija’s wrists away from her face and glared into her terrified eyes. “You are coming with me now, you with your brazen face. Cover it at once. You sought to escape me, but it did not work.”

Khadija hid her face with her sleeve. She stood limply. All the fight had gone out of her. This was the writing of fate. “She’s not going with you,” John began. “She has a right—”

The door of the surgery opened suddenly. Carol looked in and blinked. She could not believe her eyes. “Good heavens! Am I b-butting in on something?” she stammered.

“Does this woman know your room?” Ahmed Karim asked Khadija sharply. Khadija nodded submissively. She did not care what happened to her now. Her brief bid for freedom was over. She looked at the dark man who would soon become her husband and shuddered. He would possess her body and decide every phase of her life. But Ahmed Karim would not be able to control her thoughts or destroy her love for the fair Englishman who even now was still trying to protect her. John would never know how much she loved him. It was a secret she would take back with her to the weeping desert.

“Fetch the princess’s
petula
,”
Ahmed Karim ordered. Carol stared, not understanding. “Her face mask. Fetch it at once.”

“John?” Carol turned to him.

“Do as he says, Carol.”

“And please bring a small case of my things,” Khadija whispered. “Please, my special new English things.”

Ahmed Karim looked suspiciously from Khadija to Carol. He was unsure now. “I will come with you,” he said. “I do not trust you.”

He told his two servants to watch Khadija and John, and then followed Carol out of the surgery. The small room seemed suddenly empty with the departure of Ahmed Karim. The Arabs were like statues, their hooded eyes watching.

John still did not dare to move. His beautiful Arab rose was crumpled and tear-stained. He longed to comfort her. He could not understand why she was agreeing to go with her cousin.

“You don’t have to go,” he said in a low voice. “He won’t kill me now. You heard what he said. I saved his life. He cannot kill me.”

“This is true,” said Khadija brokenly. “He will not kill you himself. But I cannot trust him. It will not stop him from arranging for someone else to kill you.”

“Did you know this would happen?”

Khadija shook her head. “No. I was betrothed to Ahmed Karim when I was seven, but I have rarely seen him. He came to England to be educated and I never saw him at all, until last week. I thought I saw him in Pinethorpe, watching me. And I was so afraid. But I could not be sure it was him. Then h-he sent me a warning—a scorpion—it was horrible! I knew that he meant to harm you, and I have been so frightened.”

“Don’t go,” John heard himself saying. He knew now that he meant it. For weeks Khadija had been a helpless and sometimes embarrassing responsibility, and many times he had wished her safely back in Shuqrat so that he could enjoy his leave in peace. If Ahmed Karim knew how to untangle their so-called marriage ceremony, then John should have felt nothing but gratitude. But for gentle Khadija to be married to such a cruel and arrogant Arab was unthinkable. John wanted to give Khadija her freedom, but real freedom, not just another prison.

“I can’t let you do this. I won’t let you. The police will be here any moment now. I’ll tell them you are my wife and you are being abducted against your will,” he insisted.

For a moment joy rose in Khadija’s heart. The gravity of the situation faded away, like an old sepia photograph caught in mid-action. She remembered the happiness of being with him; the brushing of his fingers against hers; the intimate way he sometimes took her arm; the sensuous feeling of the hair on his skin.

John looked at her, his eyes darkening with determination. It was an unexpected, special look which almost made her resolution melt. How cruel life could be; she had to go back to Shuqrat just when a tiny crystal of love was forming.

“Be brave, Khadija,” he began. “We will—”

John broke off. Two unrelated phrases jangled in his brain. They were words he had only half heard in the rumpus of the moment. Khadija saying, “It was I who arranged the marriage,” and Ahmed Karim asserting, “You sought to escape me but it did not work.”

John frowned. “Khadija, it was you who arranged the marriage? Did you say that just now?”

Khadija felt the world falling away from her. She had been almost happy a moment ago, when John pleaded with her and really wanted her to stay. Now, if she told him, he would never want to see her again.

“Yes, I said this,” she whispered.

“But what did you mean? I don’t understand. I thought Is-if…”

Khadija sought John’s eyes, hoping that her face might say what her words would be unable to express. But already any warmth had left John’s expression and a cool suspicion taken its place.

“It was not Is-if who told my father,” she whispered. “Is-if is a deaf mute. Nor can she read or write. I am the only person she can communicate with, because she has been with me since she was a child.”

“If it was not Is-if, then who told your father? Who arranged to have me kidnapped and forced to go through that ridiculous ceremony?” he asked grimly. But he already knew the answer. It was in every line of her dejected body.

“It was I,” she said with a low moan.

“You?” John was almost speechless.

“I will tell you now because I want there to be truth between us,” Khadija went on quickly in a low voice. “Please try to understand, John. When I saw you, I saw not only a tall Englishman with eyes the colour of the sea. I saw also my means of escape from the royal harem. I told my father because it was the one way to gain my freedom.”

“What about
my
freedom?” John glared at her, heedless of the guards who were looking from one to the other with growing alarm. “You made me your prisoner! Chained for the rest of my life to a woman I did not know and certainly did not love!”

“Oh…” Khadija broke down, weeping. “John, please—”

“I’m not listening to you any more. You’ve made yourself quite clear enough,” he said, pushing the two astonished guards and striding into the hall.

“But I found a gold necklace with a seven-pointed star,” Khadija cried. “It was a good omen.”

Carol and Ahmed Karim were coming down the stairs with a suitcase. They saw John in the hall.

“You can take her!” said John. “She’s a liar, a deceiver and a fraud! Take her back to Shuqrat. I never want to see her again.”

Without looking behind him, John grabbed Carol’s hand and dragged her towards the lounge. He flung open the door and a wave of rock music hit their ears. The room was dimly lit, throwing purple and black shadows. He pulled Carol into the crowd of gyrating bodies.

“Let’s dance,” he said with sudden savagery.

Ahmed Karim and his servants left as silently as they had appeared, taking Khadija with them. The blanket from the surgery also disappeared, perhaps to stifle Khadija’s cries; but John had the feeling that she had not resisted.

John’s parents were appalled when he blurted out the news. They had been drinking coffee with a few old friends in the dining room, quite unaware of the disturbance. They had retreated the moment the music had blared into life and had not even witnessed the arrival of Ahmed Karim on the scene.

Dr. Cameron was all for calling the police straight away. But Edith Cameron, worried though she was, restrained him. It did not seem so strange to her that Khadija might want to go home.

“Perhaps it’s all for the best,” she said.

“I don’t believe it,” said Dr. Cameron. “Everyone has a right to live the way they want to. The girl has a right to be free. I can’t understand you letting her go,” he said to John.

“She tricked me,” said John. But the pain inside him was confused. His anger was leaving him. “She told me a load of lies!”

“Wouldn’t any young girl have acted similarly in her position?” said the doctor sadly.

“I don’t blame her,” said Carol. “I would have done exactly the same. It’s a crying shame. And you just let her go, John.”

“Don’t you start turning on me as if I’ve done something wrong. Surely you’re all supposed to be pleased? I’m not encumbered any more with a peculiar foreign wife,” John retorted.

“I hope she doesn’t catch her death of cold,” said Mrs. Cameron, looking vainly out of the window into the darkness. “She hasn’t a coat, and these autumn nights can be quite chilly.”

“I didn’t think she was at all peculiar,” said James, looking at his brother with near dislike. “I thought Khadija was an absolute cracker. You didn’t deserve her, old chap. Never did.”