Love Is Dangerous Page 18

  “Yes, of course, I see,” Melina murmured.

  “I would much prefer not to take you, but I want everything to appear commonplace and ordinary,” Bing went on. “This is no joking matter, Melina. It’s going to be an extremely dangerous and difficult operation to get inside the house and to rescue the boy. I may fail utterly, in which case it will be very unlikely that I shall come out alive. They might spare your life, as a woman, but it isn’t a scenario one would care to insure against.”

  “I am coming with you,” Melina said firmly. “There’s no question for me to answer, Bing, I am coming with you. I will see this adventure through and if we die, we die.”

  She saw in the moonlight the expression on Bing’s face as he turned towards her and took her hand in his.

  “Thank you, darling,” he said softly. “I somehow knew you would say that.”

  She felt herself tremble at the touch of his hand and the note in his voice as he called her ‘darling’ for the first time.

  Then her hand was free and Bing had resumed the hard brusque tone in which he had started to speak of his plans.

  “I hate to think I have brought you into this,” he said. “But if we are going to do it, we will do everything in our power to try and succeed. Ahmed is coming in the morning at five o’clock. There are not many hours ahead of us. We must sleep. We shall need all our intelligence if we are to come out of this alive, so sleep and relax, so that our minds will be active and we don’t lose all we have gained by being slow-brained.”

  He might have been giving a lecture to a number of students, Melina thought, but she was too happy to criticise him. He had kissed her and that was enough.

  He loved her a little, she was sure of that now and her whole heart was overflowing with gratitude.

  “Sleep!” he commanded and flung himself down on the grass and pulled his native robe around him.

  Meekly Melina settled herself beside him. He was not asleep, she knew that – he was not even relaxed. She could feel it by the tenseness of his body.

  But because he wished to pretend that he was already unconscious she pretended too, shutting her eyes, trying to breathe quietly and feeling the thrill of happiness run through her because he was so near and she had only to put out her hand to touch him.

  She must have dozed a little during the hours of darkness but she was too happy to sleep and she was well aware that Bing was not asleep either. She wished she could believe that he was thinking of her, but she knew that he was thinking of only one thing – the rescue of the child.

  Finally she fell into a fitful slumber, only to feel Bing’s hand touch her shoulder and his voice say quietly in little above a whisper,

  “Ahmed has come!”

  She sat up quickly to see Ahmed walking across the garden as the first golden fingers of the sun shot across the sky. He was followed by another man, older and rather bowed, whom Melina guessed at once was his father.

  The older man salaamed with the exquisite courtesy of his generation and Bing returned his greeting. Then they settled themselves cross-legged on the grass and produced a small bundle of items that Bing needed for his disguise as the baker.

  Fortunately the man wore glasses and had, as Bing explained to Melina, a rather nondescript face without any distinctive features. He had, also, Ahmed told them, suffered from boils during the winter and so they put a dressing on Bing’s jaw as if it concealed a sudden skin eruption.

  The clothes of the baker, traditional to all the Moslem world, were soon assumed and with a little make-up round his eyes, which Ahmed applied with a skilful hand, Bing looked very unlike himself and Ahmed stood back with a cry of delight.

  “It is Seddig!” he exclaimed. “Not even the mother who bore him would know it was not her son. You must walk as he does, sir, with a slight limp, for Seddig was kicked by his mule last year and always he tells the story of the animal’s ingratitude and how never again will he own a creature on four legs.”

  “I noticed his limp yesterday,” Bing said. “Is this how he walks?”

  He walked away from them across the garden and Ahmed and his father clapped their hands together.

  “It is excellent, sir, but the head on one side a little more,” said the old man. “Remember the boil on your chin is hurting.”

  “And now Seddig’s wife! What does she look like?” Bing asked.

  The eyes of all three men were on Melina.

  “I have not looked at her,” the old man said with dignity, “but the guards are often impudent creatures of the young generation.”

  He gave a sidelong glance at his son as he spoke.

  “There is no reason why they should look closely at this hour of the morning,” Ahmed suggested.

  “You have brought the thicker yashmak?” Bing enquired.

  “I have done so, sir.”

  He brought out a yashmak of thick black gauze such as the more strict women of the Moslem faith assume. He handed it to Melina who took it, wondering as she did so how any woman could tolerate such coarse material in the heat.

  “Kohl!” Bing exclaimed abruptly. “You have brought some more kohl?”

  A small bottle was produced and he made Melina sit on the ground while he knelt beside her.

  “Shut your eyes,” he commanded, and she felt the soft camelhair brush drawing the long black lines over her closed eyelids.

  “Now open your eyes and look up,” Bing said and she obeyed him feeling her heart quicken because his face was so near to hers.

  The brush tickled. Bing’s hand was steady and she forced herself not to blink as he drew the dark line along the bottom lid and pointed it at the corners.

  “Has the baker’s wife blue eyes?” he enquired.

  Ahmed and his father both shook their heads.

  “We have no idea.”

  “You must keep your eyes lowered,” Bing said to Melina. “And I think it would be best,” he added, “to darken the top of your nose a little and what can be seen of your cheeks. The dark powder will do.”

  Ahmed had brought that too and, when Melina had adjusted her yashmak, Bing stood back at a distance.

  “You’ll pass,” he said. “Let’s hope the guards of the older generation are on today and not ‘Peeping Toms’.”

  “I believe in emancipation and that women should discard their veils,” Ahmed said defiantly.

  “Such wickedness!” his father muttered. “Do not listen to him, sir. Bad devils are inside him.”

  “My father thinks all modern progress is the work of the devil,” Ahmed scoffed.

  As if he was not interested in their personal disputes, Bing turned to the older man, thanked him courteously in Arabic for all he had done and asked that Ahmed should now lead them to the baker’s shop.

  “I will take you a roundabout way where we will see few people,” Ahmed promised. “You just follow me, sir, but we will not talk. I will walk a few paces in front and no one need know that we are even acquainted.”

  Melina could not help feeling that Ahmed was taking good care not to be involved more than necessary.

  Bing turned to the older man.

  “The car will be where we arranged?” he asked.

  “It will be attended to,” Ahmed’s father replied. “Allah go with you!”

  There was a sudden throb of sincerity in the words, which told Melina that he, at least, was wholeheartedly on their side. And then there was no time to think of anything but that they must follow Ahmed from the safety of the garden into the dangers of the streets outside.

  *

  It was still very early but in Djemaa El Fna there was already activity. The sweepers were cleaning the streets and brushing down the wide paved square and the water carriers from the Atlas mountains, with their brilliantly coloured hats, were moving amongst the stallholders offering water from bottles made from the skins of goats.

  The stalls were opening up. There was the smell of cooking fat, of mint tea and also of the heat to come later in the day.
Herds of goats were being driven through the streets to where, outside the City, they would find a meagre meal amongst the weeds that grew on the sandy ground despite the strength of the sun. There was the clatter of horses’ hoofs and the shrill hooting of cars driven by natives who keep their fingers permanently on the horn.

  It was difficult for Melina to have more than a fleeting glance at everything before she lowered her eyes and, pulling her djellabah well forward over her face, followed meekly behind Bing.

  He was moving quickly along but limping as he did so and she knew that he had already slipped into the character of the baker and assumed his personality completely.

  Melina remembered that many years ago her father had said,

  “The perfect disguise is to think that you are the person you pretend to be. It’s thoughts that count far more than any trappings one can assume.”

  Melina knew that now Bing was thinking himself into being the baker and she tried to think herself into the part of the baker’s wife.

  How happy she would be, she thought, if Bing was the baker and she could be, in fact, his wife. She imagined them living in the native town and baking bread and carrying it round to their customers, as they were pretending to do today.

  Would life really be sufficient for her under those circumstances, she wondered, and knew with a little stab of her heart that even if she was content Bing would not be. He belonged not only to the world of excitement and adventure, but to the world of intelligence, the world where men were prepared to fight for what they believed to be right and true.

  She saw little of the narrow street and passages that Ahmed led them through, twisting this way and then that until finally they came to a standstill and from the smell of warm bread Melina knew that they had arrived.

  They passed through the doorway of the shop. The room they found themselves in was little more than a cave and on the table was a board stacked high with a great pile of flat thick loaves of unrisen bread that the natives ate and which was half-covered with a white cloth. Beside it, on the table, was a large roughly constructed reed crate. Inside chirping and scratching against the sides were half-a-dozen small live chickens.

  Bing shut the door behind them and now the light came into the small room only from another open door, which led into a courtyard beyond.

  “Seddig is hiding, sir, as you commanded,” Ahmed said. “It would not be good for anyone to see two bakers this morning.”

  “That is what I asked,” Bing approved.

  “And this is all you require?” Ahmed asked, looking down at the board of bread and the basket with the chickens.

  Bing lifted up the board.

  “It’s heavy,” he exclaimed, and turned to Melina. “I was going to ask you to carry this on your head,” he said, “but I see that I shall have to do that. Can you manage the chickens, do you think?”

  He stopped and a look of utter consternation came over his face.

  “Fool that I am!” he cried. “Can you balance anything on your head?”

  “As a matter of fact I can,” Melina answered. “I went to a school where they made us walk with books on our heads for good deportment.”

  “You can, of course, hold the basket with one hand,” Bing said. “In fact you will want to do that. But I had not thought that your arm will show and a married woman of your standing would be wearing a gold bangle.”

  Ahmed held out his hand.

  “Ten shillings, sir, and I find you a gold bangle such as a Princess might envy.”

  “No!” Bing said sharply. “Don’t go into the marketplace. Go and find the baker’s wife and buy one of hers.”

  He brought out a little collection of Moroccan notes and gave them to Ahmed who disappeared through the open door into the courtyard.

  “I thought I had remembered everything,” Bing said. “It just shows how stupid one can be. You are certain you can balance this on your head, Melina?”

  “Quite certain and, if I can hold it with one hand, it will be quite easy. I really have learned to walk and carry things on my head, not only at school, but I used to practise with the water bottles my father had in his collection. It amused him to see if I could go upstairs without touching what I carried and only once did I break anything.”

  “How lucky I am to have found you,” Bing murmured.

  Just for a moment Melina thought that his tone changed from swift urgency to something else and his eyes, behind the ugly steel-rimmed spectacles, softened.

  Then Ahmed came hurrying into the room.

  “Here you are, sir. She was delighted. Tomorrow she will buy a new one, perhaps two, for what you have given her.”

  “That is good,” Bing replied and, taking the gold bracelet from Ahmed’s hand, he slipped it on o Melina’s wrist.

  “It’s fortunate that you are tiny,” he said as he did so. “Few European women could squeeze their hands through a native bracelet.”

  He opened the chicken crate and said to Melina,

  “Now, listen to me carefully. When we get through the kitchens, you follow me up the stairs and the moment I am engaged with the guard, who I expect will be outside the boy’s room, you enter, tell the child, in French, that you are to take him to his mother and persuade him to lie down in this basket. If he curls himself up with his knees beneath his chin he can manage it. It has been chosen for that very purpose. I will then take the crate from you, carry it downstairs and put it on my head. You will pick up the board that I have left on the kitchen table and follow me.”

  “But the servants?” Melina asked.

  “Everything depends on what they do, of course,” Bing answered. “But I think they will do nothing.”

  Melina gave a little sigh. She felt somehow that Bing should have told her all this before. She thought that perhaps he had his reasons for doing everything at the last minute.

  She glanced at him quickly and wondered if it was because he thought that she might be too afraid to undertake the task if she had time to think it over.

  “Now, do you understand?” Bing asked impatiently. “You know what to do? I may, of course, have to alter everything at the last moment. We don’t know. We can only improvise as we go along. Now, put this on your head.”

  He lifted the crate with the chickens as he spoke and balanced it carefully. It was not heavy and, putting up her hand to steady the crate, Melina realised that it would be no effort to carry it quite a long distance.

  Then Bing picked up the heavily laden board, tossed the cloth over it and placed it on his own head.

  Ahmed opened the door and they both had to steady their burdens as they passed under the lintel and then they straightened themselves in the street.

  “First to the left, sir,” Ahmed murmured, “and then right.”

  Bing did not answer him, but Melina, without looking, knew that Ahmed had now disappeared and was hurrying from the scene as quickly as he could go.

  ‘What a coward he is,’ she thought scornfully and then realised that men like Ahmed and Rasmin had everything to lose by getting involved in the wrong political faction.

  It was better to remain neutral, as far as the ordinary man was concerned, until one side or another came out on top.

  The narrow street was not long. Bing turned the corner and Melina followed him.

  She was proud to find how well she could walk carrying the crate. It was not half as difficult as the water bottles she had practised with or the books they were made to carry at school.

  The only difficulty was when the chickens moved nervously, but after a few frightened squawks because of the movement, they had now settled down and were crouching almost in the centre of the crate as if they realised it was the most secure place to be.

  Left, now right. The street was much broader and there were more people moving along. Melina kept her eyes lowered. She could see Bing’s white robes ahead of her, she could see his feet, although he was limping, moving at quite a good pace over the cobbled road.

&nb
sp; Then, almost without looking, she realised that they were there.

  It was a wide, arched doorway and two men were lounging, one on either side of it. One of them was smoking. The other was cleaning his knife, a long, evil-looking weapon.

  They neither of them spoke and Bing and Melina passed them. They went on with what they were doing. Melina wondered why they did not hear the sudden thumping terror of her heart.

  Bing crossed the courtyard.

  There was a bleat from a goat that was tethered to a post at the far end, but otherwise the place seemed deserted save for an ancient dog sleeping in the sun.

  Bing veered to the right.

  There was an open door through which Melina could hear the sound of voices.

  Now came the real test, she thought.

  A sudden scream and the guards would be there, one already had a dagger in his hand.

  She wondered what Bing was going to do, what he was going to say. She saw him bow his head and move the tray of bread in dexterously through the doorway. She steadied her crate of chickens with her gold-bangled arm and then she, too, was inside.

  There were half-a-dozen servants in the low-ceilinged kitchen, working at a chopping board or over the fire or washing up in a rough wooden sink.

  Bing put the board down on the table and an elderly man whom Melina suspected was the chief cook wished him good morning in Arabic.

  Bing replied in a low voice and, taking the reed crate from Melina, put it on the table and opening it brought out the chickens by their legs. The cook took them, one by one, pinching their bodies as he did so and grumbling that they were not fat enough and wondering how he was going to make a meal of them.

  Melina did not understand in actual words what he said but his meaning was obvious from the gestures of his hands and his tone was the tone of every cook the world over who is confronted with food that he does not really consider up to his standard of cooking.

  It was then that Bing closed the crate and gave it to Melina.

  Then he drew something from his pocket, held it in his hand and spoke five words,

  “By the Hand of Fatima!”

  There was a sudden gasp and everyone in the kitchen turned to look. He held out the jewelled Hand that Rasmin had given him. It hung sparkling in the light from the window so that they could all see it.