Singing in the Wilderness (21 page)

Stephanie giggled, thinking he sounded like the hero of an American film, but she did as he told her, bracing herself into her seat with her legs, and she was glad she had, for he took off across the rough, pitted ground with a speed she found both frightening and exhilarating. She had confidence in his ability, though, and after the first few moments she relaxed a little, more interested in what they would find when they got there than in how they got there.

‘Tell me more about Amber,’ she said to him. ‘I wish I’d been nicer to her, but—’

Cas cast her a swift, teasing look. ‘You’d better tell her. She thought you didn’t like her.’

‘Well,’ Stephanie murmured dryly, ‘I’m still not sorry she lives in Beirut. It’s a long way from West Virginia.’

‘Tell her that too,’ he advised her. ‘She’ll like that almost as much as Casimir’s dreamboat. She hasn’t had much to make her laugh recently.’

‘Where did you meet her
?
’ Stephanie wanted to know
.

‘Still jealous? I was at College with her husband, Gregor. He introduced me to her and he knows I’ve taken her out to dinner once or twice in Isfahan, in case you’re wondering. Amber telephones him practically every night.’

Stephanie blinked. ‘Won’t he ever get better?’ she asked.

‘Depends what you mean by better, honey. He’ll never walk again, but he manages pretty well in his chair. Amber wants him to go to England to see what can be done for him, but he wants to finish qualifying
first.’

‘Electronics is a closed book to me,’ Stephanie admitted.

‘It has its uses. He sent some pretty sophisticated gadgets along to cover your office. Bugging devices, cameras that are tripped off by the heat of a body coming close to them, all sorts of things. Amber was thrilled to bits that he could fix it all up for us.’

Stephanie sat in silence for a long moment, then she said, ‘Cas, it must have cost a bomb? Did the company pay?’

‘My interest in clearing my wife and father-in-law is rather greater than theirs. But, if it’s come off, it will have been worth it! Every last cent of it!’

‘Was it very much
?
’

He slowed to negotiate an awkward hump in the ground. ‘Don’t you think you’re worth it?’ he teased her.

‘I thought you’d made up your mind that I had to be guilty,’ she confessed. ‘I thought that was why you wouldn’t let me go inside yesterday to see Fatemeh. Oh, Cas, I thought you didn’t trust me not to do something else awful! I didn’t know you’d do
—that
for me!’

‘But, sweetheart, I told you—’

‘I wasn’t listening,’ she said with regret. ‘Cas, was it terribly expensive
?
’

‘I’m not complaining—especially not if it’s come off! I happen to care about my wife, little one. Too much, to have her living under a cloud of suspicion if there’s anything I can do about it, no matter what the cost! Satisfied!’

‘Oh, Cas!’ she exclaimed. ‘I wish I could do something for you too!’ She put her hand on his knee. ‘Thank you, darling,’ she said.

He covered her hand with his own. ‘My pleasure, Mrs. Ruddock.’

‘Oh,
Cas,
I’ll never doubt you again!’ Two tears rolled down her cheeks and she brushed them impatiently away. ‘I’m such a fool! I wish I’d done as you told me and trusted you to look after everything right from the start, but I’ll make it up to you if I possibly can.’

He came to an abrupt halt, almost stalling the engine.
He put his arms round her and kissed her hard on the lips. ‘You already have!’ he told her.

Stephanie had never seen anyone make a telephone call from the middle of nowhere before. One of the men helped Cas up the nearest pole, fitting him out with a leather belt so that he could lean back and use both his hands without falling. The receiver was a more workmanlike edition of the kind that was used in telephone booths every day. Cas seemed quite at home up his pole and after a while Stephanie forgot her first anxiety about him when he had first shinned up to the top. He had obviously done this often before.

‘Do we go back to Isfahan?’ she asked him when he came down again.

‘It would seem so.’ He sounded grim and more than a little angry.

Stephanie watched him cagily, not wanting to risk turning his wrath in her direction by asking him too many questions that he didn’t want to answer. ‘It was Gloria Lake, wasn’t it
?
’ she hazarded.

‘She was there,’ he answered her. ‘But she wasn’t alone. There was someone else there too.’

Stephanie’s eyes widened. ‘Who?’ she whispered.

‘
Ali,
’
he said with some bitterness. ‘No wonder she found it so easy to come and go! Now the interesting tiling will be to find out whom they were both working for and, after that, it will be my pleasure to sack the two of them personally.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Okay, Isfahan, here we come! Poor love, it isn’t much of a honeymoon for you, is it
?
’

She looked at him with eyes that glowed with mischief.
‘
It’ll do—for starters!’ she said very much in his. style. ‘Is Idries coming with us
?
’

‘I think not,’ he said dryly. ‘We’ll have to come back again when this is all over and he may as well wait for us here.’

Stephanie found that Idries’ absence had its advantages and its disadvantages. Against the incomparable advantage of having Cas all to herself, the disadvantage was that she had no excuse not to sit in the far seat from him, but perhaps that too was an advantage once the
f
ull heat of the day made itself felt in the Range Rover and any contact was almost too much to be borne.

They didn’t stop for lunch on the way back. Cas bought some hot bread from a wayside baker and they nibbled it as they went along, augmenting it with the white local cheese that was obtainable everywhere.

‘How about a Coke?’ he asked her when she confessed that something to drink was far more important to her than something to eat.

She made a face at him. ‘I have a long way to go, haven’t I
?
Do you think they have any lemonade
?
’

‘I’ll find you something,’ he promised. ‘As long as you take to hamburgers, American style, you can be as English in your tastes as you like!’

He was as good as his word, bringing her back a sparkling, fizzy drink that tasted of nothing very much but which was deliciously cool against her dry throat and tongue. He opened the bottles with a flick of his wrist and then looked at her again, his blue eyes sparkling in the sun.

‘Want to drive for a while
?
’

‘If you like,’ she responded. ‘I don’t drive as well as you do, though, so don’t be too critical, will you?’

He stepped into the passenger seat, putting his feet up on to the dashboard in front of him. ‘Such words are balm to my spirit! I’ll take over when we get nearer to the big city. Okay
?
’

‘Right,’ she said.

It was strange to be behind the wheel of such a large vehicle, but it drove so easily that she gained confidence at every mile and she had to admit that it gave an added interest to the journey to have something to do for
a while.
She stopped to exchange places with him just outside Isfahan, in sight of the bridge where he had first kissed
her.

‘
Are you going straight to the office
?
’
she asked.
‘
Will
you take me with you?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ll take you home. This is something only I can do, honey. Do you mind?
’

She tried not to let it show that she did. Women and children were always having to wait around for their menfolk, she thought bitterly. Then she thought how little cause she had to complain and managed to summon up a jaunty smile.

‘I’ll be waiting for you,’ she said. ‘I have some letters to write and I can start putting all these things away.’

The corner of his mouth twitched with amusement. ‘I’ll help you later on if you don’t want to do them all by yourself,’ he offered, knowing that she would have sorted out the muddle long before he got back to the flat.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll write to my mother first of all.’

A crack of laughter escaped his
li
ps. ‘If you do, I’ll know you’re in love,’ he grinned at her, ‘and that you can’t bear to do anything without me!’

She laughed too, knowing as well as he did that she would have everything tidied away long before he would be free to help her. ‘My mother wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t put her first,’ she insisted. ‘Though heaven knows what I’m going to say to her. She’d always planned to write a special piece of music for my wedding that would naturally receive a standing ovation from all present. It would be the perfect setting for a piece of really modern church music. I should probably have hated it.’

‘I can see that a certain amount of tact is called for,’ he agreed, ‘but I have no doubt that you’ll think of something to soothe her ruffled feathers.’

She would have liked to have talked the problem over with him further, but she could see that his mind was already working on what he would find at the office when he got there. She helped him carry the extra things out of the Range Rover and into their apartment, clucking angrily when he dropped his share on the floor where he stood. It wasn’t only his packing she would have to do for him, he obviously needed someone to run round after him all the
ti
me, putting his things away for
him.
‘Cas, must you
?
’ she protested.

His face took on a stubborn twist to it. ‘I can’t stand being nagged, Stephanie. Especially not about something as trivial as the way I mess up the apartment.’

She bit her lip. It was very nearly the last straw when she wanted to go with him so badly and hated being left behind to twiddle her thumbs until he should care to come and tell her what Gloria and A
li
had been up to. She turned her head away from his farewell kiss and refused to have anything to do with his departure. Why should he have all the fun, while she did all the chores
?

She had only half finished putting the things away when a knock at the door interrupted, her Still feeling a little sulky, she opened the door with a frown and was astonished to see Amber on the other side—an Amber who could barely restrain herself from dancing up and down with excitement. She flung her arms round Stephanie and embraced her warmly.

‘I had to come, Stephanie, to thank the two of you! Gregor has passed his exams! Better than that, the order Cas gave him has given him the confidence to start straight away in his own business! I am going home as soon as I can get a flight on an aeroplane.’ She hugged Stephanie all over again. ‘I’m going home and I’ll never have to leave him again!’

‘How marvellous!’ Stephanie exclaimed, pleased for the other girl. ‘Oh, Amber, I am glad! I didn’t thank you either for all you did to help arrange my wedding, but—’

‘But you were afraid of Casimir’s dreamboat?’ Amber’s eyes twinkled naughtily. ‘But of course you were jealous. If I had known how it was, I would not have allowed Cas to take me out to dinner that evening—’

‘Nor telephoned to him on my wedding night?’ Stephanie said dryly.

‘Oh, that!’ Amber dismissed it as being of very little consequence. ‘That was for your own good! Cas told me to tell him as soon as the equipment arrived and it had to be installed at night, when there was nobody there to see us. Didn’t Cas tell you?’

‘No. I didn’t know anything about it.’

‘But, Stephanie, what did you think I wanted him for?’ Amber began to laugh. ‘Oh, poor Stephanie! He was so anxious that he should clear up the mystery all by himself and present you with the results as a wedding present, and then he has to hurt you like that! But then, what will you? The nicest men are frequently the most stupid! Like Cas! Like Gregor! The stories I could tell you about Gregor! But I have no time now, I must go.
When we are better arranged in Beirut you must both come and stay with us.’ She smiled happily to herself, her eyes flashing with her newly restored pleasure in life. ‘Our children must play together! That would be nice, yes?’

Stephanie was thoughtful after she had shut the front door behind the Armenian girl. She went into her bedroom and searched amongst her things for a writing pad and some envelopes, settling down to write the long, detailed letter she felt she owed to her mother.

She was still writing busily when Cas came in, and she looked up and smiled at him. This was his great moment and she didn’t want to spoil it for him. ‘How did it go?’ she asked him, her voice not quite her own.

He smiled broadly. ‘Industrial espionage, just like the lady said,’ he told her. ‘We got the contract, but they thought they’d have a second bid for the work. Both Gloria and Ali are on our rival’s payroll and, from this evening, are no longer on ours. It went like a dream! I got my report off by telex tonight, and then I came straight home. Fatemeh sent you her congratulations—if such a mild word can cover her state of mind. I like your friend, little Stephanie.’