“I’m not best pleased myself,” Daphne said, thinking of the batik workshop she would be forced to miss. “But Eric says he simply hasn’t the wherewithal to provide people with chauffeurs.”
“What’s Hasan for?”
“My dear, would you like to be entrusted to Hasan on your first visit to the Kingdom? That man’s only thought is to ditch you and sneak off to those smoking parlors they go to. Many’s the time I’ve been stranded—” Daphne’s voice ran on. Frances pictured her, teetering on the pavement outside the Patisserie Franco-Belge, a box of dissolving cream cakes balanced on her fingertips; helplessly scanning the traffic by the gold souk, while the morning sun burned, and her own ethnic trinkets seared her flesh. “Fairfax,” Daphne said, “will just have to shift for himself.”
Frances looked at her watch. Fairfax was due; dinner was cooking.
“I wonder what he will think of us?” Andrew said.
“Of you and me?”
“No, of the whole lot of us. The
“I imagine,” Francis said, “that he’ll think we’re pathetic.”
As she set the table, she amplified the statement in her mind. The paychecks had not arrived yet. Full moon had come and gone. Alarm and despondency was the order of the day. “If only they’d be straight with us,” people said. They began to talk about “Saudi disinformation.” Companies were pulling out, writing off debts that they did not believe the government would repay. Now more than ever, the tone of expatriate conversation was callow, suspicious, a note of chronic complaint. Editorials appeared in the newspapers, alleging
“Having money makes people bad enough,” Frances said. “The threat of not having it seems to make them worse.”
“Don’t be such a prig,” Andrew said. “You are one of the people too.”
“I meant the Saudis. Although to be honest, the longer I am here, the more we seem to resemble them. We are both aspects of the same problem, I think.”
Everything in the flat—everything tangible—was dusted, sorted, put back to rights. So that they would have something to give Fairfax, they had borrowed some wine from Jeff Pollard. Jeff was in a bad mood over the loss of his mistress. Russel, he said, was persecuting him, and badmouthing him to the other compound dwellers, and fomenting quarrels around the swimming pool. He would have to move out, he said, and hope that Terrex Mining would give him one of their houses. “Take a case,” he said sulkily, when they called around for the wine. “I won’t be doing any entertaining.”
Fairfax was late. Frances turned the oven down, hoped for the best. She poured herself a glass of wine, and went to sit with Andrew. “Do you think,” she said, “that there is any chance of us going to live on the Terrex compound?”
“You want to follow Jeff about? It will start another rumor.”
“It’s not that. But Daphne did say that she would inquire.”
“I’ll talk to Eric. I could make out a case that you were especially miserable, after the burglary and everything.”
That burglar, she thought, may prove to be my friend. I shall pretend to a hopeless neurosis, about the sliding doors; I shall say I can’t settle, I shall say I can’t sleep at night; I will take all the burden of weakness on myself, the little woman: and in that way I will extricate us, I will get us out of here.
She got up to see to the food. It was nine o’clock. The gatebell rang. Soon she heard Andrew in the hall, saying, “You made it,” Fairfax saying, “Got hopelessly lost,” Andrew saying, “I should have come for you.”
Fairfax stood in the doorway. He was young; he was a tall man, very tall and quite insubstantial. He had a transparent pallor, because he had come from England, and because he had come from England so recently, he had a transparent smile. Fairfax had dark red hair, unfashionably long, as fine as cobwebs, very straight: and guileless eyes. He wore a lightweight gray suit, the uniform of the traveling executive, and held something behind his back. He offered his other hand to Andrew. “I know we’ve met five times today,” he said. “But it’s the local custom, isn’t it?”
Andrew shook his hand. “How do you do?”
“Worse,” Fairfax said. “Much worse than when we parted at two o’clock. Since then I’ve suffered death by a thousand cuts. I shall become a cautionary tale in our company newsletter. He went out there to sell air- conditioning, and returned with scars on his soul.”
“Yes, I know,” Andrew said. “You must have been taken to meet the Minister. Come in, you’ll need a drink. This is Frances.”
Fairfax looked down at her. From behind his back he took a bouquet of white roses, and proffered it, diffidently.
Frances wiped her hands on her apron. “Roses in Jeddah,” she said. “Oh, Fairfax, these must have cost you the earth.”
Fairfax’s eyes opened wide, as if he were reliving the purchase. “I said to the man in the shop, surely you’re joking? He wasn’t. Never mind. Don’t you ever bring her flowers?”
“Oh, Andrew can’t afford to. He’s saving up for a posh flat in London.”
“That’s marvelous,” Fairfax said. “Get somewhere nice, and then I’ll come and stay with you when I’m down that way, I can’t stand hotels.” He seemed sure of his welcome; but Frances puzzled him. He gazed down at her. “I feel as if I know you from somewhere.”
Frances touched his elbow, drawing him into the room. “Sit down, Fairfax.”
Andrew said, “He’s called Adam. You mustn’t talk to him as if he were the butler.”
She was not surprised by his name. It seemed to suit him. Fairfax had an air of being impressed by the separate qualities of each moment, the air of one to whom the world was new, and unpredictable. He might be
