Her Desert Dream

She laughed, then clapped her hand to her mouth.

‘That is the correct expression?’ he asked.

‘You know it is, Kal.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not funny.’

‘It all happened a long time ago. My grandfather has long since accepted that he has no one but himself to blame for what happened.’

‘So what did happen?’ she asked, concentrating on her food rather than looking at him, as if she understood how difficult this was for him. He, on the other hand, watched as she successfully negotiated a second forkful of rice and knew that he could sit here and watch her eat all day.

Instead, he followed her example, picking up a piece of fish, forcing himself to concentrate on the story.

‘In an attempt to remind Kalil of his duty,’ he went on, ‘encourage him to return home and settle down, his family arranged his marriage to the daughter of one of the most powerful tribal elders.’

‘Arranged?’ He caught the slightly disparaging lift of her eyebrows, the sideways glance.

‘It is how it is done, Rose. To be accepted as the husband of a precious daughter is to be honoured. And an alliance, ties of kinship between families, adds strength in times of trouble.’

‘Very useful when it comes to hanging on to land, I imagine. Especially when it lies over a vast oilfield. Does the girl get a say at all?’

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘But who would refuse the man who was going to be Emir?’

‘Marriage binds tribal societies together, Rose. I’m not saying that ours is an infallible system, but everyone has a stake in the partnership succeeding. No one wants to match two young people who will be unhappy.’

‘Yours?’

She sounded sceptical. He could see why she might be. He was the second generation to be born and live his entire life in Europe. But at heart…

‘There’s no place for love?’

‘That would be the happy-ever-after fairy tale perpetrated by Hollywood?’ he responded irritably.

He’d hoped that she would understand. Then, remembering Lucy’s concern that she was being guided towards marriage not of her own choice, he realised that she probably did understand rather more than most. And found himself wondering just how much choice a girl really had in a society where being married to a powerful man was the ideal. When her family’s fortune might rise or fall on her decision.

‘Hollywood came rather late in the story, Kal. Ever heard of Shakespeare? “Love is not love, Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: Oh, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark…”’

She said the words with such passion, such belief, that a stab of longing pierced him and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. Wanted to believe that out of an entire world it was possible for two people to find one another. Reach out and with the touch of a hand make a commitment that would last a lifetime.

Knowing it for nonsense, that anyone who believed in it was going to get hurt, he shook his head.

‘It’s the same story for the same gullible audience,’ he replied. That kind of attraction is no more than sexual chemistry. Powerful, undoubtedly, but short-lived. ‘I’ve lived with the aftermath of “love” all my life, Rose. The hurt, the disillusion. The confused children.’

She reached out, laid her hand over his. ‘I’m sorry.’ Then, as swiftly she removed it. ‘I didn’t think.’

He shrugged. ‘I admit that my family is an extreme case,’ he said, but how could he ever put his trust in such here today, gone tomorrow feelings? He’d much rather leave the matter to wiser heads. ‘Not that it was a problem in my grandfather’s case. His response to the summons home for the formal betrothal was a front page appearance on every newspaper with his new bride, a glamorous British starlet who was, he swore, the love of his life.’

‘Ouch!’ she said. Then, her face softening, ‘But how romantic’

‘The romance was, without doubt, intense…’ ‘Like a rocket’, was the way his grandfather had described it. Hot, fast, spectacular and gone as quickly as the coloured stars faded from the sky. ‘But the reason for the swift marriage was rather more prosaic. She was pregnant.’

‘Oh.’

‘He knew his father would be angry, his chosen bride’s family outraged, but, universally popular and always a favourite, he was confident that the birth of a son would bring him forgiveness.’

‘I take it he was mistaken.’

‘When a favoured son falls from grace it’s a very long drop, Rose.’

‘So his father disinherited him.’

‘Not immediately. He was told his new bride was not welcome in Ramal Hamrah, but that when he was prepared to settle down he could come home. My grandfather wasn’t a man to abandon his bride and return like a dog with his tail between his legs.’

‘I like him for that.’

‘Everyone likes him, Rose. That was part of the problem.’

‘And you,’ she said gently. ‘You love him.’

‘He is my jaddi’l habeeb,’ he told her. ‘My beloved grandfather. While my own father was following in his father’s footsteps, Jaddi taught me to speak Arabic, the stories of my people. Their history.’

‘And he gave it all up for love.’

‘While his studious, dutiful younger brother soothed outraged sensibilities and rescued his father’s tattered pride by marrying the girl chosen for the heir. Within a year he had a son with blood that could be traced back a thousand years and was visibly putting all this new found wealth to work for his father’s people.’

‘A new man for a new age.’

‘Smarter than my grandfather, certainly. When his father had a stroke Jaddi raced home, but he was too late. The Emir had slipped into a coma and was beyond extending the hand of forgiveness. There was to be no feast for the prodigal.’

‘Poor man.’

He glanced at her, uncertain who she was referring to.

‘I wonder if there was a moment when he knew it was too late. The Emir. Wished he had acted differently? You think that you have all the time in world to say the words. When my father was killed I wanted to tell him…’

She broke off, unable to continue, and it was his turn to reach out for her hand, curl his fingers around it, hold tight as she remembered the family that had been torn from her.

After a moment she shook her head. ‘I’m fine, Kal.’

Was she? He’d never lost anyone close to him. Rose had only her grandfather and he wished he could share his many grandparents, parents, siblings with her.

‘What did you want to tell him, Rose?’ he pressed, wanting to know about her. How she felt. What her life had been like.

‘That I loved him,’ she said. And for a moment her eyes were noticeably brighter. ‘He used to take me for walks in the wood on Sunday mornings. Show me things. The names of trees, flowers, birds.’

‘Your mother didn’t go with you?’

She shook her head. ‘She stayed at home and cooked lunch but we’d always look for something special to take home for her. A big shiny conker or a bird’s feather or a pretty stone.’

The Marchioness slaving over a hot stove? An unlikely image, but Rose’s mother hadn’t been born to the purple. She’d qualified as a doctor despite the odds, had met her polo playing Marquess in A &E when he’d taken a tumble from his horse.

Such ordinary domesticity must evoke a genuine yearning in the breast of a young woman who’d been brought up by a starchy old aristocrat who probably didn’t even know where the kitchen was.

‘I should have told him every day how much I loved him. That’s all there is in the end, Kal. Love. Nothing else matters.’

‘It’s tragic that you had so little time to get to know him. Be with him. With both of them,’ he said. ‘To lose a mother so young…What do you remember about her?’

She started, as if brought back from some distant place, then said, ‘Her bravery, determination. How much she loved my father.’

She looked at her hand, clasped in his, reclaimed it.