‘A little. There’s a restaurant I sometimes go to. It has the most delicious chicken with dates and honey, and I can’t resist it. But the surroundings are vulgar. The walls are covered with murals of the desert, with oases that light up in neon.’
Ali winced. ‘I know the kind of place you mean. They make a great play of the desert, but none of them knows what the desert is really like.’
‘What is it like?’ Fran asked eagerly. ‘Tell me about the desert.’
‘How shall I know what to say? There are so many deserts. There is the desert in the evening when the sun turns to blood and is swallowed up by the sand. In England you have long twilights, but in my country it can be broad daylight, and then pitch darkness a few minutes later.
‘Then, in the early hours, dawn lays a cool light on the land for a few moments, then rises in pale glory, and we all give thanks for the renewed blessing. But at noon the desert can be a enemy, and the sun turns to a furnace, driving you back into the sand.
‘But they all have one thing in common, and that is the silence: a deeper silence than you can imagine. Until you have stood in the desert and watched the stars wheel overhead, you have never heard the silence of the earth as it spins on its axis.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what I thought.’
Without her knowing, a dreamy, far-away look had come into her eyes. Ali saw it, and a small frown of interest creased his brows. ‘You thought?’ he asked.
‘I used to dream about places like that,’ she admitted. ‘When I was a child that dream was very important to me.’
‘Tell me,’ Ali said intently. ‘What happened in your childhood?’
‘It’s strange, but whenever I think about that time I remember rain. I suppose it couldn’t have rained every day, but all I can see is grey, drizzly skies, and people to match.’
‘People were unkind to you?’
‘No, I’m not being fair. After my parents died I was raised by some distant cousins on their farm. They meant well, but they were old and very serious, and knew nothing about children. They did their best for me, encouraged me to do well at school. But there was no excitement, and I longed for it.’ She gave a small embarrassed laugh. ‘You’ll probably think this is silly, but I started to read The Arabian Nights.’
‘I don’t think that’s silly. Why should I? I read it myself as a boy. I loved those fantastical tales, with their magic and drama.’
‘There was certainly plenty of that,’ Fran remembered. ‘A sultan who took a new wife every night and killed her in the morning.’
‘Until he found Scheherazade, who teased his mind with fantastic tales, so that he had to let her live to find out what came next,’ Ali supplied. ‘I loved the stories, but I loved Scheherazade’s wit even more.
‘I used to read that book in the desert, looking out at the horizon as the sun blazed its last before dying. How sad for you to yearn for the sun in this cold country.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, and living in a chilly house, watching the rain outside, always short of pocket money because-I quote-“we mustn’t be extravagant”.’
She hadn’t meant to make herself sound quite so deprived as it came out. Her elderly cousins hadn’t been mean, simply determined to teach her the value of money. While rebelling at their frugal standards she’d somehow imbibed them. She’d gone on to achieve a first-class degree in economics, but pure economics had been too dry for her. So she’d switched to journalism, specialising in stories where scandal mingled with money. She’d found the excitement she secretly yearned for through investigating the shady secrets of high-profile figures. But she couldn’t tell Ali Ben Saleem that.
There was a great deal more she couldn’t tell him- like Uncle Dan’s teachings about ‘money and morality’. The God-fearing old man had never bought himself or his family any little treat without donating a similar amount to charity.
His wife had shared his views about thrifty living until Fran was sixteen and had suddenly blossomed into a beauty. Aunt Jean had yearned to celebrate the girl’s looks with a new wardrobe, but it had taken many earnest discussions before Dan could be brought into the right frame of mind. The local charities had done well that summer.
They were both dead now, but their austere, kindly influence lingered. Fran had a passion for lovely clothes, but she never treated herself without also giving to a good cause. It was bred in the bone, and she wouldn’t have known how to stop. It was hardly surprising that Sheikh Ali’s lifestyle roused her to indignation.
‘I know what you mean about restaurants that play up to stereotypes,’ Ali said. ‘I’ve been in places over here called Ye Old English Waterwheel, with waiters dressed as yeomen, tugging their forelocks, and saying, “What be thoy pleasure, maister?”’ His stage yokel accent was so talented that Fran bubbled with laughter. He laughed with her and added, ‘I nearly told them my pleasure would be to have them vanish from the face of the earth.’
‘I suppose we both suffer from that kind of cliché about our countries,’ Fran said.
‘But England is also my country. I have an English mother, I attended Oxford University and learned soldiering at Sandhurst.’
She almost said, Yes, I know, but stopped herself in time. It wouldn’t do to let him know she’d done her homework on him.
They had finished the pumpkin soup and Ali indicated a choice of dishes.
‘If I had known your preference, I would have arranged for chicken with dates and honey,’ he said. ‘I promise it shall be served the next time we dine. Until then, perhaps you can find something in this humble selection.’
‘This humble selection’ stretched right down a long table. Fran was almost overwhelmed with choice. At last she picked a dish of long green beans.
‘It’s very hot,’ he warned.
‘The hotter the better,’ she said recklessly.
But the first bite told her she’d made a mistake. The beans were spiced with onions, garlic, tomatoes and cayenne pepper.
‘It’s-it’s delicious,’ she said valiantly.
Ali grinned. ‘You have steam coming out of your ears. Don’t finish it if it’s too much for you.’
‘No, it’s fine.’ But she accepted some of the sliced tomatoes he pushed over to her, and to her relief they quenched the fire in her mouth.
‘Try this instead,’ Ali suggested, helping her to another dish. It was a cod liver salad and presented no problems. She began to relax even more. It was tempting to give herself up to the night’s seductive spell.
And then, without warning, something disastrous happened. Glancing up, Fran met his eyes and found in them the last qualities she would have expected: real warmth, charm and-incredibly-a sense of fun. He was smiling at her, not seductively or cynically, but as though his mind danced in time with hers, and he was glad of it. And suddenly she suspected that this might be a truly delightful, great-hearted, funny, entrancing man. It was total disaster.
She struggled to clear her mind, but it persisted in lingering on the curve of his mouth, which was wide and flexible and made for kisses. It was smiling at her now in a special way that started a glow inside her.
And when she forced her attention away from his mouth his eyes were lying in wait to tease and entice her. There was a wicked promise in them and it was tempting to speculate what would happen to a woman who called that promise in. Of course, that could never be herself. She was here on serious business. But some lucky woman…
She pulled herself together.
‘You have a lovely home,’ she said, sounding slightly forced.
‘Yes, it’s beautiful,’ he agreed. ‘But I’m not sure it could be called a home. I have many dwellings, but I spend so little time in each one that-’ He finished with a shrug.