I know that now.’
‘I could have told you and saved you the trouble. Frances, could not your husband’s company give you a driver?’
‘I think Mrs Parsons, the boss’s wife, has got a monopoly on them.’
‘I can get drivers. Raji’s office will send a car, if I call up, but I don’t like to ask too often.’ She pressed her hands together. ‘Just tell me where you want to go. I will arrange it. But don’t be walking the streets.’
‘It was only round the block,’ Frances murmured.
‘We can go to Al Mokhtar if you want anything for sewing. We can go to Happy Family Bakery. We can make an evening tour to the souk, Raji would be so happy. Just tell me where.’
‘The trouble is, I don’t know where. How can I find out about the city? How can I meet people? Can I learn Arabic?’
‘I can teach you a few phrases. It is enough.’
‘But what if I want to study it?’
‘You can get a teacher. I have a private teacher, but it is for classical Arabic, it wouldn’t interest you. Or perhaps, I don’t know, maybe there is a class somewhere. Don’t think about this now, Frances. You have to get your household in order. You will be meeting your husband’s colleagues and entertaining them. You will be busy, I think.’
Yasmin leaned forward, and brushed the back of her sticky hand with a long, opalescent fingernail. ‘Listen, Frances, I remember when I first got in Jeddah. I had come from Karachi, you see, where my family were all around me. I have been to Britain, fifteen months in St John’s Wood, you know, when Raji was working over that side. I am a modern woman, Frances. I have the British passport. I have not lived my life behind the veil. It is hard, I know.’ She paused, to let Frances feel her sympathy; took her hand. ‘Soon you will meet the colleagues’ wives,’ she said persuasively. ‘They will send their cars and carry you away to drink coffee every morning. Perhaps, who knows, you can have a baby soon. The Bakhsh hospital has very well-known and excellent maternity care.’
‘Yes, who knows,’ Frances said. She stood up.
Yasmin smiled, archly. ‘So no more wandering the roads? Promise me?’
Frances fitted the key into her front-door lock. Again Yasmin stood at the door, watching her across the hall. The taste of the sweet drink lingered in her mouth. She did not feel that she had conquered the street; but she did not feel, either, that the street had conquered her.
Later that day she asked Andrew, ‘Would you describe me as a timid person?’
‘Quite the reverse.’
‘Good,’ she said. She had not told him about her trip out. She was not sure why she had not told him. She had not done anything wrong, so why was she keeping it from him? They had been married for almost five years, and in that time they had never had any secrets at all.
The following evening Raji rang the doorbell. ‘I’m off downtown,’ he said. ‘What’s it to be?’
Raji: silver wing tips of hair, a wide white boyish grin; a dark expensive Western suit, gold rings; comfortably plump, gently mocking. ‘Well, Miss Frances? What is your desire right now? Box of Medina dates? Some nice sticky baklava? Large gin and tonic?’
‘We’ve already made one major foray tonight,’ Frances said. ‘We’ve been to Safeway for the greengrocery.’
‘Ah, a Safeway Superstore is streets ahead for iceberg lettuces. Say those who know.’
‘It’s such a major occupation, shopping.’
‘We have to keep the womenfolk happy.’ Raji spied Andrew, appearing behind her. ‘Hello, old boy,’ he said, his tone much more serious.
‘How’s tricks, Raji?’
Raji shook his head, smiling, and made a plummeting motion with one hand. ‘Oil is down,’ he said. ‘So our Minister’s temper not the best. We will be getting a cut in our funding for the department if this goes on, those fellows at the Ministry of Finance are so tight. They are having one mighty royal sheep-grab in Riyadh tonight, so that the Princes can talk it all over. That is how I come to be on the loose.’ He turned to Frances. ‘You’ve met Samira, from upstairs?’
‘Not yet. Yasmin promised—’
‘Me neither. I’ve seen her flitting shape, mark you. Yasmin chats with her every day, but I’ve never seen her face, you know, which I find somewhat bizarre. Abdul Nasr keeps her locked up, the old devil.’
‘That’s not unusual, is it?’
‘No, but that is one very religious man.’ Raji slapped his palms together. ‘Nothing, then, for you good people?’ Producing his car keys, he made for the front door. ‘I’ll get Yasmin to call you for dinner one night,’ he said over his shoulder.
Abdul Nasr was a young devil, in fact. Frances saw him striding down the stairs a couple of mornings later, about ten o’clock, when she was on her way out with a bag of rubbish. He was a lean young man, with a delicate bronze skin and a heavy black moustache. He nodded to her; did not look her in the face.
‘Eyes like coals,’ she said later to Andrew. ‘Now I’ve seen them. I thought they were a fiction.’
FRANCES SHORE’S DIARY: 28 Muharram
Wrote a batch of letters home today, Clare, my mother, Andrew’s lot. He never writes to them, they wouldn’t know if he was dead or alive. Strange to think that by the real calendar it’s nearly November and that people in England are boosting up their heating bills and settling into their winter dourness. It seems no cooler here, though it should be. Whenever you mention the heat the old residents say, ‘There’s worse to come.’ They enjoy telling you that.
When I look back on this diary it seems to be all about money. At least, it’s always there between the lines. Some of the writers in the newspapers take the line that Saudi Arabia has been spoiled by its wealth, that before the oil there was a golden age when everyone lived in tents and was simple and religious and kind to old people. I am suspicious of this, but certainly greed is not attractive in anybody, is it? I’m waiting to see what our humble wealth will do to me, and if I shall grow nastier and harsher in character, bank draft by bank draft. Andrew is quite right when he says that we must stay here and stick it out and make some money. We’ve spent our lives on living, not accumulating, and now it’s time to start trying to do both, and to grow up, and be far-sighted, and not spend time agonizing over ideals we might once have possessed. In other words, we must try to have the same concerns as other people.
1
The man on the plane – Fairfax’s colleague – had been quite wrong. There was a map of Jeddah. Andrew brought it home. ‘Now I can begin to make sense of it,’ Frances said.
She spread out the map on the dining-room table. Five minutes
