had taken a little time to work, within a matter of weeks she had turned to him and said, ‘We could get married if that’s what you want.’
So perhaps, too, he should have wished her into suggesting Saudi Arabia; then she would have known it was her own decision. But from what he had heard it was a part of the world in which women’s decisions did not operate. He made a leap of faith: it will be all right, I know it will. ‘Frances,’ he said, ‘we won’t go unless you want to.’
She slotted a wrapped teacup into place. ‘I want to.’
It had been raining, earlier that day, and there was a heavy, animal scent of drenched earth and crushed flowers. In the kitchen their housemaid, Elizabeth, was washing glasses – pointless really as they would soon be crated up – and they could hear the separate clink that each one made as she put it down on the draining-board. The dogs and cats were coming in to be fed, wandering to the back door to wait around, like the Victorian poor. ‘I really think we ought,’ Andrew said.
‘In point of fact, I don’t think we’ve anywhere else to go.’ She picked up a broad felt marker and daubed their name on the side of the tea-chest, SHORE, FRAGILE. GABORONE – LONDON.
‘No,’ Andrew said. ‘No point.’
She crossed out LONDON, wrote JEDDAH. Another pang stabbed her, as sharp as the first. She imagined herself already in Saudi, a discreet teetotal housewife, homesick for this place that was not home in another place that was not home. It was almost dark now; the air was cooling, the sun dipping behind the hill. ‘What was Jeff Pollard doing, recruiting you? I thought he was trying to persuade everybody what a grand life it was as a freelance consultant?’
‘Well, it can’t be such a grand life, because he’s just signed up with Turadup himself. He’s going to manage their Jeddah business; he’s had experience out there, of course.’
‘So you mean you’ll be working with him?’
‘There is that tiny drawback.’
‘I hope we don’t end up living near him as well.’
‘They do pay for your housing, so it’s probably a case of taking what you’re given.’
‘That’s fine,’ she said, ‘but just try to ensure that what we’re given doesn’t include Pollard. Do you think they’ll all be like him?’
‘He’s a type. You get them everywhere. But Parsons isn’t like that.’
‘I suppose he’s another type.’
‘Yes, you’d know the one. Genial old duffer. Safari suit, doing the African bit. Two sons at medical school, showed me their photographs. His wife’s called Daphne.’
‘And did he show you a photograph of her?’
‘He didn’t, come to think of it.’
‘Perhaps he thought it would over-excite you.’
‘When he asks you what you want to drink, he says, “Name your poison.”’
‘I see. Weybridge abroad.’
‘Melbourne, I think. He keeps a place in the Cotswolds though. He’s been with Turadup for twenty years. He’s a shareholder. Pollard says he’s a millionaire. Anyway, he seems very enthusiastic about this building. About the whole scene in Jeddah. He says it’s a very stimulating place to work if you’re in the construction business.’ He paused. ‘I’ll tell you what he said exactly.’
‘Go on.’
Andrew bit his lip. ‘He said, “I have witnessed the biggest transportation of ready-mixed concrete in the history of the human race.”’
‘I’d like to witness a large gin. Let’s celebrate.’
‘We’re late,’ said the man across the aisle. She jerked out of her doze; she’d not realized, at first, that he was speaking to her.
‘Are we?’ She consulted her watch.
‘It’s always late,’ the man said tetchily. ‘Of course, if you fly Saudia, they’re always late as well.’
‘Do you go often to Jeddah?’
‘Too often. The Saudia flight’s supposed to take off at twelve-thirty, but it never does. Not in my experience. I suppose the staff are having prayers. Bowing to Mecca, and so forth.’
‘How long do prayers last?’
‘As long as it takes to inconvenience you totally,’ the man said. ‘I can tell you’ve never been in the Kingdom. Noon is movable, you see. Noon can very well be at twelve-thirty. Nothing’s what it says it is.’
Oh dear, a philosopher, she thought. She might as well put on her Walkman. She leaned down to inch out her bag from under the seat in front, and as she groped for it she felt his eyes on the back of her neck. ‘Nurse, are you?’ he inquired.
‘No.’
‘What are you doing out there then?’
‘I’m going to join my husband.’ She filled in the details again, aware that she was more polite in the air than she was on the ground: the six years in Africa, and now Turadup, and the new ministry building; aware too that as soon as she had said ‘husband’, the slight interest he had taken in her had faded completely.
‘Pity,’ he said. ‘We,’ he indicated his cohorts, ‘are stopping at the Marriot. I thought if you’d been a nurse we could have had dinner. Of course, I’m not sure if they let them out nowadays. I think they’ve got rules now that they all have to be locked in their own quarters by nine at night. It’s after that Helen Smith business.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘It was a damn funny business, if you ask me. That Dr Arnott, the chap that lived in the flat she fell out of…and that wife of his, Penny wasn’t it…and the British Embassy? You can’t tell me it wasn’t a cover-up.’
‘I wouldn’t try, I’m sure.’
‘It stinks.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’
‘You find a young girl dead outside a high-rise block, after a wild party – you ask yourself, did she fall or was she pushed? Take it from me, it’s a funny place, Jeddah. Nobody knows the half of what goes on. You work?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m a cartographer.’
‘Oh well, you’re redundant. They don’t have maps.’
‘They must have.’
‘Too bloody secretive to have maps. Besides, the streets are never in the same place for more than a few weeks together.’
‘They move the streets?’
‘Certainly do. They’re always building, you see, money no object, but they don’t think ahead. They build a hospital and then decide to put a road through it. Fancy
