Desert Love | Page 9

of this her freedom for at least a short while, and of the unknown quantity she was mixing into her portion of daily bread which, up to this moment, had consisted of the plainest, wholesomest, most uninteresting bun-loaf, not even resembling that extremely dull and unappetising cake named, I believe, Swiss roll, which hides its staleness under the glass case of Life's shop window, lying fly-blown on the plate and heavily and unimaginatively on the digestive powers of those who consume it for the thin layer of jam to be discovered between its wedges of sullen dough. A soul-stifling mess to be found in the drab sideboards of most English households along with its sister made of a pastry so flimsy that it chokes, filled with a cream that is merely froth, the whole hiding its cheapness under an application of highly coloured paint essence, the consuming of which will prove as fatal as the Swiss roll.
So she raised her hands to the grimy ceiling of the dirty waiting-room and whispered to the dust, the buzzing flies, and vivid ray of sunlight,
"Verily, and indeed I have burned my boats behind, or perhaps I should say my liner before me!"
CHAPTER VI
Jill, very fair indeed to look upon, and with seven-and-sixpence in odd money in her bag, stepped out bravely on to the road, scorched by the midday sun, with a curl at the corner of her mouth, a medley of disconnected thoughts in her madcap head, and a feeling of unromantic emptiness somewhere in the vicinity of her white leather waist belt.
A wisp of a boy, clad in very dirty garments, shrilled the equivalent of "Carry your bag, miss," in the Egyptian tongue, calling down the displeasure of Allah upon the foreign woman when she shook her head, and changed the heavy dressing-case to the other hand.
Ismailiah is no place for a beautiful English girl to wander in unchaperoned, especially when out of respect to the slenderness of her purse she gets off the beaten track in search of a cheap restaurant.
Indeed Jill was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable at the way the natives stared and even turned to look after her as she plodded on, so that it was with a feeling of relief that she espied "Cuisine Francaise" written across the window of a fairly clean-looking restaurant in a small street, into which place she turned, to be confronted by a fat, oily individual hailing from the Levant, who looked as though his business was anything but that of the kitchen.
Unsophisticated Jill, however, saw nothing wrong in the person who bowed, and smiled, and rubbed the palms of his hands in a rotary movement; and being taken up in trying to amalgamate the scantiness of her money, the prices on the carte, and the enormity of her hunger, neither did she notice the burning eyes in the handsome, sensual dark face of a middle-aged native fixed upon her hungrily from behind a half-open door, where he had been hurriedly summoned by the man who advertised his skill in "la cuisine Francaise."
To pass away the time Jill lingered over her meal until she was alone in the place save for the waiter, who was aching to get away to smoke a cigarette, and the native who had noiselessly entered and slipped into a seat in the far corner.
Once Jill, inadvertently looking straight into his eyes, and hurriedly looking away, had picked up a paper lying on the chair beside her; glanced at the first page, and dropped it like a hot plate, whilst a wave of scorching red rushed over her neck and face.
"Allah!" she thought, "what an awful place, and what on earth am I to do with two shillings in my pocket, and not a cinema handy!" And feeling the native's eyes still fixed on her, she beckoned to the waiter, paid her bill, and once out in the street turned sharply up the first on the right just as the native and the Levantine came to the restaurant door in time to see the last inch of her disappearing skirt. And yet through all her haste and her annoyance the inner membrane of Jill's mind, that delicate fabric woven of intuition and divination, which gives women the pull on so many occasions, and on certain courses get her past the post lengths ahead of man, whispered to her that it had not failed her earlier in the day, and that if she could but stick out the next few hours she would find a sure reward for her present distress.
But she stopped short and clicked her teeth angrily when she met the native of the restaurant face to face in a narrow street, and turned and walked in the opposite direction as quickly as her dignity