Arabesque Read Online Free Page A

what? She had two offers from senior officers at G.H.Q. who wanted personal private secretaries. When she pointed out that she knew
no shorthand and was a two-finger typist, they didn’t seem to think it mattered. Secretaries in Cairo were evidently very personal and private.
    Nursing was attractive: intimate, and balanced and gentle. And scarlet and grey suited her—though she suspected that only regular nurses might wear them. She would have liked to give
herself to the care of sick and wounded if only there had been a chance of serious training in the Middle East. She could no doubt be useful washing dishes and sweeping the wards, but such humble
employment was a waste of her education and ability.
    John was always asking her why she did not join one of the women’s services. There seemed to be any amount of them at home. In the Middle East they did not exist. Englishwomen, in fact,
were not supposed to be in the fortress at all. The wives and daughters who had managed to avoid evacuation were all passably efficient secretaries, or running indispensable canteens and funds.
    Was there, she wondered, any sort of amateur intelligence work that she could do? Everyone assumed that she was fitted for it, though the opinions as to who might employ her apparently varied.
She remembered a hint thrown out by David Nachmias. He had only made a casual remark to the effect that there were interesting jobs around if one looked for them, but Abu Tisein was not
conversational without a purpose.
    Although he was known to everyone and to Armande by his Arab nickname, he was a Jew, born and bred in Palestine. Upon his broad and muscular stern, a firm base for operations wherever he set it
down, he sat peacefully in the hotel listening to his excitable wife. When she disappeared, always in a flurry of smart scarves and feminine business, he sat on listening, equally peacefully, to
Moslem and Christian Arabs. His quiet manners, his quality of outward simplicity, appealed to Armande. What David Nachmias was doing in Beirut so soon after the occupation she had no idea. It was
pretty evident that the British approved of him. He was said to be one of the Arab experts of the Jewish Agency, and a mine of information on the politics and personalities of Syria.
    In the afternoon she went down to the terrace of the hotel, sure of finding the Nachmiases. The crowded tables along the balustrade formed a semicircle between the sea and a dance floor. A band
played hopefully, but it was too soon after the hour of the beauty parlour for the women of Beirut to risk their complexions in the sticky heat. An Australian officer and a nurse, snatching a
moment of civilisation after months of disciplined discomfort, were laughing gaily and dancing stiffly, alone on the floor, completely indifferent to the flashy foreigners who watched.
    Abu Tisein had chosen a table as far as possible from the band. He was moodily drinking coffee, while his wife’s plump hands fussed over the tea, the slices of lemon, the cakes and ice
cream. It was hard to guess their nationality or religion. Madame, tightly corseted in body and soul, outwardly expensive, was French to eye and ear. Abu Tisein, with his short hawk nose, clipped
moustache and powerful head, looked like a bored and prosperous Spanish manufacturer.
    When their eyes met, Madame bowed and gave Armande a signal of round white fingers which the former
jeune fille bien
é
lev
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e
recognised
as a masterpiece. It combined the geniality proper to a place of public amusement with all the etiquette of the upper bourgeoisie, and elected Armande as the only lone woman in the hotel who might
unquestionably and without further invitation join Mme. Nachmias at her table.
    Armande went over to them, and was almost immediately served by a rushed waiter with a gin fizz. Tea was inadequate to deal with her odd combination of light-heartedness and a headache. She
approved of David Nachmias. He never appeared to give