Lemon in the Basket Read online

  Duncan thought to himself, But it was odd.

  “And the little boy is in the hospital, now?”

  “Sure is. I got to drive in to the ambulance entrance, and Mitch was there and we were all whisked up in a back elevator. They’re in a suite, all right. Very private. I think the hospital uses it for movie stars who have had face lifts, or something equally top secret. Arrangements seem fine. Saiph’s got one bedroom. Inga’s got the other. The two characters who are supposed to be his bodyguards are going to have cots in the sitting room—that is, if they intend to sleep at all.” Duncan laughed in sheer excitement.

  “But his mother isn’t going to stay there?” Tamsen marveled, slightly.

  (No, no, thought Duncan, you don’t understand. You just don’t understand.)

  “No, no,” he said aloud. “I drove her and the maid to Maggie’s. Wait till you see Zora. Chiffon bloomers.”

  “Oh, Duncan, no!”

  “Oh, she was wearing a blue suit, but Zora’s got the aura.” He was in high spirits. He didn’t know quite why.

  Tamsen fell in with his mood and rejoiced. She thought it was wonderful that something was being done, and being done through the Tylers, to help the poor child.

  But Duncan Tyler knew that, marvelous though this might be, and conducive to rejoicing, it wasn’t the true source of his own exhilaration.

  “Hey, this cloak-and-dagger stuff works up the appetite,” he announced, dumping her from his lap. “What’s to nibble on?”

  “Steak. I’m starving, too. I served a very genteel lunch,” said Tamsen, scampering before him into their crazy kitchen. “And I swear unto thee, I don’t know why.”

  “It was your tender heart, wishing to please.”

  “No,” said Tamsen, “or yes, maybe. Or no, I don’t really think so.”

  “How about searching your soul after supper?” he said cheerfully. “Hey, Maggie wants to know will I bring you by, Thursday evening, to meet the Princess?”

  “Oh, I’d love to!”

  “Phillida’s coming too. Maggie thinks she’ll be a great comfort. The Doctor’s wife, you see, calm as cucumbers.”

  “It’s ‘cool’ as,” said Tamsen, “and Phillida is. But what about …?”

  Nothing was said.

  Tamsen unwrapped the steak.

  “Maggie’s privilege,” Duncan said, “after all.”

  “So it is,” she agreed, “but it seems too bad to leave them out, when it’s not their fault.”

  “Whose fault is it,” he said with a touch of impatience, “that they wouldn’t be of the slightest interest, or use, to Jaylia? Nor she to them, for that matter.”

  “Why not she to them?”

  “Because they would be forbidden to name-drop,” he said cruelly.

  “Oh, Duncan—”

  “Communication would be nil,” he said. “The Princess is simply another order of human animal. And that’s not her fault, either.”

  Tamsen heard a note in his voice she did not understand at all, and it frightened her a little.

  5

  The big house in San Marino had two wings that bent inward, on the street side. One entered at the far left of the central block, to a wide hall which continued (under the stairs) all the way to the garden side and glass doors there. To one’s left, visible through two archways, lay the enormous living room, the entire ground floor of the west wing. To one’s right lay the Judge’s study, a long narrow room in the central block, on the street side. Behind this, toward the garden, there was a room that Maggie called the lanai. It was both an informal sitting room and the passage to the east wing, where lay the big dining room, the kitchen beyond that, and the little breakfast room that overlooked the east terrace and the swimming pool.

  Upstairs, on the street side, as the house bowed in, there ran a long passage the whole way. All the bedrooms looked out on the garden side and were not subject to the intrusion of glances from passersby. Maggie’s servant-couple, who inhabited an apartment over the garage, were not in the house except when serving. The whole establishment was kept to itself within boundaries of shrubbery so that, although Maggie’s hospitality was famous, this place could be a quiet fortress, and very private indeed.

  They were gathered in the lanai, which Maggie considered appropriate in the summertime, with its light gay furnishings and its windows standing open to the peaceful lawns.

  Tamsen was quiet in her corner, a looker and a listener. Meantime, she was trying not to turn in her mind the knowledge that she had been somewhat misdirected by her husband.

  She had seen Zora, a young person with, indeed, the look of her people, but Tamsen had sensed no chiffon-bloomer aura about her. She was obviously devoted to her mistress and, by now, also devoted to Maggie, who had probably arranged this without half trying. Zora came and went, being of service in a happy way, and then vanished, and was not missed, and that was that.

  It was quite obvious to Tamsen who had the chiffon-bloomer aura, if that was the name for it. Jaylia Foster, or whatever she was called now, a princess who had once expected to be a queen, spoke pure American, taking after her mother, no doubt, and her speech habits further reinforced by an education in New England. She was a dark blonde, with a great hank of hair wound around a small head that tilted nicely on a mobile neck. She was not tall but, in fact, almost as short in stature as Tamsen herself. She was a lot … well, fatter wasn’t the word. Rounder? She was, if not perfectly beautiful, certainly striking, thought Tamsen, who had known at once that she might paint that face and that body seven times, and never catch Jaylia’s aura.

  Tamsen tried to view with detachment the two kinds of magic present here. Maggie was being the protecting angel, strong and serene, indulgent of her protégée’s right to hold the center of the stage, so long as Maggie chose not to have it herself. Jaylia’s magic was not that kind. It was simply that here sat a woman possessed of a magnetism of the flesh (that, no doubt, thought Tamsen wryly, wasn’t her fault) but which drew men, any and all men—including Duncan Tyler, husband to Tamsen.

  It was the psychic equivalent of chiffon bloomers, the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t fascinating promise of what? Of touch, Tamsen decided. Or just plain yumminess. All right, spell it sex. It wasn’t youth. Jaylia must be hovering around thirty. It wasn’t provocative clothing. She wore a dress of a brownish print, conservative to the point of long sleeves in the summertime. It was just … what? It was there.

  Jaylia, however, was talking what Tamsen supposed must fall into the category of either politics or intrigue. Duncan and the Judge (the only men present), and sometimes Phillida, were involved in this conversation. Tamsen only looked and listened, and Maggie was keeping her wings furled benignly.

  Duncan was asking about the last batch of riots at the University. Were they, he wanted to know, connected with any particular issue? Or merely the result of young exuberance, and the sheeplike nay-saying of youth to the establishment, whatever it might be?

  “They were confusing,” Jaylia said, one shoulder (no doubt unconsciously, thought Tamsen) moving very slightly, as if to say, But wouldn’t it be more fun to go to bed than to wonder about this sort of thing? “We suspect, of course, that somebody was behind them. It remains just the usual suspicion.”

  “The usual,” the Judge said, smiling upon her.

  “Infiltration? Divide and conquer?” said Duncan, rocking backward. “Or local talent? Subversion? Rise of the military?”

  “Al Asad is the military,” said Jaylia gently.

  Phillida said, in her bright way, “Did—uh—anybody really believe the American professors were agents, inciting to riot?”

  Jaylia said pleasantly, “Who knows what—uh—anybody really believes?”

  “What do you think Al Asad thought?” said the Judge, coming in bluntly. “You are among friends, my dear.”

  “I know,” she said with a fluttery little gasp. “But it is foolish to try too hard to guess, I think, when it is only imagining. My moth
er, I see, has been writing letters. Of course, she is a born intriguer.”

  “So are you, dear,” said Maggie calmly. Jaylia cast her a startled glance. “So am I,” said Maggie, wing-tips stirring.

  When the ripple of amusement had subsided, Duncan, with the intention of abandoning questions that the lady didn’t seem to want to answer, asked another. “What kind of chap is this Dhanab? A nephew of the King’s, isn’t he?”

  Jaylia said, “You didn’t meet him, did you, Duncan? Oh, he is in his early thirties. He sometimes seems young for that.” (As you do not, said her flesh.) “He is serious-minded—I’d say.”

  “A born intriguer?” said Duncan, grinning. “Or just power-mad?”

  (All right, thought Tamsen, he is attractive, too. I should know.)

  “He wants to do what is good for his country,” said Jaylia evasively. “About those American professors. It hasn’t occurred to any of you that they might have been in danger?”

  “Might have been?” said Duncan alertly.

  “Oh, in the rioting, perhaps. If some unknown parties had wanted to make awkwardness. Or just be rid of American influence in the—uh—curriculum.”

  “You mean to suggest that the King put them in protective custody?” said Duncan.

  “I mean to suggest that he may have,” said Jaylia. “It’s not impossible.”

  “But I understood your mother to be … imagining …” said Phillida, “that they might possibly be in great danger later on.”

  “Al Asad will not let them go until later on,” said Jaylia, avoiding, as had Phillida, the definition of “later on.” “But you ought not to imagine that he won’t be in charge of things. He really is quite a marvelous old person. Although a person, with the power of life or death, is bound to be approached a bit gingerly by most.”

  “Indeed,” said Duncan. “You say he is the military? Not, then, the anachronism he seems to be? Yet a hereditary monarchy …”

  “Unless otherwise decreed,” she murmured.

  “It’s the religious element that holds?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  The two of them seemed to have lost the others. “Are you …” Duncan began. Jaylia was a convert.

  But at this moment Mitch came in. Tamsen couldn’t help being quite glad to see him.

  The Doctor was greeted but not pressed with the question, although the question hung in the ceiling corner like smoke.

  The Doctor chose to answer it almost at once. “He’s a good little animal, Jaylia,” said Mitch, “in every way but one. I think I can say that he looks to be a classic case.”

  “What does that mean?” Jaylia straightened and sat tall, looking with frightened eyes at a person with the power of life or death.

  “That means I see a high probability that he can successfully be patched up,” said Mitch. “Or course, there’ll be many preparations. I can’t and won’t attempt it for several days.”

  “Aunt Maggie?” said Jaylia in a choking voice. Her face looked shocked, thinner, almost tragically alarmed.

  So Maggie simply turned the spotlight elsewhere.

  “Now, Mitch,” she said plaintively, “I suppose you will poke and will pry, and the poor little boy won’t have the faintest idea what you are doing. No patient ever has. Is he happy, Mitch? What in the world will he do, between pokings and pryings? He can’t look at the wall at the age of eleven. Unless, of course, there is television. But is that enough?”

  Maggie had put on tragic concern over what was of so little importance, compared to such great hope after long despair.

  “You’re right, Maggie,” the Doctor said. “You are absolutely right, as usual. What he needs is a playmate. He is an awfully smart little boy. And he would sure like to see something of this foreign land. He would like, in fact, to take a jaunt to Disneyland, like everybody else. But, because he is so unfortunately unable to sight-see, I wonder … He could certainly use an American companion.”

  “Mickey?” said Phillida. All of them were turning to chat of this kind because of Jaylia’s stricken face.

  “Well, now, Mickey,” said the Doctor, and aside, “That’s our ten-year-old. Mickey is not quite … In the first place, he is in school.”

  “He could take time out,” said Mickey’s mother, “with no permanent damage.”

  “Oh, certainly,” said Mickey’s father, “but I don’t think he has … well … the maturity. Fact is, I was thinking of Tamsen.”

  “Me!” Tamsen sat up, startled.

  “She being about the nearest thing to a mature child we’ve got handy,” the Doctor said fondly. “How would you like to drop by, in the afternoons, and play with him?”

  “Why, I’d just love to!” she cried. “Could I, really?”

  Jaylia looked at her and said, “You!” She began to turn her head to look at all the faces. “You … all of you?”

  “Do you know,” said Maggie, flowing to her feet, “I think that makes a very effective exit line, my dear. I think that you and I will go quietly upstairs now.”

  “Aunt Maggie?” said Jaylia again, reaching out to her.

  “It is very difficult,” decreed Maggie, “to bawl in public and not be mortified in the morning. Come with me.”

  Jaylia rose. Her hands flew out, in a begging gesture. But Maggie said severely, “Unnecessary,” and silently led her away.

  The people left behind sat stunned for a moment.

  “How great the strain has been,” said the Judge finally. “Good news can be devastating. Poor girl. It is good news, Mitch.”

  Mitch was making himself a cooling drink. He grinned. “Never any guarantee, but I don’t have too many qualms. He’s got a lot going for him, including his attitude.”

  Tamsen, who had been looking at Duncan, now rose quickly. “We don’t need an exit line,” she said. (Because one face, peeled naked, in this room had been enough for one evening.) “Just tell me when, Mitch, please?”

  “Make it two o’clock,” the Doctor said. “For an hour. Teach him to paint, eh?”

  “Oh, we can mess around, gloriously,” she promised.

  “No, no,” said the Judge.

  “Religion,” croaked Duncan.

  “Come along, Duncan,” said Tamsen. “Although a mature child, it is early to bed for me, these days.”

  “Good night, Tamsen dear,” said Phillida affectionately. “Good night, Duncan.”

  They went out to the car. They drove through sleepy Pasadena silently. They took the Pasadena Freeway to the Harbor, to the Santa Monica, toward home.

  Duncan was driving faster than usual, waiting for what he knew would come. Tamsen had not chosen, so uncharacteristically, to take the center of the stage for no reason at all.

  She said, at last, “Did you fall in love with her a year ago?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But you came home and married me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you,” he answered.

  “Too?” said Tamsen keenly.

  “Yes.”

  “All right,” she said quietly, in a minute.

  Duncan increased speed, cutting in and out of lanes recklessly. She said nothing. After a while he was able to subdue the car to a steadier pace.

  In silence they finally descended into their own terrain, and the car came softly to rest beside their door. In silence they went into the silent house, arms around each other.

  But when he would have fallen fiercely upon her in their bed Tamsen said, “Not at this time.”

  He drew away warily.

  “Because we will have so many other times,” she finished, clearly.

  So Duncan left the room. He went out into the little backyard and sat there, alone, in the darkness. To be thoroughly understood and, worse, accepted, as the confused and ambiguous creature you really are … This was not, he found, as delightful as it was cracked up to be.

  6

  At two o’clock the following day, Tamsen Tyler f
ell in love.

  The little boy was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and if his skin was not as dark as the skin of his bodyguards (two youngish men, who watched Tamsen like twin hawks for ten minutes, and then suddenly left off watching her) the little face was handsome in much the same way as their faces. He sat up in his high bed without really wiggling, but radiating energy just the same.

  Inga Bjornsen was a big woman, forty, at a guess, whose long bony face fell into dour lines until she smiled at her charge. Then she was seen to be enslaved.

  Saiph, accepting Tamsen with one quick look that melted her immediately, began to bombard her with questions. It wasn’t long before she had to beg mercy and restrict him to one question at a time. His curiosity was intelligent and full of fun. He was a joyous child, who came forward to meet a stranger with an endearing trust seasoned with moments of bright suspicion that she might be inventing such outlandish answers. But, if so, he didn’t really mind. He was prepared to enjoy that, too.

  His father had been, Tamsen supposed, a world citizen during his short life. The little boy spoke American very fluently, with only now and then a British twist to a vowel. But he did not think of himself as even a quarter of an American. He was of the royal family of Alalaf. He didn’t mind being so. The knowledge he had obviously carried for a long time, that he might die in a very few years, had not bothered him, either.

  Tamsen was a goner.

  When her hour was up and she dutifully rose to depart she said, “Tell you what. Why don’t you write down all the questions you’ll think up before tomorrow?” It was in her mind to give him occupation.

  Saiph said, “I can remember them. Even a hundred.”

  Tamsen laughed, because he was teasing her. “I wouldn’t put it past you, at that,” she said. Then she must explain that old-fashioned idiom to his complete satisfaction before she could get away.