Free Consider the Lily by Elizabeth Buchan Page A

greed Matty fastened her gaze on him. Kit drank some wine and tried again. ‘Tell me what Daisy was like as a little girl,’ he said in a low voice.
    His question was transparent, and burrowing among the tangle of new feelings inside Matty’s breast, she was conscious of despair.
    ‘ Did you get on as children?’
    ‘No,’ she said with the characteristic shake of her head. ‘We didn’t. We are too different. I’m very quiet.’
    ‘Are you?’ said Kit thoughtlessly.
    ‘Daisy had the friends. I didn’t so much because... well, I was ill a lot when I was a child.’
    Kit pushed Matty’s wine glass towards her. ‘Have some,’ he said. ‘It’s rough but invigorating.’ He watched as she obeyed. ‘Why were you ill?’
    ‘I don’t know. Ever since I was a small child in Damascus—’
    ‘Damascus! What were you doing there?’
    ‘I lived there,’ she said. ‘My parents bred Arab horses, and grew roses in a small way until...’
    Kit put down his glass. ‘Until what?’
    The chatter of the other diners seemed very loud. ‘Until they died, of typhoid. When I was five.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ Kit sounded very distant and Matty was quite sure she had said something wrong. As if he did not want to accept what she had said. The moment passed, and he resumed. ‘Roses, you say?’
    Matty smiled and the candle-flame lit up her face. ‘Autumn damasks. They have a very rich scent.’
    ‘Yes, I know.’ For a moment, Kit was back in a courtyard in Bokhara where he sat drinking tea, a mass of roses spread under the olives, and an old restlessness stirred. Daisy’s laugh brought him back.
    ‘Don’t be absurd, Marcus.’ She addressed her brother across the table. ‘We will never have another war. It was all decided in a railway carriage.’
    Marcus lit a cigarette. ‘My sister’s ignorance is profound so don’t take any notice of her.’
    ‘I, dear brother, am entitled to hold an opinion. Whether or not it is a good one is another matter.’
    ‘ Touché .’ Kit raised his glass to Daisy, who was as pink and flushed as the roses he had been remembering. ‘If I were you, Marcus, I wouldn’t be so rude to your sister. They have a way of exacting revenge.’
    ‘My saviour.’ Daisy kissed the tip of one fingertip and blew it across the table to Kit.
    With an effort, he turned back to Matty. ‘You know about roses?’
    ‘Only a little,’ she replied seriously. ‘I’ve kept my parents’ notebooks and records, but I’ve never actually grown them.’
    ‘It sounds as though you should try.’
    And it sounds as though you are bored, thought Matty, and drank as much of the wine as she could manage.
    Kit looked out at the forest of masts, and the lights flaring at the end of the harbour. A fishing boat was coming in and the crew’s conversation sounded clearly over the water. Fuelled by the wine, Matty grabbed her chance. ‘You know the East?’
    Kit swivelled back to her. ‘Quite well. It gets to you the East, doesn’t it? Especially the desert. Clean and unforgiving. I’ve stayed in Damascus twice. You must remember what it is like?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’ At least, thought Matty, I share this in common with him. It was followed by a less worthy thought: Daisy did not. ‘Did you know that martial law has been declared in Jerusalem and that the Arabs are crossing the Syrian border?’
    ‘Really!’ Kit looked at her with sharpened interest. ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Gambling, I think, mes amis.’’ Daisy scraped back her chair and stood, her arms spread as if to embrace the world. ‘ Allons.’
    Kit laughed at her impersonation of the patron , got to his feet immediately and Matty lost him. She took another gulp from her glass and felt it trickle down her throat. She had always known there was a dark edge to her spirit: a place where anger and jealousy met and cohabited. She had so little, so very little, attention or affection, and Daisy who basked in these things was given them just like that. Anger