From Hate to Love

Chapter One 1899-1

Chapter One

1899“You’re late! If you want something to eat, you’d better get it yourself! I’m not here to wait on you. I’ve other things to do!”

As she spoke, the elderly woman, who was half-Spanish, half-Arab, walked out of the kitchen and slammed the door.

Atayla sighed, having expected this sort of reaction.

Her first impulse was to go without food, but then her common sense told her that this would be a very stupid thing to do.

After she had been so ill with the wound in her shoulder, she knew that what she needed now was what any doctor would call ‘building up’ in order to regain her strength.

But this was difficult in a religious household where every other day seemed to be a Fast Day and Mrs. Mansur, housekeeper to Father Ignatius, was extremely hostile.

When Atayla had first been brought to the Mission in Tangiers, she was unconscious and it was some time before she realised where she was or could remember what had happened.

Then the whole horror of the sudden attack by the desert robbers upon herself and her father as they were making their way towards Tangiers seemed like a nightmare from which she could not awaken.

It seemed extraordinary, after Gordon Lindsay had travelled all over North Africa without coming to any harm, although there had been moments of danger, that when he was almost within sight of Tangiers at the end of his latest expedition, disaster had struck.

It might have been anticipated, Atayla thought now, as she remembered how few servants they had with them, because in the first place one of their camels had died and the other had been too weak to make the journey home and secondly they could not afford to buy replacements.

The result was that she was now destitute.

Her father was dead and she was penniless, but she had to pull herself together and work out how she could get back to England and once there find some of her father’s relatives and hope that they would look after her until she could find employment of some sort.

It was all too much of an effort!

She felt so weak and her head seemed to be stuffed full of cotton wool, so that she felt unable to use her brain and think things out sensibly and clearly.

She looked round the airless low-ceilinged kitchen and wondered what she should eat.

Last week, when she had first been able to get out of bed, she was aware that the housekeeper not only grudged her every mouthful she ate but was also wildly jealous because Father Ignatius, for whom she had an admiration that was almost idolatrous, talked to her.

An elderly man, kind and extremely sympathetic to all those who came to him in trouble, Father Ignatius ran the Mission.

It consisted of Catholic Missionaries who had training in medicine and they went out to preach the Gospel to the Arab tribes, who in most cases had no wish to listen to them.

But the Missionaries’ lives were dedicated to converting the heathen and, if they suffered intolerable hardships and sometimes premature death in the process, they would undoubtedly be accepted in Heaven with open arms.

But such ideals apparently had not communicated themselves to the housekeeper.

Atayla knew that she must make plans to leave and decided that she would talk about it to Father Ignatius that evening after supper.

Because she would be eating with him, she would at least have something of a square meal, unless, of course, it was a Fast Day.

In the meantime she was hungry and she remembered that last night had been one of the evenings on which a long grace was said over two slices of coarse bread and there had been nothing else for supper except a glass of water.

She opened the cupboards in the kitchen and found a very small egg, which, because it was pushed to the back behind some cups, she was sure Mrs. Mansur had deliberately hidden from her.

She put it on the kitchen table and then found a loaf of stale bread from which she cut herself a thick slice and toasted it in front of the range, in which the fire had almost died out.

It all took time and by the time she had poached the egg and put it on the bread she was no longer hungry.

But because she had had much experience in coping with illness during her travels with her father, she forced herself to eat and, when the last crumb was finished, she knew that she felt a little stronger.

‘What I should really enjoy,’ she told herself, ‘is a fat chicken that has been roasted in the oven, some fresh vegetables from an English garden and new potatoes.’

Then she laughed at the idea. It seemed so out of keeping with the brilliant sunshine outside, which was really too hot at midday to be enjoyable.

She sat at the table with the empty plate in front of her and told herself that now was the moment when she must plan her future.

There was just a chance that her father’s publishers, if she could get in touch with them, would give her a small advance on the latest manuscript that her father had sent them only a month ago.

By the mercy of God, it had not been with them when the robbers had left them for dead and made off with everything they possessed.

They had even stripped her father of his clothing, Atayla subsequently learnt, but they did not touch her, apart from stabbing her in the shoulder and had left her unconscious.

The horses they had been riding and the one camel they had left, which was worth at least one hundred pounds and had been carrying all their worldly possessions, had vanished.

Atayla was left with just what she stood up in and, as she said herself, not even a penny to bless herself with.

She started worrying that even if the publishers did give her a small advance, it would not be enough for her fare to England and she would have to throw herself on the mercy of the British Consul.

But when she had suggested this to Father Ignatius, he had not been very optimistic.

From what he said she gathered that there were far too many English people who found themselves stranded in North Africa because they had either been robbed or had lost their money through sheer carelessness and the British Consul would help them back to their own country only under very extenuating circumstances.

Atayla considered that her father, having a fine reputation amongst scholars, might come into this category.

At the same time every instinct in her body shied away from asking for charity and doubtless having to submit to an humiliating cross-examination as to why her father was not better off.

While scholars like himself and explorers who acknowledged him to be an authority would understand, it would be quite a different matter to explain to some Senior Clerk that her father had dedicated his life to research into the tribes of North Africa, especially the Berbers.

As very little was known about these people and since so much about their history, their religion and their habits was secret, Gordon Lindsay knew that he was contributing something of great importance to historical research.

‘Perhaps when Papa’s book is published,’ Atayla thought, ‘he will be acclaimed as he should have been in his lifetime.’

At the same time she had the dismal idea that, as in the case of other books he had written and articles he had contributed to the Royal Geographical Society and the Société des Géographes, only a chosen few would appreciate his discoveries and his sales would be infinitesimal.

‘I will have to rely on myself,’ Atayla thought and wondered what qualifications she had for earning money.

That she could speak Arabic and a number of African dialects was hardly a saleable ability if she returned to England.

Equally she knew that it would be impossible for her to live alone in any part of Africa and she had the uncomfortable feeling that, if she stayed in the Mission or in any other place that catered for unattached young women, she would come up against the same hostility that she was experiencing in the house of Father Ignatius.

Her mother, before she died, had said to her,

“You are going to be very lovely, my darling, just as Papa and I always thought you would be. But you will have to face the truth that a beautiful woman always pays a penalty for her looks.”

Atayla had not understood, and her mother had smiled as she went on,

“There will be men who will pursue you and women who will hate you. I can only hope, my dearest, that you will find a man who will make you as happy as I have been with your father.”

“Have you really been happy, Mama,” Atayla had asked, “without a proper home, always wandering, always moving from one place to another?”

Just for a moment there had been a radiant expression on her mother’s face before she answered,

“I think it would be impossible for any woman to be as happy as I have been! Everything I have done with your father has been so exciting and, even when things have been desperate, uncomfortable and dangerous, we have always managed to laugh.”

That was true, Atayla thought, for when her mother had died it seemed as if the laughter had gone out of her father’s life and hers.

She had tried desperately to take her mother’s place in looking after him and seeing that he had proper meals and making their journeys from place to place, sometimes across unknown, uncharted deserts, a happy adventure.

But while her father had loved her and she loved him, she had always known that he missed her mother desperately.

Although he still laughed, the spontaneity and the joy had been left behind in an unmarked grave in an Arab village that was so small it did not even have a name.

Once or twice during their married life her father and mother had returned to England and she had been born there.

They had gone back six years ago when her mother’s father had died and Atayla had met a number of relations, all of whom disapproved of her father and the life he led.

Because she had been only twelve at the time, it was hard to remember them at all clearly, but she was sure that they would not welcome her with any enthusiasm if she arrived orphaned and penniless on their doorstep.

Her father’s relatives lived in the far North of England on the border of Scotland.

It was perhaps his Scottish blood that had made him an adventurer and his North Country brain that had made him a writer.

Atayla remembered now that, although his parents were dead, he had a brother who was older than he was, but he had not heard from him for several years.

She had the uncomfortable feeling that he might be dead. There was also a sister who was married, but try as she would she could not remember her married name.

The only thing to do, she told herself practically, would be to go North and look for them.

Then she asked herself how she could find the money to do that.

It was depressing now to remember that her father, before they had set off on their last expedition, had drawn everything he possessed, which was only a few hundred pounds, out of the Bank in Tangiers.

He had spent most of it on the animals and servants they required for their journey, but, when they were on the way back, he reckoned that there was enough money left to keep them in comfort for a month or so when they reached Tangiers.

“What we will do,” he said, “is rent ourselves a small house on the outskirts of the town and the two articles I intend to write for the Société des Géographes, who are always interested in Africa, will bring in quite a good sum. Then we must decide, my dearest, what to do next.”

Atayla had not worried. She was used to what her mother called ‘living from hand to mouth’ and was content to accept her father’s optimism that something would turn up, as it invariably had.