‘Very well,’ he said, head lifted, ‘you may continue to film on the land of Auda Khazir.’
A sigh of relief hushed through the gathered crew.
Thank you very——’ Chris began gratefully.
‘But there is a price, English!’ interrupted the sheikh with a slow, soft drawl, and he leant forward, one strong arm resting on the pommel of his saddle.
Chris blinked blond lashes rapidly. ‘Of course!’ The diplomatic mask was nailed in place as he smiled. ‘Name it!’
The dark hawk-like eyes flicked suddenly to Bethsheba. ‘I will hear your songbird sing.’
There was a little silence, and under his strong, arrogant gaze she felt, to her humiliation, her nipples become prominently erect beneath the blue silk harem bodice she wore. The dark eyes flicked to her face, met her gaze, and made her heart skip a beat.
‘Sing?’ Chris looked baffled for a moment, staring. ‘You want to hear her sing? Well, sure…of course…I mean——’
‘Tomorrow night!’ The sheikh straightened on his horse. ‘I will hear her sing at my palace. It is the House of the Seven Suns on the outskirts of Agadir, the gateway to the Western Sahara.’
‘The House of the Seven Suns…’ Chris was saying, mystified, and someone with initiative behind the cameras grabbed a piece of paper and wrote it down.
‘It is my birthday tomorrow,’ drawled the sheikh with a faint, hard smile. ‘You will eat with me, Burton, while your songbird pleasures me with her voice.’
Bethsheba swallowed, her throat dry, and studied him through lashes damp with sweat as the sun burnt down on her tousled gold hair, her full cleavage and her bare arms and belly.
Chris had no choice but to make a deep salaam and say, ‘We are honoured.’
The sheikh gave a thin smile, and turned his horse. ‘Bring her to me tomorrow night at seven!’
Suddenly he was riding away, nudging his horse into a gallop as his men turned their horses, too, and galloped away at his side in a menacingly silent display of desert loyalty, the only sounds the thunder of hoofs.
Everything around Bethsheba felt so Western, so tame and somehow conventional. The cameras that surrounded her filled her with boredom. Just the latest in a long, long line of promotional videos for her records. Even the excitement of knowing it was a brilliant song, and would hit number one, no longer affected her.
But in the dark landscape of her mind a secret fantasy stirred in its long-forgotten, long-abandoned grave, and she knew she would have ridden away into the desert with Sheikh Suliman El Khazir had this been that dark, potent landscape instead of reality.
Suddenly she was very much looking forward to singing at his palace tomorrow night…
Next day they worked in the studio. Chris owned a villa in Tangier, and it was here that they were staying to record and film. High on a curving hill overlooking the city, the villa gave a ravishing view of flat red roofs and clean white walls leading down to the rich, spicy heart of Tangier: the bazaars and little dirty alleyways filled with jewels and rugs and spices. The wail from a nearby mosque filled the air at regular intervals and the cry of ‘Allah!’ echoed in the city heat.
‘We’ll take it once again from the top,’ Chris said through Bethsheba’s headphones.
‘Can’t you drop me in for that line?’ she asked over the microphone, watching him through the smoked-glass studio windows.
‘I can if you prefer not to work hard,’ Chris said flatly, watching her from the control-room.
‘Oh, all right, then! From the top!’ And she sang the whole chorus verse again, her pride rising to the fore as always when Chris criticised her. It had always been this way between them. Their platonic relationship was like a family relationship that blended perfectly with business.
‘Perfect!’ Chris said when she had finished. ‘Outstanding vocal! Well done, Beth!’
Bethsheba studied him, wondering why she no longer felt a thrill of pleasure when he was pleased with her. She hung her headphones on the mike, walked across the gleaming parquet floor and slid open the glass doors to the control-room.
‘We’ll add all the choruses tomorrow for the sampler,’ Chris said.
‘You don’t need me for that, do you?’ she asked rhetorically.
Chris replied by pressing the sampler keyboard, making Bethsheba’s voice burst through the speakers, singing, ‘Sheikh! Sheikh! Sh-sh-sh-sh-sheikh!’
‘We’ll have to release a greatest-hits album for you soon,’ Prudence, her pneumatic peroxide-blonde backing singer, drawled from the sofa. ‘Listen to this,’ she said, flicking through last month’s Q magazine: ‘“Bethsheba’s fifteenth number-one single proves the old adage that you can never underestimate the stupidity of the masses!”‘
‘Bastards!’ said Chris.
‘I never read my reviews.’ Bethsheba sank on to a stool beside Chris at the control-desk and toyed idly with the sampler. ‘It’s too painful!’
‘They’re just jealous.’ Chris flicked off the power and dropped a kiss on her tawny-gold head. ‘It’s the name of the game. Success brings criticism—failure brings praise. If you only sold ten records a month they’d call you an artist and you’d be worshipped as a cult figure.’
‘Or you could always commit suicide on stage,’ Prudence drawled. ‘That’ll get you sensational reviews!’
Chris laughed. ‘Do you want to be famous or do you want to be famous!’
Bethsheba felt an overwhelming urge to escape again. It gnawed at her constantly these days. Her life had become a trap, and there was no way out of studio work, concerts, touring, television appearances, interviews, photograph sessions…
Suddenly the urge to escape was too strong. Her gold eyes flicked to the walls of the studio. Black walls…windowless walls…oppressive walls. No light, no view, no outside world. No sense of time; here, in this airless room with its forty-eight-track mixing-desk, it could be morning, afternoon or evening; winter, summer or spring; London, New York or Paris.
‘I’m going out,’ Bethsheba said suddenly, standing up.
Everyone turned to look at her. Mark, pro-gramming the drum computer, almost dropped his ice-cold beer.
‘Out?’ Chris frowned. ‘What do you mean—out?’
‘I need some air,’ she said rapidly. ‘I want to go out!’
‘But we’ve got to leave in an hour.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve got to be at the sheikh’s palace at Agadir at seven. It’ll take at least four hours to drive there.’
‘I won’t be long,’ she said quickly, and moved to the door.
‘Wait!’ Chris leapt in her way, at his most autocratic now, that RADA training leaping into evidence as his voice took on a distinctly Shakespearian ring. ‘You are not, I repeat, not going out into town. I know you love the place, Beth, but I can’t allow you to walk off into a bazaar and get lost.’
Frustration made her mouth tremble. ‘But, Chris, I haven’t been out of this studio since I arrived!’
‘Yes, you have—you were in the desert yesterday.’ He patted her head. ‘Now, be a good girl and go down to the pool. Prue will go with you, won’t you, Prue?’
‘I’m a great chaperon,’ drawled Prudence, getting to her feet.
Bethsheba