Court of the Veils: And the Desert is like a Woman, of course!

Back to our heroine ‘Roslyn’ and her encounters with the Gerard family. There is one more character in this book who I failed to mention on Friday: The Other Woman.

Romances from this era often have an Other Woman character who serves as a foil to the heroine.  Where the heroine is innocent and unworldly, the Other Woman is glamorous and very, very worldly. Court of the Veils’ Other Woman is Isabela Fernao, a Portuguese opera singer who is working on an opera with Tristan. She is, of course, very beautiful, very seductive and very self-centred. Is Isabela interested in Tristan or in Duane or neither or both?

This novel has many, many philosophical discussions of love in it. Does love exist? What is it exactly? How should love be? It’s funny because even though it’s a constant topic of conversation, it doesn’t really seem to be a theme in terms of the plot (beyond, of course, the fact that this is a romance). We don’t have a couple of different couples engaged in different kinds of love. Or even one character who moves through different expectations of love, at least not from my reading. So why so much talk of it?

Anyway, the first of these discussions is between Tristan and his grandmother.  All this talk of love is very operatic, and this conversation starts with opera:

“‘To love is to be burned in the flames of passion and disillusion, grand’mere.’ He seated himself at the piano and shot her a smile.

‘Your cynicism almost matches Duane’s,’ Nanette said tartly. ‘Love can be a most enjoyable emotion, but you young people of today seem to regard it as a battle.  I suppose we can all expect the finale of your opera to be a tragic one, cheri, though in all likelihood Nakhla was merely fascinated by her soldier admirer, and in love with her master.  A woman cannot help loving her master.’

‘You are an incurable romantic, grand’mere,’ Tristan chuckled, and played a snatch from The Merry Widow.” (23)

No comment.

Court of the Veils has some quite enjoyable descriptions of the décor and setting, which double as ‘eastern’isms. Roslyn’s room has a ‘strange Eastern charm’: it’s “white-walled, and beamed with cedar.  The bed was low, with tall posts holding back yards of misty net as a safeguard against the intrusion of insects.  Squares of oriental carpet covered the floor, and the windows were narrow harem-lattices covered with mesharabeyeh [which are, according to Wikipedia, those lattice-y windows, so Winspear has basically repeated the terms here to offer both the explanation and the ‘authentic’ term]. There were deep window recesses beneath the lattices filled with cushions, a cupboard for her clothes, and a carved chest with mirror-stand upon it” (24).

I would like this room.  Of course, if I had it, it would also be covered in piles of paper and books. But still very picturesque, I’m sure!

In sheikh romances, though, pretty rooms are seldom just pretty rooms.  Often they’re reminders – of luxury, decadence or the Oriental past which is still present. Thus, Nanette tells Roslyn that her room was probably ‘long ago’ the room of ‘a favourite of the harem’: “in the days of female seclusion in the East, when the master of the house handed to his fancy of the moment a coloured veil to indicate that she was to be brought to him that night.” Roslyn replies, “what a catastrophe if the master wasn’t attractive,” but Nanette thinks otherwise: “The Aga was said to be a fiercely handsome man, so there is every likelihood that the inmates of his harem fought to win a veil from him.  These veils were added to their everyday wear.  A particular favourite would probably be clad in little else.” (25)

So many things to say about this – ‘the East’ exists here in a kind of limbo fairy-tale time of ‘long ago’ where there is a place called ‘the East’ where customs were all the same. Yet there’s a specific handsome Aga. And the veils! I do not know if this is actually a thing, but it really sounds like an Orientalist fantasy. Pics or it didn’t happen.

Well, Roslyn spends most of her time at Dar al Amra hanging out with Nanette and Tristan and occasionally crossing swords with Duane.  Duane ticks another of the boxes on my imaginary Bingo card by comparing the desert to both a woman and a horse:

“After four years I’m not certain whether I love its moods, or hate them. I sometimes think I like the desert best when it is wild, untamed, like a horse to be broken, or a woman.” (35)

Duane has some issues. He’s very cynical about love. He compares love to a peach – with a stone at its heart. Frankly I think he is missing the point of peaches, which are delicious! He is also suspicious of Roslyn. But he’s a very good plantation manager, apparently.

And he saves Roslyn from being attacked by a mountain cat while she’s wandering among the date palms. So there’s that.  He takes her to his house (he lives separately from Nanette) for a drink to recover her composure. And there he makes dragonflies – dragonflies! - sound wild and untamed (which I guess technically they are, but still?): “The male dragonfly is utterly ruthless towards its mate, you know” (55).

Violet Winspear cannot let an animal just be an animal (or insect, as the case may be). It must be a ruthless, stalking, masculine kind of animal, or an animal to be tamed.

On the other hand, Roslyn gets along with Tristan very well. In these types of novels, I’m never really sure why it is that the heroine doesn’t end up with the person she gets along with, who’s actually nice to her. I suppose it may be that that person also does have some flaws – often they’re too easy-going, or would like to live in a busy city, or are actually a bit of a playboy. I mean, sure, you love who you love, but if it’s as easy to love a rich man as a poor one, why shouldn’t it be as easy to love a hot guy who’s nice to you as a hot guy you argue with all the time? Maybe that’s more revealing of my own personal relationship interaction preferences than anything else, though...

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that Tristan and Roslyn kiss, after yet another philosophical discussion of love. They’re interrupted by Isabela, though, who is suitably tart about the whole thing. Roslyn still thinks she was engaged to Armand, so she’s feeling a little iffy about having kissed Tristan (his brother!). But we don’t mind, because we know she’s not really Roslyn…

Wow. I’m finding it really hard to do a whole novel in under three posts. I can’t believe I initially thought I would do one post per novel! I’m guessing I may get down to one or two posts per novel as I get through more of them, but for now, I’m afraid Court of the Veils is going to be going onto a third post…

Up next: All of the younger generation are about to take off for a weekend to the city of El Kadia… But before that – movie Wednesdays! I’ve been finding some more great stuff in the archives…