Immortal Flower: Like a Medieval Tapestry

I’m back!  It was a lovely vacation – lots of swimming, sitting and reading. But now I’m back and ready to post what I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for…the continuing story of Immortal Flower!

When we last left Mandy (a secretary working for a Professor in Tunisia), she, the Professor, his nephew Steven Heron and the glamorous Renata were all about to head off to Sheik al Hassan’s place for an exciting ‘medieval’ festival.  Would Mandy see the Sheik’s son, handsome Ramon, in a new light at that festival?

Steven Heron certainly thinks so and he tells Mandy this repeatedly. Initially, he’s almost as annoying as the marabout, in terms of vague warnings about possible disaster for Mandy.

Mandy wonders about Steven’s obvious protectiveness.  This is a popular romance set-up in the 60s and 70s – man doesn’t seem to the heroine to think much of her, but he’s always getting involved in her business, fixing things for her and meddling in her romantic affairs. In this case, there’s one possible explanation for the romantic affair meddling: racism. But Mandy thinks that “it was too simple to think it might be racialism.  Steven with his numerous Arab contacts at the University was far too intelligent and cosmopolitan for any kind of racial prejudice” (62). So it must be something else…

She’s equally puzzled when Steven buys her a “multi-stranded necklace of copper medallions and beads, showy but artistic because of the native handcraft which had been put into it” (65) in the souks of Tunis. Why would he do such a nice thing?

Because he likes you, of course! He’s just stuck in his role and thus is unable to tell you this! Unlike in The Sheik, however, we only get Mandy's narrative point-of-view and thus must wait for Steven to actually say things to know what he's thinking...

But on to the great adventure – their trip to El Habes and the Sheik’s palace. This trip is actually much less dramatic than I was expecting it to be. I was expecting some sort of kidnapping or maybe a trip into the desert or something, but mostly they just stay in the Sheik’s beautiful palace and see some horsemanship.

Mandy, Renata and the Professor fly to El Habes in the Sheik’s own private airplane, while Steven travels there in his old jalopy, since he is reluctant to trespass on the Sheik’s hospitality. The palace is beautiful, but it is also marked by the presence of the Sheik’s armed soldiers who make Mandy nervous.  Being a Sheik in this novel is a much different matter than in E. M. Hull’s The Sheik. Sheik el Hassan has an army and a large palace. He is not the nomadic desert figure of the Rudolph Valentino sheik. 

As yet, the sheik romances I've read for this blog haven’t had any significant speaking parts for Arab women and Immortal Flower doesn’t seem to look like it will provide one.  Sheik el Hassan has a young second wife, but, unlike the Sheik, she doesn’t have any lines. Instead she is described as having a “small perfect face” with “kohl-darkened eyes” (73) and chatting with Renata in French.

What the novel does have is a visible presence of Islam, something which is often absent from many later sheik romances. It’s interesting that while Islam is both named in the book and has a presence in characters' actions, while the ‘Western’ characters are almost certainly Christian they never go to church or do anything visibly 'Christian'. When they were visiting Tunis, Mandy and Steven had seen a group of men at prayer. Now, at the palace, Renata explains to Mandy (or rather, the reader) that “Friday, as you know, is the Moslem holy day of the week” (73).

On Friday, after prayer, there is the procession which begins the festival, led by the Sheik in “robes of purple and gold, riding his white horse like a king” (75).  Also in the procession is Ramon, who looks, to Mandy “so different from her beach and dance-floor companion” (76).  It seems as if he “might have been a figure in a medieval tapestry” (78).  Hoy really does tie everything back to the ‘medieval’. 

Part of the festival is a mock battle and set of displays on horseback. This is about as dramatic as the visit gets, I’m afraid, but it does get Mandy’s heart pounding when Ramon, the leader of one of the group of riders, “his sword held aloft, uttered a bloodcurdling yell, swung his mount aside and missing the dais by inches guided the galloping chargers harmless away back on to the open plain” (83). She’s also alarmed when Ramon strikes a man in the course of the mock battle.

And when Ramon for the first time notices that Mandy has been there to see the display, he is very dismayed. I’m not clear why either of them is really so upset by this whole interaction. If fact, Mandy herself doesn’t seem so clear. She thinks to herself that “what she had seen was no worse than many contests of strength of skill put on in England – boxing matches, for instance, or Rugby football” (85). Why is it that she's so upset, do you think? Yet she is upset, and Steven tells her that he’s glad she’s seen Ramon in this context. He thinks that this will stop her from “making a fool of herself over him” (87).

Of course, they fight about this.

And that’s it. That’s the trip. Oh, except for the fact that Renata wears a fabulous outfit modeled on an Arabian dress (a “dress that was all dark violet draperies trimmed with bands of gleaming gold”) to the final banquet. And Ramon tells Mandy that he’ll call her soon.

When they return, Mandy goes back to her usual life, transcribing papers for the Professor and swimming at the beach by herself or with Steven. It seems like the episode has put her off Ramon a bit, if she ever was seriously interested in him romantically. When Ramon finally calls, though, they go out to dinner at the big hotel. Mandy dresses up and gets her hair put in ringlets and Ramon gazes at her soulfully. On their way up to the hotel they meet the marabout and chat a little. 

And then…almost out of the blue…Ramon proposes! Or rather, gets halfway through a proposal before Steven and Renata appear literally out of the bushes (or rather the oleander flowers) and crash their party.

His interrupted proposal is a rather dramatic one:

“With your hands in mine I have the courage to say all that I long to say. You are so tender, so gentle. The desert with its hardened warriors, its cruelties, its loneliness is not your world. That it is mine is…accidental, a burden I am supposed to take up and bear. But I need not take it up. I could go away, with you to help me” (104). 

“Mandy! Mandy!” he implores and then Steven and Renata appear, obviously having been informed by the marabout that this meeting was underway and deciding for their own reasons to mount a ‘rescue operation’. 

Thus, Mandy does not have to decline Ramon’s proposal and avoids an awkward conversation. But then again she also doesn’t decline Ramon’s proposal. It’s clear that that may cause trouble in the future.

And that’s where we will leave things for now. Why are Renata and Steven so determined to protect Mandy from Ramon? And what is the closeness between them? Are they romantically involved, as Mandy assumes? And how exactly is horseback riding in a djellabah medieval?