Immortal Flower: Surprise fake engagement!

When we last saw our heroes, Steven and Renata had just inserted themselves awkwardly into Ramon and Mandy’s surprise proposal dinner. So no proposal for Ramon…

I’m beginning to think that Renata in fact doesn’t fit the typical profile of the ‘Other Woman’ that we saw in Winspear’s novel. She does serve as a foil for the heroine in terms of Mandy’s own insecurities about herself – Renata is glamorous whereas Mandy isn’t, intellectual whereas Mandy gave up on university. And Mandy does think that Steven is in love with Renata pretty much throughout the entire novel. But…she’s actually kind of nice? She’s just a fabulous woman who is always well-dressed, likes to throw fancy parties, hobnobs with directors and sheiks, and is just good friends with Steven. Just an all-round nice woman. Props to Elizabeth Hoy for this characterization and not making the only women in the book enemies!

After the aborted proposal, Mandy learns from Steven and Renata that Ramon is actually already in the process of becoming betrothed to the beautiful daughter of a neighbouring oil sheikh. So it seems like his interest in Mandy could cause a lot of trouble, especially with his father. Mandy begins to wonder how she got into this and why Ramon is taking it all so seriously! “Hadn’t he ever before had a seaside holiday friendship?” (112).

She breathes a sigh of relief, however, when she doesn’t hear from Ramon for a while. She returns to correcting the Professor’s page proofs for his manuscript. The Professor goes off on another expedition to some ruins, but Steven stays behind because he’s worried about Mandy being alone in the villa with all the potential drama with Ramon and his father swirling about. Mandy is angry because she feels like Steven has been spying on her and also desolate because she’s beginning to realize that she cares for Steven and she thinks he’s uninterested in her romantically.

And frankly, I’m not surprised. Why doesn’t he just say, ‘I’m interested’ instead of doing things like sighing loudly at her behaviour and saying that sometimes “I’m tempted to wish you were young enough to be taken across my knee and spanked” (117)? And not in a sexy way?

But their time together alone at the villa is actually quite pleasant. They swim together, recite Yeats at each other and visit some beautiful mosaics. This peacefulness is interrupted by the arrival of two rather intimidating men come to take Mandy to see the sheikh. Luckily Steven arrives just as they are about to bundle her into the car and insists on going along with her. 

The men take them to Sheikh Hassan’s apartment in Tunis, which is furnished ‘in ultra-modern style’, including “strangely twisted steel wire ‘mobiles’ holding light bulbs shaded with large tropical sea shells, [and] a huge incomprehensible piece of scultputre in honey-coloured wood” (138). It’s an interesting choice, given that most houses or apartments in sheik romances are usually described in the same ‘Oriental’ fashion. Although I’m not completely convinced by the romance (more on that later), I think Elizabeth Hoy is actually pretty interesting writer.

Well, as everyone expected, the Sheikh plays the heavy and warns Mandy off of his son. In fact, even though she declares herself uninterested in Ramon romantically, the Sheik tries to buy her off, offering to give her money if she flies back to England immediately and signs a paper ‘relinquishing all claim’ to Ramon. Wow.

Mandy is offended. And then Steven announces to Sheikh Hassan that he has just dealt both of them a ‘mortal insult’ because… they are actually engaged!

Surprise! 

Well, it’s a surprise to Mandy too, but she plays along. And Steven somehow convinces her that this fake engagement makes total sense and that it’s something that he’s really only doing to help her out. If they’re not engaged, apparently Ramon will never believe she doesn’t want to marry him. Apparently he is simply a love-sick mad young man who will never listen to reason. Really. They even put an announcement in the paper and lie to the Professor. 

Renata, ever reasonable, frames Ramon’s infatuation in terms of his own struggle to gain independence from his father and the conflict between Ramon’s new ideas and his father’s old-fashioned ideas. And then she throws Steven and Mandy an engagement party, just to really make their story seem real!

Two unexpected guests appear at this party and I bet you can all guess who they are:

The marabout! He tells Mandy that “the snares still lie about your feet, but if you keep close to Steven all will be well. Great joy awaits you” and then disappears (178). Presumably to go find the canapés. 

Ramon! He’s haggard and upset. Stereotypically, Steven suggests that “passions can be fierce in these latitudes” (180). Ramon tries to whisk Mandy away to Paris, refusing to believe that she’s become engaged to Steven of her own free will, until she blurts out her actual feelings for Steven: “It’s Steven I love […] it will always be Steven” (184). Chagrined, Ramon leaves immediately to go make peace with his father. And that’s that.

Mandy feels sorry for Ramon and awkward about her pretend engagement with Steven, especially now that she’s blurted out her love for him. Steven asks her if those things she said were really only ‘amateur dramatics’ and she reveals that she does indeed love him. Only then does he say that he loves her too. In fact, he never actually says it outright, only referring to “the way I feel about you” and “you got me right from the day you went for me saying you have red hair”. And then that’s it. They’re engaged for real. The End. 

Well, what do you think? I'm not sure about the pacing of this book and the romance is resolved much too quickly for my liking, but it was an enjoyable read. We should be reaching the era of books with actual Arab heroes soon, though... Maybe the next one?

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?

Immortal Flower: Carthage edition

The next book on my pile of romances is Elizabeth Hoy’s Immortal Flower.  It’s a Harlequin Romance first published in 1972.

Everyone look in a different direction

According to http://www.squidoo.com/Elizabeth_Hoy_vintage_Harlequins, Elizabeth Hoy wrote a few books that could be considered Sheik romances: including To Win a Paradise and Flowering Desert. I don't think I have any of her other books, but I could be wrong! She also wrote a number of books set in Italy and Ireland.

Immortal Flower is interesting because it’s in-between a sheik romance with a sheik as a hero and a desert romance where the desert is simply a romantic setting for a romance between two ‘westerners’. As you can see, there are two men on the cover – one Eastern, one Western.  Which one will the girl in green choose?!

It’s quite obvious from the set-up that she’ll choose the Western guy. On the front cover, he's the one looking at her. And on the back cover, he’s the one she finds the most annoying, so we definitely know that he’s the one she’ll end up with. But let’s go along with the ride for fun…

Our heroine Mandy works as a secretary for a professor who is doing research in Tunisia. The professor (Noel Croftwell, a very British Professor name) is a historian and archaeologist who is working on a book on Roman remains in Tunisia, specifically the ancient city of Carthage (of Dido and Aeneas fame). Mandy’s father, John Lavalle is an “authority on Oriental religions, author of the Islamic Encyclopaedia” (11).

Mandy and the Professor have been working in Tunisia for a few short weeks when his nephew Steven Heron arrives for a visit. Steven is a geologist surveying “somewhere in the Sahara” (9). When he arrives, exhausted from his trip, he’s very brusque and rude to Mandy, describing her to his uncle as a “red-headed dolly” (11).  Not a very good first impression.

The three main men in Mandy’s life, then, all study some aspect of ‘the East’ for a living: as a historian, religious scholar and geologist. Mandy, on the other hand, left University to take a secretarial course, as she felt her Arts degree was too un-directed. As she thinks of it, “if secretarial work hadn’t quite the same snob value as being able to call yourself a B.A. it at least promised movement and variety” (21). Mandy’s feelings about being an 'ordinary' woman surrounded by intellectuals are a recurring theme throughout the novel.

There is also a fourth man, Ramon al Hassan, who Mandy met at the beach and has been swimming with regularly, despite not knowing much about him. He is a “golden boy, with a body like a slim bronze god” (17). And very charming, unlike Steven.

Mandy, the Professor and Steven go out for dinner at the local fancy hotel and run into Renata Castella – our Other Woman. Hopefully she won’t turn out as terrible as the opera singer from Court of the Veils. Renata is a half-Italian, half-American “dilettante writer who lives in a magnificent old Moorish palace on the outskirts of the Tunis Media” (23). She’s a beautiful, exotically dressed widow; her husband was a race-car driver who died in a crash. And in her party is Mandy’s beach friend, Ramon, who Steven reveals is “the eldest son of an oil sheik who lives in a fabulous palace on the edge of the Sahara” (24).  Apparently, Ramon’s father is not the best of friends with Steven, as he suspects Steven of being a prospector or a spy for English oil interests. Not entirely unreasonably, I would think…

And thus we have our cast of characters all assembled. Mandy is already a little disillusioned with Ramon’s attitudes, for example, his fondness for veiling: “all this Oriental pomposity and male dominance…it struck her as prehistoric! And yet Ramon had been around, living in Cannes and in Paris.  But whether he realized it or not, his roots, it seemed, were in that sheikdom on the edge of the desert” (33).  On the other hand, she’s increasingly jealous of the attention that Steven is paying to the glamorous Renata and annoyed by Steven’s warnings against getting involved with Ramon. Steven too has some out-dated ideas: “the he-man type, like Steven went  about imagining girls were poor helpless creatures who couldn’t take care of themselves and had to be protected; a middle-aged viewpoint totally out of date” (44).

Renata, hearing of the Professor’s interests in Roman ruins, invites them all to come along with her to a party that Ramon’s father, Sheik al Hassan is throwing: “a period of festivity – a gathering of the clans, including Army manoeuvres, riding contest, and jousting, reminiscent of the old days of medieval English chivalry” (49). Another quote to add to Amy Burge's work on the use of 'medieval' in sheik romances. But a marabout “in floating white robes” with “strange depths in his dark eyes” warns Mandy that there is “a difficult and dangerous path ahead of [her]” and advises her to “walk warily” (53). So seldom do Christian mystics advise heroines to beware. It's always Gypsies and marabouts...

So I’m guessing there will be adventure at this party! I’m looking forward to it…