"O.K.," he said decisively. "Let's go then." He came to his feet and reached a hand down for her.
"Heavens to Betsy," she said, "don't do that."
"What?"
"Help a woman in public. You'll look suspicious." She came to her own feet, without aid.
Damn, he thought. She was right. The last thing he wanted was to draw attention to a man who acted peculiarly.
They made their way out of the food market and into the souk proper, Homer walking three or four paces ahead of her, Isobel demurely behind, her eyes on the ground. They passed the native stands and tiny shops, and the even smaller venders and hucksters with their products of the mass production industries of East and West, side by side with the native handicrafts ranging from carved wooden statues, jewelry, gris gris charms and kambu fetishes, to ceramics whose designs went back to an age before the Portuguese first cruised off this coast. And everywhere was color; there are no people on earth more color conscious than the Senegalese.
Isobel guided him, her voice quiet and still maintaining its uncharacteristic demure quality.
He would never have recognized Isobel, Homer Crawford told himself. Isobel Cunningham, late of Columbia University where she'd taken her Master's in anthropology. Isobel Cunningham, whom he had told on their first meeting that she looked like the former singing star, Lena Horne. Isobel Cunningham, slight of build, pixie of face, crisply modern American with her tongue and wit. Was he in love with her? He didn't know. El Hassan had no time, at present, for those things love implied.
She said, "Here," and led the way down a brick paved passage to a small house, almost a hut, that lay beyond.