In the Wolf's Mouth (10 page)

Will’s opinion of the French was reinforced rather than challenged by each of the colonials he encountered in the town. With little to occupy them, they drank too much, fornicated in shuttered rooms and paid frequent visits to the office to denounce each other as traitors. They drank so much that occasionally one of them would fall from a bar stool and die on the floor. Draycott mentioned a couple of distressing recent incidences of this happening in a morning meeting and Samuels raised his hand to say, ‘It’s the anisette, sir. It’s not safe.’

Will and Samuels had gone to a bar together one evening. Will requested beers. While they were served, Samuels watched the preparation of a drink for their neighbour at the bar. A glass of clear spirit was handed to a customer who added a dash of water, turning the whole concoction cloudy white. The man noticed
Samuels looking at him and said, ‘Anisette. You like to try? Very strong. Is good.’ He took the cigarette holder from between his teeth and knocked back the drink, closing his eyes, leaning forwards, tucking in his chin and shuddering. He reopened watery eyes and laughed. ‘Yes, yes, two for you, for victory heroes.’

‘That’s kind,’ Samuels replied. ‘I’m not sure …’

‘But why not?’ Will said, always alert to detect any hint of unmanliness in Samuels, with the urge to punish any that appeared. Will said to the Frenchman, ‘That’s good of you. For victory heroes.’ To Samuels he went on, ‘What are you scared of?’

‘Nothing. I …’

‘Might as well try it. New experiences and all that. See the world. Worried it’ll be too strong for your delicate constitution?’

‘No. It’s not that. I …’

‘So there we are, then.’

The Frenchman was already conferring with the barman. It seemed that some discussion was necessary, some persuasion. Finally, the barman shrugged his shoulders and reached for an unmarked bottle.

‘He is not certain for you,’ the Frenchman laughed. ‘In Vichy time, it was not legal. Now it comes back to legal. But only the pharmacist makes it. Very very strong alcohol.’

Two small glasses were set before Will and Samuels. They added water and observed the colour change like schoolboys in a chemistry lesson.

‘Right,’ Will said. ‘On one.’

‘It smells like pure ethanol with a dash of aniseed twists.’

‘On one. One.’

The drink fell in clouds of flame into Will’s chest. ‘Haaa.’

‘There goes my tongue,’ Samuels croaked.

‘That’s awful.’

‘The second one is always better,’ the Frenchman said, laughing. ‘You will see.’ He ordered two more.

Later, the Frenchman was telling something deeply secret into Will’s ear, his breath hot, his lips wet and explosive. It was something about a particular woman’s vagina, someone’s wife. Will couldn’t really follow. Something to do with the vagina and a kind of fruit. Outside the bar, the Frenchman called over an Arab boy and reached into a pocket musical with loose change. ‘Look at this,’ he said to Will. When the boy was close, the man jerked up one leg and stamped as hard as he could onto the boy’s bare toes. The boy squeaked and fell over holding his foot.

‘Did you see what that fucker did?’ Samuels spiralled into Will’s vision. ‘I’m going to stamp on his fucking toes.’ Samuels staggered towards the man and tried to do the same but missed, banging his own foot on the pavement. ‘I missed.’

‘Why?’ the Frenchman protested, looking hurt. ‘It is normal. It is good for them.’

‘Try again,’ Will instructed. Samuels did but the man backed away as he approached and then turned and kept walking.

Will remembered hurtling home on his motorbike after that, zooming up the slope to the villa and arriving suddenly stock still beside the machine with the engine running. He made himself vomit into the
elegant floral lavatory of the villa and went to bed.

The following morning, when called into Draycott’s office, Will’s head felt both hollow and filled with pain. Light drilled into him. He squinted as he saluted and sat carefully on the chair Draycott indicated. Draycott had good news. As an Arabic speaker, Will’s new job was to compile a report on local attitudes to the Allies. Get out of town on a motorcycle and see what he could find out. Talk to the tribal bigwigs. Will watched with increasing interest as Draycott’s fingers swirled over a very sizeable area of the map.

‘All of that?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long?’

‘However long it takes, I suppose. Not too long. If we need you for anything we’ll let you know.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Will stood up and saluted again, suddenly cleared of pain by a rush of real happiness.

12

Frightened by the noise of Will’s motorcycle, a deer flew up the mountainside. He watched it go, the pulsing of its strong body, its delicate legs flung out, gathered under. Will shut off the engine and stood on the balls of his feet, the bike balanced beneath him. The winter’s day was as clear as spring water. In the forests of cork oak on either side, every tree was distinct, clarified. He could see the texture of the bark, the shivering leaves, insects twirling in shafts of sunlight. Above, a raptor glided along the valley’s channel of sky. Will tipped his head back and breathed in through his nostrils. Fresh cold air, wood-scented, tainted with the faint reek of petrol and hot metal. He was further inland than any of the Allies had yet reached, out on his own, the first. As he drove between fields, startled women had turned their backs on him, hiding their unveiled faces. The stillness in the forest was wonderful. It reminded him of being home in the wood by the river. Peace settled gently over his shoulders like a shawl. He allowed himself a moment more then kicked the motorcycle alive. There was somewhere he had to get to. The bike rattled and shook, firing up. The Norton was not a powerful machine but it was dogged up the inclines, chugging away. Will was getting to like its dumb, stubborn character as he would a horse.

Standing in the sleepy Esso station, petrol splashing into the hot empty tank of the Norton, it occurred to Will that the open lorry he’d just seen driving away with barrels roped to its back was probably delivering stolen fuel. Petrol was going missing in large quantities from the Allied shipments, soaking quickly out of sight. Of course that was what he’d just seen happen but he hadn’t realised it at the time because he lacked the nasty immediate suspiciousness of a policeman. He hadn’t thought of it until it was too late. He wouldn’t go after the truck now. He didn’t have time and, anyway, if it was delivering there’d be no evidence. He had better things to do, an appointment to keep.

In the next valley, Will terrified a man walking with a few goats by riding at him, even as he tried to get out of the way, stopping and shouting the tribal leader’s name into his face. Eventually the man understood. He took his stick from across his shoulder blades and pointed with it, adding words Will couldn’t understand. Will nodded and gave him a cigarette then drove off, his motorcycle sliding under him as it struggled for purchase in the dust.

Will found a huddle of tents surrounded by animals and children who ran up to him to examine the motorcycle and take hold of his hands and laugh and try to grab the pistol in his belt. Will repeated the elder’s name at them. A man approached, very stately in a long swathe of cloth, and bowed with his right palm over his heart. He beckoned Will to come in, delaying him at the low entrance to remove his boots. Inside, Will felt underfoot the luxury of thick carpets. Seated on cushions were several men smoking and
drinking tea. Will assumed the eldest of them to be the man he had come to see and he bowed deeply, his hand over his heart. The man smiled and gestured for him to sit. Will lowered himself into a cross-legged position on a cushion and looked around, carefully smiling at everyone in turn. The soft, rich carpets, the luminous low walls of the tent, the scent of tea and smoke, made a cosiness as piquant, Will thought, as that of an English cottage with a lively fire and rain beating on small panes of leaded glass. In his classical Arabic, he said that he thanked Allah for bringing him to this place and for the honour of being their guest. Some tension seemed to be induced by this greeting. Polite smiles stiffened and betrayed incomprehension. Of course, Will’s accent might not be too accurate. He was a reader of Arabic first and a speaker second. The faces arranged around him in the tent were similar enough for Will to think he saw signs of interbreeding. Recurring round the circle were the same sharp, deeply cleft chins and large watery green eyes. A young lad offered fresh glasses of tea on a brass plate. Will took one and held it by the burning rim. The head man immediately sucked at his glass and growled quietly. Behind him, in Will’s line of sight, an open panel in the tent showed the world outside with browsing goats shaking off flies, low sunlight clinging to the stones and plants and goat fur, and blue smoke rolling across from a fire out of sight.

The old man said something to Will. Will listened but could not understand. The man repeated himself. This time Will managed to hear the breaks between
the words and understood that what he’d been asked, a little surprisingly, was whether he was a German.

‘No. I’m British. The Germans are our enemy.’

‘Ah.’ The man reached into his glass with long fingers and pulled out a sprig of mint, chewed it. ‘Tell me, my brother, who will Allah give victory to in this war?’

‘To us.’

‘Ah. Are there many of you?’

‘Yes. Very many. Many thousands. We have many cannons, aeroplanes, bombs and ships. The enemy, the Germans, cannot resist.’

‘Ah. This is what I thought.’ The old man turned to his fellows. He said, ‘They will win.’

Through the bright gap in the tent wall, Will saw a goat suddenly start to piss, a thick jet of liquid, while it lifted its tail and a few turds extruded and dropped softly in a pile. Will had the urge to comment, to make a little joke perhaps, in the English way, but stopped himself. He felt the flat heat of embarrassment pressing under his skin at the thought of the misstep he might have just made. It would have been gauche and he arraigned himself for his superficial civilisation, degenerate, that was scandalised by natural processes. These tribal men in their tent, mixing regal postures, ceremony and unaffected natural squalor, were truly aristocratic, like figures from epic or Arabic hunting poetry. But he hadn’t said anything. All was well. The moment passed. He sipped his tea and imagined in his own eyes, narrowed at the steam, the same farseeing, blue-green clarity of the eyes around him. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘We will win.’

A thoughtful silence. Outside the tent, the dry ripping sounds of a wood fire, the voices of those tending to it.

‘I can offer you,’ the old man said, slapping his palm on the carpet beside him, ‘one hundred horsemen to help you win the war.’

‘Thank you. I will tell the general of your offer. He will be very pleased and honoured.’ Will had no idea whether the man could raise a hundred horsemen. It sounded suspiciously like a symbolic figure but it hardly mattered. Even if they existed, there was no need for them. No, what this exchange meant was that Will had created an alliance, a pact between warriors.

‘Good. Then that is settled. Come outside now.’

The men all stood up and Will followed them in his socks out into the light and air. He thought for a moment of retrieving his shoes but decided he couldn’t double back. He absorbed, with slight tremors, the discomfort of the ground beneath him. Several men lit new cigarettes and Will did also, offering his around. A couple of the men already smoking took one of Will’s for later. That smell: across the fire lay the scorched carcase of a goat, blackened, cracking, its posture rigid as though still resisting giving up its life. Evidently Will was being treated to full tribal hospitality.

More tea was brought by a woman whose similar eyes looked out, downcast, from the gap in her veil. One of the men patted Will on the shoulder and led him over to squat down by the fire and start picking shreds of meat to eat. The other men joined them,
sinking onto their heels and laughing. A hawk called overhead, keen, austere, poignant. Evening moisture had started giving body to the air. After this successful mission, Will would get back on his motorcycle and ride down from the mountains to the coast. At the villa, he would lie on his bed and read more classical philosophy. Here he was sitting among newly made allies, tribesmen. At home in Warwickshire was a famous river by which he’d grown up. He was the son of a war hero. Overhead an eagle (probably) was flying. He was eating roasted goat. He was where he’d always wanted to be, in the middle of his life’s adventure and standing at its prow, pushing forwards.

Before he left, they told Will that they wanted to present him with a gift. Two men left and Will filled the silence with expressions of his gratitude and how unnecessary a gift was for him, it was he who should have brought them a gift and so on. They returned accompanied by a young girl and Will, smiling, looked at them each in turn and waited for them to present the gift. ‘Please,’ one of the men said and gestured at the girl. ‘No,’ Will said. ‘No, you can’t mean …’ She was about fourteen years old, short with strong bare feet and thin gold rings in her ears. The expressions of the men seemed to confirm that they were serious, that she was a gift. Will didn’t know what to say. The living presence of the girl, staring down, waiting, her toes contracting to grip the carpet, disabled thought. Will didn’t want to offend the men and forfeit his achievement with them. Still not knowing what he would do, he thanked them with his right hand over his heart. He took the girl to his motorbike, followed
by the tribesmen, thanked them again and sat down, arranging her behind him with her arms around his waist. He had to pull her arms around him; they were knotted with fear or shame or some terrible emotion. He waved and they drove off down the valley, Will’s heart pounding, the girl’s breath on the back of his neck.

When they were out of sight, he slowed to a halt to consider the situation. Again he had to pull at her thin, dark-haired arms that were now bound suffocatingly tight around him. The ride seemed to have terrified her. She climbed off. He could see her short legs trembling. She was his possession. A girl. He felt the warmth of her body still on his back. He smelled the acid smell of her body. But there was nothing he could do or could consider doing. He couldn’t take her with him. He couldn’t have her and then send her back. He wouldn’t do anything, he corrected himself. He was a gentleman and so forth. He took hold of her, however, and hugged her, his nose in one small ear, holding her tightly enough that he could feel her small breasts against him, the strong length of her body pressed against his. He felt it and let go, pushing her away again. He pointed at the motorcycle and said, ‘It won’t ride.’ She stared. He made large x-shaped gestures to tell her that it wasn’t working. He said again, ‘It will not go. It will not go.’ She gave no sign of understanding. ‘Home,’ he said. ‘You go home.’ Still she didn’t move. He pointed back up the hill and shooed her away. Finally he took hold of her shoulders, turned her around, put
one hand on her left buttock and pushed. She understood. She ran and didn’t look back.