Moroccan Traffic (12 page)

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Taking over the company debt and Mo Morgan. Assuming, of course, that Mo Morgan still intends to keep his money and stay.’

‘He’s uneasy,’ my mother said. ‘Does he like pressed ham all that much? Or coffee? He wants to know what’s in the cooking pot.’

‘They don’t see eye to eye, he and Sir Robert. He doesn’t like Seb or Johnson. He could make his whole team unhappy,’ I said. ‘I have to help Colonel Sullivan with this trip to Essaouira tomorrow. Why don’t you call on Mo Morgan and mother him? I have his address.’

She took it thoughtfully in her paws. She said, ‘It’s illegal, boarding this painter’s yacht? Remember all that pain in the Customs shed, Wendy? You let this man Seb go to prison, not you.’

‘I’m just there as his cover,’ I said. ‘Remember, someone planted that bomb to harm Kingsley’s. They can’t complain if we look through their yachts.’

‘They can shoot bullets,’ my mother said. ‘I think I should go with you. If they want a good target, they’ll have it.’

She was right about that. I said, ‘Anyway, you’d never fit into the Sunbeam.’

I waved to her as we drove off. ‘A latch-key child at my age!’ she cried after me.

‘I thought she was supposed to be sick?’ yelled Colonel Sullivan above the uproar of the 1926 engine. We had overtaken, to their vociferous delight, some Moroccan joggers on the western suburbs of Marrakesh. It wasn’t yet eight, and hordes of bicycles packed the road coming inwards, while patient lines of caps and veils waited outside lanes of unopened block factories, and groups of men by the roadside drummed up tea on cloth covered boxes. Everyone looked at us. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘they let you come, and I wouldn’t have betted on it.’

‘I can get round her,’ I said, vibrating. I saw him, Full of Eastern Promise, through my mother’s glistening eyes. He had on an Afghan silver belt, and his tunic and slimline trousers were by Valentino, while his camera had a handmade leather satchel. It wasn’t a league I could enter, but I had done my best with a midriff top and thonged sandals, and my skirt was half the length of my office one. Or a quarter, maybe. The rest of the impact depended on pinned-up hair and a headscarf, and a pair of very French dark glasses. I’d paid my fees for the Image Enhancement Workshop.

Colonel Sullivan said, ‘Anyone else, m’darlin’, would believe every word that you spoke. As I recollect, it wasn’t your mother who wanted to clamp you. Fancy him, do you?’

I said, ‘I really don’t know what you mean.’

‘No more you don’t,’ he said, grinning, and changed gear with his powerful wrists. ‘But I don’t blame him: not with a female like Charity.’

I said, ‘You sound like Ellwood Pymm. In a rut.’

He grinned again. His hair undulated in the warm breeze as we came to open country. On either side of us were almond blossom and olive trees and vines covered with matting. Lorries passed, packed with bamboo bundles, or boulders, or women, their working-veils flapping together. Sullivan said, ‘If smart-ass Ellwood Pymm gets one heady whiff of what’s happening to Kingsley’s, Sir Robert can hang up his Guccis. You know Pymm’s a tipster? He’s sniffed news. He wasn’t on the original Canadian rota.’

I didn’t need the warning, if it was a warning. ‘You were lunching with him,’ I said.

‘And you were lunching with Johnson,’ said the Colonel. ‘Field-trials: that’s the name of the game.’

‘You crossed to Sir Robert’s side after the lunch,’ I remarked.

‘Nothing personally against the worthy JJ,’ said Colonel Sullivan. ‘A very cool groover. But without the liquidity muscle, you might say, of Kingsley Conglomerates.’

‘You didn’t know Johnson was involved with MCG?’ I asked. We passed flocks of goats and some kids, and chunks of thick dirty sheep and peculiar Biblical landscapes where cattle, camels and donkeys grazed together. On either side, the country was flat, with small jagged hills to the right. In mid-air, to the left, was a dazzling cloudscape.

‘Not then, I didn’t,’ said Sullivan. ‘He’d covered his tracks like a vice-king. It made us look to see if he was a vice-king. And bingo, me darlin’, a harem.’

Mentally I took back from Johnson the benefit of the doubt I had given him. I said, ‘A harem?’ politely.

‘Well, he’s a sailor, isn’t he?’ said Colonel Sullivan. It was a fair understatement. Johnson had been professional RN in the same way that Sullivan had been professional Army. I supposed that, with men, it was like belonging to different clubs. Sullivan said, ‘Anyway, isn’t that why you’re here? Sniff out the orgies. Help Sir Robert stitch his painter up good and proper.’

The cloud-light was irritating, like the conversation. ‘Stitch him up?’ I repeated.

‘Come on!’ said Seb Sullivan. ‘What d’you think he has a yacht for? What do you think the MCG shareholders will make of that, and their redheaded nympho MD?’

He was late with the idea. It was what I had suggested myself, when I thought Dolly was Johnson’s date in Morocco. Then, we were only twisting his arm over a portrait. ‘And Roland Reed?’ I said.

‘We’re working on him,’ said Colonel Sullivan ghoulishly. ‘Single, well-heeled, an accountant with an interest in
films
? If he isn’t AC or DC, we’ll surely catch him on insider trading.’

He sounded happy and confident. He hadn’t a thought in his head but his job. I looked away. The haze of cloud in the sky had grown brighter. It spread into irrational patterns, and glistened. I realised that the icy glow wasn’t cloud, it was mountains. Suspended over the haze, a frightening range of fierce snowy mountains rolled towards the horizon. I said, ‘What’s that?’

Sullivan glanced to his left. ‘The High Atlas,’ he said. ‘The way to Taroudant and the end of the rainbow. The day after tomorrow, me darlin’, and the Sunbeam’ll climb like an angel. You should have seen her cleaning the hills after Azrou. But today, it’s safe, sunny Essaouira.’

I said, ‘There’s a mountain called Toubkal.’

‘A massif. You’re looking at it,’ Sullivan said. ‘Why? He glanced at me and back to the road. ‘Ah. Mo Morgan, the microchip genius. Well, well, well. You keep going, Wendy, and Kingsley’s will give you a bonus. Pile it high and sell it cheap, sweetheart.’

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t make him out, and the sight of the mountains had shaken me. I let him talk on, about the Sunbeam and all the other cars he had owned. His first vintage had been made in Berlin. After a while, he behaved more as I expected him to, and got his hand into my lap a couple of times; a thing I have been taught how to deal with. While he got over that, I was able to look about and size up Morocco.

There was no sand. There were no sheiks. There was nothing you could think of as a kasbah. The land was dirt brown or weedy or planted. Camels pulled wooden ploughs. Market-tents without buyers sat like capital letters in the dirt. There were windmills, and wells, and isolated red compounds full of flat roofs and narrow clay passages. There were peeling roadside arcades of village shops selling bicycle parts. There were children trudging to school, cases strapped to their backs. There were prickly pears and argan trees, with goats like cats crouched on their branches. And as we came down to the sea, there were cedars and orange orchards coming to blossom, and fields of daisies and pink and bright scarlet flowers, and the stifling smell of mimosa, and a carpet of marigolds, small and wild and raw as Rita Geddes.

We ran from the country into the bright esplanade of Essaouira, with the blue sea rolling in, and boys in T-shirts with a ball on the sand, pretending they were the Lions of Cameroon. It wasn’t quite the Algarve, but it wasn’t The Desert Song either. Sullivan braked to a halt, and I saw ahead of me the walls of a harbour, with masts and a boat on the stocks showing above it. On the landward side were the high pink walls of the older town. Parked between us and the town was a bus, from which a mixed party with cameras was descending.

Among them was Ellwood Pymm. He saw us at once, and came over. ‘Why, will you look who is here!’

The hounds of the Canadian press and radio wandered after him, their faces vacant with cultural overload. They remembered the vintage car rally and Seb. They patted the Sunbeam and then, ignoring the cries of their conductor, made stolidly for the nearest source of relief and refreshment, taking us with them. Ellwood said, ‘Seb, Wendy sweet baby! Why don’t you come with us on the tour? The port, the fish market, the silversmiths, the spice stalls, the Portuguese artillery platforms, the cedarwood furniture!’ Below the crewcut, his scalp was mahogany: his lump-like features were mottled. In one pocket of his shorts, I could see his Arab phrasebook.

Colonel Sullivan said, ‘Now who could resist that, my son, except a man who’s just driven all the way from Marrakesh and is medium knackered? Go on into the town. Wendy and I will relax, and have a wander, and join you.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said Ellwood Pymm. ‘I thought you’d want to come with us to the harbour. You know, your pal Johnson has a yacht here? Not interested, are we?’

There was malice you couldn’t miss in the question. Seb Sullivan said, ‘Curious as the next man, but won’t it be under covers? He can’t be using it much.’

‘You never know,’ said Ellwood Pymm. ‘When Cupid calls, it’s nice to have somewhere to go. We could leave our visiting cards, so he’ll know that we care.’

I watched the Colonel changing his mind. If Johnson’s yacht was packed full of call-girls, it would do no harm to have a mass audience. On the other hand, if we let Ellwood’s lot go on their own, they might scare off the prey and we’d lose it. Or her. Or them. When the Canadians moved, we walked to the harbour beside them.

It was a place Mo Morgan would have wanted to photograph. Guarded by grey, turreted forts it was crammed full of fishing boats, their names painted in Roman and Arabic. Because of the heat, everything had gone into pause. On the quay, men in seaboots and caps sat sewing or pillowed on pink and blue nets, with necklaces of floats lying around them. The unfinished boats on the stocks stood against the noon sun, their open Japanese ribs painted orange. On the water, a skiff laden with men left the ship and poled its way absently somewhere. Beyond the boats I could glimpse a few pleasure craft, jogging a bit as the waves and wind slapped them. Above them soared the two slender masts of a yacht. We walked along, and from a discreet distance, studied her.

‘Ketch,’ said Ellwood Pymm. ‘Gaff-rigged, with a bloody big engine. Looked him up. There you are, boys and girls. That’s the
Dolly.’

I have seen yachts on TV. This one was painted gloss white. In the sun, she glistened like Toubkal. Contrary to expectations, she was not wrapped in canvas. Her cockpit with its smart awning and cushions lay invitingly open. Her decks shone unimpeded; her brass and paint glittered. On Johnson’s coach roof, pin-clear to Mr. Pymm’s long-focus lens, a sleeping blonde lay exposing her spine to the sun, a half-full glass and a book at her side. She wore the lower half of an expensive bikini. The click of five cameras disturbed her. She turned. Eight more clicks ensued. She was elegant, tanned, and about thirty-five. She smiled without a hint of dismay and, leaning back on her elbows, called something in English. ‘Jay, you’re an absolute animal. Did you pay them to come?’

‘In kind,’ said an unemphatic bass voice I remembered. We turned. Impossibly, behind us on the wharf stood Johnson Johnson in an old shirt and creased bags, a dripping ice cream in each non-painting hand. Behind the bifocals was nothing but resignation. He said, ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve only got two. We weren’t expecting a gang. Seb, it’s just up the road. Will you bring some?’

‘Ice cream?’ said my rallying Colonel. It was the first time I’d seen him disconcerted. We had left Johnson in Marrakesh painting the royals. This very dawn, we had left him. Yet Johnson had got here before us.

‘Unless you’d like anything else,’ Johnson said, walking past us to the foot of the gangplank. ‘You
are
all coming aboard? Or don’t you want to?’

He stood and gazed amicably at us all. He looked the way he had in the café: his glasses impervious, his black brows meeting his hair. He had seen me there; now I was sure of it. Ellwood said, ‘If you and the lady don’t mind.’

‘Muriel?’ Johnson said. ‘Do you mind?’

She got up and took the ice cream, her breasts jiggling. She stood and surveyed herself, frowning. She said, ‘I don’t think so. Should I?’

‘Not on my account,’ said Seb Sullivan lasciviously.

She smiled. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Then I don’t suppose Daniel will, either. Do come aboard. Lenny! Oliver!’

I suppose we had all assumed they were alone. They weren’t. Lenny appeared, an elderly man in a jacket and tie, and was introduced as
Dolly’s
skipper and steward. Oliver, a charming thug with an upper-class accent, handed fourteen of us on board and helped serve us ice cream, when Colonel Sullivan brought it. Johnson, the perfect host, took time to toss a scarf at his inamorata. ‘Muriel! You’re giving everyone orgasms.’

Without haste, she wrapped it over her bosom where it clung, noticeably embossed. ‘Jay, I love you,’ she said. Her face was healthy and heart-shaped, and she had blue eyes and dyed lashes and a large, generous mouth smeared with white lipstick. I had seen her before.

I caught Sullivan by the arm. ‘That woman!’ I said.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Not just now, angel.’

An hour later the guide from ONMT and RAM, trying hard, got his party to leave. Johnson and his girlfriend waved them off from the cockpit. Seb and I lingered, and Ellwood, slowing down, stopped on the quayside to wait for us. Seb ignored him. He said, ‘Sir Robert said you were painting SM at the Palace.’

The woman Muriel was reclining, her long bare legs on the cockpit cushions. Johnson sat on the wooden edge of the cockpit, his sandshoes planted beside her. ‘And so I should have been,’ he said. ‘Except that Muriel’s husband was called to the Presence, and the painting was cancelled this morning.’ He looked down, and he and the girl exchanged smiles. He said, ‘Of course, you know who Muriel is?’ His glasses inclined towards me.

I said, ‘I saw her photograph, Mr. Johnson. She’s Mrs. Daniel Oppenheim?’