Stewart, Angus (27 page)

Caroline shook her head. The smile, Brown saw, was intriguingly sweet, if sparingly released. It was as much in acknowledgement of this, as of Skipper Toni's memory, that he administered himself a stiff slug of contraband whisky standing at the ice box, before carrying a larger one back out on to the balcony. Caroline had seated herself in a deck-chair.

Then let's to work for
Queen and country,' he said. 'We leave tomorrow. How?'

Caroline ground out a cigarette, emphasising practicality herself. 'On honeymoon.'

'But that's bigamy! Or am I to become a Muslim?'

'There need have been no actual ceremony.'

'The situation's familiar,' Brown said.

'But you will not be.' Caroline allowed herself the ghost of a smile. 'Now, I picked up these half an hour ago—from a man who "found them on the beach". Ten shillings the pair.'

'Let me reimburse you!' Brown said gallantly. 'Why are there two?' The whisky, perhaps, was promoting a defensive stupidity in him.

'The one with a stone is an engagement ring,' Caroline patiently explained, 'and the plain circlet is a wedding ring. A young bride commonly wears both. Study them, please'

'Proceed,' Brown said profoundly, handing them back.

'What's your car?'

'
Deux-chevaux
.'

'Get a sound Land Rover.'

'Just like that?'

'Mrs. Brown is loaded.'

'For how long can I stay married to a Treasury appropriation?'

Caroline smiled. 'Not a moment longer than I can help.' Brown started at the sound of a door. 'Manolo. It's been algebra and he'll be in a temper,' he explained quickly. 'Presumably the pretence doesn't take effect until we're clear of Tangier. Meanwhile there's the bafflement of my friends to consider. I'm going to a party tonight. You'd better come. It'll make our disappearance tomorrow more acceptable—a casual tour. Quite the only thing one cannot afford here is any element of mystery. Okay?'

'I knew you'd wake up eventually.' Caroline was smiling with almost prim approval, Brown thought.

At that moment Manolo erupted on to the balcony. He carried a glass of milk, and an expensive pastry, which he must have bought on his way home. Brown made introductions. Manolo merely looked thoughtful. For her part, Caroline regarded this person, at least some of whose functions, and rather nominally at that, she supposed herself to be usurping. The boy had a precious haircut and brown eyes whose pigmentation was strangely diluted, so that they could accurately be described as golden. His striped tee-shirt was crisp, and the white cotton trousers he wore in a way that proclaimed his consciousness that there must be nothing bulky in the pockets. On his feet were black sneakers that must have cost considerably more than Caroline herself had ever paid for a pair of shoes in her life. A few rotten teeth, she was surprised to find herself thinking maliciously, would bring welcome relief to the decadent perfections of Manolo.

Her scrutiny had not gone unremarked by Brown. 'Manolo, I want you to go to the Don Silvas for a few days,' he began hurriedly, 'and we can talk later. Meanwhile there are things to do quickly . . .'

'Has it got something to do with toothbrushes?' Manolo interrupted suspiciously, as if unsure, Caroline thought, of how much to code some signal in front of herself.

'Has what?' Brown was blank.

'Going to Gibraltar.'

'I am
not
worried about Jay Gadston.'

'Then what,
hombre
?'
The boy was regarding Caroline resentfully now.

'I have to be away from Tangier for a bit, scripting something.'

Manolo nodded thoughtfully. 'I'll miss the math exam.'

' "Maths".'

'Mrs. Cooper-Madison says "math".'

'She's American. You're not.'

'They have
better bicycle engines in Gibraltar.' Manolo gave the word its Spanish 'G', quite perversely, Caroline was sure.

'They're allowed motorised cycles here at fourteen,' Brown explained. 'We can talk about that too,' he said to the boy.

'What things to do?' Manolo bit into the pastry and laid a white musk of milk on his upper lip.

' 'Phone the headmaster—I suppose you'd better say I'm writing too. Book me a call to Gibraltar. Pack. Then ring around the garages until you final a Land Rover for
hire. Collect air ticket from Blands. We'll eat out before Raphael's party—Miss Adam is coming too. Oh, English suit.'

'Which?' This time the coded signal carried some obscure hint of blackmail.

'Long trousers, if you must'

Stoically Manolo nodded. He got up. The first morning 'plane is best,
hombre
.'

'And goes before the dentist appointment—Oh, and Manolito,' Brown called after the boy. 'Take pyjamas. And generally think a bit when you're packing. People are a little different in Gibraltar, as you know.'

'I will start behaving like an English boy at once,
hombre
,
for your sake,' Manolo called back ambiguously, confident now perhaps because he was out of sight

'Damn!' Brown said, quietly, uncomfortably.

'I'd give a lot to overhear your more domestic explanation to him,' Caroline said, and was puzzled by her own sympathy,

Brown looked at her. Then, filling the momentary pause, he said, 'Just remember when our severed heads are rolling in the sand after some miraculous suicide pact of honeymooners, that Manolo's been twice bereaved before. And come to that, my widow and son will never know that they're legitimate British subjects; attested to through the incorruptible archives of Somerset House. It's an odd world.'

They talked on for some time. Caroline accepted a drink. The sun glowed orange against the white walls of the French cathedral, and dropped quickly behind the Rif massif, while the swallows continued to flash about the balcony. A cruise liner hooted impatiently from the harbour. With no shoes to remove, the goatherd knelt on the bare ground to pray, leaning ritually forward until his forehead touched the earth, and remaining like that for a long time. The liner, Brown supposed, would he disgorging its minimum party of fifty at five pounds supplement a head for a Moroccan meal and evening of dancing. Lain in day-long rows, pinkening like lobsters in a safe deckland paradise where chips and tea were gloriously on call at any hour, many were due for disappointment when they discovered that, not even for them, could Morocco provide the erotic fantasy insistently labelled in their collective mind as a 'belly dancer'. But then they'd he spared the knowledge that the rare wine, to essentially first poured for them to taste after the ritual invented by the English, cost one and fourpence a litre from the great bodega casks, that could not conceivably be corked anyway. Three cheers, he thought hollowly, for this great nation from which he had cut himself off none too soon, yet in whose alleged interests he was now perhaps about to risk his life. Doubtless secret agents were another fantasy the trippers might project upon the city. But which of them would find adequacy in Simon Brown? A man whose intention it was to be progressively free from Samsara?

Then the girl. She seemed intelligent enough. What was she really doing in all this? Perhaps he would come to know her well enough simply to ask. 'Remember,' she had said in a brisk moment during the discussion of their preparations, 'that I am not of your "sloppy and half-hearted" lot.' Why ever should she have felt the need to say that?

Manolo reappeared to announce that he had found a Land Rover, but that there was not enough cash in the flat to buy his ticket, unless the
hombre
had some hidden. He also wondered whether pocket-money wouldn't somehow he affected. Brown sent him out to the Medina to make illegal exchange.

'I suppose his expenses
can
be defrayed,' he asked when Manolo had gone.

'It depends how he's to be described,' Caroline said, provocatively. ' "Tickets and temporary provision for kept boy" might meet with disapproval.' If nothing else, it proved the measure of their increasing familiarity,

'Dependant,' Brown decided. 'I'm only sorry he's playing it to cool towards you. Algebra affects him strangely.'

'Rubbish. It's perfectly natural unnatural jealousy. He's afraid I may corrupt you.'

'By definition nothing in nature can be unnatural,' Brown said. The following days would be a trial if he were to allow himself to be drawn into a defence of his way of living. It was bad enough arguing with a man. But a woman's logic was inflexibly circular. Where had he read that the feminine was eternally assured, while the male must be constantly proving himself? It was a trap to avoid at every level. 'I'll have a word with him before this evening,' he said.

Caroline laughed. 'That's what I meant about longing to overhear the domestic row.'

'I don't think there'll be one.' Brown spoke half to himself. He felt a curious certainty building within him; and with it impatience for the girl to be gone. Night had fallen completely, and was cool. With almost identical speed, and motions, bats had replaced the swallows in the swooping hunt for insects.

It was agreed that Caroline take Brown's car and transmit his request to London. He didn't enquire as to the method and place of her doing so.

When she had gone, Brown sat alone on the balcony. There was a red aircraft beacon on the spire of the cathedral. Harsh lozenges of orange street lighting defined the first quarter mile of the Rabat road. From the east of the city came the hysterical tooting of many motor horns: a wedding, whose still tribal celebrants had simply found a new toy and mode of expression more acceptable to the authorities than the wild firing of muzzle-loaders. The procession of cars could tear around hooting for a full hour; longer if the participants had discovered the equally alien pleasures of liquor. Simon Brown smiled faintly. It had been quite a day for weddings, if neither of his had been very real. London must come up with the documentation. He felt obscurely certain now that they would. After that, it would be a question of carefully assessing the actual danger, with a view to a family move if necessary—perhaps to Tunisia.

Manolo had returned from the Medina. Brown could hear him bumping around in his bedroom.

'Hallo, Manolito,' he said uncertainly, from the doorway. The boy was half changed. He looked up, surprised by the silent approach. Then he looked more closely at Brown; shrugged into his jacket, as though he had noticed nothing, turned away to comb his hair. 'What did the West Indians close at?' he asked casually.

'Manolito, really . . .'

'Been no sort of spinners' wicket, anyway.' Manolo was intransigent 'Chance of rain, d'you think tonight?'

'She's simply someone I have to work with, Brown said, placing his hands on the boy's shoulders.

But there was no part of Manolo's body and mind even remotely dead to Brown's intention. His breathing grew heavier. It was coquettishly now that he wriggled to pull his passport from his breast pocket. Shallow defence became calculated invitation.

'
Hombre
,
I have looked , these words "let" and "hindrance",' he said, deliberately forgetful of his body while his eyes and hands were on the open book, 'and I think I must ring the Consul and ask whether this is an occasion for "such assistance and protection as may be necessary" . . .'

  *  *  *  *  *

'Ezra's place. Ask one of the girls, stranger.' ran the scribbled note pinned to Raphael Bonnington's door. Two black prostitutes on camp stools mounted guard on either side of it. Thus presumably had the American provided for the guidance of uninitiated guests.

'Ezra's place?' Jay
asked the girls ingenuously.

Sure enough one of them got up, a lot of teeth showing suddenly as Jay produced the magical words, her pendant ear-rings revolving slowly in the light from a low-power bulb on the landing, which was so browned and fly-blown as to resemble a rotten pear. On patent-leather high heels she clattered down the wooden stairs Jay had just ascended, while her wiry-haired colleague indicated he should follow.

Emerged into the Petit Socco, Jay's first doubt was
lest they run across Naima in the Medina. At this hour it was unlikely. Still he endeavoured to make himself appear as detached as was possible from the stranger, whose flamboyant green and gold print dress would have been conspicuous enough weaving among the mutely robed figures, even without the other overtly obvious manifestations of her calling. They dived into a dark tunnel, beneath houses, which the battered blue enamel sign proclaimed, presumably without intending any ironic reflection upon Christendom, as
Calle de los Arcos
.
Pools of water, or perhaps urine, lay seeped about doorsteps, collecting a faint glimmer from the last street light; but Jay felt more at ease. On a rooftop a caged wild bird protested pathetically. From behind a rough board door came a man's shouting. Then there was silence once more except for the sound of their own ill-syncopating footfalls. Jay simply followed the brisk bottom before him. The alley took more right-angles. They negotiated a spongey patch of seepage caused by a broken drain, where a surprised cat stared at them indignantly a second before fleeing. Jay now began to wonder what sort of party he was about to attend. Its approaches, at least, struck him as incompatible with the presence of guests like Brown and Manolo.

Unexpectedly the alley opened out. A hole-in-the-wall
bacal
was still doing business. A lamp bracket over the mean shop front threw light on to a heavily studded door opposite, and about this were grouped a knot of ragged children, who now eyed Jay with a mixture of shyness and expectation.

Their common bond escaped him for a moment, until he saw they were all either chewing or blowing bubble-gum. His guide worked the door-knocker, discreetly, as perhaps was only habitual with her, and the children drew back several paces, still resolutely chewing, blowing and watching. The girl who opened the door appeared under the influence of nothing more noxious than ennui.

'Oh, Zora, thanks,' she drawled, before bringing bored eyes back to Jay who, not for the first time, found himself wishing he
were possessed of the total ingenuousness affected by Brodie Chalmers. 'Come on in,' she said, while he was still searching for some appropriate greeting. "You're not Simon, so you must be Jay.' It was an auspicious start '
Sirhub halig
!'
she flapped at the encircling urchins; but the violence of the words had no backing in her tone, and they showed little disposition to clear out.