Tremor (19 page)

He enquired of an attendant, and M. Benjamin Ardrossi was pointed out. A thin dark man with an apron-string of black beard running thinly from ear to chin, a narrow hooked nose and some gold teeth which showed when he spoke. He was operating at the table where the three women played.

People were standing around watching the circulation of the little ball. He edged his way nearer until he was behind the croupier.

In the brief pause after the winnings had been distributed, the losings raked in, and the new bets were being laid, Johnny Frazier said: ‘ M. Ardrossi?'

The croupier glanced round, then back at the table. ‘ Yes?'

‘Colonel Tournelle gave me your name. I'm his son.'

‘
Faites vos jeux
,' Ardrossi called. ‘
Mesdames et messieurs, faites vosjeux, s'il vous plaît
.'

More quietly. ‘So?'

‘My father's in hospital. Did you know?'

‘Yes.'

‘I came wanting a bit of help. He couldn't oblige. He suggested you might.'

‘Might what?'

‘Be able to help me.'

‘In what respect?'

‘I would like a quiet word with you.'

‘
Faites vos jeux
,' called Ardrossi. ‘
Faites vos jeux. Rien ne va plus
…' And then, ‘ I break for coffee in half an hour. Wait by the cash desk.'

‘
ça va
,' said Johnny, and moved away.

But Laura had spotted him.

‘Johnny! Come and join us! We need a morsel of help. Lady Luck's been no good for us, so maybe a touch of Gentleman's Luck will roll the ball right. Didn't know there were so many damned ways of losing.'

She had him by the arm. The heavily made-up face was flushed; but the blue eyes, though bleary, were shrewd enough. With her free hand she kept twitching up the shoulder of her dress where it wanted to fall off.

He allowed himself to be led to the table, and Françoise was yanked out of her chair to make room for him. Oh well … Gambling was a weakness of his.

He began cautiously, changing only a few hundred dirhams and using them for the shorter odds on
impair
and
manque
. He lost them all, bought some more chips, took larger risks, and began to win. He concentrated on 2 and 8, only because it happened to be the 28th of the month. Half an hour passed quickly, and he became so absorbed that he only just raised his eyes in time to see Ardrossi slipping out of his seat to be replaced by another croupier. He was nine hundred dirhams up, and the three girls were noisy with praise, as they had profited too.

‘Coming back,' he promised, as he got up. ‘ Just off for a few minutes, see? I'll be back.'

‘What's in that case?' Vicky asked playfully, tapping it. ‘ Been robbing a bank? Never seen you without it. D'you take it to the john, eh?'

‘That's where I'm going now,' said Johnny, withdrawing it from her touch and tucking it under his arm. ‘Didn't know I was a tax collector, did you? I'm here on business. Catching dodgers.
And
young women who take other people's cars for their drying rooms!'

Shrill laughter followed him as he made for the cash desk. Ardrossi was leaning against a pillar, with a freshly lighted cigarette in his hand. Standing up, he was a much shorter man than the impression given in the croupier's chair.

He made a movement of his head, and Johnny followed him into a darker corner of the room. Ardrossi went off, and came back with coffee.

‘Tournelle is still sick? I heard it was his heart.'

Johnny nodded. He was summing the other man up, deciding how far he could trust him. It had been left to him to decide.

‘He's better. But it'll be days before he can be moved, maybe a week.'

‘Your name is Tournelle?'

‘Well … it was. I'm half-English. When the marriage broke up my mother took me to England and I took her name.'

‘Which is?'

‘Carpenter.'

‘Ah.' The croupier put brown sugar in his coffee. ‘And …?'

‘I came from England on Friday. I wanted something from the old man. I saw him this morning, and …'

‘Yes. I understand. And what do you want from me?'

Johnny said: ‘Another passport.'

It looked from a distance as if Françoise had fallen out of the chair he had recently vacated. There was quite a noise and a commotion, but other people blocked the view.

‘Friends of yours?' asked Ardrossi.

‘What? No. Women staying at my hotel.'

‘Are you wanted by the police?' Ardrossi asked suddenly.

‘Nothing like that,' said Johnny. ‘But would it matter?'

‘It might add to the urgency.'

‘I wouldn't want to wait long.'

‘Speed always costs more.'

‘Of course. But by that do you mean you can fix this?'

Ardrossi tapped at his cigarette, and some fine ash drifted onto the parquet floor. A small twisted smile.

‘Most things can be arranged, with adequate time and adequate funds.'

Something in Ardrossi's smile decided Johnny not to trust him with the contents of the suitcase.

‘I'd want to have it at the earliest.'

‘And therefore the most expensive.'

‘If you say so.'

There was a pause. The commotion round the roulette table had died down.

‘When?'

‘When can you do it?'

‘Do you have spare passport photographs?'

‘No.' Johnny had thought of this but decided against it, thinking he would probably grow a beard. But, he had realized too late, beards take a long time to grow.

Ardrossi was pained by this lack of foresight. He pinched the bridge of his narrow nose between thumb and forefinger.

‘It
can
be done, of course, but … Tomorrow morning first thing, I would suggest for the photographs. Seven o'clock. Then it will have to go to Casa. There are no facilities here. This will cost you a thousand dollars.'

‘Too much,' said Johnny automatically. One bargained for everything in Morocco. ‘Five hundred.'

‘You can have it complete by Tuesday morning. But it will be not less than a thousand.'

The essence of bargaining is that the buyer must pretend he is not keen to buy. No such leeway here. One could only approach it another way.

‘A thousand if you have it ready tomorrow night.'

Ardrossi lit a cigarette from the butt of the old, then stubbed the old one out. His glance strayed to the case Johnny carried. ‘I will have to telephone my friends in Casa. It will be necessary to fly the photographs – and your present passport, please – as soon as they have been taken. Whether it can all be done in time to catch the evening plane back I do not know. But in that case it would be another two hundred dollars. I assure you, that is very cheap. Your father, I am certain, could not arrange it for less.'

Johnny was suddenly angry. This little Jew had him over a barrel. Bargaining be damned. He could do nothing but agree. That glance at the suitcase. People did. If you carried a suitcase on a beach or into dinner or at a casino people stared. And speculated.

‘I'll pay a thousand,' he said.

Ardrossi put down his cup. ‘I must go in a moment. Twelve hundred it has to be, if you want it tomorrow night. I come off duty at eleven tonight. Think about it until then.'

Johnny realized that twelve hundred dollars would hardly disturb the packages in the case under his arm.

‘OK,' he said. ‘ If you can guarantee.'

‘Six hundred now. Six hundred on completion.'

‘Can you guarantee it?'

‘If the plane runs. It usually does. But it will be late when it arrives.'

‘Do we meet here?'

‘No, better at your hotel. I must go.'

‘Where tomorrow morning?'

‘Rue Moulay Ismail. A shop on the corner. A photographer's shop. It is near the port.'

‘I'll find it. Seven a.m.?'

‘Seven a. m. The shop will be closed but will open if you knock.' Ardrossi stubbed out his second cigarette. ‘And the money. Six hundred tonight.'

It was all there. But not to be taken out publicly. ‘ I'll meet you at eleven.'

‘Very good.' Benjamin Ardrossi bowed courteously to the other man and walked back to the roulette table.

Johnny followed him and rejoined the three women; he set about losing the nine hundred dirhams he had won.

Lee and Letty ate early, then strolled along the boulevard in the direction of the Casino. But they did not go in. He linked her arm. The movement was his but she made no attempt to withdraw.

Suddenly aware that things were not going to work out on this trip as when he left America he had subconsciously hoped, knowing now that his life was washed up and this vacation was a mess, and Ann's desertion was just as dire now as he had hoped it never would be again, he began to talk about Ann to this other woman who cared nothing for him at all. He told her of the vacations they had had together while they were still young, of their honeymoon in Mussolini's Venice, when the mosquitoes were still rampant, of rain in St Mark's Square and duckboards needed to cross it, lovemaking and eating grapes on a wet afternoon. Of Ann, ever adventurous, during the early fifties on a visit to Vienna, getting caught up in a political march, unaware and uncaring of the issues involved – this on the fringe of the Russian sector – and of her being arrested and Lee having to take along an attaché from the US Embassy to apologize and explain.

The First World War, he told Letty, had ended just in time not to interfere with his Law School; but he had seen a year of the Second as an ambulance driver in Italy before being blown up and invalided out. Ann, too, by flagrantly lying about her age and pulling strings not unconnected with her father's position in Congress, had contrived to enlist, and had traded on her knowledge of French (she had been at school in Paris) to be taken on as an interpreter with the First Army, where she had caught the eye of General Bradley and become his platonic friend.

He went on and on, telling Letty details of his married life that he had almost forgotten. Sometimes a trace of emotion came into his voice in spite of himself; but on the whole he took care not to seem to be evoking sympathy, not to be asking even for understanding. Sometimes the lightness of the stories lifted him so that they could both smile at the misadventures and the misunderstandings.

When they got back the night was still hot and overcast, so they had a drink on the terrace, and went up to bed soon after ten. They kissed outside the bedroom doors. There was a glint in her eyes as she smiled at him and slid out of his arms.

When she had gone he stared bleakly at the closed door. He knocked.

She opened it immediately, looking startled.

‘Your cape,' he said. ‘You forgot it.'

‘Oh, thank you.' She took it from him. It was the cape he had bought her in Paris. She looked down at it. She fingered the cape as if she had not seen it before.

He said: ‘Goodbye, Letty.'

She said: ‘I wish I could make you happy.'

He said: ‘You can.'

‘Yes, but only in a way. It is the most unimportant part of love.'

‘For me,' he said, ‘it is the most important right now.'

‘Yes, but in the morning …' ‘I would be glad to let the morning take care of itself.'

So it happened. In a half light, not so tastefully arranged as in the bedroom in Taroudant, they lay quietly on the bed together, and when they were naked he stroked her gently for quite a while. Presently he parted her thighs and entered her – not like a commanding hero but like a snake in the grass. He then did absolutely nothing more, propping himself up on his elbows, partly to take his weight off her and partly to look at her face.

She said: ‘Lee, I …'

‘Ssh. Say nothing, Letty.'

He did no more while the seconds ticked away. Silence in the room except for their breathing. There was music tinkling outside.

Her eyes were half-closed, her expression strained. And a long minute went by, and another minute began.

Then he leaned forward and began to kiss her mouth, using each of her lips individually like new senses to be explored. And he began to grow again within her. The second minute was near its end before he began to move his loins, and then very gently. Her eyes had been open for some little while now, clear and hurt and staring; then they slowly glazed over and tears started on the bottom lids and as quickly dried. She gave the deepest sigh: he watched her breasts rise and fall.

He was losing himself, and he knew she was. And with a rising sense of elation he arrived at the certain belief that she had not experienced this before.

He edged and manoeuvred and gently moved her whole body, timing his own senses, holding them back until he knew she was coming. Then together they climbed to the peak.

Monday, the 29th of February, 1960. Leap Year. The third day of the Fast of Ramadan.

The day broke heavy and sunless. Gulls were noisy, circling and screaming over the sullen sea. Dogs had howled again in the night, and animals were generally restless. In the early morning there was what many people took for a heavy rumble of thunder but others recognized as an earth tremor. When it was over pictures were here and there aslant on walls. Cups had rattled. Cutlery had tittered together on newly laid breakfast tables.

But nobody took alarm. The occasional tremor was something one was used to, living here. It was part of the general order of things, part of the climate. There had been something rather bad once upon a time, but that was over two centuries ago …

On the Saturday and the Sunday Johnny Frazier had occupied some of his time in the little travel shop, which had its main office in Casablanca. In there he had examined the options open to him to leave Morocco by sea, and had whittled these down to two vessels, one to leave on the Tuesday forenoon, the other on Friday evening. The first was an American tramp steamer called the
Merrimac
, out of Baltimore, and loading a cargo of canned sardines for Rio de Janeiro. She was licensed to carry six passengers, and a berth was available. The second was a Norwegian cruise ship, the
Vesteraaven
, which would put in for two nights before leaving for the Canary Isles and thence to Cape Town. Again there were cabins available.