In the Wolf's Mouth (13 page)

‘Not precisely,’ Zakaria corrected. ‘They aren’t,’ he went on. ‘They like different kinds of gossip and they’re too busy considering their positions when the Allies go. The Free French supporters will want to take control. As far as they are concerned, we’ll still be their niggers.’

‘Until you commit your first outrage. Anyway, you’re repeating yourself.’

‘To someone else. Repetition. Perseverance. Doing the same thing again and again before it gives way. It’s boring, trying to change things. Boring and difficult.’

‘I’m not bored.’

‘Until you do something, until we all do something, my good friend, you are still a spectator.’

Mr Ammar arrived next, sudden through the hanging beads at the door, shaking hands with his right hand, holding a match flame to a cigarette with his left. Ammar was angry. Ammar was always angry. He had weapons in his cellar. He abused waiters, clenched and unclenched his fists during conversation. He was a powerful man, compact and raging. Will
liked observing him, feeling him seethe. Ammar was trivially powerful at the moment, powerful conversationally, personally, but Will could see how as events changed he might darkly blossom. He was the one. He could be a great force at the right moment.

Will sat beglamoured in the company of the conspirators who talked about some Italian armaments that could be bought. Several more arrived, argued and departed before the evening was done, faces hovering in the light of match flames and lighters. Dark hands held his forearms as ideas were elaborated. He listened. It was intelligence, pure intelligence.

22

Back at the villa, Samuels was still awake, sitting in a clean cone of lamplight, his hands spidery with shadows as he stripped and fixed the wiring of their telephone. Humming along to some dance music on the wireless, with tools spread out and litter of Bakelite pieces, Will thought he looked as idiotically happy as a child in a sand pit.

‘Evening.’

Samuels looked up, mouth open, and down again at his task. ‘Out with the rebels again?’ he asked.

‘Something along those lines.’

‘Need a drink, I imagine, after all that boozeless Mohammedan plotting. There’s Scotch in that window seat for some reason. Don’t know whose it is.’

‘Excellent idea. Draycott’s probably. According to Travis he’s now hiding things. Travis found one of the maps under the rug. That’s why when you knock on the door he tells you to hang on and there’s a lot of fuss and thumping about before he lets you come in.’

‘There’s a mug on the table as well.’

‘A mug. Ideal.’

Will poured himself a sincere measure of about three fingers and sat with the mug resting on his belt buckle. He tilted his head back and sighed.

‘Aaah. Hmmm. There’s quite a lot I need to remember, actually. I should make a few notes.’

‘I see. They seducing you to their side?’

‘No. What a fatuous thing to say. I’m not being seduced by anyone. You make it sound …’

‘Oops. Sorry if I hit a nerve.’

‘You haven’t hit anything because you don’t know anything.’

‘I don’t see that that follows logically. Anyway, I’m not wrong. You’re sympathetic to their side.’

‘Samuels, I think you’re straying out of your area of expertise. You don’t know the language here. Your brethren are a little north and east of here, aren’t they, somewhere in Palestine?’

Samuels said nothing, then, ‘They’re in London and on the Continent.’

‘Muttering to yourself like an old woman.’

‘Snippety snip. Somebody’s very tetchy.’

‘No idea what the situation is in this country.’

‘Doing my job. Minding my own bleeding business. Not blessed, you see, your excellency, with your understanding of the great game here. I does what I can in me humble way. For example, this telephone now works. You go on and win the war for us, sir.’

‘Oh, for crying out loud. I’m going to bed.’

23

Sergeant Major Henderson stood with his thick, freckled arms folded high across his pristine shirt, his eyes half closed with sceptical curiosity. ‘So who was that fucker with the sharp stick up his arse?’

Will examined the card the man had given him. Tilting it so that the swirling curlicues of black ink caught the light and shone. ‘He works for the Bey. Says here he’s an adviser, a courtier.’

‘Works for the what’s that?’

‘The Bey. Local royalty. As I understand it, he hasn’t had much to do since the French took over. He lives in a palace and he wants to talk to me. A car will collect me tomorrow evening.’

‘Arab johnny?’

‘Yes.’

‘Probably dressed up like the bleedin’ haberdashery department. Don’t tell him anything, will you.’

‘I’m not planning to tell him anything. I’ll tell him that we’re going to win the war and I’m wondering what he has got to tell me.’

‘We are going to win the war.’

‘I know we are.’

‘And what does he want you for anyway?’

‘His adviser, his courtier, tells me that he wishes to make contact with his British friends.’

‘Wants a nice white arse then. And don’t go stealing anything.’

‘I wasn’t planning to.’

‘I know it’s tempting. Some fat Arab with more money than sense. He’ll have a lot of knick-knacks, I reckon.’

24

The car that collected Will was certainly beautiful but he thought that the tyres needed air. They had a rather glutinous grip on the road, stones pinging under the rubber as the car snaked its way along the coast road and Will slid to and fro across the leather upholstery. He held onto the handle above the window to preserve his dignity and looked out at the lilac sea, the landscape pitted with shadows. He looked at the back of the driver’s slender neck that emerged from a wide starched circle of collar; his uniform looked big on him. On top of his head he wore a dove-grey chauffeur’s cap. His gloved hands rotated and Will gripped the handle as the car turned uphill, inland, through orange orchards towards the palace. Will recognised them as orange orchards despite the absence of fruit. The trees were regularly spaced, the leaves waxy dark green. In the dusk, without fruit or blossom, they were dowdy as cattle. Will regretted that it was the least romantic time of the year to see them.

The car slowed to a squidgy halt and the driver sprang out to open Will’s door. Will stood up, ignoring the man, and walked to the palace gate where a guard stood who looked more at home in his uniform. An enormous African, his skin mauve in the evening light, his chest pressed smooth the dark blue cloth of his
jacket, tasselled with gold braid. On his head he wore a red fez. In his right hand he held a bared scimitar, its blade shining blue. He pulled open the gate and waited for Will to pass through, his eyes dead ahead. Behind Will, the car rumblingly withdrew.

Another guard or functionary approached wearing a different uniform, a red sash around his waist, and led Will up through a rose arbour to the palace garden. The building itself appeared, large, its many windows mostly unlit, clean cut against the early stars.

And then the man who Will thought must be the Bey appeared in white, smooth-faced, floating towards him. ‘So good of you to come. Welcome.’ He had a neat, subdued moustache and a beard that ran only along his jawline, framing large, plush, shaven cheeks.

‘Your highness.’ Will bowed very slightly from the waist.

The Bey stood still a moment, examining Will or expecting him to say something further. Either way, he was completely motionless, a mannequin standing there, his hands by his sides. Just as Will was about to say something, he jerked back to life. ‘Come. Come and join me.’

He gestured for Will to walk ahead to a table topped with ceramic tiles with a lamp on it beneath an arch of greenery. Will sat and twisted round in his chair when he heard a dry, flustered noise that turned out to be a bird in a large metalwork cage. The bird bounced from perch to perch. A servant approached and placed on the table before them two cups of mint tea, the gold patterning on the glass shining in the lamplight.

‘So,’ the Bey began. ‘Where did you school?’

Will’s school would have been unknown to the Bey. He pretended to misunderstand him. ‘I was at Oxford.’

‘Ah. How excellent. So was I. At Exeter College. Do you miss it? I do, in my maudlin moments. I miss the climate from time to time, would you believe it. Also here there really is nowhere to play golf.’

‘I do miss it I suppose,’ Will said without really meaning it. ‘I’m happy to be out, though. Oxford is where I learned my Arabic.’

Another servant appeared with a silver platter on which were arranged squares of folded cloth. Having sipped his tea, the Bey picked one up with his fingertips, patted his lips with it and let it drop to the floor. When the tray was proffered, Will did the same and discovered that the linens were chilled and scented with rose water. Just dropping it onto the ground was a strange, slightly dreamlike thing to do.

‘Yes, I’ve heard that you speak Arabic. Do you mind, old thing, if we stick to English? It’s such a pleasure for me to speak it.’

‘Not at all, your highness. You speak it so well.’

The Bey tutted at the formulaic compliment and closed his eyes briefly.

‘The reason you were invited here was because the world is at an interesting moment. Things are in flux, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘I would.’

‘Of course. Wars. Empires.’ He gestured with a ringed hand. ‘We’ve had rather a lot of them in this part of the world. It seems that one empire is passing so it is time to consider the future, hopefully without barbarians or dark ages.’

‘I see. I’ve met – I think you know I’ve met – countrymen of yours who are preoccupied with the same questions. They are devising some answers.’

‘So I gather. But are they the barbarians, perhaps? It is an interesting question. Perhaps there are other more time-tested forms of authority that could emerge. Once the ghastly French have gone back to Rouen and Dieppe or wherever, their boulevards and puffy old mistresses, as I see it this country will head in one of two ways.’

‘Chaos or …’

‘No, not that. I mean two kinds of state: either a socialist republic or a stable royalist state. I think the gentlemen you have been meeting in déclassé cafés are rather militating for the former but I think that is really in nobody’s interest. Their activities could be useful in creating the latter but I’m hoping for a way in which such things wouldn’t be necessary at all.’

‘Either way, an independent state.’

The bird started jumping again, half opening its wings.

‘Of course. There are Sicilians here contending for the same choices. Did you know that? They’re here, apparently, because they believe or know that once your lot have swept through here, Sicily will be next, and then up across the Continent, and they wish to free Sicily from Italy.’

‘I didn’t know that. I haven’t seen them if they are here.’

‘Possibly you have without realising. I’m told that because of Norman and Moorish invasions, a Sicilian will look either like a Frenchman or like an Arab. That is very convenient here, evidently.’

‘That would be.’

The Bey sipped his tea again, again the servant stooped forward with his platter. The Bey patted his mouth and dropped the cloth.

‘But we’re getting off the topic there,’ the Bey said. ‘I fear that you’ve leaped to a conclusion there with the notion of an independent state. A fledgling state would be a delicate thing. Complete independence might be too much for it. It should be protected, let’s say, helped into the world. Why you are here is because I’d like to put to you a proposition to take away and discuss with others and quietly to set in motion. I would like us to become here, once the French have finally buggered off or been pushed out, rather, I’d like us to become a part of the British Empire.’

25

Before Will knocked on Captain Draycott’s door, he could hear him at his activities on the other side, in particular the twanging sound of things thrown into his metal waste-paper basket. Will rapped hard, thinking again of the necessity of circumventing his useless superior. The reins were in Will’s hand. He was riding the horse of the world. He could steer the course of this part of North Africa. Draycott opened the door and said, ‘Ah, Walker, come on in.’ His cheeks were flecked with hectic pink, he was slightly breathless, but Will immediately thought that he no longer looked mad. His face was clarified, sober. Draycott’s eyes were meeting his.

‘Captain, I have some news of a very interesting, very interesting, development, possibly actually very significant for British interests here, I mean really significant. I’d need time and further work but it seems, well, I have contacts with senior royals in this area and they have made submissions to me that they are minded to join the British Empire, to become part of the British Empire here once the war is over. Sir, is everything all right?’

Draycott was emptying the entire contents of one of his desk drawers into the bin. Perhaps his sanity had been fleeting, a lucid moment only.

‘The war is over here, Walker,’ he said.

‘Sir?’

‘That all sounds very interesting. Top work on your part, awfully exemplary intelligence work, I imagine. It’s not really my area beyond needs must. We’ll have to find a way for you to pass it on to someone.’

‘Sir, what are you talking about?’

‘Oh yes. I haven’t informed you all yet although I think everyone’s got the gist from the rumour mill. There’s a terrible joke there that I can’t quite think of about gist to the mill.’

‘What gist?’

‘We’re leaving. The war has headed east and we’re heading with it. It’s the lookout of the Free French round here now. There’s a handover being organised, so I’m not really sure how your new colony can be brought into the Empire. Fearfully complicated, I imagine.’

‘But we can’t.’

Draycott laughed, actually laughed at him. ‘I’m sorry, old boy, but we do just have to get up and go. It’s not down to us to decide. You can put it all in a report.’

‘Yes and toss it into the void of complete army incompetence. I’ve made this. Don’t you see? I’ve done important work here and all you can bloody well say is put it in a report and flush it down the lavatory.’