Miss Webster and Chérif (26 page)

Chérif didn’t appear to be interested in the question. He bought her a small plastic glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and then sat quietly beside her, silent and preoccupied. Elizabeth Webster was not a woman to plague other people when they were troubled by moods, but she did think it was peculiar that he seemed so uninterested in his own country. He had been gone for eight months. Why wasn’t he excited to be coming home? The Moroccan immigration boys stared enviously and at length at his student visa. They even held it upside down. No one raised an eyebrow at his elderly female companion with the British passport. Miss Webster surveyed the dawdling groups around her, seized with an uncanny sense of déjà vu. I have sat here, at this very table, with an unknown black man before me and a newspaper spread out upon this spangled plastic top: CRIME OF PASSION KILLER GOES FREE. She looked at Chérif.
What had he done?
She tried one more question.

‘Are you missing Karen?’

He nodded.

‘But you’ll see her again.’

He shrugged.

Elizabeth gave up and dug out her airport thriller. The plot shifted around the question of doubles. One of the twins was a murderer. But which one? Only when they were climbing the steps on to a smaller jet, bound for the Sahara, and Chérif gave her his hand to help her aboard, did she notice that his flesh felt grotesquely cold. The air breathed warm and dry around them, the night perfectly clear. Far above, barely visible, a faint torrent of stars fluttered. The smaller transfer plane across the Atlas Mountains bulged full of travellers, and they found themselves wedged in between some chattering Spaniards, the only other Europeans.

‘Chérif.’ She gave him a prod. ‘Is there something you aren’t telling me?’

He shrank down into his Bruce Lee leather jacket, but did not speak.

‘Are you in trouble?’

He nodded.

‘Have you done something wrong?’

He raised his head and looked her straight in the eye, the grim film of guilt clearing away from his face. The truth tasted like fresh water on his tongue.

‘Yes, Madame Webster. I have done something terribly wrong.’

‘And are you going to tell me what it is?’

‘
Mesdames! Messieurs! Attachez vos ceintures
.’

The flight lasted thirty-five minutes. Her ears ached. The Spaniards gabbled. Chérif said absolutely nothing, but sat there rigid, like a man condemned, sentenced and awaiting the last walk towards the post against the wall and the firing squad. Elizabeth Webster’s patience dissolved, her temper mounted alongside her increasing irritation. By the time the plane had cleared the Atlas Mountains, she was bubbling with rage. She hadn’t brought him home to make him wretched, but to give him pleasure. Her anger simmered at his remote refusal to confide in her or to ask for her help. It never occurred to her to worry about what he might have done. In her experience young people generated crises of their own that expanded into mountains of potential horror, but which resulted in no lasting consequences. She was hot, tired, hungry. Her ankles had swollen. She wanted a shower, clean pyjamas and a bed sprinkled with rose petals. She guessed which one of the twins was the murderer and lost interest in her book. She gazed at the long line of runway lights far beneath them and prayed that Abdou had checked his e-mail. If he’s not there, then that’s the last straw and I’ll end up giving this young man a clout round the chops. She glowered at the abject boy. The air hostess packed the Spaniards into their seats and removed their sticky apéritifs.

‘Come on, Chérif,’ she snapped – this too came out sharper than she had intended – ‘let’s face the music. Whatever it is. You can’t sit on the plane for ever.’

They stepped into a different world, palm trees loomed out of the dark; she could smell water pouring on to the gardens in the hot night and stretched out her aching knees, delighted to feel the difference in her stride as she marched across the tarmac. Nine months ago I couldn’t have carried a shoulder bag. Watch me now.

The first person she saw was Abdou, dressed in a spanking new kaftan; his white turban swirled behind him as he dashed towards her.

‘Madame!’

He arrived like a cartwheel, all teeth and arms and smiles. She noticed that his lopsided grin had been fixed.

‘C’est grâce à vous, Madame.’ He bared his fangs like an angry camel. ‘Look! New teeth. First class work.’ He actually kissed her hand.

Chérif was fishing their bags off the conveyor belt. Abdou hadn’t seen him.

‘Wait a moment. I’ll get Chérif.’

‘I’ll get the taxi.’

They ran off in opposite directions. Chérif stood there, resolute at last, hung about with bags.

‘Bon, je suis prêt,’ he said, clear-eyed and calm.

‘Well, thank God for that.’

She gave him a huge smile, turned around, and blundered into the open arms of a woman she hardly recognised. It was Saïda, done up like a wedding cake with her hair in a sparkling mound. Her eyelids were very black and her lips were very red. But as she reached out to embrace Elizabeth Webster, her face, at first glowing with recognition and joy, suddenly froze. She bellowed something in a language which sounded neither like Berber nor Arabic, sprang past Miss Webster, and flung herself upon Chérif in a lunge worthy of an army-trained, anti-terrorist security guard. She almost brought him down. Then she savaged his shoulders and began shaking him, screaming desperately all the time and giving him no chance to reply. He dropped all the bags. Saïda began to drag him towards the automatic doors, yelling. All the airport officials turned round to stare. An incident! Abdou reappeared in the gaping exit and let out a terrible shriek. The guards tapped their guns and began to approach the domestic brawl in case they were needed.

Elizabeth Webster gawped at the confusion and then retrieved the abandoned bags, which lay scuffed and overturned upon the marble floor.

‘Will someone please tell me what is going on?’

One of the security police marched up to Saïda and tried to stop her beating Chérif about the head with her handbag. She turned up the volume and the pitch. Her diatribe became a screech. Abdou joined in, echoing the main theme with a bass line. A crowd, which included the armed security guards, gathered around them all, peering and staring with fascinated concentration, as if they were following one of the storytellers in Djamma el Fnaa who had reached an exciting moment. Everybody ignored Elizabeth. It was as much pique at being linguistically excluded as baffled shock at this peculiar welcome which led her to mount her attack in booming colonial French.

‘Mais arrêtez! Stop this at once!’ She grappled with Saïda’s hairdo. ‘Abdou! Taisez-vous! Saïda, control yourself! Chérif, will you please tell me what on earth is going on.’

But before he could reply Saïda thrust her distorted face close to Elizabeth, her mouth open and screaming, her breath hot.

‘This is not Chérif,’ she roared. ‘
This is not my son
.’

6

Desert

Miss Webster awoke the next morning beneath the anticipated flood of scented petals. The bed had not been turned down, as it would have been nine months before. Nor had the curtains been drawn. The small brass lamp covered in jewels and mirrors, subtly placed before the silk drapes, had not been lit to signal her welcome. Dust coated the shade. The invisible worm had entered the rose.

Miss Webster awoke in a rage. She had been abandoned at the airport. Chérif had vanished. Abdou had vanished. Saïda rushed forth into the night, her wails trailing in the air behind her like floating scarves. And so Elizabeth Webster was left to fend for herself. She found a wobbling trolley and rescued the suitcases. The boy had flung down his bag and never returned to reclaim his possessions or offer his assistance. The arriving airport crowds gathered to stare at her. Miss Webster did not like being the centre of invidious and disagreeable attention. Nor did she like joining the ordinary taxi queue and being leered at by a stranger, who offered to take her to a cheaper hotel that was just as good, but run by his friends. She did not like being forced to heave her own suitcases through gates and up steps. And she was alarmed and displeased by the cavernous sound of her own heels upon the marble squares as she staggered into the once scented and exotic halls of the silent hotel. The flunkeys no longer stood ready to wheedle and bow. A scruffy night porter handed her the key and left her to find her own way up in the darkness.

The world had changed in frightening and uncomfortable ways. Why should she suffer the change when she was not culpable? None of this emotional chaos was of her making. How could she be responsible for all this mayhem and disaster? And so she awoke upon the following day with the conviction that she had been dreadfully imposed upon and fearfully misused. Moreover she was now being held to account for villainy of which she was not guilty.

Miss Webster rang reception without preparing a speech. She was ready to overflow with lurid threats and righteous demands. She was not prepared to lie there in modified and diminishing luxury, fretting, enraged. Nine months ago Saïda’s voice would have purred dedication, comfort, reassurance. Now the phone sounded in the void; the hollow chambers of marble and alabaster with decorated iron grilles across the arched windows, the small, low tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the fountains in which the mosaics glimmered and rippled, all crouched beneath her, empty and neglected. There was no one shaking cocktails in the Desert Rendezvous, no one watering the gardens, no one busy in the kitchens. No one answered her early calls for recognition and acceptance. The hotel had entered that long sleep which descends upon temples of tourism after the advent of the bombs.

Reception simply did not respond. Miss Webster’s fury mounted and amplified like a tropical storm. She counted out her cotton shirts, plain colours, no frills. Were there enough for three weeks if the hotel laundry service had collapsed completely? Evidently not. She glared at Chérif’s offending suitcase, one of her old ones, dedicated to the cause and filled with presents for all his family and friends. The thing cowered in the lee of the door, shrinking beneath Miss Webster’s glare. He had packed his books and notes, reading for the summer, and all his new clothes. Where was he now? Or, more to the point, who had he become?

There is a thread of privacy in the English character. The best of us develop the habit of leaving well enough alone, of not interfering with our neighbours and inserting a handsome get-out clause to all our enquiries. A comment such as ‘Off out, are you?’ does not entail a demand as to where we are going. A cheery wave will do as a response, if you have no intention of revealing your destination. Miss Webster now realised how cleverly Chérif had played the game of evasion. He had never appeared to be secretive or underhand. He had never refused to answer direct questions, but his cheerful, good-natured politeness had exploited her determination never to pry. He had indeed spoken of his mother, and of Saïda, but always in such terms that left the doors open. They could have been two separate people. And now it was clear that they were. He’s related to Saïda, thought Miss Webster, striding towards the staircase. She knew him as a child. Or she wouldn’t have dared to box his ears.

The curving marble stairs emerged gloomy and obscure from the bowels of the foyer, despite the wash of gold light flooding the courtyard. The globes that were always aglow on the balustrades were now eclipsed by the half dark. Clearly the hotel was economising on electricity. The same hollow void she had encountered on arrival repeated her steps as she descended into emptiness. No lights shimmered in reception. The tall blue vase, which in more prosperous times always overflowed with lilies and gladioli, now stood stricken and empty; the computers’ screens cowered, blank and dark. Miss Webster realised at that moment that she was the only person staying in the hotel. The world had been closed down around her.

‘It’s the war, isn’t it? And the bombs.’ She addressed the mass of keys with their heavy tags attached, hanging in the empty pigeonholes, with fearless contempt. Miss Webster’s fatalism would never allow her to cancel her voyages, even if her journey took her into the heart of a civil war. She asserted her right to travel, one of those terrifying tourists who carry on with their sightseeing even as the streets explode into dust just behind them.

‘Bonjour, Madame.’

Before her stood a young girl, dark-skinned, anxious, wearing a faded blue dress and sandals. Her hair was covered with a long black veil, tiny silver medallions stitched into the fringe. These tinkled softly when she moved. She smiled at Miss Webster, clearly wishing to please and to help, but uncertain of her welcome. The child could not have been more than twelve or thirteen, her breasts looked quite flat. The old lady replied in slow careful French.

‘Good morning, my dear. Do you know where Saïda is?’

‘Oui, Madame. Elle est partie.’

‘Partie? Gone where?’

‘To the desert, Madame. To see her sister.’

That’s it. Miss Webster’s deductions snapped into place. She’s his aunt. Saïda is Chérif’s mother’s sister. So they are related.

‘Was she very angry when she left?’

‘Oui, Madame. Quelqu’un a volé tout son argent.’

‘Aha!’ cried Miss Webster with great satisfaction. So, Saïda has been robbed. And I know whom she has accused of theft. There was a pause. The girl stared at her, less nervous now, but wary.