Stewart, Angus (12 page)

'Even now if I'm particularly depressed or nervous—in an anxiety state I suppose it'd be called—I wouldn't touch
kif
Not even with Manolo with me. He's, of course, strictly forbidden it . . .'

Simon Brown switched off the recorder with a clumsy blow. It was funny the proprieties one continued to observe . . . and those one didn't.

He seized a pad and scribbled: '
Please
don't leave your matador tunic on the bathroom floor to get spoilt. Shampoo your hair in the lunch break. A London photographer's coming, to tea. Wear the English school suit. I can't do the algebra. You'd a headache. Or ask an Arab. They invented it.'

He fell asleep where he lay.

  *  *  *  *  *

Covered by sacking still dusty with flour, Achmed slept at the restless depths that may come after terror. At twenty francs he bedded down, just before the closing hour, in the Petit Socco café where many of the homeless slept to avoid arrest on the streets. The arrangements, and the profits, were entirely the responsibility of the head waiter, for the proprietor lived in Rabat, and the manager appeared only briefly during the daytime. For all Chalmers' insistence on his rapid recovery desolation worked in Achmed's dreams. For the first time since he had come to the city he dreamt of his home village. The
Aid el Kebir
was approaching, and he was out grazing the family sheep, which was soon to be killed for the feast. But it had been a dry year, and the grass was already browned. Not only could he find no tempting pasture, but the sheep appeared not to be hungry. It was listless and he had often to lift its hind legs clear of the ground to compel it to walk. Then he realised that he was unhappy too. For some reason he didn't want the sheep killed. But suddenly his brooding over its future was frighteningly resolved. An eagle fell out of the sky and seized the sheep in its
talons. ft rose up again with a roar of wingbeats and carried the sheep far away over the hills. Achmed was terrified, because it was known that an eagle could not take a grown sheep. He felt very
alone. Then, for a moment, he was with Frederick again, looking at the five dirham note. it might be that the corn in the picture was blind, he thought; but there was a lot of money in Tanja.

Achmed's slumber was disturbed only once. A hand, seeking the money in the zip pocket of the bathing trunks he wore as underpants, aroused him. Achmed, his voice still unbroken, woke the whole company with his abuse. Quite a verbal holocaust ensued. In the end everyone was recalling who was not, or who had ever been a criminal. The wide-awake company, led fiendishly by Achmed, cursed and spat upon the culprit. When order was once more the boy fell instantly asleep again.

By five o'clock the cafe was coming to life. Men sat up in the half light and smoked a pipe of
kif
before filtering out into the early morning, to beg, to sell what they had failed to sell, or to start walking to wherever they were going. Others produced bread from beneath their
djellabas
and began to chew it reflectively before departing in their turn. By six o'clock the sleepers had left, steam was raised in the Espresso machine, and the cafe had resumed its daytime function. Only Achmed slept doggedly on. A woman swept patiently around his form as it lay huddled on the floor. When the waiter tried to rouse him, Achmed was an even tighter head-hidden bundle, which groaned, and then whined, '
Imah!
'

  *  *  *  *  *

In his flat, less than a hundred yards away, Raphael Bennington woke up on some athletic reflex. At once, and before the open window, he executed thirty heaves with his chest-expanders. There were five springs on the engine and
only one more to come. Had Achmed known anything about Raphael's athletic accomplishments he would have been round every day. In him he would have discovered the ideal focus for his Tarzan complex. But Raphael Bennington had found casual employment at a hotel swimming pool, and so seldom sported himself on the public beach. He was in fact a life saver. Nor, though himself often inclined to feel redundant, was he merely ornamental. There had been the inevitable occasion when he had grabbed a middle-aged English woman who had not been in distress at all. Or not until he had grabbed her.

Raphael made his way up from the Medina to a small cafe on the Boulevard that advertised American breakfasts. This promise had been somewhat nominal before Raphael had become an
habitué
.
Now, however, he had merely to appear and orange juice, scrambled eggs and a side order of sausage, were quickly placed before him. He greeted the waiter exuberantly in English and was similarly received.

Jay Gadston watched this eruption nervously. For him the day
had not snapped open, but been drawn imperceptibly from the darkness. Towards five o'clock he had become convinced that he could hear birdsong; tentative, single calls at first, swelling into a chattering chorus. At first he had taken indignant action, burrowing beneath the bedclothes as if to thwart an invasion of bees; but sleep had continued to evade him. Then resignation had turned to excitement, and with an eerie sense of occasion, for normally he was a late riser, he had gone out on to his balcony to watch for the dawn. His decision to breakfast in a café had been a conscious perpetuation of the same unfamiliarity. Now he looked out on the morning town. Shutters rattled up from shop fronts, a post office clerk with whom Jay sometimes did business walked past on his way to work, Spanish children hurried by clutching plastic writing cases. Outside the hairdresser's a woman, clearly Spanish, stood precariously upright with a poodle on a lead. Nearby two American tourists were consulting a Nagel, quite unaccosted in the innocence of the hour. Jay looked curiously from the Spanish woman to the American woman. Both were middle-aged and had the same sort of cosmetic repair which money buys but the eye won't.

'Hi!' Raphael called suddenly, looking aside from his steady munching at the bar counter. 'Been here long?'

Jay, conscious all the time that they were the only customers in the cafe, looked up warily. 'Quite a while, yes,' he said.

The stranger appeared to consider this, forking food into his mouth with concentrated zest. In fact Raphael was congratulating himself on having spotted an English-speaking person flawlessly.

'Funny I haven't seen you around before,' he said eventually. 'Eat here often?'

Jay put the question down to good-natured, if slow, mental processes rather than overt suspicion, which the American's tone could be taken as implying.

'A couple of tines. Never for breakfast, though.'

'That maybe explains it then!' Raphael gave a huge grin of enlightenment. 'I always come here for breakfast . . . Have you got any more sausage hot?' he called to the waiter. 'Sausage? Some more?'

The waiter made a gesture of delight, and even excitement, as if he were an animal keeper whose charge was responding healthily after a long convalescence. He hurried away; and Raphael Bonnington revolved on the bar stool the better to introduce himself.

Jay nodded formally. 'I'm Jay Gadston.'

'D'you always eat only those roll things?' Raphael asked, peering curiously at the croissants on Jay's plate.

Jay laughed. 'Yes. Your breakfast seems to be pretty standardised too.'

'Sure. They know me here,' Raphael said, after another moment's reflection. 'Say, I'm haying a sort of party next week. On Tuesday night Would you care to come along?' Jay accepted readily enough, though he saw no possibility of escaping had he wanted to.

'That's settled then.' Raphael began fishing about in the pocket of his jeans and produced a printed card. 'Here's the address. Why not come about eight?'

'All right. Do I bring a bottle or anything?'

'No! Oh no! Drinks on the house. There'll be quite a crowd. They're an odd bunch.' A doubt struck Raphael. 'You pretty broad-minded?'

'Limitlessly,' Jay said. There
seemed to be no other answer to the earnestness that had overtaken the American.

'Fine. Should be okay, then. Bring a girl along if you want. There'll be plenty round
if you don't though. All sorts.'

'Good. I'll look forward to it,' Jay said somewhat mechanically. He got up.

'See you Tuesday, then. Goodbye now.' Raphael turned back to the fresh plate of sausage.

  *  *  *  *  *

Achmed was eventually roused by the waiter in the Petit Socco café, though not before he had called out again in his half sleep for his mother. Muttering and glowering he shook himself free of flour. Then, wetting his hair at a tap, he returned to study his squashed reflection in the chromium of the Espresso machine while he combed it.

Outside in the square he bought half a loaf of native bread, pressing it flatter with his fingers as he fed it into his mouth, because his other hand held the bundle slung over his shoulder. Eating steadily, he walked up to the Grand Socco, and began to search methodically amongst the row of clothing stalls beneath the mosque. The wares here were mostly second-hand woollens, flimsy, and stretched out of shape from much washing. But there were also new clothes, and it was to these that Achmed gave his attention. After some two hours feeling, testing, arguing and considering, he had collected a gigantic pair of baggy Moorish trousers for his father, a white blouse for his stepmother, two straight-falling yellow rayon dresses for his stepsisters, and lastly, and most carefully chosen, a complete miniature outfit, including socks and pullover, for his infant stepbrother, Hassan. This last woollen alone was perceptibly second-hand. Achmed acquired it at bargain price. Untying his bundle, which could barely contain the addition of the new purchases, he discovered simultaneously that he had only just enough money left for the bus, and also that he had not bought any shoes for Hassan. He remembered the omission when the small, soleless slipper he had in the bundle caught his eye.

Ten minutes later he was ringing Raphael Bonnington's doorbell

'Holy smoke, a hobo!' the American exclaimed, opening the door to him.

Achmed wore the half-wizened, half-coquettish smile, that pleasantly twisted his face when he greeted someone he felt might repulse him. Nevertheless, he walked straight in and made for the packet of Chesterfields on the dresser. 'American?' he enquired politely, picking them up.

'That's right. Go on and have one,' Raphael said as he followed him through into the lounge.

Achmed lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke addictively. Achmed—
familia.
Valenciana
,'
he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the sea with his head.

'Oh, so you do have a home some place?' Raphael had picked up the name of the bus station. Now he began to make chugging noises and the motions of steering with hands.
'You're going on a bus?'

'
Si
,' Achmed said, laughing. '
Correo
.'

'That should be fun.'

'
Si
,' Achmed said again, this time automatically. 'Hey, look!
Cadeaux. Familia di Achmed
.'
With sudden enthusiasm he half opened his bundle, and began pulling out the presents he had bought for his family, holding them up one by one for Raphael's inspection. First he produced the outfit for Hassan, together with the minuscule socks. '
Hermano
,' he explained. Next he held the baggy trousers against his body. '
Padre. GRAND
.'
He threw the shawl for his grandmother about his shoulders, bending double in mock decrepitude, and asked Raphael whether he thought it
bueno
.
Finally he took one of the smock-like yellow dresses and held it pinned to his shoulders. 'Good?'

Raphael, who had watched all this activity with growing astonishment, now burst out laughing. 'Very good! Go ahead and put it on if you want

Catching his meaning from his gestures, Achmed at once pulled the dress over his head and shoulders, and went to inspect himself in the long mirror in the adjoining bedroom. The effect was rendered absurd by the protruding trouser legs and shirt-sleeves; but Raphael had his eyes screwed up. 'Say, why don't you wear that for the party Tuesday!' he said. 'It suits you, oh but it really does!'

'Comment
?'
Achmed asked, coming through into the lounge again.

Raphael begun again more slowly. 'You know—the party? When you're going to play the flute?' He made flute-playing motions.

'Ah, si! Party.
Aqui
,'
Achmed said attentively.

'That's right Well why not wear that dress?' Raphael held his hands flat and outstretched, as if to contain the picture before him.

'Oh, no!' Achmed laughed knowingly. He clicked his tongue reproachfully, pulling the dress over his head as he did , but still smiling.

'Come on! You won't look like a girl really A bright idea for a party wasn't a thing Raphael would forgo easily. 'It's just so simple and pretty. And it makes you look like an angel too,' he said, trying to put his feeling into words. 'There's no more to it than that That's all there is to it. What d'you say?'

'
Cadeau, hermana
,' Achmed said firmly, ignoring what was evidently pleading, and folding the dress away. As he did so, he caught sight of the soleless slipper, which was a guide to the size of shoes he wanted to buy for Hassan. He turned to Raphael with this self-explanatory thing. '
Soubhets—hermano
,' he
said.

Raphael was scratching his head distractedly. 'And you want money to buy new ones, I suppose. How much are they?'

Achmed gave an enormously disinterested shrug. 'No much money,' he said vaguely.

Raphael produced his pocket book helplessly. 'Here's five. Okay?'

Achmed turned his lower lip down in a not unattractive consideration of doubt. Now that the shoes were more than twice covered there was no need to say anything.

Raphael stooped to finger the glazed, yellow patterned dress. 'How much did this cost?' There was no thought of bribery in his mind. Five dirhams was exactly a dollar, so he reckoned what he had already given should easily buy baby boots.