Tangier (25 page)

Rupert received me on his chaise-longue. That is Rupert reclined; the callow youth perched upon as adjacent chair. Joseph, his Indian secretary, gave me a glass of red wine. Rupert talked for an hour upon the iniquities of publishers and agents. The callow youth, attentive, noncommittal eventually muttered about a taxi. Joseph summoned one. Back down three miles of the Mountain to Ain Haiani (
where
?),
hungry, through sheeting rain.

I hope this isn't knocking. I have nothing but admiration for any sort of author who turns the stuff out bright, professional, regular. I just felt Rupert, the bloke, might have offered me a biscuit then, or made vague social noises about the possibility of a sandwich in six months. A year later I'd invited Peter and Wendy Owen to a drink at the Parade. Rupert appeared from exile, not yet having published the novel of some similar title, and I introduced him to the Owens. An elderly author trying to flog the idea of a book to a publisher has curiosity value,

If writers are rare, so are unaffected gentlemen. At a lunch given by Marigold Stirling, widow of T. E. Lawrence's fellow officer, to whom I'd been given an introduction from Anne Bridge, Lady O'Malley, I met Alec Waugh and his lovely wife, Virginia Sorenson. With precision I'd scarcely known since coming down from Oxford Mr Waugh produced a diary and invited myself. and the Bowles, who weren't present, to his suite in the Hotel Velazquez at 12.30 for lunch at 1.00,

Staggered, I had my tropical suit cleaned. Memorable as the meal was my falling in love with Janie Bowles mind. It opened like a flower, as gently; then sparkled as though broken through the glass of a bell-jar.

A few years later I called on the Waughs in their Velazquez suite for the last time before settling into a Tangier flat. Alec had a copy of my second novel which he asked me to inscribe. He had
bought
the book!

A generation younger, Alan Sillitoe and his wife Ruth Fainlight, the poet, were equally openly off the mark. 'We usually have coffee at the Café  de Paris about six after shopping. Meet us there if you can, and come up to supper.' Sillitoe said, over a phone wire which creaked and whistled beneath a tremendous rainstorm. In Dradeb cast-iron manhole covers were balanced atop gushing water like pingpong balls on a fountain. Don only suit again.

'We'd better get out and push the fucking thing,' Sillitoe said as the Ford Anglia drowned in three feet of flood water at the bottom of the Old Mountain road. The rain had stopped. I thought only. 'Hell, he must have a second pair of trousers,' before plunging in knee-deep on the passenger side. Alan shoved driver's side. Ruth, secure, giggled.

We ate fresh chicken and sausages from the Belgian butcher, and drank sensible wine. I met
the
infant David. Whether he yet stalks the steppe in wolfskin cap as people in Volgograd hoped, I don't know. With such sane parents he will do and be what he wills.

Bloody-minded Alan had to drive me hack. I begged Ruth not to let him. He had a foul cough; but he must. The baby Ford in the garage wouldn't start.

'Plugs must be soaked and shorting,' I said. 'Distributor'll need wiping.'

'Which are the plugs?' Alan asked. We were groping with a torch under the bonnet. Real creative artists mutate. Sillitoe must have switched himself off from mechanical things very young, I remember thinking.

We wiped dry, started, charged the diminishing lake at the bottom of the hill with only partial success; but I'd ceased to give a damn about my only suit trousers.

There were more meals with the Sillitoes. That winter the rains caved in the roof of my Ain Haiani house, and I moved to the top of the Lottery Building, where I was succeeded by William Burroughs.

A few years later I met the Sillitoes at a
Transatlantic
Review
party in London. Bill Burroughs and I were gloomily munching food, strategically near Joe McCrindle's overly generous bar, talking Tangier. 'It's radioactive.' Bill said several times. I took this as
metaphor. No nuclear devices had fallen. The finger poked between my shoulder-blades was Ruth's; her first words, 'When can you come to dinner:' She marched me through the chaos of that sort of party to Alan. One doesn't need to be in process of divorce, hiding from oneself and the world in a fourteen-by-eight-foot London bedsitter, irrationally paranoid, adjunct of depression, because one's refusing to eat anti-depressants and trying to write a novel, to remember kindness. The Sillitoes knew none of these facts; but intuition plus selective intelligence is part of the make-up of artists.

Another saviour of this time was John Lehmann, employing me to type letters in connection with his third volume of autobiography. I was numb with private unhappiness. A true zombie. The phone rang on John's desk. It was John Bowen. 'No, but he's just walking Rudy (his dog) 'round the block.' I said. 'You'll ring again! Fine. Do you have his number?'

A visual idiocy happened elsewhere in London. At a small party I mistook Robert McKenzie for a man I'd known for years, seen only the previous day. Worse, I remained, convinced my friend was pulling my leg for over an hour. Was it semi-conscious assimilation of television? Or is one mad when living with the characters of a novel! Returned to the solitude of my bedsitter, I wrote McKenzie an apology, without explanation. A kind letter came back. We were next to meet again, then frequently, in Tangier. Bob still eyes me a little nervously. In July 1973, off-duty and off the cuff, he gave me a brilliant assessment of the politico-economic situation of Morocco in the Café  de Paris.

In 1961 a visit of Francis Bacon's to Tangier coincided with that of one of my more socially competent friends to me. Alister Brass and I had known each other since we were thirteen. It was Alister who recognized Bacon; Bacon who recognized I know not what in Alister. Alister is a medical doctor, and was challenged by Bacon to guess his age. His guess was twenty-two years short of Bacon's triumphant announcement of his actual age, My guess, lay and unspoken, was roughly the same as Alister's. I record this to disabuse notions of flattery. Bacon did, and does have one of those preternaturally young faces. We had met in the Djenina, where Alister and I had been having dinner. Francis had a friend with him, and the four of us moved on to more champagne at Dean's Bar. Dean himself, an inscrutable Negro said to know more about Tangier than anyone, was then still alive.

Perhaps eight bottles of champagne were consumed in the next three hours. 'I think it's time we bought one,' Alister said in an aside. I swallowed. At twenty-four Alister had just qualified, was doing the second half of his preregistration year at the Colonial Hospital in Gibraltar. We dug in our pockets - or, rather, in his.

A great friend of Francis' had died, and he was in extreme mental pain. Someone has described the impact of a Bacon portrait as deriving from the fact
that the scream is forever inaudible. That night we heard the scream many times, high-pitched, terrible, never loud. The young friend accompanying Francis alone could cope.

When we left Dean's around 2.00 a.m. Bacon was outwardly calmer. We passed those seven Moroccan soldiers, heavily armed, stalking the night streets in file. I was terrified lest Bacon suddenly see tortured, melting faces, butchered meat perhaps, beneath the steel helmets; and lash out uncontrollably. Crack Moroccan infantry wouldn't know what a painter was. 'This man is the brother of the Queen of England' might prevent an ugly scene in emergency. It no sooner occurred to me that '. . . is very rich' would stay summary execution completely, than a less worthy thought came. Why not lock the impossibly lovable man in my tiny Ain Haiani house with brushes and oils and cable the Tate to come and collect the wall? The Bollinger was affecting me too.

The soldiery passed without a glance at us. We saw
the red light of a taxi. It paused at Tangier's all-night
épicerie
(there is one no more), then drove us to Francis' simple hotel. Dawn found the party eating sardines and olives, finger-dug and dripping from tins and a paper cornet, and sipping warm champagne from the shop.

One is spontaneously drawn to a single object a man has made, alone. Most explosives are destructive, manufactured with sums and slide-rules, whole cities of technicians. Knowing nothing of the visual arts, I began at least to look at paintings and sculpture after that night.

William Burroughs I first met in September 1964. A gentle, suited, hatted, soft-spoken man, whose Pittsburg drawl I could barely understand. Solemnly he inscribed an Olympia
The Naked Lunch
, and Calder's
Dead Fingers Talk
,
for me. Subsequently I was to know Bill the slow-speaking raconteur, wit, and kind man: In the flats of Paul Bowles and the painter Brion Gysin, and in the Café de France. The last occasion was instructive. The previous night I'd explained to Bill my ethics of portrait photography: no study is seen by anyone except the subject; none published without subject's written permission for a given shot. Bill said, 'Maybe'. Next morning in the Café de France he said, 'No.' This was fine by me.

The problem re-occurred more traumatically with the girlfriend of the Moroccan painter, Ahmed Jacoubi as earlier touched upon). Ahmed I'd known for years; the girl was new, and one of the most beautiful girls I'd ever seen.. Her name was Khemo (pronounced 'Heemo'). For seventy-two hours I was in love with her which I suppose made mc a temporary haemophiliac. But no photograph.

Margaret Lane asked me to her beautiful house; a miniature version of Barbara Hutton's, but genuine and tasteful. Her live beauty was staggering; her collection of kaftans superb. Lord Huntingdon was courteous — and articulate, which painters seldom are. Barbara Hutton was disembarked from a scheduled flight I happened to be on, and I knew she must be someone important because a Rolls swept right up to the plane's steps. Scruffiness and nerves had previously prevented my accepting an invitation to one of her fabled parties. There were said to be discreetly armed men from the insurance company to sec you didn't prise emeralds from the furniture with your penknife. Gavin Maxwell I first met in his London home when I was nineteen. We were to see each other only twice again, in Tangier. Peter Churchill's personal bravery, Anthony Nutting's writings upon modern history, need no mention by mc. Joe Orton, the playwright (subsequently murdered), I was introduced to by a friend in Tangier's cheapest restaurant, the defunct Florian's, The restaurant bore small resemblance to its namesake in Venice, but sensible people regularly ate there. The price was right.

Charles Monteith of Faber gave me an introduction to the author, and expert on Nigeria, Michael Crowder, which afforded further impressions of just how beautiful a Tangier Kasbah house can be Jan Morris introduced me to Sir Hugh Boustead, sometime British Political Agent to Abu Dhabi, among other distinguished posts. The consequence was a delicious outdoor lunch (in Tangier Sir Hugh was wont to sleep in a hammock beneath a mosquito-net) at which the only other guest was a former governor of Gibraltar. As measure of unfamiliarity with such company I simply cannot remember the man's name.

Tangier's wisest raconteur, and one of its kindest men provided one keeps on the right side of him is George Greaves. Probably he knows more about Tangier than anyone but, despite being correspondent for the
Daily Express
, he's telling nothing in writing. An Australian, he's nevertheless one of the uncrowned kings of the British 'colony'. The other is David Herbert,

Michael Davidson briefly visited in summer 1974. I was instructed to present myself; and we had a simple supper together. Michael hadn't been in Tangier since independence - nearly twenty years. Next day we met in the Café de Paris at 3.30. I offered him a brandy because he couldn't believe there was no longer wine in the Socco. He declined; but was saddened by the new fact. We visited the Socco for mint tea, before I escorted him back to an appointment with George Greaves. In thirteen years I had never heard George called 'Georgie' before.

In 1964, at a party given by Paul Bowles in a cliff -hanging house he had taken for the summer, Tennessee Williams was courteous in a way only an American Southerner can be, but somehow unfocused. I didn't know that, similarly to Francis Bacon, he had recently suffered the loss of a great friend. In July 1973 the English novelist (subsequently become a US citizen) Gavin Lambert gave a small dinner at which Tennessee was a totally focused man: ebullient, witty, mentally sensitive as a wet finger is physically when it touches electricity. The moral for me was that a man can pass through mental hell to emerge more whole, richer.

Everyone knows this. I had never seen the fact more blessedly demonstrated. Tennessee intrigued me by doing something I myself have done - though in my case with - cheek. Finding his wine-glass momentarily empty he reached across Gavin's dinner table and drained mine with an unapologetic chuckle.

Different types of wit cannot be equated. Of writers and authors in Tangier (and some have been transients) the most sympathetic to me belongs to Gavin Lambert and Paul Bowles. That of the delightful Tom Wright, John Hopkins, Leslie Croxford, David Woolman and the quiet, gentle Noel Mostert is simply different. Mohammed Mrabet has a wit all his own, Mohamed Choukri is too serious to let much show.

Paul Bowles was to extend me constant friendship over thirteen years. A man more sensitive to atmosphere would be ethereal. Paul has three distinct ways of walking: the country stroll; the Medina prowl; and the shopping dart for the new town, where he won't linger a second longer than he must. His conversation is sometimes dry, but enormously knowledgeable. Composer of the incidental music for Tennessee William' early plays, he is a passionate recorder of Moroccan music, whether for the Library of Congress, or discreetly for himself and friends, wherever genuine stuff is being played. Paul is of course also a novelist, and a master of the short story. Recently he has devoted himself to live translations: live because the Moroccans' stories, with the exception of Mohamed Choukri, are talked in Moghrebi on to tape, the minutest nuance then discussed between author and translator, words being clarified with cross-reference in Spanish, I have watched the process far hours; mention it because one of the Moroccan authors' English language publishers once told me the books were written by Bowles himself!