Tremor (12 page)

Johnny had been born in Casablanca in 1924, and had spent his first ten formative years in barracks and then on the streets of Agadir. In 1934 his mother, tired finally beyond endurance by her husband's string of girlfriends, had returned to her parents in Wolverhampton, taking her only child with her, and Johnny had changed his name and become a British subject.

But he had never lost touch with his father.

He was in trouble in England in his late teens, put on probation for stealing a motor bike, given a day's imprisonment for breaking into a shop, then four months for a repeat offence. His mother blamed it all on Gaston's influence.

But that was the lot. After that he turned over a new leaf, or became cleverer. The police had interviewed him repeatedly whenever a break-in occurred in the neighbourhood, but he had always had a cast-iron alibi. For years he had worked as a motor mechanic in one of the big firms, but had lived at home, never married.

He knocked on the white-painted Moorish door, and it was answered, as he had half-expected, by Maria Jerval. Unlike the rest of his women, Maria had stuck and refused to be discouraged, and made herself useful to Gaston and finally indispensable. She was a squat woman in her late thirties, the nubile figure which had first attracted Gaston long since gone, but still with good eyes and a fair skin for one with such lank bootblack hair. A half-caste, she refused to speak any English, but now had a firm grasp of the household, not to mention the two girls she had borne him. Gaston should have married her – and now could – but he and Johnny conspired to silence in the matter of Fiona's death six years ago.

‘Oh, it is you,' she said.

She did not like Johnny. She did not like it that he was Gaston's only son. She resented his visits, which she felt were a reminder to Gaston of her own inadequacies in presenting him only with girl children.

‘Maria,' Johnny said with false heartiness. ‘How are you?'

He stooped to kiss her, but she turned her cheek.

They went into the dark little vestibule that led through to the garden and the pool and a mass of nasturtiums. One of her daughters put her head round a door and then was gone.

‘You have lost weight,' he exclaimed, knowing it would please her. ‘Is my father here?'

Her eyes strayed to the case he carried. ‘No.'

‘He will be back soon?'

‘I have just been to visit him,' she said. The wide sleeve fell back from her arm as she brushed her hair back. Eight bracelets jangled. ‘He is in hospital.'

Johnny felt a lurch of apprehension. ‘When? What is wrong? My father never ailed nothing!'

‘His heart. He was taken ill on Wednesday. He is in a unit. What do they call it? Cardiac.'

They went through to a larger room beyond, which had a floor of olive-green herringbone tiles and soft woven rugs on the walls. One of the daughters brought in mint tea in an ornate Moorish silver teapot. Johnny felt he could have done with something stronger.

Maria became slightly less hostile as she poured the tea and they talked. The absence of Gaston made it easier between them. Gaston, she said, had been taken with acute pain on Friday night; the doctor had diagnosed a coronary; Gaston had been taken away and was recovering slowly but was still on the danger list.

‘I'll go see him,' Johnny said.

‘Not yet. The doctors said he must not be disturbed. I was allowed only to sit five minutes …'

‘His only son.'

‘Tomorrow or the day after, perhaps. You are here for some time?'

‘A week maybe.'

‘You gave us no warning.'

‘I made up my mind quite sudden. I thought: I'll surprise them.'

Maria's eyes strayed again to the suitcase at Johnny's feet. ‘He will be in no fit state to transact business, if that was your thought.'

‘Business? Who says business? I'm just here for a holiday, like. But I always want to see the old man. Always ask his advice about things.'

‘You are not to worry him … Where are you staying?'

‘The Saada.'

‘Expensive.' Maria pursed her lips. ‘So you are doing well?'

‘Well enough.' Johnny had no intention of confiding in his common-law stepmother. He was shaken up, thrown right off balance by the news. He had reckoned confidently on his father's help; it had been a part of his scheme all along; Gaston would have known exactly the safest way to launder the money. Also, Johnny needed a new passport. He had two with him, but both of them had little trailing connections with the past. He needed something absolutely new. He had no intention whatever of staying in Morocco longer than absolutely necessary. Morocco was too near London. And, who knew which of his pertinacious friends, particularly Mr Artemis, might not sniff out the French link, and bribe a sight of the lists of air passengers leaving for France yesterday? Even the police might sus him out. The sooner he left for somewhere like South America the safer he would feel.

But now …

After a few minutes he made an excuse and left, walked back over the cobbles, squeezed past a donkey whose panniers were so stuffed with sisal hemp that it almost filled the street, reached his car, put his suitcase carefully on the passenger's seat and drove off, scattering a group of Arab children who were playing with a rag ball.

What now? Go back to the hotel and ring the hospital from there? Maybe tomorrow the old man would be sitting up and speaking, able at least to give advice, names to look up who would help in this emergency. Johnny had not kept up with his school-friends. With his confidence in his father it had not entered his head that he would need to. How old was his father? About seventy? But he had looked so tough, as if his years in the Army had pickled him into an enduring mahogany. Black, close-growing hair, hardly tinged with grey, coarse, weathered skin, thin, hooked nose, black, wary eyes: the eternal corporal. Johnny could not imagine him between white sheets, a drip feed or whatever, dials attached to wires on his chest.

Johnny remembered the secret safe behind the panel in the wall of his father's bathroom. Doubtful if Maria knew of its existence; if she did she certainly never saw it opened. It would have taken comfortably the contents of the little suitcase. Twenty per cent for Gaston; that would have been expected; a fair deal. But now where was the safest hiding place for the next two or three days? Nothing in the bedroom of his hotel. No doubt the hotel had a safe for ‘valuables'. But the case was a bit too large not to invite curiosity. Or he could carry it around with him wherever he went. This too would be conspicuous; but if the case never left his side there could be no opportunity for prying servants to pick the flimsy locks. Moroccan servants, he knew, were not all that reliable.

He wished now that he had taken the other course of flying first to Switzerland and banking it there. The strictest secrecy, he knew, was preserved. But in his career Johnny had never even met a Swiss banker. You couldn't just go into a bank without an introduction and ask them to take care of hot money for you for an indefinite period.

As he turned into the Boulevard Mohammed V the sun went in, and he saw that the haze had turned into dark opaque cloud. A storm perhaps. It would help to clear the air. The sea, glimpsed between the hotels and the other buildings, was the colour of a soup tureen. Half a dozen yachts seemed planted immovably, immobilized like boats in a Dufy painting. Only a tanker, sending out a little black dribble of smoke, was perceptibly stealing towards the harbour.

The gates of the hotel; drive up between the praetorian guard of umbrella pines. A taxi was at the door, two people getting out. He parked his little Renault under the trees and followed the porter, who was carrying in luggage. The new arrivals were at the reception desk, as clearly American as their luggage. The man, much the older, was tall and good-looking and well-dressed, but unsuitably for a holiday town. Grizzled grey hair, clean skin, good-toned voice as if he were used to employing it in public. The woman was about thirty, small and slim, in a thin, long, flowered frock that disguised her figure. She was pretty, good eyes, good fair-browny hair, and spoke in an undertone as if the last thing she would have thought of was employing her voice in public.

‘Burford,' he was saying. ‘And Mrs Heinz. It was two single rooms with a sea view.'

‘Of course, monsieur,' said the receptionist. ‘Rooms thirty-four and thirty-five. Ahmed will show you. Your luggage will follow. May I please have your passports.'

They had spent three nights in Paris. They were to have three nights in Agadir, three in Cairo and three in London on the way home.

The last few months had seen a slow process of affiliation. Early on in those months he had acknowledged to himself that he no longer disliked her; but it was long after that before he admitted that she attracted him physically. Of course there'd been the ‘feeling', the sensation that she was provocatively female, but he had half resented its effect on him. In the end he came no longer to resent it. He thought about her a lot when she was absent, and found himself watching her when she was present.

Not that she came more often – it was two evenings only a week, with bridge sometimes to follow. And she would cycle home, or be given a lift and walk up for her cycle next day. He kissed her goodnight frequently now, but more often than not she turned her cheek. It was all very friendly but very impersonal. She kept at a distance and kept him at a distance. She did in the end accept his invitation to lunch in Boston at Locke-Ober's, and that was a great success. Her voice, with its foreign undertones, was rather husky, and when she laughed it was not a musical sound. But she had a quick brain – not at all like Ann's, but acute and sometimes humorous.

Another letter from Ann confirmed her contentment in her new life and showed no hint that she might return. Indeed, he had raised it in a previous letter but she had not replied to that at all.

He suggested to Letty that she should give up her work in the restaurant and cook for him six evenings a week, but she made excuses about having committed herself to the proprietress and not wanting to let her down.

He still missed Ann very much, but he was growing accustomed to becoming more his own man. As a single man, he was invited to make up the numbers at several places where they had not been accustomed to go. He began to enjoy women's company more for itself. But warily. The only woman with whom it seemed safe not to be wary was Letty Heinz. She was easy-natured, good-tempered, willing to be a friend, but not much more.

He began to cut his lunch in the city each day, and took to walking distances instead of taking a cab. He felt he could lose ten or twelve pounds, get rid of some of the flabbiness of middle age. He began monthly visits to the dentist, having his teeth, which weren't in bad condition, cleaned up and renovated. He ordered two new suits. He left the barber who had cut his hair for twenty years and went to a fashionable one who let it grow a bit longer and made something of it without getting too way out.

As he had said once to James Amis, he was still living with a sort of emotional trellis behind him. If he looked back and through it he looked at the ruins of a life; he looked back at all the comradeship and kindness of his departed wife; he remembered the early days, so many happy moments, so many vacations together, so much experience shared.

But as time passed he found he
could
look a little more forward – perhaps to nothing more than a shallow flirtation with a pretty woman who meant nothing to him, could mean nothing compared to what was gone. Perversely he was not interested in any of the other opportunities that had so far come his way. Just as perversely, he was interested in Letty Heinz. She might not come of his social group, but she was appealing, pretty and she did play such good bridge.

The slow progress of their friendship seemed sometimes to come to a complete halt. Then it would move on again, and usually with a little move forward from what it had been before.

He had told her in November that he was planning one of his holidays, to take time off from his office and make a trip to Europe and Africa early in the New Year. He had shown her the brochures, the maps of the itinerary, photographs of the places he wished to visit. Since leaving Norway she had never been back to Europe, and she showed interest in his plans. Christmas he had spent with his brother-in-law, but the next time he saw Letty he suggested she might like to go with him.

She had shied away at first, and he had not pressed her – just left the suggestion to soak in. Then the next time he mentioned it he pointed out that he needed companionship, no more, that they would travel as a businessman and his secretary that if she didn't accept he would take his own secretary from the office, though he would much prefer it if he took a friend of Ann's, and that they would be away scarcely more than two weeks. Had she ever flown in a jet? He was looking forward to it. It turned out that she had never flown at all.

The first sign that she was weakening was a remark that if they did go together, she would tell people in the neighbourhood that she would be visiting her uncle in Baltimore. In the end they left on separate days and joined forces at Idlewild. This subterfuge irritated him; he had a reputation to consider and this clandestine way of travelling suggested he had something to hide. Whereas he had nothing to hide. But if Mrs Heinz thought differently, so be it. The main thing was she had agreed to come.

The first time he and Ann had crossed the Atlantic by air, five years ago, they had had to put down to refuel at Gander and Shannon. Now, with these new engines, in a new Boeing 707, they flew non-stop to Paris, leaving New York at seven o'clock in the evening and arriving in Orly next morning at eight.

After they had slept for a few hours, trying to shake off the jet-lag, they walked about Paris in fine grey mild weather. They went first to the Louvre, but he saw at once Letty was not interested in pictures, as Ann had been, and they did not stay long. With his new companion in mind he had booked in at the Hôtel de la Paix, in the very heart of the city, and on the first afternoon they spent a couple of hours sitting at a table watching people pass by. She was fascinated, her eyes glinted with excitement, and he was pleased to watch her. They walked again as darkness fell, had a quiet dinner in the hotel and went to bed early to try to pick up more of the lost sleep. He kissed her goodnight at the bedroom door.