Moroccan Traffic: Send a Fax to the Kasbah

  I hesitated still in the doorway. Morgan walked in and sat down facing Lady Kingsley. He said, ‘She’s not a bad swimmer either.’

  I saw Rita, beside me, look at him. Then she took me by the arm and marching in, planted us both on a sofa. Roland Reed came and stood behind us. Johnson said sharply, ‘Has something else happened?’ Then, when she didn’t immediately answer, he added, ‘Lady Kingsley doesn’t perhaps know that you’ve been discussing business with Sir Robert at Asni. Rolly’s only told me the outcome.’

  ‘How boring,’ said Charity. ‘And why are you showing the whites of your eyes? Bobs has been especially tycoonish?’

  ‘He has decided to launch a hostile takeover bid, Lady Kingsley,’ said Roland Reed. ‘I think JJ has only been trying to spare you embarrassment.’

  ‘It would be a pleasure,’ said Lady Kingsley, ‘to be embarrassed by Mr. Johnson. Or JJ, is that what they call you? Or is it Miss Helmann and Mr. Morgan who are embarrassed? Isn’t this what is called fraternising with the enemy?’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ Johnson said. ‘But we are delighted you’re here, and we shan’t breathe a word to Sir Robert. What happened, Rolly?’

  Roland Reed had perched on the back of our sofa. ‘Sullivan’s sidekick Gerry turned up and had a go at us for jailing his partner. Rita saw him off.’

  ‘How?’ said Johnson. It had been his fault, I remembered, that Sullivan had been put away.

  Reed said, ‘She let the monkeys out on him. Only he went off his rocker and unlocked the boar. Nasty scenario. Then Rita lured it into the pool and Sir Robert disposed of it with a boar-spear. Saved Rita and me. Accurate throwing.’

  ‘All that cricket,’ said Charity vaguely. She was looking at Rita. ‘Let the monkeys. . . ?’

  ‘Fucking stupid,’ said Rita. ‘Cost me a fortune.’ She returned the look in the same exploratory way. She said, ‘You’re into horse-racing; you know what we’re saying. You get dirty tricks, honest traders in business. We’re not swapping firm’s secrets with Kingsley’s, but they help when a screwball attacks us. You think that’s right and good, but it’s not. You let each other get killed, or the tabloids will think you’re defecting.’

  ‘And you’re not,’ said Lady Kingsley. She was looking at Mr. Morgan.

  There was a silence. Johnson said, ‘For what it is worth, I think that Kingsley’s possess in Mr. Morgan and Miss Helmann two valuable and honourable employees who would never abandon their firm or its Chair unless driven to it. But you don’t need to believe me.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she said. ‘Bobs was furious when it turned out you were the opposition. Are you going to finish his portrait?’

  ‘It’s finished,’ he said. ‘Or will be tomorrow. He telephoned this afternoon to arrange a final sitting. I plan to add the horns and the tail.’

  She had turned her whole attention to him. She said, ‘It’s interesting. Whatever’s happening, you don’t let it into your painting. I think it’s a generous portrait. Will you paint my picture one day?’

  ‘Will you want it painted?’ he said.

  She stood up. She said, ‘Why ever not? May I come another time? I’d like to see Mr. Morgan’s mountain photographs.’

  Morgan said, ‘I may be off taking more.’

  ‘You’ll probably want to, after the Oppenheim party,’ Charity said. ‘Or maybe you love endless talk about football. Robert and I aren’t going. I must be off; I’m late for my ride. Goodbye. Goodbye, Wendy.’

  Wendy. Johnson left to see her out. Morgan got to his feet. He was flushed. He said, ‘Johnson had no bloody right—’

  ‘Wait,’ said Rita Geddes. ‘Tell him when he comes back. How is he, Rolly?’

  ‘As you see,’ said Roland Reed. ‘Or rather, you don’t. Under all that, I suspect, notably uptight. Here he is.’

  Now that I looked at him, Johnson didn’t look uptight, only faintly unhealthy. His fresh pair of bifocals hid any other aftereffects of last night. His hair was unnaturally tidy. Rita said, ‘You’ve upset Mo, telling Lady K. about his Oppenheim party.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me,’ said Johnson. ‘But before—’

  ‘Well, I bloody know what came over you,’ Mo Morgan said. He was still standing up. I rose slowly too. I didn’t know what they were talking about.

  Johnson said, ‘Well, you think you do. Listen, sit down for a moment. I must hear first what has happened. Rolly, how did Rita get on?’

  ‘Fabulous,’ said Roland Reed. He came round the sofa, pressed me back into my seat and sat himself on the arm. ‘Like an essay from Global Perspectives.’

  ‘What the hell’s Global Perspectives?’ said Morgan. Finding himself isolated, he sat himself slowly down in his chair.

  ‘Great publication,’ Johnson said. ‘Adopts a global stance to examine the mega-dimensions of current issues from a new standpoint. Rita’s dyslectic; couldn’t read; can’t find her way about. With the coloured glasses she’s practically Einstein, or do I mean Epstein? Rolly writes out the stuff, and she reads it off when she wants to. The rest is up to her own fertile mind.’

  And that was true. Reed could never have prompted all of that performance. Johnson said, ‘And the figures?’

  Across my head, I felt Reed and Miss Geddes look at one another. Unexpectedly, it was Morgan who spoke. He said, ‘They were roughly the ones Wendy brought, provided by Pettigrew and then merged with later updates. Nobody would expect them to be other than broadly favourable.’

  ‘But?’ said Johnson. From where he was sitting, he could see both me and Morgan. He had peeled off his expensive jacket and tie and had settled back, his shirt neck hauled open. He said, ‘It’s up to you whether you tell me. It’s a hostile bid now, which does make a difference.’

  Morgan looked at me. Once, I would have stopped him. Now, I didn’t know what to do. He said, ‘It’s my funeral. Wendy’s free, if she wants, to tell Sir Robert all that I’m saying, just as Charity will tell him I’m going to this meeting with Oppenheim. The—’

  ‘Are you sure Charity will tell him?’ Johnson said.

  I said, ‘What meeting?’ at the same moment.

  ‘You think she won’t?’ Morgan said. ‘Is that why you told her? You’re mad.’

  ‘So you’d rather not talk about figures?’ Johnson said. Nobody answered my question.

  ‘I couldn’t anyway,’ Morgan said after a pause. ‘But you asked me to think about them, and I have. The initial figures from Pettigrew were far too favourable.’

  ‘They would be weighted,’ I said. It didn’t seem too disloyal to say that.

  ‘I know what my Division costs,’ said Mo Morgan. ‘I don’t think any good accountant would allow them to be weighted so far, unless he were heavily overruled.’

  ‘Or given the wrong figures to work with in the first instance,’ Johnson said. ‘Wendy, do you really hate pipes?’ He had his in one hand.

  I said, ‘Sir Robert doesn’t allow them. No. I don’t mind.’

  ‘Yes, but I do,’ said Rita, getting up and taking the pipe from his fingers. She sat down again, leaving Johnson staring at her empty-handed. He looked resigned, rather than cross.

  Reed, on the arm of the sofa, glanced at him briefly. ‘Tell your tubes to be grateful. It would be bloody silly to risk it. Mr. Morgan, if it’s any help, we’d already spotted the likely cosmetic work. We did think it extreme. What we didn’t know was whether it was created for us, or your own Board. Then, if the books were being cooked, who was cooking them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Morgan. ‘And I shouldn’t tell you if I did.’

  ‘But you’ll perhaps look into it?’ Johnson said. ‘It does affect your financing as well.’

  Morgan was silent. Beside me, Rita shifted. She said, ‘Don’t wrap everything up. Morgan thinks we’re setting him up for his meeting with Oppenheim, and of course we are, in a way. Mo? You know a lot more about King Cong and Co than you did. Oppenheim will push you towards a management buyout, wh
ich means you would try to leave Kingsley’s. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe not. It’s not for us to tell you. But it’s worth a good bloody think.’

  And then I realised what they were talking about. I said, ‘You’re seeing Oppenheim today? You’re going to the next buyout meeting after all?’

  ‘I meant to, all along,’ Morgan said. ‘I’m sorry, Wendy. I didn’t see why you should be worried. But he’d set it up for this evening, and I accepted.’

  ‘For when?’ I said.

  ‘In an hour,’ Johnson said. Morgan must have told him that, during the companiable, coked-out night they’d spent together. And Johnson had told Lady Kingsley.

  In a single day, I had lost my hold on the entire orderly world of the seminars. But I was sure of one thing. I said, ‘Mr. Morgan. You’re still a director of Kingsley’s. You’re still responsible to the Board. You can’t do this without reporting it.’

  ‘Then come with me,’ said Mo Morgan. ‘And report it, if you want to.’

  ‘Will she be safe?’ Rita said quickly. She looked at Johnson. ‘There was a bug at Asni. Pymm, I suppose. Kingsley pulled it out before the meeting began. By now, whoever planted it will know it didn’t operate, and they may come again hunting for Wendy.’

  ‘Pymm’s been with her mother all day,’ Johnson said. ‘I’m told they had an incredible schedule. Rita, really—?’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Geddes. ‘Have a drink and shut up.’

  I was watching a grown-up man asking to be allowed to smoke his own pipe. I was watching him ask Rita Geddes. Neither of them showed the least rancour, and Reed was grinning. They were like brother and sister. They were the way I imagined students to be. I said, ‘My mother and Mr. Pymm?’

  ‘She’s quite safe,’ said Johnson. ‘He saw her back to her hotel a short time ago. And if it was Pymm’s Asni bug, he’d imagine he’d got all the dope he wanted, forgive me, on tape. Now, of course, he’ll know better.’

  I said, ‘My mother doesn’t know anything that Pymm would find. . .’ and stopped.

  ‘Wendy,’ said Mr. Morgan. He knew and I knew that my mother was the original bug.

  Johnson struggled up and went across to the drinks tray where he stood, looking unhappy. He said, ‘So we need, I’m afraid, to take a few precautions. Mr. Morgan is quite all right: he’s the gold at the end of the rainbow and no one’s going to touch him. Wendy and her mother are different. If they think Kingsley’s can protect them, then of course that’s all right. If they want to leave it to us, that’s all right, too. Wendy’s not a director; she’s not going to tell us anything we don’t know already, and since the meetings are over, she has no more work, presumably, to do for Sir Robert. In fact, what did he tell you to do?’ Johnson asked me.

  No one, clearly, had informed him of all that had happened in Asni. I supposed they would, as soon as they got a chance. They would play him the tape from the lunchroom. As if I’d said it aloud, Rita said, ‘By the way, there’s your case. It’s locked, and the key’s in your bag. Don’t forget it. You don’t want to leave anything.’

  I looked at it, and remembered at last what Sir Robert had actually said, in the big room at the Hotel Toubkal. I said, ‘He told me to go home. I want to go home.’

  Morgan said, ‘You’d still need protection in London, and you’d have to ask Kingsley’s to do it. That’s OK, I’m sure. The other way is to stay here with us. What are you doing?’

  He snapped the question at Johnson. Johnson said, ‘Rita, Rolly and the rest are going back to Ouarzazate. I have my last session with Sir Robert tomorrow. Then I’ll see. The royals, thank heaven, are flexible.’

  ‘Jay?’ said Roland Reed. I could hear Morgan hiss. I thought, too, of Sir Robert’s voice on the tape, reciting his wrongs. The concealment of Johnson’s MCG holding; the subversion of Morgan, the spying, the drugs.

  Johnson looked at Reed, bottle in hand. ‘Oh, shut up,’ he said, as Rita had done. He poured a large drink and carried it back. It was just mineral water.

  Morgan said, ‘But Reed is right. You need to watch out. You’re on Sullivan’s particular hit list. You didn’t see the way Gerry acted today. You ought to go with the rest to Ouarzazate. Or get back to London.’

  ‘After I’ve finished the portrait,’ said Johnson. ‘Anyway, the Colonel’s in jug. Look. First things first. Morgan and Wendy and I go to Daniel Oppenheim’s party, and Mo has his fateful interview and decides whom he’s going to rat on and how. Then we call on Wendy’s mother, come back here—’

  ‘We?’ said Roland Reed. ‘Where do you come into this?’

  ‘I’ve got an invitation,’ said Johnson, looking surprised. ‘From Muriel Oppenheim and her husband and, of course, her father, the great Jimmy Auld. So has Mo. Party’s really for Jimmy. He got a nice little medal at Casa, and is fitting in the odd hooley for pals. Africa Cup, here we come.’

  His glasses flashed. For a moment, crazily, I saw that he and Morgan were actually enchanted by the idea of going to the Oppenheims’ house, and meeting Muriel’s famous football coach father, and discussing the Africa Cup the way they had done on the yacht. With all that was happening, they longed to talk football. I made a statement. I said, ‘I can’t go dressed like this. And I don’t have time to get anything else.’

  I was not unsupported. I could see the resistance in Rita’s eyes, and Roland Reed stayed silent. Johnson contemplated them both. Then he turned to me and said, ‘Have you glanced at Mo recently? But the great thing about film outfits is that they travel with wardrobes. Rita, could someone Kwikfit them up?’

  ‘What as?’ said Mo Morgan suspiciously. Like Johnson, he had begun to revive.

  ‘Spoiled for choice,’ Johnson said. ‘A pterodactyl, a ground sloth, or any two legs of a dinosaur. Rita’ll do all your make-up. Won’t you, Troon?’

  She threw a cushion at him, and he fielded it. She had flushed with what seemed to be relief, even pleasure. In due course I dressed and when Rita came, I let her do my make-up to show I felt better. I thought I knew what to expect, but I didn’t. At the end, she said, ‘You don’t really need me; you make a better job of your face than most people. Listen, don’t feel you have to carry it all. Let the men take the strain. They’ll see you right, and your mother.’

  She had talked of my mother before. She hadn’t mentioned Sir Robert. I said, ‘Are your parents alive?’

  She took the towels away and laid her hands on my shoulders. ‘Oh, no. They went a long time ago. I have a bitch of an auntie in Troon. Keeps me right. Keeps me wrong. Don’t know what I’ll do when she dies.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Chapter 14

  Let the men take the strain, the Geddes woman had said. Advice that would bring out the street militants on any professional business course I’d ever taken, or listened to. I thought of my mother’s cassettes piled up back at the hotel. How to use the Triple-Tick System for Making Problem Free Travel Arrangements. How to Avoid the One Secretarial Mistake That Could Destroy Your Career. I sat in the yellow taxi taking Johnson and Morgan and me to the Oppenheim party, and I let them take the strain.

  I thought they might be good at it. Dressing, I had already listened to Johnson delivering a lecture to Morgan as he changed in the next room. There was no doubt which was which. Johnson and Sir Robert might have been to the same school. Johnson said, ‘May I bore you with a circumstance you will have thought of already? An Oppenheim-aided buyout of you and your microchips would hit Sir Bobs and help, I have to say, to keep Rita out of his clutches. At this moment, you may like the idea as much as I do, but there are several possible glitches. One, Oppenheim might be fronting for a crook with BO. Two, King Cong won’t unbundle you lightly, and he’s got Muriel’s picture.’

  ‘And yours,’ Morgan said. ‘And Wendy’s.’

  ‘I don’t mind if Wendy doesn’t,’ Johnson said. ‘And lastly, there’s a strong possibility, I should say, that someone will come and sing you a sweet song to the effect that, if only you agree to stay on a
t Kingsley’s—’

  ‘I’ll be buried a K,’ Morgan said.

  There was a pause. Then Johnson’s voice, wholly fascinated, said, ‘Did someone say that?’

  ‘Sir Robert,’ Morgan said. He began laughing at the same moment as Johnson. When I met them outside, he was looking cheered-up and almost respectable in a check shirt outside a pair of fresh pants and a pair of Mafia dark glasses. He said, ‘Wendy. My God, how did you ever give birth to your mother? Turn round.’ And as I did so he added, ‘Just had my first naval briefing. Always look at the print under the small print. That’s really pretty fetching.’

  ‘I’m fetched,’ said Johnson surveying me. He put a calm, steering hand on my back. ‘Come on. Into the circus.’ And they kept up the joshing, in between talking football, all the way to the Oppenheims’.

  Thirty years before, when African Cup games began, Jimmy Auld had been flown out to coach in Morocco: a married man with a toddler. He was a widower now, and the same toddler was thirty-five, and married to Daniel Oppenheim the investment adviser, and had been photographed semi-nude in several postures on Johnson’s yacht Dolly.

  None of us could have avoided that thought, driving into the sweeping courtyard before the Oppenheims’ rented pad in the French quarter. Even Johnson broke off as we crawled through the crowds in the driveway. The mansion was large, and the ground full of flowering bushes and people and palm trees. Mixed up with the guests on the lawns were quite a lot of Desert Song extras on horseback, and groups of tinkling women, and people with drums. Everybody, including the folk-performers, had come to show how much they loved Jimmy.

  We climbed the steps and were welcomed by Muriel inside the large marble hallway. Tanned and expensively unadorned in a silk toga dress, she kissed Johnson and shook hands with Morgan whom, of course, she’d met climbing in Asni, and greeted me with the same friendly warmth she’d shown on the yacht at Essaouira. Her gaze had lingered a fraction on Johnson. She knew about the cannabis, I suddenly thought. Then she cried, ‘Father! Danny! Look who’s arrived!’

  In size, Daniel Oppenheim fitted my recollection of the pyjamas I’d seen on his bunk. He was above average height; a well-fed man with fine, dark hair and a trace of a jowl. His eyes were strikingly brown, and his mouth took its shape from a double set of prominent, very white teeth. He said, ‘JJ? We drank all your brandy, did Lenny tell you? And I’m not at all penitent. Nothing here as grand as a yacht except Jimmy. He’s longing to see you. And Mo Morgan, the intrepid inventor and climber, of course. Welcome, welcome. And—?’