Moroccan Traffic: Send a Fax to the Kasbah

  My mother couldn’t turn round, but her captor did. I saw the blur of the distant, sallow face turning, and then the agitation with which the driver thudded forward the wheel of his bike on the carpet, shouting angrily. Because of the damage rather than any mood of compliance, they let him scrape past, and closed ranks again almost immediately. Johnson, beside us, swore under his breath, and Charity looked at him. She said, ‘He’ll make sure we catch up.’

  ‘Bang to rights,’ Johnson said. ‘D’you think I could jump that?’

  The carpet, still on display, stretched before us. Lady Kingsley looked at him. She said, ‘I can’t, not with Wendy. What’s the trouble?’

  ‘He’s got a rifle,’ said Johnson; and set his horse at the barrier.

  It was a carriage horse, and he hadn’t a saddle, so that it was an ungainly business, and got him wreathed in the process with bunting. But he did it, and we heard the mare’s hooves clatter distractedly on the other side, and then seem to recover and set off. ‘Well done, the Navy,’ said Charity Kingsley, and rode forward. After some moments of commanding argument, she forced the carpet away and pushed her horse past in pursuit.

  By then, we could no longer see Sir Robert’s portrait painter, although we could hear the hooves of his horse. We followed the sound out of the souk and into another, and then along a busy lane that led to a space lined with buildings and roofed with a series of fringes made up of eye-blinding wool hanks slung on rods. The ground was surprisingly vacant of people, and those who were there stood like spectators, smiling as we dashed past. Trying not to make a film. . .

  I lost the thought, because suddenly we were in a network of dark lanes lined only by fences, and waste ground, and occasional sheds. We had left the busy traffic of the souks, and I could hear neither the horse nor the bike with its sidecar. Lady Kingsley drew our mount to a halt, just as a hand laid itself on my knee. Johnson said, ‘Get down, both of you. There’s a ditch and a fence to the left. Lie there, and don’t move. He’s ahead, and waiting.’

  Lady Kingsley didn’t try to say anything. She handed me down, and Johnson caught me competently and helped me to the side. He was breathing quite hard. My knees were shaking. Lady Kingsley, dismounted, gave him her bundle of reins. She said, ‘Have you seen Sullivan?’

  You couldn’t see his face; only the glint of his silly spectacles. He said, ‘No, but I’m sure he’s seen you. That isn’t the problem.’

  ‘We have a problem?’ she said. Her voice drawled more than his. She wasn’t here because of my mother. She was here because she was the only one who could protect him from Sullivan.

  ‘Nothing that dynamite wouldn’t solve. Someone’s left a lorry where no one can shift it. This is where the showdown is going to be. Music. Action. Popcorn.’

  ‘And the gallant Oliver?’ she said.

  ‘Probably back in the spice market,’ said Johnson. ‘Unless he’s got a flying carpet, that is. However. We have Right on our Side.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Lady Kingsley. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘By tying up the horse and lying there in the ditch alongside Wendy,’ Johnson said.

  ‘And not going for the police?’

  ‘And not going for the police. You are my favourite Charity, Charity,’ he remarked; and vanished abruptly. He hadn’t mentioned my mother, who was alone with a man with a rifle. Or that somewhere else in the same darkness was Sullivan, possibly waiting to pick off the survivor. Or that, if we had any friends, they had long since been outstripped by the hooves and the wheels.

  I looked about. Below me was dirt and patched grass. The lane in which we lay ran straight ahead for some distance, then curved.

  It seemed to be lined by an ancient wood fence, just discernible in the glow of some light from beyond. I saw that Johnson had walked to the bend and was standing there in the shadow. He had his horse with him. I wondered about the source of the light. It could have come from the scooter, or the lorry’s two headlamps, trained back the way we had come. If Johnson moved, he would step into a spotlight. And the man who shot would shoot from darkness.

  I wanted to see round the bend. When I moved, Lady Kingsley grasped my arm, but I pulled away, and when she held out, I hit her arm, hard, and dragged myself free. Even then, she scrambled after me, as if she thought I was going to do something stupid. I wasn’t. I just wanted to see what Johnson would do. To see what I could do for my mother.

  Perhaps he heard us both rustling behind him, but he didn’t look round. Only, rather suddenly, he slapped the horse on the rump and, as it jerked and took some steps sideways, he picked up a stone and threw it hard. Then it snorted and began to trot forward, and he began to move too, jogging along the edge of the fence in its shadow.

  I didn’t try to stand, or to follow. I crawled to the ditch where he had been and watched the galvanised shape of the horse, and the twin headlights blazing before it, and the minor dodging shape of darkness and light which was Johnson, running hard to the light, and away from me. I felt the thump as Lady Kingsley came unspeaking to join me. Then there was a flare of light from under the headlights, and a crack of sound, and a scream, and the horse started to stumble.

  I could see the man who shot it. I could see the motor scooter between the front wheels of the lorry, and the driver perched there with his rifle. I could see the huddled shape in the sidecar, but not whether my mother was dead. I wanted to dash out into the road, but bike and lorry were a long way away, and a decoy horse wouldn’t work twice. I saw the rifle blaze another couple of times, each time pointing at a different spot by the fencing, but couldn’t see whether Johnson had been hit or not. I wondered if he was trying to get to the sidecar, and what he could possibly do. I wondered where Sullivan was, and how long he would wait for Pymm’s friend to do his beastly work for him. I saw the rifle barrel glint again as the marksman swung it round, trying to follow Johnson’s quiet movements. It barked; and then there were two other reports, much deeper and quite close together from somewhere to the left.

  With the first, the man with the rifle suddenly jerked, and began to heel over. With the second, I heard the thud and ring of metal from somewhere behind him. I was hardly aware, then, that Charity Kingsley was forcing me into the deepest part of the ditch underneath her. I kept my eyes on the man with the rifle because he was tumbling stiffly over the sidecar, his hands clawing at the hopeless, emigrant unchic of my mother’s outer garments.

  He hadn’t touched the ground when he became a silhouette. Everything became a silhouette. Instead of car, motorbike, human beings there were two black cardboard figures and the black cardboard struts of a bike, outlined against a dazzle of brightest vermilion.

  With a roar, the lorry burst into flames; and in explosion after booming explosion, lorry, bicycle and all living souls in or near them were turned to molten metal and grease there before us.

  The blast hit the fence where I lay with Sir Robert’s wife. I suppose the worst passed over us, and the red-hot metal and flaming fabric fell short, but we seemed to lie half-buried there for a long time, choked with dirt and pummelled by fragments of debris. Then my hearing returned, and I felt, in a little, the weight that was Charity Kingsley lift from my back, and her hands began to clear the dust from my face, and carefully brush off my shoulders and arms, looking for injury. I let her do it. I knew she was more likely to be hurt than I was, but I couldn’t speak to her. I knew now what I had seen, and what it meant, and I crouched in all that heat, and shivered and shivered. And then my stomach rose into my throat, and I began vomiting.

  She held my head, and then wiped my eyes and my mouth with her handkerchief, and rocked me in her arms without speaking. She had daughters and stepdaughters, I remembered. She looked after them. Sir Robert never had time.

  I could hear people running. From the souks, from the cabins inside the fence, they came to see what had happened. I could hear a car, turning in from a lane where it must have been standing. Through my closed eyes, I could see its lights glo
wing red, and I opened my eyes and looked up, because it was near; and saw my shadow thrown black by the far greater light burning behind me. Charity knelt by my side, her eyes pale as water in her blotched face, and one arm clotted with blood. Before me stood a pair of hide boots.

  Wearing them was Colonel Sebastian Sullivan. He soared above me, with his immense shoulders and his athletic frame and his rippling, honey-combed hair all outlined by the light. Full of Eastern Promise, he was: the Romantic East my mother in her wistful, caustic, sentimental and outrageous soul had hankered after. He said, his face calm, his voice solicitous, ‘May I offer you ladies a lift? It’s just too bad, of course, but you know what they say. If you can’t stand the heat, you should get out of Morocco.’

  Charity Kingsley stood up. She said, ‘I am glad you are here. Are you responsible for what has just happened?’

  He looked consoling, deprecating, conciliatory. ‘My dear Lady Kingsley, I didn’t shoot up the truck.’

  ‘Can you prove it?’ said Lady Kingsley.

  ‘Of course I can,’ said Colonel Sullivan. ‘Would you like me to turn in my firearms? Ballistics will find the bullets that exploded the truck and killed the thug with Wendy’s poor mother. Don’t feel sorry for him. He or his friends shot Daniel Oppenheim. The police won’t regret that he’s dead.’ He paused. ‘It’s a rough, crude country, Lady Kingsley. You should never have come. I’m sure Sir Robert would be happier if you were safely at home. May I give you a lift?’

  ‘I would rather travel by donkey,’ said Charity. ‘And Wendy will go home with me.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Sullivan, with the warmest interest. ‘I thought she’d resigned.’

  I supposed his car had been hired: it wasn’t the Sunbeam. He slid behind the wheel and drove off, waving elaborately. Before that, I’d begun retching again, and some women came along, and helped Charity. Someone spread a carpet, and we sat on the grass while kind people brought water to drink, and cloths to wipe our hands and faces, and cotton to wrap round Charity’s arm and the other places where we were bleeding. A police car arrived. I said, ‘What do we say?’

  A half-familiar voice said, ‘You mustn’t say anything. Wendy? Lady Kingsley? Are you all right?’

  But for the words, it might have been the Colonel again, kneeling beside us with his mellow, acceptable accent. It was Oliver. Oliver from Johnson’s yacht Dolly, who had protected neither Johnson nor my mother. For the first time, my thoughts went to Johnson, and how he had died; and from there, to Rita and Oliver. I said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  Lady Kingsley was looking up at Oliver too. She said, ‘We must tell the police something.’

  He said, ‘No. Please. Will you trust me? Wendy, listen. Your mother’s alive.’

  Nothing would obey me, my nose, my mouth, my throat. I didn’t turn round to the glare. I said, ‘Look at it.’

  ‘She wasn’t there,’ Oliver said. ‘She’s safe. Wendy, she’s safe, but we don’t want the police to know the whole story. You must say you took a ride through the souks for the fun of it, and lost your way, and the lorry suddenly blew when – when JJ tried to get past it.’

  ‘But he isn’t safe,’ I said. ‘He went with it.’

  ‘You saw him,’ said Oliver. His voice had flattened.

  ‘No,’ said Lady Kingsley. ‘We saw him run towards it. The other man fired several times. Then there were two different shots, from a revolver perhaps.’

  ‘Jay’s,’ Oliver said.

  ‘He had one?’ said Lady Kingsley. She paused. She said, ‘The first hit the driver, and the second started the fire.’

  The police were coming over. I didn’t care who heard. I said, ‘So he killed my mother.’

  ‘No,’ Oliver said. ‘I told you. She wasn’t there. That was why he risked shooting at last. Pymm’s men took her into the souks while you were unshackling the horses. They switched her driver, and wrapped all her shawls round a dummy. I saw them. We’ve got your mother. She’s safe. She should be at Rita’s by now. I’ll take you there. I just have to . . . to look.’

  It was Lady Kingsley who jumped to her feet. She said, ‘Oh, go. Go. Please go. We shouldn’t have kept you.’

  We told the police what we’d been told to say, and they accepted it, once they knew who we were and where to find us. They wanted to fetch us an ambulance, but we said that Oliver would take us to where we were staying. We didn’t even know his second name. When we were free, I went towards the smouldering wreckage with Charity.

  I didn’t look at it, although Lady Kingsley stood for a while, before she turned away. Somewhere in that glowing mound were the driver and Johnson, but not my mother. My mother, that Bilge, strange, ill-defined shape in my life was still in existence, more mysterious than she had ever been. What I had lost was a new acquaintance who was liked, I now knew, by many people. I followed Sir Robert’s wife back across the scorched grass to the blackened remains of the fence. The stretch by the fire had been consumed. Nearer to where we had been, a postern gate hung in charcoal effigy, and I thought I heard voices beyond it.

  Voices.

  We would have gone through, but Oliver saw our shadows and came back quickly to stop us. He said, his voice a little unnatural, ‘No, we can’t get out here. Look, why don’t you ask the police to take you to Rita’s? She’ll know by now you’re both safe. I’ve got things to collect, then I’ll come.’

  I made to speak, but Lady Kingsley took my hand firmly and stopped me. She said only, ‘. . . Yes?’

  And he said, ‘Thank God, yes. But no to everyone else, except Rita.’

  So the police took me when I paid this, my third visit to Rita’s. They drove in the gates and rang the doorbell while Charity Kingsley and I stood there, pale and grimy, with blankets round our tattered shoulders. Rita was the first to rush headlong out of the house, with Reed just behind her. She stopped for just a moment. Then she came pelting down the steps and took Charity’s hands, and then turning to me, put her arms round me and hugged me. Then one of the officers spoke to her in French, which she didn’t know; and still holding me, she turned towards Rolly.

  I knew what the policeman was going to say, and I had to let him say it. I saw the effect of every word on Reed’s face, and then its reflection on Rita’s. At the end, he translated clearly for her. The officer had finished with some delicacy. ‘My commiserations, mademoiselle. One can hold out small hope, except for confirmation when daylight allows. One may say only that such things are quick.’

  In the pause that followed, Rita was silent. Her eyes were rimmed with red like a drunkard’s, but they were dry. Queerly, before we arrived, she had filled in the time decorating her face like teenagers once did. It was all patterned in tiger stripes and little whorls, and her red hair was done in elaborate spikes. Reed looked at her once, and then began, admirably, to say the right things, walking to the gate with the officer; seeing him off with excessive formality. I held Rita’s arm and said, ‘No.’

  She looked from me to Lady Kingsley, but didn’t move. The police car reversed, turned and drove off. Reed came back. I said, ‘That’s the story Oliver told us to spread. He isn’t missing.’

  Rita lifted her arm out of mine. Reed, his hands at his sides, stood beside her, looking at us.

  ‘He’s alive,’ said Charity Kingsley. ‘Oliver found him. He was in the explosion. We haven’t seen him, but we heard him speak. He doesn’t want it known that he survived.’

  ‘Thrawn,’ said Rita. I didn’t know what she meant.

  Rolly Reed put a finger on her shoulder, which came no further up than his elbow. He said, ‘So you don’t know quite how he is. What is Oliver doing?’

  ‘Waiting, I think,’ said Lady Kingsley. ‘When the coast is clear, he’ll bring him here. Should you warn a doctor?’

  Reed said, ‘We have one, for the crew. Oliver knows how to reach him. I think we ought to go in.’

  It was good advice. In spite of the heat, I had begun to shiver again. When I turned to go up the steps I found tw
o other people standing there. One was the middle-aged steward called Lenny, whom I’d last seen on Dolly at Essaouira. Beside him, even more unexpectedly, was the narrow, mangetout face of Mo Morgan. Morgan said, ‘Wendy? You’d like to go up to your mother?’

  It embarrassed them, that they’d forgotten my mother. Rita suddenly began to bustle about; taking Lady Kingsley indoors to be tended; giving orders. We all moved up the steps after her. Morgan touched my blanket. ‘Maybe you should get looked after first. You’ll give your mother a fair old fright when she sees you.’

  ‘She gave me one,’ I said. She was resting, he said, in a bedroom. He took me there, and then went away. I should have asked him how he came to be there, and the man from the yacht. I should have asked about Mr. Reed, but I didn’t. I opened the door of my mother’s room, and she was sitting facing me, bulbous, bow-fronted, draped in some vast spread of cloth from the Wardrobe Department which was already out the price of one wrecked cocktail dress for the Oppenheim party.

  She wasn’t smoking. She looked me up and down with screwed eyes just the same. Her fierce hair was rammed full of hairgrips and her eyes were stamped with brown beer rings, and her nose was obscene. On her brow was a swollen bruise the size of a penny.

  Only a short time ago, I had lain in a ditch and thought I had lost her. No more harangues. No more arguments. No more mortification.

  I said, ‘What the hell were you doing? With Pymm? At that gate? You deserved to be blown up. You did. You did.’

  She said, ‘Oh, Christ God,’ and stared at the floor as if someone had thrown up all over it. Her hands were more or less on her knees. As I looked, she rocked herself once, and then stopped.

  I was crying with anger and bafflement. I have never understood her.