Tremor

  ‘And you?’

  She smiled gently, lashes on cheeks. ‘I have been married.’

  ‘And are no longer?’

  Still smiling she shook her head.

  He said: ‘My horoscope told me I was going to be lucky.’

  ‘Aren’t you assuming a lot?’

  ‘What? Well, yes, I suppose so. That may be so … But we have known each other at least the best part of a day.’

  ‘Now you are teasing.’

  ‘Well, yes, if you take it that way.’

  ‘How else am I to take it?’

  ‘That we have formed an amitie.’

  ‘You use the French word.’

  ‘Because it can mean whatever you may want it to mean.’

  They went on with their lunch.

  He said: ‘We shall meet tomorrow morning, then, if not before. It should be a pleasant drive.’

  ‘I did not think I had actually said yes.’

  ‘Then please say it now.’

  ‘I am not known to your friends.’

  ‘Please say yes. Please, please, please.’

  ‘They will not expect me.’

  ‘I told them I hoped …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I hoped to bring a lady.’

  ‘You were presuming on a beach acquaintance of about ten minutes’ duration?’

  ‘I was hoping that my dearest wish would be granted.’

  ‘Oh, come, M. Morris, too much flattery …’

  ‘Not flattery. Oh no, not flattery! It would give me outrageous pleasure.’

  ‘You do not speak quite like an Englishman.’

  ‘They vary, you know. Little ones, big ones, fat ones, thin ones, cold ones, passionate ones. You’d be surprised.’

  They said no more until they had finished lunch. Then he said: ‘Well?’

  She smiled. ‘Je le veux bien.’

  Chapter Six

  I

  Johnny Frazier, alias Carpenter, alias Tournelle, goes into the telephone booth to call his father.

  He has had a restless night. First because of the news of the old man’s illness, which effectively scuttles all his plans. And second, no doubt prompted by the first, has come a succession of nightmares. It is curious that scarcely any of them involves the police.

  He dreams of his bedroom door being quietly opened and Big Smith stepping in, with a grim smile. Greg Garrett follows him. Joe Rooney carries a rubber truncheon.

  ‘Well, Johnny,’ Big Smith says, ‘ so we’ve found you at last. You have been a trouble to us. All those false scents. But we knew we’d catch up with you in the end. You must have known too, didn’t you? Or did you take us for right suckers? Eh? Tell us just what you thought. There’s plenty of time.’

  ‘Time?’ Rooney says. ‘Why wait? Let me just knock his teeth out first. Then maybe he’ll be able to explain just what he had in mind.’

  Johnny dreams he pushes himself up the bed until he is in a sitting position, and begins.

  ‘Difficulty is, it’s hard to explain. In fact there is no excuse possible, no explanation of any sort, however far-fetched, but the plain truth. I tried to double-cross you. We went through this robbery as partners; and I decided to let you all down and pinch the lot! Or all the best part. All the most negotiable part. The rest is in my flat. You’ll have found it by now. Maybe there’s quite a nice little haul left there. I only took the cream. And after all I haven’t spent much. It’s all under my bed in this case. You’re welcome to take it back.’

  ‘That’s what we intend to do,’ Big Smith smiles. ‘After we’ve dealt with you. After we’ve really finished with you.’

  But in a later dream of the night it is Mr Artemis who comes in with his tinted glasses and the blood blister on his lip and his fat white hands: he leads the way followed by the other three. They are standing by the side of the bed: Smith and Garrett and Rooney, all waiting for the word to start on him. And he is trying once again to stumble through his explanations, his excuses. And Mr Artemis rubs his nose and says: ‘ Let’s see, how thick are these walls? Will they hear his screams? That wouldn’t really do, would it? Perhaps we’d better carry him out on to the beach. There’s lots of room there. And it’s dark and it’s lonely: no one will dare to interfere with us there.’

  So it is while they are seizing him and gagging him and tying his hands that he finally wakes up, to stare in a steamy sweat out of a window where dawn is still no more than a smear in the east. No stars visible: land and sea drowse in an ominous haze.

  He gets up and gulps some soda water and tries to clear his head of the miasmas of the night. He is, he knows, in danger. They may trace him. They will certainly do their damnedest. If they do so while he is still in Agadir he is as certainly doomed to a nasty end as his nightmares have foretold. Two or three days. He feels sure that, barring some extraordinary twist of fate, he will be safe for another two or three days. In that time he can do – could have done – all that is necessary. This is Sunday. By Tuesday he could have been away – on a ship leaving Casablanca for Buenos Aires, Baltimore, Brisbane, he is not all that particular. It is just essential to keep moving until the trail is lost. For a reasonable commission his father could have arranged it all.

  But his father is in hospital. Every plan is awry. He had thought in his mind that he would maybe leave half the money in the old man’s keeping, in the safe in the wall. Now he can no longer trust the old man to stay alive. So what is the answer? Even if the passport is contrived, do you take all the money with you? Carry the case around with you, with the intimacy of guilt, for the duration of at least one long sea voyage?

  Johnny has always had the ultimate hope of settling somewhere French or French-speaking. Maybe Martinique, or Montreal or Mauritius, or one of the South Sea islands. Though English was his mother’s tongue, he has always felt drawn to the speech and the food and the culture of France. He would like to marry a French girl, settle down comfortably to the retired life of a man with an adequate bank balance. The dream, it seemed to him, was within reach. (As well as the nightmares.) His father’s illness makes the pleasurable dream more remote, the horror more probable.

  ‘I wish to speak to Colonel Gaston Tournelle.’

  He has said this some minutes ago, and now, just after he has inserted a second jeton, comes the reply. ‘Colonel Tournelle’s condition is serious but stable. He is still in special care. Perhaps if you rang tomorrow …’

  ‘I’m his son. His only son. I’ve come a long distance special to see him. I’m not able to stay long in Agadir. Could I please speak to the doctor in charge.’

  Another wait. He pushes open the door to get some air. In the foyer of the hotel, where he is speaking from, he sees the mismatched American couple get out of the lift and go through to the garden. She is wearing cream shorts which show off her slender pale legs, a navy blue halter top and a flowered sunhat. Johnny’s male mind, while concentrating passionately on the business in hand, registers that she is attractive rather than pretty.

  ‘M. Frazier.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dr Eyme says if you come about eleven you can see your father for five minutes.’

  ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.’

  He is there by ten thirty. The hospital, a white, square, functional building, is on rising ground between the main town and the Kasbah on the hill. Johnny parks and smokes a cigarette and then goes in. It is a similar day to yesterday, the sun part hidden between rafts of cloud which have drifted up since dawn. The light breeze seems hotter than the air.

  He gives his name and is shown into a waiting-room where all the patients are Arabs. This is a change Independence has wrought. It used to be a hospital for Europeans only.

  After twenty minutes his name is called and he follows a nurse down a long corridor and into a crowded ward, at the near end of which, behind protective screens, a man lies in a bed in rather the condition that Johnny has pictured yesterday. There is a large moving graph which pulsates in jagged lines
, presumably monitoring the heartbeat of the patient. A black nurse is standing by the bed. Johnny steals over and peers down. Gaston Tournelle has a tanned leathery complexion that could never look pallid, but Johnny notices how bloodless the lips are and the nostrils of the prominent nose. His eyes are half open.

  ‘Mon père,’ whispers Johnny.

  ‘Ah,’ says Tournelle, in a voice surprisingly powerful for one so ill. ‘Jacques …’

  For a few moments they make polite conversation – or Johnny makes the conversation, the replies come in monosyllables. He is aware that time is passing, but he has to go through the motions of being a sympathetic son. In the meantime the nurse in attendance, who from the shape of her nose looks as if she comes from the far south, remains in attendance, standing by the edge of the screen, watching the heartbeats, no doubt, but clearly hearing everything that is being said.

  Johnny explains that he is in Agadir only for a few days, that he is staying at the Saada, that he came to his father’s house yesterday, anxious to discuss some urgent business with him, only to learn the sad news of his illness …

  As he is speaking he fancies he detects a renewed interest in his father’s black eyes; even severe illness cannot destroy the acquisitive instincts. Eventually Johnny says: ‘Nurse, could I maybe have a word in private, like, with my father?’

  She looks ungracious. ‘You have been here already four minutes. Dr Eyme said you should not stay more than five.’

  ‘Give us a minute or two longer, eh? It’s very urgent.’

  She transfers her weight from one heavy leg to the other. Then she shrugs and says: ‘Do not excite him.’

  Johnny watches her waddle off down the length of the ward. Then, speaking in a half whisper, he tells his father something of what has happened, muttering half truths, part in his haste, part from habit.

  He does not notice, but the heartbeat on the screen slightly quickens. His father says: ‘ How long can you stay?’

  ‘Not long. It wouldn’t be safe.’

  ‘It depends who wants you.’

  ‘I’d best go soon. What I need most is a new passport.’

  His father sighs. It is his body rather than himself that is making an admission of fatigue and distress. ‘I cannot move as yet. I shall be lucky – out in a week. It is more likely to be two. Can you wait that long?’

  ‘No.’

  There is a long silence. The eyes close. Johnny has a fearful apprehension that his father has gone to sleep. A quick anxious glance at the dials, in case … Then Tournelle utters one word.

  ‘Ardrossi.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ardrossi. Benjamin Ardrossi.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Someone who – might help you. I have known him – thirty years.’

  ‘Can you trust him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘… Then …’

  ‘He will do what I ask – if he is well paid. He will do what you ask – if I ask him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I know – about him – what he would not wish – to be publicly known.’

  ‘Time is up,’ says the nurse, flexing her broad nostrils. She has marched up and down the ward three times, and is now back.

  ‘How can I find him?’ Johnny asks, ignoring her.

  But she squeezes past him and puts a hand on his father’s forehead, dabs at his face. ‘ It is time.’

  Tournelle waves her away with a tired hand, as if she is a troublesome fly. ‘Casino. He is a tailleur. Say I sent you …’ His eyes flicker.

  ‘Could you trust him right down the line?’ Johnny demands.

  ‘No, not everything. But see him for yourself. Judge. Get what is most urgent. Then see.’

  There is nothing more to do, nothing more to say. Johnny stands up. ‘I’ll come again.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tomorrow. I may stay three or four days. It depends how things turn out.’

  ‘Yes,’ says his father, and closes his eyes again.

  Johnny goes out on tiptoe, out of the hospital to his boiling hot car.

  II

  The road from Agadir to Taroudant is not picturesque. It runs through the outskirts of the port, where encampments of gypsies and Berbers exist and shanty towns half grown mask the spread of the new settlers; then across a desolate plain dotted with argan trees which yield an oil from their seeds and so induce goats to climb them in search of food. When Nadine first saw a group of them up what looked like a desiccated olive tree, ten and twenty feet from the ground, she refused to believe they were goats, and presently she persuaded Matthew to stop and got out with a camera to photograph them. But the goats were camera-shy, and as she came near them they slipped and slithered down the tree as if pretending they had never been up in the first place. Laughing, Matthew drove on a bit further and they stopped again some distance away. Nadine’s tele-photo lens did the rest.

  Matthew said: ‘They call the goats here black grasshoppers.’

  ‘I do not believe it! You are teasing again.’

  ‘And those little trees provide all sorts of things: wood, coal, fruit. You see them nowhere except Morocco.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I’ve been reading it up. I’m telling you this while it is fresh in my mind. I’ll have forgotten it tomorrow.’

  ‘You have a poor memory, then?’

  ‘Not for faces. Some faces.’

  ‘You’ll still remember me after a week?’

  ‘Ten years hence I shall be saying: “That was the day I first met her.’ ”

  ‘Second. You’ve already forgotten yesterday.’ She glanced at him. ‘You do not look like a Baedeker reader. I always picture Baedeker readers as people with little round spectacles and pebble lenses, stooping and rather stout and very intense.’

  ‘That’s what I am,’ he agreed. ‘Very intense.’

  As they neared Taroudant, bumping along in their boxlike car, the countryside softened and they came upon olive groves and fields of maize and orange trees in verdant elegant ranks.

  Matthew had been instructed to fork left before they reached the town, but he missed the turning and they found themselves facing the great ochre walls of the city. They did not go in through the big wooden gates but asked a policeman who had decided to spend a happy hour directing the non-existent traffic, and he sent them back on their tracks to a turning which was hardly observable for mimosa and lilac trees. They drove along a three-mile track until the smallest of signs pointed left.

  Iron gates, which were closed. A tall servant came out in a white jellaba with a ceremonial dagger at his hip, and was told their business. The gates were opened and they went on.

  A sandy drive between hibiscus and jasmine bushes. A low-lying pillared house flanked by palms and oleanders. All the land around was green.

  A white-jacketed footman, dark-skinned but with the light eyes and high cheek-bones of a Berber, let them into a circular hall and through into a spacious ornate room in which stood a stocky middle-aged man who came towards them with outstretched hand.

  The Baron de Blaye was in his fifties, brown hair greying and worn long at the back in a succession of handsome coiffured curls. Not a good-looking man, but his expression was ironical, sophisticated and pleasantly welcoming. He was wearing white Moroccan slippers, beige linen trousers and a white silk shirt open at the neck. A cream cravat tied at his throat did not hide the crucifix nor the string of crystal beads round his neck. His skin was fair, his eyes blue, and Matthew remembered that the family came from Normandy.

  By now it was nearly twelve; de Blaye said they must have a drink at once and then, if they cared to, could swim before lunch. He seemed to take to both of them instantly and there was no lack of conversation, about Edouard with Matthew, and about the Paris stage with Nadine.

  The house was designed like a Moorish palace. High-domed ceilings, arched windows with leaded lights, tall bronze lamps, mantelpieces and doors decorated with intricate a
rabesques, antique carpets on marble floors.

  All swam in the pool, which was surrounded by orange and lemon trees. Pierre de Blaye said the oranges grown in Taroudant were the finest in Morocco.

  After they had swum de Blaye excused himself and the other two were left in deck-chairs drying off in the brilliant sun.

  Driving the car he had had little opportunity to look at her; now as they sipped at a vodka and orange a waiter had brought he stared at her candidly and decided she was the best thing he had ever seen. His blood ran thickly. She turned and met his gaze, did not lower her eyes but looked as candidly back at him.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  He let out a breath. ‘ Oh, just how lucky I am.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘You have lovely friends.’

  ‘I meant lucky to have found you.’

  ‘Found me,’ she said. ‘Am I a stray cat to be picked up and fed a saucer of milk?’

  ‘Picked up, gladly. We can leave the milk till later.’

  She studied him, decided to put into words what she was thinking.

  ‘I know very little about you, Matthew. Some small, small amount of your history – oh yes, whatever you think suitable for a press release, but not more. You think me good-looking?’

  ‘Wonderful!’

  ‘Ah yes. Well, I think you good-looking. We are much of an age; we have no ties – except that you have a wife you have just left. But there must be more than that before …’

  ‘Before?’

  She shrugged. ‘From your look, that was what you were thinking.’

  ‘That was what I was thinking.’

  ‘A little holiday affaire? A trifle sordid, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not if we don’t make it so.’

  ‘How can it be lifted out of the rut?’

  ‘With passion,’ he said.

  She took in a slow breath, looked across the pool. ‘The air is light here, hot and yet fresh. That is the way I remember it in Agadir.’

  ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t go back.’

  ‘Now you’re being romantic.’

  ‘Is there anything wrong with that?’

  ‘You must always be practical with a Frenchwoman. Didn’t you know?’