Tremor

  II

  They had stopped once on the way home. Just after they had left the orange plantations and the olive groves and come out upon the plain where the argan trees grew, Matthew braked because he saw a large obstacle in his path. At first he thought in the heat haze that it was an animal, then he saw it was a rock. If he had driven into it it would have wrecked his front wheels.

  They both got out and looked around. They stood in a hot windless silence. At first Matthew was cautious, wondering if this were a booby trap, with a dozen wild beggars waiting to spring out and rob them and steal their car. But there was nobody. Nor was there much cover for anyone to hide. The only place of concealment was a craggy bluff about twenty yards from the road, red sandstone, with a few wispy clusters of vegetation clinging to its side. The boulder in the road was of red sandstone. Looking up, it was possible to imagine that it had been dislodged from somewhere near the top and had rolled down, shedding dust and bits of rock, until it came to a stop in the middle of the road. There it stood, uncompromising and very large and blocking their way. But who had dislodged it? There were no robbers; there were no tittering children.

  Matthew went across and shoved at the rock. It was movable – with effort. In any case where it stood it was a hazard to traffic. Matthew looked up and down. There was no traffic. But sooner or later would come a bus. He heaved at the side of the rock and was able to topple it over. He heaved it again: this was more difficult for its largest side was now downwards. But he did it.

  Now he could get past. But a bus could not. His sense of civic responsibility was not normally great, but he heaved a couple more times and the boulder was no longer a menace to travellers. He dusted his hands, rubbing off the clinging, cloying reddish dust and looked round again. Nothing but the hot windless silence.

  Nadine was standing a few yards from the car, hands behind back, staring across the plain. He came up with her.

  ‘Thing must have just rolled down,’ he said. ‘ Unless some wild kids did it for fun and ran away. Anyway, we can drive on now.’

  She said: ‘The goats have all gone.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose they have. Maybe it’s too hot for them in the mornings.’

  ‘It was morning yesterday.’

  He looked around. ‘That’s true.’

  ‘No birds either. It’s … lonely.’

  He did not speak but put an arm lightly round her.

  She said: ‘Look over there – towards Agadir.’

  The landscape was so level that it disappeared into the shimmering distance, but Matthew could see a dark cloud, covering a third of the sky, over towards the sea.

  She shivered.

  ‘You can’t be cold,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘You have that old English saying: “ Somebody must have stood on my grave.”’

  ‘You know English too well.’

  ‘I lived there for two years when I was eighteen, nineteen. In Windsor.’

  ‘As a guest of the Queen?’

  ‘She was unaware of my existence.’

  ‘She didn’t know what she was missing.’

  Nadine frowned at the sky. ‘Do you think there will be a storm?’

  ‘It was brooding like that when we left.’

  ‘I know.’

  He said: ‘Are you psychic?’

  She shook her head. ‘I just feel an oppression which – which isn’t at Taroudant.’

  ‘Do you want to go back?’

  ‘I certainly do. On Thursday.’

  ‘Not now? Not reverse right round and go back?’

  She looked at him. ‘ You know it wouldn’t do, Matthew. It’s only two more days there – three nights. Maybe a thunderstorm will clear the air.’

  ‘So long as you don’t change your mind.’

  ‘No, I won’t. Not over that.’

  ‘Oh, well. It was worth a try. In we get.’

  They returned to the car. He did not at once start the engine.

  She said: ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Well … I suppose I cannot complain.’

  ‘Nor can I.’

  After a few seconds she said: ‘Drive on, Matthew.’

  He put his hand to the key but did not turn it. ‘Good moments in life are rare.’

  ‘Yes … yes. Perhaps there will be others.’

  ‘Many others,’ he said.

  There was not a sound outside. Only a total hot silence.

  ‘Drive on, Matthew. Let’s get in before the storm.’

  III

  Lee and Letty went on the beach quite early, bathed, walked, bathed again. They sat at one of the little kiosks sipping Campari sodas.

  They had both slept restlessly after the events of the night. Just as day was breaking he heaved up on his elbow and looked for her, then realized that sometime afterwards he had gone back to his own room. He did not knock on her door until nearly nine, when he found her already dressed and eating breakfast on the veranda. They exchanged commonplace words, polite, casual, a little forced.

  Just as they were leaving he said: ‘Letty, about last night …’ but she shook her head.

  ‘Not now, Lee, please.’

  He did not know whether he ought to feel pleased or remorseful about the outcome of the night, but he knew precisely what he did feel – which was damned triumphant. At Idlewild airport, while waiting to meet Letty, he had wandered into the airport bookshop and bought himself a sex manual. He had read it surreptitiously in quiet moments of their trip, and last night he had put into practice some of its advice. It had worked to such good effect that his own sensations had been heightened. His experience as a seducer was scanty, and he was massively elated that he had done so well. He felt thirty years younger.

  On the beach they did not mention last night, nor at the café. Her face was composed, unresponsive, a little clouded. For the moment he was content. Often he felt people talked too much, analysed too much. It was one of his own failings.

  The beach was busy this morning. Two football games were in progress, and more people than usual, it seemed, were walking and strolling about in the warm air. It was a pretty scene. The man with the camels came up, offering them a ride at a reduced rate, but they smilingly refused. Silk blouses, jewellery, daggers and rugs were also offered from time to time.

  Because they were on the beach they hardly noticed the earth tremor, which took place at about midday. The table gave a shudder and someone shouted in the café behind, that was all. Lee remarked that he had read somewhere that Agadir had been built on a rock fault, so he supposed one had to suffer these little inconveniences. They got up together and walked unhurriedly in to lunch. Once or twice he took her hand, but there was no returning clasp so he allowed it to slip away.

  Over lunch he asked her to marry him. She gently refused.

  ‘May I ask why – after last night?’

  ‘Because as I said at the time it was just something – separate.’

  ‘To me it was very special.’

  She sipped at her wine.

  ‘… We are both married.’

  He made a gesture. ‘In the circumstances that can hardly be looked on as an obstacle.’

  ‘It would not work out, Lee. We do not come of the same world. I … I am not at all ashamed of my family – indeed, I am proud of them – but among the – the old families of Boston and Massachusetts – and you belong to such a one – the standards are still quite rigid. Through you I have come to know many of your friends. They accept me as a bridge player but I would never be invited to join their Club. If you married me they would laugh.’

  ‘You misunderstand them. As my wife you’d go anywhere. Anyway you’re not marrying them.’

  ‘I do not think I could ever take Ann’s place. Although she has left her home – and you – it is her house. You must realize how much she made it her own. The rugs, the ornaments, the vases, the pictures. Every time I am in the house I see her – as I know you must.’

&nbsp
; ‘So you would have me live alone for the rest of my life – or marry someone else.’

  ‘That is something only you can decide.’

  ‘Would it help,’ he asked, ‘if I moved house, if we went to live in some quite different part of the county? We might try Rhode Island. Maybe near Providence.’

  He saw her hesitate and knew that she was not convinced.

  ‘Don’t answer now,’ he said, knowing well enough that she had answered but that she had not explained. Unless the explanation was the one that he feared most of all, that she had no real, genuine feeling for him.

  The three French ladies had heard even less of the earth tremor than the Americans, for they were in their car and Laura was driving, and that meant that ordinary noises, vibration and rattles were totally overborne by the noise she made. No one has ever driven a car as noisily as she did. She crashed the gears, she revved the engine to racing limits, she slipped the clutch, she lurched and braked and talked at the top of her voice all the time.

  ‘Tiens, that crétin has left his car where there is no room for me – ah! just past – did I touch it? No matter, shut your mouth, Vicky – no one will know. Sacred name of a little blue man, why do they not observe the rules of the road! Merde, that cursed donkey – ha, ha, ha, that gave him a shock, I’ll lay a curse; had he been a nick slower we would have left him with no arse! – where the hell is second gear? Do we turn right, Vicky, do we turn right? – Well, I’ve done it now – we’ll see where this avenue leads – quelle pisser! The man does not look where he is walking! Ah, I have gone back to first – a million curses on these gears; Françoise, bestir yourself, I am not here to drive you about in your sleep! Sot! Bétise! Babouin! I have forgotten, where are we going?’

  ‘To the port,’ said Vicky.

  ‘Helas! Then we are going the wrong way.’ Without regard to other traffic Laura made a sharp U-turn. Something rattled and fell off in the road, probably a casualty of the early scrape, but none of the ladies bothered to look behind to see what they had lost. They rejoined the main avenue at a breakneck speed and zoomed off towards the port.

  Eventually, with a jerk and a jolt Laura brought her car to a stop nine inches from a fruit stall. They all piled out and began to prowl and wobble around the market, which was in essence more a point of assembly for all sorts of early season delicacies about to be crated and shipped to Europe.

  It seemed that some event had disturbed the stallholders, for they stood in groups talking and glancing anxiously about as if waiting for something more to happen. Laura, Vicky and Françoise, having been insulated from the tremor by reason of being in the car, strutted around unaffected, buying an orange here, a banana there, until they reached a kiosk serving mint tea and sweetmeats and caramel cakes and roast chestnuts and fried eels.

  Thy sat down gratefully, as the cobbles had been trying their high heels, but the proprietor informed them that there was no alcohol to be obtained in his shop. Disgruntled, they sipped strong black coffee and listened to the monotonous wail of the radio.

  Back in the car, Laura drove suicidally up to the Kasbah on the hill, but there was no alcohol here either, only narrow cobbled streets, dark alleyways arched over by houses with trailing creepers, old men sitting knees up against walls, the radios again blaring Arab music, pottery shops with open fronts, gaudy scarf shops, dyers, wood carvers, blind beggars, mangy cats, the smell of the tanners and the smell of goat.

  ‘Alors! Let’s go back,’ Françoise said. ‘I’m thirsty.’

  ‘And hungry,’ said Vicky.

  Laura turned the car noisily to head down the hill, and they lurched and slithered over the loose surface while the port and the town of Agadir and the great expanse of beach swung in front of the windscreen.

  Halfway to the bottom there was a fork in the road, and Laura, whose sense of direction was not of the best, bumped off to the left. Vicky at once told her she had gone wrong, but Laura said: ‘Tiens, what matter? All the roads lead down.’

  In fact they did not all lead down in quite the same way, and after half a minute they rounded a bend into a quarry which was full of camels.

  They came round quickly, missing the rump of one and the nose of another by a nostril’s breadth. Vicky gave a squeal of delight, Françoise one of apprehension as she thought they were about to have a smash. In fact Laura, driving like Fangio, swept and swirled among the tall brown animals and only had a slight accident when she was through the worst and out the other side. Her foot slipped off the brake and they thumped into a six-foot-high wall of camel dung which four boys had been compressing into bricks for use as fuel.

  They were immediately surrounded by faces, some of them grinning, some curious, some wrathful, some with heavy nostrils breathing and snuffling, big liquid expressionless eyes and slow champing jaws. All forms of nature seemed to be instantly interested in the little cream car stuffed with women.

  Laura got her window wound down and became instantly involved in an argument with two of the boys, which would have been more satisfactory if Laura had known Arabic or the boys French. Eventually a tall, bearded, distinguished-looking man with a wall eye intervened and communication was established.

  This was the camel market, he explained, swirling his cream jellaba; this was held in Agadir on the fourth Monday in every month. Did they want to buy a camel? If so, he had two excellent beasts hardly yet grown – a four- and a five-year-old. He was in charge of the sale, he said, and would be honoured personally to conduct such distinguished ladies round the camels and enable them to pick the best beast and to obtain the best bargain. All three ladies said they did not want to buy a damned camel, but Vicky seemed halfhearted in her refusal, so the tall man and two other friends at once transferred their attention to her. She incautiously lowered her window, and at once was closely engaged.

  A particularly large camel put its head against Françoise’s window and rubbed it noisily.

  ‘Oh, look!’ screamed Françoise, with a crow of laughter. ‘It’s blowing bubbles!’

  The man with the wall eye said: ‘ Nay, nay, Mrs, that is a big man camel and he shows he wishes woman camel; dangerous, he bite, whey-oh! take him away, Ibrahim … Allow me, madame. Pray alight and I will personally escort you.’

  To the shouted imprecations of the other two, Vicky allowed herself to be helped out, when Mustafa, as he was called, swept away the boys who were dancing around, first on one leg, then on the other, out of sheer interest, and escorted her away from the broken wall of dung towards two smaller camels tethered to a post. One of them, looking round with a reproachful eye, suddenly let out a dismal howl that had half the camp trumpeting in response. When the noise had died down Vicky had disappeared among a white-shouldered crowd of men.

  ‘Mon Dieu,’ said Laura, banging her fist on the steering-wheel. ‘She’ll be raped!’

  This seemed greatly to amuse Françoise in the back. She tittered and tittered and tittered and tittered. Eventually between splutters she said: ‘ Charge ’em all extra if they’re more than half an hour.’

  Laura whirred the self-starter, but the engine did not fire. She glowered at the scene. ‘Might be a lot of schoolboys after their first, eh? You remember I had that place opposite the technical college? No, you weren’t there: you were still at the Rue de Courcey. Charging extra for over the half-hour, mon Dieu! It was half-price for the students! Holy Mary, they were a lively, eager lot. All pretending to be eighteen, borrowing the same identity card over and over. In and out, it doesn’t take long when they’re that age. Bang, bang and they’ve finished.’

  Mustafa said: ‘Now these two splendid beasts come of the finest Hageen stock, just suitable for a lady. Look at their slender legs, their sinewy frames. This one is my prime possession, Esu, just four years old. Admire him. Examine him. Look, put your hand on his muzzle, he is as tame as a bird. See his beautiful tender eyes.’

  Considering this was the animal which had created all the racket, Vicky was cautious about approachi
ng him too closely, but she was edged forward while Mustafa continued his sales talk.

  Laura, having had no satisfaction from the starter button, tried the horn instead.

  ‘Where’re you going?’ she demanded suddenly, as Françoise opened her door.

  ‘Can’t stand that noise!’ said Françoise. ‘ Gives me the wobblies. I’ll go find Vicky.’

  To their surprise, at that moment the crowd of grinning men parted and Vicky appeared, unraped and unruffled, followed by Mustafa and Esu. Mustafa, having reluctantly named a price, was now following Vicky with an amended quotation.

  ‘Can’t do,’ Vicky said, spreading her hands. ‘ Go by plane, understand? Can’t get camel on plane. It would stick in the door.’

  ‘Ah, madame, you do not understand. He can be shipped. He can go to Marseilles and you could meet him there …’

  A bearded face, untoothed but smiling, appeared at Laura’s window.

  ‘Can no start? Eh? Car broke down? Eh? You want push? A hundred dirhams. Eh?’

  Laura hesitated. It was a lot to ask for a push, but she needed a drink. And to get that little fool Vicky out of trouble …

  ‘Ca va,’ she said, and began to fumble in her handbag.

  ‘Et moi, mad’moiselle. Et moi!’ More voices and more beseeching hands.

  ‘It will take three of us,’ said the toothless one. ‘I and my two boys. They shall come at a special rate. Specially for you. Thirty dirhams each! Eh, what? That is all.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Laura snarled. ‘Canaille! One hundred dirhams is more than you deserve. Come along. Fifty now, and fifty when we start. Vicky!’ she screamed. ‘Get into the damned car! Merde! When will you learn?’

  ‘I cannot buy it,’ Vicky was saying. ‘It is too dear. Yes, I know you will amend the price. You cannot amend it enough for me—’

  ‘I swear on my mother’s grave,’ Mustafa said. ‘Never will you have so splendid a chance again. Esu is a model beast, mild, well-bred, gentle, all that you could wish. Come now, make me an offer …’