Miss Webster and Chérif
Read Miss Webster and Chérif Online
Authors: Patricia Duncker
Praise for Miss Webster and Chérif
`An enchanting novel, filled with all Duncker's trademark wit and intelligence'
Daily Mail
`The kind of novel you want to give all your friends
–
the elderly, to show them all is not lost, and the young, who have everything to gain'
Telegraph
`An accomplished piece of work with a bite to it . . . amusing and witty, with fine descriptions of the North African desert'
Bookseller
`This is a sparkling, redemptive novel which I read in one go and then again with relish'
Independent
`A finely poised novel about anxiety and the fragile threads of understanding between people and cultures'
TLS
`Most entertaining . . . She succeeds in bringing a touch of mystery to the English countryside'
Time Out
`The skill and craft of Duncker's writing is plain in every chapter . . . in the rigour of the writing, the conscious blending and bending of genres
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English detective story, post-9/11 morality tale and comic travel romance'
Irish Times
`Miss Webster herself is a brilliant creation, with a ``tart and subtle'' tongue that would make a sailor blush'
Glasgow Herald
`A witty comedy of manners'
Independent on Sunday
`A gem of a book . . . Funny and sad with some wonderful characters, this book will beguile a plane journey and you will still be reading it as you wait for your luggage'
Oldie
`An intelligent, entertaining read . . . Duncker provides a memorable character in Miss Webster'
Sunday Morning Post
`On the surface, it reads like a mystery, a thriller . . . but we are familiar with the dark intrepidity of Duncker's imagination and her skill in writing suspense and the uncompromising nature of her polemic . . . it continues Duncker's successful and compelling marriage of lightness of touch with profundity of intent' Niall Griffiths,
New Welsh Review
Miss Webster and Chérif
Patricia Duncker
For my students 1987–1991
Hassan, Mohammed & Chérif
‘Allah removed all surplus human and animal life from the desert so that there might be one place for him to walk in peace ... and so the great Sahara is called the Garden of Allah.’
(Desert Saying)
Abbas, I wish you were the shirt
On my body, or I your shirt.
Or I wish we were in a glass
You as wine, I as rainwater.
Or I wish we were two love birds,
Who lived alone in the desert.
No people.
Abbas Ibn Al-Ahnaf (750–809)
You sing about love,
Your very flesh is consumed,
And you look quite ill.
Let me praise friendship,
This candle burns more softly, but it’s constant.
Slow heat – that’s the way it shows.
Abbas Ibn Al-Sabah (?780–843)
Contents
Praise for Miss Webster and Cherif
1
She heard an English voice. Rising above the surrounding babble of security announcements in different languages and the distant honking taxis, the English accent, harassed and irritated, yet full of expectant self-assertion, gave her an immense rush of reassurance. Someone English, close at hand. She pinpointed the voice.
‘I don’t think that’ll do any good. We’ve tried all the main airlines. I’m going to ring the consulate again and insist. They keep saying that it’s a matter for the police.’
He was tall, narrow-shouldered, wearing a white linen suit that had creased a little in the small of his back. He sported a cream hat, wedged on the back of his head, which made him look theatrical, as if he were playing the part of a colonial inspector. An Arab in a shiny pink shirt with a neatly clipped moustache was leaning in towards him, anxious, fidgeting. Was this an airport official? No, insufficiently dressed. He was wearing sandals, the thongs tight over his bare toes. An undercover customs officer? Unlikely. Security guard? No uniform. Not armed. There were guards swaggering through the airport in desert storm battledress, carrying Kalashnikovs. A guilty travel rep, who has mislaid one of his flock? In which case I hope you give him hell. The Englishman turned and brushed against her inquiring hand which was raised to intercept his elbow. She retreated in shock. He was a black man, an old black man in a white linen suit, his coiled hair white at the temples.
‘Oh, excuse me,’ she murmured, pretending that she had taken him for someone else.
‘May I be of any assistance?’
The English voice never faltered, neither did the urbane and knowing confidence. He had registered her recoil, her alarm. He had read her correctly. She was afraid of him. She had thought he was white. The voice coloured with irony, and the gesture, for he actually bowed towards her, gleamed suave and contemptuous. He had the excessive certainty of a gentleman.
‘Are you in difficulties?’
This was too much for Elizabeth Webster. Tears flooded her words.
‘I’ve missed my plane. They said I’ve missed my plane. We were too late leaving Gatwick. I was meant to join my group here. The transfer to Ouarzazate has gone without me. I can’t find anyone here who has ever heard of me.’
This came out as an existential declaration. The two men surrounded her with a cloak of courtesy and concern. The Arab man began waving his hands. His glossy shirt shimmered in the dingy lights.
‘This is most unfortunate. I am sure that something can be done. Please do not upset yourself.’
She dug about for a handkerchief in her floral carrier bag and withdrew a small plastic bottle of Evian, a sachet of salad dressing and a yellow biro. Unaccountably, the Arab man accepted all these as legitimate offerings.
‘Do you have your travel schedules?’ The black man took over. ‘Or your ticket?’
Helplessly convinced by his Englishness, Elizabeth Webster handed over all her vital documents: tickets, passport, insurance, driving licence, faxed confirmations from The Magical Adventures Travel Company, list of medicines and allergies, vaccination certificates and Foreign Office travel advice, downloaded from the Internet, suggesting that North Africa was a highly undesirable holiday destination. The tall black man sorted through them, trying to identify the airline that was responsible for abandoning fragile old ladies in North African airports. He registered her name: Elizabeth Webster; date of birth: 2 June 1933; domicile: some appalling rural backwater where the local shop wouldn’t even stock the national press and the vegetables were long past their sell-by date.
‘You flew in with Royal Air Maroc?’
She nodded.
‘And now you have to change to another airline? Or do you stay with Royal Air Maroc?’
He looked round the sandy marble hall with its huge dome and the fountain dripping recycled water on shining wires. The space rumbled and boomed, full of scurrying Westerners and local boys trying to hustle them into taxis. She had come downstairs and was now outside the security zone.
‘Aren’t the Magical Travels responsible?’ demanded the pink Arab man.
‘No, they’re not. They have to meet her at the other end. She hasn’t arrived yet.’
The Arab man filched all her documents and snatched the tickets. His pink shirt now appeared detestable. Elizabeth Webster discovered that she was not happy watching him clutching her private papers. Ha! He had deciphered the additional computer printout.
‘She’s been re-registered. She’s on the six o’clock flight. Look here. It just hasn’t been called yet. I’ll go and check.’
And he trotted off to check-in, clutching her passport and tickets. He was a little overweight and his buttocks wobbled. She watched him spiriting away her national identity and expensively purchased holiday rights with a little surge of alarm. She stepped closer to the Englishman and forgave him for being black. He seemed calm, even protective.
‘Shall we sit down?’
Two backpackers suddenly liberated a small table by the kiosk selling fresh orange juice and scuttled away. The black man pulled out the chair for her and settled her bags between them.
‘An orange juice perhaps? Or a coffee?’ She had not yet acquired any foreign currency as the dirham proved to be non-transferable and was therefore worthless outside the country. He brushed her objections aside.
‘They accept Euros. At an extortionate rate.’ She confronted a small plastic glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.
She ventured a conversation. ‘Are you looking for someone? I couldn’t help overhearing –’
‘Yes,’ he replied gloomily, ‘and it’s hopeless. We’ve lost all trace.’
He spread out a newspaper cutting on the table, beside her floral carrier bag and plastic glass. The headline read CRIME OF PASSION KILLER GOES FREE. A grainy picture of a sullen street girl in dreadlocks glared back from the middle of the text. Runaway. Jumped bail. Spanish courts. Miss Webster gave up. Why were the Spanish courts bothered? Didn’t they let you go with three months suspended sentence and an understanding reprimand from the judge for killing off the women taken in adultery? So was this man her father, mired in grief, hunting down her fleeing passion killer? Perhaps the pink Arab worked as a private detective. She arranged an expression of sympathetic tragedy and held it up in front of her face. To each his own sorrow. The strange hunt faded softly back into the papers on the table. I have my own sadness. This is not my affair. They sat silent, anxious among the booming announcements: Arabic, English, French, Spanish. All unattended luggage will be treated as a security risk and may be removed or destroyed.
‘Are you on holiday?’ The black man was clearly wondering why she was alone.
‘My doctor told me that I should go far away,’ she murmured.
Far away from what? She no longer made any sense. The black man in the creased white linen suit nodded his assent, baffled, humouring the mad. She sounded deranged, even to herself. ‘You see, I wasn’t at all well.’
He bowed. For indeed, she gleamed an unhealthy yellow, unnervingly thin, her head adorned with a curious arrangement of white punk spikes, bobbing at an angle as if she had caught the first whiff of Parkinson’s.
‘Ah. You have been ill.’