Miss Webster and Chérif (6 page)

Silence.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’ve told you who I am. You know who I am.’

‘All right then. You tell me where I should go. What I must do.’

‘You are to go far, far away from here. You will find a country that is francophone. Then you will be at home in the language. But you must not go to France itself as that is a country you know too well. Everything must be different – the culture, the people, the food. You must go somewhere that is very strange to you, somewhere that is utterly unknown, and then you will be told what to do.’

There was a long, long silence. And it struck her as odd that inside this silence she could hear nothing, neither the sounds of the mowers in the gardens, nor the traffic on the bypass, which usually hummed and hissed in a tense, swift rush at midday, nor the soft tap of the computers in the neighbouring office. Then she heard the doctor’s voice again, coming towards her like an approaching procession that she had last seen at a great distance.

‘I’m going to change your prescription. I want you to take these tiny pills four times a day. One at each meal and one before you go to bed. I’ll write to your GP and let him know.’

Elizabeth Webster had the distinct impression that a brief rift in time had gaped open and swallowed her grasp of the remembered present. Had she hallucinated the doctor’s command to depart into the wilderness? What was still real? She left the room clutching a National Health prescription with instructions to go straight to the hospital pharmacy and then to seek out a desert on the rim of the world.

My pills.

Where are my pills?

She scrabbled at the bottom of her handbag. My papers? My passport? Oh God, I’ve given them all to that Arab in pink. I must have been mad. She looked up at the black man, anguished and frantic.

‘My pills. I haven’t taken my pills.’

‘May I hold your other bag? Then you can look for them.’

He relieved her of the tartan hold-all. She retrieved the pills. Everything she had packed was still there. Elizabeth Webster twitched and shook, paranoid and insecure, fearful of strangers. But she was no longer on home ground. Anger and despair are emotions that need a secure base and known surroundings to flourish in tranquillity. She had begun to loathe her garden, her house, her furniture and her television because they were all still there, battered but intact, while she fretted and struggled against the process of dissolution. But here she was, in the transitional flux of a foreign airport, where the air felt thrice-breathed, and all known markers vanished, swallowed down by the strangeness of the languages around her. Despair thrives on stagnation. Elizabeth Webster had packed her bags and moved on. She was no longer angry either, for the place was too strange. She had been shaken out of her hole, like the vixen that had missed the sound of the hunt breaking cover and found herself exposed in open fields. She blinked, bewildered and unsettled, at the black man whose steady, abstract gaze met her own.

He had stretched out a small pile of documents before her as if awaiting her judgement and inspection. Here was the sullen black girl with dreadlocks coiled round her head like the Medusa. CRIME OF PASSION KILLER GOES FREE. And here was another image of a glamorous woman in a lavish blue dress, her breasts shiny with light, making love to a microphone. TRAGIC FATE OF JAZZ SINGER. She peered more closely at the huge eyes mired in dreadlocks. The coils were decorated with tiny shells and eyeless faces. Crimes of passion. Was it a crime to be passionate? Were these dead girls the images of the women the old black man was pledged to avenge? She leaned over the photographs.

‘Lost, lost,’ she murmured.

‘She is lost to me,’ agreed the black man and the disconcerted Miss Webster realised that the photographs had deceived her. The glamorous woman and the mutinous street girl were one and the same.

And now before her fluttered the sudden apparition of the pink satin Arab, whose moustache vibrated with polite formulas.

‘Voilà, Madame! I have checked the flight and confirmed that your luggage will be transferred. Everything is written down here for you. We will escort you to internal departures.’

She was marched across the atrium to yet another security gate. The guards stood at ease, watching the shifting lines of passengers, their hands on their machine guns.

‘There are lots of soldiers.’ Elizabeth scuttled anxiously between her two guardians, only just keeping up.

‘Ah, yes,’ said the Arab, ‘there have been other threats since the last attacks.’

‘Attacks?’

The black man shrugged, irritated.

‘Don’t alarm Miss Webster, Hassan. The level of alert here is no worse than London.’

But the Arab was bent on terrifying explanations.

‘It was all most unfortunate – two terrorist attacks, on a hotel and on a restaurant, within minutes of each other. Everyone is saying that it is Al-Qaida, but nothing has been proved. This kind of thing puts off the tourists. People feel unsafe.’

She contemplated death by unseen and unsolicited explosion. This seemed far less terrible than being lost in the street. They reached the departure gate for internal flights. The two men began making noises of reassurance and farewell. She returned their kindness with whispers of gratitude. She could never repay their generosity. The black man raised his hand as if he was silencing a congregation; then he began a speech.

‘Miss Webster, here is my card. This is my mobile number, which will work in this country. But put 00 44 in front of the number and drop the first 0. It will then work like an international call. I am here in Casablanca at the Grand Hôtel Royal. If you are in any further trouble please do not hesitate to call me.’

She peered at his name. Percival Leroy Jones in silver italics. There was a lunatic pomposity in the embossed pretentiousness, but a posh address in St John’s Wood backed up his self-importance. She clutched the card. He bowed.

‘And now we will escort you to your flight.’

As she watched them walk away down the concourse she noticed that the black man rested his hand on his companion’s shoulder. The younger man looked up, trusting, comfortable. She saw their unlikely colours, pink, white, touching, merging, as they gathered one another closer to pass through the crowd. They looked – and sounded – like men from two radically severed worlds, but their obvious intimacy suggested years of shared experiences. Their connection was palpable, unequivocal. They were friends.

2

Taxi Driver

Someone had blundered. She ended up in an expensive hotel far outside the great walls of the kasbahs, rising one above each other with their dark medieval streets, and far from the balconied buildings of the old colonial town. This was a smart new hotel with a view of seven palm trees and the endless desert beyond. The taxi stopped in twilight. Opposite the hotel entrance she perceived a dim expanse without colour, lights or buildings. Far away, a truck, its canvas roof torn and flapping, lurched down a long straight road, raising a giant cloud of dust which never settled but simply lengthened, like a jet’s trail. The air tasted of cooling dust. Half a dozen children doubled up like empty gunny sacks were loitering beside the hotel’s entrance, under the red walls and towering oleanders just beyond the security gates. They sprang into action as she reeled out of the car, and tried to snatch her bags. ‘Un cadeau, un cadeau,’ they shrieked in chorus. The taxi driver shouted back in a language she had never heard before. Elizabeth Webster beat them off with one of her sticks.

‘They just want to help.’ The taxi driver glared at her and rang the bell.

The receptionist and the porter looked like costumed extras on the set of Indiana Jones and the Desert of Doom. The woman was wearing chains of gold: gold falling from her ears, gold encircling her neck, gold draped in her hair, and a long black gown with a tight bodice, stitched sequins sparkling. The porter was stuffed into a tomato-red uniform with gold buttons and a fez. The glittering tassel swung madly round his head as he drove the children back under the wall. Suddenly the feeble twilight was engulfed by the black pool behind them. All the light sank into the ground. They retreated into the illuminated courts. Who had paid the taxi? Elizabeth Webster now felt very uncertain on her feet. She looked up, steadying herself on the gravel with her sticks. A large blue and yellow neon script announced the hotel bar as the Desert Rendezvous and promised a Foretaste of Paradise at Happy Hour. She heard voices and shrieking giggles. A long facade of identical pointed doorways faced a courtyard of rustling bougainvillea and tiled fountains. She could smell jasmine and sense textures, but could not distinguish any colours. Elizabeth Webster decided that she had at last arrived in hell. She was hot, she was dirty, she was tired, she was limping, she was old, she was late.

‘Welcome, welcome. Please let me carry that. Come in, come in  ...’

The costumed woman plumped her down amidst embroidered cushions and offered her a tall clean glass filled with sparkling mineral water.

Don’t drink anything if it isn’t bottled.

‘C’est de la Badoit.’

The receptionist spoke fluent French and had eyes ringed with kohl like an Egyptian deity. Her skin was pale olive and her forehead high and domed. All the wealth of the desert smothered her in gold. She smelt of cinnamon and rose water.

‘My name is Saïda, Madame Webster. You must come to me whenever there is anything you need.’

It was like having a personal djinn. Miss Webster’s luggage vanished and soft hands ushered her upstairs. Rose petals floated across the bed and her bathroom, paved in blue and white tiles, equipped with large bath, power shower, bidet and hair dryer, glowed with comforting, luxurious modernity. The sheets were ironed white and the light cream covers had been turned back. A tiny jewelled lamp lit up the carved wooden screen and a bowl of exotic fruit – figs, dates, apricots – stood on a small table of inlaid cedar and mother-of-pearl. Somewhere at a little distance she could hear water falling in the fountains. Her anxiety ebbed away. Someone else was looking after her. Someone else was in charge. Someone else was pointing out the way.

In the days that followed the hotel staff approached her mouthing concerned clichés.

‘Ah Madame Webster, you look so much less tired. You looked very strained and exhausted when you first arrived.’

‘Madame Webster, voulez-vous prendre votre café au lait ici ou dans le jardin?’

‘Mees Webster? Is the music disturbing you? I will ask the young people to turn it down.’

‘May I bring you a glass of mint tea, Miss Webster? If you sit outside in the gardens then you must drink a lot because of the heat.’

The garden was a miracle of colours, sustained entirely by a network of irrigation channels and humming electric pumps. The hotel was built on a deep well, barely fifteen feet beneath her feet. The water rose up from the dark earth, ancient, cold and sweet. It smelt of riches and prosperity. Palm trees, neatly pruned into symmetrical rows, lined the walkways and the old walls; roses with magnificent peeling faces loomed white and red in well-turned beds of imported soil. A huge hibiscus, now well past its best, some flowers still hanging limp and bleak upon their stems, stood up to the bougainvillea. But the place she preferred was a hidden stone bench in front of a mountainous wall of jasmine that oozed a strange dismal perfume into the afternoon heat. A sequence of exotic tiled fountains in ochre, red, blue and the subtle green of Islam punctuated the gardens, imposing as medieval fonts. One of these stood in the midst of a pond whose cool waters were protected by a surface of pale, scented water lilies. The flowers appeared to darken to a deep rose in the evenings. At night the temperature fell by over twenty degrees; every surface, patterned, paved and tiled, cooled at a different pace. Every opening or entrance seemed curtained, veiled, shuttered or screened. It was as if she were under constant surveillance. Someone watched her, constantly, from behind the silenced windows.

During the days Saïda appeared and disappeared in hushed slippers. The woman stalked the arcades and staircases like a beautiful giant cat, padding between guests. At night she burst forth in high heels and phoney Oriental chiffon. She chatted, merry and brisk, with the young people and lavished cocktails upon them; her manner was formal with the staff. She inspected their work – each detail was checked, from the measures of alcohol in the Desert Rendezvous to the arrangements for collecting guests from the airport. She clearly suspected all her employees of being skivers, profiteers and thieves. Everything was locked up. She carried the keys. She checked the mini-bars herself. Her tone with Elizabeth Webster was always careful, respectful and apprehensive. A cardiac crisis would be bad publicity for the hotel. The old woman must be humoured and cherished. The hotel was full: many French people, mostly older couples on autumn breaks, and a young Dutch crowd who stuck together and roared out on quad bike adventure trips across the desert. Yet the sounds of laughter from the swimming pool and the bar always seemed to be in the distance. Miss Webster noticed that she was being protected from intrusive disturbance. Everyone seemed to know that she had been very, very ill.

On the third day Saïda greeted her in the gardens beneath the wall drenched in jasmine. The old woman was reading Laclos. Saïda looked at the book.