‘And so he has photographs of your wife sunbathing on
Dolly,’
Morgan said.
For a moment, the other man sat quite still. Then he said, ‘And others?’
‘Of Miss Geddes. Of Miss Helmann here, riding pillion with Mr. Johnson. They are unfortunate, that is all. They could add fuel to rumour.’
‘But these individuals have nothing to do with your buyout?’ Oppenheim said.
‘No. The threat was made to smooth the way for Kingsley’s to take over Miss Geddes. But photographs of that kind have many uses.’
‘I see,’ said Oppenheim slowly. ‘Who took them?’
‘Of your wife? Sullivan, I believe,’ Morgan said. ‘Colonel Sullivan, of Black & Holroyd.’
Oppenheim’s hands were loose on the desk before him. He said,
‘This threat was made in connection with Sir Robert’s attempt to take over MCG? What was their response to it?’
Morgan said, ‘Miss Geddes told them to publish.’
Oppenheim said, ‘So, because Mr. Johnson is involved with MCG, my wife’s picture may be made public in any case? Even if that were not so, I am not the man, Mr. Morgan, to be impressed by that sort of blackmail. What you make of Sir Robert is your own affair. I can only say that if, on reflection, you will throw in your lot with me, I shall receive you gladly, no matter what may come—’
He broke off. Without warning, the door to the study had opened. ‘I was most unwilling to believe this,’ said Sir Robert Kingsley from the threshold, ‘but I see, Oppenheim, that it is true. May I ask to have noted my disappointment, my anger, and my intention to take this breach of City practice to its furthest possible limit?’
He came in and slammed the door, and walked to the desk. Oppenheim made to speak. Sir Robert said, ‘No. If you please. I should like to make my point first. This man, Mohammed Morgan, with whom you are holding this meeting in secret, is a Director of my company, has signed a contract, has accepted a substantial sum of money in return for his position. In coming here, he shows himself foolish. In inviting him here, you expose yourself to everything I and my friends can do to discredit you, and your business, and your practices. Be sure of that.’
I had seldom seen him so angry. His voice was soft, as it had been in the Boardroom in London, disputing with Johnson. But this time I felt it cost him to keep the fury banked down: he was flushed with it. Coming in, he hadn’t even spared Morgan a glance. I saw, because I was looking for it, the flicker when his gaze passed over me. He hadn’t expected to see me. He didn’t know yet what I knew about Asni. He couldn’t be sure which side I was on. He ignored me.
Daniel Oppenheim rose to his feet. ‘I hope you do,’ he said. ‘Fabricate a report against me, Robert, and you’ll have time to regret it. Blackmail is a serious offence.’
Sir Robert looked from Morgan to me. Morgan said, ‘We’ve talked to Miss Geddes. We know what happened at Asni.’
‘You think you know, perhaps,’ said Sir Robert. He was partly prepared for that, too, although his colour increased a fraction. His eyes came at last fully to mine. He said, ‘I had to protect you.’
I had hoped, at first, that he might have had that in mind. But only at first. I said, ‘By using that photograph?’
‘It was a threat, that was all.’
‘You didn’t intend either to use the pictures of Muriel on
Dolly?’
said Daniel Oppenheim.
Sir Robert turned from me. He said, ‘Oh, wait a moment. Are you seriously comparing young Miss Helmann with what we know of the private life of your wife? Half-naked on
Dolly,
who would be interested? It is the other pictures I should use.’
‘What?’ said Oppenheim. His face had changed.
‘Look,’ said Sir Robert, and flung a plastic folder on the desk.
What it contained, I couldn’t see. Only Oppenheim sat, and taking out the glossy package of photographs, shuffled them through one by one. At the end he placed them face down on his desk and lifting his hands, held them apart as if they were wet, or contaminated. He said, ‘If you made these public, I think I should kill you.’
‘You are welcome to try,’ said Sir Robert. ‘Do I gather you feel no need now to pursue your illicit courting of Mr. Morgan?’
Oppenheim turned his head speechlessly. Morgan looked at his face and said, ‘Mr. Oppenheim, you don’t need to say anything.’ He got up, and I found I was standing as well. Morgan said, ‘I don’t think, Sir Robert, I’ve ever seen a dirtier way of halting a deal. If it matters, I came to hear Mr. Oppenheim out, without expecting or meaning to leave you. I’ve changed my mind about that. If I could, I’d ditch you tomorrow.’
‘My God,’ said Robert Kingsley. ‘Are you still in napkins, or what? I may be nothing to you; you may be nothing to me, but what does it matter? You have a talent, and nothing. I can provide you with equipment, premises, buyers and more money to play with than you’ll find anywhere else in the world. What more do you want? What more do you expect? Men like Oppenheim will come, ten a penny, because they want the use of your brains; but it’s Kingsley money that will let you realise your potential. That of you and your team.’
Morgan stared at him. He said, ‘You think I have nothing? I don’t even know how to talk to you. Mr. Oppenheim—’ He looked at the desk. Oppenheim sat without moving. Morgan said simply, ‘I’m sorry. We’re going.’
I had dreaded meeting Sir Robert again. I had been frantic with anger and misery. But for that display of the brutality he had shown at Asni, I might have been uncertain of my own feelings still. As it was, I said, ‘Wait. Sir Robert, I wish to give a month’s notice.’
He smiled. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘I suppose it shouldn’t come as a total surprise. Your resignation is accepted, of course. You will make immediate arrangements, if you please, to vacate the holiday room you and your mother are currently occupying at the company’s expense. And I don’t believe you will be required to work out your notice. You will not, I am sure, expect a reference.’
‘She’ll get one from me,’ said Mo Morgan. He gripped my hand and began to stride to the door, but Sir Robert reached it before us. He pulled it open and walked out, letting it crash and shudder behind him. Morgan caught it and, still holding the doorknob, turned round. Outside, I caught sight of Pymm in the crowd, with my mother.
Daniel Oppenheim had lowered his palms. The pile of pictures still lay there reversed: now his fingers closed upon it convulsively. Clutching the photos, he looked up and spoke, quite politely. ‘I am sorry, too. If you don’t mind, I shall join you all later.’ So we left him alone, and walked back to the party.
My mother stood waiting, as at an invisible bus stop. She said, ‘Are you starting a cold? People are beginning to leave. You’re meant to leave, or their dinners get cold.’
I said, ‘I’ve resigned.’
She stared at me, her eyes set like hazelnut whirls. It was the way she probably looked at my father. He had never resigned. He had never even got the hang of getting methodically sacked. His way was to start up his own spanking new business, and go on his beam ends when it did. My mother knew me better than that. All the same, I could see the text in her head before it got printed out. References. . . Pensions. . . Redundancy money. And by the way, what about our room at the Golden Sahara Hotel?
She didn’t get to say any of it because Morgan spoke first. He said, ‘She did the right thing. And she’s got a new job. Helping me.’
‘She can’t cook?’ said my mother. I knew from the tentative way she spoke that she was interested.
‘Jeez!’ said Ellwood Pymm. I’d forgotten he was there. He said, ‘You resigned too, Mr. Morgan?’
‘Unfortunately, no,’ said Mo Morgan. ‘But I can choose what staff I please, and I need a personal assistant. If Sir Robert doesn’t like it, I’ll pay her salary out of the rivers of gold I’ve been promised.’
‘He sure came out of that room looking like thunder,’ said Mr. Pymm. ‘Would I be right in guessing at an ideological clash? Some kinds of Englishmen, they’ve got no respect for other men’s colours and creeds. You a practising Muslim, Mr. Morgan?’
Mo Morgan, thinking his own thoughts, looked taken aback. He said, ‘Brother, we’re at a drinks party.’
‘I wouldn’t think that you were,’ said Ellwood Pymm. ‘Any more than Mr. Oppenheim can be Orthodox, with Muriel there as his wife. But to some Englishmen, a foreigner’s always a foreigner. You want to look at how much better we do things in the New World. I could take you to a party or two back in London where you’d hear things that would open your eyes.’
‘Oh, there you are,’ Johnson said. ‘Mo, Jimmy wants to have another look at your legs. The public figures have gone, and there’s a move afoot to transfer the whole detritus to the Place for a special knees-up folklore performance in honour of Auld. Pymm, your Canadian pals have sent out a raccoon call for your company. Mrs. Helmann—’
‘She’s resigned,’ said my mother, staring at him over a plateau of ethnic emigrant garments. ‘Sir Robert was here. Wendy’s resigned.’
‘What happened?’ said Johnson. He looked busy. Perhaps he was.
I said, ‘I thought you said my mother’d be safe. She’s been with Mr. Pymm the whole day, and now we’ve no hotel. And you told Lady Kingsley where we were. Sir Robert knew just where to come. He walked right in on Mr. Morgan. If you want to know what happened, ask Mr. Oppenheim.’
‘That’s why I came,’ Johnson said. ‘Message from Muriel: the party’s moving outside. And really, I’m sorry about Sir Robert getting into a spat, but I don’t think it was Charity’s fault. Ask her. She came after all: there she is, talking to Oliver.’
Oliver. I saw him now, for the first time: the large young man from Johnson’s yacht. Johnson said, ‘He’s been with your mother all day as well, but I don’t think she noticed him.’
‘Yes, I did,’ said my mother. ‘Thought he fancied me.’
Johnson’s mouth moved. ‘So I think you’ll be safe,’ he said. ‘If, that is, you’d like to join the party. Horse-drawn carriages waiting outside, service free. All the drivers have nephews coached somewhere by Jimmy. I’ll go and tell Oppenheim.’
I watched him walk to the study door and tap on it. I thought of Oppenheim sitting alone, looking at all those photographs. I realised we had to go with the party, because we didn’t have anywhere else to go. I set off for the door, walking slowly because I didn’t want to catch up with Muriel, and also because my mother had collected five different people who wanted to talk to her. Then we stood on the steps by the carriages, which was where Johnson eventually found us. He had brought Oppenheim with him and would have launched my mother into a vehicle except that she suddenly vanished.
I gave myself five minutes to panic. She reappeared in rather less, preceded by a large ball of wool which bounded publicly down the Oppenheims’ steps, there to be cheered to a landing and pounced on by many dribbling feet. Professional and amateur, Jimmy Auld’s guests clotted into a jumping, elbow-swinging, hollering crowd that moved off with the ball down the drive, on to the grass and then back again to the steps, by which time it was a collection of yarn.
Mo Morgan, I noticed, had been in there with the team: he passed us once, giving the thumbs-up sign to my mother. She stared back at him violently. She knits very good socks, as well as cooking and baking and ironing shirts and fixing up courses to get me appointments from which I resign.
Iread an article once. It said,
The Most Difficult Transition of All: From £1 to £2 Million Turnover.
It isn’t.
That was the evening I gave up what I had worked for. That was the evening I sat in the lee of my mother on a bench behind two trotting horses and watched the sun go down twice and maybe for ever in Johnson’s spectacles opposite.
Nobody spoke. The wheels jolted over the potholes on the way to the Place Jemaa-el-Fna, and the horses’ hooves kept the same steady beat as the braces of horses before us pulling the coaches of Jimmy Auld and his footballing cronies, and the line of horses behind bringing Daniel Oppenheim and his much-photographed wife. Bringing Lady Kingsley without her eminent spear-throwing husband; and Ellwood Pymm, who organised charades to do with kidnapping and knives; and Mo Morgan who, having ratted in vain, had offered me a share in his highly uncertain future. Bringing Johnson’s high-class thug Oliver, whom I remembered hovering over the svelte topless Muriel on
Dolly,
and who might – who just might – feature in those later, shocking pictures shown to her husband. Unless, of course, the man in those pictures was Johnson. Sitting with him in that barouche I should have told him what happened, but I wasn’t going to. Morgan could do it.
A cheerful throng escorted us every step of the way. Boys somersaulted and cartwheeled beside us. Folk-dancers scampered on bare feet and leaped, their djellabahs flying. Singers rode beside us in pairs on Motobecane Vespas, ululating above the buzz of the motor. And although the main body of horsemen had galloped ahead to prepare the display they had promised us, the occasional rider appeared, and upset the carriage horses by firing his rifle.
The first time it happened, I saw Johnson glance at my mother. I couldn’t be bothered to turn. I didn’t even peer at the riders to see if I recognised Sullivan’s vicious friend Gerry Owen. Men got shot; rooms got blown up; people were blackmailed and threatened. I didn’t care. I didn’t work for Kingsley’s any more. My mother said, ‘You lost your nerve?’
She wasn’t speaking to me: she was speaking to the twin setting suns which were Johnson. He showed no particular desire to respond. Scents of lemon and orange and garlic whipped past our noses. Every building was pink; lamps glimmered; the Koutoubia minaret was abruptly outlined in light bulbs. Johnson said, ‘Yes. I think you should both go straight to Rita’s.’
‘Nix,’ said my mother, groping inside her bag. ‘Wendy? You did all them courses on self-defence? You got your hatpin?’
My hatpin was at Rita’s with my modest holiday clothes. I shook my head, and was handed a long battered skewer with a scuffed crochet ball on the end. ‘Are you a coach potato?’ asked my mother. You take that, and do what you have to.’