It isn’t my fault my mother is crazy. I wished we really were going to Rita’s. I had given up calling her Geddes.
Johnson murmured, ‘Go easy.’
‘My name’s Doris,’ my mother said. ‘You think you know better than I do?’
He never really smiled. He said, ‘No, Doris. I don’t.’ I thought the next thing we knew, he’d be fixing her pipes or her wiring. At least one thing was for sure. He wouldn’t be moved to paint her flaming portrait.
We arrived in the square, and dismounted, and piled with the rest into the forecourt of one of the cafés that lined it. Jimmy Auld was absorbed by a robed crowd of men who kept kissing him on either cheek. Johnson hefted my mother into a seat while I looked about me and patted the horses, which were fitted with blue plastic eyeshades, and answered to Françoise and Bijou. As soon as the café seat by my mother was filled, I went and found another one, by itself, with a view. I looked for Mo Morgan and saw him with three men with big jaws, whom I suspected must be some of his climbing friends. I saw Oppenheim arrive with his wife, who had flung a cashmere shawl over her toga. In the rosy light she seemed to be smiling, although Oppenheim beside her was expressionless. I thought she saw me, but she didn’t come over. Ellwood Pymm, who did, said, ‘Well, is it my lucky day! You don’t mind, baby? After all those close shaves we had together?’
He had brought his own chair. I couldn’t stop him sitting down. He couldn’t do anything to me surrounded by people. I looked about but didn’t see Johnson, or Oliver. Oppenheim took his seat, in the end, beside his father-in-law among the front tables edging the Place. I saw Muriel moving about, talking and smiling. Eventually she sat down with some couple. Pymm said, ‘Your mother reads Arab newspapers?’
I was about to say no, and then remembered where he was staying. I said, ‘Sometimes.’ I kept my voice low, because he did.
‘Naturally, she’s sympathetic. And Mo there, why not. And you’re a nice girl: you do what your mother says, and I like it. But as I was saying to Mo, Arabs ain’t natural businessmen. You want a contract, you want it legal, in words your lawyer and my lawyer understand. I say, don’t get round a table with Arabs. You tell that to your mother. And JJ, whatever commission he’s getting up there at the Palace. And you wise up old Danny boy there.’
‘Mr. Oppenheim?’ I said. I had no idea where Johnson stood racially, but if anyone was the opposite of an Arab, it was Daniel Oppenheim.
Pymm shrugged. ‘You never seen him with those Arab princes? And listen, you pass all that on to Mo. Mo wants to have fun and get rich, all he has to do is stay where he is.’
I said, ‘But he doesn’t get on with Sir Robert.’
Mr. Pymm smiled, his pug nose expanding. He looked like a door-to-door fruit bat. ‘Some things get sorted out,’ said Mr. Pymm. ‘My gut feeling is that some things get sorted out if you wait long enough. You doing anything later tonight?’
I had wakened up. I stared at him. I said, ‘Yes. Having my dinner standing up with my mother.’
‘Hey, baby!’ said Ellwood Pymm. His voice conveyed hurt. ‘I didn’t mean her. Your Mom’s a real proper lady. But say, what about after dinner? There we are, in the same big hotel. I don’t want for you to be lonely. It can be lonely, being out of a job. Friends are useful.’
I used the skewer. He took his hand off my thigh with a gasp just as Charity Kingsley settled herself in a chair on my other side. She was still wearing her jodhpurs, and maybe even her spurs. Pymm hesitated, then got up and walked away. Lady Kingsley said, ‘Those poor bloody horses. You look very nice.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ve resigned.’
‘Good,’ she said.
She wasn’t getting away with that. Not now, she wasn’t. I said, ‘Sir Robert came. You told him where Mr. Morgan would be. You said you weren’t coming to the Oppenheim party.’
‘I know. I didn’t mean to bother,’ she said. ‘And then some friends at the stables persuaded me. Actually, I didn’t tell him: I don’t know how he found out. If you’re sorry, I’m sorry. Are you in need of a job?’
‘I’ve got one,’ I said. ‘With Mr. Morgan.’
For a moment her surprise showed; then she laughed. She said, ‘Oh, dear.’
‘What do you mean, oh dear?’ I asked. They were serving drinks. I saw Morgan had got up in response to a wave from Jimmy Auld, and had gone to the front to join him and Oppenheim. A table arrived, and a plate of pastries and two full glasses of whisky. Lady Kingsley took one, so I took the other. She smelled faintly of horse.
She said, ‘Just that I think you’re rather splendid. Look. We ought to watch. Isn’t Jimmy Auld marvellous?’
‘I thought you didn’t like football?’ I said.
I could see her profile, as she trained her large, light eyes on the arena. She had no make-up on, and I had a suspicion she wore glasses for reading. She was bestowing critical attention on the lines of black caps and swaying white djellabahs before us, and the rows of bright, fleshy feminine faces topped with coins and gauzes and flowers and looped with beads big as onions. The women were singing already, holding hands and stamping their feet to a welter of sound arising from drums and percussion and tubes and fiddles and a man wearing a brass cap and chiming himself monotonously with a stick. Lady Kingsley said, shouting a little, ‘Football? My dear, I think it’s ludicrous, but I adore Jimmy Auld. Mr. Johnson, don’t you adore Jimmy Auld?’
I didn’t know where Johnson had come from. He placed a chair plumb in front of us and, sitting, shouted amicably back, ‘Legendary,’ Johnson said. ‘Nicest fanny-pincher I know. May I blanket some of the sound for you?’
My mother appeared to have brightened him up. I could see her where he had left her, a coloured bolster surrounded by people, her mouth opening and shutting. She had got one elbow on the table, which was equivalent to a performance by Houdini. Her presumed guardian angel Oliver was not to be seen, even doting on Muriel; but I saw Pymm, and he was nowhere near her.
Johnson wasn’t looking about him at all, but was good at refilling our glasses and talking. The lines of singers were replaced by clapping men and dancing girls in glistening kaftans. There was some slapstick with drums, and some juggling. There was another dance, done by men dressed as women. We applauded, and everyone drank and ate and chattered and Johnson, receiving permission, took out and loaded his pipe and smoked it peacefully. I remembered he wasn’t supposed to, and realised he was skiving from Rita.
At some point Morgan noticed us sitting behind him and turned and grinned. He had pinned his pigtail on top of his head with a twist of frilled braid and a cherry. I wondered if he had had a chance to tell Johnson that the great Oppenheim-Morgan buyout was off, and exactly why. For a while the two of them held a drawling conversation about something I didn’t understand, although Jimmy Auld turned round now and then and threw in a remark or a bellow of laughter, and once Oppenheim turned and gave a measured view of his well-cared-for teeth. Then Johnson said, ‘Look. The horses are coming.’
By then, the light had almost gone. The space before us flickered with acetylene lights from the stalls and the open-air cooking places. Hot charcoal winked in the dark, and yellow filaments beaded far buildings. The glare of light from our café threw our shadows over the tables and on to the ground of the Place.
Now the storytellers, the snake-charmers and the acrobats had given way to a solid phalanx of sturdy, quarrelsome men mounted on tasseled horses and brandishing rifles. The Fantasia was imminent. The Fantasia which reproduces a tribal cavalry charge with all its speed, its swerves, its manoeuvres, as can be seen at the Hotel Golden Sahara, outside the front door on Mondays and Thursdays.
The horses were excited already, rearing and prancing, and their booted riders, robed and turbaned in white, would have ridden straight over a Desert Song audience without even noticing. Lady Kingsley said, ‘Now, this is going to be something.’
Johnson agreed. His pipe had gone out, but he looked none the worse for having smoked it. A waiter, threading softly among us, placed a candle on Morgan’s table and then on ours and lit them both, protecting them from the wind with his palm. He had moved away when Johnson touched his pipe and called something to him. His French was quite idiomatic: I wasn’t even sure what he said until the man returned, smiling, and handed over his matchbox. He waited, answering politely, while Johnson relit his pipe and made friendly small-talk. The flame pulsed and Johnson, puffing gently, lidded the bowl with the box.
It took all that time for me to realise that the waiter’s voice was familiar, and to remember where I had heard it before. I paid no attention to the body of men now massed into a horde at the end of the square. I didn’t hear any command, or even the distant rumble of hooves as there began, deceptively slowly, the series of large ragged movements that would climax at top speed before us. I just said to Johnson, ‘
It’s the carpet man!’
I suppose I screamed it. Lady Kingsley jumped. Morgan turned round, half-rising. The waiter took a step back. Johnson dropped the matchbox and killed the candle flame with a sweep of one hand, shoving me low with the other. He was calling to Morgan, who began, all too slowly, to reach for the flame on his table. His and ours were the only two candles alight. Then I was down from my chair on one knee, and gasping as Johnson half-landed on top of me. Something clattered and flashed. I saw the waiter’s sandalled foot turn, and then stop as its ankle was seized. The foot kicked, and Johnson rolled back to go with the blow, but still holding. The waiter twisted to scoop up the thing that had fallen.
I still had the skewer with the crochet ball handy. I chose the leg the waiter was standing on, and drove the thing up to the neck in his calf. He cried out twice, the second time because Johnson had got better leverage and jerked him right off his balance. He began to fall, bumping against tables whose occupants, thinking us drunk, were only mildly distracted. Johnson rose to seize him, to cries of disapproval from all those whose view he was blocking, as the Desert Song at full pelt swept towards us.
By now, you couldn’t ignore it. The riders, howling, thundered over the square. The heat and smell of the cavalry charge hit us. The delirious explosion of scores of rifles wrapped us in smoke, pungent with the stench of cordite and onions and horse dung. The white-clad army skidded to a glorious halt at our feet, and went on shouting and firing its rifles. Johnson, reaching out for the waiter, threw a rapid glance over his shoulder. The waiter tugged, the rifles fired, and Daniel Oppenheim gave a scream and crashed forward over the table.
‘And sucks to you,’ said Johnson viciously, and tumbled flat as the waiter dragged free and set off between tables, running. Johnson got up and, swearing, began to race after him. Against him came the horrified rush of Jimmy Auld’s friends who had just witnessed his son-in-law being shot. I saw Johnson thrust through them, answering nothing. He passed Muriel, who was standing quite still, her face ghastly.
I scrambled up, and found Charity Kingsley beside me. She said, ‘I don’t know what all that was about, but shouldn’t we help?’
I said, ‘Mr. Oppenheim!’
‘Plenty of people helping him, if he needs it,’ she said; and, taking my arm, began to rush after Johnson.
It was hard to make any progress. All the cooks and waiters had run out to see what had happened, and guests were standing clutching each other, or crouching in groups under tables, or climbing on tables to see better. A number had fled to the café for shelter.
The waiter had a clear start, and was better motivated than almost anyone. He darted across the main forecourt followed by Johnson, employing an erratic outflanking technique. We followed. I found myself breathless from sheer fright and anxiety, but Lady Kingsley galloped ahead, wielding her shoulders and elbows like truncheons. I saw, now, what the waiter was making for. In the most obscure corner of the forecourt was a service gate, beyond which was the Place Jemaa and a typhoon of spectators and horsemen. And beyond the present traumatised crowds was the labyrinthine web of the souks.
Our quarry was almost there, when I saw that his bobbing black head had ceased bobbing. Behind, Johnson put on speed. Realising it, the other man began to run forward. Lady Kingsley and I, battling through the last of the crowds, had a sudden view of the gate, and the waiter and Johnson, and perceived why our villain had paused. Solidly blocking the gate was my mother.
I heard Johnson shout, telling her to let the man through. Certainly, he had no other chance, outside pole-vaulting. Instead she stood where she was, a pillar box with a fag in its mouth, with her arms folded as near as she could get them. I thought the fellow would hit her, but no. He just took out a knife, laid it against the side of her neck, and backed her through the gate, using one of her arms as a tiller. Behind, driverless at the moment, was the line of horse-drawn barouches we had come in.
That was where Lady Kingsley and I caught up with Johnson, standing still at the gate. He was murmuring something. Lady Kingsley said, ‘I don’t think I’d follow, if I were you.’ She pushed past.
‘But you aren’t,’ Johnson said. He had begun to move, a hand in his pocket. ‘Wendy, it’s all right, she’s safe so long as we stay with her. Charity, you can drive one of these things?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’d take the third lot. They look better goers.’ She paused. She said, ‘He can’t do much damage while driving.’
‘Do not,’ said Johnson, ‘worry your elegant head about that.’ His accent was the same as Sir Robert’s, but his style suddenly wasn’t. Running, I saw Charity look at him quickly, as if he were a horse that had surprised her. Then no one spoke, for our waiter hadn’t made for the barouches at all. Instead, he stopped by a Super Bleu bike with a sidecar. He heaved my mother inside, vaulted on to the bike and shot out into the Place, engine roaring.
We had got to the horse-carts by then. ‘Right,’ Johnson said;
and taking hold, shot me into the seat of the third, before swinging up on the box beside Charity. She had the reins collected already. He said, ‘Let it rip, lady. If our villain can’t get through the Place, I reckon he’ll try for the souks. Tell you what to do when we get there.’ The horses trampled and fussed, and then suddenly began to move off together. The wheels picked up speed. The cart jolted. Watchful as a traffic controller, Johnson sat scanning the crowds. But the rest of his attention, I saw, was concentrated ahead, on the bike and my mother.