‘I think he gives everyone the creeps. That’s why I’m glad he’s on my side.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
She was right, of course. Watson was only ever on Watson’s side . . . but once you worked that out, you were usually OK with him.
‘Are you staying down here tonight? I could buy you a drink in the mess later.’
She shook her head.
‘No. I’m going back to the Keep when I’ve finished, but thanks for the offer. I’ll take you up on it one day.’ I know I’ve said it before, but that was interesting. She was still there four hours later when I signed out.
I hung around outside for five minutes, waiting for Pat’s stand-in, Bud Abbott, to come and get me. If things were quietened down that much, why were we still driving everywhere? I could easily have walked the half-mile to the RAF camp, but everyone gave me a very funny look when I suggested it. No one else came from or went into the radio block. If we were monitoring Ibn Saud twenty-four hours a day there must have been at least another three guys working him with me, despite what de Whitt and Watson had tried to fob me off with. The odd thing was I hadn’t met one of them yet.
‘Do unmarried men think about girls all of the time?’ Fiona asked me.
‘A lot of the time. Will that do?’
‘What about married men?’
‘We hardly ever think about married men at all.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I don’t know, because I’ve never been married. When I am, I’ll give you a call and tell you. What about unmarried women? Do you think about men all of the time?’
‘No. It sort of comes and goes. I thought a lot about romantic men when I was a teenager, but I think girls grow out of it.’
‘Are you coming or going at the moment?’
I sat on the edge of her desk, and shared her glass of mineral water. The bubbles clung to the inside of the glass. After the first sip I realized that it wasn’t water, it was a gin and tonic. Watson had gone. When the cat’s away . . .
‘I’m definitely going. If I was coming you would have known about it by now.’
‘I like you very much,’ I told her.
‘I like you too, Charlie. You’re not as complicated as people make you out to be.’
‘So now you can tell me where Pat’s gone? The boss is worried about him.’
‘So am I. A couple of civvy police came round asking for him yesterday. I don’t know where he is. I thought Mr Watson was going to ask you.’
‘He did. I don’t know either, so I agreed to try to find him. Apparently you’re going to give me the keys to his Humber, and a pocketful of money to bribe people with.’
A set of car keys sat on a bulky envelope between us. She said, ‘You’ll have to account for the money, and don’t scratch the car – it’s his pride and joy.’
‘Cypriot money or sterling?’
‘Some of each. A hundred and twenty quid in all.’
‘That’s not much.’
‘It’s enough, Charlie. It’s wiped out the petty cash until the end of the month, so I’d appreciate it if you brought some back. And bring Pat back too – this place feels not quite under control when he’s away. All sorts of odd characters turn up asking for him, but never tell you what they want him for.’
‘Give me an example.’
‘That American girl who dances at Tony’s. She came in the day after he left – and looked pretty glum when she found he wasn’t here. Pat really has a way with the ladies.’
‘You should know.’
‘Don’t get catty with me, Charlie. I didn’t make him any promises.’ She made me smile, and gave me a get-out. If I had thought too hard about what business Steve could have with Pat it would probably have wiped the smile from my face too. I scooped up the keys and the envelope – I’d already seen the car parked under a tarpaulin in the side alley outside.
‘I’ll let you know how I get on. OK?’
Fiona OK’d me back. She was a little distant. Maybe she really was worried.
When I opened the envelope later, and counted the cash, I found I only had a hundred quid’s worth. I suppose every bugger was at it.
Watson’s Humber Hawk was a curious deserty sandy-pink colour, and wore Cyprus civvy plates. I wasn’t that struck on the column gear change, but it went like shit off a shovel. I think someone in Pat’s workshop may have breathed on its engine. I had it at over eighty on the road to Famagusta – a flock of sheep in a sunken field fully a hundred yards away panicked and scattered at my approach. The shepherd waved his stick at me in protest. I’m not surprised they wanted the Brits to go to somebody else’s island. The Hawk howled the way a proper car is supposed to, and a dust cloud marked my passing. What had Fiona asked me? Do unmarried men think about girls all of the time? Nah, sometimes we think about cars.
It was an unreasonably happy Charlie who drove to Yassine’s Hotel, and scraped one of the car’s wings against the stone gatepost. Yassine came out onto the steps smoking one of the long cheroots he favoured. He was wearing a gleaming white dishdash, and a battered red fez. It was odds on he was feeling peculiarly Lebanese again that morning.
‘Yah, Charlie.’
‘Yah, David.’ I had never asked him what yah meant, or worked it out for myself. He had several words which were particular to him; I think he made them up.
‘Mr Watson’s car.’
‘Yes. That’s right. Where can I buy one?’
‘Middle East main dealer in Beirut. He’s been sending them to Kuwait, to the oil companies – they are very good in the desert.’
‘How much?’
‘Four hundred and twenty as a tax-free export. Maybe seventy pounds shipping fee?’
‘I want one.’
We were joking of course, but everything David said was likely to be true. He carried money in his head the way other people carry dreams.
‘You come for breakfast?’
‘Stuffed vine leaves and haloumi?’
‘As you wish. Do you want your woman woken?’
‘Not yet. Let her lie. Let’s go into the garden and talk.’
Yassine looked as stretched out and relaxed as I felt. He must have had a good night.
‘What car you drive in England, Charlie?’
‘A Sunbeam – a sports tourer.’
‘You really want one o’ these fat ol’ Humbers instead?’
‘I rather think I do – I’ll see to it as soon as I get home. I’ll get married and settle down, be a decent father to my boys . . . probably become a Scoutmaster.’ I stretched my feet beneath the table; it was one of those kinds of morning.
‘You will die of boredom, my friend.’
‘That’s a very good thing to die from, David. I’ve made a lot of money since the war – mainly by following good advice given to me by friends like you. I want to live long enough to begin to spend some of it.’
‘I take it that you require some more free advice?’
‘No, help. I may need to lay my hand on four or five grand without much warning. I have plenty of cash, but no arrangement to access it out here. If I wrote you a cheque for that amount, could you cash it?’
He didn’t answer immediately. One of his girls had approached us with coffee, stayed and poured it. I caught a whiff of her as she bent over the cups. Brown and musky. When I flicked a look up I saw her large dark eyes, and a slightly knowing smile. What was that question Fiona had asked me again? When we were alone again Yassine let his face slip into its serious mode.
‘Are you in trouble, Charlie?’
‘No. I told you the truth – I just may need to lay my hands on a large amount of cash in a hurry. Could you help?’
‘Of course. And the cheque is good?’
‘Yes. I wouldn’t cheat you. I have a bank account in Germany. I bought a house south of Frankfurt just after the war, and the Americans rent it from me for their staff officers. They’ve had it for ten years now, and pay the rent straight into
my bank account by some fancy method or other. The rent goes up every year. I’ve never taken anything out, so there could be tens of thousands in there.’
‘Don’t you know, Charlie?’
‘Not exactly.’ That feeling again – as though you were up in front of the headmaster again, for an offence you didn’t know you’d committed. Yassine shook his head ruefully.
‘That money should be doing something for you, Charlie.’
‘It’s going to,’ I told him. ‘It’s going to save my life. You don’t want to know the rest.’
Silence. Then a bulbul began to whistle. I could get to like those musical birds.
‘OK.’ He clapped his hands. ‘You ready to eat now?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘You don’t go making no big sheep’s eyes at the girl who brings it, OK? I don’t want her dropping no more plates.’
‘OK.’
We had two conversations over breakfast. One was about that Humber saloon, and the other about a woman.
He told me how to buy my car without the inconvenience of paying purchase tax or car tax. I suppose that there is always a scam if you know who to ask. Yassine proposed that the Beirut dealership buy two cars, one in my name, and one for itself, but only export one. He knew how to fiddle the papers, mix up their identities, so that one remained in the UK tax free.
‘How much will I save?’
‘Coupla hun’red pound.’
‘And you’re sure this will work?’
He laughed, and lit another of his cheroots.
‘Charlie. The dealer does this all the time for your lords an’ ladies back in England. Rolls-Royces and Bentleys. Big Daimlers like the Queen. You want a Daimler? You think they ever pay taxes like an ordinary man? What’s the point of being a lord if you pay taxes like an ordinary man? These guys never pay their taxes.’
‘Who is this car dealer, David? One of your relatives?’
‘No.’ I didn’t press him. I just waited until he said, ‘Is me.’
What I did ask him was, ‘Are you the richest person I know, David?’
‘Dunno, Charlie. How many rich people you know?’
I tried again.
‘Are you the richest man in Cyprus?’
He thought about it, and scratched his face. Then he smiled slowly and said, ‘Yes. Certainly.’
The second conversation wasn’t as easy, because it was about his stake in Steve.
He said, ‘Friends shouldn’t argue over a woman,’ and I didn’t get what he wanted to talk about at first.
‘Agreed. We didn’t argue about Mariam, did we?’ She was a girl we’d both known in Egypt – the one who had run off with a weightlifter, and married America. She always got her priorities right.
‘But you weren’t attached to her. I think you are attached to Stephanie. Are we going to argue about her?’
I pulled my lip. I felt uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable because I had broken several taboos, and we both knew it. Thou shalt not fall in love with a prostitute should have been the eleventh commandment – for either sex. So I told him, ‘I’m sorry if I’ve made things difficult for you. Is it so obvious?’
‘To those who know you well, yes. I am not worried about the affection you have for her, just that she is no longer my most profitable employee. Now she is just another mouth to feed.’
I wasn’t quite sure what he meant.
‘Doesn’t she still dance for you?’
‘Yes, but that’s all she does . . . and to be strictly honest, she’s not a very talented dancer. Our clients appreciated that her talents lay . . . in other directions.’
‘I thought that after she’d danced . . . she was, well . . . self-employed, to coin a phrase.’
‘She is. The establishment takes a percentage for facilitating the business contact, and providing a working space.’
‘Her bed, you mean?’
‘Yes, if you like, and it’s become a very peaceful bed when you are not here.’
‘Because she’s not whoring up to her usual standards, you’re not getting your cut. Is that it?’
‘Crudely put, Charlie, but exact. I thought I’d mention it. Her regular clients are fretting. I get telephone calls from gentlemen in Nicosia almost every day. They are distraught.’
‘What have you told them?’
‘That she is ill. That was foolish, because one is a doctor, and now he is demanding to examine her. Some of her other friends are almost as pressing.’
‘And how long has this been going on?’
‘A week, ten days.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Talk to her, Charlie. All I want is a decision.’
‘And if she has decided to . . . take a rest? A holiday?’
‘Fine, and I mean that – really fine. She can dance for her room as long as she pays her bar bills, and for her food and laundry. It’s nothing personal – it’s just that I don’t want the other girls getting ideas. This is a business, not a charity.’
‘Your clubs have always been charities, David. You have always looked after your girls, even given them dowries when they wed.’
‘You mustn’t be a romantic, Charlie – that too is purely business. The dowries are simple investments, nothing more. Laying up treasure in heaven. When the girls come back to me, and mostly they do, they work even harder to please me. You will talk to Stephanie?’
‘Of course I will. What about her clients?’
‘The other girls will provide friendly diversions for them. Stephanie’s clients are good payers – respectable men. I can arrange that if necessary.’
‘Thank you, David. You were right, old friends shouldn’t fall out over a woman.’
He leaned forward and supported his chin with a hand.
‘Old friends. I like the idea of old friends.’
‘So do I, David.’ We left it at that.
Bed had not worked, leaving us both feeling vaguely unsatisfied. Getting past that for the first time is a landmark in any relationship. Steve sat across the room from me wrapped in a rumpled sheet. I was turning out the pockets of my jacket, looking for my pipe and tobacco pouch: smoking is something I often do if I want to avoid facing a problem. Steve wasn’t that type. She smiled impishly at me without saying anything, until I asked her, ‘What happened there?’
‘We both did what we thought we ought to be doing, rather than what we wanted to do.’
‘What did you want to do?’
‘Talk to you about the little things I don’t know about you – what’s your favourite book, that sort of thing.’
‘Treasure Island. It’s been my book since I was ten. I loved Ben Gunn and John Silver . . .’ My mother had read to me until the old man came home from work; then he took over.
It led me to ask her, ‘Do you miss them much, your mother and father?’
She looked away; one of those moments of weakness. She blinked the tears back.
‘That was cruel, Charlie.’
‘Do you?’
‘Of course I do, but it’s impossible – I told you why.’
‘Why don’t we go down and visit them – sort it out?
‘Are you mad?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I’ll finish up here sooner rather than later, won’t I? And you can leave whenever you want. What’s the point of me being in the airline business if I can’t use my wasta to get us tickets down to South Africa and back?’
‘Why on earth would you want to meet my family? You might hate them.’
‘And I might not. I need to meet your dad anyway, don’t I?’
‘Why?’
‘I’ll need his permission to marry you.’
That brought things to an emergency stop.
Steve could unnerve you by staring at you for a long time without saying anything. That’s what she did. I filled my pipe, and let the aromatic smell of its burning tobacco lay over the pink perfumes of Steve’s room. She got up, and went over to the window trailing the she
et, like a trousseau, I thought. She probably didn’t see it that way. When she spoke it was in a whisper so low that I had to incline my head towards her to pick it up.
‘Isn’t there a girl in England?’
‘There have been. But none of them took me seriously.’
‘What about you? Are you serious?’
‘I am this time. Don’t ask me why. I just am.’
‘What about your boys?’
‘We’ll take them with us. It’s about time they saw a bit of the world. London, Mombasa then down to Jo’burg. I think that’s the route that BOAC fly. I loved geography lessons when I was at school – it was the only thing I was any good at. I loved the foreign-sounding names of countries and cities.’
I knew that I was gibbering: making noise, not conversation.
I suppose that it was my fault; girls have had more romantic proposals than that, haven’t they? Put it down to inexperience – she was only the third or fourth woman I’d asked. The room seemed unnaturally quiet. A dying fly buzzed itself to death on its back somewhere. The ceiling fan clicked slowly around: why do those damned things always click as they revolve? When my pipe was finished I walked over to join her at the window, and knocked out the pipe ash on the sill. I watched the soft black bones of burned tobacco fall down the face of the outside wall, and into the courtyard. Eventually I couldn’t bear her silence, and asked, ‘Well? What about it?’ although I hope I sounded kinder than it looks on paper. She sighed.
‘Let me think about it.’
‘You want me to go?’
‘Yes, I’ll call you.’ This time, for some reason, I believed her.
‘You won’t have to call very loudly. Because I won’t be going far. I intended to be around for a couple of days, but I won’t crowd you.’ She looked doubtful. ‘I mean it. I have a few things of my own to do – I’ll ask Yassine to let me have a room.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Finding Pat Tobin for a start. I was going to ask you where – I know you came to see him a few days ago.’ I’d given her the perfect opportunity to tell me why, but she wasn’t stupid enough to fall for it.
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