by Tom Barry
“How much?” asked the man; the shopkeeper gave his price in Arabic. The man pulled some crumpled notes from his pocket and pressed them into Ali’s hand. “Not the best time to bargain,” he quipped.
With the exchange done, the hostile manner of the shopkeeper gave way to supplication. Ali returned to the smiling well-wisher Isobel had first encountered.
She let out a long, audible sigh, her breathing easier, as the stranger led her towards the fading light. “Where did you come from?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said the man as they passed a stall of shining metal-ware, “someone must have made a wish, one minute I’m in this brass lamp and the next —”
She burst out laughing, the tension falling from her body. “So how do we leave this nightmare?” she asked.
“Come on, follow me, it’s this way — or at least I think it’s this way,” he said, beckoning encouragement.
Was her rescuer all he seemed? It occurred to Isobel that she had already been deceived that afternoon by one smiling Samaritan. But she had little choice; the man took her by the hand and led her away with quick and purposeful strides, turning this way and that through the narrow alleys as if by instinct, into the spice market with its endless sacks of red saffron, golden curry, and bronze cumin, the aromas of mint and rose filling her senses and soothing away her fears, before they emerged into the square. The sky was darkening to a reddish brown, the orange veil which bathed the square now disappearing as the sun retreated beyond the horizon, along with the tourists and those who traded among them. From distant minarets came the wailing sound of the faithful being called to prayer.
The tension and seeming danger in the souk, the heroic intervention, the rapid escape, all made for a strange sense of elation in Isobel. She tried not to think of Peter back at the hotel waiting and, no doubt, worrying. Right now she wanted to enjoy the moment.
“Who do I have to thank for saving me from Ali and the forty thieves?” she asked, masking the strange importance she placed on knowing his name.
“Jay, Jay Brooke.” He offered his hand and Isobel took it. His blue eyes bore into hers.
“Isobel,” she offered in reply, unsure how to proceed.
“You were quite a fighter back there,” he said.
“Fight or flight, I suppose. You must think me very foolish to have gotten myself into such a mess?”
“These things happen. Probably down to misunderstanding mostly. But a woman, an attractive Western woman, alone in the souk, maybe not the best idea.”
Isobel blushed at the compliment but controlled her instinctive flirtatious response and settled for a simple request. “You must let me pay for the blouse.”
“Don’t be silly, you earned it,” he replied before being cut short as a taxi broke from the rank, turned full circle, and pulled alongside them.
Jay opened the rear passenger door. “Where are you staying?”
“La Mamounia,” she said.
Jay grinned. “Great taste. That’s where I’m staying. How long are you there for?”
Isobel felt compelled to break the dream, to make it clear she was accompanied.
“We’re just here for the weekend.”
She expected him to seek clarification on who the “we” was, but he didn’t.
“Me too. Maybe I can save you from drowning in the pool or something next time?”
He made no move to close the door and, taking the hint, Isobel slid across so he could join her.
He lowered his head to follow her movement. “I just need to get a couple of things before everything closes, lovely to have met you. Take care.”
And with that he gave a final smile, before pushing the door closed. Was their brief acquaintance to be confined to and immortalised in one fleeting moment of chivalry? He hit the roof of the cab, signalling it to leave with the same confidence that seemed to permeate all his actions. And as the taxi drove away, all Isobel’s feelings of elation evaporated, turning to embarrassment at her rejection and shock at her own forwardness. She huddled into a corner and willed herself home, perhaps not herself at all.Two
Isobel stared at her reflection in the gilded reception mirror. She fancied it altered from the face in the bathroom that morning, somehow younger and brighter. Her eyes descended her figure and halted in alarm at the still damp linen blouse which revealed her nipples like roses in the mist. Fear and embarrassment flooded over her at the thought of her involuntary immodesty, although if the stranger noticed then he certainly concealed it well. She remembered the way his bright blue eyes held her own with an almost hypnotic gaze and was certain they did not stray to her body.
The concierge eyed her curiously as she turned from the mirror.
“Welcome back, madam. Your afternoon in the bazaar was pleasant I trust?”
Isobel forced a laugh. “Your sellers in the market are very persuasive.”
The concierge simply returned a knowing smile. “Is there something I can help you with, madam?” She looked around the foyer and towards the bustling lobby bar with the golden statues at its entrance assuming poses of serenity that contrasted harshly with the harried staff that passed between them.
“Is my husband around, do you know?”
“Yes, madam. I believe he is in his suite. He rang down a short while ago.”
“Looking for me?”
“If I remember correctly, it was to do with a courier delivery he was expecting. Some papers.” Isobel feigned a look of surprise and nodded, turning her attention to a taxi that swept up outside. She watched in nervous expectation as a strong male figure, broad shouldered and straight-backed, emerged from the darkness of the interior. She craned her neck as the figure turned from her view and reached his hand into the taxi, helping an elderly lady from the vehicle and leading her into the hotel. Isobel blushed as he met her glance, his sandy hair and watery grey eyes worlds away from what she wished for.
She made her way back to the hotel room, choosing the staircase over the elevator, stepping on her anxiety and frustration with each firm footstep as she prepared to face Peter. The image of what this evening should have been — a night of dining under the stars with music, dancing, and horse riding across desert dunes — sat stubbornly before her eyes. Peter’s words, his careless and thoughtless dismissal of her plans in favour of the hotel restaurant and its internet connection, still rang in her ears.
He was on the phone when she entered the room, papers and files arranged on the coffee table like place settings.
“We need to be in the lobby at six-thirty,” she said, hovering by the bed to invite his apology, but he did not rise to greet her, just smiled and gave a thumbs up as he nodded assent.
“Six-thirty,” she repeated, already pulling her blouse over her head as she made towards the bathroom, the beginnings of tears making spots like raindrops in its translucent fabric. She turned on the shower and tried to compose herself as the jet-stream cascaded down her body, allowing her emotions to evaporate as the heat of the water turned the shower door a milky white. She drew a tree on the glass, her finger etching paths through the moisture like a figure skater, as the trunk became branches with fingerprint leaves. As her fingers slid along the glass she followed the passage of time; through fifteen years of marriage, from Peter’s growing infatuation with his work — a drug that fed his ego with a heady cocktail of success — to the missed anniversaries and interrupted holidays. As each year passed, things grew worse, and now she left the bathroom and Peter was asleep.
Isobel was running again through the winding alleys of Marrakech. Everywhere there were shopkeepers with many heads and many, many more hands. The square buildings grew rounder and rounder until they were crystal balls, filled with the sea and the sky, and great hands hovered above them covered in golden rings. Suddenly the rings started to fall, hitting against the glassy globes with a hollow knocking sound. The swirls of smoke became the damask pattern of the curtains in the half-light; it was 2am and the clicking was the w
hirring ceiling fan, the dullest of confirmations that she was back in the world of the living. Peter, she sensed, was also awake, his thoughts still no doubt consumed by the late night messages from Tokyo. They were as far apart in the king-size bed as it was possible to be, his straight, firm back repelling hers, and she felt sure that, if she edged closer, an invisible barrier would brush against her skin, so ingrained were the day’s events.
“I’m sorry about this afternoon,” she said, conciliation and warmth in her tone as once more she fought against what threatened to be nature’s course.
He stayed quiet a few seconds before reaching out and pulling her to him, an increasingly unfamiliar gesture that made her jolt in surprise.
“It was my fault. And the evening too. I behaved unforgivably, sulking like that. I know how much you wanted it to be a success, to be a romantic evening. It was just…” His explanation trailed away. “I will make it up to you,” he promised with a reassuring hug, his thoughts seeming to drift off with his words.
“Why don’t we make it up now?” She slipped her hand inside his pyjamas. “It can still be a romantic evening.” It had been many months, perhaps six, since she last prompted lovemaking, or since she last responded fully to his initiations. At times when the mood of martyrdom most gripped her, she would try to convince herself that she was content to lie beneath him and wait, until finally rolling away to let sleep envelop her.
She squeezed and massaged him, but he was slow to respond to her coaxing. As she stroked and caressed she pushed the guilt of her straying imagination aside, picturing herself the confused heroine in an epic romance. She felt again the adrenaline of the souk, and an unfamiliar lust coursing through her veins, her frustration rising at the lack of progress her efforts were instilling. At last she felt his readiness and rose to straddle him, gently helping him inside her with a mix of platonic affection and stifled fear.
His surprise at her initiation was almost comical, a jarring note of humour in her serious romantic drama. Yet she pursued her cravings nonetheless, strangely aroused by her experience with the man from the market and spurred on by fear, needing to reassure herself about her marriage. But his familiarity was crushing; she felt no possibility in Peter’s embrace — only his inevitable climax and her seemingly eternal disappointment.Three
Strange feelings of guilt surged and ebbed within Isobel as she sat with Peter at the breakfast table; she pushed her food round the plate with her fork, eyeing it listlessly and eating nothing. She had lost almost a stone in the past six months, the weight falling off as Peter’s absorption in his latest client reached its peak. He, of course, failed to notice. Failed to feel her hip bones against his as they lay together, remained oblivious to the wedding ring that now slid loosely up her finger and back to the knuckle with a dull thud.
She studied him as he prodded his mushroom omelette, his attention temporarily distracted from the business section of the newspaper. His face and body were as lean and athletic as the day they met, but the vitality within him was so changed from the man she married. And without knowing why, she found herself resenting that he was the same, yet different.
“Peter, about yesterday…”
But her words were drowned by the quiet bleep of his phone, the ‘please stay quiet bleep’ as she once called it; it was late afternoon in Tokyo, and his eyes and mind went to the message on the screen instead of the anxiety on her face. She reached across and put her palm over the phone; he looked at her with impatience, perhaps even anger, in his eyes.
“I had quite a fright in the medina. At one point one of the sellers grabbed my arm, you know, really grabbed it, and a crowd gathered.”
“Those guys don’t take no for an answer. If you had just waited half an hour we could have gone together,” he said, failing to sense any impending drama as he removed her hand from the screen. “Can I just deal with this, and then I’m all yours.” But he was not and she feared never would be.
She rose and stood for a moment in exasperation. “I’m going to the room to pack, then I’m off to the pool.”
He gestured to the phone pressed to his ear and batted off her words with a flick of his hand.
All guilt dissolved as she made the short walk to the elevator, her vision narrowed by rage she focused only on the shining doors ahead. A man leapt up from a chair to her left but she did not see him. He threw down his newspaper and ran up behind her, pressing his hand playfully to her back.
“Going my way,” he said, as she almost jumped out of her skin, whirling round as the last of her tired nerves snapped.
“Oh my god, don’t do that,” she said, trying to disguise the contortion of emotions on her face.
He laughed a boyish laugh. “Sorry, I just can’t seem to help myself jumping out of nowhere to rescue damsels in distress.”
“I’m not in distress,” she said smiling, “and the lift only goes one way.”
The lift came and went as they exchanged pleasantries, Isobel offering her thanks once more for his heroics and he convivially dismissing them, his humour as pleasant and energetic as the day before. He seemed content to chat idly as the doors opened and closed, but Isobel found her eye straying to the breakfast room entrance. He seemed to sense her discomfort and stepped into the elevator at the next opportunity, silently beckoning her with his smile to follow him.
She looked at her watch.
“We’re leaving in a couple of hours,” she said, to which he muttered a nonchalant “uh um,” obliging her to continue. “I thought I’d spend the last hour around the pool… just while Peter makes his calls.”
“Sounds good, I was thinking about doing the same.”
Isobel had to stop herself from running as she stepped out to the corridor and made for her room. Once there she threw her clothes haphazardly into the suitcase, rehearsing her reasoning as she went. “Why should I avoid someone who did such a chivalrous thing, if Peter’s going to ignore me?”
She paused to consider her clothing options, dallying only seconds over the idea of travel clothes before opting for a swimming costume. Modesty and disquiet compelled her to choose the one-piece over a bikini but it was a striking black number, with a lace effect around the neck and midriff that allowed a veiled glimpse of both cleavage and waistline. She stood before the mirror touching up her lipstick; the woman looking back at her was strikingly attractive. Although her skin no longer shone with the dewy freshness of youth, it was firm and polished, taut across her fine bone structure. Taller than average, she was a sculpture of a woman, viewing herself in the mirror like looking at art behind glass. She subconsciously nodded her approval and moved to the door, grabbing a bathrobe as she went.
When she reached the pool, Jay was already there, his suit jacket draped over the lounger at his side. He looked effortlessly smart, his attractions in no way dulled by his unexposed flesh. Isobel broke her stride, now feeling foolish in her swimsuit and hating herself for her lack of subtlety. She pulled the bathrobe belt even tighter and made the walk across to him. She wanted to take the lounger next to his but her nerve failed her.
“Shall we talk at the table?” she suggested, as she hung her bag decisively on the nearest chair.
He was charming but professional as they chatted, and with every sentence struck another crack in her fragile, still almost unconscious, hopes and imaginings.
“Your husband not joining us then?” he asked.
“He’s busy making calls to save the world,” she said, reproaching herself for her bitterness.
“Ah yes, you said. What does he do, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“He flies from boardroom to boardroom making fat cats look good.” She tried to make her tone blasé, even amused, as she discreetly loosened the bathrobe. “You know, strategy. Buy this, sell that.”
“So he travels a lot, I guess?”
“All the time. One luxury hotel to the next, like this place.”
“That must be great for you.” He smiled and raked h
is fingers through his hair before continuing. “The opportunity to travel with him, I mean.”
“I used to think so. But after ten years it can get nauseating. Talking trivia with pampered spouses in the same bland function rooms all over the world.”
“While the boys swig their brandy and swing their dicks?” His crudity should have shocked her and she blushed when it didn’t.
“It sounds like you know the game he’s in,” she said, the bathrobe slipping from her shoulders as she put down her drink. His eyes lingered for a moment on her torso as curved black materialized from the soft, shapeless white.
“A little bit, maybe. But what brought you both to Marrakech, if he’s so busy?”
She could not resist the invitation for disclosure. “My dreams, I suppose. You know, the romance of the place. But I did have to drag Peter here kicking and screaming.”
“And your dreams were fulfilled?” His eyes burnt into her, seeming to see everything, to know everything.
“It hasn’t been the right time, there’s a lot going on.”
She felt all of a sudden afraid of being quizzed further and drew herself up to become the questioner.
“And you, what brings you here?”
“Business. I’m checking out an investment possibility. A tourist development.”
“And that’s what you do all the time?”
“Some of the time. Right now I’m spending most of my time in Italy, in Tuscany; it’s a new concept — a luxury hotel and spa, an idyllic retreat in the hills — somewhere for a romantic getaway, or just to get some ‘me-time,’ while being pampered like a princess. If you visit you’d love it, I’m sure, and if you didn’t, then I’d know we were getting it wrong.”
She smiled at the compliment. “Maybe I will,” she said brazenly, taking a sip of iced tea through the straw, moulding her lips round it into a soft pink ‘o’.
He laughed, and pulled a card from his wallet. “Here are my details, and there’s a link on the back to a website; it will show you what we’re up to much better than I can describe.”