The boss man tossed my passport on to the desk. I stared at it, that little rectangle of card, so precious to me. Let me go, I begged silently, please just let me go.
‘What did Bautista pay you?’ the boss was saying. I dragged my eyes back.
‘He didn’t. He gave me the passport. That was the bargain.’
The man snorted. ‘Here.’ He held a peseta coin towards me. ‘A tip. Take it.’
There was no way to refuse. ‘Gracias, señor.’
He picked up my passport and handed it over. ‘Go get yourself a drink,’ he said. ‘And a girl. Not the ones on the beach, though, if you know what’s good for you.’ He fixed me with those yellow eyes. ‘Keep your mouth shut.’
I nodded. I knew he could see the terror on my face, and that it satisfied him. Then, Márquez was unbolting the door, giving me a shove into the thick night. The moment it clanged behind me, I took off.
My back was crawling with sweat, with the feeling that I’d been standing in the hot maw of a lion, and had – by chance – slipped free. I ran until I reached the sandy promenade, with its brash lights.
Alone in Tangiers. What was I doing? I didn’t know anything about the place, other than the fact it was somehow international territory, belonging to many countries and none. My only thought had been to get out of Spain, out of danger. But I had been here only a moment and danger had found me once again. If Márquez and his boss were to discover that I had lied, that I was not the young man I appeared to be …
No. I walked briskly up the promenade. No, I had to be smart. Something had drawn me here, across the strait. Someone. The way Langham had looked at me, despite the presence of the woman at his side. Had I imagined that? My lips twitched a little, an almost smile. We’d been all women at the inn, but I knew what some men liked, and though I’d never met anyone like Arthur Langham before, so cool, so refined, I’d met plenty of other wealthy men. I was clever, I was quick; I could get what I wanted from him, through sympathy or persuasion.
But what did I want? I watched as two men ran from one of the bars on to the beach, whooping drunkenly, their polished shoes filling with sand. Their carelessness made my bound chest contract, made me ball my hands into fists in my pockets. I knew what I wanted well enough, but it was impossible for someone like me. Security, I told myself severely. Safety. That was what I needed.
I followed the flow of people up a steep street into a tightness of buildings. All my plans involving Langham would be useless if I couldn’t first find him. In Córdoba, the Plaza de la Corredera was where life happened. It must be the same in any city, surely: there would be a central place, where people lingered and talked and talked.
When I’d imagined Tangiers I’d pictured palm trees and gleaming ships, grand villas that looked like the Mezquita back home. But here, the plaster walls were pocked and crumbling, revealing layers of colour beneath. Pigeons shuffled in crevices, gulls wheeled hungrily overhead, like flashing eyes in the dark.
Soon, the streets grew more crowded. Modern buildings sprang up amongst the old, their signs bellowing for my attention: HOTEL DETROIT, CAFÉ-BAR POSTO, BOUCHERIE BENSIMON. Donkeys idled on corners beneath signs for Marlboro and Coca-Cola and Cinzano. From a rusted basement window, a child’s face looked up at me, gaunt and solemn. I was shoved by passers-by whenever I stopped on the narrow street, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop looking, for here – it seemed – was everything.
Brightness and misery, rope sandals and gleaming shoes, animal dung and French perfume, music and screamed insults. A boy elbowed past, newspapers bristling on his arms like the feathers of city pigeons. Edición noche! he bawled at a group of men who sat smoking on a step. Edition soir! Evening paper, sir! Abendausgabe!
From above, I heard a shriek and jumped to the side just as a splash of liquid came cascading down. Every orifice of every building seemed to be spilling, oozing with life.
A few steps on, the street seemed to take pity and expand a few paces, leaving room to breathe. Here it was brighter, café awnings marching down the sides of a small square. I took a step towards one of the bars, my heart squeezing at the thought of fulfilling my dream: of sitting down on my own and ordering a drink, like any young man in a hot foreign city.
But after a moment, I felt someone watching me. It was a woman at a table near by, an unlit cigarette in her hand. Her red hair was tightly curled, eyelashes black with mascara, smudged beneath. She smiled and raised an eyebrow. No one had ever looked at me that way before. Face burning, I turned away, too late.
‘Do you have a light?’ she called in English.
Her accent was strange. American, I realized, looking from her to the two men at her table. I’d never met Americans before. All three of them were young, and deeply tanned, yet the skin of their faces looked waxy and one of the young men had bloodshot eyes. Too much, those faces said, too much.
‘Well?’ she asked again, waving her cigarette.
‘No, señora,’ I muttered. ‘I am sorry.’
‘Señorita, please,’ she said. She looked up at me again through her lashes. ‘And no matter. Are you lost?’
‘No.’ I kept my face lowered.
‘Well, you sure look it. You must be new in town?’
I nodded, glancing over my shoulder, wondering how to escape.
‘I always can tell.’ She began to search through a tiny bag on her lap. ‘Looking for anyone?’
I took a step away, only to hesitate. The Americans looked wealthy enough. And I had to start somewhere. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I am looking for someone. His name is Arthur Langham.’
They looked blank. I repeated my question in broken French, until the blond man made a noise of recognition.
‘Langham? Is that what you’re saying? Langham?’
‘Sí, Langham,’ I tried to swallow the sound as he did. ‘You know him?’
‘Sure. He lives up on the hill.’ He jerked his hand vaguely. ‘Big place, huh, Dolores?’
‘Langham?’ The woman frowned. ‘Oh, him! Yes, what’s his place called? Like a ship, or a goddess.’
‘Dar Portuna,’ the third man said moodily.
‘That’s it! Dar Portuna.’ She looked at me. ‘Why? Do you actually know the man?’
I faltered. I had known that Langham was rich, and upper class; the woman with him had been a Lady after all, but these people spoke about him as if he were a king. My suit, which had felt so respectable in La Atunara, seemed to be unravelling as I stood there, revealing me for what I was. A stray dog, trailing along after a scrap of kindness. I firmed my chin.
‘Yes, I know Langham,’ I said, with as much confidence as I could. ‘We were in Gibraltar together. I was going to call on him, but I lost his address. Perhaps you would be kind, and show me the way?’
The woman’s eyes kept landing on parts of my face, my lip, my cheek, the corner of my eye. This close, I could smell the gin she had been drinking, her powder and perfume.
‘Why certainly,’ she said. ‘I’d be delighted to. Join us, won’t you?’
The men seemed none too pleased when she said that, but they shifted their chairs to make room for me.
‘Dolores Moberly.’ She gave me her hand, and I brushed my lips across it. ‘That’s Bobby Tallerton and Jim Clough.’ She gestured at the two men.
‘Glad to meet you,’ I said, not caring which was which. ‘My name is del Potro. Alejandro del Potro.’
‘Well, isn’t this something?’ Dolores was leaning towards me. ‘To meet a friend of Mr Langham’s down here in the socco. I confess I’ve only been up to the house once, so far. It’s the devil’s work to get an invitation. I’m sure we won’t have any trouble, though, with you being a personal friend.’
I almost laughed when I heard her tone. She thought I was her ticket into Langham’s house, when in fact she was mine.
‘Do you know,’ I asked, doing my best impersonation of a gentleman’s bored voice, ‘if Lady de Luca Bailey is here with him?’
Dolores’ eyes grew round. ‘You know Lady Bailey too?’
‘Sí, señorita. I saw her only a few days ago.’
‘I believe she is here, yes. I must say, though, she isn’t what I would call a good hostess. She didn’t do a scrap of entertaining when I was there last, not one introduction—’
‘That’s because she isn’t the hostess,’ one of the men said lazily. ‘She’s just a guest up there.’
‘What trash,’ Dolores laughed. ‘Everyone knows she and Langham are special friends.’
‘Not what I heard,’ the other man said, with a strange, leering smile. ‘I heard he’s one of them.’
‘But the two of them have been seen together,’ Dolores persisted. ‘And people say he was engaged to a Russian heiress, after the war.’
‘Smoke and mirrors, darling,’ the man said, taking a cigarette. ‘It always is.’
Dolores turned her bright eyes on me. ‘Well, which is it? Surely you know whether Langham and Lady Bailey are … au fait.’
‘I—’ I stammered. I had no idea whether Langham and Lady Bailey were a couple. They had certainly seemed close. But I remembered the feel of Langham’s eyes on me, his expression. One of them. My face began to burn.
I was saved from answering by the appearance of a waiter.
‘What’ll we have?’ Dolores asked.
‘Scotch?’ the moody man suggested.
I swallowed. Blood and ice and liquor, pooling on the floorboards …
‘Not Scotch,’ I said, trying to sound casual. ‘Something else.’
‘Mr del Potro is quite right. Brandy is better. Fundador!’ she said to the waiter. ‘Fundador and a bottle of Apollinaris! Vite!’
She looked back at me and laughed, her knee touching mine beneath the table. And though my guts were kinked with nerves, I smiled back and tried to do the things any young man might, until I could convince her to take me to Dar Portuna, and to Langham.
Tangier
July 1978
Sam stepped out on to the street. Only then did he realize he was trembling. Taking a deep breath, he found a doorway and sat down, resting the writing case on his knees.
What had just happened? He started to roll a cigarette. An old lady, her mind wandering and confused at the end of her years; that was all. But even as he struck a match, the strange shudder returned at the back of his neck.
I was there the night it happened. I saw him. I saw them both.
He took a drag. Who was she talking about, and what did she mean, that night at Dar Portuna? Abruptly, he remembered the pencil-written note, and its words: A, I am sorry. One day, I hope you’ll understand.
She’d mentioned the name Arthur. Was he A, or was Alejandro? And in either case, who had written it? He blew out smoke, and rubbed at his face with one hand. What was wrong with him? He didn’t need to know this stuff in order to write.
And yet, something whispered to him that here was a story, more brilliant than anything he could invent, just waiting to be uncovered. He had all the ingredients: the writing case and the letters, the old book, Alejandro del Potro and now this mysterious Arthur, the scent of those damn flowers and the unshakable certainty that something wild had happened, all those years ago.
Jasmine in the dark and wet roses …
If only he could step back into Lillian Simcox’s memories; if only he could stand beside her fifty years ago, a drink in his hand, and turn to find A – Arthur or Alejandro – watching him, smiling as dawn broke across the jumbled rooftops of Tangier, as the sun rose through the old sea gate.
He stopped, the cigarette halfway to his mouth.
The old sea gate. That’s what Lillian had said. Did she mean one of the old city gates in the wall that surrounded the casbah? He knew the Bab el-Fahs was the medina gate, the Bab al-Assa the gate of sinners, but the sea gate? He wracked his brain. He had a hazy memory of stumbling across an ancient archway on one of his kif-fuelled night walks, and seeing the bay through it, sparkling with lights … He threw the cigarette into the gutter, grabbed the case and began to stride down the road, towards the beach, towards the old town.
He was gasping by the time he took the steep road that led up to the edge of the casbah, where the Hotel Continental presided high above the bay. The writing case was sticking to his hand again. He should have left it in his room with the suitcase. And yet, it felt like a talisman, an enchanted object with the power to lead him onwards. It was what had started this whole thing; he knew it would help him find the way.
He sucked in air, sun-hot, stone-cold, scented with human lives, and dived into the casbah. Ordinarily he would hurry through, trying to outmarch the kids who ran after him, begging for change, or the stares that followed. Now he walked slowly, peering at every wall, every doorway. It had seemed a simple idea, in the new town, to look at all the houses near the city walls for that one name, Dar Portuna, but soon, the casbah streets began to play their confounding tricks.
Sam ran his fingers down the walls, tried every dead end, no matter how private it looked. He did find names, more than he could have imagined: Dar Nour, Villa Katerina, Dar Esperanza, but never the one he wanted. He found corners of the casbah he never knew existed: a huge, old chimney oven where the neighbourhood was baking bread. A door that he had only ever seen closed thrown open to reveal the bright, intricate beauty of a mosque courtyard. The smell of soap and wet dust coming from a dark recess that turned out to be a hammam, a bath house, its opening hours for men and women chalked on the wall.
Finally, at the very top of the casbah, he found himself in the spot he remembered: the crumbling archway that looked out over the strait. Bab al-Bahr, a painted sign told him. Gate of the Sea. Heart thumping, he began to search the streets around it, striding up and down once, twice. Only on a third pass did he begin to consider that what he was searching for might no longer exist. Dar Portuna could have been demolished, or renamed, or swallowed into the casbah. After fifty years, it was ridiculous to think A might still be there.
He slumped against the Bab al-Bahr, defeated. Somewhere near by, a loudspeaker gave a high-pitched whistle and the call to prayer began, the low, tinny chant that even now made him raise his head in wonder and awe, reminding him how many thousands of miles he had come from home. His eyes stung. He didn’t want to leave all of this. The story he was writing wasn’t only a piece of fiction, he knew then. It was his reason to stay.
Slowly, he walked away, alongside the old city wall, back towards Madame Sarah’s. He’d find a way to remain here. Even if that meant selling the writing case to A, he’d do it, and hope for the best. He walked blindly, and didn’t notice the puddle until it had already splashed up his jeans, soaking his shoe.
Swearing, he stepped back. Thankfully, the water looked clean enough, emerging from a hole in the white wall beside him. He stopped, shaking his foot, only to catch a scent on the air. Water yes, and dust, but something else, sweet and heady in the evening: jasmine and wet roses.
The wall was high, twelve feet at least, vegetation straggling over the top. He followed it around a corner and the scent grew stronger, until he came to …
Nothing. The white wall ended in a rocky outcrop, a pile of rubble from the old fortifications. No gate, nothing, just trash blown into a corner. A great wave of jasmine was growing over the wall here, like a thick velvet curtain studded with flowers. They were just beginning to release their evening scent. He breathed it in, thinking of Lillian Simcox.
He’d take a bunch for Madame Sarah, he decided. If he wanted to stay, he’d probably have to persuade her to overlook more late rent. He was about to break off a stem when something caught his eye, deep in the tangle of vegetation. A curl of metal.
Dropping the case, he shoved the branches aside. They caught at his hair as he tugged old stems away from the ironwork affixed to the wall, uncovering a D, then an a and an r until at last he stood, his nails green with crushed jasmine flowers, staring at the rusted letters:
Dar Portuna
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br /> Hop Toad
Take one jigger of Hungarian apricot eau-de-vie, the juice of half a lime and two dashes of Peychaud’s bitters. Shake well and drink very cold to make the heart leap and the tongue jump.
In Tangiers, there is always a way in. Whether it’s a soft word or a wink, a jackboot or a silver dollar in the palm, there is always something that will open the door.
I thought Dolores Moberly would be my key, and so I let her drag me through the night, let her waft brandy and broken French and Spanish into my face. I didn’t hear a word. I was too busy looking around, as we stepped heavily from the taxi.
We had pulled up alongside an ancient stone archway. From up here, I could see the lights of ships, glinting on the strait.
‘Where are we?’ I asked impatiently. I’d expected us to pull into a driveway, or alongside a grand entrance. Here, I could see nothing but a high, white wall, running away into darkness.
‘We’re here, darling.’ Dolores took my arm. ‘That’s Dar Portuna, look!’ She pointed to the wall, the tiny bag swinging on her wrist. ‘Funny name, isn’t it? Wait!’ She stopped dead on the dark road, listening.
Noises were drifting over the top of the wall: a treble of laughter, a splashing sound, a squalling jazz horn that broke the night open. I forgot the woman who held my arm and walked forwards, my nose to the air, because now I could smell cigar smoke and jasmine, heady in the night. The sounds and scents led us around the corner to a gate, where double wooden doors barred the way and an ornate, curling sign announced:
Dar Portuna
‘If I’d known we were coming to a party, I would’ve worn my silk,’ Dolores was murmuring, dabbing at her face.
Her two friends had trailed behind us, sullen and smoking. I tried the handle of the gate. It was locked. There was a bell, buffed bronze, and I jabbed at it without a second thought. Too late I realized that my suit was dusty, that the tie was loose around my collar, the woman beside me undeniably drunk. The door swung open.
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