I swung my legs to the floor. Loyalty, that’s what he’d demanded last night. I had agreed; of course I had. Did he know I was lying? I’d never been loyal to anything or anyone before, except, perhaps, to Ifrahim.
The suit I’d bought in La Atunara was crumpled on the chair. The sight of it made me hesitate. It was stained in places, and the length of bandage I had been using to bind my chest was beginning to yellow with sweat. I tightened it reluctantly. I wanted cool, clean linen. I wanted to wander out into the garden dressed in a morning robe and slippers, with no one to answer to or decide what the day held but myself.
Of course, I couldn’t do that. I could only dress again in the suit, wash my face and wet my hair to make it presentable, and step outside the door, to see what was waiting.
I hadn’t seen much of the house last night. I only knew that my bedroom was on the ground floor. I crept down a short corridor into a kind of courtyard, open to the sky. Everything was quiet, only the sound of birds and a clock ticking somewhere. Was Langham sleeping now? Did he wear fine, satin pyjamas? Was he brought his breakfast on a delicate tray? A staircase wound up to a balcony, where the bedrooms must be. I wanted to walk up there, explore dressing rooms and bathrooms and lounges. Instead, I turned, and found my way back to the kitchen.
It had been cleaned, scrubbed of the previous night’s mess and debris. A basket of fruit stood on the table, as though just delivered; apricots and melons, prickly pears and yellow plums. There was no one around to see, so I helped myself. The plums were mottled like the gold of a church altar; they had a drowsy sweetness which filled my mouth. I took another.
Outside, the sun was burning through the freshness of dawn. All around was gentle birdsong, the sound of water. I stepped on to the path, examining the place in daylight.
High white walls surrounded the garden of Dar Portuna. The house was perched on the very edge of the city: on one side were the narrow streets, on the other the remains of old crumbling fortifications, and a steep slope, running all the way down to the port. Citrus trees lined the walls, their dusty leaves hiding orbs of yellow. An old fig tree stood, bent-backed, in one corner. The paths had been swept, last night’s revels tidied away. I came to a stone bench next to a star-shaped fountain, where lilies grew, water caught in their throats. Here, in this garden, the sharp edges of the world were held at bay. Something only the rich could afford: such peace in the heart of a city.
‘Del Potro.’
I spun around, like a guilty thing.
Lady Bailey stood watching me, her pale hair ruffled above her chin, a blue embroidered robe dragging on the ground. I met her gaze. The last time I’d seen her, she had been lying on a pile of cushions with a silver pipe in her hand.
‘You stayed,’ she said.
I remembered some manners, and dropped my gaze. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I said, you stayed.’ She came towards me, to sit on the bench.
‘Yes.’ I backed up a few paces. ‘Monsieur Langham has given me a room, near the kitchens. I am to be the new cook.’
She looked at me, her grey eyes hard. ‘He never lets people stay. They can drink until the sun comes up, so long as they go home at the end. Why is it different for you?’
I remembered Langham’s face, close to mine in the darkness of the study – the strange tension between us as he asked for my loyalty.
‘I am not a guest,’ I murmured. ‘I am here to work.’
She said nothing, only frowned at me, sucking in her lower lip. Were they lovers, after all? Was she jealous? Her piercing gaze made me nervous.
‘Please excuse me,’ I said. ‘I must go and see if Monsieur Langham would like breakfast.’
‘You won’t find him. He’s already gone. Never sleeps much.’
I stopped. I had thought of Langham as a man of leisure. ‘Gone where?’
‘Business.’ She took a handkerchief out of her sleeve. ‘Always business.’
I wanted to ask, What business? but instead I dropped my head. I had to learn this role of the polite, disinterested cook. I had to disappear behind my apron again, to be safe. ‘Will you be wanting breakfast, mademoiselle?’
She sighed and sat back. ‘No, I couldn’t possibly. And it’s madame, not mademoiselle.’ She looked down at her hand. It was tanned, save for a pale line that encircled her wedding finger. ‘I suppose you weren’t to know that.’
I hurried back towards the house, adding another mystery to the hoard that seemed to dwell in Dar Portuna.
I was prowling the kitchen, poking into every corner, searching through the cupboards when Bouzid found me.
‘There will be six guests for dinner tonight,’ he told me in Spanish. ‘They will take an aperitif at eight, followed by dinner at eight thirty. Monsieur Langham wishes to impress upon you that his guests will be using cutlery. Not their hands.’
I gave him a polite smile. ‘Of course.’
‘Do you wish me to send out for the food?’ The man was looking at me curiously, as if trying to gather information, now that he saw me in the daylight. ‘Monsieur Hubert, the previous chef, had his own supplier. A French importer.’
‘That’ll explain why it was all so bad,’ I said. ‘It was probably half-rotten by the time it left Marseille.’ Was that a glimmer of amusement on Bouzid’s face? ‘I would prefer to buy my own supplies from the market, thank you.’
‘You mean the medina?’
‘Yes,’ I said, pouring myself a glass of water, as if that was what I had meant all along. ‘Perhaps you could point me in the right direction?’
When I turned back, I found Bouzid stony-faced. ‘If you truly wish to buy your own ingredients, it will be best if I show you. The medina can be … confusing, for foreigners.’
I watched him over the rim of the glass, wondering at his motives. I decided to be gracious. I needed every scrap of help I could get in this place.
‘Merci, Bouzid,’ I said.
‘Also, Monsieur Langham has asked me to give you this.’ He took something from the pocket of his robe. ‘He believes it might be of some help, with regard to menus.’
It was a small parcel, wrapped in brown paper. A gift from Langham? Hurriedly, I turned my back on Bouzid to open it, afraid that my face would give me away.
Inside was a book, not a new one. It was well worn, the cover bent and scratched, the gilding half rubbed from an English title.
The Gentleman’s Guide.
I frowned. Why should Langham have this, why was it so well-thumbed and studied, when he was already a gentleman? I opened the cover, searching for a name or a stamp, something that might hint at the book’s past. Instead I saw fresh ink, where someone – Langham – had written:
If you’re going to play the game, you have to learn the rules.
I snapped the book shut.
I turned back to find Bouzid studying me hard. ‘Bueno,’ I said, dropping the book into the pocket of my jacket, as if it was of no consequence. ‘I am ready when you are.’
If I had thought the streets around the Café Central were confusing, they were nothing compared to the ones Bouzid steered me down. This was the casbah, he told me, as we turned left and right and back upon ourselves until I gave up trying to keep track of our direction.
I am not too proud to say that without Bouzid, I would have been hopelessly lost. It was all I could do to keep my mouth closed. I had thought our market in Córdoba was plentiful enough, but here it seemed as if the whole countryside was laid out at the edge of the pavement. Women shaded by huge straw hats sat behind piles of tomatoes, the stones around them already littered with flesh and seeds. Aubergines groaned purple, onions hung with soil still clinging to beards. Barrows of melons, heavy as heads, engulfed us in their honey-vegetable sweetness as we passed.
Bouzid kept glancing at me. I think he was enjoying my astonishment. We came up for air in a large open space, only to plunge into yet another covered market. It was loud beneath the tin roof, packed with voices. Women in robes and h
eadscarves were inspecting, rejecting, haggling with the sellers, who pleaded as if they were in court. There were mountains of eggs, white cheeses spread on palm leaves. The smell grew stronger until I realized we were approaching a meat market: fish and fowl, old and bloodied and new. The dirt floor grew clogged beneath our feet; a skinned sheep’s head leered down at me from a hook as if it were about to leap on to my shoulder and whisper a tale into my ear.
I’d never seen so much flesh before. Cracked skulls revealing brains, dishes heaped with lungs, tongues, guts and hearts: the ingredients of life, ready to be remade into something new.
The spectre of the meat market released us, only for another to swallow us up, one of perfumed breath and rattling chillies and shivering dried husks. I had to stop myself from plunging my fingers into a basket of rosebuds, had to resist licking my finger and touching it to a pyramid of powder the colour of the sun.
‘Down here are olives,’ Bouzid said, but I had to stop him in order to catch my breath.
He tutted at me impatiently. Still, he looked a little gratified. ‘Do you know what you will need for tonight’s dinner?’ he asked.
I nodded, and closed my eyes to buy time. In truth I had no idea. The scents and sights were overwhelming. In that moment, I wanted Ifrahim beside me more than anything, Ifrahim who had tasted a thousand dishes in a hundred different port towns. Ale, hacer de tripas corazón.
I opened my eyes. I’d give them their fine food. I’d drown the pale, bland chicken on their plates with flavours of Andalucía, spike their wine sauces with spices. It would be a vagabond cuisine; beguiling, never quite one thing or another. That’s what they wanted, these ex-patriots and exiles. That’s what this city was.
When I told Bouzid what I would need, he frowned at the eccentricity of the ingredients.
‘Monsieur Hubert—’ he began.
‘Monsieur Hubert was a fraud,’ I said with as much arrogance as I could, ‘and a drunk. I know what I am doing.’
He shrugged, and turned away.
‘Where are you going?’ I stepped after him like a child. I was afraid to be left alone there, in that carnival of new things.
‘To hire a porter,’ he said shortly. ‘You can find your way back to Dar Portuna?’
‘Of course,’ I said, hiding my hands in my pockets. It was only then I felt the book. The Gentleman’s Guide. The back of my neck prickled beneath my second-hand shirt.
If you’re going to play the game, you have to learn the rules.
‘Wait!’ I called, stepping after Bouzid. ‘I don’t suppose you know a good tailor?’
It was easy enough to follow Bouzid’s directions out of the socco, towards the Rue Siaghines where most of the tailors could be found. It was a harder matter to find one that suited me. I didn’t want the clean, sober shops, where sallow Englishmen sweated into arrow collars. I needed something different.
I found it by wandering the nearby alleyways. No grand glass windows, no courteous mannequins, just a peeling sign.
Sastrería Issac Souissa
I pushed open the door. Inside, a man sat hunched, needle-blind, working at a piece of mending. When I greeted him, and asked about a suit, he looked at me as if I was a young thug, sent to press him for money.
‘A suit?’ he repeated. His face trembled between dubiousness and hope. ‘Well …’ He glanced at his shop, the shelves almost empty of goods.
‘A suit,’ I said, firmly. ‘And shirts. Underwear. Socks. Anything else a gentleman might need.’
The tailor stood, fumbling a pair of spectacles on to his face, smoothing his wayward grey hair. ‘Of course,’ he said, ushering me closer, as if I might run out the door any moment. ‘Of course, it would be my pleasure.’ He held up a measuring tape, but hesitated. ‘Only … I am sorry to ask, monsieur, but do you have the means to pay? You see, I cannot extend credit.’
He’d noticed my suit at last then. His tailor’s eye had picked up its second-hand nature, the tiny holes where embroidery had been picked from the fabric. I gave him my best smile.
‘You may send the bill to my employer, a Monsieur Arthur Langham, of Dar Portuna. He will pay it. He wishes me to be well dressed.’
‘Dar Portuna?’ The tailor scrawled a hasty note.
‘That’s correct.’
Play the game, learn the rules. There were a hundred rules in The Gentleman’s Guide about how to dress. And if I was to be part of Langham’s world, I had to look the part, didn’t I? I swallowed and raised my chin, hoping I was right; that the book had been an invitation, of sorts. If not, I would have a lot of explaining to do. Even if he kicks me out, my old, thievish self thought, at least I’ll have a good suit.
‘Very well,’ the tailor was saying, ‘if you would please remove your jacket.’
‘There is one more thing I require,’ I said, stepping back.
I took the remaining five pesetas from my pocket, plus the coin the goat-eyed man had given me. My only money in the world. The tailor stared at it. It could keep his family fed for a week, I knew. It could buy him bottles to drown in, a dozen pipes to dull his misery.
‘Yes?’ he asked eagerly. ‘What is it?’
I shifted my chest in the bindings and placed the money in his hand.
‘Your silence.’
Tangier
July 1978
Outside, night fell as the man talked. He didn’t switch on a light. Better that way, Sam thought. In the shadows he could imagine himself back there, to the Tangiers of fifty years before: a place of French champagne and Moroccan rosewater, Indian opium and cold, dry Plymouth gin.
He heard stories about parties and thrilling flights to Gibraltar, night cruises on the strait, where the lanterns and flares of smugglers lit up the three-mile limit. The man spoke of a city built from the materiel of the Great War – the bones of the old world wetted with the blood of the new. Sam gulped the man’s words like the cocktail in his glass. If he’d been there, if he only could’ve been there … In that moment, he would have given anything.
Finally, when it was completely dark, the man stopped talking. Sam couldn’t see his face; he could barely see his own hands that rested on the writing case.
There was a knock at the door. When neither of them answered, it creaked open, letting in a sliver of warm, yellow light and the smell of toasted spices.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ the young woman said, breaking the web of words around them. ‘Is he staying?’
The man said nothing, as if he had exhausted himself. Sam hesitated. He did want to stay for dinner. He wanted to desperately. And yet … His head was bursting with what he had heard. He needed to remember it, write it all down.
‘No.’ His voice sounded clumsy in the dark room. ‘Thanks, but I’ve got to get back.’ Too late he realized he hadn’t actually been invited. ‘Another time?’
‘Another time,’ the man murmured. ‘Yes. Come back tomorrow, around five. Bring that old suitcase.’ The chair creaked as he leaned back. ‘Zahrah will show you out.’
Awkwardly, Sam put the glass down on a side table. He paused, the writing case in his hand. Should he give it back? The man hadn’t asked for it. He decided not to.
‘Thank you, Mr Langham,’ he murmured.
He received no response.
In a daze, he followed the young woman back into the kitchen. On the table he saw a platter of meat scattered with pomegranate seeds and herbs; rounds of bread wrapped in cloths. He began to regret his decision not to stay.
She showed him out a different way, through the garden, where plants and vines dragged at his shoulders, releasing their scent. He caught a glimpse of water through the trees; a swimming pool, tiled blue and white. The stones around it were cracked but clean, as if still in use. Dar Portuna only pretended to be abandoned, he realized. Like a rich man dressed in pauper’s clothes. But why?
‘Tomorrow come this way,’ the girl told him shortly. ‘Don’t use the front gate. It’s always locked.’
‘It wasn
’t today,’ he said. ‘I walked straight in.’
The girl made a noise. ‘I forgot to lock it. I was distracted. Some idiot chased me through the medina.’
‘Sorry.’
They’d reached the far end of the garden. Hidden behind a tree was a short flight of steps, and a second door, whitewashed like the wall.
‘Tomorrow, wait for the end of Asr, the call to afternoon prayer, then come here and knock. Don’t let anyone see you. Don’t be late. I won’t wait around.’ She turned away.
‘Wait, Miss … is it Zahrah?’ She nodded curtly. ‘Listen, I’m not going to cause any trouble, I promise. I’m just a writer who wants to talk to your –’ he hesitated ‘– grandfather? Uncle?’
The woman snorted and held open the gate. ‘We’re not related. Remember, be here, right after the call.’
Sam stepped through, and turned, meaning to apologize again, only to find himself facing a locked door. From this side, it blended almost imperceptibly with the wall, weathered dust-grey wood, tucked into an alcove. He looked up and found himself standing on a narrow, trash-strewn walkway below the Bab al-Bahr. Stone steps disappeared down into the darkness, hugging the curve of the old fortifications. He’d never seen them marked on any map.
An escape route, he realized. But for who?
That night, he wrote feverishly, trying to remember every sensation, every smell and sound of Dar Portuna. He wrote about the woman – Zahrah – and about the exquisite villa with its gentle decay. He wrote about the strange figure at the heart of it all, who had drawn him there.
He used the final piece of the writing paper, and had to scrabble about under the bed for the old, half-typed sheets he had discarded from the Hermes. First, he wrote on their backs. Then, when he ran out of space, he wrote around the letters that were already there, until they merged, ink on ink, new story on old, becoming something that was both, and neither. Like the city, he thought.
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