Stewart, Angus (10 page)

Not everything that came back to Lom was horrific and artificial, and not everything was inane. Anything, too, he could escape from simply by opening his eyes. When he did this he felt nervous, though without any real fear. Twice he checked whether the door was locked, and once he went out on to the balcony as if anxious to challenge some power which might lie outside in the night. Several times he giggled, rolling his head stupidly in his armchair. At the back of his mind was the fear, not so much of physical intrusion, as of someone's somehow entering the realm of his mind. It did not strike him as incongruous that this was the very prospect he was inviting.

Some of the scenes were natural to life, though when this happened the colour tones, as well as the prevailing light, subtly matched their moods, and gave them harmony. An old Woman with a wooden pail who stood on a cart-track beside a river, was caught in the cool, translucent light of a Dutch painting. Lom closed on her face, as he might have done through the zoom lens of his camera, and saw that she was crying. A ferocious battle between two armoured and mounted knights on a giant open-air rostrum was illuminated by the flames of campfires in the night. Here
the foreground was filled by a crowd of medieval people, who however took no notice of the fight. Some of those nearest him acknowledged Lom as being amongst them, though they gave him no particular recognition or sign. Inanity returned when a similar crowd, that was no less real, launched a hen whose feet were bound to a roller-skate, which in turn appeared to be attached to some form of rocket. Once again the crowd were more or less careless, and the bird, invisibly propelled in its flight, passed very close to Lom. In doing so, its eye blinked enigmatically at him. He couldn't tell, though, whether the gesture was meant to convey indignation, or some sort of pleased conspiracy.

He
sought other scenes of peace, or at least of resignation, like that portraying the woman by the river. But always these were in jeopardy. Some senseless reduction would overcome them. Nothing might remain but melting or gyration transformed it. Usually the transformation was one way. A sailing ship became a cast-off door hinge on a dirt road. A flock of birds distilled itself into a hardened spread of candle wax. He looked for his own sexual images, and while he found a few they also disintegrated, and had no power to entice him. This failure did not alarm him. He remained a spectator without personal commitment.

When eventually Lom opened his eyes and climbed out of his chair, his carelessness remained, but behind it a conviction was being formed. He went out on to the balcony and leant against the railing for some time. He felt no concern about the film; and couldn't even raise indignation over the horrible child in the market place. Even the prospect of his approaching death hardly appalled him at that moment. For some reason, though, his thought moved from an idle consideration of the prognosis to a curiously intense speculation about war. He thought not of the violence, the death, the mutilation, the terrible noise, though all these he had witnessed in his lifetime, but of the people this human activity displaced, as it were, peripherally. His eyes were open now in the darkness, and he saw the faces of the uncomprehending, the suddenly destitute. In their ghost-like gravure was reflected all that was most expressive
of a man's need and ability to survive. Although in them he recognised what might perhaps be the inspiration of his own saddened consciousness, they were nevertheless real, and infinitely beautiful. He longed for some means of depicting what he saw with permanence. It was only now that he remembered that one of the nastiest and most obscure wars was being conducted at that moment less than four hundred miles away on the Saharan border with Algeria. He had no sudden or absolute intention of going there. But what compelled attention was that the drug had revealed a need within him. A corner had been turned, and, in turning it, there had been disclosed a prospect that was imperative for the beholder, although the precise nature of its magnetism might not be defined.

With that ruthless single-mindedness which, in an artist, may cause him unexpectedly to forswear responsibility towards his immediate milieu, sometimes to the embarrassment and confusion of those most closely associated with him, and instead align all that he is behind what at first may be no more than an intuitive prompting towards an undiscovered commitment, Harold Lom decided suddenly to resign. His current commission with the B.B.C. promised, after all, to be without interest. In the excitement which overcame him now he wondered why he had ever accepted it. Certainly the idea of chucking up the assignment must already have been in his mind when, only that afternoon, he had talked of retirement to a totally strange young man.

Before sleeping Lom 'phoned Caroline Adam. Saunders, his assistant director, he explained, might want her should the Corporation decide to carry on with the projected film. He was due out with the second unit in about a week's time. In the morning he would tell Sandy Pherson, who was a regular employee, simply to maintain the equipment and await word from London.

When, in the morning, a chambermaid entered the room to draw back the curtains, it was to see a middle-aged man sleeping deeply with an M3 Leica clutched beside him on the pillows, as it might have been a child with a teddy bear. The Nazarene, she concluded, was taking no chances with having his possessions stolen.

  *  *  *  *  *

Jay Gadston also stood on his balcony that night. It was his habit, when feeling particularly in need of self-indulgence, to see the night in with half a bottle of Moroccan champagne. Made tolerable with sugar and lemon juice, the draught cost something under two and six. The flat was a penthouse on top of the highest building in the modern city. This said little for its amenities and interior appearance. Unoccupied for three years as the landlord had confessed, a heavy, sweet-smelling tapestry of mucor grew on the walls, while chained to the ceiling, an enormous twelve bulb chandelier bore indelible witness to the Spanish passion for such objects.

Below the flat were four empty storeys, though whether in the process of demolition or repair was not revealed. The ground floor comprised various offices, arid the flat occupied by Selly Wilburs. The sole advantage of the penthouse was its view. It had not once housed Nazis for nothing. Four pairs of glass doors gave on to an angled balcony, which swept a broad arc from north to due south. There was very little in the Strait, Gibraltar, both Tangiers themselves, and even a segment of the hills behind, that Jay could not decipher through field glasses. The building had several disadvantages. The lift carried only one and a half persons at a time, as Chalmers had not neglected to point out Its cable was unduly stretched, so that sometimes it stopped, jammed, several inches beneath the desired floor. On such occasions the electric engine needed some minutes untroubled generating before it could raise sufficient energy to correct the mistake. There was, too, the possibility of the building's simply falling down. These drawbacks, coupled with a chronic lack of money, were what caused Jay to consider it an impermanent resting place. The walls had accordingly remained un-whitewashed, and the giant panes of glass were in imminent danger of being blown out for lack of the retaining putty. This problem had become particularly acute during Ramadan, when the cannon, signifying the end of the day's fast, had been wont to rattle them alarmingly. In the eventuality of
its blast actually shattering the lot Jay foresaw certain bankruptcy.

The inspiration for taking the flat had come from Jay's erstwhile companion Rupert Filsall, who had long since returned home. Shortly after his arrival he had been knocked down by the emergency midnight Butagaz delivery. This consisted of an Arab wearing a crash helmet on a Vespa, to which was attached a rack, holding two cylinders of the gas. The Arab sensed the magnificence of his calling, and rode accordingly. Now as Jay sipped the modified champagne looking out over the darkened city, the telephone, which had been Filsall's contribution to elegant living, began ringing in the sparsely furnished salon. It was Chalmers.

'I wondered if you'd heard about Frederick Halliday,' he began.

'No—what about him?'

'It would seem you've got your wish,' Chalmers said, perhaps a little less easily than usual. 'He's dead. Only he was knifed by some lunatic during a riot tonight in the Grand Socco.'

'Christ almighty!'

'Could be that was the reason.'

'That what was?'

'Religion. There are still a few fanatics who'll have a go at the Nazarene given a fair chance.'

'What,
here?
Fez, maybe.
Here?
Jay repeated stupidly.

'No, they're all over.'

'What happened, D'you know? Was Achmed there?'

'I don't have any details. Only really that Halliday's definitely dead. And whoever it was who killed him.'

'How did that happen?'

Oh he went quite berserk, I think. Ran off through some
suqs
—the
silversmiths'. The police shot him down.'

'Rough sort of justice,' Jay said slowly.

Chalmers laughed. 'I rather agree. Only they don't coax people to give themselves up and be reasonable through megaphones here. He was crazy. They probably thought he would take a swipe at someone else.'

'If they thought at all.'

There's that! Anyway I thought I'd call and let you know?

'You've certainly done that,' Jay said. There were questions he wanted to ask; protests he wanted to make. For moment, though, he couldn't order these in his mind.

'By the way,' Chalmers was saying, 'Sally says to thank you for the information about the stone. She's seeing the man tomorrow.'

'Stone? . . . Oh yes, of course.'

'How's the birdbath, by the way? I forgot to ask.'

'Well . . . progressing, progressing,' Jay mumbled. 'It's a
table
actually, anyway.'

'I can't think what she wants it for,' Chalmers said. ‘There aren't any birds except gulls and egrets. Do they need such things? Will any birds use it?'

'That, not my problem . . . I've an uneasy feeling that this particular contract for Lady Simpson is in the nature of charity employment.'

Chalmers laughed pleasantly enough. Jay felt mildly humiliated, though the confession had been entirely his own.

'Look, Brodie,' he asked, 'what's going to happen to Achmed?'

'I don't know,' Chalmers said. There was a suggestion that it wasn't his business to know.

'Something's just dawned on me.' Jay was thoughtful. 'When I saw Achmed in the Socco . . . With the bundle, you thought might be laundry. That must have been . . . well, sometime soon after it happened. He
was
looking rather dazed . . . God! Why in hell didn't I go up to him then? He paused a moment, recovering; then said, 'Do we know whether the adoption was legal, or casual, or simply employment, or what? Is anyone we
know
likely to know?'

'Wo! Steady now you sound as if you're contesting his will!'

'Maybe,' Jay said uneasily.

'Then the only time I ever saw the boy was at your place, remember?'

'And you didn't like him much.'

'Oh, I wouldn't say that at all! He was clearly a mixed-up kid. I didn't see any future in your having him around.'

'Stupid thing is I never even met Halliday,' Jay said bitterly. It had struck him that his perverse instinct for social isolation couldn't have been shown up to less fortunate advantage than in this business.

'I knew him,' Chalmers said. 'Used to get books from him now
and again. But he wasn't any sort of close friend.'

'Hell!' Jay said emptily.

'I shouldn't worry about Achmed,' Chalmers sounded reassuring now. 'He'll know how to take care of himself. Then
mektoub
is
built into these people in a way we simply can't understand. He's probably already accepted Halliday's murder as something that was written and unavoidable. He'll simply be getting on with life. As you surely know the word
Islam
itself means simply resignation.'

'Sure,' Jay said. He didn't like to sound unconvinced before Chalmers' attempts to buoy him up, which clearly had some truth to them anyway. 'Well, thank you for telephoning.' 'Not at all. See you soon, I hope.'

'Yes, surely.'

Jay put the receiver down and stood looking at it for a moment or two. Then he took the lift down to the first floor, which was as far as it would ever go on the descent unless summoned from ground level, and walked the rest of the way. He let himself out through the heavy glass and wrought-iron door. It was past midnight and the streets were nearly deserted.

'Hey, you, British! You like it here?' a voice said immediately behind him.

Jay checked, spun furiously about, and laid his hand on the shoulder of the approaching Arab. 'Get to hell out! Leave me alone, eh?' His jaw protruded aggressively, and was quivering with the tension of his rage.

 The Arab took a step backward, lifting Jay's wrist and letting it fall from him, as if the incredible had happened. 'Why you touch me?' he said softly. 'Why you push me like that, my fren'?' He was the nastiest type of urban tout; natty, ratlike, entirely professional. He would undoubtedly starve rather than sacrifice a thimbleful of haircream. Now he waited for an answer, with an intuitive evaluation of his advantage.

Jay realised this, as he also realised his
mistake. Normally he would simply have gone on walking as if unaware of the other's existence. Now he recognised in his action an impulsive reckoning with his own guilt, or at least the desire to confront an opposing force. Just one more voice had hailed him in the street, and while disgusted by its intention, he was, made more indignant by the naivety the speaker must attribute to himself, and thence by the picture he must present to the speaker, which perhaps was only the picture of what he really was. Jay took a step towards the man and placed his hand on his shoulder again. 'Ye, he asked. 'What is it you want?'

'Why you push me?' the Arab repeated, unappeased. 'I speak you. That all I did. So why you push me so . . .' he made a disgusted, shoving gesture in imitation of Jay. 'You. guest my country.'