The Lighthearted Quest (31 page)

“And how do you know
that,
my girl? You seem to have plenty up your sleeve.”

Julia explained about the hotel
patron
at Fez and his wife, who had been so informative. “It all seems to me to tie in. Couldn't one put coffers, or sacks of ore, on the floor of the
camionnette under the suits and dresses? And they'd have a perfect excuse for cruising about near the mines.”

“They would that. Yes, so far so good. I wonder how Mr. Smith gets away with two passports, though.”

“Two cars, and a false beard on one passport, do you think?”

“Yes—plus a venal
garagiste.”

“But what can this ore
be,”
Julia asked, “to be worth so much fuss?”

“Ah, yes—I never told you about that at lunch, you got so het up about Mr. Smith. It
was
the East Germans who found it originally—old Bingham was quite right—helped by a Swiss metallurgist who'd been in the Legion, and stayed on here; they went for it bald-headed because it gave them something unique to trade to the Russians, so's they could keep their end up a bit, see? They have some proper concessions, mostly for chrome and molybdenum, but they get this stuff as well, and ship it out along with the other, secretly.”

“But Paddy, what
is
it?”

“Some very queer ore. I had to make the man who told me so tight—hence our late lunch—that I could hardly understand him at the end! But it has some special properties, besides being practically
pure
uranium, with next to no waste products, so it's worth sending out unprocessed, in those trunks of yours.” He swung the car smartly into his drive at this point—Julia got out, and after a minute or two he joined her in the sitting-room and poured out drinks. During those few moments alone Julia had been thinking back—recalling Mr. St John's emphasis that what Colin was doing was too important to be left for any inheritance.

“So I suppose our people want it too,” she said. “Oh, yes—I'm beginning to see. It will be the East Germans who are tailing Colin and Mr. Smith as rivals, and now me—Bathyadis and poor old Mr. St John really agreed that the Germans were
‘nos ennemis'.”

“Could be. Anyhow England would certainly like to be
sure of a supply of this stuff, Astridite or whatever they call it.”

Julia sat up. “Say that again,” she said quite sharply for her.

“Say what?”

“The name. Did you say
Astridite?”

“Yes, that's what I gathered through my acquaintance's hiccoughs. Mean anything to you?”

“Yes, it means a whole lot,” said Julia slowly. She was thinking that this practically answered the question she had never cleared up with Purcell, as to where he stood; he had spoken of “Mademoiselle Astrid”, and if he knew that name he must be in the whole business up to his neck, surely?

“Did your informant make any fuss about telling you that name?” she asked.

Paddy looked surprised.

“Actually he did. When I repeated it to him, to be sure I'd got it right, he crossed himself and said—'Mother of God, did I say that? I must be drunk.' ‘Poor man, you are that,' I said. But why?”

“Just confirmation of another tip I got. Paddy, we couldn't go to Marrakesh a bit sooner, could we?”

“No, my dear. Friday at dawn is the earliest possible! But it seems to me that we haven't done badly so far, in the time.”

“No, indeed, Paddy dear. You've been wonderful.” She thought. “Where shall we put Moshe's book? I'd rather it didn't lie about.”

“Where is it now?”

“In my handbag.” She gave it to him.

“Well I hope I don't get leprosy,” said Mr. Lynch, putting the unsavoury object in an envelope before tucking it into the inner breast pocket of his jacket. “I'll seal this tomorrow and leave it in the safe.”

Julia passed the next two days quite contentedly—she had the use of Paddy's car in the mornings, and caused Ali to take her first to see the
bidonville,
the shanty-town created by the
Moors who persisted in pouring into Casablanca in search of higher wages and a gayer life than were obtainable in the
bled,
the agricultural country-side. It was nasty enough: the shacks, crammed together, were constructed of every sort of rubbish—old sacks, straw mats, decayed fabrics of indeterminate origin; those that were really made of hammered-out
bidons,
or petrol-tins, were mansions compared with the rest. And they were minute in size. She commented on this to Ali, who as usual became informative. They were no smaller, he said firmly, than the Moroccan country-man's normal habitation, the
nuala,
a sort of tent of straw or rushes, some eight or nine feet across at the base at a maximum; he would take Mademoiselle to see some of these if she wished. Mademoiselle did wish, and they spun out into the country, where Ali led her along a muddy track to a group of three
nualas,
standing within an untidy straggling hedge of camel-thorn. Ali continued to expound—he would have made a splendid P.R.O., Julia thought. The
nualas
were in fact pre-fabs—a newly-married Moor bought one ready made, erected it on his plot, and lived in it; after a year he bought a second, lived in that, and turned the first into a kitchen or store-house; a year later he bought a third to live in, and turned the original one into a stable for his animals. In four years a
nuala
simply fell to bits, so the Moor of the
bled
bought a new one every year, and continued this extraordinary turn-round of differing uses.

It wasn't, Julia thought, a very high or energetic way of life, this huddling on one spot in fragile impermanent dwellings, less solid and elegant by far than the highly mobile tents of the Bedouin which she had once seen in Syria. Next day she made Ali take her to one of the
bidonvilles améliorées.
There, shacks were going up in quantities; there were the stand-pipes, with an occasional ragged woman drawing water at one; but of any use being made of the facilities for sanitation there was no sign—slops were being emptied, and evacuation taking place, on the open ground.

“Ah, ils ne se fichent pas mal de tout cela, ces autres,”
said Ali, with the high contempt of the already urbanised man for his rural brethren.

Julia set out for Marrakesh with a considerably higher degree of anticipation than she had felt on her journey to Fez. For one thing, any tips of Purcell's were now proved to be reliable, so that she was more curious to meet “Mademoiselle Hortense” than she had been to see Mr. St John; for another, they had found out so much, quite independently of Purcell, that she really felt herself to be fairly hot on Colin's trail. Mr. Lynch had cajoled his acquaintance in the Casablanca Bureau to produce a note of introduction to his opposite number in Marrakesh, and hoped to be able to arrange for notice to be given them if—and when—Herr Nussbaumer's camionnette turned up in the oasis city—this seemed a more hopeful line than studying crowds through field-glasses from the roof of a restaurant. It was a fine sunny morning, and as they left the city for the open country Julia began to hum a little tune.

“Feeling good?” Mr. Lynch asked.

“Quite good.”

“We're just coming to the big Yank air-base,” her companion said presently. “It's a vast place; they say the runway is 11,000 feet long.”

“Is
that long?”

“Dear fool, it's immense. The most enormous bombers can use it. Look, the barbed wire's just beginning; on your right.”

Julia took a glance at the speedometer and noted the figure of kilometres already run before she turned her attention to the American air-base. There was little to be seen at first behind the high barbed-wire fence but huts and sheds; the runway and main hangars lay out of sight, in the middle, Paddy explained—but presently they came to a well-guarded entrance, beyond which sanded roads led off among tidy bungalows, with creepers on trellises and flowers in bloom,
at which Julia looked with interest; were these the sort of quarters lived in by Steve at Port Lyautey? A large notice said “T.V.A.”, and she asked Paddy what it meant.

“Temporary Village Accommodation—that's where the officers and their wives live.”

The base was certainly large. When at last they left the barbed wire behind Julia looked at the speedometer again—they had done 25 kilometres, or roughly 15 miles. She pointed this out to Paddy.

“Yes, it's immense—and we're coming to another soon on the left, that they run in conjunction with the French, like they do at Meknes. And then there's the one at Port Lyautey. These great Yank air-bases are one of
the
dominating factors in North Africa today, and come to that, in South-West Europe too—though very few people seem to realise it. You might do a piece about them for your paper.”

Some distance beyond the bases they came into camel-country. Even close round Casablanca an odd camel may be seen, ploughing yoked to an ass or mule, but here they were everywhere—ploughing in pairs, walking in circles at wellheads winding up the water-buckets, or merely grazing on the stony reddish land like cows: some, like cows, with a calf at foot, delicious little creamy creatures. When they stopped to eat their lunch in the shade of a wood of young pines a commotion presently arose on the far side of the road—a troop of sixty or more of the huge beasts was being driven along a track through the spindly trees, headed and followed by a Moor riding a donkey; they threw up their great saurian heads, snarling and hooting, as they plunged along.

“Oh, good,” said Mr. Lynch. “There must be a fair on in Settat. I'd like you to see that.”

Settat is for North and Central Morocco in the matter of camels what Ballinasloe is for horses today in Ireland, or the Falkirk Tryst used to be for cattle in Scotland—
the
great mart, where fairs are held frequently, and the animals are driven
long distances to be sold. When Julia and Paddy took the road again the resemblance to the outskirts of Ballinasloe on a fair-day became very marked, except for the uncouthness of camels compared with the neatness and grace of Irish horses—in threes or fours, or in bunches of up to a hundred, the earthen track beside the road allocated to four-footed traffic was alive with camels. Mr. Lynch sighed for Ireland; Julia was delighted—something more for
Ebb and Flow.
They pushed slowly through Settat, a rather undistinguished town of white houses, since even the main highway was jammed with the grunting snarling creatures and their brightly-clad buyers and sellers, the latter displaying the same total indifference to the needs of motor traffic as Mr. Lynch's compatriots do; but out in the country beyond the animals were once more confined to the earth track, and the car shot ahead. A range of low mountains rose in front of them: that was the Djebelet, the Small Mountains, her companion informed Julia—“and the French are doing some interesting afforestation work there.”

“Oh—why?”

“How pitifully ignorant you are, Julia! Forests bring rain, and also hold the water in the soil instead of letting it pour out over the land below in great scours, smothering what wretched topsoil there is with silt and stones. This country suffers from drought for more than half the year, and from ruinous erosion for the rest of it; the French are spending a fortune trying to correct that—not an enterprise that would occur to an Arab!”

Indeed when they entered the defile by which the road passes through the low range of the Djebelet Julia could see for herself what the French Administration was doing: trenches two or three feet deep following the contours of the hills, with trees planted along their lower edges, thus at the same time securing a supply of water to the roots, and preventing scouring.

In the pass through the hills the camel-track was crammed
close up against the highway; rounding a blind turn Mr. Lynch prudently gave a blast on his horn. This startled the leaders of a troop of laden camels coming round the bend from the opposite direction, and as the car came in sight two or three of them appeared to shy violently, dancing awkwardly at the end of their head-ropes. They were laden with
crin végétal,
the fibre, made from leaves of the palmette, with which Arab mattresses are stuffed; the hairy greenish stuff bulged through the holes of the big rope nets in which it was carried, slung pannier-wise on either side of the hump. Mr. Lynch pulled up: the caravan-men hauled agitatedly at the head-ropes, trying to drag their charges back on to the track, below which a gully ran down to a stream-bed; but one camel got completely out of hand, and plunged so wildly that its load came adrift and fell off onto the road, breaking the net—out from among the hairy mass tumbled a plum-coloured velvet trunk, which also burst open, scattering lumps of stone of a peculiar pinkish orange all over the grey tarmac of the highway.

Julia was out of the car in a flash.

“Paddy! This is
it!”
she cried, and ran towards the mess-up.

“Take care—don't upset them,” Mr. Lynch called after her. But Julia never heeded him—here was Astridite itself under her very nose, or she was a Dutchman, and she pounced on two or three of the fallen lumps. That particular camel-man was too busy trying to calm his beast to take any notice, but the Moor in charge of the caravan came over to her gesticulating angrily, obviously demanding his bits of rock back. Mr. Lynch also hastened up.

“Give it back; we don't want any fuss,” he said.

“Oh, woe!” But Julia obediently pulled a couple of pieces out of the pocket of her orange suède jacket and gave them to Mr. Lynch, who handed them to the Moor with some pacificatory remarks in Arabic.

“Well, there you have it,” said Julia as they drove off.
“ ‘Confirmation strong,' as the Victorians used to say.
What
a piece of luck!”

“I'm not so sure. I expect
he's
taken our number now. That was rather stupid, Julia.”