Tremor (15 page)

‘Right little devil,' she said, crumbling and buttering a bread roll. ‘You can't imagine what his little trick was. Pretending to lose his watch and have six of my girls kneeling down looking under chairs and tables, their bare butts sticking out for him to look at. Then after some minutes he'd choose the one he fancied and take her upstairs … We all knew it was a game, but we all played along and it was harmless enough.'

Vicky giggled, but Françoise laughed out loud.

She said: ‘In the Maison Lapin where I worked for a short while before I came to you,
mon chou
, there was a man like that only worse, much worse.
Mon Dieu!
He would hire six girls to lock him in chains, and then they all had to take it in turns to pee on him! Ho! ha! ho!'

‘Please,' said Vicky, fanning herself. ‘If you will. Let us not have such talk. I wish to retain my appetite!'

‘
Merde
,' said Laura, glaring across at M. Thibault, which seemed to close the conversation.

‘Leave it be,' snapped Thibault. ‘Allow it to be forgotten. She was just a common woman I had to meet in the course of my business and charitable affairs.'

‘Business and charitable affairs!' snapped his wife. ‘I did not know your charity was extended to trollops like those three. Regard them! What dress! What vulgarity! One comes to Agadir to escape the winter and stays at the best hotel! One does not expect one's husband to be accosted by the street sweepings of Paris!'

‘Conceive of the fact,' Thibault said bitterly, ‘ that in the course of a wide commercial and public-spirited involvement in all –
all
– strata of society, one cannot pick or choose everyone one meets. I certainly cannot be certain but I suppose it was when I was with Crédit Lyonnais – ten or fifteen years ago. A bank, you will perhaps be aware, must be prepared to accept custom, deposits from all conditions of persons and to transact business with and for them. It would be a sorry world if every client who entered the door of a bank was compelled to bring a certificate of moral character! Good God, not all
your
relations are above reproach. Think of Cousine Adèle! Think of—'

‘Ten years ago,' said Mme Thibault, ‘a likely story. Even fifteen years ago you were an
inspector
of banks. An inspector of banks! Not an inspector of whore houses!'

A waiter came to take away their plates, and another to lay fresh places for their second course. After they had gone Mme Thibault said: ‘ Where
did
you meet her if it was not in a
maison de passe
?'

‘I cannot in the least remember. I have told you so! I recall her only very vaguely.'

‘She seems to know
you
well.
Tibby
indeed!'

‘No doubt when the weather cools,' said Thibault, ‘you will permit your choler to abate. You are here for a holiday to recuperate from the stresses of the wedding of our youngest daughter, if you remember—'

‘Of course I remember! How can you speak Catherine's name after you admitted friendship with an obvious prostitute—'

‘I admit
nothing
! And kindly keep your voice down if you do not wish to make us the laughing stock of the hotel …'

The bickering went on for a while, observed among others by Matthew and Nadine, who had decided to share a table for lunch.

‘Do
you
think they are
poules
?' Matthew said, with a nod towards Laura and her friends.

‘Don't you?'

‘Appearances can deceive but – well, it's hard to see them as anything else!'

Nadine sipped her wine.

Matthew thought it over, then glanced back at the bickering Thibaults. ‘Hell hath no fury,' he said, ‘like a woman who has got her husband in a corner … D'you know, I've never been in a brothel, either English or French. And it's not because I don't like women.'

‘So I observe. But then perhaps you have never had the need …'

‘Need? Oh, I—'

‘I mean because of your looks.'

He half rose to make her a bow. ‘May I quote you?'

‘I mean I do not suppose you have had to run after women, have you? Brothels surely are for men who for one reason or another are deprived. Is that not so? Unattractive men, undiscriminating men, married men who cannot afford a regular mistress, men with kinky tastes, men with uncontrollable appetites, young men who are too timid to develop a proper relationship …'

‘Just men.'

The sky was still heavy, low-lying, dense, the sun hazy, the heat cloying.

He said: ‘Do you have a special boyfriend?'

‘Not at the moment.'

‘Have you been married?'

‘You tell me
you
have. But in England it is all so serious. In Paris …'

‘Yes?'

‘When two people live together they are often known as married. When they go through a civil or religious ceremony, they are known as married-married.'

‘And you?'

She smiled gently, lashes on cheeks. ‘I have been married.'

‘And are no longer?'

Still smiling she shook her head.

He said: ‘My horoscope told me I was going to be lucky.'

‘Aren't you assuming a lot?'

‘What? Well, yes, I suppose so. That may be so … But we have known each other at least the best part of a day.'

‘Now you are teasing.'

‘Well, yes, if you take it that way.'

‘How else am I to take it?'

‘That we have formed an
amitie.
'

‘You use the French word.'

‘Because it can mean whatever you may want it to mean.'

They went on with their lunch.

He said: ‘We shall meet tomorrow morning, then, if not before. It should be a pleasant drive.'

‘I did not think I had actually said yes.'

‘Then please say it now.'

‘I am not known to your friends.'

‘Please say yes. Please, please, please.'

‘They will not expect me.'

‘I told them I hoped …'

‘What?'

‘I hoped to bring a lady.'

‘You were presuming on a beach acquaintance of about ten minutes' duration?'

‘I was hoping that my dearest wish would be granted.'

‘Oh, come, M. Morris, too much flattery …'

‘Not flattery. Oh no, not flattery! It would give me outrageous pleasure.'

‘You do not speak quite like an Englishman.'

‘They vary, you know. Little ones, big ones, fat ones, thin ones, cold ones, passionate ones. You'd be surprised.'

They said no more until they had finished lunch. Then he said: ‘Well?'

She smiled. ‘
Je le veux bien.
'

Johnny Frazier, alias Carpenter, alias Tournelle, goes into the telephone booth to call his father.

He has had a restless night. First because of the news of the old man's illness, which effectively scuttles all his plans. And second, no doubt prompted by the first, has come a succession of nightmares. It is curious that scarcely any of them involves the police.

He dreams of his bedroom door being quietly opened and Big Smith stepping in, with a grim smile. Greg Garrett follows him. Joe Rooney carries a rubber truncheon.

‘Well, Johnny,' Big Smith says, ‘ so we've found you at last. You
have
been a trouble to us. All those false scents. But we
knew
we'd catch up with you in the end. You must have known too, didn't you? Or did you take us for right suckers? Eh? Tell us just what you thought. There's plenty of time.'

‘Time?' Rooney says. ‘Why wait? Let me just knock his teeth out first. Then maybe he'll be able to explain just what he had in mind.'

Johnny dreams he pushes himself up the bed until he is in a sitting position, and begins.

‘Difficulty is, it's
hard
to explain. In fact there is
no
excuse possible,
no
explanation of
any
sort, however far-fetched, but the plain truth. I tried to double-cross you. We went through this robbery as partners; and I decided to let you all down and pinch the lot! Or all the best part. All the most negotiable part. The rest is in my flat. You'll have found it by now. Maybe there's quite a nice little haul left there. I only took the cream. And after all I haven't spent much. It's all under my bed in this case. You're welcome to take it back.'

‘That's what we intend to do,' Big Smith smiles. ‘After we've dealt with you. After we've really finished with you.'

But in a later dream of the night it is Mr Artemis who comes in with his tinted glasses and the blood blister on his lip and his fat white hands: he leads the way followed by the other three. They are standing by the side of the bed: Smith and Garrett and Rooney, all waiting for the word to start on him. And he is trying once again to stumble through his explanations, his excuses. And Mr Artemis rubs his nose and says: ‘ Let's see, how thick are these walls? Will they hear his screams? That wouldn't really do, would it? Perhaps we'd better carry him out on to the beach. There's
lots
of room there. And it's dark and it's lonely: no one will dare to interfere with us there.'

So it is while they are seizing him and gagging him and tying his hands that he finally wakes up, to stare in a steamy sweat out of a window where dawn is still no more than a smear in the east. No stars visible: land and sea drowse in an ominous haze.

He gets up and gulps some soda water and tries to clear his head of the miasmas of the night. He is, he knows, in danger. They
may
trace him. They will certainly do their damnedest. If they do so while he is still in Agadir he is as certainly doomed to a nasty end as his nightmares have foretold. Two or three days. He feels sure that, barring some extraordinary twist of fate, he will be safe for another two or three days. In that time he can do – could have done – all that is necessary. This is Sunday. By Tuesday he could have been away – on a ship leaving Casablanca for Buenos Aires, Baltimore, Brisbane, he is not all that particular. It is just essential to keep moving until the trail is lost. For a reasonable commission his father could have arranged it all.

But his father is in hospital. Every plan is awry. He had thought in his mind that he would maybe leave half the money in the old man's keeping, in the safe in the wall. Now he can no longer trust the old man to stay
alive
. So what is the answer? Even if the passport is contrived, do you take all the money with you? Carry the case around with you, with the intimacy of guilt, for the duration of at least one long sea voyage?

Johnny has always had the ultimate hope of settling somewhere French or French-speaking. Maybe Martinique, or Montreal or Mauritius, or one of the South Sea islands. Though English was his mother's tongue, he has always felt drawn to the speech and the food and the culture of France. He would like to marry a French girl, settle down comfortably to the retired life of a man with an adequate bank balance. The dream, it seemed to him, was within reach. (As well as the nightmares.) His father's illness makes the pleasurable dream more remote, the horror more probable.

‘I wish to speak to Colonel Gaston Tournelle.'

He has said this some minutes ago, and now, just after he has inserted a second
jeton
, comes the reply. ‘Colonel Tournelle's condition is serious but stable. He is still in special care. Perhaps if you rang tomorrow …'

‘I'm his son. His only son. I've come a long distance special to see him. I'm not able to stay long in Agadir. Could I please speak to the doctor in charge.'

Another wait. He pushes open the door to get some air. In the foyer of the hotel, where he is speaking from, he sees the mismatched American couple get out of the lift and go through to the garden. She is wearing cream shorts which show off her slender pale legs, a navy blue halter top and a flowered sunhat. Johnny's male mind, while concentrating passionately on the business in hand, registers that she is attractive rather than pretty.

‘M. Frazier.'

‘Yes?'

‘Dr Eyme says if you come about eleven you can see your father for five minutes.'

‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.'

He is there by ten thirty. The hospital, a white, square, functional building, is on rising ground between the main town and the Kasbah on the hill. Johnny parks and smokes a cigarette and then goes in. It is a similar day to yesterday, the sun part hidden between rafts of cloud which have drifted up since dawn. The light breeze seems hotter than the air.

He gives his name and is shown into a waiting-room where all the patients are Arabs. This is a change Independence has wrought. It used to be a hospital for Europeans only.

After twenty minutes his name is called and he follows a nurse down a long corridor and into a crowded ward, at the near end of which, behind protective screens, a man lies in a bed in rather the condition that Johnny has pictured yesterday. There is a large moving graph which pulsates in jagged lines, presumably monitoring the heartbeat of the patient. A black nurse is standing by the bed. Johnny steals over and peers down. Gaston Tournelle has a tanned leathery complexion that could never look pallid, but Johnny notices how bloodless the lips are and the nostrils of the prominent nose. His eyes are half open.

‘
Mon père
,' whispers Johnny.

‘Ah,' says Tournelle, in a voice surprisingly powerful for one so ill. ‘Jacques …'

For a few moments they make polite conversation – or Johnny makes the conversation, the replies come in monosyllables. He is aware that time is passing, but he has to go through the motions of being a sympathetic son. In the meantime the nurse in attendance, who from the shape of her nose looks as if she comes from the far south, remains in attendance, standing by the edge of the screen, watching the heartbeats, no doubt, but clearly hearing everything that is being said.