TEMPTATION
Take a piece of orange peel and a piece of lemon peel and twist them together. Soak them in two dashes of Dubonnet Rouge, two dashes of absinthe and two dashes of Curacao. Pour in a jigger of Canadian Club whisky and stir until inextricably mixed.
He isn’t who he says he is.
Identity can be a slippery thing. It is easy to see a fine suit and a hat and say gentleman when you should be saying stranger or thief or liar. And yet, we are drawn to those in who we see ourselves, for better or for worse.
I was drawn to Langham, though I couldn’t begin to untangle what my attraction consisted of.
So I did as I had been brought up to do at the inn: to watch, to listen, to needle out the information I needed to ensure my safety.
I began to linger in corridors and doorways obsessively, hoping to catch a fragment of conversation.
I dropped whatever I was doing when the telephone rang, hoping to beat Bouzid to it and hear who was calling.
I never did. He was too conscientious for that.
It did not stop me from trying to wrangle information from him, especially when I found out that he – for all his stoicism – had a sweet tooth.
After that, I bought the best sweet pastries from the medina in an attempt to win his trust.
Much good it did me. He told me some things, true; where to find the best olives, and who Lady Bailey paid for opium, which diplomats brought their mistresses to dinner rather than their wives and who could be relied upon to cause trouble at parties.
But on the subject of Langham, he was resolutely and frustratingly silent.
What was it, that made him dust the sugar from his hands and leave the kitchen, whenever I asked a question about the man we worked for?
Had Langham also made him swear loyalty?
Perhaps Bouzid had sworn and meant it, unlike me.
I still did not know whether I was capable of loyalty.
Perhaps Lady Bailey’s words had some impact on Langham after all, for I saw even less of him, and began to wonder if he was avoiding me.
His absence affected me almost more than his presence.
The heat from our encounter by the pool hadn’t yet left my body, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t ignore it.
Too dangerous, I thought, in an attempt to silence it.
Langham thought I was a boy. If I went too far, if he found out the truth, what then?
Every night, I found myself reliving the encounter on the terrace in my mind, until I had to open my eyes and read a chapter of The Gentleman’s Guide to distract myself.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it, and one day, having heard the gate close behind Langham, I crept up the stairs into his room.
Even before I pulled the wardrobe door open, I knew what I would find.
The bloodstained suit was gone. In its place, coiled like a snake, was the green silk tie.
A taunt? An invitation? I took it up with shaking hands, and returned to the kitchen.
The days were beginning to turn hotter, as June wore on.
That day was the hottest yet, a strange sea fret hanging over the city, turning the sun into a gelatinous orb behind the clouds, making the air cling like gum.
Beneath my shirt, the tightly laced brassiere was soon soaked through with sweat, and I longed to rip it off and dive naked into the pool.
Sweat beaded my forehead and upper lip as I worked in the kitchen. It ran down my neck and collected in the hollow of my throat, beneath the collar, where Langham’s hand had brushed my skin. I tried to concentrate. I couldn’t.
That thick heat sent me into a sort of delirium.
When Bouzid came at eleven to inform me there would be seven guests for dinner and to ask what I would need from the market, I gave him a list that might have come from a deranged person.
Oysters, with the cool water of the port still in their shells, and honey and champagne, saffron and artichokes.
Bouzid seemed on the verge of asking me if I was well, but he knew my ways by then, and only nodded, mopping his own brow.
Perhaps he thought it didn’t matter that I had lost my mind in the heat; everyone else was likely to be in the same state.
Later, when I looked down at that strange collection of ingredients, I felt the old kitchen-duende shiver rising in me.
I had always tried to cook what I thought other people wanted, and yet, here were my own desires, laid out before me.
I wanted the colour of the sea and the ochre sunsets seen from the best room in Dar Portuna.
I wanted the sting of cold champagne on my tongue and the sear of spice from the medina street vendors.
I wanted the perfume of dawn flowers and the must of unswept streets, the pungency of kif and the bitterness of hot coffee, served in a silver pot.
I wanted to own the streets. I wanted to stride the world as Langham did. I wanted to be inside his skin.
My hand slipped on the oyster I was shucking, sending the knife slicing into my thumb. Blood welled, a droplet falling into the dish that held the liquor. I watched it disappear.
I cooked for so long that day, I barely had time to run to my room, scrub the sweat from my neck and change into a fresh shirt.
In the mirror I caught a glimpse of myself; it showed a black-haired young man, red high on his cheeks, perspiration shimmering at his temples.
Slowly, I drew the green silk tie from my pocket and put it on.
Was I making a wrong move? No way to tell, until I saw Langham’s face.
I made my way to the lounge, tying the long, white serving apron about my waist. I already knew the drink that I wanted to mix that night.
I had found it in The Gentleman’s Guide.
Temptation, it was called; orange and lemon skin entwined, both of them in fine spirits.
When Langham stepped into the lounge with his first guest, I already had the drink waiting, and handed it to him before he could ask.
His eyes travelled over my face and down to that green tie. Did I imagine it, or did he smile?
Now I have you, that look seemed to say.
A few minutes later, I escaped to the kitchen, leaving Bouzid to deal with the drinks, and the guests.
I’d watched them with interest, trying to gauge their relationships with Langham.
There was a man with watering eyes, who spoke no English, only French in a thick German accent.
A tall, black American woman in a shimmering satin dress who sang a snatch of Italian opera.
A florid Englishman in a striped waistcoat that broke every rule in The Gentleman’s Guide.
I was lingering by the kitchen door, waiting for the signal that they had gone into dinner when I heard footsteps and Langham’s hushed voice in the hall. I leaned closer.
‘Any word from Cabrera?’ he murmured.
‘Not yet.’ That was Bouzid.
Langham swore.
‘Call down and see if there’s trouble.’
‘Of course.’
I ducked into the kitchen, and was back at the stove by the time Bouzid put his head around the door.
‘They are going in to dine,’ he told me, and hurried away. To call Cabrera, I supposed.
Trouble, Langham had said … I began to arrange the plates, my heart skipping a little.
What did he mean? I’d never heard him sound agitated, never heard him swear in frustration like that.
I tried to forget about it. It was probably just business, and I had my own to concentrate on, the heady, eccentric meal that had swallowed my day.
First came the starter: poached artichoke hearts, each of them holding a single oyster, surrounded by its liquor and a sauce made from champagne.
It smelled earthy, of flesh and salt, like alcohol spilled on sea-wet limbs.
I helped Bouzid carry in the plates, but I could not look at their faces, least of all Langham’s.
Make them think of you as a kitchen-thing, a duende, a stove-spirit, then they will want you for your usefulness, and will leave you be.
That wasn’t what I was doing. I wasn’t hiding behind a kitchen apron, or keeping to my place at the stove any more.
I was out in the open, I was brazen. I watched through a crack in the door as Langham spooned up the oyster and tipped it whole into his mouth.
The next course was different. First, I sent out bowls of water scented with rose and orange blossom, to awaken their senses.
Next came chicken, burnished with saffron and lemon, cinnamon, ginger and chilli.
It was a dish to revive throats that had been burned by too many spirits, to quicken lips numbed by luxury, to entice them to eat and drink and talk and never stop talking.
During the meal I paced the kitchen like a cat locked in a room waiting for … I didn’t know what. Something had to happen after a dinner like that, after the glances that Langham had given me. When Bouzid came in I almost grabbed him by the arm.
‘Senor Cabrera has arrived,’ he told me. How could he be so cool? ‘Please make him up a plate. He is in the study with monsieur. The other guests will take their dessert on the veranda.’
I nodded. Had I not been so distracted, I might have proceeded with more caution. I might have tried to eavesdrop before approaching the study. As it was, I simply knocked and stepped through the door, thinking only of Langham’s face.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘I have brought a plate for Senor—’
I froze. The goat-eyed man, Bautista’s contact, was standing before me.
Look away, I screamed at myself, turn your head. But I couldn’t and he met my gaze, his yellow eyes flat in the lamplight. For one, desperate moment, I hoped he wouldn’t recognize me. Then his eyebrows were twitching into a frown, and I knew it was too late.
‘Gracias,’ he said, staring hard. ‘How kind.’
I had to step past him to put the tray on a side table. He watched me do it. I could feel his eyes on the nape of my neck and thought wildly of the Senor.
‘Will there be anything else?’ I murmured to the rug, wanting to run from the room, wanting to vomit up the crushing fear in my stomach. I didn’t want to look at Langham, not with Cabrera watching me, but when there was no answer, I had to raise my eyes.
Langham’s face was unreadable as stone.
‘No,’ he said coldly, ‘now leave us.’
I had to lock myself in the bathroom after that, and tell Bouzid through the door that the heat had made me sick. I was terrified, and furious with myself for being so. I never wanted to feel that way again, as I had been at the inn, voiceless, exposed …
I forced myself to think. So what if Cabrera knew me? I had done one job for him, that was all. He could only know what Bautista might have told him: I was a young man who had arrived in La Atunara with no papers and had paid for some new ones. He knew nothing that could hurt me, I told myself.
But Langham had seen the recognition pass between Cabrera and me.
He was no fool, and would have guessed in that second that my past was murkier than I had let on.
It went the other way too. Langham knew Cabrera.
Knew him well enough to telephone him, to be concerned with ‘trouble’. What was Langham’s business?
When I finally emerged from the bathroom, I knew what I would find. Bouzid was waiting in the kitchen, his face as calm as ever. He had served the dessert of iced apricots and candied rose petals without me.
‘Monsieur Langham,’ he said, ‘is in the lounge.’
I nodded. Silently, I shed the apron and pulled on my jacket. Words and excuses crowded to the front of my mind, ready to come spilling out. They would do me no good; Langham had asked for loyalty and now he had found out that I had given him less than the truth.
I opened the door of the lounge without knocking. It was dark in there, as always, lit only by candles and the lamplight that crept from the veranda. I could hear the guests out there, Lady Bailey and the other woman laughing softly, could smell their bitter smoke and kif.
‘Monsieur?’ My voice was barely audible.
Langham was standing at the piano, turned away, his hands clasped behind his back. He was twisting the ring on his little finger around and around. I had never seen him do that before.
‘Why are you here?’ His voice drifted to me, like the smoke.
‘To be your cook, monsieur.’
He didn’t turn around.
‘Are you working for someone? I will find out if you are lying.’
Any excuses dried on my lips. We had been spinning such brilliant, unspoken truths between us, he would know a lie in an instant. I clenched my hands behind my back.
‘I don’t work for Cabrera, if that’s what you’re asking.’
He turned his head a fraction. ‘But you admit that you know him?’
A bloodstained jacket. And you? I wanted to ask.
‘I don’t know him. I only met him once.’ I took a step forwards. ‘I carried a bag here for a man in La Atunara, named Bautista, in exchange for new papers. Cabrera was the man I delivered it to. I haven’t seen him since and I’ve no wish to again.’
Let that be enough. I stared at the edge of Langham’s cheek, at his sharp jawline, at the shadow of stubble beginning to show. Be satisfied. I did it to get to you.
‘Why would you tell me that?’ His voice was soft.
‘Because you asked me to,’ I said. Langham’s face was half hidden in shadow, but his eyes found mine. ‘Because I promised you loyalty. Because I want—’ My words ran out, replaced by smoke-filled air. Because I want to crack you open and see what’s inside. Because I want to know you.
‘Because you want what?’ He stepped towards me, raising a hand to touch my chin.
A knock on the door, as loud as thunder and I stumbled away, tripping on the edge of the rug. Langham moved back too. His face was tight, as if we’d been caught in the act. Nothing had happened, but my whole body was buzzing as if it had.
‘What is it?’ Langham called impatiently.
The door creaked open. Was it a trick of the shadows, or did Bouzid’s eyes flick to where I stood trembling, for one brief second? ‘A telegram, monsieur. It is marked urgent. I thought you should know.’
‘Fine, I’ll be there shortly.’
Bouzid shut the door. For one uncertain moment, Langham looked at me, his lips parted.
‘Alejandro—’ he began, but the rest was lost in a tumult of voices and laughter as the guests called Langham’s name from the veranda, demanding more music, more drinks.
I turned and fled, the danger of it all burning on my lips.