BETWEEN THE SHEETS
Take three quarters of a pony each of brandy, Cointreau and white rum. Add just a dash of lemon juice, shake well and strain into a glass. How you drink it is nobody’s business.
June slid into July like butter on a hot plate.
I was used to Andalucían summers; the fierce sun and the darkness of shuttered rooms, the constant thirst of those who cannot escape the city for mountain or coast, who only emerge in the greyness of dawn to crawl to mass and pray for rain.
But Tangiers heat was different. It was the heat of the desert, come to try its luck by the sea.
It was an old god, one who laughed to see us sweat and swoon.
It found me wild with anxiety and joy and fear and desire shaken up together.
The night with Langham turned into another, then another.
My morning meetings with him – ostensibly to discuss the day’s menu – would more often than not descend into a frenzy of fingers on buttons and loosened garments, up against the locked door.
There was no hiding it from Bouzid, of course, or Hilde.
Early one morning she had walked into Langham’s room and found me there, in my strange collection of male underwear and the tight brassiere.
She had laughed, and I felt a huge wave of relief. I wanted her for my friend.
‘I see he took your news well then,’ she said, helping herself to a cigarette from the box on his dresser. By the time Langham emerged from the bathroom, Hilde and I were standing at the wardrobe, holding up suits, trying on hats, Hilde with a cravat looped about her neck.
‘What’s this?’ he said, with his secretive half-smile. ‘A pantomime?’
‘Tell del Potro,’ Hilde said around her cigarette, ‘that a gentleman must have a flannel suit for days like this. A gorgeous, white flannel suit, with –’ she rifled through the shelves ‘– a pale green shirt, or a rose pink.’ She held one up beneath my chin.
‘Yes! Just like that. You’ll look a dream.
And a sprig of jasmine at the lapel. The ladies won’t be able to keep their eyes off you. Or the men,’ she added slyly.
‘No, no.’ Langham came forwards, his robe brushing against me, his hair still gleaming with water.
‘A gentleman is never ostentatious.’ He was quoting from The Gentleman’s Guide, and I smiled at him.
‘He does not covet attention but attracts it by way of an engaging ensemble.’ He pulled out a saffron-coloured shirt and held it up to my chest, with his arms around me.
‘One that defies analysis,’ he finished, his eyes on mine in the mirror.
Smiling, I took the shirt, and slid my arms into it. Langham followed every movement. ‘This one,’ he murmured, pulling a suit from the rows that hung there. ‘Try this.’
It was white flannel, just as Hilde had suggested. I pulled the trousers over my legs, felt a rush of delight as I adjusted the waistcoat and settled the jacket over my shoulders.
She clapped when I was dressed.
‘Perfect. Just perfect.’
Langham was smiling. ‘Hilde’s right. How fine you look. You must get one of your own.’
We were almost of a height, he and I, and though the suit was too big across my shoulders and around the waist, it wasn’t a bad fit. He ran his hands through my hair, combing it back from my forehead, like his own. Quietly, Hilde let herself out.
‘There,’ Langham murmured when he was done. Our faces were next to each other, his flushed from washing, mine from his touch. ‘We could almost be the same man.’
I turned to find his mouth, the hangers in the wardrobe clattering as we leaned back against it.
Later that day, I slipped outside the back gate for the first time in days, and beckoned to one of the children who were always lingering near the Bab al-Bahr, on the make. A boy came running over. He wore rope sandals, his hands quick and grubby, his eyes appraising of my fine suit.
‘Yes senor, monsieur, yes?’ he asked.
‘You know Souissa, the tailor down near the Petit Socco?’ I asked.
He nodded rapidly, answered sí sí, his eyes on my pocket as I took out a handful of centimes. ‘Take this down to him right away.’ I handed over an envelope, one from Langham’s personalized leather case. ‘Tell him to send the bill as usual. You can remember that?’
The boy snatched the letter from my hand before I finished speaking. ‘Sí, senor, claro,’ he smiled, holding out his hand for his payment.
I watched him run off with a smile, picturing Souissa’s face when he opened the letter and found my order for a white flannel suit, and a shirt of palest saffron gold, just like Langham’s.
As I turned back towards the house my neck prickled, despite the heat. I looked about, searching for the eyes I was sure were watching me, but all I saw was a flash of movement as someone disappeared around the corner of the Bab al-Bahr.
In those hot weeks, Langham did not go out as much as he usually did.
Perhaps he was feeling on edge too, or perhaps we were simply being gluttons, revelling in each other’s company.
We hadn’t spoken about the night he had returned, sea-drenched and bleeding from what looked like a knife wound to the arm.
Indeed, though I began to know every centimetre of his body, from the jut of his hip and the smooth gold-brown hair of his thighs, there were multiple scars across his back and chest and now his arm that eluded definition.
I asked him about the wound only once on that first night, as we lay tangled in clothes and bedsheets.
He had only looked at me, and smiled. ‘A scuffle, that’s all. ’
Whether that ‘scuffle’ was the cause of his lapse in business, his increased presence in the house, I didn’t know.
Bouzid knew, I was sure. He’d been ‘with the boat’ on the night it happened.
On a few occasions I saw them together, talking in hushed voices, but I could never get close enough to hear.
I tried to forget about it, basking in my new life at Dar Portuna, in the delicious, decadent freedom.
I slipped from being domestic help to lover, friend.
I knew things had changed for good when Langham caught my hand and asked me to eat supper with him and Hilde as they lay on the veranda, rather than in the kitchen.
I still cooked, still served food, but that was my power: something neither of them possessed.
I shared it with affection and was proud.
For two weeks, the outside world did not exist. It was as if the three of us – Hilde, Langham and I – had signed a pact to be idle for a time, to take joy in each other.
Bouzid did not break the hierarchy as I had.
Sometimes, he could be compelled to join us on the veranda for tea, during the afternoons that seemed to last a century.
Mostly though, he left us to our revels.
We soon lost all notion of should and ought.
I began to leave off the tight brassiere, certain that Bouzid now knew my secret, and would keep it.
Every day I sent orders to town for ice, more ice; ice to chill melon to tooth-stinging coldness, ice to mix drinks powerful enough to make us forget the heat, until we rolled on the hot tiles of the poolside, laughing as freezing gin slid across our cheeks.
One afternoon Hilde produced a lump of hashish and told me, looking like a child who has raided the pantry, to ‘do something nice with it’.
Exactly what she meant, I didn’t know. It took several plates of briwats and wondering aloud whether I was meant to bake it before Bouzid relented and impatiently explained how to make mahjoun – his grandmother’s recipe, he said.
That afternoon, I worked at the stove, grinding the hash, melting butter, dicing nuts and dried fruit, mixing spices and honey and rosewater until I had a sticky, delicious mass. Bouzid had gone out, so I couldn’t ask him if it was right. Only one way to find out, I thought with a smirk.
That afternoon, the whole world was as soft as cinnamon.
‘We should serve this at a party,’ Hilde said, licking mahjoun from her fingers.
‘Send the stuck-up old diplomats wild.’ She’d left off smoking her pipe so much over the past few weeks, and she looked bronze and healthy in the sun.
Langham too, seemed freer than I had ever seen him, especially when Bouzid was not around.
‘A party,’ he said, leaning back on a lounger, naked except for a pair of sunglasses.
‘Yes, we should.’ I was watching the way the sun licked at his hair, bringing out its gold lights.
‘How about it, del Potro?’ he said, glancing to where I stood, mixing drinks in my shirt and underwear. ‘Shall we give the Tangerines a show?’
I tried to smile into the melting ice. I didn’t want a party.
During those glorious, honeyed days, the rules of society had melted away, until all that mattered was the next moment, breath and skin and hunger, not names or rank.
I didn’t want to step back into my old position.
I didn’t want to see Langham flirt with young men and rich ladies and watch it all from behind a tray. I wanted to be there beside him.
I shrugged. ‘If you want.’
‘That settles it then. We’ll have one on Saturday.’ I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses as I handed him the drink, though I knew he was looking at me. ‘Got to keep up appearances,’ he said softly.
I should have told him then that it was a bad idea. I should have argued that no good could come of a party when the whole city was broiling in the heat. I should have leaned in close and asked him who he was keeping up appearances for, when he so clearly didn’t give a damn about society.
But I forgot Ifrahim’s advice about watching and listening, and instead shut my eyes to my anxieties, and when Langham and I were alone, I kissed him all the harder.