SCOFFLAW
Take one dash of orange bitters, three quarters of a pony of Canadian Club whisky, the same of French vermouth, a tablespoon of lemon juice and a tablespoon of imported grenadine. Shake well and strain into a cocktail glass. Drink fast, before it catches up with you.
All things come at a price.
I’d grown up around swindlers and thieves – I should have remembered not to trust anything that seemed too good to be true.
I should have realized that the diamond walls of my world could turn to glass and crack; that the elegant fabrics could rip and unravel, that my saint’s gold could peel away like cheap gilding on a false coin.
But I didn’t. Not until it was too late.
Bouzid found me at the gate of Dar Portuna, bracing myself against the wall, my eyes screwed closed against the awful, dull throbbing in my head.
The wound had stopped bleeding now, but I could feel it, flaking and tacky at the base of my skull.
Bouzid was angrier than I had ever seen him.
He grabbed my jacket, the way he had all those weeks ago when I had first trespassed into the gardens, and dragged me into the house, unheeding of my protests.
He didn’t stop until we reached the study.
Hilde was perched on the edge of the desk, her face strained, chewing at her nails. And Langham … when he looked at me, his eyes were like flint.
‘Where did you go?’ he demanded.
I couldn’t think straight; the pain was muddled together with the memory of Cabrera saying my real name, with the fear of what he might do if I didn’t comply. ‘I went to the tailor’s.’ My voice sounded vague. ‘I left a note.’
‘The truth, del Potro.’ Langham’s hand was beneath his desk, in one of the drawers. ‘I need to know where …’
I didn’t hear the rest. The throbbing grew worse, blue and yellow lights filling my vision. The next thing I knew I was on my knees, staring at the rug, hearing Hilde’s panicked voice.
‘Arthur!’
She was at my side. I could smell her scent: powder and lilies and the clinging bittersweet tang of smoke. Coolness touched my skin, her fingers, exploring the back of my neck. ‘My god,’ she murmured, when she found the crusted blood. ‘Who did this to you?’
I forced my eyes open. Langham was staring down at me, his face taut. I couldn’t betray him, I realized. Not now. I met his eyes.
‘Cabrera.’
Bouzid was dispatched to fetch ice, Hilde the medical chest. For a moment, it was only Langham and I in the room.
‘Cabrera knows about me,’ I said, hauling myself up using the edge of the desk. ‘He knows what I am and he wants me to set you up. He said you have unfinished business.’
Langham’s shoulders dropped. ‘Alejandro.’ He was stepping close, taking my face in his hands. ‘I’ll kill the bastard for hurting you. Did they …?’ His hands tightened.
‘No.’ I closed my eyes, unable to focus on him. ‘No. He didn’t want anyone to think anything was wrong. He needed me to be able to pretend everything was normal.’ I reached for the back of my head. ‘I don’t think Márquez was supposed to hit me so hard.’
Langham produced a bottle of brandy and pushed a glass into my hand.
I sat on the floor cushions in the lounge and sipped at it while Hilde swabbed at the back of my head.
More nauseous than ever, I told them what had happened, how Cabrera had intercepted my note to Souissa and sent the tailor’s son to lure me there.
‘They must have been watching the house,’ I said, looking up. My eyes were swimming with the sting of alcohol, but even so, I saw the look that passed between Bouzid and Langham.
When Hilde had finished, she made me lean back against the sofa. Langham came to sit opposite me, his face serious.
‘What information does Cabrera have on you?’
‘He knows I’m a woman,’ I murmured. ‘He knows my real name.’ I gripped the glass of brandy, its amber colour all too similar to Scotch.
‘He knows I’m wanted by the police in Spain, and that if I’m caught I’ll be garrotted for murder.
’ I glanced up at them. ‘I didn’t do it, but that won’t matter. There are people who will swear I did.’
Langham was very still. His eyes never left my face, but I could tell he was thinking hard, trying to decide what to believe of me, whether I was capable of killing a man, what it meant that I had lied about it.
Would things ever be the same between us, now?
He had asked me not to bring trouble into his house, and that is exactly what I had done.
There was no sympathy in his look, or anger.
Part of me wished he would react: shout and swear at me, or take my hand, but he did neither and I had to look away.
Hilde was frowning at me too, worrying at her lip. Her trust in me had been based on the story I had told; a story so like her own. Now she knew that I had lied – would she understand?
Finally, Langham blinked. ‘What exactly did Cabrera want you to do?’ he said slowly. ‘Use his exact words if you can.’
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to remember it; the stench of Márquez at my back, the awful closeness of Cabrera’s face as he spelled out his demands.
‘He wants me to report everything to him. Who telephones, who comes to the house, what Bouzid does. He knows about the party tomorrow night. He wants to set up the rendezvous for then, he said it would be the perfect cover.’ I forced myself to look up at them all.
‘He wants me to get into your study and take some papers from your desk, from any green file he said, and place them secretly in your coat or bag so that you carry them to the meeting.’ I could feel my face growing hot, ashamed of my own foolishness. ‘He said that would be enough.’
To my surprise, Langham was nodding. ‘What about Hilde? Did he mention her?’
Hilde’s face was curiously pale, her eyes fixed on Langham.
‘No,’ I stammered, looking between them. ‘No, he didn’t mention Hilde at all. He said that I should stay here during the rendezvous. He said that some other people might come to search the house, and that I should let them in.’
‘Other people – did he say who?’
‘No. He said I’d be able to tell when they arrived, though.’
‘And that was all? You’re sure?’
I nodded my throbbing head. ‘Yes. I swear.’
Abruptly, Langham’s flint-like expression softened. He reached over and squeezed my shoulder, before looking up at Bouzid.
‘It’s the British. I’m sure of it.’
The other man grunted. ‘Would they trust Cabrera?’
‘They’d trust a mule if it trotted up to them with a promise in its mouth.’ Langham’s voice was filled with contempt. ‘Cabrera must’ve done a deal with them. No doubt they are offering him ample reward for ensuring I am caught red-handed.’
I stared at the side of his face, his smooth skin, the fine lines about his eyes. ‘I don’t understand,’ I murmured. ‘The British authorities? What do they want with you?’
Langham looked over at me then, with a soft, half-pitying smile.
‘Same as the Spanish want with you. They want to hang me, chico.’
‘Arthur!’ Hilde started up, glancing at me.
‘No,’ he stopped her. ‘If we are all to get out of this, Hilde, Alejandro needs to understand.’ He focused on me again.
‘Bautista and his crew are small fry, when it comes to contraband. The real business isn’t in booze or tobacco, but in information.
’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘The sort of thing you delivered to Cabrera.’
‘The suitcase full of papers?’ I asked slowly. ‘What were they?’
Langham smiled humourlessly. ‘I’m afraid I have no idea. You were lucky not to be caught, though. Cabrera’s obviously been double-crossing us.’ He looked a little thoughtful. ‘You didn’t catch any glimpse of what the papers were? Any stamps or letters?’
I shook my head.
‘Pity,’ he murmured.
‘But,’ I shifted to look at Bouzid, at Hilde, ‘smuggling isn’t a hanging offence, is it? They’d have to hang the whole of La Atunara, and half of Tangiers, if it was.’
Langham laughed a little, and drank his brandy. ‘No, smuggling isn’t a hanging offence. Treason is, though. And murder.’
I stared into his eyes, trying to see the man I thought I knew, but all I saw was my own reflection.
Later, as afternoon became evening, we sat at the kitchen table – all four of us – our elbows resting on the scrubbed wood, drinking tumblers of wine and picking at food.
We had never sat and eaten like that before.
We are in this together, that meal said.
We had to work and act as equals, if we were to get out of it.
At another time, Bouzid’s lack of formality would have made me glad.
But in that moment, all I could think was that everything was changing.
‘What’s important is that they are not connecting you to anything,’ Langham said to Hilde. ‘They see you as a socialite, nothing more. That makes you a safe pair of hands.’
She nodded, and shifted in her chair. She had lied to me then, about her knowledge of Langham’s activities.
‘What about the party?’ I asked. ‘It can’t go ahead, now, surely?’
‘On the contrary, it must.’ Langham was twisting the ring around and around on his little finger.
‘If we call it off, Cabrera will know that you’ve told me everything.
Then we lose the upper hand.’ He looked at me, eyes travelling over my hair, my collar.
‘Alejandro,’ he said softly. ‘The suit you ordered from the tailor, it was the one we talked about?’
For some reason, a shiver ran down my neck. ‘Yes. White flannel. And a shirt of saffron gold, just like yours.’
‘Will it be ready by tomorrow?’
I nodded, feeling queasy. ‘Cabrera said so. He told me it would be delivered in the morning, with a note inside about the rendezvous. I’m to send information back with the delivery boy.’ I swallowed. ‘They will be watching the house.’
‘Good,’ Langham said. He looked away and stood up and I was left feeling cold, as if someone had closed the door of a stove. ‘Bouzid,’ he said, ‘come with me. We have a lot to do.’
Despite the heat of the day and the brandy I had drunk, I could not stop shivering.
Langham and Bouzid left Dar Portuna by the secret back gate, where to I didn’t know.
Hilde and I did what we could to distract ourselves, decorating the lounge for a party that none of us wanted.
We arranged glasses and chose platters. Once or twice we tried to talk of what had happened, what was to come, only to find we couldn’t; the words turned to ash in our mouths.
Finally, we parted, Hilde to her pipe, I to the privacy of Langham’s bathroom.
In the shower, I tried to sluice away the fear and anxiety, wincing at the sting of water on the back of my head.
I tried to forget that there was a world outside the house.
I wanted to sever Dar Portuna from Tangiers, wanted to untie all of the strings that tethered us to the past and send us drifting away into the world, untouchable.
Later, wrapped in Langham’s robe, I sat on the tiny roof terrace above the bedrooms, trying to catch a breeze off the strait.
It was like a nest up there, the highest spot in the house, from which I could see everything.
The edge of the casbah and beams of motorcars on the beach road, the ships on the strait, the vastness of a continent behind me of which I still knew nothing.
I stared into the darkness, trying to imagine what life lay ahead for me, tomorrow, next week. I found that I couldn’t.
‘Here you are.’ It was Langham, emerging from the stairs. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
He came and stood behind me, his arms encircling my chest, careful not to touch my bruised head.
‘I don’t even know your name.’ I murmured it to the night. I wasn’t sure where the words came from, only that they were truth.
For a moment, he stiffened. Then, I felt him relax, leaning closer. ‘I could say the same for you,’ he whispered. ‘Why don’t you choose us another one?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve been thinking.’ His breath was warm on my cheek. ‘If it happens that I have to leave Tangiers, would you go with me?’
Leave Tangiers, Dar Portuna? ‘And go where?’
‘Anywhere. Argentina, Shanghai. The other side of the world, where no one knows us.’
Those places, I knew them from Ifrahim’s stories, but they’d always seemed like a fantasy; impossible to reach for someone like me.
‘You mean travel together?’ I leaned my head against his, closing my eyes.
I could see us now, two gentlemen standing at the railing of a ship, smoking and laughing, playing cards with ladies in cocktail lounges, idly reading newspapers over breakfast, sharing a cabin, where we could shed our disguises and be together, breath and skin, upon a vast ocean.
‘Of course together.’ His lips touched the side of my head. ‘With you as my wife—’
I opened my eyes, as if someone had stuck me with a pin.
‘Your wife?’
‘Yes. They will be looking for us, after all, for Langham and del Potro. But as a gentleman and a lady we could slip past. Mr and Mrs Porter, of Gibraltar, maybe. You could borrow a few of Hilde’s dresses, perhaps a wig, until your hair grows out.
’ He ran his hand through my short curls and I jerked away, my guts knotting.
He frowned. ‘What is it?’
He reached for me again, but I shrugged out of his grip. I couldn’t explain it. Langham’s wife … to be with him, openly, in public. Wasn’t that what I wanted?
‘No,’ I told him shakily. ‘I can’t.’
‘Ale, as my wife, you’d have protection.’
I turned to face him. ‘I don’t want to be protected, to need protection. I don’t want to be a wife.’ I searched for his eyes in the darkness. ‘I want what you have. I want to be like you, to be free.’
There was silence between us for a long time. I couldn’t see his face clearly, only the outline of his features. Then, his chest jerked and I saw a glint on his skin. It was a tear, I realized.
‘To be like me,’ he said, his voice soft with dismay. ‘No, Ale, I couldn’t wish that on you.’
I pulled him into my arms. His tears were warm and slick as lamp oil on my cheek as I kissed him, feeling my own eyes sting. We clung to each other, there on that rooftop, like two people about to fall from the edge of the world.