Macfarlane had invited him home to dinner. When they got there his wife had just finished putting the children to bed. Macfarlane went up to kiss them goodnight and Mrs Macfarlane collapsed with a drink on the divan. She was a small, bright, birdlike woman, Scottish, like her husband.
‘Well, Mr Seymour,’ she said, ‘how do you find us?’
He took her to be referring to Morocco as a whole.
‘A strange mixture,’ he said. ‘Strange, but interesting.’
‘It is that,’ she said. ‘And sometimes I think it’s getting stranger.’
‘As the French move in?’
‘As the West moves in. I think I liked it more as it was. Dirty and barbarous. Often cruel. But, somehow, authentic. Itself.’
‘You liked it under the Parasol?’
She laughed.
‘Life under the Parasol was not that special,’ she said drily. ‘Especially at court. Diplomats see a lot of courts, and they’re not always the most interesting places to see. When we came out here first the Sultan was very young. Just a child, really. And he made the whole court a nursery, a kind of playroom, as my parents would have called it.
‘At one time he developed a craze for bicycle polo. Bicycles were a new thing then. He got the whole court to play, even the Viziers. Even-’ she laughed — ‘some of the Consuls. My husband, for instance. Although he quite liked it. Actually, I would like to have played, myself. We used to play it as children at home. But, of course, as a woman I wouldn’t do it here. The court became very indulgent but not quite that indulgent! This is, after all, a Muslim country.
‘And, as in many Eastern countries, the Sultan had absolute power. Even if he was just a child. And because his power was absolute, he thought he could do anything. They all had to obey his will. And if his will was to play bicycle polo all day, well, so be it.
‘He had no sense of — well, measure. For example, they were always smashing the bicycles up. Well, that was no problem. He would just order the Vizier to get new ones. And everything was like that. Money was no object. If he suddenly felt he wanted something, he would just get it. Money simply ran through his fingers. He thought it would never run out. But, of course, it did. And that enabled the French to come in. It’s always like that. It was just the same in Egypt under the old Khedive when we were there.’
‘He’s still like that, is he?’
‘Less so now. The French have hemmed him in. Controlled his expenditure. And, besides, he’s grown up a bit. But it’s too late. He’s lost all his support. His capriciousness has turned everybody against him. Even his own half-brother.’
She sighed.
‘So you see,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t always that good under the Parasol. I liked it as it was but maybe it had to change. And you could have worse people coming in than the French. I sometimes think that the French and the Moroccans have a lot in common. Their cultures are more traditional than ours, more formal, more polite, naturally courteous. When you go to a French household the children come round before going to bed to shake hands. In a Moroccan family it’s rather like that, too. Whereas with my savages…!’
Macfarlane came downstairs and they went out into a little courtyard to dine. The house was an old Arab one, with a courtyard almost inside the house and boxed wooden windows looking down on it from above. A fountain played into a small pond and around the walls were cypresses and jasmine. As it grew darker the smell of the jasmine was joined by the scents of other flowers which opened only at night.
The meal was Arab, too, with hot, peppery soup and then various kinds of meats, served with rice and burning hot peppers. Afterwards, there was melon and iced orgeat, made of crushed almonds, milk and sugar.
Seymour was a little surprised. In his office Macfarlane had seemed so British. At home he seemed much more responsive to things Moroccan. Perhaps that was the effect of his job. More likely, thought Seymour, it was the effect of his wife.
She asked him if the hotel was comfortable.
‘Very,’ he said. ‘And the people are most helpful.’ He mentioned the receptionist.
‘Chantale,’ said Mrs Macfarlane, with a smile.
‘She seems very versatile.’
‘Aye, she is that,’ said Macfarlane.
‘She has to be,’ said Mrs Macfarlane. ‘She and her mother run that hotel between them and there can’t be a lot of money to spare.’
‘She’s a good lassie,’ Macfarlane conceded.
‘A journalist, too, you said,’ said Seymour.
‘She would like to be. But it’s not easy if you’re a woman and in an Arab country.’
‘She writes mostly for the French newspapers,’ said Mrs Macfarlane.
‘It’s still not easy.’
‘She seems to have good French contacts,’ said Seymour. ‘I saw her with the pig-sticking crowd and then again, I think, at the Resident-General’s.’
‘She would have been going to see Cecile,’ said Mrs Macfarlane.
‘Cecile?’
‘The Lamberts’ daughter. They were at school together.’
‘Not altogether happily in Chantale’s case,’ said Macfarlane.
‘She rebelled against it. It was a convent school and too strict for her. So soon after her father’s death. But what could they do? There aren’t many schools here and they wanted it to be a French one. The Lamberts were very good to her. They treated her like another daughter. She’s always been very close to them.’
‘She wanted to be independent, though.’
Mrs Macfarlane laughed.
‘She would, wouldn’t she? But it’s a good thing they got that hotel. It gives them a base of their own, and you need that if you’re a woman in Morocco.’
‘Aye, but will it do for her in the long run?’
‘Why shouldn’t it?’
‘You always feel that she’s champing at the bit.’
‘Isn’t that inevitable?’
‘She ought to go to France,’ said Macfarlane.
‘But would that work out any better? It would be the same thing only the other way round.’
‘Sorry?’ said Seymour.
‘Perhaps you’ve not understood,’ said Mrs Macfarlane. ‘Chantale is half Moroccan.’
Chapter Four
The next morning, it seemed that all Tangier was on the road: except that when they got to the Tent it seemed as if all Tangier had already got there. The space around the marquee was packed with people, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them, many of them dressed in robes of pink and blue, saffron and mauve. The Tent, too, was already full of people. A long bar ran down one side of it and there was a crush of people six feet deep pressed against it. Away from the bar it was almost as crowded.
Macfarlane took one look and said: ‘We’d better go straight to the enclosure.’
Behind the Tent was a roped-off enclosure full of horses and men, the men in brightly coloured shirts and riding breeches, and holding lances, the horses nervous and frisky. Apart from the lances it reminded Seymour of… What was it? A circus? That County Show again? He’d got it! He knew what it was. As part of the show there had been a gymkhana. That was it: it reminded him of a gymkhana.
What followed, though, was not at all like a gymkhana.
A bugle sounded and anyone in the enclosure who was not already on a horse began to mount. There were about a hundred riders and now they were all holding lances, their points held vertical, as in a Renaissance painting.
A rope was removed and the horses began to move round the side of the marquee and out towards the desert and scrub.
The crowd surged with them, small boys running excitedly ahead and frequently in front of the horses. The horses took no notice. They formed into a long line and began to trot.
The crowd, too, began to trot, and Seymour, willy-nilly, with them. People pressed in upon him on all sides. He very soon lost sight of Macfarlane. He found himself being carried along and began to feel anxious. Crowd control? Where was it? They were all running. If one person went down it would be a disaster.