A personable and impressive young officer, Fromental had gained his promotion, like so many, in the trenches of Flanders, but he had an enormous admiration for his ex-commander and, inspired by what Lyautey was trying to do for these people, had volunteered for the colonial service. ‘He was a realist. When he came here every little sheikh and caïd claimed to be in charge and everyone was corrupt, everyone was poor. Now we have only a few big chiefs in charge. They are corrupt, of course, but we know who we’re dealing with and the people are richer. It is a further step on the long road to constitutional democracy. In a few generations, no doubt, they will be making laws about minimum wages and maximum hours. Every so often the Italians or the Germans or someone else slips a local pasha a few cases of repeating rifles or a Gatling gun so he can set himself up as an “anti-imperialist” or “nationalist”, or in other words some such try for a traditional power-grab! But Lyautey always saw to it that the bigwigs stayed in power so that it was always in their whole interest to support the French. The Sultan is a cipher. El Glaoui, of course, holds the real reins of power amongst native Moroccans. It makes him our best friend.’
At dinner that night, conversation returned to the Pasha of Marrakech, El Glaoui (whose family title was similar to ‘the MacTavish’ in Scotland). ‘Indeed,’ said Captain Quelch, ‘the whole system seems thoroughly Scottish to me. One day they’ll make a great race of engineers and music-hall comedians!’ We sat beneath chandeliers, eating off a vast mahogany table furnished with that excessively heavy silverware the French feel is necessary to set off their normally exquisite food. I must admit the food in this case was not entirely worthy of the knives and forks, as I had hoped, but it was served very elegantly by native servants in a livery of white, dark red and royal blue. Esmé, Mrs Cornelius, Wolf Seaman, Captain Quelch and myself were the guests, while Mr Mix had gone ashore with O. K. Radonic, Harold Kramp and some of the film crew to explore the pleasures of the medina. Bolsover was the duty officer.
‘I heard El Glaoui was the original of Valentino’s Sheikh,’ said Seaman, ‘and was told that the Pasha spends more time beside the Oued Seine than he does beside the Oued Dra.’ He offered the company his least constipated smile.
‘He is a charmer.’ Madame Fromental was one of those very plain French women whose features assume a kind of frosty beauty when animated. She put pretty fingers to her hirsute chin. ‘But scarcely a Valentino. A little darker, perhaps?’ At which everyone laughed. It seemed to me that Madame Fromental had spoken with a less than impersonal warmth of the Pasha whose reputation as a lady’s man had already been mentioned.
The French officers and their wives found my Esmé delightful and enjoyed her strangely-accented French, learned from her Roumanian mother. Mrs Cornelius was also a considerable success. She made no attempt to rid herself of her Cockney lilt while her frequent shrieks of laughter and ‘oo la la’s made her a hit as usual, at least with the younger officers. Esmé’s girlishness appealed more to the older men, who made great play with their whiskers (much as a woman unconsciously fingers her hair before a man who attracts her), yet the wives were tolerant and were happy to talk to my innocent, if only to annoy their entranced husbands.
‘Elle est un bijou,’ confided one of the matrons to me just as Mrs Cornelius came by on return from the powder room.
‘She bloody well should be!’ - my friend was a little the worse for the local claret - ‘She fuckin’ corst enuff!’ Before I could admonish her she had returned to her party, but Esmé had caught something of the exchange and directed a glare down the table which, had the child really been Mrs Cornelius’s dresser, would have put the terror of Satan into my friend.
After more toasts and all kinds of assurances of their co-operation if we ever wished to film in Morocco, we returned very late to the Hope Dempsey. With our gossip of Hollywood’s famous we had more than sung for our supper and everyone was thoroughly satisfied with the evening. From that moment we were assured of impeccable consideration from the local Arabs and might have been visiting Royalty to the military and police. Of course, Captain Quelch found the whole thing hugely amusing. ‘It would be almost worth telling them, Max, that we’re a couple of wanted outlaws!’ In one of our close moments I had decided to reveal the circumstances of my sudden departure from the USA and my problems in France. The confidence had only served to deepen our sense of common experience.
‘Volvitur vota,’ he remarked the next day on the bridge as he oversaw our ship’s move to a more respectable part of the quayside. He was delighted by the irony of our situation. “The wheel turns, eh, old boy?’ The entire episode was affording him considerable pleasure.
It was all he could do, he said, not to go into the mellah and strike some deal with one of the Hebrews. ‘Could we ever have a finer cover? We’d make a certain fortune overnight! Especially with the Rif in the Spanish territories.’
‘Guns, captain?’ I reminded him that he said it was against his principles to sell a gun that might kill a white man.
‘Good God, old boy,’ he said in some astonishment. ‘You don’t regard those dagos as white men, do you?’
I was rather discomfited by this racialist display from a man I respected for both his learning and his experience. While I was bound to admit that the Pope’s greedy hand had squeezed proud Spain’s wealth from her every pore, she was still a noble land who had single-handedly cleansed herself of the curse of Jewry and of Islam. Yet I would learn there are two kinds of Spaniard, one largely untainted by the blood of Carthage, while the other, true to form, was soon to attempt what the even more polyphyletic Castro succeeded in accomplishing some years later: to create the first Latin Bolshevik state. Unfortunately there are many Castros and only a few General Riveras. In retrospect I came to understand what Captain Quelch meant. From Phoenician to Barbary pirate, Oriental Africa left much of itself behind before the brave Iberians drove it back to its own desert domains. That part of Europe is still rich with their ancient sorceries, however, their barbarous creeds.
I reminded the adventurous old sea-dog that it would not do to upset Mr Goldfish, who was still technically the owner of the ship, even though we were supposed to be independent ‘Seaman Pictures’, and that there would be plenty of perfectly legal opportunities for him once we arrived in Alexandria. ‘So long as they don’t look too closely at my passport,’ he said. It had cost him a two-guinea bribe in Belize and had been obtained to replace one still held by the Cape Town police. He promised he would take no illicit cargo on board the Hope Dempsey. However, later that day he disappeared into the mellah and returned some hours later sporting an oily stogey of anonymous origin and the air of a man completing or predicting an excellent piece of good fortune. All I could do was turn the discreet eye of a friend but I would have speculated more on this had not Mrs Cornelius appeared in my cabin asking, with some concern, if Mr Mix had said anything to me about ‘jumpin’ ship’. I admitted that he had not. ‘Why should he?’ Whereupon she became even more alarmed. ‘Eiver ‘e’s done a bunk or that scamp of a captain’s sold ‘im,’ she declared.