“I think if we just walk up to that big street,” Emma said, pointing. “I even see taxis. Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.” Mrs. Ellenger looked back, almost wistfully, to the cruise ship; it was, at least, familiar. “Don’t look that way,” said Emma. “Look where we’re going. Look at Africa.”
Obediently, Mrs. Ellenger looked at Africa. She saw hotels, an avenue, a row of stubby palms. As Emma had said, there were taxis, one of which, at their signals, rolled out of a rank and drew up before them. Emma urged her mother into the cab and got in after her.
“We might run into Eddy,” she said again.
Mrs. Ellenger saw no reason why, on this particular day, she should be forced to think about Eddy. She started to say so, but Emma was giving the driver directions, telling him to take them to the center of town. “But what if we did see Eddy?” Emma asked.
“Will you stop that?” Mrs. Ellenger cried. “Will you stop that about Eddy? If we see him, we see him. I guess he’s got the same rights ashore as anyone else!”
Emma found this concession faintly reassuring. It did not presage an outright refusal to be with Eddy. She searched her mind for some sympathetic reference to him — the fact, for instance, that he had two children named Wilma and George — but, glancing sidelong at her mother, decided to say nothing more. Mrs. Ellenger had admitted Eddy’s rights, a point that could be resurrected later, in case of trouble. They were driving uphill, between houses that looked, Emma thought, neither interesting nor African. It was certainly not the Africa she had imaged the day she invited Eddy — a vista of sand dunes surrounded by jungle, full of camels, lions, trailing vines. It was hard now to remember just why she had asked him, or if, indeed, she really had. It had been morning. The setting was easy to reconstruct. She had been the only person at the bar; she was drinking an elaborate mixture of syrup and fruit concocted by Eddy. Eddy was wiping glasses. He wore a white coat, from the pocket of which emerged the corner of a colored handkerchief. The handkerchief was one of a dozen given him by a kind American lady met on a former cruise; it bore his name, embroidered in a dashing hand. Emma had been sitting, admiring the handkerchief, thinking about the hapless donor (“She found me attractive, et cetera, et cetera,” Eddy had once told her, looking resigned) when suddenly Eddy said something about Tangier, the next port, and Emma had imagined the three of them together — herself, her mother, and Eddy.
“My mother wants you to go ashore with us in Africa,” she had said, already convinced this was so.
“What do you mean, ashore?” Eddy said. “Take you around, meet you for lunch?” There was nothing unusual in the invitation, as such; Eddy was a great favorite with many of his clients. “It’s funny she never mentioned it.”
“She forgot,” Emma said. “We don’t know anyone in Africa, and my mother always likes company.”
“I know that,” Eddy said softly, smiling to himself. With a little shovel, he scooped almonds into glass dishes. “What I mean is your mother actually said”—and here he imitated Mrs. Ellenger, his voice going plaintive and high—“‘I’d just adore having dear Eddy as our guest for lunch.’ She actually said that?”
“Oh, Eddy!” Emma had to laugh so hard at the very idea that she doubled up over her drink. Eddy could be so witty when he wanted to be, sending clockwork spiders down the bar, serving drinks in trick glasses that unexpectedly dripped on people’s clothes! Sometimes, watching him being funny with favorite customers, she would laugh until her stomach ached.
“I’ll tell you what,” Eddy said, having weighed the invitation. “I’ll meet you in Tangier. I can’t go ashore with you, I mean — not in the same launch; I have to go with the crew. But I’ll meet you there.”
“Where’ll you meet us?” Emma said. “Should we pick a place?”
“Oh, I’ll find you,” Eddy said. He set his plates of almonds at spaced intervals along the bar. “Around the center of town. I know where you’ll go.” He smiled again his secret, superior smile.
They had left it at that. Had Eddy really said the center of town, Emma wondered now, or had she thought that up herself? Had the whole scene, for that matter, taken place, or had she thought that up, too? No, it was real, for, their taxi having deposited them at the Plaza de Francia, Eddy at once detached himself from the crowd on the street and came toward them.
Eddy was dapper. He wore a light suit and a square-shouldered topcoat. He closed their taxi door and smiled at Emma’s mother, who was paying the driver.
“Look,” Emma said. “Look who’s here!”
Emma’s mother moved over to a shop window and became absorbed in a display of nylon stockings; presented with a fait accompli, she withdrew from the scene — turned her back, put on a pair of sunglasses, narrowed her interest to a single stocking draped on a chrome rack. Eddy seemed unaware of tension. He carried several small parcels, his purchases. Jauntily he joined Mrs. Ellenger at the window.
“This is a good place to buy nylons,” he said. “In fact, you should stock up on everything you need, because it’s tax-free. Anything you buy here, you can sell in Spain.”
“My daughter and I have everything we require,” Mrs. Ellenger said. She walked off and then quickened her step, so that he wouldn’t appear to be walking with them.
Emma smiled at Eddy and fell back very slightly, striking a balance between the two. “What did you buy?” she said softly. “Something for Wilma and George?”
“Lots of stuff,” said Eddy. “Now, this café right here,” he called after Mrs. Ellenger, “would be a good place to sit down. Right here, in the Plaza de Francia, you can see everyone important. They all come here, the high society of two continents.”
“Of two continents,” Emma said, wishing her mother would pay more attention. She stared at all the people behind the glass café fronts — the office workers drinking coffee before hurrying back to their desks, the tourists from cruise ships like their own.
Mrs. Ellenger stopped. She extended her hand to Emma and said, “My daughter and I have a lot of sightseeing to do, Eddy. I’m sure there are things you want to do, too.” She was smiling. The surface of her sunglasses, mirrored, gave back a small, distorted public square, a tiny Eddy, and Emma, anguished, in gloves and hat.
“Oh, Eddy!” Emma cried. She wanted to say something else, to explain that her mother didn’t understand, but he vanished, just like that, and moments later she picked out his neat little figure bobbing along in the crowd going downhill, away from the Plaza. “Eddy sort of expected to stay with us,” she said.
“So I noticed,” said Mrs. Ellenger. They sat down in a café—not the one Eddy had suggested, but a similar café nearby. “One Coca-Cola,” she told the waiter, “and one brandy-and-water.” She sighed with relief, as if they had been walking for hours.
Their drinks came. Emma saw, by the clock in the middle of the square, that it was half-past eleven. It was warm in the sun, as warm as May. Perhaps, after all, they had been right about the summer dresses. Forgetting Eddy, she looked around. This was Tangier, and she, Emma Ellenger, was sitting with the high society of two continents. Outside was a public square, with low buildings, a café across the street, a clock, and, walking past in striped woollen cloaks, Arabs. The Arabs were real; if the glass of the window had not been there, she could have touched them.