‘She is not a Tangeroise,’ Jose whispered across the bar.
‘Of course not.’
‘She is inglesa perhaps?’
But I shook my head. She didn’t look English. I turned back to Jose. He still had that ugly smirk on his face. ‘You are married per’aps now, senor?’ he suggested.
‘No.’
‘You are still in the business then?’
‘Smuggling?’ I laughed. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m a missionary now.’
‘A missionary? You?’ He let out a great guffaw that came to me hot with the smell of bad breath and garlic. ‘You a missionary! Si, si. I understand. An ingles joke, eh?’
I didn’t say anything. He’d never understand. How should he when I didn’t understand myself? It was just that a man changed as he got older, that excitement palled — that kind of excitement anyway. It had happened to Paul. It had happened to any number of men.
‘You are serious, senor?’ His tone had changed.
‘Yes, Jose — quite serious.’
He mumbled an apology and crossed himself, his fat face sagging. ‘It is this place, senor, God is not here in Tangier.’ And he crossed himself again.
And then the door swung open and Youssef came in.
‘You’re late, Youssef.’
He hung his head. ‘Is wet, m’soor,’ was all he said. His brown eyes stared up at me. The brown eyes and the big, hooked nose were all that was visible of him. The hood of his djellaba muffled his pock-marked features. He pushed the hood back with long, stained fingers till it showed the red of his tarbush. Little pools of water formed on the floor at his feet. ‘Very wet, m’soor,’ he said and shook his djellaba. ‘Very bad night. Boat not come here. Stop other side, in Spain, I think.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ I said. ‘The weather’s no worse than they’ll have had in the Bay of Biscay. You have a drink, Youssef, and then get back to the douane.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But is no good, m’soor. Boat not in Spain, then is finish.’
There was a sudden tinkle of glass. It came from the corner where the girl was sitting. The stem of her glass had snapped. She sat, staring down at the dribble of wine that spilled across the oilcloth covering the table. Her long fingers still gripped the broken stem. Her face was very white. Again her eyes darted in my direction, apprehensive, furtive. Then she was picking up the pieces, her hand trembling slightly, and Jose was at her side, explaining volubly that glasses were difficult to get, that they were expensive. She fumbled in her bag and brought out a hundred-peseta note, which she handed to him, at the same time ordering another drink in English that was too grammatical, as though it were a language learned long ago and now unfamiliar. She had a soft, slightly husky voice, a whisper that was as pale and thin as her face.
‘I take a cafe with you, m’soor,’ Youssef said. ‘After, I return to the douane. But is no good.’
They’ll come,’ I said.
‘Insh’ Allah.’ He shrugged his shoulders. He was a Christian, one of the few Arab Christians in Tangier, but he still used that inevitable, fatalistic phrase — If Allah wills it.
I was still watching the girl, wondering about her, and when Jose returned to the bar, I ordered two coffees and asked him what nationality he thought she was. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘She speaks your language, senor, but she is not inglesa. She is not Spanish or French and she is not an indigene.
Perhaps she is Mexican.’ He grinned. He had once had a Mexican girl to serve drinks, but his wife had thrown her out.
Youssef drank his coffee noisily, standing at the bar. He drank like a horse, sucking it up through his thick lips. Then he left. I went with him to the door and watched his flapping figure scurry down to the wharf like a rag blown on the wind. He was a clerk in the Customs office. He would know sooner than I could when the boat was sighted.
I stood there for a moment with the rain beating down on me, listening to the roar of the sea along the beach and thinking of the two men somewhere out there in the night, beating into the shelter of Tangier in a fifteen-ton ketch, fighting their way through the breaking seas towards the safety of the harbour. They had been sighted off Cape St Vincent the day I had arrived in Tangier and yesterday a freighter had reported them forty miles south-west of Cadiz. I prayed God that they would reach Tangier safely. It wasn’t only a prayer for two men in peril on the sea. I needed Dr Kavan. I knew nothing about him, had never seen him, and I didn’t understand why he had to come out to Tangier in an undermanned yacht, but I needed a doctor, a man who would give his life to the people I lived and worked among, who would give it for a pittance because it was what he wanted to do.
I went slowly back into the bar, conscious of the girl’s eyes following me as I crossed the room. The place brought back old memories and I felt a momentary impatience, wishing Kavan would come so that I could get out of the town. Jose picked the bottle up. ‘Don’t you ever feel you want to go back to Spain?’ I asked him.
‘Spain?’ He stared at me, the bottle poised in his hand. ‘I fight in the Republican Army. What the hell for I go back to Spain, uhn?’ The bottle tinkled against the rim of the glass as he poured. He pushed the drink across to me, not saying anything, his black eyes morose and withdrawn.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know.’ I sipped the drink, looking across at him, seeing more now than the fat paunch held in by a leather belt and the matted, hairy chest and the grey, unshaven face, seeing for the first time the man behind the crumbling exterior, the man who had fought for an ideal.
I was still thinking about this, thinking how blind people are, seeing only the ugliness — until suddenly you catch a glimpse of the likeness of God in a man — and then the door was thrust open and the bar was suddenly full of noise. It was Big Harry and his crew. With them were the Galliani brothers and Kostos, the Greek. I had known them all in the old days. ‘Muy buenas, Jose,’ Harry roared. ‘Set ‘em up. Drinks for everybody. The kid, too.’ He bent down, swept Jose’s little boy up and set him on the bar top. The child gurgled, putting his fat arms round the giant’s neck, while the mother smiled coyly. ‘Come on, Jose. Make it snappy. We’re wet and tired and dam’ thirsty. We just got in. An’ we got somep’n to celebrate, ain’t we, boys?’ He grinned round at his crew and there was a murmur of assent.
He was a huge rock of a man dressed in a reefer jacket with a peaked cap that looked several sizes too small for him crammed on to his cannon-ball of a head. He was an ex-Navy petty officer, one of the last of the big-time smugglers who had given Tangier the reputation it had had immediately after the war. Now it was all banking and export-import crockery and he was left to rule a roost that had become no more than a dung heap for Mediterranean small fry to root in. It was sad in a way.
He saw me and grinned and came staggering through the whole bunch of them like a tramp ploughing through a litter of bum boats. ‘Well, Phip. Good God! Long time no see, eh? What you do for a living these days?’ The big hand gripped my shoulder and the round, unshaven face was thrust close to mine. He still had a boyish look, even when liquored up — except for the eyes. ‘Watcher drinking, cocker?’
‘Same as you,’ I said. ‘Fundador.’
‘Ca va. Make it eight, Jose. An’ one fer yourself. We’re celebrating.’
‘Good run?’ I asked him.
‘Sure we had a good run. We always have good runs. Wet, that’s all. Molto bloody wet.’ He seized hold of the bottle on the counter and took a swig at it. ‘Only we ain’t the only ones to get wet tonight,’ he said, grinning and wiping his mouth. ‘There’s a poor bastard out there… Christ! You never saw such a sight. We picked him up against the beam of Malabata. All plain sail an’ going like a train. Couldn’t see the boat fer spray. Jesus! There are some crazy bastards! Single-handed and full sail!’