‘Would you like me to cope with breakfast for you?’ Julie asked hesitantly.
He glanced at her and then nodded. ‘Sure. Go ahead. There’s tinned bacon, biscuits, jam and coffee.’ He watched her disappear into the cook tent, glanced quickly at us and then turned back to the mirror again.
‘You’re mining up here, aren’t you?’ Jan asked.
‘I told you — I’ve got a concession from the Sheriffian Government.’
‘What are you mining?’
‘That’s my business.’
Jan started to ask another question, but then stopped and stood staring up the newly-made track to the entrance to the gorge. An uneasy silence developed between us. The morning was very still. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the air was clear and crisp with that freshness that occurs in desert country before the sun bakes the land to arid heat.
‘What about a wash?’ I suggested.
Jan looked at me and nodded. ‘Yes. A wash would be good.’ We got our things and scrambled down the steep bank where a few dwarf palms thrust dusty fronds above the sand. Then we were in the rock bed of the stream and the only vegetation was the feathery sprays of the tamarisk and the needle-pointed tufts of the reeds. A heron rose from the edge of the muddy-flowing stream, its wings beating slowly, cumbersomely. Occasional banks of dark sand were white-crusted and marked by the feet of birds and when I rinsed out my mouth I found the water was slightly salt.
‘He was expecting Wade,’ Jan said suddenly. And then, after a pause, he added, ‘He doesn’t believe I’m Kavan.’
‘He’ll get used to the idea,’ I said.
He bent down and washed his face. As he stood up he said, ‘I was right, you know.’
‘What about?’
‘Wade was going into partnership with him.’
‘You mean he was double-crossing Ali?’
He nodded.
‘You may be right,’ I said as I towelled my face. ‘The point is, what do we do now?’
‘First I’m going up to have a look at the gorge.’ He was standing with his towel slung round his neck, staring towards the entrance which was a black canyon of shadow.
‘Well, you’d better have breakfast first,’ I said.
‘Yes, of course.’ He nodded, laughing excitedly. Then he turned to me, his expression suddenly serious. ‘Philip. You’ve no idea what this means to me; to be actually here, at Kasbah Foum. It was like a dream come true. Back in England, as things became more difficult, I thought of nothing else. It was my dream — a sort of El Dorado.’ He laughed a little self-consciously and, in a more practical tone, added, ‘After we’ve looked at the place, perhaps you’ll come with me to see Caid Hassan?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But I think we’d better see this Capitaine Legard first. You don’t want to upset the French.’
Julie joined us then. ‘Breakfast is ready,’ she said. She washed her hands and face and then came and stood beside us. ‘It’s a queer, wild place.’ She said it a little breathlessly, as though she was uneasy about it. ‘Why do you think the others left him?’
‘How do you mean?’ I stared at her and saw that her eyes were troubled. ‘They went to get stores. You heard what White — ‘
But she shook her head. ‘I’ve been inside the big tent. All their things are gone. And there are three empty beds there. You remember those men sitting round that petrol fire on the other side of the mountain?’
‘The three Arabs with the jeep?’
‘Yes. They came from here. I’m certain of it. That was his jeep. They were frightened. They stole the jeep because they were frightened and wanted to get away.’ She stared up at the entrance to the gorge. ‘I don’t like it, Philip. He’s frightened, too. I can feel it. He’s trying to hide something, but he’s frightened.’
‘Who? White? Nonsense,’ I said. ‘You’re imagining things.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not imagining things. There’s a queer atmosphere about the place. And those people down by the souk.’ She hesitated and then said, ‘A little boy came into the tent while I was cooking. Apparently Abdul used to give him scraps to eat in the mornings. He told me he sleeps up in the ruins of that kasbah. His father keeps his flock of goats there. He daren’t bring them down into the palmerie in case they get stolen. Since the souk was destroyed they’re very short of food here.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her voice trembled slightly. ‘There’s a feeling of…” She didn’t seem able to put it into words.
‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘You’re tired and you need some food.’
She looked up at me uncertainly. Then she smiled and, with a sense of relief, I saw the smile spread from her lips to her eyes. ‘I expect you’re right. Let’s go and have breakfast. Maybe I’ll feel differently afterwards.’
We. breakfasted under the extended fly-sheet of the larger tent and from where I sat I looked through into the tent, to the three empty camp beds. I, too, began to feel Julie’s sense of uneasiness. It wasn’t only the fact that the tent looked deserted. It was White himself. He was oddly talkative. And once started, he talked quickly, eagerly, as though he had to go on talking to keep his mind off other things. He talked about himself, about North Africa — about anything that came into his head. He was from the Middle West and he had worked with Atlas Constructors for eighteen months, building the big American bomber base at Sidi Slimane near Fez. ‘Hell! That was a tough job. But I needed the dough. That eighteen months made it possible for me to come down here with my own outfit.’
‘You’d been prospecting here before, I suppose?’ Jan said.
‘Prospecting?’ White frowned. ‘No, I hadn’t been prospecting.’
‘But you knew the place? You’d been down here — ‘
‘No. I’d never been here before.’
Jan stared at him. ‘But how did you know? …’ He stopped, a puzzled expression on his face.
But White didn’t want to talk about Kasbah Foum. He slid quickly away from the subject and began talking about Morocco. He talked about it with an odd disregard for the French as though he had no idea what the country must have been like before they came. And yet he knew more about the history of the Berbers than I did, and when Julie asked him about the old city that lay in ruins on the slopes above us, he talked with authority. ‘I’d say it was six or seven hundred years old,’ he said. ‘Maybe more.’ And he went on to describe the ruins in detail, a sudden enthusiasm in his voice as though they touched him personally.
In his view the people who had built it had come in from the desert. ‘It’s a very complicated history down here in the south. And it isn’t helped by the fact that it’s been passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation. Some of the officers of the AI have done some good work on reconstructing it, but I guess nobody will ever really know. Basically, it’s quite simple though,’ he added. ‘Nomadic tribes move in from the desert, become date farmers and goatherds in the palmeries, get soft and then themselves fall victim to another wave of tough guys coming in from the desert. It’s a cycle that went on repeating itself. But the people who built this city, they were something bigger. As you see, they built in stone.’
He had been staring up at the ruins as he talked, but now I saw his gaze shift to the track running into the gorge. It had become very hot and the whole place seemed to brood in the shimmering light.
‘And what about the kasbah?’ Julie asked.
The kasbah? Oh, that’s later. Much later. It was the first kasbah built here in the valley. Legard says it was originally called Kasbah Foum-Skhira. Then, when the palmerie developed and they built a bigger kasbah and a new village, they called that Kasbah Foum-Skhira, and the deserted fort here became just Kasbah Foum. To differentiate between the two, I guess.’
Jan leaned forward and touched my arm. He had the deeds of Kasbah Foum in his hands. ‘Will you check through this and see if it says how far the properly extends?’ he asked me.