The Strange Land

CHAPTER ONE

The rain came in gusts out of a leaden sky. The flat-topped houses of the old Arab town climbed the hill like a cemetery of close-packed gravestones, window-less, lifeless, their whiteness accentuated by the dusk. There was still light enough for me to see the solitary palm tree above the old Sultan’s Palace thrashing its fronds. It was straight like a flagstaff and black against the fading light of the western sky. Down in the harbour a siren blared, the sound of it cut off abruptly as the wind clutched at it. The wide, open space of the Zocco Grande — the big market — was deserted and runnelled by muddy streams of water. Naked lights already glimmered in the squalid huts, revealing the cracked mud of the walls and the still, wrapped bodies of the men who sat there drinking mint tea and smoking their tiny-bowled pipes of kif. An Arab passed me, carrying his slippers in his hand. His djellaba flapped in the wind and his bare feet were wide and splayed as they scuffed through the mud.

The Air France flight from Paris went over, a dull roar of engines in the murk of low-hung cloud. The plane was over two hours late, delayed by bad weather. Even so, it had left Paris only that morning. A day’s flying and I could be in England. The rain would be soft and gentle there with the smell of things growing and the promise of spring. I hunched my shoulders into my raincoat and tried not to think of England. My home was Enfida now, close under the mountains of the High Atlas looking out across the flat, brown plain of Marrakech.

But Tangier is a restless, transient place. I had already been waiting three days; and all the time I had carefully avoided my old haunts, trying to tell myself that it was a sordid, unreal city, a sort of international Sodom and Gomorrah, and that the past was all done with. After all, it was here that I had made the big decision. It was here in Tangier that I had thought it all out and taken the plunge. It was crazy perhaps, but at least I was doing something real. And I had made some progress in the last five years; the French no longer regarded me with suspicion and the Berbers of the High Atlas accepted me without hostility. When Kavan arrived…

I half shrugged my shoulders. The sooner I got out of Tangier the better. It was an unsettling place and already the old fever, the desire for excitement, for taking a chance, had got hold of me. But Kavan would be in tonight, and tomorrow we should leave for Enfida where the white mountain peaks are seen through the grey mist of the olive trees and there are no planes roaring over to remind one of England.

The arch of the medina loomed ahead, the entrance to the Arab town and Es Siaghines, the street of the money changers. There were lights in some of the shops, but the street itself was deserted, the steep slope of the asphalt shining blackly. The money changers — operators of one of the world’s few free bourses — were gone, and the narrow street was strangely silent. A bundle of rags, propped against a shuttered jeweller’s shop, stirred and extended a brass bowl held in two filthy arm stumps.

The forgotten beggar and the deserted bourse seemed somehow symbolic of the bubble nature of Tangier, and I found myself suddenly loathing the place for what it was — crooked and greedy and shallow, a harlot city in a world at grips with the reality of a cold war.

The Zocco Chico was empty, the tables glistening forlornly in the light from the deserted cafes that surrounded it. The little market place was like an Italian piazza in the rain. I took the alley that leads past the grand mosque and went down the steps. The fronds of the palm trees lining the Avenue d’Espagne were waving wildly and the sea roared white along the sands; the noise of it mingled with the wind, so that the whole front was one continuous murmur of sound. Out in the harbour the lights of the anchored freighters shone on heaving, white-capped water. A plume of smoke rose from above the roof of the railway station and was whipped out across the mole in a long, white streamer. I pitied the poor devil I was waiting for and turned into Jose’s Bar.

After all these years the place smelt the same — a combination of coffee, garlic, sour wine and bad sanitation. Jose was standing behind the bar counter. He looked fatter, greasier, more shifty, and his black hair as grizzled now. ‘Muy buenas, senor.’ And then he stared. ‘Senor Latham!’ His face lit up with a smile, his brown teeth showing a grin that cracked the grey stubble. He wiped his hand on his apron and extended it to me across the counter. ‘It is good to see you, senor. It is a long time — five, six years; I do not remember. Time goes so quick.’

‘You’ve got a good memory, Jose,’ I said.

‘Si, si. A good memory is necessary in my business.’ He turned and reached for a bottle. ‘It is a Fundador, si?’

‘No, Jose. A coffee, that’s all.’

‘Ah, no, no, no.’ He shook his head. ‘I do not forget what you drink, and this is with me.’ He poured two glasses. ‘Salud!’

‘Salud!’ I raised my glass. It was like old times. It seemed a long, long time ago.

‘A terrible night, senor.’

‘Terrible.’ I glanced at my watch. It was nearly six. Youssef was late. But that meant nothing. Time meant nothing in an Arab world. ‘How’s business, Jose?’ I asked. The place was almost empty.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘The season, she is finish now.’ He meant the smuggling season. Not for nothing was Jose’s called the ‘Smuggler’s Bar’. It used to be the haunt of half the riff-raff of the port, probably was still.

But the Mediterranean in December is no place for small boats. The business would be confined now to the bigger boats and the short runs across to Gib and Algeciras.

I turned and glanced round the cafe. It was a dreary little place. Yet there were times I could remember when it had seemed gay and bright and cheerful — but then that had been just after the war, late at night when the boys were in after a successful run and Jose sweating like a bull to keep the glasses filled. Now the piano in the corner was closed and the only music came from the radio, the tinkle of a guitar from some Spanish station. Jose’s wife, Maria, hummed the tune tonelessly as she sat mending a shirt and watching the pots on the battered range. A child sat at her feet, cross-legged like an Arab and sucking a cork. The place had a tired, rundown air. Two sailors sat at a table engrossed in a game of cards and in the far corner, beyond the door, a girl sat alone, toying with a half-empty glass, whilst two tables away one of the currency boys, with long sideboards and a wide-brimmed hat, sat eyeing her speculatively. There was nobody else in the bar.

‘Who’s the girl?’ I asked Jose. It was unusual for a girl to sit drinking alone in a place like Jose’s.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I never see her before, senor. I think she is new in Tangier.’

‘She certainly must be,’ I said. Didn’t she know the sort of place Jose’s was? ‘You ought to have a notice up outside, Jose,’ I said. ‘ “Abandon hope all girls who enter here.” ‘

He frowned. ‘I do not understand, senor.’

‘Oh, yes you do.’

He glared at me angrily, and then he showed his decayed teeth like a bull terrier shirting a snarl to a smirk. Si, si-always you are the joker, senor.’

I turned and glanced at the girl. She had a small, pinched, rather serious face with a finely shaped nose and an attractive mouth. Her skin was pale, accentuating her dark hair, and she had a high, rather bony forehead. She sat with her head a little on one side, staring out of the window, her mouth tightly puckered. There was something of the gamine about her that was appealing, and she wore no make-up, which again was something unusual.

She was apparently aware of my interest, for she glanced at me quickly out of the corners of her eyes. Then she was looking down at her fingers, which were twined round the stem of her glass as though to shatter it. Something about that quick, surreptitious glance had given her face an odd, almost furtive look. Perhaps it was the slant of her eyes. She was frowning now and her lips were no longer puckered, but compressed into a thin, hard line.

‘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!’

I caught his elbow as he turned back to join his crew. ‘What sort of boat was she?’ I asked him.

‘Ketch or yawl — couldn’t be certain in the spotlight.’

‘About fifteen tons?’

‘Yeah, about that. Why? You know the boat?’

‘If it’s the boat I’m expecting, there should be two men on board her.’

‘Well, this bloke was single-handed.’

‘How do you know?’

‘How do I know? Because there was only one bloke in the Goddamned boat, that’s how.’

‘In the cockpit?’

‘Well, he wasn’t standing in the bows, I can tell you. She was taking it green, right back as far as the coach-roofing.’

‘The other fellow was probably below,’ I said. ‘In a storm that’d be the sensible — ‘

‘What do you know about it?’ He thrust his face close to mine. ‘In a storm you shorten sail. This crazy bastard had full main and mizzen set, Number One jib and stays’l. If you don’t believe me, ask one of the boys. They all saw it. He was a single-hander all right.’

Kostos thrust his long nose between us. He had a thin, acquisitive face and dark, restless eyes. ‘How far is he, this boat?’

‘About five miles.’

The Greek nodded. ‘Good. That will be him. And you are right. He is alone — one man.’

‘Well, that’s fine.’ Big Harry grinned. ‘Kostos agrees with me. He’s never seen the boat, but he agrees with me. That means I’m right, eh?’

Kostos smiled and tapped the side of his nose. ‘Not a sparrow falls,’ he said.

Big Harry roared with laugher and clapped him on the back. Then he turned and rolled back along the bar to join his crew. The Greek stared at me. He had grown sleeker and fatter with the years. When I had first come to Tangier he had been a pale, undernourished little runt of a man, inquisitive, restless, his grubby fingers prodding energetically into every pie. Now his hands were manicured, his clothes well cut and he had an air of flashy opulence. ‘What do you want with Wade?’ he asked me curiously.

‘Wade?’

‘Yes, Wade: the man who sails this boat into Tangier. What do you want with him?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Then why are you asking about the boat?’

‘That’s my business.’

He stared at me hard. The pupils of his eyes were the colour of sloes when the bloom has been rubbed off. An unpleasant silence stretched between us. I watched him trying to sum me up, trying to understand what I was doing back here in Tangier. ‘You have been away from here a long time, Captain Lat’am,’ he said, smiling. ‘Things have changed. I have an organisation here now, several companies.’ He paused significantly and then said, ‘You like a drink?’

‘No thank you,’ I said.

He nodded and smiled. ‘All right, Lat’am. But don’t do nothing foolish.’ He went back to his drink then and I wondered what his interest was in Gay Juliet and her skipper. I was wishing Dr Kavan had chosen a more conventional method of travelling out. I was wishing, too, that I hadn’t decided to wait for the boat at this bar.

I seated myself at one of the tables. A newspaper lay there, the black print of the headlines ringed by the base of a wine glass. Idly, I picked it up. There had been trouble at Casablanca. There was always trouble at Casa, for it grew too fast and the people of the bled were herded in packing-case slums of indescribable squalor. And then I noticed the weather report. There was a gale warning, and heavy falls of snow were reported in the High Atlas, The pass of Tizi N Tichka, which linked Marrakech with Ouarzazate, was closed. I had never known the pass blocked so early in the year and I wondered if there had been snow at Enfida. I started thinking of the Mission then, wondering if it was all right and how Julie Corrigan was making out with the kids. George would be painting, of course. He never stopped painting. But Julie …

And then I was thinking of the girl again, alone there in the far corner of the bar. The rings of spilled wine had reminded me of how she had snapped the stem of her glass. I lowered the paper. She was still there, and she was staring out of the window, just as she had been when I had first noticed her. But there was nothing to see there; only the rain drops glistening on the glass and the lights of the ships out there in the blackness of the harbour. Her face and neck were reflected in the dark surface of the glass, disembodied and blurred, like the face and neck of a girl in an old painting.

And then I realised that it wasn’t the world outside nor the reflection of her own image that she saw there, but the bar and the men ranged along it under the naked lights, the whole room. I couldn’t see her eyes, but somehow I knew that she was watching us all surreptitiously. And suddenly I knew, too, that she wasn’t here by chance — she was here because she was waiting for somebody, or something. She had the tension and watchfulness and the resignation of a woman waiting. She was massaging nervously at the fingers of her left hand. I couldn’t see whether she wore a wedding ring or not, but that was the finger she was massaging.

She turned her head then and our eyes met again. I heard Big Harry shouting to his crew, telling them to drink up and get the hell out of here and go on up to Maxie’s with him, and all the time she seemed to be measuring me, trying to make up her mind about something.

Finally she got slowly to her feet. I watched her all the time she was coming across the cafe towards me. Her clothes were poor and did not fit very well, yet she moved easily and she had a good figure. She didn’t smile as she reached my table. She just kept her eyes on mine and said, ‘Do you mind please if I ask you something?’

‘Go ahead,’ I said, wondering what was coming.

She was nervous and her eyes looked scared. It gave her face a sort of beauty, that and the way her mouth puckered at the corners. ‘You talk about a boat with the big sailor over there.’ She nodded towards Big Harry. ‘When will it come, please?’

‘The boat?’

‘Yes, the boat.’

A chair overturned with a crash as one of the crowd stumbled drunkenly. Harry was leading them out of the bar now.

‘Are you waiting for Gay Juliet, too?’

She nodded her head solemnly. ‘Yes, that is the name. When will it come, please?’

The street door was wide open now and the wind was blowing sand and dust along the floor. Surprisingly a glint of moonlight streaked the roadway outside. ‘Soon,’ I said. ‘Big Harry saw her five miles out. That was probably an hour ago, maybe more.’ The street door shut with a bang. ‘Would you like to join me whilst you’re waiting?’ I suggested. And when she didn’t answer I said, ‘Why are you interested in the boat? Do you know one of them?’

She shook her head uncertainly, as though bewildered by the question.

‘Who is it you’re waiting for?’ I asked. ‘Is it Wade or Dr Kavan?’

Her eyes widened fractionally and her mouth opened as though she had caught her breath, but she still said nothing, and I asked her whether she would like a drink.

‘It is kind of you. No.’ She turned quickly and her heels click-clacked across the wooden floor to her table by the window.

I called to Jose for another coffee. It came in a cracked cup. A violent gust of wind shook the building. It went tearing and screaming round the walls, tugging at the tin roof. The door burst open and sand blew in along the floor in little, sifting runnels, bringing with it the wild sound of the sea along the beach. The girl shivered. I caught a glimpse of a big, bright moon sailing swiftly amongst torn fragments of cloud, and then Jose had shut the door again.

‘A bad night, senor.’ Jose crossed himself and I remembered that he’d been a fisherman in his youth.

Kostos hadn’t left with Big Harry and his crowd. He was still standing at the bar, his long, thin nose dipping every now and then to the little glass of liqueur he held in his hand.

There was a conscious stillness about the half-empty bar. It was a silent watchful stillness, as though the whole place were waiting for something to happen. The girl glanced nervously at her watch and then stared resolutely out of the window. Moonlight filtered through on to her face, making it pale like a mask instead of living flesh and blood.

She was waiting for the boat, Kostos was waiting for it, too. All three of us were waiting for the boat, and I wondered what it was like out there in the wind and the waves. Tomorrow it would be hot again with that blazing North African sun heat that bleaches the houses of the kasbah whiter than bone. But right now it was gusting fifty or sixty knots and Big Harry had said the boat was being sailed single-handed. Suppose he were right? Suppose Kavan … I felt the need for prayer, but I couldn’t, for I was thinking of my plans, not of the man. I didn’t know the man. What I did know was that I’d never get another doctor for my Mission on my own terms the way I’d got Kavan. There was something odd about the man, of course. There had to be for him to come a thousand miles to a remote hill village for next to no money. But he had written — / have the need to lose myself in work that is quite remote from everything that I have been striving for over many years. That part of my life is finished. Now I wish to make use of the art of healing I learned as a young man. It is better so and all I ask is that the work shall absorb me utterly…

That section of his letter I knew by heart, for when you live a lonely life, cut off from the world among an alien people, and you plan to share that life with another man, a man you do not know, then you search urgently for any scrap that may give you some clue to the sort of person he is.

I was still wondering about him when the door opened and Youssef burst in. ‘Come quick, m’soor,’ he called, flapping urgently across to me, his hooked nose moist and blue with the wind. ‘Quick. Is finish, the boat. Is to be a tragedy.’ He caught hold of my arm. ‘Quick. I show you.’ The words spilled out of him in breathless puffs. The whole cafe was silent, listening.

I pulled him down into the chair beside me. ‘Just tell me quietly what happened.’

He caught his breath. ‘Is the wind — a terrible blow of wind. It take the roof from one of the warehouses and there is a little house down near the — ‘

‘The boat,’ I said, shaking him. ‘Tell me about the boat.’

‘Oui, m’soor. I tell you. Is finish — no good — kaput.’

‘You mean it’s sunk?’

‘Now, non. Not sink. Is finish.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Youssef — what’s happened?’

‘Is the wind, m’soor. Is coming into Tangier, the boat, and I am watching it and there is terrible blow of wind and — pouff.’ He blew out his lips and shrugged his shoulders. ‘The big sail is finish and the boat is blown away.’

‘Where? Where is it now?’

‘Below the kasbah, m’soor. Per’aps he obtain the Baie des Juifs. I do not know.’

‘What are they doing about it — the port authorities?’

‘Nothing. They can do nothing. They have telephone to the police.’ He shrugged his shoulders again. ‘Is to be a tragedy.’ He seemed to like the word. ‘You come quick now. You see. I do not lie.’

I followed him out of the cafe then. The girl was standing, wide-eyed and shaken, by the door as I opened it. ‘You’d better come, too,’ I suggested.

Outside, the wind and the sea still roared along the beach, but the sky was clear now, a blue-black sky, studded with stars and dominated by the white orb of the moon which flung a glittering pathway across wind-white waters. Youssef clutched my arm and pointed. Beyond the roof of the Customs House, against the black blur of the sea, a patch of white showed, a rag hung momentarily above the waves and then lost in spray. It emerged again and, shielding my eyes from the wind, I saw vaguely the shape of a boat with heads’ls set and drawing. And then it was gone again, like a phantom boat, as the spray smothered it.

‘Oh, God!’ the girl whispered, and when I looked at her I saw her eyes were closed and her lips were moving silently.

I told Youssef to phone for a taxi and then I took her arm. ‘Would you like a drink?’ I had half turned her back towards the bar and, as Youssef opened the door, I saw Kostos momentarily outlined against the rectangle of light. He was staring along the line of the cliffs, watching the death struggles of the boat, and his hands were clasped together, the ringers pressed against the knuckles as though by mere physical effort of thrusting at his hands he could pull the boat through.

‘Come on,’ I said to the girl. ‘A drink will do you good.’

But she remained quite still, resisting the pressure of my hand. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I do not want a drink.’

She was trembling. I could feel her body shaking. ‘Who do you know on the boat?’ I asked her. She wasn’t English. It had to be Kavan. ‘Is it Dr Kavan?’

She nodded dumbly.

‘You’re a Czech then?’ I said.

‘My mother was Irish,’ she answered as though that made some sort of difference.

I stared out across the docks to the moonlit fury of the sea. It was a wild, terrifying sight. The cliffs were black in shadow and the sea was white with driven spray and the backlash of the tide running around Cape Spartel. I was thinking about Kavan and how little I knew about him — just that he was a Czech and was thirty-eight years old and that he had been trained in his youth as a doctor. The Mission authorities in London had not been involved. This was a purely personal arrangement and the only information I had on him was what he had given me in those two letters — the first applying for the post in answer to my advertisement and the second informing me that he was sailing with a man called Wade in the fifteen-ton ketch Gay Juliet. I hadn’t dared ask questions, for his had been the only application I had received. ‘How did you know he was on the boat?’ I asked the girl.

I thought for a moment that she hadn’t heard my question and I glanced at her face. It was very pale in the moonlight and there were lines of strain at the corners of eyes and mouth. ‘He told me,’ she whispered. ‘We still have means of communicating.’ And her mouth was shut in a tight, hard line and I felt her body shake again, though she wasn’t crying.

Youssef came back to us out of the bar. ‘The taxi is coming, m’soor.’

The girl didn’t move, didn’t look at him. She was staring at the point where we’d last seen the boat. I wanted to ask her about Kavan, but it would have to wait. This wasn’t the moment. She was racked with fear and there was a sort of desperate bitterness about her face. I looked round for Kostos, but he’d gone. And then a police jeep drove past and went through the dock gates and stopped at the Customs House.

The girl stopped trembling. She was suddenly incredibly still. And when I looked at her, she wasn’t staring at the sea any more, but at the little group that had gathered about the jeep, gesticulating and pointing towards the cliffs where the boat had disappeared. Customs officers and police piled into the jeep and it turned and came racing past us again and disappeared down the Avenue d’Espagne, the red tail-light dwindling to a pinpoint. The girl found her voice then. ‘What are the police going to do? Why have they been called?’ Her voice was scared, a little breathless.

‘The boat’s in distress,’ I reminded her.

‘That is purely a job for the coastguards, not for the police.’

I shrugged my shoulders, not understanding her concern. ‘There’s a lot of smuggling goes on in Tangier,’ I told her.

‘Smuggling?’ She repeated the word slowly as though she’d never heard it before. ‘But if they — ‘ She stopped suddenly as though biting back her words. And then she said, ‘I suppose it does not matter. So long as they get him safe ashore. Nothing else matters.’ But there was an odd reservation in her voice as though there were things worse than drowning.

The taxi arrived then and we got in and I ordered the driver to take us to the Pension de la Montagne. From the terrace there we should have a clear view right across Jews’ Bay where the oued that the Europeans call Jews’ River runs out into the sea. To go up to the kasbah meant walking and would take too long, and if we drove to the Marchan on this side of the bay, we should lose ourselves in a tangle of undergrowth and villas.

The girl sat very still as we drove up through the Place de France and out along the route de la Montagne. She didn’t talk. She had her hands clasped tightly on her lap and her face, in the flash of the street lamps, was set and tense. We crossed the Pont des Juifs, and then the headlights were cutting up through a narrow road hemmed in by steep, walled banks, where the bougain villea showed as splashes of bright purple on the walls of villas. At the bend halfway up la Montagne, we turned off on to a track, and in a moment we were in bright moonlight with a clear view of the sea below.

We left the taxi then and walked through the arched gateway of the pension and out on to the terrace. The wind caught us there, driving the breath back into our throats. The view was magnificent. On the dark slopes of the Marchan opposite, the lights of the villas shone like glow-worms, and beyond, the kasbah sprawled over its hill like a bone-white cemetery. Below us, the sea was deeply ridged and flecked with white. I shaded my eyes from the moon’s glare and stared down along the line of the cliffs beyond to Marchan.

‘Do you see it?’ the girl asked.

‘No.’

It was dark below the Marchan and all I could see was the white of the waves breaking. Then Youssef was pointing and I thought I saw the triangle of a sail. But it vanished as though it were a trick of the light. The girl saw it, too, and said, ‘We must do something. Please can you do something?’ There was a desperate urgency in her plea.

‘There’s nothing we can do,’ I said. ‘We can only wait until…” And then, suddenly, I saw the boat quite clearly. It had emerged from the shadow of the Marchan and was out in the moonlight. It was edging along the coast, close in and half-smothered by the break of the waves. The wind was driving it straight into the bay. ‘They’ll beach her in the bay,’ I said. The yacht hadn’t a hope of wearing the headland below us. ‘Come on.’ I caught her arm and we ran back to the taxi.

‘Is there any hope for him?’ she asked as the taxi turned and started back down the hill.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The sea looks pretty bad down there. But if the boat comes in close…’ She was looking at me and there was a desperate pleading in her eyes, so that I felt her fear as though it were my own. ‘Why does he mean so much to you?’ I asked gently.

‘He is my husband.’ She said it so quietly, so softly, that I scarcely caught the words, only the meaning. And then in a sudden rush she added, ‘We were engaged before the war. Christmas, 1938. And then in March the Germans came and, because he was a scientist, they forced him to go to Germany. We didn’t see each other until after the war. Then he came back and we were married. We were married two years. Then the Russians came and he escaped to England. We only had those two years.’ There was no bitterness in the way she said it, only a sort of hopeless resignation.

It seemed odd her talking about him whilst the man himself was fighting for his life down there in the bay and we were careering down the hill to be there when the boat struck. ‘Why didn’t you go to him in England?’ I asked. ‘If you could get to Tangier …’ I felt the sentence unfinished, for she was staring at me, sudden fear and suspicion in her eyes.

‘Who are you? Why are you here, waiting for him?’ It was the same breathless rush of words, but difficult now, harder and more withdrawn.

‘I’m Philip Latham,’ I said. And then I began to explain about the Mission and my need of a hospital and how we had so little money that I had despaired of ever getting a doctor out from England. And before I had finished, the taxi had swung off the road on to a track that ran down through a squalid, mud-walled village and finished on the banks of the oued.

The police jeep was parked there. And beside it was a big American car, its chromium glinting in the moonlight. She gave a little gasp and clutched my arm. She was staring at the jeep. ‘Why can’t they leave him alone?’ she whispered. I stared at her, not understanding the cause of her outburst.

It was the car that puzzled me. The village was half a mile away and there was no villa near. ‘Do you know whose car this is?’ I asked Youssef.

But he shook his head. ‘There are many American cars in Tangier, m’soor. Very expensive, very nice. Per’aps I have American car one day.’ He grinned at me from beneath the hood of his djellaba. An American car was the dream of every Arab in Tangier.

We pushed past the jeep and hurried along the path that ran beside the oued. The pounding of the sea was hurled at us on the wind and soon a fine spray was drifting across our faces. Then we were out on a little bluff that was all coarse grass and sand, and there, straight ahead of us, was the yacht, its jib bellied out as it ran for the shore with the wind and sea behind it. A lone figure stood on the edge of the bluff, curiously insubstantial and ghostly in the driven spume and the moonlight. He turned as we came up. It was Kostos.

‘What are you doing here?’ I shouted to him.

His long face smiled at me. But he didn’t say anything, only turned and stared out across the surging, foaming surf to where the boat was piling in, its bows lifting to a wave and then creaming forward on the break of it.

‘Who is that man?’ the girl asked me. ‘He was there in the cafe. What does he want?’

‘His name is Kostos,’ I said. ‘I think he’s waiting for Wade.’

‘Wade?’

‘The owner of the boat.’

‘Oh, I see.’ She was staring down at the beach where a little group of officials stood at the water’s edge, watching the boat. It was in the broken water now and I wondered how the poor devils who sailed her expected to get ashore through those thundering acres of surf.

A hand gripped my elbow and I turned to find Kostos at my side. ‘Why do you come here, Lat’am?’ he shouted at me. ‘What is your interest in the boat?’

‘What’s yours?’ I demanded.

He stared at me hard and then asked about the girl.

‘She’s come here to meet Kavan,’ I told him.

‘Who?’

‘Dr Kavan,’ I shouted.

‘Kavan? But there is only Wade on the boat.’

‘No. A Dr Kavan is with him.’

‘I don’t believe it.’ He stared at me. ‘Why should he bring Kavan? He would not be such a fool.’ And then he caught hold of my arm. ‘What do you know about this, Lat’am?’

But my attention switched to the boat then as she lifted high on the curling crest of a breaker. I thought for a moment that she was going to broach-to; she swung almost broadside and then twisted back on to her pell-mell course of destruction, steadying in the surf and driving forward through the broken water, her bows half buried by the press of canvas for’ard. She was surging straight in towards us and I realised that the man at the helm had seen the channel cut by the oued and was driving her towards it. But the oued was only a trickle. The channel did not extend into the sands.

The tall mainmast quivered as she struck. She held there for a moment, her waterline showing like a red wound in the backwash, and then the next wave had piled in on top of her, jerking her forward, covering her with a seething cataract of foam like a half-submerged rock. And as the wave receded, a lone man fought his way for’ard to the bows. He wore a life jacket and for a moment he stood there, his head turned, watching the next wave climb and curl above the stern of the boat. I heard the girl give a cry that was as wild and forlorn as a sea bird’s, and then the wave was breaking and the figure of the man plunged into the surf of it and was lost.

I ran down to the sands then. The little group by the water’s edge had a rope, but they were arguing and gesticulating. They weren’t going to risk their necks in that sea. I stripped off my clothes and seized the end of the rope and tied it round my waist. I could see the swimmer’s head now. He was halfway between the yacht and the beach and he was being swept out again in the backwash of a wave. ‘Hold that,’ I shouted to one of the gendarmes, thrusting the end of the rope into his hand. And then I was wading out through the warmth of the water, letting the backwash carry me towards the dark head of the swimmer where he was being sucked into the break of the next wave.

I called to him as my legs were swept from under me, and then I was swimming. I met the on-coming breaker with my body flat, spearing through it, coming up with my ears singing with the rush of it, and then swimming hard with the rope tugging at my belly.

The yacht wasn’t far now. It shifted in the break of a wave. The waves seemed huge in the moonlight. They piled in, one after the other, growing, white-capped mountains that rose up as though from some subterranean commotion, rose up to impossible heights and then toppled and fell with the crushing weight of tons of water. Their surf piled over me, flinging me shorewards, filling mouth, ears, eyes and nose full of the burning, sand-laden salt of the water.

I prayed to God that they would keep a firm hold on the rope, knowing no swimmer could get ashore through this unaided, and then I came up gasping for breath, searching desperately for the man I’d come in after. The tug of a backwash got me, tossed me into the maw of a breaker, which toyed with me and spewed me up out of its creaming back, and there he was, lying like a log not twenty yards to my left.

I put my head down and began to swim. Another wave piled over me and then I was seaward of him, treading water, waiting to hold him in the backwash. I caught him just as the next wave engulfed us. I got my fingers into his life jacket and kicked with all my strength. And as we broke surface, I felt the rope tighten round my body, biting into my flesh as they held the two of us against the back-surge. And then they were dragging us in, my lungs fighting for breath against the constriction of the rope and the tug of the man’s waterlogged body.

After what seemed an age there came a wave that rolled us forward like logs before a wall of broken water, engulfed us and then subsided to leave my feet scrabbling desperately in a moving tide of sand.

After that there wasn’t any danger any more, only the leaden weakness of my legs as I forced them to drag myself and my burden clear of the pull of the surf. Where the sea ended and the sands showed hard and white in the moonlight I staggered and fell forward on to my hands. I was completely drained of energy, utterly exhausted. They dragged us higher up the sands to safety and then fingers unknotted the rope from around my waist and began to rub my body to restore the circulation.

Slowly the blood pumped energy back into my limbs and I pulled myself into a sitting position. I saw the bay and the white surf in the moonlight and the lank hair lying across the man’s bloodless face. He was short and thick-set and he had a round head set close into broad, powerful shoulders. One arm was bent across his chest. He looked like a little bearded Napoleon.

And then everything was blurred and I retched, emptying myself of the sea water that was in my lungs and stomach. I was sweating suddenly and very cold.

One of the Spanish Customs officers helped me to my feet. And then Youssef was there. He had slipped out of his djellaba and he thrust it down over my head, whether to cover my nakedness or to keep me warm I don’t know. The cloth was soft and it kept out the wind. I pulled it close round me, trying to control the shivering of my body. The girl was still standing up there on the bluff, her hands clasped together, her body leant forward as though she were on the point of rushing down on to the beach; but yet she did not move. She stayed up there as though her feet were somehow rooted to the spot.

The officials were all bending over the man I had pulled out of the sea, One of them had turned him over on his face and had begun to work on him, kneeling astride him and pressing rhythmically with the palms of his hands against the man’s shoulders, thrusting down with all his weight. Kostos hovered uncertainly in the background. One of the police, a sergeant, caught hold of my hand and pumped it up and down and slapped me on the back as though by shaking my hand and congratulating me and telling me I was a brave man he could absolve himself from his failure to enter the water.

And all the time I stood there, feeling dazed, staring down at the face of the stranger that was pressed against the sand. It was a round, white face under the dark stubble of the beard, the lips slightly parted, blowing frothy bubbles. Then the eyes opened and they were bloodshot and wild in the moonlight. He began to retch with a ghastly concentration, and a pool of water appeared where his mouth touched the sand and trickled away under his body. He groaned, shook himself, and crawled slowly to his feet, swaying slightly and blinking his eyes. He stared at us for a moment, rubbed at the salt in his eyes with his knuckles, and then looked back at the yacht where it lay, canted over, the waves thundering across its decks.

‘What about the other man?’ I asked him.

He didn’t seem to hear, so I caught him by the arm and repeated my question.

He looked at me then. There was blood trickling down from a cut on his head, a bright scarlet runnel of blood in the sand that covered his temple. His eyes were half closed and his mouth was a thin line as though compressed by pain. Then he looked past me at the police and the Customs officers and his eyes were wide open and I saw that he was fully conscious, his brain alive again.

The sergeant saw it, too. He stepped forward. ‘Your name please, senor?’ he asked in Spanish. The man didn’t reply and the sergeant said, ‘Are you Senor Kavan? Senor Jan Kavan, a resident of Great Britain?’

The man made some sort of sound, inarticulate as a grunt, as though somebody had punched him in the solar plexus. He was staring at the police, swaying slightly, his eyes immensely blue and wide open, dazed with shock. And then Kostos pushed his way through the little circle of officials. ‘You are Mr Wade, yes?’ He gripped the man’s arm, shaking him. ‘You do not bring anybody else with you, eh?’

The man shook his head dumbly.

‘Good. I thought not. You are very fortunate man, Mr Wade. One time I do not think you make it. But now, everything is all right, eh? I am Kostos.’

The man stared at him with the same concentration with which he had stared at the police. He was puzzled and uneasy. The sergeant cleared his throat and addressed Kostos. ‘You know this man, Senor Kostos?’

‘Si, si.’ The Greek nodded emphatically. ‘He is Mr Roland Wade — an Englishman. The yacht out there is called Gay Juliet. He has sailed it direct from England.’

‘Is this correct, senor?’ the sergeant asked.

The man I had pulled out of the sea stared wildly round the group, half-nodded and pushed his hand wearily through his hair. ‘Please, I am cold. I must get some clothes. I’m very tired.’

The sergeant was sympathetic, but he was also correct. ‘Have you anything by which to identify yourself, Senor Wade? Your passport? The certificate of registration of your boat? Entry into the International Zone of Tangier, you must understand, can only be permitted on production of the necessary passport.’ It was really rather ridiculous, the pompous little sergeant demanding a passport from the poor devil there on the sands in the roar of the wind and the sea.

The man moved his hand in a vague, automatic gesture towards his breast pocket and let it fall limp at his side. His eyes closed and he swayed. I thought he was going to pass out. So did Kostos. We both caught hold of him at the same time. ‘Can’t you settle this in the morning, sergeant?’ I said. ‘The man is in no state to go through the immigration formalities now.’

The sergeant hesitated, frowning. He stared at the stranger, whose body sagged heavily between the two of us. His eyes ceased to be impersonal, official, became sympathetic. ‘Si, si.’ He nodded energetically. ‘The formalities will be dealt with in the morning. For the moment, senor, I permit you to land.’ He made an expansive, accommodating gesture, and looked round for confirmation from the Customs officers, who nodded agreement. They crowded round him then, bowing and offering him their congratulations at his miraculous escape from death.

‘Help me get him out of here, Lat’m,’ Kostos hissed.

‘Mr Wade.’ He shook the man’s arm. ‘I have a car waiting for you. Can you walk to my car?’

The officials had broken away from us and were going down the beach to recover their rope. The man seemed to pull himself together. ‘I’m all right,’ he mumbled. He had his eyes open again and was standing more firmly.

‘What about the other man?’ I asked him again.

‘What other man?’ His voice was slurred, almost inaudible against the sound of the surf.

‘There were two of you on the boat.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘No. Only myself. I am single-handed — all the way from England.’ He spoke quickly, violently.

‘You see,’ Kostos said to me. ‘It is as I tell you in the cafe. There is only Wade on the boat.’ He tightened his hold on the man’s arm. ‘I have been expecting you.’

‘Expecting me?’ The man stared at him, his expression one of bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I tell you. I am Kostos.’

‘Leave it at that,’ I said. ‘He’s about all in.’ ‘You keep out of this, Lat’am. Mr Wade.’ But the man had turned and was staring up the beach. And then he saw the girl and stopped. She was standing about ten yards away. She had her back to the moonlight and I couldn’t see the expression on her face, but her hands were held slightly forward, her body too, as though she were entreating him to say he was her husband.

And for a moment I thought he knew her. His eyes had come suddenly alive and his mouth opened, but all he uttered was a sort of groan and then his eyes closed and his knees buckled slowly under him. The police sergeant ran forward, clicking his tongue. He bent over the man’s body lying there in the sand and then he looked up at the girl. ‘You know Senor Wade?’ he asked. She backed away slowly and shook her head. ‘No. I do not know him.’ Her body seemed suddenly slack as though all the strength had gone out of her with the realisation that the man was a stranger. She turned, slowly, reluctantly, her head bowed, and walked back alone across the bluff, back towards the taxi.

So Kostos was right. Kavan wasn’t on the boat. I went and got my clothes and pulled them on. By the time I was dressed, the little party of officials, carrying the unconscious body of the man I had rescued, was climbing the bluff. Only Kostos still remained there on the wet, gleaming stretch of the sands. He was staring after the little cavalcade. I stared at them, too, wondering about Kavan. Had he changed his mind? Had he decided at the last minute not to sail in Gay Juliet? I felt tired and dispirited. And as I walked up the beach, I wasn’t thinking about the girl. I was thinking of myself, of the people of Enfida and the mountain villages who needed a doctor, of the fact that the way to their confidence, to the success of my work, lay through medical aid.

Youssef was waiting for me at the foot of the bluff. I gave him his djellaba and we climbed through the wet sand. At the top of the bluff, I turned to look at the yacht again. A glint of metal caught my eye. Kostos was still there on the beach and he was ripping open the discarded life jacket with a knife. As I watched him, he flung the jacket down and started up the beach towards us.

I glanced at the yacht. The starboard shrouds had already parted and the mast was swaying wildly. It was only a matter of time before the whole thing broke up. It was cold there in the wind and spray and I turned and hurried after Youssef along the path beside the oued. We caught up with the others just as they reached the cars. They had halted beside the jeep, the half-conscious man held up between them. He was shivering violently and I suggested that he’d better come with me in the taxi. It would be warmer. The sergeant nodded. ‘You will take him to the hospital, senor?’

Apparently the poor devil understood Spanish, for he caught hold of my arm in a quick, urgent movement. ‘Not a hospital,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me; I just want some sleep, that’s all.’ He was scared of something. It was there in his eyes. They were imploring like the eyes of a stray dog. And I heard myself tell the sergeant that I would take him to my hotel. He asked me the name of it and I told him the Hotel Malabata. He glanced at the man and then nodded and climbed into his jeep.

I saw the look of relief in the man’s eyes and then he had closed them and his body sagged as though he had suddenly relaxed his hold on consciousness. Youssef and I had to carry him to the taxi.

I had expected the girl to be sitting there, waiting for us. But she wasn’t in the taxi and when I asked the driver whether he had seen her, he said ‘No.’ I turned and stared back along the path but there was no sign of her. I wondered whether to go and look for her, but I was cold and the man was just about all in. I decided the girl would have to look after herself and I got into the taxi. As we drove off I caught a glimpse of Kostos running towards us. He shouted something. I think it was the man’s name. And then we were bumping our way back to the village and the road to Tangier, the police jeep following behind us.