The Strange Land Read online

  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.