Moroccan Traffic

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘And if he isn’t? If he’s coming north on this road, where’s the meeting?’ Johnson said.

  And Oliver said, ‘I don’t bloody know, and I’m not sure if I can find out. If Kingsley keeps coming south, there’s only Taddert ahead, and the vertical bends to the col. And if it’s over the col, he may not even make it; the road may be swamped by that time. Jay, this is lethal.’

  ‘You amaze me,’ said Johnson; and cut Oliver off.

  No one spoke as we climbed. About us now were vistas of red hills of varying sizes, some with walled and fortified villages made of hill coloured vermilion clay. They plastered the inclines in long, smooth rectangles, defining ridges and perpetrating sudden verticals of tower or mosque. It came to me that some of these buildings were kasbahs – crow’s nests, robber fortresses – with Ramon Navarro in them, and black satin sheets, and my mother was being whipped straight past them.

  I saw she wasn’t watching her knitting, but her fingers zapped through her needles, and her sock continued to grow like a print-out. We drove alongside the dark netted green of a royal game forest from which, impetuously, something bolted as we approached. Morgan braked. It was a boar. I waited for Johnson to speak, but he didn’t. Soon, we came to the first of the infinite succession of loops by which the road to Ouarzazate climbs up to the snowline. The large behind of a navy Bugatti loomed ahead of us, and we began to pass beautiful cars.

  On our way to look for the Dolly, Sullivan had treated me to a monologue about vintage cars, beginning with the first he had ever rebuilt and proceeding with a list of all he and his fellow officers had ever owned or aspired to. I had received further exposure at Asni. I concluded that vintage car ralliers were like Seb and Gerry, a mixture of macho competitive handymen and dedicated collectors with their own brand of drop-dead chic humour. In between driving up mountains, they navigated with buckets over their heads to their co-drivers’ orders. On the High Atlas before us were a dozen nutters and a few million pounds’ worth of vehicles, plus Sir Robert Kingsley on his way to a quiet business meeting with someone.

  The metalled carriageway of the Tichka, engineered by the French, is less than two lanes in width, joined by a jagged fringe of potholed tarmac to a broken hard shoulder. From Marrakesh, the distance is seventy miles to the crest, of which the last twenty-mile stretch contains frequent blind and precipitous turns of 180 degrees, alternating in sequences of two or three clusters of S bends. No one had mentioned this to me when we set out.

  To begin with, the climb seemed merely difficult because of the traffic. The bends were not unduly steep, and allowed Morgan to weave his way among the vans, the lorries, the cars in varying degrees of repair and the twice-daily CTM bus service, none of which had been deterred by the weather and all of which, as they passed up and down, gave passionate attention if not very much room to the labouring vintages. Once, we had to crawl behind a sad Ford HE 14/40 two-seater on the end of a tow-rope until safely flagged past, and once we met a girl with a herd of red plushy cows which took a long time to pass, allowing Morgan to exercise his libido as well as his Arabic. Then he had to shut up his window because Oliver’s voice spoke to us again. It sounded tentative.

  ‘JJ? Oppenheim’s passed the Taroudant junction. He’s coming north on P31, your road. Time to the col, about an hour and three-quarters. If he doesn’t divert, Oppenheim will get to the top about the same time as Sir Robert. There’s nothing there. A Berber hamlet. A lot of snow. A bunch of tourist stalls selling fossils and amethyst. They’re going to meet at Taddert, or south of the col.’

  I looked at the map in Johnson’s hand. Taddert was five and a half thousand feet up, and fourteen miles short of the col on our side. And a lot of zigzags away. ‘In a tent?’ Johnson said.

  ‘I don’t see how,’ said Oliver, clearly in the grip of anxiety.

  ‘No. Neither do I. Keep trying,’ said Johnson, and lurched to one side, swearing, as Morgan avoided running over a bullock.

  That proved to be the start of a livestock problem. The carriageways of the High Atlas are put to excellent use by hill-farming and amenable Berbers in robes and shorty green wellies who drive sheep, goats, cows, mules and donkeys along the water canals at the verge and occasionally straight over the road, in the process of descending from road-bend to road-bend as on a convenient ladder. We had two fairly abrupt halts, followed by a close encounter with a long vehicle coming round a bend like a lariat. After that, Johnson took to saying, ‘The camber on the next one is wrong.’ And once, ‘There’s a passing place just ahead, but the shoulder tends to be broken.’ I remembered that the film company were based at Ouarzazate, and he must have driven there on other visits. I thought Morgan looked a bit worn, and was thankful to see that the two of them had taken to talking. They weren’t joshing, but they were talking all right.

  We passed, to its patent annoyance, a noisy Riley and then a rumbling Alvis whose camshaft drive met with the disapproval of both Morgan and Johnson. A sign, looming up on our right, said col tizi-n-tichka: ouvert, and added something about chains on our tyres. There was an argument about that, which I didn’t listen to. My mother apparently did. At the next decent passing place, she said ‘Stop!’

  It was a nice spot, if we had wanted the scenery. Below the road, a slate-blue river had made its appearance, heavily populated by Berber women washing cress or scrubbing brilliant garments, undisturbed by a horizon full of roaring machinery. Dots on the slopes rising behind them were children with bundles of fuel and fodder. On the riverbank, the leafless grey branches of walnut trees flapped with cerise and green silks; and ragged patches of clothes were spread over carpets of tulips. Kettles steamed above small brush-wood fires and when Morgan switched off the engine, you could hear women’s chatter and laughter.

  Far from mentioning chains, my mother merely wished to get down from the Rover. After the briefest bachelor hesitancy. Morgan and Johnson hoisted her out of the passenger seat. I didn’t help. I knew she had a bladder the size of a football, and whatever it was, it wasn’t what they were thinking. In the event, she merely heel-toddled straight down the hillside, carrying one of Morgan’s aluminium canteens, and climbed it again ten minutes later with a bundle under one arm and the canteen full of unhygienic mint tea. The women who pushed her uphill remained for a moment, giggling and nudging each other, and then went back, their robes full of Gauloises.

  ‘Doris?’ said Morgan. ‘You have a cassette on how to speak Berber?’

  ‘You live in London, you communicate,’ said my mother, pouring liquid into tin mugs from Morgan’s unshackled haversack . ‘Mint tea is better than whisky. Five bends up, there has been a bad avalanche: watch out for boulders. And hear this: them high buildings are kasbahs.’

  She hadn’t missed them. I looked at the bundle she had laid carefully down and wondered if she had fixed herself harem pants and a rug. Then I realised that what she had brought was Berber clothing, half-dry and authentic. Morgan said, ‘Doris: if we get out of this, I’m going to build you a kasbah.’

  ‘In Ealing?’ said my mother.

  ‘In Ealing,’ he said, handing her his empty mug and seizing the wheel. He didn’t roar into the climb because there was a line of donkeys before us, all with filled double-panniers, and a bus approaching. The driver shouted something as he passed, and Morgan waved as he crawled. A loaded donkey travels at five miles an hour. We were still behind them when we got to the avalanche, before which was a short line of traffic, including the Bugatti, a Chrysler and what Morgan said was a Darl’ Mat Peugeot with smoke or steam coming from under its silver bonnet. They had stopped because the road was full of robed men tugging at boulders and sweeping up stones which might inconvenience little hooves. Above was the scar where the boulders had fallen, and beyond it an older gash containing the remains of two handsome villas, one with a tiled roof whose front edge drooped like an envelope over nothing.

  Morgan, who had used the wait to go visiting, lifted himself back into the Land Rover with the goss
ip. ‘Happened last year, the old landslide. Seventy million dirhams’ worth of holiday house built by Saudis and battered out of the way by the mountain. They say we’ll have to watch for slides from now on; mud on the road and holes in the tarmac. The Ford’s terminally out: big end gone. The Frazer-Nash has had a chain failure but the Alvis is ok : shifted a nut from somewhere else to the camshaft drive.’

  ‘It was,’ Johnson said.

  ‘Yes, it was. The Sunbeam, you’ll be sorry to hear, is still in good nick and swallowing S bends. If I interpret that rightly, Tom and Jerry have got marching orders: they’ve no quarrel with me, they aren’t worried about Wendy or Doris, and they’re clearly not hanging about to nurse Kingsley or Oppenheim. Kingsley’s service jeep is still ahead, going well and handing out swigs of whisky and sparking plugs from a tinny like caramels. The Bentley’s changed a couple of wheels and that’s radiator hose trouble in the Peugeot. Also, someone in front went short of lock at one of the hairpins and needs to patch up their steering linkage. There’s a Berber market over the hill with spare parts. Well, bits of wire and metal and rubber. I reckon they’re going to have one or two clients. That’s my news. And that’s Oliver.’

  The radio crackled. The procession in front of us started to move, the car wheels scrabbling in mounds of red mud. The Chrysler went into the lead, and Morgan passed the Bugatti and the Peugeot and sat behind it, slithering up round the bend past which the downcoming traffic had halted. The mud thinned beyond, and the road looped up and round the next turning. Far across the valley, a waterfall hung like a strip of grey satin. Oliver’s voice said, ‘Are you all right? There’s been a fall where you’re heading.’

  ‘We knew,’ Johnson said. ‘Doris had a tip from the Berbers. Who’s in the lead?’

  ‘The Sunbeam,’ said Oliver. ‘Nearly up to the radio van and within twenty minutes of the summit. Tail-end Charlie’s the Lancia: had to change its head gasket. I’m going to move up off the road: a Harley passing six times is getting obvious.’

  Johnson whisked off his glasses. I didn’t know why, but it obviously made him feel better. He said, ‘You bloody fool: I told you—’

  ‘They haven’t seen me,’ said Oliver. ‘I’m just taking precautions.’

  ‘The man who fixes my word-processor,’ said my mother. ‘He talks exactly so. Tell him to stay off the road.’

  Johnson told him. He had some trouble, because we had arrived at all the blind bends, and our torsos were switching like metronomes. Then we fell on our backs, because on the next bend thirty large speckled goats were discovered crossing the road in the charge of an eight-year-old child and a mongrel. We recovered. We slewed round long, slow arabesque curves, and slewed back over others. Morgan said, ‘Oh, hooray, there’s the Lancia.’

  There weren’t very many places where you could pass, but the Lancia’s driver soon did, waving cheerfully as he went by. Having passed, he maintained a decorous pace. Indeed, he dropped speed. Red and elegant, he occupied the whole road before us.

  A shining Lancia is a handsome sight, and it annoyed me to hear Morgan cursing it. Then my mother said, ‘Why does he linger? His gasket is weakening?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Morgan said. ‘But if he gets any slower, we’re going to slide backwards.’ I could see the dials. I could see how the temperature was rising. And if the gradient got any steeper, I could see the Lancia relapsing back into us. She must have realised it as well. At the next bend she crawled halfway round, viewed the highway ahead, and signalled flamboyantly for us to pass her.

  Morgan was a good driver. From a standing start, he gave the Land Rover as much power as would provide grip and steering and set it at the bend outside the Lancia. He was halfway round when he met the oncoming truck full of half-ripe tomatoes. Because it was coming down, it was using part of the hard shoulder as well as the centre, spraying loose stones and small rocks as it came. We had the flexibility, the tyres and the presence of mind, but what really mattered was how wide the hard shoulder was. As the truck driver slammed on his brakes, Morgan swerved round his outer side with a snarl of his engine. For a moment we rocked on the brink, gravel flying, wheels whining and spinning. And then we were round and past, and crossing the road to hug the inner side of the next U bend while the truck blared its furious horn, and the Lancia dropped demurely behind us. I said, ‘The Americans! These were the Americans!’

  ‘They sure were,’ Morgan said. ‘And one of the John Does was Pymm.’

  ‘Pymm?’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ Johnson said. ‘That’s why they broke down by the river. They shed a passenger and took Pymm aboard. Folks, we’ve found Ellwood Pymm’s contacts.’

  ‘Great,’ said Morgan. ‘Now explain why they tried to get rid of me?’

  ‘Because they didn’t recognise you,’ said my mother. Her needles ran along, fast and soothing as sleeper wheels. ‘You they have hardly seen. But they observe me and Wendy, who have lied about our departure to London. They do not wish me and Wendy to see what they are up to. They are up to something, for sure. There is the radio van. We are not far from the summit. With Pymm behind you, I do not recommend that you stop.’

  Now and then, I felt she had a grasp of the situation. This time, however, my mother and the High Atlas stood face to face. Now the mountains about us were deep with snow and the air was cool and fresh and thin, making us breathe quickly. There were ovals of snow at the roadside, valanced like sea-shore sand with patterns of thawing, but as we got higher they spread, and the red and yellow snow-posts stood sunk in them. There was a barrier ready to drop, if the road became impassable.

  This morning, Rita had driven through snow. Now the passage of cars had half melted it, making it easier and also more difficult. We veered round sickening bends, braking abruptly for oncoming traffic and accelerating sharply when pushy drivers behind bounded forwards. We slid through slush and lurched into pot holes, but we kept going. We didn’t stop at the radio van, although we saw faces watching us pass. Near the top were the efficient fawn block-houses, labelled Gendarmerie Royale, and beyond that, the checkpoint trestles with their freezing officials bundled in anoraks, and a white-topped police car with cheerful men in red-banded caps and grey uniforms and two or three Vintages, cars and owners steaming together.

  It was a temptation to halt, but we didn’t. His hair undone, his face rather set, Morgan drove to the top of the col Tizi n’ Tichka, seven thousand four hundred feet high, and slid over the crest. My mother said, ‘Born of a corkscrew, I knew it. Open your mouth.’

  She put chocolate into it, and fed me and tried to feed Johnson, who was crouched over his crackling transmitter. When he shook his head, she turned back to Mo. She said, ‘The Lancia will stop at the checkpoint. You take your time.’ And Morgan, his face widening, smiled.

  She knew, I suppose, that our road would be worse going down. Around us, also, the mountains seemed different. The lower slopes weren’t red any more, but ochre dusted with grit, and all the hamlets, the shacks, the terraces were the same colour crusted with snow, with jade water rushing between. The road looped and coiled and wound far below us, and behind the blotched, crumpled cups of the valleys the snowy mountains rose, rank upon rank. For the second time Johnson called Oliver, and for the second time, he didn’t answer.

  The third time of asking he did, and duly shrivelled, rushed to excuse himself. ‘Christ, I’m sorry, but I’m bloody dying. I had to take off my helmet: big deal, don’t have kittens, I’m off the road. I’m up above you; I can see you. The Sunbeam and Kingsley have both passed the radio van and the summit and are on their way downhill ahead of you. Oppenheim has passed the south radio van on his way to the summit, and so has Chahid, still tailing him. The gap between Oppenheim and Sir Robert is closing, but I don’t know where the hell they’re expecting to stop.’

  ‘They may not try,’ Johnson said. ‘Pymm is in the red Lancia, travelling south with the worst of intentions. He’s had a swipe already at us, and will do the same, I assu
me, to anyone he thinks Kingsley is courting. God knows what will happen if and when he finds Oppenheim and Sir Robert are buddies.’

  ‘Is that a note of hope?’ Morgan said.

  ‘That,’ said Johnson, ‘would be an overstatement. Oliver, can you climb any higher? I’d really like to know if Kingsley has stopped or turned off.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Oliver said.

  Johnson put his hand on Morgan’s shoulder and Morgan slowed. My mother laid down her knitting. Morgan said, ‘I’ll have to keep some momentum.’ We’d seen a car have to back down already, to take a run at a bend.

  Johnson said, ‘I know. I want to keep within Oliver’s cheapo binocs as long as it’s possible.’ I wondered what he was afraid of, apart from a landslide, or a crack in the road, or a perfectly legitimate crash. I thought of a number of things he might be afraid of, because I was. Oliver’s voice came abruptly again.

  ‘It’s conclusive, I think. Kingsley hasn’t shown up at the next checkpoint after the summit. And Oppenheim passed that checkpoint and vanished. They’ve met, JJ.’

  ‘Or crashed. Or stopped for a pee, or a picnic. Or Chahid has wiped them both out. Let’s be crazy,’ Johnson said, ‘and suppose we are right. Where are they meeting? Rumour says there’s a Berber market somewhere about. What about that? Can you see one?’

  ‘No,’ said Oliver’s voice. ‘At least, maybe. There’s a dip over there, and a road of sorts with some mules walking along it.’

  ‘Wide enough for a car?’

  ‘I should think so. Dirt surface. But where could they meet in a market?’ He broke off. ‘Hey!’

  ‘Hey,’ repeated Johnson with patience. ‘What?’

  ‘The Lancia!’ Oliver said. ‘The Lancia’s coming behind you. It’s pulled out to pass!’

  ‘It can’t,’ said Morgan. My mother stopped knitting. Morgan said, ‘It can’t. We’re on a blind corner. Christ Jesus!’

  In a flash of red, the Lancia drew alongside on the left, and I prepared for the squeal of metal, the bump that would slam us into the core of the hill. But the cars roared side by side without touching, and then the other car pulled past at top speed, still on the wrong side, full into the bend. Morgan was pumping the brake, slackening speed as much as he dared; trying to keep steering power for anything. His knuckles were white on the wheel.