An Echo of Scandal

by Laura Madeleine

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The old man who sent me the letters. A. Arthur Langham!’

  The woman stopped. Her expression changed, anger and confusion giving way to fear. ‘No,’ she said, shoving him forwards. ‘No, you must go now.’

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ He was babbling. ‘It was you who I chased earlier, you collected the letters. Why won’t you talk to me?’

  ‘Please, please, just go, before—’

  ‘What is going on?’

  The young woman froze. Sam felt her fingers tighten on his forearm. Together, they turned.

  Someone was standing in the doorway. Through the floating dust, he saw grey streaked hair, a cream linen suit, a cigarette held in one sinewy hand. Deep brown eyes met his.

  ‘Samuel Hackett.’ A husky voice filled the kitchen. ‘You have your wish. It seems I shall have to introduce myself after all.’

  Part Three

  Third Degree

  Take a jigger of Plymouth gin and a pony of French vermouth. Into this add four dashes of absinthe. Shake and strain into an old-fashioned whisky glass. Of a challenging and potent nature.

  I would love to say that once I found Langham, my life ran smoothly on its tracks. I would love to say that after I arrived at Dar Portuna, all my hillsides were oregano, all my dishes were flowers and whipped cream.

  But that’s not how it was.

  I remember so well the smell of the kitchen that night: boiling milk and old lard, half-rancid fish offcuts and discarded onion skin. I remember too the mess that the hired chef – who had scarpered as soon as dinner was served – had left behind for some poor servant to clear. Bad workmanship. I observed as much to Langham’s man, Bouzid, who had showed me to the kitchen.

  He only grunted. ‘You have what you need?’

  In that moment, the audacity of what I was doing struck me, hard. It was almost eleven and Langham had ordered food for midnight; I had a single hour and an unfamiliar kitchen with which to secure my future. I was not cooking for half-drunk townsmen at the inn, unfussy and distracted by the girls. I was cooking for Langham, for a saint and his exalted guests. I was cooking for my life. Every trick Ifrahim had taught me to please the teeth and charm the tongue, I would need now.

  ‘Yes,’ I told Bouzid. My hands hesitated on the lapels of my jacket. I didn’t want to take it off; it was my protection, a shield between my bound chest and the world. I’d already caught his sharp, sober eyes watching me. ‘Is there an apron?’ I asked gruffly.

  The garment he returned with was a huge, canvas thing, stiff from laundering. With my back to him, I shucked off the jacket, and ducked beneath the apron’s cover. As soon as it was tied around my waist, I began to feel better. I bared my wrists to wash my hands at the sink, and became aware of the familiar tingle in my fingertips, the itch to spice and shape the world.

  ‘You can leave me now,’ I said, over my shoulder.

  My kitchen self and Alejandro had not yet met each other. If I was to introduce them, if I was to stir them together until they were blended, inseparably, I needed to do it alone. Bouzid watched me a moment longer, his dark eyes sceptical. Then he turned and disappeared into the garden.

  Thankfully, the stove wasn’t a fancy gas contraption, but a huge old blackened thing with a glow of embers deep in its belly. I rattled them up hot, fed it more wood, and went to search out the raw ingredients of my future.

  I was right about Monsieur Hubert, the cook. It takes a thief to know a thief, and the hired chef was a lazy one. Almost everything I found was cut-rate or half-bad. The milk skimmed and skimmed again, the cooking wine no better than vinegar. How had it not been noticed? Perhaps Langham and Lady Bailey did not often eat at home. A smile found the edge of my lips. I could change that.

  Almonds, my hands moved across the shelves. Garlic. Olive oil. Ifrahim’s voice was with me. Herbs from the garden. Lemons. Bones. If in doubt, serve the best things whole and let them speak. Let them be barefaced.

  I tumbled what I had found on to the table and freed the kitchen knife from my jacket. It had come with me all this way, it had blistered my childish hand and tasted men’s blood to aid my escape. Now, it would help me win my freedom.

  Outside the back door, the gardens were warm, fanned by a breeze that smelled of brine and sea fog. The noise of the party reached me as I knelt among the dark plants. The scent of herbs rose up; must from oregano, the tough greenness of parsley, bright, clean rosemary. Rocío del mar, Ifrahim had always called rosemary; the dew of the sea. That was what I needed.

  It was not until I returned to the kitchen that I realized how tired I was. Luckily, my hands remembered the work. The guests outside were drunk, for the most part, so they’d want strong tastes, guilty, heady morsels. And salt. It was the easiest charm to work upon a tongue, especially ones drenched in liquor.

  I found potatoes and onions in the pantry, a shrivelled chilli pepper, the end of a chorizo sausage that I guessed the chef had been gnawing on. It would do for a patatas a lo pobre. The onions hissed like laughter; I’d serve poor man’s potatoes to those rich beasts and they would wolf them down like caviar. Soon the onions were joined by spicy sausage, turning the oil crimson.

  What else? Anchovies, freed from their coffin and plunged into a pool of olive oil and lemon and garlic. More garlic for an aioli, another trick, a way to dazzle the mouth. No matter that it would linger long after it was welcome; what mattered was approval, here and now.

  Watch what comes out of their mouths, as well as what goes in, and you will know them for what they are.

  Leaning out of the back door, I listened to the party. It was raucous still, but the voices were growing languid. Somewhere near by, foliage rustled and two people hushed each other’s laughter. I smiled. Sweetness was what I needed to add, and decadence. There was a lump of hard cheese on one of the shelves, which I sliced finely to disguise its age. Next came a pot of honey, which I drizzled all over, followed by a scattering of rosemary flowers. It wasn’t subtle; it was blatant and heady. That honey would linger tantalizingly on fingers, shine on lips, and the guests would praise me silently for helping them in their seductions.

  I hadn’t noticed the time racing by. Suddenly, Bouzid was back, looking dubiously at the dishes on the table. I didn’t blame him. It wasn’t food to be eaten with silver cutlery and linen, but with hands. It was a gamble on my part, a guess that Langham’s guests hadn’t come to this hot, dazzling city for luxury alone. They were here because they were hungry, famished for what they couldn’t get in their own countries. They wanted to crush the world to their mouths and sink their teeth into its flesh, they wanted to suck at the juice and fling the rinds away and never think about the cost. I can see you, I wanted my dishes to say; I can give you what you want.

  Bouzid and I carried the platters between us, two on each arm, like I used to at the inn. The guests were waiting on the veranda, a pack of bright, wild things, their beautiful clothes splashed and crumpled and pushed askew. I saw Lady Bailey amongst the cushions, leaning forwards over a pipe, her pale hair sliding across her cheek. And in the middle of them all was Langham, the head of that lost troupe, his face smooth, his mouth full of secrets.

  We locked eyes. ‘Supper is served,’ I said.

  ‘Very well, del Potro,’ he smiled. ‘We’ll taste your petition. With what do you make your case?’

  ‘With patatas a lo pobre,’ I told him quietly. ‘And aioli. Sardinas en salsa de limón. Queso con miel y romero.’

  ‘Peasant food,’ he murmured. ‘You’ve given yourself away, boy.’

  ‘Bon appétit,’ I said. It was a challenge.

  I stood in the shadows, watching as Langham’s guests fell upon the food, as they laughed at the novelty of scooping aioli straight from the bowl, picking up salt-scattered potatoes with their fingers, their lips flushed and tingling with chilli. I watched as the woman from the pool fed a slice of honey-slicked cheese to a man, following it up with her lips. I wat
ched as another man, his waistcoat hanging open, dropped a whole sardine into his mouth, imitating a gull. It was grotesque, it was glorious, and I was torn. Half of me wanted to fling myself into that revelry, drink until I was like them, until I could no longer taste the bitterness of the world. The other half of me held back, an outsider, thrilled by the power of what I had done, how I could affect people’s behaviour, with nothing more than kitchen scraps.

  I looked for Langham. I tried to see him eating, tried to guess at his face, but every time I thought he was about to bend towards a dish I lost sight of him. Eventually, the platters were emptied down to scrapings and skin, and people began to drift off, towards pools of light or quiet shadows. Only then did I come forwards to clear the plates, relieved and frustrated. For all his words, I had never once seen Langham eat my food.

  On the cushions, Lady Bailey lay insensible with her head in the lap of another man. The long, slim pipe hung loose in her hand. If she and Langham truly were together, then where was he at such a moment?

  ‘Leave that,’ a low voice told me. I turned and found Bouzid. ‘Monsieur wants to see you. In the study.’ He pointed to the farthest end of the veranda, where I could just see a pair of glass doors, open to the darkness.

  My body gave a thud of anticipation. ‘All right,’ I muttered. Bouzid was holding out his hand for the apron. It obviously wouldn’t do to wear it in there. Gritting my teeth, I took it off, hunching my chest. I wanted to go back to the kitchen and fetch my jacket, but Bouzid blocked my way.

  ‘You should not keep him waiting.’

  I had no choice but to walk into the shadows, trying surreptitiously to check that the bindings were still tight around my chest, praying they hadn’t slipped in all of my activity. Too soon, I came to the glass doors. I was sick with nerves, all my arrogance, my kitchen magic seeping away. Had I fooled Langham? Would he actually consider hiring me? The others had eaten my food; I had bewitched them, in whatever small measure, but him …

  ‘Del Potro?’ His voice drifted from the darkness. ‘Come in.’

  I stepped through the doors. Beyond was a large room, lit by a single oil lamp that rested on a desk. Its flickering light caught varnished wood, papers, the corner of a leather writing case, where two initials glinted gold. A flare of orange in the darkness made me look up. Langham was leaning there, barely visible save for the end of his cigarette.

  Abruptly, I became aware of the cooking smells that clung about me; hot oil and onions, garlic and lemon sharp on my fingers.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’

  Another flare of the cigarette. ‘I did.’ He moved forward to sit on the corner of the desk before me. He was so close that his own scent began to mingle with mine. I breathed waxy pomade and sweat-damp silk, tobacco and roses, the blunt sting of liquor. His voice was as quiet as the smoke. ‘I want to know what you’re doing here.’

  The scant light caught the side of his neck, his cheekbone, the very edge of his mouth. I sensed that we were playing some game and that I had to tread carefully, because I didn’t know the rules.

  ‘I came here to find you,’ I said, gambling that the truth would be more potent than a lie.

  ‘Why?’ The smoke from his cigarette was filling the space between us. ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because …’ The truth ran out. It was something that didn’t exist in words, yet, only in the stab of my heartbeat, the singing of my blood, the yearning in my constricted chest. Because you have everything I want.

  He didn’t ask me to continue. Instead, our breathing filled the silence until he moved abruptly, reaching along the desk.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.

  It was my passport. Bouzid must have gone through the pockets of my jacket. I tried to see Langham’s face, but it was lost in shadow and his voice gave away nothing.

  ‘From the consulate.’ I tried to keep my voice steady.

  ‘The consulate here in Tangiers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you’ve been here before?’

  ‘No. I lost my papers. A friend helped me to replace them.’

  ‘A friend,’ Langham said softly. He opened the passport, to where my face stared up sullenly. ‘Del Potro,’ he read, and half laughed, ‘what a name.’

  ‘It’s the only name I have,’ I told him.

  He looked at me, and I could tell he knew everything; that the name was false, that I was here because I was desperate, because I was running from something. Almost everything, I thought, as the bindings squeezed my chest.

  After what felt like an age, he nodded. ‘Very well, del Potro. I will consider your request, if you can assure me of two things. First, that you will not bring trouble to my house.’

  I shook my head rapidly.

  ‘I will not, monsieur.’

  ‘Second –’ Langham paused ‘– that you will give me one thing, without question or condition.’

  I swallowed, feeling a pulse beat in my throat. ‘Which is?’

  He closed the passport and held it towards me.

  ‘Your loyalty.’

  Tangier

  July 1978

  ‘A drink?’

  Sam looked up, trying to bring his thoughts back into some kind of order. He’d been staring, trying to take everything in: the expensive rug on the floor, the varnished desk, the bookshelves lined with ledgers, the small, curved bar built into one corner of the room, and the person who stood behind it …

  ‘Yes.’ The word stuck in his throat, and he coughed. ‘Yes, thanks.’

  He watched as the man confidently took up spirit bottles and a measure, scooped ice from a bucket and shook droplets of who knew what into a measuring glass. Only when the clinking of the stirrer stopped could Sam bring himself to speak.

  ‘Who are you?’

  It wasn’t the sort of question he should have asked, but he couldn’t help it; his thoughts were a mess of what he’d imagined and what he’d written, what he’d heard from Lillian Simcox and what he’d read in the strange exchange of notes.

  There was a grunt of laughter from the bar.

  ‘Who do you think I am?’

  He’s playing with me. Sam gripped the case. ‘You’re A. L. Arthur Langham. You’re the person who owned this case, and the suitcase I found. You’re the one who wrote—’ He stopped. He hadn’t yet said anything about the discovery of that short, desperate, pencil-written plea. The old man at the bar was watching him closely.

  ‘Wrote?’

  ‘The notes to me, at the Gran Café de Paris. And stole my letter?’

  The man smiled a little, pouring the drinks. ‘Yes. I am sorry. I was rather surprised, you see. I had not seen that –’ he pointed to the writing case ‘– for fifty years. I could not believe my eyes.’ He stepped out from behind the bar. ‘I had to know who you were, why you had it.’

  ‘You could’ve just asked me.’ The man didn’t reply. Sam felt as though he’d said something stupid. ‘You could’ve agreed to meet me at the café,’ he ploughed on. ‘Then I wouldn’t have tried to find this place.’

  The man crossed the room slowly, as if one hip was paining him. ‘Mr Hackett, I have my reasons for acting as I have. Just as you, no doubt, have yours.’ He held out a glass. In the twilight it glowed ochre-gold, beaded with ice.

  Sam took the glass. ‘Thanks,’ he said, groping after some kind of normality in the charged room. ‘I’m sure all of this can be explained easily enough—’

  ‘Why on earth would you think that?’ The man raised his eyebrows. ‘It cannot be easily explained and you would not have come here if you wanted it to be. You’re a writer, Mr Hackett, I know that much. You don’t want something easy and plain. You want something tricky and tangled.’ He smiled. ‘You want a story.’

  ‘That’s not,’ Sam stammered, ‘I mean, I don’t want to pry—’

  ‘But you do. You want to pull up the surface of the world and see what’s underneath.’ The man took a sip of his drink. ‘You’ve come to the right pl
ace to do it. Tangiers is nothing but layers. Pull off the paper and you’ll find a dozen stories. Scratch the plaster and you’ll end up with a saga beneath your fingernails.’ The man lowered himself into a chair. ‘This city is built on stories. And right now, there is a new one being written. By you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sam murmured, as if at confession.

  ‘And to write your story, you have to hear mine? Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said again.

  ‘Then you must promise to listen carefully, and to hear it whole, beginning to end, for I’ll only tell it the once.’

  Sam looked up in surprise. ‘I will, I mean, of course.’

  The man gestured at the glass. ‘Drink to it.’

  He drank. Brandy stung his tongue, followed by sharp herbs and bitter citrus. It was strong. When he swallowed, the liquor seemed to fill him from gullet to gut.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked, into the quiet. Beyond the door he could hear faint evening birdsong, the clatter of kitchen pans.

  The stranger smiled. ‘The beginning.’

  Twin Six

  Take a dash of imported grenadine and four dashes of fresh orange juice. Add the white of one egg, half a pony of Italian vermouth and a jigger of dry English gin. Shake well together and strain. Smooth, and very deceptive.

  I awoke abruptly, with sweat-drenched limbs and a thundering heart. For a minute, I didn’t know where I was.

  Light was filtering in through a carved window screen, illuminating a small room, pristine white sheets that were tangled about my legs. Then I remembered: the party. The food and the encounter with Langham. Afterwards, Bouzid had shown me here, and I’d been too tired to do anything except lock the door, struggle out of my suit, and fall face first on to the bed.

  Sitting up, I looked about the room. There was a bureau, a silver lamp, a patterned woollen rug. I stared at it all, thrilled and terrified in equal measure. I had never had my own room before. Slowly, the sense of wonder faded. This would not come free. Nothing did. Langham wanted something in return.