Other Countries

by Jo Bannister

  His powder may have been drawn by her prompt and cheerful response. But he wasn’t ready to back down. ‘Near China?’ he hazarded, stonily.

  ‘Not very far from China,’ agreed Frankie. ‘I’ll show you in the atlas after school. That is where my children live. You do have an atlas? No? Then we must ask your father if we may go shopping …’

  If she’d asked to buy them both Samurai swords, he’d probably have agreed out of sheer relief. Not until that moment had Gabriel Ash admitted to himself just how difficult getting his lost sons back had proved. Be careful what you wish for … Already – she hadn’t been in the house for five minutes – he had the sense that Frances Kelly had been one of his better decisions.

  The away-day in Devon stretched somewhat, but they were back in time for Oliver Ford to resume filming at the museum on the Saturday. Hazel watched from the sidelines. It was more interesting now that she knew some of the people involved. She was amazed how long it took to get two minutes of programming into the can – there was no longer a can involved, but some of the production team were old enough to remember when there was – and impressed by Ford’s ability to keep his narration seamless, even though it was filmed in bite-sized chunks. She warmed to Emerald, who bossed her male colleagues around shamelessly and reminded Hazel of the captain of her school hockey team. She started to appreciate how a shot could be set up so that it was more than just another image of a man pointing at a glass case. Some of the techno-speak she heard started to make sense to her.

  A man turned up with a horsebox and a pile of armour. Hazel puzzled over the shape of some of the armour, until the man decanted his horse and started fitting some of the odder bits of metal to it. It gave her a resigned look that reminded her of Patience.

  When horse and man were proof against anything short of an Exocet missile, the one struggled up on top of the other and they cantered across a convenient field while Ford spoke to camera about the crusading classes in the thirteenth century.

  Then, unexpectedly – or at least, as unexpected as a storm could be in England in October – the heavens opened. The carefully constructed shots were no longer of a gaily caparisoned horse cantering across medieval England, but of an angry, muddy man on foot pursuing a muddy horse across a muddy field after it had fallen in the mud. Emerald threw up her hands in despair and called an end to the day’s shooting.

  With the weather forecast promising more of the same for several days at least, Ford cornered Emerald and suggested that they abandon filming for a week.

  ‘But we’re already running behind! You buggering off to Devon didn’t help.’

  Ford remained unchastened. ‘You didn’t need me until today. I’ve seen the schedule, I know when I’m going to be needed and when I’m just going to be sitting round drinking coffee. And really, Emerald’ – he directed her gaze to the window: it was like peering through a waterfall – ‘you can’t blame me for this. Look, we’ve finished the inside work, and we can’t do anything outdoors in this, so you might as well give everyone a few days off. It won’t cost any more than keeping us here waiting for a break in the weather, and it’ll earn you Brownie points with the whole crew. Let’s meet back here on Thursday, say. If the weather’s better by then, we’ll quickly catch up on lost time.’

  She did some rough sums in her head, blanched at the financial implications, but had to acknowledge that the probability of doing any useful work outside in the near future was minimal.

  Satisfied, Ford linked his arm through Hazel’s and steered her back towards his trailer. ‘Four days. Where can we get to in four days that they don’t have mud?’

  He knew – of course he knew – the perfect place. No mud, but a sapphire sea breaking in lace-trimmed waves against a rocky red shore. No rain, but a blue-tiled pool surrounded by potted palms and wicker loungers. No Emerald tapping her clipboard with the end of her pen to demand attention, but a hotel staff in white tunics who knew when they were required before their guests did, and a head chef who knew exactly – exactly – how Ford liked his steak.

  Morocco was one of the many places Hazel had never been. Foreign holidays had never been on the agenda when she was a child – as a serving soldier her father had got all the travel he’d wanted at work, could never be persuaded to venture beyond Cornwall when he was on leave. After her mother died they never bothered with holidays at all. She’d ventured as far as Brittany with some university friends once, and to the Canary Islands with a group of police probationers while they awaited the results of their exams, but that was about it. Her passport had seen about as much sunshine as Dracula.

  And four days in Morocco sounded … amazing. Every fibre of her being wanted to jump at the chance. But there was this little chirping cricket on her shoulder, primly pointing out that while a few decadent days in the sun with a celebrity might be the sort of thing that lots of girls would jump at, Hazel Best had always been too sensible for that. Too aware of where such indulgences might lead. Too smart to dive headlong into a blue tiled pool without knowing exactly where the ladder was that would enable her to get out. And fully aware that another word for decadent was dirty. If someone who wasn’t Oliver Ford had offered her a dirty weekend in Brighton …

  Hazel brushed the cricket off her shoulder and began ransacking her wardrobe for some clothes that hadn’t just come back from Devon.

  FOURTEEN

  Before Frankie Kelly had been working for him for a week, Ash knew that he and his sons were in safe hands. They’d agreed a plan of campaign which would allow him to spend as much time as he wanted with the boys, to contribute as much to raising them as he was able, but still provide him with daily support and emergency back-up.

  Frankie too seemed satisfied with the arrangement. Ash wasn’t quite sure why. Much as he loved them, he doubted that his children were outstanding examples of the species, and he knew the house was shabby. He even found himself apologising for Patience, and promised to brush her more often to keep her hairs off the boys’ clothes.

  Frankie gave him the same warm, generous smile as she gave her charges. ‘My goodness, Mr Ash, don’t apologise for your fine dog! A dog is a wonderful thing for children. It keeps them active, it teaches them care and kindness, it makes them think of something beside themselves. A little hair on a school blazer is a very small price to pay.’

  Patience thumped her tail in agreement.

  Frankie laughed in delight. ‘Goodness, Mr Ash – I believe she knows exactly what we are saying!’

  Ash sidestepped that carefully. ‘I feel a little awkward being called Mr Ash. People at work used to call me Ash. My friend Hazel, and my therapist, call me Gabriel.’

  ‘Yes? But then I would feel awkward. No, I’m afraid you must get used to it, Mr Ash.’ And that, he realised immediately, was that.

  He couldn’t wait for the people from Family Support to come round again and try their disapproving stare on Frankie Kelly.

  They went to Casablanca. It wasn’t what Hazel expected: much more middle-class and respectable. Less ‘Rick’s Café’ and more ‘Lyons Corner House’.

  Ford took her shopping. Anything she admired he wanted to buy for her, so she was careful only to admire – at least aloud – the gaily coloured scarves and artisan brasswork created before their eyes in the little open-fronted shops. Some of the jewellery was fairly cheap-and-cheerful too: Ford bought her a silver bracelet and half a dozen charms. ‘We can add to them as we go along.’

  Hazel bought souvenirs for Saturday – a keffiyeh to knot about his thin throat on winter days when he considered himself too cool to wear a scarf – and Ash. That was harder. Not because he had everything: in fact he had very little in the way of personal possessions. The difficult part was knowing what might give him some pleasure. She finally bought him a finely tooled leather collar for Patience.

  She also wanted to buy Ford something. This was as difficult as buying for Ash, if for a different reason. Ash wanted little; Ford already owned everything he
wanted. She watched covertly to see what took his fancy among the goods on display; but his tastes ran mostly to luxury, and she didn’t want to give out the wrong signals. She enjoyed his company – she was very much enjoying this trip – but she didn’t see it as anything other than a pleasant interlude and she didn’t want Ford to think differently.

  In the end she bought him a shirt. She realised that he probably paid more for his shirts at home, and that hand-made hadn’t the same cachet in a country where even skilled labour was cheap, but she liked the fabric which was chambray with a little very delicate embroidery around the yoke.

  ‘If you don’t like it,’ she said, ‘you can always sleep in it.’

  Ford held it up, inspecting the workmanship. ‘I do like it,’ he assured her. ‘And I don’t need anything to sleep in.’

  But by then she knew that.

  After taking the boys to school on Monday, Frankie made an inventory of their belongings. She was serious about Ash buying them an atlas, and any number of other improving and educational toys. She was a great believer in proper building blocks – not the ones that came already assembled into a specific structure, but those that made you use your imagination. Frankie was a great believer in children using their imagination. It was their one window on the world, she said, that wouldn’t crash in a power-cut.

  Ash had tea and biscuits ready for when she was finished. She sat down with an audible sigh of gratitude. She was also a great believer in the therapeutic properties of tea and biscuits.

  ‘Do you want me to come shopping with you?’ he asked. ‘Or would you rather go alone and browse? You can take my credit card.’

  Frankie Kelly looked up at him – she had to look up at people much smaller than Ash – with exasperation. ‘Mr Ash, you shouldn’t be so trusting.’

  Ash shrugged. ‘I’m trusting you with much more than my credit card, Frankie. I’m trusting you with my children.’

  She nodded approval and took another custard cream.

  That was when the phone rang. It was Detective Inspector Dave Gorman from Meadowvale Police Station. ‘Gabriel – have you been interrogating my suspect?’

  ‘No,’ said Ash promptly. Then, because he was a deeply honest man: ‘I did talk to him. But that was days ago.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was there when he was waking up. He wanted someone to talk to.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you that questioning a terror suspect was probably a job for an expert?’

  Ash refrained from pointing out that, when it came to terrorism, he was something of an expert himself. ‘I didn’t question him. I asked if he wanted me to call the doctor. I asked if he was in pain. He wanted to know if Hazel was all right, and I told him she would be.’

  ‘And you told him he was a poor advertisement for his religion.’

  Ash was surprised the injured youth had repeated that to the policeman. ‘You want to argue the point?’

  ‘What I want to argue about is you saying that, or anything else, to a man facing charges of attempted murder! Gabriel, you know how the system works. Putting him away won’t come down to what he did – dozens of people saw what he did! – but to proving it. The first thing his brief will want to know is, were all the procedures properly followed? You giving him a lecture on religious freedom does not constitute proper procedure!’

  ‘But I’m not a policeman,’ Ash pointed out reasonably. ‘I’m a private citizen. Nothing I say to him can compromise your case.’

  Which was probably true; but Gorman was still annoyed. ‘I suppose I can always say you’re just the local lunatic who happened to wander by.’

  ‘You’ve said it before,’ murmured Ash.

  ‘But that doesn’t help me with the problem you’ve created.’

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘Now he’s refusing to talk to anyone but you! He must have recognised you as some kind of a kindred spirit. He thinks he’ll get a fairer hearing from you than he will from Counter Terrorism Command.’

  That was certainly a problem. ‘You did tell him I’m not a policeman? In fact, I told him I’m not a policeman.’

  ‘He doesn’t care. He won’t talk to CTC, he won’t even talk to me. He says he will talk to you, at least about some things. I think he wants to debate religious dogma with you. Will you come to the hospital and talk with him?’

  ‘I’ll come,’ said Ash reluctantly. ‘I’m not sure how much good it’ll do.’

  ‘Me neither,’ admitted Gorman. ‘But if he starts talking he may end up telling us more than he intends to. It’s worth a try. Shall I send a car?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ sniffed Ash. ‘I’ve got a car. I’ve got a perfectly good car.’

  ‘You’ve got a perfectly good car that’s older than some of my officers,’ said Gorman. ‘I’ll see you at the hospital in half an hour. Unless you break down on the way.’

  From Casablanca they headed inland to the red city of Marrakech. It was everything Hazel had hoped: vibrant, busy, colourful, full of strange sights and stranger smells, at once deeply exotic and entirely familiar. It was a market town full of people doing business. The fact that their businesses involved dyeing great swags of wool and drying them over the street, or tanning leather in huge vats whose stench travelled two blocks against the prevailing wind, didn’t alter the fundamental ethos of the place. Residents, farmers coming in from outlying areas and foreign visitors met and mingled on the cheerful, noisy streets, making way – eventually, under protest – to traffic comprising modern 4x4s, big old sedans that even Ash would have traded in, and the occasional donkey.

  The invitations to shop, shouted across the alleys of the impossibly convoluted souk, came in a variety of languages – French, English, and some which Hazel didn’t recognise and so were probably Berber or Arabic – but in essence were the same that market traders shouted across the town squares of middle England. ‘What’re you looking for, missus? Got it here somewhere. You know what you need to go with one of those? – one of these. Bargain of the day, this is. Not fifty quid. Not twenty quid. Not even a tenner. You got eight pounds? There you go. You know it makes sense.’

  Dazzled by the colour, drunk on the smells, Hazel wandered from one tiny emporium to the next, admiring the craftsmen busily finishing their wares in front of her, sometimes buying trinkets, sometimes getting lost, enjoying the experience with all five senses. At times she forgot about the man who had brought her here, and spent minutes haggling in schoolgirl French with a man turning little fruitwood boxes on a pole-lathe indistinguishable from the one his great-grandfather had used; only to find, when she’d succeeded in striking a deal that she was pleased with (and the wood-turner probably ecstatic about), that Ford was watching her affectionately.

  Hazel wanted to buy camel stew from one of the street kitchens in the Jemaa el-Fnaa, and eat supper at communal tables grouped around the cooking fire. Ford shuddered, muttered something about Delhi belly, and steered her to an altogether more prestigious establishment where they ate, reclining on cushions, at a low table under silvery lanterns. The stew served here was perhaps from a better class of camel, and the kitchens were probably more in line with European expectations, but Hazel regretted the lost opportunity to share in the camaraderie she had glimpsed at those communal tables in the great square.

  After they had eaten she dragged Ford back to watch the street-theatre and listen to professional storytellers working the crowd in a language she couldn’t fathom.

  Ford understood enough to give her a rough translation. The Arabic in use was not identical to that spoken in those areas of Syria and Iraq where he’d worked, but it was close enough to follow. When the storyteller finished, Hazel gave him a small banknote, and a single dirham to Ford for the translation.

  He didn’t put it in his trouser pocket with the rest of his change, but folded it in his handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket.

  On the Tuesday evening Ford phoned Emerald. The call didn’t last long, but the outcom
e was clearly to Ford’s satisfaction. ‘It’s still raining cats and dogs in the Midlands. No point going back yet.’

  ‘We can stay another couple of days?’ Hazel heard the hope in her own voice, knew Ford must have heard it too. She frowned. ‘But Oliver, what about …?’

  He knew what she was going to say, stopped her with a wave of his hand. ‘The expense? What about it? I work like a Trojan for eight months of the year so I can enjoy my ill-gotten gains for the rest of it. If you weren’t here, I might save a bit on mint tea’ – Hazel had developed a taste for the local brew – ‘but the only real difference would be that I wouldn’t be enjoying myself as much. You’re giving me much more than you’re taking.’

  In truth, she knew that a few more days in Morocco would make little dent in his financial situation. Not paying her share still went against the grain with her; but somehow, less than it had in Norbold. They say that travel broadens the mind. Hazel was still, just, narrow-minded enough to worry that she could get used to being a kept woman.

  But before she could propose a more equitable solution, Ford had taken her silence for consent. ‘Good, that’s settled then.’ And when she didn’t immediately correct him, they both knew she would not raise the matter again.

  Half an hour later Ford’s phone rang. He talked for several minutes before ending the call. He came back with an expression Hazel couldn’t read. ‘Now, that’s remarkably good timing. If the sun had been splitting the heavens over Norbold, and Emerald had had her cameras ready to roll, I wouldn’t have known what to do about that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘An old colleague has painted himself into a corner over some artefacts rescued from Palmyra. Wants me to pour oil on troubled waters at the Turkish Ministry of Culture & Tourism. I have some contacts there. I’ll take everyone for a good lunch, dole out a bit of flattery, point out that the items would have been lost if they’d been left in situ, and that one day Syria will be very glad its good neighbours in Turkey cared enough to keep its artefacts safe. In the meantime they’ll look good on display in Istanbul. It won’t take twenty-four hours. We’ll be on our way home before the rainclouds have cleared over Wittering.’