by Esther Freud
Chapter Three
After wandering for some time through the lanes of the indoor market, we stopped at a stall that was very much like the others. There were rows and rows of shiny, coloured dresses packed against the walls, and also soft white caftans with thick embroidery round the neck. We stood at the entrance, which was like the mouth of a cave of treasure, and watched as dress after shimmering dress was pulled and shaken and laid on the ground before us. I chose a caftan that looked as if it had been painted. It had blocks of red in it like red liquorice and purple and orange flames. Mum said it made me look a little pale. But if that was what I wanted.
I slipped it over my T-shirt and shorts and felt the slippery nylon swish around my ankles. ‘Can I keep it on?’
Mum was busy dressing in a pale purple caftan. It swept the floor and made her look tall and mysterious with her black hair loose and hanging thickly down her back.
Bea chose one in cotton. It had patterns of leaves and stalks and flowers that swirled all over it in blue and green. ‘Of course it’ll fit,’ she said holding it up to her chin.
‘Don’t you want a shiny one like me and Mum?’ I asked, hoping she’d change her mind. But Bea folded up the dress and held it under her arm, so I knew that she’d made her decision.
A cloud of drumming hung above the main square, which Akari the Estate Agent called the Djemaa El Fna. Groups of men moved tirelessly from one spectacle to the next, forming circles to watch the dancers and the tambourine players, the African who dressed as a woman with cymbals on his wrists and a full silver tea-set on his head, the acrobats, and the snake charmers whose songs seeped across the square and mingled with a wailing like a bagpipe I couldn’t trace. A waterman roamed from corner to corner clanking his brass cups and calling to the thirsty to buy a drink of his warm and rusty water. I felt cool in my new dress. It was a smart, clean version of what the beggar girls wore, the beggar children who roamed the Djemaa El Fna, chattering and chasing each other, always on the lookout for a tourist to torment. ‘Tourist, tourist. Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola,’ they chanted in reedy voices as they marched beside their victim, until, unable to endure it a moment longer, the tourist would stop, open up his purse and send the beggar children spinning off, laughing and clutching a shiny new coin. The tourists, having shaken off their entourage, headed for the terraced hotel at the far side of the square. They sat in the shade and ate melon already sliced.
A few days before, Bea and I had slipped up there while Mum was shopping. She was buying dates and oranges to tempt Maretta. We sat at an empty table and fixed our hungry, mournful gaze on a lady with white hair. We watched unblinking as she skewered lump after sliced lump of melon with a silver fork.
But she’s only eating half of it, I thought, as the thick and discarded rind piled up. By the time the woman called us over I had convinced myself that I was really starving.
‘You win,’ she said, giving us each a slice. She spoke with an American accent.
We devoured the fruit right there in front of her, letting the sweet juice run down our arms until there was nothing left but a rind so thin it turned transparent when I held it up to the sun.
‘Well, well,’ she said, as I placed the rind proudly on the table. I was hopeful of another slice.
Bea pointed out our mother who was wandering between the stalls looking as if she were lost.
‘That’s our Mum,’ I said, forgetting we were meant to be in disguise as Moroccan beggar girls, and we ran out of the hotel to be found.
We chopped vegetables – onions, potatoes, green beans, peppers and tomatoes – on the floor of the tiled kitchen. My mother lit the mijmar and began to cook. The mijmar was a large clay pot that had a fire alight inside it. The tajine was a dish that sat above it with a lid like an upside-down flowerpot, and everything that was going to be cooked had to cook in the tajine, unless it was couscous which could be steamed in a bowl above it.
‘Why don’t you go up and see if Maretta is eating with us tonight?’ Mum said to me when supper was nearly ready. I dragged my feet. We had been in the Mellah for over a week now and Maretta had hardly left her room. I opened the door a crack and looked in. She was lying face down on her mattress, one arm stretched above her head.
‘Maretta . . .’ I whispered from the doorway. My voice rasped unexpectedly.
‘Maretta . . .’ I moved towards her. I could tell that she wasn’t asleep. She was never asleep. I knelt down by her bed and went to touch her shoulder. Something moved. Something tiny. A grey speck in her hair. I flinched away. Then I saw another. A speck like a grain of dirt alive and moving over her body. Along her neck. Crawling. Crawling. My hands began to twitch as I edged away from her. I shrieked as I clattered downstairs. I ran into the garden and shook myself in a frenzy.
John, who had been rolling a cigarette against the wall, pushed past me and into the house. I heard him running up the stairs and then there was silence. I twitched occasionally and waited.
After a while Bea came out and said in a calm voice, as if she had expected it all along, ‘Maretta’s got body lice. John is going to take her to the hospital.’
So we stood in the garden and waited for him to bring her out.
John didn’t come home that night and my mother gave us both showers standing in a bucket in the kitchen. She heated up a bowl of water and poured it over us with a cup. I flinched at anything that moved. A strand of hair on my neck. Water squelching grey slugs between my toes.
‘You don’t get lice in England, do you?’ I asked as she worked her fingers through my hair.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘You can get lice anywhere. If you’re really dirty they might even follow you right round the world.’
Bea giggled. ‘Just waiting to hop on.’
‘It’s not funny.’
I started abruptly as the sleeve of Mum’s caftan brushed my leg. I jolted round in my bucket so fast I almost knocked it over. Mum wrapped me in a towel and lifted me out.
‘Where do they come from?’
She hesitated and I could feel Bea listening hard.
‘Eggs,’ she said. ‘They lay eggs. It just takes one lice. Or is it louse? One lousy lice to hop on to you, lay some eggs and then the eggs hatch into lice and then they lay more eggs, and those eggs – ’
‘Stop it, stop it!’ I screamed. I ran upstairs and pulled the covers off my bed and inspected the sheet until I was sure it was all unbroken white. I got in and curled up in the blankets.
When Bea came up I asked her, ‘Do you think Maretta is going to die?’ and she said, ‘I don’t know.’
What I really wanted to ask was: ‘Can body lice kill you?’ and: ‘Can they kill you between going to sleep one night and waking up the next morning?’
Two days later I was still twitching every time a blade of grass caught my ankle or a fly whistled past my ear. When, at lunch, the specks of ground black pepper crawling in my soup made me choke on my spoon, Mum had an idea. She packed a bag with towels and soap and shampoo and a tube of Macleans toothpaste.
‘Today,’ she said, ‘we are going to the Hammam.’
The Hammam was a building that was one enormous bath. The walls, floor and ceiling were covered in brick-shaped tiles in blue and green. We stood in a small, warm room streaked with sunlight which slanted from a window high up, almost in the roof, and took off our clothes. A wooden door at the end of the room opened and a woman, wearing just a thick bead necklace, greeted us and held the door for us to go through. A large, damp, steam-clouded room opened on to another, slightly warmer, and another, and another so hot I had to yawn to catch enough breath to breathe.
In the farthest room, which was cooler, there was a cold-water tap and a bucket. As I stood and watched, a woman with overlapping stomachs and hair down to her waist tipped a full bucket of water over the head of a very thin girl who stood with her eyes closed, dark brown and shining. My mother picked up a cake of smooth, soft soap that looked like oatmeal blended with olive-green oil. I fol
lowed her back through the hottest rooms into a milder steam, through which I could make out children sleeping stretched out on the floor, and in one corner an old woman rubbing her arms with a grey stone that looked like concrete.
We sat against a wall that dripped with water and blew long breaths. The woman with the necklace appeared, smiling broadly and gesturing with her hand, in which she held a rippled washing stone and a bar of soap. She spoke in Arabic without interrupting her smile.
‘Would you like to have a special Hammam wash by this lady?’ my mother asked us both, but I couldn’t tell from her voice whether she thought it was a good idea or not. I shook my head sideways.
‘All right, I will,’ Bea said, and I immediately regretted my decision and tried to change the movement of my head without anyone noticing so that I felt dizzy.
Bea stood in the middle of the room. The Hammam woman squatted next to her and rubbed her body with the stone until grains of black dirt stood out all over her.
‘Doesn’t it hurt?’
She shook her head.
She was splashed clean with water from the cold-water bucket. The Hammam woman lathered soap soft in her hands and, taking each part of Bea’s body, rubbed it down as if she were polishing a piece of furniture. Then she took up the bucket, which she poured slowly over Bea’s head so that the cold water flattened her hair and the soap ran off her in a frothy river. When the last drip had fallen, she opened her eyes and looked down at her body that glimmered and sparkled in the misty room.
‘Is it my turn now?’ I said, taking Bea’s place, and the lady held my arms and began rubbing them with short swift strokes of the Hammam stone. When my body was so clean it felt like silk, we all washed our teeth under the cold tap, and the Hammam lady and the three small children who had been sleeping in a corner stood and watched.
We were getting ready to go home when my mother opened her purse and took out two coins. ‘Bea, go in and give the lady this and say thank you.’
Bea disappeared through the wooden door and returned a few minutes later clutching a brand new stone. ‘It’s mine.’ She waved it triumphantly. ‘She gave it to me for a present.’
‘How do you know? Maybe it was meant for me.’
‘Shh. It can be for all of us.’ And Mum pushed the door open on to the noise and dust of the narrow street.
Chapter Four
Bea and I sat cross-legged on the floor and divided the beans into two piles. My pile looked bigger than Bea’s, but I decided not to mention it. Mum was crying over the onions.
‘Will John be back in England by now?’ I asked, and she wiped her nose on the back of her hand and said, ‘Yes. I should think so.’
‘Did he go back to find Maretta?’
‘Yes, I expect so,’ she sniffed.
‘Why did Maretta go back?’ I asked, forgetfully eating a bean.
‘Because the hospital sent her.’ I had heard this before, but I wanted to hear it again.
‘Did they send her on an aeroplane?’
‘Yes.’ She dropped handfuls of onions into the hot oil.
‘Did they send John on an aeroplane?’
‘No. They didn’t send him. He went.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he wanted to.’
‘Didn’t we want to?’
‘Didn’t we want to what?’ She stopped and caught my eye.
‘Go home,’ I said.
‘No. We do not. And please don’t eat the beans.’
She stirred the onions angrily as they sizzled in the tajine. A plate of chopped tomatoes sent the sizzle into a roar and then the stew steamed gently with slowly added aubergine and all of Bea’s beans and some of mine.
‘When we do go home . . .’ I asked, ‘will it be on an aeroplane too?’
Mum poured olive oil on to the salad and cut thick slices of white bread. ‘Let’s eat,’ she said and she carried the food out into the garden.
It was a warm and light evening and we had gone to the open café in the Djemaa El Fna to eat our supper: bowls of bissara, a soup made with split peas and cumin and a circle of olive oil floating on top. Mum had finished and was talking in French with a man from another table. Bea and I explored the café while playing our own game of tag. The key rule to the game was one invented by Bea to extricate herself in the unlikely event of her ever being caught. As I brushed the edge of her sleeve with my outstretched hand I would have to say something, a word invented by me, but if she saw me coming she could free herself by screaming ‘Hideous!’ or ‘Kinky!’ or both a second before I touched her, thereby freeing her to race away between the tables and chairs while I panted behind – running good words over in my head.
It was at the height of this game that a man stopped me as I hurtled past his table. He held on to my arm and looked at me full in the face. I gulped. I was sure I had been swearing. Bea sidled back and stood behind me.
‘Why don’t you both sit down and take some tea with me?’ the man said in perfect English. He stretched out his hand to Bea and introduced himself. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Luigi Mancini.’ He was tall and thin with pure silver hair that slicked back from his temple to the nape of his neck. ‘So you are English,’ he smiled. ‘What shall I call you? The English Children?’
We told him our names and he leant back in his chair, drawing on an ivory cigarette holder. He exhaled a gentle line of blue smoke into the air. ‘I used to know your father,’ he said. ‘In London, in the forties, when he wore silver and gold waistcoats.’ Luigi Mancini chuckled to himself. ‘Does he still wear these waistcoats in silver and gold?’
I wanted to ask whether he meant one silver one and one gold one, on different days. Or whether it was a mixture. One silver-and-gold waistcoat for Sunday best.
‘Probably,’ Bea said.
I tried to picture my father in London dressed in clothes that sparkled. All that came to mind was a colour illustration from ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’. A man in his forties with pockets full of treasure. I had forgotten that I even had a father.
‘I hope you will come and stay with me. I have a house not far from here,’ Luigi Mancini was saying. ‘With a beautiful garden. Will you visit?’
‘Oh, yes,’ we both said in unison, and Bea jumped down and ran and found Mum and led her back to the table.
‘This is Luigi Mancini. And this is our Mum,’ Bea said, and Mum sat down and smiled while a waiter came and poured us all mint tea.
‘Can we go?’ I asked, when the invitation was presented again, and to my relief she said, ‘Of course, we’ll go this weekend. If that’s all right with you?’
Luigi Mancini waved a hand heavy with rings and said he’d be delighted.
Luigi Mancini was a Prince. There was everything but his crown to prove it. I wandered with Bea through the cool dark rooms of his palace. There were gold-framed mirrors and candles, unlit in every room. I slid over polished wooden floors that creaked between one flying carpet and the next. ‘Luigi Mancini, Luigi Mancini,’ I hummed as we explored the upstairs corridor.
‘Do you think maybe Luigi Mancini will ask Mum to marry him?’ I said as we watched them from a bedroom window. They were deep in conversation as they walked in a slow curve around the rose garden. ‘Then I could be a Princess and you could be my lady-in-waiting.’
Bea stared out of the window.
‘Or if you wanted, you could be a Princess too.’
‘Just think, we’d have cornflakes every morning for the rest of our lives,’ she said, and we both sighed.
For the last two mornings we’d sat down to breakfast at a table heavy with linen and silver, in the centre of which was a giant box of cornflakes. ‘Shipped from England,’ Luigi Mancini had said. ‘Especially for my girls.’
There was a host of silent servants, all men, who kept the silver shining and the meals flowing and the beds crisp and turned down. They were not the same men who clipped the rose bushes and collected the petals that sat in bowls around the house or mowed the
lawn and mended the fences so that the peacocks didn’t stray too far.
Luigi Mancini and our mother walked back into sight along a gravel path. He was, as always, dressed in white and Mum looked like a Queen in her purple caftan.
‘Anyway, Mum wouldn’t want to marry Luigi Mancini and stay in this house for ever and ever.’
‘Why not?’ I pressed my face against the window-pane to try and lip-read their conversation.
‘She wants to have adventures,’ Bea said. ‘She told me.’
‘When?’
Bea didn’t answer.
‘Will they start very soon?’ I persisted.
‘Yes, of course.’ Bea began to wind herself up in the linen curtain that hung across the window.
‘But if she married Luigi Mancini that would be an adventure.’
‘No,’ her muffled voice came back.
‘It would be for me,’ I said, trying to unwind her. ‘It would be for her if she liked cornflakes.
‘Or white bread.
‘Or mashed potato.
‘Or milk shakes.’
‘Or spaghetti hoops,’ Bea joined in. ‘We could order crates of them and eat them off our fingers like rings.’
‘Strawberries,’ I said.
‘Liquorice allsorts.’
‘99s.’
‘They’d melt, silly. Wind yourself up in the other curtain and be hidden and we’ll see if they come and find us.’
So we stood there, whispering to each other from our separate coils of curtain while we waited in vain for the search to begin.
We walked into the garden to take a final look at the peacocks. ‘If there is ever a peacock that doesn’t get on with the others and needs a home . . .’ Bea ventured nervously, ‘or if one of the pea-hens has too many chicks, I’d look after it for you. We’ve got a garden too, you know.’
‘Thank you,’ Luigi Mancini said. ‘That’s very kind of you. I’ll most certainly remember.’
The car was waiting to take us back to the Mellah. Mum was already sitting inside and, as we approached, the driver started up the engine. Luigi Mancini whispered something to him and strode off without a word of goodbye. The car turned in the drive and Mum looked round at us with a frown.
