Strip the Willow (20 page)

She enjoyed Djemma el Fna. But she liked to stay in the riad most of the day. She looked at picture books in the library, she sat across from the fountain, she secluded herself on her loggia, and found herself alone on the roof. There were no tall buildings overlooking, none in all the city, and that seemed to keep the city whole. The swooping swallows stitched it together, with playful vibrant cries, and loop upon loop of invisible thread.

She too, whole, as far as she could be, momentarily whole. It was a great deal to be grateful for, momentary wholeness, after what had happened with Peem, with Alison, even her job. It was not all, but that, of course, was what went wrong in the beginning for her. Wanting it all, yet not being able to give time to, or properly enjoy, the tiniest portion.

Wholeness; all. She turned the two concepts loose to comment on each other, and grazed in the safety of the Marrakech riad, across its patient tiles, from one seclusion to another, a cup of sweet mint tea in hand, under the orange trees.

Then she went back up on the roof, and looked at the High Atlas Mountains, rising frankly, close and beckoning, their browns turning to rose in the late April sun.

They got into a neat routine, Peem and Charlie, and it seemed to suit them fine. They were staying in Charlie’s pal’s spacious flat, in Lagos, just above a homely piri-piri restaurant, The Firefly. They had no fireflies to light their way, but every day the sun lured them to a different dampish habitat, where the marsh birds sensed the
calmness in them, and didn’t hurry to hide.

And every night in the smoky restaurant, with endless football dinning on TV, they chose the piri-piri chicken, the salty bacalau, or beer and swordfish.

They had the use of an old blue Mercedes, right-hand drive; people were always donating well-made cars to holiday destinations, where they might be pensioned off and subside. Charlie drove. Every time he pulled out to overtake, Peem was exposed to oncoming drivers who seemed to have reconciled themselves to this being their last moment on earth.

– And I’ll tell you another thing, said Charlie, as he noted the whiteness of his companion’s knuckles. Never accept a lift or a taxi anywhere unless you have checked one thing.

– What’s that? said Peem.

– Whether the driver believes in an afterlife, simple as that. If he’s hedging his bets on this life, and is only half-committed, let him drive on.

– Seems like a valuable screening principle. I wonder if it could be applied further.

– Sure, said Charlie. I would include Prime Ministers and
Presidents
. As soon as they show the slightest hankering to believe in an afterlife, shoot them.

– They could hardly complain. They might even thank you, in a roundabout way, for speeding them to a better place. I take it you would apply this to all fundamentalists?

– What does it mean, this
fundamentalists
? I never heard cheep about them in my young day.

– Fundamentally wrong, I suppose, said Peem. Fundamentally missing the point. I met one or two when I was on my wanders. I can’t remember what any of them said, except there was a bad time coming, so better have faith, in as large a dollop as your system could stand. For me and plenty others, the bad time is already with you, or has already been. Say for example your skull’s been crushed but you’re still dottering along, I mean.

– Yes, said Charlie. Look out for a sign that says
Alvor
, that should be us.

They saw storks, squatting high on nesting posts and making a racket. They saw tall herons, ash-grey herons, miserably
conspiratorial
, twenty-four of them, standing amongst the reeds. Herons had this marvellous weapon, the long beak. The lightning beak, according to Charlie. But Peem never saw them use it.

They saw three spoonbills swishing their beaks through saltpan shallows. They witnessed the dirty pink grotesqueries of
flamingoes
. It was no wonder that Alice had so much trouble with one, when she sought to use it as a croquet hammer. The flamingo always tried to twist its head to look at her, when all Alice wanted it to do was propel her hedgehog.

And they saw coots, avocets, godwits and gallinules, satisfied or peckish, brilliant in the sun.

Peem’s favourite by far was the black-winged stilt.
Stilt
was the clue. It could stand in two feet of water up to only its knees and fool you. It could pace with monstrous heel-lifting deliberation through cloyings of mud.

Yet as it wafted into the air, looking for another café, it was elegance itself, long parallel legs making a slender wake. The stilt was a stilt. It reminded him of no-one. And there was joy in that too.

Ingmar had indicated or promised a tour, and he didn’t disappoint, though he did not accompany Lucy on her trip over the Atlas, but only found for her
an excellent Berber
. Lucy wondered if there was something patronising about that, or at least patrician. Battened upon daily in her occupation by so much hype and jargon, she jibbed at Ingmar’s description. Perhaps she recoiled from the term as though it might be racist.

But he was a Berber, and if he hadn’t been, and if he hadn’t been excellent, you couldn’t have trusted him in these real mountains, up through the twisting steeps, then aslant through the imperfectly
ploughed snowdrifts at the swirling top.

Equal opportunities could go so far, but a sense of properness sometimes further. Did you really want a pustular booking clerk from Putney piloting your Landcruiser at 7,000 feet? Did you want an alien Leopard coming in and making his high hide, to slavver over your native city?

She might ask something else. Was it proper for folk to knuckle under, or even, like her, run off to the sun—?

But, when you are in the Atlas, the Atlas have to come first.

The debut of GrottoLotto was set for May Day. She would ask Ingmar in good time where she could go online and rebook her flight back.

The mountain villages were startling, flat, mud-walled, with Sky dishes. There were goat-paths leading down from the road, and up the other side of the river towards them. She wondered if the goatherds and their families would stay in and watch GrottoLotto, and whether they would be able to buy tickets for it, so high up. Did they have broadband and credit cards? She wanted to ask Karim, but it went way beyond her phrase books in Berber and Arabic.

Halting French might do the trick.

– Karim, s’il vous plait. Est-ce que les gens ici ont le broadband, ou le dial-up seulement?

– S’ils ont beaucoups des chèvres, ils ont aussi le broadband.

– Merci. Et, est-ce que les gens ici aiment beaucoup La Loterie?

– La vie, c’est leur loterie. S’ils gagnent trop d’argent, ils doivent demeurer en ville. Les Berbers et la ville sont les bons cousins, mais non les bons voisins.

– But you live in the city, vous demeurez en ville?

– Mais chaque jour je prends l’auto sur les montagnes. Mon âme s’est nourrie et satisfiée par les voyages que je fais, jour par jour.

Lucy cupped two open palms below her heart and then moved them up beyond her cheekbones, and out – beyond.

– Your soul, you mean? Your soul is satisfied?

– Je le crois, said Karim, without taking his eyes from the road.

Once they had dropped on the other side, and into the bony fringes of the Sahara, and across the great, braided, alluvial watercourses with the patches and plots of green vegetables perched on their banks, they came to the vast film studios in Ouarzazate, that Ingmar had half-jokingly mentioned as a possible target for their one-day jaunt.

They turned down left and approached the massive junk lot of clapboard and recycled sets for Egyptian, Arabian, Palestinian and Tibetan films.
Lawrence of Arabia, The Man Who Would Be King, Cleopatra, Kundun, Alexander
and
Kingdom of Heaven
had all been shot there, at least in part. Just about everything of the sandy genre, apart from
The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan
and
Bhaji on the Beach
. Karim stayed outside to save on fees, to contemplate and – most centrally probably – to avoid boredom.

At the moment there was nothing going on, apart from some desultory tours. There was a plethora of polystyrene pillars, fierce paper Anubises, and artificial palms.

The film-lot guides were young and full of fun and, it being early season, there was one guide between only four of them, plus a
tag-along
apprentice learning the spiel, the numbing statistics, the film jokes.

– Ah, so you are Alexander the Great! the main young guide said in triumph to one of the other three tourists.

– I am called Zander, said the white-haired gentleman. I wish it to be known that I do not use any
Alex
prefixed to my name.

– Zander the Abbreviated, said the witty lad.

– If you wish, said the man. One cannot achieve greatness merely by length of name.

– How did you achieve it then? said the wit.

– I profess philosophy, said Zander.

– Philosophy, said the guide. We don’t see so many films about philosophy these days.

– The fact that there are few films about it is greatly to the credit of philosophy, said Zander.

– Well, said the youngster. Why you out here, Mr Zander, if that’s how you feel?

– That is a good, though not insurmountable question, said the philosophy man.

Get on with it, thought Lucy. This was getting to be like one of the more turgid passages in
Icarus ’68,
so-called.

– I am from Crete, said Zander, and you will be aware that we have a certain priceless historical monument: a cradle, if not the cradle, of European civilisation, at Knossos.

– So you were a Professor in Crete, said Lucy. How interesting.

– I was a Professor of Philosophy in Aberdeen, Scotland, said Zander Petrakis, a part of the neo-Greek world that you are not
unfamiliar
with, if I am correct in deducing from your slight accent?

The guide turned to the other two.

– What did you think of Aberdeen, Uberdeen? asked Lucy. Or Leopardeen, I should say.

– I am aware of the attempted transmogrifications, said Zander. But a city cannot so easily redefine its spots. I studied these spots, I have suffered from these spots, for the best and worst parts of forty years.

– Were you in Aberdeen in the Sixties then? With long hair?

– I arrived in effect on the last day of 1967. I met the long-haired, the self-deluded, the internally exiled and the desperate.

– And were you none of those yourself?

– A philosopher is required to manage the world’s fate, his people’s history, and both the peaks and vicissitudes of love.

– A Stoic perhaps is required to. There are philosophies too of the heart, you may be aware.

– We would need longer, I submit, to discuss the contradictions of that fully. Let us progress. I do find it a pleasure to have met you. Now I must assess whether Atlas Studios could host the making of a Knossos film, and save my land and heritage from much ignorant trampling.

Lucy wondered about him briefly as a possible ally in the battle against LeopCorp, UbSpec Total, Swink, Rookie Marr, Guy Bord, and GrottoLotto. Not to mention that turncoat Alison.

– I’ve never been to Crete, I must confess. But your myth is part
of all of us. The labyrinth, the horrible monster at its heart.
Daedalus
, prisoner and inventor. And Icarus, who tried to fly without listening.

– Thank you for reminding me, Ms—?

– Ms Legge, Lucy Legge.

– But what we will be faced with, Ms Legge, if that film is made, is only labyrinth as folly. Film is the great art form of the last century, but two-dimensional only. A film about Knossos can only be a façade.

The granite is no façade,
thought Lucy.

– Now, Lucy, I must prospect further. What is that on the horizon, with so many high walls? he asked the guide.

–
The Kingdom of Heaven.

– Have they finished with their lot?

– Ouarzazate, what does it mean, Karim? Qu’est ce-que il veut dire? En Berber? said Lucy, as they were driving away west and beginning their climb.

– Ouarzazate. Sans bruit, sans nuisances, sans embrouillement.

– Without noise, without confusion. C’est évidemment un nom ancien, a name given long ago.

Peem and Lucy bumped into each other at Leopardeen Airport, at the carousel. There were passengers from about three flights looking glum.

– Hi, said Lucy. Waiting to be reconciled with your baggage?

– Reconciled to waiting, said Peem.

– I think it’ll be all over the place. They only changed the name of the airport last week, so not all the airlines will have the Leopardeen labels. And there are no doubt two dozen old Aberdeens, and a dozen mimic Uberdeens scattered across the globe.

– I did not think death had undone so many, Peem said.

– Donne?

– Dante. I am the age I am, and only now coming to the
Inferno
.

– How have you been? Are you reconciled? I was going to get in touch, but you’re not on email.

– Never mind me. I’ve had a nice quiet time looking at birds. How about you?

– Oh, Morocco.

– Lucy, Charlie, I should have introduced, Citizens’ Advice man. He’s been looking after me.

– Hi Charlie, said Lucy. Full time job, eh? You back specially for tomorrow night? Son of Spectacle? GrottoLotto?

– Charlie thinks my second name’s Endrie, said Peem.

–
Dree,
said Lucy.
End-dree
? You know what that means in the old Ewan MacColl song? Endure your fate.

– How does it go again? I think I know it.

–
Work and wait and dree your weird,
sang Lucy.

–
Pin your faith in herrin sales,
said Peem.

–
And oftimes lie awake at nicht,
sang Lucy.

–
In fear and dread o winter gales,
they attempted to sing together.

– Weird for sure, said Charlie.

Some of the other passengers had found good reason to shuffle their way round the carousel.

Lucy and Peem stopped rattling on, and took each other in. The play of a smile. Whatever they’d squandered, they hadn’t lost their gift for each other.

They plucked their bags, and spoke even faster for half a minute.

– So if things go bust, Peem, and they may well, said Lucy, forget GrottoLotto, forget Spectacle. Make your way to the beach. See ya.

– Lucy, both of you, do you want to share a taxi? said Charlie.

– Okay, said Peem.

– No, Charlie, said Lucy, got a ton to do. Better head off, thanks.

I left my Traveller in the long stay.

After he had dumped his stuff at Maciek’s, Peem asked Charlie to drop him off at the Shack. Still there after all these years, the red corrugated roof, the black door, down at the quayside.

– Come in for a minute, said Peem, with one hand on the passenger door. You must meet Iris.

Charlie steamed around till he spied the last space in a pub car park.
For Patrons Only,
it said. They set off on foot along the
waterfront
.

– What’s Iris like? said Charlie.

– Wait till you meet her.

They found the place was packed. Folk of all ages: lorry drivers, office workers, pensioners. It was tea and sandwiches, bananas, cakes and juice mostly. The place was humming with chat.

– There’s no space, said Charlie.

– Wait, said Peem.

There was a steady traffic to and from the toilet. Though more seemed to go than came back. There was no sign of Iris.

– Look, there’s a seat, said Peem. You take it. I’ll be back.

He went hunting for her. There were three doors in the toilets,
Men, Women
and
Staff Only
. He chose the third. In the dark partition between toilets and kitchen, a hand went on his forearm.

– Iris? said Peem.

– No, said the voice.

– I need to see her.

– Forget it.

With that Iris poked her head through, and light from the kitchen fell on his face.

– Oh, said Iris. It’s you. I’ll see you later. No, put on a mask and come through. But say nothing, unless you have something to say.

– Another Snoopy, she said, when they went through.

– We’re just finishing, said a Marge Simpson.

– So when the text comes through, said Darth Vader, pour real fast for five minutes. Spirits. That’ll get them excited. No champagne, the corks take too long. Just max the value that hits the floor: rum, voddy, special brandies. And malts, of course.

– If we want to align our action with a Scottish Republic— said Bugs Bunny.

– Okay, said Darth. Agreed, max on the malts.

– No, said Bugs, the opposite, surely!

– Hold it, said Iris, this is not an issue. Each group can pour as they see fit. Get the aisles awash pronto. Alarm the manager, get him phoning for help, but don’t harm the staff if they try to restrain you. Encourage other shoppers to join in—

– Tell them it’s a stunt for Candid Camera, said Marge Simpson. Or Liver Concern.

– How about just tell them it’s the start of a revolution? said Iris. Else it’s all part of the general heehaw, and we gain nothing.

– Yeah, yeah, with you— said Marge.

– Spot on, said Bugs.

– Now the clowns, said Iris. The clowns don’t want to be compromised. They’re fresh from Faslane. The clowns are in it for the long haul.

– Bloody clowns, said Darth Vader.

– What’s it about? said Peem, when the others had melted back into the café scene, and Charlie had been invited through to the kitchen.

– Don’t completely know, said Iris. None of us has got an overall picture. These three were spokes-persons. Literally,
spokes-persons,
each linking direct to a small group. There’s probably thirty groups – within a broad plan, they choose their own targets. I’m one of ten, I think, holes in the hub. Only tomorrow do we roll out the whole wheel. Or try to—

– Sounds great, said Peem.

– All the time, absolutely, we have to keep our lines tight, we’re not up against mugs. So what have you two been up to?

Alison had a thousand things to attend to in the run-up to May 1st. She could have done with a few more reliable colleagues in truth, but she flew around, her mobile red-hot. Otto was being a pain, trying to make out GrottoLotto was named after him. Gwen was still not responding to texts.

Gwen may have felt she was being pestered by her mother, fussed-over, spied-on. Well, the last was true, but from a very different quarter, Alison knew. Though as far as she was aware texts could not be intercepted by the authorities, or by any of those who arrogated authority to themselves, whereas all voice-calls, terrestrial or celestial, terrorist or humdrum, were liable to be tapped, listened to, logged and recorded. And it was unlikely that LeopCorp didn’t have access to that kind of stuff.

But from Gwen still, not even a text.

Anyway, take a deep breath, thought Alison. All of the Gwen stuff paled into horrible insignificance – horrible yes, but insignificant – beside what she herself had learned the previous evening.

Sifting at home through a bundle of unopened and tossed-aside correspondence, she had come on a buff envelope. And it wasn’t a bill or a circular from the Council, or anything Revenueish.

It was from the Health Board. It was, in effect, though wholly benign on the surface, a non-love letter from the very distant past.
She hadn’t stopped weeping till after one o’clock. Her face was still red in the morning.

Gwen had taken the job with open eyes. As far as her employer went, she was an Under Information Officer. She was a kind of researcher, with restricted access. She was a species of gofer, but not allowed out. She composed messages, yet was not allowed to send them. Partly because she was not allowed out, she had had to apply together with a partner, who was similarly confined.

Gwen had had little to do, when she was off duty, apart from keep her orange blouses clean and ironed. Bill told her who Luna was. She saw her at the end of a corridor once. Gwen tried to explore. There was a Vision Mixing room, but it seemed to be always locked. She spent her time reading.

She and Bill were given their own accommodation, in a back turret, facing east. It was a one year contract, very good money, with no living expenses, and would enable a couple, if the market remained passably stable, to put together the readies for a 5% deposit on a house. With houses costing a lung or half a liver, their temporary loss of all freedoms was supposed to be worth it.

Bill’s job was that of APT, Assistant Principal Taster, and he was ushered into the Leopard’s presence nightly, blindfold, and required to sample each meat at the point of the Principal Taster’s fork. His interview had been almost entirely silent, apart from the inevitable gnashing Bill made as he chewed his way through two-inch cubes of seared veal, scorched venison and flash-fried seal.

The Leopard mainly just drank during the day, water and juices; the occasional nibble of specially-sourced crisps, salt and emu, gnu and onion. Bill had to taste these too. The main meal was eaten at night. The Leopard had lived in many uncongenial places – Australia, Chicago, Singapore, Kampala – at his father’s behest, and had dined exclusively on local meats.

There was a mobile barbecue always available for North Turret, with a self-filtering cowl. After darkness had fallen, the barbecue was taken up to the Fastness in the lift, already fired. Whatever the plat de la nuit might be, its choicest chunks would be barely
introduced
to the glowing embers.

At meat-time, the Leopard was at his most charming. He would pace round the room stroking the fangs and snouts of the dozen leopard heads mounted on the walls.

Tonight the starter was Capercaillie and Blackcock Kidneys. With kidneys, Bill knew, there was always the strong chance of a dash of piss. Piss the Leopard might not like. Piss he might associate with poison. Bill gave the kidneys the thumbs-down. They were flung out the lower half of the slit window, to bounce amongst the
pie-dogs
of Leopardeen’s Castlegate.

The alternative starter was announced as Urban Fox. A lot of foxes ran about the Links these days, not far from the sea, between the HyperMall and Jumbo Arcade. Bill was afraid they might taste
overpoweringly
of Kentucky fried chicken, but there was barely a nuance. He passed the Urban Fox, and the Leopard was soon munching in.

Entrée was Cairngorm Reindeer. There was never much fat on one of these, roaming the plateaux, choosing their moss, tinkling their bells obligingly so the harvester’s rifle could zero in. Bill chewed and chewed. The Leopard was mainly afraid of quick and violent poisons. After ten minutes of Bill’s chomping, the Leopard got torn in too.

Dessert in Australia had often been platypus, in Singapore, snake, and in Kampala, chimp, but here in northern clime the Leopard was reduced to Queen of Newt Pudding. Bill was prepared to find the taste of newt dull, but, as he prised his slightly rubbery portion off the fork, he was pleasantly surprised.

He was less pleasantly surprised when his blindfold slipped a little. He blinked at the nine flickering monitors, over the hunched and munching Leopard’s shoulder.

Particularly one monitor. He could see a woman, in her bedroom, thick hair wild across the pillow. It was their bedroom, and Gwen was reading late, the latest Rosa Luxemburg tome, waiting for him. Then she got up for a snack or a leak, and stretched her legs towards the camera. It was abundantly clear she had nothing on. Towards just one of the cameras. There was a clutch of screens, displaying their sweet pre-marital bed ambushed from a splay of angles.

Bill spat out.

The Queen of Newt was blamed and removed. They had to open a tin of monkey.

Gwen was reading one of her favourite passages from her favourite revolutionary.

Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party, is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. The essence of political freedom depends not on the fanatics of justice, but rather on all the invigorating, beneficial, and deterrent effects of dissenters. If freedom becomes synonomous with privilege, the workings of political freedom are broken.

Bill came in the bedroom door, looked round their room swift and strange, came across and whispered, and told her what he had seen.

So, year by year, from bigger and bigger wheelhouses, set on higher and higher bridges, Spermy had looked out with his searchlight over wider and wider undulant rings of coloured buoys, marking the utmost perimeter of his net. White buoys marked the wide wings of the net, pink marked smaller mesh, while between the two red buoys hung the dense, black mesh of the reinforced bag, the heart of the purse. Here the herring or mackerel would be corralled and held in not too agitated readiness to be vacuumed aboard into chilled tanks of brine.

As Spermy watched, from the canted window of the high
wheelhouse
, and as the purse block began its inexorable work of tautening and retrieving the net, here and there a buoy would twitch or duck as a sweep of anxious, panicking herring sought to find gaps in the shuttling curtain. None existed. And as Spermy observed, and as he considered the information relayed by sensors, he was privileged to be able to adjust his effort to baffle the blind, collective dash of the fish. These days there was no risk of a wrongful encirclement of some clogging, time-wasting species like spurdog or sprat. The modern sonar could pick out a single fish at 200 fathoms, declare the species, its likely size and probable birthday. No longer was fishing a dicey do, ocean roulette. And the good thing was, his son was sitting in the pair boat a hundred yards off, nothing but nav lights on, heaving up and down, waiting to take his share of the load.