thought: a devoted cuckold, a vulnerable wife. Might the Saudis have those emotions: or another set entirely? Frances seems to believe that nothing in the Kingdom can be taken for granted; that human nature, if indeed it exists anywhere, is not something that can be relied on here.
“They’d have to be very persuasive connections,” she said, “for a couple to run this sort of risk. Come to that—” she reached down the teapot—“only one of them would have to get divorced, the woman, because the man can have four wives, can’t he?”
“They don’t do that much nowadays. None of the Saudis I know at the Ministry has more than one wife. They leave that to the Bedu. They try to be modern.”
“Up to a point.”
“And besides, it’s too expensive, getting married. The girls want a new house built for them, and all the furniture.”
“Yes, I know. They want chandeliers.”
“So now it’s just like the rest of the world, what do you call it—serial polygamy.”
The water was boiling. “Perhaps the woman upstairs has a possessive husband,” Frances said. “Perhaps she doesn’t think he’d play the game and say
Yasmin, after their conversation in Samira’s flat, had been anxious to correct any wrong impression that Frances might have received. “It seems to me,” Frances had said recklessly, “that everybody could be good, if you could get a more or less instant divorce each time you saw someone you liked the look of—and then after a week or two you could get married again. On that principle, no one need ever commit adultery.”
She had thought, if I just give Yasmin a little push, I’ll find out whether or not she’s in the secret. But Yasmin seemed nettled. “The Saudis do this,” she said. “We wouldn’t do this. In Pakistan a divorce is much rarer,”
“But the Saudis have lots. Why’s that?”
Yasmin dropped her eyes. “Because they are very passionate.”
“In the West we take marriage more seriously. We think if you don’t like it you have to try to put it right. We promise it’s for life.” She stopped, realizing how remote this was from her real experience; half Andrew’s colleagues were on their second or third wife. “Well, that’s the theory,” she said.
Yasmin had sighed. She said, “A realistic religion is best, isn’t it?”
Just now, Andrew was not interested in talking about the empty flat. He flung himself into his chosen armchair and said, “My model’s not come yet. My model of the building, I mean. I’m worried about it. It’s left L.A. Jeff thinks the customs men might be holding it up. Searching it for drugs, or something.”
“Oh, surely not.”
“If it gets damaged I’ll kill somebody.” Suddenly he was full of venom. “Jeff’s an idiot,” he said.
Andrew hugged his mug of tea, and lapsed into thought. He is losing faith in Turadup’s bosses, in their technical competence. Not that they bother with him much. His building, the multimillion-riyal building, seems unimportant to them compared to the underground silo at the missile base. Whenever he wants something, Parsons and Pollard are having a high-level meeting; or say they are. People he doesn’t know arrive at the airport, and occupy office space, and monopolize the telex machine; they break Turadup’s photocopier, and expect him to mend it, as if he were a maintenance mechanic. Once he found that one of these strangers had taken over his Portakabin, and pushed all his drawings aside. “You’re not working on the silo, I gather?” this chap had asked him, and he had said, “No, the building, I’m working on the building, and you are in my space.” He had been violently rude. Parsons, in his mild way, had upbraided him.
And anyway, he thought, sipping his tea, ignoring his wife: isn’t the whole project misconceived? Building an underground silo on limestone? It’s permeable, it cracks, it’s continually flooding. They should have put the missiles inland, on granite. The site’s in the wrong place. It should be up on the escarpment, not down by the sea. But then, officially there are no missiles. There are no Americans. How can you point out the flaws in a project that doesn’t exist?
And mixed up with his larger doubts (after all, Saudi defense strategy is not his affair) are the little things that niggle away. If he goes to the Ministry—the Ministry that wants the building so much—nobody seems prepared to deal with him. The fact is, they seem not to know who he is. Four or five men loll around in the Deputy Minister’s anteroom, drink coffee, and read the newspapers. They give him a blank stare, and return to their conversation.
When Jeff Pollard recruited him in Gaborone, he said that he would be a valued member of a team; but he doesn’t feel like one. Parsons and Pollard don’t know how to make someone feel valued. Havana-sucking half-wits, he thinks. Captain Hook and Smee had more notion of personnel management. Far more.
“Awful tea,” Frances said. “Want another cup?”
He shook his head. “I’m supposed to be getting this consultant out from London,” he said. “Though when he’s coming I don’t know. Perhaps we can have him over to dinner when he does get here, keep him away from Parsons and Pollard. He’s an expert on air-conditioning. His name’s Fairfax.”
“Really?” Frances looked up. “Who does he work for?”
He told her. “I feel as if I know him,” she said. “I came over on the plane with some of his colleagues. They talked shop the whole time. Poor Fairfax, I think they had a down on him, they weren’t very complimentary.”
“Well, I hope he’s some use. I spoke to him on the phone. He was going on about the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. Says they’re doing it up and it’s going to have the biggest central air-conditioning system in the world.”
“I suppose the Believers have to be kept cool.”
“I said to him, well, you can’t go to Medina. Only Muslims can go to Mecca and Medina. He said, I really need the order, how can I convert? And then he started laughing like a maniac.”
“I’m sure that when he comes here he’ll sober up.”
