‘There are a few Europeans around,’ Hudd told me. ‘Most of them are from the oil companies. BP has an office here, and so has Shell. They’re exploring. So are the Americans and the French. It’s a bit like a gold rush. The first one to find major deposits of oil will come up with an offer the government and locals can’t resist – but the companies won’t bid until they’ve actually found the stuff.’
‘Is there much?’
‘Loads and loads of it, apparently. It will just depend on whether it’s cost-effective to get it out of the ground.’
‘What about Şiwan’s Jews?’ Even as I said that I felt uncomfortable. ‘I don’t like saying that word anymore; isn’t that odd?’
‘The Nazis discredited it. Jews don’t mind calling themselves Jews; it’s only us. We think it makes us sound like Nazis. I know what you mean: the Israelis have murdered British soldiers and nurses, torn the Middle East in half, and still we can’t call them what they call themselves. I usually say Israelis, but whenever I say it I feel like a coward.’
‘What about Şiwan’s Israelis, then?’
He made the effort and said, ‘I met a drunken Welshman who said there’s a bunch of Jews living in a villa down by the lakeside.’ He grinned: like he didn’t mean it.
‘Well done. Was he one of your oilmen?’
‘No. He works for the British Council.’
‘What’s he doing up here?’
‘Looking for poets, he said.’
‘Are there any?’
‘Loads, apparently, and nobody knows what to do with them . . . they’re nowhere near as useful as oil.’
I heard Weir come back and call a greeting. Arzu joined us at the table and helped Hudd draw a map on which he marked out the bars where men smoked, and drank coffee, and the small bazaars where people wandered. Weir came in after five minutes, and looked over her shoulder. They bickered amiably over whether the shops were marked in the right places. Their alterations had made the map almost unintelligible.
I asked Hudd, ‘What’s it for, anyway?’
‘Your turn now: you can visit a few places tonight, and see what you can turn up. You’ll need a map ’cos there ain’t no street lights out there. Leicester Square it isn’t.’
‘What do I use for money?’
‘Alan’s changed a couple of sovereigns for me. You can buy a small family an’ all their goats for that.’
‘. . . and camels’ teeth,’ Arzu added. ‘My father said that when he was a boy he could buy spices with camels’ teeth.’
‘What would people want camels’ teeth for?’
‘For good luck, of course!’ There was no denying it. She had a delicious little giggle.
They dowsed the lights at the front of the house that night, so that no one would see me slip out if the place was being watched. Just before she opened the door for me, Arzu gave me a peck on the cheek, and I felt her hand in the pocket of my leather jacket. It paused when she touched my pistol, and then moved past it.
She wasn’t being improper; she whispered, ‘For good luck,’ and her hand was gone.
When I put my own hand in the pocket I felt one of those big buck teeth a camel grins with. I turned back to say thank you, but the door was already closed. I heard the bolts go home. It was as black as in an outdoor privy out there.
I thought I saw a movement in the dark shadows across the road, and waited more than a minute before I shifted. No one stepped out to follow me. Things look different at night. Cats can even become lions. I walked down to the corner of the road between dull houses. The occasional window laid the occasional square of dull light on the ground. No pavements. Just as I reached the junction, a person stepped out in front of me, still in shadow. Someone in a nearby room lit a lamp, and our faces were suddenly illuminated by the light from its open window. My heart beat like a tom-tom.
She said, ‘Hello, Charlie. I hoped it was you. I know somewhere they’ll give us good coffee.’
Chapter Twenty-One
The Sheik of Araby
‘Your parents gave you the wrong name, Grace,’ I told her. ‘They should have called you Tinkerbell . . . from Peter Pan.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you always turn up when I least expect you to, and then you make a mess of my life.’
‘You didn’t complain in Cyprus.’
‘You never gave me a chance to. You sodded off again before I could blink my eyes.’
Grace bent over and extinguished the candle on the table between us with a moistened forefinger and thumb. It was the sort of thing she’d do; and she wouldn’t change her expression even if it had hurt.
She said, ‘I read a novel about Peter Pan once. It ended a year after the Darlings had returned to their family. Tinkerbell had died, and Peter couldn’t even remember her name. Isn’t that sad?’ She always asked you questions that made you pause and think.
‘I’ll never forget you, Grace. Fat chance.’
‘Good.’ She put her hand over mine, on the table.
I asked her, ‘What is this place?’
‘It’s an illegal drinking den. They had them in Ireland when I was delivering planes during the war. They called them shebeens there. They are places you can go and drink in whatever company you like – men, women or in-betweens – and no one asks you your religion, or for your identity card. Places made for folk like you and me.’
The place was dark, and smelled of hashish – now that I knew what the stuff smelt like. I’d followed Grace through the dark streets trying to memorize our route – twice I suspected she had deliberately
