We took a couple of bottles of beer each, and went into a small semicircular alcove. There were about twenty around the periphery of the room. Cushions and a curtain, low table, small oil lamp on the wall and a candle on the table. Grace seemed to know the form. She swapped a few sweet words with the owner – but they were in Turkish so I didn’t understand what was said. The smell of the oil from the wall lamp hung around us like a crude scent. I didn’t mind that.
Grace clinked bottles with me, and said, ‘Cheers.’
‘Did you know I was here?’ I asked her.
‘Partly. The leader of our little embassy has paid some of the street kids to let him know if any European strangers turn up. As soon as I heard the description of you walking out of the mountains, I think I knew. So I hung around the end of the street, and waited to see who came out of the English House. I saw the big man go in, and a few hours later you came out. Now, here we are.’
‘Why didn’t you just knock on the door?’
‘I wanted to see you alone.’
‘Why?’
Even in the half-light I could see how she dropped her eyes before she replied. Her voice dropped a register as well.
‘I thought we could manage better on our own. The others would just have wanted their say, and have probably cocked things up: you know what men are like.’
I could have said something smart, but I just nodded, and asked, ‘Cock what up, my pretty one?’ I shocked myself. I don’t think I’d ever used a pet phrase for Grace in my life. She allowed herself a brief smile, as if she’d won a point. She may have, for all I knew.
‘The deal of course, darling.’
‘What deal?’
‘The deal for the money you brought down with you, of course. You have it, and I want it.’
‘What’s in it for me?’
‘I will convince my people not to kill you – which is what they want to do at the moment. Shall we smoke one of those things together, for old time’s sake?’ She nodded at the bar, where a large man was preparing several water pipes.
‘No. I never saw myself as a dope user. Booze and pipe tobacco will do me. I still smoke the pipe you gave me.’ Grace ignored my last sentence.
She said, ‘You can get opium here, you know. I always fancied doing that once; just to see what it did to me.’
‘No, Grace.’
‘You’re an old square, Charlie. Not fun any more.’
‘Does square mean . . . ?’
‘Yes, old-fashioned and unadventurous. American teenagers are using it. You weren’t like that when I first met you.’
‘I’m older now.’
‘And I’m not; is that what you mean?’ Her bottom lip turned down.
We were back to Peter Pan again, weren’t we? People who never grew up. Grace had started off by insulting me, and had turned that into a reason to feel insulted herself. It was something that couldn’t have happened in a conversation between two men. Nothing to be done about it. And she was still the most enchanting woman I had met in my life. Nothing to be done about that either.
‘We can get a room upstairs, if you like. It’s quite private.’
In order to give myself thinking space I asked, ‘How do you know about places like this, Grace?’
‘Every town in Turkey and North Africa has a place like this, Charlie . . . you just have to know who to ask.’
Later we lay back on an old mattress covered in carpets. Where we touched, we stuck lightly together. Sweat. Grace always worked you hard I remembered.
She asked, ‘Will your people worry about where you are?’
‘Maybe, but I shouldn’t think so. I was sent out to find where the Israelis were . . .’
‘. . . and you found them.’
‘I was going to ask you about that. What were you doing, there in Cyprus?’
‘Exactly what I told you. There’s a deal between your government and the state of Israel. Britain is going to support us when the Arab League girds its loins for another attack on Israel, but can’t do so openly because that will offend NATO. I was tying up the last threads, that’s all. They must have really been scraping the bottom of the barrel if I was the only person they could find who both sides would trust. When I ran off to Israel in 1947 I was called a traitor to my country: now I am a trusted intermediary. Isn’t life odd?’
‘So how does the deal work?’
‘At the first sign of trouble, we storm through the Sinai and up to the Canal, gratefully capturing all of the arms and stores dumps the British have thoughtfully left behind for us. We could have reached the Canal in 1948 if our supply lines had stretched that far . . . as it is we’ve kitted out the Army with your war-surplus stores, and you are the best people to supply us with the spares.’
‘You know where our secret supply dumps are . . . ?’
‘Most of them.’
‘Because we’ve told you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the Egyptians don’t know of course, but are desperate to find out.’
‘Correct again, Charlie . . . and to think we once thought that Never-Never Land was only in a book!’
‘What do we get out of it?’
‘Your lovely bloody Canal, I should think.
