I laughed, but it was a bit of a rueful one. ‘Your old man might know more than you think. But since this thing with Daisy, I’ve been worried, so I came up to talk to you. I appear before you as a penitent.’
‘What’s worrying you?’
‘The boundary. Where you draw the line.’
‘Explain, Charlie. What boundary? Your last few words are not far from gibberish.’
‘Do you know how men talk about women when women aren’t there?’
‘How could I? Women aren’t there. You said it yourself.’
‘I think you know what I mean . . .’
‘Yeah . . . sometimes women can be almost as bad, you know. Have you heard the A hard man is good to find joke?’ I hadn’t: it sounded like Mae again. It’s just the sort of thing she’d say. I shook my head, but she didn’t elaborate. She said, ‘Tell me about this boundary.’
‘It’s the one you shouldn’t cross. There are some things you can do to get a girl into bed, and some you can’t.’
‘I agree, and if you think like that you’re probably going to get it right most of the time. Are there any of these stratagems that worry you particularly?’
‘All of them, now I begin to think about it. Dating a girl is beginning to feel like a transaction – maybe I won’t ever ask one out again.’ She offered me one her Turkish fags and I accepted. We plumed the air around us in scented smoke.
When she spoke again it was to say, ‘Maybe both our fathers were brighter than we gave them credit for: yours told you how to look at sex through the eyes of a woman, and mine told me about it from the point of view of a man. They almost sound like warnings, don’t they? The way I see it – and after this I want to change the subject – is that the difference between a man’s attitudes and a woman’s is that if you lure me up to your room when I don’t want to sleep with you, and you lock the door, I still won’t want to sleep with you. In fact I’ll probably like the idea even less. On the other hand, if I lure you up to my room when you don’t want sex, and lock you in with me, you’ll soon end up changing your mind – maybe you’ll even think it was your idea in the first place. I think it’s what they call the sexual imperative. We have different priorities, that’s all. Now change the subject.’
‘That hasn’t helped.’
‘It wasn’t meant to, Charlie. I’m on the other side. Are you going to buy me a drink later . . . before you go back?’
I agreed to meet her in the Families Club later on. It had big wicker chairs, cooling fans and long drinks.
With some time to spare I hitched a ride down to the Blue Kettle. David Yassine was on the steps outside smoking a big cigar, and chatting to an MP and an Egyptian copper. The place was obviously still off-limits. As he stepped back he met my eye, and inclined his head briefly towards the alleyway a couple of buildings down. It led to the Kettle’s back courtyard. I had my small automatic in my trouser pocket, and kept my hand over it like a wanker as I walked into the shade. I needn’t have worried. The one Arab I met grinned, and touched his head; he was one of Yassine’s boys who worked in the club. The Fat Man met me under the fire escape, led me past another Gyppo copper, and on through to the bar. There were half a dozen Europeans, all of whom looked the other way, and a sprinkling of wealthier Arabs. Altogether your usual Wednesday afternoon crowd, I thought.
‘You’re very good at this,’ I told him.
‘Blame the Welsh. You want a Stella?’ He nodded to a bar boy. Two beers appeared as if by magic. I’ve asked it before, I know, but how did they do that?
‘And what have the Welsh to do with it, pray?’
Amazingly, he switched to an outrageously ripe Welsh accent: he sounded like Lloyd George. Another bleeding David. Goliath can’t have been too far away.
‘When I was a boy – before your European war, see – my father sent me to Britain to finish my education. For a year I lived in a small Welsh town named Lampeter. That was in Cardigan I think, and Cardigan is a dry county, which meant that the bars do not open on a Sunday. No booze. So the local public house, the Railway Tavern, held Bible classes every Sunday . . . and the only difference between a Saturday night out-of-control drinking session and the Bible class was that for the Bible class on Sunday you entered the premises from the back door, and the local policeman was there to let you in . . . just like the Blue Kettle when your military policemen have closed it down. Blame it on the Welsh. Cheers. Another?’
‘Yes, please. Can we sit at a table and talk?’
‘Of course.’
Another beer, and another conversation. I agreed to try to find out when the MPs were going to lift the ban on the Kettle. Then I asked him, ‘Tell me, David, if, theoretically, I wanted to have a couple of men punished – not severely hurt, but punished enough for them to always remember it – are there people through whom that could be arranged?’
He made a steeple of his hands, and rested his mouth behind them like one of the devout at prayer. ‘Of course. Yes, it could.’
‘Even if those men were British officers?’
He took longer to reply. His eyes were hooded. I couldn’t read him.
‘Yes. Even if they are British officers.’ I hadn’t missed the change of tense.
‘. . . and you, personally, wouldn’t be put
