A girl in tight trousers stood at a table against the wall shaking a silver flask. At the end of the room windows opened on to the balcony where three men sat under sunshades drinking.
The girl turned and looked at him. He recognized the Jewish girl, Nadia. She went on shaking the flask and called out, ‘He’s awake!’
One of the men came in from the balcony: it was Colonel Le Hir. He came across the room in easy strides with a cut-glass tumbler in his hand. He stood in front of Neil, his pale-brown eyes flecked with yellow, and said, ‘Are you ready to talk?’
Neil put his stockinged feet on the floor and murmured, ‘Give me a drink.’
‘Nadia, one martini!’
‘I don’t want a martini,’ said Neil feebly, ‘I want a glass of water.’ He felt ashamed of the vomit down his shirt. ‘Is there somewhere I can wash?’ he added, as the girl came over with his drink. He felt sick and dizzy and half-asleep. The girl handed him a tumbler of water with a proud sneer and walked sinuously away towards the balcony. He saw now that the other men outside were the two legionnaires.
‘You can clean up later,’ said Le Hir; ‘first we’re going to have a little talk about what you were doing in the Casbah this morning —’
Neil was beyond subterfuge now. He was alive, on a sofa, not on a slab in the morgue; and the water was ice-cold, clearing his head, making him feel almost happy. He began telling Le Hir about his telephone call yesterday to Pol and the meeting that morning in the Cintra Café. Le Hir looked like a schoolmaster listening to one of his pupils confess to a serious misdemeanour.
‘I decided not to go,’ said Neil, ‘I didn’t want to get involved with Pol. That’s not what I’m here for.’
Le Hir nodded gravely.
‘But I changed my mind. I went after all. A man came and drove me up to the entrance into the Casbah. I can’t tell you where it was, except that it was behind a lot of fruit markets.’ He sipped the iced water: ‘When I came out the driver had had his throat cut, and your two boys were waiting for me at the hotel. Nice morning.’
‘What made you decide to keep this appointment?’ Le Hir’s face was suddenly tight and nasty; he was trying to scare Neil, but somehow Neil was filled with a tired, dreamy feeling and the only thing that really troubled him was the mess on his shirt.
‘Well, last night,’ he said, ‘I rang up my girl in London and the bitch told me she’s getting married next week to a racing motorist.’ He looked at Le Hir and shook his head sorrowfully: ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it? Here am I, gainfully employed, full of fine prospects, getting heroically beaten up by Foreign Legionnaires, and she goes off and chooses a racing motorist!’ He laughed into his glass of water.
Le Hir sat and stared at him.
‘You think I’m a bit touched?’ said Neil. ‘Que j’ai des araignées au plafond?’ He ran his fingers over the back of his neck: ‘That young lad of yours hit me rather hard, I’m afraid.’
Le Hir blinked. ‘I’m in no mood for jokes, Monsieur Ingleby.’
Neil drained down his tumbler of water: ‘It’s no joke, I can tell you! You wanted to know the reason why I changed my mind and kept Pol’s appointment? I’ve told you. Because of my girl —’
‘It’s not a good enough reason.’
‘Perhaps not for you. It is for me.’ Neil glanced across at Nadia, who was leaning against the wall sneering at him. He tried to imagine her and the Colonel in bed together.
‘What did you do in the Casbah?’ said Le Hir. The welted scar from his mouth to his ear seemed to grow more pronounced, like a strip of macaroni.
Neil said, ‘I met three men called Marouf, Boussid and Ali La Joconde.’
Le Hir sprang up and hit him across the mouth. The blow made a dry smack that cut across the room and brought the two legionnaires to the door of the balcony. Neil put his hand up to the hot pain and said apologetically, ‘I thought you wanted to know what I did in the Casbah?’
Le Hir grabbed him by the collar, pulled him a foot off the sofa and hit him again, hard with the back of his hand, then dropped him on the cushion: ‘Repeat what you just said!’ His words made a hissing sound between his square teeth: ‘Repeat it!’
The two legionnaires were coming across the room with their drinks. Neil’s eyes misted with tears, his mouth tasting of salt and blood as his lips began to swell like rubber. Le Hir stood over him flexing his fingers. His face had turned oyster-white: ‘Go on! Tell us again what you did in the Casbah.’
The young legionnaire came round and stood close behind Neil’s left ear.
Neil began, ‘I went into the Casbah. I was taken up to a house where I met three men. They were Dr. Marouf, Abdel Boussid, and Ali La Joconde who was introduced to me as Mohammed Sherrif.’ He waited for the blow, from in front or behind, but none came.
‘Describe them,’ said Le Hir.
Neil did so, in laborious detail, right down to Ali La Joconde’s fluttering white hands and Boussid’s pouting lips.
‘Very well,’ said
