Hideous Kinky (12 page)

‘Yes. I’ll get the bank to wire the money through to Algiers when it arrives.’

There was a pause in the conversation. This was Bea’s chance. I kicked her under the table. She kicked me back hard and kept quiet.

Then the Fool appeared with our tin. He held it under my nose and with a flourish twisted off the top. Inside was a round of hard black wax, a little like a crayon.

‘This shoe polish,’ the Fool spoke slowly, and Luna translated his halting words, ‘is not so good. This shoe polish is in fact very, very old.’

While Mum sorted through our things, deciding what to take and what to leave behind, Bea said in the most casual of her voices, ‘Oh, Mum, would it be all right if I didn’t come?’

Mum wavered momentarily and continued to pack.

‘I asked Sophie if I could stay with her and she said yes. She said as long as it’s all right with you. She said…’

Mum withdrew a T-shirt of Bea’s and put it to one side.

‘Fine,’ she said flatly, ‘if that’s what you want.’

Bea opened her mouth to continue the argument and then closed it again.

Mum didn’t speak.

‘Goodnight,’ she said eventually when she had finished packing. There was one large bag for me and Mum, and a smaller one for Bea.

‘Goodnight,’ we both said in uncomfortably cheerful voices and she left the room to join Luna and Umbark on their terrace.

Bea stood at the top of the tiled steps of Sophie’s house and watched us go. Sophie stood behind her in a dressing-gown and waved.

‘We’ll be back soon,’ I called before we turned a corner and lost sight of her.

‘I never thought she’d say yes,’ Bea had whispered to me the night before once Mum was safely on the terrace. But we both agreed there was no going back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Mum and I stood at the edge of the road and stretched out our thumbs. Most of the cars that passed were lorries and mostly they were going the wrong way. They crowded up to the gates of the city with full loads of water melons, oranges, chickens and sheep. I thought of all the chickens that had been eaten on the last day of Ramadan. Every family in the hotel had bought one, cluttering the terrace with wilting, shackled birds that squawked in terror on the morning of their last day. They hung, waiting to be cooked, their necks broken and their feet tied. I thought of Snowy and her beady eyes and the way she liked to peck corn from the cracks between the fingers of your hand.

‘In the end they’ll have to turn round and come back,’ Mum said as we watched the stream of traffic heading into the city. The sky had turned a pale green with the rising mist, but it was still cold.

A tall blond man strolled out of the city gates and began to walk towards us. He stopped a little way in front and took up a waiting position, his eyes fixed on the road.

‘Where are you going?’ Mum called to him eventually, when two cars had failed to stop for either him or us. He was very thin and his trousers looked like he had made them himself. ‘Where are you going?’ Mum asked again, when he came near.

The Hitcher raised his hands in a questioning gesture and muttered something, his voice full of muddy words.

Mum repeated her question in French and then in Arabic. If Bea were here, I thought, she’d make him understand. Mum pointed down the road. ‘Algiers?’

‘Ah, Algiers.’ He nodded and smiled. ‘Algiers.’

Not long after, a truck stopped. Mum and I sat in the high cab with the driver. The Hitcher climbed into the open back and settled himself among the straw and droppings of a recent load of sheep.

‘Algiers?’ Mum asked as we climbed in.

‘Algiers?’ she asked again more anxiously as we began to pick up speed. The driver raised one eyebrow and pressed his foot hard on the accelerator.

Our truck rattled along in a breathtaking race. Everything on the road had to be overtaken. Even a single donkey warranted an ear-piercing blast of the horn to signal our approach. I kept my eyes glued to the road. I was sure if I removed them for a second we would dissolve in a splintering crash of metal.

The sun rose slowly in the sky, heating the truck into a burning grid as I watched the road unfold. With a great effort and tearing of eyes I forced myself to twist away. I peered at the Hitcher. He lay face down in a pile of straw with his shirt over his head.

The driver brought the truck to an abrupt stop. He slid out of his seat and, taking a carefully wrapped parcel of food, walked over to a nearby tree. Mum and I climbed stiffly after him. The driver looked unencouraging as we approached but the tree was the only shade in sight and the sun was beating a hole through the top of my head. Little sparks of white light danced before my eyes.

‘Mad dogs and Englishmen,’ Mum sang half-heartedly.

Mum and I shared an orange and ate half the loaf of bread she had in her bag. The driver finished his lunch and fell asleep sitting upright against the trunk of the tree.

‘Are we nearly there?’ I asked, and Mum said she wasn’t sure but she thought about halfway.

The Hitcher slept through the afternoon and only woke up when we stopped at a house that served supper. ‘Algiers?’ he asked as if he had just remembered who he was.

The driver shook his head and Mum said, ‘No, but I think we should be there soon. We must have been going for twelve hours at least.’

‘Henning.’ The Hitcher pointed to himself.

After we’d eaten and sat for a while listening to the unintelligible crackle of the radio, the driver made his way back to the truck. It was night and the air was warm and thick with the smell of earth.

‘Can we sit in the back with Henning?’ I asked, dreading the surly racket of the cab.

Henning began to chat happily to Mum.

‘It was only recently,’ Mum interrupted him as if she understood every one of his words and was simply carrying on the conversation, ‘that I became really interested in the Sufi.’

Henning said something of which only the words ‘Henning’ and ‘Algiers’ were recognizable.

I lay back and looked up at the sky. The stars here were different from the stars in Marrakech. They were jagged and white and they crowded out the sky. Under the low murmur of Henning’s monologue I listened to the crickets and the stillness of the air.

‘We’re not moving,’ Mum said all of a sudden, interrupting everything. ‘I’ve only just realized, we’re not actually going anywhere.’ She stood up and looked through the narrow window into the cab. ‘He’s asleep,’ she said. ‘He’s sitting there and he’s fast asleep.’ Then she began to laugh. ‘Well, it doesn’t look like we’ll be arriving tonight after all.’ Mum lay down in the straw. ‘Tomorrow. God willing. Inshallah.’ And she closed her eyes.

Henning was wide awake. He sat directly across from me and talked, fixing me with eyes that glowed pale. Sunstroke, Mum would have said if she’d been awake. Henning talked on, hardly pausing for breath. I set my mind on the distant crackle of the radio and the chorus of crickets that hummed all around the truck. A dog began to whine, bursting into a frenzied bark. Henning hardly blinked. His words were heavy and laden and from time to time he stretched his throat and gulped.

I kept to my side of the truck. ‘Sufi, Medina, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola,’ I sang quietly. ‘Ramadan, Calisha, earrings and jellybeans.’ My voice gained strength. ‘Waa waa Khadija.’

Henning was silent.

‘Waa waa Khadija,’ I quavered. ‘Waa waa believe her. Waa waa cat fever. Waa waa Bea, Bilal. Beetroot, Beetrootlal. Lal lal Beeeelal.’ My voice rose and fell in an ever more practised imitation of Om Kalsoum.

Henning had stopped talking. I carried on mumbling and singing small victorious phrases. ‘The grand old Duke of York, Sheikh Bentounes, hey Helufa, he had ten thousand men… Mashed potato…’

Henning began to snore.

The air was sharp and cold and there was a pink sunrise turning the sky white. Our truck groaned up a steep hill. I stared at the wall of rock stretching away from the road in a gentle curve. I watched as it dissolved into sky. On the other side, the road fell away in a gulf of nothing. Sunrise and the occasional wheeling bird. The tyres scrunched along the cliff, sending showers of dry earth and pebbles falling forever over the edge. We were climbing a mountain. The road was not a road but a narrow ledge. A flat plain unfolded below, stretching away like a sea of brown paper. Scorched fields dotted with struggling trees and specks that might be goats nibbling a rare new overnight shoot.

Through the window of the high cab I could see the head and shoulders of the driver. He had one hand on the wheel as he steered the truck. He looked as though he might be whistling. I woke Mum. ‘We’re in the mountains.’

She stood up shakily. First she looked at the rock-face on her side of the truck and then she peered over my side into the chasm below. She started back.

‘I don’t remember there being mountains on the map,’ she said. ‘But then again…’

She gazed in silence at the stretch of plain, at the fields and tiny houses and at the changing colour of the earth.

‘Mum,’ I tried to coax her back.

‘Yes?’ She continued to hang, her arms and head dangling over the edge.

‘Mum, please…’ I begged, pulling at her dress.

‘I hope nothing decides to come the other way.’ She squinted past the driver to the steep and narrow road that twisted in a single lane ahead.

As the morning wore on the truck slowed to a crawl. Black and white goats looked down at us from paths in the rock. It was cooler in the mountains and the air was sweet and fresh. Mum draped a cloth over Henning’s head. ‘So he won’t be so crazy when he wakes up,’ she said.

Mum and I finished our loaf of bread and ate an orange each. The juice stuck to my hands and face and my arm began to itch.

‘I need to go to the toilet.’

Mum banged on the window of the cab. The driver looked round, taking his eyes off the road for a long, terrifying minute. I scratched my arm ferociously.

‘Stop. Stop. Arrête,’ Mum mouthed at him through the glass. The driver creased his eyes in incomprehension and turned away.

‘I need to go to the toilet,’ I moaned.

Mum slapped my hand to stop me scratching. ‘I’ll hold on to you and you pee over the edge,’ she said, hoisting me up on to the metal wall.

Henning lay motionless under his scarf.

Mum held me tight by the arms while I squatted on the ledge and tried to pee on to the road and not into the truck. As I was lifted back to safety a horn began to blare. It wasn’t our horn. It came from further up the mountain. It wound round the corners nearer and louder with each bend of the road. Our truck slowed right down and stopped. The driver opened his door and got out.

‘Algiers?’ Henning asked. He had woken up.

A truck almost identical to ours but carrying a half-load of sheep came to a halt a few feet away. The two men stood in the middle of the road and argued. They were making a plan. Eventually they both turned round and got back into their trucks. First the other man backed off a little. Then we began to move forward, inch by inch straight towards the cliff edge.

Henning buried his head in his hands. Mum and I scrambled over to the safer side.

The other truck nuzzled into the rock-face, its wheels spinning as they tilted up the wall. We edged forward until the two cabs were side by side, their walls scraping and grating above the engine and the braying of the frightened sheep. Our truck lurched. A shower of loose earth and stones fell away from the ledge and cascaded down the sheer cliff. I listened with burning ears for the slide of our wheels slipping off the road. Mum pulled me to the back of the truck. I held on to her and prepared to jump. Henning kept his face buried.

We progressed scrape by scrape with slow grinds. I had forgotten how to breathe. I gasped, my mouth open, sucking and swallowing the air into my chest. My chest ached. There was a point right between my ribs that was as raw as my arm. I wanted to lie down and go to sleep.

A fat, white sheep watched me with concern. I held its liquid eye as it moved slowly past until with a loud blast of the horn our truck pulled free and screeched into the middle of the road.

Henning leapt up and began to dance. The skin on my face had frozen with the wait and now it began to tingle.

‘Are we nearly there?’ I asked, but I didn’t expect anyone to know.

‘Don’t stare,’ Mum said, as we watched the driver unpack his lunch.

We had stopped on top of the mountain. There were crystals of purple glass scattered over the ground. Amethyst, Mum said they were. The amethyst, which was a jewel, grew in rocks like a hard and shiny animal. I wanted to collect it. All of it, or just some of it and take it away, but the rocks were too heavy to lift. In Marrakech I had seen women selling earrings and bracelets made of amethyst. If I could just carry some away, Bea and I could sell it on a stall while Bilal told jokes and did backflips to attract a crowd. We’d make our fortunes and live in a magic palace like Luigi Mancini’s that floated from place to place so that when Mum wanted an adventure we wouldn’t have to hitch.

Henning sat on a rock and watched the driver eating his food. He pretended that he wasn’t watching, but I could see he was following the driver’s every mouthful.

I tried to make him help me. I wanted him to crack apart one of the stones so that it would be small enough to carry. I wanted him to lift one up and crash it down so that it would splinter into tiny pieces. Pieces the right size to sell on a stall. He refused to understand and continued to watch the driver’s every move.

Mum sat with a straight back and meditated.

In the late afternoon we drove into a vineyard. We had all moved into the front of the truck to get out of the sun, and as we passed through a faded wooden gate the driver turned and gave us his first smile. He stopped the truck in front of a row of stone buildings and turned off the engine. A dog ran out of a shed and jumped up at him. He kicked the dog affectionately and stretched.

The driver wasn’t going any further. We had arrived at his vineyard and that was as far as he went. But before we continued our journey he insisted we accompany him on a guided tour. We wandered listlessly down rows of green vines, their leaves scattered with grapes too small to eat. The driver glowed with pride. He kept up a running commentary as we walked, kicking his dog from time to time with an indulgent smile.

‘Algiers?’ Mum asked when the tour was over. The driver pointed us along the rough track that led away from his farm and we said thank you and goodbye.

Mum, Henning and I stood on the dirt track with our eyes fixed hopefully on the horizon. Nothing appeared.

We began to walk.

‘I can’t help thinking,’ Mum said after some time, ‘that this might be one of those roads that nothing ever comes down.’

It began to grow dark. Once it started to grow dark you only had to notice and it was dark. It seemed pointless to keep on walking. We sat down on a wall.

I closed my eyes and imagined Bea lying in a bedroom full of toys under a smooth white sheet, too full of mashed potato to sleep. Maybe she’d go back to visit Aunty Rose and Aunty Rose would give her presents and home-made biscuits and glasses of lemonade. She would have Khadija all to herself and then if Bilal came back she might tell him that me and Mum had left her behind and he’d feel sorry for her and she’d become his favourite. I wondered what Mum’s face would have looked like if I’d said that I wasn’t going to the Zaouia either. Little shivers ran across my skin. I knew I could never have done it.

I must have fallen asleep because when Ali stepped out of the darkness and introduced himself I woke up with a start. Ali knew of somewhere we could spend the night. It was a mud hut with a roof made of straw. The hut had one room and it was round. Moonlight flooded in through the doorway and lit up the rush mats that covered the floor.

Henning had a pack of cards. Henning, Mum and I sat in a circle and played snap. Ali had disappeared without a word as soon as we were settled in. It was very hard to play snap by moonlight but it was the only game we could get Henning to understand. Every time someone said ‘snap’ Mum lit a match to see if they were right. The game went on for ever, and when eventually Henning won we started again. I was too hungry to sleep.