Hideous Kinky (3 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Bea and I sat cross-legged on the floor and divided the beans into two piles. My pile looked bigger than Bea’s, but I decided not to mention it. Mum was crying over the onions.

‘Will John be back in England by now?’ I asked, and she wiped her nose on the back of her hand and said, ‘Yes. I should think so.’

‘Did he go back to find Maretta?’

‘Yes, I expect so,’ she sniffed.

‘Why did Maretta go back?’ I asked, forgetfully eating a bean.

‘Because the hospital sent her.’ I had heard this before, but I wanted to hear it again.

‘Did they send her on an aeroplane?’

‘Yes.’ She dropped handfuls of onions into the hot oil.

‘Did they send John on an aeroplane?’

‘No. They didn’t send him. He went.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he wanted to.’

‘Didn’t we want to?’

‘Didn’t we want to what?’ She stopped and caught my eye.

‘Go home,’ I said.

‘No. We do not. And please don’t eat the beans.’

She stirred the onions angrily as they sizzled in the tajine. A plate of chopped tomatoes sent the sizzle into a roar and then the stew steamed gently with slowly added aubergine and all of Bea’s beans and some of mine.

‘When we do go home…’ I asked, ‘will it be on an aeroplane too?’

Mum poured olive oil on to the salad and cut thick slices of white bread. ‘Let’s eat,’ she said and she carried the food out into the garden.

It was a warm and light evening and we had gone to the open café in the Djemaa El Fna to eat our supper: bowls of bissara, a soup made with split peas and cumin and a circle of olive oil floating on top. Mum had finished and was talking in French with a man from another table. Bea and I explored the café while playing our own game of tag. The key rule to the game was one invented by Bea to extricate herself in the unlikely event of her ever being caught. As I brushed the edge of her sleeve with my outstretched hand I would have to say something, a word invented by me, but if she saw me coming she could free herself by screaming ‘Hideous!’ or ‘Kinky!’ or both a second before I touched her, thereby freeing her to race away between the tables and chairs while I panted behind – running good words over in my head.

It was at the height of this game that a man stopped me as I hurtled past his table. He held on to my arm and looked at me full in the face. I gulped. I was sure I had been swearing. Bea sidled back and stood behind me.

‘Why don’t you both sit down and take some tea with me?’ the man said in perfect English. He stretched out his hand to Bea and introduced himself. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Luigi Mancini.’ He was tall and thin with pure silver hair that slicked back from his temple to the nape of his neck. ‘So you are English,’ he smiled. ‘What shall I call you? The English Children?’

We told him our names and he leant back in his chair, drawing on an ivory cigarette holder. He exhaled a gentle line of blue smoke into the air. ‘I used to know your father,’ he said. ‘In London, in the forties, when he wore silver and gold waistcoats.’ Luigi Mancini chuckled to himself. ‘Does he still wear these waistcoats in silver and gold?’

I wanted to ask whether he meant one silver one and one gold one, on different days. Or whether it was a mixture. One silver-and-gold waistcoat for Sunday best.

‘Probably,’ Bea said.

I tried to picture my father in London dressed in clothes that sparkled. All that came to mind was a colour illustration from ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’. A man in his forties with pockets full of treasure. I had forgotten that I even had a father.

‘I hope you will come and stay with me. I have a house not far from here,’ Luigi Mancini was saying. ‘With a beautiful garden. Will you visit?’

‘Oh, yes,’ we both said in unison, and Bea jumped down and ran and found Mum and led her back to the table.

‘This is Luigi Mancini. And this is our Mum,’ Bea said, and Mum sat down and smiled while a waiter came and poured us all mint tea.

‘Can we go?’ I asked, when the invitation was presented again, and to my relief she said, ‘Of course, we’ll go this weekend. If that’s all right with you?’

Luigi Mancini waved a hand heavy with rings and said he’d be delighted.

Luigi Mancini was a Prince. There was everything but his crown to prove it. I wandered with Bea through the cool dark rooms of his palace. There were gold-framed mirrors and candles, unlit in every room. I slid over polished wooden floors that creaked between one flying carpet and the next. ‘Luigi Mancini, Luigi Mancini,’ I hummed as we explored the upstairs corridor.

‘Do you think maybe Luigi Mancini will ask Mum to marry him?’ I said as we watched them from a bedroom window. They were deep in conversation as they walked in a slow curve around the rose garden. ‘Then I could be a Princess and you could be my lady-in-waiting.’

Bea stared out of the window.

‘Or if you wanted, you could be a Princess too.’

‘Just think, we’d have cornflakes every morning for the rest of our lives,’ she said, and we both sighed.

For the last two mornings we’d sat down to breakfast at a table heavy with linen and silver, in the centre of which was a giant box of cornflakes. ‘Shipped from England,’ Luigi Mancini had said. ‘Especially for my girls.’

There was a host of silent servants, all men, who kept the silver shining and the meals flowing and the beds crisp and turned down. They were not the same men who clipped the rose bushes and collected the petals that sat in bowls around the house or mowed the lawn and mended the fences so that the peacocks didn’t stray too far.

Luigi Mancini and our mother walked back into sight along a gravel path. He was, as always, dressed in white and Mum looked like a Queen in her purple caftan.

‘Anyway, Mum wouldn’t want to marry Luigi Mancini and stay in this house for ever and ever.’

‘Why not?’ I pressed my face against the window-pane to try and lip-read their conversation.

‘She wants to have adventures,’ Bea said. ‘She told me.’

‘When?’

Bea didn’t answer.

‘Will they start very soon?’ I persisted.

‘Yes, of course.’ Bea began to wind herself up in the linen curtain that hung across the window.

‘But if she married Luigi Mancini that would be an adventure.’

‘No,’ her muffled voice came back.

‘It would be for me,’ I said, trying to unwind her. ‘It would be for her if she liked cornflakes.

‘Or white bread.

‘Or mashed potato.

‘Or milk shakes.’

‘Or spaghetti hoops,’ Bea joined in. ‘We could order crates of them and eat them off our fingers like rings.’

‘Strawberries,’ I said.

‘Liquorice allsorts.’

‘99S’

‘They’d melt, silly. Wind yourself up in the other curtain and be hidden and we’ll see if they come and find us.’

So we stood there, whispering to each other from our separate coils of curtain while we waited in vain for the search to begin.

We walked into the garden to take a final look at the peacocks. ‘If there is ever a peacock that doesn’t get on with the others and needs a home…’ Bea ventured nervously, ‘or if one of the pea-hens has too many chicks, I’d look after it for you. We’ve got a garden too, you know.’

‘Thank you,’ Luigi Mancini said. ‘That’s very kind of you. I’ll most certainly remember.’

The car was waiting to take us back to the Mellah. Mum was already sitting inside and, as we approached, the driver started up the engine. Luigi Mancini whispered something to him and strode off without a word of goodbye. The car turned in the drive and Mum looked round at us with a frown.

‘What did you say to him?’

‘Nothing… only…’ But before any more trouble was caused the door opened and a fat black hen was thrust on to Bea’s lap.

‘Sorry she’s not a peacock,’ Luigi Mancini smiled, but she’ll be very happy with you in your garden. And he kissed his fingers at us as the car pulled away, and called, ‘Do come again.’

Bea held her arms tight around the black hen so she couldn’t move or flap her wings. ‘I’ll name her Snowy,’ she said. ‘Like in Tintin.’ I leant over and stroked the top of Snowy’s head with one finger. Her round orange eyes darted about like fireflies.

CHAPTER FIVE

If Mum refused to marry Luigi Mancini it was not long before another suitable candidate presented himself.

It was a blue cloudless afternoon and we sat at the front of the crowd in the Djemaa El Fna and watched the Gnaoua dancing. They wore embroidered caps fringed with cowrie shells which tinkled like bells when they moved. They played their tall drums and danced in the square on most afternoons.

‘Where do they come from?’ I asked Mum.

‘They are a Senegalese tribe from West Africa. The King of Morocco has always employed them as his own personal drummers.’

‘Because they’re so beautiful?’ I asked, admiring the elegant wrists and ankles of the dancers as their cymbals rang out in time to the men’s drumming hands.

‘Maybe.’

Khadija, a plump and solemn-faced beggar girl, wriggled through the crowd and squatted next to me.

‘Hello Khadija,’ my mother said, noticing her, and Khadija smiled a big gap-toothed grin. She touched my arm and pointed through the crowd across the square to where a group of people were beginning to gather. ‘Hadaoui,’ she said and began to move towards them, looking over her shoulder to see that I was following.

An old man in faded purple and red robes unfolded a large carpet on which he placed variously shaped brass pots. He filled each one with plastic flowers. He talked to the people who stopped to watch, spreading ripples of laughter through the gathering crowd. Once the carpet was unravelled and every last ornament was in place it became clear not all his comments were directed towards the crowd, but some to a tall, much younger man, who threw his words back at him quietly and with a half-smile that made the people sway with laughter.

The old man sat in the centre of his carpet and blew into a pipe that twisted around inside a bowl of water and bubbled and smoked with each breath.

‘What’s he doing?’ I looked at Khadija and pointed.

‘Kif,’ she said, hugging her knees and keeping her eyes fixed on the entertainment.

Bea appeared and sat on the other side of Khadija. ‘Where’s Mum?’

I looked round to see her standing near the young man who was lifting white doves out of a box and placing them on the carpet. The doves ruffled their wings and strutted about, pleased to be in the open.

‘Do you think they’re going to do any tricks?’

‘Who?’ Bea said.

‘The doves, of course.’

They didn’t. It was the old man who did the tricks. He didn’t juggle or dance or swallow flaming swords, but somehow, by talking, mumbling, even praying, he held the crowd, grinning and transfixed, straining for his every word. The younger man seemed sometimes to be his loyal assistant and then, disappearing, would emerge on the side of the crowd, heckling and jibing from amongst them, and, just as tempers began to boil, would disclose himself, much to everyone’s delight, by leaping into the open and winking slyly all around. Bea, Khadija and I squatted close to the front, with the hard legs of men pressed against our backs.

After the young man had walked twice round the circle on his hands, and the old man had prayed to Allah on a pretend rug, the people seemed to know it was the end. They threw coins on to the carpet and drifted away. I saw my mother throw a coin, but she stayed standing where she was on the other side of the circle.

The Hadaoui’s assistant wandered about, stooping now and then to collect the money, which he placed in a leather pouch. He wore sandals and jeans that had once been white and a thin Moroccan shirt with tiny cotton buttons that ran halfway down the front. He had wavy black hair and was taller than Akari the Estate Agent and the other Moroccan men I knew. As the people dispersed, Khadija jumped up and ran on to the carpet where the old man still sat, quietly smoking. She took a red plastic flower from its pot and presented it to the man who was collecting coins. He looked at her for a moment. I held my breath. Then he smiled and bent down to accept it. Khadija ran about under my jealous stare, collecting flowers one by one and standing straight and still to present them, while the assistant, sharing her solemnity, accepted them with a ritual nod of his head. I hovered in my place, envying her bare feet as they padded over the carpet, until, unable to resist a moment longer, I slipped off my plastic sandals and skidded across to join her. The man smiled quizzically as I handed him my first flower. He looked over my head and I saw his eye meet my mother’s and so identify me as her child and a foreigner despite my caftan and dusty feet.

Khadija and I watched as the doves were collected one by one and replaced in their cardboard box. ‘We’ve got a pet,’ I said to her. ‘Not a dove. A hen.’ I pointed at the cooing boxes. ‘At home. Would you like to see?’

Khadija shook her head, but I could tell she didn’t understand. ‘Mum, Mum,’ I shouted as I ran towards her. ‘What’s Arabic for hen?’ But I stopped before I got there because she was deep in conversation with the magic man’s assistant. They were talking in a mixture of French and English and laughing. They turned to me as I ran up.

‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I saw you earlier on, helping Bilal.’

Bilal smiled at me. He had the most beautiful smile of all smiles and his dark eyes twinkled in a face smooth and without a trace of anything unfriendly. It was then that I noticed the necklace. It hung around his neck in a string of silver and gold beads.

‘Mum,’ I said, willing her to bend down so I could whisper in her ear, and when she finally did I pressed my face close to hers and said, ‘Is Bilal my Dad?’

She stood up and took my hand and patted it.

‘Goodbye,’ she said, a little abruptly, ‘maybe we’ll see you here tomorrow.’

‘Oh yes,’ Bilal answered. ‘Tomorrow. Inshallah. God willing.’ And he began to roll up the carpet.

The Hadaoui, Bilal and the white doves stayed in Marrakech for a week, attracting a large crowd every afternoon. Each day Khadija and I waited impatiently for the entertainment to end so we could take up our important role as official helpers to Bilal. The old man remained forever too full of mystery and magic to approach. I kept to the edges of the carpet and avoided meeting his eye.

‘When you’re old, will you turn into the Hadaoui?’ I asked Bilal on the afternoon of his last performance.

‘I am the Hadaoui. Now. You don’t believe me?’ he said in his funny broken English.

‘But you’re not magic,’ Bea said.

‘And you don’t have a beard.’

Bilal laughed. ‘Maybe children can tell about these things. Today the Hadaoui stops here. And from tomorrow I am working as a builder.’

‘Here? Staying here?’

‘Yes. The Hadaoui must have a holiday. So I become a builder. Here in Marrakech.’

I looked over at Mum to see if she was as excited as me that Bilal wasn’t to be going away. She was smiling, but she looked as if she might have known all along.

Bilal came to live with us in the Mellah. Every morning he went out early to work on a building site. In the afternoons when it was too hot to work he took us to the square. Best of all he liked to watch the acrobats. There were a troupe of boys, all about seven or eight years old, dressed in red and green silk like little dragons, who did double somersaults from a standing position and tricks so daring the people gasped and clapped and threw coins into a hat. Bilal instructed us to watch them very carefully.

One day over lunch in our cool tiled kitchen Bilal revealed his plan. ‘We will have our own show in the Djemaa El Fna!’ he declared triumphantly. Bilal was to be Ring Master. Mum was to make the costumes from silk on the sewing-machine we’d brought with us from England, and Bea and I would be the star guests, performing acrobatic tricks. ‘People will love to see the English children do the tricks.’ Bilal’s eyes sparkled. ‘We will have a crowd as big as the Hadaoui and we will collect many coins.’

‘But I can’t do any tricks,’ I said, frightened of diminishing his enthusiasm, but unable to restrain my anxiety.

‘Bea can you do any tricks? At all?’

Bea shook her head. ‘I can do a handstand.’

Bilal was undeterred. ‘I train you. We start today. Very soon you will be doing this.’ He demonstrated with a backward somersault right there in the kitchen.

That afternoon we dressed in shorts and T-shirts and spread a blanket over the paving-stones. ‘Soon,’ Bilal said, ‘you won’t be needing any carpet.’

We started with roly-polies. Head over heels. The names made Bilal laugh. Our attempts to perfect this simple trick did not. My version of a roly-poly was a slow tumble which culminated in a star, as I lay flat on my back, my legs and arms stretched in different directions, staring up at the sky. The best part of it, I thought.

‘You must end up on your feet.’ Bilal frowned. ‘Watch me.’ From a standing position Bilal took a couple of quick steps, then, tucking in his head, rolled through the air, his bent back barely touching the ground, and he was upright again. ‘You see,’ he said. ‘A flying rolly-polly.’

We kept working at it, Bilal was patient and encouraging. As part of our training he took us regularly to the square, where we sat and watched the acrobats. For me they had taken on a new majesty. They were tiny and fluid and without fear. They cartwheeled through hoops, formed themselves into pyramids and triple-somersaulted off the top, their bodies bending in half as they flew through the air. I imagined Bea and myself dressed in silk, our hair plaited out of the way, dextrous and skilful, taking a bow to the applauding crowd. We would have so many coins to collect that when we sent enough to Bilal’s family in the mountains so that he didn’t have to work on the building site any more, there would still be some left over. I took hold of Bilal’s hand. ‘I promise to practise every day, because…’ And I felt a rush of excitement as the beginnings of a great plan unravelled in my mind. ‘Because I’ve decided that when I grow up I want to be a tightrope walker. You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ Bilal nodded. Bilal was someone I could trust.

That afternoon we walked home through the busy streets. I sat on Bilal’s shoulders high up above the crowd and from time to time I asked him to let go of my legs so that I could practise balance.

We began going to the park for our training. Mum thought it would be better to practise acrobatic tricks on grass. As the weeks went by, our bodies didn’t turn into the fearless, weightless ones Bilal had hoped they would. Or at least Bea’s did a little more than mine, but not enough. We began to spend more and more time playing leapfrog, which anyone could do, or lying on the grass telling stories.

Bilal continued to work on the building site. I realized that in order to be a tightrope walker I didn’t necessarily have to be an acrobat. So I kept to my own secret plan and practised balancing whenever I got the chance.