The Tenth Gift (33 page)

“I am horribly ashamed of myself,” I said quietly into the stiff silence.

His gaze came back to me slowly. Was I imagining it, or was there cold disdain in those dark eyes now?

“We must go,” he said tonelessly. “Khaled will be waiting for us.” He said nothing else to me for the rest of the afternoon.

T
HE CAFÉ WAS
on the Rue de Baghdad, just behind the central railway station. Khaled turned out to be a rotund little man in his middle fifties with a smooth, unlined face and twinkling, curious eyes. He wore a white gandoura and, incongruously, a green baseball cap bearing the letters ASS across its crown. He caught my hands and shook them warmly. As my eyes strayed back to the cap, he laughed delightedly.

“You like my hat? It is my favorite,” he said in excellent, barely accented English. “I wear it particularly for surprising my American students, who find it hilarious. Stands for Association Sportive de Salé.
C’est rigolant, non?”

Idriss managed a thin smile, while I nodded, grateful for this break in the tension.

“As I said on the telephone, Julia has a book she wants to show you for your opinion,” Idriss started, as if wishing to complete the task as quickly as possible. He switched to Arabic, talking fast, and Khaled’s expression changed to one of shock. A paranoid part of me imagined Idriss telling him that the woman opposite him, looking so innocent in her hijab, was in fact an adulterous infidel, a creature of no morals who had by dubious means come by a treasure she did not merit; that they should relieve her of the book and send her back to the world she came from, where such behavior was commonplace. I felt my cheeks flushing anew.

“May I see it?” the professor asked at last.

Idriss sat back, his expression closed and remote, and lit up a cigarette.

I reached into my handbag, extricated
The Needle-Woman’s Glorie
, and passed it to him. At the sight of it, Khaled’s eyes grew round and intent. He spread a paper napkin across the melamine table, as if decades of spilled coffee, sugar, and ash could by osmosis insinuate their way into its covers to desecrate its contents, and laid Catherine’s book down with the reverence of a man handling a religious relic. His fingers brushed the calfskin, caressed the blind bands on the spine. Then with infinite care he opened it and began to read.

“I
NCROYABLE
.”
T
HE FOUR
syllables came separately, the
r
rolled dramatically.

“Is it real?” I asked.

I had sat like a mouse for the best part of two and a half hours, avoiding looking at Idriss, instead drinking an unpalatably strong coffee and focusing on the professor turning the pages and tilting the book this way and that. At one point he had produced a magnifying glass, at another a small dictionary. He had tutted and hummed and taken his baseball cap off and scratched his head, revealing an unfortunate comb-over, then muttered to himself in Arabic, and then in French, and said something to Idriss that he did not translate for my benefit. He had laughed and flicked back a few pages as if searching for a reference, before reading on. Now he met my concerned gaze with a vast grin.

“Real?”

“Or is it a clever forgery, a fake?”
“Mon chère
Julia, it’s as real as you or I.”

By this stage, light-headed with hunger and dread, I was feeling so insubstantial as to not be very real at all. “Sorry, can you explain?”

“There is, as far as I am aware, no other account in any language by a female captive from the early days of the Salé corsairs, even
before their independent divan was established, and the fact that it appears to be in her own hand makes it a unique artifact. The Sidi al-Ayyachi is a well-documented character, and I have come across references in the course of my own research which refer to a lieutenant of his called Sidi Qasem bin Hamed bin Moussa Dib, so to see him featured here is quite fascinating.” “Who?” I frowned.

“Qasem bin Hamed bin Moussa Dib, known variously in the legends as the Djinn or the Jackal—‘dib’ means ‘fox’ or ‘jackal’ in Arabic—or the man of Andalucia. He appears to have been one of the Hornacheros, a Moor expelled from Spain by Philip III. According to the stories, his family was butchered by the Inquisition, and he returned to Rabat. He learned his corsair skills under the tutelage of the infamous Dutchman Jan Jansz, otherwise known as Murad Raïs, when he became admiral of the Salé fleet, and he was elected a raïs— a captain of the fleet—and fought as
al-ghuzat
—a holy warrior in the war against the enemies of the Prophet. This tells us things about him no one ever knew: that he was more closely allied to the notorious English pirate John Ward than with Jan Jansz, that he led the fleet to the English coast in 1625, that he was more cultured and more complex than any of the legends imply.”

“You speak about him with far more respect than I’d have thought due a pirate chief.”

Khaled smiled. “I might say the same of your Robin Hood, or your Francis Drake, and certainly of your Richard the Lionheart. One culture’s hero is another culture’s villain—it all depends whose side you’re on. History is a very malleable thing, usually written by the victors.”

“I always preferred Saladin,” I said softly.

“Another great
al-ghuzat
—and unlike your Richard, merciful in victory.”

“And all this about the embroidery—can it be true that Catherine taught the local women her skills?”

Khaled spread his hands. “About that I fear I am no expert.” He leaned forward. “But it ends very suddenly, this journal. Do you know what happened to her, to this Catherine Tregenna?”

“There is more to her tale.” I showed him the photocopies Michael had left at the riad for me.

He read the two sheets, then turned them over, searching for more. “But where is the rest? You cannot leave me in such suspense. The young man followed her here—was he successful in his ransom bid? Did she return to your country with him?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“But we must find out! I very much want to read the account of this”—he scanned the first page again—“this Robert Bolitho.”

“A friend has the letters,” I said uncomfortably.

“Well, then, that’s simple enough. Excellent. I shall very much look forward to reading them. Now, in the meantime, Julia, tell me: What are you going to do with your book?”

I hesitated. “I’m not sure. What do you think I should do with it?”

The professor’s eyes gleamed. “It is a magnificent treasure containing unique insights into the history of my country. It would be a tragedy for it to disappear. I would truly love to do some further research on it, to produce a paper … maybe even a book of my own.”

He was candid at least. “For now,” I said carefully, “you could have a photocopy. While I decide what I am going to do with it.”

He beamed at me. “That would be wonderful.”

We found a copy shop around the corner from the Ministry of Justice and I went outside and sat on the pavement in the late-afternoon sun while Khaled, with the infinite care of a man used to handling old books, made a copy. Idriss came out and leaned up against the door, smoked another cigarette in an agitated fashion, glanced at me once and looked as if he was about to say something, then went back inside without a word.

At last, Khaled gave me back Catherine’s book and we shook
hands. “Let me give you my telephone number,” he said, “so that you can call me when you make your decision, yes?”

I smiled. “Okay.” We both took out our mobiles and I gave Khaled my number while I turned mine on. Meditel came up on the screen after a few seconds, followed by a powerful beep.

You have 7 missed calls.

Oh, hell. There were also three messages: two from Michael and one—my heart thudded—from Anna. Avoiding the messages, I input Khaled’s number into the phone, locked the keypad, and stowed it in my bag. “I will phone you,” I promised the professor, and stood back as he and Idriss embraced and bade each other farewell.

When he had disappeared from view, Idriss turned and looked at me. “What now?” he asked suddenly.

It was the first time he had addressed me since we left his brother’s place of work. The sun beat down on me, and my head pounded unpleasantly. We had walked to the corner, which gave onto the Avenue Mohammed V, and were approaching the Gare de la Ville before I could find the words to reply. “I’ve really messed everything up,” I said miserably. I felt sick. “And I know you despise me for it, and I don’t blame you, but I’m going to try to put everything right, I am.”

I looked up at him, but the sun was behind him and I couldn’t see his face. The next thing I knew, the world spun and I was on the ground, black stars dancing before my eyes.

“Julia!”

He hauled me upright and fairly carried me up the steps and into the shade of the station concourse. Soon I found myself sitting on an orange plastic chair with a huge pastry and a bottle of mineral water in front of me.

“You haven’t eaten anything all day,” he said sternly.

“Neither have you.”

“I am used to going without, and to the sun here, which you are not. I thought the hijab would help, but the heat today is unforgiving.”

Much like you, I thought, but did not say.

I bit into the pastry and little flakes of almond cascaded onto the plate. Over his shoulder I could see on the board that the next train to Casablanca had been announced, leaving in fifteen minutes. Just enough time to buy a ticket and run away again. The thought was tempting. I had my passport and ticket with me, and there was nothing in the bag at Idriss’s house I could not live without. I could spend the night in an anonymous hotel in Casa and catch a flight back to London the following day, and bury my head in my new apartment. And then what? And then … my future stretched like a gaping black void. Lucky Catherine, I thought. Someone had loved her enough to cross oceans for her, to risk his life to bring her home to be his bride. Rather than chasing her across continents with his wife in tow in order to take back a gift he had given her to seal the end of their love affair.

“I owe you an apology,” Idriss said suddenly.

“Heatstroke.” I laughed feebly. “Not your fault.”

“Not that. For today, for not talking to you after you shared your story with me. I should have said something, but I did not know what to say. You brought some painful memories back, and you shamed me by your honesty.”

I thought for a moment that his grasp of English had failed him and he meant he was ashamed of me, but by the time I realized this was not what he had said, he was talking fast and I had to struggle to keep up.

“When Francesca’s contract came to an end and she left, I was devastated. I wanted to die. For a while I thought I would, and that would be the best solution to the mess I was in, but somehow I kept living and eating and breathing, and although I was a lesser man for a long time afterward, I was still me and still alive and my family stopped me from falling apart completely. We kept in touch for a while after she went back to the States. She told me that she was going to divorce her husband, and asked if I would leave Morocco to be with her. I even went to their consulate to see about a visa, but of course they wouldn’t give me one: a single Muslim man from a country which had generated a number of wanted radical Islamists, heading
for the U.S. for no apparently good reason just after nine-eleven? I wouldn’t have given me a visa, either. And of course I couldn’t say anything about my relationship with Francesca: She had been my university tutor, and she was married—our relationship was scandalous on both fronts. They could have imprisoned me for it, and banned her from ever returning. So after that, I gave up my studies and worked the taxi full-time, every day around the clock, just to forget, and to pay my family back in money what they had given me in support. That was six years ago. So you see, Julia: I do not despise you, because I, too, know what it is to lose my heart, and in the worst of circumstances.”

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t shocked—but I was surprised, for Idriss did not strike me as a man who would give himself over to passion. He had seemed calm and restrained, a man in control of himself, a man at peace with his world. How deceptive appearances can be. I leaned across the table, forgetting where I was, and put my hand on his arm. He leapt back, as if I had burned him.

People were looking at us now. It was obviously one thing to carry in a heat-struck woman, but quite another for that woman to show physical affection in public.

“You said, before you fainted, ‘I’m going to try to put everything right.’ What did you mean by that?”

I took out my phone and laid it on the table between us. “I can’t keep running away. There are things I must face up to, amends I must make, if I can.”

M
ICHAEL’S FIRST MESSAGE
read:

The second was more frantic:

I deleted them both. Anna’s message was the third. I didn’t much want to read it but I knew I must. Swallowing hard, I opened her message.

Tears sprang to my eyes and I dashed them away with the back of my hand.
I know everything, but you are still my friend … Love, Anna.
She knew it all. She knew Michael had cheated on her, and that it was with me. And yet after all that I had done to her, she had the grace to say something that touched my heart and reminded me of the girls we had once been. Abruptly I realized that all this time I had been afraid not of losing Michael but of the thought that Anna would discover what I had done to her. Michael and I had tied ourselves together with bonds forged of our guilt; now that what we had done lay exposed to the light, I could see it for the paltry thing it was. A weight seemed to be lifted from me. I was free at last; for all my failings, I realized that I deserved better than a man who could turn a smiling face to his wife every morning, every night for seven long years, and lie and lie and lie.