Part 11 (1/2)

He walked sadly back to his room through the afternoon heat. Lizards basked on stones in the sun, idly doing press-ups as he approached, reverting to glazed immobility once more as he walked on by. To his left he saw the tall diving board of the swimming pool, and some asterisks of light flashed off the blue water he could glimpse through the perforated concrete screen that surrounded the pool area. Normally it would be lively with bathers, the bars crowded with sun-reddened guests, the nearby tennis courts resounding to the pock-pock of couples rallying. Where were the other people who were staying here? Morgan wondered. What were they like? He felt like some mad dictator, or eccentric millionaire recluse, alone in an entire multi-bedroom block with only his taciturn guards for company.

His second question was answered that evening when he went down to the restaurant. There was a table of four Syrians or Lebanese men, and an ancient, wrinkled American couple. The Lebanese ignored him; the Americans said, ”h.e.l.lo, there,” and looked anxious to exchange grumbles about their common predicament. Morgan sat as far away as he could. Pretend nothing has happened, he told himself; as soon as we start behaving like victims of a siege-sharing resources, privations and anecdotes-this enforced stay really will become a nightmare.

He was well into his rather firm avocado when the eighth guest arrived. If he had been asked to speculate, unseen, on his or her ident.i.ty, Morgan-knowing his luck-would have laid long odds on the eighth guest being a nun, an overweight salesman or moustachioed spinster. He was surprised then, and almost enchanted when a young woman entered wearing the dark-blue skirt and white blouse of BOAC. She was quite pretty, too, Morgan a.s.sessed, his avocado untended, as he watched her sway through the empty tables to her seat close to the Americans.

For a minute or so Morgan's heartbeat seemed to echo rather loudly in his chest as, more surrept.i.tiously, he scrutinised the girl. ”Girl” was perhaps a little too kind. She looked to be well into her thirties, that short blond hair certainly dyed, a slightly predatory air about her features due to the rather hooked nose, the liberally applied cosmetics, and lines that ran from the corners of her nostrils to the ends of her thin orange lips. She had amazingly long painted nails that matched the colour of her lipstick.

For the first time that day Morgan's spirits were lifted. Something about her-the dark eye-shadow, her tan against the white cotton of her blouse-reminded him of the brisk s.e.xual allure of the helicopter pilot of the year before. He pa.s.sed the rest of the meal in a pleasantly absorbing miasma of s.e.xual fantasy.

Fantasy was all he had to content himself with, however, as the girl appeared to return to her room directly after dinner. Morgan drank a couple of whiskies in the bar but was driven out by the increasingly clamorous garrulity of the four Lebanese, who played bridge with a quite un-English fervour and intensity. The American couple tried to befriend him once again but Morgan repelled their polite ”Say, do you have any idea where we can change some dollars?” with a rush of eyebrow-jerking, shoulder-shrugging pseudo French: ”Ah, desole desole, haw...euh, je vous ne comprendre, non? Oui? Disdonc je vous ne comprendre, non? Oui? Disdonc, eur, bof, vous savez vous savez haha haha parler pas Anglais parler pas Anglais. Mmm?” They wandered off with an air of baffled resignation.

The next morning, Morgan looked out of his fifth-floor window. From this height he commanded a considerable view of the hotel area. He could see Peter p.i.s.sing into a bush on the edge of the car-park. A military jeep was pulled up in front of the central building. Over to his left and partially obscured by a clump of trees he could see the swimming pool: a static blue slab surrounded by grey concrete and ranks of empty lounging chairs. Then, as he watched, a small figure came into his line of vision. It was the stewardess, wearing what looked like a tiny yellow bikini. She jumped into the pool and swam round. Morgan watched dry-mouthed as she clambered dripping up the steps and fingered free the sodden material of her briefs, which had become wedged in the cleft between her b.u.t.tocks. Morgan turned from the window and rummaged in his suitcase for his swimming trunks.

Morgan was not proud of the state he had allowed his body to get into. Always what his mother had called ”a big lad,” he had a.s.siduously developed at university a beer-gut which never disappeared and indeed had since expanded like some soft subcutaneous parasite around the sides of his torso, padding his back and swelling his already considerable b.u.t.tocks and thighs. He could have done something about it once, he supposed as he stood in front of the full-length bathroom mirror; there was nothing he could do about his balding head, but the recent addition of a thick Zapata moustache had effected some positive transformation of his appearance. A straggling line of pale brown hair ran straight down from his throat, between his worryingly plump b.r.e.a.s.t.s, to disappear beneath the waistband of his capacious trunks. ”Not a pretty sight,” a girlfriend had once remarked on observing him as he stumbled-soap-blind-from the shower, groping for a towel. Well, it was too late now, he concluded, inflating his chest and trying to suck in his stomach. In a suit he fancied he looked merely beefy; but this was another trouble with tropical climes: the terrible exposure that resulted through the regular need to shed as much clothing as possible.

Still, he felt quite good as he strolled down the walkway towards the pool, a carefully slung towel modestly covering his shuddering paps. A few more soldiers lounged by the hotel entrance, and the sun beat down from a perfectly blue sky. The enforced, unreal isolation and the unsettling threat of casually sported arms he found strangely invigorating, as if the deserted hotel complex were infused with a lurking wayward s.e.xuality only waiting to be sprung from cover.

Morgan spread his towel a polite few chairs away from the girl. She was lying on her front, bikini top undipped. He was perturbed to see the Lebanese encamped on the other side of the pool playing bridge. There was a fat one, far fatter than Morgan, in a white s.h.i.+rt and Bermuda shorts. The others wore tiny swimming suits like jock straps: two thin weaselly men-one of whom had a face pitted like a peach stone-and the fourth, gratingly handsome in a lounge-lizard kind of way, with a thin moustache and a thick springy rug of hair over a lean and muscly chest. Morgan worried rather about him; he kept looking over at the girl.

There was a persistent roaring in his head; furious red static grumbled and flushed behind his eyes; slabs of heat burned his thighs and belly. Morgan was sunbathing. It was agony. He sat up, rockets and anti-aircraft sh.e.l.ls pulsating and exploding everywhere he looked, and reached behind him for the bottle of beer he'd ordered and kept in the shade beneath a lounger. The bottle was still cool, the green gla.s.s slippy with beads of condensation. Morgan took great juddering pulls at it, beer spilling from the upended bottle over his chin, dripping onto his chest. His brain seemed to soar and cartwheel with the alcohol. He let out a silent, satisfying belch and stood up ready to plunge into the pool.

The first thing he noticed was the girl's striped towel, occupied only by the damp imprint of her body. Then he heard a ripple of laughter from the shallow end of the pool and he saw her chatting to the hairy Lebanese, who, as Morgan gazed, stood on his hands and walked round with his brown legs waving comically above the water, to the delighted laughter of the girl.

It can only have been this flirtatious display of agility, coupled with the dizzying effects of the cold beer, that drove Morgan to the diving board. As he climbed laboriously to the top he grew increasingly aware of the absurdity of the position he had committed himself to, and of all its hackneyed connotations. He sensed, as he emerged on the highest board, the attention of the others below turn to him. He had only seconds to decide. Beyond the lip of the board he saw the girl looking up at him, and the frank interest of her gaze inspired him and yet was somehow depressing. Depressing to think that he had stooped to these despised macho techniques to gain the girl's absorption, and inspiring to find that they actually worked. He hitched up the waistband of his trunks. He would compromise: he wouldn't dive-he wasn't sure if he could remember how-and he wouldn't climb back down. No, he would jump. He tried to saunter casually to the edge of the board. The pool slowly revealed itself beneath him. He thought: good G.o.d, it seems higher from up here. b.l.o.o.d.y high. Shouldn't there be some kind of legal limit ...? His doubts were cut off in midstream as he realised with a gulp of horror that he had missed his step and clownishly fallen forward off the board, not an elegant vertical jump, but at a gradually diminis.h.i.+ng angle of forty-five degrees to the water. And as the glinting, s.h.i.+mmering surface rushed up to meet him, Morgan spread his arms in a grotesque parody of a swallow-dive and belly-flopped full force with a ghastly echoing smack.

Everything was white. White and fizzing as if he were immersed in a gla.s.s of Andrews Liver Salts. He felt strong arms pulling him to the side. He felt his hands on the tiled edge of the pool. He took great gasping mouthfuls of air. His vision cleared. The hairy Lebanese was by his side, an arm protectively round his shoulders. Morgan shrugged him off and looked up. The stewardess crouched on the pool edge above him, concern filling her eyes.

”Are you all right?” she asked. ”It made an awful sound.”

”Mmmm. Sure,” Morgan wheezed. ”I'm...fine.”

He rested in his room all afternoon. The entire front of his body was flushed and tingling for at least two hours. The girl had gathered up his stuff, draped a towel across his winded shoulders and led him back to his block. He felt as if he had just swum the Channel; his lungs heaved, his body creaked with pain and he could barely gasp replies to the girl's worried solicitations. And when the pain and the agony subsided it was replaced with an equally cruel shame. Morgan writhed with embarra.s.sment on his bed, cursing his ridiculous pretensions, his preposterous life-guard conceit and his absurd gigolo rivalry.

He ate his evening meal as soon as the restaurant opened. Only the Americans accompanied him but they maintained a frosty indifference. He inquired at the desk if there had been any word about the coup or news of the airport opening. The reception clerk told him that there was nothing but martial music on the radio but he planned to listen to the BBC world service news at nine. Perhaps that would give them some reliable information.

Morgan found a dark corner of the bar and flicked through old magazines for a while. No one interrupted him. There was no sign of the stewardess or the Lebanese. He ordered a large whisky. To h.e.l.l with everyone, he thought.

Shortly after nine Morgan went out to look for the receptionist but the desk was empty. He waited for a few minutes and then decided to turn in early. He was walking down the pa.s.sageway that led out to his block when he heard noises coming from behind a door marked GAMES ROOM GAMES ROOM. He stopped. He could hear a man's voice, an indistinct seductive ba.s.s. He then heard some feminine giggles. He was about to walk on when he heard the girl say, ”No. Stop it. Come on now.” He listened again. She grew more insistent. ”Look. Stop Stop it. Really. Come on, it's your serve.” She was still giggling but it seemed to Morgan that a worried tone had entered her voice. Then: it. Really. Come on, it's your serve.” She was still giggling but it seemed to Morgan that a worried tone had entered her voice. Then: ”Ow! ”Ow!-Honestly, cut it out! No. Stop it, please.”

Morgan pushed open the door. The girl stood there in the hairy Lebanese's arms. He seemed to be biting her shoulder. As Morgan entered they broke apart, and the girl, blus.h.i.+ng, quickly readjusted the strap of her cream dress which had slipped down her arm. Morgan felt supremely foolish for the second time that day. He wasn't at all clear about what one was meant to say in situations like this. The girl smiled; he felt slightly rea.s.sured. She seemed pleased to see him and backed away from the Lebanese. He smiled, too, white and gold teeth beneath his moustache.

”How you feel?” he asked Morgan confidently, tapping his stomach. ”The belly. Is good?”

They were standing in front of a Ping-Pong table. Morgan walked over to it and picked up a bat. He swished it menacingly about.

”My turn to serve, I think,” he said pointedly, in as clipped and cool a tone as he could summon. ”Why don't you push off, Abdul? Eh?”

The Lebanese looked at the girl, who earnestly studied her fingernails. He gave a snort of laughter and pushed past Morgan out of the room, saying something harsh and guttural in Arabic, as if he had a forest of fish bones stuck in his throat. An expressive language, Morgan admitted to himself, hugely relieved.

Morgan and the stewardess went to the bar and had a quiet, mature laugh about it all. There had been no real problem, the girl insisted. He was just getting a little fresh. Still, she was glad Morgan had walked in. They had a few drinks. The stewardess said her name was Jayne Darnley. She'd come down with a touch of upset tummy and had to be left behind when the last plane took off. Morgan bought some more drinks. She was wearing a loose satin dress and Morgan admired the roll of her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s beneath the bodice as she reached down into her bag for a menthol cigarette. They got on famously; Morgan even laughed about his ill-fated dive. ”It was terribly brave of you,” stated Jayne. She came, it transpired, from Tottenham and had worked on ”promotions” before becoming a stewardess. The whisky made Morgan feel virile and capable; he could smell the pungent scent she used, and the click of the sentry's boots in the foyer lent a frisson of exotic danger to the atmosphere. He started to lie grandly. Yes, he admitted, he was leaving this country for a new posting: Paris. He was going to be defence attache at the Paris emba.s.sy. ”Ooh, Paree,” enthused Jayne. ”I love love Paris.” And from there, Morgan confided, a spot of work at the UN perhaps. After that, who knows? Although his first loyalty had always been to the service, he'd always had a secret yearning for the cut and thrust of political life, and with his experience, maybe.... Morgan went on to conjure up a large, interesting and cultured family, a trendy public school, a starred first. He created a modest private income, a chic Paris.” And from there, Morgan confided, a spot of work at the UN perhaps. After that, who knows? Although his first loyalty had always been to the service, he'd always had a secret yearning for the cut and thrust of political life, and with his experience, maybe.... Morgan went on to conjure up a large, interesting and cultured family, a trendy public school, a starred first. He created a modest private income, a chic pied-a-terre pied-a-terre in Chelsea; he fabricated costly hobbies and recondite enthusiasms, and spoke knowingly of half-famous intellectuals, minor royalty, television-show comperes. As the whisky and his rising s.e.xual excitement fuelled his imagination, so Jayne grew more entranced, edging forward on her chair, lips set apart in a ready smile of antic.i.p.ation. Her eyes gleamed; what a good time she was having. Morgan concurred, and called for another Pernod and blackcurrant. in Chelsea; he fabricated costly hobbies and recondite enthusiasms, and spoke knowingly of half-famous intellectuals, minor royalty, television-show comperes. As the whisky and his rising s.e.xual excitement fuelled his imagination, so Jayne grew more entranced, edging forward on her chair, lips set apart in a ready smile of antic.i.p.ation. Her eyes gleamed; what a good time she was having. Morgan concurred, and called for another Pernod and blackcurrant.

At midnight, both a little unsteady on their feet, they walked arm in arm up the pathway towards the residential blocks. Crickets telephoned endlessly all around. The path bifurcated. ”Well,” Jayne sighed, raising her face to his, ”I go this way.”

Morgan was quite satisfied with their love-making. It hadn't exactly made the earth move for him but Jayne had produced a flattering tocsin of appreciative yips and mews as he had humped away in the dark heat of the room. He lay back now, his chest and belly heaving, and thought how perhaps events had not turned out so badly.

Jayne smoked a cigarette and whispered compliments to him. Then she propped herself on one elbow and gazed down at his face, tracing its contours with a sharp red fingernail.

”I can't believe my luck,” she confided softly. ”To...well, to meet you like this.” Her thin lips pecked at his face like a dabbing fish. ”I'd just never have thought it possible. Someone like you. You know?”

Morgan wasn't sure that he did, and for the first time he found the ambiguity somewhat unsettling.

Jayne still maintained the same vein of ingenuous lyricism in the morning before she returned to her own room. Strangely, and against his better judgement, she elicited similar vague responses from Morgan. He was half-asleep and unused to finding a warm naked woman in his bed on waking up. The a.s.sociated sensations of comfort and cosy eroticism were agreeably complementary. They admitted that, yes, they both really liked each other; and it was funny how people like them-from such different backgrounds-got along so tremendously easily. It was almost, almost like fate really, wasn't it? What with her illness, his puncture and, of course, the coup. Didn't he think so? Jayne prompted, searching beneath the sheet. A squirming Morgan felt bound to agree, suggesting, almost before he realised what he was saying, that once this thing was over they really ought to see some more of each other. Miraculously, it seemed, Jayne had two weeks of leave coming up and nothing in particular planned for them. If Morgan had some time to spare before his Paris posting came through, it would be fun to see each other in London. Of course, Morgan whispered, nuzzling her neck, of course.

But then Jayne was out of bed and swiftly into her cream dress, patting her face with powder and applying fresh lipstick. She kissed him on the cheek.

”See you downstairs,” she said. ”Let's go to the pool again.”

Alone, Morgan dressed slowly. Post-coital tristesse, not an ailment he was usually afflicted with, weighed heavy on him today. He moved like a man deep in thought, like a hasty investor who's just had the dubious ramifications of his latest deal explained. His early swaggering confidence, his locker-room bravado, his smug self-congratulation had mysteriously dissipated, leaving a querulous, nagging tone of rebuke and stale second thoughts.

He walked distractedly into the hotel lobby, his mind preoccupied, and was surprised to find it full of the guests, their luggage and the same fl.u.s.tered BOAC official who had met him at the airport gates two days previously.

”Ah, Mr. Leafy,” he said to Morgan. ”Here at last. You'll be glad to know that the airport has reopened, diplomatic relations have been established, and you're flying out on”-he consulted his clipboard-”the third plane. Eleven forty-five this morning. We're getting you all along to the airport as quickly as possible, as things are a bit chaotic, to put it mildly. If you could report back to me here in fifteen minutes?” He turned to answer a phone ringing on the reception desk.

Jayne came up to Morgan. She was wearing a lurid print dress and large round sungla.s.ses.

”We're on the same plane,” she said. ”Isn't that a stroke of luck? Don't worry, I'll see we get sitting beside each other. I've a friend at the airport.”

Morgan smiled wanly, muttered something about having to pack, and returned to his room.

As he laid his clothes in his suitcase he felt unfamiliar symptoms of panic sweep over him, as if he were some inefficient refugee too late to flee the advance of an invading army. He felt like a c.r.a.pulous sailor who's overstayed his sh.o.r.e leave, watching his s.h.i.+p steam out of harbour. Things were moving far too quickly, he realised; he no longer felt in control. Suddenly they were leaving for home and he found himself teamed up with this Jayne, thinking of themselves as a couple, without really understanding how it had all come about. He felt mystified, bemused. Who was this woman? Why was she making a.s.sumptions about him, organising his life?

The minibus that was to take them to the airport contained only two of the Lebanese and Jayne, who had kept Morgan a seat. As he settled in beside her, studiously avoiding the hostile looks of the others, she squeezed his hand and smiled at him. Morgan felt sick, queasy, like a man on a tossing s.h.i.+p who realises he should have refused those second helpings. G.o.d, he hadn't envisaged anything like this at all all, he reflected, as Jayne explained about her friend at the airport. No, by Christ, it was getting terribly out of hand. Why had he lied so convincingly; as if he were short-listed for foreign secretary? Why hadn't he been callous and knowing, taken his pleasure like the chance acquaintances they were? Then he felt foolish and sad as he reasoned that it had only been the lies and false grandeur that had attracted the woman to him at all, and that without the fake glitter and borrowed glory, Morgan Leafy was of little consequence as a person, a minor district official leaving for a boring desk job in central London; and that without the stories and the make-believe, he could have stared and l.u.s.ted at the side of the pool or fantasised in the bar for days and she would probably never have noticed he was there.

The low prefab shacks of the airport building heaved and pulsed with hot, irate travellers like some immense festering yeast culture. Queues intertwined and doubled back on themselves before makes.h.i.+ft desks, where airline clerks mindlessly flipped through damp sheets of pa.s.senger manifests and ticket counterfoils in a futile attempt to match names to seats, and parties to destinations. Beyond customs control, gangs of green-suited porters hurled bags onto lorries, and starched, impa.s.sive military police forced everyone to hand over their local currency.

After a two-hour struggle, Morgan and Jayne arrived in the departure lounge, their clothes mussed and sticky with perspiration, clutching handfuls of official departure forms and exchange-control declarations to be filled out in triplicate. Normally the blatant inefficiency and wanton lack of automation fixed Morgan in a towering rage, but today he was merely sullen and leaden-hearted. Jayne had clung to his arm throughout the obstacle course of the check-in and, das.h.i.+ng his last faint hope, had successfully arranged with her friend behind the desk for the two of them to have adjacent seats.

As she went up to the bar, Morgan gazed blindly at the ancient photographs of long-out-of-commission aircraft and thought of the appalling chain of events the coup had unwittingly set in motion. He mentally compared his parents' semi-detached in Pinner, where he would be staying, with the Chelsea mews flat he had described to Jayne in such detail. He anguishedly contrasted his menial job off Whitehall, in a grimy office block, with the post of defence attache at the Paris emba.s.sy. He sighed in frustration as he considered how he had meekly accepted Jayne's invitation to meet her Mum and Dad the following Sunday. It was pathetic. He felt like weeping.

Jayne returned with two warm bottles of Fanta orange. ”All they had,” she explained. ”Come on, dear, move up. Make room for little me.”

Dear! Morgan's spirit finally collapsed. He felt he couldn't simply tell her to go away, as he himself had so deliberately contrived to deceive her. Perhaps when she found out the truth she'd reject him. But he looked at the tight lips sucking on a straw, the shrewd eyes with their delta of discreet lines, the coruscating talons gripping the Fanta bottle, and he thought, no, Jayne was running out of time, and there wasn't much hope of that. Morgan's spirit finally collapsed. He felt he couldn't simply tell her to go away, as he himself had so deliberately contrived to deceive her. Perhaps when she found out the truth she'd reject him. But he looked at the tight lips sucking on a straw, the shrewd eyes with their delta of discreet lines, the coruscating talons gripping the Fanta bottle, and he thought, no, Jayne was running out of time, and there wasn't much hope of that.

At eleven o'clock their plane was called and they a.s.sembled at the departure-lounge door. None of the airport buses was functioning and they had to walk across the s.h.i.+mmering ap.r.o.n to the plane. Morgan plodded across the hot tarmac, his eyes on the heels of the couple in front of him. The sun beat down on his exposed head, causing runnels of perspiration to drip from his brow. Jayne's hand was latched firmly in the crook of his elbow.

They paused at the foot of the steps. Morgan looked up. Stewardesses beamed at the entrance to the plane. He'd never trust those smiles again. He felt he was about to climb the gallows. He looked at Jayne. Her eyes were invisible behind the opaque lenses of her sungla.s.ses. She squeezed his arm and smiled, revealing patches of orange on her teeth that had smudged from her lips.