Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,47
made these trousers on her sewing-machine and worn them every day for a week, until one morning, after queuing with me for the toilet on the landing for over half an hour, she came back to our room to find them gone. Mum stared at the pink legs crossed in front of her and up at the open smiling face of the nappy thief.
‘Of course I always knew it was her,’ she said afterwards, ‘but to taunt me! She must have run and put them on when she saw us arrive.’
Once three polite glasses of tea had been drunk and Mum had given up on Moulay Idriss to find us a room, we set off for the Djemaa El Fna to look for Bilal. Mum refused the Ladies’ offer to mind our bags.
We wandered from café to café searching out a familiar face. The square, lit with its bulbs of light and smelling warm of city food, lulled me with memories and made me happy to be home. We set down our bags at the large open café where we had first met Luigi Mancini. Mum ordered meat tajine and went to buy cigarettes from the man who sold them singly in the square. The Fool appeared at our table. He smiled, his one tooth hovering in his mouth as if it were about to drop.
‘It’s the Fool! It’s the Fool!’ I sang with delight. I held on to his hand until he sat down.
Bea and I cross-examined him. ‘Bilal? Khadija? Aunty Rose? The Hadaoui? Bilal? Bilal? Bilal? …’
The Fool nodded and smiled and repeated each name lovingly. I searched his eyes for information. They were dark and far away. ‘Bilal…’ he mused.
Mum returned to our table with Luna and Umbark. Luna lifted her veil and kissed Bea and me on both cheeks. She gazed into our faces. ‘From day to day they change,’ she said, tears glistening in the edges of her eyes. Luna sat down. It wasn’t us but Luna who had changed. She had swollen up strangely since we went away and the blue veins in her face, flowing so near the surface, gave her a glassy look. Luna noticed the red rash in the crook of my arm. I had rolled up the sleeve of my caftan to cool it after an attack of itching. Luna inspected the raw and slimy rash. It ached under her scrutiny.
Mum dug into her bag and brought out the round tin she had bought from the salesman in Sid Zouin. After my arm had been shown to the Cadi, Pedro, Scott, Jeannie, and almost every other inhabitant of the village, a travelling salesman had inspected it and assured us he possessed the cure. The one and only cure. He sold us a small, flat tin of cream. It wasn’t until he had trotted out of town on his donkey that Mum realized the tin didn’t actually open. Pedro nearly broke a finger in his attempt to wrench it apart and Scott tried each one of the sharp instruments on his penknife. Like my arm the tin was inspected first by the Cadi and then by every other member of the village before it was finally returned to us, battered, but still firmly closed.
Mum passed the tin around the table. When it reached the Fool, he held it up to the light and nodded thoughtfully over its secret contents. Without a word he pocketed it in the folds of his djellaba.
I soaked my bread in the steaming juice of the mutton tajine, burning my fingers as I ate. Luna and Umbark had neither seen nor heard of Bilal since he left with the Hadaoui.
‘Maybe they are travelling in the desert. He and the Hadaoui,’ Luna said, and Mum agreed and told them about her plan to make a pilgrimage to the Zaouia.
We stayed that night with Luna and Umbark in their tiny room, and the next day Mum went alone to visit her bank.
Luna was taking Bea and me to lunch. ‘I want you to meet some friends of mine,’ she said.
Luna’s friends were an English family who lived in the new French city. They had two children. A baby younger than Mob and a boy called Jake who clung to his mother’s legs as she moved about the kitchen.
Bea was very impressed with lunch. So was I. Mostly it was mashed potato. We had three helpings each. I ate my meal in greedy silence while Bea talked. She told Jake’s