"I've never been to the store. We've always met in London. I wouldn't even know where to find the store."
"Me neither. Ali, stop it. I mean he just never, never does this. He's abroad, you see. Well, he's on his way back, obviously. I mean he could be here."
I waited while she talked herself round.
"Look. All right. Why don't you come indoors and have a cup of tea till he shows up? He'll be terribly angry. If people stand him up, he goes totally spare. He's not a bit Oriental in that way. I'm Julie, actually."
I stepped after her into the house, took off my shoes, and put them with the family's in the rack beside the door.
* * *
The living room was a kitchen, playroom, and living room all at once. It had an old doll's house and cane furniture and pleasantly disordered bookshelves with books jammed upward and sideways in English, Turkish, and Arabic. It had a silver-gilt samovar and Koranic texts and silk embroideries. I recognised a Coptic cross and Ottoman carnations. A magic eye in gold and green hung above the door to ward off devils. In a carved wall cabinet, a mother-cult goddess rode sidesaddle on a very obvious stallion. And on the television set stood a studio photograph in colour of Julie and a bearded man seated among pink roses. The television was showing a children's animated film. She turned the sound down, but Ali grizzled so she turned it up again. She made a pot of tea and set shortbread biscuits on a plate. She had long legs and a long waist and a model's studiously casual walk.
"If you knew how unusual this was, it's so stupid, it's so untypical of him," she said. "You didn't come all the way from London just for—well—this, did you?"
"It's not a tragedy. How long's he been away?”
“A week. What's your speciality?"
"I'm sorry?"
"What do you deal in?"
"Oh, you name it. Hamadan. Balouchi. Kilims. The best of everything when I can afford it. Are you in the trade yourself?"
"Not really." She smiled, mostly at the window because she was keeping watch. "I teach at Ali's school. Don't I, Al?"
She went to the next room, and the boy went after her. I heard her telephoning. I snatched a closer look at the portrait of the happy couple. The photographer had been wise to pose them sitting, for straightened out, Mr. Aitken Mustafa May would have been a bearded head shorter than his lady, even allowing for the raised heels of his high-gloss, buckled shoes. But his smile was proud and happy.
"All I ever get's the answerphone too," she complained, coming back. "It's been the same all week. There's a store-man there and a secretary. Why don't they switch off the machine and answer the phone for themselves? They're supposed to have been there since nine."
"Can't you reach one of them at home?"
"Aitken just will hire these way-out people!" she protested, shaking her head. "He calls them his Odd Couple; she's a retired librarian or something, he's ex-army. They live in a cottage in the moors and don't talk to anyone except their goats. Which is why he hires them. Honestly."
"And no telephone?"
She had placed herself at the window again, bare feet apart. "Water from the well," she said indignantly. "No mains, no phone, no nothing. You're absolutely certain he didn't say the store. aren't you? I don't mean to be stupid or rude or anything, but he just never, never has business people here."
"Where's he been travelling?"
"Ankara. Baghdad. Baku. You know how he is. Once he gets on a scent there's no stopping him."
She drummed her fingertips on the window.
"It's his Muslim side," she said. "Keep the women out of it. How long have you known him?"
"Six years. Seven maybe."
"I just wish he'd talk about the people he meets. I'll bet some of them are really, really interesting."
A taxi came up the hill and drove past without slowing down. It was empty.
"I mean what's he pay them for?" she protested in exasperation. "Two grown-up zombies sitting on their backsides listening to a machine. I'm just so sorry for you. Aitken'll kill them, he really will."
"Oh dear."
"He has this really ridiculous superstition thing about not telling me which plane he's on too," she said. "He thinks they'll blow him up or something. I mean he's so spooky sometimes. I wonder—you know, am I going to be like him, or is he going to be like me?"
"What car does he drive?"
"A Merc. Metallic blue. Brand-new. Two-door. It's his pride and joy. It's your deal that paid for it," she added.
"Where does he leave it when he goes abroad?"
"At the airport sometimes. Sometimes at the store. Depends."
"He's not with Terry, is he?"
"Who?"
"Sort of half partner of mine and Aitken's. Terry Altman. Amusing chap. Talks a lot. Got a beautiful new girlfriend called Sally. Sally Anderson. But her friends call her Emma for some reason."
"If they're business, forget it."
I stood up. "Look. There's been a muddle. Why don't we abandon this, and I'll go down to the store and see if I can rouse the secretary. If I find anything out, I can give you a ring. Don't worry. I've got the address. I'll just wander down the hill and get a cab."
I took my shoes from the rack and laced them up. I stepped into the sunlight. A knot had formed in my gut, and there was a singing in my ears.
TWELVE
THE HILLS DARKENED as I drove, the roads grew steeper and smaller, the rock peaks of the hilltops were blackened as if burned. Stone walls enclosed me, and I entered a village of slate roofs, crumbling walls, old car tyres, and plastic bags. Piglets and hens wandered in my path, inquisitive sheep eyed me, but I saw no human soul. My ordnance survey map lay open on the passenger seat beside Ockie's list of Aitken May's addresses.
The stone walls gave way, and I was flying over wide valleys patched with sun and crossed with streams. Chestnut horses grazed in perfect rectangular meadows. But in my apprehension everything was too late, and I sensed not pleasure but despair. Why had I never played here as a child, walked here as a boy? Run in that field, lived in that cottage, made love beside that stream? These colours, why had I never painted them? Emma, you were all these hopes.
Pulling up in a lay-by, I consulted the map. From nowhere an old man appeared at my car window, and his gnarled face reminded me of the groundsman at my first boarding school.
"Past yonder reservoir ... turn right at t'gospel hall ... go on till th' sees t'mill in front o' thee ... then keep on going till th' can't go no further...."
I drove over humpbacked hills into a plantation of blue conifers that turned green, then polka dot. I scaled the first hump and saw Larry in his broad hat standing at the roadside with one arm raised to stop me and his other arm round Emma, but they were just two travellers with a dog. I scaled the second and saw them in my driving mirror, giving me the finger. But my fears were worse by far than these anxious fantasies. They were composed of the uncompleted warnings still ringing on the path behind me. A week, Julie had said. All I ever get's the answerphone... It's been the same all week.
A gospel hall loomed at me. I turned right as the old man had instructed and saw the wrecked mill, a monster with its eyes put out. The road became a track; I crossed a ford and entered a rural slum of rotting cauliflowers, plastic bottles, and the collected filth of tourists and farmers. Hard jawed children watched me from the threshold of a tin shed. I crossed a second stream or the same one, skirted the stone face of a quarry, and saw a glitter-paint orange arrow and the words HARDWEAR WHOLESALE ONLY stencilled below it. I followed the arrow and discovered that I had descended further than I realised, for a second valley now opened before me, its lower slopes heavy with trees, and above the trees squared green fields and brooding moors, their tops cut off by cloud. Another arrow pointed me towards a wooden gate. A yellow sign said private road. I pushed the gate open, drove through, closed it behind me. A sign said: HARDWEAR STRAIGHT ON (TRADE ONLY).