De Vèze does not rise to this, the young woman’s face is quite charming, dimples, pointed nose, lips not too big nor too small, teeth a tad rabbity, de Vèze watches for the moment when he’ll get her profile, then abandons her face to catch the way the light behind her shows her legs through the material of her dress, they are almost sturdy, not exactly what he goes for, I prefer long legs, ah! the aristocracy of long legs! but hers have style, are muscular and cope very nicely without high heels, enough for an evening’s entertainment but not worth ruining your whole life for.
And finally Malraux makes his appearance in the garden of the villa, charcoal-grey suit, white handkerchief in the breast pocket, dark tie, quick stepping, he no longer has that rebellious flop of hair over one eye, his baldness is spreading in all directions over his scalp from a central patch of stubbornly resistant hair, he emits a thin smile, he looks in better health than rumour has it:
‘Please don’t stop whatever you’re doing! Croquet! I insist you finish your game, I didn’t even know playing it was still allowed, fear not, Consul, I won’t tell the General that his diplomats are in the habit of playing such a quintessentially English game, good to see you again, de Vèze, it’s twenty years since the last time! Actually I think I’ll join in the game, that way I shall be as guilty as you, oh just an ordinary pastis, Pernod if you have it, not too much water, one ice cube, thank you.’
Malraux with a magisterial flourish reaches for a mallet:
‘You know, I played here in 1925, not at this villa, in the hotel, the Raffles, the English called croquet “the lord of lawn games”.’
‘“Lord, lord”,’ said Max in the wings, ‘as well they might, croquet was invented by French peasants and it was passed on to the English via Ireland, the lord of lawn games has a whiff of the potato about it, anyway, this particular lord is on the point of extinction, killed off by baseball, ultimately the Yanks will kill off everything, except in out-of-the-way places like Singapore, the last gasp of empire, which will stagger on for just a wee while longer, though it’s soon to be an independent republic.’
Max turns towards Malraux:
‘My dear author, if you don’t mind being my partner I shall be an active participant, as a matter of fact I was in the middle of explaining to these young people the rule of tight croqueting, to recap, a tight croquet is allowed when I have succeeded in hitting another player’s ball with mine, this entitles me to a second shot, using considerably more force but still within the rules of the game, shush! don’t say a word, I shall now fetch the ball which I hit with mine, watch carefully, I place it so that it touches mine but without moving it by so much as a hair’s breadth, I put one foot on my ball, then thwack! I strike my own nice ball with my mallet and out shoots the other nasty ball, I can either hit it as far as I can or alternatively take careful aim and knock it through an illegal hoop, which is very much like diplomacy since it means pushing your opponent into making mistakes, which means the nasty ball has to be thwacked. You can peel as much as you like, but you’ll not thwack everything into the long grass.’
They played on for some time while the daylight drained from the town and the ocean, from time to time Max would drift off into his thoughts, Rabat, his youth, barely thirty years old, in my head I’ve never got beyond thirty, I still feel that’s how old I am, how I got around in those days! you could tell that young woman all about it, not sure if she’d listen, she speaks very well, very clipped, you’re older than Chaplin was when he married his wife, she’s not really paying any attention to you, she’s watching the Ambassador from Rangoon, he’s not aware of it, he’s happy to strut and swagger for her benefit, he hasn’t noticed that she’s observing him back, there weren’t any women like her in Rabat, this one can talk, has the voice of someone who isn’t dependent on the way men look at her, she knows things, she can answer back, that ‘didn’t you?’ to the Consul’s wife just now was spunky stuff, in Rabat there were women who had a certain style but the minute they opened their mouths they ruined it, Lyautey just couldn’t pick them, and Max was only interesting when he was talking, he got his best ideas from looking into the eyes of women, a friend once told him that a woman’s look can sometimes be better than sex, he made conquests, today you’re just an old story-teller who needs to be holding forth, I’ll have to tell them about the rain maidens.
That doll on a manure heap in the Riff, at Chefchaouen, not the same smell as is now blowing in from the far end of the grounds, it was stronger, doll is hardly the word, a grain shovel, made of wood, a piece of wood nailed crosswise to the handle, the blade of the shovel is the hips, encapsulated a whole concept of Woman, then a small piece of cotton veil, red wool for a coat, a silk belt, a few Spanish coins around the head, the agent for Native Affairs said it’s intended to invoke rain, they’re dying of drought at present, and they’re not allowed down on the plain unless they agree to surrender, woe to any who rise up in revolt only when their necks are already placed between block and sabre, so they make a doll, the children make a doll, they call it a rain maiden, they pour water over it and process with it from the mosque to the marabout, praying for rain, at the end of their march they prop it upright in a dungheap and go back home to wait for the rain to come, come on, de Vèze, wake up, dear boy, it’s your turn.
De Vèze has almost begun to feel happy, playing croquet, drinking his whisky, watching the birds cross the sky, talking to the writer he so admires, and watching the young woman, Malraux and Max are paired, a team, they’ve been playing at a fantastic rate, with Malraux tending to invent new rules at every turn, they’ve even argued, Max has been behaving like a crotchety old man to ensure he remains in charge of operations, he has provoked Malraux, once he called him young man, he didn’t do it again, he quite deliberately talked to himself or said As sure as my name is Clappique! and Malraux pretended not to hear so as not to have to follow it up, the Consul watched them anxiously, he had invited Clappique on his own initiative, he could feel an incident involving Malraux looming.
Something suddenly came over de Vèze at the thought that he would probably never see the young woman again, I must have her, she’s got no business being with that man, the prissy bookworm, women belong to the men who love them most.
The young woman has seen a large bird in the clouds.
‘An albatross,’ said de Vèze, edging nearer her.
‘No it’s not,’ said Max.
And the Consul’s wife:
‘It’s a frigate-bird.’
‘Four metres wingtip to wingtip,’ adds Max, ‘a bird that’s all wing, it flies at ten thousand feet and sleeps on the bosom of the storm.’
He looks straight at de Vèze:
‘There are frigate-birds and there are gannets, the gannet is the most ridiculous bird, the fat girl on the beach, you can kick her and she won’t even try to run away, spends all the time stuffing herself, and she’s drawn to frigate-birds, they’ve developed a technique for not overtiring themselves, they wait for a gannet to fly close to them, then they wallop it over the head until it coughs up the fish it’s got in its craw, it’s true, they keep swatting it, the fish falls from the gannet’s beak and they catch it in mid-flight, frigate-birds don’t have very nice manners.’