"I loved you immediately," Joseph was explaining, in the same pretended tone of retrospection. "Or so I tell you now. As soon as the lecture was over, I enquired who you were, but I did not feel able to approach you before so many people. I was also aware that I was unable to show you my face, which is one of my greatest assets. I therefore decided to seek you out at the theatre. I made enquiries, tracked you to Nottingham. Here I am. I love you infinitely, signed Michel!"
As if making amends, Joseph put on a show of fussing over her welfare, refilling her glass, ordering coffee--medium sweet, the way you like it--did she want to wash? No thanks, I'm fine. The television was showing news footage of a grinning politician descending the gangway of an aeroplane. He made the bottom step without mishap.
His ministrations complete, Joseph glanced significantly round the taverna, then at Charlie, and his voice became the essence of practicality.
"So then, Charlie. You are his Joan. His love. His obsession. The staff have gone home, the two of us are alone in the dining-room. Your unmasked admirer, and you. It is after midnight and I have been talking far too long, though I have scarcely begun to tell you what is in my heart, or ask you about yourself, whom I love beyond comparison, such an experience is entirely new to me, etcetera. Tomorrow is Sunday, you have no commitments, I have rented a room in the motel. I make no attempt to persuade you. That is not my way. Perhaps I am also too respectful of your dignity. Or perhaps I am too proud to think you need persuading. Either you will come to me as a comrade-in-arms, a true, free lover, soldier to soldier--or you will not. How do you respond? Are you suddenly impatient to return to the Astral Commercial and Private Hotel, near the railway station?"
She stared at him, and then away from him. She had half a dozen facetious answers ready but suppressed them. The hooded, totally separate figure at the forum was once more an abstraction. It was Joseph, not the stranger, who had put the question. And what was there to say when, in her imagination, they were already lying in bed together, Joseph's cropped head resting on her shoulder, Joseph's strong wounded body stretched along her own, while she willed his true nature out of him?
"After all, Charlie--as you told us yourself--you have been to bed with many men for less, I would say."
"Oh, much less," she agreed, developing a sudden interest in the plastic salt-pourer.
"You are wearing his expensive jewellery. You are alone in a dismal city. It's raining. He has enchanted you--flattered the actress, inspired the revolutionary. How can you possibly refuse him?"
"Fed me too," she reminded him. "Even if I was off meat."
"He is everything a bored Western girl ever dreamed of, I would say."
"Jose, for Christ's sake," she muttered, not even able to look at him.
"So then," he said briskly, signalling for the bill. "Congratulations. You have met your soul mate at last."
A mysterious brutality had entered his manner. She had the ridiculous feeling that her acquiescence had angered him. She watched him pay the bill, she saw him pocket the receipt. She stepped after him into the night air. I'm the twice-promised girl, she thought. If you love Joseph, take Michel. He's pimped me for his phantom in the theatre of the real.
"In bed, he tells you that his real name is Salim, but that is a great secret," said Joseph casually as they got into the car. "He prefers Michel. Partly for security, partly because he is already slightly in love with European decadence."
"I like Salim better."
"But you use Michel."
Just whatever you all say, she thought. But her passivity was a deception, even to herself. She could feel her anger on the move, still far down but rising, rising.
The motel was like a low factory block. At first there was no space to park; then a white Volkswagen minibus lumbered forward to make room for them, and she glimpsed the figure of Dimitri at the wheel. Clutching the orchids as Joseph had instructed her, she waited while he pulled on his red blazer, then followed him across the tarmac to the front porch; but reluctantly, keeping her distance. Joseph was carrying her shoulder bag as well as his smart black grip. Give that back, it's mine. In the foyer, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Raoul and Rachel standing under the vile strip-lighting, reading notices about tomorrow's tours. She glowered at them. Joseph went to the desk and she drew close to watch him sign the register, though he had specifically told her not to. Arab name, nationality Lebanese, address an apartment number in Beirut. His manner disdainful: a man of position, ready at any time to take offence. You're good, she thought ruefully, while she tried to hate him. No wasted gestures but plenty of style, and you make the part your own. The bored night manager cast her a lustful glance, but showed none of the disrespect she was accustomed to. The porter was loading their luggage onto an enormous hospital trolley. I'm wearing a blue kaftan and a gold bracelet and underwear from Persephone of Munich and I'll bite the first peasant who calls me a tart. Joseph took her arm and his hand burned her skin. She pulled free of him. Sod off. To the strains of canned Gregorian plainsong, they followed their luggage down a grey tunnel of pastel-painted doors. Their bedroom was double-bedded, grandeluxe and sterile as an operating theatre.
"Christ!" she exploded, staring round her in black hostility.
The porter turned to her in surprise but she ignored him. She spotted a bowl of fruit, a bucket of ice, two glasses, and a vodka bottle waiting beside the bed. A vase for the orchids. She dumped them into it. Joseph tipped the porter, the trolley gave a departing shriek, and suddenly they were alone, with a bed the size of a football field, two framed Minoan bulls in charcoal providing the tastefully erotic atmosphere, and a balcony with an unspoilt view of the car park. Taking the vodka bottle from the bucket, Charlie poured herself a stiff one and flopped onto the edge of the bed.
"Cheers, old man," she said.
Joseph was still standing, watching her without expression. "Cheers, Charlie," he replied, though he had no glass.
"So what do we do now? Play Monopoly? Or is this the big scene we bought our tickets for?" Her voice rose. "I mean, who the hell are we in this? Just for information. Who? Right? Just who?"
"You know very well who we are, Charlie. We are two lovers enjoying our Greek honeymoon."
"I thought we were in a Nottingham motel."
"We are playing both parts at once. I thought you understood that. We are establishing the past and the present."
"Because we are so short of time."
"Let us say, because human lives are at risk."
She took another pull of vodka, and her hand was as steady as a rock because that was how her hand went when the black mood got into her. "Jewish lives," she corrected him.
"Are they different from other lives?"
"I'll say they bloody are! Jesus Christ! I mean Kissinger can bomb the poor bloody Cambodians till the cows come home. Nobody lifts a finger. The Israelis can hack the Palestinians to pieces any time. But a couple of rabbis knocked off in Frankfurt or whatever--I mean that's a real grade-one prime-beef international disaster, isn't it?"
She was staring straight past him at some imaginary enemy, but out of the corner of her eye she saw him take a firm step in her direction, and for a brilliant moment she really thought he was going to remove her choices for good. But instead he walked past her to the window and unlocked the door, perhaps because he needed the drumming of the traffic to drown her voice.