The Time in Between A Novel

Chapter Twenty-Three

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The bar of the El Minzah Hotel was just as it had been a year earlier. Animated clusters of stylishly dressed European men and women filled the tables and the bar drinking whiskey, sherry, and cocktails, forming groups in which the conversation jumped from language to language as easily as one might shift gears. In the middle of the room a pianist was lightening up the atmosphere with his melodious music. No one seemed to be in a hurry, everything seemed to be just as it had been in the summer of 1936 with the sole exception that there wasn’t a man waiting for me at the bar, speaking Spanish to the barman, but an Englishwoman chatting to him in English as she held a glass in one hand.

“Sira, querida!” she said, attracting my attention when she noticed me. “A pink gin?” she asked, holding up her cocktail.

To me, drinking gin with bitters was no different than swigging turpentine, so I accepted with a forced smile.

“Do you know Dean? He’s an old friend. Dean, let me introduce you to Sira Quiroga, mi modista, my dressmaker.”

I looked at the barman and recognized his lean body and sallow face, in which were set eyes with a dark and enigmatic stare. I remembered how he used to talk to everyone in the days when Ramiro and I would hang around his bar, how everyone seemed to come to him when they needed a contact, a reference, or slippery little bits of information. I saw his eyes running over me, locating me in his past while at the same time weighing up the ways I’d changed and associating me with the vanished presence of Ramiro. He spoke before I did.

“I think you’ve been here before, some time back, haven’t you?”

“A long time ago, yes,” I said simply.

“Yes, I think I remember. So many things have happened since then, haven’t they? There are a lot more Spaniards around here now; when you were visiting us there weren’t so many.”

Yes, a lot of things had happened. Thousands of Spaniards had arrived in Tangiers fleeing the war, Ramiro and I had left, each in our own direction. My life had changed, along with my country, my body, and my affections; everything had changed so much that I preferred not to think about it, so I pretended to be concentrating on looking for something at the bottom of my bag and didn’t reply. They continued chatting and exchanging confidences, switching between English and Spanish, occasionally trying to include me in gossip that didn’t interest me in the slightest. I had enough to think about trying to put my own affairs in order. Some customers left, others arrived: elegant-looking men and women at ease and with no apparent obligations. Rosalinda greeted many of them with a pleasant gesture or a couple of kind words, as though avoiding having to linger over any encounter more than was absolutely necessary. She managed for a while, until the arrival of a couple of women she knew, who no sooner saw her than they decided that a simple hello, dear, how lovely to see you wasn’t going to be enough for them. Their appearance was magnificent: blond, slim, and graceful, vague foreigners like those whose gestures and postures I’d so often emulated in front of the cracked mirror in Candelaria’s bedroom. They greeted Rosalinda with fleeting kisses, puckering their lips and barely grazing their powdered cheeks. They settled in with us quite naturally, without anyone having invited them. The barman prepared their aperitifs, they took out cigarette cases, ivory cigarette holders, and silver lighters. They referred to names and posts, parties, meetings, and partings from this or that person: do you remember that night in Villa Harris, you’re never going to guess what happened to Lucille Dawson with her last boyfriend, oh, by the way, did you know that Bertie Stewart has gone bankrupt? And on and on like that until one of them, the older of the two, the more bejeweled one, quite overtly raised with Rosalinda the subject that they’d doubtless had on their minds from the moment they’d seen her.

“So, my dear, how are things going with you in Tetouan? To tell you the truth, we were all so surprised to hear about your unexpected departure. It was all so, so sudden . . .”

A little laugh filled with cynicism preceded Rosalinda’s reply.

“Oh, my life in Tetouan is just marvelous. I’ve got a dream house and some fantastic friends, like mi querida Sira, who has the best haute couture atelier in all of North Africa.”

They looked at me with interest, and I replied with a flick of my hair and a smile falser than Judas.

“Well then, perhaps we’ll come one day and pay you a visit. We adore fashion and it’s true that we’re a little bored of the Tangiers dressmakers, aren’t we, Mildred?”

The younger one nodded effusively and took up the baton of the conversation again.

“We’d love to come and see you in Tetouan, Rosalinda dear, but all this business with the border has been such a trial since the beginning of the Spanish war . . .”

“Though maybe you, with your contacts, could get us a safe-conduct; that way we could come and visit you both. And perhaps then we’d also have the chance to meet some more of your new friends.”

The blondes made rhythmical progress in their advance toward their goal; Dean, the barman, followed it all impassively from behind the bar, unwilling to miss a single second of the action. Rosalinda, meanwhile, kept a frozen smile fixed on her face. Her two friends went on talking, each of them in turn taking up where the other left off.

“That would be marvelous; my dear, tout le monde in Tangiers is dying to meet your new friends.”

“Well, why not say it straight out, since we’re among true friends, right? We’re dying to meet one of your friends in particular. They say he’s someone very, very special.”

“Perhaps one evening you could invite us to one of the receptions he hosts; that way you could introduce him to your old friends from Tangiers. We’d love to come, wouldn’t we, Olivia?”

“It would be wonderful. We’re so bored of always seeing the same faces—mixing with the representatives of the new Spanish regime would be fascinating for us.”

“Yes, it would be fantastic, so fantastic . . . And besides, the company my husband represents has some new products that might be of considerable interest to the Nationalist army. Perhaps with a little push from you we might be able to introduce them into Spanish Morocco.”

“And my poor Arnold has got a little tired of his current position in the Bank of British West Africa; perhaps in Tetouan, among your circle, he might be able to find something more on his level . . .”

Bit by bit Rosalinda’s smile was fading, and she didn’t even try to hold it. And quite simply when she felt she had heard enough nonsense she decided to ignore the blondes and addressed me and the barman in turn.

“Sira, querida, shall we go and have lunch at Roma Park? Dean—por favor—be a love and put our aperitifs on my tab.”

He shook his head.

“They’re on the house.”

“Ours, too?” Olivia asked instantly. Or it might have been Mildred.

Before the barman had a chance to reply, Rosalinda did it for him. “Not yours.”

“Why not?” asked Mildred with an expression of astonishment. Or it might have been Olivia.

“Because you’re a couple of zorras—how do you say, Sira, querida?”

“A couple of bitches,” I said, without a glimmer of doubt.

“Sí—that’s it, a couple of bitches.”

We left the bar at the El Minzah aware of the many eyes following us: even for a cosmopolitan, tolerant kind of society like Tangiers, the public love affair between a married young Englishwoman and an older, powerful rebel soldier was a tasty morsel to spice up aperitif time.