“This is all to help some migrant?” the maid said.
“I’d help you too if I could. I think you know that perfectly well. I’ve never held anything back from you—you know I help you whenever I can.”
“Yes, but you know me. You’ve known me for years. Now you’re doing this for a stranger?”
“I can’t explain it, but he isn’t a stranger to me. I feel like he’s my responsibility. I know you probably won’t understand that.”
Carissa flared up for a moment.
“You’re right, I don’t. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. What if your father finds out? You’re done for.”
“I know.”
“No, you’re really done for. He’ll disown you.”
“Carissa, it’s not a rational thing. I don’t care that it’s not rational. Don’t you see? It’s an emotional thing. Do I really have to explain it on my hands and knees?”
“Well, it might make it sound less crazy!”
“No, it would still sound crazy. I want to do it because it’s crazy.”
“And to hell with the rest of us?”
“Maybe I could give you something for helping, just in case.” She paused, not quite sure if bribery was the way to go. But she realized it was inevitable. “You know what I mean. Don’t be embarrassed. I’d be happy to and I think it’s only fair. What about five thousand euros?”
“Twenty.”
“You’ve thought it through, haven’t you? All right, fifteen.”
Carissa hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’ll do it if that’s all I have to do. Are you sure?”
“Very sure.”
“Is he safe, this man?”
“Very safe. He didn’t want to do it at all. I think a part of him still doesn’t want to do it.”
“I suppose that’s a good sign.”
She prepared the tea tray with some lemon biscuits, and when it was done they embraced. Carissa went up into the gloom of the first-floor landing and set down the tray to knock on the master-bedroom door. Phaine was already asleep on her side, and Jimmie was reading in bed in his silk pajamas. When she set the tray down beside him he gave her a merry eye and told her that she could go to bed now. She went back down to the kitchen and found that Naomi had disappeared.
Alone as she always was at night, she poured herself a brandy shot in the salon and went out onto the terrace to think about Naomi’s proposition. Fifteen thousand euros was a lot of money and it was, if she was honest with herself, too much to turn down for something so simple as unlocking a door. She didn’t want to harm the Codringtons fatally, but there was undeniably a question of justice in taking some of their wealth and passing it on to a helpless itinerant. Naomi had told her that it would be a few nights from now, because Jimmie and Phaine would be going to a cocktail party earlier in the evening and would in all probability come home semi-drunk and sleepy. A dose of her homemade herbal tea and they would sleep through the whole thing without a whimper. She considered how likely this was. Jimmie often woke up because of his aging bladder, but he stumbled around in the bathroom half asleep and rarely, if ever, came downstairs. She would make the tea strong enough—a little stronger than usual—and make sure of it and then go to her room and lock the door until the following morning. Fifteen thousand euros was enough to buy a whole new wardrobe or pay some of her mother’s medical bills, or both. And if Jimmie had paid her fairly from the beginning she would not have had to do it.
She poured herself a second shot of brandy and felt the bitterness of the alcohol reaching down into her stomach. They were filthy Scrooges, the pair of them, except when it came to their social equals, and then, of course, their generosity flowered. But the maid never saw the genuine side of it. All she saw was the hypocrisy and the frugality behind the scenes, a frugality of which she was both executor and victim. You brought it on yourselves, she thought vindictively, and she was certain that she and Naomi had understood the matter simultaneously, without disagreement. Her father in any case had always told her to distrust and hold to account the capitalist class—but how much better it was to rob them on the sly.
THE
NIGHT JOURNEY
TEN
The three days Faoud spent hiding in the hotel room passed in a blur of room service, TV, and thoughts avoided. But while he waited that last night, the evening felt long and tedious and the chatter from the hotel restaurant came and went like music on a radio being turned up and then turned down. By eleven it was quiet again. He let himself out of the room, leaving the key in the door, and went unnoticed up to the coastal path according to Naomi’s instructions. A lopsided moon lit the first bend where he waited. An hour passed and still Naomi had not come, though she had promised to meet him there. He sat on a wall and considered the possibility that it might be a trap after all. He didn’t know what he would do if it was. Run down to the sea and throw himself into it? It would be an insalubrious drama with which to end a life that had once been so promising. In the end he was forced to trust her, if only because there was no one else to trust. It was said that a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a sister. At twelve-thirty, however, she appeared. She had told him to follow her at a fair distance; they were not to talk or greet each other. She was dressed in black, and as soon as she saw him, she turned and began to walk back the way she had come. He followed her, doing as he had been told.