Page 21 of The Last Postcard

‘Gracias,’ I gabbled, and the next thing I knew I was jumping from the back of the van. I landed badly, half-sprawling in the grit on my knee. I got up immediately and began to walk without looking back, though the men behind me called out, ‘Sister!’

I didn’t know where I was going. I just wanted to be away from the soldiers and the uniforms, and their sharp eyes. And so, I made for the sea, for my new love, washing at the edge of the beach like the brightest silk coverlet ever sewn.

The sand beneath my boots made me start but it did not slow me down. When I reached the shallows, I dipped my hands and brought them to my face. The water was fierce, it stung my sunburned skin and bruised nose and it burned my tongue. It made my eyes stream, as if the salt in my body wanted to greet its long-lost cousin.

When I straightened, I found that I could barely stand, could barely keep my eyes open in the heat. It was exhaustion that made me lie down in a strip of shade, concealed between two fishing boats. There, surrounded by the strange mineral reek of drying seaweed and crusted barnacles, I slept.

Tangier

July 1978

Sam hurried along the Rue Dar-el Baroud, his throat raw from running. A wind had picked up, scudding across the city, bearing its load of grit and sand towards the Mediterranean. The night sky was tinged pink, bloody at the edges and in his sudden fever he felt as though some djinn was whirling around him. A night for wild schemes, he thought.

He’d passed the Hotel Continental many times but, like the El Minzah, had never been in. It stood at the very edge of the casbah, past the Grand Mosque, built out of the old city walls, staring seaward like a grand dame decked in jewels, her face turned away from the shabby city at her heel.

Sam stopped on the steps that led up to the terrace, beer thudding in his head, the writing case stuck to his hand. If this place was anything like the El Minzah he couldn’t just fling himself in to the reception, crumpled and breathless, and present them with a fifty-year-old cloakroom tag. They’d look at him as if he was mad.

I am mad, he thought. Whatever item the tag belonged to was probably long gone. A shiver ran across his skin as he pulled the scrap of leather from his pocket and stared at it in the green and red light of the hotel’s illuminated sign. What did he expect to find here, except disappointment? He turned it in his fingers. Perhaps finding wasn’t the point …

Swallowing some moisture back into his throat, he tucked the writing case beneath his arm, and walked up the steps, trying to look dignified.

But the Hotel Continental was not like the El Minzah. Instead of dark wood and stern marble, he found himself among a riot of coloured tiles, kaleidoscopic from floor to ceiling. For a moment, it was dazzling. Then he blinked and saw that many of the tiles were cracked or missing, the velvet drapes threadbare and sun-stained, the brocade sofas worn bald with use.

The empty reception smelled of ancient rose petals and hot dust. There was no one at the desk. He rang a bell and the noise wandered away into the hotel’s interior, in search of a reply that never came.

Hesitantly, he walked into a hallway hung with portraits, darkness creeping from their corners. There were grand stairs, the gilded banisters chipped and flaking. He followed them up, towards a clinking sound, and found himself at the entrance of a long gallery, with huge arched windows that overlooked the bay. For a moment, he thought the clinking would be nothing but a curtain tie, stirring in the breeze, but then he heard voices, and a figure materialized from the gloom: a young man in an old-fashioned green uniform.

‘Bonsoir, monsieur,’ he said softly. ‘A table?’

He looked so hopeful that Sam almost considered saying yes, taking a strange, quiet meal alone there in the glittering carcass of the hotel.

‘No,’ he forced himself to say, ‘no, I’m sorry. I was looking for someone at reception. I wanted to ask about … I wanted to ask a question.’

The young man’s eyes were wide. ‘Please, wait, I will fetch the manager.’

‘No, don’t disturb—’

But the young man was already gone, his footsteps echoing away. Sam had no choice but to wait, surrounded by the quiet murmurings of the few diners at the far end of the room. He allowed his eyes to blur, his imagination to run. Had A. L., the owner of the case, once sat here in solitary splendour, penning a letter before departing Tangier, never to return? Perhaps the dining room had been full of guests back then, champagne and brandy and music from a piano, chatter in French, English, Arabic, cigar smoke swirling like secret code.

‘Monsieur?’ He looked up. A middle-aged man was standing before him. ‘I am Farouk, the manager here,’ he smiled. ‘How may I help? You are interested in a room? I am sorry for your wait, we do not have many staff tonight.’

‘That’s, ah, OK.’ Sam shifted in his espadrilles. ‘I’m not here about a room. I wanted to ask about your … cloakroom. It sounds crazy, but I have this.’ He pulled the tag from his pocket. ‘I think it came from here?’

The manager frowned, holding out his hand. In the dim light, the leather tag looked older than ever.

‘Oui,’ he said at last. ‘Oui, oui, this belonged to the Continental.’ He looked at Sam over his spectacles. ‘How did you come by it, monsieur?’

‘I found it,’ Sam said, before immediately regretting the words. He needed some reason to explain his being there, to make it less strange. I’m trying to write a book wouldn’t cut it. ‘That is, I found it among my late uncle’s possessions. This was his too,’ he said quickly, showing them the case.

The manager looked no less confused. ‘Your uncle was a guest with us?’ He held up the tag. ‘But this is very old. I have never seen one like it, and I have worked here for twenty years.’

‘Yes, I think he was a guest.’ Sam could feel himself turning red. ‘Perhaps some time around nineteen twenty-eight?’

‘That is fifty years ago, monsieur!’

‘I know, I know, I just—’ He groped for some rational argument, but there wasn’t one. ‘I just wondered why he kept it,’ he muttered. ‘Whether he left any belongings here, unclaimed, for some reason. I’m sorry. It was a stupid idea.’

The manager was smiling now, polite but pitying. ‘It is true we sometimes store items for guests, but for this long?’ He handed back the tag. ‘I do not know.’