Page 53 of The Last Postcard

He tutted at me impatiently. Still, he looked a little gratified. ‘Do you know what you will need for tonight’s dinner?’ he asked.

I nodded, and closed my eyes to buy time. In truth I had no idea. The scents and sights were overwhelming. In that moment, I wanted Ifrahim beside me more than anything, Ifrahim who had tasted a thousand dishes in a hundred different port towns. Ale, hacer de tripas corazón.

I opened my eyes. I’d give them their fine food. I’d drown the pale, bland chicken on their plates with flavours of Andalucía, spike their wine sauces with spices. It would be a vagabond cuisine; beguiling, never quite one thing or another. That’s what they wanted, these ex-patriots and exiles. That’s what this city was.

When I told Bouzid what I would need, he frowned at the eccentricity of the ingredients.

‘Monsieur Hubert—’ he began.

‘Monsieur Hubert was a fraud,’ I said with as much arrogance as I could, ‘and a drunk. I know what I am doing.’

He shrugged, and turned away.

‘Where are you going?’ I stepped after him like a child. I was afraid to be left alone there, in that carnival of new things.

‘To hire a porter,’ he said shortly. ‘You can find your way back to Dar Portuna?’

‘Of course,’ I said, hiding my hands in my pockets. It was only then I felt the book. The Gentleman’s Guide. The back of my neck prickled beneath my second-hand shirt.

If you’re going to play the game, you have to learn the rules.

‘Wait!’ I called, stepping after Bouzid. ‘I don’t suppose you know a good tailor?’

It was easy enough to follow Bouzid’s directions out of the socco, towards the Rue Siaghines where most of the tailors could be found. It was a harder matter to find one that suited me. I didn’t want the clean, sober shops, where sallow Englishmen sweated into arrow collars. I needed something different.

I found it by wandering the nearby alleyways. No grand glass windows, no courteous mannequins, just a peeling sign.

Sastrería Issac Souissa

I pushed open the door. Inside, a man sat hunched, needle-blind, working at a piece of mending. When I greeted him, and asked about a suit, he looked at me as if I was a young thug, sent to press him for money.

‘A suit?’ he repeated. His face trembled between dubiousness and hope. ‘Well …’ He glanced at his shop, the shelves almost empty of goods.

‘A suit,’ I said, firmly. ‘And shirts. Underwear. Socks. Anything else a gentleman might need.’

The tailor stood, fumbling a pair of spectacles on to his face, smoothing his wayward grey hair. ‘Of course,’ he said, ushering me closer, as if I might run out the door any moment. ‘Of course, it would be my pleasure.’ He held up a measuring tape, but hesitated. ‘Only … I am sorry to ask, monsieur, but do you have the means to pay? You see, I cannot extend credit.’

He’d noticed my suit at last then. His tailor’s eye had picked up its second-hand nature, the tiny holes where embroidery had been picked from the fabric. I gave him my best smile.

‘You may send the bill to my employer, a Monsieur Arthur Langham, of Dar Portuna. He will pay it. He wishes me to be well dressed.’

‘Dar Portuna?’ The tailor scrawled a hasty note.

‘That’s correct.’

Play the game, learn the rules. There were a hundred rules in The Gentleman’s Guide about how to dress. And if I was to be part of Langham’s world, I had to look the part, didn’t I? I swallowed and raised my chin, hoping I was right; that the book had been an invitation, of sorts. If not, I would have a lot of explaining to do. Even if he kicks me out, my old, thievish self thought, at least I’ll have a good suit.

‘Very well,’ the tailor was saying, ‘if you would please remove your jacket.’

‘There is one more thing I require,’ I said, stepping back.

I took the remaining five pesetas from my pocket, plus the coin the goat-eyed man had given me. My only money in the world. The tailor stared at it. It could keep his family fed for a week, I knew. It could buy him bottles to drown in, a dozen pipes to dull his misery.

‘Yes?’ he asked eagerly. ‘What is it?’

I shifted my chest in the bindings and placed the money in his hand.

‘Your silence.’