Free Alexandra Singer by Tea at the Grand Tazi Page B

get Martin’s attention. He can be so intolerably slow.” Maia looked back at the woman, whose jaw was wobbling
emphatically. As she repeated her story, she relived the experience; the injustice that she perceived had been done to her. Maia was amused. The woman was a truly comical sight.
    As Maia waited at the bar, someone tapped her arm, and she turned to find herself accosted by Rupert.
    “Hello.”
    “Rupert.”
    “I know.”
    “Where do you normally live, Maia, when you aren’t working for shady historians?”
    “Shady? Is he shady?”
    “Well, the great Mihai Farcu does have his detractors. So where do you normally live?”
    “Sometimes in Paris, sometimes in London.”
    “And what brought you here? Wait – don’t tell me, a lost lover, a broken heart,” and he began to snigger at his own witticisms.
    “Don’t be so ridiculous.”
    “It isn’t so ridiculous, Maia. Most of the people I meet here are running away from something. Are you?”
    “You are a little inquisitive, aren’t you?”
    “I’m just curious.”
    “In London I bumped into an old university Professor, who found out I was at a loose end. He mentioned the Historian, and, voila .”
    Rupert nodded, apparently satisfied with her explanation. She had nothing else to tell him. She certainly was not going to go into details.
    “And what will you be doing for Mihai Farcu?” asked Rupert.
    “You seem so different to that couple. What exactly are you doing here with them?” said Maia, swiftly changing the subject.
    “She is my mother,” said Rupert, and winked.
    “I don’t believe that for a second!” Then, discerning his true meaning, Maia could understand the strange enmity between Rupert and the husband. Martin Bambage was a cuckold,
being routinely humiliated by his unattractive wife. She did not trust Rupert; she had caught a facetious look in his eyes.
    “They both have their little eccentricities,” he said.
    “Lucy Bambage is in charge of both you and Martin.”
    “As you say. She supports me, anyway. She has her needs.”
    “Whatever do you mean?”
    Rupert lowered his voice and whispered in her ear. “Poor old Martin. He just can’t keep the pace any more. Anyway, I’ve sent him straight home!” and he cackled wickedly,
slipping away from her, taking Lucy Bambage’s brandy with him. Maia stared at him in horror as he left.
    Under Mahmoud’s watchful eye Maia avoided Armand all night, but still she seemed to gravitate towards him. As she heard him speak, his words had all the urbane fluency of a highly educated
man. Later in the evening she saw him sitting at the bar, flanked protectively by two dark women, both anxiously competing for his attention. As she passed, she looked at him puzzled, and as he
smiled at her, she unsuccessfully tried to avert her eyes from his. Neither of them spoke, and Armand looked at her questioningly, raising a sardonic eyebrow.
    Maia realised that she had drunk far too much. Mahmoud had handed her so many differently coloured drinks prepared by Tariq, that she lost count.
    Later that summer, she could recall only flashes of that first night at the Grand Tazi bar. She remembered Tariq’s pitted face and the father and daughter at the bar, whose grieving faces
were painful to look at. The father was sobbing and inebriated whilst the daughter remained pitiful and silent. It turned out that the commotion that Maia had encountered that afternoon as she had
made her way to the bar was due to a death of a British woman named Pamela. The family had been living in the city for some time, and the father had decided to give his wife what he thought was the
most romantic gift of all: an amorous camel. It seemed that incident in the streets with the camel had attracted more customers than was usual.
    The lime green light that spewed forth, casting a theatrical glare upon the bar, lent Mahmoud’s listeners a ghoulish appearance as Mahmoud extolled on the excitement of the Friday
afternoon