Free A Dead Man in Tangier by Michael Pearce Page B

action.'
    ‘Appropriate?'
    ‘Well, they would be able to plan ahead.'
    ‘Buy land, you mean?'
    ‘That sort of thing, yes, sir.'
    ‘And Bossu being close to the committee’s deliberations . . .'
    ‘I must insist, sir, that anything he did would be separate from his work on the committee. The Chairman is a stickler for propriety. But, of course, outside the committee room –’
    ‘And close as he was not just to the committee’s working but also to the interests of other parties –’
    ‘He would be well placed,’ said Mr Bahnini.
    ‘Thank you, Mr Bahnini. I think I understand what you are telling me.'
    At one point Seymour heard Mr Bahnini talking to someone in his office. They kept their voices down and he couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they appeared to be having an argument. The other person seemed to be a young man. After a time he went away.
    When Mr Bahnini next came in to see how Seymour was getting on, he appeared vexed.
    ‘An awkward customer?'
    ‘Very. My son.'
    ‘The one you were talking about with Macfarlane?'
    ‘The same.'
    ‘The one who has just finished his studies and is uncertain what to do?'
    ‘It is not that he is uncertain. He doesn’t appear to want to do anything . He just sits in the café all day with his friends listening to music.’
    ‘He probably finds it hard to put student life behind him.'
    ‘They all do. But it’s time they did. They can’t sit around for ever.'
    ‘You couldn’t tempt him to take up Macfarlane’s offer? As a temporary expedient?'
    ‘That’s just what I’ve been trying to do. But he will have none of it. The committee is just a cover for the French, he says, and he refuses to have anything to do with it. He won’t work for the Mahzen because he says it’s too corrupt. All right, what about business, then, I say? There are plenty of jobs there if only you could be bothered to look for them. That would be working for foreigners, he says, and he doesn’t want to do that.'
    ‘What does he want to do?'
    ‘Sit around in the caf é e and chat. And his friends are just the same. They say they will only work for Morocco. Look, this is Morocco, I say: here! No, it’s not, they say. It’s France or Spain or some other rich country.
    ‘“It’s all very well for you to talk,” I say to him, “but before you start taking a high-and-mighty line about principle, you’ve got to find a way to live. At the moment you’re living on me!”
    ‘That always makes him angry, and my wife says I mustn’t say things like that. But it’s true. And it’s true for the others, too.
    ‘Take young Awad. He spends all his time lolling about in the café, too, but he can do it only because his father is rich – his father is a Minister in the Mahzen, Suleiman Fazi. Did you say you had been to see him? I met him once, he’s a nice man and he’s just as worried about Awad as I am about Sadiq.
    ‘I don’t know what’s come over the young. They have chances we never had. And what do they do? Loll about and complain! Say the world’s all wrong and that it needs to change before they’ll get their hands dirty by working in it!'
    Seymour laughed.
    ‘The young have always been like that,’ he said.
    ‘But it’s different now. Here. And with the Protectorate being imposed, it’s become worse. They say such wild things!'
    ‘It’s just talk.'
    ‘So long as it stops at just talk,’ said Mr Bahnini darkly.
    When Seymour left, he saw just such a group of young men as they had been discussing sitting in a café across the road. In fact, they were the young men they had been talking about, or some of them were, for as he and Mr Bahnini came out of the bank one of them looked up and saw them and then came running across the road towards them.
    ‘Your pardon, Father,’ he said. ‘I spoke too warmly.'
    ‘Like father, like son,’ said Mr Bahnini. ‘I spoke too warmly, too.'
    The young man fell in alongside them.
    ‘This is Monsieur Seymour,’ said Mr