Chapter 3: Tangiers

The waves crashed against the jetty. The same waves, Marla reflected, that might have crashed against the Gibraltan shore on the other side of the straits, waves that were as much Atlantic as they were Mediterranean. Each wave fierce and restful at the same time, built up slowly and steadily out at sea to break sometimes on themselves and sometimes against the concrete jetty that projected into the open water.

She glanced down at the postcard on her lap, the same one she'd started writing half an hour ago and had still not got beyond the initial sentence where she told her parents about how friendly Moroccans were. It wasn't, of course, their friendliness that most concerned her (she didn't want to tell her parents too much about how some of this friendship was real and some was just a means to an end). No. The friendship that most haunted her, even now, more than a week later, was what she'd experienced at the Atlas Hotel in Taroudannt.

Was she really a lesbian?

She'd always known she was bisexual. The first time in Kristianer with Helga and Rolf. That was one thing. But they were all drunk and very very stoned and the lovemaking was not totally successful. Helga had even fallen asleep with Marla's tongue still licking her thick pubic bush. The second time wasn't so much a reprise as a total disaster, when it was Rolf this time who was unable to fulfil his role in the trio. Men were always so eager to begin with, but you could never be sure they could sustain the enthusiasm.

And the second time in the kibbutz, with Isabella, the Brazilian girl, whose friendship had somehow developed into something altogether more intimate. Theirs had been a relationship more marked by moments of tenderness than ones of abandon and uncontrolled passion. Isabella tried so hard to hide the relationship from everyone else in the kibbutz, even sometimes pretending she hardly knew Marla, who was aware that what Isabella most wanted was for the two of them to retreat to her bed and lie together. Maybe just hold hands. Maybe just kiss each other's face and breasts. And, so few times that each time was wholly memorable, to explore the pubic region that burned so fiercely.

But none of this was anything compared to the passion Marla had enjoyed with that English woman in the Middle Atlas. In fact, not one encounter, with either man or woman, bore fair comparison to the intensity of the passion Marla experienced that day. She was so frightened of spoiling that memory, she deliberately avoided Phillippa and David the following day and set off by as early a bus as she could to El Jadida, whilst the couple no doubt continued driving on to Agadir.

The memory of those orgasms was intense not only in her mind, but the mere recollection burnt just as intensely between her legs. How could sex be so intense? So overwhelming? So totally beyond what Marla had ever associated with sex before?

Was Marla a lesbian?

She was still sure it was men she most desired. Even now, with the memory of Phillippa's fingers and thumb so vividly imprinted on her vagina and anus, it was the image of a man and the hope of achieving similar satisfaction with one that was uppermost in her mind.

"Elles sont belles, n'est-ce pas?" Marla heard.

"Pardon?"

"Les vagues. Elles sont trés belles!" repeated the young man who stood above her as she sat cross-legged by the edge of the jetty.

"I speak English, you know," said Marla with a smile. The young man's French accent was truly execrable. He was slim, with baggy khaki shorts that came nearly to his knees, open-toed sandals, and a tee-shirt that celebrated the Pacha nightclub in Ibiza.

"You do? I thought you might be French or Belgian or summat."

"Not Moroccan?"

"No. Not Moroccan. You don't look Moroccan. Where d'you come from? Switzerland or Austria or something?"

"Denmark."

"Oh! I'd never have guessed!" he said, crouching down beside her. "I'm sorry for butting in, like, but I saw you were by yourself. I thought you might want company."

"Really?" said Marla, with a smile. This young man couldn't be much more than twenty, almost a boy really, with a chin that was still relatively smooth and hair that had grown out a bit from whatever style it was originally supposed to have been. He seemed quite harmless. And he had such a sweet smile.

"Yeah! I mean, I've been sorta wandering about, like, not doing much and I saw you. So I thought, well, you know, I thought..."

"Yes," said Marla, putting the hand that held her ball pen onto her lap. "The waves are beautiful. I could watch them for hours. They are very restful. And you? Where do you come from? I don't recognise the accent. Are you Australian? A New Zealander?"

"Am I fuck!" he said, rather surprised. "Do I sound like an Ozzie? No, I'm English, me. I come from Newcastle." He noticed Marla's blank expression. "It's in the North West. Near Scotland. In fact, it's a sort of Viking place. It was you Danes that we Geordies originate from."

"Oh yes," said Marla. That was fascinating. She knew her history. She knew England had once been part of the Danish Empire, but it was very curious to meet an Englishman who was part of the same heritage as her, if in a rather indirect way. "I'm Marla, by the way."

"Paul," the young man said, reaching out a hand at the end of his skinny bare arm and shaking hers in an unpractised way. "Pleased to meet you, like."

"Are you here on holiday by yourself?"

"Naw! But me mates are in the hotel room still. They've both got the trots. It's like Delhi Belly, only this being Morocco and all I guess you have to call it something else. It was the bloody couscous and stuff we had in the restaurant last night."

"But you've not got the same problem?" remarked Marla. Her English was always very good, but she had difficulty understanding much more than half of what Paul was saying. She surmised that Paul's friends must have eaten something that disagreed with them.

"Well, yeah! I'm a vegetarian, like, so I didn't have none of the chicken and mutton and stuff. You don't get the trots from vegetables mostly."

"Vegetarian?"

This seemed most unlikely. Most of Marla's vegetarian friends dressed in ways that proclaimed their social conscience that was totally unlike this young man. He didn't look the sort who would relish lentils or organic rice. Marla sympathised. When it was possible, she much preferred her food to be kosher, though halal was acceptable.

"Aye," he said, looking almost embarrassed. "I'm not some sorta hippy, like. Though I smoke blow like the best of them. I dunno why. I just sorta gone off eating meat. I guess I must be soft, me."

"Soft?"

"Aye! Not hard, like. I sorta look at meat and I think about the animals, you know, the sheep and cows and pigs and all. And then I just don't fancy it. So, I must be soft as shite, me."

Marla found this terribly endearing. Although he betrayed a certain degree of boldness by breaking into her reverie in the way he had, there was still something rather shy and awkward about him. He fiddled with the waist of his huge shorts and smiled readily and easily. But his eyes contrived to focus on hers for only as long as it was strictly polite to do so.

"And have you and your friends been travelling around Morocco?"

"Well, not really. We just came for a couple of days in Tangiers. We're going on to Ibiza for the clubs later, but we thought we'd see what Africa's like. But it's not proper Africa, is it? They're all Arabs and the like here. And there's no zebras and elephants and lions and stuff."

"It's still Africa."

"Guess it is. But I'd like to see real Africa some time. You know, go on a safari or something. There's summat about big animals I've always liked."

"And your friends? Do they like animals?"

"Nah! They don't give a fuck about stuff like that. They'd rather smoke blow and drop E and go to nightclubs and dance and stuff. Not that I don't like doing that and all. And they're good mates, like. So what are you doing in Morocco?"

"Touring. Seeing the country."

"Oh! And where've you been?"

"Everywhere," Marla boasted. "Fez. Marrakech. Meknes. Casablanca. Rabat. All over."

"Hoo! You and your mates, like?"

"No, just me."

"Just you? You're by yourself, like?"

Marla nodded. She could see Paul was slightly uncomfortable with that information. He knelt down next to her.

"So, what are these places like? You must be a brave lass to go to all those places."

Marla smiled and gave an account of the places she'd visited, the sights she'd toured, the carpet shops she'd been to. She told him how difficult it was sometimes to shake off the persistent attention of Moroccan men in the Kasbahs and medinas, and how there always seemed to be someone who wanted to be her friend and tour guide. She recounted the ruses she used to escape from their attention, but spluttered when she was sure he used the word 'cunnilingus' in one of his nodded interjections.

"Sorry? What was that?" she asked, for the first time aware that he was in some sense a potential sexual partner.

"You're a canny lass!"

"A what?"

"Canny lass. Smart girl, like. Geordie expression."

"Oh."

Marla was enjoying Paul's attention. She was touched by how, whenever she caught his eyes looking at her in a clearly appraising way, he visibly blushed and looked away. Although he was soft-spoken, Marla wasn't at all sure how much that was to do with his peculiar English dialect or if it would be the same whatever his native tongue.

"Shall we go for a coffee?" she asked.

"A coffee?" wondered Paul, the freckles on his face deepening again with his ready blush. "But I hardly know you, like."

"To a café. There are a few near the Kasbah."

"Oh, in a café. Aye, of course. We've been drinking that weird Moroccan tea. Mint tea. It's reet sweet, like."

"I prefer coffee. Café cassé. Or café au lait."

"Yeah. I could do with a cuppa, me."

They sat outside a café at a table on the pavement. The waiter swivelled the huge parasol so they were both in the shade of the fierce North African sun. Paul seemed ill at ease but insisted on buying the drinks. He struggled with his schoolboy French while the waiter nodded and seemed to understand. Marla couldn't help smiling at his pronunciation, but chose to make no remark.

"You pay afterwards," she advised him as he fumbled for some dirhams.

"Oh! Of course. Like you do in France and Spain, like."

After the coffees, they wandered into the Kasbah. Marla enjoyed herself as she helped Paul haggle over a scented cedar box that he took a fancy to, easily reducing the cost to about a fifth what was originally requested.

"You're a reet canny lass!" Paul exclaimed.

That expression again. Marla giggled. As she contemplated Paul's startled face she resolved in her mind to take this young man in hand. She had some condoms she'd brought over from Denmark. Perhaps she could find out for sure whether she really was a lesbian. If she was one, why would she find herself so attracted to Paul? She liked his smile. She liked the way he occasionally ran his fingers through his hair to push it off his forehead. She liked his gaucheness and that unforced charm that came from his heart and not his head.

"Have you got a girlfriend, Paul?" she asked as the two of them left the winding claustrophobic maze of stalls and re-emerged into the open square through one of the doorways to the Kasbah.