‘You are most welcome any time, Madame Harris. I often find new items. But there is no need to buy, of course. It is simply a pleasure to share these things with a fellow history fan.’
‘Merci, Monsieur Habib.’
‘Je vous en prie. God be with you.’
‘And also with you.’
I pick up the heavy changing bag, bulging now with my laptop, library books and my purchases, and readjust my shawl. Grace peeps out, wide eyed with wonder as we walk through the narrow streets lined with their heaps of colourful wares. I pause here and there to examine embroidered scarves and shawls that I might be able to use for the quilt. I like the idea of adapting older items for the sashing strips that will hold my blocks in place and for the border of the finished quilt and so I make a mental note of the location of the places that stock second-hand fabrics.
Stepping back through another arch into the wider, palm-lined avenues of the nouvelle ville feels a little like stepping from one world to another and I blink in the sunlight, getting my bearings. We’re not far from home now. I pat the mobile and music box for Grace’s room through the plastic coating of the bag, reassuring myself that buying them wasn’t a dream. I glance back through the archway. It felt like going back in time. I almost expected to bump into Josie and Nina, looking for things to spend their pocket money on, each shop an Aladdin’s cave of treasures.
Back home, I clean the mobile until the moon and stars shine with a gentle silver light and then I hang it beneath the mosquito netting over Grace’s bed. I place the music box on the nightstand and carefully wind the key. Then I lie next to my baby daughter, listening to the lilting notes of the lullaby, as she watches the moon and stars above her and waves her hands, cooing her approval.
But I can’t settle. I rub at the scaly skin on the underside of my wrist with the nubs of my bitten fingernails, trying to scratch away the irritation. Now that I’ve discovered Monsieur Duval was becoming involved with the embryonic resistance network in Casablanca, a lump of fear has lodged itself in my stomach. It’s a visceral sense of anxiety that I can’t shake off.
I imagine Josie watching the snake charmer in the medina and know now that she felt exactly this same sense of foreboding.
Josie’s Journal – Tuesday 1st April, 1941
Surprise, surprise! Over breakfast this morning, Papa asked us how we’d all like to go on that expedition to the mountains that we’d talked about the first time we went to the farm. I pretended to busy myself in extracting the stone from the juicy date I was eating so that I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye, which might have given away the fact that I’d been expecting this turn of events all along.
Maman wasn’t so sure. ‘But Guillaume, mightn’t it be dangerous to travel, when there’s so much more military activity now?’ she said.
I glanced up then, to see what his response would be. He reached over and took Maman’s hand and said, ‘Chérie, I wouldn’t dream of exposing my wife and daughters to danger, you know that. You are the most precious things in the whole wide world. Don’t worry, I’ve spoken to Stafford about it and he says it’s still safe to travel in Morocco. The fighting is far away in Libya and Egypt. We have two whole countries between it and us.’
I found that very interesting because, of course, Papa was telling the truth in a way. I was sure he had spoken to Mr Reid and Mr Reid would have said it was safe （as long as Maman, Annette and I were there to provide camouflage）。 But he wasn’t telling the whole of the truth. In the background, the Radio Maroc newsreader was describing the latest tremendous victories the Nazis had won by sinking convoys of ships in the Atlantic and pushing the British back in the desert of North Africa. I felt a bit sick then, not just because it made me think of all the dead bodies sinking into the ocean to join my stones but also because when people don’t tell the whole truth it makes me wonder whether they can really be trusted at all. I realised that Papa was becoming a bit like the radio broadcasts: it wasn’t exactly lying, but there was an important bit of the truth that was being held back. I know Papa would never want to do anything to hurt us, unlike the Nazis, but it still made my stomach tie itself into a tight knot to think he wasn’t telling the whole of the truth and so I pushed my plate away with my breakfast unfinished.
We’re going next week, if Papa can hire the car and lay his hands on a canister of gasoline. I imagine Mr Reid will probably help make sure that happens.
I know I should have been feeling excited and happy to be going on such a trip and I tried to remind myself how beautiful and mysterious the mountains looked when we went horse riding on the farm. But instead of their hazy blue layers being filled with the promise of new places to explore, now when I picture them in my imagination they seem a little sinister, hiding secrets and lies.