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"Well, I'm a pretty substantial customer of his, actually.

We've been trading some while. I know he likes to be private as a rule, but he said he had something a bit special for me to look at."

She was impressed. "Are you the big, big buyer? The one that's going to make us all mountainously rich?"

"Well, I hope so. I hope he'll make me rich too."

Her confusion increased.

"He can't have forgotten," she said. "Not Aitken. He thinks about your deal day and night. He must be on his way." Her doubts returned. "And you really, really don't think you've made a mistake and you should be at the store? I mean he could easily have driven straight there from the airport. He keeps weird times."

"I've never been to the store. We've always met in London. I wouldn't even know where to find the store."

"Me neither. Ali, stop it. I mean he just never, never does this. He's abroad, you see. Well, he's on his way back, obviously. I mean he could be here."

I waited while she talked herself round.

"Look. All right. Why don't you come indoors and have a cup of tea till he shows up? He'll be terribly angry. If people stand him up, he goes totally spare. He's not a bit Oriental in that way. I'm Julie, actually."

I stepped after her into the house, took off my shoes, and put them with the family's in the rack beside the door.

* * *

The living room was a kitchen, playroom, and living room all at once. It had an old doll's house and cane furniture and pleasantly disordered bookshelves with books jammed upward and sideways in English, Turkish, and Arabic. It had a silver-gilt samovar and Koranic texts and silk embroideries. I recognised a Coptic cross and Ottoman carnations. A magic eye in gold and green hung above the door to ward off devils. In a carved wall cabinet, a mother-cult goddess rode sidesaddle on a very obvious stallion. And on the television set stood a studio photograph in colour of Julie and a bearded man seated among pink roses. The television was showing a children's animated film. She turned the sound down, but Ali grizzled so she turned it up again. She made a pot of tea and set shortbread biscuits on a plate. She had long legs and a long waist and a model's studiously casual walk.

"If you knew how unusual this was, it's so stupid, it's so untypical of him," she said. "You didn't come all the way from London just for—well—this, did you?"

"It's not a tragedy. How long's he been away?”

“A week. What's your speciality?"

"I'm sorry?"

"What do you deal in?"

"Oh, you name it. Hamadan. Balouchi. Kilims. The best of everything when I can afford it. Are you in the trade yourself?"

"Not really." She smiled, mostly at the window because she was keeping watch. "I teach at Ali's school. Don't I, Al?"

She went to the next room, and the boy went after her. I heard her telephoning. I snatched a closer look at the portrait of the happy couple. The photographer had been wise to pose them sitting, for straightened out, Mr. Aitken Mustafa May would have been a bearded head shorter than his lady, even allowing for the raised heels of his high-gloss, buckled shoes. But his smile was proud and happy.

"All I ever get's the answerphone too," she complained, coming back. "It's been the same all week. There's a store-man there and a secretary. Why don't they switch off the machine and answer the phone for themselves? They're supposed to have been there since nine."

"Can't you reach one of them at home?"

"Aitken just will hire these way-out people!" she protested, shaking her head. "He calls them his Odd Couple; she's a retired librarian or something, he's ex-army. They live in a cottage in the moors and don't talk to anyone except their goats. Which is why he hires them. Honestly."

"And no telephone?"

She had placed herself at the window again, bare feet apart. "Water from the well," she said indignantly. "No mains, no phone, no nothing. You're absolutely certain he didn't say the store. aren't you? I don't mean to be stupid or rude or anything, but he just never, never has business people here."

"Where's he been travelling?"

"Ankara. Baghdad. Baku. You know how he is. Once he gets on a scent there's no stopping him."

She drummed her fingertips on the window.

"It's his Muslim side," she said. "Keep the women out of it. How long have you known him?"

"Six years. Seven maybe."

"I just wish he'd talk about the people he meets. I'll bet some of them are really, really interesting."

A taxi came up the hill and drove past without slowing down. It was empty.

"I mean what's he pay them for?" she protested in exasperation. "Two grown-up zombies sitting on their backsides listening to a machine. I'm just so sorry for you. Aitken'll kill them, he really will."

"Oh dear."

"He has this really ridiculous superstition thing about not telling me which plane he's on too," she said. "He thinks they'll blow him up or something. I mean he's so spooky sometimes. I wonder—you know, am I going to be like him, or is he going to be like me?"