By Hamish Brown

When his parents hadn't heard from him for a month, after he'd phoned from the Foucauld in Marrakech, they got in touch with the British Council. They had heard no more than his father: Jean Louis had gone off to Oualidia to look for Painted Ladies. Ivor felt duty bound to go with Froment pére to Oualidia. They found an abandoned camp, and, with the help of the gendarmerie two very frightened youths reluctantly told their story. Police threats simply silenced them, but Ivor found a regular application of francs worked wonders. Not that the story that emerged made any sense. Jean Louis appeared to have had a dose of cafard, to have gone bunkers. But Ivor could hardly say that to Jean Louis.'s old man. He didn't need to in the end. The old man suggested as much to him.

They returned to Rabat and life resumed its normal routine of teaching and good works. Ivor had a couple of letters from the Bristol students, one a formal sort of 'Thank You', the other of a more personal nature following his letter explaining Jean Louis's disappearance. There the matter rested.

But as Allah brings the sun and the rain, and the rivers flow to the sea, so this business was not yet over. Ivor was sitting in the Moorish cafe one Sunday afternoon two months later. He was reading a novel while enjoying the usual thé à la menthe, with a come de gazelle, when a cheery voice hailed him. "Hello, Ivor, old cock. 'Up the Painted Ladies',as we used to say."

He just about fell off the beach. It was Jean Louis, Jean Louis as thin as a ghost, dressed in a malodorous and tatty djellaba and sandals with car tyre soles: a real tramp.

"Could I have a thé please?" he asked.

They sat drinking. Ivor was consumed with curiosity but before he could bring himself to ask any questions Jean Louis said "No questions, old chap. Aprés peut-être. Much more important, can you kit me out like a Christian again? And give me a bath? I'm not going home like this and I haven't a sco for anything."

Naturally Ivor complied.

Jean Louis reappeared in Rabat society just as if he had never been absent for something like five months. He took a job with Le Matin and was as good company as ever. All be could tell Ivor, however, was that he woke one night in the tent at Oualidia with the horrors on him and convinced his mosquito net was coming down on him just like a net on a poor butterfly. The next thing he remembered was a fisherman's hut near Magazan whose simple occupants had apparently taken pity on one of Allah's sons and clothed and fed and nursed him for God knows how long.

To be continued.

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