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
très
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?"
