Everyone Must Carry Their Own Luggage

'Everyone Must Carry Their Own Luggage'

It's the third double brandy J B Foxley MBE, has tipped into the plant pot, the palm looks healthy enough but might feel a bit groggy in the morning.

Foxley was awarded an MBE for 'services to export': in spite of a severe bout of yellow fever contracted in West Africa he had bravely continued to carry out export duties, and Foxley vowed in future to resist the welcoming ladies at the Ikeja Club in Lagos.

He is watching the boy dancing with a whore. Mohamed is only eighteen, soft-baked, his first time out of Saudi. He has probably never seen a woman before:apart from his mother. Arabs keep their women hidden in those hijab things. . . black sacks with cages over their heads. Sheik Abdul bin Azis has sent his son over to complete his Western education and Foxley will oblige.

Business is founded on trust: Arabs only take bribes from people they trust, and they trust old Foxley with his infectious laugh and a ready smile which doesn't quite light-up the shrewd eyes. Foxley finds comfortable women for his clients, cases of Glen Fiddich, and trips to shady night clubs. They call him Foxy Foxley, the fox you can trust. He

reflects on his early days in the export business. It was easy when he first started - in Ghana you changed dollars for mountains of Cedis behind a curtain in Quimby's, the sweaty night club in Accra - he enjoyed the local ladies, lived like a lord on a tenner a day and slipped brown envelopes to local buyers.

Foxley's superiors suspected this practice but chose to ignore it, but it was getting difficult. Such inducements became difficult to extract by padding expenses with fake vouchers - the devious brain of Foxley got to work, he appointed the recipients of bribes as agents for them to dish out the brown envelopes.

But in the armaments trade envelopes weren't large enough to contain kick-backs in millions and Foxley developed labyrinthine untraceable offshore conduits to ensure safe payments. Soon a tide of dirty money washed-up on the shores of the Caribbean islands, to be laundered through dummy companies with no questions asked by governments grateful for hard currency.

Abdul bin Azis, an old fashioned gentleman, always insists on notes; Abdul doesn't trust banks. Foxley fingers the fat envelope weighing down his trouser pocket. Foxley likes presents it makes it seem like Christmas. The scruffy hold-all at his feet contains a million dollars. Abdul told him to courier it to St Lucia and pay it into the account of Johnson: the builders merchants. It will substantially boost Johnson's turnover from the two bags of cements he normally sells in a day.

The lady with a leg pressed against the boy's is aged about forty with the pallor of a night worker - and Arabs do adore white skin. Foxley has known Joan Hunter since she started at the club. She doesn't do short time and doesn't do exotic: sometimes a social worker, sometimes a lover, sometimes an agony aunt and sometimes a spy for Foxley. He studies them as they shuffle around cheek to cheek, she's crooning in the boy's ear as she used to do for him, somebody said dancing is doing in the vertical what is normally done in the horizontal. There have been so many ladies, but still he feels jealousy tug at this heart strings. He trawls through the library of ladies; like a stamp collector he records them by country; the Ghana lady,Veda was special, melting milk-chocolate skin, brilliant in bed, elegant, he couldn't wait to return to Accra, he bought her a watch. But she had gone.

The young man is in love, and Joan is playing the female role of 'retreat and advance' before the final surrender - for money.

It's getting late. Joan can escort young Mohamed back to his hotel: she knows every hotel in Mayfair and every ceiling of every hotel. He calls over the waitress, hands her his credit card and tells her to add Joan's charges to his bill. He doesn't want true love to be sullied by a sordid commercial transaction. He picked up the scruffy hold-all and retires to his bed above the offices of Foxley & Chambers in Mayfair.

Next morning Foxley calls in his secretary, "Book me a flight to St Lucia first class."

He has a weakness for secretaries; he inevitably ends up tumbling into bed with them. This one is an elegant black lady, she reminds him of the lady from Accra but she has been cleared by his wife because she is safe: her husband is an army captain.

"You want someone to carry your bags?" the secretary asked with a smile.

"There is an Arab proverb: 'Everyon must carry their own luggage'."

"What about a lady?" she replies, as she shimmies out the office with a swish to her hips and a flirt to her voice.

This is an invitation..

She returns. "There are two seats on the BA flight to Vieux Fort via Barbados."

"Do you want to come? What about the army captain?"

"We are separated."

"Oh”, he reshuffles things in his mind." He hands her his credit card, "Book two tickets."

"I've never travelled first class."

The next day they meet at Heathrow Airport. She checks them in, and hands Foxley his boarding pass.

At Barbados, they change planes and have to clear customs and immigration. When Foxley returns from the toilet, she is nowhere to be seen. He is the last to leave. As he enters 'Nothing to Declare', a sniffer dog takes an unreasonable interest in his bag.

"On the table, please sir.

"What?"

"Your bag, sir. On the table. Open it."

Foxley doesn't recognise the contents. "That's my secretary's bag."

"I see. She wears size ten shoes, does she? And these?" he holds up a pair of boxer shorts. " I think these are about your size. Come with me, sir. We need to check this bag of white powder."

It was later he received the letter – 'everyone must carry their own luggage. It is payback time, the million dollars has gone to help the professional ladies of Accra. It was signed, 'Veda'.