Stamboul Train (30 page)

‘Talking of theatres, Janet,' Myatt said, ‘will you do a show with me tonight?' He used her Christian name, feeling quite at ease now that he knew that her mother was Jewish and that her uncle was in his pocket.

‘I should love to, but I've promised Mr Savory to have dinner with him.'

‘We could go along to a late cabaret.' But he had no intention of allowing her to dine with Mr Savory. All the afternoon he was too busy to see her; there were hours he had to spend at the office, straightening out all the affairs which Mr Eckman had so ingeniously tangled; he had visits to pay. At half past three driving through the Hippodrome he saw Mr Savory taking photographs in the middle of a group of children; he worked rapidly; three times he squeezed his bulb while the taxi went by, and each time the children laughed at him. It was half past six when Myatt returned to the hotel.

‘Is Miss Pardoe about, Kalebdjian?' Mr Kalebdjian knew everything that went on in the hotel. Only his restlessness explained the minuteness of his information; he would make sudden dives from the deserted hall, rattle upstairs and down again, penetrate into distant lounges, and then be back at his desk with his hands between his knees, doing nothing. ‘Miss Pardoe is changing for dinner, Mr Carleton Myatt.' Once when a member of the Government was staying in the hotel, Mr Kalebdjian had startled a meticulous caller from the British Embassy: ‘His Excellency is in the lavatory. But he will not be more than another three minutes.' Trotting down corridors, listening at bathroom doors, back again with nothing to do but turn over in his mind a little sheaf of information, that was Mr Kalebdjian's life.

Myatt tapped on Janet Pardue's door. ‘Who's that?'

‘May I come in?'

‘The door's not locked.'

Janet Pardoe had nearly finished dressing. Her frock lay across the bed and she sat before her dressing-table powdering her arms. ‘Are you really going to have dinner with Savory?' Myatt asked.

‘Well, I promised to,' Janet said.

‘We could have had dinner at the Pera Palace, and then gone on to the Petits Champs.'

‘It would have been lovely, wouldn't it,' Janet Pardoe said. She began to brush her eyelashes.

‘Who's that?' Myatt pointed at a large photograph in a folding frame of a woman's square face. The hair was bobbed and the photographer had tried to dissolve in mist the rocky outline of the jaw.

‘That's Mabel. She came with me on the train as far as Vienna.'

‘I don't remember seeing her.'

‘Her hair's cut short now. That's an old photograph. She doesn't like being taken.'

‘She looks grim.'

‘I put it up there in case I began to feel naughty. She writes poetry. There's some on the back. It's very bad, I think. I don't know anything about poetry.'

‘Can I read it?'

‘Of course. I expect you think it very funny that anyone should write me poetry.' Janet Pardoe stared into the mirror.

Myatt turned the photograph round and read:

‘It doesn't rhyme. Or does it?' Myatt asked. ‘What does it mean, anyway?'

‘I think it's meant as a compliment,' Janet Pardoe said, polishing her nails.

Myatt sat down on the edge of the bed and watched her. What would she do, he wondered, if I tried to seduce her? He knew the answer: she would laugh, laughter was the perfect defence of chastity. He said, ‘You aren't going to have dinner with Savory. I wouldn't be seen dead with a man like that. A counter-jumper.'

‘My dear,' Janet Pardoe said, ‘I promised. Besides he's a genius.'

‘You are going to come downstairs with me, jump into a taxi, and have dinner at the Pera Palace.'

‘Poor man, he'll never forgive me. It would be fun.'

And that's that, Myatt thought, pulling at his black tie, everything is easy now that I know her mother was Jewish. It was easy to talk hard all through dinner and to put his arm round her as they walked from the Pera Palace to the Petits Champs near the British Embassy. The night was warm, for the wind had dropped, and the tables in the garden were crowded. Subotica became the more unreal when he remembered the snow driven against his face. On the stage, a Frenchwoman in a dinner-jacket pranced up and down with a cane under her arm, singing a song about ‘Ma Tante,' which Spinelli had made popular in Paris more than five years before. The Turkish gentlemen, drinking coffee, laughed and chattered and shook their small dark feathery heads like noisy domestic birds, but their wives, so lately freed from the veil, sat silent and stared at the singer, their faces pasty and expressionless. Myatt and Janet Pardoe walked along the garden's edge, looking for a table, while the Frenchwoman screeched and laughed and pranced, flinging her desperate indecencies towards the inattentive and the unamused. Pera fell steeply away below them, the lights of fishing boats in the Golden Horn flashed like pocket torches, and the waiters went round serving coffee. ‘I don't believe there's a table. We shall have to go into the theatre.' A fat man waved his hand at them and grinned. ‘Do you know him?' Myatt thought for a moment, walking on. ‘Yes, I think. . . . A man called Grünlich.' He had seen him clearly only twice, once when he had climbed into the car and once when he had climbed out into the light of the waiting train. His memory therefore was dim, as of someone he had known better a long while ago in another country. When they had passed the table, he forgot him.

‘There's an empty one.' Under the table their legs touched. The Frenchwoman disappeared, swinging her hips, and a man flung cartwheels on to the stage from the wings. He got to his feet, took off his hat, and said something in Turkish which made everyone laugh.

‘What did he say?'

‘I couldn't hear,' Myatt said. The man threw his hat into the air, caught it, leant forward until he was bent double, and called out a single word. All the Turkish gentlemen laughed again, and even the pasty faces smiled. ‘What did he say?'

‘It must have been dialect. I couldn't understand it.'

‘I'd like something sentimental,' Janet Pardoe said. ‘I drank too much at dinner. I'm feeling sentimental.'

‘They give you a good dinner, don't they?' Myatt said with pride.

‘Why don't you stay there? People say that it's the best hotel.'

‘Oh well, you know, ours is pretty good, and I like Kalebdjian. He always makes me comfortable.'

‘Still the best people—'

A troupe of girls in shorts danced on the stage. They wore guards' caps and they had hung whistles round their necks, but the significance was lost on the Turkish audience, which was not used to guards dressed in shorts. ‘I believe they are English girls,' Myatt said, and he suddenly leant forward.

‘Do you know one of them?'

‘I thought—I hoped,' but he was not sure that it had not been fear he felt at the appearance of Dunn's Babies. Coral had not told him she was going to dance at the Petits Champs, but very likely she had not known. He remembered her staring with brave bewilderment into the noisy dark.

‘I like the Pera Palace.'

‘Well, I did stay there once,' Myatt said, ‘but something embarrassing happened. That's why I never went again.'

‘Tell me. But don't be silly, you must. Do tell me.'

‘Well, I had a friend with me. She seemed quite a nice young thing.'

‘A chorus girl?'

Dunn's Babies began to sing:

‘No, no. She was the secretary of a friend of mine. Shipping.'

‘
Come up here,
' Dunn's Babies sang. ‘
Come up here,
' and some English sailors sitting at the back of the garden clapped and shouted: ‘Wait for us. We're coming.' One sailor began to push his way between the tables towards the stage.

The man fell on his back and everyone laughed. He was very drunk.

Myatt said, ‘It was terrible. She suddenly went mad at about two o'clock in the morning. Shouting and breaking things. The night porter came up stairs, and everybody stood about in the passage. They thought I was doing something to her.'

‘And were you?'

‘No. I'd been fast asleep. It was terrible. I've never spent a night there since.'

‘Come up here. Come up here.'

‘What was she like?'

‘I can't remember a thing about her.'

Janet Pardoe said softly, ‘You can't think how tired I am of living with a woman.' Accidentally their hands touched on the table and then stayed side by side. The fairy lights hanging in the bushes gleamed back at him from her necklace, and at the very end of the garden, over her shoulder Myatt saw Mr Stein pressing his way between the tables, pipe in hand. It was a mass attack. He knew that he only had to lean forward now to ask her to marry him and he would have arranged far more than his domestic future; he would have bought Mr Stein's business at Mr Stein's figure, and Mr Stein would have a nephew on the board and be satisfied. Mr Stein came nearer and waved his pipe; he had to make a detour to avoid the drunk man on the ground, and during that moment's grace Myatt summoned to his assistance any thoughts likely to combat the smooth and settled future. He remembered Coral and the sudden strangeness of their meeting, when he had thought that all was as familiar as cigarette smoke, but her face eluded him, perhaps because the train at that moment had been almost in darkness. She was fair, she was thin, but he could not remember her features. I have done all I can for her, he told himself; we should have said good-bye in any case in a few weeks. It's about time I settled down.

Mr Stein waved his pipe again, and Dunn's Babies stamped their feet and blew their whistles.

Myatt said, ‘Don't go back to her. Stay with me.'

She nodded and their hands moved together. He wondered whether Mr Stein had the contract in his pocket.

THE HISTORY OF VINTAGE