Band of Angel (46 page)

“Yes,” he said, “I have. I’m like that.”

Inside the hammam, a fat, barefooted woman with a big smile led her into a high, light room where the walls were lined with wooden cabins that looked like bathing huts. She was given a towel and a large brass key and shown how to lock her hut and where to hang her clothes. It was cold in the hut, so she kept on her chemise and stockings and wrapped herself carefully in her own towel, terrified at her own daring, but so longing for a bath that she was trembling.

The woman returned and, holding her hand, took her into a steamy room with a high roof and a glass dome set in it. Inside it were twenty or so Turkish women, partly naked and washing either themselves or each other. She looked away, horrified, and was relieved when the fat woman gestured toward a dark corner of the room away from the others.

“Bonno, bonno.” She pointed toward the slatted bench. “Is very good, very nice, sit down!”

Catherine obeyed, still shivering. In front of her a large tap protruded from the wall and underneath it were two buckets, one filled with hot water, the other with cold. The woman gave her a copper scoop and showed her with elaborate gestures how to cover her
head, first in hot water then in cold. Laughing, she tugged at Catherine’s chemise and petticoats, and off they came.

She felt a spasm of shame but then nothing but pure animal pleasure at the sensation of warm water pouring down her back and over her head. After months of damp wool and itching skin, it felt so wonderful.

The woman’s eyes were half closed; her movements had a hypnotic slowness and she took no notice at all of Catherine’s nakedness. As she poured the warm water again and again, nothing was rushed or awkward. At last she took a loofah from her apron pocket and gently, methodically, scrubbed her from head to toe.

Black worms of old skin began to stand up on her arms and legs. “Oh dear,” she said, “I’m sorry I’m so dirty,” and blushed.

The woman laughed at her. She sang a song in a sweeping, guttural voice. She took Catherine’s head between her fingers and began with firm, rhythmic gestures, to knead in a sticky-looking soap. As she sang and scrubbed, bit by bit Catherine felt herself let go. She bowed her head and when her tears came, the woman dried them as if this was normal, too.

When she was clean again, they began to alternate hotter and hotter water with icy blasts from a cold bucket, then they brought her a fresh towel, rubbed her in some sweet-scented lotion and dried her.

“Is good?” A cup of coffee and a glass of water had appeared on a tray beside her. “Is finish now.” She flashed her gold teeth and patted her on the arm.

Her skin was tingling, her blood sang, and she could have wept again with relief. The itching had gone.

When she’d finished her coffee she washed her clothes. As instructed, she’d brought her Scutari wrapper and aprons, and a chemise, in a cloth bag. It took her over half an hour, scrubbing and dunking the filthy wool felt like a kind of exorcism.

When she was finished, they took her clothes away to dry them and she changed into the tunic that Dr. Cavendish had brought for her. It was a soft cotton tunic, a pretty blue, and she liked the feel of it. The water and the heat had made her feel calmer than she had in months, and the physical ache of sadness about Lizzie felt
more bearable. The ceiling of the bathhouse had stained glass set in it. Now she saw how beautiful it was to see the snow fluttering by, blurring and playing with the colors.

After she was dressed, she combed her hair luxuriously with her fingers and allowed it to hang loose until it was dry, then covered it with her veil. The woman came for her. She gestured toward the street outside and said, “He is waiting.”

Her body felt so fine now, so clean and new, her spirits so much lighter, that she couldn’t help but enjoy the sensation of their carriage moving through crowded streets; the smells of spice and roasting meat from the street vendors, the marvelous variety of people walking through the streets: beggars and acrobats, street musicians, ordinary people looking as though they’d stepped from a Bible story. She stared hungrily at the wonderful city from behind her veil. Dr. Cavendish said they would have lunch at a hotel and that he might see another patient that afternoon. Now he had lapsed into silence beside her. He had shaved and his hair was damp.

After a short drive, they reached the Hotel Ambassadeurs, a pretty pink stucco building whose balconies overlooked a cobbled street. He told her to walk behind him into the hotel.

He seemed nervous, and she was, too. If she hadn’t felt so hungry now she would have wanted, not exactly to go home soon—how could anyone think of Scutari as home?—but to be out of his presence, which was oppressive.

They went through a brass swing door and when he got to the reception desk, he frowned at her as if she should pay attention. He spoke to the English receptionist, she heard a braying laugh and another English voice calling from the bar, “But must you say that, Amelia?”

“Of
course
I must,” said a young woman in a charming gray hat, “it’s absolutely the thing.”

A cloak trimmed with silver fox slipped from her shoulders and
both Dr. Cavendish and the young officer at her side swooped to retrieve it and they all laughed in a rather artificial way. As he passed her he took off his hat and bowed. “Dr. Cavendish?” The woman recognized him. “What brings you again to this side of the waters? Surely not on duty?”

“Oh, I’m over to see patients quite often.” He took her hand in his. “I’ll go back to Scutari tonight, and you?”

“Well, I might be there myself soon.” She sounded excited. “I got the ambassador to speak to Miss Nightingale about a special project for me.”

Catherine felt she had stopped breathing, and felt him stiffen beside her.

“Come on, Amelia,” said the lounging officer rudely. “I want to get to Smithson’s before it closes.”

“They are rude, aren’t they?” She made a little frown in his direction. “Such babies.”

Cavendish bowed at the company again and, when they’d gone, muttered about the madness of sending women like that to Scutari. He seemed very put out by the encounter.

“She knows the ambassador,” he said to Catherine angrily, as if this was somehow her fault, and then asked, “Did she see you?”

“I don’t think so.” She was starting to feel heavyhearted and afraid again.

“Look, don’t hang around here, go upstairs in front of me and wait at the top.”

She disliked his tone and shot him a blazing look from above her veil, but she had no alternative. She walked up a short flight of stairs to a landing that had a row of solid doors on either side. He took a key, unlocked the second door along, and they stepped together into a small sitting room, furnished attractively in the English style with good furniture and Persian rugs. There was a small fire burning in a tiled hearth.

“What time is your patient coming?” she asked.

“Not sure, don’t know,” he said. He still seemed flustered and cross. “I can’t think before eating. Are you hungry?”

“Yes.” How horrible it felt to want food so much; as strong as the urge to breathe or to pass water, it seemed to override everything.

Hungry and humiliated, she sat in the half dark while he went downstairs to order food. A few moments later he was back with a waiter, who carried a tray covered with a blue and white napkin that he set down on a table near the window. When he whisked the napkin off, a fragrant spicy steam rose up and she could have cried. Here were soft pastries, piping hot and filled with meat, tomatoes, brilliantly red and sprinkled with coriander and olive oil, the taste of fat green and black olives, some small fishes, some small spicy sausages with a delicioussmell. The unleavened bread was wrapped up in a cloth and also steaming.

“It’s called a mezze.” He handed her a long-handled fork without looking at her.

“I can’t eat it all so you’d better have some. And here.” He held out a bottle of red wine. “Allow me.”

She hesitated. The sight of so much food had brought a strange pang of sorrow. This was the meal she and Lizzie had dreamed about but now it felt so awkward and sad.

She closed her eyes and the tears ran down, and then she dried them, and ate and ate and ate. He kept piling food on her plate in a haphazard, thoughtless way, almost as if he was feeding coal to a fire.

The waiter returned with a lamb stew, steaming hot, and a pile of pale yellow rice scattered with herbs. He took a great deal of it, and then went to a chair in the corner of the room, where he ate in such an intent and secretive way she almost thought he had forgotten her and was relieved. But then, when he’d finished, he came back, sat down opposite her, and, sucking the last lamb bone, raised his eyes to look at her.

“There, you see.” His lips were gleaming with oil. “You’re enjoying yourself now, aren’t you?”

She told him politely that the food was delicious. She wanted to ask him if she could take the bread back to Scutari, as a treat for . . . for . . . And then felt a great hole in her chest and wanted to howl. What a story all this would have made for Lizzie, how could she not be here?

“And now you’re clean.” A pause. “And
I’m
clean.” He smiled at her for the first time since they’d arrived at the hotel.

“What time will we get back to Scutari?” she said nervously. “We have evening prayers at nine.”

“Pipe down,” he said to her suddenly, “a man could get very tired of your impertinence.”

“It’s just that Miss Nightingale . . .”

“I’ll tell you something about Miss Nightingale,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for my intervention on the morning we met, she would have sent you home then and there.” He said this in a flat voice, as if it were half a joke. “Don’t look so serious,” he went on, “my bark’s worse than my bite.” The remains of a mashed-up bit of fish from the mezze hung on his whiskers, he licked it away with his tongue.

“But
you
said you were on duty tonight.”

“Oh, did I?” He was teasing her now. “So I did.”

“Sir, please, I don’t . . . I want to keep my job.”

“Hush, hush, hush, hush. You are too fond of trying to make the rules.”

He picked up another lamb bone and chewed on it. He looked at her and she was instantly afraid.

When he said, in the same level voice, that she should now go through into the next room and change back into her Scutari uniform; she was flooded with relief.

“Go, go,” he said, “we don’t have much time.”

The new room had a blue rug and a white bed. White curtains were drawn back to reveal a sky full of snow again.

“Why do you think you are such a jittery young woman?” she heard him ask from the room beyond.

Her hands were trembling as she unpacked her uniform and put it on the chair. The sight of it, unlovely and never looking quite clean, filled her with a wave of revulsion and fear.

As she was slipping the tunic over her head, she felt his hand clamped over her breasts, and smelled his breath—a blast of alcohol and spices.

“No,” she said. “No! Please . . . I don’t want.”

“A good clean girl now.” He held her hair in one of his hands and kept mashing at her breasts with the other. “Drop your bodice. Drop it! I need to see how things are progressing.”

She said she didn’t want to show him, that she wanted to go home now.

“You’ve been a very naughty girl before.” He told her she had very nearly got him into a frightfully awkward situation with Lady Amelia, who was, of course, a close friend of Miss Nightingale.

His big wet lips were against her ear now, one of his hands was fumbling between her legs, the other was over her mouth.

“Stop it— Don’t—” she mumbled into the palm of his hand.

But his hand was inside the edge of her drawers and now it was . . .

“Don’t!” She whirled around and tried to push him away. He grabbed her hair and put his fist against her cheek. She could smell the greasy fat from it. He told her if she was going to have to make a noise, he was going to have to stop her. His big carved face seemed all broken up, and his lips were stiff. She was instantly cold and still.

“Lie down on that bed,” he said, “and keep your mouth shut.”

While he held her down with one hand and undressed her with the other she smelled blasts of garlic from his mouth. “You’re a very pretty girl,” he told her, running his eyes up and down her body. He did not bother to take off his trousers, but unbuttoned the front and held his thing—stiff and purple—out.

He rubbed it while he talked to her in a gentle voice for a while.

“I wonder if I’ve been silly to trust you,” he said. “You’ve led me on a bit, coming here and accepting a fine meal and a bath at my expense, and now you’re trying to pretend you don’t like having fun at all.” His eyes popped out at the unfairness of this, his hand grew more and more frenzied. Sometimes he gasped, particularly with young women, it didn’t do to be too nice to them . . . lessons to be learned. He smiled at her, almost sympathetically, then smacked her twice, hard, around the face, and then he went wild. And when he had finished, and she was covered in him, he turned out the lamp, and she heard, as if from a great distance, the clamoring streets outside, and a snatch of wild Turkish music. She could taste her own blood.