Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) (3 page)

She had become interested in the Hendersons. They very nearly offered one of the things she had hoped for on this expensive voyage – a pleasant, growing acquaintance with strangers. They seemed devoted to each other – it was probably always said of them – as were so many other childless, middle-aged couples she had observed; to learn later of a son and grandchildren was an annoyance, for those did not enter into her picture.

One afternoon at sea, going through the Strait of Messina in a storm, she had spoken to them during what was called a Tea Concert. She doubted if they ever would have spoken to her. They sat trying to read, cringing from the music. She proffered a large and illustrated book on Byzantine art, which Nick seemed very pleased to borrow. They had talked of places they had been to, and others lying ahead of them. Martha, living for a time in England, had made the most of her opportunity to travel on the continent,
and had stayed for a long time in Florence, but without benefit of Italian.

On the ship passengers seemed to compete with freight in order of importance; but a Cruise atmosphere was attempted. Between Piraeus and Istanbul, the Captain’s Dinner was held, with streamers and fancy hats. Stewards, radiantly smiling, as if at their first party, advanced through dimmed lights and a
rallentando
drum-roll, carrying on silvery trays a colourful
hors d’oeuvre
surrounded by large white swans.

“What are the swans made from?” Amy asked the steward.

“From
feta
cheese, Madame.”

“Oh, may I have just a little piece, from underneath a wing, perhaps?”

“I am sorry, Madame, but the birds are very old. They are kept in the cold storage.”

“What did he say they are made from?” Martha had asked, leaning over from the next table.

“
Feta
cheese,” said Amy. “Apparently from a long time ago.”

Martha nodded. She smiled, and then nodded again to herself, looking down at her plate, and trying to prong a skidding olive.

After that, the lights had dimmed again and this time, the stewards having lined up once more, came forward with pheasants, with probably age-old feathers (for they lacked brilliance) fanned out behind them, as if the tails belonged to displaying peacocks. Trussed and frozen birds can give little idea of the real thing, and perhaps the chef had never seen one in its natural state.

Again Martha leaned over and asked for information – this time about the close season for game in England. And so it followed that they drank coffee together in the farthest place they could find from the Palm Court music. Nick obediently took a carnival hat from the steward and put it on his head, hardly looking up from his book. Martha and Amy declined.

“It is too English for words,” Amy said, nodding in the direction of the band. “I remember those dreadful tunes when I was a girl.”

Martha looked at her, as she drank her coffee, and thought about the English voice — the Englishwoman’s voice, rather light and high, quick, with odd stresses. “It is too English for
words
… when I was a gairl… those dretful
tunes.”

Martha was content simply to sit and watch Amy writing on her picture postcards of mosques that they had not yet seen. In spite of her assurance about clothes – that orange caftan, for instance – there was something girlish about her, and Martha, openly staring at her pale face (pale, for she never tanned, got only a scattering of tiny freckles, like grated nutmeg), and at her dark, fringed hair, was trying to analyse this. Whatever was the cause, Amy seemed to have remained at the age of seventeen, or thereabouts; but it was the English girlhood of her own class and time. The like never to come again, Martha, much younger and American, decided. She loved Englishness. Because of her reading, she had by no means come to London as a stranger. She had gone about on her travels, recognising things and people, though as yet she could not put Amy into her right file.

“Anyone want brandy?” Nick asked, looking up, but keeping his finger on a word.

Amy lifted her head, became aware of Martha’s scrutiny and smiled awkwardly. Before she went back to her postcards, she glanced across at Nick. Martha wondered, too, about this everlasting wifely watchfulness. On the whole, she had disliked the marriages she had studied.

Nick was reading her book about Byzantine art. On the flyleaf was written, “Dear Martha, I’ll miss you. Love, Simon.” He and Amy had discussed this, for they couldn’t place Martha, though were less occupied with her than she with them. The three of them, knowing nothing of one another, were cast together by their language and nothing else.

Even in that stupid cardboard hat he was handsome, Martha thought. The fleshy fold under his eyes denoted sensuality, and she had never, never been wrong about that, she was sure. His hair was thick, going grey. There was an arrogance about the deep lines from nostrils to mouth, and in the set of his lips. And yet he bites his nails, she thought. They were cropped right down. Absorbed in his reading, he put his forefinger between his teeth, then quickly stuffed his hand in his pocket.

Now some people were dancing – the Alexandrian woman on her own in a space near the band, doing a sort of belly dance, with arms raised and bracelets shaking. Wives looked at her with hostility. But they were all participants in the festive occasion, wore their carnival hats, clapped at the end of each piece of music this assorted audience from Beirut, from Italy
and France and Switzerland. The rich family from Saudi Arabia clapped most and enjoyed themselves greatly. Only the three English-speaking passengers had retreated, and were not thought better of for doing so.

It occurred to Nick that perhaps he had retreated too much into his book. He closed it reluctantly and said, his voice placidly expectant, “Tomorrow, Mosques.”

“Why I can’t tell you…” Martha began eagerly. But what she couldn’t tell them no one ever discovered, for Nick, with an altered look about him as if he had been struck blind, put out a groping hand to the table and tried to rise.

“Hot,” he said, and then, attempting by a great effort to be social, added, “Damn music.”

Amy was at his side in a flash. With Martha’s help, they went out through a glazed door onto the deck. Nick leaned over the rail for a while in silence, and Amy watched him, saying nothing. Martha, a little apart, looked at all the lighted traffic on the vast stretch of water, the ferries, still crowded, coming and going between the shores. But it was not warm out here, and soon Nick said that he would go to their cabin. He pressed Amy’s hand against the rail, silently asking her to stay where she was.

“Is he ill?” Martha asked, when he had gone.

“Has been. Very.”

“Perhaps came away too soon.”

“Perhaps.” Very taut this conversation. Amy put up her small hands and rather wearily parted her hair from her brow. “Shall be glad in a way to be home.
Get back to being ordinary. He might be happier working again.”

“What sort of work?”

“He’s a painter.”

Sometimes, people who knew that she wrote but had never heard of her books, asked Martha if she did so under her own name. She would not make that kind of mistake with Amy, who must know by now that neither she nor Nick had heard of each other. He had his incuriosity as a painter, and she her chameleon quality.

“Tomorrow, Mosques,” he had said, and he came to breakfast in happy anticipation; had slept well, looked better. Amy looked just the same as yesterday.

For this first day of their friendship, instead of coming across one another by chance, the three of them stayed together by arrangement.

Nick listened to the French-speaking guide and interpreted for Martha. She found his enthusiasm infectious. Amy did not.

The oppressive, dark weather, the noise of the city, the trudging and bussing about had brought her to snapping point. She was tired of being herded, of listening to foreign languages. And now there were two who got left behind and lost, and had to be waited for. “I don’t mind walking out of doors with my shoes off,” she said. “But I hate walking barefoot on these clammy old carpets. We shall get Turkish verrucas.” She was quite petulant by the time they reached the Blue Mosque, which Nick and Martha called the Mosque of Sultan Ahmed. She had noticed that Nick had put his shoes neatly together in the rack outside, with soles facing, as he had read was correct and respectful. By this time, the sourness in Amy made her pleased when she saw the Turkish guide throw his plastic sandals in anyhow. Such it ever was, she thought.

She sighed and yawned, observed a bunion on the German woman’s foot, and found it more interesting
than Nicaean tiles. They wandered on across the carpets. Sometimes, she looked up, as bidden, sometimes came upon insignificant details which only she saw. What a daunting place, she thought. What on earth are they all looking at now? My neck aches so. Of course, it might be quite pretty if all the lights were on, I suppose.

The guide seemed to have made a joke. He looked pleased with himself, and people smiled. Amy stood about, padded around impatiently, her head bowed, her arms folded across her breast. Then stood about. And stood about. Came back. Dusty, tawdry places, she thought in a spurt of anger. They have nothing to offer like our little churches at home. She was not religious, but by now she was beginning to love the little churches at home. This place was far too large. Voices came and receded. There was a hum of guides, yet they did not incommode one another. If I could just
go,
she thought, putting her hand to her forehead. If I could just go and never come back to this damned city again.

Nick asked intelligent questions of their guide, and then gave the answers to Martha in English. Holding up everything, the Alexandrian woman thought. Being barefoot seemed to inspire her. She traced patterns upon the carpets with her toes, outlined designs, walked with one foot exactly before the other, or angled like a herring-bone, her head bent, her black hair and her shoulder-bag swinging. She stood on tiptoe, swayed, stretched out her arms. Did not listen. Did not listen. She examined her bracelets, and counted them. From want of anything better to do,
she looked at some tiles, yawned. Amy, catching sight of her, caught also the yawn. She put her hands over her face to hide it.

“You all right?” Nick asked, passing by.

She nodded.

“Good. Fascinating.” He did not mean her, or Martha going along beside him in her dirty raincoat, or even the Alexandrian woman.

“I hate this bloody country,” Amy thought, who was to hate it more.

In the afternoon, there were to be Ming dishes and God knew what else. I could stay here on board, Amy thought, as they waited patiently for the bus. The sun had come out at last. She could sit on deck among the unglamorous surroundings and read, or not read. Her skin would turn pink and freckled like a foxglove, and never the honeygold she desired and thought she had a right to. Nick would be quite content, going round with Martha. But all the same, Amy was in the bus by two-thirty, sitting as usual behind the Germans.

Because of the sun, Martha had discarded her raincoat. She was wearing a fancy blouse and jeans. Her straight fair hair was streaked and stringy. All very scruffy, neat Amy thought. Martha’s camera was slung over her shoulder. All the cameras had come out with the sun. The German man was weighed down by photographic paraphernalia, even a tripod.

Martha took a photograph of Nick and Amy beside some dingy roses in the gardens of the Topkapi Gardens, and Amy thought it was taken for the sake of Nick.

Some of the Ming porcelain would have looked quite nice in her own house, set out on the pine dresser. She whiled away some time by arranging it in imagination about her rooms, but then suddenly her anger came up to boiling-point. Suppose they had had one little piece of it at home, one tiny dish – would he spend half-an-hour of every day staring at it? Anyway, why come to Turkey to look at Chinese things?

Standing before a blue and white bowl, he seemed entirely engrossed. But then she saw him give a quick glance in her direction, as she hovered, waiting to join the rest of the party: and at once he returned to his steady contemplation of the bowl. He is doing it purposely, she decided furiously, quite sure of that now.

And then the strap of her sandal broke. She shuffled along paths and corridors, in and out of pavilions after the guide, who was a nice matronly woman, with hair half-dyed yellow.

It was for Amy a thoroughly bad afternoon.

She was rather silent and off-hand while they had their drinks before dinner, said very little throughout the meal, ate very little: she allowed herself to be distant and absent-minded in her manner, but not plainly so. Sulky she would not be, nor openly impatient with him, but she could not put to the back of her mind his childish behaviour in the museum that afternoon, his sly glance to measure how far he was trying her.

He looked tired. He finished one bottle of wine and ordered another. She sipped mineral water, as if to underline her woundedness. Why does he do it to
me? she was wondering. It was something new since his illness. Perhaps he had been too much with her lately – those long hours in the hospital when they could find nothing more to say to one another, and the convalescence when she had never left his side. Day after day, they had sat together reading – peacefully, she had thought, but perhaps he had been restless. He had procrastinated about painting, whereas once he could never begin early enough; he tired quickly, standing at the easel, and seemed disheartened. So he read, or sat with the book in his lap, staring about him, or dozing. Of course, she knew that his illness had been a shock to his mind, as well as to his body; but it had gone on long enough. And now there was this voyage, perhaps ill-chosen, for they were once more – apart from the recent intrusion of Martha – alone. He associates me too much with doctors, hospitals, pain, Amy thought. And perhaps what he really needs is a holiday from me.