The Water Diviner (31 page)

The pounding from downstairs is louder now, more insistent, the timber beams running beneath the floor transmitting the heavy thud as the front door is assaulted.

‘Quickly, the roof,’ whispers Ayshe.

She opens the bedroom door to find Orhan standing in the hallway, still in his cotton nightshirt and rubbing eyes puffy from sleep. The racket downstairs has woken him; the rest of the household won’t be far behind. Ayshe puts her arm over his shoulder and draws her son to her side. He is momentarily surprised to see Connor in his mother’s room, but does not question what somehow feels right.

‘Connor Bey is leaving, Orhan. You must say goodbye,’ she tells her son in English.

‘When will you come back?’ asks the boy.

Connor kneels down, takes Orhan’s hand in his and shakes it. It is answer enough. Tears well in the boy’s eyes as drowsiness gives way to grief. Yesterday, Orhan felt his father’s shade slip through his fingers like smoke, and now he must face losing this strong, kind man who has somehow made him feel safe again. When he is with his mother and Connor, Orhan feels that he has found a way to keep his head above water again.

The boy throws his arms around Connor’s powerful neck and squeezes him tightly.

‘Goodbye, Connor Bey. Come back.’

Connor smiles and smooths Orhan’s ruffled hair. ‘You will be a great man – just like your father.’

They hear a dull thud and the groan of splintering wood downstairs. Orhan starts and clutches his mother’s arm.

‘It is all right, Orhan. Now, you must be strong. You are a man now,’ Ayshe reassures her son. ‘Go and open the door before they break it down.’ As Orhan heads along the hallway she adds, ‘And stall them if you can.’ He gives her a cheeky smile and bounds down the stairs.

Orhan reaches the foyer just as the front door yields to the British assault and its lock is wrenched from its mount. Brindley steps through the breach followed by half a dozen soldiers who stumble around trying to get their bearings in the half-light. Brindley spots Orhan standing at the bottom of the stairs, skinny shanks sticking out from beneath his white nightshirt.

‘Where is Joshua Connor?’

‘You want room, mister?’

‘Quickly. The Australian. What room is he in?’

‘Very cheap. Hot water. No Germans.’

Brindley is in no mood for Orhan’s banter. He grabs the hotel register and begins flicking pages.

‘Australian? Connor Bey? He is on the first floor. I will show,’ says Orhan.

Brindley pushes past the boy and mounts the staircase two steps at a time. He summons his men, who scuttle up the stairs behind him.

‘Upstairs. Check every room!’

Natalia hears the tumult from her room and springs out of bed in a panic to pull a gown over her nightdress. The sound of slamming doors in empty guest rooms is unmistakable as the soldiers work their way down the hall towards her.

Still half-asleep, she is overcome by an irrational and uncontrollable fear. Although Natalia knows that she is in Constantinople, the drumming of hobnailed boots on the floorboards drags her back into the darkest, most desperate recesses of her memory. Before the revolutionary guard came banging on their door in St Petersburg, Natalia begged her husband to flee. As a businessman he presumed he could negotiate with them. He was beaten to death on his own doorstep in full view of the neighbourhood as Natalia and her baby daughter, Elena, hid beneath the bed and listened to his dying screams. The bloodied, hobnailed boots thumped through their home until eventually they found them and wrenched them from their hiding place. As Natalia shrieked, holding her baby to her chest with one hand as she clawed desperately at her assailants with the other, Elena was torn from her grasp and thrown like a discarded toy out the second-storey window. After hearing Elena’s cry trailing away to nothing, she was inured to the Bolsheviks’ depravations. Nothing they could do to her could be worse. That was two years ago, and here again on her doorstep are the boots.

A fist hammers on her door.

‘Connor. Are you in there?’

The door bursts open and two young British soldiers appear, cocking their rifles and shouting. Expecting to face down a reluctant Australian farmer, they are taken aback to find Natalia standing before them in her vermilion silk gown, surrounded by the trappings of an Imperial Russian salon. She stands stock still, petrified, with her eyes lowered, expecting the worst. Almost apologetically the soldiers step into the room to check under the bed and behind the door.

Her voice quavers, fat tears of fear welling in her eyes. ‘Take what you want. Don’t hurt me, please,’ she cries in English. ‘I have my papers. They are here. You want?’

Another soldier, one of higher rank, Natalia suspects, steps into her room, his meticulously groomed moustache bristling.

‘Captain Charles Brindley, ma’am. I’m looking for Mr Joshua Connor.’

Orhan pushes past the British officer and stands in front of Natalia, hands planted firmly on his hips. He juts his chin forward, challenging the soldiers.

Brindley sighs. ‘I just want Connor.’

Then, from above their heads comes the unmistakable sound of footsteps, followed by a scraping sound and the crash of a terracotta roof tile on the street below. The soldiers run from the room.

Ayshe stands on the terrace that overlooks the peaked rooftops of Sultanahmet. Connor has straddled the balustrade and stands on the edge of the roof. The indigo night sky is now in full retreat as a halo of orange light appears over the top of the city wall, tinting the sandstone blocks amber and pink.

Blind to the dramatic skyscape, Connor takes Ayshe’s hands and kisses her gently. With his rough, stubbled cheek against hers, she whispers a line of poetry in his ear, in Turkish.

‘I shall wait. Will I ever know another night like this?’

‘Pardon?’

She responds in English. ‘I said, “Don’t crack any more tiles”.’

They hear the British pounding down the hallway towards them and steal another hurried kiss before Connor turns to scale the hotel roof. He scrambles up the steep incline towards the summit, the rounded red tiles crunching and shifting under his boots.

Ayshe hears frantic shouting from inside the Troya, ‘Stop now! Stop him!’ and turns to see a British officer barrelling towards the doorway, pistol in hand.

A soldier follows in his wake calling, ‘Captain Brindley, sir, the roof!’

Cursing, Brindley marches the length of the hall, clearly determined not to let the Australian get the better of him. Ayshe slams the door shut and presses her shoulder against it but before she can turn the lock, Brindley crashes through and knocks her against the balustrade. He scours the roofline and spots the silhouette of his quarry straddling the peak of the roof, the distinctive wide-brimmed hat set firmly on his head. Brindley raises his gun and aims.

‘Stop, Connor. Or, God help me, I will shoot!’ His cry ricochets over the rooftops, startling sparrows from beneath the eaves and shattering the tranquillity of the streets below, still quiet in the early dawn. Ayshe hears the false bluster in his words as they rebound, echoing through the narrow laneways and bouncing off timber terraces. He lowers his gun. Brindley may be sorely tempted to pull the trigger, but he has no intention of shooting the Australian. Instead he watches him clamber over the apex of the roofline and drop from sight.

Brindley turns on his men in a rage. He points at the nearest private.

‘You! Get up there! After him!’

As the soldier makes a half-hearted attempt to clear the balustrade, Ibrahim appears from a nearby bedroom, wearing a long nightshirt and clearly disoriented by the turmoil.

‘Has there been another coup?’ he asks his daughter.

Brindley pushes past the old man and sticks his finger into the breastbone of his corporal.

‘This isn’t the end of it. I want Connor on that boat! Today!’

Connor slides down the reverse side of the hotel roof, clutching at the dry moss and the ends of the tiles and finally sticking a boot against the fascia board to bring himself to a stop. He takes a breath and leaps the small distance to the next roof, feeling the tiles snap under his boot as he lands. He scrambles up the next valley and over the roof ridge, his hands now red as the Mallee with tile dust.

He finds himself at the end of a narrow wooden gangway that joins the surrounding homes, built a century ago for bucket brigades to pass water along whenever house fires threaten to engulf the neighbourhood. Frantic voices shouting in English echo up from the street below as Brindley and his men pursue Connor at ground level. He jogs into the sun and notices the tiled roofs giving way to hewn sandstone blocks. Suddenly he finds himself running along an ancient rampart, the broken teeth of the city’s crenellated wall beside him.

Connor stops, sucks in the fresh morning air and surveys the emerging cityscape to get his bearings. He singles out the towering minarets of the Blue Mosque and the succession of domes at Topkapi Palace. During his desperate dash across the rooftops, Connor’s mind has been working clinically, measuring his options. Until a moment ago he had no idea where he was going. Now, no matter how he looks at it, there is only one place that makes any sense. But it is a path fraught with danger.

Shimmying hand over hand down a drainpipe, back braced against the adjacent wall, Connor finds his way down to street level from the dizzying heights of the ruined city wall.

Heart pounding and with a singularity of purpose, he straightens his collar as he merges with the people starting to move through the market. He dips his head and hunches his shoulders – a feeble attempt to blend into a crowd in which he could only ever stand out. He feels eyes burning into him as he tries to move quickly through the streets, sure that at any moment a voice will cry out, signalling his presence to his pursuers.

From the corner of his eye, he sees figures jostling, hears raised voices. He clenches his fists, his nerves tense as he anticipates a shout of recognition. Or perhaps Brindley, spying his distinctive hat across the heads of the shoppers. Connor resists the urge to run, knowing it will only attract more unwanted attention. He steals a glance towards the source of the hubbub. A rush of relief. It is only two stallholders squabbling.

He has a sense now of the chaotic rambling of the lanes that wind up and down the hills of Sultanahmet, leading him one way and then the next. He has learned that the best way to negotiate the labyrinth is to follow landmarks. And so Connor peels off the main street and passes the row of barbers plying their trade before turning left at a three- storeyed mansion with an elaborately designed wrought-iron gateway. Every step he takes, he listens for the ominous sound of boots ringing on the cobbles behind him. The street dips down then branches into two, a marble-faced fountain at the intersection spurting water into a carved basin and running over onto the paving stones. Connor steps over the channel of water and takes the right-hand laneway.

A narrow strip of light is all that penetrates into the alley from between the uppermost levels of the terraces, tendrils of ivy hanging in curtains from the iron grilles that cover the bay windows. Connor sees the place he’s looking for at the end of the lane. Set below street level, a haphazard row of timber steps – barely more than a glorified ladder – leads down to a basement door. A narrow strip of dusty glass barely a hand-span wide runs along either side of the worn timber door and emits a dull glow from a flickering light source burning within.