A Twist in the Tale (13 page)

“Yes, a carpet
would be perfect,” Margaret mused. “The trouble is
,
everyone goes to Turkey with the idea of picking up a carpet on the cheap. So
to find a really good one....”

She knelt and
began to measure the small space in front of their drawing room fireplace.

“Seven by three
should do it,” she said.

Within a few days
of term ending, the Roberts travelled by bus to Heathrow. The journey took a
little longer than by rail but at half the cost. “Money saved is money that can
be spent on the carpet,” Margaret reminded her husband.

“Agreed,
Matron,” said Christopher, laughing.

On arrival at
Heathrow they checked their baggage on to the charter flight, selected two non-
smoking seats and, finding they had time to spare, decided to watch other
planes taking off to even more exotic places.

It was
Christopher who first spotted the two passengers dashing across the tarmac,
obviously late.

“Look,” he
said, pointing at the running couple. His wife studied the overweight pair,
still brown from a previous holiday, as they lumbered up the steps to their
plane.

“
Mr
and
Mrs
Kendall-Hume,”
Margaret said in disbelief. After hesitating for a moment, she added, “I
wouldn’t want to be uncharitable about any of the offspring, but I do find
young Malcolm Kendall-Hume a . . .”

She paused.

“‘Spoilt little
brat’?” suggested her husband.

“Quite,” said
Margaret. “I can’t begin to think what his parents must be like.”

“Very
successful, if the boy’s stories are to be believed,” said Christopher. “A
string of second- hand garages from Birmingham to Bristol.”

“Thank God
they’re not on our flight.”

“Bermuda or the
Bahamas would be my guess,” suggested Christopher.

A voice
emanating from the loudspeaker gave Margaret no chance to offer her opinion.

“Olympic
Airways Flight 172 to Istanbul is now boarding at Gate No. 37.”

“That’s us,”
said Christopher happily as they began their long route-march to their
departure gate.

They were the
first passengers to board, and once shown to their seats they settled down to
study the guidebooks of Turkey and their three files of research.

“We must be
sure to see Diana’s Temple when we visit Ephesus,” said Christopher, as the
plane taxied out on to the runway.

“Not forgetting
that at that time we shall be only a few
kilometres
away from the
purpor
-ted last home of the Virgin
Mary,” added Margaret.

“Taken with a
pinch of salt by serious his-
torians
,” Christopher
remarked as if addressing a member of the Lower Fourth, but his wife was too
engrossed in her book to notice.

They both
continued to study on their own before Christopher asked what his wife was
reading.

“
Carpets
– Fact and Fiction
by Abdul
Verizoglu
-seventeenth edition,” she said, confident that
any errors would have been eradicated in the previous sixteen. “It’s most
informative. The finest examples, it seems, are from
Hereke
and are woven in silk and are sometimes worked on by up to twenty young women,
even children, at a time.”

“Why young?”
pondered Christopher.

“You’d have
thought experience would have been essential for such a delicate task.”

“Apparently
not,” said Margaret. “
Herekes
are woven by those with
young eyes which can discern intricate patterns sometimes no larger than a
pinpoint and with up to nine hundred knots a square inch. Such a carpet,”
continued Margaret, “can cost as much as fifteen, even twenty, thousand
pounds.”

“And at the other end of the scale?
Carpets woven in old
leftover wool by old leftover women?” suggested Christopher, answering his own
question.

“No doubt,”
said Margaret. “But even for our humble purse there are some simple guidelines
to follow.”

Christopher
leaned over so that he could be sure to take in every word above the roar of
the engines. “The muted reds and blues with a green
base
are considered classic and are much admired by Turkish collectors, but one
should avoid the bright yellows and oranges,” read his wife aloud. “And never
consider a carpet that displays animals, birds or fishes, as they are produced
only to satisfy Western tastes.”

“Don’t they
like animals?”

“I don’t think
that’s the point,” said Margaret. “The Sunni Muslims, who are the country’s
religious rulers, don’t approve of graven images. But if we search diligently
round the bazaars we should still be able to come across a bargain for a few
hundred pounds.”

“What a
wonderful excuse to spend all day in the bazaars.”

Margaret
smiled, before continuing. “But listen. It’s most important to bargain. The
opening price the dealer offers is likely to be double what he expects to get
and treble what the carpet is worth.” She looked up from her book. “If there’s
any bargaining to be done it will have to be carried out by you, my dear.
They’re not used to that sort of thing at Marks & Spencer.”

Christopher
smiled.

- “And
finally,” continued his wife, turning a page of her book, “if the dealer offers
you coffee you should accept. I t means he expects the process to go on for
some time as he enjoys the bargaining as much as the sale.”

“If that’s the
case they had better have a very large pot percolating for us,” said
Christopher as he closed his eyes and began to contemplate the pleasures that
awaited him.

Margaret only
closed her books on carpets when the plane touched down at Istanbul airport,
and at once opened file Number One, entitled “Pre-Turkey”.

“A shuttle bus
should be waiting for us at the north side of the terminal. It will take us on
to the local flight,” she assured her husband as she carefully wound her watch
forward two hours.

The Roberts
were soon following the stream of passengers heading in the direction of
passport control. The first people they saw in front of them were the same
middle-aged couple they had assumed were destined for more exotic shores.

“Wonder where
they’re heading,” said Christopher.

“Istanbul
Hilton, I expect,” said Margaret as they climbed into a vehicle that had been
declared redundant by the Glasgow Corpora-
tion
Bus
Company some twenty years before.

It spluttered
out black exhaust fumes as it revved up before heading off in the direction of
the local THY flight.

The Roberts
soon forgot all about
Mr
and
Mrs
Kendall-Hume once they looked out of the little
aeroplane
windows to admire the west coast of Turkey highlighted by the setting sun. The
plane landed in the port of Izmir just as the shimmering red ball disappeared
behind the highest hill. Another bus, even older than the earlier one, ensured
that the Roberts reached their little guest house just in time for late supper.

Their room was
tiny but clean and the owner much in the same
mould
.
He greeted them both with exaggerated gesturing and a
bril-liant
smile which augured well for the next twenty-one days. Early the following
morning, the Roberts checked over their detailed plans for Day One in file
Number Two. They were first to collect the rented Fiat that had already been
paid for in England, before driving off into the hills to the ancient
Byz-antine
fortress at
Selcuk
in
the morning, to be followed by the Temple of Diana in the afternoon if they
still had time.

After breakfast
had been cleared away and they had cleaned their teeth, the Roberts left the
guest house a few minutes before nine.

Armed with
their hire car form and guidebook, they headed off for
Beyazik’s
Garage where their promised car awaited them.

They strolled
down the cobbled streets past the little white houses, enjoying the sea breeze
until they reached the bay. Christopher spotted the sign for
Beyazik’s
Garage when it was still a hundred yards ahead of
them.

As they passed
the magnificent yachts moored alongside the
harbour
,
they tested each other on the nationality of each flag, feeling not unlike the
“offspring” completing a geography test.

“Italian, French, Liberian, Panamanian, German.
There aren’t
many British boats,” said Christopher, sounding unusually
patri-otic
,
the way he always did, Margaret reflected,
the
moment
they were abroad.

She stared at
the rows of gleaming hulls lined up like buses in Piccadilly during the rush
hour; some of the boats were even bigger than buses. “I wonder what kind of
people can possibly afford such luxury?” she asked, not expecting a reply.

“
Mr
and
Mrs
Roberts, isn’t it?”
shouted a voice from behind them. They both turned to see a now-familiar figure
dressed in a white shirt and white shorts, wearing a hat that made him look not
unlike the “Bird’s Eye” captain, waving at them from the bow of one of the
bigger yachts.

“Climb on
board, me hearties,”
Mr
Kendall-Hume declared
enthusiastically, more in the manner of a command than an invitation.

Reluctantly the
Roberts walked the gangplank.

“Look who’s
here,” their host shouted down a large hole in the middle of the deck. A moment
later
Mrs
Kendall-Hume appeared from below, dressed
in a diaphanous orange sarong and a matching bikini top. “It’s
Mr
and
Mrs
Roberts – you
remember, from Malcolm’s school.”

Kendall-Hume
turned back to face the dismayed couple. “I don’t remember your first names,
but this is Melody and I’m Ray.”

“Christopher
and Margaret,” the schoolmaster admitted as handshakes were exchanged.

“What about a
drink? Gin, vodka or...?”

“Oh, no,” said
Margaret. “Thank you very
much,
we’ll both have an
orange juice.”

“Suit
yourselves
,” said Ray Kendall-Hume.

“You must stay
for lunch.”

“But we
couldn’t impose . . .”

“I insist,”
said
Mr
Kendall-Hume. “After all, we’re on holiday.
By the way, we’ll be going over to the other side of the bay for lunch.

There’s one
hell of a beach there, and it will give you a chance to sunbathe and swim in
peace.”

“How
considerate of you,” said
Christopher.

“And where’s
young Malcolm?” asked Margaret.

“He’s on a
scouting holiday in Scotland.

Doesn’t like to
mess about in boats the way we do.”

For the first
time he could recall Christopher felt some admiration for the boy. A moment
later the engine started thunderously.

On the trip
across the bay, Ray Kendall-Hume expounded his theories about “having to get
away from it all”.
“Nothing like a yacht to ensure your
privacy and not having to mix with the hoi polloi.”
He only wanted the
simple things in life: the sun, the sea and an infinite supply of good food and
drink.

The Roberts
could have asked for nothing less. By the end of the day they were both
suffering from a mild bout of sunstroke and were also feeling a little seasick.
Despite white pills, red pills and yellow pills, liberally supplied by Melody,
when they finally got back to their room that night they were unable to sleep.

Avoiding the
Kendall-
Humes
over the next twenty days did not prove
easy.
Beyazik’s
, the garage where their little hire
car awaited them each morning and to which it had to be returned each night,
could only be reached via the quayside where the Kendall-
Humes
’
motor yacht was moored like an insuperable barrier at a gymkhana. Hardly a day
passed that the Roberts did not have to spend some part of their precious time
bobbing up and down on Turkey’s choppy coastal waters, eating oily food and
discussing how large a carpet would be needed to fill the Kendall-
Humes
’ front room.

However, they
still managed to complete a large part of their
programme
and determinedly set aside the whole of the last day of the holiday in their
quest for a carpet. As they did not need
Beyazik’s
car to go into town, they felt confident that for that day at least they could
safely avoid their tormentors.

On the final
morning they rose a little later than planned and after breakfast strolled down
the tiny cobbled path together, Christopher in possession of the seventeenth
edition of Carpets – Fact and Fiction, Margaret with a tape measure and five
hundred pounds in travellers’
cheques
.

Once the
schoolmaster and his wife had reached the bazaar they began to look around a
myriad of little shops, wondering where they should begin their adventure.

Fez-topped men
tried to entice them to enter their tiny emporiums but the Roberts spent the
first hour simply taking in the atmosphere.

“I’m ready to
start the search now,” shouted Margaret above the babble of voices around her.

“Then we’ve found
you just in time,” said the one voice they thought they had escaped.

“We were just
about to -”

“Then follow
me.”

The Roberts’
hearts sank as they were led by Ray Kendall-Hume out of the bazaar and back
towards the town.

“Take my
advice,
and you’ll end up with one hell of a bargain,”
Kendall-Hume assured them both. “I’ve picked up some real beauties in my time
from every corner of the globe at prices you wouldn’t believe. I am happy to
let you take full advantage of my expertise at no extra charge.”