The Mule on the Minaret (62 page)

It was a pleasant prospect to have a whole day stretching in front of them. Up till now, they had never had more than a single meal together. ‘I'll wait till this evening,' she thought, ‘before I tell him. After dinner will be the time.' It was good not to be in any hurry.

It was a flat, dull road to the picnic spot. ‘It's no good my telling you where it is,' he said. ‘It's one of those names that no one can remember.'

It was a pine covered hill on a long plain. The road swung and climbed. ‘It's crowded on week-ends, but it'll be quite empty now,' he said. They did not pass a single car: only a group of peasants collecting pine cones in large sacks. The restaurant was deserted too. There was a series of terraces under the trees, with tables and benches on them. In the kitchen the proprietor showed them what
he had to offer, in terms of meat and fish and vegetables. ‘That and that and that,' said Martin, ‘and Raki and some rosé wine.'

The meal was a long time being prepared. They had a white cheese with their Raki.

‘How did your trip to Beirut work out?' she asked.

‘That seems a long time ago.'

‘It is, but I haven't seen you since.'

‘No more you have. I left three days later. I tried to telephone you, but you were out.'

‘They told me that you called. I was glad you had. Did you see Jane Lester in Beirut?'

‘Only for a minute or so, that first time, but I've been there since.'

‘How was she?'

‘You haven't heard about her?'

‘I've heard nothing.'

He told her what Farrar had told Reid during the drive from Damascus. ‘She's knocked off drink, and she's as wild as hell.'

‘So you didn't waste your time.'

‘I didn't waste my time.' He frowned. He hesitated. ‘It sounds a silly thing to say, or perhaps it sounds a silly thing for me to say, but I was rather shocked.'

‘It sounds a
strange
thing for you to say.'

‘Strange, yes, perhaps that's the right word, strange. It's the opposite of what I was supposed—or at least what I thought—I stood for. The whole thing seemed wrong; the whole approach seemed wrong, for a girl like Jane, I mean. It isn't easy to explain. Where love making is concerned, masculine vanity is limitless. Every man wants to be considered a great cavalier, as he wants to be considered a great cricketer or a fine shot. But the angle of vanity alters with each generation. My father told me that in his day every young man wanted to be a great success in the
demimonde,
but
sans payer.
When I was at Oxford, it was considered
infra dig
to pick up tarts or go to brothels. Even the girls in those London houses used to despise the men who went there regularly; they used to call them “housemen”. Why go there, one would say, when there are girls of one's own class who are happy to go away for a week-end with you if they like you? And that's how I used to feel myself;... but this case of Jane. When you see that someone like Jane can end up like that, I feel that the world of Toulouse-Lautrec was a cleaner one, the world where you had professional
entertainers in places like the
Chabbanais
;... Does this sound very stodgy and Edwardian?'

She shook her head. ‘I think it sounds rather sweet.'

And indeed there was an engaging boyish quality about the puzzled frown that creased his forehead. There was, too, a new expression in his eyes. ‘You see,' he started... But at that moment the food arrived breaking the current of his mood. She suspected that he had been going to say something that he found important, something that needed the right atmosphere for saying. Well, and if he had, it did not matter since they had the whole day ahead of them.

‘Are you excited about going home?' he asked.

She shrugged. ‘Yes and no. It can't be very much fun now in England. But I mustn't be away too long. England's where I've got to make my life. I've an idea that the people who are spending their whole war abroad are going to find it difficult to adjust themselves to life in England afterwards.'

He laughed. ‘That's an occupational hazard for men like myself. We're children of no-man's-land, and we have to be on our guard against putting down too deep roots in the countries to which we are accredited. Otherwise we find ourselves arguing the foreign country's case to England, instead of England's case to the foreigners. How long have you been out here now?'

‘Three years.'

‘You came to get over something, didn't you?'

‘How did you know that?'

‘Intuition, guess work, one or two discreet inquiries.'

He had completely recovered his composure. There was the familiar quizzical twinkle in his eye. ‘If one is interested, one makes inquiries,' he said.

She had suspected long ago that he had made inquiries.

She was flattered that he had. Yet at the same time, she was irritated. It was too much a part and parcel of that thought-out way of life that in one way she respected but in another way resented. It was
too
thought out. He would never let himself tumble into anything.

‘And now you've got over it,' he said.

‘Now I've got over it.'

‘Ready to start a whole new life?'

‘Ready to start a whole new life.'

‘Let's drink to it,' he said, and raised his glass. There was
warmth in his smile now and her heart warmed to him. He really liked her. He was attractive. And he was sympathetic. She would have liked to have told him about Raymond. Perhaps she would tonight. After she had told him about Aziz, in explanation of what she had to tell him about Aziz. It was a relief that there was to be that dinner later; that this lunch was not the curtain. So often in Istanbul she had had a sense of awkwardness as the meal reached its close, the foreknowledge that there might be a scene, a situation. There could be no scene today. And it was very cosy sitting here under the trees with little coins of sunlight falling through the leaves across the table, eating these pleasant squelchy dishes, the large stuffed green peppers and the fingers of pastry stuffed with cheese, and the cucumbers swimming in sour milk; slaking their thirst with water, sipping the rough red wine, letting the talk drift lazily from one subject to another. She had never felt more at ease with him. ‘It could so easily have been you instead of Aziz,' she thought. ‘It would have been you if you had not been an Englishman. If you had been an Irishman or an American or a European.' She was glad that it had not been him. You could not help being on your guard with a compatriot. You knew too much about each other. You were afraid that he would despise you afterwards; as he was, it seemed, despising Jane. It was better the way it had been. Perhaps they would meet after the war in London.

Karpiç's was at the base of the old town; in the oldest part of the new town. It was run by a White Russian, white bearded, with a high white Russian smock. It was Ankara's international restaurant; British and French, Germans and Italians dined there at adjacent tables, scrupulously avoiding one another. ‘With any luck, we'll see Van Papen there; he looks very English in his Anderson and Shepherd suits.' There was no nearby parking place. There was a partial blackout in Ankara and Ransom took her arm as they walked along the crowded pavement. He held it close; his fingers stroked her wrist.

Karpiç's was large and rectangular like a Baptist chapel.

‘It's not unlike Rejans, is it?' Eve remarked.

‘They would both look very drab if they were empty. But they never are empty.'

The door opened on a din of voices, to which every recognized language made its contribution. There were not very many Turks; those few were most of them in uniform. There were more men
than women. A waiter came across at once. ‘Over here, Mr. Ransom, sir.'

‘Over here' was against the wall. ‘Would you like a whisky?' Martin asked her. ‘This is one of the few places where you can trust the whisky. Don't let's bother to look at the menu yet. When Karpiç sees one with an attractive female, he usually comes across and says that he has something special.' They lingered over their whisky and soda and sure enough, within twenty minutes, Karpiç had come across and bowed. ‘I think that this is the first time that this charming lady has dined in my humble caravanserai. I think she should be encouraged to come again. I have some excellent
paté de foie gras.
I know, Mr. Ransom, that you take a broad, cosmopolitan view of the problems that distract us. The things of the spirit—and are not the pleasures of the table to be numbered among the things of the spirit—do not they transcend frontiers? I am sure that your delightful guest would not be shocked that channels, legitimate channels of communication, permit me to serve to special guests a paté that is authentic, that was made in Strasbourg.'

He suggested that a chicken à
la Kieff
should follow it. ‘And I do consider that those two dishes deserve a European wine. I should not boast to you of my close friendship with certain wine merchants of Moselle, but am I not entitled to, I who was driven from my own country, to reap the benefits of the neutrality which my adopted country has conferred on me?'

‘He's a delightful old scoundrel, but he's genuine and it's well to get away for once from “swooning priests” and “twisted turbans.” '

Indeed it was very excellent. ‘And think what I shall be eating three weeks from now,' she said. ‘Spam and dehydrated eggs and macaroni.'

‘You mustn't forget to tell me how it is.' It was at the close of the meal that he said that; just as she was starting to remind herself that it was high time to tell him why she had come to Ankara. She was thinking it, rather ruefully. It would change the atmosphere and it was a very cosy atmosphere. She had not often felt so close to anyone.

‘I don't want to lose touch with you,'he said. ‘I've been thinking about you a lot these last few months; and I've been thinking about myself in relation to what you said to me about myself. You gave me a lecture once, do you remember? Jane Lester was a
shock to me. That's what started me trying to think things out afresh. You are so different from Jane; yet you were a friend of Jane's. You liked her. And I had a sense of guilt. I had been trying to turn you into the kind of girl who could become like Jane. But you didn't let me and you weren't sanctimonious about not letting me. You simply said quietly “That is not my game.” And I've kept remembering the things you told me about myself, about the way I had planned out my career. And you were justified, I could agree to that; but not justified all the way: I wanted to justify myself to you. You said that I was wearing blinkers going down a straight broad road: that's true but it isn't wholly true. It wasn't only what you said but what you implied. You implied that I was a calculating careerist; that when the time came, I would make a marriage that would be an assistance to my career. You did imply that, didn't you?'

‘I suppose I did.'

‘And it's true, but only partly true. And even so, it isn't necessarily, at least not all of it, an entry on the debit side. The word “careerist” has a nasty sound, but a man ought to be ambitious. We don't think much of a man who isn't, do we? The people whom we are respecting the most at this very moment are ambitious: Winston and Monty, for example. That's true now, isn't it?

‘And even in terms of marriage, which was your main point really, is it quite so shocking to be prudent? It's considered discreditable nowadays for a man to marry for money. But it used not to be. And don't we often hear of men whose careers have been ruined by an unlucky marriage? Just as we read of men who owe everything to their wives. In certain careers—and mine is one surely, if there ever was one—a wife is all important. She can make or mar. Don't you think that a man like myself, when he came to consider marriage, would be very foolish not to ask himself whether the woman he was going to invite to share his life was someone who would fit into that life, would fill the role that would be expected of a partner in it? Wouldn't he be foolish?'

‘He would be very foolish.'

‘You wouldn't dismiss him surely on that account as a “calculating careerist”. It doesn't mean that he looks around for the daughter of a millionaire or somebody in Debrett. He is looking for someone who can be a partner, that's the word, a partner.'

He paused; his voice had deepened. It had a sincerity that very rarely showed beneath the official flippant manner. And she knew
beyond all doubt that within five minutes, if she played her cards correctly, or even if she played no cards at all, if she merely sat and listened, he would have made her a proposal.

It was the last thing that she had expected of him, when she met him first. Yet she could see how it had come about. He had reached the marrying age. He had been away from England for three years, in a world where there was a great insufficiency of women; where there were only two alternatives in terms of dalliance: the mercenary ladies of the bazaars and girls like Jane or Kitty. And there were not so very many girls like those. Jane was an exception; and when he had met Jane, he was shocked. She was more than he could stomach. She had forced him to take stock of himself. Martin Ransom was in a vulnerable position; a familiar position in English life, to the Empire builders, the guarders of our ‘perilous outland marshes.' Had not parents sent their unmarried daughters on winter holidays to Egypt? All those jokes about ‘the fishing fleet to Malta.' It was a story that had been told in fifty novels, and on the whole those marriages had worked out reasonably well.

‘Because a marriage is made thoughtfully, it needn't be un-romantic,' he was saying. He quoted Tennyson:' “Don't marry for money, but go where money is.” I don't believe it need be all that thought out. Ambitious men have a sense of self-direction. They make the right choice when they reach a cross-road.'