The Mule on the Minaret (63 page)

‘It needn't be unromantic.' She didn't need to tell him how far marriage to him would be for her the complete opposite of unromantic. There had been from the start a mutual attraction. It was only because she had had this thing about him that she had resented his casual courtship. Had she not been thinking only that morning how easily it might have been Martin instead of Aziz? She had had to make an effort not to let herself fall in love with Martin. And the very characteristics that would have made him unsatisfactory as a lover would have made him utterly eligible as a husband. He would concentrate on, he would bank on, the success of marriage. He would give himself in marriage, in a way that he could never do in a love affair—a thing done with the left hand; and where he had given himself completely she would be able to give herself completely in return. She knew now enough about herself to appreciate how much she had to give. Marriage between them would start as a real love affair.

She let her thoughts linger on what life would be for her as Martin's wife. He was a man destined for success. He would be an
Ambassador within twenty years. She would be Lady Ransom. She would know quite a lot of grandeur. She would meet prominent people upon equal terms. She would be behind the scenes at a number of big events. It would be a life of movement and activity; with the sense that what she was doing, mattered. And Martin's career would not end with his ambassadorship. It would be a step to further careers when he left the foreign service; in business or in politics. He might well finish in the House of Lords. Wherever she went, she would be able to take pride in herself because of him.

How happy and proud her parents would be. Her children would start life under the most favourable auspices. She allowed herself to relish with an air of mischief the little satisfactions that worldly success would bring her; what a surprise for all those friends and relatives who had patronized her as a ‘mousy little thing.' They would quote to themselves that venerable adage: ‘Always be polite to girls; you never know whom they may marry.' It would be fun to be well off, to be able to do things for one's friends, to send impressive Christmas presents.

It was the fulfilment of her girlhood's daydreams. ‘I must look at it very carefully, very lovingly,' she thought. ‘I must recognize what it is I am being offered. I have been dealt the one supreme hand in the pack that can carry every trick. I must look at the cards carefully before I throw back the hand.' Because it had to be thrown back. There was no doubt of that. She could not let Aziz be handed over to a fate whose horror even she, who had had glimpses of what could happen in cross-examination, could barely guess at. She could not do that to him. She had to tell Martin the truth. And she also knew beyond all doubt that those words which were now only five minutes away would remain unspoken. He would not want her after that admission. He was not a Victorian to the extent that he would demand that his wife should be a virgin. If she had had an affair with Raymond, he could have shrugged that off. It was before she knew him. But that she should have had an affair with Aziz in Istanbul when he was himself available, that she should have preferred Aziz to him, for that was what it amounted to, Aziz of all people too, who would be in Martin's eyes a “little dago”. It was more than any man's vanity could stand, let alone Martin's.'

But she had no choice. ‘I'm going to live with this moment all my life,' she thought. ‘It's the chance that any girl would give her soul for—the chance of getting it both ways—worldly material
success and love as well. I have only to sit here and say “yes”. But I have no choice.'

‘You do see what I mean, don't you?' he was saying. ‘It isn't a calculated choice; it's a sense of self-direction, the recognition of one's destiny. Is that too big a word? I don't believe it is.'

She had to stop him before he went too far. There had to be a break; just as there had been at lunch. Over his shoulder, she caught their waiter's eye. He hurried across. He stood over the table. ‘And for dessert, sir? Shall I show you what I have?'

Martin blinked as though he had been shaken from a trance. ‘Dessert? Oh yes, of course. Wheel round the tray.'

It was the break she needed. She helped herself to a honey cake.

‘Martin,' she said. ‘There's something that I've got to ask you. One of the chief reasons that I came here was to ask it.'

She told him what she had to tell him. He listened, with his full attention, with his official manner, that she had seen often in his office. He might have been wearing a mask. Yet at the same time, he made himself easy to confide in. He was a good and interested listener. It was one of his most marked assets. The men who called on him in his office went away feeling that they had expressed themselves clearly and that they had made a good impression.

It did not take Eve five minutes to tell her story, and she knew that he had grasped its implications.

‘I need to know two things,' she said. ‘One, whether Aziz is in any danger; the second is whether there's any real need for him to be in danger. There
is
a war on. If I interfered with the war effort, with an operation that is a legitimate part of the war effort, then I'd be a traitor. But I can't be certain that it is that. There's so much phoney business in our business.'

‘That's what we feel sometimes in the Chancery.'

‘Do you know Nigel Farrar?'

‘I met him when I was in Beirut.'

‘And you've read his summaries. You know what I mean when I say that he's always cooking up some ingenious plan. Some of them are so fanciful that I don't feel they're real. He's fooling himself as much as he's fooling the Germans. You remember that case of the wireless set that went to Baghdad?'

‘Of course.'

‘He was very keen on taking over that set and transmitting false information to the Germans. Then the Germans would have discovered that it was we who were doing the transmitting, so we
would have had to start transmitting truthful reports that the Germans would disbelieve. Then the Germans would find out that we knew they knew. The whole thing becomes endless. Everyone is in the dark.'

‘Do you remember that poem, I think it's Coleridge's, about a man who kisses in a hammock a girl who's pretending to be asleep? “I thought she thought I thought she slept.” '

They laughed together easily; it was hard to believe that ten minutes earlier they had been on the brink of a decision that would have altered both their lives for ever.

‘This is how I see it,' she went on. ‘If whatever is happening to Aziz is part, is an important part, of an important operation, I've no right to interfere, but if it's only the unnecessary dotting of an “i”, something that Farrar has invented for the hell of it, I don't see why Aziz shouldn't be warned, do you?'

‘Officially I should say I do. Unofficially I'd say I didn't.'

‘Do you think you can find out for me?'

‘I'll do my best; now let me see.' He pondered. ‘You know the Ankara Palas? Let's meet there. In the main hall, where they serve tea, at four o'clock.' He looked at his watch. ‘It's getting late. You must be getting tired. It's been a long day, and a very happy one.'

It had been a long and crowded day, but its passing had been swift. The next day was endless in its passing. Would four o'clock never come. There was nothing to do, and no one to do nothing with. She pottered round the acacia-lined streets. At the end of every one, there seemed to be either a mountain or a minaret. She noted the elaborate brass bound boxes of the shoe polishers, inlaid with porcelain pictures. She wished she could summon up an appetite for the hollow circular pastries that were on sale at half the corners. In two weeks she would be back in austere England, thinking enviously of those appetizing pastries. She drank a great many cups of coffee. At last, at very long last, she was waiting in the Ankara Palas.

She did not expect Martin to be late and he was not late. He arrived at one minute before four. He did not appear to be in a hurry, but she knew that he had only a very few minutes at his disposal. He behaved as though the whole afternoon were his. He asked her what she would like, as leisurely as though she were selecting a five-course dinner, but the moment that the cakes arrived, he handed a note over to the waiter, nodding his head in
indication that no change was needed. He had now prepared his exit. She noted and admired his technique. He had a long way to go. He would go most of it.

He was very much to the point. ‘You're absolutely right,' he said. ‘It's the dotting of an “i”, and an inessential “i”. It was so involved that it might even have defeated its own ends.'

‘May I ask what the plot was?'

He shrugged. ‘I found it rather hazy. Farrar wanted to strengthen the status both of the Pullman porter and that Armenian. The Armenian is important. He is the key figure in the next operation; which does seem to me a serious one. I would not have said that this minor operation was of the least importance.'

‘What was the idea?'

‘The Armenian was going to hand your friend over to the Germans, claiming that he was a double agent working for the English too. In support of that, he was going to produce a report that the English had seen before it reached the Germans. That might have improved the Armenian's status on a short-time basis.'

‘But the Germans would not have got anything out of that; not on Turkish territory, would they?'

‘No, but they could have reported your friend to the Turks, on Chessman's testimony.'

‘What good would it have done the Germans?'

‘In actual fact, none at all; they don't know, at least we hope they don't know, that Chessman is a double agent. Actually he is a treble agent. But it suits the German pattern for the moment to strengthen Chessman's position with the Turks. It would have, in their opinion, done Chessman good to hand over your friend as a spy.'

‘What do you yourself think?'

‘I think that the Turks in the Ottoman days had one of the first Intelligence services in the world and that the modern Turks are finding the old machine works very well.'

‘So that if you were me, you wouldn't think me a traitor to give that warning.'

‘No, but if you are caught, I shall say I never heard of you.'

He rose to his feet. ‘I have to rush. You must excuse me. There are a great many things on hand. Don't hurry your tea. I have, as the Americans say, taken care of it.'

They stood facing one another. In all human probability they would never meet again. Yet they might at this very moment have
been happily planning the details of their own joint life: should she arrange to stay on here so that they could marry right away or should she wait in England till he was posted home? Should they announce their engagement now?... All the whens and wheres and hows.... It could so easily have turned out that way. It seemed a shame. For him as well as her; he might not do as well elsewhere. She could have been so right for him.

The girl who had met her at the airport took her to the station. Eve wished that she had not insisted, but there was no avoiding her. She would have preferred to stand at the near end of the platform and watch the train come in, carriage by carriage. Aziz might be leaning out of the window; he probably would be. Then she would know in what part of the train he was. It was a long train. She might have difficulty finding him.

For her opposite number in Ankara, however, this visit was an occasion; a break in the day's routine. She would want to dawdle in the station restaurant. The station was impressive; with pillars and rounded towers and marble floors; a tribute to the new-born Turkey; very unlike the ramshackle jumble of offices and waiting rooms at Istanbul. ‘We'll get there early,' the girl said. ‘Your carriage is in the front, a third of the way up; we'll leave a porter with your suitcase. Then we'll have a coffee and some cakes.'

There was no resisting her. Nor was there any means of getting her out on to the platform to watch the train come in. ‘We don't want to stand around. Your seat is booked. The train waits ten minutes here. We can wait till the last minute.'

That was how she wanted it and that was the way it was. ‘I've got to relax,' she thought. ‘I mustn't fuss her. I mustn't fuss myself. I'm so near a breakdown myself that I might have hysterics right here in the restaurant.' So she sat with her back to the railway line and ate an extra honey cake and did not turn round as the train slid in, waiting for the other one to say, ‘All ready now? I think we should be going.'

‘At last,' she thought. ‘At last.'

It had seemed a long train as it stood along the platform. It seemed a much longer train as she fought her way down its crowded length. She remembered the struggle to get to the
wagon restaurant
on the trains bound south from Paris. That was nothing compared to this. Turkey might be a neutral, but it seemed as though the whole army had been mobilized to make this journey. The luggage racks were piled with rifles: the corridors were barricaded
with packs and suitcases. Voluminously draped women were nursing babies. She had to fight her way every yard. And each embattled yard reminded her that she would have to fight her way back every inch; and this time to meet the grumbles and complaints of those who had already had to make way once. Doorway after doorway, carriage after carriage: and each time she passed an engaged toilet sign she would wonder if he were behind it. ‘If he were.' she thought, ‘he would have come out by the time she made her return trip. No one on a crowded train could stay there indefinitely.'

She had started by moving towards the front of the train. It was the shorter trip. She had no idea in what class he would be travelling. It was not one of the things that she had thought to ask him. ‘Did you have a good trip?' she would say. ‘Not bad.' he would answer, and they would leave it there. He had not much spare money. She did not think he would have taken a sleeper, but he might have gone first class. Door after door. Carriage after carriage. Door after door. At last she reached the luggage van. The front of the train. The final toilet door was locked. She would have to wait and see if he was there. One minute, three minutes, five minutes. How much longer could one stay? She rattled the handle impatiently. Another minute. She banged her fist upon the door. The door opened. A flushed and shamefaced eleven-year-old boy came out. His forehead was damp. ‘He ought to be ashamed of himself.' she thought.