The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘He’s surely a rogue,’ I complained to George, when he brought to our table in the Messieri Hotel a young man transparently disreputable. ‘You would have shunned him at home.’

  ‘We are not at home,’ George countered. ‘And I find him amusing.’

  ‘She has a reputation,’ I warned Beatrice, who, taking a lead from George, soon became on intimate terms with a Mrs Yardley, travelled out from England in the company of a colonel of the Guards. ‘She is plainly connected to that gentleman without the benefit of marriage vows.’ To which Beatrice tartly replied we were hardly in a position to throw the first stone. I confess she had me there.

  The military news was confusing. On our arrival we had been told of a glorious Turkish victory and assured that the danger of conflict was past, only to learn the following day that the Duke of Cambridge and Lord Raglan were at this moment on their way to Malta to make a declaration of war. There were many among us, profiteers all, Mr Naughton being a choice example, who hoped the latter story was the truth. Meanwhile, we continued on our merry round.

  Of all our numerous outings, the spectacle of the dancing dervishes remains most vividly in the mind, their performance being ridiculous in the extreme. It took place at Pera, in a small mosque adjacent to a harem. We were given seats in the gallery, from which we looked down on a circle of men garbed in long coats and wearing the sort of conical hats believed to be common to witches. In the centre sat a high priest, eyes closed as though he slept – and who could blame him? In the gallery opposite, a stout individual wearing a long beard and a silk dress decidedly feminine in design – Beatrice whispered she thought it divine – shook a tambourine and emitted a fierce howl whenever the fancy took him. For an hour or more we were subjected to a monotonous gabbling of prayers. Just as I was near swooning from boredom, the dervishes rose to their feet – they were immensely tall – cast off their outer garments and shoes and walked about, bowing ceremoniously to the priest and to each other. Then, at no apparent signal, they began spinning round and round. A more absurd sight could not be imagined, for they wore white petticoats and held their arms raised above their hats, so that they resembled huge revolving extinguishers. Efforts to suppress the hilarity raging through the gallery were far from successful.

  Afterwards, Annie, Beatrice and Mrs Yardley gained admittance to the harem, where they were received by a Madame Kiasim whose raven locks were dyed buttercup yellow and who was reported to have read a French novel throughout. No other women were visible. A slave shortly brought in glasses of water and a plate of sweetmeats, Madame Kiasim later demanding payment for this refreshment without once looking up from her book.

  In all this relentless gadding, this reckless bonhomie, I detected something of the hectic gaiety which must have prevailed during the last days of Rome. Like dervishes, we twirled from one diversion to another. At yet another picnic in the hills outside the town, the women’s chatter rising like the twitterings of starlings, a premonition of impending disaster took such a strong hold of me that I was forced to leave the group and walk to a pinnacle some distance off. As I gazed below, to where the domes and slender minarets glittered amidst the cypress trees, a quotation came unbidden to my thoughts – We have run this morning twenty-four miles, and could run forty-eight more. But who can run the race with death? In the distance, beneath an azure sky, the narrow arms of the Bosphorus and Golden Horn, that perfect blending of land and water, pointed at the Black Sea.

  That evening, when we returned to the hotel, we were met with two items of dreadful news; the first – depending on whether one considers things personal rather than universal to be of paramount importance – concerned Myrtle. In our absence the children had pined for a sight of their collie pup, housed down by the port. Sent for and let loose on the mosaic tiles of the forecourt, and no doubt terrified by reverberating footsteps, it had turned tail and lolloped back through the open doors, where it was immediately pounced upon by dogs, of which there are innumerable fierce packs roaming the streets, and torn to bloody shreds. Fortunately, the children, one toddling, the other in its nursemaid’s arms, were too far behind to see the shocking assault.

  Myrtle, in swift pursuit and coming in full view of the butchery, fainted clear away. Those who knew of her strength and singularity of character would have found her collapse hard to credit were it not for the testimony of the keeper of the hotel who had followed her abrupt departure from the premises. Restored, she had been helped from the scene of carnage by Mr Naughton and an unknown gentleman in military uniform.

  The second piece of news, days out of date, was that England had declared war on Russia.

  For a full week following this momentous announcement, we witnessed the most nauseating display of patriotic fervour. Cannons were fired by those ships of the fleet already returned to harbour after the supposed destruction of Sebastopol. The Messieri Hotel became a focal point for gatherings of English residents, all gesticulating like foreigners. It had seldom been safe to venture into the streets after dark, unless one cared to be jostled by drunken troopers, and now it became positively dangerous. Many a night we were woken by the gurgling screams of some poor wretch having his throat cut. Forced to stay indoors, we were subjected most evenings to the carollings of Mrs Yardley, who, accompanied at the piano by a haberdasher from Yorkshire, sang such sentimental ballads as ‘The Soldier’s Tear’ and ‘Yes, Let Me Like a Soldier Fall’. Mercifully, she appeared not to know that one time family favourite, ‘Mother Dear, I am Fading Fast’.

  George too was affected by the atmosphere, though he was touched by something more resonant than the trillings of the Messieri songbird. Before leaving for Constantinople he had sought an interview with the Army Medical Board in Manchester, and offered his services. In spite of possessing the right qualifications and having spent in excess of five years on the surgical wards of the Liverpool Infirmary, he was deemed unsuitable on account of his marital status. No objection was raised to his travelling out as a civilian, nor to his procuring a post for himself at the General Hospitals of Scutari or Gallipoli, but attachment to a regiment was out of the question. Since our arrival in the East he had made no attempt to make enquiries of either such place; when not on the sea-shore with Myrtle, he had busied himself with photography or else disappeared into the Greek quarter of the town with new-found friends. To be fair, he had practised his trade when called upon, and without charge – treating an elderly Greek lady for dropsy, dressing a burn on Mrs Yardley’s arm, lancing a child’s boil, etc.

  Now, he surprised me, for he lost no time in making preparations to visit Scutari. His cause was helped by his recent medical attentions to Mrs Yardley, her gentleman friend, the colonel in the Guards, going out of his way to assist him. It took longer than expected to arrange matters and George fretted under the delay. Again he surprised me, for he gave up his patronage of the Duke of Wellington public house and scarcely wetted his lips at dinner. I found this change of heart touching. He wrote long letters, many to his mother, and even took the trouble to pen a few lines to Mrs O’Gorman.

  One evening, when we were sitting on the veranda of the hotel watching the sun go down and waiting for the ladies to join us, he turned to me and said he hoped I would always be his friend. I replied indeed I heartily wished it so – and he mine.

  ‘You have always looked after me, Potter,’ he said. ‘And I have not always taken your advice.’

  ‘My dear boy—’ I began.

  ‘I would like you to know that in the event of something happening … something untoward … to me, that is, I have appointed you my executor. I trust you’re agreeable.’

  ‘Come, come,’ I said. ‘What has brought this about?’ I felt uncomfortable.

  As a man without resources – in terms of money – I have always relied heavily on George’s generosity. It had been my dream that some bright day I might be able to repay him – through my writings; alas, it has remained a dream.

  ‘Should I obtain a post at Scuta
ri,’ he said, ‘it would give me great peace of mind if you would stay here and arrange passage home for Annie and the children.’

  I agreed, of course. How could I refuse? He then began a rambling discourse to do with his past life, regrets, wasted opportunities, lack of application, etc., and how he felt, in some mysterious way, that the war would at last provide him with the prop he needed.

  ‘Prop?’ I said.

  ‘Crutch, even,’ he said. ‘A man like me needs something to hold him upright. Beyond Myrtle, that is. There are things I have done that were not right.’

  ‘In a hundred years,’ I assured him, ‘we shall all have forgotten the things that trouble us now.’

  ‘I shall need a thousand years,’ he said, and I swear he had tears in his eyes. His words made me uneasy; it is not generally a good sign when people like George lean towards introspection.

  Just then Naughton came up and was no doubt taken aback at the warmth of my welcome. After much beating about the bush he asked George if the gentleman to whom his sister was betrothed had yet been called to active duty. George looked puzzled.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘The rest of his regiment is still at Malta.’

  ‘He’s a good-looking fellow,’ Naughton observed, in a distinctly wistful tone – at which it was my turn to be puzzled. Following some judicious probing I gathered he was referring to the soldier who had gallantly come to Myrtle’s side during the shocking incident with the dogs.

  ‘Are they to be married before or after the war?’ Naughton asked, and it was then that George, irritated by such persistence, chose to break off Myrtle’s engagement. ‘He may be handsome, sir,’ he replied, ‘but he has treated my sister disgracefully. She will never be his.’

  I remember how pleased we were at our inventiveness. It was, after all, nothing more than an amusing ending to a good, if rather cruel, joke.

  It was decided that Beatrice, Annie and the children would sail home at the beginning of May, Constantinople having become insufferably crowded with troop transports and officials. Moreover, with the advancement of the season came an alarming increase in the number of flies and things that nipped in the night. It did no good to shake the bed linen from the balcony, as Beatrice took to doing morning and evening, for the verminous intruders were secreted in the floorboards and every slight crack in the walls. Annie, for one, couldn’t wait to retire to the civilised surroundings of her aunt’s house in Anglesey.

  In April, George had achieved his goal, and now spent three days a week at Scutari, where he had been appointed assistant to a Turkish doctor at the Barrack Hospital. He could have returned each night, Scutari being no great distance, but felt it prudent to consolidate his position. His cases, as yet, consisted for the most part of falls from horses, injuries sustained in inebriated brawls and fever occasioned by venereal disease. In these parts a soldier could get drunk for sixpence and syphilis for a shilling. He said it was just as well he was not required to perform more surgery, facilities being primitive in the extreme. He reckoned there was a rat for every patient admitted.

  He was a changed man. Though he returned weary and in need of a bath, hair cloudy with dust and clothes stained, his blue eyes conveyed a candour and innocence of spirit missing since his youth. Myrtle rarely accompanied him, due to the impending departure of the children. In this she was content, her love for them being quite simply an extension of her love for him.

  In deference to the wishes of Beatrice, a last outing was planned – an excursion to the Sweet Waters of Europe beside the Golden Horn, followed by an evening at the opera. My feelings can be imagined, yet I smiled, feigning enthusiasm. I loved my wife, and indeed, the thought of parting from her, for Lord knows how long a duration, filled me with sorrow. How was I to manage? I dwelt sentimentally on the habit she had of sometimes picking at the food on my plate, the fond way her stubby fingers rubbed at my insect bites in the small hours. Needless to say, attempts to put my thoughts into words were greeted with irritation. Yet, when she slept and I made to move from the circle of her hot little arms, her clasp only tightened.

  The Sweet Waters of Europe, a resort popular with all the Turkish rank and fashion of Stamboul and Pera, lay a fast two hours’ ride across country. We were to picnic in the grounds of the Palace belonging to the Sultan’s brother, a man celebrated for the beauty of his cultivated gardens and the hundreds of peacocks that swayed up and down his avenues of roses. I say fast, but as the children’s necks were in danger of being dislocated from the jogging of the ponies, our progress was necessarily more sedate. We started soon after dawn but by eight o’clock the sun was already high and Myrtle wielded her fly-whisk above those downy infant heads as though warding off eagles.

  It was pretty countryside we passed through and if it had not been for the temperature – a well-built man is rendered almost to lard by a fierce sun – I would have found it a pleasant enough way to spend a morning. We were trailed and sometimes overtaken by Naughton, who rode rather well for a violin maker. He was accompanied by one of the engineers and a skinny man in a turban. Each time Naughton drew close, he called out a greeting and raised his hat. Of course, he only looked directly at Myrtle. ‘He stalks you like a hunter,’ Beatrice said. ‘I don’t know how you bear it.’

  ‘You forget that I understand obsession,’ said Myrtle. ‘Besides, what harm does he do?’

  As we approached our destination, winding our way past the rustic villas that lined the water’s edge, a flight of storks rode the blue heavens. For a moment we saw them clear, then, piercing the glittering sunlight around the golden dome above us, they flashed from dazzling view.

  The Palace was built on a wide plateau, its grounds planted with trees and flowering shrubs. Leaving our ponies, we climbed a flight of steps and entered by way of a tunnel fashioned out of some sort of exotic privet. A hundred men, so Annie said, were employed in its upkeep.

  The gardens beyond were extensive, an artistic blend of lawns, rockeries and herbaceous borders. I myself have never been able to raise much interest in horticulture, and grew weary of Annie’s constant exclamations of delight at this or that example of what she termed an exquisite bloom. I was far more taken by the little clearings among the trees, in whose shade lolled parties of fortunate ladies, their scarlet fingernails languidly fanning the air. How I longed to join them! Instead, spurred on by Beatrice, who was driven forwards by the distant sound of clapping and muted cheers, we toiled down an avenue of purple rhododendrons and came at last to an open space ringed by boisterous spectators.

  Here, the navy was holding an athletic sports day, presided over by a French admiral who, judging from the uncomplimentary remarks of several English on-lookers, should have been occupied with more urgent matters, namely the conflict brewing beyond the Bosphorus. I rather agreed, though later, having caught a glimpse of this gentleman coming out of the refreshment marquee, gloriously attired in cocked hat and braided coat and supported on either side by blue-coats, I altered my opinion of his usefulness. It was evident from his drooling mouth and tremulous gait, each step placed as though fearful of encountering quicksand, that his days were numbered.

  Presently Beatrice became absurdly engrossed in sprinting and jumping; unable to stand upright any longer in the blistering heat, I found refuge under a Judas tree and, draping a handkerchief over my perspiring face, fell into a reverie. My thoughts, possibly because I was thirsty, centred on the writings of Homer, in particular those verses dealing with the death of Antinous, stabbed in the throat by Ulysses as he was about to drink from the golden goblet – hence the proverb, There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip – when I was painfully disturbed by a kick on the ankle. Snatching the cloth from my eyes I was in time to see an elderly gentleman diving across my legs and sprawling to my side.

  I have often thought that most things in life are ordained and that there is no such thing as chance. Galileo Galilei could not have deduced that the earth spun round the sun without the inventor of the tele
scope having been born in his lifetime, any more than Myrtle would now be in her present proximity to George without an outbreak of smallpox and a visit to a brothel. These two examples, of course, are in no way to be compared in importance, but they do point to an extraordinary fusing of time and place. In my case, I have been the unhappy victim of predestination in that anything I might have had an aptitude to study has already been worked over by minds greater than my own.

  I mention all this because the ancient man now lying alongside me under the Judas tree was none other than Gustav Streicher, the director of the Archaeological Collection at Kertch, whom I had known twenty years before. After assurances that no bones had been broken, there followed one of those conversations peculiar to encounters between comparative youth – my hearing was certainly superior – and extreme old age. I wasn’t even sure he knew who I was, though he appeared to remember the marble head of Apollo whose tinge of rouge on the cheeks I had once so admired, also the sarcophagus with its two gigantic figures astride its lid, their heads knocked off by marauding Turks. I told him I recalled his inspiring lecture on the latter subject.

  ‘Barbarians,’ he muttered. ‘Barbarians to a man.’

  ‘And are you still at Kertch?’ I asked, to which he replied he held a courtesy post, with pension.

  ‘You prefer to live there … rather than England?’

  ‘What is England?’ he retorted. ‘Where is England?’ I took this as rhetorical and stayed silent. I noticed his eyes had closed and hoped he slept rather than swooned from the effects of his tumble. Just as I was about to enquire whether he was all right, he cried out with great vigour, ‘It is sheer nonsense to transfer the wanderings of Ulysses to the Black Sea. He would surely have mentioned the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus if his travels had taken place to the west of the theatre of the Trojan War rather than the Pontus Euxinus to the north.’