When I Grow Rich

by Joan Fleming

  From what he knew of the English, which was a great deal because he made a study of that nation one of his minor interests, her parents would have an address something like: The Old Mill House, Wealdney, nr. Oxford. Class distinctions in that so-called classless country were less numerous than those of India, but at least as distinct and Nuri bey guessed that she came from an upper class, though not top class. He knew that a young woman in ‘The Old Mill House’ class ought not to have ‘The Three Diamonds Hotel’ in Soho as her permanent address.

  The envelope bore an Italian stamp and was posted in Rome. It was probably from Tony Grand for whom Nuri bey felt an increasing dislike which could hardly be called unreasonable. If he could do anything which would help the authorities to take that young man into captivity, he would unhesitatingly do so. And with that aim in view he bounded out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the look-out room.

  It was an ungentlemanly thing, he knew, to search a young lady’s bedroom, but in a mood in which he would have been breathing fire if he could, he ripped the clothes off the truckle bed, smelling faintly of something very pleasant, snatched up the mattress, turned the bed upside down and shook it. He shook it because there was nothing else he could do; he shook it in anger, he shook it as he would like to shake Miss Bolton, he shook it until he was breathless. Shaking an old-fashioned truckle bed is a risky business, and what one would expect to happen happened. The skin of a finger of his left hand was trapped and he uttered a cry of mingled pain and rage. There are no really satisfactory oaths in Turkish but he let off all there were.

  He tore downstairs, placed himself in the salon and reviewed the geography of the house: the hall was wide and square, the archway to the salon being on the right of the front door and the double doors into the kitchen beyond. At the end of the hall a hideous stained-glass window would show the patch of ground behind the house, if one could see through it. Beside this the stairs rose to the first floor.

  He could see now exactly what had happened. From the kitchen she could easily slip upstairs unobserved and down again with the case and out by the back door, which Nuri bey hardly ever used and which was usually bolted inside. She had done this when he was plying Madame with sweetmeats, silently and swiftly.

  Hadji, crushed in a corner beside the front door, might have noticed her, but one wondered if such a dim shadowy creature ever noticed anything.

  To be outwitted by a woman is defeat indeed; he stood and let the blood from his injured finger drip on to his precious blue-satin table cloth, defeated beyond defeat.

  He never expected to see her again. In fact, he hoped he would not see her again; his feelings about her were so mixed that he felt he would be quite at a loss as to how to treat her. He no longer wanted her in his house, if, indeed, he ever had. He would rather house an unexploded bomb. Though she had certainly been in some distress at the airport, she had recovered with remarkable speed; he believed now that he was a great deal more upset than she. He believed now that she was enjoying herself and he was perfectly prepared to believe that the whole thing was a put-up job, planned to the second and himself a pawn, the man who happened to be on the spot at the time. At least saving her taxi fare into Istanbul, he thought, bitterly, because he could not afford to take private taxis for any distance.

  He wrapped a handkerchief clumsily round his wounded finger and went into his study, the room opposite the salon, on the other side of the front door. As a hurt animal retires to its den to lick its injuries, Nuri bey closed the door and went to his bookshelves which lined the walls. He could be led blindfold to his study and pick out the book he required. Unerringly he brought out the book which he needed for his comfort; as soon as he had it between his fingers, peace flooded his soul and he knew security again. He knew the russet-apple colour of the binding and the feel of the smooth calf as a prelude to the calm wisdom of the Indian mystic between the covers. And even if he had not been able to hold it, he would have recognized the book as soon as it was opened by the faint smell; not as delightful, he thought, as the smell of a young lady’s bed, recently vacated, but much, much more familiar, and therefore safer.

  In a formal upright chair, his long legs elegantly crossed, he read on, assimilating an enormous amount of unpractical wisdom. He read on, through the day, past the time of the midday meal, on into the late afternoon until his face was smooth again and his eyes once more upon the stars.

  He had not rebolted the back door, perhaps deliberately, and perhaps his ears had been alert for a sound all the time; the wise can be strangely sentimental. He neither moved nor allowed his eyes to raise themselves from the printed page when he heard the door bang.

  She was back, that was what mattered, he could hardly be bothered to look up from the book when she burst in: ‘This is where you are? Oh, gosh? I’m absolutely worn out!’

  She flounced herself down into a chair and kicked off her shoes. ‘Look what I’ve bought.’ She held up a pair of French-type espadrilles. ‘I had an awful job finding some. I couldn’t teeter about the quite awful streets in these silly shoes, so I went round and round, and where do you think I found these? In the Spice Market! An absolute pet of an old man picked them out of a pile; they’re second-hand … do you think I’ll get foot rot or something?’

  Nuri bey had not got up when she same in; he looked at her, finger and thumb pointed, tapping his lips, thoughtfully. He was packed with wisdom now and felt he could deal with any situation.

  ‘I love finding my own way about a foreign town; when I asked one man where a bank was where I could change some money, he couldn’t speak English, and asked another, and he couldn’t speak English either. But we lined up and went along till we found someone who could and he said, “Come along, I’ll show you,” and so he and I and the first two men I’d asked all marched along in single file, up and down filthy little alleys, up and down steps, and past stalls until we came out into a street that looks a bit more decent than some, and there was a bank. And we all bowed to each other and said fearfully polite things and they called me “Efendim” or something … I was quite sorry when they went. But it’s not like Italy, is it? I mean they don’t pick you up and stick and stick until you want to kick them.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Nuri bey said.

  ‘I love the Turks,’ she went on enthusiastically, ‘they’re so kind and considerate. I had to go and look inside a mosque; several men hurried up to tell me to take off my shoes, which of course I did. I say, aren’t the mosques marvellous inside! All those wonderful carpets! It looks as though several huge tanks of paint in different shades of red and orange had been upset all over the floor; the red kind of flows, doesn’t it, all round the pillars and all over the huge, huge floor … are you cross with me, Nuri bey? It was rather rude, but you were having such a session with that old lady, I thought I’d hop it and go exploring on my own.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘You are cross! Please don’t be!’ She jumped from her chair and came, barefoot, across to him, bending over and kissing him warmly on his smooth, cool cheek.

  She sat down on the floor, shining up into his face: ‘And the kittens, Nuri bey! Staggering about dying. I was going to bring one home, back here I mean, and had it under my arm, but I saw hundreds of others, wandering about the forecourts of the mosque; I put it down when I saw one in worse condition but, do you know, it died as I carried it. I found I was carrying a dead kitten! And they are mostly tiny kittens, not cats, and they are so sweet, their eyes are absolutely pathetic; don’t they ever grow to cats?’

  There was a pause. ‘Nuri bey, do say something. I’m afraid you’re really cross. Don’t you trust me? You’re thinking about the case, aren’t you? Do you think I’ve been seeing Tony, giving it him by pre-arranged plan?’

  She leaned forward, peering into his face, her hair falling forward and she pushing it back impatiently. ‘Because I haven’t, I promise you I haven’t.’

  He might have said a great deal but the kiss had knocked the pu
nch out of him, he was winded, out for the count.

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you? Well, I think last night took all my wish for adventure away, at least, for the moment. I’ve done something safe … the sort of thing my family would do. They would call it “playing for safety”, it’s something which I vowed I’d never do. And now I have. I chucked the beastly thing in the river.’

  ‘River?’

  ‘Over the bridge; where the river runs out into the Bos-phorus.’

  ‘Over Galata Bridge?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘The river was not a river, it is the Golden Horn.’

  ‘That’s a very glamorous name for it; it looks like the Manchester Ship Canal. Anyway, it sank, and several people shouted at me;I didn’t understand, I made sure it sank, it was quite heavy, and I left the scene of the crime, as they say, pretty hurriedly.’

  ‘Perhaps it is as well,’ Nuri bey said heavily, ‘a great many things, people and things, which cause trouble, end up in the Golden Horn … or the Bosphorus.’

  ‘And after I’d done the dirty deed I went across some rough ground, through some filthy puddles and into a sort of slum where there was a shop selling Turkish Delight! I pointed and he gave me a box, I held out some money and he took it and gave me change; they’re very honest, aren’t they? The shop is called Haci Bekir and I gather it’s the place for locum. Anyway, it’s heavenly! Much, much nicer than English “Turkish Delight”. It’s stiffer and lasts longer and it’s got delicious fresh nuts in it. I’m afraid I ate the lot; it was about lunch-time. And after that I went into a café over the bridge, near the Spice Market, and had some tiny glasses of tea. There were nothing but men in the café and they did stare, but not to worry, everyone was marvellously civil.’

  Nuri bey was coming to life, the wisdom was receding and a delightful warmth was creeping over him.

  ‘Oh, what have you done to your finger, old dear?’

  He looked down at the blood-stained handkerchief; the wound no longer hurt and he had forgotten about it. She unwrapped it, made sympathetic noises.

  Later, in the kitchen where she had held his finger under the tap, they found some clean cloth, tore it into strips and rewound the injury.

  ‘Don’t go upstairs,’ Nuri bey said, ‘there is the mirror there, in the salon, where you can tidy yourself. We are going out. I shall take you to supper in a little restaurant near the Tulip Mosque, and we will eat a dish called “The Imam Fainted”!’

  CHAPTER 5

  The restaurant to which he took her could hardly be recognized as such; it was a mere hole in the wall and, at first glance, looked like a den of thieves, full, as it was, of men with faces like Ali Babas’ talking together in a manner that they might have used when planning a particularly bloody revolution, but were, in fact, merely gossiping as mildly as old wives at the well.

  Nuri bey ordered raki, a strong spirit, gentler but with a more insidious and lasting effect than the Scandinavian schnapps which it resembles.

  ‘And now you will tell me about Oxford, please,’ he demanded and she obliged in the way he would have wished. Gently prompted, she talked about the public-house clinging to the tiny scrap of medieval turf in the quiet heart of the city, of the Best Bookshop in the World, of the hot-dog stall which came to roost most evenings at ten o’clock outside the Taylorian, of the sobriety of the Martyrs’ Memorial.

  And in return he told her about his father who had been one of the last of the Dancing Dervishes, a member of an esoteric Moslem fraternity called Mevleir who would dance themselves into frenzies and ended up in a queer trance-like state ‘more metaphysical than physical’.

  He told her about the old woman who had come to visit him that morning, Madame Miasma, and how she had very nearly become the Sultan Validé. How she lived in a yali on the Bosphorus and how he went to read the newspapers to her each week.

  ‘Who was the old man she had with her?’

  ‘That,’ was his delighted answer, ‘was her chauffeur, one Hadji who was in her time a servant and attendant in the Sultan’s harem … a eunuch, in fact.’

  They sat in a small yard at the far end from the entrance; there was room in it for four tables, it was lit by oil-lamps hanging on the whitewashed walls. Several small starving cats wandered about; the waiter brought earthenware dishes containing a delicious sizzling mixture with chicken and cheese and aubergines and onions. And afterwards they ate a kind of rum baba, very sickly and bad for the figure.

  ‘I’m having a lovely time,’ she said, ‘I oughtn’t to, ought I, with poor Tony on the run somewhere? I should be frantically worried; in fact, I am, though I don’t look it.’ She sipped her strong sweet coffee appreciatively. ‘Fiddling while Rome burns, and all that. But what can I do?’

  ‘Do you speak French? French is more popular than English here; we do not find English easy.’

  ‘You speak it perfectly, though rather carefully as though you had learned it from a book. Yes, I can speak French.’ She smiled. ‘That was one of the things the family have against me. My sister Daphne went to a finishing place in Paris, madly expensive, and had a ghastly time. She never went out except on a lead.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I mean metaphorically speaking. She loathed it. So when my turn came, I said I wasn’t going, and I arranged to go to a French family in Touraine and I didn’t speak a single word of English for six months … the result is that I can speak good French, but the family darkly say it was that that started it all.’

  ‘Started what?’

  ‘Started me going off the rails.’

  ‘I see.’ Nuri bey was on her family’s side but wisely refrained from saying so.

  She looked round at the other customers. ‘Oh, my lord, I wouldn’t dare to come in here on my own? I’d be scared out of my wits.’

  ‘Some are students in the university which is nearby. I come often; I spend much time at the second-hand book shops. The university library, too, is just up the road. If you are safe anywhere, you would be safe here in Istanbul,’ he said sternly, ‘Moslems are on the whole peace-loving people. They do not stick a knife in a back without very good reason; they do not have drunken brawls in cafés because Moslems are not alcohol consumers.’

  ‘That does sound pompous,’ she returned, ‘and I must say for a country of teetotallers, you’ve got a fine national drink … here’s to raki!’

  Walking back across Galata Bridge, she stopped to look. The moon was up, making a wide highway across the water. The lighted ferry boats caused great stains across the night sky with clouds of filthy black smoke from the poor quality fuel, their headlamps made fan-like sweeps of light in front of them, warning fishing-boats of their approach. There was much activity and noise.

  ‘You couldn’t call it beautiful exactly,’ she said, ‘but it is certainly fascinating!’ and then she suddenly seized Nuri bey’s arm and squeezed it. ‘Thank you for being so kind; it has been a wonderful evening. What can I do for you?’

  She kept her arm in his as they walked on and Nuri bey went to some trouble to conceal his extreme pleasure. ‘You can, in fact, do something for me, you can read to me.’

  ‘Aloud?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘No reason why not … I’d like to. Of course I will.’

  As they walked on, up the long and tedious hill to Taxim Square she said: ‘The streets crowded with seething masses of people and I may have passed Tony for all I know. I’m sure he’s here, Nuri bey. He must be. Big cities are much the best places to hide. If he’d made any attempt to leave the country he would have been caught, he wouldn’t dare. Poor Tony, perhaps this will cure him of boredom.’

  ‘Boredom?’

  ‘Yes, he’s bored, that’s what is wrong. Not wicked, merely bored.’

  ‘Boredom is a state of mind,’ Nuri bey said, ‘I do not understand how anyone can be bored.’

  ‘You’re lucky. Lots of young people are bored, I suppose because they have never been
taught how not to be, and you should remember that when you start thinking how wicked some of them, us, are. Anyway, Tony won’t be bored now!’

  ‘Are you going to marry Tony … or, I should say, were you?’

  ‘Well, that’s a moot point.’

  ‘What is that, moot point?’

  ‘At first I didn’t think I wanted to settle down and get married and start a life of eternal nappy-washing. But now I’m beginning to think there is something to be said for it, for being settled, I mean.’ They walked on, still arm in arm. ‘And I’m kind of used to Tony. I thought I knew him very well.’

  ‘No, you do not know him very well. He has deceived you completely.’

  She sighed. ‘Don’t let’s talk about it, only you started it, asking me if I want to marry Tony.’

  As they approached his house Nuri bey began to worry over what he was going to do about the torn-apart bed in the turret room. Maybe if he left it, she would merely think it was a particularly thorough bed-airing.

  ‘It’s not too late to read to you now for a bit, if you’d like.’

  Yes, he would like it very much. The house was in darkness and there was no street lighting near enough to be of any use. The big plane trees growing lavishly out of the hard flat earth-patch that was his garden, were coming into leaf; moonlight lit the way up the front steps. He unlocked the front door and they went inside.

  ‘You really feel you could read now? It is nearly midnight!’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, after that glorious meal and the lovely drink I’m not a bit tired.’

  ‘Very well.’ His face alight with pleasurable anticipation, Nuri bey went into his study.

  ‘My library,’ he said proudly.

  ‘Whilst you are deciding what you want me to read, may I go and see if that kitten is still outside, round the back?’

  ‘Of course, the back door is bolted but you know how to undo it. There is a little yoghourt left in the big jug on the table, you can give the wretched animal some if you like.’