The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

  "No! Are you really?" demanded Mia breathlessly. 'Then that's what I felt at once. Colin's Capricorn, you know, that's why he's so inherently precise."

  "My husband was a Libra," put in Mrs. Pollifax.

  "But how marv," breathed the girl. "Charm? Diplomacy? Harmony?"

  "Oh yes," said Mrs. Pollifax, nodding.

  "Most of my family's Gemini," Mia added broodingly. "A very restless sign to be born under, you know. Tony's Libra," she confided. "He wants to marry me."

  "Tony?"

  "The man in charge of all this," she said with a sweeping gesture that apparently included her outrageous costume. "The one waiting for me in Athens. He's a marv photographer."

  "And do you love him?" asked Mrs. Pollifax with interest.

  Mia turned thoughtful. "I'm only eighteen, you know. Do you think it possible to love at eighteen?"

  "In general no," said Mrs. Pollifax.

  Mia nodded. "That's what I think, too. It's tempting— and terribly romantic—but I do want to find out who I am first. I don't want to be married umpteen times. It's so unstable."

  At this point they were interrupted by lunch—the meals were growing very confusing—and then they were nearing Athens, and Mrs. Pollifax watched Mia reline her lips and eyelids with white, and comb her long hair. As the plane touched earth and taxied down the runway Mia looked at Mrs. Pollifax with huge eyes. "Do you realize we may never meet again?" she said in dismay, and was suddenly a very young child.

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled. "But it's so very nice that we've met at all," she said warmly.

  Mia laughed. "There I go, being greedy again—you're much the wiser." Standing, she leaned over and impulsively kissed Mrs. Pollifax on the cheek. "God bless," she said warmly, and placing her stovepipe hat securely on the top of her head she walked down the aisle, every eye on the plane fastened just as securely upon her receding figure.

  Mrs. Pollifax watched her go. She thought she left behind her a very definite fragrance—not of an orchid in spite of her exotic green and purple appearance, she reflected, but something rather sturdy and British, like a primrose. Yes, a primrose, decided Mrs. Pollifax, and with a little smile brought out her travel guide on Turkey again, and settled down to read it.

  4

  Mrs. Pollifax landed at an airport whose name she could not pronounce, and went through Customs in a state of numbness. Not even a glimpse of her first mosque or the delicate spire of a minaret roused her from this alarming sense of detachment; she was experiencing now the effect of crossing two continents and an ocean in the space of a day. She remembered that she had been contacted by Car-stairs at two o'clock on a quiet Sunday afternoon, she had left the United States less than two hours later, and she had been in flight for seventeen hours, with a brief stopover in London. In America it would be Monday morning and she would be preparing to shop at the A&P, but instead she was in Istanbul and it was four o'clock Monday afternoon, all of which produced a bewildered weightless and unattached feeling: it was difficult to realize that she had reached Istanbul, or how, or for what purpose. As the airline bus carried her toward the city there was added to her blurredness a steady cacophony of noise: horns honking, donkeys braying, and vendors shouting.

  When Mrs. Pollifax reached the Oteli Itep and registered at the desk, showing her passport, it was five o'clock. There was no sign of Henry, which reminded her that they were in Istanbul now and there would be no more reassuring winks. The desk clerk himself showed her to her room on the second floor and left her there staring, mesmerized, at the bed.

  And the bed really was enchanting. It was mounted on a platform that made it the focal point of the room, it was covered with a brilliant scarlet afghan and what was more it looked voluptuously soft. Mrs. Pollifax moved toward it with longing, every bone of her body still in protest against the reclining seats into which she had been fitted for so long. She reached up to her flowered hat, fumbled for its hatpin and then hesitated. She remembered that in fewer than three hours she must take up her post in the lobby with her copy of Gone with the Wind—it was why she was here—and by that hour she must be alert and rested. She had already done a great deal of sleeping on the plane, and another nap could only leave her woolly-headed. A more sensible idea would be to find something to occupy and clear her mind. She thought of food but she was not hungry enough to spend the next hour in dining, and in any case she would prefer breakfast to dinner, her appestat being still on American time. Yet somehow before eight o'clock she had to recover a degree of perception and awareness, and enough vitality to think clearly.

  "A walk!" she thought. "A good brisk walk!" It was the perfect idea, jewel-like in its simplicity and wisdom after so many hours of tedium. She wondered if the bazaars would be open at this hour, doubted, and immediately suffered a loss of motivation until she remembered Mia Ramsey's brother.

  "What a very nice idea, and it shouldn't take long!" she exclaimed aloud, and at once felt a leap of interest and purpose. She dug the brother's address out of her purse, noted that they were both in the old part of the city but decided nevertheless to take a taxi there and do her walking on the way back.

  Washing her face in very cold water she left the room without opening her suitcase, walked down the heavily carpeted stairs to the lobby, nodded cheerfully to the desk clerk and strolled out into the bustling life -of the streets.

  According to her map Istanbul was a city divided by bridges, water and the geographical coincidence of existing upon two continents, Europe and Asia. Mrs. Pollifax assessed the character of it with a certain feminine casualness: the newer section, called Beyoglu, contained the Hilton Istanbul, and therefore must also contain the newer residences, the higher priced hotels, and most of the tourists. The older section, called Stamboul, appeared to hold most of the minarets, mosques, bazaars, native hotels as well as herself and Mia Ramsey's brother. With this settled she hailed a taxi. The driver greeted her effusively, swore by Allah that Zikzak was not far, that his taxi was the best in Stamboul, he was a fine driver and it was a beautiful evening, and they started out.

  Delighted by her resourcefulness and already reviving at the thought of exchanging words with an authentic resident of the city, Mrs. Pollifax sat back in anticipation. What struck her forcibly as she looked around her was the patina of antiquity everywhere that went beyond old age; there was a grandeur in the shabbiness of Stamboul's flaking walls, peeling stucco, faded paint and eroded columns. It rested the eye: this city was thousands of years old. Istanbul also impressed her now as being a surprisingly gay place, and her ears began to sort out the sounds that had dismayed her earlier. A great deal of commerce appeared to be transacted from the sides and backs of donkeys, upon which were carried baskets of flowers, bread, tinware, bales of cloth, jugs of water, herbs and sweets, all of which had to be advertised incessantly and vocally, the louder the better. Children played and shouted. Strange weird music drifted out of shuttered windows and open doors. The light itself was purest Mediterranean—why had she assumed Istanbul would be gloomy?—and as they drove up and down unbelievably steep streets Mrs. Pollifax was reminded of San Francisco.

  But gradually the streets grew narrower, darker and less traveled, and Mrs. Pollifax began to experience a growing sense of alarm. After all, they were in search of a business called Ramsey Enterprises Ltd., which had a solid, respectable and undeniably British ring to it, whereas this was old Istanbul, and growing older and older at each turn. For the first time she remembered the two envelopes in her purse, each of them bulging with money, and when the taxi turned into a cul-de-sac, a dead end alley with a high wall running along one side, Mrs. Pollifax was certain that she was going to be held up and robbed. She was wondering if she dared try out her karate—and which blow to deliver—when the driver brought the cab to a stop, jerked his head toward a ramshackle building on the left which leaned precariously to one side, and turning to her said, "Twenty-three Zikzak."

  "Are you sure?" she asked doubtfully. She handed the p
rinted address to the driver for verification.

  "Evet, evet," he said, nodding indignantly, and jumped out and opened the door for her.

  Mrs. Pollifax climbed out, paid the man—or over-paid him, she reflected wryly, having still no firm grasp of the country's lira and kurush—and when she walked across the alley to the lopsided door experienced the small shock of relief at discovering all her suspicions unfounded. The man was reliable and she was indeed in the correct place. But what an astonishingly unprepossessing place it was! A neat sign over the bell said RAMSEY ENTERPRISES LTD. A small dusty sign below it read Ramsey Documentaries in Rear (Documentaries! thought Mrs. Pollifax); a third sign read Hubert Ludlow Ramsey, Esq. Mrs. Pollifax pushed the bell. Nothing happened. Sounds of traffic came dimly to her ears, and among the wilting bougainvillea a bee droned monotonously. From the other side of the alley's wall came shouts of muffled argument, and from a distance the sound of a muezzin's chant. Mrs. Pollifax turned her back on the front door and walked firmly down the narrow, beaten-earth driveway toward Ramsey Documentaries in Rear.

  She came out upon a small cobbled courtyard walled with bougainvillea. A dusty van was parked here beside an equally dusty old jeep, and beyond them lay a series of small cement-block buildings, obviously quite new: a garage, a building with two skylights, and a small office bearing a sign RAMSEY ENTERPRISES. The door to this office stood open, and as Mrs. Pollifax approached it she heard someone swearing—steadily and scathingly—in English.

  "Good afternoon," called out Mrs. Pollifax cheerfully.

  The swearing immediately broke off, and a round, owlish face peered around the door. "What the devil!" exclaimed the young man in baffled astonishment, and then, "I say— I'm awfully sorry, you overheard the swearing?"

  "Every word," said Mrs. Pollifax amiably. "Is it a habit of yours?"

  "It's rapidly becoming one," he said crossly from somewhere inside ("I'm putting on a shirt," he explained in an aside). "I'm swearing because I've been doing some filming while my uncle's away and not one damned frame has come out yet. My uncle will have my head for it. No, he'll probably fire me."

  "Why didn't the pictures come out?" inquired Mrs. Pollifax curiously.

  His voice drew closer. "Because yesterday I left the lens cap on, and today they're all light-struck." He suddenly appeared in the door, a small, compact young man wearing a fierce scowl, dusty khaki shorts, dusty shirt and dusty boots.

  "Then you must be Colin Ramsey," said Mrs. Pollifax warmly, extending her hand. "You have to be Colin Ramsey."

  "I don't have to be but I am," he said suspiciously. "Are you a friend of Uncle Hu's?"

  "No, of your sister's," she told him. "That is, I flew from London to Athens with her today—my name's Mrs. Pollifax —and if I had time she asked me to stop in and give you both her love and this ring."

  His face brightened. "Did she really! I say, that's decent of her." He took the ring and looked at it. "Beautiful Mia —what on earth is she doing in Athens! I suppose she's left school again?"

  "I didn't hear anything about school; she's modeling."

  He nodded, still staring down at the ring. "Funny," he mused, "this came from Uncle Hu when we were still in the nursery, I'd forgotten its source until this minute. He gave it me, said it was magic or some such bit of whimsy, and for years I wore it faithfully on a string around my neck. That's how it all started, and here I am working for Uncle Hu now, and the ring's here, too." His laugh was so bitter it startled him as well as Mrs. Pollifax and he glanced up. "It's really decent of you to have bothered with this, and I'm being terribly rude, boring you with my blighted life. May I offer you a lemonade?"

  "You weren't being rude, you were feeling sorry for yourself," pointed out Mrs. Pollifax firmly. "And yes it was decent of me, except that I had too much time for just eating and not enough time for sleeping because of having to be back at the hotel before eight. Also I was curious. Yes, I will have a lemonade, thank you."

  "Curious because of Mia?" he asked.

  "Not entirely. I thought it restful—soothing, you know— to have a small errand to run, und the name and address of someone here, in a strange city and strange country." She stopped and suddenly smiled. "It just occurs to me: I'm probably feeling a touch of homesickness. Or rather of not-at-homeness."

  He nodded. "Your first trip abroad?"

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled faintly. "Yes and no," she said adroitly. "The first alone, at least."

  "Then do come and have that lemonade," he suggested understandingly. "Although if you're traveling alone who's the chap with you, your driver? Guide?"

  Mrs. Pollifax looked at him blankly. "There's no one with me. I came in a taxi but the driver went away." She turned, following Colin's glance up the driveway to the alley. "What is it?"

  He grinned. "Some tourist—a chap in a dark suit with a camera. He's strolled past twice, trying not to look too interested in us. Tourists don't usually get this far."

  Henry, thought Mrs. Pollifax warmly. But how absolutely astute of him, she reflected, he had not for a moment forsaken his post, he had seen her leave and followed. A rush of gratitude flooded her at such touching protectiveness, and then she put the thought aside and turned and followed Colin toward the house. "But how do you happen to notice such things?" she asked of Colin, responding at once to such an active imagination.

  He smiled ruefully as he held open the door to the house. "Compensation, I guess—observation is my only talent. I'm a complete embarrassment to a brilliant family—it's why they've shipped me out here to Turkey."

  Mrs. Pollifax entered a bleak, cheerless kitchen dominated by a very old refrigerator with coils on the top. "Purest Soho, circa 1920," commented Colin with a gesture toward the room. "Do have a seat."

  Mrs. Pollifax slid gratefully onto a bench beside a long trestle table. "But what kind of brilliant family?" she asked. "That is, if you could use just one word—"

  "That's easy," said Colin, removing ice cube trays from the antique refrigerator. "Successful."

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "But in what way? What values?"

  He scowled. "Well, they climb mountains. Big ones," he added angrily. "They excel at rugby and take honors at Oxford and rather tend to get knighted. They go into the Army and win medals, that sort of thing. My father's an M.P. My two brothers went to Sandhurst and they'll either be generals or M.P.'s, wait and see. You met my sister. She's the baby of the family, but if she's taken up modeling she'll be a top model on all the magazine covers by Christmas. My mother's a poet and the last time I saw a London Times she was in jail for picketing—some kind of labor protest. That's being a success these days too, you know." He gloomily handed Mrs. Pollifax a frosty glass of lemonade and sat down across the table from her.

  Mrs. Pollifax said tartly, "I think someone in your family read far too much Halliburton in their youth. But if they’re active and extroverted and like heights, that's their prerogative. What do you like best?"

  He looked thoughtful. "It's hard to say, you know. I'm an absolute physical coward. I daresay that's something most people don't have to learn about themselves by the age of eight, but living with my family I learned it early. Alpine climbing absolutely terrifies me, boxing appalls me and fencing scares the hell out of me. The Army didn't turn out to be my cup of tea and I flunked out of Oxford." He brightened. "Frankly I like it here. It's a joy having nobody care that I'm a Ramsey, and Uncle Hu doesn't care tuppence about climbing mountains, he's too busy running this rum outfit. But damn it I'm desperately afraid that just when I've found the right nook I shall blow it. Failure can get to be a habit, you know."

  "Nonsense," put in Mrs. Pollifax flatly.

  "But just see what's happened. Uncle Hu goes off to Erzurum with his projection man for a week, and after showing me the work for four months he leaves me with just ten minutes of filming, the first assignment he's given me, and I'm already blowing the whole thing. He runs a shoestring operation; I ask you, how long can he afford me?"

&n
bsp; Mrs. Pollifax glanced curiously around the barren room. "You mean this address is all there is to Ramsey Enterprises Ltd.?"

  Colin nodded. "Mostly it's a matter of traveling around the country—he comes back here to splice and develop film and pick up his mail. He has a tie-in with the British Council. Winters he puts chains and a snowplow on the van and goes on tour, as he calls it. Shows Turkish films in the hata series —the council houses in the villages—and occasionally shows films from England. There are thousands of little villages in Turkey and for some of them it's the only contact they have with the outside world except for the traveling schoolteacher. But his real passion is making documentaries about Turkey— he really loves the place. In the summer he drops everything for this, he'll take on any assignment he can get—travelogs, industrial films, commercials, short subjects, that sort of thing."

  "And works all alone!" exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax.

  Colin smiled wryly. "There's scarcely enough money in it for a crowd, but he does all right. As you can see, he picks up people like me when it pleases him, and then there are students in the summer, and in the winter there are mechanics and out-of-work seasonal people. It's all very casual but it functions."

  "And your family like him?"

  Colin wrinkled his nose. "Everything's relative, isn't it? He used to be Sir Hubert, with all the usual Ramsey accomplishments. Medals. Honors. Came out of World War Two loaded with that sort of thing, was knighted by the King and then one day took all the medals, flushed 'em down the toilet, packed a duffel bag and left England. A woman, my mother said. No, they don't like him but they leave him alone." He sighed. "It's hard to explain my family, they're not monsters, you know, they're marvelous really. Colorful, competitive, uninhibited, uncomplicated. I'd have absolutely no problems at all if—well, if—"

  "If you were also colorful, competitive, uninhibited and uncomplicated," said Mrs. Pollifax, nodding.