Chapter 5
Permission has been obtained from Dublin to purchase one of the smaller Mercedes. I have been trying to hire a driver. They are a select bunch. They confer together when their charges are engaged at meetings. They know everything. One recruits a driver by letting it be known in the proper circle that a driver is required. Approved candidates turn up. Only two presented themselves this afternoon. The first of the two has driven the Saudi Ambassador for three years and is tired of the ban on alcohol, being fond of a glass of raki with his meals. Investigation confirms that he is very fond of raki. The second candidate had excellent references and has been 'chauffeur to India and Luxembourg'.
I felt secure enough to carry the interview through to its second phase by inviting Walter to join us. Ambassador and prospective driver surveyed each other. The driver looked unimpressed. Ambassador Brown, in his office, takes off jacket and tie.
'There will be a dress allowance?'
'A modest one,' I replied.
'I will be in touch,' said the candidate, rising and leaving with a chilly bow.
'You fluffed that one, Denis.' said the Ambassador.
'I rather thought, Ambassador, that it was your casual dress style that gave offence. Among his colleagues, he could never live down an employer in shirtsleeves.'
'You might have told him that my dress is beyond reproach when I appear in my official capacity.'
'The cook and driver no longer required by the Portuguese are available. Perhaps we could take them on.'
'Did the driver give poor Miguel a heart attack by reckless driving?'
'His Excellency suffered the attack while eating breakfast.'
'I have been wondering, Denis, if I could manage without a driver.'
'No, you couldn't.'
Nobody knows better than himself that Ambassadors are prisoners of form, yet an urchin Wally Brown occasionally kicks truculently at the prison door. I suppose it is ironic that he is required by his doctor to walk and lower his blood pressure, while his position requires that he be driven everywhere.
'Think of the consternation in the Palace if you had to go and park the car while the President waited to greet you.'
Wally the urchin still kicked a little, so I enquired how security at Parliament would deal with a taxi, and clinched the matter by pointing out that it would not be advisable, given the current political climate, to have the Countess driving around alone in her little red sports car. (The Countess, who is accident- prone, should not drive, whatever the political climate.)
Walter said he hoped I would approve the house, driver and cook of the Portuguese ambassador and be done with it. He would even undertake to represent Portugal if Portugal could solve all his domestic problems at one swoop. Walter doodled in numbers as we spoke. I hate this habit of his. I feel that at least half his attention is on an obscure mathematical problem as I try to talk sense to him.
'Are you worrying about the accounts, Ambassador?' I asked him once.
'Oh no Denis! I leave them in your capable hands. I am working out the rate at which your hair grows – given that you had a haircut five weeks ago and another today.'
'One ought to have a haircut every six weeks,' I said, hoping that he would take the hint. He waits until his own hair grows over his collar before getting it cut.
Ambassador Brown, on the scale of evaluation maintained by third secretaries, gets just above average marks. He is moderately everything. Though he scores relatively high on reasonableness, manageability, giving credit where credit is due, his marks are pulled down by a lack of drive and ambition, which reflects adversely on junior officers associated with him. He has a cynical, somewhat sardonic sense of humour that prevents a single-minded pursuit of distinction. There is also the incongruity of his marriage to the Countess; an elderly turkey cock married to a fairly young bird of paradise. He limped as he moved across the office.
'I thought your ankle was better?'
'I hurt it again, this morning, on the stairs.'
I couldn't believe it, Millicent. Surely the embarrassment of the Patrick's Day episode should have been enough to send him quietly into the lift in the mornings.
'Ambassador,' I said, shocked into formality and a sense of responsibility by his folly, 'you really must stop running down those stairs. You won't burn up calories that way and you might do yourself worse damage than a sprained ankle.'
'Burn calories?' He gaped at me and broke into a laugh. 'What on earth made you think I run down to breakfast to burn calories? Is that what you do for exercise, Denis? No wonder you are developing a little paunch. I take the stairs because I cannot bear waiting for the lift. At least that is why I began to do it.'
'Why do you continue?' I asked, anxious to move the focus of interest from my blunder.
'I want to find out if I fell by accident, or was felled by design on Patrick's Day. I run down the emergency stairs every morning, but I keep a hand on the rail and carry a torch, switched on.'
'What happened this morning?'
'The light went out, as before. I didn't fall but I strained the weak ankle.'
'You think someone switched the light off on purpose?'
'I have proved it.'
'A hotel employee, a left-wing political activist, strikes out at a diplomat?'
'Don't sneer, Denis.'
'If you really believe that, you must take precautions.'
'Taken.'
I couldn't get any more information out of him.
'Denis,' he said as I left, 'never worry about putting on a few pounds round the middle. It is a sign of virility.'
It occurs to me, Millicent, that Walter may have a health problem. A minor blackout, followed by a fall on the stairs, would account for his experiences. I'll think of a tactful way to broach the subject of a general check-up.
The Countess's cousin, M. d'Aubine, had coffee with me in the lobby today. He has been called, urgently, to Cappadocia where he acts in a consultative capacity to the Society of Grape Growers. Turkey grows a lot of grapes but not much of it is translated into wine in spite of Kemal Attatürk's attempts to develop the wine trade.
'It is a terrible waste of opportunity,' M. d'Aubine said. 'The terrain is wonderful in Cappadocia. Wine was important there in antiquity. Have you visited the underground cities of Cappadocia, my dear Denis? People claim that they were a defensive measure – perhaps they were – but those stone tanks for pressing grapes, for fermenting and storing wine, would make you wonder if they were not enormous wineries. It is certain, at any rate, that the underground cities were not without stored sunshine.'
Foreign businessmen are deemed to be at risk during the current crisis, but M. d'Aubine is not afraid of being assassinated by political activists. He says, merrily, that if he disappears, it will be due to getting caught in a local feud between Cappadocian grape growers. We must visit Cappadocia, Millicent. It is a four-hour bus trip from Ankara. We will stay in a hotel where the rooms are carved out of rock and have Byzantine paintings on the ceilings.
I like M. d'Aubine, but I am glad that he is leaving. He upstages Walter without being aware of doing so. His height, girth and jutting goatee give him an unfair advantage. His personality is as overpowering as his size. He also gives the impression, unintentionally I am sure, that the Countess should be at home in Château Fontenoy rather than slumming in the diplomatic service. Even when one allows for French exuberance, I find the degree of cousinly attachment exhibited by the Countess her cousin unseemly. They should be aware that they are not in France.
I asked him about the relative importance of grape-type and terroir in producing characteristic wines, expecting him to claim that terroir was of supreme importance in deciding character. Instead, he extended benign tolerance to international Chardonnay. He invited me to a wine-tasting session in Ankara when he returns. Perhaps I will be able to buy a superior wine at a reasonable price.
I went out, just now, to buy milk at the bakkal, the corner shop.
It stays open until midnight. The shop is the family living room. I delayed a while, as usual, practising my Turkish and teaching a few words of English to the children. We were startled by shouting and running footsteps outside. I moved towards the door, but Feroz Bey held me back and switched out the light. More shouting, cars swerving, police whistles, shots, a cry, wailing that stopped abruptly.
'What is it?'
'The police shot someone. Stay until they have cleaned up. They don't like watchers.'
When I left the shop, there were police on duty preventing anyone from going down the side street, so I still don't know what happened.
Millicent, I was delighted to find your letter in the bag this morning. Wonderful that you have been working with the Turkish Linguaphone course. There was no mention of last night's shooting on the news. Does that mean that nothing serious happened, or does it mean that the press does not report this type of incident? How many of them occur?
You say that you cannot make out whether I like the Countess or not. I'm not sure. I was prepared to find a prima donna with the airs and graces of royalty and the temper of a fishwife. She is overpowering. She takes it for granted that things will happen as she wishes, and usually they do. She never has that slight unease about protocol that makes people like myself over-careful in our observations. When Walter was in Ottawa, she created an incident that might have had serious repercussions. The Saudi Ambassador stood in his own receiving line, on his own national day, greeting guests. (They have 'dry' receptions but provide excellent food.) It is understood by all that he shakes hands only with men. When ladies are introduced, he puts his hand on his heart and bows.
When the unfortunate gentleman bowed to the Countess, she swooped forward and planted a kiss on his forehead in full view of the cameras, and with malice aforethought. Only the most careful and tedious diplomacy hushed it up. Word got back to Dublin, however, and the Ambassador's standing suffered. She hasn't done anything of that magnitude here yet.
I expected her to be difficult to please when it came to finding a residence. However, the problem has been the shortage of suitable houses. When Attatürk moved the capital from Istanbul to Ankara in 1923, he gave sites to the established embassies. Ambassadors left palaces on the Bosporus to their Consuls and settled among dusty goat tracks in Ankara. (The British Ambassador arranged to have a luxury train carriage towed on to a sideline near Ankara and he used that as his office.) Ankara grew into a huge city of apartment blocks jammed tightly together, ringed by unplanned, unserviced houses, romantically individualistic in construction. Each one seems to have an apricot tree, a cock and his hens.
Five months in a hotel have not ruffled the Countess. She has created a feeling among the staff that the hotel is hers. Walter is frustrated. Failure to settle within a reasonable period is considered frivolous in Dublin and reflects adversely on all those involved. That we have found a suitable Chancery is not a mitigating circumstance. 'If they found an office, why couldn't they find a house?'
Full-Bodied Wine : A Vintage Murder Page 4
