The Collected Short Stories (25 page)

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Authors: Jeffrey Archer

BOOK: The Collected Short Stories
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The old man turned and stared with childlike delight at my pile of newspapers and magazines.
“Punch, Time,
and
The Observer
—a veritable feast,” he declared, gathering them into his arms before placing them lovingly on the bed in the corner of the room.
The professor then opened a bottle of Szürkebarát and left me to look at the pictures while he prepared the meal. He slipped away into an alcove that was so small that I had not realized the room contained a kitchenette. He continued to bombard me with questions about England, many of which I was quite unable to answer.
A few minutes later he stepped back into the room, requesting me to take a seat. “Do be seated,” he said. “On reflection, I do not wish you to remove the seat. I wish you to sit on it.” He put a plate in front of me that had on it a leg of something that might have been a chicken, a piece of salami, and a tomato. I felt sad, not because the food was inadequate, but because he believed it to be plentiful.
After dinner, which despite my efforts to eat slowly and hold him in conversation, did not take up much time, the old man made some coffee, which tasted bitter, and then filled a pipe before we continued our discussion. We talked of Shakespeare and his views on A. L. Rowse, and then he turned to politics.
“Is it true,” the professor asked, “that England will soon have a Labour government?”
“The opinion polls seem to indicate as much,” I said.
“I suppose the British feel that Sir Alec Douglas-Home is not swinging enough for the sixties,” said the professor, now puffing vigorously away at his pipe. He paused and looked up at me through the smoke. “I did not offer you a pipe as I assumed after your premature exit in the first round of the competition that you would not be smoking.” I smiled. “But Sir Alec,” he continued, “is a man with long experience in politics, and it's no bad thing for a country to be governed by an experienced gentleman.”
I would have laughed out loud had the same opinion been expressed by my own tutor.
“And what of the Labour leader?” I said, forbearing to mention his name.
“Molded in the white heat of a technological revolution,” he replied. “I am not so certain. I liked Gaitskell, an intelligent and shrewd man. An untimely death. Attlee, like Sir Alec, was a gentleman. But as for Mr. Wilson, I suspect that history will test his mettle—a pun which I had not intended—in that white heat and only then will we discover the truth.”
I could think of no reply.
“I was considering last night after we parted,” the old man continued, “the effect that Suez must have had on a nation which only ten years before had won a world war. The Americans should have backed you. Now we read in retrospect—always the historian's privilege—that at the time Prime Minister Eden was tired and ill. The truth was he didn't get the support from his closest allies when he most needed it.”
“Perhaps we should have supported you in 1956.”
“No, no, it was too late then for the West to shoulder Hungary's problems. Churchill understood that in 1945. He wanted to advance beyond Berlin and to free all the nations that bordered Russia. But the West had had a bellyful of war by then and left Stalin to take advantage of that apathy. When Churchill coined the phrase ‘the Iron Curtain,' he foresaw exactly what was going to happen in the East. Amazing to think that when that great man said, ‘If the British Empire should last a thousand years,' it was in fact destined to survive for only twenty-five. How I wish he had still been around the corridors of power in 1956.”
“Did the revolution greatly affect your life?”
“I do not complain. It is a privilege to be the professor of English in a great university. They do not interfere with me in my department, and Shakespeare is not yet considered subversive literature.” He paused and took a luxuriant puff at his pipe. “And what will you do, young man, when you leave
the university—as you have shown us that you won't be making a living as a runner.”
“I want to be a writer.”
“Then travel, travel, travel,” he said. “You cannot hope to learn everything from books. You must see the world for yourself if you ever hope to paint a picture for others.”
I looked up at the old clock on his mantelpiece only to realize how quickly the time had passed.
“I must leave you, I'm afraid; they expect us all to be back in the hotel by ten.”
“Of course,” he said smiling at the English public school mentality. “I will accompany you to Kossuth Square, and then you will be able to see your hotel on the hill.”
As we left the apartment, I noticed that he didn't bother to lock the door. Life had left him little to lose. He led me quickly through the myriad of narrow streets that I had found so impossible to navigate earlier in the evening, chatting about this building and that, an endless fund of knowledge about his own country as well as mine. When we reached Kossuth Square he took my hand and held on to it, reluctant to let go, as lonely people often will.
“Thank you for allowing an old man to indulge himself by chattering on about his favorite subject.”
“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said. “And when you are next in Somerset you must come to Lympsham and meet my family.”
“Lympsham? I cannot place it,” he said, looking worried.
“I'm not surprised. The village has a population of only twenty-two.”
“Enough for two cricket teams,” remarked the professor. “A game, I confess, with which I have never come to grips.”
“Don't worry,” I said “Neither have half the English.”
“Ah, but I should like to. What is a ‘gully,' a ‘no-ball,' a ‘night watchman'? The terms have always intrigued me.”
“Then remember to get in touch when you're next in England, and I'll take you to Lord's and see if I can teach you something.”
“How kind,” he said, and then he hesitated before adding: “But I don't think we shall meet again.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Well, you see, I have never been outside Hungary in my whole life. When I was young I couldn't afford to, and now I don't imagine that those in authority would allow me to see your beloved England.”
He released my hand, turned, and shuffled back into the shadows of the side streets of Budapest.
I read his obituary in
The Times
once again, as well as the headlines about Afghanistan and its effect on the Moscow Olympics.
He was right. We never met again.
Christopher and Margaret Roberts always spent their summer vacation as far away from England as they could possibly afford. However, as Christopher was the classics teacher at St. Cuthbert's, a small preparatory school just north of Yeovil, and Margaret was the school matron, their experience of four of the five continents was largely confined to periodicals such as
National Geographic
and
Time
.
The Robertses' annual vacation each August was nevertheless sacrosanct, and they spent eleven months of the year saving, planning, and preparing for their one extravagant luxury. The following eleven months were then spent passing on their discoveries to the “offspring”: The Robertses, without children of their own, looked on all the pupils of St. Cuthbert's as “offspring.”
During the long evenings when the “offspring” were meant to be asleep in their dormitories, the Robertses would pore over maps, analyze expert opinion, and then finally come up with a shortlist to consider. In recent expeditions they had been as far afield as Norway, northern Italy, and Yugoslavia, ending up the previous year exploring Achilles' island, Skyros, off the east coast of Greece.
“It has to be Turkey this year,” said Christopher after much soul-searching. A week later Margaret came to the same conclusion, and so they were able to move on to phase
two. Every book on Turkey in the local library was borrowed, consulted, re-borrowed, and reconsulted. Every brochure obtainable from the Turkish Embassy or local travel agents received the same relentless scrutiny.
By the first day of the summer term, charter tickets had been paid for, a car hired, reservations made, and everything that could be insured comprehensively covered. Their plans lacked only one final detail.
“So what will be our steal' this year?” asked Christopher.
“A carpet,” Margaret said, without hesitation. “It has to be. For over a thousand years Turkey has produced the most sought-after carpets in the world. We'd be foolish to consider anything else.”
“How much shall we spend on it?”
“Five hundred pounds,' said Margaret, feeling very extravagant.
Having agreed, they once again swapped memories about the “steals” they had made over the years. In Norway, it had been a whale's tooth carved in the shape of a galleon by a local artist who soon after had been taken up by Steuben. In Tuscany, it had been a ceramic bowl found in a small village where they cast and fired them to be sold in Rome at exorbitant prices: A small blemish only an expert would have noticed made it a “steal.” Just outside Skopje the Robertses had visited a local glass factory and acquired a water jug moments after it had been blown in front of their eyes, and in Skyros they had picked up their greatest triumph to date, a fragment of an urn they discovered near an old excavation site. The Robertses reported their find immediately to the authorities, but the Greek officials had not considered the fragment important enough to prevent it being exported to St. Cuthbert's.
On returning to England, Christopher couldn't resist just checking with the senior classics don at his old alma mater. He confirmed the piece was probably twelfth century. This latest “steal” now stood, carefully mounted, on their living room mantelpiece.
“Yes, a carpet would be perfect,” Margaret mused. “The
trouble is, everyone goes to Turkey with the idea of picking up a carpet cheaply. So to find a really good one …”
She knelt and began to measure the small space in front of their living room fireplace.
“Seven by three should do it,” she said.
Within a few days of term ending, the Robertses traveled by bus to Heathrow. The journey took a little longer than by rail but at half the cost. “Money saved is money that can be spent on the carpet,” Margaret reminded her husband.
“Agreed, Matron,” said Christopher, laughing.
On arrival at Heathrow they checked their baggage on to the charter flight, selected two nonsmoking seats, and, finding they had time to spare, decided to watch other planes taking off for even more exotic places.
It was Christopher who first spotted the two passengers dashing across the tarmac, obviously late.
“Look,” he said, pointing at the running couple. His wife studied the overweight pair, still tan from a previous vacation, as they lumbered up the steps to their plane.
“Mr. and Mrs. Kendall-Hume,” Margaret said in disbelief. After hesitating for a moment, she added, “I wouldn't want to be uncharitable about any of the offspring, but I do find young Malcolm Kendall-Hume a …” She paused.
“‘Spoiled little brat'?” suggested her husband.
“Quite,” said Margaret. “I can't begin to think what his parents must be like.”
“Very successful, if the boy's stories are to be believed,” said Christopher. “A string of secondhand garages from Birmingham to Bristol.”
“Thank God they're not on our flight.”
“Bermuda or the Bahamas would be my guess,” suggested Christopher.
A voice emanating from the loudspeaker gave Margaret no chance to offer her opinion.
“Olympic Airways Flight 172 to Istanbul is now boarding at Gate Number Thirty-seven.”
“That's us,” said Christopher happily as they began their long march to their departure gate.
They were the first passengers to board, and once shown to their seats they settled down to study the guidebooks of Turkey and their three files of research.
“We must be sure to see Diana's Temple when we visit Ephesus,” said Christopher, as the plane taxied out onto the runway.
“Not forgetting that at that time we shall be only a few kilometers away from the purported last home of the Virgin Mary,” added Margaret.
“Taken with a pinch of salt by serious historians,” Christopher remarked as if addressing a member of the Lower Fourth, but his wife was too engrossed in her book to notice. They both continued to study on their own before Christopher asked what his wife was reading.
“
Carpets—Fact and Fiction
, by Abdul Verizoglu, seventeenth edition,” she said, confident that any errors would have been eradicated in the previous sixteen. “It's most informative. The finest examples, it seems, are from Hereke and are woven in silk and are sometimes worked on by up to twenty young women, even children, at a time.”
“Why young?” pondered Christopher. “You'd have thought experience would have been essential for such a delicate task.”
“Apparently not,” said Margaret. “Herekes are woven by those with young eyes that can discern intricate patterns sometimes no larger than a pinpoint and with up to nine hundred knots a square inch. Such a carpet,” continued Margaret, “can cost as much as fifteen, even twenty, thousand pounds.”
“And at the other end of the scale? Carpets woven in old leftover wool by old leftover women?” suggested Christopher, answering his own question.
“No doubt,” said Margaret. “But even for our humble purse there are some simple guidelines to follow.”
Christopher leaned over so that he could be sure to take in every word above the roar of the engines.
“The muted reds and blues with a green base are considered classic and are much admired by Turkish collectors, but
one should avoid the bright yellows and oranges,” read his wife aloud. “And never consider a carpet that displays animals, birds, or fishes, as they are produced only to satisfy Western tastes.”
“Don't they like animals?”
“I don't think that's the point,” said Margaret. “The Sunni Muslims, who are the country's religious leaders, don't approve of graven images. But if we search diligently around the bazaars we should still be able to come across a bargain for a few hundred pounds.”
“What a wonderful excuse to spend all day in the bazaars.”
Margaret smiled before continuing. “But listen. It's most important to bargain. The opening price the dealer offers is likely to be double what he expects to get and treble what the carpet is worth.” She looked up from her book. “If there's any bargaining to be done it will have to be carried out by you, my dear. They're not used to that sort of thing at Marks & Spencer.”
Christopher smiled.
“And finally,” continued his wife, turning a page of her book, “if the dealer offers you coffee you should accept. It means he expects the process to go on for some time because he enjoys the bargaining as much as the sale.”
“If that's the case they had better have a very large pot percolating for us,” said Christopher as he closed his eyes and began to contemplate the pleasures that awaited him. Margaret only closed her books on carpets when the plane touched down at Istanbul airport, and at once opened file number one, entitled “Pre-Turkey.”
“A shuttle bus should be waiting for us at the north side of the terminal. It will take us on to the local flight,” she assured her husband as she carefully set her watch ahead two hours.
The Robertses were soon following the stream of passengers heading in the direction of passport control. The first people they saw in front of them were the same middle-aged
couple they had assumed were destined for more exotic shores.
“Wonder where they're heading,” said Christopher.
“Istanbul Hilton, I expect,” said Margaret as they climbed into a vehicle that had been declared obsolete by the Glasgow Corporation Bus Company some twenty years before. It spluttered out black exhaust fumes as it revved up before heading off in the direction of the local THY flight.
The Robertses soon forgot all about Mr. and Mrs. Kendall-Hume once they looked out of the little airplane windows to admire the west coast of Turkey highlighted by the setting sun. The plane landed in the port of Izmir just as the shimmering red ball disappeared behind the highest hill. Another bus, even older than the earlier one, ensured that the Robertses reached their little guesthouse just in time for late supper.
Their room was tiny but clean, and the owner much in the same mold. He greeted them both with exaggerated gesturing and a brilliant smile that augured well for the next twenty-one days. Early the following morning, the Robertses checked over their detailed plans for day one in file number two. They were first to collect the rented Fiat that had already been paid for in England, before driving off into the hills to the ancient Byzantine fortress at Selcuk in the morning, to be followed by the Temple of Diana in the afternoon if they still had time.
After breakfast had been cleared away and they had cleaned their teeth, the Robertses left the guesthouse a few minutes before nine. Armed with their car rental form and guidebook, they headed off for Beyazik's Garage, where their promised car awaited them. They strolled down the cobbled streets past the little white houses, enjoying the sea breeze until they reached the bay. Christopher spotted the sign for Beyazik's Garage when it was still a hundred yards ahead of them.
As they passed the magnificent yachts moored alongside the harbor, they tested each other on the nationality of each
flag, feeling not unlike the “offspring” completing a geography test.
“Italian, French, Liberian, Panamanian, German. There aren't many British boats,” said Christopher, sounding unusually patriotic, the way he always did, Margaret reflected, the moment they were abroad.
She stared at the rows of gleaming hulls lined up like buses in Piccadilly during the rush hour; some of the boats were even bigger than buses. “I wonder what kind of people can possibly afford such luxury?” she asked, not expecting a reply.
“Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, isn't it?” shouted a voice from behind them. They both turned to see a now-familiar figure dressed in a white shirt and white shorts, wearing a hat that made him look not unlike the captain in the “Birds Eye” commercial, waving at them from the bow of one of the bigger yachts.
“Climb on board, me hearties,” Mr. Kendall-Hume declared enthusiastically, more in the manner of a command than an invitation.
Reluctantly the Robertses walked the gangplank.
“Look who's here,” their host shouted down a large hole in the middle of the deck. A moment later Mrs. Kendall-Hume appeared from below, dressed in a diaphanous orange sarong and a matching bikini top. “It's Mr. and Mrs. Roberts—you remember, from Malcolm's school.”
Kendall-Hume turned back to face the dismayed couple. “I don't remember your first names, but this is Melody and I'm Ray.”
“Christopher and Margaret,” the schoolmaster admitted as handshakes were exchanged.
“What about a drink? Gin, vodka, or … ?”
“Oh, no,” said Margaret. “Thank you very much, we'll both have orange juice.”
“Suit yourselves,” said Ray Kendall-Hume. “You must stay for lunch.”
“But we couldn't impose …”
“I insist,” said Mr. Kendall-Hume. “After all, we're on vacation.
By the way, we'll be going over to the other side of the bay for lunch. There's one hell of a beach there, and it will give you a chance to sunbathe and swim in peace.”

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