“They are not the same as those who attack France. They were Catholic Germans.”
“You are ridiculous! Was I not hit in the guts by a bullet fired by a Bavarian Catholic in ‘seventeen? You make me tired. You are ridiculous. Be silent.”
“No, it is you who …”
They went on. Graham heard little more. Before he could make up his mind to cough loudly, he was asleep.
He awoke only once in the night. The vibration had ceased. He looked at his watch, saw that the time was half-past two, and guessed that they had stopped at Chanaq to drop the pilot. A few minutes later, as the engines started again, he went to sleep again.
It was not until the steward brought his coffee seven hours later that he learned that the pilot cutter from Chanaq had brought a telegram for him.
It was addressed: “
GRAHAM, VAPUR SESTRI LEVANTE, CANAKKALE
.” He read:
“H. REQUESTS ME INFORM YOU B. LEFT FOR SOFIA HOUR AGO. ALL WELL. BEST WISHES. KOPEIKIN.”
It had been handed in at Beyoglu at seven o’clock the previous evening.
I
T WAS
an Æ
gean
day: intensely coloured in the sun and with small pink clouds drifting in a bleached indigo sky. A stiff breeze was blowing and the amethyst of the sea was broken with white. The
Sestri Levante
was burying her stem in it and lifting clouds of spray which the breeze whipped across the well-deck like hail. The steward had told him that they were within sight of the island of Makronisi and as he went out on deck he saw it: a thin golden line shimmering in the sun and stretched out ahead of them like a sand bar at the entrance to a lagoon.
There were two other persons on that side of the deck. There was Haller and with him, on his arm, a small desiccated woman with thin grey hair, who was evidently his wife. They were steadying themselves at the rail and he was holding his head up to the wind as if to draw strength from it. He had his hat off and the white hair quivered with the air streaming through it.
Evidently they had not seen him. He made his way up to the boat deck. The breeze there was stronger. Mr. Kuvetli and the French couple stood by the rail clutching at their hats and watching the gulls following the ship. Mr. Kuvetli saw him immediately and waved. He went over to them.
“Good morning.
Madame. Monsieur.”
They greeted him guardedly but Mr. Kuvetli was enthusiastic.
“It
is
good morning, eh? You sleep well? I look forward to our excursion this afternoon. Permit me to present Monsieur and Madame Mathis. Monsieur Graham.”
There was handshaking. Mathis was a sharp-featured man of fifty or so with lean jaws and a permanent frown. But his smile, when it came, was good and his eyes were alive. The frown was the badge of his ascendancy over his wife. She had bony hips and wore an expression which said that she was determined to keep her temper however sorely it were tried. She was like her voice.
“Monsieur Mathis,” said Mr. Kuvetli, whose French was a good deal more certain than his English, “is from Eskeshehir, where he has been working with the French railway company.”
“It is a bad climate for the lungs,” said Mathis. “Do you know Eskeshehir, Monsieur Graham?”
“I was there for a few minutes only.”
“That would have been quite enough for me,” said Madame Mathis. “We have been there three years. It was never any better than the day we arrived.”
“The Turks are a great people,” said her husband. “They are hard and they endure. But we shall be glad
to return to France. Do you come from London, Monsieur?”
“No, the North of England. I have been in Turkey for a few weeks on business.”
“To us, war will be strange after so many years. They say that the towns in France are darker than the last time.”
“The towns are damnably dark both in France and in England. If you do not have to go out at night it is better to stay in.”
“It is war,” said Mathis sententiously.
“It is the filthy Bosche,” said his wife.
“War,” put in Mr. Kuvetli, stroking an unshaven chin, “is a terrible thing. There is no doubt of it. But the Allies must win.”
“The Bosche is strong,” said Mathis. “It is easy to say that the Allies must win, but they yet have the fighting to do. And do we yet know whom we are going to fight or where? There is a front in the East as well as in the West. We do not yet know the truth. When that is known the war will be over.”
“It is not for us to ask questions,” said his wife.
His lips twisted and in his brown eyes was the bitterness of years. “You are right. It is not for us to ask questions. And why? Because the only people who can give us the answers are the bankers and the politicians at the top, the boys with the shares in the big factories which make war materials. They will not give us answers. Why? Because they know that if the soldiers of France and England knew those answers they would not fight.”
His wife reddened. “You are mad! Naturally the men of France would fight to defend us from the filthy
Bosche.” She glanced at Graham. “It is bad to say that France would not fight. We are not cowards.”
“No, but neither are we fools.” He turned quickly to Graham. “Have you heard of Briey, Monsieur? From the mines of the Briey district comes ninety per cent. of France’s iron ore. In nineteen fourteen those mines were captured by the Germans, who worked them for the iron they needed. They worked them hard. They have admitted since that without the iron they mined at Briey they would have been finished in nineteen seventeen. Yes, they worked Briey hard. I, who was at Verdun, can tell you that. Night after night we watched the glare in the sky from the blast furnaces of Briey a few kilometres away; the blast furnaces that were feeding the German guns. Our artillery and our bombing aeroplanes could have blown those furnaces to pieces in a week. But our artillery remained silent; an airman who dropped one bomb on the Briey area was court-martialled. Why?” His voice rose. “I will tell you why, Monsieur. Because there were orders that Briey was not to be touched. Whose orders? Nobody knew. The orders came from someone at the top. The Ministry of War said that it was the generals. The generals said that it was the Ministry of War. We did not find out the facts until after the war. The orders had been issued by Monsieur de Wendel of the Comité des Forges who owned the Briey mines and blast furnaces. We were fighting for our lives, but our lives were less important than that the property of Monsieur de Wendel should be preserved to make fat profits. No, it is not good for those who fight to know too much. Speeches, yes! The truth, no!”
His wife sniggered. “It is always the same. Let someone mention the war and he begins to talk about Briey—something that happened twenty-four years ago.”
“And why not?” he demanded. “Things have not changed so much. Because we do not know about such things until after they have happened it does not mean that things like it are not happening now. When I think of war I think also of Briey and the glare of the blast furnaces in the sky to remind myself that I am an ordinary man who must not believe all that he is told. I see the newspapers from France with the blanks in them to show where the censor has been at work. They tell me certain things, these newspapers. France, they say, is fighting with England against Hitler and the Nazis for democracy and liberty.”
“And you don’t believe that?” Graham asked.
“I believe that
the peoples
of France and England are so fighting, but is that the same thing? I think of Briey and wonder. Those same newspapers once told me that the Germans were not taking ore from the Briey mines and that all was well. I am an invalid of the last war. I do not have to fight in this one. But I can think.”
His wife laughed again. “Ha! It will be different when he gets to France again. He talks like a fool but you should take no notice, Messieurs. He is a good Frenchman. He won the Croix de Guerre.”
He winked. “A little piece of silver outside the chest to serenade the little piece of steel inside, eh? It is the women, I think, who should fight these wars. They are more ferocious as patriots than the men.”
“And what do you think, Mr. Kuvetli?” said Graham.
“Me? Ah, please!” Mr. Kuvetli looked apologetic. “I am neutral, you understand. I know nothing. I have no opinion.” He spread out his hands. “I sell tobacco. Export business. That is enough.”
The Frenchman’s eyebrows went up. “Tobacco? So? I arranged a great deal of transport for the tobacco companies. What company is that?”
“Pazar of Istanbul.”
“Pazar?” Mathis looked slightly puzzled. “I don’t think …”
But Mr. Kuvetli interrupted him. “Ah! See! There is Greece!”
They looked. There, sure enough, was Greece. It looked like a low bank of cloud on the horizon beyond the end of the golden line of Makronisi, a line that was contracting slowly as the ship ploughed on its way through the Zea channel.
“Beautiful day!” enthused Mr. Kuvetli. “Magnificent!” He drew a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “I anticipate very much to see Athens. We get to Piræus at two o’clock.”
“Are you and Madame going ashore?” said Graham to Mathis.
“No, I think not. It is too short a time.” He turned his coat collar up and shivered. “I agree that it is a beautiful day, but it is cold.”
“If you did not stand talking so much,” said his wife, “you would keep warm. And you have no scarf.”
“Very well, very well!” he said irritably. “We will go below. Excuse us, please.”
“I think that I, too, will go,” said Mr. Kuvetli. “Are
you coming down, Mr. Graham?”
“I’ll stay a little.” He would have enough of Mr. Kuvetli later.
“Then at two o’clock.”
“Yes.”
When they had gone he looked at his watch, saw that it was eleven-thirty, and made up his mind to walk round the boat deck ten times before he went down for a drink. He was, he decided as he began to walk, a good deal better for his night’s rest. For one thing, his hand had ceased throbbing and he could bend the fingers a little, without pain. More important, however, was the fact that the feeling of moving in a nightmare which he had had the previous day had now gone. He felt whole again and cheerful. Yesterday was years away. There was, of course, his bandaged hand to remind him of it but the wound no longer seemed significant. Yesterday it had been a part of something horrible. To-day it was a cut on the back of his hand, a cut which would take a few days to heal. Meanwhile he was on his way home, back to his work. As for Mademoiselle Josette, he had had, fortunately, enough sense left not to behave really stupidly. That he should actually have wanted, even momentarily, to kiss her was fantastic enough. However, there were extenuating circumstances. He had been tired and confused; and, while she was a woman whose needs and methods of fulfilling them were only too apparent, she was undeniably attractive in a blowzy way.
He had completed his fourth circuit when the subject of these reflections appeared on the deck. She had on a
camel hair coat instead of the fur, a green cotton scarf round her head in place of the woollen one, and wore sports shoes with cork “platform” soles. She waited for him to come over to her.
He smiled and nodded. “Good morning.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Good morning! Is that all you have to say?”
He was startled. “What should I say?”
“You have disappointed me. I thought that all Englishmen got out of bed early to eat a great English breakfast. I get out of bed at ten but you are nowhere to be found. The steward says that you are still in your cabin.”
“Unfortunately they don’t serve English breakfasts on this boat. I made do with coffee and drank it in bed.”
She frowned. “Now, you do not ask why I wished to see you. Is it so natural that I should wish to see you as soon as I left my bed?”
The mock severity was appalling. Graham said: “I’m afraid I didn’t take you seriously. Why
should
you want to find me?”
“Ah, that is better. It is not good but it is better. Are you going into Athens this afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“I wished to ask you if you would let me come with you.”
“I see. I should be …”
“But now it is too late.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Graham happily. “I should have been delighted to take you.”
She shrugged. “It is too late. Mr. Kuvetli, the little
Turk, has asked me and,
faut de mieux
, I accepted. I do not like him but he knows Athens very well. It will be interesting.”
“Yes, I should think it would be.”
“He is a very interesting man.”
“Evidently.”
“Of course, I might be able to persuade him …”
“Unfortunately, there is a difficulty. Last night Mr. Kuvetli asked me if I minded his going with me as he had never been in Athens before.”
It gave him a great deal of pleasure to say it; but she was disconcerted only momentarily. She burst out laughing.
“You are not at all polite. Not at all. You let me say what you know to be untrue. You do not stop me. You are unkind.” She laughed again. “But it is a good joke.”
“I’m really very sorry.”
“You are too kind. I wished only to be friendly to you. I do not care whether I go to Athens or not.”
“I’m sure Mr. Kuvetli would be delighted if you came with us. So should I, of course. You probably know a great deal more about Athens than I do.”
Her eyes narrowed suddenly. “What, please, do you mean by that?”
He had not meant anything at all beyond the plain statement. He said, with a smile that he intended to be reassuring: “I mean that you have probably danced there.”
She stared at him sullenly for a moment. He felt the smile, still clinging fatuously to his lips, fading. She said slowly: “I do not think I like you as much as I thought. I do not think that you understand me at all.”
“It’s possible. I’ve known you for such a short time.”
“Because a woman is an artiste,” she said angrily, “you think that she must be of the
milieu.”
“Not at all. The idea hadn’t occurred to me. Would you like to walk round the deck?”