The Means of Escape (7 page)

There Tanner had made his one oversight. It wasn’t the afterbirth, it was a second daughter, smaller, but a twin. – But how come, if both of them were girls, that Mr Tanner himself still had the name of Tanner? Well, the Tanners went on to have nine more children, some
of them boys, and one of those boys was Mr Tanner’s father. That evening, when the doctor came in from the yard with the messy scrap, he squeezed it as though he was wringing it out to dry, and it opened its mouth and the colder air of the kitchen rushed in and she’d got her start in life. After that the Tanners always had one of those tinplate mottoes hung up on the wall – Throw Nothing Away. You could get them then at the hardware store. – And this was the point that Mr Tanner had been wanting to make all along – whereas the first daughter never got to be anything in particular, this second little girl grew up to be a lawyer with a firm in Wellington, and she did very well.

All the time Brinkman continued to sit there by the table and smoke his pipe. Two more women born into the world! It must have seemed to him that if this sort of thing went on there should be a good chance, in the end, for him to acquire one for himself. Meanwhile, they would have to serve dinner sometime.

L
ady P lived at Tailfirst, which was not shown to the public. Fothergill was the resident administrator, or dogsbody, at Tailfirst Farm, which was shown 1 April to end October, Mon., Wed., Sat.: no coach-parties, no backpackers, guide dogs by arrangement, WC, small shop. It was the old Home Farm, sympathetically rebuilt in red brick between 1892 and 1894 by Philip Webb (a good example of his later manner), the small herb and lavender garden possibly suggested by Gertrude Jekyll. The National Trust had steadfastly refused to take it over; still, they can make mistakes, like the rest of us.

‘Now Fothergill, as to the room stewards,’ said Lady P., returning with frighteningly renewed energies from the Maldives.

‘The ladies …’

‘The Trust calls them room stewards …’

‘Two of them, of course, are your own recommendations – Mrs Feare, who was at the Old Pottery Shop until
it closed, and Mrs Twine, who was dinner lady at the village school.’

‘Until
that
closed. Faithful souls both.’

‘I’m sure they are, and that is my great difficulty.’

‘Don’t confuse yourself with detail. You must treasure Twine and Feare, and dispense with Mrs Horrabin.’

‘I should very much like to do that,’ said Fothergill.

Lady P. looked at him sharply. ‘I’m told in the village that you only engaged her last Wednesday. Now, in any group of employees, and perhaps particularly with low-paid employees, a dominating figure creates discord.’

‘Do you know Mrs Horrabin well, Lady P?’ asked Fothergill.

‘Of course not. I’ve been obliged to meet her, I think twice, on my Recreation Committee. She comes from the Industrial Estate at Battisford, as you ought to know.’

‘I do know it.’

‘You don’t look well, you know, Fothergill. When you came into the room I thought, the man doesn’t look well. Are you still worrying about anything?’

He collected himself for a moment. ‘In what way am I to get rid of Mrs Horrabin?’

‘I’m sure you don’t want me to tell you how to do your job,’ said Lady P.

‘I do want you to tell me.’

Fothergill lived in one of the attics (not shown) at the Farm, on a salary so small that it was difficult to see how he had survived for the past year. Undoubtedly there was something not quite right about him, or by the time he
was fifty-six – if that was his real age – he would be married (perhaps he had been), and he would certainly by now have found some better employment. Lady P, who found it better in every way not to leave such things to her husband, had drafted the advertisement which was specifically aimed at applicants with something not quite right about them, who would come cheap: ‘Rent-free accommodation, remote, peaceful situation, ample free time, suit writer.’ Fothergill wasn’t a writer, but then he soon discovered there wasn’t much free time either.

‘I do want you to tell me,’ he repeated.

He had known very little about architecture when he came, nothing about tile hanging, weather boarding, lead box-guttering or late Victorian electrical fittings, and he had never heard of Philip Webb. He learned these things between maintaining the garden, the very old Land Rover and the still older petrol mower. But the home-made damson cordial was manufactured and supplied by a Pakistani-owned firm in Sheffield, no trouble there, and to his surprise, Mrs Feare and Mrs Twine had agreed to come. ‘You’re a novelty for them,’ said the man who came to clean out the cess-pit. It was gratifying to Fothergill to be described as a novelty.

So far there had been worryingly few visitors, but he disposed carefully of his small force. Mrs Twine couldn’t stand for too long, and was best off in the dining-room where there was a solid table to lean against; on the other hand, she was sharper than Mrs Feare, who let people linger in the conservatory and nick the tomatoes.

Mrs Feare was more at home in the shop with the fudge and postcards, and her ten-year-old son biked up after school to work out the day’s VAT on his calculator. Mrs Twine also fancied herself in the shop, but had no son to offer. Fothergill hurried about between the garden, the white-painted drawing-room and the cash-desk. Each day solved itself, by closing time, without complaints. A remote, peaceful situation.

Mrs Horrabin had driven up to the front door of the Farm at 9 a.m. last Tuesday. To avoid shouting out of the bedroom window he had come downstairs, unbarred, unlocked and unopened. ‘The house is not shown today, madam. Can I help you at all?’

‘We’ll see,’ said Mrs Horrabin.

Hugely, beigely, she got out of her Sunny, and with a broad white smile told him her name.

‘I’ve decided to take over here.’

‘I’m afraid there are no vacancies.’

‘Shirley Twine won’t be coming back after the end of this week.’

‘She said nothing …’

‘She’ll take a hint.’

‘Mrs Feare …’

‘I’ll give her a hint as well. They won’t either of them break their hearts over it, they can get another little job easily enough.’ She stared at him boldly and unpeaceably. ‘Some can, some can’t.’

Although from long habit Fothergill pretended not to understand her, he was in no way surprised. He was pretty sure he had never met Mrs Horrabin before, but that didn’t mean that through one of life’s thousand unhappy coincidences she might not know something unacceptable about him. He had lived in so many places, and so often left them in a hurry.

‘Didn’t you once work as a credit manager in Basingstoke?’ she asked now. ‘An uncle of mine lives there.’

She belonged to the tribe of torturers. Why pretend they don’t exist?

‘You have it in mind,’ he said, ‘to take away my last chance.’

Mrs Horrabin ignored this. ‘I know what’s wrong with this place. You’ve got these two old boilers standing in the corners of the rooms and they make people afraid to come in at all. In any case they don’t particularly want to look at what’s on show, they want to have a good poke around. They want to see the bedrooms and the john.’

In default of a decent piece of rope Fothergill had placed a handwritten card,
PRIVATE
, on the front stairs. Mrs Horrabin actually trod on it – visitors wearing stiletto heels not admitted – on her way up. In rage and disgust he followed her into the never-used, pomegranate-papered front bedroom where, marching in, she dragged down the blinds.

‘It isn’t necessary to restrict the light in here,’ he said, clinging to his professional status, ‘there are no watercolours.’

‘I like them down. Just for half an hour or so.’

She sat down on the double bed, whose box-springs reverberated, and took off her jacket. She was wearing a very low-necked blouse, with machine embroidery. ‘I don’t believe you know what to do next,’ she said.

Fothergill cried, ‘It’s only twenty past nine in the morning.’ It was not quite what he had meant to say. He went on, ‘You’re making a grotesque mistake.’

‘Well, perhaps I am, we’ll have to see,’ said Mrs Horrabin. ‘At least, though, you’ve got your own teeth. You can’t go wrong about that, you can always catch the gleam of dentures. Anyway, the choice isn’t so wide round here.’

But from her great beige bag, which she had never so far left hold of, a great monotonous chirp began, like a demented pipit.

‘That’ll be Mr Horrabin outside in your drive.’ She opened her bag and took out her mobile phone. ‘Tweety calling Bub …’

‘Your husband knows you’re here?’

‘He always knows where I am. He isn’t against my enjoying myself, he stretches a point there, but he likes to feel included.’

‘Included in what way?’

‘He’s an area salesman for alternative medicines … He wants me at home, it seems, so I’m letting you off for
this morning … But I’ll be back tomorrow. We’ll be able to manage quite well between us.’

He shouted, ‘You have robbed me of Mrs Feare and Mrs Twine, you have taken away my peace of mind, and what’s worse I find you completely unattractive.’ Or perhaps he had never said the words aloud, since Mrs Horrabin was standing self-approvingly in front of the cheval glass, with the calm smile of the powerful, smoothing the shoulders of her jacket.

While Fothergill allowed himself to think backwards into the trap of his mind, Lady P. had been talking on, passing to many other topics, and now gracefully returned. He mustn’t blame himself too much, she said, for the disappointing figures. Apart from the fact that they didn’t do teas, the great drawback was that nothing interesting had ever happened at Tailfirst Farm. Not a murder, she didn’t mean that, although it would certainly create some interest, but perhaps some sad and unexpected accident … She laughed a little, to show that a joke had been intended, but saw that Fothergill had been quite prepared to agree with her. He hasn’t much spirit, she thought. Probably he never thinks about anything except keeping his job.

M
ake no mistake, you pay for every drop of blood in your body.

Demetrius Christiaki was anxious, as far as possible, to please his father, who was a cotton importer, and still wore on his watch-chain one of the gold 100 lira pieces which had been brought away out of Stamboul fifty years before when the family escaped to London. Father and son had had a number of disagreements, but not, fortunately, about Dimi’s choice of career. He trained as an artist, in London with Luke Fildes, and in Paris with Gérôme. The Christiaki were prosperous but they were not materialists. In 1880, when Dimi was twenty, his father asked him to go to Stamboul to paint a portrait of his aunt.

Aunt Calliope (in reality the cousin of a great aunt) belonged to a branch of the family which had chosen to stay behind in Turkey after the troubles. She lived alone, except for her servants and a great niece, in the Greek district, the Fener. She must be over seventy by this time, and was said to be in poor health. Dimi’s father had a
splendid collection of family portraits by Watts which he intended to leave to the South Kensington Museum, on condition that it should always be on show to the public, free of charge. It was almost complete, all the older generation were there save one: only Calliope was missing.

‘I don’t see why Watts refuses to go,’ said Dimi. ‘I believe he’s in Venice.’

‘He hasn’t refused, I haven’t asked him. His digestion has become very weak, it would be madness for him to attempt the crossing.’

‘He gets a very good likeness.’

‘I have had you trained for three years,’ said his father. ‘Are you afraid?’

‘Yes,’ said Dimi.

Christiaki senior ignored this, and went on: ‘Good, well, I shall say nothing in my letter about either your drawing or your painting, you will explain my wishes in person. Go gently, remember you will be in the Fener, not in Alexandria.’

‘My aunt may not want me to paint her portrait.’

‘It will be your business to persuade her that you are competent.’

‘I meant that she might not welcome the whole idea.’

‘In any case, she will welcome a relative.’

Dimi had not been to Stamboul since he was ten, a schoolboy on holiday. Some things about it he could remember vividly, others not at all. The sober hush of the Fener, ter
ribly depressing to a ten-year-old, came back to him, and the relief of being taken out sailing almost as far as the mouth of the Black Sea. He recalled very clearly that in his aunt’s house there was a well, or spring, which had been blessed four hundred years ago by St Akakios the Harmless. At the time Dimi had drunk the water with reverence, confident that it would help him to pass his school tests.

He travelled by
Messageries Maritimes
via Marseilles and arrived just before nightfall, when the city which will last as long as there are men on earth looked at its most enticing, not bettered by any engraving, its outline just at the point of disappearing into a pearl-grey sky. The Karaköy wharf, on the other hand, and even the Yeni mosque nearby, proved as they drew near to be black with smoke from the coal-burning ferries, while the water was crowded beyond belief with longshore traffic. Against the wooden piers of the Galata Bridge, filth and rubbish rode high. Shoals of fish, which had swarmed across to feed on human refuse, were hooked, gutted, fried and offered for sale in the cook-boats, consumers consumed.

Perhaps, Dimi thought, he ought to have travelled more respectably. But he was hardly established yet as a portrait painter, and it was a rule of the Christiaki that what you have not earned on your own account you must not spend. If, when they were children, they were tipped sixpence or a shilling by some visiting man of business, they were required to give it back at once, with the explanation ‘I have done nothing that you should give me this.’ And if the kindly guest had turned away and was
no longer listening, one had to tug at his sleeve and repeat the words louder. Surely no duty in later life could be more embarrassing than that. Dimi let his thoughts wander a little. He would arrive late, but he knew that there are moments when to keep count of time is to waste it. Half way up the Golden Horn the ferryboat’s engines faltered, and it had grown quite dark by the time they drifted, apparently at random, against the walls of the Fener Iskalesi. High above him, and above the sea walls of the city, he could see the discreet lights of the Fener.

Dimi’s feet knew these streets. As he walked through the Petri, carrying his one carpet bag, the high cloud drifted apart and showed him that the pavement widened a little to form a kind of square where two domed churches, sunken with age, faced one another. There was one light burning in the barred window of the night baker, who was preparing the church bread. Dimi turned a corner and went down three steps set at an angle to a blank doorway, deep in its stone recess.

Ten years ago a black woman who stood no nonsense had been on duty at the door. When he heard her voice at the grating he remembered her name, and said: ‘Ferahidil, it’s Demetrius, Demetrius from England.’

‘Where is your servant?’

‘I don’t travel with a servant,’ he said. ‘I’m an artist.’

One after another she drew back the bolts. As he crossed the forecourt behind her he could just see the reflections
of her lamp in the gold of the icons, and make out the position of the holy well. Ferahidil let him come only as far as the ante-room. Then she lit another lamp and left him alone while she fetched the coffee. This at least meant that he could consider himself received as a guest.

A young girl, however, came back with the silver tray, the two glasses of water, the two spoonfuls of jam. She was in Turkish dress, as though this – it was two o’clock in the morning – was a party, with bare feet in red leather
tsarouchia.
To the exhausted Dimi her prettiness seemed an injustice. He knew it must be Cousin Evgenia. She must have been about five, as plain as a frog, when he had taught her, with the help of a few sweets from the bazaar, to count in English.

‘Why aren’t you in bed and asleep?’ he asked.

‘Tantine is in bed, I am staying up for you. Why didn’t you come earlier? We sent a
hamal
down to Karaköy for your luggage, he has been there for two days.’

‘I haven’t any luggage,’ Dimi said. ‘I hope he won’t wait there much longer.’ First sitting upright on a chair, but then giving it up for a cushion, she chattered on in Greek, Turkish, French and English without much distinction between them. She couldn’t, however, quite get the English ‘j’, so that she spoke of jam as
zham
, and journey as
zhourney.
This was a relief to Dimi and enabled him, for the first time since he arrived, not to feel at a disadvantage.

Early on the following morning he was called down to the salon to pay his respects to his aunt. This room again he half remembered. It was in the Turkish style, with six pairs of windows shedding their latticed cross lights on to the seats of honour at the far end. But the furniture was French, and sight was obstructed by an immense grand piano made in Berlin and loaded down with Bohemian glass, piles of old journals and a bronze head of Gladstone by Alphonse Legros. Aunt Calliope, much smaller and thinner than he had expected, held out her hand to him from the ‘angle’ beneath the right-hand window.

‘Welcome, you have come.’

‘Welcome, I have found you,’ Dimi replied automatically, scarcely feeling that he spoke the truth, she looked so much worn away. She began to talk about his father, adding mildly: ‘Well, we are quite out of the world here, you have come from England to set us right.’

‘Why should you think that I want to do that?’ Dimi cried in distress. ‘Do you think my father sent me over here to insult you?’

His aunt smiled. ‘You are shouting. What would your English friends say?’

Dimi paused. ‘They would say “Steady on, old fellow.”’

‘Steady on, old fellow,’ she repeated in English, doubtfully.

With some idea of showing the worth or seriousness of his training he began to talk about the bust of Gladstone. He had met Legros often enough and could say that he knew him quite well.

‘He lives in London, but he is French?’ Aunt Calliope asked.

‘Burgundian.’

‘Is it true that he can’t read or write?’

‘It may be true,’ said Dimi, ‘but there’s no way of telling.’ He felt that he was losing her attention because he hadn’t begun by saying something about the spiritual value of art. Everything in the room must have a higher importance for her, even the rubbish on top of the piano. Evidently she tired very easily. She told him that she regretted she would have to rest a good deal of the day, because old friends would be coming in that evening for the express purpose of meeting him.

‘Meanwhile, my dear, you have all you want, you are at home?’

Dimi considered. ‘Perhaps I’m not quite at ease yet. Last night, when I arrived, I was angry with myself because I thought my cousin ought still to be five years old.’

‘You don’t want change?’

‘I want progress, Tantine, certainly I do.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘my Evgenia is still at school.’

While his aunt had been speaking Dimi had begun the study of her face from a professional point of view, calculating, as he had been taught, the primary, secondary and reflected lights. Her age could be indicated, he thought, without heavy shadows, simply by care with the flesh tones. But for some reason he did not like to suggest a preliminary sitting, not now, not yet. He might start
by doing a few sketches from memory in his room, which overlooked the sea.

Ferahidil, with an attendant maid, came to take her mistress up to rest. At midday Evgenia returned, no longer, thank heavens, in fancy dress but in the uniform of her
gymnase
, with plain gold studs in her ears. The two of them sat down together at the low dining table, so that Dimi, who had been uneasily conscious of the heaps of scarcely worn red slippers in the corners of the room, waiting to be given to the poor, and each one lightly marked by her foot’s impress, now found himself near enough to watch her breathing. The uniform confused him.

‘Who are these people who are coming this evening?’ he asked her. ‘Of course you must know them all.’

‘I know them.’ He thought she was going to go through the names, but she only said, ‘I hate them.’

Dimi felt he couldn’t let this pass, even if it was said for effect. ‘What have they done to offend you? Anyway, they will be guests in Tantine’s house, and it’s out of the question …’

It was not a success. At home he himself was the wild one, the Bohemian. He had practice in ignoring reproofs, none in giving them. Evgenia gave him a bright glance.

‘Steady on, old fellow.’

‘Where did you learn that?’

‘I don’t know. When I came back they were all saying it in the kitchen.’

Since it was a fast day they were served with fish and a cheese dish. The flaky pastry was so light that it was difficult to manage; not, however, for Evgenia, who held her fork in her left hand, but ate
alla turca
with two fingers and her right thumb. It was dexterous, but not quite civilised. He wished very much that he could make a drawing of her. That, however, would make her conceited, and it was not what he had come to Stamboul to do. Presently she threw down her fork and said: ‘Well, now you’ve come at last you can take me out into the city.’

‘Haven’t you got afternoon classes?’

‘Not now, not till later.’

‘But where do you want to go?’

‘Anywhere. You can take me to church.’

‘Which church?’

‘To St Theodosia. There’s a service of blessing there this afternoon for Professor Zographos.’

‘But I’ve no idea who he is.’

‘He died three years ago. When they last looked at the corpse it was not corrupted. The family are afraid that he is possessed by some other spirit.’

‘Professor Zographos was a teacher?’

‘Yes, at the college.’

‘What did he teach?’

‘Anatomy,’ said Evgenia absently.

‘And what will they do if he holds up for another three years?’

‘What would anyone do, cousin? Boil his bones clean.’

She began to eat again and he turned the conversation
to her studies. There was a new subject in the final year, psychology, but it did not interest her. Drawing, painting? No, she did none at all. But music she loved. Her piano was the only one in the Fener, probably therefore the only one in Stamboul. When it was time for her to go to London, Dimi must take her to concerts, she had never heard an orchestra play. Dimi replied that he would be happy to take her to a Wagner concert and to present her to Mme Wagner, whom he knew slightly. ‘Oh, cousin, yes, I beseech you …’ She had turned pink, a pale rose colour, delightful. So far, so good. No more on the subject of Professor Zographos.

But at that moment, something having been muttered by a servant as the glutinous desserts, powdered with fine sugar, were handed round, Evgenia declared that they ought to go out at once. Ferahidil wanted to fumigate the rooms on the ground floor. There was a hostile presence in the house. The servant, referring to it, had made the familiar sign to avert the evil eye. Ferahidil was never mistaken, it seemed.

‘And what does she do?’