Tremor of Intent (28 page)

‘Sixteen.' She smirked very faintly then looked sad again.

‘Not so young. I once had an Italian girl of eleven. I was once offered a Tamil girl of nine.'

‘You're pretty horrid really, aren't you?' But she gave him a full gaze of neutral appraisal.
Initiator:
he could see the word being marshalled into position behind her eyes. And on this cruise there was a man who was really what you might call an initiator. A what? Tell us more.

‘I don't know what I am,' said Hillier. ‘I failed to be a corpse. I dreamed of a regeneration. Perhaps one can't have that without dying first. It was foolish of me to think I could be both a father and a husband. And yet in what capacity do I dread your being thrown to the wolves?'

‘I can look after myself. We can both look after ourselves.'

There was a knock at the door. ‘Tea at last,' Hillier said. ‘You'd better get off that bunk. You'd better look as though you just came in to tell me your sad news.' She got up and went demurely to a chair. Sad news; that was what the Old Mortality tasted like. Have another nip of Sad News. Hillier unlocked and opened up. It was not the strange steward, Wriste's replacement. It was Alan. In his dressing-gown, hair sleek, Black Russian in holder, he looked rested and mature.

‘Did she spend the night here?' he asked. Hillier made a mouth and shrugged; no point in denying it. The brother had done murder; the sister had been initiated. ‘Well,' said Alan, ‘you've certainly shown both of us how the other half lives.' He tasted, like Sad News, the ineptness of that last word. ‘She came,' he said. ‘She woke me up to tell me. It seemed rather small stuff really. I hope that doesn't sound callous.'

Very ill at ease, Hillier said: ‘He reached Byzantium first.' He could then have bitten out his tongue. Alan looked at him gravely,
saying: ‘You're what I'd call a romantic. Poetry and games and visions.' To Clara he said: ‘She's behaving as I knew she would. Terribly ill after telling everybody the news. Blinding headache. Prostrate with grief. She said it was up to the Captain to see to everything. Get him off the ship. Bundle him out of sight. It upsets the passengers, having a dead body on board. They paid for a good time and by God they're going to have it.'

‘You must leave everything to me,' said Hillier. ‘You'll want to travel back with him. You can fly BEA from Istanbul. I'll sort it all out for you, the least I can do. I'll get dressed now and go and see the purser. I ought to radio your solicitors, his I mean. They can meet you at London Airport.'

‘I know what has to be done,' said Alan. ‘You're too much of a romantic to be any good at
real
things. I notice you don't say anything about flying to London with us. That's because you daren't, isn't it? Some of your pals will be waiting for you, other romantic games-players in raincoats with guns in their pockets. You talked about looking after us, but you daren't even set foot in England.'

‘Things to do in Istanbul,' mumbled Hillier. ‘One thing, anyway. Very important. Then I was going to suggest that you both meet me in Dublin. At the Dolphin Hotel, Essex Street. Then we could decide about the future.'

‘Our future,' said Alan, ‘will be decided by Chancery. Wards in Chancery, Clara and Alan Walters. A stepmother has no legal obligation. I suppose you'll start talking about yourself having a moral obligation. And all that means is our skulking in Ireland with you. Neutral territory. Opting out of history – that was your expression. That means the IRA and gun-men and blowing up post-offices. No, thank you. Back to school for us. We want to learn
slowly
.'

Hillier looked guiltily and bitterly at the two children. ‘You didn't always think like that,' he said. ‘Sex-books and dinner-jackets and ear-rings and cognac after dinner. You talk about me playing games –'

‘We,' said Alan with something like sweetness, ‘are only children. It was up to you to recognise that. Games are all right for children.' Then his larynx throbbed with anger like an adult's. ‘Look where
your
bloody games have landed us.'

‘You're not being fair –'

‘Bloody neutrals. That bitch with the grief-stricken headache and filthy Theodorescu and grinning Wriste and
you
. But I suppose you feel very self-righteous and very badly done to.'

‘There are no real martyrs,' said Hillier carefully. ‘One should always read the small print on the contract.'

‘Oh, you even have to make a game out of that,' sneered Alan. He took out of his dressing-gown pocket a much-mauled piece of paper. ‘Look at it,' he said. ‘This is that message you gave me to decode.' Hillier took it. The paper was quite blank. ‘No come-back there,' said Alan. ‘They play the game well.'

‘Seven-day vanishing ink,' said Hillier. ‘I might have known.'

‘It would be lovely if everything could vanish as easily. Conjuring tricks. Games. Oh, let's get back to the real world.' He made as to leave. ‘You coming, Clara?'

‘In a minute. I just want to say goodbye.'

‘I'll see you at breakfast.' And, with no farewell to Hillier, he left. His mature smoker's cough travelled down the corridor, perhaps to a boy's tears in his own cabin, the natural self-pity of a newly-made orphan. Hillier and Clara looked at each other. He said: ‘A kiss wouldn't be in order, would it? Too much like love.'

Her eyes were bright as from dexedrine. She lowered them bashfully. ‘It doesn't look as if you're going to get any morning tea,' she said. ‘Why don't you lock the door again?' He stared at her incredulously. ‘There's plenty of time,' she said, raising her eyes to him. How often had he seen those eyes before.

‘Get out,' he said. ‘Go on. Out.'

‘But you seemed to like it –'

‘Out.'

‘You're horrible.' She began to cry. ‘You said you loved –'

‘Go on.' Blindly he pushed her out on to the corridor.

‘Beast. Filthy filthy beast.' And then, as she too made for her cabin, it was just tears. But tears, however public, were in order. Hillier settled in his wretchedness to the bottle of Old Mortality.

Hillier had three days to wait in Istanbul. His hotel was pretentiously named – the Babi Humayun or Sublime Porte – also misleadingly, since it was nearer the Golden Horn in the north than the Old Seraglio in the south-east of the city. But it suited Hillier well enough. The final act to be performed accorded better with fleas, foul lavatories, stained and carious wallpaper, than with the grand asepsis of the Hilton. His room was shady and smelt shady: the bed had surely known gross and barbaric
gesta
, the paint scratched from its iron by strong and cruel fingers from the hills, fingers unwashed from dipping in rank stews of goat-mutton. Bearded phantoms shuffled the floor in the night in greasy slippers, muttering last words before the striking down for a little bag of coins ill-concealed under the bursting mattress: shadows of murderous thieves danced on the walls in the dim light from the three-in-the-morning street. The room had a balcony long uncleared of Turkish cigarette-ends, old cobwebs thick with white dust; the one chair was rickety. But Hillier liked to sit there and take his early breakfast of yoghurt, figs, unleavened bread and goat-butter, thick syrupy coffee and foul Brazilian cigars, looking into the clear glimmer of the morning Bosporus. He reflected, naked under his dressing-gown, on how wrong he had been about things, believing too much in choice and free will and the logic of men's acts; also the nature of love.

On Cumhuriyet Caddesi he had watched, half-hiding like some
native of the city up to no good, the loading of the flour-king's coffin on to the closed BEA van, later the boarding of the flour-king's orphans, two pale and elegant children, with the rest of the passengers on Flight BE 291, and he had waved feebly as the coach ground off to Yesilköy Airport. He had gone to the address given to him by Theodorescu and found it a decent bundle of business offices. At the enquiry-desk he had asked if there were anything for Mr Hillier; a Mongol-looking woman with hair streaked white had given him an envelope. A note inside merely said:
FAIL WHOLLY TO UNDERSTAND BUT WILL BE THERE
. It was signed T.

And then to wait. Breakfast, the first raki of the day, fried fish or kebab for lunch, raki going all the time. Sleep or a restless wandering of the city, cocktails at the Kernel or the Hilton, a European dinner, then a raki-crawl and early bed. Istanbul disturbed him with its seven hills, as though Rome had tried to build herself on another planet. The names of architects and sultans rang in his mind in dull Byzantine gold – Anthemius, Isidorus, Achmet, Bajazet, Solyman the Magnificent. The emperors shrilled from a far past like desolate birds – Theodosius, Justinian, Constantine himself. His head raged with mosques. The city, in cruel damp heat, smelt of wool and hides and skins. Old filth and rusty iron, proud exports, clattered and thumped aboard under Galata's lighthouse. Ships, gulls, sea-light. Bazaars, beggars, skinny children, teeth, charcoal fires, skewered innards smoking, the heavy tobacco reek, fat men in flannel double-breasteds, fed on fat.

In the early evening of the third day, Hillier arrived back at the Babi Humayun from a trip to Scutari. He was damp and tired and his head ached. His pulse raced when he saw in the entrance-hall a small pile of good leather luggage. Someone had arrived from somewhere. Who? He did not dare ask the squinting bilious-skinned porter. He took the lift (old iron for export) to his floor, went to his room, stripped, and checked the Aiken and silencer before loading. He hid the weapon among his few remaining clean
shirts in the top drawer of the dressing-table. He drank raki from the flask by the window. Dressing-gowned, towel round his neck, he went out to the bathroom, feeling slightly sick, eyes focusing badly; he noted the tremor of intent in his fingers as they reached for the bathroom door. He knew what he would see inside.

Miss Devi stood under the shower's cold trickle. He surveyed her nakedness as coldly as she suffered his gaze. Fronds and dissolving islets of water flowered and fell upon the baked skin; the tar-black bush glistened. She had hidden her hair in a plastic cap; her face seemed more naked than her body. The nipples were pert after the shock of the douche; like eyes they met his eyes. ‘Well,' he said. ‘Is he here?'

‘Later. He has things to do. He found your message very mysterious. He will not trick you, of course. No tape recorder. But his memory is very good.'

Mine too, thought Hillier. His flesh crawled as it remembered that night in her cabin. Was it proper now to feel desire? That past desire had been used to betray him; this time it would be different. Shatter that child's body; those scents that lingered in his nostrils and the feel that was stitched into the whorls of his hands could only be exorcised by the ranker contacts of a knowing, mature, corrupt routine. Hillier said: ‘Would you now? I take it there is time.'

‘Oh, there's time. Time for the
vimanam
and the
akayavimanam
.
Mor
and the
taddinam
and the
Yaman
.'

‘
Yaman
? That's the god of death.'

‘It's just a name. My room is 47. Wait there.'

‘Let's go to mine,' said Hillier.

‘No. I have the instruments of the
Yaman
. Wait for me there. I must perform the triple washing of the
vay
.' Hillier noticed that she had a little waterproof bag on the chair by the bath. There would be other engines there than those of the
Yaman
. He went to her room. It was as seedy as his own, but her presence rode it strongly, sneering at the accidents of decay. He washed himself in cold water
from her basin and briskly dried himself. Then he got into her bed (the sheets must be her own: crisp black linen) and waited. In five minutes she came to him, plunging into bed naked from the very door.

‘It's no good,' said Hillier, after the simple movements of the
vimanam
. ‘I want something too direct and easy and tender for you. I want a simple tune, not a full orchestra. It's just the way I am.'

She went cold and stiff beneath him. ‘A little English girl,' she said. ‘Blonde and trembling and talking about love.'

‘She never talked about love,' said Hillier. ‘She left that to me.'

With a swift muscular convulsion she rejected him. He was not sorry to be rejected. ‘I'm sorry,' he said.

‘You'd better go.' The voice was glacial. ‘Mr Theodorescu said something about business first, dinner after. He'll see you in your room as you requested. He asked me to see that you have drinks sent up.
Not
raki. It can go on his bill, he told me to tell you. And now get out of here.'

Hillier sat in his room waiting. The marine sky insinuated itself, through phases of pink and madder, into a velvet transformation. Stars over the Golden Horn, its gold in darkness now like the gold of Byzantium. On the table by the balcony were whisky, gin, cognac, mineral water, ice, and a box of cigarettes whose paper was like silk and whose tobacco tasted like burnt cream. Hillier checked his gun once more and placed it in the right-hand pocket of his moygashel jacket. He waited.

Theodorescu entered without knocking. He was in a lounge suit and silk shirt; he smelled of an ideal Orient, not the gamy real Asia that started here east of the Bosporus. He was huge; his baldness was massive smoothed stone; he was urbane, genial, saying: ‘I'm sorry you've had to wait, my dear Hillier. There were things in Athens that had to be seen to. Miss Devi entertained you, I take it? No? You seem very serious, glum almost. This is not the naked Hillier I knew and respected on shipboard.' There were chairs on either side
of the drink-table. Theodorescu took a whole gill of whisky; ice clinked in with the tones of a tiny celeste.