He stayed quiet that night and all the next morning, and the nurse believed that he had resigned himself to staying where he was. She left him sleeping and came down to my room for a cup of tea. Mr. Visconti had bought some cream cakes in Milan at the good pastry-cooks near the cathedral. Suddenly from up the stairs there came a strange grating noise. Mamma mia, the nurse said, whats that? It sounded as though someone were shifting the furniture. We ran upstairs, and what do you think? Jo Pulling was out of bed. He had fixed an old club tie of his, the Froth-blowers or the Mustard Club or something of the kind, to the handle of the suitcase because he had no strength in his legs, and he was crawling down the passage towards the lavatory tower pulling the suitcase after him. I shouted to him to stop, but he paid me no attention. It was painful to look at him, he was going so slowly, with such an effort. It was a tiled passage and every tile he crossed cost him enormous exertion. He collapsed before we reached him and lay there panting, and the saddest thing of all to me was that he made a little pool of wee-wee on the tiles. We were afraid to move him before the doctor came. We brought a pillow and put it under his head and the nurse gave him one of his pills. Cattivo, she said in Italian, which means, You bad old man, and he grinned at the two of us and brought out the last sentence which he ever spoke, deformed a bit but I could understand it very well. Seemed like a whole lifetime, he said and he died before the doctor came. He was right in his way to make that last trip against the doctors orders. The doctor had only promised him a few years.
He died in the passage? I asked.
He died on his travels, my aunt said in a tone of reproof. As he would have wished.
Here he lies where he longed to be, I quoted in order to please my aunt, though I couldnt help remembering that Uncle Jo had not succeeded in reaching the lavatory door.
Home is the hunter, home from sea, my aunt finished the quotation in her own fashion, and the sailor home from the hill.
***
We were silent for quite a while after that as we finished the chicken à la king. It was a little like the two minutes silence on Armistice Day[77]. I remembered that, when I was a boy, I used to wonder whether there was really a corpse buried there at the Cenotaph[78], for governments are usually economical with sentiment and try to arouse it in the cheapest possible way. A brilliant advertising slogan doesnt need a body, a box of earth would do just as well, and now I began to wonder too about Uncle Jo. Was my aunt a little imaginative? Perhaps the stories of Jo, of my father and of my mother were not entirely true.
Without breaking the silence I took a reverent glass of Chambertin to Uncle Jos memory, whether he existed or not. The unaccustomed wine sang irresponsibly in my head. What did the truth matter? All characters once dead, if they continue to exist in memory at all, tend to become fictions. Hamlet is no less real now than Winston Churchill, and Jo Pulling no less historical than Don Quixote. I betrayed myself with a hiccup while I changed our plates, and with the blue cheese the sense of material problems returned.
Uncle Jo, I said, was lucky to have no currency restrictions. He couldnt have afforded to die like that on a tourist allowance.
They were great days, Aunt Augusta said.
How are we going to manage on ours? I asked. With fifty pounds each we shall not be able to stay very long in Istanbul.
Currency restrictions have never seriously bothered me, my aunt said. There are ways and means.[79]
I hope you dont plan anything illegal.
I have never planned anything illegal in my life, Aunt Augusta said. How could I plan anything of the kind when I have never read any of the laws and have no idea what they are?
Chapter 8
It was my aunt herself who suggested that we should fly as far as Paris. I was a little surprised after what she had just said, for there was certainly in this case an alternative means of travel; I pointed out the inconsistency.
There are reasons, Aunt Augusta said. Cogent reasons. I know the ropes[80] at Heathrow.
I was puzzled too at her insistence that we must go to the Kensington air terminal and take the airport bus.
Its so easy for me, I said, to pick you up by car and drive you to Heathrow. You would find it much less tiring, Aunt Augusta.
You would have to pay an exorbitant garage fee, she replied, and I found her sudden sense of economy unconvincing.
I arranged next day for the dahlias to be watered by my next-door neighbour, a brusque man called Major Charge. He had seen Detective-Sergeant Sparrow come to the door with the policeman, and he was bitten by curiosity. I told him it was about a motoring offence and he became sympathetic immediately. A child murdered every week, he said, and all they can do is to pursue motorists. I dont like lies and I felt in my conscience that I ought to defend Sergeant Sparrow, who had been as good as his word and posted back the urn, registered and express.