So this is the great Orient Express, Tooley said.
All thats left of it.
Istanbul cant be much worse, can it?
Ive never been there, but I dont imagine so.
I guess you are going to tell me that I mustnt smoke because therell soon be another frontier.
There will be three frontiers, I said, looking at the time-table, in less than four hours. The Bulgarian frontier, the Greek-Macedonian frontier, the Turkish frontier.
Maybe its real luxury travel, Tooley said, for people not in a hurry. Do you think they have an abortionist on the train? Its lucky Im not nine months gone, isnt it, or I wouldnt know whether my baby was going to be Bulgarian or Turkish or what was the other?
Greek-Macedonian.
That sounds a bit special. Id choose that. Not a Bulgar. If he was a boy thered be dirty jokes.
But you wouldnt have a choice.
Id hang on. When they said push I wouldnt push. Not till after the Greek-Macedonian frontier. How long are we in Greece-Macedonia?
Only forty minutes, I said.
My, its complicated. Id have to work quick. She added, Its not funny at all. Im scared. Whats Julian going to say when the curse hasnt come? I really thought the train would do it, sort of shake it out of me, I mean.
Its Julians fault as much as yours.
But it isnt any longer, not with the pill. Its all the girls fault now. I really did forget. When I take a sleeping pill I wake up muzzy and forget, and then when I take a methedrine to wake up properly I get so excited I dont remember all the dull things like the pill and washing the dishes. But I guess Julian wont believe all that. Hell feel trapped. He often feels trapped. He was trapped first by his family, he says, and then he was nearly trapped by Oxford so he went away fast without a degree. Then he very nearly got trapped by the Trotskyists, but he realized just in time. He sees traps a terribly long way ahead. But, Henry, I dont mean to be a trap. Really I dont. I cant call you Henry. It doesnt sound like a real name. Can I call you Smudge?
Why Smudge?
I had a dog once called Smudge. I used to talk to him a lot. When Father and Mother got divorced I told him all the horrid details. About the mental cruelty I mean.
She leant against me in the carriage. I liked the smell of her hair. I suppose if I had known more about women I could have identified the shampoo she must have had in Paris. Her hand was on my knee, and the enormous wrist-watch stared up at me with its great blank white face and its four figures in scarlet, 12 3 6 9, as if those were the only important ones to remember the hours when you had to take your medicine. I remembered Miss Keenes minute gold wrist-watch like a dolls which Sir Alfred had given her on her twenty-first birthday. In its tiny ring it contained all the figures of the hours as though none were unimportant or without its special duty. Most of the hours of my life had been eliminated from Tooleys watch. There were no hours marked there for sitting quietly and watching a woman tat. I felt as though one night in Southwood I had turned my back on any possibility of home, so that here I was shaken up and down between two segments of Bulgarian darkness.
What was the mental cruelty? I had to ask her questions: it was the only way in which I could find my way about in this new world, but questioning was not a habit I had ever formed. For years people had asked me questions: What unit trust would you recommend? Do you think I should sell my hundred Imperial Tobacco shares before the next cancer report? And when I retired most of the questions I might have wanted to ask were answered for me in Everyman His Own Gardener.
The only mental cruelty I ever saw personally, Tooley said, was when Father woke her up bringing her breakfast in bed. I dont think that awful Bulgarian sausage was good for my metabolism. Ive got a terrible stomach-ache. Ill go and lie down. You dont think it was horse, do you?
Ive always understood that horse has a sweetish taste.
Oh God, Smudge, she said, I didnt want a literal answer, not real information I mean. She dabbed her lips against my cheek and was off.
I went down the corridor rather nervously to find Aunt Augusta. Id hardly seen her all day and the problem of Tooley was one which I felt she ought to share. I found her with a Baedeker[145] opened and a map of Istanbul spread over her knee. She looked like a general planning a campaign.
Im sorry about yesterday afternoon, Aunt Augusta, I said. I really didnt mean to say anything against Mr. Visconti. After all I dont know the circumstances. Tell me more about him.
He was a quite impossible man, my aunt said, but I loved him and what he did with my money was the least of his faults. For example he was what they call a collaborator. During the German occupation he acted as adviser to the German authorities on questions of art, and he had to get out of Italy very quickly after the death of Mussolini. Goering[146] had been making a big collection of pictures, but even he couldnt easily steal pictures from places like the Ufizi where the collection was properly registered, but Mr. Visconti knew a lot about the unregistered all sorts of treasures hidden away in palazzos almost as crumbling as your Uncle Jos. Of course his part got to be known, and thered be quite a panic in a country place when Mr. Visconti appeared taking lunch in the local taverna. The trouble was he wouldnt play even a crooked game straight or the Germans might have helped him to escape. He began to take money from this marchese and that not to tip off the Germans this gave him liquid cash or sometimes a picture he fancied for himself, but it didnt make him friends and the Germans soon suspected what was going on. Poor old devil, she added, he hadnt a friend he could trust. Mario was still at school with the Jesuits and I had gone back to England when the war began.