Tremor of Intent (30 page)

From a ramshackle raki-stall came thin Turkish radio-noise, skirling reeds in microtonal melismata with, as for the benefit of Mozart, gongs, cymbals, jangles. Theodorescu cried loud his contempt of foreign art: ‘Nigger stuff. Bongabongabonga. Chinks and niggers.' And, like a true Britisher, he rolled seawards, Istanbul possessing three walls of sea and one wall of stone. Lowly people of various inferior races stared at him, but with neither fear nor malice: this big man was lordly drunk, Allah or the shade of Atatürk forgive him. The time, thought Hillier, had come to steer him whither it was proper for him to be steered. As he lessened his following distance, he was suddenly turned upon by Theodorescu, though
jovially. Theodorescu called: ‘Ah, Briggs, you little squirt, if you try and pin that insulting filthy card to my back I will have you. I know your nasty tricks, you boily son of a cut-price haberdasher.'

‘It's not Briggs,' said Hillier.

‘Oh, isn't it?' said Theodorescu. Three filthy children, Turko-Graeco-Syrian or something, were capering round him for baksheesh. Theodorescu tried to cuff them off, but his co-ordination was bad. Still, they ran to an alley of foul dark, jeering. ‘No, it's not Briggs,' agreed Theodorescu. ‘It's Forster. Well, Forster, is it to be war or peace?'

‘Oh, peace,' said Hillier.

‘Jolly good,' said Theodorescu. ‘We'll fare forward together. In peace peace peace. Arm in arm, Forster. Come along, then.' Hillier was up to his side, but he resisted the fierce and podgy embrace that was offered. ‘You say peace,' said Theodorescu, tottering downhill along a sinuous mock-street, ‘but you told Witherspoon that I was a dirty foreigner.' The street seemed full of torn posters advertising long-done Turkish entertainments, though one showed two American film-stars embracing grimly among words umlaut-spiked. A gas-lamp flickered like a dying moth. A fat woman with creamy Greek skin suddenly peered out from a derelict shop, calling hoarsely. ‘I am a true-born Englishman,' said Theodorescu, ‘despite the name. I will make the second eleven next year, so Shaw said. The eye and the hand.' He began to demonstrate batting strokes but nearly fell.

‘Let's go down,' said Hillier, ‘for a breath of the old briny.' A ghastly odour of decaying water-rack came up to them on the warm breeze. With a finger-tip prod he impelled Theodorescu to descend a wider street with food-and-drink shops open to the night. Here radio music of various kinds contended; a plummy, somehow Churchillian, voice read through farts of static the news in Turkish. There was the hissing of nameless fish and meat being dropped into hot fat. Theodorescu sniffed hungrily. ‘Old Ma
Shenstone's fish and chips,' he slavered. ‘The best in town.' There were knots of merchant seamen about, some quarrelling over money. Hillier could swear that he saw, for an instant only, a woman thrust a fat white belly over the window-ledge of an upper room; she was dressed only in a yashmak. Hadn't Kemal Atatürk forbidden yashmaks? Then her light went out.

‘Theo,' said Hillier, ‘you're a dirty young squirt. What have you been doing with the younger boys?'

‘It was Bellamy,' cried Theodorescu in distress. ‘Bellamy did it to me. They all stood around in the prefects' room. The door was locked. I yelled and nobody came. They only laughed.'

‘You have the habits of a dirty foreigner,' said Hillier. ‘I know what you did with that little boy in the choir.'

‘I didn't do anything with anybody. Honest.' Theodorescu started to cry. An unshaven sailor, streaked with hold-dirt, stood outside a food-hell called
Gastronom
. He belched on a long and wavering note. Theodorescu decided to run. He did this clumsily, crying. ‘They're always on to me,' he yelled. ‘I only want to be left alone.' He Charlie-Chaplin-turned the corner. Two linked seamen swerved out of the way of his impending bulk, calling strange words.

‘Easy, easy, Theo,' soothed Hillier, catching up with him. ‘You'll feel tons better after a lovely sniff of sea.' They were on a minor wharf, its stones broken or slimy. The Bosporus lapped orts of shipping. Two youths, hairy and dark under a faint working-light, one of them unshod, were trying to open a packing-case with an old iron bar. Seeing Hillier and Theodorescu, they ran off with unsure Turkish guffaws. There were crates lined up against dismal sheds, rat-scufflings behind. A gull somewhere seemed to cry out at a bad dream. ‘I say,' said Hillier, ‘we could have a jolly good bit of fun here. Let's go aboard one of these boats.' Farther out, small merchantmen did a dance of dim lights; there was a party going on somewhere – cries of joy that sounded Scandinavian, desperate under the
euphoria. Hillier led Theodorescu to the quay's edge. It was green and slippery. ‘Careful, careful,' said Hillier. ‘Don't want to fall in, do we?' Theodorescu's eyelids were drooping; Hillier peered at the sagging mass of the face, all fat nobility dripped off. ‘You're a bloody foreigner,' he said, ‘not British at all. I dare you to jump on that barge with me.' It was a coal-barge emptied of coal; only its residue of dark dust, film everywhere, mole-mounds of it here and there, glistened under the thin rising slip of a Turkish moon. The empty vessel rocked over a subdued glug of water, its lip not more than three feet from the quay.

‘Can't,' said Theodorescu, looking seaward with filming eyes. ‘Not like warrer. Ole Holtballs no blurry good. Took us to the baths, not teach swim proper. Wanner go ome.'

‘Coward,' jeered Hillier. ‘Dirty dago coward.'

‘Fishin ships. Ole Ma Shenshtin.' Hillier reached up and slapped him on the left jowl. He tried not to think. Ah God God God. Was he so much the ultimate villain? He could have taken all that information that time without asking, without paying out dollars. Even the identity of, the location of. Free will, choice: he had spoken of those things. ‘Choose now, Theodorescu,' he said into the sea-breeze. ‘Go in now. A narrow bed, it will just hold you.'

‘Murrer send big cake for dorm. Bellamy buggers eat the lot.'

‘Five shillings, Theodorescu. I bet you five whole bob you daren't jump after me.'

‘Five?' It had shaken him awake. ‘Not supposed to gamble. Old Jimballs will be in a hell of a wax.'

‘Watch this. ‘ Hillier gauged keenly. There was a wooden ledge a foot or so down from the gunwale. That would be all right. ‘Now then, Theodorescu.' It was an easy leap. Panting only slightly, Hillier looked up the brief distance to the quay's edge, where Theodorescu swayed doubtfully.

‘Come on, coward. Come on, foreign dirty dago coward. Come on, you flaming neutral.'

‘British,' said Theodorescu. He stood erect, as to the National Anthem. ‘Not neutral.' He too leaped. The water was so shocked by the impact of his weight that it launched to the air curious ciphers of protest: ghostly caricatures of female forms, Islamic letters big enough for posters, samples of lace curtaining, lightning-struck towers, a wan foam-face of dumb and evanescent horror. Its chorus of hissing after the splash was for an outraged audience. Theodorescu was between quay wall and unpainted barge-side, gasping: ‘Rotter. Beastly rotter. No right. Know I can't.'

‘You forgot to give me the absolution,' said Hillier. And, he remembered, the Roper manuscript. That tale of betrayal was being fast soaked down there, along with wads of money. A fortune was going down in the Bosporus. Theodorescu's rings gleamed dimly as he tried to scratch his way up the weedy stone-work. Howling, he tried to keep himself afloat by, in a crucified posture, pressing both walls of his gulped and glupping prison. The barge moved its skirts away from his grope, tut-tutting. He cried out again and a fistful of dirty water stopped his mouth. ‘Bellamy,' he choked, ‘bou fwine.' The prefects were tee-heeing all about him. Oh God, thought Hillier: finish it off. He clambered into the barge well, searching. He found only a heavy shovel. He climbed up with it, hearing before he saw Theodorescu fighting the wet, the solids of stone and wood. He foresaw himself, in a cannibal breakfast, tapping that skull-egg, seeing the red yolk float on the water. It wouldn't do. But there was the drug, the drug was still working. Theodorescu seemed to fold his arms, like a stoic placed in the Iron Maiden. He said something in a language Hillier didn't understand, then he visibly willed himself – eyes tight shut, lips set firm – to go under.

He went under. Odd burps and glups, as of marine digestion, rose after him. Then the water settled. After a short while, Hillier flawed the air with a Brazilian cigar. Then, puffing, he minced along towards the prow of the barge. At that point, on the quay wall, a
worn lifebelt had been fixed as a sort of buffer. By means of this he was able to climb with ease on to the wharf. Now, with his work finished (though suddenly, briskly, Cornpit-Ferrers danced in, thumbing his nose, going Yah like a schoolboy), he could go home. But, as he walked through the odorous Turkish evening, he wondered again where the hell home was.

‘Now then, everybody,' cried the television producer, ‘drink, but not too self-consciously. Talk, but not too loudly. No singing, please. You're just background, remember. And let me say now, in case I forget, how much I appreciate your co-operation. And,' he added, ‘the BBC too. Ready for rehearsal, everybody? You ready, John?'

The man addressed was grey with hangover. He was sitting at the bar with a camera looking at him, a microphone impending, waiting for his words. On the bar-counter stood a large Irish whiskey, untouched, un- (shudder) -touchable. ‘Make it a take,' he said. ‘Let's get it over.'

‘Boom shadow,' said the cameraman. There was some adjusting.

‘A take, then,' said the producer. ‘Quietish, please.'

‘Will we be seen?' asked one of the drinkers, in sudden agitation. ‘Will we all be on the film?'

‘I can't guarantee it,' said the producer crossly. ‘You're just part of the background, you know.'

‘But we
may
be seen?
I
may be seen?' He finished his draught stout in one shaky throw. ‘I don't think I can risk it.' He got up. ‘Sorry. I suppose I should have thought of this before. But,' he said, with a touch of aggressiveness, ‘this is where I normally drink. I've as much right here as anyone.'

‘Stay where you are,' commanded the producer. ‘I don't want an empty seat there. What's the matter? You got enemies in England or something?' Then he soothed: ‘Never mind. Read this newspaper.
That'll cover your face. A nice touch, too.' He took from his overcoat pocket a folded copy of
The Times
– yesterday's or the day before's. He had not read it; he had not had much time for keeping up with the news.

The drinker said: ‘That'll be all right. Thanks.' And he unfolded
The Times
, raising its front page to eye-level. A grizzled man, an electrician, brought a chalk-dusty clapperboard to the camera.

‘Turn over,' said the producer.

‘Scene ten, take one,' said the clapperman.

‘Mark it,' cried the sound-recordist. The board clapped.

‘Action.'

‘It was in pubs like these,' said the hungover man called John, earnest dead-beat eyes on the camera, ‘that he spent much of his spare time. He would come in with his little bits of yellow paper and his stub of pencil and scrawl down what he heard – an obscene rhyme, a salty anecdote, a seedily graceful turn of phrase. In a sense, he never had any spare time – he was always working. His art was Autolycan, snapping-up, catching the mean minnows of the commonplace when they were off their guard. Perhaps his devotion to the speech-scraps and decayed eloquence of this city derived from the fact that he was not of this city, nor of any city of this mean and vindictive fairyland. He was a foreigner, a wanderer, a late settler, a man who had lived secretly in Europe – anywhere between Gibraltar and the Black Sea. This ambience was new to him. He came with a sharpened ear –'

‘Is it some sort of a bloody queer ear you'll be wanting yourself?' said a bearded young man, a drunken country singer. ‘Mean and vindictive, is it? And he's a fine one, sure, to be talking about fairylands.'

‘Cut,' said the producer.

‘Smash him,' said the young man, whom restraining hands now clutched. ‘Smash the bloody camera and the whole bloody bag of tricks. Foreigners coming over here with their dirty libels.'

Indifferent, the technicians readjusted – light, shadow, angle, level – seeking perfection with cold passion. The bearded singer was carried off cursing still. The producer said to the man called John: ‘Leave out that mean and vindictive bit. We may want to sell this to Telefis Eireann.'

‘I rather liked it. And it's true.'

‘We're not concerned with the truth. We're concerned with making a bloody cultural film.' He then shouted: ‘Ready, everybody?' And, after, having absorbed something of the country in his three or four days here: ‘Don't interrupt till he's finished, please.'

A Trinity College man spoiled the second take by suddenly saying: ‘Well, isn't it mean and vindictive? Isn't it just what the man said it was?'

‘Cut.'

The third take was ruined by the drinker with
The Times
suddenly shaking so violently that the sound-recordist said: ‘It's coming through loud and clear. Rustle of that paper. Like an army on the march.'

‘Cut.' The producer came over to the man and said: ‘I think you'd better leave. If you don't mind. No hard feelings, eh? When you come back there'll be a pint of Guinness paid for.'

And so he went out. Autumn sun gilded Duke Street. He turned into Dawson Street and then walked south to Stephen's Green. They knew then, or somebody knew. The shadow of a gunman, the regular dream of the two courteous strangers in raincoats. He still had
The Times
gripped in his left hand. He glanced again at the box-number. And, had it not been for this chance today, he would never have known. The fear could have remained a dream. The only thing to do was to answer, no longer to remain in hiding. But, before he wrote, there was something important to be done. He had parked his small car just off Baggot Street. He strode nervously to get it. Then he drove through the shining traffic north, across the river – Capel Street, Dorset Street, Gardiner Street.