Jeffrey Archer - A Twist in the Tale

Christopher and Margaret Roberts always spent their summer holiday as far away from England as they could possibly afford. However, as Christopher was the classics master at St. Cuthbert’s, a small preparatory school just north of Yeovil, and Margaret was the school matron, their experience of four of the five continents was largely confined to periodicals such as the National Geographic and Time.

The Robertses’ annual holiday each August was nevertheless sacrosanct and they spent eleven months of the year saving, planning and preparing for their one extravagant luxury. The following eleven months were then spent passing on their discoveries to the ‘offspring’: the Robertses, without children of their own, looked on all the pupils of St. Cuthbert’s as the ‘offspring.’

During the long evenings when the ‘offspring’ were meant to be asleep in their dormitories, the Robertses would pore over maps, analyze expert opinion and then finally come up with a shortlist to consider. In recent expeditions they had been as far afield as Norway, northern Italy, and Yugoslavia, ending up the previous year exploring Achilles’ island, Skyros, off the east coast of Greece.

‘It has to be Turkey this year,’ said Christopher after much soul-searching. A week later Margaret came to the same conclusion, and so they were able to move on to phase two. Every book on Turkey in the local library was borrowed, consulted, reborrowed and reconsulted. Every brochure obtainable from the Turkish Embassy or local travel agents received the same relentless scrutiny.

By the first day of the summer term, charter tickets had been paid for, a car hired, a slightly larger hotel room booked and everything that could be insured comprehensively covered. Their plans lacked only one final detail.

‘So what will be our “steal” this year?’ asked Christopher.

‘A carpet,’ Margaret said, without hesitation. ‘It has to be. For over a thousand years Turkey has produced the most sought-after carpets in the world. We’d be foolish to consider anything else.’

‘How much shall we spend on it?’

‘Five hundred pounds,’ said Margaret, feeling very extravagant.

Having agreed, they once again swapped memories about the ‘steals’ they had made over the years. In Norway, it had been a whale’s tooth carved in the shape of a galleon by a local artist who soon after had been taken up by Steuben. In Tuscany, it had been a ceramic bowl found in a small village where they cast and fired them to be sold in Rome at exorbitant prices: a small blemish which only an expert would have noticed made it a ‘steal.’ Just outside Skopje the Robertses had visited a local glass factory and acquired a water jug moments after it had been blown in front of their eyes, and in Skyros they had picked up their greatest triumph to date, a fragment of an urn they discovered near an old excavation site. The Robertses reported their find immediately to the authorities, but the Greek officials had not considered the fragment important enough to prevent it being exported to St. Cuthbert’s.

On returning to England Christopher couldn’t resist just checking with the senior classics don at his old alma mater. He confirmed the piece was probably twelfth century. This latest ‘steal’ now stood, carefully mounted, on their drawing room mantelpiece.

‘Yes, a carpet would be perfect,’ Margaret mused. ‘The trouble is, everyone goes to Turkey with the idea of picking up a carpet on the cheap. So to find a really good one...’

She knelt and began to measure the small space in front of their drawing room fireplace.

‘Seven by three should do it,’ she said.

Within a few days of term ending, the Robertses traveled by bus to Heathrow. The journey took a little longer than by rail but at half the cost. ‘Money saved is money that can be spent on the carpet,’ Margaret reminded her husband.

‘Agreed, Matron,’ said Christopher, laughing.

On arrival at Heathrow they checked their baggage onto the charter flight, selected two nonsmoking seats and, finding they had time to spare, decided to watch other planes taking off to even more exotic places.

It was Christopher who first spotted the two passengers dashing across the tarmac, obviously late.

‘Look,’ he said, pointing at the running couple. His wife studied the overweight pair, still brown from a previous holiday, as they lumbered up the steps to their plane.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Kendall-Hume,’ Margaret said in disbelief. After hesitating for a moment, she added, ‘I wouldn’t want to be uncharitable about any of the offspring, but I do find young Malcolm Kendall-Hume a...’ She paused.

‘“Spoilt little brat”?’ suggested her husband.

‘Quite,’ said Margaret. ‘I can’t begin to think what his parents must be like.’

‘Very successful, if the boy’s stories are to be believed,’ said Christopher. ‘A string of secondhand garages from Birmingham to Bristol.’

‘Thank God they’re not on our flight.’

‘Bermuda or the Bahamas would be my guess,’ suggested Christopher.

A voice emanating from the loudspeaker gave Margaret no chance to offer her opinion.

‘Olympic Airways Flight 172 to Istanbul is now boarding at Gate No. 37.’

‘That’s us,’ said Christopher happily as they began their long route-march to Gate No. 37.

They were the first passengers to board, and once shown to their seats they settled down to study the guidebooks of Turkey and their three files of research.

‘We must be sure to see Diana’s Temple when we visit Ephesus,’ said Christopher, as the plane taxied out onto the runway.

‘Not forgetting that at that time we shall be only a few kilometers away from the purported last home of the Virgin Mary,’ said Margaret.

‘Taken with a pinch of salt by serious historians,’ Christopher remarked as if addressing a member of the Lower Fourth, but his wife was too engrossed in her book to notice. They both continued to study on their own before Christopher asked what his wife was reading.

‘ Carpets — Fact and Fiction by Abdul Verizoglu, seventeenth edition,’ she said, confident that any errors would have been eradicated in the previous sixteen. ‘It’s most informative. The finest examples, it seems, are from Hereke and are woven in silk and are sometimes worked on by up to twenty young women, even children, at a time.’

‘Why young?’ pondered Mr. Roberts. ‘You’d have thought experience would have been essential for such a delicate task.’

‘Apparently not,’ said Mrs. Roberts. ‘Herekes are woven by those with young eyes which can discern intricate patterns sometimes no larger than a pinpoint and with up to nine hundred knots a square inch. Such a carpet,’ continued Margaret, ‘can cost as much as fifteen, even twenty thousand pounds.’

‘And at the other end of the scale? Carpets woven in old leftover wool by old leftover women?’ suggested Christopher interrogatively.

‘No doubt,’ said Margaret. ‘But even for our humble purse there are some simple guidelines to follow.’

Christopher leaned over so that he could be sure to take in every word above the roar of the engines.

‘The muted reds and blues with a green base are considered classic and are much admired by Turkish collectors, but one should avoid the bright yellows and oranges,’ read his wife aloud. ‘And never consider a carpet that displays animals, birds or fishes, as they are produced only to satisfy Western tastes.’

‘Don’t they like animals?’

‘I don’t think that’s the point,’ said Margaret. ‘The Sunni Muslims, who are the country’s religious rulers, don’t approve of graven images. But if we search diligently round the bazaars we should still be able to come across a bargain for a few hundred pounds.’