Хелен Девитт - Some Trick - Thirteen Stories

‘Now I was prepared to see what the hookah was like, and even — dare I confess it? — be entertained by one of the companions, at least up to a point. But Angus is a true Scot, his Presbyterian blood curdled at the sound of this.

‘“Of course I’ll not touch his filthy hookah,” he whispered to me in tones just loud enough not to be tactful.

‘Our host went on with the utmost urbanity, as though nothing had been said, urging us to express a preference for one of the girls. Angus preserved the silence of outraged virtue. I murmured something noncommittal, all extremely attractive, impossible to choose one above the rest. This, it turned out, was a bad move.

‘“My dear fellow —” he cut me short “— I understand perfectly — to tell the truth I’m not, myself, entirely in the mood — as your friend’s tastes, it seems, are not in that direction (he smiled rather maliciously at poor Angus, who went bright red as only a rufus can) — you shall have them all!” A barrage of claps, and a bevy (it really is the only word for it, echt B movie stuff) of beautiful girls surrounded me, urging me to recline on a sort of divan strewn with silk rugs and shawls dripping with fringe.

‘Mahmet excused himself with a profound bow, leaving me, I took it, to disport myself with the company provided. If this was his object the ruse failed dismally, since he neglected to take Angus with him. Angus continued to sit bolt upright on his cushion, pulled out his pocket copy of Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class in a battered old blue and white Pelican edition, and buried himself in its pages, the picture of dour intellectual respectability. It effectively cast a damper on the debaucheries in which I was supposed to be rejoicing at the other end of the tent. After a little laboured banter with the beauties I sent them off, pulled out my Edmund Crispin, and started reading — it was the final humiliation to have nothing better to show than a humble green and white Penguin.

‘We turned in soon after. We never saw our host again: in the morning the Nubian appeared with a message on a tray. I took it, and he disappeared without a word. It was from Mahmet:

‘“My dear chaps,

Business calls me away unexpectedly. So sorry to interrupt our larks together! Please avail yourselves of the yacht for as long as convenient. What a story for your grandchildren! You can tell them you were once shipwrecked with

Edward paused dramatically before the name; after pronouncing it he fell silent, ending the story with a resounding close. He leant back into the corner of the sofa with a little expectant smile. The silence stretched out, a little awkwardly. As always with Edward’s stories, a round of applause seemed the most fitting response, but this is seldom used other than ironically in private conversation. Maria had not yet worked out an acceptable substitute, though she had had plenty of opportunity to practice: Edward was a gifted raconteur. Edward and Maria were engaged, but without the ease this implies — Maria still found herself struggling to keep up with a companion of such wonderfully polished conversational skills. What was the appropriate response to narrative tours de force? Should one praise the performance? Aim for intelligent comment? Laugh? Counter with a story of one’s own? That reminds me of the time I — but Maria’s life offered little in the way of anecdotal material, none of Edward’s stories had any connection with the sort of thing that happened to her.

‘What a story!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve always wanted to hear a genuine traveller’s tale: you don’t happen to have a bit of Roc’s egg lying about, I suppose?’

‘Nary a one — I did think the least our host could do was leave us each a ruby the size of an orange, but Sindbad seems to be a bit of a Thatcherite these days.’

Maria laughed heartily.

Edward and Maria had a big wedding. Maria had a very pretty dress (lace over satin); she decided to have a long veil. The men wore morning suits. She had a little going-away suit in nubbly pink silk, with binding, just the least bit Chanel, and a little hat. How can you have that kind of wedding and not be just the tiniest bit camp? Edward and Maria got in the limo amid showers of rice and confetti. Edward laughed, and kissed her. ‘You look lovely, my dear.’

They were taking a real old-fashioned honeymoon! They would go to Paris by boat-train, spend a week there, then go south to the Riviera. They would spend two weeks on a cruise ship, stopping first at various Italian ports, then at the Greek islands. They sat side by side in their compartment, holding hands — it was not something they had done often.

‘Y’know, I hope I have better luck this time than the last time I went sailing,’ said Edward.

‘Why is that?’ asked Maria.

‘The last time I went sailing I got shipwrecked! Have I ever told you the story? It was when Angus McBride and I went island hopping after Finals. Altogether a fantastic tale! We’d booked onto something that sounded perfectly respectable — the Hellenic Swan or some such thing — but turned out to be a great tub of a Victorian yacht that had been restored and put to work for the tourist trade. Amazing boat! Someone had clearly done it up to the nines about eighty years ago. Plush upholstery — swags of gold rope — thick Turkey carpets — vast numbers of cut-glass chandeliers — and a lot of brass and mahogany woodwork. It was all rather the worse for wear by the time it crossed our path, and its owners hadn’t had much luck in luring tourists aboard — the only other passenger was a mysterious Turk! Well, we’d only just started to make his acquaintance by the tarnished grandeur of the bar, when we ran into a bit of rough weather in the Adriatic, and the bloody boat started to go down!

‘Mahmet got us rather briskly into one of the lifeboats and winched us down. Then Angus and I started rowing like blazes! We saw the crew pulling off in another boat. We’d got perhaps a couple of hundred yards away when we saw the ship go under. I don’t suppose I’ve ever seen such a terrifying sight. One moment rather a lot of the bow and a fair bit of cabin roof were still above water; then an enormous swell rose above it, and the whole shebang was sucked under in a couple of seconds. A few flecks of foam and a stray life preserver were left floating on the surface where, just a few minutes earlier, there’d been a twelve-ton yacht.

‘We were at sea in the lifeboat until noon the next day. Angus and I had already started wondering whether it might be prudent to ration supplies, but Mahmet was superbly unconcerned. In the event we could have gorged on the water biscuits and tinned luncheon meats in the hold: we were picked up by a magnificent yacht which turned out to belong to Mahmet. He’d been on his way south to meet it at Genoa, but its captain had had the sense to head north when he heard of the disaster which had befallen the Swan. We were shown to a cabin, where we slept heavily all the afternoon — we hadn’t got much sleep the night before. When we woke we found we were at anchor off an unidentifiable bit of coast. A gigantic Nubian told us we were to join Mahmet on shore for dinner, and saw us into a small motorboat. We were taken ashore, and escorted into a vast tent which had been set up on the sand.

‘The rest was pure Arabian Nights. Gazelle-eyed maidens with perfumed robes brought Turkish delight in inlaid boxes and roast hummingbirds and sugared grapes and honeyed wine — ghastly stuff — and tiny cups of sludgy coffee. Silks kissed the earth. Our host raised his hands and clapped — once — twice — three times, and on the third the strains of a harp wafted in from the wings.’

Edward raised his hands and clapped; paused; clapped; paused; clapped again, and then caressed, gracefully, the air with his right hand in a wavy glide suggestive of the delicate notes of the harp.