James Munro - The Innocent Bystanders

Miriam watched him take off his coat. The gun harness was still there, but the gun was in the waistband of his trousers. He took it out, checked it, laid it on the bedside table. The time was four thirty, and she was dizzy with fatigue.

"You want to bathe first?" he asked. She nodded. "Go ahead."

"Are we sleeping together?" she asked.

He looked at the bed. "Looks like it," he said. "Don't worry, Miss Loman. I'll control my bestial desires."

She flinched at that and went into the bathroom. When she came back, she wore a towel tied round her like a Hawaiian pareu, covering her from shoulder to thigh.

"Very pretty," he said.

"I've washed my dress."

"Tomorrow I'll buy you a new one. Which side of the bed d'you want?" She got in on the left. The gun was close to her hand. "I'll bet it isn't loaded," she said.

"You'd win," said Craig. "Little girls shouldn't play with loaded guns. They go off."

"Please," she said. "I'm not a child. Don't treat me like one. It's bad enough being here-■"

"You're on your honeymoon," he said. "That's what I told them downstairs. You're nervous and shy, and you might try to run away. Don't try it, Miss Loman. Nobody speaks any English for miles around. They'd just bring you back and embarrass you."

She began to cry then, and still crying, fell asleep.

When she woke it was daylight, and she was alone. She got up quickly, and the towel fell from her. She ran to the door—it was locked—and then to the bathroom. Her dress was dry, and she put on bra, panties, and dress with clumsy haste, then prowled the room. There was no sign of the gun, no sign that Craig had ever been there. She had no memory of him in the bed. The thought should have been a comfort to her. She wondered what Ida would say if she knew how her Miriam had spent the night, and the thought made her smile, until she remembered Marcus, and the look on his face when Craig had taken her away. She loved Marcus as he loved her, un-questioningly, without reservation. A fat, middle-aged milliner had no business to possess such a capacity for love. It was a wonderful thing, no doubt, but one day it would destroy him.

She went out on to the tiny balcony and looked down. The Bosphorus was below her, the ships tied up to the stone quays, the racket of the port unending: stevedores, lorry drivers, even policemen milling about, and not one she could talk to, not one who could understand a word she said, even if she could escape from the hotel. She picked up her handbag and looked in the change purse. A five-dollar bill, three dollar bills, two quarters, and seven pennies. And Craig must be carrying thousands of dollars. Suddenly there was the sound of music, American music, below her. She leaned over the balcony and looked down. A small, dark man was washing the windows of the floor below. There was a transistor radio hooked to his ladder, and it was playing "Stardust" very loud. It had to be loud to compete with the racket of the port, but the volume couldn't mar the clean drive of the trumpet. She began to feel better.

When he came back, his arms were filled with parcels. She lay on the bed, not sleeping, and he looked so like

Hollywood's version of the wholesome American husband at Christmas time that she smiled.

"There should be a sound track playing 'Jingle Bells,'" she said.

"I bought you some clothes," he said. She sat up then, angry.

"Did it ever occur to you I might like to choose my own?" she asked.

"Perhaps you'll like these, Miss Loman," he said. "It's possible."

She opened the parcels, adored everything he'd bought her, and hated him even more.

"I'm hungry," she said.

"Lunch is on its way up," he said.

The feeling of frustration grew inside her. She had never known anything as hateful as this massive and very British competence.

Lunch was moussaka, grilled swordfish, salad and cheese, and a white wine she decided she detested, then drank three glasses of. After it, she felt well and wide awake for the first time since she'd left the aircraft.

"You're looking well," said Craig, and again the intuitive competence enraged her. She watched in silence as the crone poured Turkish coffee from a battered brass pot and left them.

"This food will probably make me ill," she said. "You know what we Americans are like—if the food's not flown in from home we go down with a bug."

"Ah," he said. "I'm glad you reminded me. I bought you some pills for that."

She slammed down her coffee cup.

"I hate you," she said.

"That's obvious—but it doesn't matter, so long as we don't let it get in the way. You ready to go?" "Now?"

"We haven't a lot of time," he said. "And Kutsk is five hundred miles away. Are you frightened?"

"Horribly," she said. He nodded.

"Me too," he said, and caught her look of surprise. "No matter how often I do it, I'm always frightened. So are all the others—except the nuts, and they don't last very long. Being frightened's part of the game, Miss Loman." "This isn't my game," she said.

"Poor little innocent bystander," said Craig. "Get your things together."

The Greek taxi driver had found Craig a Mercedes, a battered 200S that had nothing to recommend it except its engine, but that was astonishing. He drove Craig to the outskirts of the city, and again the girl had glimpses of the other Istanbul, the five star dream world of the tourist —Haggia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Dolmabace Palace —that gave way too soon to the narrow caverns of streets, first shops, then houses, then the dusty wastelands that fence in all big cities: abandoned cars, billboards, the first ploughed field. The driver pulled up at last by a bus stop and made another speech. At the end of it, he shook hands with Craig, then got out.

"He hopes we'll be very happy," said Craig. "That's nice of him," the girl said. "He's not to know it's impossible, is he?"

When she looked back, the driver was waving to them, teeth flashing.

Turkey turned out to be mostly dry hills and plains, waiting for water. That, and terrible roads that the Merc took with more philosophy than she did. And mosques of course, mosques in every village and town, built of everything from mud to marble. There were almost as many mosques as sheep. The car ate up the miles to Ankara— this was Turkey's main highway, the one they kept repaired—and Craig drove quickly, yet with caution, saving his strength for what was to come. When darkness came the girl drowsed again, and woke to more street lights, and Istanbul was nearly two hundred miles away. Craig drove slowly now, following the directions the Greek had given him, and stopped in a wide avenue, lined with olive trees that whispered softly even in that still night. He led the drowsy girl to the doorway, rang the bell, and again there was the babble of Greek, another crone, another vast bed with cool, white sheets. Then supper came: olives, lamb kebab, rice and fruit, and a dark, acrid wine that Craig drank freely. The whisky stayed in his bag untouched. Then after supper came Turkish coffee, and the sound of the crone running a bath. She took the first bath without asking. This time there were bath salts, the talc he had bought her, and a dressing gown, a scarlet kimono he had chosen that did a lot for the plumpness of her body, made her taller, more elegant. She went back to the bedroom.

He was standing, half turned away from her, practicing with the gun, drawing it, aiming, the muzzle a pointed, accusing finger, then putting it back in the holster, repeating the process over and over, then switching, the gun in the waistband of his pants, pulling it, aiming: and the whole thing so fast that the gun seemed to unfold in his hands into the hardness of death. He saw her, but didn't stop until he was satisfied, the sweat glistening on his face, pasting his shirt to his body. The girl thought of boxing champions she had seen on television, the endless training sessions devoted to just such a skill in hurting the man who faced you.