Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) Read Free

her bed and pulled on some tights. “I simply thought Turkey would be the hottest. It sounds so hot.”
    “Well, we can look at things,” Nick said.
    He could study an object for so long that she – who went in for quick impressions – wondered how there could be any more to see. On this holiday, he had stood for longer than ever, as if trying to imprint details on his mind. Amy sometimes thought that it was done to break her patience. Even the guides, who were too particular, too long-winded for the other tourists, went ahead and lost him. Amy, drifting on, would realise his absence and go back to look for him. He had been lost at Pompeii and in the museum in Cairo: from the Acropolis of Athens, he had turned up only after everyone waiting in the hot bus had become angry and begun to murmur amongst themselves, while the Greek driver was only too ready to lean on the horn to hurry him up.
    Amy, because he was convalescing from surgery, said nothing. Ordinarily, she would have gently nagged; now, she merely pointed out that their doctor would not have approved of his standing about solong and then having to make a mad dash. “That wasn’t what he meant by a holiday,” she said. Always at the mention of his illness his expression was uneasy. He would look at her closely, as if she were behind a case in a museum; he examined her face carefully and then, as if he could come to no conclusion, would sigh and turn away. He was almost convinced that something was being kept from him – by his cheerful doctor, the unruffled surgeon, above all by Amy’s new-found patience. By no means could he drag her down to share his own depression. Crossness she ignored, scarcely a harsh word was she trapped into uttering. The gentler she was, the more his suspicions rose. On one occasion he had been unable to forgo asking her outright. “Of course not,” she said, her eyes wide with surprise. “He said nothing to me that he didn’t say to you. I hardly ever saw him when you weren’t there.” For a while he was appeased, but fairly soon after the thought came to him, “Well, of course, that is what she
would
say.” And he didn’t really want to know. Or did he? Neither way was there any peace of mind. One day he would think she could not act as well as this; the next day he might decide that she was over-playing a part.
    And so it had been in some ways a trying holiday – she fussing over him with the patience of a saint, but inwardly quick to be bored, or irritated by such prolonged sight-seeing; and he determined to miss nothing, as if it were his last chance. Sometimes she longed to stay on deck and lie in the sun, instead of getting into a hot bus on the quayside, and going off on a tour. Even in this grey Istanbul she would rather haveremained behind and had a drink than put on her raincoat and go to look at the bazaar. Tomorrow the Topkapi Museum and mosques. The following morning even more mosques, before they sailed in the afternoon for Izmir.
    The
Galatea
was something of a freighter and something of a Mediterranean bus. Passengers got on at various ports, others got off. A few – including Nick and Amy and their new-found American friend, Martha Larkin – had booked for the round tour, from Trieste to Trieste.
    Amy now tied a scarf over her head and was ready to go. It is his holiday, she told herself, forgoing the drink in the bar. Not I who’ve been in hospital all these weeks.
    There had been a time when she had thought that he would not recover, that she would have to make her way through the rest of a meaningless life alone. Every day she reminded herself of those weeks of fear.
    She preceded him down the gang-plank to the sordid quayside, where bales were being unloaded from the hold. Making her way towards the waiting bus, she said, “We might find presents for the children.” Although their son was in his thirties, he and his wife and their little girls were always referred to as ‘the children’.
    They