Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) Read Free Page A

were driven over the Galata Bridge. It was early evening. The pavements of the Bridge and all the streets were crowded with people hurrying from work, and the ferry boats went back and forth between shore and shore.
    In the great covered bazaar, they wandered about,shaking their heads at boys thrusting goods at them, hardly daring to look in shop windows, because of the owners standing by ready to pounce. “Just to look. Only to look. No buy.” The noise and stuffiness were tiring. They found nothing for the children.
    They saw some others from the ship – a German couple they disliked, the ones who always grabbed the front seat in the bus, which Amy would have liked for Nick, to save him effort and give him air. There was the Alexandrian woman, beautifully dressed, slim and graceful, buying more gold bracelets. Already she wore so many that when she raised her arms to smooth her hair, there was a rippling, chiming sound as they softly clashed down to her elbows.
    Amy kept looking at her watch. Another twenty minutes before they were all to meet outside by the entrance to the gardens.
    “I intend to have a drink before dinner,” she said. “No matter what time it is.”
    He looked at her and smiled. “You shall,” he said. “You shall.” There was nothing much in this place for him to examine, and for once he walked at her pace, and would have been glad enough to leave.
    At first, when pestered by touts, Amy had smiled politely and shaken her head; but she was by now becoming brusque. The ones she encountered at the end of this tour would marvel at the rudeness of Englishwomen.
    Near to the time of departure, they saw Martha Larkin, wandering alone, as usual. She had bought a rather strong-smelling, tooled leather bag.
    “Surely a mistake,” she said, holding it wellaway from them.
    “It may wear off,” said Amy.
    Others from the party had bought leather goods, and all were glad to get off the bus and into the fresh air. Amy went nimbly (towards her gin) up the gangway. With one foot on deck, she remembered Nick, had to step aside quickly for the determined German couple, and then saw him, with Martha at his side, coming up slowly, step after breathless step. She felt remorse. As they walked together along the deck, he patted Martha’s arm, to save breath-spending words, and Amy felt ruffled, as she had so long ago when her baby had been content to be nursed by other people.
    And now, along the deck, came a steward beating on a gong. “It’s absurd,” Amy said. “Who can be ready for dinner? And in any case, it’s they who’ve made us late.”
    “Come,” Nick said to Martha. “Drink in the cabin. Have secret gin.”
    Their cabin was but a few paces off and he walked there determinedly, and was quite himself by the time he reached it.
    Nick and Amy Henderson were, apart from the Purser, stewards, shop-keepers, the only ones Martha had spoken to on this holiday. She was greatly taken up with her own language, but could not come to grips with any other, although she had strong reactions to them, a sense of inferiority when she heard French, wistfulness listening to Italian, displeasure from German.
    She had listened to Nick and Amy talking, not only with relief at understanding what they said, but with her usual passionate delight at the turn of a sentence, and her ear for nuances. She was a novelist, an expatriate one at that, a writer of sad
contes
about broken love affairs, of depressed and depressing women. Her few books were handsomely printed, widely spaced on good paper, well-reviewed, and more or less unknown. Without fretting, she waited to be discovered. From the sales of her last novel she had hoped to pay for this holiday, but could now see that savings would have to be delved into, and perhaps some borrowing done.
    She had become interested in the Hendersons. They very nearly offered one of the things she had hoped for on this expensive voyage – a pleasant, growing acquaintance with