by Ann Bridge
They only left at 2 a.m. when their host, like a clock, had at last run down. Driving home in the starlight Dr. Pierce, stifling a vast yawn, gave his comment. “Really quite sound, a lot of what he said. He’s got it thought out, you can see—though whether he will be able to put it through is another matter. Your nation is pretty conservative, Féridé Hanim—it’s a strength, in one way.” He stifled another yawn. “But my goodness, what energy! The man’s a perfect dynamo! I suppose he was working all day, wasn’t he, Orhan, my boy?” And Orhan replied, with detail and emphasis, that his chief had been at work since 9 a.m.
. . . . . .
The hot, hot days of the blazing Anatolian summer flowed by—gently, lazily, as time does flow in Turkey; with long spells of conversation, in the salon or on the embowered balcony, with walks, with strolls— rather early or rather late, when the sun was endurable. They made some of the expeditions that Orhan had promised: to the Kary-aghdi-Dagh—the “It Snowed” Mountains, a low range about two hours’ drive from Ankara, full of small steep glens, clothed with a thick natural growth of pines; to the Tschubuk Brook, a rather muddy stream not far from Kalaba, famous as the site of one of the battles of Tarn burlaine the Great, the Scythian warrior immortalised by Marlowe.
“Is it not brave to he a King, Teychelles?
Usumcané and Theridamas?
Is it not passing brave to be a King,
And ride in triumph through Persepolis?
—Fanny spoke the resounding words to Kemal Pasha, who for once was with them, as they sat under the silvery willows on the low bank, and then made a rapid ad hoc translation of them into Turkish. He asked who the poet was, and she told him of Marlowe the Elizabethan, and his tremendous drama of Tamburlaine. He appeared struck by this, and made a curious comment—“In Elizabethan days the English seem to have understood our outlook better than they do now.”
“That is perfectly true,” Dr. Pierce said. “For one thing everyone was familiar with Turkish battles and Turkish exploits then, because we and the Venetians and so on were always fighting them. And the Elizabethan Englishman was quite untroubled by washy nineteenth-century humanitarianism—he was a natural man, as your people are still.” At which the Ghazi laughed loudly.
Besides the picnics, there were rides. Orhan had horses at his command, and he and Dr. Pierce had ridden from the outset of the Pierces’ visit; but after a few days Kemal Pasha offered Fanny the use of one of his own horses, and a beautiful mare, Nazli, was put at her disposal. Féridé did not ride; she had confessed happily to Fanny in the course of the first few days that she was at last pregnant.
Fanny was delighted. “My Two Eyes, this is wonderful! I am so glad. How I wish Réfiyé Hanim could have known! But what a joy for your Father. It was so terribly tragic, Ahmet’s poor little baby dying like that.”
But though Féridé could not accompany them, the rides were an extreme delight to Fanny. During those summers in the Cotswolds a local resident with a large stable who had taken a fancy to the Oxford don and his lively niece had lent her first a pony, then a staid cob, then a well-mannered and reliable hunter—and on this succession of mounts she had become a fairly competent and a very ardent horsewoman. She was quite fearless, and delighted in the swift movement and the feel of a horse under her. At home she could not afford to ride, and one of her unconfessed disappointments about Alec’s home had been that his parents kept no horses—except in the Borders the Scotch do not, on the whole, ride. But at Ankara, evening after evening a groom brought the nervous beautiful mare to the foot of the steps—sometimes with the message that the Effendis should first pass by the Kiosk, where the Ghazi would join them; then she and Orhan and Dr. Pierce would ride off along the sandy track and draw rein under the poplars beside the spring, where four or five horses waited in the shade—Kemal Pasha would come out, trim as ever in riding-dress, followed by several A.D.C.s, and the whole company would clatter off, laughing and talking: up onto the Dikmen Hills, where the tracks are rough and stony, and through their shallow arid valleys, or away to the south, always over open rocky country with wide pale views on all sides. Kemal Pasha and Fanny occasionally rode together a little ahead, the grooms and A.D.C.s keeping a respectful distance; once or twice he dismounted beside a cabin and took her in with him to talk to the people inside, and roared with laughter at their amazement at the yellow-haired unveiled foreign girl, who talked Turkish like one of themselves. Altogether Fanny was extraordinarily happy during those summer days. She was back in Turkey, and it was all that she had dreamed it through years of absence; she was with Féridé again, and found the “wonderful person” of her childish memories a beautiful, distinguished, and charming woman, with a clear intelligence and great sincerity and integrity. She thought quite honesdy that these things were the principal source of her happiness; her occasional meetings with the national hero, the Head of the State, were just delightful extras, the cream on the pudding, so to speak. There were social doings too, though not very many—pleasant afternoon visits to the houses of various members of the new Government with whom Orhan and Féridé were on intimate terms, who like the peasants were startled and pleased to meet an English Professor and a pretty girl who spoke perfect Turkish, and made no calls on their careful French; and now and again a little dinner at Çankaya, at which the host always made Fanny sing Turkish songs to his guests, accompanying her himself with a slight, rather satisfied air of showmanship—Look what a pretty clever creature I have got here!
His attentions to Fanny, slight and formal as they were, began at last to disquiet Féridé a little. She knew his charm for women, though she herself had never actually suffered from it, and she knew too his curious irresponsibility where women were concerned. But she only began to worry seriously after the ball.
Late that summer Mustafa Kemal Pasha gave a ball at the Ankara Palace. He had caused the hotel to be built partly, at least, for the express purpose of having a place in which to do large-scale entertaining, impossible at the Kiosk. The invitations came out, and caused a buzz of excitement. It was to be one of the biggest entertainments so far given; all the foreign diplomats were to be there, and all the Turkish wives were invited, as well as their husbands. A day or so after the cards had been sent Kemal Pasha dropped in one afternoon at Féridé’s house, in his casual fashion—sitting in the salon, over coffee and cigarettes, he made a formal request to his young hostess that she would appear at the ball en grande toilette, if possible with a décolletage, and without even a scrap of tulle on her head. (Féridé still clung to her discreet habit of wearing a graceful arrangement of pale-coloured French veiling, pinned with diamond stars over her dark hair, at the dinners at Çankaya.) “This is my personal request to you,” he said, with urgent persuasiveness. “You will have the support of your young friend” —glancing at Fanny; “she, I am sure, has never veiled her head! And it is important that the foreign diplomats who will be present should see that there are at least some Turkish women who are up-to-date, and liberated from outworn customs.”
Féridé, with a reluctance which she did not allow to appear, agreed —she could hardly do anything else. But when he had gone—“This is going to be exceedingly disagreeable!” she exclaimed to Fanny. “With the diplomats it is all very well. They know how to behave. But there will be many among our own people who will disapprove furiously, and will make themselves unpleasant, you will see. I wish he had asked anything but that! It is quite another thing for you—you are accustomed to going bare-headed, and wearing low-necked dresses.”
“Yes, but I haven’t got one here,” Fanny said briskly—“I never thought I should need it. I’ve only got that black one I showed you, with the transparent lace top and sleeves, that you liked so much. Will that do?”
“If it is all you have, it must do. How I wish I had something as discreet! In Istanbul I should mind less; people are more advanced down there. But here!”
Fanny thought for a moment.
“Have you got a black di
nner-dress?” she asked.
“Yes-why?”
“We could take out the sleeves and cut a décolletage to fit my lace top, and you could put in my lace, and I could go lowneck, and you ‘discreet,’ as you call it. You’re no bigger around than I, only taller.”
“Fanny, this is brilliant! Would you do it? Do you not mind?”
“Goodness no—I don’t care tuppence about going low-neck, naturally. You can lend me some white lace to dress up the neckline, can’t you?— I expect you’ve got masses.”
Féridé had masses, and the alterations to the dresses were put in hand at once. The two girls were both actually engaged one morning on gathering some old fine duchesse flouncing to make a bertha for Fanny’s frock when Madame T., the wife of a young Government official who was rather friendly with Féridé, was announced. Mme T. was a pretty lively young woman, who always dressed well; she had already met Fanny, and after the usual flow of graceful politeness had been gone through she had no hesitation in embarking on her errand in front of the foreigner, though she made some courteous apologies for doing so. To her also, it seemed—but through her husband—it had been suggested that the Ghazi would like her to appear in evening dress— “et sans tulle!” “Oh Féridé-djim, do give me your advice! What are you going to wear?” she said urgently. “I have no low-neck dress, naturally. I must say I wish the Ghazi had not quite so many of these European ideas! Fani Hanim, I mean no discourtesy; to you all this must seem folly, for I suppose you appear constantly with your shoulders bare,” she said with a disarming smile—“but to us it is a difficult thing, you understand.”
Fanny knew enough to understand very well how difficult it was, and said so. At her suggestion they went to Féridé’s room and showed Mme T. the dress with the newly-arranged black lace top and sleeves; this compromise commended itself, and the young woman went away somewhat comforted, to organise a similar transparency for herself. “Mon Dieu,” Féridé said to Fanny when she had gone, with a rather rueful laugh, “we shall see some curious toilettes at this party, I wager you!”
When the day came, they did. Orhan being in attendance they had to be there early, and stood and watched the big garish rooms filling up. Many of the Turkish men had by now risen to tail coats and white ties, but a large number wore their fezzes as well, which produced a very odd effect. Men predominated; the more old-fashioned and stubborn of the deputies had left their wives at home, invited or not, and stood staring sourly at those who had come. One thing struck Fanny particularly—as these married couples passed through the entrance of the big room where the company was assembling, several of the wives stood politely aside to let their husbands pass in first, as a man would do in Europe; and she saw that Féridé noticed this too. Most of these ladies had made no attempt at formal evening dress, indeed Mustafa Kemal had only suggested it to a few of the younger, more enterprising and more elegant women in Ankara, and especially to those who, like Féridé, were sufficiently well-born to be less likely to suffer from the inhibitions of the bourgeoisie. So the room became fuller and fuller of high necks and long sleeves, of every colour and kind; the wives of the foreign diplomats, in their French dresses, jewels, and long white gloves looked like birds of Paradise among a flock of hen pheasants in this curious throng. Féridé knew several of them, and after introducing Fanny took her place near them, sheltering in their company till the President of the Republic should arrive; from this coign of vantage she looked round curiously to observe how many of her countrywomen had carried out the Ghazi’s behest. Only about a dozen, so far as she could see. Mme T. had made quite a success of her transformation, having (not too obviously) converted the lace sleeves of her silver dress into a transparent neck, leaving short ruffles at the shoulders. Féridé glanced with envy at the tiaras worn by one or two of the foreigners. “How I wish I had a diadème also!” she murmured to Fanny—“My head feels so strange. That one there is like a hat, it is so big!”
“Get one made; you have diamonds enough for six!” Fanny returned merrily.
When Kemal Pasha eventually arrived, “looking absolutely smashing in full fig,” as Fanny incautiously phrased it afterwards in a letter to Alec—and indeed he did, with stars and orders glittering on his faultless dress clothes—there was a certain amount of ceremonious presenting, arranged largely by Orhan, and then the dancing began.
Dr. Pierce leant against the wall and looked on. To him it was a very strange spectacle indeed, this mixed gathering of men and women— in Turkey, and in public. He thought of the past with something very like regret; the past had been so dignified, the people so content with the ordering of their lives by custom and tradition. As he watched these Turkish women dancing modern dances, body to body with foreign men (for the diplomats were doing their duty) it occurred to him to wonder, first, whether the western way of life was really so superior to the oriental, and then whether it could be right to do such violence to national tradition, national feeling? Kemal himself had said, at their first dinner at Çankaya, barely a month before, that the peculiar genius of a nation must be respected, fostered. Was the national genius being fostered here, at this moment, let alone respected? Close by him, also propping up the wall, were several old Generals and reactionary elderly deputies—and as Féridé, Mme T., and the other heroines of the occasion spun past, with uncovered hair and shoulders visible, even if through lace, he heard their hissed comments: the Turkish equivalent of “brazen hussy!” The women heard—the old men saw to that— and Dr. Pierce saw their embarrassment, their distress, and wondered again if all this was really for the good of the nation which he loved. But then he was a traditionalist, and therefore perhaps something of a reactionary himself.
Fanny also noticed it all—little was ever lost on her. As she was twirled round the great room under the glaring lights in the arms of Orhan, of young diplomats, or of various Turks she too heard the hissed comments, and noted the discomfort of the women whose uncovered hair and shoulders called them forth. “How very ill-bred those old men are!” she made a point of saying, very audibly, to her Turkish partners; she too might regret the past, but the present made her angry. “So ignorant, also,” she would add, and was delighted to see the angry looks which greeted her shafts as they reached the grumblers ranged along the walls.
But the décolletées ladies had a much doughtier champion than Fanny, as the whole room presently saw. Very little was ever lost on Mustafa Kemal Pasha either, and he had been expecting this particular development, and was on the watch for it. Poor Mme T. was really beginning to falter, at last, under the public unpleasantness of this adverse comment, which grew bolder all the time, and after she had just passed a trio of old men whose remarks were especially opprobrious she turned to her partner and murmured that she was tired, and would like to sit down. She had hardly taken her seat when she found Kemal Pasha himself standing before her.
“You are tired, Madame? Would you like some champagne to restore you? No? An ice, then? One moment”—and he stepped across the floor, the dancers making way for him, to the three elderly deputies. “Come, Mehmet Effendi, Talaat Effendi—I have a little task for you. Follow me, please”—and he led them over to Mme T.
“Madame, allow me to present Mehmet Effendi to you—he will fetch you an ice. And this is Talaat Effendi—he will bring you a glass of water. Hasten, my friends; see that Madame T. is served well.” He remained at her side, talking to her with the most deferential politeness till the outraged old men returned, and under the eyes of the whole company were obliged to wait on her. Then he sought out the third, and made him do the same to another woman in a low-necked dress; and so he continued to do throughout the evening —quite easily, apparently quite casually, but with a look in his eye that all who knew him understood. None of the unmannerly elders were spared: deputies, Generals, Valis, all were pressed into the service of the low-necked ladies, and no one dared to disobey. In a way it was a scene of high comedy, besides its wider significance.
This
also Fanny saw, and her combative little spirit glowed with approval. She was dancing with a boy from the British Embassy called Fisher when Mme T. and the next woman were singled out for Kemal Pasha s protective attentions, and to her countryman she was not afraid to say what she felt. “Isn’t he magnificent?” she exclaimed.
“I must say I like to see those old toads of deputies being done down,” Mr. Fisher said temperately. “I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they looked like the Elders accusing Susanna.”
“They were being exactly that,” Fanny returned.
“Awful shame,” said Mr. Fisher—“I call it exceedingly plucky of those girls to turn out in evening dress—or at least to have a shot at it! I wonder how the Ghazi got them to. Such a pretty girl, that one in silver; I wish I knew her.”
“Oh, that’s Mme T. I can introduce you to her—I know her,” Fanny said.
“Oh, good. Of course you know all these people, don’t you? You’re staying with Orhan Bey, aren’t you? I wish you’d introduce me to Madame Orhan—she looks an absolute stunner. That’s a very pretty frock she’s wearing—and what diamonds!”
“I will,” said Fanny obligingly.
“Oh, splendid. I see Orhan Bey occasionally—he’s an awfully able fellow, and so amusing, too. How do you come to know them so well?”
“She and I played together as children, as a matter of fact.”
“What, out here?”
“Yes—I used to come with my Uncle every summer. Oh look,” she said gleefully—“there he goes again!”
“What, the President? Oh, so he is,” said Mr. Fisher, steering his partner skilfully in the direction of another group consisting of a lady in a low dress, the Ghazi, and two rather ancient Generals who under an appearance of civility both looked as if they had just swallowed an emetic.
“I do think he’s superb,” Fanny said as they danced away again. “It’s so frightfully kind, for one thing. But then he is awfully kind.”