by Ann Bridge
“That’s about the last thing one usually hears said of him,” said Mr. Fisher, in surprise.
“Oh, because people don’t know him, that’s all. He’s so considerate, and frightfully amusing—and yet without ever losing that sort of special dignity he has. And if ever there was a man who loved his country, and worked himself to the bone for it, it’s he!” she said eagerly. “He half-killed himself during the war, Orhan Bey says, and even now he simply slaves away, night and day, to get things better for them. I think he’s absolutely wonderful. He’s so sweet with the country-people, too”; she went on—“he goes in and sits down in those little houses, and hobnobs with the old crones, and rags them, and lets them rag him back— a little crudely,” the girl said frankly, “but that’s what they like, of course.”
Mr. Fisher fairly stared.
“But you haven’t seen him doing that?”
“Oh goodness yes—several times. He takes me in with him when we’re out riding,” said Fanny simply. “I think he thinks it’s good for them to see an Englishwoman, and especially bareheaded!”
Mr. Fisher’s surprise was by now such that it almost robbed him of speech. That a fellow-countrywoman of his own should go for rides with the remote and inaccessible Head of the State, who only received Ambassadors at the most formal interviews, fairly took his breath away. “Let’s go and have a drink,” he said. “I must say he does one quite well in the matter of champagne—and that is a form of kindness which I personally appreciate very much.”
Fanny laughed. At the buffet Mr. Fisher imbibed the champagne for some time in silence; he was thinking. At last—“It’s coming back to me,” he said. “Don’t you know Alec Grant?”
“Yes.”
“That’s it. I knew he had a friend who had Turkish friends, when he was at Constant. Somewhere down on the Bosphorus, wasn’t it? A Pasha or something?”
Fanny smiled. “Yes. Orhan Bey’s wife is the Pasha’s daughter. But how do you come to know Alec?”
“Oh, we were at school together. The Fiery Cross’ we used to call him, he used to get into such terrific rages if anything upset him! And we’ve always kept up. I’m very fond of old Alec. Do you still see much of him?” he asked casually.
“I’m engaged to him,” said Fanny, with a pretty sparkle of mirth.
“Oh, Good Lord!” Mr. Fisher began. “I say, you must—” But his aghast apologies were interrupted by a slight movement among the crowd about them, as Mustafa Kemal Pasha himself came up.
“Fani Hanim, will you do me the honour of dancing with me?” he said, with a formal bow. As she moved away on his arm Mr. Fisher turned to the buffet and secured himself another glass of champagne. He was still thinking; his duties in the ballroom could wait. So this was Alec’s girl! He’d seen that he was engaged, but it was some months back, and he’d forgotten the name. Well, for a fiancée she seemed pretty much taken up with the Ghazi; his eyebrows went up as he recalled some of her remarks. But Mr. Fisher was a very conscientious young man, and the business-like thought also occurred to him that The Old Man (so popular Ambassadors are frequently referred to by their staffs) ought to know about this, and what friendly terms these Pierces seemed to be on with the Head of the State. It was the devil and all, dealing with Turks; they were so oriental, kept you so elegantly at arms’ length, never showed their hand—and none of them more so than Kemal Pasha. Still meditative, he strolled back into the ballroom, where Fanny and her eminent partner were dancing with energy; he was laughing, and Fanny’s face, bright with animation—or was it admiration?—was turned up to his.
As a matter of fact Mr. Fisher, who was young, and without much experience of human psychology, had been wrong in his deductions about Fanny’s attitude to Mustafa Kemal Pasha; an older person would have realised from the very openness with which she spoke of him that her feelings were enthusiastic and admiring, but little more. It was only that night that they changed a little—and it was the dance that changed them. Kemal Pasha danced beautifully, with expert mastery of step and rhythm—and with another sort of mastery too; and Fanny, full to the brim anyhow with her innocent ardours of passionate admiration, could not remain unaware of this. When at last he relinquished her, to dance with Féridé—he had worked his way through the diplomatic and official ladies by this time—there was that about her face and her whole demeanour which was hardly to be accounted for merely by her having danced with the national hero.
However, she remembered to keep her promises, and introduced Mr. Fisher to pretty Mme T., with whom he at once danced; later when Féridé’s dance with the Ghazi was over she introduced him to her too. “Only think—he knows Alec!” she said gaily, and—“Tiens!” said Féridé, as the young man led her away to perform a fox-trot. At 5 a.m. Kemal Pasha went off to play poker with his cronies in a private room down a corridor near the entrance, and his guests were free to drive home in the dawn.
Since English visitors were still rare in Ankara, and Dr. Pierce of a certain eminence, he and Fanny would probably have been the objects sooner or later of some form of Embassy entertaining, even without the conversation which Mr. Fisher contrived to have next day with “The Old Man.” The Ambassador had come up to Ankara for the ball, as in duty bound, leaving the cool spacious comfort of the vast Embassy in Istanbul for the relative rigours of the Ankara Palace—the new Embassy in Ankara was not yet habitable. He listened quietly to what Mr. Fisher had to say (in his youthful inexperience that worthy even mentioned that Miss Pierce was engaged to an old friend of his) and at the end he said—“Yes, all right. They’d better be asked to lunch at Carpic’s. This Dr. Pierce is her uncle, you say? I know his name, of course. I think you should keep up the contact, Billy. You’d better call, as you’ve met Mme Orhan. Orhan Bey is quite important; these anonymous fellows with no obvious position often are. Far more so,” he added meditatively, “than the lay figures they put into the Ministries, in most countries. All right.”
“All right,” is often a dismissal, and Mr. Fisher took his departure. Two days later, after making some complicated enquiries as to where Orhan Bey lived, he walked up to the villa among the vineyards to pay the indicated call. And so it came about that he was sitting in Féridé’s salon, chatting in French with Fanny and his hostess, at the very moment when the tesbih which Kemal Pasha sent to Fanny arrived.
A tesbih looks more like a rosary than anything else: a looped string of beads arranged in groups, with a short pendant at the junction, only instead of a crucifix a small ornament like a finial dangles from this. They have a definite religious significance, connected with prayer, and elderly Turks can still be seen running the beads through their fingers. Sometimes of ivory, sometimes of turquoise, sometimes of coral, they are often to be found in the bazaars, and can be very beautiful things, with the fine delicate silken cord between the polished beads; a pretty tesbih is quite a normal and non-committal form of present. But the tesbih which Fanny, excited as a child by the parcel done up in white paper, opened in front of Mr. Fisher was of amber on golden cord—obviously an old one, and valuable.
“How lovely! Who can it be from?” she exclaimed in delight.
“Here’s a card,” said the young man, picking it up as he spoke from the floor where it had fallen from the wrappings—as he handed it to her he saw the name. Fanny saw it too, and even in the dim light in that green-shadowed room the blush that spread over her fair skin was unmistakable. She recovered herself quickly—“Oh, how very kind,” she said coolly—“Look, Féridé, isn’t it pretty?”
But Féridé had seen the blush, and in conjunction with the valuable present it troubled her; and Mr. Fisher, Alec Grant’s friend—who had also so needlessly seen both—was troubled too.
Chapter Twenty-one
The luncheon at Carpic’s duly took place about a week later; “the Orhans” as Fisher called them were too important—potentially, any how—to be asked at shorter notice; the Ambassador however did not feel called upon to stay in Ankara for it, so
it was given by the Counsellor. To take a meal by day, in a restaurant, was yet another step in Féridé’s progress towards westernisation—she had never done such a thing in her life. She had to have a hat for the occasion; Fanny’s two or three were tried on, but none of them would satisfy her—in the end she confectioned herself a ravishing little toque of tulle, and ostrich-feathers from an old fan, to Fanny’s immense admiration. “How you can be so clever at making a thing you never wear I can’t imagine!” she said.
“I gave it much thought,” Féridé answered simply. And in that reply probably lies the key to the astonishing elegance of Turkish women, at least those in public positions, today. Working in a new medium, as it were, they have applied their whole intelligence to mastering the technique of western dress—no running into a shop to buy a little frock or a little hat because it has “caught their eye,” or is cheap, for them. As a result, their chic is amazing.
When it came to the point Féridé enjoyed the lunch very much. The Pierces apart, she had hardly met any English people, and Réfiyé Hanim’s frequent praise of the English had left her with a strong curiosity about the race. The Counsellor was a good talker and an amiable host, and had been too wise to overload this party with dull people whom he wished to “work off”; he had merely added a witty and amusing French couple. The food and wine were excellent; Carpic himself, the White Russian proprietor, hovered beside the round table with his sloping shoulders and drooping eyelids, his immense dignity and solicitude “practically hypnotising one into finding everything delicious,” as the Frenchman said—“though all of it is delicious.” Orhan was in tremendous form, and kept the party alert and laughing in a way which made Féridé suspect that he had something up his sleeve. She was right; as they drove away—Orhan had come straight to the restaurant from his bureau—he said to Dr. Pierce: “What would you say to a trip to Kastamonu, the week after next?”
“Oh, that would be very pleasant,” the Doctor said. “As I remember it it is a charming place.”
“Orhan, why Kastamonu?” Féridé asked, almost sharply; she was always a little suspicious of her husband in these moods.
“I have to go. The Ghazi is going, and I thought we might all go also. It will give Fani Hanim a sight of Anatolia, which she would not otherwise get; and would you not like to return to some of the scenes of your journey here?” he said, looking mischievous.
“Not in the least! Our journey was horrible,” Féridé began with energy, when Fanny broke in.
“Oh dji-djim, do let us go! I have wanted so much to see the way by which you came here. Orhan Bey, should we go by the same road?”
“Precisely the same—only we need not stay in all these terrible hans, because in a car one does it in one day. My Life, it is really an easy journey nowadays,” he said, turning round to his wife—he was sitting by the chauffeur.
“And why does the Ghazi want to visit Kastamonu?” Féridé asked, still suspicious.
Orhan chuckled. “Ah, that I cannot tell you now. You will learn when you get there!”
“He can’t be going to oust another Sultan or another Khalif,” said Dr. Pierce calmly, “because there aren’t any left. It cannot be anything very much, Féridé Hanim.”
Orhan shouted with laughter.
“He will still find something to oust, Professor,” he said. “You will see.”
He was as pleased as a child over his secret, but as it was obviously an official one they let him alone about it. But Féridé, to Fanny’s surprise and rather to her annoyance, raised a number of objections to the plan. It would still be fearfully hot; they had no conception of what the dust on the roads would be like; the han at Kastamonu would be sure to be over-crowded if the Ghazi was going. Everyone realised that she did not like the idea, but to none of them, not even to Orhan, did she care to give her real reason for opposing it. Both he and Fanny asked her privately if she thought the trip would be too much for her in her condition, and were told, quite brusquely, “not in the least—that does not enter into it.” So she was overborne, and rooms were telegraphed for.
Her real reason was her faint anxiety about Fanny and Mustafa Kemal Pasha. She, like Mr. Fisher, had noticed Fanny’s face at the ball, both during her dance with the President and after it; she had seen the brief expression of incredulous rapture which had accompanied the blush when the girl saw his card and realised that the tesbih was from him. That was before Fanny had collected herself and made that cool appraising remark about the splendid gift; but Féridé was much better at human psychology than Mr. Fisher—to her that cool remark was the biggest give-away of all. Forty-eight hours earlier Fanny would have gone on enthusing about the tesbih as candidly as she had continually enthused about the Ghazi himself; since the ball she rarely mentioned him. It was too unlucky that that wretched young man should just have happened to be there at that moment; diplomats were fearful gossips—“I suppose because they have nothing else to do,” Féridé said to herself, unjustly. She feared that gossip might be beginning, and she did not want her dear friend affichée with Kemal Pasha, as she well might be if they practically accompanied him to Kastamonu. Actually they were going a day ahead, but the effect would be the same. But much deeper than this was her concern for Fanny herself, her happiness and her peace of mind. Féridé had now been married for seven years, and had lived in Ankara for five of them—since Orhan was one of Kemal Pasha’s closest associates, and she herself a respected and favourite companion, she could not escape knowing him rather well. His charm for women was prodigious—she had seen respectable married ladies being bowled over by it like ninepins. As for Kemal Pasha himself, where his amusement or pleasure with women was concerned he had always been irresponsible, and since his divorce from Latifé Hanim— the one woman he had ever really cared for, however difficult and ultra-political she might have been—he was more reckless than ever. She had seen nothing so far to lead her to suppose that he was really attracted by Fanny—the gift of the tesbih might be no more than a gracious action to a friendly foreigner; but she knew what he was like, and nothing could have pleased her better at this juncture than that he should go off on one of his trips, expounding to the people in town and village his ideas for their improvement—whatever this latest notion might be—while Fanny remained quietly at Ankara; it would havé made a break, and given the girl’s enthusiasm a chance to die down.
It might have seemed an obvious thing to tell Orhan all this, and enlist his support; but Féridé felt a very natural disinclination to give Fanny away, and she could not be sure that her husband would not brush the whole thing aside as wholly unimportant. Orhan might pride himself on having no haremlik in his house, but in fact he was very far as yet from holding, let alone putting into practice, the commonly accepted western ideas on how to treat women—which are based, ultimately, on chivalry and Christianity. So she gave way, and the last week in August the four of them set off in a big car for Kastamonu.
Féridé could generally accept the inevitable with a good grace, and as this trip was inevitable she very sensibly gave herself up to enjoying it. Since her arrival in Ankara she had never been further afield along her old route than the çankiri Bridge where she and Nilüfer had been met by Ahmet and Orhan—she pointed it out to Fanny as they passed— and it was a strange experience to bowl in a fast car over the road along which they had crept in their little carriage five years before. As for Fanny, she could not be shown enough of the scenes, or hear enough of the episodes of that journey; her interest and happiness were so vivid that Féridé began to think that really it would have been a shame for her to miss the expedition. When they lunched at çankiri Fanny insisted on being taken up to the top floor of the inn to see the room where Féridé had looked from her window towards Ankara—“If I had known then what I was going to, I should have looked the other way, I can tell you!” Féridé said gaily. They went on, up over the rolling downs where the silver goats enchanted Fanny, down into the Devrezçai, whose chess-board of rice-field
s along the valley floor was turning a rusty brown as the grain ripened, and up again into the forests of the Ilghaz Dagh. Orhan and Dr. Pierce were talking practically about soil and climate, agriculture and afforestation, and Kemal Pasha s plans for these two last; but as the road climbed higher and its surface grew worse, and the drop below more startling, the Doctor began to listen to Féridé, who was describing the snow-drifts—“It was here that the driver would not go on; I am sure it was here!—and Hassan Bey made us get out and walk, and took the reins himself, and drove, and I led his horse.”
“Well, upon my soul!” commented the Doctor, “I shouldn’t care to cross this road in winter.”
“The hans were worse than the road, I assure you! I will show you the Bostan Han when we come to it”—and when the road dropped down through the beechwoods to the bridge over the Kara-Su she stopped the car and led the others into the han, which was still as dirty and degraded as ever; modern improvements had not yet reached Bostan. When she took them up the broken wooden stairs into the bedroom with the gaping floorboards, full of the smell of dung, even Orhan was aghast. “I had no idea it was as bad as this,” he said, looking round him with dismay.
“Please imagine it all a foot deep in snow, piercing cold, and with a stove that smoked, also!” Féridé adjured him. As they went out into the clean air again Dr. Pierce turned to her with—“Well really, my dear Féridé Hanim, I think you ought to receive a decoration! Orhan, when is the Ghazi going to start an Order for Women?”
As they swung down the great loops of road into Kastamonu and saw the citadel on its vertical rock, glowing like bronze in the late light above the faint haze which hung over the old city, Fanny exclaimed with delight—“Oh, what a beautiful place!” The houses along the river with their silvery woodwork enchanted her still more; so did the great han, when at last they drew up before its low noble line of brickwork. One of Féridé’s minor worries, and indeed a major preoccupation of Orhan’s, had been how Fanny would stand a night in a han, in spite of the elaborate instructions which had been telegraphed in advance. Bedding of a sort had been provided, though naturally no beds; the bedding rested, as always, on a raised wooden platform. But neither Orhan nor Féridé need have worried—Dr. Pierce had slept in such places a hundred times, and Fanny took to it all like a duck to water: the room—a cubicle, really—which she shared with Féridé was charming, the great loggias with their pointed arches round the central court were too superb (that was true), the food was delicious. In fact she stood up to it all far better than Nilüfer and Féridé, nurtured in luxury, had done, as Féridé admitted to Orhan. That young man was greatly impressed. “She might be & Turk,” he said—and wondered why his wife frowned, her dark brows drawn down, at his words.