Arrivals & Departures

by Leslie Thomas

  In a contrary way he had often felt disappointed, cheated even, when the final approach of a flight missed out the spread of a city: the squares and bridges of London, unseen on the landing from the west, Charles de Gaulle from the north with no vision of Paris, the long drop to Kennedy across Jamaica Bay, the city reduced to packing cases piled on the horizon. But Istanbul provided the perfect landing.

  Paddy Bush met him at Yesilkoy Airport. He had a car and driver waiting and they drove through the dusty evening towards Istanbul. ‘Where is Ray Francis?’ he asked Bush.

  ‘God only knows. He’s gone, that’s all I know.’

  The driver, who wore a fez and a maroon suit, interrupted. ‘We go along coast road. Along Sea of Marmara.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Mustapha,’ said Bush.

  ‘Past Castle of the Seven Towers.’

  ‘Good. Yes. Thanks.’ He grimaced at Edward. ‘He is normally a tourist guide.’

  ‘Best in Istanbul,’ said Mustapha over his shoulder. ‘See, the Sea of Marmara by night.’

  Bush raised his eyebrows.

  ‘On our left,’ said Mustapha.

  He appeared to have finished. Richardson said: ‘How is the operation going?’

  ‘Well, we’re managing but it’s not easy when the station manager walks out. He took the keys of the safe for a start.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Bush looked sideways at him. ‘No. It’s not like that. There isn’t anything valuable in there anyway and Francis wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘I didn’t think he would.’

  ‘But we’ve had to get a locksmith to open it. He took all day. Said he was a former burglar but I doubt it. He wasn’t quick enough. All the documents, receipt books and suchlike are in there. We were lost without them.’

  ‘The Castle of the Seven Towers,’ interrupted Mustapha. ‘See also Tower of Marble. Nice eh?’

  ‘Very nice,’ muttered Richardson.

  ‘He’s very useful to us,’ warned Bush. ‘We use him all the time.’

  ‘Up there famous Topkapi Gate, Topkapi Museum.’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  They turned from the sea into the city. The lights in the streets shone on the roofs of the slow traffic, people crowding the pavements. There were street cafés and deep alleys full of activity.

  ‘Ataturk Bulvari,’ Mustapha informed them. ‘Ataturk Boulevard. Name after Ataturk.’

  ‘Ray Francis always had a theory that this was the nearest place to London for making a good disappearance,’ said Bush.

  Edward looked at him wryly. ‘What did he mean by that?’

  ‘Well, it’s a totally foreign city. It’s not like Rome or Athens, it’s the East. So if you don’t want anyone to find you, even if your picture is in the papers, this is the place.’

  ‘You haven’t had …’

  ‘Inquiries from the press? No. Not yet.’

  ‘God, we can do without that. Imagine the British tabloids. “Airways chief goes off with belly dancer”.’

  ‘She’s a professor.’

  ‘I know. But that wouldn’t stop them. “Brit’s Turkish Delight” – can’t you see it? “Weeping wife in Cheltenham while air executive is in the kasbah”.’

  ‘Grainger would go through the roof.’

  ‘He’s heading that way anyhow. I saw him before I left.’

  Mustapha appeared to have become sulky at their monopolising the conversation. They arrived at the hotel and he got out to open the doors saying only: ‘Imperial Hotel. Hotel Imperial.’

  They thanked him and he seemed mollified. ‘Go on tour tomorrow,’ he suggested. ‘Elephant Path, Chicken That Would Not Fry Street, Mosque at St Sophia?’

  ‘Mr Richardson has to return to London tomorrow,’ said Bush.

  ‘Another time,’ said Edward.

  ‘I been visit London,’ said Mustapha. ‘Regent Park, Buck Palace. Very nice.’ He paused. ‘Now I go get Mr Francis.’

  They stood astonished on the pavement. A braided hotel porter hovered, holding Richardson’s hand baggage. ‘Mr Francis?’ queried Bush. ‘You’re going to fetch him?’

  ‘He tell me.’

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Richardson.

  ‘Over bridge,’ smiled Mustapha pointing and pleased at their interest. ‘By historic Tower of Galata.’

  ‘And you’re bringing him here?’

  ‘To Hotel Imperial,’ confirmed the driver. ‘Imperial Hotel.’

  Richardson said quietly. ‘Perhaps we’d better go with him.’ Bush touched his sleeve.

  ‘No,’ confirmed Mustapha quickly. ‘Mr Francis want to come here. Back in no time, half hour.’

  He left them summarily, climbed into the car and drove off into the traffic. Slowly Richardson retrieved his hand-baggage from the porter, saying he would check in later. ‘Well, what do you make of that?’ he said to Bush.

  ‘He’ll come back with him,’ said Bush confidingly. ‘We’d better go and have a drink and wait.’

  They went into the big, marble hotel. The bar was full of men drinking coffee at low tables. Smoke drifted heavily. Bush ordered two gins and they sat almost concealed by an ornamental palm.

  ‘What did Grainger say about it?’ asked Bush.

  Richardson sniffed. ‘The usual barely controlled spleen,’ he said. ‘Although, this time he’s got some justification. I’m not all that pleased with Ray Francis myself. I was in Bahrain yesterday.’

  ‘Do you think there’s going to be redundancies?’ asked Bush as if he had been waiting for the opening. ‘We never hear anything out here, except from crews and people passing through.’

  ‘They’re probably looking at it,’ shrugged Richardson. ‘But then they always are.’

  ‘I’ll bet my life that Grainger will still be there, recession or not,’ probed Bush.

  ‘He probably will,’ said Richardson. ‘He asked me today whether anyone else was head-hunting me and I told him I wasn’t interested in going anywhere else. Which probably means I’m first for the chop.’ He paused and nudged Bush as he saw Ray Francis come through the door. ‘Well, the second anyway,’ he said.

  Francis was a pale, anxious man with hair so fine and fair that from a distance he appeared bald. His normal tentativeness had been replaced by a temporary and unconvincing bravado. ‘Ah,’ he said as he advanced on them. ‘Waiting in ambush.’

  ‘We’d have to get up early in the morning to ambush you, Ray,’ said Richardson. They shook hands all round. Bush diplomatically excused himself. He was halfway to the door when he returned. ‘Have you got the safe keys?’ he asked Francis.

  The fair man looked startled. ‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ He produced two keys from his pocket and handed them to Bush. ‘I suppose that’s been inconvenient,’ he said lamely. Bush said: ‘A little,’ and left.

  ‘Nobody’s very pleased with me, I suppose,’ said Francis miserably sitting down in the chair which Bush had vacated. A waiter approached and he ordered a beer, then changed it for a Coca-Cola.

  ‘You can suppose that,’ confirmed Richardson. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I fell in love,’ sighed Francis. ‘Again.’

  ‘Can’t you fall in love without pissing off with the safe keys, just for a start.’

  ‘I know. And now you’ve had to come out. There’s been all sorts of trouble.’ He became abruptly afraid. ‘Nobody’s told my wife, have they?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. I thought you might tell her.’

  ‘Oh, no. But thank goodness for that. She’d be furious.’

  ‘She’s still going to be.’

  The Coca-Cola arrived and Francis sipped it. ‘There’ll be no need,’ he said. ‘I’ve left Gloria. Or she’s left me rather.’

  ‘Gloria? That’s a funny name for a Turk, isn’t it?’

  ‘Turk? Who said she’s a Turk? Somebody’s obviously got the story all arse-about-face.’

  ‘Well, you weren’t around to correct them.’

  ‘She’s at the University of Ankara. She’s
a professor of psychology there. But she comes from Barnsley.’

  ‘Barnsley?’

  ‘Yes, why not? Professors can come from Barnsley.’

  ‘Listen, Ray,’ said Richardson impatiently. ‘Wherever she’s from, you can’t just clear off and leave Bush and everyone else in the lurch.’

  ‘Did Bush tell on me?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. He’s not the school sneak. He covered up for you as long as he could. But we’ve had two flights a day into Istanbul this past week. People tend to wonder where the station manager is, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Will I get the axe?’

  ‘That’s not up to me, you know that. But this isn’t the first time. There was that burgomaster’s daughter in Germany….’

  ‘Gerda,’ nodded Francis. ‘I do pick some names, don’t I.’ He looked sorrowfully at Richardson. ‘I’ll go in tomorrow,’ he said. ‘If they sack me, they sack me.’

  ‘The trouble is you’re so bloody good at the job,’ grunted Richardson. ‘When you’re there.’

  ‘I let my heart lead me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have said it was your heart.’

  ‘Well, that as well. What do you think will happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. Grainger is furious, but then he always is. What I imagine will happen is that you’ll be brought home for a while. Bush can take over in Istanbul – he’s got used to it.’

  Francis looked relieved. ‘Thanks,’ he said genuinely. ‘I’m very grateful. It’s not the sack I mind so much, but I don’t want the wife to know. I don’t know what I’d do without her.’

  The lych-gate creaked like a cleric clearing his throat. The sound pleased Pearl Collingwood and she shut and opened it again to hear it repeated. She enjoyed believing that it had been like that for several centuries.

  From where she stood, the side of the porch and the west window of the church were framed by the iron-black wood of the gate; she had to walk below the arch before the full view came to her. She smiled her pleasure at seeing it, like someone recognising family traits in a distant relative. She was wearing a light summer dress and a straw hat. She had bought it in Maidenhead when she and Rona had gone there to have tea by the river.

  Bedmansworth Church had a look of long prosperity. It had flourished in the age of manors and estates. The lord of that land had ridden to London to send Guy Fawkes to his gallows death from the Gunpowder Treason Plot. Rich merchants and owners of great houses had been prominent in the parish right to the end of Victoria’s reign.

  It was built of figured brick and had a four-square tower surmounted by a vane in the form of a golden ball above which was a splendid golden arrow, like a near miss from a large angel.

  Pearl walked up the path and at once realised that its paving was formed by broken gravestones worn smooth by years of feet. Bending closer and adjusting her spectacles, she could make out rubbed names and dates, or segments of them. ‘Agnes Jones.… Ap....... John Martinda.… 30th August … in the year of Our Lo … 179.… To the good memory of Timothy........... Mary Taylor … a spinst.… of this par .…’ She recited them quietly to herself, the words of a jigsaw made up of former inhabitants of the village. She felt sorry that their memorials had fallen but not even chased stone was meant to last forever and she liked the notion of those one-time people being together there, neighbours still as they had been in the hamlet of long ago, their loves and sins and quarrels trodden by their successors.

  It was mid-morning; a blackbird sang in the dark yews of the churchyard, there were fresh wet flowers on a grave by the far wall, a dog relieved itself against a leaning cross, and a light blue skein of smoke curled from behind a ruined vault. Mrs Collingwood sniffed and advanced. Peering around the mouldy wall of the vault she saw a silvery man in striped shirtsleeves with a vicar’s bib strapped around him, as though he were about to wash dishes. He was smoking a cigarette, his face composed in an expression of secret bliss. It changed swiftly when he saw her. The cigarette was squashed and thrust into his trouser pocket. The aura of smoke hung about his grey head.

  ‘That’s a sure way of catching yourself on fire,’ pointed out Mrs Collingwood with a worried stare at his trousers.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ he agreed. He smiled with her. ‘If I am to be consumed by flames I would prefer it to be later rather than sooner.’

  ‘I guess that goes for all of us.’ She patted the roof of the vault and held out her long hand. ‘I’m Pearl Collingwood. I’m visiting from Los Angeles with my daughter.’

  ‘And I am Henry Prentice,’ he said. ‘I’m the vicar here. I heard you were in Bedmansworth. My wife forbids me to smoke and some of my parishioners don’t like it either. So I have to sin like this.’ He glanced guiltily at the vault. ‘Hiding behind the dead.’

  Pearl sighed. ‘Don’t they just bug you,’ she sympathised. ‘People who don’t smoke. My doctor and my daughter between them stopped me, or they tried. Now I have to do it under the bedclothes, which is dangerous.’

  They exchanged covert glances. ‘Would you like one now?’ the vicar inquired kindly.

  ‘I just would,’ affirmed the old lady her eyes brightening. ‘It’s a fine morning for a smoke.’

  Slyly, and first looking around, he opened a wooden trapdoor in the wall of the church. Within were two watering cans and a pair of grass shears. From one of the watering cans he took an unopened packet of Silk Cut. ‘Low tar,’ he said like an absolution. ‘Although that always sounds to me like a disreputable sailor.’ He took the wrapping from the packet with difficulty, complaining: ‘You have to break and enter these things nowadays.’ He offered the packet to her and she took a cigarette. He selected one for himself, choosing as though they were not all the same. He produced a box of matches. ‘I’m allowed matches,’ he said as he lit up for them both.

  The blackbird, like some tell-tale, increased its song. They puffed, the secrecy seeming to increase the enjoyment.

  ‘When I was at school,’ mentioned Henry Prentice, ‘a smoke was called a drag.’

  ‘We called it a puff,’ she said. She intook heavily. ‘God, this is good.’

  ‘Yes, a drag,’ he mused. ‘Nowadays if you see a headline saying: “Vicar in Drag” it means he’s a transvestite.’

  ‘Life gets so complicated,’ Pearl agreed. She pushed aside her own emitted smoke to read the names on the vault. ‘It’s like a little house,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the Malcomb-Ferringford family tomb,’ he said patting the warming stones fondly. ‘They did a lot of good in this parish when it was not a general virtue with the landed gentry.’

  ‘And they’re still proving useful,’ acknowledged the American woman also touching the stone. She regarded him conspiratorially. ‘Do you have any other hideaways for dragging?’

  ‘In the winter I crawl behind the organ,’ he told her releasing a small smoke-ringed confessional grin. ‘I blow into the pipes, through the holes, and it sort of wanders about in there. The organist is an abolitionist and I’ve derived a certain measure of enjoyment from observing his nose twitch while he’s playing. But generally, when the weather is suitable, I conceal myself here.’ He laughed jollily. ‘One evening, at just about dusk, a young couple crept into the churchyard. I was standing here with my secret cigarette. They were cuddling on one side of the Malcomb-Ferringfords and I was puffing on this side. Then the girl saw the smoke drifting up from the tomb. Ghosts! They tore off like fury.’

  ‘Do you think Our Lord would have smoked?’ asked Mrs Collingwood soberly. ‘Say it had been available.’

  ‘It’s the one temptation He was spared but I like to think that He might,’ Henry Prentice mused. ‘It is after all a contemplative occupation. It’s pleasant to think of Him having a quiet puff by the wayside.’

  ‘Out there forty days in the wilderness,’ she reflected. They had finished their cigarettes. The vicar hid the butts in the watering can and they walked into the alternating sunlight and the warm shadows of the trees. ‘It’s a fine
church,’ she said looking at the stout tower.

  ‘One of the finest in Middlesex. We still call ourselves Middlesex although we don’t officially exist. We’re not far from Whitehall in distance but we’re a long way in other matters.’

  A silver-bellied plane came noisily and low from behind the tower.

  ‘When they use this particular flight path, which fortunately is not all the time, everything shakes in the church,’ said Henry Prentice. ‘I’ve seen the communion wine swishing about and plaster falling from the memorial tablets on the wall.’

  The plane had quickly gone. Pearl smiled: ‘It’s just like standing in the middle of a history book here.’ She surveyed the graves. ‘These people who knew this place.’

  ‘And they would recognise it now, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘Despite Heathrow, despite everything, it hasn’t changed that much. Only the surroundings have changed. Mind, it took a determined effort by the present inhabitants and the other villagers around here to prevent the airport swallowing it up.’

  They strolled along the path with its broken memorial slabs. Pearl studied them once again. ‘Some fell down, some crumbled,’ he explained. ‘Inferior stone I suppose and lately, of course, there’s been pollution from the airport and the motorway and the industrial estates.’ He rubbed his shoe against a segment of masonry. ‘And some were damaged in the war.’

  ‘The Nazis bombed the church?’