“Oh yes?”
“I do not know Athens. I have never been. Would you allow me to go with you?”
“Yes, of course. I should be glad of company. But I was only going to buy some English books and cigarettes.”
“I am most grateful.”
“Not at all. We get in just after lunch, don’t we?”
“Yes, yes. That is quite right. But I will find out exact time. You leave that to me.”
“Then that’s settled. I think I shall go to bed now. Good night, Mr. Kuvetli.”
“Good night, sir. And I thank you for your favour.”
“Not at all. Good night.”
He went to his cabin, rang for the steward and said that he wanted his breakfast coffee in his cabin at nine-thirty. Then he undressed and got into his bunk.
For a few minutes he lay on his back enjoying the gradual relaxing of his muscles. Now, at last, he could forget Haki, Kopeikin, Banat, and the rest of it. He was back in his own life, and could sleep. The phrase “asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow” passed through his mind. That was how it would be with him. God knew he was tired enough. He turned on his side. But sleep did not come so easily. His brain would not stop working. It was as if the needle were trapped in one groove on the record. He’d made a fool of himself with that wretched woman Josette. He’d made a fool … He jerked his thoughts forward. Ah yes! He was committed to three unalloyed hours of Mr. Kuvetli’s company. But that was to-morrow. And now, sleep. But his hand was throbbing again, and there seemed to be a lot of noise going on. That boor José was right. The vibration was excessive. The cabins were too near the lavatories. There were footsteps overhead, too: people walking round the shelter deck. Round and round. Why, for Heaven’s sake, must people always be walking?
He had been lying awake for half an hour when the French couple entered their cabin.
They were quiet for a minute or two, and he could only hear the sounds they made as they moved about the cabin, and an occasional grunted comment. Then the woman began.
“Well, that is the first evening over! Three more! It is too much to think of.”
“It will pass.” A yawn. “What is the matter with the Italian woman and her son?”
“You did not hear? Her husband was killed in the earthquake at Erzurum. The first officer told me. He is very nice, but I had hoped that there would be at least one French person to talk to.”
“There are people who speak French. The little Turk speaks it very well. And there are the others.”
“They are not French. That girl and that man-the Spaniard. They say that they are dancers, but I ask you.”
“She is pretty.”
“Certainly. I do not dispute it. But you need not think little thoughts. She is interested in the Englishman. I do not like him. He does not look like an Englishman.”
“You think the English are all milords with sporting clothes and monocles. Ha! I saw the Tommies in nineteen fifteen. They are all small and ugly with very loud voices. They talk very quickly. This type is more like the officers who are thin and slow, and look as if things do not smell very nice.”
“This type is not an English officer. He likes the Germans.”
“You exaggerate. An old man like that! I would have sat with him myself.”
“Ah! So you say. I will not believe it.”
“No? When you are a soldier you do not call the Bosche ‘the filthy Bosche.’ That is for the women, the civilians.”
“You are mad. They are filthy. They are beasts like those in Spain who violated nuns and murdered priests.”
“But, my little one, you forget that there were many of Hitler’s Bosches who fought against the Reds in Spain. You forget. You are not logical.”
“They are not the same as those who attack France. They were Catholic Germans.”
“You are ridiculous! Was I not hit in the guts by a bullet fired by a Bavarian Catholic in ‘seventeen? You make me tired. You are ridiculous. Be silent.”
“No, it is you who …”
They went on. Graham heard little more. Before he could make up his mind to cough loudly, he was asleep.
He awoke only once in the night. The vibration had ceased. He looked at his watch, saw that the time was half-past two, and guessed that they had stopped at Chanaq to drop the pilot. A few minutes later, as the engines started again, he went to sleep again.
It was not until the steward brought his coffee seven hours later that he learned that the pilot cutter from Chanaq had brought a telegram for him.
It was addressed: “GRAHAM, VAPUR SESTRI LEVANTE, CANAKKALE.” He read:
“H. REQUESTS ME INFORM YOU B. LEFT FOR SOFIA HOUR AGO. ALL WELL. BEST WISHES. KOPEIKIN.”
It had been handed in at Beyoglu at seven o’clock the previous evening.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was an Ægean day: intensely coloured in the sun and with small pink clouds drifting in a bleached indigo sky. A stiff breeze was blowing and the amethyst of the sea was broken with white. The Sestri Levante was burying her stem in it and lifting clouds of spray which the breeze whipped across the well-deck like hail. The steward had told him that they were within sight of the island of Makronisi and as he went out on deck he saw it: a thin golden line shimmering in the sun and stretched out ahead of them like a sand bar at the entrance to a lagoon.
There were two other persons on that side of the deck. There was Haller and with him, on his arm, a small desiccated woman with thin grey hair, who was evidently his wife. They were steadying themselves at the rail and he was holding his head up to the wind as if to draw strength from it. He had his hat off and the white hair quivered with the air streaming through it.
Evidently they had not seen him. He made his way up to the boat deck. The breeze there was stronger. Mr. Kuvetli and the French couple stood by the rail clutching at their hats and watching the gulls following the ship. Mr. Kuvetli saw him immediately and waved. He went over to them.
“Good morning. Madame. Monsieur.”
They greeted him guardedly but Mr. Kuvetli was enthusiastic.
“It is good morning, eh? You sleep well? I look forward to our excursion this afternoon. Permit me to present Monsieur and Madame Mathis. Monsieur Graham.”
There was handshaking. Mathis was a sharp-featured man of fifty or so with lean jaws and a permanent frown. But his smile, when it came, was good and his eyes were alive. The frown was the badge of his ascendancy over his wife. She had bony hips and wore an expression which said that she was determined to keep her temper however sorely it were tried. She was like her voice.
“Monsieur Mathis,” said Mr. Kuvetli, whose French was a good deal more certain than his English, “is from Eskeshehir, where he has been working with the French railway company.”
“It is a bad climate for the lungs,” said Mathis. “Do you know Eskeshehir, Monsieur Graham?”
“I was there for a few minutes only.”
“That would have been quite enough for me,” said Madame Mathis. “We have been there three years. It was never any better than the day we arrived.”
“The Turks are a great people,” said her husband. “They are hard and they endure. But we shall be glad to return to France. Do you come from London, Monsieur?”
“No, the North of England. I have been in Turkey for a few weeks on business.”
“To us, war will be strange after so many years. They say that the towns in France are darker than the last time.”
“The towns are damnably dark both in France and in England. If you do not have to go out at night it is better to stay in.”
“It is war,” said Mathis sententiously.
“It is the filthy Bosche,” said his wife.
“War,” put in Mr. Kuvetli, stroking an unshaven chin, “is a terrible thing. There is no doubt of it. But the Allies must win.”