There was only the one coach. It was empty. The lift-up door to the baggage compartment had been raised on one side, and in the shade the driver slept peacefully on a blanket. Apart from the Fiat there were only a couple of other cars parked. It wasn’t the height of the tourist season, but Carole wondered if even then this remote hilltop ever got crowded.
From where she was looking, though the foothills of the cylindrical mountain were wooded, there wasn’t a lot of shade on the rest of the site. So, characteristically cautious, she rubbed more of the Factor Fifty on to her exposed arms, face and particularly the back of her neck. She picked up the bottle of water she’d bought at the supermarket and put it in the Morning Glory cool bag she’d thoughtfully brought with her. With that in her knapsack and the money belt rather uncomfortably about her waist she felt ready for her expedition.
She left the Rough Guide in the car. She had been through the relevant couple of pages so many times that she virtually knew them off by heart.
Then, with her ticket bought and holding the small fold-up map she’d been given at the shed, she set off to sample the mysteries of Pinara.
The whole vast area was dominated by a huge mountain, almost cylindrical and cut across like the trunk of some giant felled tree. Its cliffs, though Carole was not yet close enough to see, she knew would be pockmarked by rectangular Lycian tombs cut into the rock.
From the entrance, a track led up the lazy incline round the edge of the circular outcrop. Carole knew, if she followed it, that she could access the Lower Acropolis to the left and the Amphitheatre to the right. Whether later on she’d have the energy to face the long climb to the Upper Acropolis she would have to wait and see.
The only nearby wooded area was to the left of the entrance, but the air was still warmly scented with pine and thyme. It was early enough in the year for a few wild flowers to be in evidence and the unexpected change of scene built up the confidence engendered by her successful journey there. It seemed bizarre to remember that she’d left Fethering only the morning before.
That thought prompted a vision of Gulliver and a slight pang for him. How he would love to be with her in this exotic environment, roaming free to investigate so many unfamiliar smells. Then again, she thought, how miserable he would be in this intense heat.
Carole had decided that she would have a look at the Amphitheatre before the Lower Acropolis, but when she got near enough, she saw a swarm of tourists there. Presumably, the ones from the purple bus. As ever wary of human company, she started the climb to the Lower Acropolis.
The way up was steep, but Carole Seddon carried no excess weight on her thin frame so the effort didn’t feel too bad. But she did find herself wondering how the more substantial Jude might have coped. It was a good idea all round that they’d decided to spend the day apart.
The path levelled out, and Carole stopped to take another swig of water. The cool bag was doing its stuff, and it still felt chilled enough to be refreshing. She looked at her watch. It was nearly one o’clock, and she felt her stomach rumble. Breakfast seemed a long time ago, and the provisions she had bought were in the car. But Carole was not about to cut short her exploration of Pinara for something as trivial as hunger.
She climbed a little further and came to a flat area littered with square-cut stones. Some of them stood regularly upon others, showing the traces of walls and outlines of buildings. Others were scattered round like a toddler’s Lego. There were a couple of crumbled standing tombs, like the one they’d gone round in the middle of the road leading out of Fethiye. Discoloured rusting notices, white painted letters on dark-blue in Turkish and English, identified one particular area as a temple but, overgrown by trees and shrubbery as it was, Carole couldn’t make out the shape of it.
Until her crash course of the last few weeks’ reading she had never heard of the Lycian civilization, and even now she wouldn’t have claimed to be an expert. Nor could she ever have claimed to have much interest in archaeology. But she was very glad she had decided to come to Pinara that day.
There was something about the place. Carole was glad Jude wasn’t there because her head was filling with words that she usually pooh-poohed. Words like ‘magic’, ‘enchantment’, ‘atmosphere’, even ‘aura’.
It was just the sheer antiquity of the place that was getting to her. The sight of these huge blocks of stone, hewn out of the living rock by men who lacked any kind of power tools, was somehow inspiring. And, at the same time, daunting. The toppling structures around her made Carole think of both the durability of human ambition and the inevitability of human failure. It made her considerably more introspective than was her custom. And, to her considerable annoyance, it made her feel as though she was in the presence of a power stronger than her own.
To banish such nonsense from her mind she took another long swig from her water bottle and set off back down to the main track. Though the gradient was easier, the stones had been rendered glassy by generations of footsteps and it was a slightly precarious descent.
Carole felt even hungrier, and the sun through her hat felt even hotter, but there was no way she was going to return to the car without seeing the Amphitheatre. So she left the track and walked towards it across a flat field full of some Turkish form of thistle (she was glad she hadn’t gone for the shorts option, otherwise her legs would have been shredded).
As she approached the structure, she encountered the bus-load of tourists weaving their sweaty way back towards the car park. Once within earshot she quickly recognized that they were English and bridled accordingly. Though there were no Union Jack T-shirts or tattoos in evidence – in fact, this appeared to be a rather genteel, mature and well-heeled selection of her countrymen – Carole felt no urgency to engage in conversation with them. All they got was a tight smile and a ‘Fethering nod’ – a small inclination of the head, the most minimal anonymous form of acknowledgement possible.
The group was led by a Turkish man wearing white trousers and a pale-blue polo shirt bearing the logo of some travel company. ‘But where’s she gone to?’ Carole heard a woman asking him as she walked by. The accent was unappealingly Midlands. This must be the group from Kidderminster that Nita had referred to.
‘I am sure she has not gone far,’ the guide replied in good English. ‘We will meet her at the bus. If not there, she will be back at the hotel.’
‘Well, it’s rather important because I wanted to ask her about the toilet in our bathroom which has got blocked, which is …’ And the woman’s voice drifted past into inaudibility.
The Amphitheatre was impressive and in a surprisingly good state of preservation. From her memorized guidebook notes, Carole knew that it was probably of Roman construction though built in the Greek horseshoe style, and it could seat over three thousand. She marvelled at its design and durability as she climbed up to the back row. It was a place that encouraged conjectures about the people who might have come there, the entertainments they might have seen, but it didn’t prompt in Carole any of the mystical sensation that she had felt by the temple. Thank goodness.
From her vantage point she looked across at the huge cylinder of rock opposite. Its sheer size made her glad she had not tried to climb any further than the Lower Acropolis. She could see the honeycomb of tombs carved into the sheer cliff and comforted herself that they were not accessible to tourists. For a moment she wondered whether she should have brought a camera, but she quickly comforted herself with the recollection that she always took rubbish photographs and never looked at the ones she had taken on her return from a holiday. The only photographs that interested her now were of her granddaughter. And thinking of Lily made her wonder how things were back in Fulham. She hadn’t set up her laptop yet at Morning Glory, but she must email Stephen that evening.