He stayed quiet that night and all the next morning, and the nurse believed that he had resigned himself to staying where he was. She left him sleeping and came down to my room for a cup of tea. Mr. Visconti had bought some cream cakes in Milan at the good pastry-cooks near the cathedral. Suddenly from up the stairs there came a strange grating noise. Mamma mia, the nurse said, whats that? It sounded as though someone were shifting the furniture. We ran upstairs, and what do you think? Jo Pulling was out of bed. He had fixed an old club tie of his, the Froth-blowers or the Mustard Club or something of the kind, to the handle of the suitcase because he had no strength in his legs, and he was crawling down the passage towards the lavatory tower pulling the suitcase after him. I shouted to him to stop, but he paid me no attention. It was painful to look at him, he was going so slowly, with such an effort. It was a tiled passage and every tile he crossed cost him enormous exertion. He collapsed before we reached him and lay there panting, and the saddest thing of all to me was that he made a little pool of wee-wee on the tiles. We were afraid to move him before the doctor came. We brought a pillow and put it under his head and the nurse gave him one of his pills. Cattivo, she said in Italian, which means, You bad old man, and he grinned at the two of us and brought out the last sentence which he ever spoke, deformed a bit but I could understand it very well. Seemed like a whole lifetime, he said and he died before the doctor came. He was right in his way to make that last trip against the doctors orders. The doctor had only promised him a few years.
He died in the passage? I asked.
He died on his travels, my aunt said in a tone of reproof. As he would have wished.
Here he lies where he longed to be, I quoted in order to please my aunt, though I couldnt help remembering that Uncle Jo had not succeeded in reaching the lavatory door.
Home is the hunter, home from sea, my aunt finished the quotation in her own fashion, and the sailor home from the hill.
***
We were silent for quite a while after that as we finished the chicken à la king. It was a little like the two minutes silence on Armistice Day[77]. I remembered that, when I was a boy, I used to wonder whether there was really a corpse buried there at the Cenotaph[78], for governments are usually economical with sentiment and try to arouse it in the cheapest possible way. A brilliant advertising slogan doesnt need a body, a box of earth would do just as well, and now I began to wonder too about Uncle Jo. Was my aunt a little imaginative? Perhaps the stories of Jo, of my father and of my mother were not entirely true.
Without breaking the silence I took a reverent glass of Chambertin to Uncle Jos memory, whether he existed or not. The unaccustomed wine sang irresponsibly in my head. What did the truth matter? All characters once dead, if they continue to exist in memory at all, tend to become fictions. Hamlet is no less real now than Winston Churchill, and Jo Pulling no less historical than Don Quixote. I betrayed myself with a hiccup while I changed our plates, and with the blue cheese the sense of material problems returned.
Uncle Jo, I said, was lucky to have no currency restrictions. He couldnt have afforded to die like that on a tourist allowance.
They were great days, Aunt Augusta said.
How are we going to manage on ours? I asked. With fifty pounds each we shall not be able to stay very long in Istanbul.
Currency restrictions have never seriously bothered me, my aunt said. There are ways and means.[79]
I hope you dont plan anything illegal.
I have never planned anything illegal in my life, Aunt Augusta said. How could I plan anything of the kind when I have never read any of the laws and have no idea what they are?
Chapter 8
It was my aunt herself who suggested that we should fly as far as Paris. I was a little surprised after what she had just said, for there was certainly in this case an alternative means of travel; I pointed out the inconsistency.
There are reasons, Aunt Augusta said. Cogent reasons. I know the ropes[80] at Heathrow.
I was puzzled too at her insistence that we must go to the Kensington air terminal and take the airport bus.
Its so easy for me, I said, to pick you up by car and drive you to Heathrow. You would find it much less tiring, Aunt Augusta.
You would have to pay an exorbitant garage fee, she replied, and I found her sudden sense of economy unconvincing.
I arranged next day for the dahlias to be watered by my next-door neighbour, a brusque man called Major Charge. He had seen Detective-Sergeant Sparrow come to the door with the policeman, and he was bitten by curiosity. I told him it was about a motoring offence and he became sympathetic immediately. A child murdered every week, he said, and all they can do is to pursue motorists. I dont like lies and I felt in my conscience that I ought to defend Sergeant Sparrow, who had been as good as his word and posted back the urn, registered and express.
Sergeant Sparrow is not in homicide, I replied, and motorists kill more people in a year than murderers.
Only a lot of jaywalkers, Major Charge said. Cannon fodder. However, he agreed to water the dahlias.
I picked my aunt up in the bar of the Crown and Anchor, where she was having a stirrup-cup[81], and we drove by taxi to the Kensington terminal. I noticed that she had brought two suitcases, one very large, although, when I had asked her how long we were to stay in Istanbul, she had replied, Twenty-four hours.
Sergeant Sparrow is not in homicide, I replied, and motorists kill more people in a year than murderers.
Only a lot of jaywalkers, Major Charge said. Cannon fodder. However, he agreed to water the dahlias.
I picked my aunt up in the bar of the Crown and Anchor, where she was having a stirrup-cup[81], and we drove by taxi to the Kensington terminal. I noticed that she had brought two suitcases, one very large, although, when I had asked her how long we were to stay in Istanbul, she had replied, Twenty-four hours.
It seems a short stay after such a long journey.
The point is the journey, my aunt had replied. I enjoy the travelling not the sitting still.
Even Uncle Jo, I argued, had put up with each room in his house for a whole week.
Jo was a sick man, she said, while I am in the best of health. Since we were travelling first-class (which seemed again an unnecessary luxury between London and Paris) we had no overweight, although the larger of her suitcases was unusually heavy. While we were sitting in the bus I suggested to my aunt that the garage fee for my car would probably have been cheaper than the difference between first and tourist fares. The difference, she said, is nearly wiped out by the caviar and the smoked salmon, and surely between us we can probably put away half a bottle of vodka. Not to speak of the champagne and cognac. In any case, I have more important reasons for travelling by bus.
As we approached Heathrow she put her mouth close to my ear. The luggage, she said, is in a trailer behind.
I know.
I have a green suitcase and a red suitcase. Here are the tickets.
I took them, not understanding.
When the bus stops, please get out quickly and see whether the trailer is still attached. If it is still there let me know at once and Ill give you further instructions.
Something in my aunts manner made me nervous. I said, Of course it will be there.
I sincerely hope not, she said. Otherwise we shall not leave today.
I jumped out as soon as we arrived, and sure enough the trailer wasnt there. What do I do now? I asked her.
Nothing at all. Everything is quite in order. You may give me back the tickets and relax.
As we sat over two gins and tonics in the departure lounge a loudspeaker announced, Passengers on Flight three-seven-eight to Nice will proceed to customs for customs inspection.
We were alone at our table and my aunt did not bother to lower her voice amid the din of passengers, glasses and loud-speakers. That is what I wished to avoid, she said. They have now taken to spot-checks on passengers leaving the country. They whittle away our liberties one by one. When I was a girl you could travel anywhere on the continent except Russia without a passport and you took what you liked in the way of money. Until recently they only asked what money you had, or at the very worst[82] they wanted to see your wallet. If theres one thing I hate in any human being it is mistrust.
The way you speak, I said jokingly, I suspect we are lucky that it is not your bags which are being searched.
I could well imagine my aunt stuffing a dozen five-pound notes into the toe of her bedroom slippers. Having been a bank manager, I am perhaps overscrupulous, though I must confess that I had brought an extra five-pound note folded up in my ticket pocket, but that was something I might genuinely have overlooked.
Luck doesnt enter into my calculations, my aunt said. Only a fool would trust to luck[83], and there is probably a fool now on the Nice flight who is regretting his folly. Whenever new restrictions are made, I make a very careful study of the arrangements for carrying them out. She gave a little sigh. In the case of Heathrow I owe a great deal to Wordsworth. For a time he acted as a loader here. He left when there was some trouble about a gold consignment. Nothing was ever proved against him, but the whole affair had been too impromptu and disgusted him. He told me the story. A very large ingot was abstracted by a loader, and the loss was discovered too soon, before the men went off duty. They knew as a result that they would be searched by the police on leaving, all taxis too, and they had no idea what to do with the thing until Wordsworth suggested rolling it in tar and using it as a doorstop in the customs shed. So there it stayed for months. Every time they brought crates along to the shed, they could see their ingot propping open the door. Wordsworth said he got so maddened by the sight of it that he threw up the job. That was when he became a doorman at the Grenada Palace.