Last Letter from Istanbul: Escape with this epic holiday read of secrets and forbidden love. Lucy Foley

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СКАЧАТЬ it was for a second. A solitary woman, for goodness’ sake, washing her feet.’

      ‘Still, you should make a formal note of it. She’d be the perfect choice to scope it, because we wouldn’t suspect her. At the very least it’s British property. She trespassed.’

      ‘Mmm.’ He is rather wishing he hadn’t said anything. He knows already that he will make no such report. He wonders whether, given the opportunity, Bill would also tell him to turn in the little boy who spat on his shoes.

      They are brought chilled glasses of that Russian spirit, which tastes to George like a distillation of nothingness, a void. But it goes well with the food. Particularly caviar, which he ate for the first time in that godforsaken place on the shores of the Caspian Sea, bubbles of salt bursting upon the tongue, a concentration of the sea itself, at once delicious and slightly repellent. But isn’t that the same, he thinks, for all tastes deemed refined? The sourness of champagne, the bitter of coffee, the fleshy gobbet of the oyster. Does one enjoy them as much for their taste as for one’s ability to overcome this brief repulsion, even fear?

      Calvert sucks back an oyster, drains his glass of vodka, and turns to him.

      ‘What are you still doing here, Monroe?’

      ‘What do you mean? This restaurant? Do you know, I’m really not sure …’

      Calvert draws back his lips in an approximation of a smile. ‘No, that isn’t what I meant. I understood that you got offered home, some time ago.’

      ‘I did.’

      ‘Well, why …’

      ‘I suppose I felt that I could be more useful here.’

      ‘Your sense of duty, was it?’

      George looks at him, sharply, but can find no obvious trace of sarcasm. ‘Yes. Something to that effect.’

      He does not like Calvert. He realises this with a sudden clarity. Even his face is somehow unlikeable. It has a peculiar fineness of feature: the nose small and neat, the chin delicately carved, the lips full as a girl’s, with a sharp cupid bow. It is these lips, perhaps, that tilt the whole effect into a prettiness that doesn’t quite work. And yet he prides himself upon them, George knows. One might even say that he wields them. It is a face that one cannot quite trust.

      Now Calvert leans across the table and says in a conspirator’s murmur, ‘They have the best girls here. All bonafide White Russians – nothing lower than a countess, I assure you. Running from the Red Bolshevik devils.’ His breath is tainted metallic by the spirit.

      George casts an eye about the room, at the waitresses in question. They are all pretty, youngish, simpering. Not especially remarkable in any way … or so it seems to him. Perhaps one requires the fine gown and jewels to appear really aristocratic. But then what, exactly, is the difference between these and any other women? If the last few years have shown him anything, it is the mutability of all things. If entire cities – countries – can be denatured in so short a space of time, the odds of any human remaining essentially unchanged seem poor.

      But clearly Calvert finds something fascinating in them, he watches them like a fox. Perhaps it is the fall itself that interests him. That he, the scion of shopkeepers – albeit extremely successful ones, as he is wont to remind them – might bed a destitute princess of Russia. The waitress comes over to them, ready for their next order. And George sees, with a small frisson of horror, that in the second before she switches on her smile – an electric flash – her eyes are expressionless as a corpse’s.

      He thinks again of the woman on the jetty. There had been nothing blank in the look she had given him. It had been a glance to singe the nostril hairs.

      ‘Penny for them?’ Bill is peering into his face. ‘You’re smiling like a loon.’

      ‘Pardon? Oh – nothing in particular.’

      ‘Well. Better get back here quickly; the show is about to start.’

      A man has stepped up onto the platform, the compère. He wears an outfit that might once have been rather grand: a frock coat, pale blue, gold-trimmed, matching trousers. Now it is several decades out of date, too large, frayed at the cuffs and collar in a soft fuzz of thread.

      ‘Where on earth do you think he found such an article?’ Bill murmurs. ‘You’d think they could do a little better, with this place being so popular.’

      Calvert seems irritated, as though a slight on the club is one upon his taste; it was he who suggested the place. ‘It’s called The Turgenev,’ he says, waspishly, ‘it is meant to be old-fashioned. A glimpse of Old Russia – the Russia that saw off Napoleon.’

      ‘Ah.’ Bill seems unconvinced.

      Fortunately they are all distracted by the announcement of the first performer. The song she breaks into is shrill as the violin, foreign to the ear as vodka on the palate. It is just an entrée, this musical interlude, for the courses to follow: the white thighs beneath silk petticoats.

      ‘I’m going home with her. No, no – her.’

      George looks over at him. ‘I thought you had a wife, Calvert.’

      Calvert’s skin is so fair that the flush is instant. Difficult to tell, though, whether he is more embarrassed or angry. ‘What exactly is that supposed to mean?’

      George isn’t exactly sure why he said it. There is hardly much novelty in Calvert’s attitude. And who is George to cast judgement? Best to smooth the situation quickly. ‘Sorry old chap, didn’t mean to offend.’

      Calvert nods, curtly. He doesn’t speak for the rest of the act. Bill tries to catch George’s eye, but he avoids him. The truth is, he is tired. He remembers poor Hatton and his herpes. He thinks he may have seen as much near-nudity in the months of being in this city as he has in his whole medical career, and as much adultery as an East End madame.

      If this gives the impression that he is absolutely above it, it is misleading.

      He has not always been immune to such intoxications.

      Soft skin, perfume, a warm body against his. Being made to feel one was the most interesting man in the room.

      No, he was not immune at all.

       Nur

      When Nur sees the boy reading a book, she almost doubts her own eyesight. All of her efforts to interest him in learning thus far have been thwarted, she has given up any hope. Now this small miracle. He is so engrossed in it he does not even hear her approach.

      ‘What is that?’

      He starts in surprise, looks about, furtively. ‘I – found it.’

      She peers at it more closely and recognises it: the book of recipes, long forgotten. Now she understands the furtiveness. ‘You found it in the kitchen, I think.’ She has discovered him there, foraging, on a number of occasions. She has not yet had the heart to chastise him for it. ‘I haven’t seen that for a very long time. May I look?’

      He parts with it with some reluctance.

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