Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) Read Online Free PDF

Tomorrow, let’s go in a taxi to mosques, just skim round them, at your pace and on our own, and more or less sit and have drinks somewhere.”
    “But we’ve already paid for the tour.”
    “It doesn’t matter. And another year,” (he still could not avoid a suspicious glance down at her), “another year, we’ll make our own way here, and hire a car.”
    “But I’m not mad on this place,” she said.
    “My fault entirely, I should say.”
    She then decided to wipe the cream from her face, and when she had done that, she kissed him.
    “Your bed, I think,” he said. “I always think that’s more polite.”
    It was the first time they had made love since his illness. Afterwards, lying down on his own bed, with just a sheet over him, he fell asleep at once.

3

     
    Martha dawdled over breakfast, waiting for the Hendersons to come down, but they did not, so she collected her landing-card and went down the gangway to the bus. Amy and Nick did not appear.
    The company, for some reason, seemed subdued. The Germans talked quietly to one another, looking awed or important, or both. Sometimes, as people stepped onto the bus, they beckoned them and whispered, and immediately seemed to cause consternation. They were sitting in their usual front seat, for no one else would dare to take it from them now. In the absence of the Hendersons Martha sat in the one behind them. The German woman was looking questioningly at her husband, who shrugged his shoulders, as if having no answer. She hesitated, looked backwards at Martha, and then bent her head over her guide book, turning the leaves, although it must have been impossible to read anything, as they were jolted over the cobbled road.
    To Martha, the bus seemed full of uneasy murmurings. The guide – the same pleasant, half-blond woman as the day before – sat in silence beside the driver. The first mosque on the list was some way out of the city. Martha looked out of the bus window with little interest, not enjoying her morning.
    It took the usual pattern of following the guide, slipping off shoes, staring giddily upwards, buying postcards, and climbing back into the bus. It waswhile Martha was taking a photograph of two little children sitting in the dust under a tree, that the German woman came to her and told her that Nick had died in the night. She touched her heart and nodded with meaning, there being the language difficulty. “It is quite sad,” she said.
    At noon, dazed with mosques, they toiled back up the gangway. By the purser’s office, Amy was sitting, surrounded by luggage, waiting to be taken ashore, exposed to everyone who must file by her as they came aboard. The passengers hastened past her in a shocked silence. She sat very still and rigid, as if disapproving something, or offended. She wore a shady hat, sun-glasses, and – strangely – a pair of white cotton gloves. It was as if she were trying to cover as much of herself as possible.
    Martha, seeing her, panicked; did not know how to behave. For a moment, Amy lifted her swollen face, and Martha as she passed by, found herself unable completely to ostracise this grief. She put her hand on Amy’s shoulder, and was surprised that Amy’s gloved hand came up and touched hers in acknowledgement, and then was at once withdrawn and folded with the other in her lap.
    There had been bad timing, for the taxi which at that moment arrived on the quay should have come before the passengers returned from their tour. The purser appeared, gently took Amy’s arm and helped her to rise. A steward gathered up suitcases, and the three of them went down the gang-plank to the waiting car.
    Martha went to her cabin and found there the book on Byzantine Art which she had lent to Nick.There was a slip of paper in it. She took it and stared at it, as if at some last message but there was only
Cabin 21. Miss Larkin
in that neat hand which had written so many postcards.
    She knew that Amy’s childlike figure would haunt her