Collected Stories

In Isfahan

They met in the most casual way, in the upstairs office of Chaharbagh Tours Inc. In the downstairs office a boy asked Normanton to go upstairs and wait: the tour would start a little later because they were having trouble with the engine of the minibus.

The upstairs office was more like a tiny waiting-room than an office, with chairs lined against two walls. The chairs were rudimentary: metal frames, and red plastic over foam rubber. There was a counter stacked with free guides to Isfahan in French and German, and guides to Shiraz and Persepolis in English as well. The walls had posters on them, issued by the Iranian Tourist Board: Mount Damavand, the Chalus road, native dancers from the Southern tribes, club-swinging, the Apadana Palace at Persepolis, the Theological School in Isfahan. The fees and conditions of Chaharbagh Tours were clearly stated: Tours by De Lux microbus. Each Person Rls. 375 ($5). Tours in French and English language. Microbus comes to Hotel otherwise you’ll come to Office. All Entrance Fees. No Shopping. Chaharbagh Tours Inc. wishes you the best.

She was writing an air-mail letter with a ballpoint pen, leaning on a brochure which she’d spread out on her handbag. It was an awkward arrangement, but she didn’t seem to mind. She wrote steadily, not looking up when he entered, not pausing to think about what each sentence might contain. There was no one else in the upstairs office.

He took some leaflets from the racks on the counter. Isfahan était capitale de l’Iran sous les Seldjoukides et les Safavides. Sous le règne de ces deux dynasties l’ art islamique de l’Iran avait atteint son apogée.

‘Are you going on the tour?’

He turned to look at her, surprised that she was English. She was thin and would probably not be very tall when she stood up, a woman in her thirties, without a wedding ring. In a pale face her eyes were hidden behind huge round sunglasses. Her mouth was sensuous, the lips rather thick, her hair soft and black. She was wearing a pink dress and white high-heeled sandals. Nothing about her was smart.

In turn she saw a man who seemed to her to be typically English. He was middle-aged and greying, dressed in a linen suit and carrying a linen hat that matched it. There were lines and wrinkles in his face, about the eyes especially, and the mouth. When he smiled more lines and wrinkles gathered. His skin was tanned, but with the look of skin that usually wasn’t: he’d been in Persia only a few weeks, she reckoned.

‘Yes, I’m going on the tour,’ he said. ‘They’re having trouble with the minibus.’

‘Are we the only two?’

He said he thought not. The minibus would go round the hotels collecting the people who’d bought tickets for the tour. He pointed at the notice on the wall.

She took her dark glasses off. Her eyes were her startling feature: brown, beautiful orbs, with endless depth, mysterious in her more ordinary face. Without the dark’ glasses she had an Indian look: lips, hair and eyes combined to give her that. But her voice was purely English, made uglier than it might have been by attempts to disguise a Cockney twang.

‘I’ve been writing to my mother,’ she said.

He smiled at her and nodded. She put her dark glasses on again and licked the edges of the air-mail letter-form.

‘Microbus ready,’ the boy from downstairs said. He was a smiling youth of about fifteen with black-rimmed spectacles and very white teeth. He wore a white shirt with tidily rolled-up sleeves, and brown cotton trousers. ‘Tour commence please,’ he said. ‘I am Guide Hafiz.’

He led them to the minibus. ‘You German two?’ he inquired, and when they replied that they were English he said that not many English came to Persia. ‘American,’ he said. ‘French. German people often.’

They got into the minibus. The driver turned his head to nod and smile at them. He spoke in Persian to Hafiz, and laughed.

‘He commence a joke,’ Hafiz said. ‘He wish me the best. This is the first tour I make. Excuse me, please.’ He perused leaflets and guidebooks, uneasily licking his lips.

‘My name’s Iris Smith,’ she said.

His, he revealed, was Normanton.

They drove through blue Isfahan, past domes and minarets, and tourist shops in the Avenue Chaharbagh, with blue mosaic on surfaces everywhere, and blue taxi-cabs. Trees and grass had a precious look because of the arid earth. The sky was pale with the promise of heat.

The minibus called at the Park Hotel and at the Intercontinental and the Shah Abbas, where Normanton was staying. It didn’t call at the Old Atlantic, which Iris Smith had been told at Teheran Airport was cheap and clean. It collected a French party and a German couple who were having trouble with sunburn, and two wholesome-faced American girls. Hafiz continued to speak in English, explaining that it was the only foreign language he knew. ‘Ladies-gentlemen, I am a student from Teheran,’ he announced with pride, and then confessed: ‘I do not know Isfahan well.’

The leader of the French party, a testy-looking man whom Normanton put down as a university professor, had already protested at their guide’s inability to speak French. He protested again when Hafiz said he didn’t know Isfahan well, complaining that he had been considerably deceived.

‘No, no,’ Hafiz replied. ‘That is not my fault, sir, I am poor Persian student, sir. Last night I arrive in Isfahan the first time only. It is impossible my father send me to Isfahan before.’ He smiled at the testy Frenchman. ‘So listen please, ladies-gentlemen. This morning we commence happy tour, we see many curious scenes.’ Again his smile flashed. He read in English from an Iran Air leaflet: ‘Isfahan is the showpiece of Islamic Persia, but founded at least two thousand years ago! Here we are, ladies-gentlemen, at the Chehel Sotun. This is pavilion of lyric beauty, palace of forty columns where Shah Abbas II entertain all royal guests. All please leave microbus.’

Normanton wandered alone among the forty columns of the palace. The American girls took photographs and the German couple did the same. A member of the French party operated a moving camera, although only tourists and their guides were moving. The girl called Iris Smith seemed out of place, Normanton thought, teetering on her high-heeled sandals.

‘So now Masjed-e-Shah,’ Hafiz cried, clapping his hands to collect his party together. The testy Frenchman continued to expostulate, complaining that time had been wasted in the Chehel Sotun. Hafiz smiled at him.

‘Masjed-e-Shah,’ he read from a leaflet as the minibus began again, ‘is most outstanding and impressive mosque built by Shah Abbas the Great in early seventeenth century.’

But when the minibus drew up outside the Masjed-e-Shah it was discovered that the Masjed-e-Shah was closed to tourists because of renovations. So, unfortunately, was the Sheikh Lotfollah.

‘So commence to carpet-weaving,’ Hafiz said, smiling and shaking his head at the protestations of the French professor.

The cameras moved among the carpet-weavers, women of all ages, producing at speed Isfahan carpets for export. ‘Look now at once,’ Hafiz commanded, pointing at a carpet that incorporated the features of the late President Kennedy ‘Look please on this skill, ladies-gentlemen.’

In the minibus he announced that the tour was now on its way to the Masjed-e-Jamé, the Friday Mosque. This, he reported after a consultation of his leaflets, displayed Persian architecture of the ninth to the eighteenth century. ‘Oldest and largest in Isfahan,’ he read. ‘Don’t miss it! Many minarets in narrow lanes! All leave microbus, ladies-gentlemen. All return to microbus in one hour.’

At this there was chatter from the French party. The tour was scheduled to be conducted, points of interest were scheduled to be indicated. The tour was costing three hundred and seventy-five rials.

‘OΚ, ladies-gentlemen,’ Hafiz said. ‘Ladies-gentlemen come by me to commence informations. Other ladies-gentlemen come to microbus in one hour.’

An hour was a long time in the Friday Mosque. Normanton wandered away from it, through dusty crowded lanes, into market-places where letter-writers slept on their stools, waiting for illiterates with troubles. In hot, bright sunshine peasants with produce to sell bargained with deft-witted shopkeepers. Crouched on the dust, cobblers made shoes: on a wooden chair a man was shaved beneath a tree. Other men drank sherbet, arguing as vigorously as the heat allowed. Veiled women hurried, pausing to prod entrails at butchers’ stalls or to finger rice.

‘You’re off the tourist track, Mr Normanton.’

Her white high-heeled sandals were covered with dust. She looked tired.

‘So are you,’ he said.

‘I’m glad I ran into you. I wanted to ask how much that dress was.’

She pointed at a limp blue dress hanging on a stall. It was difficult when a woman on her own asked the price of something in this part of the world, she explained. She knew about that from living in Bombay.

He asked the stall-holder how much the dress was, but it turned out to be too expensive, although to Normanton it seemed cheap. The stall-holder followed them along the street offering to reduce the price, saying he had other goods, bags, lengths of cotton, pictures on ivory, all beautiful workmanship, all cheap bargains. Normanton told him to go away.

‘Do you live in Bombay?’ He wondered if she perhaps was Indian, brought up in London, or half-caste.

‘Yes, I live in Bombay. And sometimes in England.’

It was the statement of a woman not at all like Iris Smith: it suggested a grandeur, a certain style, beauty, and some riches.

‘I’ve never been in Bombay,’ he said.

‘Life can be good enough there. The social life’s not bad.’

They had arrived back at the Friday Mosque.

‘You’ve seen all this?’ He gestured towards it.

She said she had, but he had the feeling that she hadn’t bothered much with the mosque. He couldn’t think what had drawn her to Isfahan.

‘I love travelling,’ she said.

The French party were already established again in the minibus, all except the man with the moving camera. They were talking loudly among themselves, complaining about Hafiz and Chaharbagh Tours. The German couple arrived, their sunburn pinker after their exertions. Hafiz arrived with the two American girls. He was laughing, beginning to flirt with them.

‘So,’ he said in the minibus, ‘we commence the Shaking Minarets. Two minarets able to shake,’ he read, ‘eight kilometres outside the city. Very famous, ladies-gentlemen, very curious.’

The driver started the bus, but the French party shrilly protested, declaring that the man with the moving camera had been left behind. ‘Où est-ce qu’il est?’ a woman in red cried.

‘I will tell you a Persian joke,’ Hafiz said to the American girls. A Persian student commences at a party –’

‘Attention!’ the woman in red cried.

‘Imbécile!’ the professor shouted at Hafiz.

Hafiz smiled at them. He did not understand their trouble, he said, while they continued to shout at him. Slowly he took his spectacles off and wiped a sheen of dust from them. ‘So a Persian student commences at a party,’ he began again.

‘I think you’ve left someone behind,’ Normanton said. ‘The man with the moving camera.’

The driver of the minibus laughed and then Hafiz, realizing his error, laughed also. He sat down on a seat beside the American girls and laughed unrestrainedly, beating his knees with a fist and flashing his very white teeth. The driver reversed the minibus, with his finger on the horn. ‘Bad man!’ Hafiz said to the Frenchman when he climbed into the bus, laughing again. ‘Heh, heh, heh,’ he cried, and the driver and the American girls laughed also.

‘Il est fou!’ one of the French party muttered crossly. ‘Incroyable!’

Normanton glanced across the minibus and discovered that Iris Smith, amused by all this foreign emotion, was already glancing at him. He smiled at her and she smiled back.

Hafiz paid two men to climb into the shaking minarets and shake them. The Frenchman took moving pictures of this motion. Hafiz announced that the mausoleum of a hermit was located near by. He pointed at the view from the roof where they stood. He read slowly from one of his leaflets, informing them that the view was fantastic. ‘At the party,’ he said to the American girls, ‘the student watches an aeroplane on the breast of a beautiful girl. “Why watch you my aeroplane?” the girl commences. “Is it you like my aeroplane?” “It is not the aeroplane which I like,” the student commences. “It is the aeroplane’s airport which I like.” That is a Persian joke.’

It was excessively hot on the roof with the shaking minarets. Normanton had put on his linen hat. Iris Smith tied a black chiffon scarf around her head.

‘We commence to offices,’ Hafiz said. ‘This afternoon we visit Vank Church. Also curious Fire Temple.’ He consulted his leaflets. ‘An Armenian Museum. Here you can see a nice collection of old manuscripts and paintings.’

When the minibus drew up outside the offices of Chaharbagh Tours Hafiz said it was important for everyone to come inside. He led the way, through the downstairs office and up to the upstairs office. Tea was served. Hafiz handed round a basket of sweets, wrapped pieces of candy locally manufactured, very curious taste, he said. Several men in light-weight suits, the principals of Chaharbagh Tours, drank tea also. When the French professor complained that the tour was not satisfactory, the men smiled, denying that they understood either French or English, and in no way betraying that they could recognize any difference when the professor changed from one language to the other. It was likely, Normanton guessed, that they were fluent in both.

‘Shall you continue after lunch?’ he asked Iris Smith. ‘The Vank Church, an Armenian museum? There’s also the Theological School, which really is the most beautiful of all. No tour is complete without that.’

‘You’ve been on the tour before?’

‘I’ve walked about. I’ve got to know Isfahan.’

‘Then why –’

‘It’s something to do. Tours are always rewarding. For a start, there are the other people on them.’

‘I shall rest this afternoon.’

‘The Theological School is easy to find. It’s not far from the Shah Abbas Hotel.’

‘Are you staying there?’

‘Yes.’

She was curious about him. He could see it in her eyes, for she’d taken off her dark glasses. Yet he couldn’t believe that he presented as puzzling an exterior as she did herself.

‘I’ve heard it’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘The hotel.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I think everything in Isfahan is beautiful.’

‘Are you staying here for long?’

‘Until tomorrow morning, the five o’clock bus back to Teheran. I came last night.’

‘From London?’

‘Yes.’

The tea-party came to an end. The men in the light-weight suits bowed. Hafiz told the American girls that he was looking forward to seeing them in the afternoon, at two o’clock. In the evening, if they were doing nothing else, they might meet again. He smiled at everyone else. They would continue to have a happy tour, he promised, at two o’clock. He would be honoured to give them the informations they desired.

Normanton said goodbye to Iris Smith. He wouldn’t, he said, be on the afternoon tour either. The people of a morning tour, he did not add, were never amusing in the afternoon: it wouldn’t be funny if the Frenchman with the moving camera got left behind again; the professor’s testiness and Hafiz’s pidgin English might easily become wearisome as the day wore on.

He advised her again not to miss the Theological School. There was a tourist bazaar beside it, with boutiques, where she might find a dress. But prices would be higher there. She shook her head: she liked collecting bargains.

He walked to the Shah Abbas. He forgot about Iris Smith.

She took a mild sleeping-pill and slept on her bed in the Old Atlantic. When she awoke it was a quarter to seven.

The room was almost dark because she’d pulled over the curtains. She’d taken off her pink dress and hung it up. She lay in her petticoat, staring sleepily at a ceiling she couldn’t see. For a few moments before she’d slept her eyes had traversed its network of cracks and flaking paint. There’d been enough light then, even though the curtains had been drawn.

She slipped from the bed and crossed to the window. It was twilight outside, a light that seemed more than ordinarily different from the bright sunshine of the afternoon. Last night, at midnight when she’d arrived, it had been sharply different too: as black as pitch, totally silent in Isfahan.

It wasn’t silent now. The blue taxis raced their motors as they paused in a traffic-jam outside the Old Atlantic. Tourists chattered in different languages. Bunches of children, returning from afternoon school, called out to one another on the pavements. Policemen blew their traffic whistles.

Neon lights were winking in the twilight, and in the far distance she could see the massive illuminated dome of the Theological School, a fat blue jewel that dominated everything.

She washed herself and dressed, opening a suitcase to find a black-and-white dress her mother had made her and a black frilled shawl that went with it. She rubbed the dust from her high-heeled sandals with a Kleenex tissue. It would be nicer to wear a different pair of shoes, more suitable for the evening, but that would mean more unpacking and anyway who was there to notice? She took some medicine because for months she’d had a nagging little cough, which usually came on in the evenings. It was always the same: whenever she returned to England she got a cough.

In his room he read that the Shah was in Moscow, negotiating a deal with the Russians. He closed his eyes, letting the newspaper fall on to the carpet.

At seven o’clock he would go downstairs and sit in the bar and watch the tourist parties. They knew him in the bar now. As soon as he entered one of the barmen would raise a finger and nod. A moment later he would receive his vodka lime, with crushed ice. ‘You have good day, sir?’ the barman would say to him, whichever barman it was.

Since the Chaharbagh tour of the morning he had eaten a chicken sandwich and walked, he estimated, ten miles. Exhausted, he had had a bath, delighting in the flow of warm water over his body, becoming drowsy until the water cooled and began to chill him. He’d stretched himself on his bed and then had slowly dressed, in a different linen suit.

His room in the Shah Abbas Hotel was enormous, with a balcony and blown-up photographs of domes and minarets, and a double bed as big as a night-club dance-floor. Ever since he’d first seen it he’d kept thinking that his bed was as big as a dance-floor. The room itself was large enough for a quite substantial family to live in.

He went downstairs at seven o’clock, using the staircase because he hated lifts and because, in any case, it was pleasant to walk through the luxurious hotel. In the hall a group of forty or so Swiss had arrived. He stood by a pillar for a moment, watching them. Their leader made arrangements at the desk, porters carried their luggage from the airport bus. Their faces looked happier when the luggage was identified. Swiss archaeologists, Normanton conjectured, a group tour of some Geneva society. And then, instead of going straight to the bar, he walked out of the hotel into the dusk.

They met in the tourist bazaar. She had bought a brooch, a square of coloured cotton, a canvas carrier-bag. When he saw her, he knew at once that he’d gone to the tourist bazaar because she might be there. They walked together, comparing the prices of ivory miniatures, the traditional polo-playing scene, variously interpreted. It was curiosity, nothing else, that made him want to renew their acquaintanceship.

‘The Theological School is closed,’ she said.

‘You can get in.’

He led her from the bazaar and rang a bell outside the school. He gave the porter a few rials. He said they wouldn’t be long.

She marvelled at the peace, the silence of the open courtyards, the blue mosaic walls, the blue water, men silently praying. She called it a grotto of heaven. She heard a sound which she said was a nightingale, and he said it might have been, although Shiraz was where the nightingales were. ‘Wine and roses and nightingales,’ he said because he knew it would please her. Shiraz was beautiful, too, but not as beautiful as Isfahan. The grass in the courtyards of the Theological School was not like ordinary grass, she said. Even the paving stones and the water gained a dimension in all the blueness. Blue was the colour of holiness: you could feel the holiness here.

‘It’s nicer than the Taj Mahal. It’s pure enchantment.’

‘Would you like a drink, Miss Smith? I could show you the enchantments of the Shah Abbas Hotel.’

‘I’d love a drink.’

She wasn’t wearing her dark glasses. The nasal twang of her voice continued to grate on him whenever she spoke, but her eyes seemed even more sumptuous than they’d been in the bright light of day. It was a shame he couldn’t say to her that her eyes were just as beautiful as the architecture of the Theological School, but such a remark would naturally be misunderstood.

‘What would you like?’ he asked in the bar of the hotel. All around them the Swiss party spoke in French. A group of Texan oilmen and their wives, who had been in the bar the night before, were there again, occupying the same corner. The sunburnt German couple of the Chaharbagh tour were there, with other Germans they’d made friends with.

‘I’d like some whisky,’ she said. ‘With soda. It’s very kind of you.’

When their drinks came he suggested that he should take her on a conducted tour of the hotel. They could drink their way around it, he said. ‘I shall be Guide Hafiz.’

He enjoyed showing her because all the time she made marvelling noises, catching her breath in marble corridors and fingering the endless mosaic of the walls, sinking her high-heeled sandals into the pile of carpets. Everything made it enchantment, she said: the gleam of gold and mirror-glass among the blues and reds of the mosaic, the beautifully finished furniture, the staircase, the chandeliers.

‘This is my room,’ he said, turning the key in the lock of a polished mahogany door.

‘Gosh!’

‘Sit down, Miss Smith.’

They sat and sipped at their drinks. They talked about the room. She walked out on to the balcony and then came and sat down again. It had become quite cold, she remarked, shivering a little. She coughed.

‘You’ve a cold.’

‘England always gives me a cold.’

They sat in two dark, tweed-covered armchairs with a glass-topped table between them. A maid had been to turn down the bed. His green pyjamas lay ready for him on the pillow.

They talked about the people on the tour, Hafiz and the testy professor, and the Frenchman with the moving camera. She had seen Hafiz and the American girls in the tourist bazaar, in the tea-shop. The minibus had broken down that afternoon: he’d seen it outside the Armenian Museum, the driver and Hafiz examining its plugs.

‘My mother would love that place,’ she said.

‘The Theological School?’

‘My mother would feel its spirit. And its holiness.’

‘Your mother is in England?’

‘In Bournemouth.’

‘And you yourself –’

‘I have been on holiday with her. I came for six weeks and stayed a year. My husband is in Bombay.’

He glanced at her left hand, thinking he’d made a mistake.

‘I haven’t been wearing my wedding ring. I shall again, in Bombay.’

‘Would you like to have dinner?’

She hesitated. She began to shake her head, then changed her mind. ‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘Here, in the hotel?’

‘The food is the least impressive part.’

He’d asked her because, quite suddenly, he didn’t like being in this enormous bedroom with her. It was pleasant showing her around, but he didn’t want misunderstandings.

‘Let’s go downstairs,’ he said.

In the bar they had another drink. The Swiss party had gone, so had the Germans. The Texans were noisier than they had been. ‘Again, please,’ he requested the barman, tapping their two glasses.

In Bournemouth she had worked as a shorthand typist for the year. In the past she had been a shorthand typist when she and her mother lived in London, before her marriage. ‘My married name is Mrs Azann,’ she said.

‘When I saw you first I thought you had an Indian look.’

‘Perhaps you get that when you marry an Indian.’

‘And you’re entirely English?’

‘I’ve always felt drawn to the East. It’s a spiritual affinity.’

Her conversation was like the conversation in a novelette. There was that and her voice, and her unsuitable shoes, and her cough, and not wearing enough for the chilly evening air: all of it went together, only her eyes remained different. And the more she talked about herself, the more her eyes appeared to belong to another person.

‘I admire my husband very much,’ she said. ‘He’s very fine. He’s most intelligent. He’s twenty-two years older than I am.’

She told the story then, while they were still in the bar. She had, although she did not say it, married for money. And though she clearly spoke the truth when she said she admired her husband, the marriage was not entirely happy. She could not, for one thing, have children, which neither of them had known at the time of the wedding and which displeased her husband when it was established as a fact. She had been displeased herself to discover that her husband was not as rich as he had appeared to be. He owned a furniture business, he’d said in the Regent Palace Hotel, where they’d met by chance when she was waiting for someone else: this was true, but he had omitted to add that the furniture business was doing badly. She had also been displeased to discover on the first night of her marriage that she disliked being touched by him. And there was yet another problem: in their bungalow in Bombay there lived, as well as her husband and herself, his mother and an aunt, his brother and his business manager. For a girl not used to such communal life, it was difficult in the bungalow in Bombay.

‘It sounds more than difficult.’

‘Sometimes.’

‘He married you because you have an Indian look, while being the opposite of Indian in other ways. Your pale English skin. Your – your English voice.’

‘In Bombay I give elocution lessons.’

He blinked, and then smiled to cover the rudeness that might have shown in his face.

‘To Indian women,’ she said, ‘who come to the Club. My husband and I belong to a club. It’s the best part of Bombay life, the social side.’

‘It’s strange to think of you in Bombay.’

‘I thought I mightn’t return. I thought I’d maybe stay on with my mother. But there’s nothing much in England now.’

‘I’m fond of England.’

‘I thought you might be.’ She coughed again, and took her medicine from her handbag and poured a little into her whisky. She drank a mouthful of the mixture, and then apologized, saying she wasn’t being very ladylike. Such behaviour would be frowned upon in the Club.

‘You should wear a cardigan with that cough.’ He gestured at the barman and ordered further drinks.

‘I’ll be drunk,’ she said, giggling.

He felt he’d been right to be curious. Her story was strange. He imagined the Indian women of the Club speaking English with her nasal intonation, twisting their lips to form the distorted sounds, dropping ‘h’s’ because it was the thing to do. He imagined her in the bungalow, with her elderly husband who wasn’t rich, and his relations and his business manager. It was a sour little fairy-story, a tale of Cinderella and a prince who wasn’t a prince, and the carriage turned into an ice-cold pumpkin. Uneasiness overtook his curiosity, and he wondered again why she had come to Isfahan.

‘Let’s have dinner now,’ he suggested in a slightly hasty voice.

But Mrs Azann, looking at him with her sumptuous eyes, said she couldn’t eat a thing.

He would be married, she speculated. There was pain in the lines of his face, even though he smiled a lot and seemed lighthearted. She wondered if he’d once had a serious illness. When he’d brought her into his bedroom she wondered as they sat there if he was going to make a pass at her. But she knew a bit about people making passes, and he didn’t seem the type. He was too attractive to have to make a pass. His manners were too elegant; he was too nice.

‘I’ll watch you having dinner,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind in the least watching you if you’re hungry. I couldn’t deprive you of your dinner.’

‘Well, I am rather hungry.’

His mouth curved when he said things like that, because of his smile. She wondered if he could be an architect. From the moment she’d had the idea of coming to Isfahan she’d known that it wasn’t just an idea. She believed in destiny and always had.

They went to the restaurant, which was huge and luxurious like everywhere else in the hotel, dimly lit, with oil lamps on each table. She liked the way he explained to the waiters that she didn’t wish to eat anything. For himself, he ordered a chicken kebab and salad.

‘You’d like some wine?’ he suggested, smiling in the same way. ‘Persian wine’s very pleasant.’

‘I’d love a glass.’

He ordered the wine. She said:

‘Do you always travel alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’re married?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘And your wife’s a home bird?’

‘Yes.’

She imagined him in a house in a village, near Midhurst possibly, or Sevenoaks. She imagined his wife, a capable woman, good in the garden and on committees. She saw his wife quite clearly, a little on the heavy side but nice, cutting sweet-peas.

‘You’ve told me nothing about yourself,’ she said.

‘There’s very little to tell. I’m afraid I haven’t a story like yours.’

‘Why are you in Isfahan?’

‘On holiday.’

‘Is it always on your own?’

‘I like being on my own. I like hotels. I like looking at people and walking about.’

‘You’re like me. You like travel.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘I imagine you in a village house, in the Home Counties somewhere.’

‘That’s clever of you.’

‘I can clearly see your wife.’ She described the woman she could clearly see, without mentioning about her being on the heavy side. He nodded. She had second sight, he said with his smile.

‘People have said I’m a little psychic. I’m glad I met you.’

‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you. Stories like yours are rare enough.’

‘It’s all true. Every word.’

‘Oh, I know it is.’

‘Are you an architect?’

‘You’re quite remarkable,’ he said.

He finished his meal and between them they finished the wine. They had coffee and then she asked if he would kindly order more. The Swiss party had left the restaurant, and so had the German couple and their friends. Other diners had been and gone. The Texans were leaving just as Mrs Azann suggested more coffee. No other table was occupied.

‘Of course,’ he said.

He wished she’d go now. They had killed an evening together. Not for a long time would he forget either her ugly voice or her beautiful eyes. Nor would he easily forget the fairy-story that had gone sour on her. But that was that: the evening was over now.

The waiter brought their coffee, seeming greatly fatigued by the chore.

‘D’you think,’ she said, ‘we should have another drink? D’you think they have cigarettes here?’

He had brandy and she more whisky. The waiter brought her American cigarettes.

‘I don’t really want to go back to Bombay,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘I’d like to stay in Isfahan for ever.’

‘You’d be very bored. There’s no club. No social life of any kind for an English person, I should think.’

‘I do like a little social life.’ She smiled at him, broadening her sensuous mouth. ‘My father was a counter-hand,’ she said. ‘In a co-op. You wouldn’t think it, would you?’

‘Not at all,’ he lied.

‘It’s my little secret. If I told the women in the Club that, or my husband’s mother or his aunt, they’d have a fit. I’ve never even told my husband. Only my mother and I share that secret.’

‘I see.’

‘And now you.’

‘Secrets are safe with strangers.’

‘Why do you think I told you that secret?’

‘Because we are ships that pass in the night.’

‘Because you are sympathetic’

The waiter hovered close and then approached them boldly. The bar was open for as long as they wished it to be. There were lots of other drinks in the bar. Cleverly, he removed the coffee-pot and their cups.

‘He’s like a magician,’ she said. ‘Everything in Isfahan is magical.’

‘You’re glad you came?’

‘It’s where I met you.’

He rose. He had to stand for a moment because she continued to sit there, her handbag on the table, her black frilled shawl on top of it. She hadn’t finished her whisky but he expected that she’d lift the glass to her lips and drink what she wanted of it, or just leave it there. She rose and walked with him from the restaurant, taking her glass with her. Her other hand slipped beneath his arm.

‘There’s a discothèque downstairs,’ she said.

‘Oh, I’m afraid that’s not really me.’

‘Nor me, neither. Let’s go back to our bar.’

She handed him her glass, saying she had to pay a visit. She’d love another whisky and soda, she said, even though she hadn’t quite finished the one in her glass. Without ice, she said.

The bar was empty except for a single barman. Normanton ordered more brandy for himself and whisky for Mrs Azann. He much preferred her as Iris Smith, in her tatty pink dress and the dark glasses that hid her eyes: she could have been any little typist except that she’d married Mr Azann and had a story to tell.

‘It’s nice in spite of things,’ she explained as she sat down. ‘It’s nice in spite of him wanting to you-know-what, and the women in the bungalow, and his brother and the business manager. They all disapprove because I’m English, especially his mother and his aunt. He doesn’t disapprove because he’s mad about me. The business manager doesn’t much mind, I suppose. The dogs don’t mind. D’you understand? In spite of everything, it’s nice to have someone mad about you. And the Club, the social life. Even though we’re short of the ready, it’s better than England for a woman. There’s servants, for a start.’

The whisky was affecting the way she put things. An hour ago she wouldn’t have said ‘wanting to you-know-what’ or ‘short of the ready’. It was odd that she had an awareness in this direction and yet could not hear the twang in her voice which instantly gave her away.

‘But you don’t love your husband.’

‘I respect him. It’s only that I hate having to you-know-what with him. I really do hate that. I’ve never actually loved him.’

He regretted saying she didn’t love her husband: the remark had slipped out, and it was regrettable because it involved him in the conversation in a way he didn’t wish to be.

‘Maybe things will work out better when you get back.’

‘I know what I’m going back to.’ She paused, searching for his eyes with hers. ‘I’ll never till I die forget Isfahan.’

‘It’s very beautiful.’

‘I’ll never forget the Chaharbagh Tours, or Hafiz. I’ll never forget that place you brought me to. Or the Shah Abbas Hotel.’

‘I think it’s time I saw you back to your own hotel.’

‘I could sit in this bar for ever.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not at all one for night-life.’

‘I shall visualize you when I’m back in Bombay. I shall think of you in your village, with your wife, happy in England. I shall think of you working at your architectural plans. I shall often wonder about you travelling alone because your wife doesn’t care for it.’

‘I hope it’s better in Bombay. Sometimes things are, when you least expect them to be.’

‘It’s been like a tonic. You’ve made me very happy.’

‘It’s kind of you to say that.’

‘There’s much that’s unsaid between us. Will you remember me?’

‘Oh yes, of course.’

Reluctantly, she drank the dregs of her whisky. She took her medicine from her handbag and poured a little into the glass and drank that, too. It helped the tickle in her throat, she said. She always had a tickle when the wretched cough came.

‘Shall we walk back?’

They left the bar. She clung to him again, walking very slowly between the mosaiced columns. All the way back to the Old Atlantic Hotel she talked about the evening they had spent and how delightful it had been. Not for the world would she have missed Isfahan, she repeated several times.

When they said goodbye she kissed his cheek. Her beautiful eyes swallowed him up, and for a moment he had a feeling that her eyes were the real thing about her, reflecting her as she should be.

He woke at half past two and could not sleep. Dawn was already beginning to break. He lay there, watching the light increase in the gap he’d left between the curtains so that there’d be fresh air in the room. Another day had passed: he went through it piece by piece, from his early-morning walk to the moment when he’d put his green pyjamas on and got into bed. It was a regular night-time exercise with him. He closed his eyes, remembering in detail.

He turned again into the offices of Chaharbagh Tours and was told by Hafiz to go to the upstairs office. He saw her sitting there writing to her mother, and heard her voice asking him if he was going on the tour. He saw again the sunburnt faces of the German couple and the wholesome faces of the American girls, and faces in the French party. He went again on his afternoon walk, and after that there was his bath. She came towards him in the bazaar, with her dark glasses and her small purchases. There was her story as she had told it.

For his part, he had told her nothing. He had agreed with her novelette picture of him, living in a Home Counties village, a well-to-do architect married to a wife who gardened. Architects had become as romantic as doctors, there’d been no reason to disillusion her. She would for ever imagine him travelling to exotic places, on his own because he enjoyed it, because his wife was a home bird.

Why could he not have told her? Why could he not have exchanged one story for another? She had made a mess of things and did not seek to hide it. Life had let her down, she’d let herself down. Ridiculously, she gave elocution lessons to Indian women and did not see it as ridiculous. She had told him her secret, and he knew it was true that he shared it only with her mother and herself.

The hours went by. He should be lying with her in this bed, the size of a dance-floor. In the dawn he should be staring into her sumptuous eyes, in love with the mystery there. He should be telling her and asking for her sympathy, as she had asked for his. He should be telling her that he had walked into a room, not in a Home Counties village, but in harsh, ugly Hampstead, to find his second wife, as once he had found his first, in his bed with another man. He should in humility have asked her why it was that he was naturally a cuckold, why two women of different temperaments and characters had been inspired to have lovers at his expense. He should be telling her, with the warmth of her body warming his, that his second wife had confessed to greater sexual pleasure when she remembered that she was deceiving him.

It was a story no better than hers, certainly as unpleasant. Yet he hadn’t had the courage to tell it because it cast him in a certain light. He travelled easily, moving over surfaces and revealing only surfaces himself. He was acceptable as a stranger: in two marriages he had not been forgiven for turning out to be different from what he seemed. To be a cuckold once was the luck of the game, but his double cuckoldry had a whiff of revenge about it. In all humility he might have asked her about that.

At half past four he stood by the window, looking out at the empty street below. She would be on her way to the bus station, to catch the five o’clock bus to Teheran. He could dress, he could even shave and still be there in time. He could pay, on her behalf, the extra air fare that would accrue. He could tell her his story and they could spend a few days. They could go together to Shiraz, city of wine and roses and nightingales.

He stood by the window, watching nothing happening in the street, knowing that if he stood there for ever he wouldn’t find the courage. She had met a sympathetic man, more marvellous to her than all the marvels of Isfahan. She would carry that memory to the bungalow in Bombay, knowing nothing about a pettiness which brought out cruelty in people. And he would remember a woman who possessed, deep beneath her unprepossessing surface, the distinction that her eyes mysteriously claimed for her. In different circumstances, with a less unfortunate story to tell, it would have emerged. But in the early morning there was another truth, too. He was the stuff of fantasy. She had quality, he had none.