The Tomb in Turkey

THIRTEEN

Jude was, in fact, having the beginnings of a perfect holiday day at Morning Glory. She had sploshed around idly in the pool for some time, then lazed on a lounger and let the already scorching sun dry her off. Then she’d had a leisurely shower and sensibly anointed herself with Factor Fifteen before putting on a dry bikini and wrapping a diaphanous drape around her ample body.

Breakfast by the pool had consisted of a nectarine chopped up in yogurt, sprinkled with honey. Then more honey on bread and butter. She’d also found in the fridge door a carton of a Turkish favourite, sour cherry juice, which tasted wonderful.

As for plans for the day, she had none. Whatever Carole had said, Jude felt sure that going out to eat in the evening would be part of it, and a visit to the supermarket might have to be fitted in at some point. But there was no pressure to work out a timescale for either excursion.

She was glad that Carole had gone out for the day. Not from any lack of affection; it was just that Jude recognized the differences in their personalities. Her own method of untwitching involved running her system down to a state of almost complete torpor and then letting her energy rebuild itself. In two or three days she’d be up to thinking about active sightseeing.

Carole, she knew, worked in exactly the opposite way. The tensions within her demanded constant activity. Even though Jude had been aware of the ill-disguised trepidation with which her friend had set off in the Fiat, going to Pinara was an essential part of her holiday acclimatization. After a few days of busily doing things, Carole would, Jude reckoned, be sufficiently relaxed even to spend a few hours on a lounger by the pool.

And by the end of the fortnight it might even be a case of Jude suggesting excursions and Carole preferring to loll around at Morning Glory.

Jude’s poolside idyll was interrupted by a voice saying, ‘Hello again.’

She shaded her eyes against the sun to see the unwelcome outline of Travers Hughes-Swann. Instinctively, she felt glad that she still had the wrap on. Thin though it was, it afforded some protection from his prying eyes.

‘Oh, good morning,’ she said, fearful that his appearance was going to become a daily occurrence. And also mentally rescheduling the urgency of her trip to the supermarket. It was the only excuse she had, should she need to get away from his cloying presence.

‘Just came to check you’d settled in all right.’

‘Very well indeed, as you see.’

‘Sleep well?’

‘Like the proverbial log. And will probably fit in a few more hours in the course of the day.’

‘Very good, very good. That’s what a holiday’s for, isn’t it?

‘Exactly.’

‘Just lazing around on your own, with no interruptions.’

‘That’s what I like, yes,’ said Jude, not daring to put quite as much edge into the words as she wanted to.

‘Well, I’m sure you’ve earned a break. What is it you do?’

‘I’m a healer.’

‘Oh.’ That was a conversation-stopper for Travers. He appeared to have no supplementary questions on the subject of healing. Instead he went on, ‘I think doing nothing on holiday is entirely legitimate.’

‘Good,’ said Jude, not feeling any need to have her plans validated by the likes of Travers Hughes-Swann.

‘What gets up my nose is people who do nothing and haven’t earned the right to do nothing. Benefit scroungers, layabouts, a lot of them immigrants, you know.’

Before he could get up a full head of fascist steam, Jude said, ‘Well, we don’t have to worry about that kind of thing out in a beautiful place like this, do we?’

Her words had the desired effect of stopping his diatribe before he had really got into it. Travers Hughes-Swann moved his tortoise head around to take in the whole villa. ‘I haven’t met your friend yet.’

‘No. No, Carole’s gone off on an expedition to Pinara.’

‘Really? Well, there’s a coincidence.’

‘Oh?’

‘Phyllis and I were thinking of going over in that direction today.’

‘Ah.’

‘There’s a little restaurant we quite like up in a village near there. I’d thought we might go there for lunch … but Phyllis says she doesn’t feel up to it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘There’s not much she does feel up to these days. It was probably rather foolish of me to imagine that she might be able to accompany me.’

‘Well, there you go …’ said Jude fatuously.

‘Yes. So I was just wondering …’

‘Mm?’

‘… whether you’d like to come with me?’

‘For lunch?’

‘Yes. Give you an opportunity to see a bit of the surrounding area. It’s very beautiful.’

‘Well, Travers, that’s terribly kind of you, but I had really planned just a lazy day by the pool.’

‘Oh, very well,’ he said. ‘Another time, perhaps?’

Over my dead body, thought Jude.

Pinara was not what Carole Seddon would have regarded as an archaeological site. The ones she’d been to in England had all been protected like Fort Knox, with guard rails and grilles everywhere. Nobody was allowed to wander off the authorized routes. Health and Safety was clearly higher up the organizers’ priorities than historical interest.

Whereas Pinara seemed to be open to everyone. True, there was a small wooden hut near the car park, beside which a small motor scooter was drawn up. From the amiable man inside she bought a rather attractively decorated ticket about the size of a five-pound note. But it didn’t look as if it would be difficult to get into the site illegally if one wished to (something which, of course, Carole Seddon never would wish). But apart from the odd signpost there was little in the way of official intervention into how one wished to conduct one’s visit. And, so far as she could see, there were no areas roped off.

As she’d stepped out of the Fiat in the car park, Carole had had two dominant feelings. One was, as she felt the almost brutal impact of the heat, that she was very glad she’d bought the straw hat.

And second was a sensation of satisfaction that was almost gleeful. She had managed it. She had found her way to Pinara. The start of the journey, it was true, had not been easy. The narrow roads, the unfamiliar car, driving on the right in a foreign country, all of those factors had contributed to state that was close to panic. Until she got through the tangled traffic of Fethiye, in spite of the air conditioning, she had been sweating like a pig and felt that her bladder was about to burst.

But gradually, the further she progressed on the expedition, the calmer she became. And she gained confidence from the efficiency of her navigational skills. They had always been one of her secret sources of pride. Carole Seddon would never set out on a journey without having made a thorough study of the route beforehand. She had an instinctive memory for road numbers and target destinations. She could visualize a route rolling out before her, knowing which place name she had to aim for, which villages she would have to drive through to get there.

During their marriage her husband David, a nit-picker and minor control freak in many ways, had never challenged her superiority as a navigator. On the few uneasy holidays they’d taken in France with the silent teenage Stephen, David had driven with Carole at his side, map on her lap, as reliable as a homing pigeon. In such situations, though not many others, her ex-husband had known his place.

So, to have negotiated the wild terrain and unfamiliar signposting between Kayaköy and Pinara gave a huge boost to Carole’s confidence. As she neared the destination, she felt positively buoyant. She was no longer sweating, the air conditioning had done its work, and when she drew the Fiat up beside a purple tourist coach in the car park she had completely forgotten how desperately, a mere half an hour before, she had wanted to find a loo.

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.

Carole was now distinctly peckish and feeling a little dazed by the bright sunlight. She felt she had done enough sightseeing to justify a return to the car park and her modest rations of bread, salami and tomatoes. Whether she would explore more of Pinara after lunch she rather doubted.

But, trudging along the track, she had a slightly guilty feeling that there was one more feature of the site she should visit. Though the cliff-side tombs could only be explored from a distance with binoculars, the Rough Guide had told her that there were some on the west side of a small stream quite near the site entrance. These included what was called the ‘Royal Tomb’, whose elaborate carvings were well worth seeing.

Being so close, Carole decided to put her hunger pangs on hold a little longer and investigate.

Arrows on metal signs pointed the way. The area around the tiny stream was overgrown with trees which provided a pleasant dappled relief from the sun, now so hot that it almost stung Carole’s arms. Some of the trees had fallen to provide a precarious bridge over the water, but in fact it was so shallow that she could have waded through.

As she stepped forward on to a horizontal branch, she was aware of a slight movement in the undergrowth beneath her feet. She looked down to see a tortoise making its laborious but determined way through the scrub. A tortoise in its natural environment, nobody’s pet (indeed, they were no longer allowed to be kept as pets in England, she recalled). It made her feel that she was really abroad.

Carole climbed up the rocks on the other side of the stream and suddenly emerged into sunlight. And there, just one level up on the rock face, was a row of carved-out Lycian tombs. She clambered up the uneven path until she was standing in front of one.

It looked remarkably solid, like a small house carved out of the pale, vanilla-coloured stone. There were pillars at each end, one somewhat battered, and a series of carved frames on the building’s double frontage. One side was walled in, though a hole had at some point (maybe by grave robbers or vandals) been smashed into it. The other side was open like a doorway.

Carole had to stoop to get under the stone lintel. There was enough light for her to see that she was in an austere rectangular cell. Along the far wall ran a rectangular stone slab almost like a bench or a bed. The image was exactly like the pictures of Lycian tombs in the guidebooks Carole had been so assiduously reading.

Except that there was someone lying on the slab. A woman, the red and blue lanyard of whose identity card had been twisted around her neck until she died.

It was Nita.