The Tomb in Turkey

SEVEN

Needless to say, Carole won about their transport to Gatwick. Jude would much rather have shared a cab. Then she could feel like she was on holiday from the moment she left Woodside Cottage. Whereas going by rail involved getting up earlier, dragging their bags to the station, waiting about for the train to arrive (Carole had, needless to say, ensured that they arrived far too early), then dragging the bags again from the train to the terminal – and reversing the process when they returned home.

But Carole had said they would catch the 5.50 from Fethering station and so it was the 5.50 from Fethering station that they caught. Carole had two suitcases and a shoulder bag; Jude had a holdall and a small knapsack. Jude was dressed in a bright skirt and a T-shirt. She felt a bit cold, but didn’t want to be weighed down with a bulky cardigan which she knew she’d never wear once when they were out in Turkey.

Carole was dressed in navy trousers and a grey jacket over a white shirt. On top of this she wore her Burberry raincoat. Jude knew that that too would not be worn once during their holiday, but she made no comment. She thought there might be other things over which they disagreed in the next two weeks, but she didn’t want to start the fortnight with an argument.

Jude had got a suitably trashy novel in her knapsack, but she felt too dozy and exhausted to start reading it on the train. Time enough for lots of reading by the infinity pool at Morning Glory.

Carole had, of course, stopped the delivery of her papers. ‘Did you do that, Jude?’

‘No.’

‘Oh dear. Think of the waste.’

‘I didn’t do it, Carole, because, as you might have noticed by now, I don’t have papers delivered. When I want to read a newspaper, I go out and buy one.’

‘Oh.’

They’d left too early for Carole to get a Times from the newsagent, but she had a book of Times crosswords in her shoulder bag, and during the journey to Gatwick she focused intently on one of those.

Theirs was a charter flight and, in the way of charter flights, once they had arrived at the airport and checked in their bags they found it was delayed by two hours.

‘Oh dear,’ said Carole, on the verge of panic mode. ‘That’ll spoil all our plans, won’t it?’

‘No, it just means we’ll get there two hours later than we thought we would. That is, assuming there isn’t a further delay.’

‘Is that likely?’ asked Carole anxiously.

‘You never know with charter flights. Quite possible. But we may get lucky and it’ll only be two hours.’

‘I don’t know how you can describe a two-hour flight delay as “getting lucky”.’

‘Well, it’s just one of those things,’ said Jude. ‘Nothing we can do about it.’

‘But don’t you feel infuriated by the fact that we can’t do anything about it?’ Throughout her life Carole had always hated not feeling in control.

‘No, of course not,’ said Jude with complete honesty. ‘Some things just happen.’

‘Oh, and I suppose you just disappear into some transcendental Zen state and nothing gets to you?’

Jude grinned. ‘No, I just accept that sometimes things go wrong.’

‘Huh,’ said Carole Seddon, as only she could say the word.

‘Oh, come on, let’s go and get some breakfast,’ said Jude.

‘We get a meal on the flight,’ said Carole. ‘We’ve paid for it.’

‘Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that I feel very hungry right now.’

‘Didn’t you have anything to eat before you left?’

‘God, no. At five in the morning my system is hardly functioning. Certainly not up to eating breakfast.’

‘Oh.’

‘You had something, I assume?’

‘Just a bowl of muesli.’

‘Come on, let’s go and get something at Café Rouge.’

‘I don’t need to get something at Café Rouge.’

‘Well, come and have a coffee and watch me while I have something at Café Rouge.’

Through Carole’s head was proceeding a thought similar to the one Jude had had at the sight of the Burberry: there may be bigger issues ahead for us to disagree about, so don’t let’s have a disagreement yet. Carole did not wish to upset the apple cart at that point. Besides, she had been considerably cheered by the fact that she’d noticed an open W.H. Smith.

‘Very well, Jude. I’ll just go and get myself a Times, and I’ll join you in there.’

‘Fine.’

Though Café Rouge was allegedly of French inspiration, at the airport they were canny enough to offer a full English breakfast, and that was exactly what Jude felt like, so it was exactly what she ordered.

It had just been delivered when Carole returned, clutching her Times. ‘Goodness, there was a big queue in Smith’s.’ She looked down at Jude’s heaped plate. ‘If you eat all that, you’re never going to manage your meal on the plane.’

‘You watch me,’ said Jude. ‘Anyway, I find while travelling you can eat a whole lot of different meals during the day without noticing.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes. Something strange happens to one’s metabolism. It’s like drinking. You can pour the stuff down your throat on the plane and still feel perfectly sober when you pick up the hire car at the airport.’

‘Can you?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Then,’ said Carole primly, ‘I think it’s a very good thing that we’re getting a cab from Dalaman Airport.’

‘Oh, but we’re not.’

‘What? But I’ve checked out where we get cabs from and the likely price.’ Carole didn’t like the prospect of her research being wasted. ‘It’s also very important that you agree a price with the taxi driver before you start the journey. According to the guidebook I read, some of the drivers are up to all kinds of scams.’

‘We won’t need a taxi. We’re being met at the airport by Barney’s holiday rep friend Nita Davies.’

‘Oh? When did you hear that?’

‘Friday, I think it was. Barney rang to tell me and, I’m sorry, I’ve just been so busy since then that I forgot to tell you.’ Jude wondered whether that was strictly true, or was it just that she’d deliberately blanked the memory of that disquieting phone call from her mind?

‘Well, that’s very kind of her,’ said Carole. But she wasn’t sure about the news. While it appealed to the budgeting part of her mind because it would save the price of a cab from Dalaman Airport to Kayaköy, it also faced her with the prospect of meeting someone new. Carole Seddon always got worried about meeting new people, and she wished she’d had a bit more notice about meeting Nita in a few hours’ time. What kind of English person, she wondered, chooses to spend her life in Turkey? And what kind of English person would get married to a Turk?

To the hovering waiter, Carole said she’d have a coffee. When offered the variety of coffees available, she said she’d just have an ordinary coffee.

‘Regular filter?’ asked the waiter.

‘If that’s what it’s called, yes.’

‘And nothing to eat?’

‘No, thank you.’ Though a croque-monsieur had just been delivered to an adjacent table, and it did look very tempting. But no, she’d had her five o’clock bowl of muesli. Ordering a second breakfast would be self-indulgent. It would, in fact, put her right on the edge of the slippery slope. And her path through life had seemed to have slippery slopes at every juncture. It wasn’t easy being Carole Seddon.

When she’d mopped up the last bit of egg yolk with her last bit of toast, Jude called for the bill, which arrived almost instantaneously (the staff in the Gatwick Café Rouge were clearly used to people being suddenly summoned by flight boarding calls). As she drew out her credit card, Carole said, ‘I should pay for my coffee.’

‘I think I can afford to stand you a coffee.’

‘Yes, but it’s a matter of principle. If we’re going to be spending the next fortnight together we must work out how we divide the bills.’

‘I have thought about that,’ said Jude. ‘We should have a kitty.’

‘A kitty?’

‘Yes. I’ve even brought a special purse for the purpose.’ Jude produced a purple leather one from her knapsack. ‘We each put the same amount of money in here and use that to fund mutual purchases, like meals and food shopping.’

Carole was dubious. ‘But what happens when that money runs out?’

‘Then we put in more,’ Jude explained, as if to a five-year-old. ‘Again, we both put in exactly the same amount.’

Carole mentally – and sceptically – tested the proposal. And, to her surprise, couldn’t find anything wrong with it. ‘Well, that might work,’ she conceded.

‘It does work,’ Jude asserted. ‘It’s what I’ve always done when I’ve gone on holiday with other friends.’

Carole didn’t like having brought to her attention that she was just one in a sequence of friends with whom Jude had been on holiday, but she curbed her instinct to say anything. Nor did she argue further about paying for her regular filter coffee.

‘Right.’ As Jude gathered her belongings together, she looked at her watch. ‘Let’s just check there’s no further delay to the flight.’

‘Oh, do you think there might be?’ asked Carole anxiously.

‘We will only find out by looking at the departures board. And once we’ve done that, I’m going to hit the duty-free.’

‘Why?’ asked Carole.

‘Because that is how one kills time at airports.’

‘It’s how they want you to kill time at airports,’ said Carole sniffily. ‘It’s a blatant ploy to separate you from your money.’

‘Well, with me it’s a blatant ploy that usually works. I almost always end up buying something.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know until I see it, do I?’

‘But is there anything you really need?’ asked Carole.

A line from King Lear came unbidden into Jude’s mind. ‘“Oh, reason not the need,”’ she said. Carole’s puzzled expression showed that the line hadn’t come up in a Times crossword recently. ‘Duty-free shopping,’ Jude continued, ‘is just an essential part of the airport experience.’

‘Is it?’ asked Carole. ‘Well, I’ll come round and look at things with you. But I’m not going to buy anything.’

‘Fine. That is your prerogative.’

‘Yes, it certainly is.’

‘For me, it’s part of going on holiday.’

‘Is it?’ repeated Carole, feeling once again dubious about the whole enterprise. Though she been Jude’s neighbour for quite a long time, there were occasions when she felt she didn’t really know her at all. And if their attitudes to the idea of duty-free shopping were so different, who could say what other points of variance might be discovered over the next two weeks?

There was no further delay to their flight registered on the departures board, so they ‘hit the duty-free’. Jude picked up a perfume tester. Gucci Guilty.

‘Is that what you usually buy?’ asked Carole.

‘No, I thought I’d try something different.’

‘Oh,’ said Carole, who had been using Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass for as long as anyone could remember.

Jude sniffed the spray on her wrist. ‘Ooh, yes, I like that.’

‘It’s very expensive,’ Carole observed, ‘even with the duty off.’

‘Yes, but I’m on holiday,’ said Jude, once again prompting her neighbour to wonder how she ran her financial affairs.

Jude also bought a huge slab of fruit and nut chocolate and a bottle of Laphroaig malt whisky. ‘For those balmy Turkish evenings.’

‘Huh,’ said Carole. And then, in spite of her earlier assertions, she also picked up something to buy. A small teddy bear sporting a pair of Union Jack shorts. Carole’s attitude to buying things for her granddaughter Lily was completely different to how she considered buying things for herself.

The flight was uneventful, though a wait on the tarmac meant the plane actually left two hours and forty minutes after its scheduled departure. And Carole was extremely hungry by the time they were served their lunch. Which was minimal and not very nice.

While they were flying, Jude embarked on one of her trashy novels for a while, then after the meal she slept. Carole sat beside her, tense as a stick insect, and concentrated on that day’s Times crossword. To her annoyance, there was one clue in the bottom-right corner that she couldn’t for the life of her work out, and her irritation was increased by the knowledge that she probably wouldn’t be able to get a paper the following day and check the solution.

Her mood was not improved by observing the other people on the flight. She saw tattoos and Union Jack T-shirts, which for Carole raised the spectre of the troubling word ‘common’. Were the only people who went to Turkey lager-swilling yobs, she wondered.

And then she felt guilty for having bought Lily a teddy bear with Union Jack shorts. Was the national flag as ‘common’ on a teddy bear as it was on a T-shirt? This and other equally troubling questions circled round Carole Seddon’s mind and, still unable to get the final clue, she tried to concentrate on the piece in The Rough Guide to Turkey about Lycian tombs. There were good examples of them at various sites, notably in the cliffs by the river at Dalyan, at Patara, Tlos, Fethiye and Pinara.

Carole wasn’t particularly interested in archaeology, but she thought visiting tombs might be a good way of giving her some sense of purpose on the holiday.

When they stepped out of the plane at Dalaman Airport, the heat hit them almost like a physical blow. They followed the crocodile of other passengers to the air-conditioned oasis of the terminal building.

Once inside, everyone seemed to whip out their passports and rush towards a couple of what looked like ticket booths. ‘What are they doing?’ Carole asked Jude.

‘Have to pay ten pounds for a visa to get into Turkey.’

‘Really?’ said Carole, who had not entered this sum into her detailed budgetary plans. ‘That’s daylight robbery.’

At the baggage reclaim it seemed, as it always does, that their bags were the last to emerge on to the carousel. Jude sat on the floor, serenely waiting, while Carole paced up and down, convinced that her luggage was on the way to Delhi.

There seemed to be no one in the customs control area as they walked through, and immediately they entered the airport foyer a voice said, ‘Hi. You must be Carole and Jude.’