Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) Read Online Free Page A

had to be waited for. “I don’t mind walking out of doors with my shoes off,” she said. “But I hate walking barefoot on these clammy old carpets. We shall get Turkish verrucas.” She was quite petulant by the time they reached the Blue Mosque, which Nick and Martha called the Mosque of Sultan Ahmed. She had noticed that Nick had put his shoes neatly together in the rack outside, with soles facing, as he had read was correct and respectful. By this time, the sourness in Amy made her pleased when she saw the Turkish guide throw his plastic sandals in anyhow. Such it ever was, she thought.
    She sighed and yawned, observed a bunion on the German woman’s foot, and found it more interestingthan Nicaean tiles. They wandered on across the carpets. Sometimes, she looked up, as bidden, sometimes came upon insignificant details which only she saw. What a daunting place, she thought. What on earth are they all looking at now? My neck aches so. Of course, it might be quite pretty if all the lights were on, I suppose.
    The guide seemed to have made a joke. He looked pleased with himself, and people smiled. Amy stood about, padded around impatiently, her head bowed, her arms folded across her breast. Then stood about. And stood about. Came back. Dusty, tawdry places, she thought in a spurt of anger. They have nothing to offer like our little churches at home. She was not religious, but by now she was beginning to love the little churches at home. This place was far too large. Voices came and receded. There was a hum of guides, yet they did not incommode one another. If I could just
go,
she thought, putting her hand to her forehead. If I could just go and never come back to this damned city again.
    Nick asked intelligent questions of their guide, and then gave the answers to Martha in English. Holding up everything, the Alexandrian woman thought. Being barefoot seemed to inspire her. She traced patterns upon the carpets with her toes, outlined designs, walked with one foot exactly before the other, or angled like a herring-bone, her head bent, her black hair and her shoulder-bag swinging. She stood on tiptoe, swayed, stretched out her arms. Did not listen. Did not listen. She examined her bracelets, and counted them. From want of anything better to do,she looked at some tiles, yawned. Amy, catching sight of her, caught also the yawn. She put her hands over her face to hide it.
    “You all right?” Nick asked, passing by.
    She nodded.
    “Good. Fascinating.” He did not mean her, or Martha going along beside him in her dirty raincoat, or even the Alexandrian woman.
    “I hate this bloody country,” Amy thought, who was to hate it more.
    In the afternoon, there were to be Ming dishes and God knew what else. I could stay here on board, Amy thought, as they waited patiently for the bus. The sun had come out at last. She could sit on deck among the unglamorous surroundings and read, or not read. Her skin would turn pink and freckled like a foxglove, and never the honeygold she desired and thought she had a right to. Nick would be quite content, going round with Martha. But all the same, Amy was in the bus by two-thirty, sitting as usual behind the Germans.
    Because of the sun, Martha had discarded her raincoat. She was wearing a fancy blouse and jeans. Her straight fair hair was streaked and stringy. All very scruffy, neat Amy thought. Martha’s camera was slung over her shoulder. All the cameras had come out with the sun. The German man was weighed down by photographic paraphernalia, even a tripod.
    Martha took a photograph of Nick and Amy beside some dingy roses in the gardens of the Topkapi Gardens, and Amy thought it was taken for the sake of Nick.
    Some of the Ming porcelain would have looked quite nice in her own house, set out on the pine dresser. She whiled away some time by arranging it in imagination about her rooms, but then suddenly her anger came up to boiling-point. Suppose they had had one little piece of it at home,