eyes?
The next day she spent helping delegates with the business of returning to their families; she did not really have to do it, her time was up, but her nature demanded that she should. On the night after everyone had scattered across the world, she joined that class of hotel guests who slip from their own rooms into others; returning discreetly before the sun rises and the corridors admit the maids in to work.
She spent the night with Jeffrey, and agreed to go with him to Spain for the month of August. Madness of course to go to Spain in August; but then it was madness to move around Europe in August at all. Sensible people did their travelling in adjacent months. But it would be easy to go into the interior of Spain, avoiding the coasts. There they would find waiting the
real
Spain, which was indestructible, according to Jeffrey, who knew it well.
The Holiday
On the 31st of July she walked out of the tall, gleaming, multinational hotel in Istanbul, thus leaving, in one step, the world of international organisation and planning, of conferences, of great Organisations—the atmosphere of money, invisible but so plentiful it is not important. The coffee and cakes she had eaten before leaving the hotel had cost two pounds, but she had never thought of asking the price. On the pavement, she was already in energetic altercation in three languages with the taxi driver, who showed signs of wanting to overcharge her by a few pence.
She had with her one suitcase, for she was adept at packing in small spaces, because she had spent so many years buying and packing for four children of that classof the world’s citizens who have the best of everything, and from all over the world, available on the counters of their local High Streets. She had given some of her new smart dresses to Ahmed for his wife, having ascertained they were the same size: from the trembling incredulity with which he handled these garments, mixed with only just-controlled resentment—not at her, she hoped, but against circumstances—she saw how much tact and self-control had gone into Ahmed’s working with her for the past month.
She stepped onto the aircraft wearing a shocking-pink dress that was in discord to just the right degree with her dark-red hair, and with a white skin that could not tan—already provocative where everyone was brown by nature, or getting brown as fast as possible. She carried
Paris Match, Oggi, The Guardian, Time, Le Monde
. Jeffrey had
The Paris Tribune, The International Times, The Christian Science Monitor
.
By the time they had read their own and each other’s newspapers, they were in Gibraltar, and in a couple of hours were sipping apéritifs in Málaga.
Again her ears were painfully reproached, by the Spanish much more than by the Turkish, since she knew the language closest to it. All around her were languages being spoken that found their way easily into her understanding: outside this central stage of drinkers and waiters was Spanish, but in offstage mutters again; the Spanish were extras and bit players on their own coasts.
Ever since early June that sun-loud coast had been filling. It was now so loaded that one could easily imagine that if seen from the air the peninsula must seem pressed down and the waters rising around it—the blue of the Mediterranean on one side, the grey of the Atlantic on theother. Soon these millions would submerge with their coloured clothes, their umbrellas, their sunglasses; their hotels, nightclubs, and restaurants.
At a table between a tall hibiscus bush and some plumbago that was moth-grey and not blue in the artificial light, a couple who were turned away from the crowd, and demonstrating their preference not to watch it, from time to time touched hands, even held hands. Once or twice they even kissed; but lightly, even humorously, certainly decorously. They might have been observed, too, giving many glances and indeed long looks away from each other, not into the crowd of which
The next day she spent helping delegates with the business of returning to their families; she did not really have to do it, her time was up, but her nature demanded that she should. On the night after everyone had scattered across the world, she joined that class of hotel guests who slip from their own rooms into others; returning discreetly before the sun rises and the corridors admit the maids in to work.
She spent the night with Jeffrey, and agreed to go with him to Spain for the month of August. Madness of course to go to Spain in August; but then it was madness to move around Europe in August at all. Sensible people did their travelling in adjacent months. But it would be easy to go into the interior of Spain, avoiding the coasts. There they would find waiting the
real
Spain, which was indestructible, according to Jeffrey, who knew it well.
The Holiday
On the 31st of July she walked out of the tall, gleaming, multinational hotel in Istanbul, thus leaving, in one step, the world of international organisation and planning, of conferences, of great Organisations—the atmosphere of money, invisible but so plentiful it is not important. The coffee and cakes she had eaten before leaving the hotel had cost two pounds, but she had never thought of asking the price. On the pavement, she was already in energetic altercation in three languages with the taxi driver, who showed signs of wanting to overcharge her by a few pence.
She had with her one suitcase, for she was adept at packing in small spaces, because she had spent so many years buying and packing for four children of that classof the world’s citizens who have the best of everything, and from all over the world, available on the counters of their local High Streets. She had given some of her new smart dresses to Ahmed for his wife, having ascertained they were the same size: from the trembling incredulity with which he handled these garments, mixed with only just-controlled resentment—not at her, she hoped, but against circumstances—she saw how much tact and self-control had gone into Ahmed’s working with her for the past month.
She stepped onto the aircraft wearing a shocking-pink dress that was in discord to just the right degree with her dark-red hair, and with a white skin that could not tan—already provocative where everyone was brown by nature, or getting brown as fast as possible. She carried
Paris Match, Oggi, The Guardian, Time, Le Monde
. Jeffrey had
The Paris Tribune, The International Times, The Christian Science Monitor
.
By the time they had read their own and each other’s newspapers, they were in Gibraltar, and in a couple of hours were sipping apéritifs in Málaga.
Again her ears were painfully reproached, by the Spanish much more than by the Turkish, since she knew the language closest to it. All around her were languages being spoken that found their way easily into her understanding: outside this central stage of drinkers and waiters was Spanish, but in offstage mutters again; the Spanish were extras and bit players on their own coasts.
Ever since early June that sun-loud coast had been filling. It was now so loaded that one could easily imagine that if seen from the air the peninsula must seem pressed down and the waters rising around it—the blue of the Mediterranean on one side, the grey of the Atlantic on theother. Soon these millions would submerge with their coloured clothes, their umbrellas, their sunglasses; their hotels, nightclubs, and restaurants.
At a table between a tall hibiscus bush and some plumbago that was moth-grey and not blue in the artificial light, a couple who were turned away from the crowd, and demonstrating their preference not to watch it, from time to time touched hands, even held hands. Once or twice they even kissed; but lightly, even humorously, certainly decorously. They might have been observed, too, giving many glances and indeed long looks away from each other, not into the crowd of which
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