Tremor of Intent

He cowered in the shadows by the ill-lighted entrance of the hotel. Soon he heard singing. Theodorescu, whom nothing could make drunk, had been made drunk. The song sung was the anthem of a minor British public school: 'Porson was founded in days of old, When learning was in flower, And mighty warriors strong and bold Brought England peace and power.' The organ-tones of the voice had been somehow diluted to the reediness of a harmonica, though there was still much strength there. Theodorescu, trying to remember the second verse, then saying 'Dash it', then merely humming, appeared at the hotel entrance, smirking sillily in the globe-light above against which moths beat, his left arm around a decay-mottled barley-sugar pillar, his right hand dripping blood. 'A jolly nice night for a bit of fun,' he told the street. 'Hey, you fellows there,' he called to a knot of Turks in old brown suits, 'let's go and write dirty words on Form Five's blackboard.' He began to stagger off now to the right, towards the maze of dirty streets which at length led to uncaulked craft bobbing on the water, thieves, little food-stalls. He sang a maturer song of school, naughty: 'We're good at games like rugger And snooker and lacrosse, And once aboard the lugger We are never at a loss. Look at the silly sod, pissed on half-a-pint of four-half.' He roared with boyish laughter, zigzagging on the greasy cobbles. Hillier followed well behind.

From a ramshackle raki-stall came thin Turkish radio-noise, skirling reeds in microtonal melismata with, as for the benefit of Mozart, gongs, cymbals, jangles. Theodorescu cried loud his contempt of foreign art: 'Nigger stuff. Bongabongabonga. Chinks and niggers.' And, like a true Britisher, he rolled seawards, Istanbul possessing three walls of sea and one wall of stone. Lowly people of various inferior races stared at him, but with neither fear nor malice: this big man was lordly drunk, Allah or the shade of Atatürk forgive him. The time, thought Hillier, had come to steer him whither it was proper for him to be steered. As he lessened his following distance, he was suddenly turned upon by Theodorescu, though jovially. Theodorescu called: 'Ah, Biggs, you little squirt, if you try and pin that insulting filthy card to my back I will have you. I know your nasty tricks, you boily son of a cut-price haberdasher.'

'It's not Briggs,' said Hillier.

'Oh, isn't it?' said Theodorescu. Three filthy children, Turko-Graeco-Syrian or something, were capering round him for baksheesh. Theodorescu tried to cuff them off, but his co-ordination was bad. Still, they ran to an alley of foul dark, jeering. 'No, it's not Briggs,' agreed Theodorescu. 'It's Forster. Well, Forster, is it to be war or peace?'

'Oh, peace,' said Hillier.

'Jolly good,' said Theodorescu. 'We'll fare forward together. In peace peace peace. Arm in arm, Forster. Come along, then.' Hillier was up to his side, but he resisted the fierce and podgy embrace that was offered. 'You say peace,' said Theodorescu, tottering downhill along a sinuous mock-street, 'but you told Witherspoon that I was a dirty foreigner.' The street seemed full öf torn posters advertising long-done Turkish entertainments, though one showed two American film-stars embracing grimly among words umlaut-spiked. A gas-lamp flickered like a dying moth. A fat woman with creamy Greek skin suddenly peered out from a derelict shop, calling hoarsely. 'I am a true-born Englishman,' said Theodorescu, 'despite the name. I will make the second eleven next year, so Shaw said. The eye and the hand.' He began to demonstrate batting strokes but nearly fell.

'Let's go down,' said Hillier, 'for a breath of the old briny.' A ghastly odour of decaying water-rack came up to them on the warm breeze. With a finger-tip prod he impelled Theodorescu to descend a wider street with food-and-drink shops open to the night. Here radio music of various kinds contended; a plummy, somehow Churchill-ian, voice read through farts of static the news in Turkish. There was the hissing of nameless fish and meat being dropped into hot fat. Theodorescu sniffed hungrily. 'Old Ma Shenstone's fish and chips,' he slavered. 'The best in town.' There were knots of merchant seamen about, some quarrelling over money. Hillier could swear that he saw, for an instant only, a woman thrust a fat white belly over the window-ledge of an upper room; she was dressed only in a yashmak. Hadn't Kemal Atatürk forbidden yashmaks? Then her light went out.

'Theo,' said Hillier, 'you're a dirty young squirt. What have you been doing with the younger boys?'

'It was Bellamy,' cried Theodorescu in distress. 'Bellamy did it to me. They all stood around in the prefects' room. The door was locked. I yelled and nobody came. They only laughed.'

'You have the habits of a dirty foreigner,' said Hillier. 'I know what you did with that little boy in the choir.'

'I didn't do anything with anybody. Honest.' Theodorescu started to cry. An unshaven sailor, streaked with hold-dirt, stood outside a food-hell called Gastronom. He belched on a long and wavering note. Theodorescu decided to run. He did this clumsily, crying. 'They're always on to me,' he yelled. 'I only want to be left alone.' He Charlie-Chaplin-turned the corner. Two linked seamen swerved out of the way of his impending bulk, calling strange words.

'Easy, easy, Theo,' soothed Hillier, catching up with him. 'You'll feel tons better after a lovely sniff of sea.' They were on a minor wharf, its stones broken or slimy. The Bosporus lapped orts of shipping. Two youths, hairy and dark under a faint working-light, one of them unshod, were trying to open a packing-case with an old iron bar. Seeing Hillier and Theodorescu, they ran off with unsure Turkish guffaws. There were crates lined up against dismal sheds, rat-scufflings behind. A gull somewhere seemed to cry out at a bad dream. 'I say,' said Hillier, 'we could have a jolly good bit of fun here. Let's go aboard one of these boats.' Farther out, small merchantmen did a dance of dim lights; there was a party going on somewhere – cries of joy that sounded Scandinavian, desperate under the euphoria. Hillier led Theodorescu to the quay's edge. It was green and slippery. 'Careful, careful,' said Hillier. 'Don't want to fall in, do we?' Theodorescu's eyelids were drooping; Hillier peered at the sagging mass of the face, all fat nobility dripped off. 'You're a bloody foreigner,' he said, 'not British at all. I dare you to jump on that barge with me.' It was a coal-barge emptied of coal; only its residue of dark dust, film everywhere, mole-mounds of it here and there, glistened under the thin rising slip of a Turkish moon. The empty vessel rocked over a subdued glug of water, its lip not more than three feet from the quay.

'Can't,' said Theodorescu, looking seaward with filming eyes. 'Not like warrer. Ole Holtballs no blurry good. Took us to the baths, not teach swim proper. Wa

"Coward,' jeered Hillier. 'Dirty dago coward.'

'Fishin ships. Ole Ma Shenshtin.' Hillier reached up and slapped him on the left jowl. He tried not to think. Ah God God God. Was he so much the ultimate villain? He could have taken all that information that time without asking, without paying out dollars. Even the identity of, the location of. Free will, choice: he had spoken of those things. 'Choose now, Theodorescu,' he said into the sea-breeze. 'Go in now. A narrow bed, it will just hold you.'

'Murrer send big cake for dorm. Bellamy buggers eat the lot.'

'Five shillings, Theodorescu. I bet you five whole bob you daren't jump after me.'

'Five?' It had shaken him awake. 'Not supposed to gamble. Old Jimballs will be in a hell of a wax.'

'Watch this. ' Hillier gauged keenly. There was a wooden ledge a foot or so down from the gunwale. That would be all right. 'Now then, Theodorescu.' It was an easy leap. Panting only slightly, Hillier looked up the brief distance to the quay's edge, where Theodorescu swayed doubtfully.