The next day began like any other day, with breakfast at seven o’clock sharp on the glass porch. William Wakefield had a boiled egg, two pieces of toast, a stick of goat’s cheese and black coffee; Jeannie had two pieces of toast with jam, a stick of goat’s cheese, three olives and a glass of Turkish tea. When they were through, William took the plates back into the kitchen and came back with a big pile of newspapers. At the top was the most recent International Herald Tribune. He handed this to his daughter and spent the next five minutes going through the five or six Turkish papers underneath. Jeannie could make out the odd word here and there: anarchy, army, constitution, law, determination. Every front page carried the same pictures of the same men. She recognised one of them as the new Prime Minister. She assumed the others were the generals who were now in charge. Pigs, every one of them. Pigs.
‘Feeling better now?’ She did not deign to answer.
He smiled at her as if she’d said something civil. And then, carrying on in spite of her silence, he said, ‘Well, anyway, things should calm down now. At least for a while.’ He put the last paper back onto the pile.
The phone rang. ‘Maybe I spoke too soon.’ He answered, then cupped his hand over the receiver and beckoned Jeannie inside. ‘This will take some time,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you…’ She walked right past him and headed for the door.
It was a sunny morning, with the clear air that only the north wind brings, but when she tried to get into the car, Korkmaz stopped her. He hadn’t finished checking the car for devices. She went to sit with Chloe on the marble bench under the plane tree while he prodded the underside of the car and she asked herself what difference five yards could make, or if she even cared.
‘So what’s the plan for the day?’ her father asked as they bumped along the steep cobblestone road to the shore. She shrugged her shoulders. When he dropped them off at school, he made his usual joke. ‘So girls, keep your eyes peeled! Don’t talk to any Communist sympathisers!’
‘I’ll talk to whoever I want to,’ Chloe said. She headed up the path looking haughty. As Jeannie made to close the door, her father caught it. ‘You okay?’
She refused to look him in the eye.
‘I know – it’s a lot to unload on you. But it’s better that you know.’
What she knew now was that her father had a file on every friend she’d made in Istanbul. He knew how old they were, what their favourite flavour of ice cream was, he knew their parents’ politics and all the organisations, overt and covert, they’d ever belonged to. He knew how well or badly they’d done in school. Who kept a mistress, who was heading for bankruptcy, involved in a swindle, interested in young boys. He knew everywhere Jeannie had been, too, and everyone she’d met, in greater detail than her own memory could furnish.
He knew everything Dutch had ever said to anyone.
He’d amassed these files, he said, to protect her. He asked her, as per usual, to keep it under her hat. As if she could tell this to anyone. Oh – by the way. My father’s been watching you. Just to be on the safe side, just to be in the know. He knows all your family’s secrets, by the way. And now, thanks to him, I know a fair number of them, too.
How to warn her friends? How to protect them? Why had she been so blind, so wayward, headstrong and stupid? It could not be wrong to assume there were lines no father would cross – even a father like hers – but at what cost blindness? The worst thing was knowing that if she told her friends what she’d discovered, they’d just tell her they’d known all along.
At Current Affairs Club that afternoon, her mind kept straying. As Suna took her ‘American friends’ through the Turkish papers, telling them what they didn’t say about the new crackdown and the role the US had played in it, the likely outcome for the Deniz Gezmiş gang and what this augured for the student left, Jeannie kept remembering things her father knew about her – and her family, and Lüset’s, and Miss Broome’s.
She was sitting in the little dining room off Marble Hall afterwards, stirring her coffee, staring at the spoon, thinking of the lists they were on now, not because they were dangerous people, but because they were her friends. Then Suna burst in. ‘So there you are. This is good. We need your help.’
Miss Broome had offered to ‘liberate’ a mimeograph machine for them, and Suna had decided that Jeannie should be the one to carry it out of the building. ‘You’re a special student. Your father can get you out of anything. So hurry.’
If I’m caught, they can’t touch me. This was the chant that kept her going, as the wind ripped around Akıntıburnu, as cars slowed down with gaping men whom Suna dispatched with scornful looks, as she tried not to hear what Suna was saying, because it was no longer safe. Sinan was waiting for them on the college terrace. He looked as if he’d been up all night, too. He wouldn’t look Jeannie in the eye. Why? Had he guessed what she now knew? She did not dare ask – he had a crowd of friends with him. They, too, were loaded down with bags. They were joking around in their usual way but they looked scared. Their bags carried books and supplies they had cleared out of the room from which they’d run an ‘association’. They did not say which – only that it had been banned.
Haluk had offered the use of his apartment. About halfway there, Jeannie realised that the boy walking next to him was the infamous Rıfat, the green-eyed boy who’d spirited Chloe away from him. But there was no sign of any tension between Rıfat and Haluk now. If anything, Haluk seemed flattered to be of use.
Just before they reached the meydan the plastic bag in which they’d been carrying Miss Broome’s mimeograph machine developed a fatal hole, so Jeannie took the whole group into the garden of the Pasha’s Library and went inside to find something sturdier. And there in the hallway was the trunk her father had brought out the night before – the one with the files. Yes, she thought. Maybe she should let them see these, let them know what he knows. But when she opened the trunk, she found it empty.
“That’s perfect,” said Suna.
“But if your father misses it?” asked Rıfat.
“He won’t,” Jeannie said.
“Ah, to be a rich American,’ said Rıfat. And Haluk laughed.
It was the same at the apartment – Haluk could not do enough to make his erstwhile rival comfortable. Rıfat and his friends were to use the dining room as their new headquarters. Jeannie sat down at the table, dragging her spoon through yet another cup of coffee. There before her was the picture window from which, if she craned her neck and looked up, up, up, she could see her father’s glassed in-porch, and the wall on which he hung his binoculars.
When she got up to draw the curtains, Suna said, ‘Don’t do that. We need the light.’ How to warn them? Would she make it worse if she warned them? What was she doing here at all?
Then she heard Rıfat asking almost the same question. ‘Why are we entertaining an American? Under the circumstances, isn’t it foolish?’
‘Not at all,’ said Suna. ‘I would offer two reasons. First, she is our friend – a sweet, innocent, child, and we trust her. Secondly, she can protect us.’
‘Ah. Don’t we already have enough Americans protecting us?’
‘This is different,’ said Suna. ‘She shares our ideas.’
‘But her father’s a spy,’ said Rıfat.
And Suna said, ‘Yes, her father is a spy. Even worse, he is an enemy of the people. But who amongst us has a father who isn’t?’ They were speaking in Turkish – they thought Jeannie couldn’t understand them. But – was it because they were speaking more slowly than usual? – she’d understood every word.
‘You haven’t told her what we’re planning, have you?’ Rıfat now asked.
‘Ah!’ said Suna. ‘What sort of imbecile do you take me for? No, to answer your question, she’s best kept in the dark.’
‘But in that case…’ It was only after Jeannie had blurted out these words that she realised: she, too, had been speaking in Turkish. Neither Suna nor Rıfat seemed to have noticed. But Sinan had.
Slowly, very slowly, he lifted his finger to his lips to silence her. Then he stretched his arms and yawned. ‘I’m so bored,’ he said in Turkish. ‘I need a nap.’
‘Our world is falling apart at the seams, and you need a nap,’ said Suna.
Sinan smiled lazily. Then he turned to Jeannie and asked her in English if she was ‘feeling sleepy’.
‘I’m beginning to see how helpful it is to have an American in the house,’ said Rıfat, in Turkish.
‘Watch your tongue,’ Sinan snapped. ‘You’re speaking about my girlfriend.’
‘Is she good?’ the boy asked.
‘Better than you’ll ever know,’ said Sinan.
‘Then why not share her?’
This was too much for Jeannie to bear. Speaking in English now, she said, ‘Not for all the money in the world…’ Sinan’s grabbed her arm and marched her into the hallway. Only when he had closed the door of the back bedroom did he let go. Leaning against the wall, he let himself sag. ‘That was close,’ he said. ‘So close. You have no idea.’
‘Tell me,’ Jeannie said.
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘If I’m putting you in danger just by being here, then maybe…’
‘Don’t even say it,’ said Sinan. He kissed her forehead, then her lips, then her neck. ‘Don’t even think it. If you let me handle this, I can make it all right. But please, be careful. Please, no more Turkish. You must try and keep your face blank, too. You must never, ever, ever, let them know how much – where are you going, Jeannie? What are you doing?’
She was drawing the curtains.