He went downstairs at seven o’clock, using the staircase because he hated lifts and because, in any case, it was pleasant to walk through the luxurious hotel. In the hall a group of forty or so Swiss had arrived. He stood by a pillar for a moment, watching them. Their leader made arrangements at the desk, porters carried their luggage from the airport bus. Their faces looked happier when the luggage was identified. Swiss archaeologists, Normanton conjectured, a group tour of some Geneva society. And then, instead of going straight to the bar, he walked out of the hotel into the dusk.
They met in the tourist bazaar. She had bought a brooch, a square of coloured cotton, a canvas carrier-bag. When he saw her, he knew at once that he’d gone to the tourist bazaar because she might be there. They walked together, comparing the prices of ivory miniatures, the traditional polo-playing scene, variously interpreted. It was curiosity, nothing else, that made him want to renew their acquaintanceship.
‘The Theological School is closed,’ she said.
‘You can get in.’
He led her from the bazaar and rang a bell outside the school. He gave the porter a few rials. He said they wouldn’t be long.
She marvelled at the peace, the silence of the open courtyards, the blue mosaic walls, the blue water, men silently praying. She called it a grotto of heaven. She heard a sound which she said was a nightingale, and he said it might have been, although Shiraz was where the nightingales were. ‘Wine and roses and nightingales,’ he said because he knew it would please her. Shiraz was beautiful, too, but not as beautiful as Isfahan. The grass in the courtyards of the Theological School was not like ordinary grass, she said. Even the paving stones and the water gained a dimension in all the blueness. Blue was the colour of holiness: you could feel the holiness here.
‘It’s nicer than the Taj Mahal. It’s pure enchantment.’
‘Would you like a drink, Miss Smith? I could show you the enchantments of the Shah Abbas Hotel.’
‘I’d love a drink.’
She wasn’t wearing her dark glasses. The nasal twang of her voice continued to grate on him whenever she spoke, but her eyes seemed even more sumptuous than they’d been in the bright light of day. It was a shame he couldn’t say to her that her eyes were just as beautiful as the architecture of the Theological School, but such a remark would naturally be misunderstood.
‘What would you like?’ he asked in the bar of the hotel. All around them the Swiss party spoke in French. A group of Texan oilmen and their wives, who had been in the bar the night before, were there again, occupying the same corner. The sunburnt German couple of the Chaharbagh tour were there, with other Germans they’d made friends with.
‘I’d like some whisky,’ she said. ‘With soda. It’s very kind of you.’
When their drinks came he suggested that he should take her on a conducted tour of the hotel. They could drink their way around it, he said. ‘I shall be Guide Hafiz.’
He enjoyed showing her because all the time she made marvelling noises, catching her breath in marble corridors and fingering the endless mosaic of the walls, sinking her high-heeled sandals into the pile of carpets. Everything made it enchantment, she said: the gleam of gold and mirror-glass among the blues and reds of the mosaic, the beautifully finished furniture, the staircase, the chandeliers.
‘This is my room,’ he said, turning the key in the lock of a polished mahogany door.
‘Gosh!’
‘Sit down, Miss Smith.’
They sat and sipped at their drinks. They talked about the room. She walked out on to the balcony and then came and sat down again. It had become quite cold, she remarked, shivering a little. She coughed.
‘You’ve a cold.’
‘England always gives me a cold.’
They sat in two dark, tweed-covered armchairs with a glass-topped table between them. A maid had been to turn down the bed. His green pyjamas lay ready for him on the pillow.
They talked about the people on the tour, Hafiz and the testy professor, and the Frenchman with the moving camera. She had seen Hafiz and the American girls in the tourist bazaar, in the tea-shop. The minibus had broken down that afternoon: he’d seen it outside the Armenian Museum, the driver and Hafiz examining its plugs.
‘My mother would love that place,’ she said.
‘The Theological School?’
‘My mother would feel its spirit. And its holiness.’
‘Your mother is in England?’
‘In Bournemouth.’
‘And you yourself –’
‘I have been on holiday with her. I came for six weeks and stayed a year. My husband is in Bombay.’
He glanced at her left hand, thinking he’d made a mistake.
‘I haven’t been wearing my wedding ring. I shall again, in Bombay.’
‘Would you like to have dinner?’
She hesitated. She began to shake her head, then changed her mind. ‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘Here, in the hotel?’
‘The food is the least impressive part.’
He’d asked her because, quite suddenly, he didn’t like being in this enormous bedroom with her. It was pleasant showing her around, but he didn’t want misunderstandings.
