Letter from a Stranger. Barbara Taylor Bradford
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‘I put the Basilica Cistern on my list, along with the two big bazaars.’
‘Good. We shall cover everything in the next few days. Perhaps this little tour of ancient places in Istanbul will produce an idea for your documentary.’
‘It just might,’ Justine murmured. ‘It just might.’
EIGHT
A voice filled the room. A man’s voice. Melodic. Slightly high pitched. Singing in a foreign language.
Justine opened her eyes and blinked in the dim light. Struggling up into a sitting position on the bed, she listened more attentively as the voice finally trailed off, stopped. Now there was perfect stillness. No sound at all.
Sliding off the bed, where she had been dozing, Justine went over to the seating area. The French doors were open, and she stepped out onto the terrace, looking around. Leaning against the terrace railings, she peered down into the garden below, expecting to see an orchestra, the singer preparing to sing another song. But there was no band. No musicians. No singer.
Then, suddenly, she understood. What she had just heard was the voice of a muezzin standing at the top of a minaret, calling the faithful to prayer. Joanne had mentioned this last weekend, explained that it happened five times a day, that electronic amplification carried the muezzin’s voice around entire districts, all of which were large and heavily populated.
The muezzin’s singing had awakened her from her languorous dozing, forced her off the bed, and she didn’t care. In fact, she was glad. She had some serious thinking to do.
After lunch with Iffet, she had come up to her room, unpacked, put everything neatly away and called Eddie Grange in London. He had not been able to find out anything on the Internet about the two companies her grandmother had been associated with. Very simply, there was no evidence that there had been either showrooms or offices for Exotic Lands and Faraway Places. It was as if they had not existed.
She had thanked Eddie and hung up. This new information, and the fact that her grandmother was not listed in the London phonebook, more or less proved that she did not live in London any longer. Perhaps she had vacated the city long ago and settled permanently. Unless she had an unlisted phone number. But Justine doubted that. Her grandmother wasn’t into the secrecy game. Unlike her mother, who was.
With her arms folded and resting on top of the railings, she stared out into the night, lost for a moment in the beauty. The sky was a lovely deep pavonine blue, the stars were coming out in a brightly scattered array, and there were twinkling lights everywhere, especially on the other side of the Bosphorus. The Asian side.
How odd it is, she thought, to be here in Istanbul and straddled between Europe and Asia Minor, on two continents at once. What an intriguing place this was. Straightening up, she realized she was more positive than ever that her grandmother was here, somewhere in this city. She felt it in her bones.
Now she couldn’t help wondering if the search at the land registry office would produce an address for Anita? Gran? Of course it was possible that Gabriele had her own home here. She had been independent by nature, decisive and driven, had stood on her own two feet, battling the world, making everything work for herself and for them.
Justine smiled inwardly. She had inherited those traits from her granny, no doubt about that. In fact, her father had told her she was more like her grandmother than her mother. And it was true, thank God.
Why would her grandmother come to live here in Istanbul? Justine was able to answer that question instantly.
Her grandmother’s lifelong friend Anita lived here, and there were several other good reasons as well. The weather was mild all year round, according to Iffet, and was certainly the perfect climate for an older woman; knowledge of Istanbul from years ago, when she was doing business; other old friends residing in the city; a lifestyle she enjoyed.
Justine went back into the room, turned on several lamps and sat down in a chair. She closed her eyes, focusing her mind on Gran, and intensely so.
To all intent and purpose, Gabriele Hardwicke had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Just as if she had died. Justine knew she hadn’t. She had Anita’s letter to prove it.
Certainly there was nothing of her life remaining in London. Earlier today Eddie had told her so in no uncertain terms. Zilch, was the way he had put it. And certainly she had been surprised, even startled, when he had wondered aloud if her importing business in London had ever existed.
What if the same thing happened here? What if neither woman owned homes here? Then there would be no way to find them. She would be facing a brick wall…
A blue-and-white tiled wall. Unexpectedly she was seeing this in her mind’s eye… a blue-and-white tiled wall in her grandmother’s kitchen in New York. No, several walls. Tiles from Istanbul, Gran had told her. Like the blue-and-white vases, tubs, planters and urns her father and Gran used to sell to interior designers in Manhattan. And brass objects. And carpets. Those beautiful silk-woven carpets from Istanbul. No, from Hereke, a small town located outside the city.
As all this came rushing back to her, she thought: That’s it. She snapped open her eyes and sat bolt upright. Dealers in tiles, ceramic objects, antiques and carpets… those were the people she had to find, if it became necessary. Perhaps they would remember her grandmother, perhaps even still knew her, and therefore knew where she lived.
Justine went to the desk, began to make notes about the items that had been imported from Turkey by her father and grandmother. As she did this she felt an easing of the tension inside her, because she had thought of another way she might be able to trace Gabriele Hardwicke. She had to find her. She would not rest until she did. And she would start tomorrow.
At one moment, Justine roused herself from her unceasing thoughts of her grandmother and pushed herself up from the desk. She could not resist the pull of the terrace that opened off her room, and she went outside to sit under the night sky. She glanced up, marvelling at that midnight blue arc above her. The stars were amazing… so many of them here in Istanbul, littering a sky that was clear, peaceful and infinite.
Across the Bosphorus the lights of Turkey and Anatolia on the Asiatic side were pinpoints of brilliant colour glittering across the countryside, turning it into a fairyland. And downstairs people were already dining at the terrace café; she could hear the sound of muffled voices and laughter against the backdrop of a tinkling piano.
She immediately recognized the song, picking up the strains of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ from one of her favourite old movies, The Wizard of Oz. Her grandmother had loved that movie as much as she and Richard had when they were little. And she herself had always yearned for Dorothy’s sparkling, scarlet shoes.
That’s what I need, a Wizard, she thought, and a Good Fairy and a Magic Wand. She let out a small sigh, and then it nudged its way in… that maddening thought of the estrangement. What had happened between her mother and Gran to cause this insane rift? She wondered then if it could possibly have anything to do with money? Her mother was a spendthrift – she knew that only too well from her childhood, her father’s angry tones echoing in her head right now, as if he were standing next to her. Bankrupt was another word constantly on his lips. ‘You’ll bankrupt me, the way you spend,’ he used to shout angrily, and there would be another row between her parents, doors banging and raised voices for hours.
But they always made up eventually, and things normalized again. But looking back she acknowledged that they were either in each other’s arms or at each other’s throats… it had been the most tumultuous of marriages. After one of these rows had occurred, her grandmother had not come to the country for a while. She had gone instead to Huntington to stay with her close friend and lawyer, Trent, at his house on the water overlooking Long Island Sound. Sometimes Gran took them with her, and she and Rich enjoyed those trips, and enjoyed being with Uncle Trent, who made them laugh and spoiled them and thought up fantastic treats. Her mother never wanted them to go out there to Long Island, mostly because she did not like Trent Saunders. Not at all.
She was