5.3 The candle situation.
5.4 Replacement uniform jacket.
6. RECOMMENDATION
6.1 The Principal requires structured daily management, clear security protocols, and firm boundaries. This officer anticipates that the implementation of all three will be met with significant resistance.
6.2 The Principal is, however, a British passport holder, a guest of His Majesty and, when not in a state of acute distress, evidently possessed of considerable personal magnetism. Thisofficer is confident that a professional working relationship can be established, provided expectations are clearly communicated and maintained.
6.3 This officer requests a meeting with the Private Secretary at the earliest opportunity to discuss the scope of his duties, the Principal’s security posture, and the long-term accommodation of Mercè.
? ? ?
H. R. Beauchamp
Major, Household Division
Appendix A: Annotated map of residence (security features marked)
Appendix B: Principal’s passport documentation
Appendix C: Photograph of Mercè (for quarantine file)
Chapter One
TheTurkish flower seller had a cousin in Istanbul who made the bestkünefein the city, and Vidal was in the middle of telling him his honest opinion on the sample he’d been given, when Mercè shivered against his ribs.
“One moment, my friend,” Vidal said, switching from the cheerful pidgin he had been constructing out of three languages and a great deal of goodwill, and unbuttoning the top of his linen jacket so that he could tuck his dog more thoroughly inside it. Mercè was wearing a small jumper Vidal had acquired from a shop two streets back, from a woman who sold vintage children’s clothing and who had not been able to refuse him when he held Mercè up and made a face. But the jumper was inadequate to the climate, because the English climate was incompatible with anything that lived.Reallylived. “There. Better. Now,künefe. You were saying.”
“My cousin Hakan,” said the flower seller, who was called Mehmet and who had been opening his stall when Vidal had drifted into his orbit forty minutes ago. “In Beyoglu. He usesthe properkaymak, the buffalo cream, you know, not that supermarket milk nonsense.”
“Buffalocream.” Vidal pressed a hand flat to his chest, in the region where Mercè’s small skull was now resting. “Mehmet! You cannot saybuffalo creamto me at this hour and expect me to behave like a rational man. I atekünefeonce at a wedding in Antalya in 2019 and I have thought about it weekly ever since.Buffalo cream. My God! Who knew it could be such a delight when transformed by capable hands!”
Mehmet, who had begun the conversation suspicious of the unshaven foreigner, but progressed through bemusement to delight in the space of half an hour, beamed.
“You should go,” he said. “To Istanbul. You would love it.”
“Iamgoing,” Vidal said, with absolute conviction. What did it matter that the loss of his country and his current statelessness were putting a small damper on his usual movements? “The moment my circumstances permit. Now. These — ” He gestured at the buckets of peonies, which were a colour he had not seen in some weeks, and had stopped him in the street as cleanly as a hand on the shoulder. “These are extraordinary. I will take a great many.”
“How many?”
“All of the pink. Wrap them however you like, my friend, I trust you completely.”
Mehmet wrapped the peonies. Vidal produced a quantity of British banknotes from the inner pocket of his jacket. Beauchamp had pressed them on him last night, like Vidal was a child going to the funfair. He held the bundle out and let Mehmet take what he needed, because Mehmet was an honest man; you could see it in the way he handled the flowers.
He carried them away under his right arm, with Mercè against his ribs on the left, and he turned the corner without noticing that he had turned it, because he was thinking about hismother’s terrace. He had decided, some time before dawn, that the only safe way to think about anything from Before was to keep walking while he did it.
Stillness was the danger. There was too much of it in the Mayfair flat, where the balcony overlooked nothing he recognised. He’d left it some hours ago by the simple expedient of putting on his shoes and opening the door. He did not propose to return to it until he had walked the city into a shape he could understand.
He had no idea where he was now. He had passed, he thought, a park on his right, then a square with a statue of someone on a horse. England had a surprising number of them. Now he was on a different road again, and there was a woman walking three small terriers towards him. The terriers had seen Mercè, and Mercè had seen the terriers, so there was no question of passing without a conversation.
“Madam,goodmorning. Your dogs areexquisite. What are their names?”
The woman, who was perhaps seventy and wearing a coat that Vidal recognised as Loro Piana from a hundred yards away, stopped and considered him over the top of her sunglasses. Her terriers had already settled the question by sniffing his shoes with great enthusiasm.
“This is Hector,” she said. “And this is Achilles. And this is Patroclus.”
“Madam.” Vidal placed his free hand over his heart again. “You are aclassicist.”
