Read Online Foreign Land by Jonathan Raban - Free Book Online

thousand tons. Her passage past the room was quite soundless. A face at one bright window stared at the party, stared at George; a young Greek sailor watching a foreign country going by at arm’s length. It was George, though, who felt homesick: he measured the space between himself and the ship. It was just three weeks and a little over three thousand miles, and he hadto shake himself to remember that it was out of reach, that Raymond Luis was in charge.
    “Do go and have a look at her,” Betty Castle said. “Poor Cynthia’s nearly at her wits’ end. She’s such a saint, that woman. And Wingco was never any good with money, I’m afraid.”
    But George wasn’t listening. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “Yes … yes … yes.”
    The score went up to fourteen when Nicola caught Mrs Downes in the act, with “When we had the cottage in the Dordogne”. With an hour at least still to go, she was confident now of breaking last year’s record.
    “Have you seen the bus shelter?” said Connie Lisle to anyone who’d listen. “It’s been balkanized again. It’s all over graffiti, just as bad as last time.”
    Balkanized
was a code word in St Cadix. It had entered the language in the early autumn, when Hugh Traill had used it as an explanation of what was happening to Britain in the 1980s. Traill had worked for the British Council in Damascus. He was not much liked, though he was asked to all the parties. “Frankly,” said Barbara Stevenson, “I don’t really see his point,” and most people found it difficult to see the point of Traill, who wore rubber overshoes indoors and went about the place in trousers that looked as if he had made them himself. When he said that Britain was becoming balkanized, the phrase was joyfully taken up—mostly in mockery and partly in deference to his notorious cleverness. When outboard motors disappeared from the cluster of moored dinghies that jostled around the steps of the Town Quay, they had been balkanized. When work began on the new council estate at the top of the hill, that was balkanization. Most things on television news now were “pretty balkan”; Sue and Nicola were doing their best to smuggle into the general currency the expressions “Oh balk!” and “Balk off!” Less than usual had been seen of Traill himself this winter; Polly Walpole was the first of several people to say that he had probably balkanized into thin air.
    George was in search of the woman with the cigarettes. Hefound her standing alone studying the Christmas cards on the mantelpiece and flicking ash into the log fire. It was obvious, when you looked at it, that the log fire wasn’t real; it was a sort of gas-powered artwork, and the ash lay in pale splashes on the blazing timber.
    “I wonder if you could spare me a cigarette?” George said.
    “Of course,” the woman said, and stared abstractedly into the gaping chaos of her handbag. Her white hair was of the kind that had once been platinum blonde.
    “I’m sorry,” George said; “I usually smoke a pipe, but I feel shy about doing it here …”
    “Yes, everyone gave up when Roger Mann died of cancer. They’re a bit born-again about smoking now.” She shook the contents of her bag: chaos rearranged itself and tossed g packet of Marlboro to the surface.
    “Oh,
Diana!”
It was the Caine woman. “D’you still want that manure?”
    “Please—” the woman said. “If you can spare it—”
    “It’s ready and waiting. You’d better get on to the Tomses and have them pick it up in the van. So you two’ve met—”
    “Not exactly,” George said. “I was just begging a cigarette.”
    “Oh—Diana Pym … George Grey. George is just back from Africa. Diana’s a great gardener.”
    George noticed that, indeed, the flat-heeled brown shoes of the Pym woman were flaked with dried mud. They did not go well with her black evening dress, which must have cost a lot of money about a quarter of a century ago.
    Sue claimed a “When we were