Anyush

Anyush by Martine Madden Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Anyush by Martine Madden Read Free Book Online
Authors: Martine Madden
structure was built, there was no money left to furnish it.
    ‘Looks very impressive from here,’ Paul said.
    ‘Until you look inside.’
    I told him how the operating room consists of our kitchen table covered in a sheet of zinc and a mop bucket to catch the blood. How there is no way of sterilising instruments and how we’re boiling them in the kettle. How we have no X-ray apparatus, no heating, no dry room for clothes in winter, no separate rooms for contagious cases or TB cases, and most of my operating instruments I’ve had to make myself.
    ‘Work as usual then,’ Paul laughed.
    A line of villagers was coming and going through the main door, some eating pilaff from vine leaves with their fingers and others stopping to talk to the khanum. Watching Mahmoud Agha’s wife putting pilaff into the pocket of her dress, I tried to explain to Paul that I had wanted to build something exceptional. A modern facility. He reminded me that things happen very slowly in Turkey and that everything would come together eventually. I just needed a little faith.
    ‘Faith?’ I said. ‘Maybe that’s where I went wrong.’
    Over by the table of food Hetty was holding baby Robert in her arms while trying to prise a fistful of cookies from Thomas’s and Eleanor’s hands. She had worn her blue silk dress for the occasion and had taken extra trouble with her hair. Her cheeks were a little flushed, and as she bent to whisper in Thomas’s ear I was struck by her girlish prettiness.
    ‘Why don’t you give yourself a break?’ Paul said, watching her. ‘Come to town for a few days.’
    For once, the idea was appealing. I couldn’t actually remember when I had last been to Trebizond.
    ‘Bring Hetty to the hotel for a night or two. Spoil her a little, Charles. She doesn’t see enough of you.’
    I turned to say that I would, but my friend’s attention was elsewhere. He was looking at Hetty with such undisguised longing that for the first time I began to wonder if Paul Trowbridge was not in love with my wife.

Anyush
    N ight had fallen outside as Anyush looked at her reflection in the darkened glass. There was no mirror in the cottage and she had to stand on a chair to see in the window. Craning her neck around, she looked at how the dress fell in two graduated layers at the back. It was a little too long, but when she stood on her toes the effect was perfect. An elegant woman in a beautiful, American dress. Bayan Stewart had made her a gift of it, but Anyush had to wait for her mother to leave the house before she could try it on. Parzik would have given her entire trousseau to be married in a dress like this. It was made from a fine white material, light like clouds and delicate as sea-spray. The hem was a little dirty from Bayan Stewart’s last outing but Anyush had never seen anything like it, especially the hand-sewn flowers and lace cuffs. Pulling her hair from her plait, Anyush piled it onto her head the way Bayan Stewart arranged hers. The doctor’s wife was very beautiful, perfect as a woman in a painting and very different to Anyush’s mother. Khandut pinned her hair tightly to her head and kept it hidden beneath a scarf. Beauty was a weakness, she said, a flaw like vanity itself. Bayan Stewart was not vain. She dressed plainly and wore no jewellery except a pair of emerald earrings which made tiny tapping noises whenever she moved her head. She had largegrey eyes, skin like honey and hair the colour of wet sand. Anyush had often wondered why a woman like Bayan Stewart would live in a village such as theirs, but then her life was different from the other village women. She could work as a doctor and speak to her husband as if she was his equal. Dr Stewart, with his dark skin and beard, might have been born in Turkey. People said there was no disease he couldn’t cure but that his spirit was restless. He was a man with his eye on tomorrow when today was barely done. A good man, but a strange and difficult

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