The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [100]
The Robertses could have asked for nothing less. By the end of the day they were both suffering from a mild bout of sunstroke and were also feeling a little seasick. Despite white pills, red pills, and yellow pills, liberally supplied by Melody, when they finally got back to their room that night they were unable to sleep.
Avoiding the Kendall-Humes over the next twenty days did not prove easy. Beyazik’s, the garage where their little rental car awaited them each morning and to which it had to be returned each night, could only be reached via the quayside where the Kendall-Humes’ motor yacht was moored like an insuperable barrier at a gymkhana. Hardly a day passed that the Robertses did not have to spend some part of their precious time bobbing up and down on Turkey’s choppy coastal waters, eating oily food, and discussing how large a carpet would be needed to fill the Kendall-Humes’ front room.
However, they still managed to complete a large part of their program and determinedly set aside the whole of the last day of the vacation in their quest for a carpet. As they did not need Beyazik’s car to go into town, they felt confident that for that day at least they could safely avoid their tormentors.
On the final morning they rose a little later than planned and after breakfast strolled down the tiny cobbled path together, Christopher in possession of the seventeenth edition of Carpets—Fact and Fiction, Margaret with a tape measure and five hundred pounds in travelers’ checks. Once the schoolmaster and his wife had reached the bazaar, they began to look around a myriad of little shops, wondering where they should begin their adventure. Fez-topped men tried to entice them to enter their tiny emporiums, but the Robertses spent the first hour simply taking in the atmosphere.
“I’m ready to start the search now,” shouted Margaret above the babble of voices around her.
“Then we’ve found you just in time,” said the one voice they thought they had escaped.
“We were just about to—”
“Then follow me.”
The Robertses’ hearts sank as they were led by Ray Kendall-Hume out of the bazaar and back toward the town.
“Take my advice, and you’ll end up with one hell of a bargain,” Kendall-Hume assured them both. “I’ve picked up some real beauties in my time from every corner of the globe at prices you wouldn’t believe. I am happy to let you take full advantage of my expertise at no extra charge.”
“I don’t know how you could stand the noise and smell of that bazaar,” said Melody, obviously glad to be back among the familiar signs of Gucci, Lacoste, and Saint Laurent.
“We rather like—”
“Rescued in the nick of time,” said Ray Kendall-Hume. “And the place I’m told you have to start and finish at if you want to purchase a serious carpet is Osman’s.”
Margaret recalled the name from her carpet book: “Only to be visited if money is no object and you know exactly what you are looking for.” The vital last morning was to be wasted, she reflected as she pushed open the large glass doors of Osman’s to enter a ground-floor area the size of a tennis court. The room was covered in carpets on the floor, the walls, the windowsills, and even the tables. Anywhere a carpet could be laid out, a carpet was there to be seen. Although the Robertses realized immediately that nothing on show could possibly be in their price range, the sheer beauty of the display entranced them.
Margaret walked slowly round the room, mentally measuring the small carpets so she could anticipate the sort of thing they might look for once they had escaped.
A tall, elegant man, hands raised as if in prayer and dressed immaculately in a tailored worsted suit that could have been made in Savile Row, advanced to greet them.
“Good morning, sir,” he said to Mr. Kendall-Hume, selecting the serious spender without difficulty.