Free Blood-Dark Track by Joseph O'Neill

Cork who died on hunger strike in 1920, and Roger Casement, the Irish patriot hanged by the British in August 1916 for treasonably acting as Germany’s ‘willing agent’; Joseph even knew the name of the gun-filled trawler, the Aud , with which Casement’s U-boat had a rendezvous off the coast of Ireland.
    ‘Papa was a cultivated man,’ my mother said quietly. ‘There was no one like him in the whole of Mersin.’
    On the subject of cultivation, it was Joseph’s dream to own an orange garden. He bought books about the farming of citrus fruit and kept an eye open for land that might suit his purposes. He loved having oranges about the house, buying them in crates that he kepton top of a cupboard, out of the children’s reach. It would seem that his love affair with citrus fruit endured even after, on one view, it had played a decisive part in the most disastrous episode of his life.
    I t is lunchtime, and hours of planning, shopping and cooking by my grandmother and her servants are about to pay off – or not. The lamb cutlets have been consumed approvingly, the correct acridity of the babaganoushe has been noted, the böreks have not been criticized. Now everything turns on the watermelon. That so much should hinge on this fruit is strange, since its quality will merely reflect on the choice made by the majordomo, Ahmet, at the market that morning; but that is the way it has always been: in the final analysis, the pastèque is the king of the table.
    A rich red tranche is forked up from the serving dish and placed on Oncle Pierre’s dessert plate. Pierre frowns, noting the consistency of the fruit’s redness. A hush descends at the table as he brushes the dark pips from the flesh and inserts a morsel into his mouth. All the while, my grandmother watches anxiously. Oncle Pierre chews, then swallows. ‘ Pas mal ,’ he concedes. ‘ Sept sur dix .’
    Mamie Dakad is happy and relieved, and general conversation resumes.
    ‘ Everything is marvellous, Georgette.’ The speaker, in French, is Madame Olga Catton, an old friend of the family. Olga has a strong, gravelly accent in every language she speaks, her r’s rolled with a regal finality; and indeed everything about her suggests a tsarina in exile. She takes out a cigarette and fixes it in her cigarette holder. My sister Ann, who knows the routine, offers a flame from a silver lighter. ‘Here you are, Auntie Olga,’ Ann says. ‘Thank you, darling,’ Olga says in English. Olga sucks on her cigarette holder, and her eyebrows – plucked into nothingness and replaced by a stroke of pencil – curve upwards appreciatively. ‘You’re so pretty, my dear, you really are.’ She turns to Mamie Dakad and says in Arabic, ‘She takes after her mother – the eyes, the hair, the chin.’
    Mamie Dakad says, slightly begrudgingly, ‘She has her mother’s colouring, perhaps. But the bone structure is the father’s.’
    Pastries – pains d’Espagne and sablés topped with icing sugar and home-made apricot jam – are brought out to accompany the fruit.
    Oncle Pierre stands up suddenly and authoritatively jangles a fistful of keys. ‘Right, I’m off.’ He looks at his watch. ‘How are you going to the beach?’
    ‘By bus,’ my mother replies.
    Pierre makes the click of the tongue that, in Turkey, means no. ‘The müdür will drive you, or give you his car,’ he decrees.
    The müdür is the manager of the hotel. Although a helpful man, he is a former colonel in the Turkish army and is not, by training or inclination, a chauffeur. ‘Pierre, there really is no need,’ my mother protests. ‘Besides, the children like going by bus.’
    This is not true. We much prefer travelling by car – preferably Pierre’s car, an air-conditioned, petrol-guzzling Chevrolet with an aquamarine front bench seat and a dark blue sunband at the top of the windscreen.
    ‘Never!’ my grandmother exclaims. ‘Take the müdür ’s car!’
    Dursun, the cook, comes in with cups of