A Man Over Forty (30 page)

‘I guess there's no drama without trauma,' said the other.

‘She's going to say her piece again.'

The girl in blue denims repeated her lines, with more animation in her voice, and Balintore and Palladis left the Theatre to walk westward a little way and inspect the narrow Stadium.

‘The only explanation of Greek tragedy,' said Balintore, ‘is that everyone in it was mad from the beginning.'

‘But logical,' said Palladis.

They walked the length of the Stadium, and back again.

‘I dislike this place,' said Balintore.

‘The Stadium?'

‘Delphi.'

‘It's usually considered—'

One of the most beautiful sites in Greece, combining mystery, majesty, and primal awe: I read that in the guidebook. But I don't like it.'

‘Wait till the morning. We'll go down and drink at the Castalian spring.'

‘Where do we sleep?'

‘The hotel's a little west of the village.'

They walked downhill, and came on to a path that suddenly gave them a cerulean glimpse, between grey and golden hills, of the Gulf of Corinth. White-walled beneath them was a small hotel.

Neither was pleased by the discovery that they would have to share a room, but after dinner – the night was clear and starlit – Palladis insisted on their walking five or six miles in the hope that Balintore, after drinking another bottle of retsina, would sleep soundly.

He slept, indeed, till after three, when he woke shouting wordlessly; and when Palladis turned on, the light he saw Balintore, with horror on his face, at the open door, looking up the narrow corridor that led to their room.

‘They're after me!' he said.

‘You've had a nightmare?'

‘Who are they? They're called the Solemn Ones.'

‘Those young Americans?'

‘I think they're women – not the Americans, but the people I couldn't see, though I know what they're called.'

‘Were you dreaming about Polly Newton? Polly and her sister?'

‘Not them. I was frightened out of my wits.'

‘It's the usual effect of a nightmare.'

‘If it was only that—'

‘You'd better have some brandy.'

Palla dis got up and took a flask from his suitcase. He poured a judiciously measured dose into a tooth-glass, and Balintore, now sitting on the edge of his bed, said with a look of bewilderment, ‘But who are the Solemn Ones?'

‘I don't know. It must be a name you've invented.'

‘I heard it. There was someone speaking through my dream. A sort of commentary, as if on a race. But it wasn't a race, it
was flight – flight and pursuit – and they were gaining on me.'

‘Drink your brandy and go to sleep again.'

Obediently – with the obedience of a man still dazed by shock – Balintore lay down, and Palladis put out the light. They woke when dawn brightened the window of their room, and dressed without much conversation. ‘A walk before breakfast will do you good,' said Palla dis.

They went through the village and down the road to the Castalian spring. There they surprised the old proconsular Englishman and his wife. He, who was kneeling to fill a thermos flask, appeared to be slightly embarrassed, but she, with a comfortable assurance, explained, ‘It's for our grandchildren.'

Balintore and Palladis splashed their faces with the bright water; cupped their hands and drank. The sun was already warm when they turned to climb a rough path, through a litter of ancient marble, to the steep hillside above the Theatre. Now they could feel the enormous view was their own – or almost theirs – for only a dozen tourists, a scattering of early risers, were to be seen meditative in the Temple of Apollo or respectful in the Treasury of the Athenians.

For perhaps half an hour they sat in the topmost row of white stone seats – the vast amphitheatre under its bright impending cliffs seemed charged with drama, though no one walked on its tremendous stage – and suddenly Palladis remembered who the Solemn Ones were. It was another name for Tisiphone and Megara and Alecto: the Furies or the Kindly Ones, the Mad Goddesses or the Solemn Ones – so they had been called, according to time and circumstance. This knowledge, of no great worth, he owed to some forgotten schoolmaster, and Balintore's memory, awaking in the middle of a dream, had presumably a like origin. The theme of his recurrent nightmares had always been flight and pursuit, and now something had happened to make him identify his pursuers with the Furies who had hounded Orestes.

Delphi itself: that was what had happened. Orestes in despair had fled to Delphi, and Balintore, dreaming in Delphi, had heard a schoolmaster's voice rise from the deep-sea depths
of memory to worry the surface of his sleeping mind. That, surely, was what had wakened him to fear.

‘You did learn Greek, didn't you?' he asked. ‘At school I mean.'

Balintore, in a tired and hollow voice, said, ‘I went to a good Scotch school. An Edinburgh day-school. And thirty years ago all good Scotch schools taught Greek. Though we only learnt enough to pass examinations, of course.'

He stood up, with a sudden shiver in the hot sun, and said, ‘This may be the most magnificent view in Greece, but too much has happened here, and I don't like it.'

‘We go back to Athens this afternoon.'

‘And then?'

‘Either Rhodes or Paros.'

‘Paros where the marble came from? It sounds too bleak. We'll go to Rhodes.'

Two days later they flew to Rhodes, and the next morning, at the Hotel des Roses, Palladis was shocked to see Balintore come down to breakfast, unshaven, in a shirt that had obviously been worn, in hot weather, for several days.

‘I haven't unpacked,' he said. ‘It hardly seemed worth while.'

‘We're staying for a week. Perhaps longer.'

‘I doubt it. There are too many people here.'

He drank a cup of coffee but ate nothing, and Palladis had some difficulty in persuading him to go out and look at the town. Under a sapphire sky, in streets bright with flowers and pottery and silversmiths' work, or splendid with the architecture of a stubborn chivalry – in gardens of oriental brilliance under the blown petals of innumerable butterflies, or on ramparts of knightly grandeur that frowned upon a radiant sea – he walked disconsolate and resentful of his fellow tourists; of whom, indeed, there were too many. A cruising ship had just unloaded some twelve or fourteen hundred for a day's sightseeing, and most of them carried cameras.

The sea offered release. Their hotel had a private beach, and when Palladis first suggested swimming they found it, by chance, almost empty. For a couple of hours Balintore swam or floated on an inflated mattress, and thereafter spent much of
each day in the water; turning an angry face to anyone who came too near his floating island.

But Palladis watched him with increasing anxiety. Balintore was still careless about his appearance. He ate little and drank too much. There was a local wine of which he grew fond, and whisky was cheap. But wine did not make him high-spirited and loquacious – whisky did not release a torrent of outrageous talk – as they had done in the past. He was moody and taciturn; and exposure to the sun, together with a recurrent forgetfulness to shave, gave him the look of a sullen beachcomber. He lost weight, and under his dark sunburn his face was gaunt and bony.

When Palladis asked if he still slept badly he said, ‘I've learnt how to deal with a nightmare. I put a squib under its tail.'

‘How do you do that?'

‘I've taught myself to wake as soon as it starts running – or almost as soon – and I take a bottle of whisky to bed with me. After four fingers of whisky the nightmare usually bolts – and if it starts again, I can bolt it again.'

While Balintore swam, or floated on his rubber mattress, Palladis went sightseeing. He enjoyed the Museum and the Street of the Knights, he bought a crateful of decorated pottery and sent it to Honoria. He drove one day, with a couple of casual acquaintances, to Lindos; and the thought occurred to him that Balintore might find the refuge he had sought elsewhere in one of the little houses of the tightly packed village that clustered under the Acropolis.

The next morning he hired a car and persuaded Balintore to go with him. They made an early start, and found Lindos in its native quiet. They climbed the steep slope to the ruined castly, and Balintore showed a little animation, a little interest in the scene. To the north rose a tall foreland, boldly and fantastically shaped, and the blue sea was trapped in a bay of paler blue. Below them the town was like a honeycomb of white houses. ‘I like the look of it,' said Balintore.

They went down again, and walked through twisted lanes in the dazzle of the sun. ‘This is where we should have come,' said Balintore.

On a seat beside the small enclosed harbour he looked at the white terraces and the quavering reflection of boats in the water: ‘It's ridiculously attractive, isn't it?'

Silence was broken by the blare of a motor-horn, and the first of a fleet of buses arrived, that disgorged several hundred tourists. Balintore fell into a sudden rage, then shrugged his shoulders and said they had better return to Rhodes.

At dinner that night he said, ‘You're not going to abandon me, are you?'

‘I don't think I can.'

‘I want to make another effort – I shan't give in till I have to – and that marble island you spoke of, that sounded so bleak – it might suit me.'

‘You mean Paros?'

‘Can you arrange it?'

‘I'll see if it's possible. I can send a telegram tomorrow. We'd have to fly to Athens again, and take ship from Piraeus.'

‘Do your best,' said Balintore, and beckoned to the head waiter. ‘I want a bottle of whisky in my room.'

Three days later they flew to Athens, slept again at the Athenee Palace, and in the morning drove to Piraeus, where they boarded a small, rather slovenly steamer. Within the next hour or two it filled with a noisy and cheerful horde of passengers, all but a few of whom were native Greeks, and many of whom were accompanied not only by a great deal of luggage, but by domestic animals. Sheep and goats came aboard, as well as several mules.

They left the dirt and clamour of the port for the cleanness of the sea, but off Cape Sounion met a movement of the sea that reduced many passengers to inert and jaundiced misery. The decks were like a battlefield on which few survived to carry off the wounded and the dead, and the small saloon looked and stank like a casualty clearing station.

The brilliance of afternoon left the dancing sea, which under the cliffs of an approaching island took on a lavender hue. Presently the ship was no longer tumbling, but gliding slowly into the harbour of Syros. Sailors and longshoremen unloaded passengers, cargo, and animals with great speed and dexterity, and the ship put out to sea again.

It was pitch-dark when she arrived at Paros, in the midst of the Cyclades, and Balintore and Palladis went ashore, to a shore invisible under midnight, in a genial but impatient throng of islanders, sheep, and goats.

Under The brilliance of the morning sun – that dazzled a windy sea – the small town was a sinuous white lane of houses that threw triangles of black shadow on blanched walls and in unexpected corners grew flowering trees. At intervals a lesser lane disclosed a church or, on the sea-road, an elderly fisherman patiently thrashing an octopus. Here the marble remnants of a fallen temple had been used to build a wall, and there a view opened of a brick-red hill. The main street, or principal lane, led to an open market-place and a foreshore where fishermen mended their nets, and a dozen caiques, with their bluff bows and round bottoms, lay at anchor or alongside a short pier. At a table in front of a tavern, under a red and white awning, Balintore and Palladis sat drinking ouzo.

They had been a week in Paros, and Balintore had a relaxed and healthier look. Their hotel was small but comfortable, and there seemed to be no more than a score of foreigners in the town, most of whom were quiet and unobtrusive. There was very little to do except walk, or swim from a beach on the other side of the bay, or sit outside a tavern and drink ouzo. But this simplicity had suited Balintore, and Palladis had begun to put away the anxiety he had felt in Rhodes. That morning Balintore had made discreet inquiry about the price of property in the island: a little house with a fig-tree at its door had taken his fancy.

The stiff breeze which pointed the water of the bay, and raised a line of white about the rocky islets that guarded the entrance, had dissuaded them from swimming, and in weather cooler than it had been they were discussing the possibility of walking to the marble quarries which had once made Paros famous. They could not learn exactly how far away they were,
but thought it probable that the distance was no more than three or four miles.

They had another glass of ouzo, to prolong discussion and postpone the walk, and their attention was taken by the appearance of a boat at the entrance to the bay. It was rolling steeply in rough water, and every now and then threw up a curtain of spray that hid it from sight. When it came nearer they could see that it was a caique, of native build, but larger than the local fishermen's boats and much more smartly painted. It had a deck-house and a cabin-top which had been added to its original design.

‘We're going to have rich visitors,' said Palladis. ‘That boat has been converted and furnished for the sort of people who can afford to pay £350 a week for it.'

‘It might be a good idea,' said Balintore, ‘to buy a boat instead – of a house. I imagine you could get an old one fairly cheap, and when you got tired of Paros you could run over to Naxos, and from Naxos to Delos and Mykinos. Even as far as Chios, perhaps. I'd like to go to Chios.'

‘And if you were surprised by a northerly gale, which isn't uncommon, you might not have to worry about your next anchorage.'