Levkas Man (14 page)

We had finished supper by then, and as soon as we had washed up, Cartwright went off to his tent to write up his notes and Hans took the other pressure lamp. ‘I have some books I must study.' Sonia had disappeared with a torch and a towel to the river. I got my suitcase and moved into the old man's tent, setting my things out by the light of a candle. And then I picked up Dart's book again and re-read that chapter on the age-old instinct of man to kill, lying stretched out on the bed roll, the candle in its bottle on the ground beside me.

I had just started on the next chapter when Sonia pulled back the entrance flap. ‘I feel like a drink,' she said.

I put the book down and sat up. She meant the taverna up in the village, for she had put on a skirt and was wearing an anorak against the growing chill of the evening. ‘What about your brother?'

‘He's working. He works most evenings. And Alec doesn't drink.'

She had a torch and as we left I saw Cartwright sitting on his camp bed, the interior of his tent bright with the light of the pressure lamp. He looked up as we passed the dying embers of the fire, staring at us, the papers on his knee momentarily forgotten. He half rose as though to say something, or perhaps to join us, but then he seemed to change his mind and a moment later we were alone together in the darkness of the olive trees. The moon had not yet risen. The only light was the stars and the pencil gleam of her torch.

She seemed to be waiting on me, for she didn't say anything and we walked for a time in silence, the only sound the growing murmur of water ahead. And then she stopped. ‘Well, now that you've come, what do you intend to do?' She was facing me, suddenly very tense, the way she had been when we had first met.

‘Stick around for a day or two, I suppose.' I wasn't sure myself.

‘Is that all?'

‘What else? You've been here four days—you tell me what I ought to be doing.'

She stared at me, biting her lip. ‘Why did you come here?'

I laughed. ‘If I knew that, I'd know a lot more about myself than I do at the moment.'

‘But you came here with that man Kotiadis. I don't understand.'

I told her how it had happened and she said, ‘Oh, that explains it. I wondered.' She seemed relieved and I realized that this was why she had been avoiding me.

As we walked on, she said, ‘You know about this Congress, don't you? There's a Pan-European Prehistoric Congress being held at Cambridge at the end of May. That's why Alec is in such a hurry to get this dig opened up.' And when I asked her what that had to do with it, she said, ‘I don't know whether Professor Holroyd initiated it, but he's certainly been closely involved in organizing it. All the leading academics of Western Europe will be there, possibly some from Russia and Eastern Europe as well. And he has the chance of reading one of the papers. That's why Dr Van der Voort was given a grant.'

‘Who told you that? Cartwright?'

‘No. Hans. Alec, as you've probably guessed, is Holroyd's protégé.' We had reached the water point and she paused, the stream close beside us, the gleam of it like steel in the starlight. ‘You remember that book Holroyd read for an English publisher? It was all there, all Dr Van der Voort's thinking on the origin of our own species. In outline, that is. Nothing confirmed. Just theory. But then he sent those bones to Dr Gilmore for dating.' She seized hold of my arm, her voice suddenly raised against the sound of the water. ‘Please—try to understand. If Holroyd can get supporting evidence, then he'll go to this Congress, read his paper. Dr Van der Voort's theories are unpublished. He'll present them as his own.'

‘And what am I supposed to do about that?'

‘Find him, you fool,' she answered stridently. ‘Find him and bring him back, so that he can take credit for anything that's discovered here.'

‘That's all very well,' I said. ‘But Cartwright has already searched the area. Your brother was with him. And Kotiadis has been searching too—not just this area, but half the country. You realize he's a Greek Intelligence Officer?'

She nodded. ‘I wasn't sure. He said he was from the Ministry of Antiquities in Athens—the General Direction of Antiquities and Restoration, he called it.'

‘He's Intelligence,' I repeated. ‘And he thinks the old man is a Communist agent. Not only that,' I added, ‘but he's leapt to the conclusion that Cartwright knew this and that's why my father attacked him.'

‘But that's ridiculous.'

‘Maybe, but what's the alternative? Why did he attack him? D'you know?'

‘No. I can only guess.'

‘Well?'

‘Can't you see it—from his point of view? Knowing Holroyd was using him. Alec, too. It must have worked on his mind—a feeling of frustration, depression …'

‘He was in a manic-depressive state you mean?'

‘I don't know—yes, probably.'

‘But why—suddenly like that?'

She shook her head. ‘I don't know. He's so complicated. I don't pretend to understand him.'

‘Nor do I,' I said. ‘I never did.' I took hold of her arm. ‘Come on. Let's go and have that drink.'

She nodded, and as we walked on I told her about Kotiadis and the questions he had asked as we drove up through Greece. ‘So you see,' I said finally, ‘there's no question of my father being allowed to continue his work here.'

‘Yes, I see. And that's why we have a guard on the camp.' She was silent as we turned into the steep alleyway that led up to the centre of the village. At length she murmured, ‘I can't bear the thought of Holroyd getting the credit for it all, for all his years of work.'

‘Not much chance of that,' I said, trying to cheer her up. ‘Cartwright didn't seem at all optimistic about this dig when I questioned him this morning.'

‘Of course not. His instructions were to locate the dig from which those dated bones had come. The cave-shelter has a virgin floor, quite undisturbed … Well, he's in charge now. He may not believe in your father's theories, but it's a great opportunity for him, and there always a chance.'

We had reached the square by then. There were lights on in the taverna and the radio was blaring Greek music as I pushed open the door. The interior was not designed for comfort, bare wood tables, some forms and the walls cracked and peeling. At one of the tables four men in open-neck shirts were playing dominoes, two others were talking, and an old man with drooping moustaches and baggy Turkish trousers occupied the only chair. All eyes were turned upon us as we entered. The owner appeared behind the counter that did service as a bar. He was a short bull of a man with black eyebrows and features that suggested he had just suffered some terrible loss. Sonia smiled at him. ‘Kalispéra, Andreas.'

‘Spéras,' he replied, his eyes on me, watchful like all the rest.

‘What would you like?' I asked her.

‘Coffee,' she said. ‘Just coffee. All we have at the camp is tea and I'm not used to it. We drink coffee at home.'

I nodded, remembering how it had been in Holland—coffee at all hours of the day. ‘Bad for the liver,' I said, and she smiled. ‘We're plain eaters and we don't suffer from le foie.'

I ordered coffee and ouzo for both of us, but she shook her head and said something to Andreas. ‘I'm sorry, I don't like ouzo. Just coffee, please.'

We sat at the one vacant table, watching Andreas make the coffee on a paraffin burner. She had a few words of Greek, but though the occupants of the taverna were polite, it was not a congenial atmosphere. I talked to her about the Barretts and the voyage from Malta, but it scarcely seemed to register. She had withdrawn into herself, her small face devoid of any expression, her eyes fixed on one of the faded posters that decorated the walls, seeing nothing, only what was in her mind.

The coffee came, black and sweet in tiny cups, each with its glass of water and my ouzo smelling of aniseed. ‘Tileghráfima,' Andreas said and handed Sonia a cable.

‘It's for Alec,' she said, glancing at it, and then she seemed to freeze, sitting very still, staring down at it. Finally she looked at me. ‘Professor Holroyd is taking the night flight. He will be in Athens tomorrow morning.'

‘Does he say why he's coming out here?'

‘No.' She folded the cable sheet and slipped it into the pocket of her anorak. ‘No, he doesn't say why. But it's obvious, isn't it?' She called to Andreas, and then she said to me, ‘I'm so sorry. I don't like the stuff, but I've ordered one all the same.' And when it came she picked it up and drank half of it at a gulp as though it were geneva. ‘They're like vultures,' she breathed. ‘That's what he always called them—the deskbound academics—vultures.' She looked at me suddenly, her face pale and tense. ‘Can I have a cigarette please?'

I produced one of the duty-free packets I had brought from the boat, and as I lit her cigarette, she said, ‘Suppose I told you where he was—what would you do?'

I stared at her. ‘You know where he is?'

She shook her head. ‘No—not for certain. But I think I can guess.'

‘How?'

‘The book—I told you I was typing his new book.'

I had forgotten that. I lit my own cigarette, watching her, waiting for her to tell me, conscious that I was nearing the end of my journey now.

‘What would you do?' she repeated.

I sipped my ouzo and drank some water. The water was very good, soft as milk and yet like crystal; spring water from the mountains, uncontaminated by chemicals. I hadn't expected this and I couldn't think of an answer. I looked at her and our eyes met, and after that my hands began to tremble, for I was certain she knew, and the prospect of meeting him, wild and alone in some secret place, brought back my boyhood fears.

‘Well?' she asked in a level, controlled voice.

‘Why didn't you go yourself if you knew where he was?'

‘I wasn't sure—' She hesitated. ‘I thought perhaps he needed to be alone. But now—'

‘Well, where is he?' I asked. ‘Where has he holed up?'

‘First answer my question.'

‘All right,' I said. ‘I'll go.'

‘Of course you'll go,' she answered quickly. ‘But what happens then?'

‘That's up to him,' I told her, not relishing the prospect. ‘I can only offer to help in any way I can.' It was what I had come for after all.

I don't know whether that satisfied her or not. She drank her coffee and finished her ouzo. ‘Let's go,' she said. ‘I can't talk here.' I paid and we said goodnight, but it wasn't until we were clear of the village that she told me where he was—or rather, where she thought he was. ‘On the main road, before you got to Jannina, did you see the remains of an aqueduct?'

It came to me then, the hillside sloping green with that gaping hole high up in the rock, and Kotiadis saying my father had been in that village the previous year. ‘Ayios Giorgios?'

‘No, not Ayios Giorgios.' We had reached the water now and she stopped, her voice only just audible above the sound of it. ‘On the other side of the valley. I've never been there, of course, but he describes it in great detail—two whole pages. And it was so important to him that, typing it, I could see the whole thing. The road cuts the line of the aqueduct; on one side the water was carried on great arches, on the other the Roman engineers drove a tunnel through the mountain. The entrance to that tunnel is right beside the road. The tunnel itself is blocked by a fall, but above it, on the tops of the hills, there is an area of red desert sand. It's a hangover from something that happened twenty thousand years ago.'

‘And you think he's there?'

‘I don't know … it's just a feeling.' She was no more than a shadow in the starlight, standing staring towards the steel ribbon of the water. ‘That place was terribly important to him. He writes very factually, you know, not at all interestingly, except to experts. But this passage was different. It had a compelling sense of excitement.' She hesitated, and then said, ‘You'd have to read it, I think, to understand. I can only give the facts—the geophysical facts and they're quite extraordinary. What he says is that during the last and most severe stage of the Würm glaciation the sea level of the Mediterranean was up to four hundred feet lower than it is at present. Violent winds from the south picked up the sand from the exposed North African coast and carried it to the Balkan peninsula. Greece was buried under that sand to a depth of two or three hundred feet. It's all gone now. You can see traces of red here and there in the soil, but twenty thousand years of erosion have washed the great blanket of sand away—except in this one place.'

She looked at me and her hand touched my arm, holding it. ‘Will you go there—tomorrow? Will you see if he's there?' And without waiting for me to reply, she went on, her words coming in a rush: ‘If he is there … it scares me to think of it. Alone in that place all this time. It made such a deep impression on him—the atmosphere of it. It seemed to fascinate him. You see, ever since those great dust storms, there's been life there, human life—Bronze Age, Neolithic, the old Stone Age, right back to Mousterian Man. There's chert in the area and they knapped it like flint—chipped sharp slivers off to make their implements … knives, arrowheads, all their weapons, and the chippings aren't buried as they are in a cave-dwelling. Because of erosion, the evidence is lying there on the surface, so that he didn't have to dig—he could just read the whole story as he wandered about. He said it was a dead place, a sort of cemetery of continual human occupation.' And she added with sudden intensity, ‘It's not healthy for him to be there alone.' Her fingers tightened on my arm. ‘Will you go—please? Not in the Land-Rover. It's too conspicuous. There's a bus leaves the village about seven and you could hitch-hike on from Jannina.'