My Brother Michael (6 page)

‘It’s all right. They can take me for tonight, and just at the moment that’s all I care about.’ I held out my hand. ‘I have to thank you very much, Mr Lester. I don’t quite know where I’d have been without your help. I’ve a feeling it might have been somewhere at the bottom of the valley, with the eagles of Zeus picking my bones!’

‘It was a pleasure.’ He was looking down at me, measuringly. ‘And now what are you planning to do? Rest and have some tea first, or is that’ – a gesture indicated the car – ‘worrying you too much?’

I said uncertainly: ‘It is rather. I think I’d better go right ahead and do what I can.’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘if you’ll forgive my saying so, you look as if you’d better have that rest. Won’t you please leave this to me, at any rate for the time being? Why don’t you go and lie down, and have tea brought to your room – they make excellent tea here, by the way – while I make a few inquiries for you?’

‘Why, I – you mustn’t – I mean, it’s absurd that you should be landed with my difficulties,’ I said, a little confusedly, and conscious only of a strong desire that he should, in fact, be landed with them all. I finished feebly. ‘I couldn’t let you.’

‘Why not? It would be too cruel if you turned on me now and told me to mind my own business.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that. You know I didn’t. It’s only—’

‘That it’s your affair and you want to see it through? Of course. But I must confess I’m seething with curiosity myself by now, and after all it’s partly my affair, too, since my
alter ego
has managed to involve me. I really would be very grateful if you’d let me help. Besides,’ he added, ‘wouldn’t you honestly much rather go and have a rest and some tea now, while I do the detecting for you in my fluent but no doubt peculiar Greek?’

‘I—’ I hesitated again, then said truthfully: ‘I should adore to.’

‘Then that’s settled.’ He glanced at his wrist. ‘It’s about twenty past four now. Shall we say an hour? I’ll report back at five thirty. Right?’

‘Right.’ I looked at him a little helplessly. ‘But if you do find him, and he’s angry—’

‘Well?’

‘I don’t want you made responsible for what’s happened. It wouldn’t be fair, and I’d much rather face my own music’

‘You’d be surprised,’ he said cryptically, ‘how responsible I feel already. All right then. See you later.’

With a quick wave of the hand he was gone down the steps to the lower road.

My room overlooked the valley, and had a long window with a balcony. The shutters were closed against the sun, but even so the room seemed full of
light, globed in light, incandescent with it. As the door shut behind the maid who had shown me upstairs, I went across to the window and pulled back the shutters. Like a blast the heat met me. The sun was wheeling over now towards the west, full across the valley from my window, and valley and plain were heavy with sleepy heat. The tide of olives had stilled itself, and even the illusion of coolness created by those rippling grey leaves was gone. In the distance the wedge of shining water that showed at the edge of the plain struck at the eyes like a flash from a burning-glass.

I closed my eyes against it, pulling the shutters to again. Then I slipped off my dress, and had a long, cool wash. I sat on the edge of the bed for some minutes after that, brushing my hair, till I heard the maid coming back with the tea. I had my tea – Simon Lester had been right about its excellence – propped against pillows, and with my feet up on the bed. I don’t think I thought any more about Simon – either of the Simons – or about the car, or about anything except the shadowed quiet of the little white room.

Presently I put the tray off my knees on to the table by the bed, and lay back to relax. Before I knew it was even near, sleep had overtaken me …

I woke to a feeling of freshness and the incongruous sound of rain. But the light still drove white against the shutters, and when I opened them a crack I saw that the sun still blazed, deeper now and lower, but at full power. Half my window was in shadow now, where the plane-trees put a bough or two between it and the
falling sun. The sound of rain, I realised, was the sound of their leaves, pattering and rustling in the breeze that had got up to cool the evening.

I glanced down at the terrace below the balcony. He was there, sitting under one of the plane-trees, smoking. His chair was pulled up to the railing that edged the terrace, and one arm lay along this. He sat there, relaxed, looking at nothing, completely at ease. The car was standing where he had parked it before. If – as appeared to be the case – he had not located another ‘Simon’ to deliver it to, the fact didn’t appear to worry him unduly.

I reflected, as I looked down at him thoughtfully, that it would probably take a good deal to worry Simon Lester. That quiet manner, that air of being casually and good-temperedly on terms with life … with it all went something that is particularly hard to describe. To say that he knew what he wanted and took it, would be to give the wrong impression: it was rather that whatever decisions he had to make, were made, and then dismissed – this with an ease that argued an almost frightening brand of self-confidence

I don’t know how much of this I saw in him on that first day; it may be that I simply recognised straight away the presence of qualities I myself so conspicuously lacked: but I do remember the immediate and vivid impression I got of a self-sufficiency harder and more complete than anything conveyed in years of Philip’s
grand-seigneur
gasconading, and at the same time quite different in quality. I didn’t see yet where the difference lay. I only know that I felt obscurely grateful
to Simon for not having made me feel too much of a fool, and, less obscurely, for having so calmly undertaken to help me in the matter of the ‘other Simon’ …

I wondered, as I closed the shutters again, if he had even bothered to make the gesture of looking for him.

On the whole, I imagined not.

In this, it seemed, I had done him less than justice.

When I went downstairs I found him, hands thrust deep in trouser pockets, in earnest contemplation of the car, together with a Greek to whose bright blue shirt was pinned the insignia of a guide.

Simon looked up and smiled at me. ‘Rested?’

‘Perfectly, thank you. And the tea
was
good.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Perhaps you’re strong enough, then, to bear the blow?’ He jerked his head towards the car.

‘I thought as much. You’ve not found him?’

‘Not a sign. I’ve been to the other hotels, but there’s no visitor of that name. Then I went along to the museum to meet George here. He tells me that he doesn’t know anyone called Simon in Delphi, either.’

The Greek said: ‘Only yourself,
Kyrie
Lester.’

‘Only myself,’ agreed Simon.

I said, rather helplessly: ‘What shall we do?’

‘
Kyrie
Lester,’ said the Greek, watching him rather curiously, ‘could it not be, perhaps, that there
is
no other Simon? And that it is not a mistake? That someone is – how do you put it? – using your name?’

‘Taking my name in vain?’ Simon laughed but I knew that this had already occurred to him. It had
occurred to me, too. ‘It doesn’t seem likely. For one thing, who would? And for another, if they did, and it was urgent, they’d surely have appeared by now to claim the damned thing.’

‘That is probably true.’

‘You can bet it’s true. But I’m going to get to the bottom of this very odd little affair – and not only for the sake of Miss Haven here, who’s worried about it. Look, George, you are sure about it? No Simons at all, however unlikely? A grandfather with a wooden leg, or a mule-boy aged seven-and-a-half, or one of the men working up on the excavations?’

‘About the last I do not know, of course, though assuredly you are right and they would have come to look for it. In Delphi, nobody. Nobody at all.’

‘Then the places nearby? You’re a native, aren’t you? You’ll know a fair number of people all round here. Chrissa, for instance. It might be Chrissa … that’s only a few kilometres away. What about that?’

George shook his head. ‘No. I am sure. I would have remembered. And in Arachova …’

Simon ran a finger along the wing of the car, then contemplated the tip of it for a moment. ‘Yes?’

George said, regretfully: ‘No, I do not remember anyone in Arachova, either.’

Simon took out a handkerchief and wiped his finger-tip clean again. ‘In any case I can find out. I’m going back there tonight.’

The Greek gave him a quick bright glance that held, I thought, curiosity. But he only said: ‘Ah. Well, I
regret, but that is all I can tell you, except – oh, but that is not the same; it is of no use to you.’

‘We’ll have it, though, please. You’ve thought of someone?’

George said slowly: ‘There is a Simonides at Itea. I do not think this is the man, but he is the only one I know of. But perhaps,
kyrie
, you would like to ask someone else? I do not know everybody, me. Elias Sarantopoulou, my cousin, he is also in the Tourist Police. He is at the office now, or perhaps he is at the café … if you like to come with me I will show you the place; it is opposite the post office.’

‘I know it,’ said Simon. ‘Thanks, but I really doubt if your cousin will know any more than you. This is an irritating little problem, isn’t it? It’ll probably solve itself very soon, but meanwhile I suppose we must do something. We’ll try your Simonides at Itea. Who is Simonides, what is he?’

George, of course, took him literally. ‘He has a little baker’s shop near the cinema in the middle of the main street, facing the sea. Giannakis Simonides.’ He glanced at his wrist. ‘The bus goes in ten minutes. The shop is not far from the place where the bus stops.’

Simon said: ‘We have a car,’ then grinned as he caught my eye. My answering smile was a rather brittle one. The car stood there like a mockery. I hated the sight of it.

Simon nodded to George, said something in Greek, then pulled open the car door for me.

I said doubtfully: ‘Ought we to?’

‘Why not? This is a quite legitimate attempt at
delivery. Come along, the sooner we get down to Itea the better. It’ll be dark in an hour. Are you tired?’

‘Not now. But – you’ll drive, won’t you, Mr Lester?’

‘You bet I will. You haven’t seen the Itea road. And please call me Simon. It’s more euphonious than “Mr. Lester”, and besides …’ his grin, as he slid into his seat beside me, was malicious … ‘it’ll give you an illusion of comfort.’

I didn’t answer that one, except with a look, but as we drove off I said suddenly, and almost to my own surprise: ‘I’m beginning to feel frightened.’

The glance he gave me held surprise, but, oddly enough, no amusement. ‘That’s a strong word.’

‘I suppose so. Perhaps it isn’t, either, from me. I’m the world’s most complete coward. I–I wish I’d had the sense to let well alone. The beastly thing should still be standing there in Omonia Square, and—’

‘And you’d still be wishing you were in Delphi?’

‘There is that,’ I acknowledged. ‘But you do see, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do.’

The car had crept carefully through Delphi’s narrow upper street, topped the rise opposite the presbytery, and then dived down to meet the lower road out of the village.

I said abruptly: ‘Do you suppose for a moment that this Simonides is the man we’re looking for?’

‘It doesn’t seem very probable.’ Perhaps he felt this to be a little brusque, for he added: ‘We might as well try it, all the same.’

‘Something to make me feel progress is being made?’
No answer to this. I said: ‘You know, it really would be carrying coincidence a bit too far to suppose there are two Simons in Delphi.’

‘It’s not,’ he said evenly, ‘a very common name.’

I waited, but he didn’t speak again. We had left the village behind, dropping in a gradual descent between dykes of red earth and stones where the road had been recently widened. The ditches and mounds showed raw as wounds in the sunburnt earth. The rich rays of the now setting sun flooded it with strong amber light, against which the dry thistles that grew everywhere stood up delicate and sharp, like intricate filigree of copper wire. Above the road the new hotel, the Tourist Pavilion, showed as raw and new and wounding as the torn ditches alongside us. The curved windows flashed as we passed beneath and wheeled into the first hairpin of the descent to the plain of olives.

I said casually: ‘Are you just holidaying here in Delphi?’

I had meant it as a
non sequitur
, a conversational makeweight, the normal casual query with which you might greet anyone you met in such a place; but even as I said it I could hear how it pointed back to my last remark. I started to say something else, but he was already answering without any indication that he saw my question as other than innocent.

‘In a way. I’m a schoolmaster. I have a house at Wintringham. Classics is my subject.’

Whatever I had expected it wasn’t this; this seal and parchment of respectability. I said feebly: ‘Then of course you’re interested in the classical sites. Like me.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re a colleague. Another beggarly usher?’

‘Afraid so.’

‘Classics?’

‘Yes. Only in a girls’ school that just means Latin, to my sorrow and shame.’

‘You don’t know Ancient Greek?’

‘A little. A very little. Enough sometimes to catch a word and follow what’s being said. Enough to know my alphabet and make a wild guess at what some of the notices mean, and to have had a queer feeling at the pit of my stomach when I went to see
Antigone
in the Herodes Atticus Theatre in Athens and heard the chorus calling on Zeus against that deep black sky that had heard the same call for three thousand years.’ I added, feeling slightly ashamed of what I’d let him see: ‘What a ghastly road.’

The car wheeled yet again round a hairpin and plunged on down the great shoulder of Parnassus that sticks out into the Chrissa Plain. Below us was a village, and below it again the flood of olives, flowing mile-wide now down to the sea.

Simon said cheerfully: ‘The buses all have icons stuck up in front of the driver,
and
with a little red light in front, run off the battery. On this road the icon swings madly from side to side at the bends and everybody crosses themselves.’