My Brother Michael (8 page)

‘But surely you’ve a perfectly good claim on the studio, too?’ I said. ‘After all, you count as a student. And as a classicist you’ve a
bona fide
claim on any concession. It’s not a question of “false pretences” at all.’

He sent me a sideways look that I couldn’t read in the darkness. He said rather shortly: ‘I’m not here to pursue my classical studies.’

‘Oh.’ It sounded lame, and I hoped it hadn’t sounded like a question. But the syllable hung there between us like a dominant awaiting resolution.

Simon said suddenly, into the darkness straight ahead: ‘My brother Michael was here during the war.’

Chrissa was below us now. Far down to our left as we climbed along the face of the bluff the lights of Itea were strung along like beads under the thin moon.

He said, in that expressionless way: ‘He was in the Peloponnese for some time, as BLO – that’s British Liaison Officer – between our chaps and the
andartes
, the Greek guerrillas under Zervas. Later he moved over into the Pindus region with ELAS, the main resistance group. He was in this part of the country in 1944. He stayed with some people in Arachova; a shepherd called Stephanos and his son Nikolaos. Nikolaos is dead, but Stephanos still lives in Arachova. I went over to try to see him today, but he’s away in Levadia, and not expected back till this evening – so the woman of his house told me.’

‘The woman of his house?’

He laughed. ‘His wife. You’ll find everyone has to belong, hereabouts. Every man belongs to a place, and I’m afraid that every woman belongs to a man.’

‘I believe you,’ I said, without rancour. ‘I suppose it gives meaning to her life, poor thing?’

‘But of course … Anyway I’m going down to Arachova again tonight to see Stephanos.’

‘I see. Then this is a – a sort of pilgrimage for you? A genuine pilgrimage to Delphi?’

‘You could call it that. I’ve come to appease his shade.’

I caught my breath. ‘Oh. How stupid of me. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.’

‘That he died. Yes.’

‘Here?’

‘Yes, in 1944. Somewhere on Parnassus.’

We had wheeled up on to the last stretch of the road before Delphi. To our left blazed the lighted windows of the luxurious Tourist Pavilion. Far down on the right the thin moon was already dying out in a welter of stars. The sea was faintly luminous beneath them, like a black satin ribbon.

Something made me say suddenly, into the dark: ‘Simon.’

‘Yes?’

‘Why did you say “appease”?’

A little silence. Then he spoke quite lightly. ‘I’ll tell you about that, if I may. But not just at this moment. Here’s Delphi, I’ll leave you and the car at your hotel, and I’ll meet you on the terrace here in half an hour. Right?’

‘Right.’ The car drew up where it had stood before. He came round and opened my door for me. I got out, and when I would have turned to repeat some words of thanks for his help in my afternoon’s quest he shook his head, laughed, raised a hand in farewell and vanished up the steep lane beside the hotel.

With a feeling that things were moving altogether too fast for me, I turned and went indoors.

A
NY
fears I might have had that Simon’s melancholy pilgrimage would be allowed to cloud my first visit to Delphi were dispelled when I came down at length to dinner, and walked out to the hotel terrace to find a table.

Seven-thirty was certainly an outrageously early hour for dining in Greece, and only one other of the tables under the plane trees was occupied, and that, too, by English people. Simon Lester wasn’t there yet, so I sat down under one of the trees from whose dark boughs hung lights, which swung gently in the warm evening air. I saw Simon then below the terrace railing, making one of an extremely gay and noisy group of Greeks which surrounded a fair boy in the garb of a hiker, and a very small donkey almost hidden under its awkwardly loaded panniers.

The fair young man looked very much as if he had just completed some arduous trek in the wilds. His
face, hands, and clothes were filthy; he had a generous stubble on his chin, and his eyes – I could see it even from where I sat – were bloodshot with fatigue. The donkey was in rather better case, and stood smugly beside him, under its load of what appeared to be the paraphernalia of an artist – boxes, roughly wrapped canvases, and a small collapsible easel, as well as a sleeping bag and the rather unappetising end of a large black loaf.

Half the youth of Delphi seemed to have rallied to the stranger’s welcome, like the wasps to my honey-cake. There was a great deal of loud laughter, atrocious English, and backslapping – the last an attention which the stranger could well have done without. He was reeling with tiredness, but a white grin split the dirty bearded face as he responded to the welcome. Simon was laughing, too, pulling the donkey’s ears and exchanging what appeared to be the most uproarious of jokes with the young Greeks. Frequent cries of ‘
Avanti! Avanti!
’ puzzled me, till I realised that they coincided with the jolly slaps under which the donkey, too, was reeling. At each slap a cloud of dust rose from ‘Avanti’s’ fur.

Eventually Simon looked up and saw me. He said something to the fair boy, exchanged some laughing password with the Greeks, and came swiftly up to the terrace.

‘I’m sorry, have you been waiting long?’

‘No. I’ve just come down. What’s going on down there? A modern Stevenson?’

‘Just that. He’s a Dutch painter who’s been making
his way through the mountains with a donkey, and sleeping rough. He’s done pretty well. He’s just here from Jannina now, and that’s a long way through rough country.’

‘He certainly got a welcome,’ I said, laughing. ‘It looked as if all Delphi had turned out.’

‘Even the tourist traffic hasn’t quite spoiled the Greek
philoxenia
– the ‘welcome’ that literally means “love of a stranger”,’ said Simon, ‘though goodness knows Delphi ought to be getting a bit blasé by now. At least he’ll get the traditional night’s lodging free.’

‘Up at the studio?’

‘Yes. This is the end of his trek. Tomorrow, he says, he’ll sell Modestine – the donkey Avanti – and get the bus for Athens.’

I said: ‘I thought when I saw the easel and what-not that he must be your English painter friend from the studio.’

‘Nigel? No. I doubt if a venture like that would ever occur to Nigel. He hasn’t the self-confidence.’

‘You said he was a good painter, though?’

‘I think he’s good,’ said Simon, picking up the menu and absently handing it to me. It was in Greek, so I handed it back again. ‘But he’s convinced himself – or else some fool has told him – that his own particular style is no good any more. I admit it’s not the fashion, but the boy can draw like an angel when he likes, and I should have thought that was a gift rare enough to command attention even among some of today’s more strident talents.’ He handed me the menu. ‘He doesn’t use colour much – what will you have to start with? –
but the drawing’s very sure and delicate, and exciting at the same time.’

I gave the menu back to him. He scrutinised the scrawled columns. ‘Hm. Yes. Well, some fool’s told Nigel that his style’s
vieux jeu
, or something. “Emasculate” was one of the words, I believe. It’s got him on the raw, so he’s hard at work trying to form a style that he thinks will “take”, but I’m terribly afraid it won’t work. Oh, he’s clever, and it’s arresting enough, and it may catch on and find him a market of a sort – but it’s not his own, and that never works fully. Another pity is that he’s been here in Delphi a bit too long and got tied up with a girl who wasn’t very good for him. She’s gone, but the melancholy remains.’ He smiled. ‘As you see, it’s with me, rather. I’m all the company Nigel’s had up at the studio for the last three days, and I’ve been playing confidant.’

‘Or housemaster?’

He laughed. ‘If you like. He’s very young in many ways, and habit dies hard. One takes it for granted one is there to help, though I’m not just sure how much anyone can do for an artist at the best of times. And at the worst they go into a kind of wilderness of the spirit where the best-intentioned listener can’t even follow them.’

‘As bad as that?’

‘I think so. I told you he was good. I believe the agony is in proportion to the talent … Look, what are you going to eat? Why don’t you choose something?’ He handed me the menu.

I gave it patiently back. ‘I shall die of hunger in a
minute,’ I told him. ‘Have you
looked
at this dashed menu? The only things I recognise are
patates, tomates
, and
melon
, and I refuse to be a vegetarian in a land which produces those heavenly little chunks of lamb on sticks with mushrooms between.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Simon penitently. ‘Here they are, see?
Souvlaka
. Well, so be it.’ He ordered the meal, then finally cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘What shall we drink? How’s the palate coming on?’

‘If that means can I swallow retsina yet,’ I said, ‘the answer is yes, though what it has to do with a palate I cannot see.’ Retsina is a mild wine strongly flavoured with resin. It can be pleasant; it can also be rough enough to fur the tongue with a sort of antiseptic gooseflesh. It comes in beautiful little copper tankards, and smells like turpentine. To acquire – or to pretend to acquire – a taste for retsina is the right thing to do when in Greece. As a tourist, I’m as much of a snob as anyone. ‘Retsina, certainly,’ I said. ‘What else, with
souvlaka?
’

I thought I saw the faintest shade of irony in Simon’s eye. ‘Well, if you’d rather have wine—’

I said firmly: ‘They say that once you’ve got used to retsina it’s the finest drink in the world and you won’t ever take anything else. Burgundies and clarets and – well, other drinks lose their flavour. Don’t interrupt the process. The palate is faint yet pursuing, and I expect I’ll like it soon. Unless, of course,
you’d
like a nice sweet Samian wine?’

‘Heaven forbid,’ said Simon basely, and, to the waiter, ‘retsina, please.’

When it came it was good – as retsina goes – and the dinner along with it was excellent. I’m not a person whom the sight of olive oil repels, and I love Greek cooking. We had onion soup with grated cheese on top; then the
souvlaka
, which comes spiced with lemon and herbs, and flanked with chips and green beans in oil and a big dish of tomato salad. Then cheese, and
halvas
, which is a sort of loaf made of grated nuts and honey, and is delicious. And finally the wonderful grapes of Greece, bloomed over like misted agates and cooled with water from the spring above the temple of Apollo.

Simon talked entertainingly through the meal without once mentioning Michael Lester or his purpose in visiting Delphi, and I myself forgot completely the cloud that was still hanging over my day, and only recollected it when a lorry, chugging up past the terrace, slowed down to pass the car which stood parked at the edge of the narrow road.

Simon followed my look. He set down his little cup of Greek coffee, and then looked across the table at me.

‘Conscience still active?’

‘Not so active as it was. There’s not so much room. That was a heavenly meal, and thank you very much.’

‘I wondered—’ said Simon thoughtfully, and then stopped.

I said just as thoughtfully: ‘It’s a long walk to Arachova. Is that it?’

He grinned. ‘That’s it. Well? It’s your car.’

I said fervently: ‘It’s not, you know. I never want to touch it again. I – I’ve renounced it.’

‘That’s a pity, because – with your permission which I take it I have – I’m going to drive down to Arachova in a few minutes’ time, and I was rather hoping you’d come, too.’

I said, in very real amazement: ‘Me? But you don’t want me!’

‘Please,’ said Simon.

For some reason I felt the colour coming hot into my cheeks. ‘But you don’t. It’s your own – your private affair, and you can’t possibly want a stranger tagging along with you. This may be Greece, but that’s carrying
philoxenia
a bit too far! After all—’

‘I promise not to let anything upset you.’ He smiled, ‘It’s a long time ago, and it’s not a present tragedy any more. It’s just – well, call it curiosity, if you like.’

‘I wasn’t worrying about its upsetting me. I was thinking only that – well, dash it, you hardly know me, and it
is
a private matter. You said it could be called a “pilgrimage”, remember?’

He said slowly: ‘If I said what I really want to say you’d think I was crazy. But let me say this – and it’s true – I’d be terribly grateful if you’d give me your company this evening.’

There was a little pause. The group of Greeks had long since dispersed. Both artist and donkey had vanished. The other English diners had finished and gone into the hotel. Away over the invisible sea the thin moon hung, apricot now among the white scatter of stars. Above us the breeze in the plane trees sounded like rain.

I said: ‘Of course I’ll come,’ and got to my feet. As he
stubbed out his cigarette and rose I smiled at him with a touch of malice. ‘After all, you did tell me I owed you something.’

He said quickly: ‘Look, I never meant—’ then he caught my look and grinned. ‘All right, ma’am, you win. I won’t try and bully you again.’ And he opened the car door for me.

‘Michael was ten years older than me,’ said Simon. ‘There were just the two of us, and our mother died when I was fifteen. My father thought the sun rose and set in Michael – and so did I, I suppose. I remember how dead the house seemed when he was drafted off to the Med.… and Father just sat every day with the papers and the radio, trying to learn what he could.’ A little smile touched his lips. ‘It wasn’t easy. I told you Michael came over here with the SAS – the Special Air Service – when Germany occupied Greece. He was doing undercover work with the resistance in the mountains for eighteen months before he was killed, and of course news came very thinly and not always accurately. Occasionally men managed to get letters out … If you knew someone was going to be picked up at night and taken off you did your damnedest to get a letter to him in the hope that he in his turn would get through, and the letter might eventually be mailed home from Cairo … but it was chancy, and no one, in those days, carried any more papers on him than he could help. So news was sparse and not very satisfactory. We only ever got three letters from Michael in all that time. All he told us in the first two was that he was
well, and things were going according to plan – and all the usual formulae that you don’t believe, but that just tell you he was alive when he wrote the letter four months before you got it.’