The Shortest Way to Hades (18 page)

In spite of this diversion we reached Parga well before nightfall, having had to motor only a short part of the way, and berthed in the western harbor.

The accident of having a long sandy beach has turned Parga from a fishing village into a cosmopolitan little tourist resort, especially popular with sailing people. It has two or three hotels and several open-air fish restaurants, in one of which we sat down for dinner. At the table next to us there was a group of English people whom at first we felt inclined to avoid: rather hearty and brick-colored and laughing uproariously at jokes I had heard quite often before, mostly from Cantrip. When I heard them mention the name of Camilla Galloway, however, I felt curious enough to engage them in conversation. There was no difficulty in persuading them to repeat the story—no one in Parga is talking of anything else, at least in sailing circles.

On Thursday, presumably just after saying goodbye to Rupert and Jocasta, Camilla and her cousins sailed down from Corfu to Preveza, where friends of theirs were holding a party. When it was over they decided not to wait until morning but to sail back by night as far as Paxos. They had all, it was thought, had a good deal to drink. A few miles south of Parga they were overtaken by the storm of which we had already heard, and Camilla was swept overboard from the deck.

You may be under the impression that the deck of a sailing-boat is much the same as the deck of a Channel steamer—a broad expanse of solid timber, with good stout railings round it. This is not the case: on a boat such as Camilla’s—I gather it was a Sadler 32—the deck consists of the cabin-top and a strip of timber, about eighteen inches wide and slightly sloping, on each side of it. There is a wire safety rail, of the same thickness as a washing-line, at about knee height.

You will understand, then, that if you were on the deck of a sailing-boat in a heavy sea with a gale blowing—and I think, Julia, that you should avoid the contingency—it would not be at all difficult to be swept off. In such conditions it is customary to wear a safety-harness—a webbing contraption with a lifeline shackled to it: the lifeline should be clipped to some secure point on the boat, so that if you do go over you have some chance of getting back. No one knew whether Camilla had been wearing such a thing: if she had, she had still been unable to get aboard again.

And that, in any ordinary sailing story, given the visibility and weather conditions, would have been the last of Camilla.

Beauty and riches, however, are not the only attributes which she shares with the heroine of a romantic novel: she has also, it seems, the same indestructible quality. In the early hours of Friday morning she was discovered by a fisherman somewhere on the seashore between Parga and Ayios Ioannis, wearing only a black silk negligée—by some accounts, indeed, entirely naked, but the black negligée version is preferred by connoisseurs. After going overboard she had simply struck out for the shore and kept swimming until she reached it—a distance, it was thought, of about three miles. She was bruised and fairly exhausted, naturally, but otherwise (said the sailing men, leering) in perfect condition. It really is a remarkable achievement: three miles may not sound far, but in pitch darkness with a heavy sea running, and without a mask or wetsuit—well, I suppose one might do it if one had to.

Such was the public interest in the notion of Camilla in her black negligée that I could learn little of what had happened to the others, though they too apparently spent an adventurous night. They were eventually taken off by a fishing vessel and the Sadler broke up on the rocks a mile or two from Parga—it seems very hard on Camilla, to be almost drowned and then find her boat was lost. I can give you, however, no further details.

It will soon be too dark to go on writing. The sun has gathered itself into a compact red circle and is slipping neatly down the sky behind Sivota Island. The bay where we are anchored looks rather pretty by this light, like a lake in Arcadia—almost encircled by mountains, with olive groves coming right down to the water’s edge and no sound except the tinkling of goat bells: Hilary would see nymphs and satyrs at every turn.

Further unrest among the crew, who complains of hunger and thirst and wants to go ashore for dinner. He instructs me to send you his love and to tell you of his sufferings and hardships—you will agree that I have done so in almost unseemly detail.

SV
Kymothoe
—at the same anchorage.
Monday morning.

By a coincidence less remarkable than you might think—the Ionian Sea is really a very small place—I have more news of Camilla.

The only other customers in the taverna where we had dinner were three Greeks of villainous appearance, all looking as if they were born with cutlasses between their teeth. After a while the oldest of them—a man about five foot square, with a huge walrus mustache—asked us in quite a friendly manner where we were from, and seemed very pleased when the crew replied in Greek. There followed an amiable conversation, which from time to time was translated to me in summary.

In the course of this the crew made some remark which gave rise to great hilarity, with much stamping of feet and banging of fists on the table: he had mentioned the story we had heard in Parga on the previous evening, and so put everyone in mind of Camilla’s black silk negligée.

It had been a friend of theirs who found her—a fellow-fisherman by the name of Stavros. Their friend Stavros was always lucky, they said, too lucky to come to any good end. It was therefore typical of him to have spent the night of the storm safe and comfortable in his bed and gone out in the morning to fish up an heiress, while the rest of them had been out on the rough sea and got nothing but the small fry—two boys and one girl only between the three of them, and her not an heiress. It was they who had taken the other three off the Sadler.

They had gone out with their nets as usual on Thursday night, not quite trusting the weather but unwilling to lose a night’s work and meaning to make for Parga if it looked like breaking. The storm, however, blew up more suddenly than they had expected, and overtook them a few miles south of Parga at about three o’clock in the morning—a force eight gale, gusting nine, and blowing from the south. Parga is at the center of a stretch of rock-bound coast running west to east for about twelve miles, almost at right-angles to the main coastline—when the wind is from the south, an absolute lee shore: a dangerous harbor to run for in a southerly gale. The skipper accordingly decided to ride out the storm at sea. They had just settled down comfortably for the night—I tell the story as it was told to me—when a distress flare went up somewhere on the starboard bow.

They motored towards the place where it had seemed to come from and after a few minutes the light of their storm-lantern picked up a small sailing vessel. She was carrying far too much sail and looked to be shipping a good deal of water. She was also moving fast towards the Parga shore. It seemed a pretty even chance whether she sank or broke up on the rocks, but certain that she must do one or the other.

Given the weather conditions, there was no possibility of salvaging the yacht, but the skipper thought they might manage something to help the people on board: he could see three of them above decks, and he didn’t think he needed to ask if they wanted to be taken off. He took the fishing-boat round to windward of the yacht and on to a parallel course, trying to bring her close enough, without a collision, for the two decks to be within leaping distance. The erratic progress of the yacht made it a difficult maneuver and it took him longer than he had hoped—all the time, you see, they were moving closer to the Parga shore. At last there were a few seconds when the two vessels were within six feet of each other, with the fishermen all shouting to those on the yacht to jump. One of them did and landed neatly enough on the deck of the fishing-boat: but the others couldn’t or wouldn’t.

At this stage the skipper was inclined (he said) to give himself no more trouble about the matter, and to leave the other two in the good hands of God. At the last moment, however, when the boats were moving apart, young Andreas jumped the other way—from the fishing-boat on to the deck of the yacht. This (said his shipmates) was because he had noticed that one of those left on the yacht was a girl, and he thought this would be a fine opportunity to cuddle her. (Great laughter and much digging of Andreas in the ribs—he was a large, placid-looking young man, who bore it all with fortitude.) They were in two minds (said the skipper) about going back for him; but he was the son of the skipper’s youngest sister, who had said he must be kept out of trouble, and probably meant that they shouldn’t let him cuddle strange women on sailing-boats. So the whole maneuver had to be repeated, with the Parga shore coming closer all the time.

This time it went better. Andreas threw the girl across to his shipmates and then jumped back himself, carrying the second boy in his arms. The three from the sailing-boat had survived their tossing about without much serious damage. They were tired and bruised, and the older boy had a broken arm—this had made him unable to balance for the jump when the boats were first alongside each other, and his sister had refused to leave him; but otherwise they were well enough. They were all in great distress, however, about another girl who had been on board the yacht and had been swept overboard about twenty minutes earlier. The skipper knew that by this time she must certainly have drowned; but he put out a call on the radio, asking any shipping in the area to be on the lookout for her. When at last they put in at Parga he reported her missing, with no idea that she was tucked up safe in bed at the house of their friend Stavros—safe from drowning, at any rate, said the skipper, leering horribly over his walrus mustache.

The story, as you will gather, was related by the fishermen in a very casual and light-hearted manner, as if it were the sort of trifling adventure that happens to everyone once a month or so. I should make it clear, however, that what they had done was nothing at all of that kind, but a most remarkable piece of seamanship, such as one rarely hears of, and involving greater risk to all of them than one would readily undertake, especially for a stranger and with small hope of success. I accordingly asked the crew, to show that this was our opinion, to invite them to have a round of Metaxa with us, seven star if possible. After this—I don’t know why, you will think I must already have drunk too much retsina—after this I burst into tears.

There was no seven star Metaxa to be had in the taverna—it was a very simple place; but we ordered a bottle of five star and drank it between us.

At some stage when we were talking of Camilla’s remarkable escape I asked whether anyone knew if she had been wearing a safety-harness. Andreas became suddenly very angry, spat on the floor, and began calling someone (according to the crew’s translation) “a pack of bloody murderers.”

It turned out that he was referring to the manufacturers of Camilla’s safety-harness. She had indeed been wearing one (over the black silk negligée) when she went overboard; but the shackle had snapped. There was, said Andreas, no question about it: he had seen the broken shackle with his own eyes—Stavros still had the harness and had shown it to him that morning. I felt some sympathy with his view of the manufacturers: one doesn’t often have to depend on a safety-harness, but when one does it’s probably for one’s life, so a faulty shackle is something worse than careless.

It was late, I need hardly say, when we returned to the
Kymothoe,
and the crew is now recalcitrant about rising from his berth to set sail for Corfu. Well, I am the most indulgent of skippers, and have refrained from throwing buckets of cold water over him—but let no one say that it’s my fault if we don’t reach Ithaca.

It’s very odd about Camilla’s safety-harness—they don’t usually break. I’m glad we resolved our doubts over the other business—one might otherwise feel inclined to find the whole thing rather sinister.

With very much love, Selena.

Villa Miranda,
Near Casiope,
Corfu.
Tuesday morning.

Dear Julia,

Please note with suitable astonishment the address from which I write. Be patient and I will tell you how we come to be here.

The sea was smooth and the sky cloudless when we weighed anchor for Corfu; but after so many stories of shipwreck and disaster we were careful to see that everything was in good order and the
Kymothoe
fully prepared for any emergency. The crew showed great diligence in making sure that all moveable objects which in rough weather might fall about and cause damage were securely stowed—a very seamanlike precaution, not to be thought less so merely because he happened to stow the transistor radio on the shelf behind the compass: it wasn’t his fault, as he rather indignantly said afterwards, if the idiotic compass couldn’t tell the difference between a transistor radio and the magnetic North.

We came without further misadventure to the island which I call Corfu, which its inhabitants call Kerkira, which ancient historians call Corcyra, and which Homer calls Scheria, the land of the Phaecians—never try to tell me that the Greeks don’t do this on purpose. It is roughly the shape of a tadpole, with a broadish head to the north and a long tail wriggling southwards parallel to the mainland coast. The landscape is one of curves and soft contours, with olive-covered hills rising over gently rounded bays. There are also a great many flowers, very colorful and highly-scented.

The principal town of the island is on the east coast, approximately at the point where the head of the tadpole joins the tail. We did not put in there, but continued northwards, running goose-winged before a light south-easterly breeze and going so smoothly that we hardly seemed to be moving, though in fact I think we were making about three knots. The crew, very pleased with these conditions, lay in the cockpit and read me the passage in Homer which tells of Odysseus arriving shipwrecked on the coast of Corfu: it is at this point (said the crew) that Odysseus emerges from the world of myths and magic and stumbles, naked and destitute, into the world of reality.

Our own landing had no such traumatic qualities. We anchored at Casiope, at the northern end of the island, a little before six o’clock, and went ashore to drink ouzo in one of the pavement cafes.

I noticed that not far away some boys were playing street cricket, with a wicket marked in chalk on the wall behind the batsman, and was gratified by this sign of enduring British influence, (Corfu, as I dare say you know, was under British rule for a period of about fifty years in the nineteenth century: here, as in other parts of our Empire, it was our enlightened policy to prepare the inhabitants for self-government by teaching them to play cricket.) I was unable, however, to attend closely to the game, since the crew thought this a suitable moment to make a certain suggestion—namely, that I should marry him.

“Sebastian,” I said, “you have said in public, and on several occasions written, that marriage is a bourgeois and degrading institution designed to reduce women to the status of mere chattels.”

“So it is,” he said. “But with you and me it would be different.”

I could not help thinking this a rather unprincipled attitude in a man well regarded in feminist circles for the soundness of his views on the question. Moreover, “With you and me it would be different” is tempting to believe; but we do have several friends, don’t we, who yielded to similar persuasion and found afterwards that it wasn’t quite different enough? Still, a measure of tact is needed when rejecting such a suggestion: I took care to explain that my reluctance was due to the idyllic perfection of our existing arrangements, which made me feel that any change must inevitably be for the worse. I wondered if it might not be sensible, in the hope of avoiding further argument, to be a little hurt that Sebastian was not of the same view.

Before I had reached a decision on this point, my attention was again drawn by the cricket match—to be specific, by the discovery that the cricket ball was now moving in my direction at a speed which gave me the choice of (i) catching it or (ii) allowing it to strike me a sharp blow in the midriff. I chose the first alternative. “Ah,” I thought, as one of the players, rather slender and elegant of figure, strolled towards me to retrieve it, “that looks like the sort of thing that Julia might fancy.” I saw, as he drew closer, that I had been right in my judgment: it was Leonidas Demetriou.

“Well caught,” said Leonidas. “Oh—it’s Miss Jardine, isn’t it? Miss Jardine of Lincoln’s Inn?”

I introduced him to Sebastian, to the great satisfaction of both: Leonidas clearly had in mind the advice of his Classics master that a boy hoping to go up to Oxford in the next academic year should miss no chance to make a favorable impression on a senior member of the University; while Sebastian, on learning that this was the son of the distinguished poet Constantine Demetriou, was as pleased and interested as if I had given him a personal introduction to Homer’s great-grandmother.

Apparently content to abandon his part in the match, Leonidas sat down at our table. At some stage he went away to make a telephone call—as it turned out, to his parents: he represented them, on his return, as yearning for our company at dinner and scarcely to be consoled should we refuse. Well, there was no question of that: Sebastian had been daydreaming for ten minutes of meeting personally the man he so much admired. A little before dusk we found ourselves at the Villa Miranda, in a garden looking out across the sea to Albania.

Since you have not enjoyed the remarkable privilege of meeting Constantine Demetriou, I must try to make up for your loss by giving you a full account of the great poet’s manner and appearance. He is tall, rather thin for his height, but fairly muscular, and with features which put one in mind (it is not for me to suggest he cultivates the impression) of one of the older gods of Olympus, as depicted in painting and sculpture—Poseidon, say, or even Zeus himself: dark eyes set deep under a high sloping forehead; an aquiline nose; and a spade-shaped black beard, slightly curly and streaked with gray. He has also the quality, which one sees in successful advocates, of holding the attention of those about him even when he has nothing in particular to say.

The Zeus-like effect was heightened, when we first saw him, by the fact of his being surrounded by the younger members of the Remington-Fiske family—all of whom, as you know, are very tall and splendid to look at, admirably suited to supporting roles in a dramatic tableau of family life on Mount Olympus. Lucinda, with her copper-colored hair and abundance of curves, would make an excellent stand-in for the goddess Aphrodite; and her brother Lucian is very good-looking, and has literary ambitions—I think he can be cast as Apollo. As for Camilla—well, I’m not sure that the qualities of a romantic heroine include the intellectual attributes of Pallas Athene; but she is certainly athletic enough to do for Artemis, and said to be suitably virginal. Leonidas would be Hermes, I suppose; or perhaps Ganymede—he was very diligent about keeping everyone’s glass filled. None of them seemed to have suffered any serious harm from their misadventures on Thursday night: Lucian had his arm in a sling, and I noticed later that Camilla still has some bruises; but apart from that they all seem to have recovered remarkably well.

Dolly, of course, does not fit in at all with the Mount Olympus picture. You would have to imagine that Zeus and Hera had been divorced—from what Homer says of their domestic life this seems not at all unlikely—and that Zeus had taken up with some less formidable goddess, with untidy hair and paint under her fingernails. It was Dolly, when we arrived at the Villa Miranda, who first came running across the garden to meet us; but her husband followed and overtook her, seized Sebastian by the hand, embraced him, and asked if he was indeed Sebastian Verity, the translator of Theocritus.

Oh joy—the great poet had read Sebastian’s translation of the
Idylls.
Oh honor undreamt of—not merely read, but admired.

I do not in fact see why Sebastian should have been so surprised. His translation of the
Idylls
may not have had a great commercial success; but it was favorably reviewed by all the critics whose opinion is worth having, and
The Times
called it essential reading for anyone with pretensions to a liberal education: our host might have been expected to have read and admired it.

Dolly went to great lengths to make sure I did not think myself the less honored guest, introducing me without a blush to her husband as one of the most brilliant advocates of my generation. I ventured to remind her that she had never heard me open my mouth in court—when we varied the trusts of her father’s will, you remember, I was led by Basil Ptarmigan; but she was not at all disconcerted.

“I know,” she said. “I thought it was a shame you weren’t allowed to say anything. I’m sure you’d have done it just as nicely as Mr. Ptarmigan, and it wouldn’t have been so expensive, would it?” Do by all means report this to Basil when you next see him. “But I do know you’re brilliant, because Ronnie Tancred told me so.”

I am bound to admit that I was rather pleased. Without believing that Tancred would have said anything so exaggerated, I thought I could infer that he had said something pleasant about me, and it is always gratifying to be well spoken of by one’s instructing solicitors.

I had hoped during dinner to hear about the events of Thursday night from the point of view of those on the sailing-boat. Dolly, however, could not bear to hear the subject spoken of: she had spent all Friday thinking that Camilla was drowned; she had afterwards learned that they could all have been drowned; it had been, she said, the most horrible day of her life, and she never wanted to think about it again.

Her husband and Sebastian, as was to be expected, fell into a discussion of poetry and politics—subjects which neither of them seemed readily able to distinguish, so that one might have gathered from listening to them that the main objection to the Colonels was their unsoundness on matters of poetic diction.

I began to be embarrassed at the thought that everyone was talking English entirely for my benefit, since all the others at the table understood Greek: even Camilla and the twins seem to speak it quite fluently. After dinner, when we adjourned to the garden for coffee, I thought it tactful to attach myself to the younger members of the family (who were not passionately interested in questions of poetic diction), leaving Sebastian and our host to continue their conversation in Greek. Since Dolly remained with them, I now felt free to ask again about what had happened on Thursday night. I said that I had heard about it in Parga, but did not mention the fishermen at Mourtos.

“I suppose,” said Camilla, “that they told you I was washed up on the shore wearing a black negligée. That’s what all those rotters in Parga are saying, and it’s an absolute lie—it was the top half of my black silk pajamas.”

“And if she hadn’t lost the bottom half somewhere in the Mediterranean,” said Lucian, “she’d have been perfectly respectable, wouldn’t you, Millie?”

In accordance with the established convention in sailing circles, they spoke off-handedly of their adventure, saying modestly that there really wasn’t much to tell. In accordance with the corresponding convention, I took no notice of this, but continued to press them for a full account.

On Thursday they had sailed down to Preveza in Camilla’s yacht, the
Sycorax,
for a dinner party with friends. The gathering, however, had been less convivial than they expected, and by eleven o’clock they were back on board. A south wind had sprung up, which Camilla and Leonidas thought it a pity to waste: they both enjoy night sailing, and it would have been annoying to wait at Preveza until morning and then find that the wind had dropped.

“And Lucian and I didn’t mind much either way,” said Lucinda. “There was plenty of booze on board, and as long as no one expected us to do anything energetic in the sailing line we didn’t care whether we drank it moving or standing still.”

The sky at this stage was clear, and it did not occur to anyone to listen to the weather forecast. Camilla took the first watch, having laid a course for Port Gaio on the island of Paxos and expecting to arrive there in the early hours of the morning. Leonidas took over at about two o’clock, with instructions to keep on a compass heading of 295 degrees. By this time it was very dark, the sky having clouded over, and the wind had freshened to something like a force five. There was some discussion about whether they should hoist the storm jib instead of the genoa. Leonidas thought he could handle the boat without any change of sail, and Camilla agreed in the end that it would be enough to take a reef in the mainsail.

“So I told Leon to give me a yell if he had any problems,” said Camilla, “and went off to the forecabin to get my beauty sleep. The twins, of course, were sprawled out all over the main cabin in a newt-like condition, snoring their heads off. And that’s when Leon decided, for reasons best known to himself, to point the boat north a bit.”

Well, Leonidas still maintains that he kept on a heading of 295 degrees, as Camilla had told him to; but from what happened afterwards it seems that he can’t have done. I wondered at first if it might be Camilla who had made a mistake, by not making the right adjustment for compass error. The rest of them, however, had all sailed often enough on the
Sycorax
to know pretty well by heart what adjustment would be needed on any particular heading, and they all agreed that 295 degrees would have been right for the course that Camilla meant to take. There seems no doubt, therefore, that Leonidas must somehow have misread the compass—perhaps by mistaking north-west for west-north-west. Whatever the reason, he was about fifteen degrees off course.

The wind rose steadily during the first hour of his watch, until it approached gale force. He realized that he was carrying far too much sail, but he also knew he could not reduce sail single-handed, and he was reluctant to rouse Camilla so soon after she had gone off watch. I think that his judgment may also have been affected by the absolute darkness all round him, which can be unsettling. The darkness of a night at sea with no moon and no stars isn’t like being in a room with the light shut out: the sea is black and the sky is black, so that there is no horizon, and the darkness has no limits to it. With the sea running high and the boat heeling over at an angle which brought her deck within inches of the water, he had the sense to reach for a line and lash himself to the stern rail. He did not, however, call out for anyone to help him, but stayed alone at the tiller while the
Sycorax
went careering through the night at a speed he had never sailed at before—God knows how none of the rigging snapped—with the black waves towering over her and the gale screaming into her canvas. It was like sailing, he said, “from nowhere into Hades.”