She tried again. ‘And the police?’
But she knew the answer before it came. Instead Stella burst out. ‘They can have the icon, of course. What’s an icon? But they say they want two. I don’t understand.’
‘By icon,’ Theodora said, ‘they presumably mean the one in Jessica’s room, the one her grandfather gave her.’
‘I suppose so,’ Stella was near to tears. ‘But God knows what they mean by two. I rang you because you’re so knowledgeable. I thought you might know what they had in mind. I mean religious art, I know so little about these things. I was sure you’d know what to do.’
Theodora was used to people trusting her and overestimating her knowledge, but not to quite this extent. Stella had given her so little information.
‘It’s all so unfair,’ Stella said turning her tearful face towards Theodora. Theodora fixed her gaze on the iconostasis, which was full of icons, but did not presumably contain the one the kidnappers wanted from the Stephanopouloses. There was, she thought, something odd – indeed something irritating – about Stella’s whole demeanour which puzzled her.
‘The icon which Jessica has: you say it’s not valuable. How do you know? Have you had it valued?’
Stella was prompt, ‘Oh yes, when we first came over we had everything done by Lancaster and Phelps for insurance purposes. It’s worth about two thousand pounds on the present market.’
‘Surely not worth going to the trouble of a kidnap for?’
‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so,’ Stella agreed.
Theodora had another thought. ‘Who knows that Jessica has an icon in her room?’
Mrs Stephanopoulos did her well-known hand-spreading act. ‘Well, I suppose the family and the servants.’
‘I really meant of her own friends or outsiders.’
Stella was again helpless.‘She doesn’t have too many friends. I suppose Clarissa Bennet might, I think she’s the only one who’s come to the house out of her school acquaintances.’
‘Ah,’ said Theodora, thinking of the recumbent form of Clarissa in the medical room. ‘But, I still don’t see why anyone should want the icon if it isn’t valuable.’
‘Oh, politics,’ said Stella vaguely.
‘How do you mean “politics”?’ Theodora was almost angry. What was the woman holding back?
‘I suppose in some communities things, objects … Icons have a symbolic value which is greater than their market or their aesthetic value.’
Theodora again had the feeling she was being played with. ‘Do you know any such community which might be willing to pay over the odds for an icon which had a special significance for them?’
Stella shook her head. ‘That wasn’t what we had in mind.’
Theodora was exasperated. ‘I don’t understand you. Who is “we” and what did you have in mind?’
Stella turned her beautiful head towards Theodora. ‘We can’t always choose,’ she said. ‘But we have to carry on as though there really is a society which is sane and just and which can judge and deal with our terrors. I thought religious people knew that and that if one knew it one could make sacrifices. Do a deal, as it were.’
Theodora wasn’t sure where all this was heading. Perhaps it represented the makeshift raft of someone who had to float around in a society to which she did not by birth and temperament belong, and who had had to make her own provision for coping with things which she did not care for. Greek society, Theodora was prepared to believe, was very different from middle-class English. About one thing, however, Theodora was perfectly clear.
‘Making sacrifices,’ she said firmly, ‘isn’t, really isn’t, the same as doing a deal. And if you’ve a mind to do a deal with icons to retrieve Jessica. I really do think you should tell both your husband and the police before you go in any deeper.’
‘I can’t,’ Stella wailed. ‘I can’t. I may never see Jessica again. You don’t understand how these people go on and on hating from generation to generation. It’s not like England where we don’t know any history and we forget our defeats as quickly as our victories. In Greece, in George’s family, when he was in Cyprus …’
Mrs Stephanopoulos stopped. Now we’re getting somewhere, Theodora thought. ‘I think you said you were in Cyprus not long before Jessica was born, just before the Turkish invasion,’ she prompted.
Stella felt able to nod.
‘What exactly was your husband’s job there?’
‘His job is to carry out government policy,’ Stella answered as though by rote.
‘Of course,’ Theodora was soothing. ‘What exactly was Greek government policy at that time?’
‘Government policy was to welcome enosis, the incorporation of Cyprus into Greece proper.’
‘And George’s part in that was to do what?’ Theodora had no intention of letting Stella off the hook.
‘He was supposed to build up pro-Greek feeling. Pride in things Greek: nationhood and all that.’
‘So what you’re saying is that your husband made enemies in Cyprus who might want to avenge themselves on his daughter?’
‘Oh, but we made many friends there too,’ Stella was adamant.
‘Whom especially did you make an enemy of?’
‘Well, I suppose none of the Turks particularly liked what we were doing. I can’t remember any particular names or persons. It wasn’t quite my affair.’
‘But your husband …’ Theodora paused.
‘I’m absolutely certain that George is doing all he can, “pulling out all the stops”, is how he puts it. The ambassador rang today …’
Hell’s teeth, Theodora thought. Not that again. What’s wrong with the woman?
Stella was near hysteria. To give her something else to think about, Theodora went on firmly, ‘There are one or two things I wanted to ask you about the details of the actual kidnap.’
Stella appeared to try and get a grip on herself.
‘One of the witnesses says he saw only one car outside the school about three-thirty on Monday, and it wasn’t your embassy car. What time would your driver have got to the school, do you know?’
Stella hesitated. ‘Michel says he was there in plenty of time to pick Jessica up: about ten to four, I think. Anyway, she was late.’
‘Did Michel stay there all the time he was supposed to be waiting, or did he go away and come back or leave the car at any time?’
‘No, he said he was there all the time.’
‘And where was he exactly in relation to the kidnap car?’
‘He says his was the last of the spaces immediately outside the school, and the kidnap car was behind him at right angles, the first one on the corner. You see there is only space for—’
‘Yes,’ said Theodora, ‘yes, so I see. Stella, how does Michel come to have a British passport when he speaks so little English?’
‘He’s Greek Cypriot,’ said Stella. ‘He came out in ’74 with his family. His brother came to England but Michel went on to cousins in Greece.’
‘What’s Michel’s surname?’
‘Kostas,’ said Stella.
‘And do you happen to know what his brother does for a living?’
‘Oh, yes. He’s got a small transport business in south London somewhere. Michel sometimes uses their vehicles.’
Theodora didn’t know whether to grin or cry. How much ought she to tell Stella? Indeed, how did the information Stella had given her fit into the other bits of information which she had about Paul Kostas’s death? She very much wanted to get away from Stella and think and then perhaps discuss matters with someone utterly sane, like Geoffrey.
Theodora was reduced to looking at her watch. Stella turned towards her, quieter now, but still unresolved. ‘What do you think I should do? I mean, about the kidnap note and the second icon?’
Theodora had an inspiration. ‘Some time before she was snatched, Jessica made a copy of an icon. Not the one in her bedroom – another one, an annunciation. Nobody seems to know where the original of tha
t one is. Anyway, she gave this copy to her art master, Cromwell, on Monday afternoon, just before she was kidnapped. Why not offer it to her kidnappers if they make contact again? I’m sure Cromwell could be induced to give it up.’
Stella’s face, at first dubious, eventually lit up. ‘What a marvellous idea! You are brilliant.’
Together Stella and Theodora left the church and walked out into the sunlight. The bull terrier had slipped his lead and was happily rootling amongst the dustbins at the rear.
Miss Aldriche snapped the light on. Six of the school’s former first mistresses, illuminated by striplights over their frames, sprang into view on the wall of the darkening library. Most were in full academicals and larger than life-size.
‘I’m afraid your grandmother isn’t in the front rank,’ she said to Theodora, and snapped another switch. This time a collection on the opposite wall came into view. ‘We keep the benefactors separate.’
Theodora walked to the centre of the room and gazed first at the academic portraits, then at the benefactors. On the whole the benefactors were the more interesting. Some were no more than sepia photographs; some charcoal sketches; some, like her grandmother, full-length paintings.
‘Dame Alicia has yet to be rendered,’ said Miss Aldriche neutrally. Theodora switched her gaze back to the first mistresses. ‘Do we need
to make statements like this?’ she ventured.
‘You feel we reinvent traditions which are not ours?’ Miss Aldriche
hazarded.
‘Something like that.’
‘Never underestimate the power of the symbolic. The gentlemen never
have. We still have a long way to go. The continuing subordination of
women in society is bad for women, bad for men, and bad for society.’ Theodora, who was a subordinate in a mostly male and certainly nonrational hierarchy and who did not actually mind too much since it gave
her scope for her sort of sacrifice, didn’t feel in a strong position to
comment on this.
She took the measure, however, of Miss Aldriche’s strength. This, she
realised, was the difference between St Veep’s and SWL Comprehensive.
Here were directive intelligences working out a coherent set of values
which, whether you sympathised with them or not, were intentionally
shaping the institution for a known future. In the case of SWL it was no
one’s duty to sift the values and approve the vision, so they fell victim to
mere fashion.
Theodora had no wish to be ungracious. It was, after all, a delight to be
in an environment where scholarship was valued as a proper activity for
women. ‘I expect you’re right,’ she said.
Miss Aldriche turned in stately fashion towards the door. ‘Your
grandmother’s material is in the case beside the OED. It’s some time
since I looked at it, but I seem to remember some excellent observation
in her diaries of Egypt and Iran in the late 1920s. She wasn’t a scholar,
but a lively and humane intelligence – which we exist to nurture.’ As the door swung shut behind Miss Aldriche’s formidable presence,
Theodora made for the case she had indicated. Apart from the hall, the
library was the largest room in the school. It ran to eight good-sized bays
of books and, at this time of the day, early evening, gave plenty of choice
as to where to sit.
Theodora turned with only mild interest to her grandmother’s writings.
She would not have chosen to spend time in this way, but Barbara
Brighouse had asked her to supper, and Barbara, being a first violin, was
not free from rehearsals until six-thirty. The diaries would be a way of
passing the time. She piled the heavy leather-bound volumes on the
table and prepared to make her way dutifully through them. Surely
Grandmother could not have lugged these around the Near East with
her? Even in the days of porters they would have been too heavy. The answer was apparent when she opened the first volume. Disparate
individual sheets from a variety of sources had been bound together to
preserve them. The later volume, which she had opened first, had letters
to and from MPs, and speeches delivered at women’s meetings. Then
came diaries kept on travels, as Miss Aldriche had said, in Turkey, Egypt
and Iran. For someone who had married a priest with a country living her
grandmother had gadded about a bit, Theodora thought. She had, of
course, her own money, a plesant small fortune from her Scottish earl
father. It all looked moderately affluent and ordinary to Theodora’s eyes.
As Miss Aldriche had said, Helena Braithwaite had been diligent: labourers’
wages had been carefully recorded, as well as the socialising of a vivacious
young thing in the twenties; but there was nothing remarkable. Theodora turned to the other and earlier volume. This was slimmer. It
had old school reports at its beginning. St Veep’s thick paper recorded
Helena MacIntosh’s progress in mathematics and French, art and divinity
(‘Helena should try harder to attend more.’) It moved through invitations
to dances and a cutting from The Times announcing her marriage to the
Reverend Henry William Theodore Braithwaite in April 1923, the
honeymoon to be spent travelling in Greece.
Idly Theodora turned the pages. Lady Helena’s young prose was like
having the light, vapid chattering of a wireless in the background. Here
were recorded her effusions on seeing the Acropolis by moonlight, there
her delight in sailing round Piraeus. Suddenly Theodora’s eye was
arrested by a sentence. It came apparently from a letter to Helena
Braithwaite’s mother, an old crone known to Theodora from a single
miniature and a great deal of family reminiscence, who had crouched in
the family castle in the wilds of Perthshire.
The letter ran: ‘… Dearest Henry has found me the most beautiful
wedding present. Well, actually I found it myself in a rather grand shop in
Athens, near the Pandemikos Square. It was in the private part at the
back. I had wandered in out of the heat because it seemed so dark and
cool. It is an annunciation. A painting of St Mary in blue with a silver
background. The angel Gabriel on a perfectly gorgeous pair of wings is
flying down towards her, pointing his finger at her in a sort of blessing. It
is quite small, about two foot six by two foot, painted on board with a
rounded top. The frame is quite plain black wood. I keep looking at her
and thinking how she must have felt. She looks ageless, but she might
have been about my age, do you think? Or is that blasphemous? It is the
most perfectly beautiful thing I have ever seen in my whole life. I do hope you will approve it. It seems the perfect picture for a young matron, which is what I now am, you realise, dear Ma. Henry says it’s very old, probably as much as five hundred years. He says it may originally have been an icon, a Greek holy picture, which would have been used in worship … Only of course that would have been a long time ago. And Henry says it is really not at all Popish. We’re going to bring it home in the hand
luggage and I know just where we will hang in at Mark Beech.’ Theodora read the passage again. There were the incidental pleasures
of the letter, the naïvety, the girlish care not to alarm a probably
Presbyterian mother lodged in the cold north, and none too hospitable
perhaps to her daughter’s marriage to a well-bred but penniless Anglican
priest. But what held Theodora
’s attention was the description of the icon.
Surely it resembled something she had seen and seen recently. Surely
the elements described were exactly those she had seen in Jessica’s
copy, the one she had pressed upon Cromwell just before her abduction. Theodora turned over the page and there, carefully bound in after the
letter, she beheld the beautiful Greek script of an engraved letter-heading
which she deciphered to read: Andreas Stephanopoulos, Fine Objects
of Antique Art, 12 Pandemikos Square, Athens. Under this was written in
western script, ‘Icon of the Annunciation; Cypriot, early fifteenth century.
Fifteen hundred drachmas.’ At the bottom right-hand corner was a faded
signature in green ink and the date, 12 April 1923.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Messages
Through the oval porthole of the Turkish airliner, civilisation revealed itself as tiny grey and brown islands in a sea of green fields. As the light began to fade, the Home Counties disappeared slowly beneath the port wing. At the centre of each island, Theodora could just glimpse the tower or spire of a parish church. Such was her concentration, summoned to defend her against the horrendous noise which the Turkish Airlines plane was making, that it was as though she looked out on to silence. The plane’s basic seats, bolted imperfectly to the floor, rattled a bit. It looked and felt as though it could be turned over to a military transport at the blink of an eye. It reminded Theodora of some of the flying she’d had to do in Africa.
The intercom crackled and a man’s voice announced in Turkish that the aircraft had taken off from Heathrow only one hour late. It continued in English and assured the passengers that food was at hand. They would be landing at Adnan Menderes Airport at 22.00 hours and at Ercam in Northern Cyprus at 03.30. The very thought of it made Theodora yawn. She leaned back in the rattling seat and reviewed her position.
She and Geoffrey, closeted in the kitchen of her basement flat, had discussed the matter from every angle until far into the night.
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