‘Quite! Quite! I know the lines.’
When minded to quote poetry Selwyn was not to be deterred by an obviously unwilling audience. He flung himself back in his chair and rolled out the final couplet while his trousers crept further down his hips.
‘And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
‘Is that how you feel?’
Dr Challoner felt nothing of the sort. No lyre, falling into his domain, was likely to degenerate. He repeated impatiently:
‘Quite! Quite! I know the lines, of course. Pity Byron was such a cad.’
2
The boat was small. The cargo included several crates of Coca-Cola and a tempestuous billy goat. At the sight and smell of this creature Dr Challoner would have cancelled the trip had he been able to retrieve his suitcases which were stowed away under the crates. Nobody listened to his protests. He was pushed aboard amidst a terrific altercation carrying on between the crew and some people on the quay. In the course of it they put out to sea but the volleys of invective between ship and shore went on as long as any shout would carry across the water.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked as silence fell.
‘Just the time of day,’ said Selwyn. ‘Who’s dead, and who’s getting married. Also some important citizen has bought a refrigerator. You needn’t keep your feet tucked up like that. The goat won’t bite.’
‘Isn’t it unusually large?’
‘He’s a famous goat. They’re very proud of him on Keritha. He’s been lent to somebody here for stud purposes.’
As soon as they were well out to sea the goat settled down. The sun shone fiercely. Selwyn had clamped an enormous straw hat upon his unruly curls. Dr Challoner draped a handkerchief from the back of his hat to protect his neck. The sky was dazzling and the sea was a very dark blue shot through with streaks of green and bronze like a peacock’s tail. The distant islands, scattered about the horizon, were pale lilac and pink in the triumphant light.
‘This is very …’
Dr Challoner paused, abashed by the word which he had been about to use. He sought for an alternative.
‘Very striking. Remarkable.’
Selwyn nodded. He would have made no bones about calling it beautiful and had thought it so for years. He still came to look at it as often as he could, just as he still did many things merely from habit.
‘If I’m to be your interpreter,’ he said, ‘you may as well tell me why we are going to Keritha.’
Since the goat had gone to sleep Challoner ventured to stretch out his legs before answering.
‘I have some property there. A house. At all events a house. And possibly some valuable … until I get there I hardly know what to expect. I had an uncle who used to live there. He died this spring and left me the house and its contents.’
‘You had an uncle on Keritha? How very odd!’
‘I suppose so. My grandfather … he was a very eccentric man, my grandfather … he went there.’
Selwyn suppressed a grin, supposing the eccentric grandfather to have been quite a gay blade.
‘Insane, really,’ lamented Dr Challoner. ‘Very well off. Had a huge house in Kensington. No profession. Nothing to steady him. My grandmother, his first wife, must have had a time of it. She was a perfectly sensible woman, as far as I know. A Miss Greighton. But she could do nothing with him. Always off on some fad or other. He took Schliemann seriously!’
‘A lot of people did,’ suggested Selwyn.
‘Should have been laughed out of court … never went to any university … never learnt Greek till he was past thirty … the untold harm that man has done! No qualifications whatever.’
‘Too bad he hit on Troy when all the qualified people were insisting that there was no such place.’
‘It was not Homeric Troy,’ bellowed Dr Challoner. ‘He missed that, for all his digging.’
‘Still, it was there, where he said it was. Would you rather Priam’s gold was still buried because the qualified people had dug up the wrong place?’
‘It was not Priam’s gold, and I’d much rather it was still buried. Dug up by an ex-grocer! Advertised to every Tom, Dick, and Harry under a totally false description. Looted by the Russians in ’45? Scattered now, nobody knows where, in Omsk or Tomsk. If qualified people had handled it nobody would have taken the slightest interest in it.’
‘Too right,’ agreed Selwyn, reflecting that gold handled by Challoner’s buddies would immediately become so tarnished with dullness that nobody, not even Russians, would trouble to loot it. ‘But go on! Did your grandfather dig up Keritha?’
‘He did. After consulting the Odyssey. Just as Schliemann consulted the Iliad before digging up Hissarlik.’
‘Thought it was a sort of Baedeker?’
‘Upon my word I believe so. I don’t know what he expected to find, but he bought the island and dug for months. Found nothing, of course. Only coins. A lot of obols, of various periods, scattered about.’
‘Kensal Green.’
‘What?’
‘Local cemetery. Coins last longer than bones. Local yokels buried with an obol apiece under the tongue.’
‘Ach!’
Dr Challoner recoiled from this suggestion. People in classical literature might have been buried with an obol as Charon’s fee, but he blenched at the idea that anybody, at any time, had ever actually been so silly.
‘Anyway, that’s all he got for his pains. Except a second wife. My grandmother was dead by the time he went to Keritha. When he gave up his digging he brought home with him an island girl he’d married out there.’
‘Married?’
This was a surprise. Selwyn had pictured a bastard left behind on Keritha.
‘He brought her back? To Kensington?’
‘To the Addison Road. A mere peasant. I doubt if she could read or write. And they had two children. Alfred and Edith. My uncle and aunt. Younger than I was. My father, the son by the first wife, was grown up and married by that time.’
‘Look! There’s Keritha! Behind Zagros.’
A long low island had appeared to the south with a mountain rising in its midst. Selwyn explained that this mountain was Keritha which lay behind its neighbour.
‘The two islands must be quite near to each other,’ said Dr Challoner, squinting into the strong sunlight.
‘Further than you’d think. You’ll see when we get round Zagros. It’s quite a high mountain really. Not as high as Samothrace, of course; but Keritha is like a smaller model of Samothrace – very much the same shape.’
The boat changed course, turning westwards to round the long cape of Zagros.
‘And did you all play together in the Addison Road?’ asked Selwyn. ‘You and your little uncle and aunt?’
‘Not much,’ admitted Dr Challoner glumly.
That pair had been a life-long grievance to him. He hated any kind of irregularity. No other boys of his acquaintance had uncles and aunts younger than themselves and conspicuous freaks into the bargain.
Alfred wore sailor suits for years after the date at which he should have been put into Norfolk jackets, Edith went about in a long black pinafore affair. Neither of their parents seemed to know what to do with them. Their mother sat upstairs in a room full of ikons. Their father rode his hobby horses. Attempts were eventually made to civilize the two bewildered children. They were dispatched to a Public School and a Convent. Edith was even presented at Court. They continued, however, to be a couple of fish out of water, inevitably doing and saying the wrong things, although apparently themselves aware that silence and inactivity had best be preserved whenever possible.
‘No harm in them really,’ conceded their nephew handsomely, recollecting that Alfred had left him a good deal of money as well as the property on Keritha. ‘They were merely ninepence in the shilling, both of them. We never went there much. My father was on cool terms with my grandfather, who had given that foreign woman all my grandmother’s jeweller
y, on top of a great deal of money. After he died the three of them cleared out. Went back to Keritha and built this house there. Thirty-eight years ago. That was the last we saw of them. Now they’re all dead. I don’t know when the foreign woman died, but my aunt died just before Christmas and my uncle soon after. The actual island they gave back to the people there, some time ago. But the house and everything in it … if it was only the house I shouldn’t have bothered to come. No earthly use to me. But there’s that jewellery. Must be worth a pretty penny if it’s still there.’
As they rounded Zagros the islanders fell into an animated discussion. Presently one of them called out to Selwyn that the price of the trip had been doubled.
‘You pulled a fast one on us,’ he complained. ‘If we’d seen the old bird we’d have stuck it on. You just said an old man.’
‘So he is, isn’t he?’
‘Lousy with money. You never said he was a tax collector.’
‘He’s not. And you never mentioned the goat.’
‘What’s he want on Keritha, anyway?’
‘Wait and see.’
‘What are they saying?’ demanded Dr Challoner.
‘They want to know why you’re going to Keritha.’
‘Tell them it’s none of their business.’
‘He wants,’ Selwyn told them, ‘to visit the grave of his uncle, Alfred Challoner. Know him?’
‘Potter! What are you telling them? Why … what on earth …’
Their companions were scrambling towards them over the crates and the goat.
‘They want to shake hands with you. They seem to have thought a lot of your uncle. They call him the Lord Freddie.’
Dr Challoner was compelled to shake several brown and smelly hands and to receive obvious compliments.
‘What are they saying?’
‘They say he saw his angel when he was in the middle of ordering repairs to his vineyard wall. I think they mean he suddenly dropped down dead … They say he made a grand corpse. They put him away in style. Classiest funeral ever seen on Keritha. They got candles from Thasos, great big ones …’
Selwyn fell silent, fearing that some of the details shouted down the boat might sound callous when translated. Nor was he quite certain that he understood them; Milorthos Frethi had, it seemed, been buried with fifty lepta peiratikion. Unfortunately this was the only word caught by his companion.
‘But what’s that about pirates?’
‘Safe conduct money really. Passage money … It might be passage money to – over there. I don’t know.’
‘They took him over to Zagros?’
‘No. He’s buried here. But they seem to have spent a lot bringing … pragmata … goods, for the funeral.’
Obols, thought Selwyn, remembering the stories told by the schoolmaster on Zagros who complained that the neighbouring island was at least three thousand years behind the times. This could not be true, since even obols must, at some point during that interval, have been adopted as a newfangled notion.
The islanders returned to their end of the boat, which had by now rounded the cape of Zagros. A wide space of water between the two islands was now visible. Selwyn, feeling hungry, produced some bread and cheese which his companion refused to share. The proximity of the goat had turned Dr Challoner’s stomach.
‘When did Charon turn ferryman?’ asked Selwyn, munching. ‘Pretty late, wasn’t it? A good bit after Homer. Who was he originally?’
‘Death probably, or the messenger of death,’ said Challoner. ‘He’s often identified with Thanatos. Even as late as Bianor … Panta Charon apleste …’
‘Oh yes. I remember. Why did you grab young Attaus in such a hurry? He’d have been yours in the end, you know, even if he’d made old bones.’
This barbarous translation, the smell of the goat, and Selwyn’s manner of eating bread and cheese were too much for any civilized man. Dr Challoner fished a bottle of tablets out of his pocket and sucked one hastily.
Keritha drew nearer. It towered superbly over them as they ran in under its lower slopes. These were thickly wooded with chestnut, pine, and ilex.
‘No houses on this side,’ commented Selwyn with his mouth full. ‘Yes, there are though! Look! Smoke curling up above the trees. Circe’s Palace!’
One of the men, following their glances, shouted:
‘To Palati tou Frethi.’
‘Oh! It’s yours. It’s Freddie’s Palace.’
They passed a small headland and the house came into view. Its stately aspect, its graceful proportions, took them both by surprise. There were glimpses of bright spring flowers in sheets falling down the slopes to the sea. A deep cleft or ravine cut the mountain to the right of it; here they caught sight of water falling in a thin intermittent thread.
‘Must be a spring up there,’ commented Selwyn. ‘It’s all so green. Doesn’t look as if it ever dried up in the summer.’
‘I’m surprised,’ said Dr Challoner. ‘I hadn’t expected … I thought it was just built by the local people.’
‘It’s in the local style. White walls, red tiles … but he must have had taste, your uncle.’
‘Taste! He never heard of such a thing. A pure fluke, I suppose. Palace though!’ Dr Challoner tittered a little. ‘That’s coming it a bit strong.’
‘More like Plâs in Welsh, perhaps. Plâs Freddi.’
‘But that smoke! Potter! Somebody must be there. I thought nobody lived there now.’
Their companions, when questioned, said that Madam Eugenia lived there, and all the servants and the tax collector.
‘A tax collector!’ cried Dr Challoner in dismay, when this was translated. ‘What’s he doing there?’
‘I believe they only mean a foreigner,’ said Selwyn. ‘Come to think of it, the schoolmaster on Zagros told me they don’t call foreigners zanies on Keritha. They call them tax collectors. I dare say tax collectors are the only people who have ever bothered to go there, and they’ve generally been foreign.’
He put some further questions and reported:
‘She’s a female tax collector and she’s lived in Plâs Freddi for some years. A friend of The Lady. Your aunt, I suppose. Let’s hope she hasn’t pinched all the jewellery.’
Some such thought had already occurred to Dr Challoner but he considered the comment typical of Potter’s taste.
The house vanished behind the next headland. A flat little peninsula came into view. There were fields, olives, fruit blossom, scattered houses, a jetty and one or two boats. The whole population of Keritha seemed to be awaiting their arrival.
As they approached the jetty one of the men in the boat got up, pushed the goat aside, took a bottle of Coca-Cola out of a crate and flung it overboard, as though this were a piece of routine.
‘What did he do that for?’ asked Dr Challoner.
Selwyn would have liked to know, but inquiries were impossible. The exchange of shouts from ship to shore had struck up. It had reached a deafening volume by the time that they bumped against the jetty. The sexual prowess of the goat seemed to be the main theme of the moment but a good deal was said about the pious pilgrimage made by these two tax collectors to Milorthos Frethi’s grave.
The goat had to be landed first, an operation which took some time. Selwyn soothed his fretful companion and surveyed the population of Keritha. He had previously imagined the party in the boat to be all of one family, since they were curiously alike. Now he saw the same features everywhere and perceived the effect of inbreeding over many centuries. They had squarish faces and their eyes were abnormally wide apart, which stamped them with an expression at once innocent and sly. The candid brows, the wide-spaced eyes, seen full face, had a child-like effect. Seen in profile these eyes looked round the corner in a disturbing way. They might not, he supposed, make very much of what was happening under their noses, but they were unusually perceptive of anything behind their backs.
At length the goat was restored to his home ground and led off in triumph. Selwyn jumped
out of the boat. Dr Challoner was hauled out. There were more greetings – endless hand-shakings, after which they were conducted to a couple of donkeys.
‘Are we supposed to ride on these?’ asked Challoner reluctantly. ‘Where? Up to the house?’
‘No. To the grave, I think.’
‘You’ll have to, or your name will be mud on Keritha. Not one of them will ever lift a finger for you again.’
‘I don’t ask them to lift a finger for me.’
‘Yes, you do. You’ll want them to take you away from here. If they don’t, nobody will.’
‘Oh, very well. Which reminds me. We must pay those people who brought us over.’
‘I think not. Just now I believe we’re the guest of the island. Later on you might distribute some tactful largesse.’
With a shrug Dr Challoner mounted a donkey. It was so small that he had to curl his feet up, lest they trail on the ground. Then, catching sight of his suitcases on the jetty, he tried to dismount again.
‘They’ll be all right,’ Selwyn assured him.
‘These people … are they honest … Oo-ugh!’
The donkey, in response to a thwack from an old woman, started forward in a disconcerting trot.
All Keritha accompanied them as they took a rough track across a shoulder of the mountain. They jogged along amidst a torrent of square, wide-eyed faces, grey-beards, youths, withered crones, plump girls, skipping children, and babes in arms. Selwyn steadied himself on his donkey and shouted:
‘They’re terribly proud of this grave. When we get there we can’t gape like a couple of fishes. We shall be a ghastly flop if we don’t say something or do something.’
‘What will they expect?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘Do you know anything about their religion? Greek Orthodox?’
‘Not much. And I’ve a notion they aren’t orthodox so you’d notice it. I don’t suppose it matters much what we do, only we must make a ceremony of it. After all, we’re tax collectors. Nobody will be surprised if we act a bit funny. What about poetry? I’ll say a line or so, and you take it up. You can spout plenty. I’ve heard you.’
The Forgotten Smile Page 2