If the ridicule showered upon Edith by pupils and teachers alike had been inhumane, their victim’s inability to avoid it, her indifferent acceptance of the role of school freak, had been exasperating. Anybody else, considered Kate, would have made more concession to appearances, would have discarded the black pinny, would have puffed her hair out at the side with combs, as fashion then dictated, instead of pulling it straight back over her square skull. Edith might have tried to walk, stand, and sit as the herd did. Every gesture was alien. She accepted her mid-morning glass of milk, dispensed by Matron through a hatch, with a deep bow. On the very first day this bow caused titters in the milk queue. Yet she repeated it until forbidden to do so any more by Kate. She walked into Prayers as though taking part in some genuine religious procession. Her posture in class was so abnormally still that it earned her the nickname of ‘The Statue’. Her answers were not merely wrong, but fantastic. Kate recalled a history mistress, a Miss Bynion, who had been fool enough to demand from Edith some comment on the battle of Hastings. After her long, customary pause, Edith exclaimed, her black eyes flashing:
‘The Conqueror was a savage man from the north. After the battle he made a feast and a harper called Taillefer sang to him about “Karlomain, et Roland, et ses vassals qui moururent à Roncesvalles”. Those people were French and the Norman liked to hear how the French had lost a battle. He didn’t want a song about victory. Only defeat. Savage people can’t really win victories because they don’t know how to enjoy themselves.’
Miss Bynion, to whom all this was possibly news, said:
‘Thank you, Edith. That may be very interesting but it won’t get you through Matric.’
Edith, in the end, never took Matric. She departed to a convent. Her parents abandoned the Addison Road for South America where her father pursued, for some years, some wild-goose chase up the Amazon. She became, in retrospect, ‘poor Edith’, but her pathos grew less poignant as Kate learnt to be more mundane. Poor Edith, so it appeared, was very rich – an heiress.
Freddie, too, was remembered with less compassion as his wealth came to be understood. His persecution had been more severe than Edith’s since non-conformity is always more heavily visited upon a boy. He was debagged, flung into rivers; his precious collection of gramophone records was systematically broken and methylated spirit was put into his tea. Not a word did he say about this purgatory but at one point, when about fourteen, he had rebelled. It was a drama which never reached the ears of the Mortimers although the servants in both households knew of it and of the sufferings which had driven him to revolt. Kate learnt of it long afterwards, from old Nanny Mortimer, grown garrulous in old age.
‘Tried to hang himself. They cut him down and brought him round and his father gave him the choice of going back to school or a lunatic asylum for life. He chose school. Of course nobody had heard of Dr Frood then. If it was now they’d have sent him to Harley Street to get adjusted. But even Dr Frood would have had a job to adjust those Challoners.’
By that time poor Edith and poor Freddie had become rich freaks, who could afford to buy themselves some safe retreat in the company of people who would not, at least, mock them to their faces. So Kate had supposed for the last forty years and she had been quite right. Keritha must have been an excellent solution.
Climbing reluctantly out of the bath she wrapped herself in a towel and wandered to the window. Edith and Freddie were just finishing an earnest conversation in the garden below. Edith went back into the house and Freddie shouted:
‘Yorgos!’
A young boy appeared to whom Freddie gave a brief order. Yorgos scampered off towards the village, grinning broadly, as though delighted with his errand. Kate had an impression that it was connected with Edith’s tidings and the presence of the Latona.
She dressed again and went downstairs. Her hosts were waiting for her in the hall. Freddie had put on a crisp linen suit. Seeing them thus a second time, no longer dazzled by surprise, she noted a change in them both. They had become immensely dignified. In former days, they had never, for all their sufferings, lacked dignity of a sort. It was implicit in their imperviousness to mockery, their silent stoicism, their freedom from resentment or anxiety. They wore it like some tattered cloak of stately antecedents. Now it clothed them royally and silenced some slightly patronizing praise of their house which she had been about to offer.
In the dining-room a shrivelled old woman with something of the same dignity was giving directions to two young maids. Freddie said something to her, upon which she bowed very low to Kate.
‘Eugenia,’ he explained.
Kate bowed back, wondering if she ought not to have shaken hands. Eugenia seemed to be something more than an upper servant. As soon as they were seated she left the room.
The meal was delicious. It began with soup so good that Kate felt impelled to eat it in silence, since failure to offer it her whole attention almost amounted to a slight. She had enjoyed no meal since leaving Edwardes Square, and began to wonder if even the doves at Keritha would accept those nasty sandwiches in her picnic bag.
With the arrival of the mullet she was about to give an account of her cruise when Freddie began to talk of wine. He regretted that his own vineyard produced nothing save red wine, which would not do with fish. She should have some of it later, with cheese. The islanders, he said, had never exported their wine; it was merely produced for their own consumption and the younger people now preferred to drink Coca-Cola, whenever they could afford it.
‘That American drink?’ said Kate disapprovingly. ‘What a pity!’
‘Don’t you like it?’ asked Edith.
‘I’ve never tasted it.’
‘Then why is it a pity?’
‘It seems so … so mass produced. Their own wine surely …’
‘Their own wine,’ said Freddie, ‘is very nasty. I won’t disturb your digestion by telling you what they put into it to promote fermentation.’
Whenever Kate tried to mention the cruise he firmly steered the conversation away to some other topic. Unpleasant subjects, it seemed, were not discussed at Keritha during a meal. Kate began to find him a little formidable. She thought that she had never seen a man so unquestionably master in his own house.
After fruit and cheese they went out to a shady corner of the terrace for coffee. As soon as Kate had got her Kümmel he said:
‘Now! Tell us how you got here.’
‘This cruise,’ Kate assured them, ‘is very unlikely ever to come again. It’s appallingly organized. Everybody is most discontented. I should think the firm will go bankrupt quite soon.’
‘What sort of people are they?’ asked Edith unhappily. ‘What do they want to find out?’
‘Nothing. There’s nothing here to find out, is there?’
‘So what are they doing?’ asked Freddie.
‘Some of them are climbing the mountain and some are bathing.’
‘Where are they bathing?’
When she described the bathing beach the Challoners exchanged glances.
‘What a good thing you didn’t bathe,’ murmured Edith.
‘Yes. Isn’t it? I was strongly tempted, it looked such a nice place. But if I had I shouldn’t have come up here. I’d have gone away without ever knowing you lived here. Whatever you may say about chance, Edith, it’s very strange.’
‘What,’ asked Freddie, ‘did Edith say about chance?’
‘She says most things happen by chance. I don’t agree.’
‘You don’t? Since when?’
‘I’ve always thought we make things happen.’
‘No. Not always.’
He got up and went into the house.
‘When you go back,’ said Edith, ‘Freddie will take you in our boat. It will be better than walking. We have a little quay and a boat house just down below here.’
‘Oh, he mustn’t bother. It’s a very pleasant walk, and nothing when it’s down hill.’
‘It mightn’t be so pleasant
going back. I’m sure he’ll say you must.’
‘Edith! Is there anything against the bathing here?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On chance,’ said Edith, with one of her sudden, disconcerting fits of laughter.
‘I can’t help feeling it wasn’t chance that brought me up here. I hadn’t in the least expected to see you, yet when I did I wasn’t all that surprised. Perhaps the name Keritha registered subconsciously. You must have talked about Keritha in the old days, although I’ve quite forgotten whether you did. I don’t say that we make things happen, but something in ourselves is always pushing us along a certain path, whether we know it or not. Part of me remembered and came looking for you. My coming today was settled fifty years ago, when we were children in London!’
‘The people here,’ said Edith, ‘would say that it was all written on your face when you were only three days old. On the third night after a baby is born they leave the door open and tie the dogs up and put food and drink on the table. Three of Them come. One gives good luck and the other bad luck, and the third decides how long the child is to live. So it’s not much use worrying about anything.’
‘But, Edith! Who on earth are They supposed to be? Surely …’
‘Ssh! There’s Freddie coming back.’
Freddie returned with a large notebook.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Here’s a poem about Chance. It’s meant to make you think of a wheel going round, and some spokes coming up before the others are gone.’
He read:
‘The turning earth
Is my domain,
And human gain
Is little worth,
Nor any pain
Endured for long,
Nor any wrong
In full repaid.
My wheel is stayed
To cheat the strong,
By me betrayed.
My wheel I turn
So cities burn,
And lizards sleep
Mid stubborn fern
On tower and keep.
The starveling sheep
A peasant calls
To flee the cold
In nameless halls,
Where royal walls
Provide a fold
O’er buried gold
That’s nothing worth –
Since I ordain
Or halt the pain
Of turning earth.’
‘I seem to remember that,’ said Kate slowly. ‘But I can’t place it. Didn’t we read it long ago when we were children?’
‘Why, Kate,’ cried Edith, ‘you and Freddie made it up! There was a prize offered in a newspaper for a poem on Chance, and you competed for it. Have you quite forgotten?’
‘I remember that Freddie used to write poetry.’
‘You made up that one together. He thought of the wheel shape. You thought of a lot of the words. He put: Stop the pain. And you said: No. Halt the pain. It didn’t get the prize though.’
‘You sat on the garden wall,’ said Freddie, ‘with all your red hair flying down your back, and said: Not stop … halt.’
‘I remember,’ said Kate, and began suddenly to cry, greatly to her own surprise.
Her hosts observed her with calm compassion. Freddie gave her some more Kümmel.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she apologized, mopping her eyes. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’
‘You feel sad,’ observed Edith. ‘One often does when one thinks of old times. It’s natural to cry when one feels sad.’
‘I believe it’s this abominable cruise,’ declared Kate. ‘I’m so tired. So exhausted.’
At her description of it they both exclaimed in horror. Edith immediately urged her to abandon it and to stay with them on Keritha. This invitation was seconded by Freddie, after a moment of almost imperceptible hesitation. Kate explained that she could not afford to lose her cruise passage home, upon which they asked if the Latona was going south again immediately. If not, could she not stay with them for a few days and rejoin the cruise at some later point?
‘It’s going up through the Dardanelles to the Black Sea next,’ said Kate. ‘And on the way back it’s calling at an island called Thasos. We collect mail there.’
‘Thasos,’ Freddie assured her, ‘is quite an easy trip from here. We’ll run over in time to catch your horrid ship again.’
After a formal demur she accepted, unable to reject the chance of escape from the garlic, the crowds, the noise, and the endemic bad temper on the Latona. Two or three days in this tranquil, uninquisitive company, lying in hot baths and eating delicious food, might steady her nerves. She finished her Kümmel and Freddie took her down to the boat below the house. He would run her round to the Latona, where she might pack a suitcase and explain her plans to the cruise office, and then he would bring her back again.
‘I want to take Edith over to Thasos soon, in any case,’ he said as they sped westward. ‘She hasn’t been well lately. I think she should see a doctor.’
‘Is there no doctor nearer than Thasos? What happens to people on Keritha if they get ill?’
‘They get better or they die.’
‘They must die rather often.’
‘Not oftener than people on the mainland. Everybody dies just the once.’
‘They must die sooner than they need.’
‘How soon need people die?’
‘I understand,’ she said smiling, ‘that it might have been written on our faces when we were three days old.’
At his startled look she added:
‘Edith was telling me about it. Is it only on Keritha they believe it?’
‘Oh no,’ he said frowning. ‘There’s the same ceremony on Zagros. Only there they have names: Christ, his Mother, and John the Baptist. Here we just call them The Visitors.’
‘It looks rather dull, Zagros. No trees. This is much prettier.’
‘Zagros had plenty of trees once. So had a lot of the islands. They weren’t always so bare. There used to be springs and groves. But nothing will grow where the Turks have been.’
‘I knew they deforested most of the land. But they didn’t dry up the springs, surely?’
‘Maybe not. Perhaps the springs dried up at the mere sight of them.’
She remembered that Freddie and Edith had always spoken of the Turks as though the very word might have some malign and blasting influence. It would be of no use to argue, or to suggest that some volcanic or geographical change might also be responsible for this prevailing aridity.
‘Then Keritha,’ she said, ‘is a sort of survival of the older landscape? What has saved it? How did it escape?’
‘Foreigners never come here.’
‘Why not? When it’s so pretty?’
He did not answer. They were running in under a rickety companionway slung over the side of the Latona. She scrambled up to the deck. The island, when she turned to survey it, seemed to be no longer ant infested. Nobody was to be seen on the bathing beach or on the mountain slope. The ship was full of noise and agitation as though most of the passengers had re-embarked. Miss Shepheard, who seldom bothered to land anywhere, lay somnolent in a deck-chair.
‘Back safely?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Nobody else is. They’re all lining up for the doctor.’
‘What happened?’
‘What didn’t happen! Bees! This island is swarming with them. Stinging like mad. And sea urchins! Hardly any of the bathers can walk. Some can’t sit. Doctor is digging out the prickles. Thank goodness I didn’t go ashore. But what about you?’
Kate’s story, and her decision to stay, were received with dismay.
‘I wouldn’t if I were you. They say these things are chance … but … Keritha doesn’t seem to like strangers.’
Edith’s laughter, Edith’s warning that the walk home might not be pleasant, recurred to Kate. There had been, moreover, that atmospher
e of uneasiness beside the waterfall.
‘Mrs Carter,’ said Miss Shepheard, ‘says there’s an Influence. She’s psychic, you know.’
‘Oh rubbish! She says she’s psychic.’
‘She can’t be very,’ agreed Miss Shepheard, ‘or she’d have spotted the Influence before she sat on a sea urchin. But honestly, I wouldn’t spend a night here for any money.’
And what, wondered Kate, had Yorgos been up to, when he ran off grinning with a message from Freddie?
‘I shall be all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve been invited.’
5
For thirty-six hours she dawdled on the terrace, ate, slept, listened to Freddie’s gramophone, slept, ate, and dawdled on the terrace. Never in her life had she come so near to complete relaxation. The misery in which she had arrived was not, of course, dispelled; it had merely moved away to an endurable distance. Still aware of it in the offing she was able to ignore it. Life on Keritha provided a powerful anodyne.
Sometime the struggle must be resumed. She must scan and control her bitterness, and consider whether anything at all could be done to rescue Andrew from his latest folly. She must credit Douglas with a genuine wish to spare her on her holiday, mixed though his motives might have been. She must laugh off Bridie’s dramatic fantasy and Brian’s criticisms. She must believe that even Pamela might have been actuated by kindly, if mistaken, intentions. Everybody concerned must be permitted to behave very naturally; she herself must soar to unnatural heights of selfless tolerance, and there would be time enough to do all this when she got back to the Latona.
On the second day Edith took her up the hill to the home-farm where a new-born baby, great-nephew to Eugenia apparently, was holding court. They carried presents with them: spiced cakes, honey, a holy medal and a knitted shawl.
‘Don’t look at the baby too much,’ warned Edith. ‘And of course don’t praise it. But you needn’t spit. Some people do, but we’ve never relied much on spitting here. Zagros! You should see a christening on Zagros. Everybody spitting at everybody else and shouting and dancing round the font. The baby gets the best of it because it’s under water. They’re very religious on Zagros.’
The Forgotten Smile Page 7