The Forgotten Smile

by Margaret Kennedy

  ‘But this isn’t a christening?’

  ‘Oh no. The priest won’t bring the font over here if he can help it. He thinks we’re heathens. Keritha babies generally get christened on Zagros, at some friend’s house, when they go over to be vaccinated. Freddie says they take out two insurance policies on the same trip.’

  ‘Oh? They’ve got round to being vaccinated?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Edith, rather offended. ‘They’re still very much afraid of small-pox. It used to be terrible. Even on Zagros they call it by the old name: Eulogia.’

  ‘Eu … good? Good talk?’

  ‘Well yes. It’s polite. When you’re frightened of anything it’s wise to speak politely about it. Like calling the Furies the Eumenides.’

  Meditating upon these polite words Kate was reminded of a riddle as yet unsolved in the Challoner household. She ventured upon a tentative inquiry about Eugenia.

  ‘She’s Freddie’s really,’ said Edith.

  ‘Mm?’ murmured Kate, uncertain how to take this.

  ‘When we came here, thirty-five years ago, Freddie was a young man. Mama didn’t think it right for him to live all alone so she sent for Eugenia, who is a sort of cousin.’

  ‘I see. And … er … it was a success?’

  ‘Oh yes. If it hadn’t been, Mama would have got her a husband and found him someone else.’

  ‘And she … just came trotting along when summoned?’

  ‘She was very pleased and proud to be chosen. She wasn’t pretty, but Mama said she was une bonne affaire and it takes more than a pretty face to satisfy a man.’

  Foreigners! thought Kate, and reproved herself for insularity.

  ‘Of course,’ continued Edith, ‘Mama taught her some things before she gave her to Freddie. Eugenia thought a hot bath unhealthy. She thought the water might soak through her skin and give her dropsy. But when Mama threatened to send her home again she gave in.’

  ‘And they never thought of getting married?’

  ‘Oh no. That would have upset everybody. Mama was the Lady here. When she died I was.’

  ‘How old is she? Eugenia?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not as old as she looks. All the women here are old crones by the time they’re thirty.’

  These revelations cast quite a new light upon Freddie, whom Kate had always supposed to be mouldering away in some secluded retreat, slightly abnormal, a mere shadow of a man. Poor Freddie indeed! thought she, as she panted up the hill. He doesn’t seem to have been poor Freddie at all.

  ‘But you, Edith,’ she said. ‘Hasn’t it been rather a lonely life for you here? Did you never want to get married?’

  ‘There was nobody here for me to marry, and I couldn’t have endured to go away. I’ve been very happy, really. The children … I loved the children so much.’

  ‘Children? You mean … Freddie and Eugenia …?’

  ‘Three. They had a little girl who died. It was very sad. Such a dear little girl. And two boys.’

  Edith sighed and paused.

  ‘Rest a little,’ suggested Kate. ‘You’re tired.’

  ‘I am. I don’t know why. Perhaps I have some illness that makes me tired.’

  They sat down under a tree and Kate, eyeing her friend uneasily, thought that the sooner the doctor in Thasos was consulted the better. These sudden spasms of exhaustion were disquieting.

  ‘And the sons?’ she asked. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Dead too. They went away to fight and the foreigners killed them.’

  ‘Both? Oh, Edith, how dreadful! How terribly sad!’

  ‘They were the Flowers of the Forest,’ said Edith.

  Her tone, a trifle cold, suggested that this calamity must be dissociated from Keritha. The sacrifice of youth was a foreign custom which had been imposed upon the world for centuries.

  ‘The prime of our land is cold in the clay,’ murmured Kate in sad agreement, thinking for an instant of a boy whom she had loved long before she met Douglas, poor gay Michael, killed in the spring of 1918. ‘That’s true everywhere.’

  ‘In any case,’ continued Edith, ‘they would have gone away and left us. War or no war. They were dromokopi – travellers. That was chosen when they were born. It would have been far sadder if they had been chosen to stay and been forced to go, and be buried far away from the earth where they belong. But we all knew they’d have to go. They grew up knowing it.’

  ‘Why should they? Who chose? Freddie?’

  ‘No. They chose for themselves really. It’s always done here. You see, Keritha is so small. Only very few people can live on it, or they’d starve. More children are born than can ever be allowed to stay. So it’s found out at once if a child is dromokopos, and then it’s brought up knowing it will have to go.’

  ‘How? How is it found out?’

  ‘Any time after the third night they take it and put it on a stone, up on the mountain. Naked. Freddie says the stone was an altar once. He thinks that once they just left it there for a night … two nights? And if it was still alive when they came back then it could stay of course. But now, if it cries they say it’s dromokopos. The ones who don’t cry are klisouriasmeni. That means stay-at-homes.’

  ‘I should think any child would cry, put suddenly on a cold stone.’

  ‘Most do. But then, most must go.’

  ‘Those who don’t can’t be very quick in the uptake.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s the dromokopi who’ve got to be quick in the uptake, fending for themselves in savage countries.’

  ‘Why? What countries do they go to?’

  ‘Oh, all over. England and America and places.’

  ‘Edith! Those aren’t savage countries.’

  Edith said nothing, and Kate reflected that the Challoners had been given no strong reasons for thinking England civilized.

  ‘And what happens,’ she asked, ‘if a stay-at-home, when it grows up, wants to travel, and a traveller wants to stay put?’

  ‘I never heard of a traveller who wanted to stay. Some go who ought to have stayed. Mama did. She should never have left Keritha. And I think that Freddie and I are klisouriasmeni, even though we were born in London.’

  ‘In any case, why can’t the children decide a thing like that when they reach the age of reason?’

  ‘When is the age of reason?’ marvelled Edith.

  ‘Or the child’s I Q could be taken.’

  Edith, it appeared, had never heard of I Q nor was she impressed by Kate’s elucidation.

  ‘You might just as well put a child on a stone to see if it has the sense to squall,’ she protested. ‘Freddie thinks the stone is a very good idea. He says most of the trouble in the world is caused by people who don’t like the place they’re in and can’t or won’t go away. So they try to change it and upset everybody.’

  ‘I must argue that point with Freddie.’

  ‘Oh no, you mustn’t.’

  ‘Mustn’t argue with Freddie?’

  ‘Nobody does. And he’ll say I oughtn’t to have told you about the stone or the Visitors or anything. He doesn’t want people to come here interfering and bringing changes.’

  ‘But, Edith! Change is necessary. It’s right. We shouldn’t resist it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s inevitable. Bound to come.’

  ‘I dare say. But that doesn’t mean it’s right or nice. So is death inevitable.’

  ‘Without change there can be no progress.’

  ‘Anyone here who likes progress will yell as soon as they get onto that stone. Then they go away and look for it somewhere else. The people who stay don’t want it. I’m rested now. Let’s go on.’

  As they toiled up the hill again Kate said:

  ‘But are they Christians? The people here?’

  ‘Certainly they are. They’re more Christian than the people in England are anyway. They don’t think Christ is somebody who was born and died ever so long ago. They think He’s here. They can’t see Him, but He’s good. The best pers
on they can imagine. He’s born every year and He dies every year, but He is so good that He’s stronger than death.’

  They were not the only guests at the farm. Baskets of little cakes were scattered everywhere amidst pecking poultry and ikons. The three-day-old baby lay swaddled on a cushion and his buxom mother darted about serving refreshments.

  Edith was received with respect and with an ease which Kate found unfamiliar. She was obviously the Lady of Keritha but nobody was awkward or shy with her. The scene flowed on, without flurry or bustle, like a well-rehearsed play. The actors said and did the expected things, harassed by no alternatives. People likely to introduce innovations, in the way of business or lines, had probably been eliminated by the rite of the stone.

  Maroulla, the baby’s mother, bowed low and handed glasses of brown liquid. Kate took one, wondering what island brew this might be. It tasted unfamiliar but agreeable.

  ‘What’s this?’ she whispered to Edith.

  ‘Coca-Cola.’

  6

  Freddie, for thirty-five years, had taken no orders from anybody. As she came to perceive this Kate began to see Keritha as a stronghold rather than an asylum.

  His manner was so mild, his voice so quiet, and his taste, in all the refinements of life, so pronounced that she found him hard to reconcile with her notion of a manly man, a type hitherto associated with loud noises, bluff manners, and no taste at all. Fanny had always contemptuously referred to him as ‘that born pansy’. His schoolmates had made life hell for him because he was so unlike themselves. Yet, speculating upon their lot, compared with his, she reached some surprising conclusions. They were now, in all probability, picking their cautious way through middle age, agreeing with their wives, contradicted by their children, and bullied by their servants, supposing them to have any. At home or abroad, they were continually taking orders, continually receiving instructions, set up for their guidance in public places. They were commanded to keep Britain tidy, their dogs on a lead, and death off the roads; to shut gates and to exterminate the Colorado beetle; to travel by rail, avoid the rush hour, and tender the exact fare; to fill up and return the enclosed form, to be immunized against diphtheria, to sneeze into a pocket handkerchief, and to wash their hands.

  She had become inured to this civilized regimentation. She believed it to be necessary, yet a short sojourn on Keritha led her to wonder whether it might not, in some degree, diminish the manliness of a man. For his own good, perhaps, he must be forced to shrink a little – to forgo his natural stature. This, certainly, had been the creed of all the Mortimers and all the Naylers. She had never quite accepted it, and it now struck her that a world full of little notices and printed commands might indicate a world increasingly dominated by women.

  Some facts about Freddie quite shocked her. His ethical code, though strict, was dismayingly unfamiliar. He observed duties towards other people, and considered their rights, but these were not rights and duties of which he could have heard very much at his English Public School. One day, when teasing Edith over the Challoner habit of giving a bath and a meal to any newcomer before asking why he came, she inquired whether a German, turning up during the war, would have received this ritual welcome.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Edith. ‘One came, actually. He’d been landed here secretly … but he was caught and brought here. Freddie gave him a bath and supper and next day invited him to fight it out with knives. Freddie won. He’s quick with a knife. We buried the German in the orchard.’

  ‘Freddie killed him?’

  ‘He was an enemy.’

  ‘Supposing he’d killed Freddie?’

  ‘That wouldn’t have been so nice for him. Our people would have killed him then, in some very cruel way.’

  ‘Then what was the point of fighting it out?’

  ‘He deserved it. He was a brave boy, even if he was an enemy. He deserved to get a chance of taking Freddie along with him.’

  ‘I suppose he was a spy really. Was he in uniform?’

  ‘No. He was disguised to look like somebody from the islands. He talked Greek quite well.’

  ‘Then he could have been shot by a firing squad.’

  ‘Unarmed? That would have been very disgusting.’

  ‘What did he come for? There’s nothing here.’

  ‘Oh, just to make sure there was nothing, I suppose.’

  By the end of her visit Kate had thoroughly accepted the fact that Freddie must not be gainsaid, although she strongly disapproved of his plan to take Edith with them to Thasos. A doctor should be summoned to Keritha; Freddie’s prejudice against strangers amounted almost to mania. Poor Edith was in no condition to set off on a sea trip in an open boat at five o’clock in the morning.

  ‘I’m only so thankful he doesn’t say I must go to Athens,’ said Edith. ‘I know he’d rather, and it would be much more tiring. The doctor on Thasos is a very inquisitive man. He’s always asking stupid questions.’

  ‘Doctors have to ask questions.’

  ‘Oh, not about illness. Just impertinent curiosity; about the stone and things like that. Anyway, I shall be quite all right. Eugenia is coming. After I’ve seen the doctor she’ll take me to rest at a house there, a friend of hers, before we start back.’

  At dawn next day they all set off. Edith, who seemed to be quite exhausted, lay with her head in Eugenia’s lap.

  ‘The Latona,’ murmured Kate to Freddie, ‘won’t be sailing till this afternoon. I shall be able to hear what the doctor thinks of Edith before I go. Is there a hospital on Thasos, supposing …?’

  ‘If she needs hospital treatment immediately,’ said Freddie, ‘I shall hire a fast boat and rush her off to some place where she can get first-rate attention. I know where I can get a boat on Thasos if necessary.’

  ‘Where is the nearest? Athens or Istanbul?’

  ‘Istanbul is in Turkey,’ said Freddie coldly.

  ‘But the Turks are quite good doctors, aren’t they?’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea.’

  They were interrupted by an exclamation from Eugenia. She was smiling and pointing out to sea. Yorgos, who was running the engine, also pointed. About fifty yards away a silver wheel turned amidst the glittering waves. It turned again … and again …

  ‘Dolphins,’ explained Freddie.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Kate. ‘And look! There are some more on the other side of us. We’re all in the middle of them.’

  Dolphins leapt and turned all round them, as though escorting them on their journey. Edith raised a wan face to smile at them. Eugenia leant over her and whispered something.

  ‘She says this is a lucky journey,’ reported Edith. ‘We shall all five get back safely.’

  ‘Tell her I wish I was coming back,’ said Kate.

  Edith translated and then reported again:

  ‘She says you must come back. You’ll be in danger if you don’t.’

  ‘How on earth does she know that?’

  ‘The hens say so,’ observed Freddie impatiently. ‘It all depends on the way they turn their heads when they cluck in the morning.’

  ‘What useful hens!’

  ‘They are indeed. Quite a third of what they say comes true.’

  Once they were round Zagros the dolphin escort fell away. Keritha dwindled to a mountain peak, sticking up behind the lower island.

  Kate felt sleepy and reluctant to relinquish the repose of the last few days. Now nothing but the bright sea lay between herself and Thasos and the Latona and … the anodyne of Keritha was wearing off. The world would soon be with her. She could hear its voice already in the hum of a plane flying low on the horizon.

  ‘That’s one of the best things about Keritha,’ said she. ‘You never hear planes, not even in the distance. There’s hardly any place now in Europe where you can get away from them. No spot so lonely.’

  ‘They never fly very near to us,’ said Freddie.

  ‘I suppose it’s not on the direct route to anywhere. But that’s a rare thing now, a
n absolutely empty sky.’

  As she said this she was struck by the thought that empty was not a good adjective for the benign sky over Keritha. She added:

  ‘As empty as it always used to be, I mean.’

  ‘Used it to be always empty?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘Well … there were no men in it.’

  ‘No. No men. In other respects it might now be thought emptier than it used to be.’

  Thasos rose out of the sea. It took on colour and detail. She scanned a pretty, hilly island, a little town, a harbour. Of the Latona there was no sign. If the wretched boat failed to turn up on the appointed day a night might, perforce, be spent on Thasos. There was enough currency in the bucket bag for that, although all the maids on Keritha had received lavish tips. A present for Eugenia was not quite so simple. When the Latona put in at Athens Kate meant to buy, and post, a nice leather purse.

  They reached port and moored. Freddie cast an imperious eye round the harbour upon which a decrepit kind of taxi appeared. The Challoners and Eugenia drove off in it to the doctor’s house, leaving Yorgos in charge of Kate’s suitcase. There were ruins upon the hill, which she was advised to inspect, and Freddie recommended a winged horse in the museum.

  The hill walk was pretty. She might have thought Thasos a delightful place had she not come from Keritha. Picking her way down the steep hill back to the town, she decided that the smaller island had something more alive about it. This one, in comparison, was comatose – a mere collection of animate and semi-animate objects, trees, earth, stones, dust, sea, and sky, amidst which human beings went listlessly about their tasks.

  ‘Getting and spending,’ she thought impatiently, as she paused to look at the Holy Bird outside the museum. It struck her as, in a way, an appropriate monument; once it might have breathed life and meaning; now it was so worn away that it meant nothing at all. Keritha, she felt, had not been worn away.

  The winged horse was better and had a faint look of Edith. The lower part of the nose was gone and the shortened head, gracefully bowed on a long neck with a stylized mane, caught the pose of Edith, ‘the statue’, sitting patiently in class. A pang of affection and anxiety assailed Kate. What had the doctor said? Freddie had agreed to meet her in the museum garden as soon as he had deposited Edith for her siesta in the house of Eugenia’s friend. She hurried out and found him standing by the Holy Bird. He looked as calm as ever. It was impossible to tell, from his face, whether the news was good or bad.