The Widow's Cruise

by Nicholas Blake

  “Gracious!” said Clare after an awed silence. “She doesn’t seem to like him, does she?”

  “She’s given chapter and verse for all her criticisms, earlier on.”

  “Well, if somebody said that about my work, I’d kill her.”

  II

  By eight o’clock that morning the Menelaos had anchored off Delos, and caïques were waiting to take the passengers ashore. There was an excited feeling of anticipation in the air: the passengers had loosened up, no longer exchanging formal introductions before they talked to strangers. Only the French contingent, forming as ever a sort of splinter-group, waited on the promenade-deck in a cluster and maintained an insular detachment. Nigel and Clare, near the head of the gangway, would be among the first to get off.

  “Good morning, good morning,” cried Mr Bentinck-Jones, pushing his way up to them. “We’re lucky in our weather. It’s often too rough to disembark here, you know.”

  A sailor handed a landing-card to each passenger, and soon they were chugging their way in a crowded motor-caïque to the quay.

  “What’s this? A reception committee?”

  All along the quay figures could be seen, who presently resolved themselves into men, women and children displaying their wares—bright-coloured scarves, nuts, trinkets, rough-woven shirts and shopping bags. The sun was beating down fiercely on the tree-less island: the water beside the quay looked cool and deep green. Nigel noticed the Bishop of Solway purchasing and putting on a shirt of turquoise and white horizontal stripes, which gave him a remarkably piratical appearance.

  Having run the gauntlet of the island traders, the passengers straggled away from the sea towards the sites of the two cities, Greek and Roman, which covered the ground, almost as far as eye could see, with a litter of masonry. Lizards baked on the stones, skittering away into crannies when a footstep came too near. The parched brown grass rasped against one’s shoes, and it was hard to believe that in springtime the island is thick with flowers.

  Nikki now jumped up on a marble slab, and made a traffic-policeman’s gesture. Most of the party gathering round, and the stragglers at last arriving, Nikki announced through his hand-megaphone that two brief talks would now be given. The celebrated British savant, Mr. Jeremy Street, would talk about the mythological significance of Delos, and Professor George Greenbaum, of Yale University, would then speak on the archæological aspects. After this, the party would split up into small groups, which would be conducted over the site by the Greek guides.

  The travellers disposed themselves as best they could, wherever a declivity or a broken pillar promised some shade. Jeremy Street, hatless, in royal-blue linen trousers and a pale-blue shirt, stood on the slab waiting for them to settle. He had waved aside the megaphone which Nikki proferred.

  Whatever might be his defects as a scholar and a translator, it at once became evident that Jeremy Street was an exceptionally good lecturer. His voice carried clearly to the outer fringes of the crowd. He spoke without notes, without confusing digressions, without a trace of self-consciousness. One could admire his technique, thought Nigel, as one admired the phrasing of a first-rate professional singer, because it was masterly yet did not call attention to itself.

  “We are on the Sacred Island,” he began, “the legendary birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. Legend is an attempt of pre-scientific man to explain the world to himself, to solicit or appease the mysterious powers of nature. What did that many-sided deity, Apollo, represent to those who first, out of their fears, their needs and their aspirations, created him?”. . . .

  As the charming, resonant voice went on, Nigel glanced round the scattered audience. They were clearly spellbound. Only Ianthe Ambrose, sitting huddled up with her back against a mound, struck a discordant note. She was tweaking at a piece of wiry grass beside her, a sour and sceptical look on her face: perhaps it was the result of having just read her blistering article on Street’s Medea, but Nigel got the impression of something more positive than scepticism—it was jealousy that lay barely concealed behind her sullen yet attentive expression; or was a remorseless hostility waiting in ambush there? He suddenly dreaded that she was going to make a scene, make some virulent attack upon the lecturer.

  But, on this occasion, Ianthe Ambrose held her fire. Jeremy Street ended, was loudly applauded, and gave way to the American professor. During the latter’s discourse, Nigel noticed Jeremy Street quietly perch himself on a piece of pavement close to the blonde Faith Trubody, who looked up at him with an expression of shy but near-idolatrous admiration. It was noticeable, too, that when the audience split up into smaller groups, Street accompanied Faith and her father towards the Hall of the Bulls. Mr Bentinck-Jones, who had started in another group, soon moved away from it and tagged on to them, talking assiduously.

  “Poor little man, he doesn’t like to feel left out of anything,” Clare remarked. “Well, I’m going to concentrate on the lions.”

  Nigel knew from her tone that she wanted to be by herself for a while. So they arranged to meet at midday outside the café adjoining the museum, and struck off on separate paths. Nigel trailed along with the party that included Street and the Trubodys, visiting the Roman quarter, admiring the mosaic floor depicting Dionysus on a tiger, and then making his way up the stony track which led to Apollo’s cave on Mount Kynthos. Half-way up, he saw Melissa Blaydon sitting alone on a rock. She signalled to him, and he went over to her.

  “I’ve done an idiotic thing,” she said; “broken my shoelace. You haven’t got a piece of string?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, I must just sit here till help comes,” she remarked cheerfully. It was odd, he thought, the way this mondaine creature looked as perfectly at home here as a lizard: her brown skin absorbed the fierce sunshine; she radiated vitality, but also a kind of coolness far more provocative than the stock female devices for attracting attention. She is Artemis, he thought, but what she hunts is men. Looking round, he realised that he was quite alone with her on the hillside.

  “Perhaps if we picked some of these long wiry grass-stems and plaited them, we could make a temporary shoelace?”

  “Oh, what a resourceful man!” Melissa’s eyes—greenish-brown, with gold flecks in one of them—dwelt lingeringly upon his. “Well, to work.”

  As he pulled the grass and she plaited it, she explained that her sister had not felt up to climbing the hill.

  “I do hope this cruise will do her good.”

  “Yes. I’m rather worried about her. She seemed well over the worst before we started, and the doctor said it’d be quite all right for her to come. But—” Melissa’s deep voice trailed away.

  “But she’s having a bit of a relapse?”

  “I’m afraid so. Last night, after we left you, she got into a dreadful state—well, you know, saying she couldn’t stand it any more—her loneliness—nothing worth living for.”

  “But she has you. You’re extraordinarily patient and unselfish with her.”

  “Me? Unselfish?” Melissa laughed harshly. “My dear man, I’m about as selfish as any woman living. I’d not seen Ianthe for years. She and I never really hit it off, from the cradle. When I got the cable saying she was seriously ill, I flew from the Bahamas. But that, and bringing her on this cruise—well, I suppose it was just because I felt guilty for having neglected her so long. And for living among the flesh-pots while she had to grind away at school.”

  “She’s got a brilliant intelligence, I’d say.”

  “Oh yes, I suppose so.”

  “Why did the school sack her? Surely not for having a nervous breakdown.”

  “I don’t know,” said Melissa vaguely. “There was some row, I believe. They’re a lot of catty old virgins, these schoolmistresses. Ianthe has taught at several schools. I expect they’re jealous because she’s so much cleverer than they are. And I dare say—” Melissa gave him her lop-sided smile—“she let them know it.”

  “Well, I still think you’re very good to he
r.”

  “Of course Ianthe’s always been mad keen to visit Greece. All these ruins and things are wasted on me. I only hope she won’t be distracted from them.”

  “Distracted?”

  Melissa turned her head away. “She feels she must play gooseberry to me. I’m a year older than Ianthe actually: but she sort of invilig—what’s the word?”

  “Invigilates?”

  “Yes, invigilates me, poor sweet.” Melissa gazed at Nigel, her red lips parted. “I seem to be unbosoming to you an awful lot. Does everyone?”

  “Absolutely everyone.”

  Melissa laughed. “Yet you don’t seem a bit nosey—not like that Bentinck-Jones creature. Oh dear, here comes another horde of cultural pilgrims.”

  They talked a bit longer about Ianthe. Then Melissa, who had finished plaiting the grasses, threaded them through the eyeholes of her shoe. She arched a brown, pretty foot at Nigel, for him to put the shoe on.

  “You’d better go easy with this. I don’t know how long it will hold,” said Nigel, gingerly knotting the grass-plait.

  “Walk down the hill with me, then. And if it breaks, you can support my feeble frame the rest of the way.”

  Melissa Blaydon evidently took it for granted that any man would alter his plans to suit her: she could hardly have forgotten that Nigel had been walking up the hill when they met. Yes, she’s a ‘spoilt’ woman, but this calm assumption that everyone will love to dance attendance on her is somehow quite inoffensive, thought Nigel.

  This thought prompted him to say, as they descended the stony track, “I imagine you had a very good relationship with your father.”

  “Yes, I did. But how——?”

  “And your sister didn’t?”

  Melissa made no reply. A strange look, both rueful and fretful, came over her face, shutting her away from him. Stumbling over a stone, she clutched his arm: the contact sent a sort of instantaneous flash right through his body.

  “You’re not offended?” he asked.

  Still not looking at him, Melissa exclaimed. “Why can’t one just be allowed to be happy, if that’s one’s nature?”

  III

  Clare, meanwhile, was concentrating on the lions. She had picked her way among the tumbled masonry, past a headless female figure in voluminous draperies, with her right arm, apparently, in a sling, beyond which a tall, four-pillared portico—all that was left of a temple—commanded the skyline. Columns, single or in groups, sprouted all over the site, a petrified forest blinding white in the glare of the sun. Near the Sacred Lake sat the five lions on their plinths. Their flat heads and gaping jaws, eroded by centuries of storm, gave them the appearance of sea-lions: but the powerful forepaws on which they were propped, and the crouching strength of the haunches, had an almost naturalistic truth.

  Had the man who carved them ever seen a lion? Clare wondered.

  They sat there in a row, guardians, confident but alert, waiting—or so it struck Clare—for something to happen. They had waited a long time, in their calm, archaic poses. She singled out one of the lions, and directed all her attention upon it. The slightly curving diagonal line of the back, from head to tail—could one aim at that sort of simplicity nowadays without falling into a self-conscious primitivism?

  As Clare intensely scrutinised the lion, its simple strength seemed to pass into her. She felt refreshed, reinvigorated, and wonderfully sleepy. Moving into the shadow of a wall nearby, she lay down and fell asleep.

  She was awoken by voices that, through the daze of sleep, sounded unnaturally loud.

  “. . . don’t intend to discuss the matter with you.”

  “I’m sorry, but you’ve got to.”

  “Are you threatening me? How dare you talk to me like this?”

  “You know that my sister was very ill after—. She had brain-fever. If she had died, it would have been your responsibility.”

  “That of course is ridiculous. I’m sorry to hear about her illness, but——”

  “You made a vile accusation against her, and she was expelled. I happen to be very fond of Faith. She told me the whole story.”

  “Your loyalty does you credit. But it doesn’t seem to occur to you that Faith might have made up whatever story she told you: we never found her very reliable, I’m afraid, where the truth was concerned.” Ianthe Ambrose’s voice was firm and cool, but there was a jagged edge to it.

  “It wasn’t just what you accused her of. You’d been picking on her all that term, though God knows why—she was supposed to be your favourite pupil before that. It’s a wonder you didn’t drive her to suicide.”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks! She was a clever girl, certainly. Scholarship standard. But we’d always found her rather unbalanced and rather deceitful. She was caught cheating—using test papers she had stolen from my room. On top of that, she was grossly insolent to me before the whole class. Those are the facts.”

  “I beg your pardon. That is your version of the facts. Faith’s version is that you—you framed her.”

  Peter Trubody’s young voice rose higher, and what he went on to say sounded all the more horrible for being uttered in the same clipped, refined, gobbling public-school accent.

  “—framed her because you’d—” he plunged at it desperately—“you’d made advances to her and she wasn’t having any of that.”

  There was a moment of absolute silence. Then Clare heard a violent crack. Miss Ambrose had slapped Peter’s face.

  “You’ll regret this,” the boy said presently, his voice quite low again, but still with the absurdly pompous senior-prefect’s intonation. “You see, I’m determined to clear Faith’s name.”

  “Don’t talk like a novelette.”

  “I know you’re very clever and all that. But the truth always wins, in the end. No, you’re not going yet. I shall take steps to see things put right, and you will not find the process very pleasant. It would be simplest all round if you wrote a confession——”

  “This is utterly grotesque!”

  “If you don’t, you’ll find that other people can be just as as vindictive as you. I’m warning you.”

  “Let me go at once!”

  “Not till—. Does your sister know why you were sacked from the school last term? Oh yes, a friend of Faith’s wrote to her about it. She said——”

  “If you don’t let go of me this instant, I’ll call for help.” Ianthe’s voice wobbled on the edge of hysteria.

  “I bet you will,” said Peter contemptuously. “And accuse me of trying to rape you or something. Another false accusation. You’re pretty handy with them, aren’t you, Miss Ambrose? Very well, you can go now.” The boy spoke like a prefect who has just ticked off a fag. “But I’d advise you to remember what I’ve said. You’re going to pay for what you did to Faith. One way or another.”

  There was a noise of feet scrabbling on stones. A few sobbing breaths came from Ianthe. Peering round the end of the wall, Clare saw her and Peter Trubody move away in different directions, Ianthe stumbling among the stones. Clare also noticed the figure of Primrose Chalmers emerge from behind the nearest lion: the child was putting her notebook and pen into the sporran: the expression on her face was both complacent and puzzled, as if an entomologist had netted some exquisite but unidentifiable moth.

  When she got up from the shadow of the wall, the meridian sun struck down at Clare’s head like a hammer. But it was not the sun which made her feel sick.

  Nigel was awaiting her outside the café. After disposing of an ice-cold orangeade, she felt better. The tables round them were all occupied.

  “Let’s go into the museum,” said Clare. “There’s something I must tell you.”

  In a cool, empty gallery, among the stone-deaf ears of statues, she still kept her voice low as she told him what she had overheard just now.

  “I don’t know why it should have upset me so: it was all so unreal and melodramatic. But I felt quite sick. And that monster, Primrose, taking it all down.”

  “Wel
l, it’s one mystery cleared up. We know why Faith took on so when she saw Miss Ambrose coming aboard.” Nigel glanced speculatively at Clare. “Which story do you believe?”

  “Which story?”

  “Ianthe’s? Or the Faith-and-Peter version?”

  “I don’t know,” said Clare slowly. “I dare say Ianthe could be vindictive—well, there’s that review of Jeremy Street. And I dare say Faith Trubody is rather unbalanced. Nigel, he couldn’t really do anything to her?”

  “Peter? I shouldn’t think so. Might start some sort of persecution-campaign, perhaps. Awfully bad form for a public-school type like him.” Nigel gave her a longer look this time. “What’s on your mind, love?”

  “Yes. You’re quite right. It’s what Ianthe might do to Peter that really worries me—if he did start ‘taking steps’ as he called it, I mean. The woman isn’t quite sane.”

  “Well, she’s got Melissa looking after her. And there’s a ship’s doctor.”

  “Melissa won’t be much help once she gets into her stride with the men.” Clare peered clairvoyantly into Nigel’s face. “Ah. She has already?”

  “There are circumstances in which the male, however innocent, cannot refrain from looking guilty,” Nigel proclaimed. “Yes, I was engaged with Melissa on the hillside while you were dropping eaves. I wouldn’t say she is in full stride yet, but she’s working up to it. She improves on closer acquaintance.”

  “Oh.”

  “She thinks I am very resourceful.”

  “She does, does she?”

  “Yes. And she’s afraid that her sister may commit suicide.”

  IV

  After dinner that night there was to be a seminar in the forward lounge. The two lecturers who had spoken in the morning would be available to answer questions on the subject of Delos, and passengers were encouraged to contribute to the discussion.