“I think you will give it me, Monsieur Dimo. I am far from wishing to avoid the police. Indeed, there are many things on which I would like their advice. I shall tell them that I am an honest Greek boy; I can speak but cannot read French. I can only read the Greek alphabet, you see. I have a piece of paper which I know shows that I served France loyally through great dangers throughout two whole years of war. But these papers,” he looked doubtfully at his passport and permis “were obtained for me by kind Monsieur Dimo, who said that he would perform all formalities. I do not understand them. But I will have to tell the Chief of Police that I am worried because Monsieur Dimo seems to have so many of these papers to give people. So many of my unfortunate countrymen are obliged by him that I am wondering if my papers are all right. The policeman at the corner is very sympathetic; I shall ask him if I ought to speak to the chief also about Monsieur Dimo’s hotel. I am troubled, especially about that pretty girl who was injured by the American.”
He looked sadly up at the ceiling.
Monsieur Dimo gave an unamused smile. “I think we will talk about this this evening,” he said, “if you really insist on this foolishness.”
Achilles was not waiting till nightfall. Disagreeable things happen at night. “I am going now,” he said. “Either I go towards the Riviera with your recommendation and 100 francs for wages. Or I go with these papers to the police.”
He looked magnificently calm, but he was not in the least comfortable. Fortunately, Monsieur Dimo was still less comfortable.
“Very well,” he said angrily. “You wait here while I get the money.”
“No,” said Achilles. “I wait outside, where I can see the gendarme. And you bring it to me.”
***
A young Levantine who was willing to work, was a promising cook, was a graceful and even beautiful waiter and dancer, and had few scruples or inhibitions. The Riviera in 1920. Take these factors together and you will see it was impossible not to make money. Polycrate—he adopted this name for a while—made it; moreover, he saved it. As he estimated the guests of all nations who passed through the big hotels where he served, he decided that only English and Americans had real money. He changed his savings into dollars. Whenever he could, he gave English speakers especially good service: in his mind was springing up a hope that he might be invited to a post in New York or London. Chef to a duke or a millionaire: that would be an ideal job.
He never got it, but he did get to London. If we say that he got to London as a result of his special attentions to an English hotel proprietor, we should tell the truth while conveying a lie. Things did not fit in so neatly with abstract justice.
Mr. Bernard Hubbard was not a discerning epicure, nor Achilles a startlingly good cook. Mr. Hubbard had bought a controlling share in Imperial and Universal Hotels, Ltd., and was determined to show what a Lancashire business man could do with an organization like that. There were hundreds of Mr. Hubbards about while the cotton boom lasted: few of them had anything to them but brass in both senses of the word. Bernard Hubbard was obstinate and arrogant; he had plenty of money which did not stay with him very long; he knew nothing whatever about cooking and hotel service, though he did know a certain amount about organization. He had come to the Riviera to get a number of first-class chefs. He would not take advice—he would ask for it, and then cunningly refuse to act upon it, in case wool was being pulled over his eyes. He was a good judge of faggots, black pudding and fish and chips, but the French menus he could not even read. Immobilized by his ignorance and his suspicions, he had hired nobody at all after a whole month in Nice and Cannes.
He had dined once before at the hotel where Achilles was working as head waiter. He came in one afternoon and reserved himself a table for two—he was to entertain a blonde who has no especial part in this story. “And mind the food’s better to-night than it was last time. It was thoroughly second-rate. I expect something special.” He complained merely on general principles.
“I will see to it myself, sir,” said Achilles, bowing, and forgot the whole matter at once.
When he saw Mr. Hubbard arrive with his blonde, he came forward with a glad recognition which suggested that nothing else but the forthcoming dinner had been in his mind all the evening. As he bowed them to their table he was thinking fast. The menu was neither good nor bad, but there was nothing that even Mr. Hubbard could be deluded into thinking special. Gigot de pré salé. Escalope de veau. Blanquette de veau. Boeuf à la mode. Poulet rôti. Perdreau en casserole. It was all pretty unimaginative. The partridge was perhaps the best bet. He recommended to Mr. Hubbard caviare, cold soup (both of which the Lancashire man disliked but ordered to impress the blonde), sole meunière.
“And then, sir, there is the special dish for you. A partridge cooked in a special way. It is not on the menu.”
Mr. Hubbard, as in duty bound, made a sceptical noise, but accepted the partridge. Achilles went back to the kitchen, placed the rest of the order and considered the partridge. “Can you fix the partridge en casserole to make it look a little different?” he asked the chief chef. “There’s an Englishman out there who insists on something special.”
The chef looked at him morosely. Waiters were thieves who took all the tips and did no serious work. They were a sort of gigolo who deserved the contempt of any honest artisan.
“You can’t do anything else with these partridges,” he said. “They are frozen anyway and have not been hung long enough. Unless you do them en casserole they will be too tough to eat.”
“A more tasty sauce, perhaps—” began Achilles.
“The sauce is naturally,” replied the cook, “wholly perfect. All that can be done with such indifferent material has been done. Since the birds have no taste, that is perceived. It cannot be prevented. When I am given filth to cook with, besides having my time wasted by chatter, what do you expect? The birds are cooked in wine, with mushrooms, onions, and herbs. They are a beautiful brown to look at. They are good enough for the English, anyway. Too good.”
Achilles tasted one of the birds which was ready to serve. It was true; it had very little taste. The sauce was competently made, as it was being made in a hundred other restaurants at that minute. He returned to his duties disconsolately.
After he had served Mr. Hubbard the fish he came back into the kitchen. Zero hour: he must do something. His eye lighted on an orange. Oranges were served with duck: very well, then. He sliced it quickly and handed it to the chef.
“Chuck that into the casserole for No. 5, and leave it in the oven for five minutes.”
Shortly afterwards he was serving with a flourish a golden brown bird surrounded by bright golden rings. As he took the dish away he tasted the remains of the sauce. All was well: there was a pleasant tang in it which had saved the whole thing from insipidity.
Mr. Hubbard was saying: “This ought to be something special, my dear.”
“Ow,” said blonde. “I fought vey only served oranges wiv duck.”
Whether it was suggestion, or that he really did perceive the excellence of the flavour, Mr. Hubbard was pleased. When Achilles returned to ask if everything was satisfactory, he beamed.
“Where d’you get the idea of shoving the oranges in? Ought only to do that with duck, you know.”
“That is an essential part of the cooking, monsieur. Part of the new idea.”
“The new idea? You can’t come that, my boy. Are you trying to tell me you made that up? Oh, no, no.”
“That is just so, monsieur. I have been considering the question during the afternoon. A partridge has never been cooked this way before. I invented it. I supervised it myself. Monsieur may ask the chef himself, if he so pleases.”
Mr. Hubbard gazed at him with what he believed was a shrewd expression.
“Hum!” he said. “Well, it was good. What is your name?”
“Anton Polycrate, monsieur.”
> Next morning Anton Polycrate accepted, after a little decorous resistance, a contract with Imperial and Universal Hotels at £750 a year for three years, and 2,500 francs to placate the restaurant management for breaking his contract with them. He had no contract, but as they never heard of the 2,500 francs, that was all right. Mr. Hubbard charged himself with all questions of securing visas and labour permits.
***
It was from that day that his life—his real life—began. He realized when he landed in London that he was in a new world, and a new life would have to be constructed. All that he had been and all that he had done was gone over, tested, and for the most part thrown away and forgotten. There was, however, one great exception. A solid citizen, Greek or English, needs one thing at least to establish his solidity. When he had been two months in London he went to his bank manager, who treated him with the respect due to a customer who had a comfortable small balance and had been introduced with a warm letter from the Société Générale. Did they have a branch in Athens? They did. Could they arrange—at a proper fee, of course—for the transfer of a small sum of money to a friend who might have changed her address? They could make inquiries, and would do their best.
He reflected for some days, and then with a sudden abandon instructed the bank to advance to Helena Melagloss, employed in 1916 in the Café Demosthenes in the Peiraieus, the price of a single fare to London and a passport fee, provided that she appeared before their local manager and swore that she was not married nor the mother of any children. To the art editor of Eleftheron Bema, whom he had known slightly he sent £25, asking him to keep £5 for himself as a sort of search fee, and to find out the present position of Miss Melagloss. The letter was couched in an extravagant and rhetorical tone of friendship—a style which even as he wrote he promised himself never to use again—but its essential instructions were absolutely clear. The editor was to assure himself that Helena was not married, not a mother, not on the streets and in good health. When he was satisfied on all these four points he was to ask her what she had called the policemen acting for Colonel Theotoki, and to hand her a letter and £20. The letter contained a proposal of marriage, and instructions to go to the bank.
The editor kept £20 and gave Helena £5 and the letter. He made no inquiries at all (except about the word for policemen). Nor did Helena. She hardly remembered Achilles and she refused to say what she had called the policemen; but he seemed to have money, and anything was better than the life of a waitress in seamen’s cafés in Greece. She went to the unheard-of expense of telegraphing her acceptance, took ship and landed in London with the set intention of making a good and loyal wife to this young man, whoever he might be.
So soon as she grasped his intentions, she was even more single-minded in pursuing them. She it was who suggested the change of surname and Christian names by deed poll. She it was who insisted on those unending-seeming night-classes, at which they learned to say th correctly and even to spell reasonably well. She made Achilles, now Arthur, take the first steps for naturalization; she took the drastic step of banning all Greek in the home after the eldest child was two, even at the most intimate moments. “ζωὴ μοῦ, ψύχη μοῦ,” Arthur said one evening, romantically and rashly remembering a scrap of classical education. She locked him out of the bedroom, and would not let him in until he had called through the door: “Oh, come on, Maud; be a sport.”
And now she watched him reading the long official document, pleasure all over his face. If any questions or doubts ran through her head they left no trace on her face. “Do you think you will be foreman, Arthur?” she said admiringly, after a long pause.
“Hardly that, I should say.”
“I don’t see why not.”
She was right: his confident manner and well-to-do appearance secured him the selection. Perhaps it was something, too, to do with the proud, almost regal tone in which he repeated the oath:
“I swear by Almighty God that I will well and truly try, and true deliverance make between our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar whom I shall have in charge, and a true verdict give according to the evidence.”
Splendid words, each phrase with a patina of history upon it. The consciousness of their meaning and their beauty seemed to radiate from him. No one could doubt, watching him, that he would indeed true deliverance make, as far as ever his powers would let him.
3
The Clerk of Assizes passed Mr. Popesgrove through, with a slight wave of his hand as if he had been in charge of a turnstile at the zoo. Glancing carelessly at the paper in his hand (for his mind was on the faces of the jurors waiting to be sworn) he said, “James Alfred Stannard…” and a short white-haired man moved forward out of his turn. “I beg your pardon,” said the Clerk vexedly, “I should have said Percival Holmes, repeat after me…” The man at the end of the row moved forward to receive the Bible.
***
A year before this trial a young Rhodes scholar had prevailed upon a friend to introduce him to the well-known Greek scholar and fellow of his college, Dr. Percival Holmes. Dr. Holmes (said the friend) was hardly ever in Oxford, and it was necessary to come to London to find him. Nor would it be possible to secure an appointment; but that did not mean the meeting need be left to chance. Dr. Holmes always lunched at one chosen place, and after lunch was accessible.
Somewhat to his surprise, the Rhodes scholar was piloted by his friend to a shabby dairy which had also a small teashop business. It was in a side-street, and looked doubtfully clean. Its white paint had become grey with age and in places had been scrubbed off showing green below. Inside there was a marble counter with a large milk bowl on it, a price list, three cakes with coconut on top and one with pink icing. The woman behind was middle-aged, dark, with glasses, and in a white uniform.
“The professor here?” said the Rhodes’ scholar’s friend.
The woman jerked her head towards the brown partition, with frosted glass panes at the top, which cut off the end of the shop. She did not speak.
The two men walked through the partition door. Here the Rhodes scholar saw a sight which shocked his sense of fitness inexpressibly. There were six marble-topped tables in the dingy small room. Only one was occupied, as it was now a quarter to three; it, like all the rest, was dirty with crumbs, splashes of tomato sauce, and brown rings of saucer marks. On it were two black bottles and some thick tumblers, of the kind that are found in boarding house bedrooms. Behind it sat an enormously fat man in a grubby brown suit. He suggested a mass of cooking fat which had been poured into some sort of container and there congealed. It was difficult to conceive of him moving; and indeed he was utterly motionless except for his white fingers which trembled continuously. His pale blue eyes stared straight ahead; they were severely bloodshot and watering. A heavy smell of alcohol rose from him, together with another smell which might merely have been that of none-too-clean clothes, but which to the Rhodes scholar seemed a smell of death. The lower part of his body was concealed by the table; what could be seen appeared to be a perfect cone. The rather narrow-topped head was supported on thick greyish hanging rolls of fat which covered whatever neck there had once been; there were sloping shoulders and a vast paunch below.
“’Morning, Dr. Holmes,” said the friend, “introduce Mr. Allinson, of your college. A Rhodes scholar.”
“Ah!” said the gross figure, in a harsh and loud voice. “Port or moselle?”
The Rhodes scholar was perplexed and silent.
“Port or moselle?” shouted the doctor again, pushing forward the two bottles, which must have been his own property, as the shop had no licence. “Never drink anything else,” he added, though it was not clear whether this was a command or a statement of his own habits.
“I’m not sure,” began the American. “Port, I think,” he added hastily, seeing anger rising in the doctor’s face.
“Don’t you know?” sneered the
doctor. He poured nearly a half-pint of purple liquid into one of the tooth-glasses and pushed it across. The American drank a mouthful: it had that revolting taste of sugar, ink, and red pepper that only bad port can achieve.
Dr. Holmes meanwhile addressed his conversation to the friend, asking him about some college gossip which the American could not follow. It appeared to be scabrous, but that might merely have been the quality of Dr. Holmes’s laugh, which was a sort of thick titter. Twice the American tried to intervene. The first effort was a carefully prepared question about Verrall’s re-interpretation of the Agamemnon.
“Doctor” (he said “Dahcter,” and Holmes made no attempt to conceal a shudder) “do you consider the Watchman’s opening speech is to be read as an intentionally untruthful statement?”
“See chapter four of my Essays on Greek Tragedy,” was the sole answer.
A little later he tried again.
“There are one or two points I’d be glad of your opinion on,” he said.
“Don’t you like your port?” replied the doctor, staring at the still half-full glass. The American, with the excessive courtesy which his nation so often shows to the elderly, learned and ill-mannered, took a fresh huge gulp of the disagreeable liquid. Tears came to his eyes and he had to fight back a feeling of sickness; meanwhile the doctor resumed his conversation with his friend.
The Rhodes scholar stood it for a few minutes more and then rose to go.
“You seem very busy,” he said with restraint.
“Ah. Yes. Good-bye,” said the doctor, swivelling his fat grey cheeks round to him for a moment, and then at once resuming his conversation.
Such were the manners and appearance of Dr. Percival Holmes at the age of 69, in every way the greatest contrast to those of Mr. James Alfred Stannard at 70. For Mr. Stannard was short, spare and neat, with a red face, white moustache, and thin white hair. He was moreover clean, and consistently polite to any one who was not drunk. Yet both men would have assumed that Dr. Holmes was a superior being. For he, though ill-bred, repulsive to look at, and grotesquely idle, was a gentleman; Mr. Stannard, who had worked hard all his life, who was kindly to all, and who was as agreeable in presence as he was in mind, kept a public-house. It was called the Hanging Gate.
Verdict of Twelve Page 4