“Manos is behind this,” she said. “Manos and the party. It is enough to make every man look at his neighbour.”
“What have you been doing?” he asked.
“I have seen Mme Lindos. Also I called in and ordered the plumber. He is coming round at once; that was another reason for getting rid of Edda quickly. I have bought some food. Also I went to Heracles House.”
“You’ve done a lot.”
She began to pull off her gloves. “The—funeral is this afternoon. You know of course to be quick like that is the custom in Greece.”
“Yes.”
“I must go.”
“Of course.”
“It will be a big one. EMO will try to make capital out of the loss of their leader. If they can bring you into court as a murderer—an American who at one time worked for the British—it would appeal to this—this stranger-hating emotion which has been creeping over Athens of late.…”
“And your arrangements?”
“Where will you hide while the plumber is here?”
“In your bedroom? He may want to go in the bathroom.”
“Well, go in there now, will you? He may be here any minute.”
Gene took his bag and slid along the inner wall to her room. He found her peering slant-wise through her blind.
“There is someone in the flat on the opposite side of the street.… Oh, I don’t know; it may not be anybody; one comes to suspect.…” She lowered the blind a little. “ It is reasonable now; the sun is coming round.”
“You saw Sophia Lindos?”
“Yes. But I think you will have to stay here another thirty-six hours.”
The telephone rang.
She went out, and came back after a minute. “A reporter. They tried to get me to talk at Heracles House. I hope they won’t wait outside here.… Where was I? Oh, Mme Lindos. There is nothing yet settled. But I said I felt sure I could get you out of Athens if she could get you out of Greece. So for the moment it has been left that way.”
“You’re being very competent about it all.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Competence can be so dull.”
“Where you’re concerned?”
“Well, tarnished, then. Perhaps that is the word.” She picked up a pair of nylons from the back of a chair and folded them and put them in a drawer. “Isn’t it what we’ve both agreed?”
Before he could reply the door-bell rang.
“It will be the plumber,” she said. “While he is here I will do some telephoning and try to get a meal ready. Then I shall be able to keep an eye on him. I’ll tell you if he’s going to be very long.”
The sun was coming round to the bedroom windows, and Gene saw that it would soon be reasonable enough to lower the blinds completely. He heard Anya using the telephone, and a conversation she had with the plumber. At the taverna where he had eaten last night the proprietor was brushing the steps, which led down; he therefore appeared to be brushing all the dust into his room and not out of it. Behind the blinds of the room on the opposite side of the street someone moved; a hand reached through the slats to fumble with the cord and raise the blind a few inches. In the street below Zachari had apparently gone. The plumber began to knock.
Anya slipped into the bedroom and at once went to the jalousies and let them right down.
“Half an hour. I have spoken again to Jon Manos and also to Mme Lascou. It was necessary, you understand. Also I must have your passport when I go out.”
“It’s here.”
“Put it in my bag, will you?”
They were talking in whispers, her face close to his but her expression very distant. Once her breath fanned his cheek.
He said rather quietly: “Anya, I want to talk to you.”
“Not now. It is a silly time.”
“I think we’ve both been deceiving ourselves.”
“About what?”
“About this.” He drew her against him and kissed her quietly on the mouth. She shook her head for a second or so after their lips touched. The plumber continued to hammer. Then she slid away, put the back of her hand up to her mouth and looked at him. “ You don’t suppose that solves anything?”
“Not on its own. It will in time.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“We’ve been deceiving ourselves, because that’s the only thing that really matters between us.”
“Is that what you think?”
“That’s what I think.”
“You know we both agreed it was impossible.”
“I knew we agreed nothing of the sort. We agreed it was ill-advised, slightly crazy, unrealistic, likely to get right out of hand and so the more sure to come a crash in the end. But now——”
“This morning you said, just after breakfast you said——”
“Just then it was as if for a second Lascou had come between us. It was entirely my fault——”
“Has he ever stepped aside?”
“I don’t think he’s ever been between us. Not in the way that counts.… Anya, at least accept what you yourself said last night. We tried to write this off. By chance we haven’t been able to. So we can no longer avoid what we tried to avoid. Isn’t that it?”
“Is that it?”
“There isn’t any escape for either of us.” he said. “You know that now.”
She turned her darkest glance on him, half smiled, half shrugged, her eyes slipping over him. Perhaps her attitude expressed exactly what she felt, a delicate but sensual disclaimer of responsibility. Her fingers closed round his and then she left the room.
Time passed. Zachari’s replacement was Mandraki. Gene felt a prickling of the skin when he saw him. This was something instinctive, something much more fundamental and less cerebral than his antagonism for Lascou. The plumber took longer than he had said, as plumbers always do. Anya did not come back.
Conflicting with his unease, with his impatience in inactivity, was a ripple of excitement coming up as it were against the current, a wave running up a river. The sunlight was broken in pieces on the floor where it came through the blinds. In his mind, in his heart, it was as if all the disparate pieces there had come together, as if all the hesitations and qualifications of experience had solidified and become a knowledge and a unification no less complete than would happen to the sunlight on the raising of the blind. The foreseeable future was short he was content to let it be so.
At last there was more conversation in the sala, and at last Anya came back. She smiled at him with that rare brilliance she seldom gave to him, as if a little afraid of its effects on herself.
“He’s gone. And our lunch is ready.”
Going down the stairs the plumber fingered the pen-knife he’d found on the floor of the man-hole. He wasn’t a thief, but it seemed a handy little thing and he’d lost his own a few weeks ago. He hadn’t noticed anybody returning that to him. Besides there was nothing to prove that it belonged to the wonderful looking girl who had called him in. It might have lain on the floor for months and have belonged to some previous owner.
At least he thought that until he took it out of his pocket in the bright light of the street and read the inscription on it. It ran: ‘Presented with the proud compliments of “Aegis” on the 50th Anniversary of its foundation.’ He had to stare twice at the date which followed, because it didn’t seem to make sense that it should be today’s date. But there it was.
He crossed the street and turned past a man lighting a cigarette. As he did so the man touched his arm.
“Been working in number four, brother?”
“What?” The plumber moved to go on but the hand held him. The man was all in black, fat, with a beard growing only under his several chins.
“You been working in Flat 4? I thought I saw you come to the window up there.”
“What’s it to you?”
“What was wrong with the plumbing, brother? What did you do in there?”
The plumber said: “A burst pipe. I mended it. That’s t
he way I earn my living—not by standing on street corners.”
The bearded man breathed in his face. “Be easy with your answers, brother. I’m not asking you this for love. Remember, I don’t love you. What was the man like who let you in? Middle-sized, grey-eyed, bit of a foreigner?
“Look,” said the plumber. “You’re chasing the wrong hare. There was no man. Only a girl. You’ve got the places mixed.”
“Didn’t you see a man in the flat at all?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“None, brother. I just like to know. Did you go in every room?”
“How do I know? I’m a plumber, not an architect. I tell you, I saw no one but the girl, the lady, whatever she is. Now move aside.”
Chapter Twenty Eight
The funeral was at four. Anya left at three, in her deepest black and wearing a veil. She was gone until eight, and when she came home he saw at once that the distance was back, the defensive shell. Not only had she truly grieved for George, she had been in contact with the people and the world she understood and had known all her life. It was as if she had been re-injected with a familiar drug.
“You’re in the dark. Has anyone called?”
“Someone rang the bell at four. And there were two phone calls.”
She dragged off her hat and veil, threw them into a chair, went to the blinds to see that they were properly drawn, then switched on two of the table lamps. “Oh, I am so tired. It is—you know—the emotion.”
“Let me get you a drink.”
“Thank you. I will change out of these.”
When she came back she was wearing the narrow black velvet trousers again and a scarlet tailored shirt with stiff cuffs. She smiled at him but not freely. He took her the drink and she curled up on the settee with her feet under her. He offered her a cigarette but she shook her head. He did not smoke himself but squatted on the piano stool and watched the expressions moving on her face.
“Do you want to hear about it?” she said.
“Only if you want to tell me.”
“Then not. I would rather not.”
“Did you go back afterwards? To Heracles House, I mean.”
“Oh, yes, I had to; it was expected. In a way I wanted to.… I wanted to see it for the last time.”
“You have come from there now?”
“No, I left at six. There was nothing more for me after that.… I have come now from Mme Lindos. And I have seen several other people.”
He waited but didn’t speak.
“Mme Lindos thinks she can fix it for Friday. Not before because her arrangements, you understand, have to be made at a distance, and she dare not use the phone. My part is easier.”
“And what is your part?”
She shrugged deprecatingly. “It is not very clear and it is not very original, but I think it will work when the time comes.”
“Friday, you mean?”
“Friday morning.”
“I don’t want you concerned in it.”
“I am not. At seven every morning the milk comes here in a small van. The man leaves his van and delivers the milk outside each flat and then drives away. On Friday morning a milk van will come at fifteen minutes to seven. The man will bring the milk up, and when he reaches this flat he will come in and give you his coat and cap and you will walk out and drive the van away. You will drive the van out of Athens—I don’t think you will be stopped—and as far as you can towards the destination that Mme Lindos is arranging for you; all the way if possible.”
He looked at her with a little wry smile. “It is in the classic tradition.”
She flushed slightly. “It is not very clever but it may do.”
“You’ve found a man to take the risk?”
“I have friends. And I can pay more than the official reward.… You know Nafplion?”
“On the Peloponnese? I’ve been near it.”
“It is a small harbour. There are fishing boats. Mme Lindos has a friend there. I shall have to go out again tomorrow morning.”
“What for?”
“I have left your passport with a man. He is photographing the photograph. He has promised to make you into a French citizen. There is also the question of getting lire and francs.” Gene said: “If you can do all this for me in a day, I wonder
what you could do in a lifetime.”
She looked at him as if trying to see deeper than her gaze would
penetrate. “I do not see the hope or the prospect of that.”
“I think there’s the hope.”
She looked down abruptly at her glass, and appeared to meditate
on that too. She did not reply.
They were about half-way through supper when Jon Manos called.
They had made the same preparations as at midday against a surprise. Nothing of Gene’s was in the sala except the plate from which he was eating, his wine glass, a slice of bread.
Manos came in, hair-oiled and plump-cheeked and smelling of Roman hyacinth. “My dear, I hoped you wouldn’t have started—it’s early yet and I’ve found a new place in Ekali—very quiet, we could dine privately. What do you say?”
“Thank you, Jon, but I’ve almost finished. In any case it is more fitting for me …”
“I understand how you feel. The formal rites this afternoon. EMO did very well at short notice. Mme Lascou, I thought, did not behave politely to you.”
“I thought she was splendid. We met as mourners.”
“Of course. Of course.” He glanced once round the apartment, summing it up swiftly and in a different way from ever before, like a man suddenly being asked to bid at an auction. Then his eyes came back to the girl as she sat on the arm of the settee and summed her up too, missing absolutely nothing, from the curve of her breast under the scarlet shirt to the hand rubbing itself meditatively along her trousered leg. “Anya, this will make a difference to you.”
“And to you, Jon.”
“Naturally. Will you smoke?”
“No, thank you. But please smoke yourself.”
“We have—a lot in common now, Anya. We both—attached ourselves, in very different ways, to a star. And now the star has fallen!”
“I hadn’t looked at it that way.”
“Of course I am putting it too bluntly. But many years ago … May I?” Manos slipped off his thin white overcoat and dropped it on a chair. “… many years ago, when I first met George Lascou, I saw him as a coming man in the biggest way. One had to be with him only a little while to appreciate his penetrating yet subtle mind, the great driving force behind that too quiet manner. I—made my choice. Sometime—I don’t know when—you made your choice. That is what I mean by saying we had much in common. Of course, in our different ways, we had much to contribute in return.”
“You’re too kind.”
Manos paced across the room lighting his cigarette. His white foulard tie contrasted with a navy blue shirt and a suit with a just visible pink stripe. He said: “My trained legal mind was of great value to him in his transactions. We helped each other. I learned much from him. I hope—to carry on in his tradition, as it were. All will not be lost, Anya, all will not be lost.”
She remained perfectly quiet, holding her knee in her hand now, profile to him, ankle gently swinging.
He said: “It was my ambition to serve George faithfully until he reached the highest eminence. I would have been his second man. Stavrides is a nonentity who would have been swept away after the election. George was agreed on it.”
“So?”
“Now that George has gone I serve Stavrides for the time being. He is the only figurehead we can rally behind. But he is too weak to survive permanently.” Manos stopped in his pacing and made an expressive gesture with his hands. “He will go and the leadership will devolve on me. That’s certain.”
“So?”
“I cannot hope to bring to this position the gifts that George Lascou had. But my best will not be inconsiderable. It’s not impossible that
you’re looking at a future Prime Minister of Greece.”
Anya got up then and poured herself more wine. “Will the coup go on?”
He looked at her quickly. “You knew of it?”
“Of course.”
“George did not tell me he had told you.”
“George told me many things.”
“Well, it cannot. General Telechos has already indicated that he will deal with no one else. I shall see him again in the morning, but I’m afraid the chance is lost.”
“Then your chances of being Prime Minister of Greece …”
“Will depend—temporarily—on the outcome of the election. But we shall not lose votes through George’s death.” In his pacing Manos stopped before a mirror and tightened his tie. “Anyway, I’m not sure that it would be a good thing to win this election.”
“Why not?”
“The country is too evenly split. With Telechos, yes, we could take over and hold what we took. Without him—and depending on parliament—it is better I think if the Government is returned, but with a very small majority. Then we can exploit their weaknesses, make capital out of the discontent that must come, and carry the day next time.”
“Wine?” she said. “ Or brandy? It is George’s brandy, so you should like it.”
He glanced at her, sensing the equivocal, poured himself a drink. She said: “Do you think the Communists have a chance?”
“The Communists?” He took time over putting back the brandy bottle. “They’re finished—we could never stand them back in Greece, could we?” It was half a statement, half a question.
“George talked of it sometime. He said that there were many disguised Communist sympathisers.”
“Some, I suppose.… Do you know any?”
She smiled. “ They do not confide in me.”
“No.” He stepped uneasily away from the mirror. “The immediate point is not that at all—it is that EMO has a chance—and I with it.”
“Which you intend to take.”
“Which George would wish me to take—in the interests of Greece.”
“And in your own.”
“He would have wished me well, because, as I repeat, I have always subordinated my own interests to his. Even my interest—my very deep interest to his. Even my interest—my very deep interest in you.”
Greek Fire Page 18