by Simon Raven
'No,' said Nicos quickly: 'no islands.'
'Whyever not?'
'The people are dirty and poor. Besides, there is a lot to be seen here in the Peloponnese.'
'As you like.' said Fielding rather shortly.
He stretched himself in the grass, and Nicos came and lay beside him.
'You are tired,' Nicos said, 'after driving over the mountains.' He stroked Fielding's brow with the fingers of one hand. 'It is a long way on to Sparta. Let us rest here a little and then go back to Tripolis, which is a pretty little town with market places and gardens. In the morning we can decide where to go next.'
'All right.'
The sun was warm and friendly in the evening, and the stream chattered quietly like well-mannered children playing at a distance, whose voices can still be heard though their words can no longer be distinguished. Fielding took the hand that was stroking his forehead and licked the palm.
'You have very soft hands, Nicos. Christopher had soft hands. Warm and soft. You are like him everywhere ... here, and here, and here.'
'You have soft hands too, and I like it when you touch me... here, and here, and here.'
So they trifled in the valley till the sun went down, then drove slowly back into Tripolis, where they found a hotel which overlooked a tangled garden in the middle of a small square.
In Athens, Earle Restarick went to the Stoa in the Agora and knocked on the door by the statue.
'News from London,' he said. The BBC has dispensed with Llewyllyn's services, and for the time being at least 'Today is History'' is going into abeyance. The pressure is off.'
'E finita la commedia?' said the man with a nose like a hockey stick.
'Yes. I must get back to Cyprus straight away. I want you to do something for me.'
'Ring the curtain down?'
'And re-engage the principal boy. Talent like that must not be wasted. Here is some money for him, and an air ticket to get him to Nicosia.'
Both of which Restarick now gave to his emissary, together with some brief and pointed instructions.
Fielding and Nicos walked up the path to Agamemnon's palace at Mycenae. The backs of their hands brushed as they walked. God, Fielding thought, looking sideways at Nicos, for seventeen years, for seventeen long years I've had nothing like this.
Ahead of them was the Lion Gate, square and flat, and above it two stone beasts craning their chins up on either side of a pillar. After they had passed through the gate and up on to the ramparts, they could see south beyond Argos and Tiryns to the bright bay of Nauplion; while just to the east of them rose the gaunt hill on which the beacon had flared blood-red, 3,000 years ago, as a sign to Clytemnestra and her paramour that Agamemnon, Lord of Hosts, had taken ship from Troy.
And to the west, just over the road which led up from the village, was a car park, into which a Land-Rover now drove.
There is a postern gate,' said Fielding, 'at the end of a long passage which leads right through the heart of the palace. Shall we go and and find it?'
'Let us stay here,' said Nicos, who was watching the Land-Rover.
A man emerged from this, walked out of the car park and over the road, and started up the sloping path towards the Lion Gate.
'I wonder,' said Fielding, 'what the Queen and her lover must have felt when the beacon flared at last. For ten years Agamemnon had been away ... "far on the ringing plains of windy Troy" ... and then, one evening as they were settling to dinner, perhaps, the beacon blazed.'
But Nicos was not listening. He was walking away from the ramparts and back to the Lion Gate. The man from the Land-Rover, a small man with a nose like a hockey stick, came through the gate, accosted Nicos as somebody known to him, and began to talk. Nicos nodded two or three times, then both of them passed back through the gate and started down the slope. Nicos did not look back to Fielding and made no sign.
'Stop,' called Fielding, and ran down from the ramparts and through the gate in pursuit.
Nicos and the stranger with the nose turned to face him.
'Where are you going?'
'I am going away,' said Nicos. This gentleman has come from those who sent me, and says that he is to fetch me away.'
It was uttered as a simple statement of fact, without emotion of any kind.
'Who ... sent you?'
'I was sent to keep you away from Athens. Now it no longer matters, and this gentleman is fetching me away.'
'Please, Nicos. Don't go. You don't have to go, Nicos. Please don't go.'
'Why should I stay?'
Nicos and the man turned and walked on down the path.
'But do I mean nothing to you?'
Nicos and the man walked on.
'Don't you understand what you mean to me?'
Fielding circled round from behind the other two and started dancing absurdly backwards in front of them.
'Nicos,' he babbled, 'I have money. I will give you money to stay.'
'This gentleman has brought me money. There will be more, he says. Much more than you could pay.'
'Nicos, you're too kind, too young to talk like that.'
'I am well over twenty. No, not seventeen, as you thought I am not properly grown you see. I wasn't fed when I was a child, and so now I go with those who will feed me and pay me best.'
'But don't you realise what they'll do to you? The horrible ways they'll use you?'
'What should I care? For this week I have been pawed about and slobbered on and called by a dead boy's name. Next week there will be something else. That is all.'
'Nicos. I love you.'
The ridiculous ensemble (Fielding still skipping backwards) crossed the road to the car park. Nicos went to Fielding's car, pulled out the little bag with which he had been travelling, walked over to the Land-Rover and got in. The man with the nose climbed into the driving seat.
'Nicos,' said Fielding, clutching the door of the Land-Rover, 'say something nice before you go. Say good-bye to me.'
He looked into Nicos' eyes for some trace of pity or regret, however trivial, pleading with his own eye for some token of farewell. But the boy's face was without expression: without love or hate or friendliness or disgust, even without recognition.
'Nicos,' Fielding said, 'do you remember the Charioteer? Surely you meant what you said then? The way you said it—'
'—I was being paid to keep you with me. That is all.'
The engine started. The Land-Rover backed suddenly, nearly throwing Fielding to the ground, and then roared out of the car park and away down the road.
In the Sterns' house in Chelsea, Isobel was toasting herself some Bath buns for tea. She had always had a healthy appetite, and these days she was positively voracious. As she stood over the grill, relishing the smell of the toasting buns and longing for them to be finished, she suddenly saw, as at a great distance, a flash of blue sea and felt a huge spasm of pain and misery pass through her entire body. It was as though she were being emptied of all capacity for joy or feeling, and emptied physically, eviscerated, at the same time. A sickly smell rose off the buns, then the acrid smoke of burning farina; but this went unnoticed by Isobel, who stood and moaned with her hands clasped to her belly while the cruel blood ran down her quivering legs.
9: Sweet Argos
Somerset Lloyd-James and Lord Canteloupe had dinner at the Connaught Hotel to celebrate. They had avocado pears stuffed with smoked and spiced cod's roe, a soufflé of turbot and lobster sauce, chicken cooked with pâté de foie gras, and a magnum of champagne to wash it all down; then they had stewed prunes, because these were good for their bowels, and shared a bottle of Taylor '27.
'So all's well. that ends well,' Canteloupe said. 'No Llewyllyn, no programme; no programme, no trouble.'
'Not for a while, no,' Somerset said: 'for a while the official version of the Cyprus business—rational concessions made in response to legitimate democratic pressures—will remain unchallenged. The Department of Public Relations and Popular Media has emerged unscathe
d, and you can now relax. Until the next time.'
'The next time?'
'There's always a next time in this game. All celebrations must be provisional, even those at the Connaught Hotel, What's more, the next time may very well come tomorrow.'
'Not Cyprus again?'
'No. I think you've heard the last of Cyprus for the next year or so. But there'll be plenty of other awkward affairs which will need explaining away. After all, Canteloupe, your job is to make the truth comfortable enough for the mass of the people to live with—to make the truth acceptable. It won't be long, with things as they are these days, before another unacceptable truth is dumped on your desk for treatment. And you won't be able to evade the issue as easily as we've managed to this time. It was sheer luck that Tom made a fool of himself like that, and even luckier that the Director was a jealous prig who was keen to make the most of it.'
'I must say, I'm surprised he persuaded the high-ups to be quite so fierce with Llewyllyn.'
'I don't know,' said Somerset. 'You see, Tom had committed the most serious error of all—he'd flouted a minor convention. He was too innocent to realise that, that's the one thing people won't forgive. They'll forgive a murderer, but they'll never forgive a man who refuses to wear a black tie for dinner. Tom's silly little lie made a mockery of the system.'
'Something in that,' said Canteloupe. Tell me, what'll happen to that chap Fielding Gray?'
'He's in luck. Since it's no fault of his that the programme's being dropped, he can just come home and claim the rest of his fee as promised. And talking of him reminds me: what arrangements are you making about Maisie?'
'Why does Gray remind you of Maisie?'
'Another old client.'
'That's just the trouble,' said Canteloupe crossly, '—all these old clients. Maisie say she's going to stay put in Curzon Street because she doesn't want to let her regulars down. Can you beat it? I've offered her comfortable quarters in Hampstead and a very handsome income, but she says that Hampstead wouldn't suit her because she can't stand the sight of all those pinkos in open-toed sandals.'
'So you've offered her otium cum dignitate said Somerset, 'but Maisie prefers Curzon Street. A true professional. It does my heart good to hear about it.'
'If you ask me, she just likes being on the game. Some of them do, you know.'
'Then here's to Maisie,' said Somerset Lloyd-James, MP, raising his Taylor '27, 'to dear, plump Maisie, the girl with the crutch of gold.'
'In bumpers,' said the Marquis Canteloupe.
Both men drained their glasses and threw them over their shoulders, somewhat to the consternation of the Americans at nearby tables.
Fielding too was thinking about Maisie. As he lay on his bed in the hotel in which he had taken refuge in Argos, he thought about the warning which Maisie had given him and cursed himself for a fool. 'Don't let them know what's in here.' Maisie had said, running her finger round his chest. But he hadn't heeded Maisie, plump, fond Maisie, he'd ripped his heart right out for them all to get a good look. To get a good look and then spit on it. And then grind their heels in the spit.
And yet, he thought as he poured more brandy, would I have missed it if I could? For although it had all been false from start to finish, it had seemed true at the time. The illusion which Nicos had created had been very lovely while it lasted; and the fact that the illusion had been so cruelty destroyed could not spoil the happiness which it had brought him first. A man might catch a pox, he thought, but the ecstasy he had known while getting it could never be taken away. He, Fielding, had loved a mask, he had loved a dummy with human skin; nevertheless, he had loved.
And another thing, he thought in his misery; there had been appropriate revenge. Years ago he had betrayed Christopher; now Christopher had risen up from the dead and betrayed him. And again: he had used Christopher to make a tale, he had exploited him, in Love's Jest Book, to get money and a little fame; and now Christopher had come back as Nicos to exploit him in return—to exploit his love and turn it into money, to use his anguish to make a career. Fair's fair, he told himself: paid out in your own dud coin.
How long have I been lying here? he wondered. I came here yesterday and now it is evening again. I stink. I must get up and wash, go out and eat. Where does one eat in this scabby little town? This Hotel? Class Gamma, the first I saw as I drove in yesterday evening, a den to hide in with brandy bottles, which aren't empty yet. Class Gamma: no food in this hotel, no hot water. Why bother? Lie here, blubbering and drinking and stinking, and let the night come down. I'm ugly; I stink; I'm getting old and rotten. Lie here, wallowing in stink and self-pity. Lie here and rot and let the night come down.
'So it looks,' said Max de Freville in the Dome Hotel in Kyrenia, 'as if something very handsome may come of it provided the island stays peaceful and the tourists come back.'
'So what now?' Angela said.
'We stay here a few days longer, to approve the provisional plans for the Casino's equipment and decoration, and to tidy up the financial arrangements. Then we go to Athens to talk with Lykiadopoulos—he'll have to come in as the front name.'
'Why? You seem to have got on very well so far by yourself.'
They're waiting for me to set it all up and pay for it,' said Max. 'Then, when it's a going concern, they'll grab it. The whole lot, down to the last spare roulette ball. But not if it's owned by a Greek. So we go to Athens and talk to old Lyki and bring him in as front name.'
'Aren't you taking rather a cynical view?' said Mrs Ongley.
Harriet Ongley was of Franco-Russian stock, of English birth, of American nationality (by marriage), and of substantial means (by widowhood). She was an old friend of Max's, having sometimes played, with her late husband, at his chemin-de-fer table in London, and she had run into him quite by chance in Nicosia three days before. She was now spending a few days with Max and Angela in Kyrenia before continuing her tour of the Near East. She had a sweet, round, placid face (young for her forty-two years), shapely and carefully shaven legs, a robust appetite for food, and an invincible belief in human goodness which she somehow contrived to reconcile with a keen intelligence.
'Why should they grab your Casino?' Harriet Ongley went on. 'You're always saying how fond they still are of the British.'
'But even fonder of money. So in a few' days we go to Athens to see Lyki. And I think, Harriet, that you had better come too.'
'But I'm scheduled to fly to Beirut, and I have no business with this Lyki.'
'I have good works for you to do, Harriet. I have something right up your street. This morning I heard from an old correspondent of mine—Leonard Percival.' he said aside to Angela, '—who tells me that somewhere near Athens Humpty Dumpty has fallen off his wall and shattered his delicate shell. All the king's horses and all the king's men are of little avail in such cases, but a good, patient woman, Harriet, with loving fingers, might just be able to fit the pieces together. At least she could sweep them up.'
'No more broken egg-shells for me, Max. I've had my share of them.' (Mr Ongley had died of martinis.) 'Why should I bother with this one?'
'A work of corporal charity. You are a Roman Catholic, I think? I should be very grateful,' said Max, 'and very interested to hear how you get on. The case, you see, has a certain fascination.'
And then, carefully playing on Harriet's known reverence for the creative arts and those who practised them. Max began to explain.
The morning after Captain Detterling heard about Isobel Stern's miscarriage he went to Gregory's office.
'I'm very sorry about Isobel,' he said.
Gregory looked up coolly from his desk and fingered his waistcoat buttons.
'It was rather gratuitous,' he replied. 'I'm glad you're here. There are some things to discuss.'
A secretary came in and put a bundle of files on his desk. Gregory started to flip briskly through them.
'During the last few weeks,' he said, 'I've signed some very foolish contracts.'
The Ne
w Jewish Library?'
'Yes. Fortunately it's early days yet. and we can get out of most of them in return for small down payments. This one, for example.' He brandished a file. The book on the crucifixion. You were quite right, of course. The thesis is unsound and in any case it has already been stated. And this—the commentary on the Talmud. The printing alone would have cost us a fortune.'
'Why the sudden change of plan?'
I've come to my senses, that's why. I've been in a state of infatuation which has now been dispelled. Next time Isobel conceives I hope I shall know better. After all, parenthood is a very commonplace affair.'
'Well, don't go too far the other way,' Detterling said. 'Some of those books you commissioned are very promising. That Rabbi who's going to assess the strength of orthodox belief in Israel—that's a book we should certainly do.'
'Granted. And one or two more. But for the most part— fwwhutt.' He thumped his fist on the stacked files. 'Now then. Tom, I hear, has left the BBC, and that also means an end of Fielding's absurdities in Greece. I want a novel out of Fielding in time for publication next spring, and a hefty piece of polemics from Tom for the following autumn.'
'Not much time, Gregory.'
'I know. I want them both to be firmly reminded that work is work—and is not to be confused with silly games in Television Studios and Continental Expresses. So I'm going to insist on an absolute deadline in both cases—but I'm also going to offer them a twenty-five per cent increase on their usual advances. Tom I am going to ring up this minute. Where can I get hold of Fielding?'
Detterling shrugged.
'I suppose he'll come back from Greece in his own good time.'
'I want him back in my good time. That's the kind of thing you're good at fixing. Please see that he gets a message—wherever he is—telling him to be in this office one week from today with a two page synopsis, in type or fair round hand, of an eighty-thousand-word novel.'