The Tomb of Zeus

by Barbara Cleverly

  “You have only to take my persistently offered advice, Phoebe,” said Theodore, smiling blandly, “if you sincerely wish to communicate with the staff. Miss Talbot, I am assured, is quite the linguist— I'm confident she would support me when I say—yet again—if you would only do as Ilse did…my first wife, Ilse,” he added for Letty's benefit, “and spend more time in the marketplace and the kitchen and less in the boutique and the boudoir, you would acquire a working knowledge of the language. The Mrs. Russell of the day would then be able to convey her wishes and preferences to the cook.”

  “A skill which Mr. Russell has evidently acquired?” suggested Letty quietly, distressed by Phoebe's sudden stillness, the droop of her fair head. She bent to retrieve Phoebe's wrap, a length of fine blue angora, which had slid, unnoticed, to the floor, and tucked it gently back around her slim shoulders.

  Theodore's head swung in her direction, eyebrows raised in mild surprise, questioning her gesture. Letty was dismayed to see that he was interpreting her instinctive attempt to offer comfort as a challenge to him and a declaration of support for his wife.

  It was George who broke the tension with a burst of laughter: “So you can jolly well come off it, Pa!” he said. “Laetitia's seen through you! She's guessed who proposed this menu item! You can be such an embarrassment, you old funster! What you are witnessing, Letty, is a demonstration of an adolescent condition prolonged into middle age—a practical jokery of a kind…a predilection for buffoonery. Perhaps Herr Freud has identified the condition and dignified it with a medical label? Now what can we suggest?…Ludomania?”

  His tone was light, playful, regretful even, but his harsh words made Letty cringe. She had little sympathy for their target, having conceived a disturbing suspicion of Theodore Russell, but surely this was an unnecessarily public insult, one delivered by the very last person she might have expected to aim a hurtful comment? Even in her bohemian world, sons showed due respect to their fathers. She could only interpret the outburst as a falsely jovial rap on the knuckles for his unkindness to Phoebe.

  “Oh, don't worry!” George went on, apparently unconscious of the general unease. “You'll not be encountering itching powder or an exploding cigar—nothing so unsophisticated—this is just Pa's way of testing the mettle of his guests. Unfortunately, the reactions of his victims do usually throw up revealing evidence. And— with the results of his experiments justifying his unconventional research—he persists.”

  Letty had encountered bad behaviour at the nursery tea table—had been responsible herself for much of it. The baiting of newcomers in the school dining hall was a tradition everyone had to weather, but she would never have expected to encounter such rank bad manners at a civilised dinner party. She considered her options. She could react in the predictable way: she could hurry from the room in distress, leaving four men shaking their heads and murmuring with insincere concern of the susceptibilities of the fairer sex, thereby sacrificing forever her opportunity to establish herself in this masculine world. Or she could face them out.

  “Throwing up evidence? Why, George—that is precisely what I had in mind,” she murmured. “Well, well! We all have our own ways of getting the measure of strangers…salt in the sugarshaker, spiders in the bath…The Greek bandit Procrustes did it all too literally by inviting benighted guests to recline on an overlong bed and then racking their limbs until they fitted. What's a dish of cervelles d'agneau en matelote by way of welcome in comparison with that? I have to think I've got off lightly.”

  She leaned across the table towards Theodore and spoke in teasing reprimand: “You'll have to do better, Mr. Russell!”

  Theodore nodded in acknowledgement of her thrust, and put down his knife and fork in a playful gesture of surrender. George threw him a triumphant look.

  “You should have seen what he served up for the Italian ambassador last week!” Dick interposed, taken in by Letty's show of good humour and vaguely sensing with relief that the game was over. “Bull's…er…parts! Steaming in a pond of white sauce.”

  Letty stared. Phoebe tutted and shushed.

  Theo, unabashed, motioned to a manservant to remove the offending dish.

  “Actually, I thought it was rather good,” offered Dick hastily. “If you didn't look.”

  “If this is how you suffer, I think you all deserve a treat,” Letty said sweetly. “One of my pieces of luggage was a hamper from Fortnum's. A present for you, Phoebe, from my father.”

  “A hamper!” The cry went round the table.

  “What's in it?”

  “Foie gras?” Phoebe said dreamily. “Do say you've brought some foie gras!”

  “A tinned haggis?” Stewart hardly dared hope.

  “Black cherries in syrup?” Dick murmured. “Or raspberries in a jar—that wouldn't be bad.”

  “Brown Windsor soup!” said Theodore. “There has to be Brown Windsor. Although beef consommé might just be acceptable.”

  “I can't swear to any of those, though I can declare—Cooper's Oxford thick cut marmalade and two packets of Bath Oliver biscuits—oh, and a bottle of gin—I put those in myself.”

  “Good Lord! I stumble into a chapter from Wind in the Willows,” said an amused baritone from the doorway. “The picnic scene, perhaps? Don't tell me! You're all off down the river in a rowing boat tomorrow?”

  They turned with a mixture of relief and pleasure to greet him. The newcomer—the architect?—unlike the other men, had not changed into a dinner jacket. He had obviously washed and shaved; a waft of Imperial Leather soap announced him and there was a fresh cut on his jaw. But the khaki cotton jacket thrown on over a white shirt, tieless and open at the neck, and the cord trousers were clear indication that he'd arrived anticipating the usual working supper. A handsome tanned face emphasised the blue of his eyes; his thick iron grey hair was neatly brushed back.

  Theo rose to his feet to greet him.

  “At last!” Phoebe whispered to Letty when her husband's back was turned. “Enter the Water Rat! Now we'll all appreciate a firm hand on the tiller of this pleasure boat.”

  “But we weren't expecting Miss Talbot for another week, were we? Theo, what is going on?” the newcomer demanded.

  The very question Laetitia would have asked herself if she had been able to master her astonishment. But she could only sit rigidly in her seat, speechless and still.

  “An early Easter present! Miss Laetitia Talbot, complete with hamper!” announced Theodore. “Now—I ask myself—ought I to fear the English, bearing gifts? She took an early boat. Laetitia, may I introduce—”

  “Please don't trouble,” snapped Letty. “Mr. Gunning and I have met before.”

  Your father is well, I trust, Miss Talbot?” William Gunning enquired politely. And, looking around and addressing the room at large: “I was last year briefly in the employ of Sir Richard.”

  “He's well, Mr. Gunning, and if he'd known I was to have the pleasure of seeing you here, he would have sent his fond greetings, as would my friend Esmé, who has often enquired about you since last we met,” she mumbled, hardly aware of what she was saying.

  Letty had spent many hours fantasising about such a moment and here it was: The treacherous, hateful Gunning had fallen right into her lap. The gutless deserter, the man unable to recognise a treasure when it stood before him, offering itself—well, offering herself—was here at her mercy. Her elegant satin T-strap was—so to speak—across his neck. After all this time. How long had it been? She didn't need to calculate. Eight and a half months since she last saw him. And the anger still glowed.

  Thrown together by circumstance not choice, they had grown very close in France the previous summer. She'd fancied herself in love with him. No self-deceiver, she corrected herself: She'd fallen for him like a ton of bricks. Letty blushed with shame to remember that she'd even, on their return to England, driven him, not home to Cambridge but to Fitzroy Gardens, to the privacy of the family property in London. There she planned to make, as he had dispa
ragingly called it in the old soldier's term, “the ultimate sacrifice.” But her plan had blown up in her face when they were greeted, on the doorstep of what she had calculated would be an unoccupied house, by her father and Professor Sir Andrew Merriman, her mentor. Unexpectedly down to enjoy the summer exhibitions. Unwittingly turning the night of passion she'd anticipated into a jolly junket.

  Gunning had sailed easily into the situation. He'd showed not the slightest discomfort, while she had turned truculent. More of her father's friends had arrived, and Letty had retired to bed early and spent uncomfortable hours listening to the male guffaws and exclamations and calls for more bottles from below. In the morning Gunning was gone.

  Without a word. Without a note. He'd vanished from her life as abruptly as he'd entered it. Relieved to have been handed a way out of a situation that was unwelcome to him? A situation that she had grossly misjudged? Or had he simply slunk away into the night after a warning-off by her father? She'd thought she would never know. But here he was again. And still up to his old deceptions, apparently. Architect, indeed! With one sentence she could destroy him before this company who, in their ignorance, appeared very much to admire him. Silently, she savoured a few killing phrases:

  “Architect, you say? But surely when last we met you were a down-and-out on the streets of Cambridge—a man I plucked from the clutches of the Cambridge Constabulary and rescued from the House of Correction for two and sixpence, like the most miserable stray dog? And before that—remind us—you were an army chaplain? Wounded, bemedalled, quite the hero! Recommended for valour and honesty by your old friend the Bishop of Huntingdon, no less. I wonder what you'll be next year? Do tell, Mr. Gunning! What an exciting life—lives!—you lead! And what eminent person have you lured into vouching for you in your present guise? I would have to guess—someone of the stature of Sir Edwin Lutyens.”

  She took a deep breath and controlled her unruly thoughts. She met his amused gaze, and the prepared speech dissolved on her lips.

  The comic opera performance provoked by the master of Villa Europa had faded to a meaningless distraction the moment it had been challenged by Gunning's presence. But how was it possible that a man so devious and unpredictable could appear without warning in front of her and be at once the steady point to which her faulty compass needle unwaveringly turned? Grudgingly, she recognised that, whatever the man's sins, she would not give him away to Theodore Russell, for whom she was conceiving a much greater scorn. She glanced at her host—so confident, so manipulative—and decided to have her revenge for the lamb's brain and the distress his bad manners had caused them all. She saw her way through to making both of these men squirm a little.

  “My father often speaks of you; Mr. Gunning. He'll be thrilled when I tell him of this chance meeting,” she said brightly, getting to her feet. She crossed the room and reached up on tiptoe to peck at his cheeks in the Continental fashion. She might as well have been kissing a statue for all the response he made, she thought. Her tone became a few degrees warmer. “I'm sure my father would congratulate you, Mr. Russell, on having secured the services of such a brilliant man. I know we all set great store by Mr. Gunning. And Sir Edwin—oh, come now, William, don't blush!—praised extravagantly his plans for the new faux-Gothic wing to our manor house near Cambridge. Those plans are merely shelved, William, awaiting your return. Father will use no other architect to see the scheme through to fruition. Ah! I begin to see the connexion! It was Sir Edwin who recommended you to Mr. Russell. And you defected to pastures new and warmer climes. Curse you!”

  Phoebe and the younger men were staring at Gunning with evident astonishment.

  It was Theodore who threw a conversational lifeline. “Lutyens? Why, no…William was referred to me by your mentor, Andrew Merriman…Did you not know this, Laetitia? Joint protégés of the great man—I'd have thought you'd have compared notes. How odd! I'm sorry to have deprived your father of his architect…quite unwitting! Forgive me! It was last summer. Digging season well over and I was losing a struggle to draw up the year's finds, trench profiles, drawings speculative as to original elevations—you know the sort of thing—I've got a book coming out next year which I'm hoping will rival Arthur Evans's and, in a defeated mood—”

  “Not something Pa suffers from ordinarily, you understand,” interrupted George. “But in this case it was a godsend.”

  “…I telegraphed Merriman in London begging his help. Andrew knows everyone. He replied saying he had the very man right there at his side—an accurate draughtsman with knowledge and experience of archaeology and an architect by profession. A gentleman scholar, with a deep appreciation of classical and preclassical culture.”

  William Gunning stared straight ahead with a grim face, listening to this account of his talents. He might have been hearing the delivery of a death sentence.

  “And William came out to us at once, before the weather closed in. He won't tell you himself, so I must say it for him—he's been spectacularly successful. He's learned modern Greek and—as you see—puts in hours of overtime in the field,” George informed Letty.

  “My book, I have decided,” announced Theodore, “—and I haven't told him this yet—is to be dedicated to William. The last little flourish. All is ready now for the publisher; the text and the illustrations are complete. William's drawings and his photographs are a vital part of the lavish production we envisage. As well as historical accuracy, they have that arresting quality the modern reader seeks out. A fresh style, very much his own. We're planning many pages in colour, Laetitia. Every drawing room table in the land will display one!”

  “I'll place my order at Hatchards directly,” said Letty. “How thrilling! Whatever next, William? An exhibition of your sketches at Burlington House?”

  “Not quite ready for that,” he growled. “Though the Royal Society has proposed a lecture engagement. I'll send you an invitation when they've hired the hall.”

  “Come and sit down, man!” said Theodore. “Dimitri is about to send in the fish course. We're to have red mullet, I understand, then there's a stew of some kind, which will be helped on its way by a bottle of the excellent red wine of Arkhanais, just south of here. Oh, and to accompany the French cheeses I've had sent out, I've opened a bottle of the Clos de Vougeot. A particular favourite of George's. So good to have him home again, sure you'll agree.”

  Gunning and George felt released at last to greet each other. The expected handshake was reinforced, Letty was intrigued to note, by warm smiles, a swift backslapping, and murmured compliments.

  “I've asked for a dish of horta from the hills,” Theodore rambled on expansively. “Wonderful stuff in the spring! Highly recommended for the liver. Just what you need, Laetitia…Laetitia is feeling a little liverish,” he confided to Gunning. “And for dessert—well, it doesn't feature in Cretan cuisine so when we have guests I clear the chaps out of the kitchen and make my own. Tonight, as the oranges and lemons are with us again, I'm going to impress you all with my Boodles Fool.”

  The meal was exceptional and in normal circumstances Letty's healthy appetite would have done justice to it but, after a token taste of each dish, her will to eat deserted her. Conversation flowed around the table, occasionally foundering on the reefs of silence stretching between herself and Gunning.

  George talked entertainingly of the six months he had just spent driving and walking around Europe. The young man puzzled her. She had assumed, from the delight he showed in owning his splendid new automobile, that he was the spoiled son of a rich man, but when she had trailed before him remarks alluding to the more frivolous aspects of life in France and Italy he appeared non-plussed. No casino gaming table, no racecourse, no gilded box at the music hall had had the benefit of the sight of that remarkable profile, as far as she could gather. Sensing at last from her carefully phrased queries that he was being a disappointment in the arts-and-culture department, George thought hard and came up with a glowing appreciation of the design of the new Alfa Romeo
showroom in the rue Marbeuf.

  It was Phoebe who caught her eye and, not too concerned to hide her amusement, reached across and patted George's hand affectionately. “You won't find our George strolling along the Via dei Condotti showing off his suit or necking in a smoke-filled Berlin boÎte!”

  But George had realised at last that the two women were teasing him. Good-naturedly, he grinned and offered further evidence of the sophistication they were casting doubt on. “You do me less than justice, Phoebe! I have adventurous friends in Paris. I was taken to a nightclub! Chez Joséphine in the rue Fontaine! Fascinating…And someone dragged me off to the winter review at the Moulin Rouge. What was it called?…All spotlights and spangles, I remember…Paris aux étoiles—that's it!”

  “It's not the fleshpots of Europe that attract George,” Phoebe answered Letty's unspoken question. “It's the people. He has hankerings after becoming an anthropologist, Laetitia. He's been studying, making notes on the different races to be found in Europe. Alpine mountain men—grey-eyed Finns—red-haired Irish—George has chased them all down! What he's attempting to do is to trace the movements of the races westwards from the Indus Valley or some such. Am I mangling this too, too horribly, George? Research all done with dimension in mind. I'll bet you anything he can tell you to the inch the average height of the Parisian chorus girl!”

  “As a matter of fact—I can!” said George, beginning to enjoy himself. “They import most of them from England, did you know? Taller girls, you see…they can reach eight feet with feathered headdress. Laetitia could audition any day with great success.”

  “Watch out, Letty! He'll whip out his tape measure, put it round your head, and declare you brachycephalic or dolichocephalic…I never know which is which…”