by Francis King
‘Of course there are,’ Theo said soothingly. ‘ But you want everything in such a hurry.’
Götz picked irritably at a length of cord that had come loose from the upholstery of the chair. ‘The truth is that nice girls aren’t interested in me.’
‘Now don’t be silly.… Come—let me give you a cup of tea.’ Theo patted him on the shoulder, and then looked up, startled; from the hall there came the sounds of two voices raised in angry altercation. ‘Now what’s happening?’ he asked. One voice was shrill; the other rough and deep.
The front door slammed and Cecil, in slippers and a silk kimono, embroidered with a dragon, swept in exclaiming: ‘The cheek of it! The barefaced cheek of it!’
‘Why, what’s happened?’
‘Oh, the usual! Of course I sent him packing—you can trust me for that.’
‘I think you’re a bit unreasonable,’ Theo said mildly.
‘Unreasonable? How unreasonable?’ Cecil swung his plump legs over the arms of his chair. ‘At my age one doesn’t expect to have to play at being Father Christmas. Besides—there’s the principle involved.’
‘Then it’s hardly fair to make friends with someone who expects you to be Father Christmas. Is it?’
‘That’s his look-out.’
‘H’m.’ Theo considered; then he went on in the same mild tone. ‘After all, you’re really taking advantage of the good nature of the Greeks. In London I bet you wouldn’t dare to behave like that—you’d have your nose broken for you. Whereas no Greek would dream of knocking someone like you about. And so you get away with it.’
‘Oh, shut up, Theo! Don’t be such a prig.’
‘After all, what is ten or twenty drachmae to you?’
‘I tell you it’s the principle, the principle!’ Cecil muttered, rising angrily to his feet. ‘Kindly remember that I’m only twenty-nine.’ At that he flounced into his bedroom, where we could hear his dropping what sounded like shoes on the floor.
Theo went to the door and asked: ‘Did you speak to him about the fashion parade?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, Cecil! I reminded you.’
Cecil reappeared, sulkily filing his nails. ‘I could hardly start talking about a fashion parade when we were in the middle of that sort of argument—now could I?’
‘But he was just the type I wanted. And he comes from Crete.’
‘Well, it looks as if you’ll have to find someone else—stinky boos to you,’ Cecil said unhelpfully. He turned to me: ‘Has Theo talked you into taking part?’
‘Me? Taking part in what?’
‘I haven’t told you about it yet,’ Theo said. ‘Among my other accomplishments, I am a dress designer. A special sort of dress designer. And in ten days’ time I shall have my first show. I was particularly hoping to get Cecil’s—er—companion as one of my mannequins.’ Eagerly he went on to explain to me that all his clothes were based on the Greek traditional costumes—‘One of the greatest tragedies of the last fifty years has been the general adoption of European dress.’ The fashion parade was to take place in Constitution Square at eleven o’clock one Sunday morning. He sighed: of course the initial cost had been enormous—he had had to scrape and pinch and, but for Cecil’s generosity, he could never have even contemplated such an outlay—but he was sure that, having cast his bread upon the water, he would get it back a hundred-fold.
‘Would you like to take part in the parade—as Cecil suggests?’
Hurriedly I excused myself: during this period of convalescence I had to take things easy and, anyway, I was always self-conscious on such occasions, I explained.
‘Do you think Dino would help? I have one model—what we call a ‘‘smoking’‘ and you call a ‘‘dinner jacket’‘—which he would carry off to perfection. You see, for ordinary, everyday costumes I have a number of soldiers and sailors and workmen who are going to look quite splendid, but for evening dress one wants someone with breeding and presence. I think Dino would be marvellous. Let me show you the costume.’ He went to a wardrobe: ‘As you see, I have substituted the traditional fustanella for the black trousers, and instead of the black tie there is this hand-embroidered kerchief from the island of Scyros. Don’t you think that would look magnificent on a man with Dino’s legs?’
I doubted whether Dino would be willing to appear in the most fashionable square in Athens in what looked like a ballet dancer’s ‘tutu’, however fine his legs, but I promised to give him Theo’s message.
‘Of course I’m sending out invitations to everyone I know. You must tell all your friends to come, won’t you? If you give me the names of any people you think might be interested, I’ll see that they receive invitations.’
I mentioned the Representative of the British Council who would, I thought, appreciate the humour of the parade, and a friend in the American Mission, but Theo said airily: ‘Oh, naturally, those sort of V. I. P. s are personal friends of mine and will turn up anyway.… No, I was thinking of some of the dimmer members of the Anglo-American colony—Embassy clerks, and that sort of thing. I’m awfully out of touch with that crowd.… When you have a moment, do draw me up a list.’
It was Dino who explained to me, when I returned home to dinner, that this fashion parade was by no means the first attempt made by Theo to establish himself as something more than a ‘character’ in Athens. He knew that, if he were to die at that moment, he would be remembered as an amiable eccentric, about whom had accreted a large number of scandalous legends. But he was thirsty for a more durable fame than that. In middle age he had imagined that his early fame as an aviator would, at least, remain: but in an era of jet propulsion his exploits in his rickety Tiger Moth had already dimmed into oblivion. He would be a composer; or a poet; or an artist. Or, better still, he would be the last Universal Man, whose incredible scope would embrace all the sciences and arts as Leonardo had done before him.
Poor Theo! Inevitably, the parade was a dismal failure. Dino, as I had expected, refused to take part, and when I had passed this message on to Theo, was rewarded with a parcel that Theo himself handed to the man-servant while we were eating breakfast. ‘Oh, this is too silly!’ Dino exclaimed. Inside the cardboard box lay a bundle of thistles.
‘What does it mean?’
‘Donkeys eat thistles. Could that be it?’
We both began laughing.
‘How did Dino like my little gift?’ Theo asked, when we next met.
‘What was the point?’
Theo giggled: ‘Oh, surely you know enough about fantasiometry to guess what was the point! … Was he very angry?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Oh.’ Theo was plainly disappointed. ‘Of course one thing he learnt in England was how to hide his feelings. I expect he was really furious.’
‘He told me to tell you that you ought to change the day you’ve chosen for your parade. You know, I suppose, that on the same Sunday they’re going to unveil the Commonwealth Memorial?’
‘Well—what’s that to me? Who wants to go and see a potty old Memorial unveiled? Anyway, I announced my Parade first.’
‘Most officials will have to go to the unveiling of the Memorial. Monty will be there——’
‘No Greeks will turn out to look at him.’
‘And Lord Halifax.’
Theo mused. ‘Now he would look superb in that dinner jacket. Really quite superb.’
‘Honestly, Theo, I think you should change the day.’
‘But how can I change it? I’ve printed my invitations. I’ve sent most of them out. My friend, the Greek Ambassador in Ankara, has specially taken leave. I can’t postpone the Parade at such short notice. Anyway it will be only the military big-wigs who will go to the unveiling—the smart and artistic people won’t be interested in that sort of nonsense. Will they?’
I continued to look doubtful.
‘No, I am sure that it’s we who will get the crowds.’
The fashion parade can best be described in Theo’s
one word, as he put his hand on to the marble top of the Grande Bretagne bar and burst into sobs: ‘ Fiasco!’ he groaned. Only half the costumes had been ready in time, even though Götz had himself joined the two seamstresses engaged by Theo, and of the dozen mannequins only five turned up: a waiter, who had to disappear before he could show his costume as he was wanted for duty at twelve o’clock; an elderly man, whose right leg was longer than his left, deputising for a cousin; two youths who giggled, emitted shrill screams and fought over everything they excitedly pulled on; and a Commando who stolidly refused to do anything until he was paid twenty drachmae, cash down. In the end, Götz and Theo had themselves to struggle into costume—Götz into some baggy Cretan trousers, and Theo into a modernised version of an evzone’s dress—while Cecil and I feebly resisted their efforts to persuade us to join them ‘If you think you’re going to get me prancing up and down the pavement outside the King George, making an ass of myself, you’re bloody well mistaken!’ Cecil succinctly summed up his own and my feelings.
‘But what’s happened to the other mannequins?’ I asked.
‘They’ve all had to go on duty at the unveiling.… I knew it would be a mistake to choose soldiers. I knew it all along! … Frank, do just run out and tell the police to clear a way for us. I’ve explained to them our route.’
I went out: but there was no need to have a way cleared. I had never seen Constitution Square so absolutely empty.
The parade started: a couple of shoe-shine boys ran after Götz making obscene comments about the Cretan trousers; the two giggling youths twirled and assumed extravagant poses before the few people drinking coffee or ouzo on the pavement outside the King George Hotel, reminding me, as they did so, of the girls I had once seen showing dresses in the restaurant of Marshall and Snelgrove; Theo cuffed a child on the head, when he tweaked his fustanella—the old man’s face was bleak with a mingling of disappointment and aristocratic scorn; the substitute caught the longer of his two legs on an unevenness in the pavement and fell to the ground amid jeers and laughter; while, all the time, the Commando ran from me to Cecil, to Götz, to Theo, declaring that for ten drachmae—for ten drachmae only, cash down—he would wear anything we liked, anything at all.
‘That wretched unveiling!’ Theo now groaned. ‘Oh, damn Montgomery! Damn Halifax! Damn them, damn them, damn them!’
As I learned from Dino at lunch, the unveiling had been quite as much of a fiasco as our Parade. British marines crashed, fainting, to the ground to the amusement of the populace; the joined British and Greek flags got stuck on the aegis of Athens, and after repeated tuggings by almost every important person present, a ladder had to be fetched before the Memorial could be disclosed; there was a gasp of relief and pleasure when, at long last, the figure stood glittering in the sunlight, followed at once by another gasp of horror from the English—at the base was the 1066-and-all-that inscription: ‘Honey soit qui mal y pense …’
Naturally Dino’s account of this greater fiasco could in no way console Theo for his own.
Chapter Five
FOR the next ten days Theo seemed to be exhausted and depressed. One no longer saw him making his round of the bars in the evening, and when one went to visit him, instead of holding forth with his usual garrulity and vehemence, he would merely sit silent on a straight-backed chair and revolve the ring, which he had once declared represented the Marriage of Heaven and Hell, about his knobbly finger. Götz would bring him cups of tea, one after another, in endless succession, but even the sight of the vast German pouring milk from the phallus failed to induce a smile. From time to time he would rattle his teaspoon in the cup, sigh heavily and murmur: ‘Ah yes—yes—yes.’
‘What’s the matter, Theo?’ Cecil asked during one of these stricken afternoons.
‘Oh, I feel old—so old.’ Then he pulled himself together and said: ‘ To be precise, this is one of my depressive periods. Once the manic phase starts, I shall be all right again. Then I shall show them! Yes, I still have one or two surprises hidden up my sleeve. But now—I must stay in the wilderness. Now I must prepare.’
It was the longest speech we had heard him make since the fiasco of the Parade, and he concluded it with another rattle of his teaspoon, another sigh, and another long-drawn ‘Ah, yes—yes—yes.’ Then viciously he muttered: ‘But money is the worm that is curled round the heart of life. Money, money, money!’
‘Now don’t start worrying about money again,’ Götz said soothingly.
‘Why shouldn’t I worry? Why shouldn’t I?’ With a magnificently tragic gesture Theo raised both his hands; then he let them fall back on to his knees, as he cried: ‘How can I think of anything else, when those bills pour in and I don’t even know how to look for my daily bread? And then that damnable woman keeps asking me to help her—’ the ‘damnable woman’, I discovered later, was Theo’s wife—‘as if she hadn’t already run through two fortunes of her own and one and a half of mine.’
‘Sell the house,’ Cecil said briefly. As he spoke there was a knock at the front door, three shorts and a long, and he jumped to his feet. ‘ That must be for me. It’s the one I met at the News Cinema, I think.’
‘Sell the house!’ Theo muttered angrily as Cecil disappeared. ‘That’s just the sort of advice one would expect from him, the—the sissy!’ He brought out the last word as if it were the vilest of abuse. ‘If you knew, Frank, how ashamed I was when I had to sell our property in Corfu. As you probably know—though we no longer give ourselves titles in Greece—I really have the right to call myself the Conte di Greco. A Venetian creation, of course. Well, there was that superb house full of some of the most beautiful furniture in Europe—Venetian and English Regency and Louis Quinze—and who bought it? Who bought it? A Greek American who made a fortune out of Motels—whatever they can be—in Texas! In Texas, Frank! … Ah—yes—yes—yes … And if it hadn’t been for that damnable woman …’ He shook his head from side to side, drawing down the corner of his mouth into a grimace of melancholy disgust.
‘You shouldn’t speak about her like that,’ Götz said.
‘Why shouldn’t I speak about her like that? She’s my wife, isn’t she?’ Then, no less suddenly, his exasperation flickered out, as he turned to pat Götz’s hand: ‘You’re a good boy, Götz. You’re a decent boy. And you’re right—I shouldn’t talk about her like that. I’ve done her many wrongs; and the worst wrong of all was when I married her.’
‘But you’ve always said that she married you only because she wanted Greek citizenship,’ Götz protested.
Theo was momentarily put out: ‘Did I ever say that?’ he demanded peevishly. ‘Well, there you see! That’s the way I talk about a woman to whom I’ve brought nothing but suffering and humiliation. I remember Gide once saying to me——’ Theo was always quoting remarks made to him by eminent men; to this day I am not certain whether they were genuine or not—‘ ‘‘Théo,’‘ he said—we met in the Belgian Congo, incidentally—‘‘Théo, all my life my wife has been my conscience.’‘ Those were his words—how clearly I recall them! And what was true of Gide’s wife is so much more true of Nadia. Through all these long years, whether we have passed them together or apart, she has always been my conscience.’
I was anxious to meet Theo’s ‘conscience’; but the opportunity did not come until some ten days later. I had more than once told Theo that when he next visited his wife, I should like to go with him, and he had assented: ‘Yes, you must meet my dear Nadia. A remarkable woman—a remarkable woman, in many ways.’ There was something slightly ominous in the emphasis he gave to these last three words.
One afternoon I came into the sitting-room to find him alone in a chair, his scarf knotted about his scrawny neck, his stained and moth-eaten overcoat on, and a tall, grey felt hat, stuck with a peacock’s feather, pulled over his eyes. A large brown envelope rested across his knees, and his hands rested on the envelope. He was deep in thought. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, as I entered. ‘Ah!’ I was given no other greetin
g.
‘Were you going out?’ I enquired politely.
‘I was going out. But I shall not go out now.’ He shook himself and rose to his feet. ‘Forgive my air of abstraction, dear Frank. I was making some calculations in my head, and since I have never been good at arithmetic, the effort has exhausted me. Sit down, sit down! I am delighted to hear that you have managed to get some work in Athens. You will have some sherry, won’t you?’
I shook my head, knowing by now that Theo, like most Greeks, thought that sherry was the same as cherry brandy.
‘I was going to call on my wife. I have something here that I think will give her pleasure.’ He shook the envelope in the air.
‘Money?’ I remembered now that, as Theo’s old woman had let me in, I had noticed that the two archaic Greek helmets were no longer hanging in their usual place in the hall.
‘Yes, money. One, or rather two, of my—er—ships have fortunately come home. So I am going to take Nadia half of the spoils. But I can’t go. I’ve just realised that today is her birthday.’
This seemed to me a curious reason, and I said so.
‘Ah, you don’t understand. Nadia never celebrates her birthdays. One is not even allowed to mention them to her. And if I arrive with this money, today of all days, well, don’t you see, it will look as if I intend it as a birthday present. And that will make her furious.’
I looked wholly mystified.
‘You still don’t understand,’ Theo said. ‘It’s quite simple really. Nadia thinks that if we acknowledge that the years are passing, well, of course we grow old. But if we refuse to count them …’ He broke off: ‘Surely you see?’
‘Is she a Christian Scientist?’ I asked.
‘Well—kind of,’ Theo said doubtfully. ‘Anyway you must get her to tell you herself. But not today—definitely not today. We’ll have to go tomorrow.’
Nadia Grecou lived in a small, costly flat in a street that ran down off Kolonaki Square. A White Russian, she was one of those ageing women of whom people always say: ‘Ah, she must have been a real beauty when she was young,’ but who, in reality, have each year more and more to offer the world in elegance and grace and charm as each year the world expects less and less of them. French had been her first language and she spoke both Greek and English inaccurately with a heavy French accent. She had a thin, slightly fox-like face with a pointed nose and chin, an over-wide mouth and grey eyes that were melancholy except when they flashed into a sudden, violent merriment or scorn. The extraordinary thing about her was her complexion, which was still that of a young girl in its delicate white and pink. Her hair, I guessed, had been artfully tinted to its chestnut colour, lying close to her small, bony head in a fashion that was reminiscent of the middle twenties. A number of rings flashed on her expressive hands which were being perpetually waved in the air.