This Rough Magic Read online

  ‘Oh, honey, don’t look so stricken!’ Phyl, her worry apparently gone, was back in the role of comforter. ‘We’re all probably quite wrong, and there’s nothing the matter at all, except that the old man needs a bit of peace and quiet to recuperate in, and Max is seeing he gets it! If it comes to that, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Max who insists on the quarantine for his own sake; he’s writing the score for some film or other, so the story goes, and he never appears at all. Hence all the “trespassers will be shot” stuff, and young Adonis playing bodyguard.’

  ‘Young who?’

  ‘Adonis. The gardener.’

  ‘Good heavens! Can anyone get away with a name like that, even in Greece?’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, he does, believe you me!’

  She turned to Godfrey then, saying something about Adonis, who had apparently been a close friend of Spiro’s. I caught Miranda’s name again, and something about a dowry, and difficulties now that the brother was dead; but I wasn’t really listening. I was still caught up unhappily in the news I had just heard. We do not take easily to the displacing of our idols. It was like making a long and difficult journey to see Michelangelo’s David, and finding nothing there but a broken pedestal.

  I found I was reliving, as clearly as if it had been yesterday, that ‘last appearance’ in The Tempest; the gentle, disciplined verses resigning Prospero’s dark powers, and with them, if this story were true, so much more:

  ‘… This rough magic

  I here abjure: and when I have requir’d

  Some heavenly music (which even now I do)

  To work mine end upon their senses, that

  This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,

  Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

  And deeper than did ever plummet sound

  I’ll drown my book …’

  I stirred in my chair, pushed my own distress aside with an effort of will, and came back to the salotto, where Godfrey Manning was taking his leave.

  ‘I’d better go. I meant to ask you, Phyl, when’s Leo coming over?’

  ‘He may manage this next weekend, I’m not sure. But definitely for Easter, with the children. D’you have to go? Stay to lunch if you like. Maria’s done the vegetables, thank goodness – how I hate potatoes in the raw! – and the rest’s cold. Won’t you stay?’

  ‘I’d like to, but I want to get back to the telephone. There may be news.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. You’ll phone me straight away if you hear anything, won’t you?’

  ‘Certainly.’ He picked up the portfolio. ‘Let me know as soon as you think Maria would like to see me.’

  He said his goodbyes, and went. We sat in silence till the engine of his car faded among the trees.

  ‘Well,’ said my sister, ‘I suppose we’d better find something to eat. Poor Godfrey, he’s taking it hard. A bit surprising, really, I never thought he’d be knocked endways quite like that. He must have been fonder of Spiro than he cares to admit.’

  ‘Phyl,’ I said abruptly.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Was that true, or was it just another of your stories, when you said Julian Gale was probably Miranda’s father?’

  She looked at me sideways. ‘Well … Oh, damn it, Lucy, you don’t have to take everything quite so literally! Heaven knows – but there’s something in it, only I don’t know what. He christened the girl ‘Miranda’, and can you imagine any Corfiote hatching up a name like that? And then Maria’s husband deserted them. What’s more, I’ll swear Julian Gale’s been supporting the family. Maria’s never said a word, but Miranda’s let things drop once or twice, and I’m sure he does. And why, tell me that? Not just because he happened to know the husband during the war!’

  ‘Then if Miranda and Spiro were twins, he’s Spiro’s father, too?’

  ‘The facts of life being what they are, you might even be right. Oh!’ She went rigid in her chair, and turned large eyes on me. ‘You mean – you mean someone ought to go and break the news to him?’ All at once she looked very uncertain and flustered. ‘But, Lucy, it’s only a rumour, and one could hardly assume it, could one? I mean, think if one went over there, and—’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ I said. ‘In any case, it’s not our job to tell him, Maria’ll tell him herself. He’ll hear soon enough. Forget it. Where’s this lunch you were talking about? I’m starving.’

  As I followed her out to the kitchen, I was reflecting that Julian Gale had almost certainly had the news already. From my chair facing the salotto windows, I had seen Maria and her daughter leave the house together. And not by the drive that would take them back to their own cottage. They had taken the little path that Miranda had showed me that morning, the path that led only to the empty bay, or to the Castello dei Fiori.

  4

  He is drown’d

  Whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks

  Our frustrate search on land: well, let him go.

  III. 3.

  DAYS went by, peaceful, lovely days. I kept my word, and went down daily to the bay. Sometimes the dolphin came, though never near enough for me to touch him, and, although I knew that for the animal’s own sake I ought to try to frighten him and drive him away, his friendly presence delighted me so much that I couldn’t bring myself to what would seem an act of betrayal.

  I did keep a wary eye on the Castello terrace, but there was no further shooting incident, nor had there been any rumour that a local man might have been trespassing with a rifle. But I swam every day, and watched, and never left the bay until the dolphin had finally submerged and headed for the open sea.

  There had been no news of Spiro. Maria and her daughter had come back to the Villa Forli the morning after the boy’s death, and had gone stoically on with their work. Miranda had lost the plump brightness that characterised her; she looked as if she cried a lot, and her voice and movements were subdued. I saw little of Maria, who kept mostly to the kitchen, going silently about her work with the black head-kerchief pulled across her face.

  The weather was brilliant, and hot even in the shade. Phyllida was rather listless. Once or twice she went with me on my sightseeing trips, or into the town of Corfu, and one evening Godfrey Manning took us both to dine at the Corfu Palace Hotel, but on the whole the week slipped quietly by, while I bathed, and sat on the terrace with Phyllida, or took the little car and drove myself out in the afternoons to explore.

  Leo, Phyllida’s husband, hadn’t managed to get away for the weekend, and Palm Sunday came without a visit from him. Phyllida had advised me to go into the town that morning to watch the Palm Sunday procession, which is one of the four occasions in the year when the island Saint, Spiridion, is brought out of the church where he lies the year round in a dim shrine all smoky with taper-light, and is carried through the streets in his golden palanquin. It is not an image of the Saint, but his actual mummified body which is carried in the procession, and this, somehow, makes him a very personal and homely kind of patron saint to have: the islanders believe that he has Corfu and all its people in his personal and always benevolent care, and has nothing to do but concern himself deeply in all their affairs, however trivial – which may explain why, on the procession days, just about the whole population of the island crowds into the town to greet him.

  ‘What’s more,’ said my sister, ‘it’s a pretty procession, not just a gaggle of top brass. And St Spiro’s golden chair is beautiful; you can see his face quite clearly through the glass. You’d think it would be creepy, but it’s not, not a bit. He’s so tiny, and so … well, he’s a sort of cosy saint!’ She laughed. ‘If you stay long in Corfu you’ll begin to get the feeling you know him personally. He’s pretty well in charge of the island, you know, looks after the fishing, raises the wind, watches the weather for the crops, brings your boys safe home from sea …’ She stopped, then sighed. ‘Poor Maria. I wonder if she’ll go today? She doesn’t usually miss it.’

  ‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Are you sure you
won’t come with me?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll stay at home. You have to stand about for rather a long time while the procession goes past, and there’ll be a bit of a crush. Caliban and I take up too much room. Home for lunch? Good. Well, enjoy yourself.’

  The little town of Corfu was packed with a holiday crowd, and the air was loud with bells. Caught up in the river of people which flowed through the narrow streets, I wandered happily along under the sound of the bells, which competed with the subdued roar of voices, and the occasional bursts of raucous brass from some upper window, where a village band was struggling with some last-minute practice. Shops were open, selling food and sweets and toys, their windows crammed with scarlet eggs ready for Easter, cockerels, dolls, baskets of tiny crystallised oranges, or enormous rabbits laden with Easter eggs. Someone tried to sell me a sponge the size of a football, and someone else to convince me that I must need a string of onions and a red plush donkey, but I managed to stay unburdened, and presently found my way to the Esplanade, which is Corfu’s main square. Here the pavements were already packed, but when I tried to take my place at the back, the peasants – who must have come into town in the early morning, and waited hours for their places – made way for me with insistent gestures, almost forcing me forward into the place of honour.

  Presently, from somewhere, a big bell struck, and there came the distant sound of the bands starting up. The vast crowd fell almost silent, all eyes turned to watch the narrow mouth of Nikephoros Street, where the first banners glinted, slowly moving up into the sunlight of the square. The procession had begun.

  I am not sure what I had expected – a spectacle at once quaint and interesting, because ‘foreign’ – something to take photographs of, and then forget, till you got them out to look at, some evening at home. In fact, I found it very moving.

  The bands – there were four of them, all gorgeously uniformed – played solemnly and rather badly, each a different tune. The village banners with their pious legends were crudely painted, enormous, and cruelly heavy, so that the men carrying them sweated and trembled under the weight, and the faces of the boys helping them wore expressions of fierce and dedicated gravity. There were variations in the uniforms of the school-children that were distinctly unconventional, but the standard of personal beauty was so high that one hardly noticed the shabby coats of the boys, or the cheap shoes the girls wore; and the young servicemen in their reach-me-down uniforms, with their noticeable absence of pipeclay and their ragged timing, had still about them, visibly, the glamour of two Thermopylaes.

  And there was never a moment’s doubt that all this was done in honour of the Saint. Crowded along the pavements in the heat, the people watched in silence, neither moving nor pushing. There were no police, as there would have had to be in Athens: this was their own Spiridion, their island’s patron, come out into the sunlight to bless them.

  And here he came. The Archbishop, a white-bearded ninety-two, walked ahead, followed by Church dignitaries, whose robes of saffron and white and rose shone splendidly in the sun, until, as they passed nearer, you saw the rubbed and faded patches, and the darns. Then came the forest of tall white candles, each with its gilt crown and wreath of flowers, and each one fluttering its long ribbons of white and lilac and scarlet. Then finally, flanked by the four great gilded lanterns, and shaded by its canopy, the gold palanquin approached, with the Saint himself inside it, sitting up for all to see; a tiny, withered mummy, his head sagging on to his left shoulder, the dead features flattened and formless, a pattern of shadows behind the gleaming glass.

  All around me, the women crossed themselves, and their lips moved. The Saint and his party paused for prayer, and the music stopped. A gun boomed once in salute from the Old Fort, and as the echo died a flight of pigeons went over, their wings whistling in the silence.

  I stood watching the coloured ribbons glinting in the sun, the wreaths of flowers fading already, and hanging crookedly from the crowned candles; the old, upraised hand of the Archbishop, and the faces of the peasant-women near me, rapt and shining under the snowy coifs. To my own surprise I felt my throat tighten, as if with tears.

  A woman sobbed, in sudden, uncontrollable distress. The sound was loud in the silence, and I had glanced round before I could prevent myself. Then I saw it was Miranda. She was standing some yards from me, back among the crowd, staring with fiercely intent eyes at the palanquin, her lips moving as she crossed herself repeatedly. There was passion and grief in her face, as if she were reproaching the Saint for his negligence. There was nothing irreverent in such a thought; the Greek’s religion is based on such simplicities. I suppose the old Church knew how great an emotional satisfaction there is in being able to lay the blame squarely and personally where it belongs.

  The procession had passed; the crowd was breaking up. I saw Miranda duck back through it, as if ashamed of her tears, and walk quickly away. The crowds began to filter back again down the narrow main streets of the town, and I drifted with the tide, back down Nikephoros Street, towards the open space near the harbour where I had left the car.

  Halfway down, the street opens into a little square. It chanced that, as I passed this, I saw Miranda again. She was standing under a plane tree, with her back to me, and her hands up to her face. I thought she was weeping.

  I hesitated, but a man who had been hovering near, watching her, now walked across and spoke. She neither moved, nor gave any sign that she had heard him, but stood still with her back turned to him, and her head bowed. I couldn’t see his face, but he was young, with a strong and graceful build that the cheap navy blue of his Sunday best suit could not disguise.

  He moved up closer behind the girl, speaking softly and, it seemed, with a sort of urgent persuasion. It appeared to me from his gestures that he was pressing her to go with him up one of the side streets away from the crowd: but at this she shook her head, and I saw her reach quickly for the corner of her kerchief, and pull it across to hide her face. Her attitude was one of shy, even shrinking, dejection.

  I went quickly across to them.

  ‘Miranda? It’s Miss Lucy. I have the car here, and I’m going back now. Would you like me to take you home?’

  She did turn then. Above the kerchief her eyes were swollen with tears. She nodded without speaking.

  I hadn’t looked at the youth, assuming that he would now give up his importunities and vanish into the crowd. But he, too, swung round, exclaiming as though in relief:

  ‘Oh, thank you! That’s very kind! She ought not to have come, of course – and now there’s no bus for an hour! Of course she must go home!’

  I found myself staring, not at his easy assumption of responsibility for the girl, or even at the near-perfect English he spoke, but simply because of his looks.

  In a country where beauty among the young is a common-place, he was still striking. He had the fine Byzantine features, with the clear skin and huge, long-lashed eyes that one sees staring down from the walls of every church in Greece; the type which El Greco himself immortalised, and which still, recognisably, walks the streets. Not that this young man conformed in anything but the brilliant eyes and the hauntingly perfect structure of the face: there was nothing to be seen here of the melancholy and weakness which (understandably) tends to afflict the saintly persons who spend their days gazing down from the plaster on the church walls – the small-lipped mouths, the meekly slanted heads, the air of resignation and surprise with which the Byzantine saint properly faces the sinful world. This youth had, indeed, the air of one who had faced the sinful world for some years now, but had obviously liked it enormously, and had cheerfully sampled a good deal of what it had to offer. No church-plaster saint, this one. And not, I judged, a day over nineteen.

  The beautiful eyes were taking me in with the frank appraisal of the Greek. ‘You must be Miss Waring?’

  ‘Why, yes,’ I said, in surprise; then suddenly saw who, inevitably, this must be. ‘And you’re – Adonis?’

&n
bsp; I couldn’t for the life of me help bringing out the name with the kind of embarrassment one would feel in labelling one’s own compatriot ‘Venus’ or ‘Cupid’. That in Greece one could meet any day a Pericles, an Aspasia, an Electra, or even an Alcibiades, didn’t help at all. It was the looks that did it.

  He grinned. He had very white teeth, and eyelashes at least an inch long. ‘It’s a bit much, isn’t it? In Greek we say “Adoni”.’ (He pronounced it A-thoni.) ‘Perhaps you’d find that easier to say? Not quite so cissy?’

  ‘You know too much by half!’ I said, involuntarily, and quite naturally, and he laughed, then sobered abruptly.

  ‘Where is your car, Miss Waring?’

  ‘It’s down near the harbour.’ I looked dubiously at the crowded street, then at the girl’s bent head. ‘It’s not far, but there’s a dreadful crowd.’

  ‘We can go by a back way.’ He indicated a narrow opening at the corner of the square, where steps led up into the shadow between two tall houses.

  I glanced again at the silent girl, who waited passively. ‘She will come,’ said Adoni, and spoke to her in Greek, briefly, then turned to me, and began to usher me across the square and up the steps. Miranda followed, keeping a pace or so behind us.

  He said in my ear: ‘It was a mistake for her to come, but she is very religious. She should have waited. It is barely a week since he died.’

  ‘You knew him well, didn’t you?’

  ‘He was my friend.’ His face shut, as if everything had been said. As, I suppose, it had.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  We walked for a while in silence. The alleys were deserted, save for the thin cats, and the singing-birds in cages on the walls. Here and there, where a gap in the houses laid a blazing wedge of sunlight across the stones, dusty kittens baked themselves in patches of marigolds, or very old women peered from the black doorways. The smell of charcoal-cooking hung in the warm air. Our steps echoed up the walls, while from the main streets the sound of talk and laughter surged back to us, muted like the roar of a river in a distant gorge. Eventually our way opened into a broader lane, and a long flight of shallow steps, which dropped down past a church wall straight to the harbour square where I had left Phyl’s little Fiat.