My Brother Michael Page 5

  Presently I put the tray off my knees on to the table by the bed, and lay back to relax. Before I knew it was even near, sleep had overtaken me …

  I woke to a feeling of freshness and the incongruous sound of rain. But the light still drove white against the shutters, and when I opened them a crack I saw that the sun still blazed, deeper now and lower, but at full power. Half my window was in shadow now, where the plane-trees put a bough or two between it and the falling sun. The sound of rain, I realised, was the sound of their leaves, pattering and rustling in the breeze that had got up to cool the evening.

  I glanced down at the terrace below the balcony. He was there, sitting under one of the plane-trees, smoking. His chair was pulled up to the railing that edged the terrace, and one arm lay along this. He sat there, relaxed, looking at nothing, completely at ease. The car was standing where he had parked it before. If – as appeared to be the case – he had not located another ‘Simon’ to deliver it to, the fact didn’t appear to worry him unduly.

  I reflected, as I looked down at him thoughtfully, that it would probably take a good deal to worry Simon Lester. That quiet manner, that air of being casually and good-temperedly on terms with life … with it all went something that is particularly hard to describe. To say that he knew what he wanted and took it, would be to give the wrong impression: it was rather that whatever decisions he had to make, were made, and then dismissed – this with an ease that argued an almost frightening brand of self-confidence

  I don’t know how much of this I saw in him on that first day; it may be that I simply recognised straight away the presence of qualities I myself so conspicuously lacked: but I do remember the immediate and vivid impression I got of a self-sufficiency harder and more complete than anything conveyed in years of Philip’s grand-seigneur gasconading, and at the same time quite different in quality. I didn’t see yet where the difference lay. I only know that I felt obscurely grateful to Simon for not having made me feel too much of a fool, and, less obscurely, for having so calmly undertaken to help me in the matter of the ‘other Simon’ …

  I wondered, as I closed the shutters again, if he had even bothered to make the gesture of looking for him.

  On the whole, I imagined not.

  In this, it seemed, I had done him less than justice.

  When I went downstairs I found him, hands thrust deep in trouser pockets, in earnest contemplation of the car, together with a Greek to whose bright blue shirt was pinned the insignia of a guide.

  Simon looked up and smiled at me. ‘Rested?’

  ‘Perfectly, thank you. And the tea was good.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Perhaps you’re strong enough, then, to bear the blow?’ He jerked his head towards the car.

  ‘I thought as much. You’ve not found him?’

  ‘Not a sign. I’ve been to the other hotels, but there’s no visitor of that name. Then I went along to the museum to meet George here. He tells me that he doesn’t know anyone called Simon in Delphi, either.’

  The Greek said: ‘Only yourself, Kyrie Lester.’

  ‘Only myself,’ agreed Simon.

  I said, rather helplessly: ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘Kyrie Lester,’ said the Greek, watching him rather curiously, ‘could it not be, perhaps, that there is no other Simon? And that it is not a mistake? That someone is – how do you put it? – using your name?’

  ‘Taking my name in vain?’ Simon laughed but I knew that this had already occurred to him. It had occurred to me, too. ‘It doesn’t seem likely. For one thing, who would? And for another, if they did, and it was urgent, they’d surely have appeared by now to claim the damned thing.’

  ‘That is probably true.’

  ‘You can bet it’s true. But I’m going to get to the bottom of this very odd little affair – and not only for the sake of Miss Haven here, who’s worried about it. Look, George, you are sure about it? No Simons at all, however unlikely? A grandfather with a wooden leg, or a mule-boy aged seven-and-a-half, or one of the men working up on the excavations?’

  ‘About the last I do not know, of course, though assuredly you are right and they would have come to look for it. In Delphi, nobody. Nobody at all.’

  ‘Then the places nearby? You’re a native, aren’t you? You’ll know a fair number of people all round here. Chrissa, for instance. It might be Chrissa … that’s only a few kilometres away. What about that?’

  George shook his head. ‘No. I am sure. I would have remembered. And in Arachova …’

  Simon ran a finger along the wing of the car, then contemplated the tip of it for a moment. ‘Yes?’

  George said, regretfully: ‘No, I do not remember anyone in Arachova, either.’

  Simon took out a handkerchief and wiped his finger-tip clean again. ‘In any case I can find out. I’m going back there tonight.’

  The Greek gave him a quick bright glance that held, I thought, curiosity. But he only said: ‘Ah. Well, I regret, but that is all I can tell you, except – oh, but that is not the same; it is of no use to you.’

  ‘We’ll have it, though, please. You’ve thought of someone?’

  George said slowly: ‘There is a Simonides at Itea. I do not think this is the man, but he is the only one I know of. But perhaps, kyrie, you would like to ask someone else? I do not know everybody, me. Elias Sarantopoulou, my cousin, he is also in the Tourist Police. He is at the office now, or perhaps he is at the café … if you like to come with me I will show you the place; it is opposite the post office.’

  ‘I know it,’ said Simon. ‘Thanks, but I really doubt if your cousin will know any more than you. This is an irritating little problem, isn’t it? It’ll probably solve itself very soon, but meanwhile I suppose we must do something. We’ll try your Simonides at Itea. Who is Simonides, what is he?’

  George, of course, took him literally. ‘He has a little baker’s shop near the cinema in the middle of the main street, facing the sea. Giannakis Simonides.’ He glanced at his wrist. ‘The bus goes in ten minutes. The shop is not far from the place where the bus stops.’

  Simon said: ‘We have a car,’ then grinned as he caught my eye. My answering smile was a rather brittle one. The car stood there like a mockery. I hated the sight of it.

  Simon nodded to George, said something in Greek, then pulled open the car door for me.

  I said doubtfully: ‘Ought we to?’

  ‘Why not? This is a quite legitimate attempt at delivery. Come along, the sooner we get down to Itea the better. It’ll be dark in an hour. Are you tired?’

  ‘Not now. But – you’ll drive, won’t you, Mr Lester?’

  ‘You bet I will. You haven’t seen the Itea road. And please call me Simon. It’s more euphonious than “Mr. Lester”, and besides …’ his grin, as he slid into his seat beside me, was malicious … ‘it’ll give you an illusion of comfort.’

  I didn’t answer that one, except with a look, but as we drove off I said suddenly, and almost to my own surprise: ‘I’m beginning to feel frightened.’

  The glance he gave me held surprise, but, oddly enough, no amusement. ‘That’s a strong word.’

  ‘I suppose so. Perhaps it isn’t, either, from me. I’m the world’s most complete coward. I–I wish I’d had the sense to let well alone. The beastly thing should still be standing there in Omonia Square, and—’

  ‘And you’d still be wishing you were in Delphi?’

  ‘There is that,’ I acknowledged. ‘But you do see, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  The car had crept carefully through Delphi’s narrow upper street, topped the rise opposite the presbytery, and then dived down to meet the lower road out of the village.

  I said abruptly: ‘Do you suppose for a moment that this Simonides is the man we’re looking for?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem very probable.’ Perhaps he felt this to be a little brusque, for he added: ‘We might as well try it, all the same.’

  ‘Something to make me fee
l progress is being made?’ No answer to this. I said: ‘You know, it really would be carrying coincidence a bit too far to suppose there are two Simons in Delphi.’

  ‘It’s not,’ he said evenly, ‘a very common name.’

  I waited, but he didn’t speak again. We had left the village behind, dropping in a gradual descent between dykes of red earth and stones where the road had been recently widened. The ditches and mounds showed raw as wounds in the sunburnt earth. The rich rays of the now setting sun flooded it with strong amber light, against which the dry thistles that grew everywhere stood up delicate and sharp, like intricate filigree of copper wire. Above the road the new hotel, the Tourist Pavilion, showed as raw and new and wounding as the torn ditches alongside us. The curved windows flashed as we passed beneath and wheeled into the first hairpin of the descent to the plain of olives.

  I said casually: ‘Are you just holidaying here in Delphi?’

  I had meant it as a non sequitur, a conversational makeweight, the normal casual query with which you might greet anyone you met in such a place; but even as I said it I could hear how it pointed back to my last remark. I started to say something else, but he was already answering without any indication that he saw my question as other than innocent.

  ‘In a way. I’m a schoolmaster. I have a house at Wintringham. Classics is my subject.’

  Whatever I had expected it wasn’t this; this seal and parchment of respectability. I said feebly: ‘Then of course you’re interested in the classical sites. Like me.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re a colleague. Another beggarly usher?’

  ‘Afraid so.’

  ‘Classics?’

  ‘Yes. Only in a girls’ school that just means Latin, to my sorrow and shame.’

  ‘You don’t know Ancient Greek?’

  ‘A little. A very little. Enough sometimes to catch a word and follow what’s being said. Enough to know my alphabet and make a wild guess at what some of the notices mean, and to have had a queer feeling at the pit of my stomach when I went to see Antigone in the Herodes Atticus Theatre in Athens and heard the chorus calling on Zeus against that deep black sky that had heard the same call for three thousand years.’ I added, feeling slightly ashamed of what I’d let him see: ‘What a ghastly road.’

  The car wheeled yet again round a hairpin and plunged on down the great shoulder of Parnassus that sticks out into the Chrissa Plain. Below us was a village, and below it again the flood of olives, flowing mile-wide now down to the sea.

  Simon said cheerfully: ‘The buses all have icons stuck up in front of the driver, and with a little red light in front, run off the battery. On this road the icon swings madly from side to side at the bends and everybody crosses themselves.’

  I laughed. ‘Including the driver?’

  ‘This is true. Yes, including the driver. I have a feeling that sometimes,’ said Simon, ‘he also shuts his eyes.’ He pulled the big car round an even sharper bend, missed an upcoming lorry by centimetres, and added: ‘You can open yours now. This is Chrissa.’

  I felt the colour come into my cheeks. ‘I’m sorry. I must be losing my nerve.’

  ‘You’re still tired, that’s all. We’ll have something to drink in Itea before we seek out this Simonides.’

  ‘No, please,’ I protested, almost too quickly.

  He eyed me for a moment. ‘You really are scared, aren’t you?’

  ‘I – yes, I am.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry; I really shouldn’t. It can’t matter, or it’d have been settled long before this.’

  ‘I know. I know it’s nonsense. It’s silly and it’s trivial and it doesn’t mean a thing, but I told you I’m the world’s worst coward. It’s true. I’ve been persuading myself for years that I’d be as competent and self-sufficient as anyone else, given the chance, but now I know … Why, I can’t even bear scenes, so why I ever thought I could get away with this sort of mayhem I have no idea.’ I stopped. It occurred to me with a queer little shock that I would never have said anything like that to Philip, not in a hundred years.

  Simon was saying calmly: ‘Never mind. I’m here, aren’t I? Whatever we get into, I’ll talk you out of it, so sit back and relax.’

  ‘If,’ I said, ‘we find Simon.’

  ‘If,’ said Simon, ‘we do.’

  I was glad enough, when we got to Itea, to leave everything to him.

  Itea is the port which in ancient times saw the landing of the pilgrims bound for the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. The shrine was a religious centre for the whole ancient world for many hundreds of years, and to us nowadays, used to modern transport, it is astonishing to contemplate the distances that men travelled on foot and on horseback or in small ships, to worship the god of light and peace and healing, or to ask the advice of the famous Oracle enshrined below the temple. The easy way was by Itea. The sea-journey, for all its hazards, was less exhausting and dangerous than the journey by road through the mountains, and here into the little port of Itea the pilgrims crowded, to see from the harbour the winding river valley of the Pleistus and, beyond the shoulder of Parnassus where modern Delphi stands, the bright cliffs of the Shining Ones that guard the holy spring.

  Today Itea is a grubby little fishing village, with one long street of shops and tavernas facing the sea, and separated from it by the road and then perhaps fifty yards of dusty boulevard where pepper-trees give shade and the men of the village gather for the usual drinks and ices and sticky honey-cakes.

  Simon stopped the car under the trees and led me to a rickety iron table which seemed to have fewer attendant wasps than the others. I would have liked tea again, but felt so ashamed of this insular craving – and so doubtful of getting anything approaching what I wanted – that I asked for fresh lemonade, and got it, delicious and cold and tangy with the real fruit, and with it a pasta something like Shredded Wheat, but frantically oversweet with honey and chopped nuts. It was wonderful. The wasps loved it too. When we had finished it I defiantly asked for another, and stayed to eat it, while Simon went off to look for the baker’s shop of Simonides.

  I watched him go, thoughtfully beating off an extra large and persistent wasp.

  Somehow I didn’t think Giannakis Simonides was our man. ‘Monsieur Simon, at Delphi …’ And there was only one Monsieur Simon at Delphi.

  There was that queer reserve, too, in Simon’s manner; there was Arachova; and the way he had shelved my question as to what he was doing in Delphi. The thing had ceased to be a slightly awkward puzzle. It was fast becoming a mystery, with Simon Lester at its centre. And Simon’s girl …

  I finished my cake now and got up. Simon had paid the waiter before he had left me. I could see him standing in a doorway some distance up the street. The place was apparently a restaurant, for outside it stood the big charcoal stove, and over this a whole lamb revolved slowly on the spit which was being turned by a stout woman in a blue apron. Simon appeared to be questioning her; she was nodding vigorously, and then, with a wave of her free hand, seemed to be directing him further up the street.

  He looked back, saw me standing under the pepper-trees, and raised a hand in salute. Then he made a vague gesture towards the other end of the street, and set off that way, walking fast.

  Taking his gesture to mean that he had some information, but that he didn’t expect me to follow him, I stayed where I was and watched him. He went perhaps a hundred yards, hesitated, then glanced up at a hoarding and plunged into the darkness of a deserted cinema. As he vanished, I turned in the opposite direction and began to walk along the boulevard. I was only too thankful to leave the inquiry to him. If he really was in the centre of the mystery, he could keep it to himself, and welcome …

  Meanwhile I would do what I had come to Delphi for. Since chance had brought me down to Itea, the start of the ancient pilgrimage, I would try and see the shrine as the old pilgrims had seen it on their first landing from the Corinthian Gulf.

  I walked quickly along the harbour’s edge. On my right
the sea paled towards sunset, and across the opal shimmer of the bay came a fishing-boat, turquoise and white, with her prow raked in a proud pure curve above its liquid image. Under a sail of that same scarlet had the worshippers come into harbour when the god was still at Delphi.

  I left the sea’s edge and walked rapidly across the street. I wanted to get behind the ugly row of houses, back into the old olive woods, where I could look straight up towards the Pleistus valley with nothing but immemorial rock and tree and sky between me and the shrine.

  Behind the main street were a few sorry alleys of concrete, with houses, as usual, scattered seemingly at random in the dust-patches between the trees. I passed the last house, skirted a building that looked like a ruined warehouse, and followed a cracked stretch of concrete which appeared to lead straight into the outskirts of the forest of olives. The concrete was crisscrossed with cracks, like crazy paving, and thistles grew in the fissures. I startled a browsing donkey, and it plunged off under the olives in a smother of dust, to be lost in the shadows. Soon the concrete came to an end, and I found myself walking through soft earth in the deeper twilight of the trees. The breeze had strengthened with the approach of evening, and overhead the olives had resumed their liquid rippling.

  I hurried on towards a space ahead where stronger light promised a clearing. I was lucky. There was a slight rise in the ground, and to the north of it the great olives thinned. From the top of the little ridge, across the ruffling crests of the trees, I could see the old Pilgrim’s Way, unscarred by my own century. I stood for a few minutes, gazing up towards the shrine in the now rapidly fading light.

  The temple columns were invisible behind the curve of the Chrissa bluff, but there was the black cleft of Castalia, and above it the great cliffs whose names are Flamboyant and Roseate, the Shining Ones … The dying sun ran up the Flamboyant cliff like fire.

  This was, I thought, the way to come to Delphi … not straight up into the ruins in the wake of a guide, but to land from a small boat in a bay of pearl, and see it as they would have seen it, flaming in the distance like a beacon, the journey’s end.