Dangerous Inheritance (4 page)

Over lunch the Duke asked them what they had seen. Then he said, ‘Unfortunately Corfu has comparatively few interesting ruins because when the island was threatened by the Turks, before the famous siege of 1537, the town was still unwalled; so the Corfiotes pulled down most of the Greek and Roman temples and used the great stones to create defences.

‘Even so, there remain quite a few traces of its chequered history. In Homer's day it was known as Phaeacia and at one time King Alcinous ruled here. It was his daughter Nausica who took pity on Ulysses when he was washed up on the shore, and after his many years of wandering sent him safely home to his own Kingdom, the neighbouring island of Ithica.

‘Historically the first we know of Corfu was that it was colonized by the Corinthians about seven hundred B.C. Later the Kerkyarians, as they were then called, broke away and became independent. In due course the Romans conquered it, then it passed to the Eastern Empire of Byzantium. During the Middle Ages the Franks, Angevins, Naples and Sicily each held it for a while and Richard Cœur-de-Lion stayed here on his way to a Crusade.

‘But most of the remains you'll see are Venetian. In the hands of the Serene Republic it remained for four hundred years one of the great bastions of Christendom against the Turk. When
Venice fell Napoleon seized it by treachery, counting it his most valuable stepping stone to the conquest of Egypt and the East; but within two years a combined Russian and Turkish fleet wrested it from him.

‘By the Treaty of Paris in 1815 it was awarded to Britain as a Protectorate, and for the first time for many centuries its wretched inhabitants were no longer plagued with wars and constantly ravished by pirates. For fifty years under British rule they enjoyed peace and a certain measure of prosperity. We gave them schools and hospitals and built all the roads so that one of their few great writers said of us, “If ever a State was prosperous, free and progressive under the dominion of another, that State was Ionia under the domination of Great Britain.”

‘Yet like so many other ignorant and primitive people they were led by so-called patriots, who are usually self-seeking politicians, to demand the casting off of the friendly yoke and to become re-united with Greece. Gladstone, that cheeseparing little Englander, saw a chance to save the few thousands a year the island cost to administer; so he let them have their way. As a result, from the sixties on, they sank back into poverty and still today the peasants go hungry half the year because their only means of support is their olive crop.'

‘Thanks a lot, Duke,' smiled Truss. ‘What you've said was most interesting; and you've certainly made a case for British colonisation in this instance.'

‘I don't believe in it in any instance,' Fleur said quickly. ‘It's fundamentally and morally wrong that any race should order another about.'

Richard laughed, not very happily. ‘Now she's off on her hobby-horse. She conveniently ignores the immense good that superior races have done for backward peoples.'

‘I don't, Daddy. But it was done the wrong way. It's right that countries that have the money and the know-how should help the poorer ones. In fact it's an obligation. But it's not right that they should take over the Government of a country that's not theirs and dictate how the people in it should live.'

‘I'm with Fleur on that,' Truss put in. ‘All peoples have the
right to make their own laws; and it can't be denied that the great Colonial Powers exploited their subject races shamefully. The cruelties inflicted on the wretched natives of the Congo in the reign of King Leopold II of Belgium simply do not bear thinking about.'

‘Every anti-colonialist raises that old hare,' Richard shrugged. ‘But you're talking of a hundred years ago; and, anyway, it was an exception. There is abundant evidence that most of the countries that were colonised in Asia and Africa owe an immeasurable debt to Europe. We taught them methods of agriculture that greatly increased their crops, abolished famine by making them build up reserves of corn and rice, checked disastrous floods by building dams, opened up their countries to trade by giving them roads and railways, and altogether raised their standard of living.'

‘But all that could have been done without inflicting on them the indignity of losing their freedom,' Fleur protested. ‘It is being done still by loans which enable them to improve their countries for themselves, and by thousands of volunteers going out to help them better social conditions.'

‘I know, dear,' Marie Lou put in. ‘And we understand how anxious you are to take up that sort of work yourself. But the loans have no strings, so lots of the money goes on big houses and Cadillacs for unscrupulous politicians, and the volunteers have no power to enforce a better state of things. Just think of India and suttee. If the British hadn't put a stop to it the Hindus would probably still adhere to the awful custom of widows being burnt on their husbands' funeral pyres.'

‘Not in these days, Mummy. And it would have been stopped by the progress of education if we'd sent them teachers instead of soldiers.'

‘You may be right, but I greatly doubt it,' remarked the Duke. ‘You overlook the part that soldiers played. Their presence ensured the continuance of a strong and benign Government; and that is the first essential for the maintenance of peace. Perhaps the happiest era the world has ever known was when the rule of Rome was enforced from the borders of Scotland to the frontiers of Persia and from the deserts of
Africa to the Danube. The Pax Romana continued for nearly four hundred years, so that when at last the Romans withdrew from Britain, and the Danes invaded her, the people had come to regard a life of peace as their natural inheritance and no longer knew how to fight.

‘The same applies to the Pax Britannica. Had the British not conquered India its history during the last century and a half would have been one long tale of wars between its many States. And what happened when India was given her freedom? The Hindus and Mohammedans resumed their age-old blood feuds. A million innocent people were murdered in the space of a few months. No, my child, whatever you and our American friends may think, there's a strong case for protecting the poor and humble from death and ruin by men of an alien and wiser race enforcing law and order. But at my age I know well that no argument will convince you; so let us talk of something else.'

As a result of their night of love-making, followed by their excursion that morning, both Truss and Fleur were feeling distinctly part-worn; so after lunch they went to their rooms and slept the deep sleep of youth so soundly that they had to be roused for tea.

Much refreshed by their slumber they then decided to go down and bathe. From the road below the villa a path led to the shore. There was no beach, but ledges of rock a few feet under water provided a shallow area until some forty feet out they ended abruptly and the water became many fathoms deep.

Fleur was a good swimmer and, having waded to the edge of the ledge, she struck out in a fast crawl. Turning on her back when she had covered a hundred yards, she saw that Truss, submerged up to his armpits, was still standing on the ledge.

‘Come on!' she cried. ‘What are you waiting for?'

He shook his head. ‘Sorry I can't join you; I'll have to splash around close in.'

Swimming back to him, she blew the water from her mouth and
asked, ‘Why? Can't you swim? I thought you were a surf-rider.'

‘Sure I am,' he smiled. ‘But surfing is done over the waves when they break in shallow water. And I can swim well enough, but I've got a thing against going in deep.'

‘What sort of thing?'

‘I've had it since I was ten. It was one time when we were down in Jamaica. I was well out of my depth when I suddenly got cramp. A bunch of folks were playing with a big ball on the beach and kicking up a din, so no-one heard my shout. I went under and was darn' near drowned. By luck my old man missed me and he's the tops under water. He struck out for the place he'd seen me last and near bust himself trying to locate me. He did, but only just in time. And don't you ever believe what they say about drowning being a pleasant death. That's all baloney. Ever since, I've been scared stiff I'd get the cramp again and there'd be no-one handy strong enough to pull me out; so I've made it a habit to stay put in the shallows.'

To the south side of the place where they were bathing there was a rocky promontory crowned by the ruin of an old Venetian fort. A narrow path led up the cliff face to it and when they had had their bathe they decided to explore the ruin. The way was steep and in places the drop from it sheer into deep water, but after a quarter of an hour of laboured climbing they reached the crumbling walls.

The spur of rock jutted out about half-way along the east coast of the island, so was a splendid vantage point from which they could see the whole sickle curve of Corfu from the north, where it approached Albania, to the south where it nearly touched Greece. They could also see, about a mile away, round the corner of the height on which the villa stood, a great white palace among tall cypress trees.

‘That must be the Achilleion,' Truss remarked, ‘the place the Empress Elizabeth of Austria built.'

‘Yes,' Fleur agreed. ‘Poor woman, she had a rotten life, what with such an old fuddy-duddy for a husband, her only son going nuts about a tart and committing suicide with her at Mayerling, then ending up by being stabbed to death by some awful anarchist in Geneva.'

‘But Rudolph's girl friend wasn't a tart; she was a Czech Baroness.'

‘What's the odds? That wouldn't have made it any less ghastly for his mother.'

‘You're right in that. I gather that later the Kaiser bought this villa and used to spend his vacations here. I'd like to go see it some time.'

‘All right. Since you're interested in that sort of thing we'll go tomorrow morning.'

But that evening they learned that for next day Marie Lou had planned an expedition. Except for the Duke they were all to drive across the island to Paleokastritsa on the west coast, and picnic there.

They could have gone more quickly by the main highway through Corfu town and then north-west, but to enjoy the finer scenery they elected to take the road inland and up through the mountains as even that meant a run of less than thirty miles. At first the way was bordered by the ubiquitous olive groves, interspersed with woods of oak and walnut trees, and many small acacias in blossom. Every meadow was carpeted between the ancient trees with a wonderful variety of wild flowers: purple anemones and honesty, yellow marigolds and buttercups, scarlet pimpernels, blue grape hyacinths, silenes, cranes-bills and bee orchis. Among them strapping peasant women were collecting the last of the fallen olives from the ground. The villages they passed through were silent, except for barking mongrel dogs, for every hand is needed to harvest the precious crop. Here and there along the rising ground were scattered farmsteads with vines, honeysuckle or wistaria half covering their white walls; many of the larger had small gardens gay with roses, carnations, stocks, wallflowers and tree peonies.

Soon they reached a pass through which they could see the blue Adriatic sparkling in the sun. Turning north they ran for a while almost along the crest of the range then down through the Ropa valley to pass through olive groves again with swathes of iris, oxalis, narcissus, speedwell, mallow and shepherd's purse.

Presently, as they approached the rugged mass of Spartil, the ground rose again. Then they curved round the beautiful
many-coved bay of Liapádon, that lay at the southern foot of the mountain, and so came to Paleokastritsa, with its ancient monastery of the Holy Virgin, perched on a spur of rock washed on all sides, but for a narrow causeway, by the sea.

After a glass of wine at the small hotel on the bay they visited the monastery. There was no sound but that of the waves and about the whitewashed buildings with their trellised vines there was an unbelievable atmosphere of peace which made the great cities of the world seem as remote as if they were on another planet.

Returning to the car they drove up the twisting mountain road to the village of Lákones for a bird's-eye view of the monastery—from that height looking no larger than a dolls' house set on a cardboard mound in a pool of dark blue water—then on for another few miles round the corner of the great headland to a hamlet where the road ended.

From there they walked some distance along a rocky track until they came in sight of Castel San Angelo. It stood on a small island separated from the mountain only by a deep cleft in the rock and other great rocks lay scattered in the sea as though once hurled there by Zeus in a fit of anger. Beyond the gorge the ground mounted in a succession of steep terraces seaward to a great broad promontory that, seeming to reach the sky, towered up a thousand feet. Circling the top like a diadem could still be seen the crumbling thousand-year-old walls of the once impregnable fortress.

Retracing their steps, they drove back to the entrance of the Ropa valley. In it, behind hedges of prickly pear and wild roses, there were many meadows having here and there an almond, plum or peach tree in blossom, and carpeted in tall grey-green grass that in another few weeks would flower as swathes of silver asphodel. Selecting a pleasant spot they set about having their picnic. When they had demolished the strange langouste-like creatures that had flippers and orange-brown shells, and the April strawberries of Corfu, that Marie Lou had brought, they dozed for a while, then made their way home after a long and happy day.

Next morning Fleur and Truss did the Achilleion. Its garden,
with the fine statues of Achilles, that gave the Palace its name, and the beautiful Rotunda, was a delight; and the lovely colonnaded gallery in which stood the statues of the Nine Muses gave a breath-taking idea of what the glory that was Greece must have been when Athens was in its heyday. But Fleur got a little bored of waiting while Truss took endless pictures with his cine-camera, and it was only with difficulty that she got him away from admiring the wall painting in the interior of the Palace of Achilles's triumph over Hector at the siege of Troy.