Greek Fire (7 page)

There was silence for a time. He said: “Maybe even that isn't quite the truth. One's got to be honest sometimes in one's life, and if I'm honest now I have to say I don't really
want
to change. I only tell myself I should. Deep down in my guts—or whatever intestinal part knows best—I
welcome
the chain.”

She stubbed her cigarette in an ash-tray and frowned at the road ahead. “ You have thought a lot about this?”

“Yes. I've thought a lot about it.”

“And this explains why you are interested in the private lives of politicians?”

“It explains why I bother to come here at all.”

They were getting nearer home. She said; “Are you married?”

“Not now.”

“In America it is always ‘ yes, just' or ‘not now'.”

“And you?” he said quietly.

“No. I've told you.”

“I didn't know it necessarily followed.”

“In my case it does.”

“Tell me more about it.”

“There's nothing to tell.”

After waiting a few seconds Gene said: “Talking of my business, I shall be going to see Michael Michaelis on Sunday. Would you be interested to come?”

“Where—to Delphi?”

“Yes. I shall not be more than an hour with Michael is and there'll be nothing private to discuss. I'd like to see the place afterwards in the company of a kindred spirit.”

“What makes you think I'm a kindred spirit?”

“I think you could be.”

She said: “You must have plucked that impression out of the air.”

“I'm assuming only that the experience of visiting one of the great Greek monuments for the first time would be enlarged if it was shared with somebody who feels the way you do about it.”

She took her attention off the road for rather longer than was safe to look at him with her great dark eyes.

“I shall be engaged on Sunday,” she said.

“A pity. I can't change the day now.”

After dropping Gene she did not drive to her flat but went straight on to Constitution Square and left the car to be picked up by the chauffeur. Then she walked across to George Lascou's flat, which was in the penthouse or seventh floor of Heracles House, a large block put up since the war by a Greek syndicate of which Lascou was the chairman.

As it happened his secretary saw Anya come into the building, so she was met at the door and brought at once into the huge salon, which was decorated and furnished in French style with fleur-de-lis wallpaper and handsome statuary set in rounded alcoves indirectly lit from below.

She found George saying good-bye to General Telechos. George looked moody and pale as if virtue had gone out of him, his black brilliantined hair veeing up at the temples rather untidily, though still showing the lines of the comb. Telechos breathed raki and garlic over her as he explained rather unnecessarily that he had called on business to do with the National Museum.

When Otho had shown the soldier out George took her face between his fingers like a goblet to be admired before it was drunk from. Then he kissed her with all the appreciation of a connoisseur.

“So?”

“Darling, I need a drink.”

“Of course.” He released her quietly and went to a side table. “A martini?”

She nodded and walked to the window, pulling off her gloves and looked out on the crowds below.

She said: “Receiving compliments from General Telechos is like being caressed by a steam shovel. Does he think I am quite ignorant of all the negotiations that are going on between you?”

“Telechos thinks women have no part in these things.”

“Does it go well?”

“It goes well. But he has all the cunning of the slightly stupid man, and all the obstinacy.”

“Is that why your hair is ruffled?”

“Is it?” He smoothed it down. “It dislikes opposition. And Vanbrugh?”

“I didn't discover his address.”

George carefully measured out the gin, touching the lip of the bottle with a napkin so that it would not drip.

She said: “ He asked to be put down at the corner of Hirodou Atticou. I don't know if he thought he was likely to be followed.”

“Does he know of your connection with me?”

“I told him because I saw he knew.” She took her glass and sipped. “Um. Good.… He said he would like to meet you.”

“That might be worth while.” Lascou guided her towards a chair, but at the last moment she slipped away from him and went across to an almost life-size statue of Hermes, looked at it, her eyebrows contracted.

He said: “Are you seeing him again?”

“Who? Vanbrugh? I hope not. He is dull, if probably harmless.”

“He may be the first, but his record doesn't suggest the second.”

“His record?”

“Oh, I mean his history in a general sense. He's been in and out of trouble a good deal.”

“Well, tell me.”

“It's not important.” George felt in his pocket and took out a typewritten card with a small photograph clipped to the corner. “This comes partly from Major Kolono's own police files and partly from a contact he has at the American Embassy. But it's incomplete yet.”

Anya took the card and after staring at the photograph began to read aloud. “ ‘Gene Vanbrugh. About thirty-five. Comes of old New York family but educated in Europe. At University of Athens when the Germans invaded Greece—fought against them. Probably was in British Intelligence for some years. In any event was in Athens, underground, until liberation.' Mm—mm.” She went on reading to herself; after a moment she spoke again. “ ‘Concerned in both civil wars against ELAS. In '47 badly wounded and invalided home. In States gave evidence to Senate Committee on Foreign Aid.' ”

She paused to sip her drink and to turn the card over. “ ‘Married in Washington but marriage broke up.' Yes, he told me that today.… Oh, this is what you were talking about. ‘In Greece in ' 51 …' ”

“Yes.”

“ ‘involved in death of Spyros Eliopolis, ship's chandler, of Piraeus. This hushed up.' Why was it hushed up? It doesn't say. Kolono ought to know.”

“It didn't come under Kolono's department. Anyway, outside influences were at work. Vanbrugh has friends.”

She turned back to the card and read in silence. Then: “ ‘In trouble in U. S. in '53 … cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to give information on Communists to the House Committee on un-American Activities.' I don't know what that means. I thought he was anti-Communist.”

George put his arm round her shoulders. “I think it simply means, my sweet, that he is a man who prides himself on taking the unpopular line and because of that is always rather an embarrassment to his friends as well as to his enemies. If his own embassy knew he was here, which they probably don't unless Kolono has told them, they wouldn't be sorry to see him go.”

She handed him back the card. “Tell me, why were you so angry when you knew Jon Manos had taken me to the Little Jockey last Monday?”

“I wasn't
angry
.… Did Vanbrugh mention it?”

“He mentioned the inquiry on the Spanish dancer's death. He had been to it this morning. The wife thought the accident wasn't an accident.”

“Does that concern us?”

“You are the one who knows.”

“Or Gene Vanbrugh.”

“I didn't say so.”

“How are the diggings?”

“We're between strata.” She stared at the statue. “I don't think this Hermes is very good, George. His legs are too short for the length of his body. I distrust men with short thigh bones.…”

“I'm sorry you've had a boring afternoon.”

She said: “Do you
want
me to see him again?”

He fitted his pince-nez. “ Have you made any arrangement at all?”

“No. I said he might phone me.”

“I hope he hasn't made an impresssion on you.”

She had finished her drink and held the stem of the glass in both hands. He put his fingers on the nape of her neck under her hair and quietly stroked it. She said: “Of course he has made an impression on me. So does a headache. So does a pinching shoe. Otherwise one would be as dead as Hermes here. Why is sincerity always so tedious?”

He smiled. “It isn't. But it's a plant that needs careful treatment. You have to bring it out regularly and air it alongside other men's so that it doesn't become bigoted and ingrown.”

There was the sound of running feet and a small boy of eight burst in.

“Papa, Nina has not been playing fair with me! She says if I—oh, Anya, Papa didn't tell me you were coming—Papa, Nina says——”

“He didn't know.” Anya kissed the boy. “ Where's Nina? What have you been playing?”

Michael explained to them both in a breathless voice.

Lascou said: “Fair play, Michael, like sincerity, is a matter of proportion. Anya and I were talking of it when you came in.”

Michael stared at them with round black eyes, eyes very different in colour and shape from his father's.

“And you were quarrelling?”

George laughed. “ No.”

“Ah,” said Michael.

“Well, what do you expect us to do, pursue Nina and beat her? Where is she, by the way?”

“Gone to find Mama. But I happen to know Mama's out.”

Helen Lascou occupied a suite of rooms on the other side of the seventh floor; the children lived with her but unlike the adults trafficked freely between the two flats. Michael was pacified and went off chewing a piece of Turkish delight.

George said: “I find it difficult not to spoil him.”

“Should you try?”

“Well, in some ways it's a disadvantage to be a millionaire's son.”

“My heart bleeds for him.”

“Oh, yes, you can use your tongue, but there
are
disadvantages. Everyone treats Michael with consideration and respect—already. He'll grow up accustomed to it.”

“So he should, a son of yours.”

“Oh, no doubt. And that's good as far as it goes. But he'll never know what it is to be cold and hungry and in rags, to be disregarded, to be left to struggle, to know himself to be
nothing
, rubbish that could die off and no one would care.” He paused. “It's unpleasant at the time, of course, but it develops the
will
to struggle as nothing else can. It becomes a load upon the ego, an obligation that must be discharged.…”

“An obligation to whom?”

He shrugged. “ To oneself, I suppose. One goes through phases.” He moved the ring on his finger as if it chafed him. “At first one wants to
belong
, one's greatest need is to be accepted as part of a larger part, a necessary unit within a community or an army or a party, a cog serving a greater end than oneself. Then, as one develops and succeeds, one's desire is for the opposite, for non-attachment again, for a withdrawal, away from and above the mass of people. It's a passing through, as it were—from the stage of being disregarded by the crowd to a stage when the crowd is disregarded.”

She nodded but did not speak.

“Oh!” He swept the thought away with a hand. “It's not important. Except that no one who has not felt poverty, extreme poverty, can ever understand the inexpressible luxury of luxury. No one who has not grown up in a wind-swept, arid, treeless, soil-less village in the hills, sunbaked in summer, snow-smothered in winter—no one who has not had to apportion his last fifty drachmae between goat's cheese and maize bread and the corner of a draughty shed to lie in …”

She said: “You show so little, it might never have happened to you.”

“I don't show it but I have it here.” He touched his body. “It's what I was saying, it's the thing Michael will lack. I wouldn't be without it now. It's the dynamo powering everything—it's the source of self-control, caution, courage, perseverance, obstinacy—any creative efforts I may make; it's the source of all the things I do to supply an inescapable need!”

She said quietly: “And will you ever satisfy it?”

“No.… But in a few weeks I may be nearer that end. Another drink?”

“No, Helen may be coming in.”

“Little fear of that.”

“I still must go. To tell the truth, George, the only time I'm ever embarrassed is when Nina or Michael come when I'm here”

“No need to be. They both like you.”

“Perhaps soon they'll grow up.”

“Nonsense. You're full of strange fancies today. It must be this naive company you've been keeping.”

They walked slowly towards the door. She said: “Has it occurred to you, though, that Helen has played fair with me over the children? It would have been easy to have turned them against me.”

“I've never denied to you that she's an estimable woman.”

“So many women contrive to be estimable without being kind.”

“Darling, when is he phoning you again?”

“Who? Gene Vanbrugh?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow morning.” “What will you say?” “I shall say nothing. I shall be out.” “Don't do that. Invite him here.”

When he rang her she said: “I'm sorry. The roads to Delphi are not good and it is 170 kilometres. Too far for one day—if you are to see your poet and also all that is there—and certainly I cannot spare two.”

He said: “ You were very kind yesterday.”

“That's another of those illusions you suffer from.”

“I thought you said you would like to meet Michaelis.”

“On the whole I've decided it is better just to know him through his poems.”

“Then when could I call and see you today?”

“I shall be out all day.”

“With George Lascou?”

“Does it matter?”

“How could it?”