The gate shut behind her. There were steps, and after the steps a path of slippery rock. She heard him warning her to take care. She would have put her arm around him, but he manoeuvred her ahead of him saying her view must not be hampered by his own bulk. So it’s a view, she thought. The second-best view in the world. The rock must have been marble, for it shone even in the darkness and her leather soles slipped on it perilously. Once she almost fell, but his hand caught her with a speed and strength that made Al’s puny. Once she squeezed her arm to her side, making his knuckles press against her breast. Feel, she told him desperately in her mind. It’s mine, the first of two; the left one is marginally more erogenous than the right, but who’s counting? The path zigzagged, the darkness grew thinner and felt hot to her, as if it had retained the day’s sun. Below her, through the trees, the city fell away like a departing planet; above her she was aware only of a jagged blackness of towers and scaffolding. The rumbling of the traffic died, leaving the night to the cicadas.
‘Walk slowly now, please.’
She knew by his tone that whatever it was, it was near. The path zigzagged again; they came to a wooden staircase. Steps, a flat stretch, then steps again. Joseph walked lightly here, and she copied his example, so that once again their stealth united them. Side by side they passed through a vast gateway, of which the sheer scale made her lift her head. As she did so, she saw a red half-moon slip down from among the stars and take its place among the pillars of the Parthenon.
She whispered, ‘God.’ She felt inadequate and, for a second, utterly lonely. She walked forward slowly, like someone advancing on a mirage, waiting for it to turn to nothing, but it didn’t. She walked the length of it, looking for a place to climb aboard, but at the first staircase a prim notice said ‘ASCENT IS NOT ALLOWED.’ Suddenly, for no clear reason, she was running. She was running heaven-bent between the boulders, making for the dark edge of this unearthly city, only half aware that Joseph in his silk shirt was jogging effortlessly at her side. She was laughing and talking at the same time; she was saying the things that she was told she said in bed – whatever came into her mind. She had the feeling she could escape her body and run into the sky without falling. Slowing to a walk, she reached the parapet and flopped over it, gazing downward into the lighted island ringed with the black oceans of the Attic plain. She looked back and saw him watching her from a few paces off.
‘Thank you,’ she said at last.
Going over to him, she grasped his head in both hands and kissed him on the mouth, a five-year kiss, first without the tongue, then with it, tilting his head this way and that and inspecting his face between whiles, as if to measure the effect of her work, and this time they held each other long enough for her to know: absolutely yes, it works.
‘Thanks, Jose,’ she repeated, only to feel him pulling back. His head slipped from her grasp, his hands unlocked her arms and returned them to her side. He had left her, amazingly, with nothing.
Mystified and nearly angry, she stared at his motionless sentinel’s face in the moonlight. In her time, she reckoned she had known them all. The closet gays who bluffed until they wept. The too-old virgins haunted by imagined clouds of impotence. The would-be Don Juans and fabled studs who withdrew from the brink in a fit of timidity or conscience. And there had been enough honest tenderness in her, as a rule, to turn mother or sister or the other thing and make a bond with any one of them. But in Joseph, as she gazed into the shadowed sockets of his eyes, she sensed a reluctance she had never met before. It was not that he lacked desire, not that he lacked capacity. She was too old a trouper to mistake the tension and confidence of his embrace. Rather it was as though his aim lay out beyond her somewhere, and by withholding himself he were trying to tell her so.
‘Shall I thank you again?’ she asked.
For a moment longer he remained gazing at her in the silence. Then he lifted his wrist and looked at his gold watch by the moonlight.
‘I think actually, since we have too little time already, I should show you some of the temples here. You allow me to bore you?’
In the extraordinary hiatus that had risen between them, he was counting on her to support his vow of abstinence.
‘Jose, I want the lot,’ she declared, flinging an arm through his and bearing him off as if he were a trophy. ‘Who built it, how much did it cost, what did they worship, and did it work? You can bore me till life us do part.’
It never occurred to her he wouldn’t have the answers, and she was right. He lectured her, she listened; he walked her sedately from temple to temple, she followed, holding his arm, thinking: I’ll be your sister, your pupil, your anything. I’ll hold you up and say it was all you, I’ll lay you down and say it was all me, I’ll get that smile out of you if it kills me.
‘No, Charlie,’ he replied gravely, ‘Propylaea was not a goddess, but the gateway to a sanctuary. The word came from propylon; the Greeks used the plural form to give distinction to the holy places.’
‘Learn it up specially for us, Jose, did you?’
‘Of course. All for you. Why not?’
‘I could do that. Mind like a sponge, me. You’d be amazed. One peek at the books, I’d be your instant expert.’
He stopped; she stopped with him.
‘Then repeat it to me,’ he said.
She didn’t believe him at first, she suspected he was teasing her. Then, grasping him by the arms, she turned him sharply round and marched him back over the course while she repeated to him everything he had told her.
‘Will I do?’ They were at the end again. ‘Do I get second-best prize?’
She waited for another of his famous three-minute warnings: ‘It is not the shrine of Agrippa, it is the monument. Apart from this one small error, I would say you were word perfect. Felicitations.’
At the same moment, from far below them, she heard a car hooting, three deliberate blasts, and she knew the sound was meant for him, for he at once lifted his head and considered it, like an animal scenting the wind, before yet again looking at his watch. The coach has turned into a pumpkin, she thought; time good children were in bed and telling one another what the hell they’re all about.
They had already started down the hill when Joseph paused to gaze into the melancholy Theatre of Dionysos, an empty bowl lit only by the moon and the stray beams of distant lights. It’s a last look, she thought in bewilderment as she watched his motionless black shape against the lights of the city.
‘I read somewhere that no true drama can ever be a private statement,’ he remarked. ‘Novels, poems, yes. But not drama. Drama must have an application to reality. Drama must be useful. Do you believe that?’
‘In Burton-on-Trent Women’s Institute?’ she replied, with a laugh. ‘Playing Helen of Troy at pensioners’ Saturday matinées?’
‘I’m serious. Tell me what you think.’
‘About theatre?’
‘About its uses.’
She felt disconcerted by his earnestness. Too much was hanging on her answer.
‘Well, I agree,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Theatre should be useful. It should make people share and feel. It should – well, waken people’s awareness.’
‘Be real, therefore? You are sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure.’
‘Well, then,’ he said, as if in that case she shouldn’t blame him.
‘Well, then,’ she echoed gaily.
We are mad, she decided. Barking, certifiable loonies, the pair of us. The policeman saluted them on their way down to earth.
She thought at first he was playing a bad joke on her. Except for the Mercedes, the road was empty and the Mercedes stood all alone in it. On a bench not far from it a couple sat necking; otherwise there was nobody around. Its colour was dark but not black. It was parked close to the grass bank and the front number plate was not visible. She had liked Mercedes all her driving life, and she could tell by its solidity that this one was coach-built, and by its trim and aerials that it was someone??
?s special toy with all the extras. He had taken her arm and it was not till they were almost alongside the driver’s door that she realised he was proposing to open it. She saw him slip a key into the keyhole, and the buttons of all four locks pop up at once, and the next thing she knew he was leading her round to the passenger door while she asked him what the hell was going on.
‘Don’t you care for it?’ he asked, with an airy lightness that she immediately suspected. ‘Shall I order a different one? I thought you had a weakness for fine cars.’
‘You mean you’ve hired it?’
‘Not strictly. It has been lent to us for our journey.’
He was holding the door open. She didn’t get in.
‘Lent who by?’
‘A kind friend.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Charlie, don’t be utterly ridiculous. Herbert. Karl. What difference does a name make? Would you prefer the egalitarian discomforts of a Greek Fiat?’
‘Where’s my luggage?’
‘In the boot. Dimitri put it there on my instructions. Do you want to take a look and reassure yourself ?’
‘I’m not going in this thing, it’s crazy.’
She got in nevertheless, and in no time he was sitting next to her, starting the engine. He was wearing driving gloves. Black leather ones with airholes in the back. He must have had them in his pocket and put them on as he got in. The gold round his wrists was very bright against them. He drove fast and skilfully. She didn’t like that either – that wasn’t how you drove friends’ cars. Her door was locked. He had relocked them all with his central locking switch. He had turned on the radio and it was playing plaintive Greek music.
‘How do I open this bloody window?’ she said.
He pressed a button and the warm night wind washed over her, bringing the scent of resin. But he only let the window down a couple of inches.
‘Do this often, do we?’ she asked loudly. ‘One of our little things, is it? Taking ladies to unknown destinations at twice the speed of sound?’
No answer. He was gazing intently ahead of him. Who is he? Oh my dear soul – as her bloody mother would say – who is he? The car filled with light. She swung round and saw through the rear window a pair of headlamps about a hundred yards behind them, neither gaining nor losing.
‘They ours or theirs?’ she asked.
She was actually settling down again when she realised what else had caught her eye. A red blazer, lying along the back seat, brass buttons like the brass buttons in Nottingham and York: and, she wouldn’t mind betting, a breath of the twenties about the cut.
She asked him for a cigarette.
‘Why don’t you look in the compartment?’ he said, without turning his head. She pulled it open and saw a packet of Marlboros. A silk scarf lay beside them and a pair of expensive Polaroid sunglasses. She took out the scarf and sniffed it, and it smelt of men’s toilet water. She helped herself to a cigarette. With his gloved hand, Joseph passed her the glowing lighter from the dashboard.
‘Your chum a snappy dresser, is he?’
‘Quite. Yes, he is. Why do you ask?’
‘That his red blazer there on the back seat, or yours?’
He glanced swiftly at her as if impressed, then returned his eyes to the road.
‘Let us say it is his but I have borrowed it,’ he replied calmly as the car’s speed increased.
‘You borrow his sunglasses too, did you? I should think you bloody well needed them, sitting right up by the footlights like that. Nearly joined the cast. Your name’s Richthoven, right?’
‘Right.’
‘First name Peter but you prefer Joseph. Living in Vienna, trading a little, studying a little.’ She paused but he said nothing. ‘In a box,’ she persisted. ‘Number seven-six-two, main post office. Right?’
She saw his head nod slightly in approval of her memory. The needle of the speedometer had climbed to 130 kilometres.
‘Nationality undeclared, a sensitive mongrel,’ she went on breezily. ‘You’ve got three babies and two wives. All in a box.’
‘No wives, no babies.’
‘Never? Or none extant at the time of speaking?’
‘None extant.’
‘Don’t think I mind, Jose. I’d positively welcome it, actually. Anything to define you just now. Anything at all. That’s how girls are – nosey.’
She realised she was still holding the scarf. She tossed it into the compartment and shut the door with a bang. The road was straight but very narrow, the needle had reached 140 kilometres, she could feel the panic forming inside her and battling with her artificial calm.
‘Mind telling us some good news, would you? Something to put a person at her ease?’
‘The good news is that I have lied to you as little as possible and that in a short time from now you will understand the many good reasons for your being with us.’
‘Who’s us?’ she said sharply.
Till then he had been a loner. She didn’t like the change at all. They were heading for a main road, but he was not slowing down. She saw the lights of two cars descending on them, then held her breath as he pressed the kickdown and footbrake together and tucked the Mercedes neatly in front of them, fast enough to allow the car behind to do the same.
‘It’s not guns, is it?’ she enquired, thinking suddenly of his scars. ‘Not running a small war on the side somewhere, are we? Only I can’t stand bangs, you see. I’ve got these delicate eardrums.’ Her voice, with its forced jauntiness, was becoming unfamiliar to her.
‘No, Charlie, it is not gunrunning.’
‘“No, Charlie, it is not gunrunning.” White-slave traffic?’
‘No, it’s not white-slave traffic either.’
She echoed that line too.
‘That leaves drugs then, doesn’t it? Because you are trading in something, aren’t you? Only drugs aren’t my scene either, to be frank. Long Al makes me carry his hash for him when we go through Customs and I’m a mess for days afterwards just from the nerves.’ No answer. ‘It’s higher, is it? Nobler? A different plane entirely?’ She reached out and switched off the radio. ‘How about your just stopping the car, actually? You needn’t take me anywhere. You can go back to Mykonos tomorrow if you like and collect my understudy.’
‘And leave you in the middle of nowhere? Don’t be utterly absurd.’
‘Do it now!’ she screamed. ‘Stop the bloody car!’
They had jumped a set of traffic lights and swung left, so violently that her seat belt locked and punched the breath out of her. She made a lunge for the wheel but his forearm was there long before she was. He swung left a second time, through a white gateway into a private drive lined with azaleas and hibiscus. The drive made a curve and they flew round it, ploughing to a halt in a gravel sweep ringed with white-painted stones. The second car was pulling up behind them, blocking the way out. She heard footsteps on the gravel. The house was an old villa covered in red flowers. In the beam of the headlamps the flowers looked like patches of fresh blood. One pale light burned in the porch. Joseph switched off the engine and pocketed the ignition key. Leaning across Charlie, he shoved open her door for her, admitting her to the rancid smell of hydrangeas and the familiar chatter of cicadas. He got out but Charlie stayed in her seat. There was no breeze, no other sensation of fresh air, no sound but the delicate shuffle of young light-footed people gathering round the car. Dimitri, the ten-year-old driver with the buckwheat smile. Raoul, the flaxen Jesus-freak who rode in taxis and had a rich Swedish daddy. Two girls in jeans and jackets, the same pair who had followed them up the Acropolis and – now that she saw them more clearly – the same pair she had seen slouching around Mykonos a couple of times when she had gone window-shopping. Hearing the thud of someone unloading luggage from the boot, she leapt furiously from the car. ‘My guitar!’ she shouted. ‘You leave that alone, you –’
But Raoul already held it under his arm, and her shoulder bag was in the charge of Dimitri. She was about t
o spring for it when the two girls each took hold of a wrist and elbow, and without effort led her towards the front porch.
‘Where’s that bastard Joseph?’ she yelled.
But the bastard Joseph, his mission accomplished, was already halfway up the steps and not looking back, like someone escaping from an accident. Passing the car, Charlie saw by the porch light the markings on the rear licence plate. It was not a Greek registration at all. It was Arab, with Hollywood-style writing round the number, and a plastic ‘CD’ for ‘Corps Diplomatique’ stuck on the lid of the boot just to the left of the Mercedes emblem.
CHAPTER SIX
The two girls had shown her to the lavatory and stayed with her unembarrassed while she used it. One blonde, one brunette, both scruffy, both under orders to show kindness to the new girl. They wore soft-soled shoes, their shirts hung loose of their jeans, they had twice subdued her effortlessly when she flew at them, and when she cursed them they had smiled at her with the distant sweetness of the deaf.
‘I’m Rachel,’ the brunette confided breathlessly, during a brief truce. ‘This one’s Rose. Rachel – Rose, got it? We’re the two “R”s.’
Rachel was the comely one. She had a pert North Country accent and merry eyes, and it was Rachel’s backside that had stopped Yanuka on the border. Rose was tall and wiry with crinkled fair hair and the trimness of an athlete, but when she opened her hands, her palms were like axeheads on her thin wrists.
‘You’ll be all right, Charlie, don’t you worry,’ Rose assured her, in a dried-out accent that could have been South African.
‘I was all right before,’ said Charlie as she took another vain heave at them.
From the lavatory they led her to a ground-floor bedroom and gave her a comb and hairbrush and a glass of slimming tea, no milk, and she sat on the bed sipping it and blaspheming in a tremulous fury while she tried to get her breathing right. ‘“PENNILESS ACTRESS HELD,”’ she muttered. ‘What’s the ransom, girls? My overdraft?’ But they only smiled at her more fondly, hovering to either side of her with their arms loose, waiting to walk her up the big staircase. Arriving at the first landing, she lashed out at them again, this time with her clenched fist, in a swinging furious sweep of the whole arm, only to find herself laid gently on her back gazing upward at the stained-glass canopy of the stairwell, which caught the moonlight like a prism and broke it into a mosaic of pale gold and pink. ‘I just wanted to bust your nose for you,’ she explained to Rachel, but Rachel’s response was a gaze of radiant understanding.