Besides, Kurtz needed the intangibles. He needed to feel the warmth and texture of his quarry. Who better than Quilley, therefore, with his long and innocent experience of her, to supply them? Thus Kurtz punched it through with his will. Having done so, he flew next morning to Munich, as he had told Quilley he would, even if the production he was concerned with was not of the type he had led him to suppose. He visited his two safe flats; he breathed fresh encouragement into his men. In addition to this, he contrived a congenial meeting with the good Dr Alexis: another long luncheon at which they discussed almost nothing of importance – but then what do old friends need but one another?
And from Munich, Kurtz flew on to Athens, continuing his southward march.
CHAPTER FIVE
The boat was two hours late arriving in Piraeus, and if Joseph had not already pocketed her air ticket Charlie might well have stood him up then and there. Though again she mightn’t, for under her scatty exterior she was cursed with a dependability of character that was often wasted on the company she kept. For one thing, she’d had too much time to think, and though she had by now convinced herself that the spectral observer of Nottingham, York, and East London was either a different man or no man at all, there was still an unsettling voice inside her that would not be talked down. For another thing, declaring her plans to the family had not been half as easy as Joseph had made out it was going to be. Lucy had wept and pressed money on her – ‘My last five hundred drachs, Chas, all for you.’ Willy and Pauly, drunk, had gone down on their knees on the dockside before an estimated audience of thousands – ‘Chas, Chas, how can you do this to us?’ – and to escape, she’d had to fight her way through a grinning throng, then run the length of the road with the strap of her shoulder bag broken, her guitar flapping under her other arm, and foolish tears of remorse flooding her face. She was saved by, of all people, the flaxen hippy boy from Mykonos, who must have crossed on the boat with them, though she hadn’t seen him. Passing by in a taxi, he scooped her up and dumped her fifty yards from her destination. He was Swedish and his name was Raoul, he said. His father was in Athens on a business trip; Raoul hoped to hit him for some bread. She was a little surprised to find him quite so lucid, and he never mentioned Jesus once.
The Diogenes restaurant had a blue awning. A cardboard chef beckoned her in.
Sorry, Jose, wrong time, wrong place. Sorry, Jose, it was a great fantasy but the holiday’s over and Chas is for the smoke, so I’ll just take back that ticket and blow.
Or perhaps she would choose the easier way and say she’d been offered a part.
Feeling a slut in her worn jeans and scuffed boots, she banged her way between the pavement tables until she came to the interior door. Anyway, he’ll be gone, she told herself – who waits two hours for a lay these days? – ticket with the concierge next door. Maybe that will teach me to go chasing mid-European beach bums through Athens by night, she thought. To compound her problems, Lucy had last night pressed on her some more of her wretched pills, which had first lit her up like a light-bulb and afterwards dropped her down a dark hole from which she was still trying to emerge. Charlie didn’t use those things as a rule, but dangling between two lovers, as she had begun to think of it, had made her vulnerable.
She was about to enter the restaurant when two Greek men burst out laughing at her broken shoulder bag. She strode over to them and cursed them in a fury, calling them sexist pigs. Trembling, she shoved the door with her foot and stepped inside. The air turned cool, the babble of the pavement stopped, she was standing in a twilit, panelled restaurant, and there in his own bit of darkness sat Saint Joseph of the Island, creep and well-known author of all her guilt and disorder, with a Greek coffee at his elbow and a paperback book open in front of him.
Just don’t touch me, she warned him in her mind, as he came towards her. Just don’t take one finger of me for granted. I’m tired and famished, I’m liable to bite, and I’ve given up sex for the next two hundred years.
But the most he took of her was her guitar and her broken shoulder bag. And the most he gave her was a swift, practical handshake from the other side of the Atlantic. So that all she could think of to say was, ‘You’re wearing a silk shirt.’ Which he was, a cream one with gold cuff-links big as bottle tops. ‘Christ, Jose, look at you!’ she exclaimed as she took in the rest of his hardware. ‘Gold bracelet, gold watch – I can’t even turn my back and you find yourself a rich protectress!’ All of which spilled out of her in a part-hysterical, part-aggressive tone, with the instinctive aim, perhaps, of making him feel as uncomfortable about his appearance as she felt about her own. So what do I expect him to be wearing? she asked herself in a fury – his monk’s bloody bathing pants and his water-bottle?
But Joseph let it all go past him anyway.
‘Charlie. Hullo. The boat was late. Poor you. Never mind. You are here.’ That at least was Joseph – no triumph, no surprise, just a grave Biblical greeting and a nod of command to the waiter. ‘A wash first or a whisky? The ladies’ room is over there.’
‘Whisky,’ she said, and slumped into a chair opposite him.
It was a good place, she knew it immediately. The kind of place the Greeks keep for themselves.
‘Oh, and before I forget –’ he was reaching behind him.
Forget what? she thought, head in hands, staring at him. Come on, Jose. You never forgot anything in your life. From under the bench Joseph had spirited a woollen Greek bag, a very lurid one, which he presented to her with an ostentatious avoidance of ceremony.
‘Since we are stepping into the world together, here is your escape kit. Inside, you will find your air ticket from Thessalonika to London, still reversible if you wish; also the means for you to shop, run away, or simply change your mind. Was it difficult getting away from your friends? I am sure it was. One hates to deceive people, but most of all the people one cares for.’
He spoke as if he knew all about deception. Practised it every day with regret.
‘No parachute,’ she complained, peering into the bag. ‘Thanks, Jose.’ She said it a second time. ‘That’s stylish. Thanks a lot.’ But she had the feeling of not believing herself any more. Must be Lucy’s pills, she thought. Steamer-lag.
‘So what about a lobster? In Mykonos you said lobster was your favourite food. Was that true? The chef is keeping one for you and he will kill it instantly at your command. Why not?’
Her chin still resting in her palm, Charlie let her humour get the better of her. With a weary smile, she raised her other fist and gave a Caesar’s thumbs-down, commanding that the lobster die.
‘Tell them I want it done with minimum force,’ she said. Then she took hold of one of his hands and squeezed it in both of hers in order to apologise for her glooms. He smiled and left his hand with her to play with. It was a beautiful hand, with slim, hard fingers and very strong muscles.
‘And the wine you like,’ said Joseph. ‘Boutaris, white and cold. Isn’t that what you used to say?’
Yes, she thought, watching his hand make its solitary journey back across the table. That is what I used to say. Ten years ago when we met on that quaint little Greek island.
‘And after dinner, as your personal Mephistopheles, I shall take you up a high hill and show you the second-best place in the world. You agree? A mystery tour?’
‘I want the best,’ she said, drinking her Scotch.
‘And I never award first prizes,’ he replied placidly.
Get me out of here! she thought. Sack the writer! Get a new script! She tried a party gambit straight out of Rickmansworth.
‘So what did you get up to these last days, Jose? Apart from pining for me, naturally.’
He did not quite answer. Instead, he asked her about her own waiting, about the journey, and the gang. He smiled when she told him about the providential lift in the taxi from the hippy boy who didn’t mention Jesus; he wanted to know whether she had news of Alastair and was politely disappointed to hear that she had not. ‘
Oh, he never writes,’ she said, with a careless laugh. He asked her what film part she thought he might be offered; she guessed a spaghetti Western and he found this funny: it was not an expression he had heard before, and insisted on having it explained to him. By the time she had finished her Scotch, she began to feel she might be attractive to him after all. Talking to him of Al, she was impressed to hear herself making room for a new man in her life.
‘Anyway, I just hope he is successful, that’s all,’ she said, implying that success might compensate him for other disappointments.
But even while she made this progress towards him she was assailed yet again by her sense of wrongness. It was a feeling she had on stage sometimes, when a scene was not playing: that events were happening singly and in wooden succession; that the line of dialogue was too thin, too straight. Now, she thought. Fishing in her shoulder bag, she produced an olive-wood box and handed it to him across the table. He took it because it was offered but did not at once recognise it as a gift, and to her amusement she detected a moment of anxiety, even suspicion in his face, as if some unexpected factor threatened to upset his plans.
‘You’re supposed to open it,’ she explained.
‘But what is it?’ Clowning for her, he gently shook it, then put it to his ear. ‘Shall I order a bucket of water?’ he asked. Sighing as if no good would come of it, he lifted the lid and contemplated the twists of tissue paper nestling inside. ‘Charlie. What is this? I am completely confused. I insist you take them straight back to wherever you found them.’
‘Go on. Unwrap one.’
He held up a hand; she watched it hover as if over her own body, then descend on the first package, which was the big pink shell she had saved from the beach on the day he left the island. Solemnly he laid it on the table and took out the next offering, a carved Greek donkey made in Taiwan, bought from the souvenir shop, with ‘Joseph’ hand-painted by herself on the rump. Holding it in both hands, he turned it over and over while he studied it.
‘It’s a boy,’ she said. But she could not shift the earnestness of his expression. ‘And that’s me sulking,’ she explained as he lifted out the framed colour photograph taken on Robert’s Polaroid of Charlie in rear view, wearing her straw hat and kaftan. ‘I had a rage on and wouldn’t pose. I thought you’d appreciate it.’
His gratitude had a note of sober afterthought that chilled her. Thank you but no, he seemed to be saying; thank you but another time. Not Pauly, not Lucy, and not you either. She hesitated, then said it – kindly and gently, straight into his face. ‘Jose, we don’t have to go on with this, you know. I can still hoof it to the plane, if that’s what you’d prefer. I just didn’t want you to –’
‘To what?’
‘I didn’t want to hold you to a rash promise. That’s all.’
‘It was not rash. It was most seriously meant.’
Now it was his turn. He produced a wad of travel brochures. Unbidden, she moved round and sat beside him, her left arm thrown carelessly over his shoulder so that they could study them together. His shoulder was as hard as a cliff and about as intimate, but she left her arm there. Delphi, Jose: gosh, super. Her hair was against his cheek. She had washed it for him last night. Olympus: terrific. Meteora: never heard of it. Their foreheads were touching. Thessalonika: wow. The hotels they would stay at, all planned, all booked. She kissed his cheekbone, just beside the eye, a casual peck bestowed upon a passing target. He smiled and gave her hand an avuncular squeeze, till she almost ceased to wonder what it was in him, or in her, that gave him the right to take her over without a fight, without even a surrender; or where the recognition came from – the ‘Charlie, yes, hullo’ – that had turned their first meeting into a reunion of old friends and this one into a conference about their honeymoon.
Forget it, she thought. ‘You never wear a red blazer, do you, Jose?’ she asked before she had even considered the question. ‘Wine-coloured, brass buttons, a breath of the twenties about the cut?’
His head slowly lifted; he turned and returned her stare. ‘Is that a joke?’
‘No. It’s a straight question.’
‘A red blazer? But why on earth should I? Do you want me to support your football team or something?’
‘You’d look good in one. That’s all.’ He was still waiting for her explanation. ‘It’s just the way I see people sometimes,’ she said, beginning to fight her way out. ‘Theatrically. In my mind. You don’t know actresses, do you? I put make-up on people – beards – all sorts of things. You’d be amazed. I dress them up too. Plus-fours. Uniform. All in my imagination. It’s habit.’
‘Do you want me to grow a beard for you, you mean?’
‘If I do, I’ll let you know.’
He smiled, she smiled back – another meeting across the footlights – his gaze released her and she took herself off to the ladies’ room, raging at her own face in the mirror while she tried to work him out. No wonder he’s got bloody bullet-holes, she thought. Women did it.
They had eaten, they had talked with the earnestness of strangers, he had paid the bill from a crocodile-skin wallet that must have cost half the national debt of whatever country owned him.
‘Are you getting me on expenses, Jose?’ she asked as she watched him fold and pocket the receipt.
The question went unanswered, for suddenly, thank God, his familiar administrative genius had taken charge and they were frightfully short of time.
‘Please look out for an exhausted green Opel with dented wings and a ten-year-old driver,’ he told her as he hurried her down a cramped kitchen passage, her luggage across his arms.
‘Right-ho,’ she said.
It was waiting at the side entrance, dented wings as he had promised. The driver took her luggage from him and put it in the boot, fast. He was freckled and blond and healthy-looking with a big, buckwheat grin, and yes, he looked if not ten then fifteen at most. The hot night was shedding its habitual slow rain.
‘Charlie, meet Dimitri,’ said Joseph as he ushered her into the back seat. ‘His mother has given him permission to stay up late tonight. Dimitri, kindly take us to the second-best place in the world.’ He had slipped in beside her. The car started immediately, and with it his facetious tour-guide monologue. ‘So, Charlie, here we have the home of modern Greek democracy, Constitution Square; note the many democrats enjoying their outdoor freedom in the restaurants. Now on the left you see the Olympieion and Hadrian’s Gate. I must warn you, however, before you get ideas, that it is a different Hadrian from the one who built your famous wall. The Athens version is a more fanciful man, don’t you agree? More artistic, I would say.’
‘Oh, much,’ she said.
Come alive, she told herself angrily. Snap out of it. It’s a free ride, it’s a new gorgeous man, it’s ancient Greece and it’s called fun. They were slowing down. She glimpsed ruins to her right, but the high bushes hid them again. They reached a roundabout, rolled slowly up a paved hill, and stopped. Springing out, Joseph opened her door for her, grasped her hand, and led her swiftly, almost conspiratorially, to a narrow stone stairway between overhanging trees.
‘We speak only in whispers, and even then in the most elaborate code,’ he warned her in a stage murmur, and she said something equally meaningless in reply.
His grasp was like a charge of electricity. Her fingers seemed to burn at his touch. They were following a wood path, now paved, now dry earth, but climbing all the time. The moon had vanished and it was very dark, but Joseph darted ahead of her unerringly, as if it were by daylight. Once they crossed a stone staircase, once a much wider path, but the easier ways were not for him. The trees broke, and to her right she saw the city lights already far below her. To her left, still high above, a kind of mountain crag stood black against the orange skyline. She heard footsteps behind her and laughter, but it was just a couple of kids having a joke.
‘You don’t mind the walk?’ he asked, without relaxing his speed.
‘Enormously,’ she replied
.
A Joseph pause.
‘You want me to carry you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Unfortunately, I have pulled a muscle in my back.’
‘I saw,’ she said, grasping his hand more tightly.
She looked right again and made out what looked like the ruins of an old English mill, one arched window stacked upon another, and the lighted city behind them. She glanced left, and the mountain crag had become the black rectangular outline of a building with what might have been a chimney poking from one end. Then they were in the trees again, with the deafening clatter of the cicadas and a smell of pine strong enough to make her eyes tingle.
‘It’s a tent,’ she whispered, momentarily drawing him to a halt. ‘Right? Sex on the South Col. How did you guess my secret appetites?’
But he was striding strongly ahead of her. She was breathless but she could go all day when she felt like it, so her breathlessness came from something else. They had joined a wide path. Before them two grey figures in uniform were standing guard over a small stone hut on which a light-bulb burned inside a wire cage. Joseph went forward to them and she heard the responsive murmur of their greeting. The hut stood between two iron gates. Behind one lay the city again, now a distant blaze of busy lights; but behind the other lay only pitch darkness, and it was to the darkness that they were about to be admitted, for she heard the clank of keys and the creak of iron as the gate swung slowly on its hinges. For a moment, the panic got her. What am I doing here? Where am I? Bolt, nitwit, bolt. The men were officials or policemen and she guessed by their sheepishness that Joseph had bribed them. They all looked at their watches, and as he raised his wrist she saw the glint of his flashy cream shirt and cuff-links. Now Joseph was beckoning her forward. She peered back and saw two girls standing below her on the path, looking up. He was calling to her. She started for the open gate. She felt the policemen’s eyes undress her and it occurred to her that Joseph had not yet looked at her that way; he had not supplied the crude evidence of wanting her. In her uncertainty she wished urgently that he would.
The Little Drummer Girl Page 13
