‘I’d like to speak to you for a moment, Uncle. May I come in?’
The Ambassador had just sat down at his desk, and he looked up with a slight frown. That morning he had received a despatch from the Foreign Secretary concerning some rather delicate negotiations, and he was anxious to get to work on it without delay; but he said with his habitual politeness:
‘This isn’t a good time, Robbie. But if it will take only a moment go ahead.’
‘I wanted to let you know, Uncle, that I’ve got a job.’
‘Really!’ Sir Finsterhorn’s long face lit up with one of his rather rare but charming smiles. ‘Well, I’m delighted, Robbie. Yes, delighted. What sort of a job is it?’
‘Translating documents. At least, I expect that’s what they’ll want me to do.’ Robbie took a deep breath then blurted out: ‘Anyway, it’s at the Czech Legation.’
The Ambassador suddenly became completely still. ‘What’s that you say?’ he demanded, after a moment. ‘The Czech Legation. If this is a joke, Robbie, I regard it as in the worst of taste. You cannot be speaking seriously.’
Robbie swallowed hard. ‘Yes, sir, I am. I saw Mr. Havelka this morning; and he’s promised to give me a job, starting on Monday.’
Sir Finsterhorn came slowly to his feet. ‘Havelka took you on personally? I can’t believe it. What possible reason could you have given to induce him to do so?’
‘Well—er—it was my knowing the Central European languages. Making use of them is about the only way I could earn money. And … and, after all, Uncle, for months past you have been urging me to get a job.’
‘I have indeed. You were utterly spoiled by your aunt and that old nurse of yours. Years ago, you should have been sent to a place where you could have been trained in some work suited to your limited abilities. That you are now twenty-three and still idling your life away is perfectly scandalous. But that you should be employed by the Czech Legation is unthinkable. You surely must know that, as long as the Cold War continues, those people must be regarded as our enemies. In fact, I am completely at a loss to understand Havelka’s taking you on. That is, if you gave him your right name.’
‘Oh, yes. I told him who I was and—and, to tell the truth, sir, I had to spin him a yarn that I had quarrelled with you over politics. I led him to believe that I was pro-Communist. It’s really that I wanted to tell you. You see, to make the story stick I’ll have to leave the Embassy and go to live in an hotel.’
The Ambassador’s blue eyes sparkled angrily. ‘And so you shall, my boy,’ he snapped after a moment. ‘I see the whole thing now. Havelka jumped at the chance of making a fool of me. For the British Ambassador’s nephew to take service with the Czechs will make me the laughing-stock of Athens. When your aunt died you were incapable of looking after yourself. My wife and I gave you a home and this is how you have repaid us. But in this past year you have learnt enough to stand on your own feet. Very well, then. Pack your bags and don’t let me see you here again.’
5
Hero Number One
Ten minutes later Robbie, near to tears, sat hunched up in the armchair in his bed-sitting room. For a while he was so completely shattered that he could not co-ordinate his thoughts. He had been prepared for his uncle to show marked disapproval when he admitted that he was posing as a pro-Communist, but had hoped that the fact that he had at last actually got himself a job would placate him. It had not occurred to him for one moment that, because he was to be employed by the Czechs, Sir Finsterhorn would be sufficiently enraged to cast him off and forbid him the Embassy. To attempt to spy on the Czechs while retaining his sheet anchor was one thing; to be thrust out into the world and on his own for the first time was a very different matter.
For a while he contemplated abandoning his plans and returning to England. Aunt Emily had left him her pleasant house at Cheltenham, together with its contents. Sir Finsterhorn had wanted him to sell it; but it was the only home he had known, and he did not need the money. Moreover, old Nanny Fisher, now nearly seventy, was still alive, and he could not bear the thought of her being put out at her age to make a new home for herself. Therefore he had dug in his toes against even letting the house, and had arranged for her to receive a sufficient sum to maintain it for him and to keep on their cook.
But Athene’s words to him, conveyed through the rustling of the leaves on her sacred tree, were still fresh in his mind. She had charged him to go through with his quest to the bitter end, whatever might befall, and a command from the goddess was not to be ignored lightly.
He considered the possibility that he had only imagined hearing her voice. Had he heard it in a dream, he could have accepted that, but he had been wide-awake, and had deliberately sought her counsel. Further thought convinced him, too, that the harsh treatment meted out to him by his uncle was typical of the unexpected misfortunes which heroes of ancient times always met with on their quests.
The inhabitants of Olympus had been a jealous lot, and perpetually quarrelling with one another. For one of them to take a mortal under his or her protection was quite enough for one of the others to set about inflicting pain and grief upon him and hamper him at every turn. It might be that or, perhaps, Robbie thought, he might unwittingly have offended some member of the Olympian family.
They were all incurable busybodies. Apart from intriguing among themselves and making love, their principal sport had been to come down to earth and mingle with mortals; but not in their beautiful trimmings. They assumed disguises as crippled beggars or wrinkled old women clad in filthy rags. One of their favourite games was to ask for a night’s lodging or a free ride on a ferry, and woe betide the unfortunate person who refused their request; he was lucky if he was not blinded there and then or turned into a lizard. It could be argued that these judgments on the spot were a far more effective way of inducing the ancient Greeks to be charitable to the poor and humble than the threats of hell and damnation in some uncertain future which were thundered forth centuries later by Christian fanatics. All the same, Robbie felt, these totally unexpected actions by the gods must have been extremely worrying for their worshippers.
Reluctantly, he concluded that, by appealing to Athene, he had laid himself open to becoming a plaything of the Immortals; so he must henceforth take the rough with the smooth, and rely on her to see him through.
As he had brought out from England nearly all his personal possessions he felt that he could hardly be expected to remove all of them that afternoon. He put his immediate requirements into a big suitcase, leaving the rest to be sent after him by arrangement when he had found permanent quarters for himself. Carrying the suitcase downstairs, he went out of the back of the house and crossed the garden.
The Embassy and its precincts occupied the whole block, the large garage at the far end of the garden opening on to Ploutarchou Street, on the opposite side of which was a big block of modern flats. In one of them lived Luke Beecham; so Robbie entered the block and asked for him.
It was a Friday, and to Robbie’s dismay the porter told him that Mr. Beecham had just left in his car to spend the week-end with friends who had a seaside villa at Lavrion. This was a sad blow as, although Robbie had made many acquaintances in Athens, there were few that he could call friends, and no one other than Luke to whom he could confide his present trouble.
Still carrying his heavy bag, which, owing to his great strength, caused him little effort, he turned into the main boulevard and walked along it, debating what next to do. To get a room at an hotel was the obvious answer. Had he had the least experience in leading a double life he would have looked for some modest place suited to the role he was playing, but that never occurred to him. Most of the visitors who were invited to lunch or to dine at the Embassy stayed at the Grande Bretagne; so, without further thought, he went to it.
Unlike most more modern hotels, the Grande Bretagne had no shops facing the street occupying a large part of its ground floor level; instead, there were spacious lounges, two restaurants,
a ballroom and cocktail bar large enough to have held one hundred people. Yet an air of quiet dignity prevailed and rarely more than a handful of visitors was to be seen sitting about, because so many of its patrons were rich enough to afford private suites.
The money left to Robbie by his parents had been well invested during his minority, so for the past two years he had been in receipt of a very handsome income. Up to the present, even with keeping open the house at Cheltenham, he had found no use for more than a third of it, so he had no hesitation in taking a small suite, as a sitting room of his own would enable him to work undisturbed on his book in the evenings. He would have preferred one that looked out on to the trees and fountains in Constitution Square, which always reminded him of Trafalgar Square in London. Constitution Square was also on a slope and, at its upper end, it was dominated by the Royal Palace, a building somewhat resembling the National Gallery. However, he felt that would be too much of an extravagance, so contented himself with a suite at the back, facing the backs of other buildings.
Having unpacked, he decided to take his mind off his worries by going to a film, and at the Orpheus Cinema saw Alec Guinness and Noel Coward in Our Man in Havana. He had chosen the film solely on the names of its stars, so it struck him as something more than a coincidence that it should turn out to be about the Secret Service. During the show its clever satire caused him to laugh uproariously, but the fact that its bewildered hero came out all right in the end gave him the more sober thought that perhaps Athene had deliberately sent him to see the film in order to cheer him up.
That idea braced him up for the remainder of the evening, but Saturday and Sunday dragged terribly, and during them he suffered from bouts of acute depression. Two visits to the Acropolis failed to bring him even a ray of comfort, and he found it impossible to concentrate sufficiently to work on his book. By Sunday evening, he was doubting his ability even to hold for long his job with the Czechs, let alone succeed in finding out their secret intentions. After dinner, up in his sitting room, he sat miserably, twisting his big fingers together, again sorely tempted to throw in his hand and either return to England or go back to the Embassy and grovel before his uncle. To distract his mind from such unhappy thoughts, he decided to make another attempt to write a few paragraphs of his book. As he took the manuscript from a drawer and laid it on the desk, it fell open of its own accord at Chapter IV. Instinctively he began to read what he had written:
THE HEROES
(NO. 1 HERCULES)
Hercules did so many heroic deeds that I think he is entitled to first place among the Heroes, but he had a sad life and was a very unlucky man. When I say he had bad luck, I really mean that he was constantly pursued by the vindictiveness of that old bitch Hera.
He was a son of Zeus by Alcmene, the wife of Amphitryon, King of Tiryns, which in ancient times was the port of Mycenae. As usual, the Father of the Gods did not let on who he was when he slept with this lady. He simply took the form of her husband and got into bed with her. I suppose he was much better at that sort of thing than King Amphitryon. Anyway, she rumbled him and he was so cock-a-hoop from the good time she had given him that, when he got back to Olympus, he decreed that the next male to be born in Amphitryon’s family should be lord over all Greece.
At that, of course, Hera guessed what he had been up to, and flew into a frightful rage. As a first move, she caused poor Alcmene’s labour to be prolonged until Hercules’s cousin, Eurystheus, was born before him. As Zeus could not go back on his word, Eurystheus became top chap and Hercules his vassal.
Now that the cat was out of the bag, Alcmene did not dare to nurse her own child, so tried to fox Hera by putting her baby out into a field, hoping that his Immortal papa would see to it that someone took care of him. It so happened that Hera and Athene were taking a stroll that way and, seeing the infant, Hera picked it up. At times, apparently, the Immortals were shockingly dense, as Hera had no idea whose the baby was, and put it to her breast. Hercules was already a lusty chap, and he pulled so violently at her that she plucked him off and, in a pet, threw him back on to the ground. Athene, being much more decent, took charge of him and gave him to his own mother to bring up as a foundling.
Hera pretty soon tumbled to the true state of things and, angrier than ever at being had for a mug, sent two snakes to kill Hercules in his cradle. His mother was asleep, and his nurse too petrified by fright to do anything about this; but Hercules woke up, roared with laughter and strangled both the snakes before they could do him any harm.
Woken by the din he made, Alcmene came running in and, amazed at her infant’s extraordinary performance, fetched her husband to have a look at the dead snakes. King Amphitryon was so impressed that he sent for Tiresias, a famous blind seer, to tell the babe’s fortune. Old Tiresias predicted that Hercules would become no end of a big shot, so Amphitryon had him educated by the very best teachers of all kinds and descriptions.
When he had grown up, the gods put him through a test. They caused him to meet two very attractive girls. One was named Pleasure and the other Duty. Pleasure was a most luscious blonde and offered to sleep with him right away. She also promised him a long life of ease and plenty with lots more blondes thrown in. Duty was a much more modest type and, like Sir Winston Churchill, offered him only blood, toil, tears and sweat. For some reason I can’t possibly explain, he chose Duty, and he got exactly what she had promised him.
However, by choosing to follow Duty, he soon became the most famous champion in all Greece. Most of the gods felt that he had done the right thing, so they decided to help him all they could. Athene lent him a suit of armour from her temple. Hermes gave him a magic sword that could cut through anything. Hephaestus made him a special shield, and Apollo gave him some of his arrows. Equipped with these aids, he fairly racketed round Greece, slaying all sorts of monsters. Anyone who had a hydra-headed Griffon ravaging his garden had only to call in Hercules, and he put paid to the beast in no time at all.
Thebes was a city that he took special interest in, because Amphitryon, who had behaved to him as a father, had had to give up his own kingdom and had settled there. On hearing that Thebes was being attacked, Hercules sped to its assistance. Amphitryon was killed in the fray, but Hercules led the defenders to victory, and Creon, the King of Thebes, gave him his daughter Megara in marriage as a reward.
It looked as if he would now be able to settle down, and enjoy family life; but Hera had not forgotten about him, and this time she played him a most scurvy trick. She inflicted him with madness, so that he threw his own children on the fire and drove his horrified wife out of the house. When the poor chap came to himself and realised what he had done he was absolutely shattered. For a time he wandered round quite distraught while endeavouring to secure pardon from the gods.
They granted it to him. But I think the gentle reader will agree that, considering he didn’t know what he was doing at the time, they treated him pretty scurvily. They had the Oracle at Delphi declare that as a penance he must do any ten jobs that his cousin, Eurystheus, ordered him to.
Nearly all these jobs entailed his having to slay some ferocious beast that was terrifying people for miles around, or stealing for Eurystheus something of value that was guarded by some other horrifying monster. His ‘labours’, as they were called, were as follows:
No. 1 To slay the Nemean lion.
No. 2 To slay the nine-headed snake, Hydra.
No. 3 To capture the golden-antlered stag, Cerynitis.
No. 4 To slay the Erymanthian boar.
No. 5 To clean the stables of King Augeias in a single day.
No. 6 To slay a flock of birds of prey called Stymphalides.
No. 7 To slay a mad Minoan bull.
No. 8 To capture the savage horses of Diomedes.
No. 9 To secure the girdle of Hippolyte, Queen of the Amazons.
No. 10 To steal a herd of red cattle from the giant Geryon.
These labours took him all over Greece, to Crete, to Asia and
to Africa, and kept him hard at it for several years. Most of the monsters he had to tackle could not be harmed by ordinary weapons, so he had to rely mainly on cunning or his enormous strength.
In the case of the Nemean lion, he tore up a tree which he used as a club to strike it down, then strangled it with his bare hands. Afterwards he skinned it and used its skin as a cloak. This is why he is often pictured dressed that way and holding a club.
With the Amazon Queen he was lucky. The Amazons were an Asiatic race of warrior women and not at all the sort of girls one would care to run into when taking a walk through the woods. They burned away their right breasts so as not to be hindered by their natural shape when bending a bow, and killed all their male children as soon as they were born. As they had been doing that for generations it is a bit of a mystery how they ever got in the family way. But perhaps they made the men captives they took from other races oblige before killing them off. Anyhow, Queen Hippolyte took such a good view of Hercules that she willingly gave him her girdle. Unfortunately Hera got to hear about this. She took the form of an Amazon herself and stirred all the other tough babies up against their visitor, so Hercules had to fight his way out of their country after all.
Diomedes, whose mares Hercules was sent to steal, must have been a horrible fellow. He fed these savage beasts on human flesh. But Hercules settled his hash. Quite literally in fact. He killed him, cut him up and gave him to his own mares to eat before driving them off.
Even given Hercules’s strength and courage anyone might have despaired at the job of cleaning out King Augeias’s stables in a single day. The King kept three thousand cattle and had not had a spadeful of their droppings taken away for thirty years, so you can imagine what mountains of dung there must have been. But our clever Hero succeeded in his task by diverting the course of two rivers, the torrents of which washed the stables clean.
Mayhem in Greece Page 7
