by Simon Raven
Fielding's life in Argos had now settled into a routine. He would get up at about eleven o'clock, hands shaking and head buzzing, breakfast off Turkish coffee and some bread and jam if he could face it, and then drive unsteadily to the palace at Mycenae. There he would sit on the ramparts and look towards the sea, thinking all the time of the days he had spent with Nicos. Later on, when the hour came at which Nicos had been taken, he would go over the scene minutely and in every last detail, acting it out word by word and step by step from the ramparts to the car park. As he did this he would search desperately, in Nicos' remembered face, for some sign that the parting was against the boy's will, for some tiny sign that could mean sorrow or fondness; and then, having failed to find such a sign, he would look south again from the ramparts and sit there till evening.
When the dusk came, he would drive back to Argos, eat some kind of meal in a restaurant, buy a bottle of cheap Greek brandy, and go back to his room in the hotel, where he would lie on his bed and drink the brandy until he fell asleep, which he often did with his clothes on. Next morning he would wake quite early but would toss and groan on the bed until the heat in his little room grew unendurable. Then he would plunge his head in cold water, comb his greasy hair, and stumble downstairs to start his day once more.
'My dear Llewyllyn' (Constable had written to Tom) 'I'm sorry to hear that your series, and with it the Cyprus programme, must be abandoned. It would have been interesting to see what came of Fielding Gray's interview with Grivas.'
Well at least, Tom thought, I am spared having to tell him what went wrong with that.
'But the real point of this letter.' Constable went on, 'is to tell you, unofficially, that it has been decided to offer you a Namier Fellowship at this College. Invitation will be made to you in official form in a few days. I need not say how much I hope you will accept. I might also add that I think a period spent in academic surroundings will provide just the kind of discipline needed to complement the facile distinction of your talents and to enable you to treat worthily of power and correlated subjects, which clearly fascinate you as much as they do me.'
'What's a Namier Fellowship?' asked Patricia, when Tom had finished reading out the letter.
'A three-year appointment during which I should have to undertake some serious line in historical research. I should get a Fellow's stipend and all the rest of it. but I should not be expected to teach or administer. Only to get on with my own work.'
'But what will Gregory say? He wants you to have something ready for him to publish next year.'
'Gregory will have to wait. What I can now propose to him instead is a scholarly dissertation to which I shall have devoted three years' loving and detailed work in the peace and quiet of the fens. Up till now, I've been little more than a political journalist. A typical London opportunist. Now I've got a chance to do something of lasting importance ... with the full recognition and backing of the most famous college in the world.'
'You're going to accept this Fellowship, Tom?'
'Of course.'
'But will Gregory want to publish a ... scholarly dissertation?'
'I want to write one,'
'But Tom ... the money? With all those fines you've got to pay.'
'We shall be much poorer, certainly. But it'll be cheaper, living in Cambridge. And at last I shall have proper work.'
'But it'll mean ... burying yourself ... down there. You'll be forgotten in no time.'
'You don't quite understand, Patricia. Robert Constable is giving me an opportunity—I'm pretty sure he's behind it all—to write about the anarchy which permeates historical processes and the deductions which follow as to the nature of power. Constable does not agree with, in fact he strongly disapproves of, the line which I am going to take. Nevertheless he's giving me a chance to state my case because he thinks that it should be stated. It's a magnanimous offer and a magnificent challenge. I wouldn't refuse it for anything.'
'Tom,' said Patricia stubbornly, 'I think I'm pregnant.'
'Are you indeed? Well, you can be pregnant just as well down in Cambridge as you can up here.'
'Tom ...'
She came towards him, smiling her invitation.
'Oh yes,' said Tom, not unkindly, 'we can do as much of that as you want. But we're still going to Cambridge, and there's an end of it.'
Harriet Ongley paused in Athens for just long enough to enquire at the Grande Bretagne Hotel whether there had been any further sign of Fielding Gray. She was told that there had not, but that someone had telephoned for him from London and left a message. This message, which was the one Detterling had been trying to pass on as requested by Gregory Stern, Mrs Ongley read and put into her handbag. She then set out, as instructed by Max, for the Isthmus and the Argolid.
She drove a hired car and sang to herself as she drove, arias from Verdi and passages of counterpoint from Bach. She was very happy because she was going to meet a new and 'creative' person, someone, above all, who wanted her help; for while it was true, as she had told Max, that her husband's deathbed had temporarily drained her of charitable impulse, she was a woman who needed to be needed and she had secretly dreaded the prospect of touring the Near East with no one to mind but herself.
Seeing no necessity to go hungry, she stopped for a substantial lunch at the Xenia in Old Corinth. Then she drove on down the road towards Argos, trying to remember a line which she had read in a paperback translation of Virgil. Yes ... that was it: 'and dying he remembers his sweet Argos'. What a lovely line, she thought, blinking her eyes as she drove.
After a time, she turned left to Mycenae, drove through the village and on up the hill to the palace; and as she got out of her car in the car park, she saw the most extraordinary sight
A young man was capering backwards down the path from the Lion Gate. He was waving his arms and seemed to be pleading with somebody, though there was nobody with whom to plead. He came skipping on down (still backwards), past the little booth where tickets were sold, over the road and into the car park. Then, at last, he turned, and looked in despair at the only car in the park other than her own. It was as if he were watching someone go to the car, do something and leave it again; and then as though that someone were coming towards herself, for the young man's gaze followed an invisible person across the car park and gradually rose until it met her own. She saw that he had only one proper eye, from which tears were streaming down over a filthy and distorted face.
But now the young man was moving. He staggered across the car park until he came to her own car, through the front window of which he started to look so intently that for a moment Harriet too thought that there must be somebody within.
'Nicos,' the young man said, 'do you remember the Charioteer? Surely you meant what you said then?'
Whatever answer the young man received, it was evidently final and unbearable; for he leapt back from Harriet's car as if he had been shot, and then sank on to the ground, where his whole body heaved and throbbed in a grotesque orgasm of grief. Harriet took a deep breath, then went to stand over him.
'I have a message from your publisher,' she said as firmly as she could, 'which I found in the Grande Bretagne Hotel. You are to present yourself in London with a synopsis for a new novel in four days from now.'
'Christopher, oh Christopher,' whimpered the young man on the ground.
'You're hysterical,' said Harriet. 'You need a bath and some fresh clothes and a meal. We will go in my car to Nauplion, where we will stay in a dear little hotel on that island in the harbour. There you will write a synopsis for your novel, and we will then fly back to London and show it to Mr Stern.'
'Who are you?'
'My name is' Harriet Ongley, and I have come to take care of you.' She stooped down and put her face near his. 'Please let me take care of you. Don't send me away.'
She started to stroke the greasy, matted hair and took out a handkerchief to dry the wet, pink cheeks.
'There, there. Time to stop crying. Time to com
e home and start all over again.'
She moved her face even closer, ignoring the foul breath which came from him, and kissed him on his twisted lips.
The Alms for Oblivion sequence, published for the first time in chronological order:
Fielding Gray
Sound the Retreat
The Sabre Squadron
The Rich Pay Late
Friends in Low Places
The Judas Boy
Places Where They Sing
Come Like Shadows
Bring Forth the Body
The Survivors
The Judas Boy
'Fielding Gray, flawed in face by a bomb in Cyprus, in mind by guilt from his schoolboy past, goes to Greece on a TV fact-finding mission, and is there seduced from his duty, quite literally, by a corrupt youth bribed by an American secret agent. Mr Raven's novel... keeps up a splendid pace: he is both cynical and civilized'
EVENING STANDARD
'Inevitably, comparisons are being drawn between Alms for Oblivion, Men at Arms, A Dance to the Music of Time and Strangers and Brothers. Mr Raven, more riotous than Waugh-like, more strident than Powell, dirtier than the driven Snow, sardonically abides the comparison'
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