The story, as you will gather, was related by the fishermen in a very casual and light-hearted manner, as if it were the sort of trifling adventure that happens to everyone once a month or so. I should make it clear, however, that what they had done was nothing at all of that kind, but a most remarkable piece of seamanship, such as one rarely hears of, and involving greater risk to all of them than one would readily undertake, especially for a stranger and with small hope of success. I accordingly asked the crew, to show that this was our opinion, to invite them to have a round of Metaxa with us, seven star if possible. After this—I don’t know why, you will think I must already have drunk too much retsina—after this I burst into tears.
There was no seven star Metaxa to be had in the taverna—it was a very simple place; but we ordered a bottle of five star and drank it between us.
At some stage when we were talking of Camilla’s remarkable escape I asked whether anyone knew if she had been wearing a safety-harness. Andreas became suddenly very angry, spat on the floor, and began calling someone (according to the crew’s translation) “a pack of bloody murderers.”
It turned out that he was referring to the manufacturers of Camilla’s safety-harness. She had indeed been wearing one (over the black silk negligée) when she went overboard; but the shackle had snapped. There was, said Andreas, no question about it: he had seen the broken shackle with his own eyes—Stavros still had the harness and had shown it to him that morning. I felt some sympathy with his view of the manufacturers: one doesn’t often have to depend on a safety-harness, but when one does it’s probably for one’s life, so a faulty shackle is something worse than careless.
It was late, I need hardly say, when we returned to the Kymothoe, and the crew is now recalcitrant about rising from his berth to set sail for Corfu. Well, I am the most indulgent of skippers, and have refrained from throwing buckets of cold water over him—but let no one say that it’s my fault if we don’t reach Ithaca.
It’s very odd about Camilla’s safety-harness—they don’t usually break. I’m glad we resolved our doubts over the other business—one might otherwise feel inclined to find the whole thing rather sinister.
With very much love, Selena.
CHAPTER 12
The suggestion had been made by some of my colleagues that I should participate in the marking of the summer examinations which in Oxford we refer to as Schools. Much as I was honored by the proposal, I had felt obliged to decline: who am I to sit in judgment on the young? Moreover, the marking of examination scripts is among the most tedious of occupations. I had accordingly explained that the demands of Scholarship—that is to say, of my researches into the concept of causa in the early Common Law—precluded any other commitment of my time and energies.
The effect of this, I now discovered, was to make life in Oxford quite impossible during the first weeks of the summer vacation. I could not absent myself for five minutes from my desk in the Bodleian Library without meeting reproachful and accusing glances from other members of the Law faculty. It was more than could be endured: I sought refuge in London and Timothy’s hospitality while I considered my plans for the summer.
It was thus that I found myself again in the Corkscrew an evening or two later, when Julia opened a letter bearing at its head the address of Dorothea Demetriou and her distinguished husband.
Villa Miranda,
Near Casiope,
Corfu.
Tuesday morning.
Dear Julia,
Please note with suitable astonishment the address from which I write. Be patient and I will tell you how we come to be here.
The sea was smooth and the sky cloudless when we weighed anchor for Corfu; but after so many stories of shipwreck and disaster we were careful to see that everything was in good order and the Kymothoe fully prepared for any emergency. The crew showed great diligence in making sure that all moveable objects which in rough weather might fall about and cause damage were securely stowed—a very seamanlike precaution, not to be thought less so merely because he happened to stow the transistor radio on the shelf behind the compass: it wasn’t his fault, as he rather indignantly said afterwards, if the idiotic compass couldn’t tell the difference between a transistor radio and the magnetic North.
We came without further misadventure to the island which I call Corfu, which its inhabitants call Kerkira, which ancient historians call Corcyra, and which Homer calls Scheria, the land of the Phaecians—never try to tell me that the Greeks don’t do this on purpose. It is roughly the shape of a tadpole, with a broadish head to the north and a long tail wriggling southwards parallel to the mainland coast. The landscape is one of curves and soft contours, with olive-covered hills rising over gently rounded bays. There are also a great many flowers, very colorful and highly-scented.
The principal town of the island is on the east coast, approximately at the point where the head of the tadpole joins the tail. We did not put in there, but continued northwards, running goose-winged before a light south-easterly breeze and going so smoothly that we hardly seemed to be moving, though in fact I think we were making about three knots. The crew, very pleased with these conditions, lay in the cockpit and read me the passage in Homer which tells of Odysseus arriving shipwrecked on the coast of Corfu: it is at this point (said the crew) that Odysseus emerges from the world of myths and magic and stumbles, naked and destitute, into the world of reality.
Our own landing had no such traumatic qualities. We anchored at Casiope, at the northern end of the island, a little before six o’clock, and went ashore to drink ouzo in one of the pavement cafes.
I noticed that not far away some boys were playing street cricket, with a wicket marked in chalk on the wall behind the batsman, and was gratified by this sign of enduring British influence, (Corfu, as I dare say you know, was under British rule for a period of about fifty years in the nineteenth century: here, as in other parts of our Empire, it was our enlightened policy to prepare the inhabitants for self-government by teaching them to play cricket.) I was unable, however, to attend closely to the game, since the crew thought this a suitable moment to make a certain suggestion—namely, that I should marry him.
“Sebastian,” I said, “you have said in public, and on several occasions written, that marriage is a bourgeois and degrading institution designed to reduce women to the status of mere chattels.”
“So it is,” he said. “But with you and me it would be different.”
I could not help thinking this a rather unprincipled attitude in a man well regarded in feminist circles for the soundness of his views on the question. Moreover, “With you and me it would be different” is tempting to believe; but we do have several friends, don’t we, who yielded to similar persuasion and found afterwards that it wasn’t quite different enough? Still, a measure of tact is needed when rejecting such a suggestion: I took care to explain that my reluctance was due to the idyllic perfection of our existing arrangements, which made me feel that any change must inevitably be for the worse. I wondered if it might not be sensible, in the hope of avoiding further argument, to be a little hurt that Sebastian was not of the same view.
Before I had reached a decision on this point, my attention was again drawn by the cricket match—to be specific, by the discovery that the cricket ball was now moving in my direction at a speed which gave me the choice of (i) catching it or (ii) allowing it to strike me a sharp blow in the midriff. I chose the first alternative. “Ah,” I thought, as one of the players, rather slender and elegant of figure, strolled towards me to retrieve it, “that looks like the sort of thing that Julia might fancy.” I saw, as he drew closer, that I had been right in my judgment: it was Leonidas Demetriou.
“Well caught,” said Leonidas. “Oh—it’s Miss Jardine, isn’t it? Miss Jardine of Lincoln’s Inn?”
I introduced him to Sebastian, to the great satisfaction of both: Leonidas clearly had in mind the advice of his Classics master that a boy hoping to go up to Oxford in the next academic y
ear should miss no chance to make a favorable impression on a senior member of the University; while Sebastian, on learning that this was the son of the distinguished poet Constantine Demetriou, was as pleased and interested as if I had given him a personal introduction to Homer’s great-grandmother.
Apparently content to abandon his part in the match, Leonidas sat down at our table. At some stage he went away to make a telephone call—as it turned out, to his parents: he represented them, on his return, as yearning for our company at dinner and scarcely to be consoled should we refuse. Well, there was no question of that: Sebastian had been daydreaming for ten minutes of meeting personally the man he so much admired. A little before dusk we found ourselves at the Villa Miranda, in a garden looking out across the sea to Albania.
Since you have not enjoyed the remarkable privilege of meeting Constantine Demetriou, I must try to make up for your loss by giving you a full account of the great poet’s manner and appearance. He is tall, rather thin for his height, but fairly muscular, and with features which put one in mind (it is not for me to suggest he cultivates the impression) of one of the older gods of Olympus, as depicted in painting and sculpture—Poseidon, say, or even Zeus himself: dark eyes set deep under a high sloping forehead; an aquiline nose; and a spade-shaped black beard, slightly curly and streaked with gray. He has also the quality, which one sees in successful advocates, of holding the attention of those about him even when he has nothing in particular to say.
The Zeus-like effect was heightened, when we first saw him, by the fact of his being surrounded by the younger members of the Remington-Fiske family—all of whom, as you know, are very tall and splendid to look at, admirably suited to supporting roles in a dramatic tableau of family life on Mount Olympus. Lucinda, with her copper-colored hair and abundance of curves, would make an excellent stand-in for the goddess Aphrodite; and her brother Lucian is very good-looking, and has literary ambitions—I think he can be cast as Apollo. As for Camilla—well, I’m not sure that the qualities of a romantic heroine include the intellectual attributes of Pallas Athene; but she is certainly athletic enough to do for Artemis, and said to be suitably virginal. Leonidas would be Hermes, I suppose; or perhaps Ganymede—he was very diligent about keeping everyone’s glass filled. None of them seemed to have suffered any serious harm from their misadventures on Thursday night: Lucian had his arm in a sling, and I noticed later that Camilla still has some bruises; but apart from that they all seem to have recovered remarkably well.
Dolly, of course, does not fit in at all with the Mount Olympus picture. You would have to imagine that Zeus and Hera had been divorced—from what Homer says of their domestic life this seems not at all unlikely—and that Zeus had taken up with some less formidable goddess, with untidy hair and paint under her fingernails. It was Dolly, when we arrived at the Villa Miranda, who first came running across the garden to meet us; but her husband followed and overtook her, seized Sebastian by the hand, embraced him, and asked if he was indeed Sebastian Verity, the translator of Theocritus.
Oh joy—the great poet had read Sebastian’s translation of the Idylls. Oh honor undreamt of—not merely read, but admired.
I do not in fact see why Sebastian should have been so surprised. His translation of the Idylls may not have had a great commercial success; but it was favorably reviewed by all the critics whose opinion is worth having, and The Times called it essential reading for anyone with pretensions to a liberal education: our host might have been expected to have read and admired it.
Dolly went to great lengths to make sure I did not think myself the less honored guest, introducing me without a blush to her husband as one of the most brilliant advocates of my generation. I ventured to remind her that she had never heard me open my mouth in court—when we varied the trusts of her father’s will, you remember, I was led by Basil Ptarmigan; but she was not at all disconcerted.
“I know,” she said. “I thought it was a shame you weren’t allowed to say anything. I’m sure you’d have done it just as nicely as Mr. Ptarmigan, and it wouldn’t have been so expensive, would it?” Do by all means report this to Basil when you next see him. “But I do know you’re brilliant, because Ronnie Tancred told me so.”
I am bound to admit that I was rather pleased. Without believing that Tancred would have said anything so exaggerated, I thought I could infer that he had said something pleasant about me, and it is always gratifying to be well spoken of by one’s instructing solicitors.
I had hoped during dinner to hear about the events of Thursday night from the point of view of those on the sailing-boat. Dolly, however, could not bear to hear the subject spoken of: she had spent all Friday thinking that Camilla was drowned; she had afterwards learned that they could all have been drowned; it had been, she said, the most horrible day of her life, and she never wanted to think about it again.
Her husband and Sebastian, as was to be expected, fell into a discussion of poetry and politics—subjects which neither of them seemed readily able to distinguish, so that one might have gathered from listening to them that the main objection to the Colonels was their unsoundness on matters of poetic diction.
I began to be embarrassed at the thought that everyone was talking English entirely for my benefit, since all the others at the table understood Greek: even Camilla and the twins seem to speak it quite fluently. After dinner, when we adjourned to the garden for coffee, I thought it tactful to attach myself to the younger members of the family (who were not passionately interested in questions of poetic diction), leaving Sebastian and our host to continue their conversation in Greek. Since Dolly remained with them, I now felt free to ask again about what had happened on Thursday night. I said that I had heard about it in Parga, but did not mention the fishermen at Mourtos.
“I suppose,” said Camilla, “that they told you I was washed up on the shore wearing a black negligée. That’s what all those rotters in Parga are saying, and it’s an absolute lie—it was the top half of my black silk pajamas.”
“And if she hadn’t lost the bottom half somewhere in the Mediterranean,” said Lucian, “she’d have been perfectly respectable, wouldn’t you, Millie?”
In accordance with the established convention in sailing circles, they spoke off-handedly of their adventure, saying modestly that there really wasn’t much to tell. In accordance with the corresponding convention, I took no notice of this, but continued to press them for a full account.
On Thursday they had sailed down to Preveza in Camilla’s yacht, the Sycorax, for a dinner party with friends. The gathering, however, had been less convivial than they expected, and by eleven o’clock they were back on board. A south wind had sprung up, which Camilla and Leonidas thought it a pity to waste: they both enjoy night sailing, and it would have been annoying to wait at Preveza until morning and then find that the wind had dropped.
“And Lucian and I didn’t mind much either way,” said Lucinda. “There was plenty of booze on board, and as long as no one expected us to do anything energetic in the sailing line we didn’t care whether we drank it moving or standing still.”
The sky at this stage was clear, and it did not occur to anyone to listen to the weather forecast. Camilla took the first watch, having laid a course for Port Gaio on the island of Paxos and expecting to arrive there in the early hours of the morning. Leonidas took over at about two o’clock, with instructions to keep on a compass heading of 295 degrees. By this time it was very dark, the sky having clouded over, and the wind had freshened to something like a force five. There was some discussion about whether they should hoist the storm jib instead of the genoa. Leonidas thought he could handle the boat without any change of sail, and Camilla agreed in the end that it would be enough to take a reef in the mainsail.
“So I told Leon to give me a yell if he had any problems,” said Camilla, “and went off to the forecabin to get my beauty sleep. The twins, of course, were sprawled out all over the main cabin in a newt-like condition, snoring their heads off
. And that’s when Leon decided, for reasons best known to himself, to point the boat north a bit.”
Well, Leonidas still maintains that he kept on a heading of 295 degrees, as Camilla had told him to; but from what happened afterwards it seems that he can’t have done. I wondered at first if it might be Camilla who had made a mistake, by not making the right adjustment for compass error. The rest of them, however, had all sailed often enough on the Sycorax to know pretty well by heart what adjustment would be needed on any particular heading, and they all agreed that 295 degrees would have been right for the course that Camilla meant to take. There seems no doubt, therefore, that Leonidas must somehow have misread the compass—perhaps by mistaking north-west for west-north-west. Whatever the reason, he was about fifteen degrees off course.
The wind rose steadily during the first hour of his watch, until it approached gale force. He realized that he was carrying far too much sail, but he also knew he could not reduce sail single-handed, and he was reluctant to rouse Camilla so soon after she had gone off watch. I think that his judgment may also have been affected by the absolute darkness all round him, which can be unsettling. The darkness of a night at sea with no moon and no stars isn’t like being in a room with the light shut out: the sea is black and the sky is black, so that there is no horizon, and the darkness has no limits to it. With the sea running high and the boat heeling over at an angle which brought her deck within inches of the water, he had the sense to reach for a line and lash himself to the stern rail. He did not, however, call out for anyone to help him, but stayed alone at the tiller while the Sycorax went careering through the night at a speed he had never sailed at before—God knows how none of the rigging snapped—with the black waves towering over her and the gale screaming into her canvas. It was like sailing, he said, “from nowhere into Hades.”
The Shortest Way to Hades Page 15
