Come Away, Death

by Gladys Mitchell

  A narrow descent to the sea was the next stage of the journey. The little boys, prevented from bathing, looked longingly at the water. The pass ended. The road followed the line of the bay, and great hills descended to the shore. The road was at sea-level, but, turning northward again at about the nine-mile mark, it crossed pasture land, the hills first receded from and then re-approached the sea, and about a mile farther on, olive-groves and vineyards took the place of the pasture. The party had reached the fertile plain of Eleusis with its artesian wells.

  Lunch had been eaten on the sea-shore in the full glare of the sun, and the pilgrims, coming at last within sight of the cement and soap factories of Eleusis, were hot, weary, footsore, and very dirty.

  ‘I’m dead,’ said Megan. Cathleen also looked tired. Even the little boys sat down, and were silent for nearly ten minutes. The sun beat down on the Bay of Salamis and on the mountains of the island. The stones on which the travellers had seated themselves were hot.

  Mrs Bradley looked benignly towards her charges, and then observed, as she stroked the patient oxen with a claw-like yellow hand, ‘I trust that we are not proposing to sacrifice the draught animals to Demeter?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Sir Rudri, who had halted the wagon some distance from the ruins of the hall. We shall now go to the inn for food. There, too, the women had better sleep.’

  ‘And the boys,’ said Mrs Bradley firmly.

  ‘And I,’ said Alexander Currie, wiping off sweat with a handkerchief which soon turned khaki with the mingled dust and perspiration it was removing from his cheeks, his ears, and his neck.

  ‘Then,’ Sir Rudri continued, ignoring him, ‘my son, myself, Dick, and Armstrong – oh, and I suppose Dmitri – will return to Athens by bus and return to-morrow night bearing torches. We shall represent the Mystae. The Statue of Iacchus we shall bring here on the day following. Then the heralds – the boys – I have coached them in their speeches – will bid the profane depart. Then —’ His eyes seemed to grow larger. They were filled with mystic light. In spite of the long walk in the heat and dust, his energy and enthusiasm were unimpaired, and he stretched his arms dramatically towards the ruined Hall of the Mysteries. Mrs Bradley studied him with interest.

  ‘And then?’ she said, in her deep, mellifluous tones. Sir Rudri looked at her sharply, his eyes suspicious, the light in them suddenly gone.

  ‘Then the experiment begins. If all goes well, we ought to be able to unravel the Mysteries, and learn the secrets that are believed to have died with the Initiates.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Alexander Currie, crudely. Mrs Bradley’s opinion coincided with his, but she was careful not to give voice to it. She rested for a bit, and then went off with the two girls and the young boys to have a look at the inn which Sir Rudri had chosen.

  ‘I think,’ she said quietly to Megan when they had all inspected it, ‘that, in spite of the kindly demeanour of the inn-keeper and his wife, we should be better accommodated in Athens.’

  ‘I know,’ said Megan. ‘I’ve already killed two bugs, and the two of us have to sleep in the same bed. What’s your room like?’

  ‘Embarrassingly over-populated, dear child.’

  ‘Still,’ said Megan, brightening, ‘the whole thing’s rather a rag, and I’m jolly glad father thought of it. He’s had much worse ideas. Oh, Lord, though, how my feet ache! And I wish we could have a bath!’

  ‘You don’t think, dear child,’ said Mrs Bradley, pressing the point a little anxiously, ‘that we might sneak back by bus to Athens, and return here early in the morning?’

  ‘Father would have a fit. It would upset the sequence of the doings. You know what he’s like when he gets a bee in his bonnet! They’ve got to go back, so that they can come again with torches. Then there’s Iacchus to bring, but our job is to stay put until we’re told to depart.’

  The little boys had found lizards, and were chivvying them with bits of dry stick.

  ‘The beggars won’t come out again,’ complained Kenneth. ‘Most unsporting animals.’

  ‘So are you,’ Mrs Bradley pointed out. ‘It’s the close season for lizards. Have you seen your bedrooms yet?’

  ‘Oh, we haven’t got bedrooms,’ said Ivor. ‘We’ve all got to sleep on the fodder.’

  ‘On the what?’

  ‘On the fodder. I don’t know what it is; it’s not hay – at least, I don’t think so – but it’s pretty nifty, and it looked to me that it crawled.’

  ‘I should say we shall catch the plague,’ observed Kenneth brightly. ‘I say,’ he said, turning on Ivor, ‘if we catch the plague, my bloke will sue your bloke for compensation, and so will this man’s bloke,’ he added, indicating the innocent, green-eyed Stewart.

  ‘Oh, rot. You can’t be sued for compensation unless you’ve given the party of the other part a contract. I read it about film stars.’

  ‘That’s all right about film stars! But all the same, if your family gets our family some fearful pestilence or skin disease or something, you can claim compensation. I mean, we can. I read it in the papers about some woman who went to some hairdresser’s and they brushed her hair with some brush that had somebody else’s skin disease on it – so you jolly well can’t get round that!’

  ‘Yes, I can. I bet you anything you like —’

  ‘Stewart,’ said Mrs Bradley, turning from the debaters to their audience, ‘take me and show me this fodder.’

  ‘This way, then.’ He stood by, silent and observant, whilst she mounted six wooden steps and peered into the sleeping-quarters which had been assigned to the boys.

  ‘Impossible,’ she said firmly to Sir Rudri, whom she found measuring the ruins and muttering.

  ‘Eh? Why? Add thirty-one and allow seven,’ he added to Dick, who was jotting down notes and digits. “Farther to the left a couple of feet,’ he added to Armstrong, who was setting up his camera on a tripod. Mrs Bradley, gazing with a benign expression at the island of Salamis just across the water, said with great firmness:

  ‘Because it is.’ She then described to him – not mincing her words – the condition of the bedding at the inn. Sir Rudri was scornful and annoyed.

  ‘Good heavens, Beatrice! Suppose a boy does get a flea-bite? Does it signify anything?’

  ‘Only that he’ll probably die of it,’ said Mrs Bradley mildly, still gazing out across the water. She turned on the experimentalist decisively, like a suddenly swooping bird. ‘I’m not asking your permission, my dear man! I’m telling you that those children cannot stay at that inn! We’re going to catch the next bus back to Athens!’

  ‘Oh well, if you are, you are,’ said Sir Rudri, secretly relieved at having the decision made so uncompromisingly. ‘You had better get something to eat first. We are going to have some goat and a cheese and some fruit when we’ve done this bit of measuring. I do wish,’ he added peevishly, ‘that we could manage to get a photograph without these wretched little sheds coming into it.’

  ‘I could easily take them out, Sir Rudri,’ said Armstrong.

  ‘No, no! We can’t have anything faked! I must have exactly what’s there.’

  ‘Let’s wait until morning, then, sir. The light is a bit peculiar,’ said Dick.

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Alexander Currie, lighting a cigar in the vain hope of keeping the flies from his bald head. ‘Rudri, this whole place is a hotbed of mosquitoes.’

  ‘That is as nature intends it,’ Sir Rudri replied. ‘Beatrice, oblige me by walking westward to that farthest pillar, holding the end of this measuring-tape. Alexander, go due north, please, with this one. The orientation of this place is of the first importance. Wait. Let me take the compass off its chain.’

  The ruins, in the full light of the sun, had little glamour or attractiveness. Of the great Hall of the Mysteries below the ancient acropolis, only some of the stone seats, cut out of the solid rock, and the scattered bases of slender pillars, once the roof-supports, were still to be seen. A rough path led from the road among the ruins, and beyond
them the Bay of Salamis glowed against the dark mountains of the island’s northern coast.

  ‘Queer place,’ said Armstrong. ‘Queer old bird, the old man, to come here, too,’ he added.

  Mrs Bradley said nothing. She did not like Armstrong, a fact which interested her.

  ‘Still,’ Armstrong continued, in no wise abashed by her silence, ‘I suppose we can’t grumble. He’s paying me well. That’s all I care about. But photograph it! What is there here to photograph? That’s what I’d like to know.’

  Mrs Bradley could not enlighten him, and continued to say nothing. After a short pause Armstrong picked up his traps and followed Sir Rudri to the inn. Mrs Bradley did not feel the slightest desire for goat or cheese, and intended to dine in Athens, so she walked up the rough path to the Hall of the Mysteries, and then climbed the seats of stone for the view. Suddenly she caught sight of Kenneth and Stewart. They were making an obviously stealthy progress towards the sea. Divining their intention, which was to bathe, she shouted after them. Unwillingly they turned and waved to her.

  ‘Come back!’ cried Mrs Bradley. They were too tired, she thought, to bathe, and she did not know how safe the bathing would be.

  ‘We’re so dirty,’ said Stewart.

  ‘Absolutely filthy dirty,’ said Kenneth.

  ‘We’re going back to Athens,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Please go and find the girls and tell them so.’

  ‘And Ivor?’

  ‘Yes, child. Where is Ivor, by the way?’

  ‘The heat makes him sick. He was sick over there. He’s gone to try and get a drink of water.’

  ‘He ought not to drink the water here unless it’s in a bottle,’ Stewart remarked. ‘I bet this water’s all germs.’

  ‘All water’s all germs, you ass,’ said Kenneth. ‘Old Potty Percy showed us, last term, under a microscope.’

  ‘I don’t mean those kind of germs. I mean the other kind, you ass.’

  ‘There are all kinds, man.’

  ‘Oh, dry up, man.’

  They were met on their return to the inn by Ivor, now obviously restored to his usual health.

  ‘I was sick,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry now. I bet I catted up every single thing I had for lunch. I say, I do feel empty. I say, I bet —’

  To save further revelations or reminiscences, Mrs Bradley gave him a couple of biscuits which she had in a small round tin in the capacious pocket of her skirt, and the party made its way towards the road.

  2

  After having made the return journey in the evening, they dined, as is usual in Athens, at ten o’clock, and the three boys went to bed. Mrs Bradley, who was not tired, went for a short walk to see the acropolis by moonlight. There were plenty of people about; the roadside cafés were full; a wireless loud-speaker broadcast an American crooner, and the Greeks talked politics with passion. At the end of about an hour she returned to the hotel. Megan had gone to bed.

  ‘I suppose I might as well go, too,’ said Cathleen, glancing indifferently round the lounge. Mrs Bradley was reading a Greek newspaper. Most of the English and American guests were playing bridge. What Greeks there were, again were talking politics, except for one, a slim, black-haired young man who came up, and after glancing uncertainly at Mrs Bradley in the most frank, disarming, courteous way, invited Cathleen to spend the night with him.

  ‘I have the most beautiful type of love for you,’ he said softly, with ingenuous earnestness. His lisping English was pretty. Cathleen smiled without looking at him, and, with a polite bow, and a regretful gesture, he went away. Mrs Bradley gazed after him and gave a sudden, alarming cackle of amusement. Cathleen looked at her in some slight surprise, and then remarked:

  ‘I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll go to bed.’ At Megan’s door she paused, reflected for a moment, and then knocked.

  ‘I wonder how the others are getting on?’ said Megan, bouncing up in bed and beckoning her in. She giggled. ‘Poor father! He gets so worked up about his ideas; and he’ll hate this one before the trip is over.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Cathleen. She spoke soberly, and sat on the end of the bed.

  ‘You can’t know. You don’t know father. But he’s just like a child – crazy about a thing one minute, and sick to death and finished with it the next. Still, he can’t very well throw this up now that he has asked your father to come all the way over here to go with him, and all these other people.’

  ‘I know,’ said Cathleen again. She hesitated. Then she said: ‘There’s something I ought to tell you.’

  Moonlight streamed through the window and on to the narrow bed. It lighted Megan’s head, but Cathleen turned away from it and her beautiful face was in shadow.

  ‘Go on,’ said Megan. ‘I suppose you mean Gelert’s proposed. I’m sorry. But he will do it. Of course, it’s a nuisance —’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ said Cathleen, gazing into the darkest corner of the room. ‘At least, I mean, he has, of course, but I shouldn’t take any notice.’ She paused again. ‘On my mother’s side we have the Gift,’ she added.

  ‘That’s prophecy, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. Well, we don’t think of it like that. It just means that we can see into the future sometimes. Sometimes we can foretell things.’ She stopped again. ‘We can foretell death,’ she added.

  The Welsh blood in Megan stirred uneasily. She looked at the coverlet instead of at Cathleen.

  ‘Are you certain, Cathleen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know that. If I did know, I would warn him not to go, although I don’t know whether that is of any use. But it isn’t strong enough in me; it isn’t clear. I think perhaps that I don’t know the person very well.’

  ‘It isn’t one of your own family, then?’

  ‘It is not. Nor, I think, is it Stewart, whom we have known since he was a baby. It is not yourself, Megan. I would know, I think, if it were you.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s something!’ Megan felt a surprising amount of relief, and immediately exclaimed: ‘But, look here, Cathleen, I shouldn’t think about it any more. Don’t you think, perhaps, you’re only tired – and in all this heat?’

  ‘But I knew this morning, before we got to Daphni. And I never mind the heat. Do you think it’s any good saying anything to your father?’

  ‘Look here,’ said Megan, inspired, ‘tell Mrs Bradley. She’s sensible. She’ll know what you ought to do.’

  ‘I will, then, to-morrow morning. Good night, Megan.’ She got up off the bed and went to the door.

  ‘Leave it open a minute,’ said Megan suddenly. ‘Good night. Sleep well.’ She waited to hear Cathleen lock her door, and then got out of bed and locked her own. No longer sleepy, she went to the window to look at the clustered houses under the moon.

  On the floor above, angelic in their nakedness (for Mrs Bradley’s forethought for their comfort had stopped short after providing them with respectable beds and had taken no account of their summer-weight pyjamas which were still – so far as they knew – neatly packed in the ox-wagon with the crates of pomegranates and poppy heads) Kenneth, Stewart, and the miraculously re-conditioned Ivor were congregated upon Kenneth’s bed deep in nefarious plotting.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Ivor, ‘that we really ought to have Megan.’

  ‘One can’t have her without letting Cath know,’ said Kenneth, ‘and Cath’s an ass.’

  ‘She looks it, rather,’ said Ivor. ‘But Megan could wangle the doings far better than we could, I bet you.’

  ‘The Greeks,’ said Stewart, who spoke seldom, ‘were not like that about girls.’

  ‘What about Clytemnestra, you ass?’

  ‘She wasn’t a girl. The Trojan War lasted ten years.’

  ‘Well, what about the Amazons, anyway?’

  ‘They weren’t much. It was merely so that Theseus could conquer them.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Oh, shut up, man! Why dig up all that rot? The thing we have to decide is,
do we have Megan or not? Personally, and knowing her, and allowing that women are mostly warts, I’m in favour.’

  ‘She’d give it away.’

  ‘Oh no, she wouldn’t.’

  ‘It’s too risky, I say. We ought to do it ourselves, or not at all.’

  ‘Yes, but can you see those Greeks letting us have it?’

  ‘Yes, if we pay them.’

  ‘Yes, but we haven’t any money, you ass!’

  ‘Then we’ll have to borrow off Megan. And if we borrow we’ll have to let her come in.’

  ‘Perhaps she won’t want to.’

  ‘Well, it’s Stewart’s idea.’

  ‘I think,’ said Stewart placidly, ‘we ought to ask Mrs Bradley.’

  ‘For the money?’

  ‘Well, no – but we could tell her our idea and she’d probably sub up, I should think.’

  Mrs Bradley was awake and not in bed. As she looked up from her book an owl flew across the moon. Impressed by this signal sign of favour from the goddess of the city, she went to bed and almost immediately slept.

  Next morning she rose at five and went for a walk. On the top of Lycabettos she met the three little boys.

  ‘Good morning, Aunt Adela,’ said Ivor. ‘We thought it might be a good idea to get some fresh air before breakfast. It gives you an appetite to get some fresh air before breakfast.’

  ‘So it does,’ said Mrs Bradley, regarding him with benevolent interest. ‘And how goes the deep-laid plot?’

  ‘Plot?’ said Ivor, trying his hardest to look puzzled.

  ‘We’d better co-opt her,’ said Kenneth.

  ‘You have to co-opt them or kill them,’ agreed Mrs Bradley. She turned to Stewart. ‘Yours is the casting vote.’ He nodded. ‘We want to startle Sir Rudri into a fit,’ he said concisely.

  ‘A worthy aim,’ replied Mrs Bradley, nodding slowly and continuously. ‘And at what point in your deliberations —’

  ‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ said Kenneth. Mrs Bradley sat down encouragingly. ‘You see, Ivor wants to have Megan in it, and we don’t, much. What do you think? It’s the hire of the boat, you see.’