by Mary Stewart
‘Yes. I’ve been there a few days. Have you come for long?’
I laughed. ‘Till the money gives out, and I’m afraid that won’t be long enough. I only hope there’ll be a room for me somewhere. I came up unexpectedly and haven’t booked. Someone told me the Apollon was good.’
‘It’s very nice. Delphi’s fairly full just now, but you’ll get a room somewhere, I’m sure. Perhaps we can persuade the Apollon to throw someone out for you.’ A pause. ‘Hadn’t we better introduce ourselves? My name’s Lester.’
‘I’m Camilla Haven,’ I said slowly, watching him, ‘but I’ve got a sort of alias today. You might say I’m … “Simon’s girl”.’
The dark brows shot up. One of those quick, light, electrifying glances, then he was watching the road again. He said evenly: ‘How very gratifying. But why? Because I rescued you in Arachova?’
I felt the blood coming into my cheeks. I hadn’t thought of that one. I said quickly: ‘No. I only meant I’d been deputizing for her – the other girl – since Athens. With the car.’
‘The car?’ he said blankly.
‘Yes.’ I swallowed and shot a glance at him. This was going to sound even sillier than I had imagined. ‘This is – oh, dear, I’ve begun at the wrong end but … well, this is your car. The one from Athens.’
I could see nothing in his glance this time except puzzlement, with possibly a dash of doubt about my sanity.
‘I’m afraid I don’t follow. My car? From Athens? And what “other girl”? Forgive me, but – just what are you talking about?’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped it on you like that. I’d better begin at the beginning. I – I’ve done a rather silly thing, and I hope you’re not going to be too angry with me, Mr Lester. I’ll explain exactly how it happened in a moment, if you’ll let me, but the important thing is that this is the car you’re expecting. The girl you sent to hire it didn’t turn up to claim it, and I was handed the key by mistake, so – well, I brought it up here for you. I–I hope it’s all right. It was the most marvellous luck to find you—’
‘Just a moment. Forgive me for interrupting, but – well, I still haven’t the remotest idea what you’re talking about. You say someone hired this car in Athens and you were given the key, and drove it up here?’
‘Yes.’ This time it was my voice that sounded flat and blank. ‘It wasn’t – it wasn’t you?’
‘Decidedly not. I know nothing about a car from Athens or anywhere else.’
‘But back there in Arachova—’ I hesitated, feeling more than ever confused and foolish.
‘Yes?’ The car slowed, dipped on to a little bridge set at an angle over a narrow gorge, then accelerated up the curling hill beyond. His tone was casual, but somehow I got the impression of sharp interest. ‘Just what made you think I ought to know about it?’
I said quickly: ‘Was I wrong? I thought … look, you are called Simon, aren’t you?’
‘That is my name. They told you in Arachova? Those men?’
‘No. That is, yes, in a way. But … never mind that now. You did say you were staying in Delphi?’
‘Yes.’
I said flatly, stupidly: ‘Then it must be you! It must be!’
‘I do assure you it isn’t.’ The quick appraising glance he gave me must have shown him the distress in my face, because he smiled then, and said gently: ‘But I’m afraid I still don’t quite see where the mystery comes in. Surely the garage also gave you the hirer’s name and address? Have you lost it, or forgotten to write it down, or something?’
I said in a very small voice: ‘That’s just it. I never knew it.’
He looked startled, and then, I thought, amused. ‘I see. You never knew it. Except, I take it, that his name was Simon?’
‘Yes. I told you I’d done something silly. It seemed all right at the time, and I thought in Arachova that it had turned out beautifully, like a story, but now …’ My voice trailed away. I looked away from him across the blue depths of the valley, and spoke my thoughts with artless and quite unguarded emphasis: ‘Oh dear, and it would have been so wonderful if it had been you!’
The words were hardly out before I realised what they sounded like. For the second time in a few minutes I felt the heat wash scarlet into my cheeks. I opened my lips to say something, anything, but before I could speak he said pleasantly: ‘I wish it had. But look, don’t worry so about it. It can’t be as bad as you think, and perhaps, if you’ll let me, I can help you. Would you care to tell me just what’s happened?’
I told him. I kept to a bare recital of the facts, from the moment when the little man approached me with the key, to the fateful second of decision which had landed me – so neatly, as I had thought – at Simon Lester’s feet in Arachova. Only the facts; nothing of the miserable tangle of motive, the fear and self-questioning and uneasy bravado … but somehow, as I finished the story, I had a feeling that I had told him rather more than I intended. Oddly, I didn’t mind, I had told him. He had said he would help. It was over to him. It was a familiar feeling, and yet not quite familiar …
I sat back, relaxed and at ease for the first time since eleven that morning, while below us the breeze ran with white feet over the billowing olives, and beside us, along the high hot road, the sun beat the smell of dust out of the red earth, and the rock glowed and sent the heat back like blast.
He had made no comment on the silly story as I told it. Now he merely said: ‘I see. So it really only amounts to this; that you’ve brought up an unknown car for an unknown man who wants it for something unspecified, and you don’t know where to find him.’
‘That’s not a very kind way of putting it, but – yes. I told you it was silly.’
‘Maybe. But in your place I’d have done exactly the same.’
‘Would you?’
He laughed. ‘Of course. What right-minded person could resist a challenge like that?’
‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly.’
I let out a long breath. ‘You’ve no idea how much better you’ve made me feel! But at least you’d have managed the adventure properly! It seems to me that it’s not enough to be bold; one has to be competent as well. You’d never have got stuck in Arachova – and if you had, you’d have been able to back the car!’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘Arachova.’ The shutters were up once more. He added, half under his breath: ‘Simon, of Delphi …’
I said quickly: ‘It does seem odd, doesn’t it? That there should be two? I told you that the man from Chrissa didn’t know anyone of that name hereabouts. Delphi’s small, isn’t it?’
‘Lord, yes.’
‘Then he’d know, wouldn’t he? That was why I was so sure it must be you.’
He didn’t answer. There was that look again, smooth, blank; the unclimbable wall with spikes at the top. I gave him a doubtful glance he didn’t see, and said, tentatively: ‘Could there have been some kind of mistake? I mean, suppose it is you; suppose someone got the message wrong, and the whole thing is just a mix-up? Do you know anyone in Athens, perhaps, who might have …?’
‘No.’ The syllable was definite to the point of curtness. ‘It’s quite impossible. I’ve had no communication with Athens during the last week at all, so it’s hard to see how any message can have gone astray. And you say it was a girl who did the hiring. I’ve no idea who that could be. No, I’m afraid it’s nothing whatever to do with me.’ A pause, then he added in a different voice, as if he felt he had been too abrupt: ‘But please don’t worry about it any more. We’ll soon get it straightened out, and then you can settle down and enjoy Delphi. I think you’ll vote it’s been worth it.’
‘It’ll have to be pretty good.’
‘It is.’ He nodded, almost idly, ahead of the car. ‘You can’t see the village from here, but the ruins are this side of the bluff, in the curve of the mountain under those high cliffs. There – that’s Apollo’s temple, below the cliffs they call the Shining Ones. You see?’
I saw. Ahead of us the mountain thrust that great buttress out into the valley, the river of olive trees swirling round it as the water swirls round the prow of a ship, to spread out beyond into a great flat lake that filled the plain. High up, in the angle where the bluff joined the mountain, I saw it, Apollo’s temple, six columns of apricot stone, glowing against the climbing darkness of the trees behind. Above them soared the sunburned cliffs; below was a tumble, as yet unrecognisable, of what must be monument and treasury and shrine. From where we were the pillars seemed hardly real; not stone that had ever felt hand or chisel, but insubstantial, the music-built columns of legend; Olympian building, left floating – warm from the god’s hand – between sky and earth. Above, the indescribable sky of Hellas; below, the silver tide of the olives everlastingly rippling down to the sea. No house, no man, no beast. As it was in the beginning.
I realised then that Simon Lester had stopped the car. We must have stood there for some minutes, at the edge of the road in the shadow of a stone-pine. He didn’t speak, and neither did I.
But I noticed that it wasn’t Apollo’s shining columns that held him. His gaze was on something nearer at hand, away up the side of Parnassus above the road. I followed his look, but could see nothing; only the bare rock shifting and flowing upwards with the liquid shimmer of the heat.
After a bit I said merely: ‘And the village is just the other side of the bluff?’
‘Yes. The road runs through those trees below the ruins and then round that shoulder into Delphi. Beyond the village it drops rather steeply to the plain. Chrissa – where your friend in the café comes from – is about halfway down. At the bottom the road forks for Amphissa and Itea.’
‘Itea? That’s the fishing-port, isn’t it? Where the pilgrims used to land in the days when they were making for the shrine?’
‘Yes. You can just see the houses away over there at the edge of the sea.’ He turned the subject abruptly, but so smoothly that I realised that he was following his own thoughts, and that these had not been about the view, or the road to Itea. ‘I’m still rather curious to know how you knew my name. I understand it was from those men in Arachova. Was … something said?’
‘Not really. I’d been trying to explain to the men why I really didn’t dare try and reverse the car there – I’d never reversed it before, of course, and it is such a length. I told them it wasn’t mine, but that it was for someone called Simon, at Delphi. I thought they looked as if that meant something … Then one of them said something to the others, and they all turned and stared at you. It was just the way they looked, somehow. I don’t know if you noticed?’
‘I noticed.’
‘Well, that was all. I suppose, when you arrived, they assumed that you were the person to deal with the car. Then, when you told me you came from Delphi, I guessed you might be Simon – my “Simon”. They …’ I hesitated … ‘they seemed to assume you were the right one, too.’
There was an infinitesimal pause before his hand went to the ignition. ‘Ah well,’ he said smoothly, ‘the sooner we get to Delphi and find your man the better, don’t you think?’
‘I do indeed.’ I laughed. ‘After all this, we’ll probably find him watching beside the road and dancing with impatience; that is, if the little man was right and it really is a matter—’ I stopped. Until I repeated the words, half-automatically, I’d forgotten them myself.
‘It is what?’
I said slowly, looking at him: ‘A matter of life and death …’
We were moving again, quickly now. Below us the sea of olives flowed and rippled like smoke. Above, the pitiless sun beat down on the rock with a heat like the clang of brass.
He said: ‘Is that all he told you?’
‘Yes. But he repeated it.’
‘“A matter of life and death”?’
‘Just that. Only of course we were speaking in French. The phrase was “il y va de la vie”.’
‘And you got the impression he meant it seriously?’
I said slowly: ‘Yes. I believe I did. I don’t know if I took it in really urgently at the time, but you know, I think that’s really why I did this silly thing with the car.’
‘You took the car, and the risks with it, because of some subconscious feeling of urgency about the affair?’
I said: ‘That makes it sound more definite than it was, and there were – other reasons … But yes. Yes.’
The car roared up a long incline, swept round and down a curling hill. I leaned back against the hot leather, folded my hands in my lap, and said, not looking at him: ‘If the little man was right, it’s just as well you’re not “Simon”, isn’t it?’
He said, quite without expression: ‘Just as well. And here we are. What comes first? Simon, or the hotel?’
‘Both. I imagine the hotel people are as likely to know of him as anyone, and at least I expect they speak English. My six words of Greek won’t get me very far alone.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Simon gravely, ‘they might get you a good deal further than you intended.’
4
And thou camest to Chrissa under snow-clad
Parnassus, to its foot that faces west, and rocks
overhang the spot, and a hollow, stony, wood-
clad vale stretches beneath it.
Homeric Hymn to Apollo.
To my relief the hotel had a room to offer.
‘But only for tonight, I’m afraid,’ said the proprietor, who spoke, after all, excellent English. ‘I deeply regret, but I cannot be certain about tomorrow. I have had a – what do you call it? – provisional booking. Perhaps I can take you, perhaps not. If not, there is the Kastalia further along the street, or the Tourist Pavilion at the other end of Delphi. It has a magnificent view, but,’ he smiled charmingly, ‘it is very expensive.’
‘It couldn’t have a better view than this,’ I said.
This was true. The village consisted only of two or three rows of flat-topped houses, washed ochre and pink and dazzling white, set in their tiers along the steep side of the hill. At the beginning of the village the road divides into a Y that makes the two main streets, and at the junction stands the Apollon Hotel, facing over the valley towards the distant gleam of the Corinthian Gulf.
Outside the hotel, on the edge of the road which was used as a terrace, two big plane-trees made a deep island of shade for some wooden tables and chairs. Simon Lester had parked the car just beyond these, and was waiting there. When I had completed the formalities of booking I went out to speak to him.
‘It’s all right. They can take me for tonight, and just at the moment that’s all I care about.’ I held out my hand. ‘I have to thank you very much, Mr Lester. I don’t quite know where I’d have been without your help. I’ve a feeling it might have been somewhere at the bottom of the valley, with the eagles of Zeus picking my bones!’
‘It was a pleasure.’ He was looking down at me, measuringly. ‘And now what are you planning to do? Rest and have some tea first, or is that’ – a gesture indicated the car – ‘worrying you too much?’
I said uncertainly: ‘It is rather. I think I’d better go right ahead and do what I can.’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘if you’ll forgive my saying so, you look as if you’d better have that rest. Won’t you please leave this to me, at any rate for the time being? Why don’t you go and lie down, and have tea brought to your room – they make excellent tea here, by the way – while I make a few inquiries for you?’
‘Why, I – you mustn’t – I mean, it’s absurd that you should be landed with my difficulties,’ I said, a little confusedly, and conscious only of a strong desire that he should, in fact, be landed with them all. I finished feebly. ‘I couldn’t let you.’
‘Why not? It would be too cruel if you turned on me now and told me to mind my own business.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. You know I didn’t. It’s only—’
‘That it’s your affair and you want to see it through? Of cours
e. But I must confess I’m seething with curiosity myself by now, and after all it’s partly my affair, too, since my alter ego has managed to involve me. I really would be very grateful if you’d let me help. Besides,’ he added, ‘wouldn’t you honestly much rather go and have a rest and some tea now, while I do the detecting for you in my fluent but no doubt peculiar Greek?’
‘I—’ I hesitated again, then said truthfully: ‘I should adore to.’
‘Then that’s settled.’ He glanced at his wrist. ‘It’s about twenty past four now. Shall we say an hour? I’ll report back at five thirty. Right?’
‘Right.’ I looked at him a little helplessly. ‘But if you do find him, and he’s angry—’
‘Well?’
‘I don’t want you made responsible for what’s happened. It wouldn’t be fair, and I’d much rather face my own music’
‘You’d be surprised,’ he said cryptically, ‘how responsible I feel already. All right then. See you later.’
With a quick wave of the hand he was gone down the steps to the lower road.
My room overlooked the valley, and had a long window with a balcony. The shutters were closed against the sun, but even so the room seemed full of light, globed in light, incandescent with it. As the door shut behind the maid who had shown me upstairs, I went across to the window and pulled back the shutters. Like a blast the heat met me. The sun was wheeling over now towards the west, full across the valley from my window, and valley and plain were heavy with sleepy heat. The tide of olives had stilled itself, and even the illusion of coolness created by those rippling grey leaves was gone. In the distance the wedge of shining water that showed at the edge of the plain struck at the eyes like a flash from a burning-glass.
I closed my eyes against it, pulling the shutters to again. Then I slipped off my dress, and had a long, cool wash. I sat on the edge of the bed for some minutes after that, brushing my hair, till I heard the maid coming back with the tea. I had my tea – Simon Lester had been right about its excellence – propped against pillows, and with my feet up on the bed. I don’t think I thought any more about Simon – either of the Simons – or about the car, or about anything except the shadowed quiet of the little white room.
