The Shortest Way to Hades (19 page)

“It must have been very frightening,” I said.

“Oh no,” said Leonidas. “No, it was marvelous.”

One can see, of course, that it would have been.

The thing that at last made him call out to Camilla was seeing lights on the starboard bow—the first sign he had that the boat was not on her intended course. He had expected that eventually he would see the lights of Paxos on the port bow, but lights to starboard were inexplicable—he could think only that he had somehow sailed straight past Paxos without seeing the lights there and was now running up the west coast of Corfu.

“Actually,” said Camilla, “I was awake already, or I don’t
think
I’d have heard him over the racket the wind was making. But I’d woken up and noticed we were moving a bit smartly for a 32-footer in nil visibility, and I’d just decided to go up on deck to find out what was doing. So when I heard Leon calling out I nipped straight up through the forehatch. Well, it was pretty obvious we were carrying too much sail, so I yelled out to Leon to put her into the wind so I could get the genoa down. I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, so I was getting ready to yell again when put her into the wind he duly did. The rigging screamed like all the devils in hell and the
Sycorax
lurched like a drunken chorus girl and over I went. I was just thinking what a good thing it was I’d remembered to clip on my safety-harness as I climbed out of the forehatch when the damned shackle snapped. So I just had to swim for it.”

A conversation followed, of a sort common in sailing circles, about the relative merits of different kinds of safety-harness. Camilla, it seems, has always favored the sort which incorporates a life-jacket. The others all think this too cumbersome, but in spite of the defect in her particular harness she looks on the night’s events as confirming her view. She would never have taken the time, she said, to put on a separate life-jacket, and without one she would certainly have drowned.

“Even with it,” I said, “you must have had a fairly rough time.”

“Well,” said Camilla, “the swim itself wasn’t too bad—I could see lights, so I knew I was heading for land, though I hadn’t an earthly what it was or how far. The worst part was coming ashore—I thought I was going to get smashed to bits on the rocks. But eventually I managed it, and got collected up by a passing fisherman—all frightfully embarrassing, of course, what with having lost the bottom half of my pajamas. Anyway, he took me home to his mother and about six aunts—I bet they didn’t tell you that in Parga—and they put me straight to bed. When I came round again I found there’d been a tremendous tizzwozz and messages were flying about all over the place saying I’d been drowned. Actually, it sounds as if life was a jolly sight more dangerous back on board the poor old
Sycorax.”

It took Leonidas two or three minutes to realize that his cousin had gone overboard: the lights of the boat were not enough for him to see clearly from the cockpit what was happening on the fore-deck, and he was struggling to regain control of the steering. When it became clear to him that Camilla was no longer on board, he shouted to his brother and sister for help, though with not much hope of waking them. He couldn’t reach the starting-handle of the engine; but he tried to go about under sail to return to the place where Camilla had last called out to him. This proved to be a mistake: struck amidships by the full force of the gale, the
Sycorax
was simply knocked flat; her mast-top dipped under the water and her cockpit was entirely submerged. After what seemed to Leonidas a very long time the boat righted herself, and rewarded his foresight in lashing himself to the rail by putting him back at the tiller only three-quarters drowned.

“The effect of this interesting maneuver,” said Lucian, “was to remove Cindy and myself from our comfortable bunks and to throw us against the ceiling of the main cabin. That was how I broke my arm. At the same time, various objects lying about in the main cabin suddenly got all spiteful and began to attack us—there was a bottle, I remember, which had formerly contained Nuits St. Georges and which definitely seemed to have something personal against Cindy.”

“And there was a lot of wetness about,” said his sister. “One expects things to get fairly damp on a sailing-boat, but three inches of water in the main cabin is a bit much. So we thought we’d better go upstairs and help chuck some of it back where it came from.”

Their first thought, on learning that Camilla was missing, was to start the engine, with the object of returning under power to the place where she had gone overboard. The engine behaved as any true sailing man would expect a first-class engine, properly maintained, to behave in an emergency—it refused to start.

Recognizing the futility of looking for Camilla on their own, they decided to send up a distress flare, in the hope that there might be some more powerful vessel in the area which would assist them. It was little more than a pious gesture: the chances were minimal of the flare being seen, and almost non-existent of anyone finding Camilla—by this time, after all, she had been missing for seven or eight minutes.

“I did my best to look on the bright side,” said Lucian, “by reminding myself that if I’d lost a cousin I’d gained several thousand acres of agricultural land in an area ripe for development—if Millie snuffs it before Grandmama, you know, I’m next in line for Grandfather’s estate. But even so—”

“Honestly, Lucian,” said Camilla, not seeming at all put out by this remark, “you really are the most frightful rotter.”

“—even so, this didn’t comfort me as much as you might expect, not only because I’m quite fond of Millie but because I started thinking the prospects for the rest of us weren’t too healthy, either. The
Sycorax
was still bucketing along at about twice the speed intended by the designer and shipping so much water we didn’t dare stop baling long enough to reduce sail. Mind you, we probably couldn’t have got any of the sails down anyway—conditions on the foredeck were fairly rumbustious, and we wouldn’t have wanted any more of us going overboard.”

“Another thing that was a pity,” said Lucinda, “was not knowing where we were. Leon said we must be somewhere off the west coast of Corfu, but he couldn’t think how we’d got there.”

“Still,” said Lucian, “we were quite pleased at the idea that that was where we were. We thought that with any luck, as long as the
Sycorax
didn’t simply fall to bits, we could just keep running north until the gale blew itself out—there’d have been quite a long way to go before we bumped into any land.”

“Which was sound thinking,” said Lucinda, “while there were only lights on the starboard side.”

“Yes, absolutely sound. But then we saw that there were lights ahead of us—ahead and to the left. The lights of Parga, as it turned out. And that’s when we started feeling a bit despondent.”

Under the heading “What to do when running on to a lee shore without power in a gale” the advice given by the better sailing manuals is “Do not allow such a situation to occur.” Bearing in mind the savagery of the Parga coastline, one would have described the
Sycorax
as being at this juncture on a very direct course for Hades.

“And then this lovely fishing-boat turned up,” said Lucian.

“With this lovely fisherman on board,” said Lucinda.

Their account of the rescue was substantially the same as that I had heard at Mourtos. They spoke of the fishermen with the warmest admiration—Lucian for their seamanship, Lucinda for the personal attractions of young Andreas. He had made her, she said, feel small and vulnerable—for a girl of five foot ten, amply proportioned, it would no doubt be a novel experience.

Soon after this Dolly joined us, and we talked of other matters; but her husband and Sebastian continued their conversation until an hour at which she easily persuaded me that it would be “simply too ridiculous” to go back to the
Kymothoe
when a spare room and a comfortable bed were available at the Villa Miranda. They were still talking when the rest of us went to bed, and I have no idea when they adjourned—late enough for Sebastian still to be sleeping at half past nine this morning.

I, on the other hand, woke early and could not get to sleep again—I would not otherwise be writing at such length. We shall spend the day, I suppose, looking at the art and antiquities of Corfu—I will give you in due course a full and instructive account.

Same place.
Tuesday evening.

No art, no antiquities—our host will hardly admit, indeed, that there are any worth visiting: “If you see something in Corfu which looks like a Greek temple,” he says, “you’ll find it’s a church built by the British.”

I thought it reflected rather well on us, when we came across a Greek island with no Greek temples on it, to have tried to make good the deficiency; but the great poet’s smile of Olympian melancholy indicated that he did not share this view.

When I asked if there was nothing at all of historical or artistic interest, he answered vaguely that we must go to the Archaeological Museum to see the famous Gorgon, and some inscriptions which would interest Sebastian—yes, certainly; and we must not miss visiting Corfu Castle—no, of course not; but we could do these things at any time, someone would drive us to the town whenever we liked.

It seemed to be understood, however, that “whenever you like” was not exactly to be taken to mean “now”; and to have been settled, I don’t quite know how, that we would be spending a further night at the Villa Miranda.

I am beginning to have an odd feeling of—it would be absurd to call it uneasiness: a sense of disorientation, and of not knowing what is going on around me—or rather, of
thinking
that I know but not being sure that I do. There is no good reason for it: one or two things have happened which have disconcerted me, but of a very trivial kind. Perhaps I am developing some interesting neurosis.

I suppose it’s due to the heat, and too much retsina, and everyone talking a language I don’t understand. It may also have something to do with our misgivings about Deirdre: it’s difficult to be altogether at ease with people of whom one has entertained such disagreeable suspicions. I don’t quite like to say anything about this to Sebastian: I never happened to mention to him our doubts about Deirdre’s death, and now they have been resolved it seems unfair to cast any sort of shadow over his friendship with the Demetriou family.

Sebastian, you see, is in a state of rapture—starry-eyed and walking several feet above solid ground. He has been invited to become the English translator of the work of Constantine Demetriou: this (he says) is the most extraordinary and wonderful honor that could possibly be imagined. I do not think myself that the honor is all on one side; but it is no use saying so to Sebastian. You see how unkind it would be of me to spoil things.

Apart from the impression he has made on our host, Sebastian has also become an object of interest to Lucinda and Camilla: he is, after all, the only young man within range who is not related to them. After breakfast, therefore, they did not go away to paint pictures (as Lucinda was supposed to be doing) or to read Salmond on Torts (as Camilla was supposed to be doing) but remained in the garden to assist in our entertainment. They naturally proposed those forms of amusement which would show them to best advantage: Camilla, who looks splendid in a tennis dress, suggested tennis; Lucinda, who looks magnificent in a bikini, suggested a swim.

I rather enjoyed the tennis and swimming: a long time ago, you may remember—when I was first at Oxford, and before I was corrupted by left-wing intellectuals like you and Sebastian into drinking coffee all night and not bothering to keep fit—I used to be rather keen on that sort of thing. Sebastian, however, took no part in either, and from the point of view of Camilla and Lucinda making an impression on him it was rather a waste of effort.

They would have done better to see if they couldn’t dash off a swift elegy or two for translation from Greek to English, for so far as I could judge there was nothing else which might have distracted Sebastian from his conversation with Constantine Demetriou. They had begun talking about Homer, and a passionate discussion had developed of the historical accuracy of the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey.
Sebastian, as a respectable classical scholar, felt obliged to maintain that hardly a word of them was true, and that Homer had invented the whole thing. Our host is of the opposite school of thought:

“Yes, yes, yes, Sebastian, my dear friend, I know what the archaeologists say. Because they can’t find a tin hat with the name of King Agamemnon on it, they say that King Agamemnon did not exist and the Greeks never came to Troy and that Homer made it all up—the whole city of Troy and all the ships and armies of the Greeks—just like that, out of his imagination. But you, Sebastian, who are not an archaeologist but a poet, and know how difficult it is to imagine anything—even a small thing, like a bird or a flower or a fold in a girl’s dress—how can you think such a thing is possible? Our poor Homer of all people, who one would swear was worse than any of us, worse than your Shakespeare even, and could only describe things just as he saw and heard them, because he had no imagination at all. So that even when he is talking about the immortal gods he doesn’t know how to give them a proper dignity and mysteriousness, but makes them sound like some farmer and his wife that one met last week in the taverna. Do you think such a person could invent whole cities and armies and systems of government? Po-po-po-poh.” This is what the Greeks say when they wish to express great astonishment and disbelief.

Sebastian, listening to this, looked like an atheist hoping for conversion.

“And when it comes to the kings and the great heroes he is even worse,” went on our host. “He has to pretend that they behave like his own friends and acquaintances—fellow poets, probably, and other riff-raff of that sort—and would drink and tell lies and sulk and quarrel over women and prize money. But everyone knows, of course, that kings and heroes and the leaders of great nations could not possibly behave like that. That is how Homer has given us poets a bad name, Sebastian. People think we are all slanderers and blasphemers, who have no respect for anything and do not understand the difference between great men and everyone else. No one sees how unfair this is on respectable, well-behaved poets like you and me.”

The discussion of Homer led to the first thing which disconcerted me. The sun had risen high enough, by this time, to discourage any strenuous activity, and Lucian and Leonidas had joined the rest of us in the garden to drink retsina and eat olives. With the flattering implication that Camilla and I would be especially qualified to comment on the question, our host asked us how one would translate in English the Homeric expression
themis
—which seems to mean something like law, justice and general good behavior.

Camilla adopted a robustly positivist approach, saying breezily that law had nothing to do with justice, but was simply whatever Parliament told one to do, whether it was right or wrong. Feeling that I was expected to present the other side of the case, I trotted out the argument about “just” not simply meaning “good” but referring specifically to the virtue of treating like cases alike; this (I said rather pompously) is also an essential feature of the concept of law, and any law or legal system which lacks this quality is not only capricious and oppressive but cannot properly be termed law at all. I have had a good deal of practice with this argument—it comes in useful when you have a judge who doesn’t want to follow a precedent in your favor—and it went down extremely well with our host: he clapped his hands and said “Bravo!”

“And if you agree,” I went on, “that there is that sort of necessary connection between law and justice, and if you think that that’s what Homer would have meant by
themis
, I suppose it’s expressed in English by the phrase ‘the rule of law.’”

“Ah no,” said Constantine Demetriou, disappointed in me. “No, surely that can’t be right. That is the phrase used by people like Millie’s father—if you will forgive me saying so, Millie—to mean that people dressed up as policemen can do what they like and everyone else must do as they’re told.”

At this point Lucian, who had not so far seemed much interested in the discussion, looked up from his wineglass and said, “Oh, I think you’re wrong about that, Costas. I don’t think Uncle Rupert would approve of people who
dressed up
as policemen. Do you think he would, Cindy?”

“Oh no,” said his sister, making her eyes very wide and gooseberry-like, “I don’t think he would at all.”

They were both then overcome by merriment, chortling and gurgling as if at some brilliant piece of wit. The rest of the family, though mildly perplexed, seemed accustomed to the twins having private jokes which were meaningless to anyone else. To me, however, when I came to think about it, it was far from meaningless: I saw that if Lucian and Lucinda had somehow heard of the raid on Rupert’s flat by the spurious policemen, their mirth was not at all unaccountable.

Then Lucian looked at me, and winked.

This, as I have said, I found disconcerting. It must mean, mustn’t it, that the twins had heard not only about the spurious police raid but also of our presence when it took place? Well, it’s not a secret exactly—the story is known to several people in Lincoln’s Inn; but it’s a little disturbing, don’t you think, to find it so widespread as to be known to the twins?