Levkas Man (25 page)

‘But they're going to dig?'

‘Yes, at the back where Holroyd thought the layers would be undisturbed.'

‘You should be there,' Sonia said.

But he shook his head.

‘Just occasionally,' she said coaxingly. ‘If you don't Professor Holroyd will make use of it the way he made use of your book.'

‘No,' he said. ‘It's much better that the discovery should be announced by him. He can refer to it in the paper he's reading to the Pan-European Prehistoric Congress next month. They'll take it from him, whereas if it came from me …' Holroyd's words almost, and the note of resignation back in his voice. I had a sudden uneasy feeling that this was an act put on for our benefit. To hide his bitterness perhaps. And then Sonia mentioned that we had Dr Gilmore on board and he froze, a tense stillness as though the news came as a shock, instead of a pleasant surprise. ‘You remember Dr Gilmore,' she said. ‘You often spoke of him.'

He seemed to have difficulty finding his voice. ‘What's Adrian doing here?'

‘I cabled him,' she said.

‘Why?' His voice was harsh. ‘Why did you do that?'

‘You were in trouble with the authorities, and then Professor Holroyd coming out … I thought Dr Gilmore—'

‘How could he help?' Be seemed strangely upset, as though shaken by some inner conflict. ‘You shouldn't have involved him.'

‘Well, he's here on the boat and he'd like to see you.'

‘No.' For some extraordinary reason he seemed to Shy away from the idea. ‘I don't want to see him. I don't want to see anybody.'

She tried coaxing him, but it was no good. It was as though by opting out, by abandoning his work to Holroyd, he had withdrawn inside himself. Nothing would induce him to go down to Port Vathy. I offered to bring the boat round to Port Atheni, but it didn't make any difference. He seemed determined now to cut himself off completely from his own world. And to close the subject he asked me about my own plans.

I told him briefly, not explaining the purpose of my visit to Samos, and he said, ‘Anatolia I know, all that Turkish coast. But the islands off … I don't think early man ever got to the Dodecanese.' And then he was questioning me about Bert again, asking about the boat and the diving equipment on board. The diving equipment seemed to fascinate him. ‘A spelæologist, you say?' He was leaning back, his eyes half closed. ‘And he's been exploring underwater cities.'

‘Only two,' I said. ‘One off the island of Andros, and a Roman port on the African coast. He's really more interested in old wrecks.'

‘Have you done any diving yourself?'

‘No.'

‘A pity. I was thinking …' But then he seemed to lose track of what was in his mind, for he began talking about the Aegean and the successive waves of invasion from the east by primitive people worshipping the Earth Goddess. And then suddenly he was back to Bert again. ‘He's a friend of yours?'

‘I've chartered his boat, that's all.'

‘He thinks a lot of you.'

I stared at him, wondering what he was after. ‘Bert's a good fellow,' I said. ‘And he took quite a risk bringing you here.'

He nodded. ‘Yes. I appreciate that.' But I could see his mind was on something else.

‘Why were you in such a hurry to come here?'

He stared at me, his eyes suddenly blank.

‘You talked to the Barretts about having to get here before Holroyd, something urgent you had to do, and about some bones—bones you'd left here the previous year.'

‘Did I?' His tone was vague—deliberately vague. And his face had a shut look. ‘Oh yes,' he said. ‘But that's all settled. I'm working on something else now.' And he added, ‘When you come back … You know where to find me now. Come and see me.'

‘From Samos,' I said, ‘I'll be sailing direct to Pantelleria.'

But he didn't seem to take that in. ‘Maybe I'll have something to show you then.'

‘What?' I asked. And when he didn't reply, I said, ‘Are you referring to that lamp?' I don't know why I said that. It just seemed to come into my head.

‘Lamp! What lamp?'

It was extraordinary. His whole face had changed, the brows drawn down and the lines back. A carved head on some great cathedral's gutter.

‘The stone lamp you were holding,' I murmured, and his breath came in a hiss.

Sonia spoke then—quickly as though soothing a child. ‘Paul saw it in a picture—some shots taken by that student of Dr Gilmore's, Cassellis.'

He leaned back, rubbing his hand over his face. ‘Yes, of course. I remember now.'

‘Where was it?' I asked. I would have pressed him for an answer, but Sonia reached out and gripped my hand, holding it tight with an urgent shake of her head. And instead of answering me, he said, ‘So you're going to Pantelleria. I was there once. In 1964. No, '65. I can't remember.'

He passed his hand up over his brow. ‘All lava. Black. A dreadful, volcanic place. And under the lava …' He was concentrating, almost struggling, it seemed, to keep his mind focused on what he was saying. ‘Old places—middens … places where ancient man had lived before the island erupted.' He was speaking faster now, getting into his stride as he told how all vestige of man had been buried beneath an avalanche of molten rock. And then suddenly he was pressing me urgently to come back through the Corinth Canal and pick him up. ‘By then perhaps I'll have broken through—I'll know the truth, I hope.' He looked at me, suddenly pleading. ‘Come back for me. And if I'm here, then we'll go on to Pantelleria together.'

I didn't say anything, not relishing the thought of bringing the contents of looted Turkish graves out through Greece, and unaccountably my hands were trembling. His assumption that I would fit in with his plans …

‘Paul.' He was staring at me urgently. ‘I want you to promise. Come back. I may need you.'

But all I said was, ‘I'll think about it.' He was sick. Sick in his mind, and it scared me. I finished my wine and got to my feet. ‘I have to go now.'

He nodded, his eyes, deep-sunk in their sockets, watching me. ‘You're like your mother,' he said. ‘Ruth was like that. Physical courage, yes. But she couldn't face the turmoil that springs from the great well of man's loneliness.' He leaned a little forward. ‘Do you believe in God?' The question took me by surprise. It made me feel uneasy. ‘Well, do you?'

‘I—I don't really know.'

‘Do you never think about death and what happens afterwards?' He was smiling now, a little sadly. ‘Well, never mind. Go back to your boat and the nice uncomplicated life of the sea. But remember that half of you is me, and with that half you inherit the other side of man—Man the Seeker.' He chuckled to himself, but there was no mirth in the sound. ‘Pray God it never leads you where it has led me.' He closed his eyes and leaned back. The brooding look had returned to his face and his mind was far away.

We left then, for he seemed suddenly exhausted. Or perhaps it was just that he wanted to be alone. Whatever it was, we were conscious of a mood of withdrawal. It didn't worry me, but Sonia felt it deeply, so that she was very quiet as we walked back through the village and down past the church. Above the slope of the hill with its olives she stopped suddenly, gazing out to the vista of sea beyond. ‘You'll be sailing to Samos now, I suppose.'

‘Yes,' I said.

‘And from there you'll go straight to Pantelleria? You won't be coming back here?'

‘No.'

She stood there, silent, looking lost and sad. I could feel her loneliness, and for the first time I understood her need, the desperate, driven search for the father she had never really known. Now she felt shut out. It was this realization, and perhaps the wine I had drunk, that made me say, ‘Would you like to come with us?' The words were out before I'd given a thought to what I might be letting her in for.

‘On a smuggling run?' Her pale eyebrows lifted and she smiled. ‘That's nice of you, Paul. But no.' She shook her head. ‘I must stay.' Her eyes were screwed up. I thought at first it was the sun, but then I saw the glint of tears as she turned quickly away. I caught her then, my arm round her, and suddenly she was leaning against me, sobbing her heart out.

‘I'm sorry,' she breathed. ‘And it's all so beautiful.' She didn't say what was beautiful. She was shaking uncontrollably, ‘It's so bloody pointless, but I feel I must. He's all alone, and no money, nobody to make him feel he's wanted.' She had got her handkerchief out. ‘I'll be all right in a moment.' And then she pushed away from me and stood very straight and stiff, facing me and not bothering to hide her tears. ‘You did mean that, didn't you?'

‘Yes.'

She stared at me a moment and then she smiled. It was like sunshine after rain, a smile that seemed to light up her whole face, so that for a moment she looked quite radiant. And then the sunshine vanished and she turned away, blowing her nose and searching in her bag for her compact. ‘It wouldn't have worked anyway.' She was in control of herself again now. ‘Florrie wouldn't have liked it, and it's her boat.'

But when we got back on board Florrie was much too concerned over the fact that Dr Gilmore wanted to stay with the ship to have worried about Sonia. ‘He seems to think the whole voyage will be a downhill run like we had from Corfu. Bert's tried to explain to him what it's like when conditions are bad, but he doesn't seem to understand. Says he's too old to mind what happens to him now and he's enjoying himself. You must talk to him, Paul.'

Dr Gilmore was in the saloon, small, bird-like and very determined. ‘My dear fellow, you must understand that I've never had a real holiday in my life. And you're going into the Aegean, something I've always dreamed of.' And he added, ‘You needn't worry that I'll be a nuisance.'

‘Florrie's afraid you'll be seasick and die on her.'

‘That's very thoughtful of her.' His eyes glinted with laughter.

‘Just practical,' I said, and tried to make him realize what it was like to be really seasick, how violent the movement could be when beating. ‘You could be thrown out of your bunk, break your arm or your rib.' But it was no use. He had made up his mind. What is more he had offered to pay Bert over and above the charter.

‘I told you, I think, that I had had a piece of luck—financially. It was the football pools. Quite a long time ago now. I used to do them for fun, a change from teaching youngsters how man evolved from the Pliocene into the Pleistocene. It's rather funny really—a Reader in Anthropology landing a shared win in a football pool. I handed it all over to one of my least successful students who had gone into merchant banking and now it's quite a respectable sum. My pension, you see, doesn't really run to Mediterranean cruises, but I always promised myself that when I did retire I'd use this money to do the travelling I had always wanted to do.'

It was hopeless to argue with him, and when I broke it to him that my father had withdrawn into himself and didn't want to see anybody, he accepted it without any sign of surprise. ‘Well, that settles it,' he said finally. ‘You'll have to take me with you.'

Florrie grumbled, of course. ‘This is a sailing ship, not a boarding house.' But since we couldn't dump him ashore on Meganisi against his will, she had to accept the situation.

We sailed at first light the following morning, motoring round the north-west corner of the island and south through the Meganisi Channel to give Dr Gilmore a sight of the dig behind Tiglia Island. The three small orange sleeping tents had blossomed on the beach beside the blue mess tent. But there was no sign of life in the camp and the cave itself was obscured by the rock pinnacle, only the outer edge of the platform visible. Gilmore, still in his dressing gown, stood propped against the wheelhouse door, looking at it through the big ex-German U-boat binoculars until we were out of the channel and had altered course for Atoko Island and the entrance to the Gulf of Patras. ‘I don't understand it,' he said almost petulantly as he finally lowered the glasses. ‘It's not like Pieter to give up so easily.'

‘What else could he do?' I asked.

‘He could fight.'

We should have known. We should have known, both of us, that that was just what he was doing. But now that I was at sea again I thought this was the end of my involvement with his affairs. My mind was on other things and it never occurred to me that the voyage would be no more than an interlude.

Three

INTERLUDE IN THE AEGEAN

It was Sonia who gave us the first indication that Holroyd had dug up something of real significance. This was in a letter to Dr Gilmore, dated April 29, which we found waiting for us at the Port Captain's office at Pythagorion.

But that was later, after we had had nearly a month of the most perfect sailing, and by then I had almost forgotten about my father. The demands and routine of a boat at sea, particularly in enclosed waters like the Aegean, concentrate the mind to the exclusion of all but the immediate problems of navigation and seamanship. Add to this the world that daily opened before our gaze, a world of islands and little ports and coves where life had hardly changed since the days of Odysseus, and it is little wonder that I became so engrossed in it that for a time I was scarcely conscious even of my own predicament and was able to shut out of my mind the real object of the voyage.

Once through the Corinth Canal, we seemed to sail into the past. Athens and the Acropolis, then east down the gulf to Sounion. Here, amongst the salt-white columns of Poseidon's temple high on its promontory, we had our first glimpse of the islands, seeing them as the old Greek sailors saw them, milestones on the voyage to the Turkish coast. We said our own prayers to the god of sea and earthquake, and then we were slanting out in their wake, a full meltemi blowing from the north-east, the boat heeled, the sea hard and white, and Kithnos growing large over the bows. Tinos then and Mykonos, and Delos all to ourselves in the tiny cove of Fourni, with only just room to swing to our anchor, and Mount Cynthus, birthplace of Apollo, with its Sacred Way and the ruins of ancient cities falling to the sea, the fantastic beauty of the lionesses in moonlight. And then down through the 14-foot passage in half a gale to Naxos, the largest of the islands.