Arms and the Women (17 page)

Pascoe grinned.

'Well, her favourite game is Black Bitch,' he said.

'I'll see you pay for that,' said Ellie over her shoulder as she headed for the stairs.

'Oh, I do hope so,' said Pascoe.

xii

doppelgȁnger

Ellie Pascoe leaned out of the open window and shouted and the woman below looked up in surprise and dropped her car keys, and Ellie in her turn was so surprised that she dropped the keys she was holding in her hand.

Ellie turned over in bed. But a moment later she was up again and leaning out of the open window and the woman below was looking up in surprise and dropping her car keys, and Ellie was dropping her keys too.

After she woke from the dream a third time, she really did get up. Peter was enjoying the sleep of the just or the completely knackered. He was a very still sleeper and repose rubbed the lining years off his face so he lay there like the monumental effigy of a child, or perhaps a childe, who'd died young.

She went into Rose's room. Her daughter had pushed the duvet back and lay curled like a stranded sea horse on the sand-coloured mattress.

Ellie covered her up. The heat of the day had not seeped into the night. Or maybe she was still carrying the chill of her dream with her.

She knew that for the time being at least sleep was impossible. All that awaited her in the bedroom was that sense of being adrift on a storm-tossed sea with ravening birds screeching overhead and the drowned faces of everyone she loved staring up at her from beneath the water. She headed into the boxroom which she refused to call a study. Not too long ago she'd have sneered at anyone nerdish enough to claim to have a relationship with a boxful of electronics, but now her laptop was waiting for her like a friend.

Time for her Comfort Blanket.

She switched on, brought up the story and scrolled through Chapter 2 till she reached the point where Daphne's arrival had interrupted her.

He flexed his broad shoulders, took a deep breath, bowed forward, his body hunched, and with a single convulsive movement, he snapped the length of cloth which bound his wrists.

The watching men gasped in admiration and at the same time brought their weapons to bear. The Greek smiled benevolently on them as he stretched his arms to restore the circulation. Then he removed the sack still hanging round his neck and dropped it to the ground, followed by the rest of his ragged robe. For a moment he stood naked before them, and they viewed his body which was as lined and cratered as the moon which lit it. Here was carved the history of a life of violence, with stabbing scars, and slashing scars, and scars which marked the bite of savage fangs and scars which recorded the impact of heavy clubs. Awe touched the onlookers and a sense of menace. Then he straddled a small cooking fire and with a deep groan of pleasure, began to massage his genitals dry. One of the young attendants put her hand to her mouth and giggled, and instantly he became a fat old Greek castaway again.

He reached out, pulled a woollen robe from her arms and draped it round him.

'Thanks, luv,' he said. 'Here, fancy a clam?'

He shook the remaining shellfish out of his discarded rags.

'You can eat 'em raw, but they're better baked with a drop of vinegar. Just thinking on it makes me hungry.'

And without more ado, he took the steaming platter from the other attendant, squatted down in front of the fire, and began to eat.

The Prince watched him for a moment, then said, 'Achates, now that the storm has abated, it may be that our guest has friends who will be anxious for his wellbeing and come looking for him. It might be well to double the guard.'

'No need of that,' said the Greek out of a full mouth. 'All on my lonesome, that's me.'

But Achates moved away and started disposing his men.

The platter was soon empty and at a nod from the Prince, the attendant took it and piled it up once again.

'Ee, I'd give my old gran to a one-legged sailor for a drink,' said the Greek.

Another nod. A jugful of wine was produced and a cup which the Greek ignored. He took the jug, poured a small (a very small) libation onto the ground, then raised the vessel high and with unerring accuracy directed the xanthic linn down his gullet till the last drops fell.

Ellie paused and considered.
Xanthic linn.
How to justify such an oddity? You could point out that it was Greek, from
xanthos,
meaning yellow. Also Xanthos was Homer's alternative name for the Scamander, the great river which Achilles fought and would have been overcome by if the fire god hadn't come in on his side. But a carper might retort that it sat very uneasily with Scots
linn,
meaning waterfall. In any case, while euphuism as comic euphemism was fine, and
xanthic linn
to describe a stream of piss might raise a smile, wasn't this just wilful preciosity? Also, did they have both white and red wine way back then? Red seemed more likely, though she couldn't say why. Because it was rougher, more basic maybe, though they'd give her an argument about that in Bordeaux. Still, that was what the French were made for, to give the English arguments.

Her fingers ran over the keys.

directed the red jet down his gullet till the last drops fell.

Now he returned his attention to the food and cleared the second platter as fast as the first.

Finished, he handed the dish to the female attendant.

'That were grand,' he said. 'Thanks, lass.'

And he let out a huge appreciative belch which set the watching men laughing, except for the Prince, who said, ‘I am pleased you are pleased, stranger. But now we have satisfied your natural hunger for food and drink, it is your turn, I think, to satisfy our equally natural hunger for information and news.'

'Ask away, lord. I'm just a simple man, with little about me to interest a great leader like yourself, but owt that I can tell you I'll be glad to.'

'I thank you, stranger.'

The Prince seated himself on a stool on the far side of the fire, Achates crouched at his side, and the men squatted on the ground in three or four circles around the central group, while the women went about their business beyond the circles, but with eyes and ears attentive to what was going on at their centre. The old man after a word in the Prince's ear retired within the shelter against the big boulder.

'Now, stranger, before we enquire of your name and history, satisfy my curiosity in this. How was it that you threw yourself at my feet when you arrived, begging for mercy and assistance, and not at the old man, my father's? From my little knowledge of Greek society, you are as accustomed to defer to the dignity and wisdom of age as we are.'

'As you are? You mean you're not Greeks?' said the stranger, his great face wrinkling in surprise.

‘
I should have thought our garments and our speech told you that.'

'Nay, but there's all sorts and conditions of Greeks. They come from all over. I met a lad from Crete once, all dressed in blue, he were, like some daft tart going to a party. And the way he spoke. I could hardly make head or tail of it. Made you sound no worse than my cousin with the cleft palate. So I thought you must just belong to this island, which I don't know the name of but am mighty glad to be cast ashore on, believe me. So if you're not Greeks, what might you be then?'

'Have a guess,' said the Prince with gentle irony.

'Phoenicians? No, not dark enough. Egyptians? The same. Medes? Aye, that's it. You could be Medes. Am I right?'

'I'm afraid not. We are Trojans. And I am Prince Aeneas of Troy.'

Pious Aeneas. Who fled from the fall of Troy bearing his father on his shoulders and leading his son by the hand with his wife following behind (perhaps with her old cock linnet?), till she lost her way, and ultimately her life. Pious Aeneas, obeying the command of the gods and following his star north from Carthage to found the Roman Empire, while behind him Dido lit the southern sky with her own terrible light.

Not the cleverest of moves to be a woman trailing in the wake of Pious Aeneas!

Dido, of course, came later, which was a pity. Would have been nice to take a look at him with that on his conscience! Ah well, nothing's easy, pity then the writer more than other women when she's got to stick to the facts, even though the facts are pure fiction. As she'd once heard a Booker winner say at a signing, pour out your soul and the world will probably react with silence; get something wrong and smartasses from five continents will e-mail you to tell you about it. Though why this should bother her when she had no intention of letting anyone else see her Comfort Blanket she didn't know.

Back to Pious Aeneas.

He regarded the stranger's face earnestly for a moment then went on, 'You don't look alarmed.'

'Why should I? I mean, you're not cannibals or owt like that, are you?'

'No, nor owt like that, as you say. But I did think it might have come to your notice that forces representing just about every corner of Greek territory, under King Agamemnon of Mycenae, were at war with Troy, a war which lasted ten years, time enough for news to spread to most places, I should have thought?'

The Greek's face screwed up in the effort of recollection.

'Now you mention it, it does ring a bell. Yes, I'm pretty sure someone did say something about it in the taverna one night. Something about a tart, was it? Aye, that's it, I recall now. We couldn't credit it. I mean, fighting over land, or fish, or cattle, that I can understand. But grown men fighting a war over a flighty tart, that's plain daft. You're not telling me it's right, are you? Bloody hell, I do believe you are. Well, well. Nowt so queer as folk, eh? So, this war, which of you won it then?'

Prince Aeneas regarded him quizzically.

'Your compatriots. Not by force of arms, where we matched them; nor by nobility of action and moral desert, where we excelled them; but by low trickery and animal cunning, in which areas they predominated, one man above all others being a master of lies, deceits and treachery. The wily serpent Odysseus.'

Odysseus, gross, untrustworthy, wheeling, dealing Odysseus, always ready with a fluent lie, often complicated beyond the needs of plausibility out of simple delight in the very act of invention. At least it wasn't any highfaluting sense of duty or destiny which drove
him
on. In the end what made him give up a life of endless bliss on Calypso's enchanted island was simply his unquenchable longing to get back home to his wife and family.

She and Peter had both been pious Aeneas's in their way. It had taken Rosie's skirmish with death to bring their questing ships together. Which, time and tide being what they are, didn't mean they would sail in convoy for evermore, but now they both knew up front what before they had only assumed subliminally, that no matter what wild waters might seem to separate them, they were bound together as intrinsically as the hulls on a catamaran.

Jesus, all this nautical metaphor from someone whose longest voyage had been on the old ferry to Skye! Where was I? Oh yes.

Odysseus.

At the name, a groan of mingled pain and hatred went up from the watching men and they rattled their weapons in anger.

The stranger, who was listening with the rapt expression of a child hearing a fascinating adult tale which he only half understands, shook his head and said, 'Odysseus, you say? Now him I have heard of. Right slippery customer from all accounts. Buy a used boat off him and you'd soon have a wet arse. Well, it takes all sorts to

Was that a noise outside?

She rose and went to the window, the same window she'd leaned out of twice in her dream. It was a fine moonlit night, just like the one she'd described in her story. No camp fires here, though. Just an empty driveway. Gate slightly ajar; Peter must have forgotten to close it. Deserted street. Some parked cars, but there always were, the overspill of neighbours whose kids had gone through this western rite of passage but couldn't leave the evidence on the drive as Dad's chariot still had pride of place in the garage and he needed to be out first in the morning. Nothing moved, not even a cat.

Then a little way up the street a car began to move forward, sidelights on, at kerb-crawling pace. Short-sighted punter perhaps? It was going left to right so she could see the driver, or at least the oval of a face as he looked towards the Pascoe house, a thin sallow face with a pencil moustache and staring eyes whose gaze locked momentarily with hers in the brief moment of passage.