My Brother Michael (14 page)

‘No? You stick to that, Camilla. This is the loveliest country in the world, and the hardest. Much of it, and you’re apt to find yourself thinking in its terms instead of your own. There are times, I’d say, when you have to … But you stand by your guns.’ He laughed down at me. ‘And for a start, don’t believe a word I say. I’m a normal law-abiding citizen, and a most upright and solemn schoolmaster … Now, enough of this Oresteian tragedy. Michael’s dead these fourteen years, and Delphi’s been here three thousand, so we’ll let Delphi bury its dead. It does it just here, incidentally; that’s the graveyard just beside the path, under the trees. And now, if you’re to get any sleep at all tonight, what about chasing up that drink? That’s the studio there.’

Without another glance in the direction of the graveyard, he led the way at a quickened pace over level ground towards the lights of the studio.

T
HE
studio was a big rectangular building situated on top of the bluff behind the village of Delphi. Later in daylight I was to see it as a big ugly box of a place, set down on a flat plateau quarried out of the living rock, so that, while its front windows commanded a magnificent view of the valley, its back looked out on to a wall of rock as high as its second storey. On this, the north side, were the big ‘front’ doors, impressive affairs of plate-glass which were never used. The tenants got in and out by a small door in the east end, which gave on the corridor running the length of the ground floor.

Inside, the place was as bare and functional as possible. Corridors and stairs were of marble, and spotlessly clean. On the lower floor, and to the left of the corridor, were the artists’ bedrooms, facing south over the valley. These were simple in the extreme, each bedroom holding nothing but an iron bedstead with blankets and pillows, a wash-basin with h. and c., both perpetually c., a small and inevitably
unsteady table, and hooks for hanging clothes. Opening off each bedroom was a marble-floored shower-cupboard – also, presumably, c. Opposite the bedrooms were other doors which I never saw opened, but which I imagined might be some sort of kitchen premises, or rooms for the caretaker. The resident artists worked on the upper floor where the light was better; here a row of rooms on the north side of the corridor served as studios and storerooms for their work.

But all this I was to discover later. Tonight the building was merely an ugly oblong box of a place planted down in a small quarry, with the light from a bare electric bulb showing us the door.

We had hardly got into the echoing corridor when a door a short way along it opened, and a young man came out like a bullet from a gun. He caught at the jamb of the door as he catapulted out and hung on, almost as if he felt the need of the door’s support. He said in a high excited voice: ‘Oh, Simon, I was just—’ Then he saw me and stopped, disconcerted, still theatrically posed in the stream of light that came from the door.

There was something about his method of appearance that was very like Niko’s, but there the resemblance ended. The young man – who I supposed was Nigel – had none of Niko’s beauty or promise of strength, and very little, in consequence, of Niko’s assurance. There was no conscious drama in his actions, and indeed now he was looking miserably embarrassed, almost as if he would have liked to retreat into his room and lock the door. He was tallish, thin
and fair. His skin had taken the sun badly, and his eyes, which were that puckered blue that you see in sailors and airmen and men who habitually gaze into the distances, looked as if they had had too much sun. He had a straggling little beard that made him look young and rather vulnerable, and his hair was bleached to the colour and texture of dry hay. He had a weakly sensual mouth and the strong ugly hands of the artist.

Simon said: ‘Hullo, Nigel. This is Camilla Haven, who’s staying at the Apollon. I’ve brought her up for a drink, and she wants to see your drawings. Do you mind?’

‘Oh. No. Not at all. Delighted,’ said Nigel, stammering a little. ‘C-come into my room, then. We’ll have a drink here.’ As he stood aside for me to pass him, slightly more flushed than before, I found myself wondering if he had been drinking alone in his room. There was that queer look about his eyes, a sort of sense that he was clutching at himself as really, as physically, as he had clutched at the door-jamb, and in the same effort of control.

His room, basically as bare as the rest of the building, was frantically but rather pleasantly untidy. It was as if the artist’s personality, far richer than it appeared from the look of him, had spilled over without his knowing it into the monastic-looking little cell. At the foot of the bed a rucksack stood on the floor, its contents bursting out in confusion. I saw two shirts, as brightly but rather more respectably coloured than Niko’s, a tangle of rope, some dirty handkerchiefs which had obviously been pressed into use as paint-rags, three oranges, and
a copy of the
Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
. The towel which was flung over the edge of the wash-basin was as brightly yellow as a dandelion. Nigel’s pyjamas, in a huddle on the bed, were striped in wine and turquoise. And everywhere on the cracked white walls there were sketches, drawing-pinned haphazardly; they were in a variety of styles, so that, looking from the bold to the delicate, from the pencil sketches to the water colours curling up at the edges as they dried, I remembered what Simon had told me.

But I had no time to do more than glance, because our host had dived past me, and was dragging forward the room’s best chair, a canvas affair of grubby orange.

‘W-won’t you sit down, Miss Er? It’s the best there is. It’s quite clean really.’

I thanked him and sat down. Simon had wandered over to the window and hitched himself up on to the wide sill, where he sat with one leg swinging. Nigel, still with that air of disconcerted fussiness, had dived into the shower-cupboard and was rummaging rather wildly among bottles on the floor. In a moment he emerged clutching two tumblers and a large bottle of ouzo.

‘Do you like this stuff?’ he asked me anxiously. ‘It’s all there is.’

There was something about Nigel that disarmed me into a deliberate lie. ‘I love it,’ I said, and waited resignedly while he poured a generous dollop into one of the tumblers and handed it to me.

‘Would you like water with it?’

Now, ouzo is the Greek absinthe. It is made from
aniseed, and tastes fairly mild and (to my mind) incredibly unpleasant. I find it quite undrinkable neat. On the other hand if you add sufficient water to make it swallowable, there is a lot more to swallow.

I said bravely: ‘Yes, please.’

Nigel grabbed a carafe from above the wash-basin. Again it struck me sharply that his movements were a parody of Niko’s. They were swift and abrupt and angular, but where Niko’s had the grace of a striking cat, Nigel’s were clumsy and almost unco-ordinated. It was odd for an artist to be clumsy, I thought; then as I watched Nigel pour water into my glass, I saw that his hand was shaking. That was still odder.

The liquid misted, clouded, and went entirely beastly like quinine. I said: ‘When. Thanks,’ and smiled at Nigel, who was watching me with an anxious-puppy expression that made him look younger than ever. He was, I judged, about twenty-three, but the beard made him look nineteen. I smiled bravely and lifted the glass.

‘
Gia sou, Kyrie
Nigel,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know your other name.’

‘Make it Nigel,’ he said unhelpfully, but with apparent pleasure.

As I drank carefully I caught Simon’s eye, to see that he knew quite well what I felt about ouzo. I scowled at him and took another drink, reflecting yet again that
Kyrie
Simon Lester saw a damned sight too much. I controlled the shudder that shook me as the liquor went down, and then watched fascinated as Nigel filled Simon’s tumbler two-thirds full, grabbed a tooth-glass
for himself and filled that, and then raised it to his lips, said ‘
Gia sou
’ quickly and drank half of it at one fell gulp, neat.

‘Cheers, comrade,’ said Simon. ‘Have you had a good day?’

Nigel, flushing and choking a little over the liquor, managed to say: ‘Yes. Oh yes, thanks. Very.’

‘Where did you go?’

The young man waved a vague hand, which almost knocked the ouzo bottle off the table, but unfortunately didn’t quite. ‘Up there.’

‘You mean up in the precinct?’

‘No. Up the hill.’

‘On to Parnassus again? Did you go up over the old track to hunt up some shepherds after all?’ He turned to me. ‘Nigel’s got a contract for a series of drawings of “Hellenic types” – heads of peasants and old women and shepherd boys and so forth. He’s done some quite striking ones in a sort of heavy ink line-and-wash.’

Nigel said suddenly: ‘It’s exciting. You can’t know how exciting. You see a grubby little boy watching the goats, and when you really start to draw him you realise you’ve seen him a dozen times already in the museums. And I found a girl last week in Amphissa who was pure Minoan, crimped hair and all. It makes it difficult, too, of course, because try as you will it looks as if you’re copying the original Grecian Urn.’

I laughed. ‘I know. I’ve met one Zeus and one rather wicked Eros and a couple of dozen assorted satyrs today already.’

‘Stephanos and Niko?’ said Simon.

I nodded. ‘Nigel ought to meet them.’

Nigel said: ‘Who are they?’

‘Stephanos is a shepherd from Arachova and he’s straight out of Homer. Niko’s his grandson and he’s – well, simply a beauty in American teenager rig. But if it’s only the head you want, you could hardly do better.’ I reflected, as I spoke, that Simon had apparently told Nigel nothing about Michael or his mission that evening.

Nor did he tell him now. He said: ‘You may meet them yet. Stephanos is usually some way up between Delphi and Arachova – near that track I took you over yesterday. Is that the way you went again today? How far?’

‘Quite a long way.’ Nigel looked round him vaguely, as if embarrassment had descended on him again, and added quickly: ‘I was sick of sitting about in the precinct and the valley. I wanted a walk. I got up above the Shining Ones and on to the track and then – well, I just went on walking. It was hot, but up there there was a breeze.’

‘No work today?’

Simon’s question was no more than idle, but a flush had crept up under Nigel’s raw sunburn. It made him look cagey, but I guessed it was only shyness. He said: ‘No,’ very shortly, and buried his nose in his glass.

I said: ‘No shepherds playing Pan-pipes to their flocks? On Parnassus? You shake me, Nigel.’

He grinned at that. ‘No, more’s the pity.’

‘And no gods?’ I said thinking of the starlit temple.

But his shyness asserted itself here completely. He
buried his face in his glass and said, almost snappily: ‘No! I tell you I did hardly anything! I was just walking. Anyway those heads are a bore. They’re only bread and butter. You wouldn’t like them.’

‘I’d love to see some of your work, though, if you could be bothered to show it. Simon’s been telling me how awfully good your drawings are—’

He interrupted in a voice so quick and hoarse that it gave the effect of a small outburst of temper: ‘God! Simon’s talking bilge. They’re not good. They please me, but that’s all.’

‘Some of them are, very good,’ said Simon quietly.

Nigel sneered at him. ‘The niminy-piminy ones. The sweet little Ruskin-and-water ones. Can’t you just hear the Sunday-paper critics turned loose over them? They’re useless and you know it.’

‘They’re first-class and
you
know it. If you could—’

‘Oh God, if, if if,’ said Nigel rudely. He set his glass down on the table with a sharp click. ‘You know damn well they’re useless.’

‘But they’re what you want to do, and they show the way you want to go, and that’s the point, isn’t it? They are “Nigel Barlow”, and what’s more, they’re uncommon.’

‘
They’re useless
.’ The repetition was emphatic.

‘If you mean they’re not easy to make a living out of here and now. I agree. But I still think—’

‘“To thine own self be true”?’ said Nigel, on a high edged note that might have been excitement but sounded like bitterness. ‘Oh God, don’t be a prosy old bore! And anyway it doesn’t matter a damn. Not a damn, do you hear me?’

Simon smiled at him. I think it was then that I first really saw what lay behind that good-tempered and apparently unruffled self-command of Simon’s; what made it so very different from the more flamboyant self-confidence I had envied. Simon cared. He really did care what happened to this casually-met, troubled, and not very attractive boy who was being so wretchedly rude. And that was why he had come back after fourteen years to find out what had happened to Michael. It was not a present tragedy, and he was not, after all, an Orestes. But he cared – for his father’s sake, for Stephanos’, for the woman’s.
Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
. That was it. He was involved in mankind, and, just at this moment, that meant Nigel. ‘
One takes it for granted
,’ he had said, ‘
that one is there to help
.’ I suppose one gets to know men quickest by the things they take for granted.

He had set his glass down and now laced his fingers round one knee. ‘All right. Exit Polonius. Well, d’you want us to find you a selling line, Nigel?’

Nigel said, not rudely now, but still with a touch of that hot and slightly sulky impatience: ‘You mean a gimmick to make people come and look at them? A bloody little quick-sales-trick to crowd a one-man show somewhere in the wilds of Sheffield or something? Two pretty drawings sold and my name in the local press? Is that what you mean?’

Simon said mildly: ‘One has to start somewhere. Couldn’t you count it as part of the fight? And at least it might mean you hadn’t to fall back on the ultimate degradation.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

He grinned. ‘Teaching.’

‘Oh. Well, I do see what you mean,’ I said.