My Brother Michael (2 page)

Someone cleared his throat just above me. A shadow crept half-apologetically across the page.

I looked up.

It wasn’t the waiter, trying to winkle me out of my corner table. It was a little dark man with patched and shabby dungarees, a greasy blue shirt, and a hesitant smirk behind the inevitable moustache. His trousers were held up with string, which it appeared he didn’t trust, because he held on to them firmly with one grimy hand.

I must have looked at him with a chilly surprise, because the apologetic look deepened, but instead of going away he spoke in very bad French.

He said: ‘It is about the car for Delphi.’

I said stupidly, looking down at the letter under my hand: ‘The car for Delphi?’

‘You wanted a car for Delphi,
non
?’

The sun had probed even into this corner of the café. I peered at him against it. ‘Why, yes, I did. But I really don’t see how—’

‘I bring it.’ One grimy hand – the one that wasn’t holding up his trousers – waved towards the blazing doorway.

My eyes followed the gesture, bemusedly. There was indeed a car, a large shabby-looking black affair, parked at the pavement’s edge.

‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I don’t understand—’

‘
Voilà!
’ With a grin, he fished what was patently a car key from his pocket, and dangled it above the table: ‘This is it. It is a matter of life and death, I understand that – oh, perfectly. So I come as quick as I can—’

I said with some exasperation: ‘I haven’t the remotest idea what you’re talking about.’

The grin vanished, to be replaced by a look of vivid anxiety. ‘I am late. This I know. I am sorry. Mademoiselle will forgive me? She will be in time. The car – she does not look much, but she is good, oh, a very good car. If mademoiselle—’

‘Look,’ I said patiently, ‘I don’t want a car. I’m sorry if I misled you, but I can’t hire one. You see—’

‘But mademoiselle said she desired a car.’

‘I know I did. I’m sorry. But the fact is—’

‘And mademoiselle said it was a matter of life and death.’

‘Madem – I didn’t. You said that. I’m afraid I don’t want your car, monsieur. I regret. But I don’t want it.’

‘But mademoiselle—’

I said flatly: ‘I can’t afford it.’

His face lighted at once with a very white-toothed and singularly attractive grin. ‘Money!’ The word was contemptuous. ‘We do not speak of money! Besides,’ he added with great simplicity, ‘the deposit is already paid.’

I said blankly: ‘Deposit? Paid?’

‘But yes. Mademoiselle paid it earlier.’

I drew a breath that was three parts relief. It wasn’t witchcraft after all, nor was it an intervention of the ironic gods of Greece. It was a simple case of mistaken identity.

I said firmly: ‘I’m sorry. There has been a mistake. That is not my car. I didn’t hire it at all.’

The dangling key stilled for a moment, then swung in front of me with unimpaired vigour. ‘It is not the car mademoiselle saw, no, but that one was bad, bad. It had a – how do you say? – a crack in it that the water came out.’

‘A leak. But—’

‘A leak. That is why I am late, you see, but we get this car, oh so good, since mademoiselle say it is so urgent a matter that Monsieur Simon have the car at Delphi straight away. You leave straight away you are in Delphi in three hours – four hours …’ his look
lingered on me momentarily, summing me up … ‘five hours maybe? And then perhaps all is well with Monsieur Simon, and this matter of—’

‘Life and death,’ I said. ‘Yes, I know, But the fact remains, monsieur, that I don’t know what you’re talking about! There is some mistake, and I’m sorry. It was not I who asked for the car. I gather that this, er, Monsieur Simon’s girl was to have been in this café waiting for the car …? Well, I can’t see anybody here at present who might fill the bill …’

He spoke quickly, so quickly that I realised afterwards he must have followed my rapid French only sketchily, and was pouncing on a phrase that made sense – the sense he wanted to hear. The key still swung on his finger-tip as if it was hot and he wanted to drop it. He said: ‘That is it. This café. A young lady sitting alone. Half past ten. But I am late. You are Simon’s girl, yes?’

He looked, with that bright brown uncomprehending gaze, so like an anxious monkey that my near-exasperation vanished, and I smiled at him, shaking my head, and summed up one of my six hard-learned words of Greek. ‘
Ne
,’ I said, as forcefully as I could. ‘
Ne, ne, ne
.’ I laughed and held out my cigarette-case. ‘I’m sorry there’s been a muddle. Have a cigarette.’

The cigarette seemed to be an amazing cure-all for worry. The lines vanished magically from his face. The vivid smile flashed. The key dropped with a jingle in front of me while the hand that wasn’t holding up his pants reached for my cigarette-case. ‘Thank you,
mademoiselle. It is a good car, mademoiselle. Have a good journey.’

I was feeling in my bag for matches, and not until I raised my head did I really take in what he’d said. And by then it was too late. He had gone. I caught a glimpse of him sliding through the crowd at the café door like a whippet let off a string, then he vanished. Three of my cigarettes had gone too. But the car key lay on the table in front of me, and the black car still stood outside in the violent sunlight.

It was only then, as I sat gaping like an idiot at the key, the car, and the sunlight on the cloth where a moment ago the little man had cast a shadow, that I realised that my momentary piece of showing-off was likely to cost me pretty dear. I remembered a little sickly that, in Greek,
ne
means
yes
.

Of course I ran after him. But the crowd surged and swayed on the pavement, regardless, and there was no sign in any direction of the shabby messenger of the gods. My waiter followed me anxiously on to the pavement, ready to grab, I suppose, if I showed signs of taking off without paying him for my coffee. I ignored him and peered earnestly in all directions. But when he showed signs of retreating to bring up reinforcements to escort me personally back to my table and the bill, I judged it time to give up the search. I went back to my corner, picked up the key, threw a quick worried smile at the still-pursuing waiter, who didn’t speak English, and pushed my way towards the barcounter to seek out the proprietor, who did.

I elbowed my way through the crowd of men, with a nervously reiterated ‘
Parakalo
’, which, apparently, was the right word for ‘Please’. At any rate the men gave way, and I leaned anxiously over the counter.

‘
Parakalo, kyrie
—’

The proprietor threw me a harassed sweating glance over a pile of fried potatoes, and placed me unerringly. ‘Miss?’

‘
Kyrie
, I am in a difficulty. A queer thing has just happened. A man has brought that car over there – you see it, beyond the blue tables – to deliver it to someone in the café. By a mistake he appears to think I’m the person who hired it. He thinks I’m driving it up to Delphi for someone. But I know nothing about it,
kyrie
; it’s all a mistake, and I don’t know what to do!’

He threw a dollop of dressing over some tomatoes, pushed them towards a large man perched on a small stool at the counter, and wiped a hand over his brow. ‘Do you wish me to explain to him? Where is he?’

‘That’s the trouble,
kyrie
. He’s gone. He just left me the key – here it is – and then went. I tried to catch him, but he’s vanished. I wondered if you knew who was supposed to be here to collect the car?’

‘No. I know nothing.’ He picked up a large ladle, stirred something under the counter, and threw another look at the car outside. ‘Nothing. Who was the car for?’

‘Monsieur, I told you, I don’t know who—’

‘You said it was to be driven somewhere – to Delphi, was it? Did this man not say who it was for?’

‘Oh. Yes. A – a Mr Simon.’

He spooned some of the mixture – it seemed to be a sort of bouillabaisse – into a plate, handed it to a hovering waiter, and then said, with a shrug: ‘At Delphi? I have not heard of such a one. It is possible somebody here saw the man, or knows the car. If you wait a moment I will ask.’

He said something then in Greek to the men at the counter, and became on the instant the centre of an animated, even passionate discussion which lasted some four or five minutes and involved in the end every male customer in the café, and which eventually produced, with all the goodwill in the world, the information that nobody had noticed the little man with the key, nobody knew the car, nobody had ever heard of a Monsieur Simon at Delphi (this though one of the men was a native of Chrissa, only a few kilometres distant from Delphi), nobody thought it in the least likely that anyone from Delphi would hire a car in Athens, and (finally) nobody in their senses would drive it up there anyway.

‘Though,’ said the man from Chrissa, who was talking with his mouth full, ‘it is possible that this Simon is an English tourist staying at Delphi. That would explain everything.’ He didn’t say why, merely smiling with great kindness and charm through a mouthful of prawns, but I got his meaning.

I said apologetically: ‘I know it seems mad,
kyrie
, but I can’t help feeling one ought to do something about it. The man who brought the key said it was—’ I hesitated – ‘well, a matter of life and death.’

The Greek raised his eyebrows; then he shrugged. I
got the impression that matters of life and death were everyday affairs in Athens. He said, with another charming smile: ‘Quite an adventure, mademoiselle,’ and turned back to his plate.

I looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘yes.’ I turned back to the proprietor, who was struggling to scoop olives out of one of the beautiful jars. It was apparent that the rush-hour and the heat were beginning to upset even his Athenian good manners and patience, so I merely smiled at him and said: ‘Thank you for your goodness,
kyrie
. I’m sorry to have troubled you. It seems to me that if the matter really is urgent, then the person who wants the car will certainly come and get it as arranged.’

‘You wish to leave the key with me? I will take it, and then you need have no more worry. No, it will be a pleasure, I assure you.’

‘I won’t trouble you yet, thanks. I must confess—’ I laughed – ‘to a little curiosity. I’ll wait here for a bit, and if this girl comes I’ll give her the key myself.’

And, to the poor man’s relief, I wriggled back out of the press and returned to my table. I sat down and ordered another coffee, then lit another cigarette, and settled down to a pretence of finishing my letter, but in reality to keep one watchful eye on the door, and the other on the shabby black car that should – surely – by now have been hurtling along the Delphi road on that matter of life and death …

I waited an hour. The waiter had begun to look askance again, so I pushed aside my untouched letter and gave an order, then sat playing with a plateful of
beans and some small pink fish while I watched, in an expectancy that gradually gave way to uneasiness, the constant coming-and-going at the café door.

My motive in waiting hadn’t been quite as straightforward as I had suggested to the proprietor of the café. It had occurred to me that, since I had become involved in the affair through no fault of my own, I might be able to turn it to advantage. When ‘Simon’s girl’ arrived to claim the car, it might surely be possible to suggest – or even to ask outright – that I might be her passenger as far as Delphi. And the possibility of getting a lift up to Delphi was not the only one which had occurred to me …

So the minutes dragged by, and still no one came, and somehow, the longer I waited, the less possible it seemed to walk out of the café and leave everything to settle itself without me, and the more insidiously did that other possibility begin to present itself. Dry-mouthed, I pushed it aside, but there it was, a challenge, a gift, a dare from the gods …

At twelve o’clock, when nobody had appeared to claim the car, I thrust my plate aside, and set myself to consider that other possibility as coolly as I could.

It was, simply, to drive the car up to Delphi myself.

It was apparent that, for whatever reason, the girl wasn’t coming. Something must have prevented her, for otherwise she would simply have telephoned the garage to cancel the order. But the car – the urgently wanted car – was still there, already an hour and a half late in starting. I, on the other hand, wanted very badly to go to Delphi, and could start straight away. I had
come straight up from Piraeus off the Crete steamer, and had everything with me that I needed for a short stay in Delphi. I could go up today, deliver the car, have two days there with the money saved on the bus-fare, and come back with the tourist bus on Thursday. The thing was simple, obvious and a direct intervention of providence.

I picked up the key with fingers that felt as if they didn’t belong to me, and reached slowly for my only luggage – the big brightly-coloured hold-all of Mykonos weaving – that hung on the back of a chair.

I hesitated with my hand touching it. Then I let the hand drop, and sat, twisting the key over and over, watching with unseeing eyes the way the sun glinted on it as it turned.

It couldn’t be done. It was just one of those things that couldn’t be done. I must have been mad even to consider doing it. All that had happened was that Simon’s girl had forgotten to cancel the order for the car and claim the deposit. It was nothing to do with me. No one would thank me for intervening in an affair that, in spite of my silly mistake, had nothing whatever to do with me. That phrase
a matter of life and death
– so glib a chorus, so persuasive an excuse to interfere – was only a phrase, after all, a phrase from which I had built up this feeling of urgency which gave me (I pretended) the excuse to act.
In any case, it had nothing to do with me
. The obvious – the only – thing to do was to leave the car standing there, hand over the key, and go away.

The decision brought with it a sense of relief so vivid,
so physical almost, that it startled me. On the wave of it I stood up, picked up the car key, and swung my hold all up to my shoulder. The unfinished letter to Elizabeth lay on the table. I reached for it, and as I folded it over to thrust it into my bag, the sentence caught my eye again.
Nothing ever happens to me
.