The Europe That Was (18 page)

‘I don't see how you guessed it wasn't pig's, Sir Matthew. But you are quite right.'

‘And that is all which remains of a great religion after sixty generations,' Fowlsey declared. ‘That, and a little of the power of the god, would you say, Charles? It was you who mentioned magic in the sausages.'

‘I'd say—to use an Americanism—that you've gone nuts.'

‘No. You are looking at the altar of Mithras.'

‘Where?'

‘There!' Sir Matthew shouted, pointing to the butcher's slab. ‘There, where the bull died and gave life to the people!'

‘Assuming that is the altar, the niches are in the right place,' said Charles as if he disbelieved his own voice.

‘Miss Mallaby, may we?' begged Sir Matthew. ‘Without letting another soul into the secret I can lift the casing off the altar with a block and tackle and do no damage to either.'

‘I am afraid you would, for the dowel pins have shrunk. I think perhaps the front of the slab would come away if you were to extract them. No, not with that knife, if you please, Sir Matthew! I will fetch you a gimlet.'

‘Madam, you must be the only woman in the world to realize that a gimlet can be used like a corkscrew to extract a wooden peg!'

‘I have been compelled by circumstance,' said Miss Mallaby primly, ‘to do all repairs to the cellar myself.'

Sir Matthew removed the dowels without much difficulty.

‘If you will now lift the top slightly, Charles, the whole front will be free.'

The noble slab of oak fell down. There, cut in the marble of the altar, was the god Mithras slaying the bull. The reliefs, except to eyes familiar with the composition, were not immediately obvious. In the upper half, the knife, the bull's head and the face of the god were worn faint. But at the bottom the scorpion and the waiting hound were clear and vivid as if they had been chiselled the week before.

‘There is only one other to be compared with it in all Europe,' said Charles reverently. ‘Miss Mallaby, Miss Mallaby, what are we to do? Your cellar will become a place of pilgrimage.'

‘The sooner the better, Mr Kinsale. No doubt Mr Ing and I will be able to come to some mutually profitable arrangement. Whatever my ancestors may have thought,
I
should not wish to continue making sausages upon a heathen altar, and I am sure the dear vicar would agree.'

THE GREEKS HAD
NO WORD FOR IT

‘May I say ten pounds?' the auctioneer asked. ‘Five? Thank you, madam … Six … Six, ten … Seven … Seven, ten … At seven pounds, ten. Going at seven pounds, ten. An ancient Greek drinking bowl of the best period. Going at …'

Sergeant Torbin had at last wandered into the auction because there was nothing else to do. It was early closing day at Falkstead, and the shops were shut. There was nowhere to sit but the edge of the quay, and nothing to watch but the brown tide beginning to race down to the North Sea between grey mud-banks. The only sign of animation in the little town was around the open front door of a small box-like eighteenth-century house, the contents of which were being sold.

‘Eight!' said the sergeant nervously, and immediately realized that nothing could give a man such a sense of inferiority as a foreign auction.

But the atmosphere was quiet and decorous. The auctioneer acknowledged Bill Torbin's bid with a smile which managed to express both surprise and appreciation at seeing the United States Air Force uniform in so rural a setting. He might have been welcoming him to the local Church Hall.

‘May I say eight, ten?'

A military-looking man, overwhelming in size and manner, nodded sharply.

Bill could hardly hope that the bowl was genuine. He liked it for itself. Angular black figures chased one another round the red terracotta curve. He recognized Perseus, holding up that final and appalling weapon, the Gorgon's head. Very appropriate. A benevolent goddess, who reminded Bill of his tall, straight mother, looked on approvingly.

He ran the bowl up to ten pounds. When the auctioneer's hammer was already in the air, he heard someone say: ‘Guinness!'

There was a snap of triumph in the word, a suggestion that the whole sale had now come to a full stop. It was the military man again. To Sergeant Torbin he was the most terrifying type of native—a bulky chunk of brown tweed suit, with a pattern of orange and grey as pronounced as the Union Jack, and a red face and ginger moustache on top of it.

‘It's against you, sir,' the auctioneer told him hopefully.

Bill knew that much already. But the mysterious word ‘Guinness' sounded as if it had raised the ante to the moon. He panicked. He decided that he had no business in auctions. After all, he had only been in England a week and had come to Falkstead on his first free afternoon because it looked such a quiet little heaven from the train.

‘Going at ten guineas … At ten guineas … Sold at ten guineas!'

Hell, he ought to have guessed that! But who would think that guineas would pop up at auctions when they belonged in the time of George III? Bill Torbin walked out and sat on the low wall which separated the garden from the road, conducting a furious auction with himself while he waited for the 6.30 train back to his bleak East Anglian airfield.

He had just reached the magnificent and imaginary bid of One Hundred Goddam Guineas when the tweed suit rolled down the garden path with the drinking bowl under its arm.

‘Nice work, colonel!' Bill said, for at last he had an excuse to talk to somebody.

‘Oh, it's you, is it? I say, you didn't want it, did you?'

The sergeant thought that was the damn silliest question he had ever heard. He realized, however, that it was meant as a kind of apology.

‘British Museum stiff with 'em!'

Again he got the sense. The Englishman was disclaiming any special value for his purchase. Bill asked if the bowl were genuine.

‘Good Lord, yes! A fifth-century Athenian cylix! The old vicar had it vetted. His father picked it up in Istanbul during the Crimean War. That was the late vicar's late niece's stuff they were selling. Have a look for yourself!'

Sergeant Torbin took the bowl in his hands with reverent precautions. Round the bottom, which he had not seen before, two winged horses pulled a chariot. He wondered what on earth he would ever have dared to do with so exquisite a piece if he had bought it. He might have presented it to the squadron but, like himself, the squadron had no safe place to keep it.

‘How the devil did you know I was a colonel?'

Bill did not like to say that he couldn't possibly be anything else unless it were a general, but he was saved by the bell. The church clock struck six.

‘Ah, they'll be opening now,' said the colonel with satisfaction. ‘How about a drink?'

Bill Torbin murmured doubtfully that his train left at 6.30. The colonel announced that Falkstead station was only two minutes from the pub, and that he himself had often done it in eighty seconds flat. Considering the noble expanse of checked waistcoat, Bill thought it
unlikely. But you never knew with these tough old Englishmen. Half of the weight might be muscle.

The colonel led the way to The Greyhound. It was a handsome little pub, built of white weather-boarding with green shutters, but Torbin had no eyes for it. He was watching the precious cylix, which was being swung by one of its handles as carelessly as if it had been a cheap ash-tray. The sergeant decided that the British had no reverence for any antiquities but their own.

In the bar were four cheerful citizens of Falkstead drinking whisky, two boat-builders drinking beer with the foreman of the yard, and, at a table near the window, the auctioneer and his clerk keeping up respectability with The Greyhound's best sherry. The colonel, disconcertingly changing his manner again, greeted the lot of them as if he had just arrived from crossing the North Sea single-handed, and enthroned the cylix on the bar.

‘What have you got there, Colonel Wagstaff?' the innkeeper asked.

‘That, Mr Watson, is a Greek drinking bowl.'

‘Never saw 'em used,' Mr Watson answered, ‘not when I was a corporal out there.'

Wagstaff explained that it was an old one, which possibly had not been used for two thousand years.

‘Two thousand four hundred,' said the auctioneer, taking his pipe out of his mouth, ‘at the very least.'

‘Time it was!' Mr Watson exclaimed heartily.

‘What are you going to put in it?' the colonel asked.

‘Who? Me?' Watson said, not expecting to be taken literally.

‘But you can't start drinking out of it!' Bill protested.

‘It's what it is for, isn't it?'

‘And an unforgettable experience for our American friend,' said the auctioneer patronizingly, ‘to drink from the same cup as Socrates—or at any rate someone who knew the old boy.'

‘Well, seeing as it's this once,' Mr Watson agreed, ‘what would you say, colonel?'

‘That Burgundy which you bought for the summer visitors is quite drinkable.'

The cylix was about two inches deep, and just held the bottle which Mr Watson emptied into it. The terracotta flushed under the wine. The figures blossomed.

‘See?' said Colonel Wagstaff. ‘Like rain in a dry garden!'

The company gathered round the bar. Wagstaff raised the bowl in both hands and took a hearty pull.

‘Tastes a bit odd,' he remarked, passing it on to Torbin. ‘Still, you can't have everything.'

The loving cup went round the eleven of them and Mr Watson.

‘Fill her up again,' said the auctioneer.

The next round was the colonel's, and after that there was a queue for the fascinating honour.

‘If you take the 7.45 bus to Chesterford,' Colonel Wagstaff suggested, ‘there's sure to be a train from there.'

Bill was beginning to feel for the first time that England had human beings in it. But it was not the facile good-fellowship which persuaded him to wait for the bus. The bowl had become a local possession, and The Greyhound a club in which he was welcome to drink but might not pay. He was jealous. He could not bring himself to leave his goddess skittering along the bar in pools of Burgundy without his own hands ready to catch her.

The auctioneer said a fatherly good-bye to all, trod upon his bowler hat and left. Bill was astonished at the dignity with which he ignored his oversight and knocked out the dent. He looked at the clock. He felt bound to mention that it was 7.40.

‘By Jove, so it is!' said the colonel, taking his moustache out of the bowl.

Till 7.45 he addressed them shortly on the value of punctuality in the military life, and then they all piled out into the street, led by Colonel Wagstaff, the bowl and Sergeant Torbin, and cantered through the village to the yard of the Drill Hall where the Chesterford bus was waiting.

It was a typical, dead, East Anglian bus stop on the edge of the North Sea marshes. The bus was not lit up, and there was no sign of the driver. The colonel swore it was a disgrace and that Sergeant Torbin would never catch his train at Chesterford.

‘What time does it go?' Bill asked.

‘I don't know. But you might very easily miss it. It's a damned shame! Here's a gallant ally trusting conscientously to the Chesterford Corporation to get him to camp before midnight, and he lands in the guardroom because their bloody buses can't run to time! I've a good mind to teach them a lesson. Anyone want to go to Chesterford?'

About half a dozen of them agreed that it would be a reasonable act of protest to run the bus themselves, whether they wanted to go to Chesterford or not.

Wagstaff opened the driver's door and switched on all the lights. Bill was fresh from a lecture in which he had been told to behave in England with the formality of the English. He decided that he had better be American and hire a car. But the colonel had tossed the bowl on to the driving seat and was just about to sit on it. Bill rescued it with a quarter of an inch to spare, and found himself on the way to Chesterford.

The colonel was roaring along between the hedges when the auctioneer's clerk leaned forward and tapped Bill on the shoulder.

‘Sergeant,' he said. ‘It is 8.45 the bus starts, not 7.45. You had better go back and catch it.'

Wagstaff jumped on the brake, and Sergeant Torbin just managed to save the bowl from violent contact with the dashboard. Several of the passengers slid on to the floor, where they continued to sing ‘Down Mexico Way' half a bar behind the rest.

‘So it is,' the colonel exclaimed. ‘Changed it last week! Well, I'll teach 'em to monkey with the timetable.' And he let in the clutch, cursed the gears, found top and put his foot down.

Bill was still wondering whether the auctioneer's clerk was sober or whether his liquor just made him more clerkly, when the man leaned forward again and tapped the colonel. ‘Has it occurred to you, sir,' he suggested precisely, ‘that it might be thought you had stolen a corporation bus?'

Sergeant Torbin cuddled the bowl, and this time only bumped his elbow.

‘We'll get out here, chaps,' the colonel said, pulling up so close to the hedge that they couldn't and had to get out by the driver's door—all except the boat-builder's foreman who broke the glass over the emergency exit and managed to make it work. ‘The Bull is just up the road.'

The Bull was a small riverside pub, empty except for two farm hands and a ferryman. It fulfilled, far better than The Greyhound, all Bill's expectations of the quiet English inn.

‘Mr Baker and gentlemen,' Wagstaff announced from the head of the procession, ‘we are celebrating the acquisition of a Greek drinking bowl. Could we allow it to go to America? Never!'

‘Say, why not?' Bill asked.

‘Because they don't drink wine in America. They drink gin.'

Bill was about to say that it was not true, and that works of art were appreciated a darn sight more than … but he was too late.

‘What's wrong with filling her up with gin?' asked the boat-builder's foreman.

‘Neat?' protested Mr Baker.

‘It is indeed long,' said the colonel, ‘since she was accustomed to those heights of felicity where you, Mr Baker, would be legally bound to refuse to serve us. So slowly, slowly. Gin and tonic. Half and half. Old Greek custom. Always put water with it. Not the men we are today.' And he began to sing ‘Land of Our Fathers' at the top of his voice.

Mr Baker had just filled the bowl when Torbin's ear, trained by conversation in the presence of jet engines, heard the bus draw up outside. He shouted the news at Wagstaff.

The colonel sprang into action. ‘Right, Bill! Our fault! Won't get you mixed up in it!'

He pushed the sergeant on to the window-seat, made him lie down and covered his uniform with a couple of overcoats. When the bus driver, accompanied by a full load of cops from a police car, crashed through the door, he was kneeling at Bill's side and bathing his forehead with gin and tonic out of the bowl.

‘Now which of you gentlemen—' a policeman began.

The colonel kept his handkerchief firmly over Bill's mouth and explained in a voice which was the very perfection of quiet respectability that he had bought a priceless Athenian cylix at the late vicar's late niece's auction, and that an American art dealer had endeavoured to steal it from him outside The Greyhound.

Foiled by these gallant citizens and especially by this poor fellow—he tenderly mopped Bill's forehead with gin—the art dealer had made his escape in a corporation bus. They followed, some on foot, some clinging to the vehicle. The bus stopped suddenly just down the road, and the fellow bolted into the darkness before they could get hold of him.

‘There was a tall, dark American sergeant in Falkstead this afternoon,' said another cop.

They all swore that it wasn't the sergeant. No, a civilian. A little, fairish chap.

‘And six of you couldn't stop him?'

‘He had a gun,' said the boat-builder's foreman, and choked into his handkerchief.

The bus driver, having no official duty to believe unanimous witnesses, went straight to the point which interested him.

‘Which of you blokes broke the window above the emergency door?'

‘I did,' answered the colonel magnificently. ‘It was an emergency.'