The Little Drummer Girl (17 page)

"It's a tent," she whispered, momentarily drawing him to a halt. "Right? Sex on the South Col. How did you guess my secret appetites?"

But he was striding strongly ahead of her. She was breathless but she could go all day when she felt like it, so her breathlessness came from something else. They had joined a wide path. Before them two grey figures in uniform were standing guard over a small stone hut on which a light-bulb burned inside a wire cage. Joseph went forward to them and she heard the responsive murmur of their greeting. The hut stood between two iron gates. Behind one lay the city again, now a distant blaze of busy lights; but behind the other lay only pitch darkness and it was to the darkness that they were about to be admitted, for she heard the clank of keys and the creak of iron as the gate swung slowly on its hinges. For a moment, the panic got her. What am I doing here? Where am I? Bolt, nitwit, bolt. The men were officials or policemen and she guessed by their sheepishness that Joseph had bribed them. They all looked at their watches, and as he raised his wrist she saw the glint of his flashy cream shirt and cuff-links. Now Joseph was beckoning her forward. She pressed back and saw two girls standing below her on the path, looking up. He was calling to her. She started for the open gate. She felt the policemen's eyes undress her and it occurred to her that Joseph had not yet looked at her that way; he had not supplied the crude evidence of wanting her. In her uncertainty she wished urgently that he would.

The gate shut behind her. There were steps, and after the steps a path of slippery rock. She heard him warning her to take care. She would have put her arm around him, but he manoeuvred her ahead of him saying her view must not be hampered by his own bulk. So it's a view, she thought. The second-best view in the world. The rock must have been marble, for it shone even in the darkness and her leather soles slipped on it perilously. Once she almost fell, but his hand caught her with a speed and strength that made Al's puny. Once she squeezed her arm to her side, making his knuckles press against her breast. Feel, she told him desperately in her mind. It's mine, the first of two; the left one is marginally more erogenous than the right, but who's counting? The path zigzagged, the darkness grew thinner and felt hot to her, as if it had retained the day's sun. Below her, through the trees, the city fell away like a departing planet; above her she was aware only of a jagged blackness of towers and scaffolding. The rumbling of the traffic died, leaving the night to the cicadas.

"Walk slowly now, please."

She knew by his tone that whatever it was, it was near. The path zigzagged again; they came to a wooden staircase. Steps, a flat stretch, then steps again. Joseph walked lightly here, and she copied his example, so that once again their stealth united them. Side by side they passed through a vast gateway, of which the sheer scale made her lift her head. As she did so, she saw a red half moon slip down from among the stars and take its place among the pillars of the Parthenon.

She whispered, "God." She felt inadequate and, for a second, utterly lonely. She walked forward slowly, like someone advancing on a mirage, waiting for it to turn to nothing, but it didn't. She walked the length of it, looking for a place to climb aboard, but at the first staircase a prim notice said"ascent is not allowed." Suddenly, for no clear reason, she was running. She was running heaven-bent between the boulders, making for the dark edge of this unearthly city, only half aware that Joseph in his silk shirt was jogging effortlessly at her side. She was laughing and talking at the same time; she was saying the things that she was told she said in bed--whatever came into her mind. She had the feeling she could escape her body and run into the sky without falling. Slowing to a walk, she reached the parapet and flopped over it, gazing downward into the lighted island ringed with the black ocean of the Attic plain. She looked back and saw him watching her from a few paces off.

"Thank you," she said at last.

Going over to him, she grasped his head in both hands and kissed him on the mouth, a five-year kiss, first without the tongue, then with it, tilting his head this way and that and inspecting his face between whiles, as if to measure the effect of her work, and this time they held each other long enough for her to know: absolutely yes, it works.

"Thanks, Jose," she repeated, only to feel him pulling back. His head slipped from her grasp, his hands unlocked her arms and returned them to her sides. He had left her, amazingly, with nothing.

Mystified and nearly angry, she stared at his motionless sentinel's face in the moonlight. In her time, she reckoned she had known them all. The closet gays who bluffed until they wept. The too-old virgins haunted by imagined clouds of impotence. The would-be Don Juans and fabled studs who withdrew from the brink in a fit of timidity or conscience. And there had been enough honest tenderness in her, as a rule, to turn mother or sister or the other thing and make a bond with any one of them. But in Joseph, as she gazed into the shadowed sockets of his eyes, she sensed a reluctance she had never met before. It was not that he lacked desire, not that he lacked capacity. She was too old a trouper to mistake the tension and confidence of his embrace. Rather it was as though his aim lay out beyond her somewhere, and by withholding himself he were trying to tell her so.

"Shall I thank you again?" she asked.

For a moment longer he remained gazing at her in the silence. Then he lifted his wrist and looked at his gold watch by the moonlight.

"I think actually, since we have too little time already, I should show you some of the temples here. You allow me to bore you?"

In the extraordinary hiatus that had risen between them, he was counting on her to support his view of abstinence.

"Jose, I want the lot," she declared, flinging an arm through his and bearing him off as if he were a trophy. "Who built it, how much did it cost, what did they worship, and did it work? You can bore me till life us do part."

It never occurred to her he wouldn't have the answers, and she was right. He lectured her, she listened; he walked her sedately from temple to temple, she followed, holding his arm, thinking: I'll be your sister, your pupil, your anything. I'll hold you up and say it was all you, I'll lay you down and say it was all me, I'll get that smile out of you if it kills me.

"No, Charlie," he replied gravely, "Propylaea was not a goddess, but the gateway to a sanctuary. The word came from propylon; the Greeks used the plural form to give distinction to the holy places."

"Learn it up specially for us, Jose, did you?"

"Of course. All for you. Why not?"

"I could do that. Mind like a sponge, me. You'd be amazed. One peek at the books, I'd be your instant expert."

He stopped; she stopped with him.

"Then repeat it to me," he said.

She didn't believe him at first, she suspected he was teasing her. Then, grasping him by the arms, she turned him sharply round and marched him back over the course while she repeated to him everything he had told her.

"Will I do?" They were at the end again. "Do I get second-best prize?"

She waited for another of his famous three-minute warnings: "It is not the shrine of Agrippa,it is the monument Apart from this one small error, I would say you were word perfect. Felicitations."

At the same moment, from far below them, she heard a car hooting, three deliberate bursts, and she knew the sound was meant for him, for he at once lifted his head and considered it, like an animal scenting the wind, before yet again looking at his watch. The coach has turned into a pumpkin, she thought; time good children were in bed and telling one another what the hell they're all about.

They had already started down the hill when Joseph paused to gaze into the melancholy Theatre of Dionysos, an empty bowl lit only by the moon and the stray beams of distant lights. It's a last look, she thought in bewilderment as she watched his motionless black shape against the lights of the city.

"I read somewhere that no true drama can ever be a private statement," he remarked. "Novels, poems, yes. But not drama. Drama must have an application to reality. Drama must be useful. Do you believe that?"

"In Burton-on-Trent Women's Institute?" she replied, with a laugh. "Playing Helen of Troy at pensioners' Saturday matinées?"

"I'm serious. Tell me what you think."

"About theatre?"

"About its uses."

She felt disconcerted by his earnestness. Too much was hanging on her answer.

"Well, I agree," she said awkwardly. "Theatre should be useful. It should make people share and feel. It should--well, waken people's awareness."

"Be real, therefore? You are sure?"

"Sure I'm sure."

"Well, then," he said, as if in that case she shouldn't blame him.

"Well, then," she echoed gaily.

We are mad, she decided. Barking, certifiable loonies, the pair of us. The policeman saluted them on their way down to earth.

She thought at first he was playing a bad joke on her. Except for the Mercedes, the road was empty and the Mercedes stood all alone in it. On a bench not far from it a couple sat necking; otherwise there was nobody around. Its colour was dark but not black. It was parked close to the grass bank and the front number plate was not visible. She had liked Mercedes all her driving life, and she could tell by its solidity that this one was coach-built, and by its trim and aerials that it was someone's special toy with all the extras. He had taken her arm and it was not till they were almost alongside the driver's door that she realised he was proposing to open it. She saw him slip a key into the keyhole, and the buttons of all four locks pop up at once, and the next thing she knew he was leading her round to the passenger door while she asked him what the hell was going on.

"Don't you care for it?" he asked, with an airy lightness that she immediately suspected. "Shall I order a different one? I thought you had a weakness for fine cars."

"You mean you've hired it?"

"Not strictly. It has been lent to us for our journey."

He was holding the door open. She didn't get in.

"Lent who by?"

"A kind friend."

"What's his name?"

"Charlie, don't be entirely ridiculous. Herbert. Karl. What difference does a name make? Would you prefer the egalitarian discomforts of a Greek Fiat?"

"Where's my luggage?"

"In the boot. Dimitri put it there on my instructions. Do you want to take a look and reassure yourself?"

"I'm not going in this thing, it's crazy."

She got in nevertheless, and in no time he was sitting next to her, starting the engine. He was wearing driving gloves. Black leather ones with air holes in the back. He must have had them in his pocket and put them on as he got in. The gold round his wrists was very bright against them. He drove fast and skilfully. She didn't like that either--that wasn't how you drove friends' cars. Her door was locked. He had relocked them all with his central locking switch. He had turned on the radio and it was playing plaintive Greek music.

"How do I open this bloody window?" she said.

He pressed a button and the warm night wind washed over her, bringing the scent of resin. But he only let the window down a couple of inches.

"Do this often, do we?" she asked loudly. "One of our little things, is it? Taking ladies to unknown destinations at twice the speed of sound?"

No answer. He was gazing intently ahead of him. Who is he? Oh my dear soul--as her bloody mother would say--who is he? The car filled with light. She swung round and saw through the rear window a pair of headlamps about a hundred yards behind them, neither gaining nor losing.

"They ours or theirs?" she asked.

She was actually settling down again when she realised what else had caught her eye. A red blazer, lying along the back seat, brass buttons like the brass buttons in Nottingham and York: and, she wouldn't mind betting, a breath of the twenties about the cut.

She asked him for a cigarette.

"Why don't you look in the compartment?" he said, without turning his head. She pulled it open and saw a packet of Marlboros. A silk scarf lay beside them and a pair of expensive Polaroid sunglasses. She took out the scarf and sniffed it, and it smelt of men's toilet water. She helped herself to a cigarette. With his gloved hand, Joseph passed her the glowing lighter from the dashboard.

"Your chum a snappy dresser, is he?"

"Quite. Yes, he is. Why do you ask?'

"That his red blazer there on the back seat, or yours?"

He glanced swiftly at her as if impressed, then returned his eyes to the road.

"Let us say it is his but I have borrowed it," he replied calmly as the car's speed increased.

"You borrow his sunglasses too, did you? I should think you bloody well needed them, sitting right up by the footlights like that. Nearly joined the cast. Your name's Richthoven, right?"

"Right."

"First name Peter but you prefer Joseph. Living in Vienna, trading a little, studying a little." She paused but he said nothing. "In a box," she persisted. "Number seven-six-two, main post office. Right?"

She saw his head nod slightly in approval of her memory. The needle of the speedometer had climbed to 130 kilometres.

"Nationality undeclared, a sensitive mongrel," she went on breezily. "You've got three babies and two wives. All in a box."

"No wives, no babies."

"Never? Or none extant at the time of speaking?"

"None extant."

"Don't think I mind, Jose. I'd positively welcome it, actually. Anything to define you just now. Anything at all. That's how girls are--nosy."

She realised she was still holding the scarf. She tossed it into the compartment and shut the door with a bang. The road was straight but very narrow, the needle had reached 140 kilometres, she could feel the panic forming inside her and battling with her artificial calm.

"Mind telling us some good news, would you? Something to put a person at her ease?"

"The good news is that I have lied to you as little as possible and that in a short time from now you will understand the many good reasons for your being with us."