The Orpheus Descent (16 page)

At first, they said, she barely felt a thing. A bit of pain where the fangs had punctured her calf, just over the top of her boot. A trickle of blood running into her sock. They even carried on the game for a few vital moments while she sat under a tree, rubbing the wound and chatting quite normally. The snake had vanished into the ground; Lily said it was no longer than her arm.

Five minutes later, the poison hit. Her face and neck puffed red as a balloon; her veins popped, her eyes bulged, her tongue swelled until it forced its way out of her mouth. She writhed on the ground as the pain shot through her back.

It was Adam who saved her. While Charis cried and Richard talked about calling an ambulance, Adam lifted her in his arms and got Julian to help him carry her out of the meadow. He laid her on the back seat of the hire car, and drove her fifteen kilometres to the hospital at Aegion. When Julian suggested that he might kill all three of them, the way he was driving, he almost kicked him out of the car.

Jonah got back fifteen minutes later. Menelaos had the only other car but he wouldn’t take him: he said there was nothing they could do. Jonah walked two miles to the main road and flagged down a lorry going in the right direction. It dropped him on the outskirts of town; after that, it took almost an hour to find the hospital. Julian met him in the crowded waiting room.

‘She’s unconscious. The doctors say she’s fifty-fifty.’

‘Fifty-fifty
what?
’

Julian pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. ‘Fifty-fifty that she’ll make it.’

He chattered on with words that Jonah barely heard:
antivenom … organ failure … sedation …

‘I have to see her.’

‘Adam’s with her.’ Julian laid a hand on his arm. ‘Let the doctors do their thing.’

Jonah shook him off. ‘I have to see her,’ he repeated. He looked around for someone to help, though he didn’t speak Greek. Instead, he saw Adam coming through a pair of double doors. His face was white as death, his shoulders hunched.

‘How—?’

‘No change. They won’t know for ages. They said to wait out here.’

That night, Adam and Jonah sat together in the waiting room, barely talking. When a nurse told them they could visit again, they both trooped through and took seats on opposite sides of Lily’s bed. She looked like a prisoner. A breathing tube snaked down her open mouth into her throat, while fat bundles of tubes and cables stuck to her like cobwebs.

Eventually, Adam looked up, ‘There’s no point us both being here. The doctor said it could be hours, even days. Better to take turns.’

‘No.’ There was so much poison in her body, and she was so weak. She needed him there. ‘You can go, if you want.’

He was too tired to pretend. The emotion in his voice was raw and explicit. No way to mistake it. Adam stared at him.

‘Are you and Lily …?’

Jonah nodded. Since that day in the sea cave, he and Lily had been behaving like fifteen year olds on a family holiday. Sneaking away at every opportunity, swimming round to the next beach, legs touching under the table at supper. Every moment snatched, illicit. Somehow, it would have felt like a betrayal of the group to confess.

And I don’t want to upset Adam
, she’d said.
He’ll take it badly.

‘I thought so.’ Adam took a sip from his water bottle. His face was pinched in furious concentration, as though this was some sort of mathematical problem he could solve with his intellect. ‘She likes you.’

Jonah didn’t know what to say. They stood on opposite sides of the bed, Lily between them. All he could hear was the hiss of the air pipe, the soft pulse of the machines.

Adam stroked Lily’s arm, strapped to the bed so she didn’t pull out the tubes by moving it.

‘Call me if anything changes.’

A universe of space seemed to hang between them. Jonah said, ‘You saved her life. The doctors said another five minutes and it would have been too late.’

A tear ran down Adam’s nose and he wiped it away angrily. ‘You’d have done the same if you’d been there.’

Lily spent forty-two hours unconscious. The whole time, Jonah was either at her bedside during visiting hours, or dozing in the waiting room. The second night, one of the nurses took pity on him and let him stay in the room after curfew. He sat in the chair, drifting into rapid-fire dreams that always ended with hours still to go until dawn.

He must have fallen asleep because at last the sun woke him, pale gold coming through the window. The light fell on Lily’s face through the cocoon of cables, painting life onto the pale skin.

She stirred, blinked, and opened her eyes. Jonah gaped, then lunged across the room for the call button. Lily wanted to say something, but the tube in her throat prevented her. He kissed her forehead and held her gaze, saying it all with his eyes.

It was only when he knew she’d make it that he finally understood it might have been different. Until then, he’d refused to let himself admit the possibility, because to admit it was to let it in, and he’d been holding back death for three days. He just had enough time to call Adam before he collapsed from exhaustion.

Once the poison had worn off, the doctors said, the symptoms should pass quickly. They discharged Lily the same afternoon. That night, he went to the room she shared with Charis. Charis answered his knock.

‘She’s sleeping. I was just going down to see if Adam wants a drink. He’s been pretty cut up about all this.’

‘I’ll keep her company.’

The air-conditioner above the window was going full blast, so cold that Lily had pulled a blanket over herself. Jonah sat on Charis’s bed, feet on the floor, hands clasped like a prayer.

‘I love you,’ he said aloud.

Lily opened her eyes. He didn’t know if she’d heard.

‘Can you open the window?’ she said. ‘It’s freezing in here.’

‘The doctors said to keep you cool.’

‘I need fresh air. Please.’

Jonah pulled open the window. After so long in the sterile hospital, the taste of life in the air overwhelmed him. He turned off the air-conditioner. For long moments, they luxuriated in the silence.

‘How’s Adam?’

‘Glad you’re better.’ He didn’t want to think about Adam now, but he could see she expected more. ‘He wants to know what you felt, before you got to hospital. If you saw shining lights, met God, anything like that.’

She pulled him down onto the bed. He lay beside her, outside the blanket, feeling her body rise and fall against him as she breathed.

‘It was dark and frightening – no stars or shining lights. I didn’t see God, I’m afraid, or any big revelation. All I could think was, there’s so much more I want to do in life. With you.’

She pushed back the blanket. Underneath, she was wearing a T-shirt, one of his, though he hadn’t lent it to her. She must have taken it when he wasn’t looking. She raised her arms and he tugged it off, so that she lay perfectly naked beside him.

‘Is it safe?’ he whispered.

‘I’m not going to poison you.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Life’s too short.’ She hugged her arms to herself. ‘Unless you don’t want …’

Gently, carefully, Jonah manoeuvred himself over her and kissed the nape of her neck.

‘I do.’

The glass room seemed to turn inside out. The wall behind him throbbed with the sound of a ball being thrown against it.

‘I’ve told Yolanda not to let them – not inside the house,’ Charis fretted. She looked back at the paper, mouthing words to herself.

‘Why did she send this?’ Jonah asked aloud.

‘Something to work on over the winter? The Italians would never have let her take the original out of the country.’

‘She could have stuck the copy in her bag and brought it with us. Why send it?’

He caught Charis giving him a funny look. Her chest shone with sweat; the strap of her top had fallen off her shoulder.

‘What?’

‘Listen to yourself, darling. Do you really think an ancient Greek tablet is going to tell you where Lily is?’

‘She put it in the post the day she vanished. There has to be a connection.’

You’ve got nothing else
, said a voice inside him.

‘So what do you want me to do?’

‘Can you translate it? See if there’s anything unusual about it?’

‘It’ll take time – it’s a tricky text. Can I keep it for a bit?’

‘It’s all I’ve got.’

‘I’ll take a copy.’ She jumped up, pulled him to his feet and led him upstairs. In another room, a child screamed as though its world had ended. A second child joined in, punctuated by the nanny’s exasperated shouts. Charis didn’t seem to notice.

The study was cool after the oven-heat of the conservatory. A white computer stood on a white desk; white bookshelves lined the room. There was a white bed with white sheets, presumably in case the guests overflowed the other five bedrooms. A black bare-breasted goddess stood on a side table, head tipped back and arms offering two snakes to the heavens.

The printer-copier hummed as Charis ran the paper through it. Jonah stood by the window, staring down at the lawn. The crying had stopped. All he could hear was the drone of the city on an August day.

Her naked feet made no sound on the white carpet, but suddenly her voice was very close behind him.

‘Can you stay for supper?’

‘I should get back.’

‘We can have the place to ourselves. I’ll have Yolanda take the kids to the cinema. Bill’s in Frankfurt,’ she added.

He turned. Charis stood almost touching him, back arched, head tipped back. Her musky perfume filled the room.

Jonah put his hand on her bare shoulder. The wine turned his thoughts to haze: he felt drunk.

He pushed her away. She took two steps back and sat down on the bed. She started to unbutton her top.

‘What are you doing?’

She paused, surprised. ‘Darling …’

She reached out for his belt. A wave of fury crackled through him: he slapped her hand away. To be doing this when Lily needed him – to be doing it at all – was wrong wrong wrong. Like …

Like dancing on Lily’s grave
, his brain supplied.

Charis stood and straightened her top. Her face had gone hard and grey.

‘You don’t have to play Sir Galahad. What do you think Lily’s doing right now?’

‘She’s missing.’

‘She isn’t missing, darling. She’s left you.’

The wine had softened him up, but the words still hit him like a punch in the gut.

‘She’s missing,’ he repeated, hiding behind the phrase like a wall. Charis’s laugh knocked it down again.

‘Be a grown-up. You said the police spoke to her this morning. Listen to what they’re saying, what she’s saying. Do you have any idea what she was getting up to in Italy?’

He shook his head. He wanted to make her understand, but all the things he could say –
She would have called; she wouldn’t leave me
– didn’t scratch the surface of what he felt. He just
knew
.

Charis hugged her arms across her chest. ‘Believe what you want. I just felt sorry for you.’

Jonah took the paper from the printer and left the copy in the tray.

‘If you want to help, tell me what that says.’

He walked out the door. He heard her coming after him on the stairs but didn’t look back. In the kitchen, the ball had started bouncing again. He fumbled with the front door latch.

‘Jonah?’

He looked, despite himself. Charis stood halfway down the stairs, her face in shadow. She looked as if she’d started to cry, though it was probably just sweat.

‘I hope you find her.’

He walked and walked, meandering through the sticky city. It was easier than thinking.

He drifted south, like a raindrop trickling down to the river without ever understanding the gravity that pulls it. He’d have to go back to the flat, but he couldn’t bear even thinking about the emptiness there.

Eventually, he found himself on the Tottenham Court Road. A black sign with gold lettering pointed left to the British Museum.

There’s one down the road in the British Museum, I think.

He followed the sign, climbed the steps between the soaring Ionic columns, and got directions to a distant gallery far removed from the noise of the Great Court.

The gold lay sandwiched between cloudy Perspex, locked in a display case in a corner of the room. It was even smaller than Charis had said, not much bigger than a large postage stamp. He had to stoop and shade the glare with his hands to see the tiny writing. Next to it, a cylindrical gold case hung on a gold chain. A card carried a typed translation of the text.

Gold tablet with an Orphic inscription and the pendant case that contained it
, the label informed him.

He looked at it for a long time. No one disturbed him or asked him to move: this part of the museum was too far from the gift shops and cafés for most people to bother with. Even if they’d asked, he wouldn’t have heard them. His gaze was fixed – not on the tablet, but on the case beside it.

He’d seen it before – or one just like it. Three days ago, sketched in Lily’s drawing in the Field Journal at Sibari.

He took out his phone.

Perhaps it would be easiest if I recounted a conversation I once had with Diotima, and the questions she asked me.

Plato
, Symposium

Akolouthei.

A single word printed in the mud outside the doorstep, wet where the slaves had tipped out their washing water.
Follow me
.

In the
andron
behind me, Euphemus, Dimos and the doctor were still snoring on their couches where they’d passed out, naked. One of the dancers – Aphrodite, I think – lay curled up against Euphemus’ chest. For a moment, when I saw her, I thought she might be Diotima. I would have killed him.

I’d made it to bed the night before, but it hadn’t helped. My head hurt; my stomach felt as if I’d swallowed a stone. I wanted to vomit. Judging by the smell, I wouldn’t have been the first. I tottered to the door, threw it open – and saw the word in the mud.

Akolouthei. Follow me.