This Rough Magic (28 page)

I was paid out when we did finally run Menecrates to earth in the garden of the police station, and the custodian, welcoming us as if the last tourist to visit
it had been Herr Karl Baedeker himself in 1909, pressed on me a faded document to read, and thereafter solemnly walked me round the thing three times, while Godfrey sat on the wall and smoked, and the lovely dusk fell, and the hands of my watch slid imperceptibly round, and into the clear …

‘After six o’clock,’ said Godfrey, rising. ‘Well, I hope you’ve time to have a drink with me before I take you home? The Astir has a very nice terrace overlooking the harbour.’

‘That would be wonderful,’ I said.

I prithee now lead the way without any more talking
.

II
. 2.

It was quite dark when Godfrey finally drove me back to the Villa Forli. I said goodbye at the front door, waited till the car had vanished among the trees, then turned and hurried indoors.

A light from the kitchen showed that either Miranda or her mother was there; but the
salotto
was empty in its cool, grey dusk, and no light showed from Phyl’s bedroom door. In a moment I knew why: I had made straight for the telephone, and just before I lifted the receiver I saw the pale oblong of a note left on the table beside it. I switched on the table-lamp, to find a note from Phyl.

‘
Lucy dear
(it ran),
Got a wire this afternoon to say that Leo and the kids are coming on Saturday, and he can stay two whole weeks. Calloo, callay!

Anyway, I’ve gone into Corfu to lay in a few things. Don’t wait for me if you’re hungry. There’s plenty for G. too, if he wants to stay. Love, Phyl
.’

As I finished reading this, Miranda came into the hall.

‘Oh, it’s you, Miss Lucy! I thought I heard a car. Did you see the letter from the Signora?’

‘Yes, thank you. Look, Miranda, there’s no need for you to stay. Mr Manning’s gone home, and my sister may be late, so if there’s something cold I can get—’

‘I came to tell you. She telephoned just a few minutes ago. She has met friends in Corfu – Italian friends who are spending one night only – and is having dinner with them. She said if you wanted to go, to get a taxi and join them at the Corfu Palace, but’ – a dimple showed – ‘none of them speaks any English, so she thinks you would rather stay here, yes?’

I laughed. ‘But definitely yes. Well, in that case, I’ll have a bath, and then have supper as soon as you like. But I can easily look after myself, you know. If you’ll tell me what there is, you can go home if you want to.’

‘No, no, I shall stay. There is a cold lobster, and salad, but I am making soup.’ She gave her wide, flashing smile. ‘I make good soup, Miss Lucy. You will like it.’

‘I’m sure I shall. Thank you.’

She didn’t go, but lingered at the edge of the light thrown by the little lamp, her hands busily, almost nervously, pleating the skirt of the red dress. I realised, then, suddenly, what my preoccupation hadn’t let me notice till now; this was not the subdued and tear-bleached Miranda of the last week. Some of the gloss was back on her, and there was a sort of eagerness in her face, as if she was on the edge of speech.

But all she said was: ‘Of course I will stay. I had a day
off this afternoon. A day off? Is that what the Signora calls it?’

‘Yes, that’s right. The afternoon off. What do you do when you get an afternoon off?’

She hesitated again, and I saw her skin darken and glow. ‘Sometimes also Adoni has the afternoon off.’

‘I see.’ I couldn’t quite keep the uneasiness out of my voice. So she had spent the afternoon with Adoni. It might be that fact alone which had set her shining again, but I wondered if anyone as young as Adoni could possibly be trusted not to have told her about Spiro. Even for myself, the temptation to break the news to the girl and her mother had been very strong, while for the nineteen-year-old Adoni, longing, like anyone of his age, to boast of his own share in last night’s exploits, the urge must have been overwhelming. I added: ‘No, don’t go for a moment, Miranda; I want to make a phone call in rather a hurry, and I don’t know how to ask for the number. The Castello, please; Mr Max.’

‘But he is not there, he is away.’

‘I know, but he was to be back before six.’

She shook her head. ‘He will not be here till late, Adoni told me so. Mr Max rang up at five o’clock. He said he would be home tonight, but late, and not to expect him to dinner.’

‘Oh.’ I found that I had sat down rather heavily in the chair beside the telephone, as if the news was in actual physical fact a let-down. I did not think then of the effort that had been wasted, but simply of the empty spaces of the evening that stretched ahead,
without news … and without him. ‘Did he say anything else?’

‘Only that “nothing had changed”.’ She gave the words inverted commas, and there was something puzzled and inquiring in her look that told me what I had wanted to know. Adoni had after all kept his word: the girl had no idea that there was anything afoot.

Meanwhile I must make do with what crumbs I had. ‘Nothing had changed.’ We could presumably expect him on the late ferry, but if nothing had changed, it didn’t sound as if a police escort was likely, so he might not bring Spiro back with him, either. More I could not guess, but my part in the affair was decidedly over for the day; I couldn’t have kept Godfrey any longer, and it didn’t seem now as if it was going to matter.

‘Where was Mr Max speaking from?’

‘I don’t know. From Athens, I suppose.’

‘From
Athens
? At five o’clock? But if he was planning to come back tonight—’

‘I forgot. It couldn’t have been Athens, could it? Adoni didn’t say, just that it was the mainland.’ She waved a hand largely. ‘Somewhere over there, that’s all.’ And, her tone implied, it didn’t matter much one way or the other. Outside Corfu, all places were the same, and not worth visiting anyway.

I laughed, and she laughed with me, the first spontaneous sound of pleasure that I had heard from her since the news of her brother’s loss. I said: ‘What is it, Miranda? You seem excited tonight. Has something nice happened?’

She was opening her lips to answer, when some sound from the kitchen made her whisk round. ‘The soup! I must go! Excuse me!’ And she vanished towards the kitchen door.

I went to have my bath, then made my way to the dining room, where Miranda was just setting the contents of a large tray out in lonely state at one end of the table. She showed no desire to leave me, but hovered anxiously as I tasted the soup, and glowed again at my praise. We talked cooking all through the soup, and while I helped myself to the lobster salad. I asked no more questions, but ate, and listened, and wondered again what magic the ‘afternoon off’ with young Adoni had done for her. (I should say here that Miranda’s English, unlike Adoni’s, was not nearly as good as I have reported it; but it was rapid enough, and perfectly understandable, so for the sake of clarity I have translated it fairly freely.)

‘This is a dressing from the Signora’s book,’ she told me, handing a dish. ‘She does not like the Greek dressing, so I have tried it from the French book. Is it good? You had a nice day, Miss Lucy?’

‘Lovely, thanks. We went to the Achilleion.’

‘I have been there once. It is very wonderful, is it not?’

‘Very. Then we had tea at Benitses.’

‘Benitses? Why did you go there? There is nothing at Benitses! In Corfu it is better.’

‘I wanted to see it, and to drive back along the sea. Besides, I was longing for some tea, and Corfu was too far, and I wanted to look at some antiquities on the way home.’

She knitted her brows. ‘Antiquities? Oh, you mean statues, like the ones on the Esplanade, the fine English ones.’

‘In a way, though those aren’t old enough. It really means things many hundreds of years old, like the things in the Museum in Corfu.’

‘Are they valuable, these antiquities?’

‘Very. I don’t know if you could say what they were worth in terms of money, but I’d say they’re beyond price. Have you seen them?’

She shook her head. She said nothing, but that was because she was biting her lips together as if forcibly to prevent speech. Her eyes were brilliant.

I stopped with my glass halfway to my mouth. ‘Miranda, what is it? Something
has
happened – you can’t pretend – you look as if you’d been given a present. Can’t you tell me?’

She took in her breath with something of a gulp. Her fingers were once again pleating and unpleating a fold of her skirt. ‘It is something … something Adoni has found.’

I put down the glass. It clattered against the table. I waited.

A silence, then she said, with a rush: ‘Adoni and I, we found it together, this afternoon. When I got the afternoon off, I went over to the Castello …’ She sent me a sideways glance. ‘Sometimes, you see, Adoni works in the garden while Sir Gale sleeps, and then we talk. But today, Mr Karithis was visiting with Sir Gale, and they told me Adoni had gone to swim. So I went down to the bay.’

‘Yes?’ She had my attention now, every scrap of it.

‘I could not find him, so after a bit I walked along the path, round the rocks towards the Villa Rotha. Then I saw him. He was up the cliff, coming out of a bush.’

‘Coming out of a
bush
?’

‘It was really a cave,’ explained Miranda. ‘Everybody knows that there are caves in the rock under the Castello, they used to use them for wine; and Adoni told me that he had seen down through a crack, and heard water, so he knew that there must be more caves below. This island is full of caves. Why, over near Ermones—’

‘Adoni had found a new cave?’

She nodded. ‘He had not been on that part of the cliff before. I did not know he was interested in – I don’t know the word – exploring? Thank you. But today he said he said he wanted to find out where the water was that lay under the Castello, and he knew that Mr Manning was away with you, so it was all right. I think’ – here she dimpled – ‘that he was not very pleased to see me. I think he had heard me, and thought it was Mr Manning come back. He looked quite frightened.’

And well he might, I thought. My heart was bumping a bit. ‘Go on, what had he found?’

Her face went all at once solemn, and lighted. ‘He had found proof.’

I jumped. ‘
Proof
?’

‘That is what he said. Myself, I do not think that proof is needed, but that is what he said.’

‘
Miranda!
’ I heard my voice rise sharply on the
word, and controlled it. ‘Please explain. I have no idea what you’re talking about. What proof had Adoni found?’

‘Proof of St Spiridion and his miracles.’

I sat back in my chair. She stared at me solemnly, and as the silence drew out I felt my heart-beats slowing down to normal. I had a near-hysterical desire to laugh, but managed to stop myself. After a while I said gently: ‘Well, go on. Tell me … no, don’t hover there, I’ve finished, thank you. Look, would you like to bring the coffee, and then sit down here and have some with me and tell me all about it?’

She hurried out, but when she came back with the coffee, she refused to take any with me, or to sit down, but stood gripping a chair-back, obviously bursting to get on with her story.

I poured coffee. ‘Go on. What’s this about the Saint?’

‘You were at the procession on Palm Sunday.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then perhaps you know about the Saint, the patron of this island?’

‘Yes, I know about him. I read a lot about the island before I came here. He was Bishop of Cyprus, wasn’t he, who was tortured by the Romans, and after he died his body was embalmed, and carried from place to place until it came to Corfu. We have a Saint like that in England, too, called Cuthbert. There are lots of stories about him, and about the miracles his body did.’

‘In England also?’ It was plain that she had never credited that cold and misty land with anything as
heart-warming as a real Saint. ‘Then you understand that we of Corfu are taught all about our Saint as children, and many stories of the miracles and marvels. And they are true. I know this.’

‘Of course.’

She swallowed. ‘But there are other stories – stories that Sir Gale has told me of the Saint, that I have never heard before. He – my
koumbàros
– told us many tales when we were children, Spiro and me. He is a very learned man, as learned as the
papàs
(the priest), and he knows very many stories about Greece, the stories of our history that we learn in school, Pericles and Alexander and Odysseus and Agamemnon, and also stories of our Saint, things that happened long, long ago, in this very place, things that the
papàs
never told us, and that I have not heard before.’

She paused. I said: ‘Yes?’ but I knew what was coming now.

‘He has told us how the Saint lived here, in a cave, and had his daughter with him, a princess she was, very beautiful. He had angels and devils to do his bidding, and worked much magic, raising storms and stilling them, and saving the shipwrecked sailors.’

She paused doubtfully. ‘I do not believe, me, about the daughter. The Saint was a bishop, and they do not have daughters. Perhaps she was a holy nun … It is possible that Sir Gale has got the story a little bit wrong?’

‘Very possible,’ I said. ‘Was the daughter called Miranda?’

‘Yes! It was after this holy woman, a Corfiote, that I was called! Then you know this story too?’

‘In a way.’ I was wondering, in some apprehension, what rich and strange confusion Sir Julian’s Shakespearian theories might have created. ‘In the English story we call him Prospero, and he was a magician – but he wasn’t a bishop; he was a Duke, and he came from Milan, in Italy. So you see, it’s only a—’

‘He lived in a cave behind the grove of lime-trees along the cliff.’ She waved northwards, and I recognised Sir Julian’s cheerfully arbitrary placing of the scene of
The Tempest
. ‘And there he did all his magic, but when he became old he turned to God, and drowned his books and his magic staff.’

‘But, Miranda …’ I began, then stopped. This wasn’t the time to try to point out the discrepancies between this story and that of the Bishop of Cyprus, who (for one thing) had already been with God for some thousand years when his body arrived at the island. I hoped there was some way of explaining how legends grew round some central figure like alum crystals round a thread. ‘Yes?’ I said again.