My Brother Michael

  She blew a long plume of smoke, then said flatly: ‘When you left me last night you went to Nigel’s room. Why?’

  ‘That’s simple enough, isn’t it? You’d told me he’d done a drawing of me as like as a photograph. I wanted to destroy it.’

  ‘But he’d cleared out – packed up and gone. You knew that. I’d told you that. I’d been in myself that evening to try and find the drawing, and all his stuff was gone. He’d taken it with him.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Angelos, ‘he hadn’t.’

  ‘What d’you mean? You never saw him. How d’you know what he had on him?’

  She stopped. I saw her eyes widen as they met his look. Her lips parted so that the cigarette fell to the ground and lay there smouldering. She ignored it. She was staring at him. He was standing very still, leaning on the spade, watching her. I could see sweat on the heavy face and on his hairy forearms.

  He said again, softly: ‘Well?’

  Her voice was shaken clear of any of its carefully affected overtones. It came clear and thin, like a little girl’s. ‘You did see him? Yesterday? He did tell you where the cave was?’

  ‘Yes, we saw him. But he didn’t tell us anything. I told you the truth about that.’

  ‘Then–then – why did you lie about seeing him?’

  The smile deepened as the thick lips parted. ‘You know why. Don’t you?’

  There was a long pause. I saw the pink tongue come out to lick once, quick as a lizard’s, across her rouged lips. ‘You – killed him? Nigel?’

  No reply. He didn’t stir. I saw her throat muscles move as she swallowed. There was no horror or regret or fear in her face; it was blank of expression, with parted lips, and wide eyes fixed on the man. But her breathing hurried. ‘I … see. You didn’t tell me.’

  His voice was soft, almost amused. ‘No, I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to scare you away.’

  ‘But – I still don’t understand. Didn’t he know about the cave? Wasn’t I right?’

  ‘He knew; you can be sure of that. But he didn’t tell us. We tried, but he wouldn’t come through with anything that made sense.’

  She swallowed again. She hadn’t taken her eyes off him. She might have been a waxwork but for the eyes and the convulsive muscles of the throat. ‘Did you – have to kill him?’

  He shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘We didn’t, in a manner of speaking. The bloody little pansy died on us. A pity.’ His head sank lower. The smile seemed to thicken. ‘Well? Scared? Going to scream and run?’

  She moved then. She came close to him again, and her hands came up to the breast of his shirt. ‘Do I look as if I wanted to run, Angelos mou? Would I be the sort you’d want along with you if I had that kind of baby-nerve?’ The hands slid up his shoulders and over them to the back of his neck. She pressed closer. ‘I know all about you, Angelos Dragoumis … Don’t think that I don’t. They still tell quite a few stories about you, here in Delphi …’

  A laugh shook him. ‘You surprise me.’

  She pulled his head down, and said, against his mouth: ‘Do I? Does it surprise you to know that that’s why I’m here? That that’s why I like you?’

  He kissed her, lingeringly this time, then thrust her away from him with his free hand. ‘No. Why should I? I’ve met women like you before.’ He still held the spade in his other hand, and now he turned back to his task. Danielle said, eyeing the broad back a little sulkily: ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Near enough.’

  I saw her eyes show white for a moment as she gave a quick over-the-shoulder look into the shadowed corners. Then she shrugged and reached in her pocket for another cigarette. ‘You may as well tell me what happened.’

  ‘All right. Only stand back out of the way. That’s better. Well … We waited beside the Delphi track for the boy, but he didn’t come that way. He must have started early and gone some other way round, because the first we saw of him was when he was away beyond us and almost up to these cliffs. We got up as close as we could without his seeing us, but when we’d worked our way up that gully that lies east of here, he’d vanished. We got up above the line of cliff, and separated; then waited. After a bit we saw him, just appearing walking out of the corrie here, as cool as you please. So we came down the cliff and got hold of him.’

  ‘Why did you have to do that? The English couple were coming. Once you saw the place where Michael died—’

  ‘A bird in the hand,’ said Angelos, and I saw the thick grin deepen again. ‘For all I knew, Stephanos wouldn’t remember the exact spot, and it was certain that your artist friend had just come out of some hiding-place. Besides, he’d done that drawing of me. He’d seen me.’

  She was lighting another cigarette. The flame of the match wasn’t quite steady. Her eyes looked wide and brilliant above it. ‘What did you do?’

  He sounded indifferent. ‘We tried to scare him into talking at first, but he wouldn’t come through. To tell you the truth I began to think you were wrong and he hadn’t found a thing, only then he began to babble something about a cave and “something beyond price” and he was damned if he’d let us touch it. Then we really got going …’ He straightened up and got out a cigarette. He thrust it between his lips, and leaned forward to get a light from hers.

  I thought, I shall see that smile in my dreams …

  ‘But he still wouldn’t say anything that made sense,’ said Angelos. ‘Babbled about water, and some flowers …’ The contempt in the thick French made the words sound obscene. ‘My English is fair enough, but I couldn’t get all the words. In the end there was something about gold, I’m pretty sure, but just as we were getting to that he died on us. God knows we’d hardly started. It looked to me as if he had a groggy heart.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘We’d hardly finished with him when we saw Stephanos and the boy from Arachova bringing the English couple along. We threw the body behind some rocks and waited and watched till the old man took them to the corrie and showed them the place. It’s altered completely; I might have looked for a thousand years, let alone the last two. As soon as they’d gone, I got down into the corrie and started looking around. It was dead easy. Your Nigel helped us after all with his crazy blathering; there was only one place where grass grew, and flowers, and it was much where I expected the cave to lie, if Stephanos had been accurate. We soon saw where the entrance was. Getting into it was another matter, but, of course, with the boy dead on our hands we had to be sure there’d be no inquiries until we’d got clear off and no traces left. So I got on with the job alone while I sent Dimitrios down to see you as arranged. I told him not to tell you about Nigel, but to get quietly into the studio and clear the stuff out of his room as if he’d packed up and gone. He did that. You’ll find all the boy’s stuff in the back of the jeep under the sacking. Dimitrios brought a big folder of drawings, but like a fool he was in too much of a hurry to check them, and he never saw that the picture of me wasn’t there … It mightn’t have mattered, but that’s the sort of detail that can sometimes matter the hell of a lot. I thought it worth attending to, anyway. I’m officially dead, and by God I’m staying that way, and no rumours!’

  ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘No. I didn’t have time. There was a lot of paper with the rubbish in a tin on the floor in his room. That fool Dimitrios hadn’t thought it worth bothering about. But in fact if that’s where the drawings are, nobody’s going to take any notice of them. They’ll just think he’s tidied up and left.’

  ‘They do. The English couple think he’s gone on a trek over the hills – with the mule.’

  ‘Do they?’ He sounded amused. ‘Then that’s that, isn’t it?’

  He had cleared the boxes now of their covering of stones. He stooped to work one of them clear of the pile. She watched the play of the great muscles for a few minutes in silence. Then she said again: ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My God, Nigel, of course! Did you leave him out there for the vultu
res?’

  ‘Not likely. They’d have given us away more quickly than anything else. He’s here.’

  For the first time I saw some strong feeling move her. It was like a spring tensing. ‘Here?’

  He jerked his head sideways. ‘Over there.’ He wrenched the box free at last, straightened up, and carried it out of the cave. The torch still shone strongly enough from its niche on the pillar. Danielle stood still for a moment, staring towards the dark corner where Nigel’s body lay, then, as if with an effort, she walked forward, took the torch down from its niche, and went over to the pile of rubble that hid the pathetic body. The light shone down on what lay, mercifully, beyond my range of vision.

  It was at that moment that I remembered my own torch, dropped near Nigel’s body. If she saw it … if the light from her torch picked up its glint in the dust …

  Angelos was coming back. He said irritably: ‘Still no sign. He seems to have taken one of the small boxes down himself by the lower track. We’d have seen him else.’ Then he looked across and saw where she was. She still had her back to him. The heavy face watching her didn’t change its expression, but something in the look of the eyes made my blood thicken. ‘Well?’

  She turned abruptly: ‘Are you going to leave him here?’

  ‘Where else? Take him in the jeep to the bay at Galaxidion?’

  She ignored the irony. ‘Aren’t you going to bury him?’

  ‘My God, girl, there’s no time. I’ve got enough to do shovelling half Parnassus off this stuff. You can throw some dirt down over him if you like, but it hardly matters. Something for you to do while I load up.’

  She came quickly back into the middle of the cave. ‘I’m not staying here.’

  He laughed. ‘As you wish. I thought you weren’t squeamish, ma poule?’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said pettishly, ‘but can’t you see it won’t do to leave him here, even if we do cover him? It’s obvious already there’s been someone at work here, and if anyone does come up they’re bound to see—’

  ‘Why should anyone come?’

  She hesitated, eyeing him. ‘The Englishman, Simon—’

  ‘What of him? You told me yourself he’d gone off to Levadia.’

  ‘I know, but – well, I was still thinking about what happened in the theatre, on Monday night.’

  In the theatre, on Monday night … I leaned back against the rock, trying, through the mists of tension and fear, to remember … The sounds I had heard as I sat there: the tiny jingling … it had after all been Danielle, taking the stolen mule off to meet the men. And Simon and I had talked, down there in the theatre … It wasn’t only the speech from the Electra that those wonderful acoustics would have sent up to Danielle, above us in the dark. And Danielle understood English … What had we said? What in heaven’s name, had we said?

  It appeared that, whatever it was, she had reported it to him before. He laughed. ‘Oh, that. It’s no news. Of course he knows Michael was murdered. D’you think Stephanos wouldn’t tell him that? What difference does it make? Nobody knows why.’

  ‘But if he suspected you were still alive—’

  ‘Him?’ The thick voice held nothing but amused contempt. ‘In any case, how should he? Nigel’s dead, and no one’s going to recognise that picture now.’

  ‘There was the gold,’ said Danielle.

  The dark was boiling round me. As clearly as if he were just beside me, I heard Simon’s voice again: ‘It’s not over … till I find what Michael found … the gold.’

  ‘Gold, gold, gold – you see it everywhere, don’t you, ma poule?’ He laughed again. For some reason his spirits seemed be to rising. ‘You didn’t see it was gold, now, did you? She picked something up and you saw it glitter, and your imagination did the rest.’

  ‘I tell you it was gold. I saw her staring at it.’

  The dark slowly cleared. Against it I saw a picture – not the one they were speaking of, but later; Simon, coming away from the centre mark just before he spoke … She hadn’t heard. By the mercy of the gods of the place, she hadn’t heard.

  Angelos had turned away and was lugging another box clear of the pile. ‘There. That’s as much as the poor bloody mule can take on one trip … Now, forget that nonsense for five minutes, and you can give me a hand loading up. He found no gold yesterday, and that’s a fact. He’s got no reason to come back here. He’s been, and seen all he can. Why should he come again? To bring a posy for Michael?’ He laughed again, unpleasantly. ‘By God, I almost wish he would! … I owe him something, after all.’

  She said, with a sort of spite: ‘And her. She hit you.’

  ‘She did, didn’t she?’ he said cheerfully. ‘I think we’ll wait till Dimitrios comes. He can’t be much longer.’ He paused, looking round the cave. ‘It’s queer to be back … and it looks just the same. Just the same. These pillars, and that bit of rock like a lion’s head, and the drip of water somewhere. I never found the spring … Can you hear it?’

  She said impatiently: ‘But Nigel. You must do something about the body. Can’t you see—?’

  ‘You may be right.’ His voice was almost absent. It was clear that Nigel had long since ceased to matter at all. ‘In fact he may do us a better turn dead than he did alive … He can go over the cliff with the jeep. Yes, there’s the water. I thought so. It’s over here somewhere …’

  Danielle’s voice stopped him as he moved. There was a note in it that I hadn’t heard before. ‘The jeep? Over the cliff? I didn’t know you planned to do that.’

  ‘You don’t know all I plan to do, my fair lady,’ he said. He turned back to her as he spoke, and I couldn’t see his face. I saw hers. It looked suddenly thinner, and sharp, like a frightened urchin’s. He said: ‘What is it now? We’ve got to get rid of the jeep somehow, haven’t we? If the boy’s found in the sea with it that accounts for him as well.’

  She said, almost in a whisper; ‘It’s mine. Everybody knows I brought it up from Athens.’

  ‘So what? Everybody’ll assume you were in it, too, and that will be that.’

  Still she didn’t move, but stared up at him. She looked very childish in the turquoise top, and scarlet bell of skirt. He went towards her till she had to tilt back her head to look him in the eyes. He said on a note of impatience, and something else: ‘What is it now? Scared?’

  ‘No. No. But I was wondering—’

  ‘What?’

  She spoke still in that hurried whisper. ‘What you were going to do with the jeep if you … if you hadn’t had Nigel’s body to send over the cliffs with it?’

  He said slowly: ‘The same, of course. They’d have thought you were in it and had been—’

  He stopped abruptly. Then I heard him laugh. His big hand went slowly out and ran down her bare arm. It looked very dark against her pale olive flesh. There were black hairs on the back of it. ‘Well, well, well … My poor little pretty, did you really think I’d do a thing like that to you?’

  She didn’t move. The thin arm hung slack by her side. Her head was tilted back, the big eyes searching on his face. She said in that flat little voice: ‘You said “He can go over the cliff in the jeep …” as if you’d planned it for someone else. As if—’

  He had an arm round her now, and had pulled her close to him. She went to him unresisting. His voice thickened. ‘And you thought I meant you? You? My little Danielle …’

  ‘Then who?’

  He didn’t answer, but I saw her eyes narrow and then flare wide again. She whispered: ‘Dimitrios?’

  His hand came quickly over her mouth and his body shook as if with a laugh. ‘Quietly, little fool, quietly! In Greece, the mountains have ears.’

  ‘But, Angelos mou—’

  ‘Well? I thought you said you knew me, my girl? Don’t you see? I had to have his help, and his boat, but when did he earn the half share of a fortune? The stuff’s mine, and I’ve waited fourteen years for it, and now I’ve got it. D’you think I’m going to share it – with anyone?’


  ‘And – what about me?’

  He pulled her unresisting body closer to him. He laughed again, deep in his throat. ‘That’s not sharing. You and I, ma poule, we count as one …’ His free hand slid up her throat, under her chin, and then forced her head up so that her mouth met his. ‘And I still need you. Do I still have to convince you of that?’ His mouth closed on hers then, avidly, and I saw her stiffen for just a moment as if she was going to resist, then she relaxed against him and her arms went up to his neck. I heard him laugh against her lips, and then he said hoarsely: ‘Over there. Hurry.’

  I shut my eyes. I turned my head away so that my cheek, like my hands, pressed against the cool rock. It smelt fresh, like rain. I remember that under my left hand there was a little knob of stone the shape of a limpet shell …

  I don’t want to write about what happened next, but in justice to myself I think I must. As I shut my eyes the man was kissing her, and I saw his hand beginning to fumble with her clothes. She was clinging to him, her body melting towards his, her hands pulling his head down fiercely to meet her kisses. Then when I couldn’t see any more I heard him talking, little breathless sentences I couldn’t catch – didn’t try to catch – in a mixture of Greek and his thick fluent French. I heard him kick a stone out of the way as he pulled her down on to the dusty floor of the cave near the rubble-pile … near Nigel’s body …

  I only heard one sound from her, and it was a little half-sigh, half-whimper of pleasure. I’ll swear it was of pleasure.

  I was shaking, and covered with sweat, and hot as though the chilly cleft were an oven. Under the fingers of my left hand the stone limpet had broken away. I was holding a fragment of it in my curled fingers, and it was embedded in the flesh, hurting me.

  I don’t know how long it was before I realised that the cave was quiet, except for the heavy breathing.

  Then I heard him getting to his feet. His breathing was heavy and even. He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t hear him move away. There was no sound from Danielle.