Decision at Delphi

  She said, “But you aren’t listening—”

  “I’m listening,” he said grimly.

  “It really was a well-organised group,” she insisted, watching his face worriedly.

  Strang nodded. “Except in following orders from H.Q. in Cairo?”

  “It’s no joking matter,” she said simply, widening her green eyes at such sarcasm. “The war was still going on, in Africa, Italy... But George had one man in his unit, a sergeant, who’d carry out any orders that came through. When George found the leaders evasive about blowing up a bridge or ambushing a German patrol—goodness knows why they were so wary about spending dynamite or bullets; the British were sending in quantities of ammunition and gold—then he would go quietly to this sergeant, and together they’d get enough men and do the job. The sergeant was called Yannis.” She halted. “Now do you see that George couldn’t have been mistaken in Naples? He and Yannis were always together in the last few months before Yannis disappeared.”

  (Steve’s voice was saying, “Maybe some of us were fighting the Germans too hard, or perhaps we just didn’t keep our mouths shut or the black look out of our eyes when we saw Ares and his men at work. Anyway, accidents happened to us. Or we were caught by German patrols. Strange how even the most careful were caught! The trap was set for me, too. But I didn’t walk in.”)

  She said, “You just can’t forget a man like Yannis. He was the closest friend George ever had.”

  “What was his full name?”

  “No one knew. Most of the guerrillas took a false name. It protected their families if the Germans ever caught them.”

  “But look—didn’t Yannis, like all the others, have a beard? How could your husband recognise him so quickly in Naples, when he was clean-shaven?”

  “Once, George took him on a special mission into Athens. They shaved off their beards before they entered the city so that they’d look more normal. They nearly ran into disaster, all the same. You see, Yannis was fascinated by cameras. He had found one among the pile of loot taken from an Italian division at the time of the Italian surrender. Others were taking boots and overcoats and arms, but he only wanted that camera. Then, in Athens, he saw the German cameras. He liberated one, and so much film that he bulged. George thought they’d never get back to the mountains.” She shook her head.

  (Steve Kladas was saying, “What does a man do when everything turns sour? Oh, it was sweet for Ares, sweet for his political friends. They had, gradually, taken over the real power. In the end, our military leaders were helpless. So were the English. So were the rest of us. We had been outmanoeuvred from the start, when Ares arranged everything to be run by Committees of Three. Everything to be decided by democratic vote; and each Committee of Three had two Communists. We had joined a National Army of Liberation to fight the invaders, and we had been turned into an army waging civil war. A man can go crazy when he sees that. He keeps hoping it isn’t true, he keeps thinking he must be mistaken, he keeps quiet, and then—. But I found a way to keep sane. I began taking photographs. If I shot pictures, I might not have to shoot Greeks. I was only a good soldier when there was a real enemy in my sights, not just someone Ares called an enemy. So I liberated a camera and some film, and became a kind of war photographer. We smuggled these photographs into Athens, pictures of villages after Nazi reprisals, that kind of thing. At first, Ares liked the idea; he was chief of Propaganda and Enlightenment, as well as leader of his own. little band of terrorists. Then, suddenly, he didn’t like it. Maybe I was becoming too handy with a camera. I could use it hidden under a torn sheepskin cape. I could work pretty close to my subject, too... One night, I was given orders to leave for a village that had been destroyed by the Nazis the week before. Routine stuff for me: a long walk over wild country, a long climb over a mountain. Except that I kept wondering why I had been sent out of camp so secretly, without a chance to say good-bye to my friends. So when I came to the village, I didn’t enter it: I lay on a hillside and watched it, a burned village with blackened walls, deserted. And that was strange, too. Survivors usually came back to search for something they could save. When you are so poor that you cannot buy a bowl, then even a broken one is valuable. I waited for a day, a night, and part of another day. At last, men came out of a half-ruined house. German soldiers, they were. They must have thought they had been given the wrong information, or that something had happened to me on the way. Anyway, they left. That night, so did I. I began the long walk to Athens. Ares did not go raiding there, not at that time. I found shelter with friends. I shaved my beard, hid my camera, borrowed clothes, invented a name and a story to go with it. None of Ares’s informers ever found me. So I stayed alive. That seems important when you are twenty-one.”)

  Caroline Ottway looked at Strang sharply. Was he really listening to all she had been saying about George, and the way he valued old friends, and how much he needed their good will in his new job? “What is wrong?” she asked.

  “Have I said something you didn’t like?”

  He shook his head.

  “And here is the hotel!” she said in dismay. “I haven’t even told you what I wanted to say most of all.” She glanced up at a corner window which overlooked the street. Oh, well, she thought, George has probably seen, us by this time. If I’m to be read a lecture again, I might as well earn it. “Let’s walk on,” she said.

  There were only two or three houses more, all standing within walled gardens, before the long street ended its slow climb in a high promontory of rock where ruined columns and broken arches were raised into the sky.

  “There’s the Greek theatre!” Strang said, halting in sudden surprise.

  I wish, she thought angrily, that he would listen to me as intently as he looks at that pile of old bricks and marble. “Mr. Strang, I haven’t much time. I am late as it is. And what I have to ask is so important.”

  “Sorry.” And he was. “All right. Go ahead and ask me for Steve’s address so that you can write him.”

  She opened her large eyes wide. “However did you guess?” He must have been listening, after all. She said, “I just want to clear up everything. I want Yannis—or Steve—to know that George has always believed in him. When he was denounced as a deserter and traitor, it was George who defended him.”

  “He was denounced as a traitor?”

  “Yes, at an emergency meeting in the camp just after he had disappeared. They said he had gone over to the Germans, and that enemy patrols were now moving against the camp, so everyone had to scatter and regroup. It must have all been a lie, of course. But George couldn’t prove it, because he wasn’t allowed to go back to the camp site to see if German patrols had moved up. He wasn’t allowed any freedom of movement at all; he was almost a prisoner after he had defended Yannis. His mission became a total failure. So—” she drew a deep breath— “do you think it was fair of Yannis to wound George so deeply when they met in Naples? Why, George was the only one who defended him.”

  “What were his other friends doing?” Strang asked bitterly.

  “But it was his brother who denounced him. Who could argue with a brother? Besides, who would argue? See what happened to George! And he had the protection of being a British officer.”

  “I see,” was all Strang said. But he was thinking, Steve never told me anything about a brother. He looked at her, wondering if she had got the story wrong. “His brother?”

  She nodded. “George can tell you all about it.”

  Strang said nothing. George, he was fairly sure, would never again even mention the name of Yannis. To a man, a snub was a snub. It was women, poor darlings, who thought that if only they explained enough, then everything would be made all right.

  “One thing puzzles me,” she said slowly.

  Only one thing? he wondered. “Shall we climb up to the theatre,” he asked, “and talk about it there?” They could hardly stand rooted beside a garden wall for another five minutes

  “I—I don’t know if I have time.” She glanc
ed back at the high, corner window of her hotel. Then she looked at the gateway to the Greek theatre. “It will soon be closed for the night,” she said, watching a girl and an elderly woman coming slowly through the gates. She noticed that Mr. Strang had seen them, too. “They always go up there, each evening, and leave just before the gates are closed. I think she’s lonely. Every morning down on the shore, every evening up on that hill. And always with that old woman trailing along. They bicker, constantly. It’s a very peculiar house-hold—George and I are fascinated—just the girl, always exquisitely dressed; the old woman, always complaining; and a rather strange manservant. At least, he wears a uniform when he drives their car, and yet he lounges about the garden as if he owned it. He was sun-bathing yesterday, without a stitch on.”

  Strang looked away from Miss Katherini Roilos and her duenna arguing sharply on the other side of the road, but the girl hadn’t even glanced in his direction.

  “That’s their house, just across from our hotel,” Caroline Ottway told him, “the one with that heavenly almond tree inside its high wall. They only arrived a week ago. If I had a divine house like that, I’d have been here since early spring, wouldn’t you?”

  He pretended to lose interest in the house. “You were puzzled by one thing,” he reminded her, and started to edge her slowly back to her hotel.

  “Oh, yes—about Yannis. Was it Cyprus, do you think?” As he looked blankly at her, she explained, “Cyprus caused so much bitterness. It’s all settled now, of course. But so many Greeks turned against the English. That could be why Yannis was so—so—well, you saw how he behaved. And that’s so unfair, too. Because George was pro-Greek, right through the Cyprus trouble. It was a miserable time for him during these last four years. He was stuck in London. In fact, it was only recently that he was given a real job to do again—working with the Greeks— that’s something which really interests him.” She fell silent. Almost sadly, she added, “Do you understand what I’m trying to say? But why should you? I don’t even know why I am talking to you like this. You listen so well—perhaps that’s the reason.”

  “Or perhaps because I’m American?” he asked. Or perhaps because she was as lonely as Miss Katherini, he was thinking. He glanced up at the high, corner window as they reached the hotel, and frowned for a moment.

  “You haven’t given me your friend’s address,” she reminded him.

  “There’s no need. He’s probably in Taormina right now. He’s going on to Athens, too. So your husband can see him there.”

  “No, not that way!” she said. “Let me see him first, talk to him. That will make things easier.”

  “You should be the diplomat in your family. Where can Steve meet you?”

  “But George isn’t a career diplomat,” she said quickly. “He isn’t Foreign Office, one bit. Why don’t you tell your friend that I’m always at the English Café on the main piazza every afternoon at four o’clock? George has been so busy this last week that he has scarcely left the hotel. Reports and things...” she added vaguely. “Well, good-bye, Mr. Strang. You know, your name sounds so familiar.” She gave a dazzling smile and a firm handclasp. She looked past him, toward the doorway of the hotel, and her smile became shy, embarrassed.

  “Don’t you want your magazines?” He began dividing them from the pile under his numb left arm.

  “Tell me,” she said urgently, in a low voice, “what do you do? Why are you going to Greece? On holiday?”

  “Not exactly. I visit ruins and try to draw reconstructions of them.” He noticed her amazement. He grinned. “What was your guess?” If she had any time for guessing about me, he thought, with all her worries about George. Even her interest in Steve was only because of dear George.

  “George!” she said delightedly, holding out her hand. Her husband walked past Strang to stand beside her, his back turned to the street and the houses opposite. “I am so glad you came down to meet Mr. Strang. Kenneth Clark Strang. Don’t you remember, darling? That book about the Mayan temples?” Her eyes were laughing. “I gave it to my husband for his birthday,” she told Strang. “You are one of his favourite authors.”

  It was a masterly introduction. George Ottway’s face, not particularly genial at this moment, unfroze just enough so that his eyes couldn’t revert to the cold stare he had been preparing for the last two minutes within the shadows of the hotel doorway. Kenneth Strang’s amusement turned to appropriate embarrassment. He glanced at Caroline Ottway, but she was too clever a little piece to show she had disarmed them both. “We’ve had such a wonderful talk,” she told her husband, cueing Strang at the same time, “all about the Greek theatre” —she waved her magazines towards the rising crags at the end of the street—“and—and things...”

  It was a lame ending. But Caroline was no liar, Strang decided; she was just a sweet little finagler with a tendency to be the defending tigress. George didn’t look as if he needed much defence, though. Strang looked at the fine-boned face, the well-shaped head with its neatly brushed grey hair, the controlled lips, the quietly appraising eyes. “Good-bye, again,” he told Caroline Ottway. “Good-bye, sir.”

  “Perhaps we’ll meet in Athens,” she said. “I hope you’re going to have the same photographer with you. His pictures of Yucatan were so good. He had a Greek name, hadn’t he?” Her eyes were laughing again. “Stefanos or Steve something-or-other, wasn’t it?” George Ottway took his wife’s arm. “Caroline, I’m afraid we are keeping Mr. Strang from his evening’s engagements.” And to Strang, “It was kind of you to help my wife home with her load of magazines. Good-bye to you.”

  Strang walked down the long street, even forgetting to look at the house with the almond tree inside its high wall until he was far beyond it, while he brooded over Caroline Ottway’s last words. So she had identified Yannis: she would find Steve’s full name in that damned book. Not that it mattered. When she met Steve tomorrow, she would melt him into telling her not only his name but his life story.

  He was back at the little square by the town’s gate. The main street was more crowded than ever. He plunged into it, wondering if he would have the good luck to run into Steve. Or perhaps even meet Alexander Christophorou. Or see Miss Katherini and her strange household. Everyone else in Taormina seemed to be here, walking as slowly as possible, looking at the little shops, looking at other people.

  Strang searched for half an hour and then entered a barbershop. He called his hotel, first, but there was no message waiting for him. Blast Steve, he thought irritably, why can’t he be on time, just for once? He had his haircut, in a thoroughly bad temper.

  For he was beginning to worry. There were just too many Greeks gathered together in Taormina. Coincidence? He would like to believe that, and enjoy the pleasant, relaxed night he had planned for himself. Instead, after dinner, he walked around the narrow dark streets, climbed innumerable steps, sat at café tables, looked into restaurants and a couple of night clubs, made three telephone calls to his hotel. There was no sign of Steve.

  Exhausted, worried, and depressed, he returned to his hotel around midnight—and that wasn’t what he had planned, either—to find the unexpected. “Signore Strang,” the porter called to him, “that message you have been expecting—it came only ten minutes ago. By telephone.”

  He took the slip of paper and unfolded it. The message was simple: “Weather disappointing. Delayed. Kladas.”

  Yes, that’s Steve, he thought wearily: one cloud missing and he can’t get the composition he wanted for the sky. “Thanks,” he said to the porter, and made his way through the dimly lit cloisters. From the distant hotel bar came the strange effect of a samba tune played by a sweet mass of Strauss violins. But tonight, completely wasted, didn’t put him in any humour even for the incongruous. He wasn’t worried and depressed any longer; he just felt foolish and a little baffled.

  He decided to have a drink in his room, and read a magazine article on “Night Life in Paris.” And so to bed.

  6

 
Bright sunshine and blue sky, for a late breakfast on a terrace high above a sparkling sea, were a good remedy for last night’s gloom. As Strang drank his third cup of coffee and looked at a small orange tree displaying its golden fruit against the distant background of Etna’s snow-covered peak, he decided he would mix a little business with a good deal of pleasure. He would spend the morning at the beach.

  He took his swimming trunks, a magazine, and a taxi, for the constant twists and turns of the snakelike road around gardens and villas trebled the journey down to the blue sea. Straight distances, here, would be measured not as the crow flew but as the stone dropped.

  The beach was a small crescent of sand, guarded by immense black rocks jutting out of the clear waters. Today, most people were of the bob-and-splash school, so it was easy to count not only heads, but torsos and hips. There was no one of the size and shape of Miss Katherini. “Every morning down on the shore,” Caroline Ottway had said But there was no one of the size and shape of Caroline, either.

  He swam out to the rocks and found no sea nymphs there, only two small, thin, brown boys in a small, thin, brown boat, who shouted to him hoarsely. He hoped it was encouragement and not a warning against octopus.

  By one o’clock, he admitted defeat, dressed, lunched at the small restaurant, beside the bay, and caught a bus back to Taormina. The streets were empty now, bleached white by the early afternoon sun. It was the time for the Mediterranean sleep behind cool shutters. He went back to his hotel, found no message from Steve, exchanged swim trunks for his sketchbook, and wandered out again. By this time, his irritation with Steve was returning. He wouldn’t get another two-day break like this for a long time, and instead of being able to enjoy it, he was restless, unsettled. All he wanted was one small note from Steve giving time of arrival; better still, one small message saying: “Here I am. Where are you? See you in the piazza.”