The Shortest Way to Hades

fishermen with the warmest admiration — Lucian for their seamanship, Lucinda for the personal attractions of young Andreas. He had made her, she said, feel small and vulnerable — for a girl of five foot ten, amply proportioned, it would no doubt be a novel experience.

Soon after this Dolly joined us, and we talked of other matters; but her husband and Sebastian continued their conversation until an hour at which she easily persuaded me that it would be “simply too ridiculous” to go back to the Kymothoe when a spare room and a comfortable bed were available at the Villa Miranda. They were still talking when the rest of us went to bed, and I have no idea when they adjourned — late enough for Sebastian still to be sleeping at half past nine this morning.

I, on the other hand, woke early and could not get to sleep again — I would not otherwise be writing at such length. We shall spend the day, I suppose, looking at the art and antiquities of Corfu — I will give you in due course a full and instructive account.

Lighting a cigarette is one of those simple tasks which even Julia can usually perform with moderate competence. I perceived, however, that she was now making her fourth attempt to light her Gauloise with one of the spent matches which it is her custom, in an attempt at tidiness, to return after use to their box.

“My dear Julia,” I said, gently taking the match-box from her and selecting from it one better suited to her purpose, “is something troubling you?”

“I was just thinking — oh, thank you, Hilary.” She seemed pleased, though baffled, by the superiority of the new match over its predecessor. “I was just thinking about Leonidas. He is an adorable creature and one would not willingly believe ill of him.” She drew deeply on her Gauloise. “But I was thinking — I was thinking of him alone there at the tiller of the Sycorax. Quite wide awake, I suppose, and in control of things, while his brother and sister and cousin were all fast asleep in their bunks. And steering them through the night on a course quite different from the one they were supposed to be on — on what Selena describes as a direct course for Hades.”

“Himself along with the rest.”

“An agile boy with sound nerves would no doubt calculate that he could swim clear, with the advantage of knowing where he was and what was going on.” She drew again on her Gauloise. “If Leonidas wanted to inherit the Remington-Fiske estate, he would have to dispose of both Camilla and Lucian. If we weren’t quite sure about Deirdre—”

“But we are quite sure about Deirdre,” I said, a trifle peevishly. “Do stop talking nonsense, Julia, and buy another bottle of wine.”

She did as I suggested, for she is a docile creature; but it was still with an anxious expression that she resumed her reading of Selena’s letter.

CHAPTER 13

Same place.

Tuesday evening.

No art, no antiquities — our host will hardly admit, indeed, that there are any worth visiting: “If you see something in Corfu which looks like a Greek temple,” he says, “you’ll find it’s a church built by the British.”

I thought it reflected rather well on us, when we came across a Greek island with no Greek temples on it, to have tried to make good the deficiency; but the great poet’s smile of Olympian melancholy indicated that he did not share this view.

When I asked if there was nothing at all of historical or artistic interest, he answered vaguely that we must go to the Archaeological Museum to see the famous Gorgon, and some inscriptions which would interest Sebastian — yes, certainly; and we must not miss visiting Corfu Castle — no, of course not; but we could do these things at any time, someone would drive us to the town whenever we liked.

It seemed to be understood, however, that “whenever you like” was not exactly to be taken to mean “now”; and to have been settled, I don’t quite know how, that we would be spending a further night at the Villa Miranda.

I am beginning to have an odd feeling of — it would be absurd to call it uneasiness: a sense of disorientation, and of not knowing what is going on around me — or rather, of thinking that I know but not being sure that I do. There is no good reason for it: one or two things have happened which have disconcerted me, but of a very trivial kind. Perhaps I am developing some interesting neurosis.

I suppose it’s due to the heat, and too much retsina, and everyone talking a language I don’t understand. It may also have something to do with our misgivings about Deirdre: it’s difficult to be altogether at ease with people of whom one has entertained such disagreeable suspicions. I don’t quite like to say anything about this to Sebastian: I never happened to mention to him our doubts about Deirdre’s death, and now they have been resolved it seems unfair to cast any sort of shadow over his friendship with the Demetriou family.

Sebastian, you see, is in a state of rapture — starry-eyed and walking several feet above solid ground. He has been invited to become the English translator of the work of Constantine Demetriou: this (he says) is the most extraordinary and wonderful honor that could possibly be imagined. I do not think myself that the honor is all on one side; but it is no use saying so to Sebastian. You see how unkind it would be of me to spoil things.

Apart from the impression he has made on our host, Sebastian has also become an object of interest to Lucinda and Camilla: he is, after all, the only young man within range who is not related to them. After breakfast, therefore, they did not go away to paint pictures (as Lucinda was supposed to be doing) or to read Salmond on Torts (as Camilla was supposed to be doing) but remained in the garden to assist in our entertainment. They naturally proposed those forms of amusement which would show them to best advantage: Camilla, who looks splendid in a tennis dress, suggested tennis; Lucinda, who looks magnificent in a bikini, suggested a swim.

I rather enjoyed the tennis and swimming: a long time ago, you may remember — when I was first at Oxford, and before I was corrupted by left-wing intellectuals like you and Sebastian into drinking coffee all night and not bothering to keep fit — I used to be rather keen on that sort of thing. Sebastian, however, took no part in either, and from the point of view of Camilla and Lucinda making an impression on him it was rather a waste of effort.

They would have done better to see if they couldn’t dash off a swift elegy or two for translation from Greek to English, for so far as I could judge there was nothing else which might have distracted Sebastian from his conversation with Constantine Demetriou. They had begun talking about Homer, and a passionate discussion had developed of the historical accuracy of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Sebastian, as a respectable classical scholar, felt obliged to maintain that hardly a word of them was true, and that Homer had invented the whole thing. Our host is of the opposite school of thought:

“Yes, yes, yes, Sebastian, my dear friend, I know what the archaeologists say. Because they can’t find a tin hat with the name of King Agamemnon on it, they say that King Agamemnon did not exist and the Greeks never came to Troy and that Homer made it all up — the whole city of Troy and all the ships and armies of the Greeks — just like that, out of his imagination. But you, Sebastian, who are not an archaeologist but a poet, and know how difficult it is to imagine anything — even a small thing, like a bird or a flower or a fold in a girl’s dress — how can you think such a thing is possible? Our poor Homer of all people, who one would swear was worse than any of us, worse than your Shakespeare even, and could only describe things just as he saw and heard them, because he had no imagination at all. So that even when he is talking about the immortal gods he doesn’t know how to give them a proper dignity and mysteriousness, but makes them sound like some farmer and his wife that one met last week in the taverna. Do you think such a person could invent whole cities and armies and systems of government? Po-po- po-poh.” This is what the Greeks say when they wish to express great astonishment and disbelief.

Sebastian, listening to this, looked like an atheist hoping for conversion.

“And when it comes to the kings and the great heroes he is even worse,” went on our host. “He has to pretend that they behave like his own friends and acquaintances — fellow poets, probably, and other riff-raff of that sort — and would drink and tell lies and sulk and quarrel over women and prize money. But everyone knows, of course, that kings and heroes and the leaders of great nations could not possibly behave like that. That is how Homer has given us poets a bad name, Sebastian. People think we are all slanderers and blasphemers, who have no