The Shortest Way to Hades

respect for anything and do not understand the difference between great men and everyone else. No one sees how unfair this is on respectable, well-behaved poets like you and me.”

The discussion of Homer led to the first thing which disconcerted me. The sun had risen high enough, by this time, to discourage any strenuous activity, and Lucian and Leonidas had joined the rest of us in the garden to drink retsina and eat olives. With the flattering implication that Camilla and I would be especially qualified to comment on the question, our host asked us how one would translate in English the Homeric expression themis—which seems to mean something like law, justice and general good behavior.

Camilla adopted a robustly positivist approach, saying breezily that law had nothing to do with justice, but was simply whatever Parliament told one to do, whether it was right or wrong. Feeling that I was expected to present the other side of the case, I trotted out the argument about “just” not simply meaning “good” but referring specifically to the virtue of treating like cases alike; this (I said rather pompously) is also an essential feature of the concept of law, and any law or legal system which lacks this quality is not only capricious and oppressive but cannot properly be termed law at all. I have had a good deal of practice with this argument — it comes in useful when you have a judge who doesn’t want to follow a precedent in your favor — and it went down extremely well with our host: he clapped his hands and said “Bravo!”

“And if you agree,” I went on, “that there is that sort of necessary connection between law and justice, and if you think that that’s what Homer would have meant by themis, I suppose it’s expressed in English by the phrase ‘the rule of law.’”

“Ah no,” said Constantine Demetriou, disappointed in me. “No, surely that can’t be right. That is the phrase used by people like Millie’s father — if you will forgive me saying so, Millie — to mean that people dressed up as policemen can do what they like and everyone else must do as they’re told.”

At this point Lucian, who had not so far seemed much interested in the discussion, looked up from his wineglass and said, “Oh, I think you’re wrong about that, Costas. I don’t think Uncle Rupert would approve of people who dressed up as policemen. Do you think he would, Cindy?”

“Oh no,” said his sister, making her eyes very wide and gooseberry-like, “I don’t think he would at all.”

They were both then overcome by merriment, chortling and gurgling as if at some brilliant piece of wit. The rest of the family, though mildly perplexed, seemed accustomed to the twins having private jokes which were meaningless to anyone else. To me, however, when I came to think about it, it was far from meaningless: I saw that if Lucian and Lucinda had somehow heard of the raid on Rupert’s flat by the spurious policemen, their mirth was not at all unaccountable.

Then Lucian looked at me, and winked.

This, as I have said, I found disconcerting. It must mean, mustn’t it, that the twins had heard not only about the spurious police raid but also of our presence when it took place? Well, it’s not a secret exactly — the story is known to several people in Lincoln’s Inn; but it’s a little disturbing, don’t you think, to find it so widespread as to be known to the twins?

“How in the world,” said Julia, “could Lucian and Lucinda have known about our being at Rupert’s party?”

“My dear Julia,” I said kindly, “when any mildly scandalous story is known to several people in Lincoln’s Inn, it is known to the rest of London within a week. I am not much surprised to find that it is known to the rest of Western Europe within a month or two.”

I have sometimes suggested, I think, that when your fancy is taken by a young man of slender figure and pleasing profile you should not disclose at too early a stage the true nature of your interest. Young men, I seem to remember saying, like to be thought of as people, not as mere physical objects: you should therefore begin by seeming to admire their fine souls and splendid intellects and showing a warm interest in their hopes, dreams and aspirations.

It looks as if someone has given the same advice to Camilla and Lucinda. Seeing that Sebastian was not to be drawn away from the company of Constantine Demetriou, they settled down on the grass close by and arranged themselves in attitudes of attentive admiration, designed to suggest that there was nothing they found quite so fascinating as the theory and technique of translating Greek verse. When our host made some reference to a recent article of Sebastian’s published in one of the learned journals, they went so far as to ask what it was about.

I am now obliged to mention a slight pitfall in the approach I have recommended: the young man may actually tell you about his hopes, dreams and aspirations. Fascinating though he believes the subject to be, Sebastian is not the sort of man to lecture anyone against their will on the errors in the P. Codex of Euripides’ Helena, but Camilla and Lucinda — to quote any common law judge in almost any rape case — were asking for what they got. They had led Sebastian on to believe that they were the sort of women who would be willing, even eager, to listen to a learned exposition of the finer points of textual criticism: if they didn’t like it, as appeared from their glazed looks and blank expressions to be the case, they had no one to blame but themselves, and it should have been a lesson to them not to go about admiring the souls and intellects of other people’s young men.

I did at last try to create a diversion by talking about our previous three days’ sailing, which I thought would be a topic of more general interest. I cannot claim, however, that this was a great success. Sebastian was reminded of his theory about the Necromantion and Book XI of the Odyssey, Camilla and Lucinda continued to look bemused; Constantine Demetriou was moved to warm enthusiasm; and the conversation, as was to be expected in these circumstances, again lapsed into Greek.

“At least Sebastian is enjoying himself,” said Julia with a touch of disapproval.

So it seemed. By what curious quirk of the subconscious, then, did the thought of my gentle young colleague in the garden of the Villa Miranda, surrounded by charming and beautiful people, for a moment put me in mind of a victim garlanded for sacrifice?

I have done what I can, by the way, to further your interest with young Leonidas. He seems to be quite a sensible boy really, though rather precocious, having been encouraged by people like you and Hilary to think himself interesting on account of his looks; and at least he doesn’t tower over me, like everyone else here apart from Dolly, as if I were Gulliver in Brobdingnag. He is thinking of coming to the Bar when he has done his degree and would like to specialize in tax matters. I warned him of the difficulty of obtaining a tax pupillage; but suggested that when the time came, if he could persuade you of the seriousness of his interest in Revenue law, you might be willing to take him on as a pupil. I don’t know, of course, to what lengths he may be prepared to go to convince you of his seriousness, nor am I to be thought to approve of his going to them, whatever they may be, nor of your encouraging him to do so; but I hope you will feel that I have done my best for you.

“Oh,” said Julia, “what a delicious idea — how very kind of Selena to think of it.”

She had forgotten, presumably, that a few minutes earlier she had suspected Leonidas of seeking to contrive the death of three of his close relatives.

The second thing which disconcerted me happened in the afternoon.

Dolly had been telling me at lunch about pottery-making — she is part-owner, you may remember, of a small ceramics business near here, for which she designs plates and things. When I said I would like very much to see how it was done, she invited me to her studio, where she keeps some examples of her work and a potter’s wheel for trying out her designs. She showed me how to use it, and I managed eventually to make quite a respectable sort of bowl, hardly lopsided at all.

The pottery I liked best was a kind apparently traditional in Corfu — a black or deep blue glaze decorated in gold with scenes from Greek mythology and so forth. When I admired it, she insisted on making me a present of a pair of little jugs in this style — shaped like ancient amphorae, with a picture on one of Penelope weaving her web and on the other of Odysseus sailing his ship. Since she said that it was a joint present to Sebastian and myself, I asked which one she thought he should have.

“Oh,” she said, with a matchmaking look in her eye, “it would be a shame to separate them.”

She has made her mind up, it seems, to marry me off to Sebastian, and was at pains to persuade me of the attractions of the married state: “It’s lovely,” she said, “it’s so comfortable.” She did concede, however — rather wistfully, I thought — that it was not quite as exhilarating as other possible arrangements.

“You can’t expect your husband to spend the whole day thinking how wonderful it is that he’s going to have dinner with you — he usually does have dinner with you, so there’s nothing special about it. One does rather miss that sort of thing — it makes one feel so cheerful, doesn’t it, and so good-tempered and energetic? But men don’t