left the village behind, dropping in a gradual descent between dykes of red earth and stones where the road had been recently widened. The ditches and mounds showed raw as wounds in the sunburnt earth. The rich rays of the now setting sun flooded it with strong amber light, against which the dry thistles that grew everywhere stood up delicate and sharp, like intricate filigree of copper wire. Above the road the new hotel, the Tourist Pavilion, showed as raw and new and wounding as the torn ditches alongside us. The curved windows flashed as we passed beneath and wheeled into the first hairpin of the descent to the plain of olives.
I said casually: ‘Are you just holidaying here in Delphi?’
I had meant it as a
non sequitur
, a conversational makeweight, the normal casual query with which you might greet anyone you met in such a place; but even as I said it I could hear how it pointed back to my last remark. I started to say something else, but he was already answering without any indication that he saw my question as other than innocent.
‘In a way. I’m a schoolmaster. I have a house at Wintringham. Classics is my subject.’
Whatever I had expected it wasn’t this; this seal and parchment of respectability. I said feebly: ‘Then of course you’re interested in the classical sites. Like me.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re a colleague. Another beggarly usher?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘Classics?’
‘Yes. Only in a girls’ school that just means Latin, to my sorrow and shame.’
‘You don’t know Ancient Greek?’
‘A little. A very little. Enough sometimes to catch a word and follow what’s being said. Enough to know my alphabet and make a wild guess at what some of the notices mean, and to have had a queer feeling at the pit of my stomach when I went to see
Antigone
in the Herodes Atticus Theatre in Athens and heard the chorus calling on Zeus against that deep black sky that had heard the same call for three thousand years.’ I added, feeling slightly ashamed of what I’d let him see: ‘What a ghastly road.’
The car wheeled yet again round a hairpin and plunged on down the great shoulder of Parnassus that sticks out into the Chrissa Plain. Below us was a village, and below it again the flood of olives, flowing mile-wide now down to the sea.
Simon said cheerfully: ‘The buses all have icons stuck up in front of the driver,
and
with a little red light in front, run off the battery. On this road the icon swings madly from side to side at the bends and everybody crosses themselves.’
I laughed. ‘Including the driver?’
‘This is true. Yes, including the driver. I have a feeling that sometimes,’ said Simon, ‘he also shuts his eyes.’ He pulled the big car round an even sharperbend, missed an upcoming lorry by centimetres, and added: ‘You can open yours now. This is Chrissa.’
I felt the colour come into my cheeks. ‘I’m sorry. I must be losing my nerve.’
‘You’re still tired, that’s all. We’ll have something to drink in Itea before we seek out this Simonides.’
‘No, please,’ I protested, almost too quickly.
He eyed me for a moment. ‘You really are scared, aren’t you?’
‘I – yes, I am.’
‘I shouldn’t worry; I really shouldn’t. It can’t matter, or it’d have been settled long before this.’
‘I know. I know it’s nonsense. It’s silly and it’s trivial and it doesn’t mean a thing, but I told you I’m the world’s worst coward. It’s true. I’ve been persuading myself for years that I’d be as competent and self-sufficient as anyone else, given the chance, but now I know … Why, I can’t even bear
scenes
, so why I ever thought I could get away with this sort of mayhem I have no idea.’ I stopped. It occurred to me with a queer little shock that I would never have said anything like that to Philip, not in a hundred years.
Simon was saying calmly: ‘Never mind. I’m here, aren’t I? Whatever we get into, I’ll talk you out of it,
I said casually: ‘Are you just holidaying here in Delphi?’
I had meant it as a
non sequitur
, a conversational makeweight, the normal casual query with which you might greet anyone you met in such a place; but even as I said it I could hear how it pointed back to my last remark. I started to say something else, but he was already answering without any indication that he saw my question as other than innocent.
‘In a way. I’m a schoolmaster. I have a house at Wintringham. Classics is my subject.’
Whatever I had expected it wasn’t this; this seal and parchment of respectability. I said feebly: ‘Then of course you’re interested in the classical sites. Like me.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re a colleague. Another beggarly usher?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘Classics?’
‘Yes. Only in a girls’ school that just means Latin, to my sorrow and shame.’
‘You don’t know Ancient Greek?’
‘A little. A very little. Enough sometimes to catch a word and follow what’s being said. Enough to know my alphabet and make a wild guess at what some of the notices mean, and to have had a queer feeling at the pit of my stomach when I went to see
Antigone
in the Herodes Atticus Theatre in Athens and heard the chorus calling on Zeus against that deep black sky that had heard the same call for three thousand years.’ I added, feeling slightly ashamed of what I’d let him see: ‘What a ghastly road.’
The car wheeled yet again round a hairpin and plunged on down the great shoulder of Parnassus that sticks out into the Chrissa Plain. Below us was a village, and below it again the flood of olives, flowing mile-wide now down to the sea.
Simon said cheerfully: ‘The buses all have icons stuck up in front of the driver,
and
with a little red light in front, run off the battery. On this road the icon swings madly from side to side at the bends and everybody crosses themselves.’
I laughed. ‘Including the driver?’
‘This is true. Yes, including the driver. I have a feeling that sometimes,’ said Simon, ‘he also shuts his eyes.’ He pulled the big car round an even sharperbend, missed an upcoming lorry by centimetres, and added: ‘You can open yours now. This is Chrissa.’
I felt the colour come into my cheeks. ‘I’m sorry. I must be losing my nerve.’
‘You’re still tired, that’s all. We’ll have something to drink in Itea before we seek out this Simonides.’
‘No, please,’ I protested, almost too quickly.
He eyed me for a moment. ‘You really are scared, aren’t you?’
‘I – yes, I am.’
‘I shouldn’t worry; I really shouldn’t. It can’t matter, or it’d have been settled long before this.’
‘I know. I know it’s nonsense. It’s silly and it’s trivial and it doesn’t mean a thing, but I told you I’m the world’s worst coward. It’s true. I’ve been persuading myself for years that I’d be as competent and self-sufficient as anyone else, given the chance, but now I know … Why, I can’t even bear
scenes
, so why I ever thought I could get away with this sort of mayhem I have no idea.’ I stopped. It occurred to me with a queer little shock that I would never have said anything like that to Philip, not in a hundred years.
Simon was saying calmly: ‘Never mind. I’m here, aren’t I? Whatever we get into, I’ll talk you out of it,
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