Rocks, The by Peter Nichols Page A

his book somehow related to that and how timely and amazing that was. Gerald smiled as if he understood, or could hear, and looked at their hair and spectacles and skin and wondered how old they were and how they lived. It didn’t seem to matter what he said.
    “—thinking of doing an article about how much things have changed in the Greek islands since you were there on your little boat—well, indeed, since Homer’s time—”
    “—a rapidly expanding niche—”
    “—on the front page next Sunday—”
    “—we’re doing a little sidebar about what books people have on their bedside tables, if you’d—”
    “—might do some reviewing for us?”
    “—spend any time in the Solent? We’ve got a Nicholson thirty-two we keep in Lymington—”
    “—my card—”
    “—brilliant!”
    “—aren’t there a lot of Germans there?”
    As Aegina stood beneath the great Selene horse, watching her father in his moment of success, a man slipped toward her around the horse’s flank; she was not aware of him until he stood at her side. Tony Watkins had written a series of best-selling and serialized memoirs exposing himself as a corrupt rake who’d done appalling things while holding a midlevel appointment in the Heath and Thatcher governments. He was grinning at her as if they shared some intimate understanding.
    “Aegina. And here I thought your father was some goatherd in Spain. You’ve been hiding him under a bushel. How clever of you. I’d love to meet him properly.”
    “Well, there he is, go say hello to him,” said Aegina.
    “No, I was thinking why don’t you both come round for dinner tomorrow night? I’ll invite someone for your father. How about Edwina Porboys? She’d certainly like him. Just the four of us. Edwina will bring some Ecstasy. Has your father tried it?”
    “You’re repellent. Go away.”
    Over his shoulder she saw her father. He looked happy.
    “That’s what I love about you, you see,” said Watkins. “Something in you knows me so well.”
    “Fuck off,” said Aegina.
    As she walked toward her father, Kate began tapping a glass and the party grew quiet. She spoke of the fortuitous rediscovery of Gerald’s “small, understated masterpiece of vernacular history and travel,” of its distinction and authority in an age of navel-gazing memoirs of house-building and eating in foreign places, and how thrilled she and everyone at Doughty were to be able to launch a new edition of what would undoubtedly prove an enduring classic.
    “—so I give you Doughty Books’ thrilling new publication
The Way to Ithaca
and its author, Gerald Rutledge.”
    Gerald saw them all grouped around him, smiling, clapping, vividly recalling his nightmare of an intellectual Scylla. He opened his mouth, waiting for a moment when he could start.
    Aegina was aware of her racing heart and a roaring in her ears.
    “Thank you so much, Kate,” Gerald began. “And all of you at Doughty Books. And the rest of you, who apparently have nothing better to do with yourselves.” This brought a generous laugh, under the cover of which Gerald cleared his throat at extensive length.
    “I too am thrilled, as you can imagine, to see my foundling book plucked from obscurity and given new life again in so fine an edition. Perhaps it’s not unlike getting a really good face-lift: you begin to feel your old self again.”
    Everyone laughed again—Aegina with them, astonished; where had he come up with that one? She began, almost, to feel relieved.
    The noise of their laughter affected Gerald like the sudden infusion of a drug. He looked down at his book in his hands. He saw the pencil-marked paragraphs in his mind’s eye and realized that he knew it all by heart, he’d known the story for most of his life, and wouldn’t need to open the book at all.
    “I won’t bore you for long, but I thought I’d tell you something of how I came to write the book. I spent most of World War Two aboard British Navy vessels in the