B007TB5SP0 EBOK (31 page)

Miss O’Brookomore looked wary.

‘How is one to tell?’ she murmured. ‘He may
not
be so briefless … !’

‘I know nothing about the law,’ Miss Arne said. ‘Although when I played in
The Coronation of Lucy
there was a trial scene that lasted nearly forty minutes.’

‘You must be delighted now to rest.’

‘Rest! I’m on my way to Greece to study Lysistrata.’

‘But couldn’t you have done it at home?’

‘Not with the same results. As I told the silly critics, I mean to treat her as a character-part.’

‘I understand. When one traces a shadow it’s mostly for the scenery.’

‘At Cape Sunium,’ Miss Collins said, ‘I shall lie like a starfish all day upon the sand.’

‘My dear, at Sunium there is no sand. It’s all rocks.’

‘How do you know there are rocks?’

‘Do you think I haven’t seen old engravings?’

‘Perhaps I might paddle.’

‘ “Oh! joy, joy! no more helmet, no more cheese nor onions!” ’ Miss Arne soliloquized.

‘I adore Aristophanes.’

‘Certainly, he has a flavour—’

Miss Arne stood up.

‘What can that be over there?’

‘Those slopes …’

‘These villas …’

‘And temples …’

‘It must be …’

‘It is—’

Miss Collins commenced a feverish country dance.

‘It’s Athens!’

‘So far I’ve not observed one!’

‘Of what?’

‘A nose! Athens and heavenly noses … Mum said I should.’

Miss O’Brookomore threw upon her head a bewildering affair with a vampire-bat’s-wing slanting behind.

‘Patience,’ she murmured. ‘We haven’t been here long enough.’

‘Quite long enough to find out the English chemist isn’t English!’

‘Why, aren’t you up to the mark?’

‘I was attempting to ward off freckles.’

‘Pretty Mrs Wilna often used to say the utmost she ever did was to apply a little cold-cream
just
as she got into bed.’

Miss Collins moved from one chair to another.

‘Oh, come and look! Oh!’

‘What ever is it?’

‘There’s such a shocking dispute in the Square!’

Beneath a bruised blue, almost a violet, sky lay the town. Very white and very clean.

On the pavement some youths, with arms entwined, seemed to be locked in the convulsions of a dance.

‘Let us go down and sit in a café.’

Miss O’Brookomore became evasive.

‘I want you to repress yourself a little for a few days. Be more discreet.’

‘Because—’

‘Professor and Mrs Cowsend have the rooms next ours …’

‘Buz! Let them!’

‘Also, the Arbanels are here on their honeymoon … You never saw such ghosts on their rambles.’

‘Who is Mr Arbanel?’

‘He’s very blasé.’

Miss Collins clasped her hands.

‘I’d give almost anything to be blasé.’

Miss O’Brookomore turned from her.

‘Those Customs!’ she lamented. ‘Everything arrives so
crushed
.’

‘Are you going out to see what you can find?’

‘I dare say I may look in at the library of the University.’

Miss Collins became contemplative.

‘Who knows, away in the Underworld she may be watching you …’

‘My poor puss, Athens must seem to you a trifle dull.’

‘It isn’t really. I could sit for hours on my balcony and watch the passers-by. So many of them don’t pass. At least, not directly.’

‘You mean they stop?’

‘Sometimes. But what does it matter? – when one isn’t a linguist.’

‘Palmer should be with you more.’

‘Palmer seems so squeamish.’

The Biographer fetched a sigh.

‘Indeed, the way she sprinkles naphthaline has quite put out the violets.’

‘All except her own!’

‘Her own?’

‘Oh, Gerald … Every week there is a dance, dear, in the hotel.’

Miss O’Brookomore shrugged her shoulders.

‘Don’t expect me to attend any of them,’ she said, ‘that’s all.’

‘Oh, darling, how can you be so Spartan! How?’

‘You forget, dear, my dancing days are nearly done.’

‘Wait … Wait …
Wait
till you hear the throb-thrum-throb of a string band … Oh, Gerald!’

‘I should be sound asleep.’

‘Fiddlesticks! You’d fling a wrap about you and down you’d come.’

‘It’s true.’

‘And you’d heighten your cheeks in such a hurry that everybody would suppose you’d been using jam.’

‘Believe me, I’d deal with the manager without the least compunction.’

‘You’d complain?’

‘I’d demand to change my room.’

‘S-s-s-h! Here’s Palmer.’

‘Ah, no more naphthaline, please.’

‘There’s a packet for Miss Hill …’

‘Take it away. It’s not for us.’

‘I expect it’s for me! Collins, Colline, Collina
Hill
. I thought it was advisable not to give my own name at any of the shops …’

‘Collina! Have you been chatting with the Count?’

‘As I went out he was stirring up the weather-glass in the front hall.’

‘I fear he takes you to be an heiress.’

‘But he’s very well off as it is! Haven’t you noticed? He doesn’t tip. He
rewards
. Besides, dear, I could never marry a man who had corns on his feet, or who didn’t say his prayers.’

‘How do you know he has corns?’

‘Because he told me. He couldn’t get up to the Acropolis, he said, on account of his corns …’

‘Isn’t that a blessing?’

‘Look, Gerald, I bought these tags to keep off flies.’

‘In Arcadia they will be just the thing.’

‘The Count was saying how rash it was for two docile women to go alone into such inaccessible places …’

With pursed lips the Historian tuned her veil.

‘Pooh!’ she fiddled.

‘And when papa’s reverse of fortune did come … why, then, of course, I thought of
everything
… to be a maid, I thought … To look up at the moon through the palings … But somehow, no! I couldn’t …’

‘… Shall we have our coffee in the lounge?’

‘The night is wonderful,’ a woman with a thrilling voice declared.

‘Evening here is really the nicest time!’

In an alcove, unable to contain her laughter, Miss Collins was teaching English versicles to the Count.

‘The naked oak-tree in the deer-park stands

Mocking the brooding moose.’

‘Dear?’

‘
D-e-e-r!
’

‘Oh, my dear!’

‘
Hinds!
…
Deer!
’

‘I adore you, dear.’

‘
Harts!
’

‘Our two hearts!’

‘Mabel! Miss O’Brookomore called.’

‘Oh, Gerald, what ever is it?’

‘Come and thank Mrs Cowsend … She has consented to take you out occasionally when I’m engaged.’

‘I shall be delighted,’ Mrs Cowsend said. ‘To-morrow we intend to pass the morning in the royal gardens.’

‘Unfortunately I’m not overfond of flowers. Gardening in the rain was one of our punishments at home.’

‘But at the palace there are so few flowers. Scarcely any! It’s bays a bit, and cypress a bit, and ilex a little, and laurel a lot, with here and there an oleander, perhaps, or a larch … Nothing that could remind you!’

‘The very sight of a wheelbarrow quite upsets me.’

‘Personally, I’m inclined to worship a wheelbarrow. It makes a change with the temples.’

Miss O’Brookomore became introspective.

‘To visit Greece with Professor Cowsend,’ she said, ‘would be
my
idea of happiness …’

‘My dear Miss O’Brookomore, I have found things in Somerset just as lovely as in the Vale of Tempe. And with none of the fatigue.’

The Historian held up a map.

‘Where we are going,’ she announced, ‘is dotted white.’

‘You must be very careful! … It’s just the region—’

Miss O’Brookomore stiffened.

‘Tell me everything,’ she begged.

‘I dare say you’ve not encountered a sheep-dog here before? Some of them are so fierce. More like wolves.’

‘And dogs frequently fly at me!’

‘Round Delphi they are quite dreadful. Parnassos, I assure you, is literally overrun …’

‘Dogs delight to lick me,’ Miss Collins said, ‘when they get the chance …’

With a lorgnon Mrs Cowsend drummed the map.

‘At Megara,’ she said, ‘there is a calvary to commemorate one of the Seymoures. But of course Lady Maisie attracted attention by her peplum even in the town.’

‘I’m told the measles in Athens just now is very bad.’

‘Even so, I must say, I find the city dull. Mr Cowsend, you see, is continually out gathering notes for lectures. Often he will leave the hotel as soon as it is light and pass the entire day poking about the Pnyx … And the shops for me … Well, on the whole, I don’t think much of them.’

‘I would take a camp-stool sometimes and sit on the Pnyx as well.’

‘… When I did the other day he didn’t seem to like it! And, in any case, he never tells me much. I approach Greece by way of the Renaissance, and I don’t pretend to know anything about either.’

Miss O’Brookomore bowed amicably.

‘Mrs Arbanel to-night is really an Eastern dream …’

‘Her husband, it seems, is incredibly inattentive to her, poor dear.’

‘It seems a little soon.’

‘There’s a boy in the porch selling strings and strings of amber,’ the lady murmured as she ambled by.

‘Miss O’Brookomore has just been saying you could scarcely be more Zara or Turkish if you tried.’

‘How suggestive that is of chains!’

Miss O’Brookomore protested.

‘With you,’ she said, ‘I only see the beads.’

‘We were wedded at St Margaret’s almost a month ago!’

‘I read of your little adventure in the
Morning Post.’

‘I forget if you know Gilbert at all …’

‘I can hardly say I know him, but I think we sat together once upon the same settee.’

‘Would it be lately?’

Mrs Cowsend smiled urbanely.

‘Absence or surfeit,’ she observed, ‘it seems there’s nothing between.’

‘Although it
is
my honeymoon I’m not at all exacting.’

Miss O’Brookomore used her fan.

‘It’s been such a heavenly day!’

‘I spent most of it in a wood on the Marathon Road,’ Mrs Arbanel said, ‘with
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
…’

‘Hermia! Lysander! Oberon! Titania! Oh dear!’

Miss Collins showed her culture.

‘Bottom,’ she added.

‘… I hate to sight-see. However, to-morrow, I’m told I must. Mr Arbanel has engaged an open coach … But, as I said to him, it would no longer be a coach. It would be a waggon …’

‘You should take a cab and drive to Eleusis … On Sunday, I believe, it’s the only thing to do.’

Mrs Arbanel looked bored.

‘I’ve seen nothing here quite as delicate,’ she confessed, ‘as the Little Trianon in a shower of April rain.’

Mrs Cowsend twinkled.

‘You should tell that to the Professor presently when he comes in.’

‘Where do the men tide through the evening? They invariably disappear.’

‘In the covered passage behind the hotel,’ Miss Collins said, ‘there’s a Viennese beer hall and a picture palace. Oh, Gerald!’

‘Mr Cowsend after dinner usually goes to a café in the Rue d’Hèrmes and does dominoes.’

‘All alone!’

‘Or with Professor Pappas – who’s apt, on the whole, to be dull. When he was introduced he started off about the county of Warwick. Or the Countess of Warwick. And then he referred to Shakespeare.’

Miss Arne turned.

‘What is that about the stage?’

‘Nothing,’ Miss Collins said.

‘One of these days, Marianne, you should arrange a Lysistrata
matinée
upon the Acropolis.’

‘Boxes full. Stalls full. Gallery full. Pit full.
Standing-room only!
’

‘Don’t people stand at concerts? They promenade …’

‘I dare say.’

‘There is a girl in the corner over there watching you who’d make a rare Lampito …’

‘She is an Australian, poor thing, seeking her parents.’

Miss O’Brookomore blinked.

‘Well, she needn’t start staring at me!’

‘In certain lights,’ Miss Collins murmured, ‘she has a look of Edith Jackson, who was sacked from York Hill.’

‘Why, what had she done?’

‘Oh, nothing very much.’

‘She must have done something.’

‘… She gave a dance in her bedroom – the
houla-houla
! But that wasn’t
really
all … Oh, good gracious!’

‘To-morrow we shall have one here I expect in the hotel.’

‘Mr Arbanel has composed a charming air expressly for it.’

‘My dear, how can one dance to his brain pictures?’

‘Oh, listen!’

‘When the wind breaks this way you can hear distinctly what they’re saying in the café.’

‘Ta-lirra-lirra-lo-la-la.

La-lirra-lirra-lo-la-la!

Ta-lirra-lirra-lirra,

La-lirra-lirra-lirra,

Ta-lirra-lirra-lo-la-la!’

‘It’s politics!’

‘It must be.’

‘Such optimism!’

‘One does hope that Mr Cowsend—’

Miss Collins drifted over to the Count.

‘Deer – have you forgotten? …’

‘Oh, the “little dear”!’

‘Mercy!’

‘Another verse.’

‘Not now; I mustn’t!’

‘When shall I see you again?’

‘To-morrow, I dare say, at the siesta hour – when Miss O’Brookomore goes to her room for a snooze …’

He bent his head above her fingers.

‘Good night, Miss Mabina. I kiss those charming hands.’

Miss Collins glanced at them.

‘Mine?’ she sighed.

Sardonic, she stirred the salad: tumbling, jostling, pricking, poking it, parting the trembling leaves. Pursuing a rosy radish, or …

‘Oh, Gerald, everyone is watching you! …’ unearthing the glaring eyes of eggs.

‘Why begin throwing it about?’

Orchestrating olives and tomatoes, breaking the violet beetroot …

‘Oh, Gerald!’

… tracking provoking peas – scattering paprinka, pouring tarragon, dashing
huile
.

‘Yoicks, dear!’