A Dead Man in Athens (7 page)

In the house he had had the feeling that all the windows were closed. They weren’t, of course: it was just that the shutters over the windows were closed. The windows were left open to allow what breeze there was to come through the slots. The effect of the shutters, though, was to make the house dark. In many of the rooms lamps were kept burning all the time, which reinforced the impression he always had when he was there that it was night. It seemed odd to have this impression when you were in bright, sunlit Athens. He wondered if the Greeks had the impression, too. Or did they do the same when they were in their own houses, shut out the sun and retreat into the shade and the cool? He had a feeling that if they did, the retreat would not be as total, that it would smack too much of the old Ottoman practices that they were so anxious to reject. He did feel, every time he entered the Sultan’s house, that he was entering a different world, slipping back in time: the Greeks would certainly see it like that.

It was a relief, at the end of the morning, to come out into the sunshine. But by this time the heat had built up and as he walked down the drive he could hear the pine cones cracking open in the pine woods in which the house was set. The trees provided some relief from the sun and it was only when he stepped out of the drive that he experienced the full blast of the heat. In a moment his shirt was wringing wet and sweat was pouring down his face. e was wearing a suit and a collar and tie – a royal residence demanded it – and envied the people in their casual open shirts and easy trousers.

Not that he saw many people as he walked back to his hotel. In the square people had deserted the tables and retreated inside. The carriages were seeking out shade for their drivers’ siestas. Shops were closing. In the back streets stallholders were creeping under their stalls. The smell of ripe fruit hung everywhere.

At the hotel he found a message from Dr Metaxas, inviting him to dinner. Aphrodite would call for him – in case he had forgotten the way – and take him to the house. fter collecting her father, he wondered?

But no, when he came down, she was standing there alone. Seymour was pleased. This was one of the perks of working abroad. Back in the East End there were no pretty girls at the end of the day. There were girls waiting, of course, and some of them were pretty, but they weren’t that sort.

The East End generally was a conservative place, at least as far as attitudes to women went. The immigrants had brought stricter habits with them from their native countries and guarded their daughters jealously. Old Tsakatellis had warned him about this, too. In Greece, he said, they’re not like they are here. Family honour is concerned, so watch your step! And certainly Tsakatellis guarded his own family honour carefully. Seymour hadn’t seen Angelica Tsakatellis since they had been in primary school together. How was it she had never married? Maybe he should look her up.

Or maybe he shouldn’t. That was the thing about family honour. Anyway, Tsakatellis was probably out of date. He certainly was, if the Metaxases were anything to go by. ending your daughter to fetch a strange man? You wouldn’t do that in the East End!

Aphrodite seemed to have quite a lot of freedom. Maybe it went with her being at university. Seymour had never met a woman who was at university before. It was like coming across a Bl´eriot machine.

There was talk of the Bl´eriot machines at the Metaxases’ that evening. This was because their son, Andreas, was there and he didn’t seem to be able to talk about much else. He was a nice lad, fair, like his mother, and with a new moustache. The family pride in him was evident: so, at least on Dr Metaxas’s part, was misgiving.

It came out when Seymour asked him about the university. About his studies, Andreas was vague; about his friends, enthusiastic. But his enthusiasm centred mainly on what he did outside university, and that was largely to do with flying. It had been given a great boost by the arrival of Stevens and they were now spending almost every afternoon at his workshop.

‘I sent you to university,’ Dr Metaxas growled. ‘Not to an army workshop.’

‘It’s one of the best workshops in the world,’ Andreas said earnestly. ‘For flying machines, that is.’

‘Stevens says so, does he?’

‘And he knows. He’s trained in France. He’s been with Bl´eriot ever since he read in the newspaper that he was going to attempt to fly the Channel. He says he knew at once that this was going to alter the world. And he wanted to be part of it. And I want to be part of it, too,’ said Andreas, his face shining.

‘Yes, well, just be part of the university for a few months longer, will you?’ said Dr Metaxas.

‘Andreas, you know this is too expensive for you,’said Mrs Metaxas. ‘It’s all right for George. His father can afford it. We cannot.’

‘But that’s the point!’ cried Andreas. ‘That’s the whole point. Of course I can’t afford it. But I won’t have to, when the Government gets the new machines.’

‘You think they’ll be like your friend, George, and let you have a go whenever you want to?’ said Dr Metaxas sarcastically.

‘They’ll need pilots.’

‘Now, just a minute –’

‘They’ll need pilots. Especially when the war comes.’

‘Andreas, you’re not thinking –’

‘Mother, it’s my big chance. They’ll need pilots. Only three of them to start with, that’s true, but I’ve got a good chance. I’m one of the best flyers, Stevens says that. And Stevens is bound to have a big say in who is chosen. He says he’ll put in a word for me –’

‘Andreas, you’re not to do this!’

‘Mother, it gives me my chance. If I don’t do this, I’ll never get a chance to fly properly. To be a professional pilot.’

‘Professional –’ began Dr Metaxas.

‘But, Andreas,’ said Mrs Metaxas, ‘they’ll only want you if there’s a war.’

‘Well, I know, but – look, Mother, it’s not as if I’m going to be hurt. That’s the thing about the machine. You’re up there out of the way. It’s not like being on the ground fighting. Now that really would be dangerous. But all I would be doing is looking. Just looking, Mother, and then going back and telling them what I had seen.’

‘One thing is clear to me,’ said Dr Metaxas, ‘and that is that intelligence is not a requirement in a pilot!’

‘I think it’s very exciting!’ declared Aphrodite.

‘My family has known fighting,’ said Mrs Metaxas. ‘It has known killing. And I am not having my son killed in this foolish way.’

‘Mother, if there’s a war . . . Look, I’ll have to fight anyway. And this is a much safer way of fighting.’

‘You are not fighting.’

‘Mother, if everyone else –’

‘You are not fighting. Hear me!’

‘Hear your mother!’ echoed Dr Metaxas.

They sat in awkward silence for a moment and then Aphrodite rose and fetched coffee. Free spirit she might be, but in the house she was a dutiful daughter. And Andreas, kick against the pricks as he might, also seemed to be a dutiful son. The family seemed to be a very close one, and Seymour could relate to that as it was very like the way it was in his own family. Very close but also oppressive. He remembered how it had been when he had decided to go into the police.

This being the East End, the police were the enemy. Quite a lot of the people there had fallen foul of the authorities in their own country and when they had come to England their first instinct, reinforced, it must be said, by the treatment they got, was to distrust the police. Seymour’s family had been no exception. His Polish grandfather had left Poland in a hurry just ahead of the Czar’s police. In England he had confined his revolutionary activities largely to his speech but his heart, as he regularly declared, pounding it, was against the Government. Seymour’s mother, who had seen her father die in a Hapsburg jail, was more muted but probably more intransigent. His sister, a teacher in a tough East End school, and a member of most of the loony revolutionary societies that Seymour spent his time trying to close down, took after her. His father, a rebel in his own way, would have nothing to do with any of it, police or politics. Steer clear of the lot, was his frequently expressed advice.

So when Seymour announced his decision to go into the police, the whole family, for different reasons, was against him.

‘No one will speak to you,’ his mother declared. In fact, they all spoke to him. Sorrowfully, it is true. However, as Old Tsakatellis said, if you grow up with someone, the bonds between you are stronger than the bonds between you and the Government.

His sister was the worst. ‘Traitor!’ she said. But then, she had been abusing him ever since he was born, so he didn’t mind that too much.

In the closed world of the East End, it was a decisive step. ‘So,’ said Seymour, ‘what would you prefer, me breathing down your neck or the Old Street Gang? At least I don’t carve you up.’ Carving up? On that, his mother had taken a line very similar to that of Mrs Metaxas. ‘Listen, don’t you go near –!’ And on the first occasion that he had, his grandfather, thinking he might need assistance, had taken out his old sabre from behind the wardrobe and come down the street to lend a hand.

So he felt he knew how it was for young Andreas. Indeed, he had some sympathy for him. Over the desire to fly, that was, not over the going to war. But wasn’t there a bit of the comic opera about all this going-to-war stuff? You didn’t go to war like this, did you?

One thing that came out of the evening was an invitation from Andreas to visit the famous workshop, and the next morning Seymour went over there. One of the Bl´eriot machines was standing in the forecourt. It had two wings, one above the other, and two cockpits, one behind, so that it could carry a passenger: an observer, as Stevens put it.

Stevens, in the middle of a group of young men, was explaining how the ailerons worked. A new mechanism had been fitted which was, he said, twice as effective as the old. He was a good explainer and knew his stuff. The group listened intently. There were two mechanics there, who were interested in the technical side, but the rest of the group were young Andreases, interested in flying the machines not mending them. Stevens knew this and pitched his talk accordingly, explaining what the new ailerons would enable them to do in the air.

‘You won’t really know until you’ve tried them out,’ he said. ‘But when you do, you’ll be surprised. Don’t be too heavy the first time or two that you try them.’

Andreas asked if he could try out the controls and see how it felt. He climbed up into the cockpit and worked the ailerons for a while.

Seymour, standing so close and seeing a flying machine close up for the first time, was struck by how fragile it seemed to be. When he touched a wing, the whole machine tipped towards him. They were, in the end, he thought, only a kite with a motor-bicycle engine attached.

He said this to Stevens and Stevens laughed and said that was exactly what they were, but that was where the fun lay. You were so close to the air and the wind and the sky. It was, he said, like sailing but with nothing there but the sail. You quivered, he said, with the aircraft, at the slightest touch of the air. The engine would drive you through but all the time you had to be responding to what the air currents were doing.

‘There’s nothing like it,’ he said. ‘You don’t really know until you’ve been up.’

He asked Andreas if he would like to take the machine out. Andreas flushed with pleasure and said he would. Someone brought him helmet, goggles and gloves and he put them on.

Stevens leaned over the side of the cockpit.

‘Remember!’ he said. ‘Not too heavy, the first time or two. Until you’ve got used to them.’

He stepped away, and a moment later, the Bl´eriot machine taxied out on to the runway. They watched it take off.

‘You don’t go with him, then?’ said Seymour.

‘These boys are experienced pilots. At least, some of them are. Andreas certainly is. He’d be all right.’

They walked back to the workshop together. For some reason, probably because they’d met at the Embassy, Stevens assumed him to be one of the Embassy staff.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’m surprised that you haven’t got anyone out.’

‘Anyone out?’

‘You know, on the military side. A military attach´e, or someone like that. Someone knowledgeable who could report. Because this war is going to be different, with the flying machines, and our people ought to be following it.’

‘I expect word will get back.’

‘They ought to have someone out,’ Stevens insisted. ‘There’s a lot to learn. About tactics, strategy, how best to use them, that sort of stuff. And supplies. The supply problem will be different.’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Seymour, wondering if this was the moment when he could slip away.

‘Because there isn’t much time.’

‘Time?’

‘Before the next war starts. The big one.’

What a load of bollocks, thought Seymour.

Then.

Afterwards, Seymour returned to the Sultan’s residence. All was quiet there now. The Sultan, Orhan Eser said, was resting.

‘How is he?’

Orhan Eser hesitated.

‘He seems better. He has, of course, a strong constitution and seems to have shaken off the effects of the poison, although his stomach is still rather disturbed.’

‘It was poison, was it?’

‘Fahkri Bey is confident, although we await the result of the tests.’

‘That does rather alter things.’

‘I don’t know that it does,’ said Orhan Eser. ‘We have had our suspicions for some time and now it appears that they have been confirmed.’

‘I mean, from my point of view. Ought I not to be working on the Sultan and not on the cat?’

‘The two are connected. Continue with the cat for the time being.’

They were standing by an open door which led out on to a small balcony. In the distance there was a now familiar sound. The Bl´eriot machine approached and swooped low over the house.

Orhan Eser went quickly outside.

‘They are doing this all the time,’ he said. ‘It must be deliberate. Is it a threat? Or a warning?’

‘I think they may be just playing around.’

‘Does one play,’ asked Orhan Eser, ‘with machines as dangerous and expensive as this?’