‘We must make our way to the Tankerville Vase immediately,’ the professor said, as he strode up the steps. He made no attempt at a formal greeting and spoke as if it was Adam’s fault that they had not been able to enter the museum the moment it opened. ‘Doubtless there will be hordes of gawking visitors in front of it already.’
Adam thought it unlikely that an Attic vase would draw the crowds Fields was anticipating.
‘Should we not first take a side turning into the Elgin Gallery?’ he asked teasingly, knowing what the answer would be.
‘Those marble statues are much overrated,’ the professor said dismissively. ‘I would exchange all of them for the finest examples of Athenian red-figure wares.’
‘Or the Phigalian Saloon? The bas-reliefs from the Temple of Apollo are much admired.’
‘They are even worse than the works Elgin prised off the Parthenon. No — we are here to see the Tankerville Vase.’
As Adam had anticipated, there was nobody in front of the case that held the vase. Both men bent double to peer more closely at the decoration.
‘It is unmistakeably a depiction of the Centauromachy,’ the professor said. ‘The same subject that appears on some of the sculptures you mentioned earlier but a purer, more authentic rendition of it. I had read that this was so but I wished to see for myself.’
They continued to examine the tiny figures on the pottery.
‘This must be Peirithoos, the king of the Lapiths. Yes, the lettering makes it clear.’
‘And these are the drunken centaurs,’ Adam remarked, pointing to the half-men and half-horses reeling across the vase’s bulging middle.
‘An illustration of the dangers of inebriation.’
‘Never allow a centaur more drink than it can hold,’ the young man said.
‘A lesson that Peirithoos learned to his cost.’ Fields straightened and stood up. ‘I am pleased to have seen this but I cannot linger over it as long as I would like. I have another appointment.’
Adam, directed so autocratically to meet his mentor, could not help feeling exasperated that the professor was hastening away so swiftly.
‘I had hoped to have longer to speak with you, sir.’
‘Of course you did, my boy. But it was not to be. You have seen the Tankerville Vase and that must suffice.’
‘You will not be able to dine with me tonight?’
Fields waved a hand, as if to suggest that the very idea of dinner was ludicrous. ‘I must return to college.’
The two men made their way back through the museum towards the entrance.
‘I believe that I shall make a diversion here and see the Phigalian Marbles,’ Adam said, as they reached a door to another gallery. ‘So we must go our separate ways.’
He held out his hand and Fields took it. ‘We will see one another again soon, Adam. Of that I am certain.’
Several inches shorter than his one-time pupil, the professor looked up at Adam’s face as if scanning it for signs of continued irritation. He let go of his hand and smoothed the thinning hair on the top of his head. Then he turned abruptly and marched briskly in the direction of the door to the outside world. Adam watched him go, his annoyance slowly fading, and then turned to enter the gallery on his right. He would see how the battle between the Centaurs and the Lapiths appeared in marble.
CHAPTER THREE
On the evening of the Speke dinner, held to commemorate the achievements of the late African explorer and member of the Marco Polo, Adam asked the cabman to drop him at one end of Pall Mall. It was a fine night and he wanted, however briefly, to take the air. As he strolled up the street towards the entrance to the club, he was in a cheerful mood. The world in general, and London in particular, seemed to be filled with the promise of pleasure and enjoyment. Entering the door to the Marco Polo, with its mosaic portrait of the Venetian traveller above the portico, Adam was immediately aware of the hurly-burly of what had become, in a few brief years, one of the busiest events in the club’s social calendar.
As he paused just inside the threshold of the main room and looked around, he caught sight of himself in a large, extravagantly framed mirror that hung on a wall to his right. His spirits still high, he liked what he saw. Tall and well built, he filled out the evening dress he was wearing. His black hair shone with the macassar oil he had applied earlier. He looked, he decided, exactly as a fashionable young man in the greatest metropolis on earth should look. He turned to face a room of men all dressed like himself. Of all ages, from fresh-faced youth to bewhiskered maturity, the members of the Marco Polo seemed to Adam, in his elevated mood, a happy band of brothers. He was inspired by a feeling of collegiate attachment to them all. Here, he thought, were some of the most enterprising men of the day. The kind of men whose spirit made the country great. Here were men who had ventured into the furthest corners of the known and unknown world. Here were men whose travels around the globe made his own journeys in Turkey in Europe seem small beer in comparison.
Filled with the glow of comradeship and admiration, he moved further into the room. Instantly, he was caught up in the crush. In a moment he had, it seemed, lost his own power of volition and was obliged to surrender to the movements of the crowd, which pitched him back and forth across the room from one group of people to another. Around him swirled the curious fragments of a dozen conversations. To his left, a peppery little man was squinting upwards at the much taller man by his side and spluttering with indignation.
‘Damn Landseer and his wretched lions. I’ve seen real lions in Africa and those beasts in Trafalgar Square are all wrong.’
‘Bit of artistic licence, old man,’ his companion suggested.
‘Damn his artistic licence. If a man’s going to sculpt a lion, it should bloody well look like a lion, if you ask me.’ The peppery little man looked furious that the artist hadn’t taken the trouble to ask him.
To Adam’s right, a red-faced man kept saying, ‘I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.’
‘No, Montagu, I swear to you, it is the truth,’ the man with him said. ‘The whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have it on the highest authority. Absolutely unimpeachable authority.’
‘Well, I still don’t believe it,’ Montagu said. ‘It’s not possible to believe it. You’ll be telling me next that Franklin is fit and well after twenty-five years and sharing his life with a little Eskimo bride.’