The decision was an awkward one pretty well evenly balanced. I was completely fascinated at the prospect of seeing classical Greece at first hand. This would be the real thing, not a cruise organized two thousand years after the event. Yet I had the feeling I would be pushing myself out of the main stream of events. The trip must surely be a leisurely one taking weeks if not months. I would lose contact with John. I would hence lose my entrée to the high-stepping circles in which I had moved of late. This was entirely a matter of unbridled curiosity, not at all of snobbery. I wanted to know what was going on. Quite clearly the intricate dealings between Britain and Europe would be utterly intriguing to observe at close quarters.
Ironically these considerations were grossly wide of the mark, for the mainstream of events was not at all where I supposed it to be. As it came about my decision made no difference to my arriving at the true mainstream, but in the ultimate outcome it did make a critical difference, that of my arriving independently, not by John’s much more direct route. No thoughts of this kind were in my mind of course when at last I came down on the side of the Grecian expedition. It was music which swayed the balance. For one thing, here was the chance to settle all the controversy and arguments about ancient music. For another, I was more and more feeling the need of leisure to give expression to my own creative impulses. The flights, the discussions, marvellously intriguing in themselves, were consuming the whole of my time and energies. A reduction of tempo was needed.
When I told John of my decision he was a little doubtfuclass="underline"
‘Things have changed a bit in the last twenty-four hours, I’m afraid. The government is getting itself bogged down more and more with the European situation. They’re really not in a position to give much priority to the Greek business. It was agreed yesterday to keep things pretty well on ice for the time being.’
‘You mean the expedition is off?’
‘Not entirely, but it’s only going to be a small show.’
I have an obstinate streak in me. When I’m thinking about any issue I like to hear the opinions of other people. I like to collect as much information as possible. But once I’ve made a decision I like to stick to it. Once I’ve made up my mind I hate to be ‘advised’. I passed off John’s entirely good-tempered warning. I’d made my decision. I told him so and without further ado he regarded the matter as closed.
‘They’ve put the whole thing under an old naval boy, Admiral Cochrane. You’ll be hearing from him pretty soon.’
Throughout lunch I could see John was bubbling over with something or other. Until my problem was out of the way he wouldn’t say what it was. Then he chuckled and let it all out:
‘Remember we were talking the other day about what would happen when a man in 1966 came face to face with himself in 1917? Well, it’s happened, in a way.’
‘How d’you mean, in a way?’
‘Not a direct confrontation, as of yet.’
‘Go on.’
‘A most exalted member of the government. They’ve managed to hush it up so far, but it’s bound to come out.’
‘Why shouldn’t it come out?’
‘They’re still keeping the identity of the exalted member secret but I don’t think I would need more than one guess.’
‘I wish I could guess what it is you’re driving at.’
‘We were thinking in terms of a man from the trenches coming back and meeting himself. Remember?’
‘For heaven’s sake, out with it!’
‘It’s not the man that’s come back from France, it’s the mother.’
‘I’m getting in deeper, into a bog.’
‘The mother was in the VAD. She’s come back. So the son has met his mother, aged twenty, thirty years or so younger than he is.’
‘Very touching I would imagine.’
‘You’re still not with it, I’m afraid. The point is the mother was, more properly is, of a kindly disposition. She took pity on a young officer. Natural enough in the circumstances, considering what’s been going on in France. In a curious way, death always tends to breed life.’
The preposterous implication hit me. ‘You mean the alter ego is still in the womb!’
‘Right. You could hardly imagine a confrontation more curious than that, could you? I thought I’d covered most of the possibilities but this one got completely past me.’
On this ludicrous note John and I parted, the one of us as it turned out to follow the high road, the other the low road. Not to Scotland, to somewhere very different.
Chapter Ten: Entracte
While the events of this narrative were still happening it was difficult to separate the trivial from the important. It was also difficult to perceive any general structure underlying the whole affair. Yet looking backward it is easy to see that the structure was rather like the two acts of a play with each act divided into two scenes. The experiences in Scotland, California, and Hawaii constituted Act 1, Scene 1, the juxtaposition of the Britain of 1966 with the Europe of 1917 constituted Act 1, Scene 2.
The second act remains for me to describe. My point here is that the two acts were connected by occurrences whose very ordinariness quite concealed the inexorable transition which took place from the still more or less normal world of Act 1 to the utterly new and strange world of Act 2.
Outwardly nothing more was involved than the transport by sea of a small party from Britain to Greece. In the spring of 1966 it had been easy to breakfast in London, to lunch in Athens, the flight by air took a mere two hours. By September 28th, the day we left Portsmouth Harbour, there were no flights. The number of planes now existing in the whole world was quite few. There were no airports in Greece any more. There were no rail tracks, no roads even, across the Alps. Every available ship had been diverted to the European crossings. There was no simple way of reaching Greece any more, and those ways which apparently were open, like our sea route, became closed only a few days later. We crossed a barrier on September 30th as we steamed south off the coast of Portugal. The following day, October 1st, would have been too late.
The day after my last talk with John Sinclair I had a call from Admiral Cochrane. I learned the party was to be under the ‘command’ of a Captain Morgan Evans, a one-time classical scholar of Balliol. An anthropologist, also with a knowledge of ancient Greek and also from Oxford, had been chosen. I believed I had heard of Anna Feldman, a formidable battle-axe as I recalled. Two other members from an intelligence unit remained to be assigned to the expedition. The general idea was to take a naval vessel to a point south of Greece and just west of Crete. A small boat would then be launched and would continue to the Greek mainland. The boat would be equipped both with sail and with auxiliary engines. Following a discussion of such details the Admiral suggested the whole party might meet for dinner that night, would I be available?
Outwardly there was nothing about Anna Feldman to suggest the tempestuous virago, inwardly it might be another matter. To the eye she seemed a pleasant-looking woman in the middle thirties. I took immediately to Morgan Evans. I judged him to be about fifty. I also judged him to have a real Welsh temperament underlying the reserve of the naval officer. Of the chaps from intelligence there was still no sign—I presumed they were lying doggo until the last possible moment.
Dinner was over before nine o’clock. It seemed a bit early to break up so I suggested we might all proceed to my apartments after making the usual apologies for untidiness and disarray. We flagged a taxi and drove through the nearly empty streets.