Charles watched disconsolately. He had been up to the Military Attaché’s office and Alan, tugging Diocletian out from under the table, asked: ‘What do they think? Have we a chance?’
‘Of course.’ Charles assumed his air of professional optimism. ‘The Greeks are determined to fight it out. This isn’t easy country for armour. It defeated the Italians; it may defeat the Germans.’
‘It may; but the Greeks have had a hard winter.’
‘They survived it. That counts for a lot.’
‘I agree.’
Guy and Ben strolled on. Harriet, waiting while Alan put the dog on to a lead, glanced at Charles and found his gaze fixed on her; he raised his brows as though to ask: ‘Must you go?’ What else could she do?
‘Come on, then,’ Alan said, moving off.
Charles made a gesture of appeal and when Harriet lingered, whispered: ‘Tomorrow. Tea-time.’
She nodded and went. Following Alan into the null and pointless day ahead, she felt she was leaving her consciousness behind her.
At Kolonaki, she was jolted out of her dejection by the sound of spoliation ahead. Diocletian growled. Alan gripped him by the collar. They turned a corner and found the enraged Greeks breaking up the German Propaganda Bureau. The bureau was a small shop and already almost wrecked. A young man dangling a portrait of Hitler from an upper window had roused an uproar and as the portrait crashed down, the Greek rushed forward to dig their heels into the hated face. The road and pavements were a litter of broken glass and woodwork. Books had been ripped up and heaped for a bonfire. ‘A bonfire of anti-culture,’ said Ben Phipps. Almost the only spectators were some New Zealanders who watched with unsmiling detachment.
One of the books, its covers gone, fell at Harriet’s feet. She picked it up and at once a young Greek, afire and abristle like a battling dog, held her as though he had the enemy in his hands. She appealed to the New Zealanders who said: ‘Let her go. She’s English.’ ‘English?’ the Greek shouted in disgust, but he let her go and Harriet was left with a book she could not read and did not want.
‘Let me see!’ Alan looked at it and laughed: ‘“Herrenmoral und Sklavenmoral.” Poor old Nietzsche! I wonder if he knew which was which?’ He put the book into his hip pocket: ‘A souvenir,’ he said.
‘Of what?’
‘Man’s hatred of himself.’
The bus took them to the lower slopes of Pendeli and they climbed up among the umbrella pines, following a path fringed with wild cyclamen. Guy and Ben Phipps, stimulated by some lately uncovered piece of political chicanery, kept well ahead of the other two.
Alan began to limp on the rough ground but would not slacken his pace. Here, in the bright mountain air, away from other claims on her attention, Harriet could see how greatly he had changed. He had been a heavy man. The hungry months of winter had caused his muscles to shrink. He had belted in the waist of his trousers but the slack hung ludicrously over his hind-quarters and his coat slipped from his shoulders. His shoes had become too big for him but by balancing on his better foot and persuading the other after it, he kept going as though the walk were a challenge he felt bound to meet.
Diocletian, darting about under the pines, was a phantom dog. He was worried by the tortoises that crawled in hundreds over the dry, stony, sun-freckled earth. Tortoises were the only creatures that thrived these days and Harriet wondered if anyone had ever tried to eat them. Diocletian, sniffing, wagging his tail, was turning to Alan in inquiry, seemed to have the same idea. It was painful to watch his bones slide against his skin as he trotted to and fro, possessed by his inquisitive energy, and hungry, too. He kept coming back to the path with a tortoise in his mouth – but what could he do but drop it? When it felt safe, it crawled away, unharmed and unconcerned.
Diocletian, perplexed, looked at Alan, then looked down at the tortoise. What had they here? A moving stone?
Alan, his face crumpled with love, waved his stick at the dog. ‘Beaten by a tortoise! Go on, you ridiculous dog!’
They paused to rest at a hut that sold retsina. Sitting on the outdoor bench, they saw the whole of Athens at their feet, with the Parthenon set against the distant rust-pink haze like a little cage of pearly bone. There had been no raid. Ben Phipps, expecting a spectacle of fire and devastation, had brought a pair of field-glasses which he offered to Guy, and the two short-sighted men passed the binoculars back and forth until the retsina came.
Diocletian lay belly up, the pennant of his tongue lolling red between his teeth. Alan asked the proprietor for a pan and filled it with retsina.
‘Good heavens, will he drink that?’ the others asked.
‘You wait and see.’
They watched, delighted, as Diocletian emptied the pan.
Ben Phipps, the binoculars up, shouted excitedly: ‘Look, look!’ Half a dozen aircraft were coming in from the south, but there was no warning, no gunfire, no bombs, and the aircraft, turning over the city, began to play like dolphins in the sea of air.
They were unlike anything Alan or Phipps had seen before. Drowsy with wine, the four sat for a long time, backs to the warm wall of the hut, breathing the scent of pines, hearing a twittering of cicadas so constant it was like silence, and watching the planes dip and circle and loop in the hyacinth sky. At this distance, the display was silent; if the aircraft were a part of conflict, it seemed a conflict too distant to have meaning.
Harriet said: ‘Perhaps they belong to the future. Without knowing it, we may have been here a hundred years and the war is over and forgotten.’
Alan grunted and sat up. Diocletian, who had his eye on his master, was on his feet at once. The walk now took them above the pines where the shale began and the going was difficult. Guy offered Alan an arm but he insisted on making his way alone, balancing and sliding on the grey, sharp, treacherous stone until they reached the top where the wind struck them violently and they knew it was time to go home.
Athens, in the light of evening had passed out of shock. It had been a resplendent day. There was no doubt now that the winter was over and the freedom of summer was at hand. Everyone was out in the rose-violet glow, crowding the pavements, their faces washed over with the sunset, carrying flowers and flags; Greek flags and English flags.
The four from Pendeli, as though they had been in some elysium outside the range of war, wandered about together, seeing the city anew. The Athenians had taken heart again. When Alan stopped a friend and asked about the strange aircraft, he was told they were British fighter planes flown from Egypt for the protection of Athens. There had been no raid but now, if the Luftwaffe came, it would not get far. The people seemed almost to be rejoicing that the worst had happened. They had a new and stronger enemy, but he would be vanquished like the other.
In University Street, where people swept to and fro across the road, an English sailor was hoisted up and with his cap on the back of his head, a carnation behind his ear, he sat on the shoulders of two men and waved happily to everyone around him. He was handed a bottle. As he tilted back his head to drink, his cap fell off and the audience applauded and shouted with joy.
Guy said: ‘Where has Surprise gone?’ but no one knew. Surprise had gone without a word to anyone. Now another man, bearded like Ajax or Achilles, was being held aloft and, swinging the bottle round his head, he was swept away just as Surprise had been swept away. Heroes came and went these days. When they were gone, it seemed they were gone for ever.
Ben Phipps went off to his office and the others decided that Babayannis’ would be the place that night; all the fun would be there. But there was no fun. A terrible sobriety had come down with the rumour that there had been a raid, just such a raid as the German radio had described. It was Belgrade that had suffered. Now the word was: ‘Belgrade today; Athens tomorrow.’ At Babayannis’ there was no dancing; the songs again were sad. When Ben Phipps arrived, he said: ‘Those were Spitfires we saw today; a new kind of fighter aircraft. They only came to cheer us up. When it was dark, they flew back home again.’