‘What do you think he said to Miss Jay?’ said Mrs Brett.
Miss Jay, whose vast bulk had shrunk until her flesh hung like flannel over her bones, said crossly: ‘You’ve said enough about it, Bretty,’ but Mrs Brett was determined to say more: ‘He said: “Women should be painlessly put down when they look like Miss Jay.”’
Ben Phipps laughed in delight: ‘Did he, really! Come on. If we get a squeak out of him, we’ll deal with him.’
They went forward prepared for Callard who was leaning over the gunwale with Dubedat beside him, but he let the Pringles and Phipps pass without a word. His eye was on Plugget, who came behind them. ‘They’re all coming out of their holes,’ he said. ‘Here’s that drip Plugget. His wife’s family put him up for twenty years. Now he’s saving his own skin and leaving them to starve.’
Plugget, pushing his wife importantly ahead of him, gasped, but said nothing. A little later, when she stood at the rail overlooking the quay, Harriet found him at her elbow. His wife’s parents stood below with their unmarried daughter, an elderly girl who held herself taut with a look of controlled desperation, a suitcase at her side.
‘Isn’t she coming with us?’ Harriet asked.
‘No,’ said Plugget with decision. ‘She wanted to come but when she saw the old folk in tears, she didn’t know what to do. My wife thought she ought to stay. I thought she ought to stay. Her duty, I told her.’
‘Poor thing! What will become of her?’
Impatient of Harriet’s pity, Plugget said: ‘She’ll be all right. You can’t take everyone. Think of me landed with two women!’ Turning his back on the forlorn spectacle of his relations-in-law, he said: ‘You people found anywhere to sleep?’
The main cabins had been taken by the Major’s party and most of the deck was covered by his possessions. Any space left had been occupied by earlier arrivals. Guy and Phipps had gone off in different directions to see what they could find. Guy had at once been caught up in conversation by his many acquaintances, and it was Phipps, with his indeflectable, inquiring energy, who came back to say there was a cabin empty on the lowest deck.
Guy, Mrs Brett and Miss Jay were called together, and the party went down into a darkness heavy with the reek of oil and human excretions. Every outlet from the lower passages had been boarded up to prevent the escape of prisoners and Plugget, who had come after them, put up a complaint: ‘If we’re torpedoed, we’d never get out of here,’ but he kept at their heels until they came to the narrow three-birth cabin next to the engine-room. Inside he at once took command:
‘You two ladies here,’ he said, slapping the middle bunk. ‘Pringles on top. You’re young and agile. Me and the wife down here. The wife’s not strong. Right?’
No one contested this arrangement, but Guy asked: ‘What about Ben?’
‘The floor suits me,’ Phipps said. ‘It’s cleaner.’
The bunks, without mattresses or covers, were wooden shelves, sticky to the touch and spattered with the bloody remains of bugs.
‘Like coffins,’ said Mrs Brett. ‘Still, it’s an adventure.’
Peering about in the glimmer that fell from a grimy, greasy, ochre-coloured electric bulb, she said: ‘We might try to get the dirt off this basin.’
Miss Jay pulled out three chamber-pots caked with the yellow detritus of the years. ‘“Perfum’d chambers of the great,”’ she said. ‘We’ll send these up to Cookson.’
While these activities went on, Toby Lush appeared in the doorway with a commanding frown. When he saw who was inside, his manner faltered: ‘I was keeping this cabin,’ he weakly said.
‘What for?’ Phipps asked.
‘The Major might need a bit extra storage space. Or he might, f’instance, want something unpacked, and I thought …’
‘If the Major has any request to make,’ said Phipps, ‘send him to me.’
Toby Lush put his pipe into his mouth and sucked. After an interval of indecision, he said mildly: ‘Glad you got on board all right.’
‘Were you expecting us?’ Harriet asked.
‘Hey, there! Crumbs!’ Toby shielded his face in mock alarm. ‘You aren’t blaming me, are you? Not my fault; nor the old soul’s, neither. The Major made his arrangements. He didn’t consult us.’
‘You knew nothing about it?’
‘Well, not much. Anyway, here you are. Nothing to grumble about. I suppose you were told to bring food for three days?’
‘We had no food to bring.’
The air-raid warning sounded. ‘More magnetic mines,’ said Toby and, giving an exasperated tut, he made off as though he meant to deal with them himself.
‘Don’t want to be trapped down here,’ said Plugget. He hurried after Toby and the others went with him. They reached the main deck as the guns, upturned on the quay, started up like hysterical dogs. In the uproar women seized their children and asked what they should do. There was a shelter on the quay but as the passengers ran to the companionway, Dubedat shouted from the boat-deck: ‘We’re leaving any minute now. If you get off the ship, you’ll be left behind.’
Bombs fell into the harbour, sending up columns of water that brought a rain of wreckage down on the ship. The passengers crowded into the corridors of the main deck where the nervous chatter and the cries of children caused Toby Lush to put his head out of his cabin: ‘Less noise there,’ he commanded. ‘You’re disturbing the Major,’ and withdrew before comment could reach him.
At noon, in the midst of another raid, Dobson drove on to the quay, bringing the Legation servants to the ship. In his light, midge-like voice, he shouted to Guy: ‘We’ll meet in the land of the Pharaohs.’
‘Good old Dobson,’ Guy said emotionally as the car turned on the quayside and started back to Athens.
‘Perhaps now we’ve had his blessing,’ Phipps said, ‘we’ll be allowed to embark.’ But the sun rose hotly in the sky, the reconnaissance planes came and went, and the Erebus and Nox remained motionless at their berths.
A taxi-load of students came to say farewell to Guy. They shouted up to the boat that the Prime Minister, Koryzis, was dead.
‘How did he die?’ the passengers asked, feeling no surprise because there was nothing left surprising in the world.
The students said: ‘The German radio says the British murdered him.’
‘You don’t believe that, do you?’
They shook their heads, believing nothing, knowing nothing, buffeted and confused by the drama of existence. Other Greeks drove down to the Piraeus, their eyes bleared with sleeplessness and tears, bringing with them the tormented nervousness of the city. The English asked again about Koryzis. The Greeks on the quay, doomed themselves, shook their heads, mystified by a death that was too apt an ingredient of the whole tragedy.
To those on board, not knowing when they would sail or whether the ship would survive to sail at all, the afternoon shifted about like a disordered vision. They could only wait for time to pass. The only event was the appearance of a man selling oranges. Despite Dubedat’s warning the women hurried ashore to buy, for there was no drinking water on the ship.
The Acropolis could be seen from the boat-deck. Harriet went up several times to look at it. Seeing it glowing in the sunset, she thought of Charles, scarcely able in memory to distinguish between his reality and her private image. She had condemned Guy’s attachment to fantasy but wondered now if fantasy were a part of life, a component without which one could not survive. She saw Charles catching the flower and thought of the girls who had given flowers, not only as a recognition of valour but a consolation in defeat.
The hills of the Peloponnesus, glowing in the sunset light, changed to rose-violet and darkened to madder rose, grew sombre and faded into the twilight. The Parthenon, catching the late light, glimmered for a long time, a spectre on the evening, then disappeared into darkness. That was the last they saw of Athens.