"I mean, you know, they swore our show would be the last to go, and we've had this fantastic back-up from the Guardian, and the whole thing costs the taxpayer about one-three-hundredth of an army tank, but what can you do?"
So how would she be spending her time meanwhile? Joseph asked with splendid disinterest. And it was a curious thing, which she afterwards thought about a lot, that by establishing that he had missed her Saint Joan, he established also that they owed it to each other to make up the lost ground in some other way.
Charlie answered carelessly. Barmaiding round the theatres most likely, she said. Waitress work. Repainting her flat. Why?
Joseph was wildly distressed. "But, Charlie, that's very poor stuff. Surely your talent merits a better occupation than barmaid? What about the teaching or political professions? Wouldn't that be more interesting for you?"
Nervous, she laughed rather rudely at his unworldliness. "In England? With our unemployment? Come off it. Who's going to pay me five thousand a year to destroy the existing order? I'm subversive, for God's sake."
He smiled. He seemed surprised and unconvinced. He laughed in polite remonstration. "Oh now, Charlie. Come. What does that mean?"
Prepared to be annoyed, she met his stare again, head on, like an obstruction.
"It means what it says. I'm bad news."
"But whom are you subverting, Charlie?" he protested earnestly. "You strike me as a most orthodox person, actually."
Whatever her beliefs might be that day, she had an uncomfortable instinct that he would outstrip her in debate. To protect herself, therefore, she elected a sudden tiredness of manner.
"Back away, will you Jose?" she advised him wearily. "We're on a Greek island, right? On holiday, right? You keep off my politics, I'll keep off your passport."
The hint was enough. She was impressed and surprised by her power over him at the very moment when she was fearing she had none. Their drinks came and as he sipped his lemonade, he asked Charlie whether she had seen many Greek antiquities during her stay. It was an enquiry of the merest general interest and Charlie replied to it in a tone of matching inconsequence. She and Long Al had been to Delos for the day to visit the Temple of Apollo, she said; that was the most she'd done. She forbore from telling him that Alastair had got fighting drunk on the boat, or that the day had been a write-off, or that afterwards she had spent a lot of hours in the town stationers, reading up the guidebooks about the little she had seen. But she had a shrewd intimation that he knew anyway. It was not till he raised the matter of her return ticket to England that she began to suspect a tactical intention behind his curiosity. Joseph asked if he might see it, so with a shrug of indifference she dug it out for him. He took it from her and leafed through it, earnestly studying the particulars.
"Well, you could perfectly well use this from Thessalonika," he pronounced finally. "Why don't I simply call a travel-agent friend of mine and have him rewrite it? Then we can travel together," he explained, as if this were the solution both of them had been working towards.
She said nothing at all. Inside her it was as if each component of her nature had gone to war against the other: the child fought the mother, the tart fought the nun. Her clothes felt rough against her skin and her back was hot, but she still didn't have a thing to say.
"I have to be in Thessalonika one week from now," he explained. "We could rent a car in Athens, take in Delphi, and head north together for a couple of days, why not?" He was unbothered by her silence. "With a little planning, we should not be over-troubled by the crowds, if that is what is concerning you. When we reach Thessalonika, you can take a London flight. We can even share the driving, if you wish. I have heard from every side how well you drive. You would be my guest, naturally."
"Naturally," she said.
"So why not?"
She thought of all the reasons that she had rehearsed for just this moment or one like it, and of all the pithy, flat-voiced phrases she fell back on when older men made passes at her. She thought of Alastair, of the tedium of being with him anywhere except in bed and latterly there also. Of the new chapter in her life that she had promised herself. She thought of the drab trail of cheeseparing and scrubbing which awaited her once she got back to England with her savings spent, and of which Joseph by chance or cunning had reminded her. She looked sideways at him again and saw not a glimmer of supplication anywhere: why not? and that was all. She remembered his lithe and powerful body, cutting its lone furrow through the sea: why not? again. She remembered the brush of his hand and the eerie note of recognition in his voice-"Charlie, yes, hullo"-and the lovely smile that had hardly come back since. And she remembered how often it had crossed her mind that if he ever did let go, the detonation would be deafening, which she told herself was what had drawn her to him above all else.
"I'm not going to have the gang knowing," she muttered, head down to her drink. "You'll have to fiddle it somehow. They'd laugh their bloody heads off."
To which he replied briskly that he would depart tomorrow morning and arrange things: "and of course if you really wish to leave your friends in the dark-'
Yes, she damn well did, she said.
Then this, said Joseph, in the same practical tone, was what he suggested. Whether he had prepared his plan in advance or simply had that kind of mind, she couldn't tell. Either way she was grateful for his precision, though afterwards she realised that she had counted on it.
"You go with your friends by boat as far as Piraeus. The boat docks in late afternoon, but this week it is liable to be delayed by industrial action. Shortly before the boat enters harbour, you will tell them that you propose to wander alone round the mainland for a few days. An impulsive decision, the sort you are famous for. Don't tell them too early or they will spend the boat trip trying to argue you out of it. Don't tell them too much, it is the sign of an uneasy conscience," he added, with the authority of somebody who possessed one.
"Suppose I'm broke," she said before she'd had time to think,
for Alastair as usual had been through her cash as well as his own. All the same, she could have bitten her tongue off, and if he had offered her money at that moment she'd have flung it in his face. But he seemed to sense that.
"Do they know you are broke?"
"Of course they don't."
"Then your cover story is intact, I would say." And as if that clinched the matter, he dropped her air ticket into an inside pocket of his jacket.
Hey, give that back! she screamed in sudden alarm. But not-though there was just a hair's breadth in it-not aloud.
"Once clear of your friends, take a taxi to the Kolokotroni Square." He spelt it for her. "The fare should cost you around two hundred drachmas." He waited to hear whether this might be a problem, but it was not; she had eight hundred left, though she didn't tell him. He repeated the name again, and checked that she had remembered it. There was pleasure in submitting to his military efficiency. Just off the square, he said, was a pavement restaurant. He told her the name-Diogenes-and permitted himself a detour for humour: a beautiful name, he said, one of the best in history, the world needed more of him and fewer Alexanders. He would be waiting at the Diogenes. Not on the pavement but inside the restaurant where it was cool and private. Repeat, Charlie: Diogenes. Absurdly, passively, she did.
"Next door to the Diogenes is the Hotel Paris. If by any chance I am held up, I will leave a message for you with the concierge at the hotel. Ask for Mr. Larkos. He is a good friend of mine. If you require anything, money or whatever it may be, show him this and he will give it to you." He handed her a card. "Can you remember all that? Of course you can, you're an actress. You can remember words, gestures, numbers, colours, everything."