Yours sincerely,
The writing was impeccably neat and legible, though rather crabbed into the center of the page; I saw a neat, crabbed man behind it. Presumably on some sort of retreat, one of those desiccated young Catholics that used to mince about Oxford when I was an undergraduate, twittering about Monsignor Knox and Farm Street. I damned him for being so useless.
The next letter was from London, from someone who purported to be a headmistress, on nicely authentic headed notepaper.
Miss Julie Holmes
Miss Holmes was with us only for one year, in which she taught the classics and also some English and Scripture to our lower forms. She promised to develop into a good teacher, was most reliable and conscientious and also popular with her pupils.
I understood that she was embarking upon a stage career, but I am very pleased to hear that she is returning to teaching.
I should add that she was a very successful producer of our annual play, and also took a leading part in our Young Christians school society.
I recommend Miss Holmes warmly.
Very funny.
Next I opened another envelope from London. Inside was my own letter to the Tavistock Repertory Company. Someone had done impatiently but exactly as I requested, and scrawled the name of June and Julie Holmes’s agent across the bottom of the page in blue pencil.
Then there was a letter from Australia. In it was a printed black-edged card with a blank space for the sender’s name to be written in; a rather pathetically childlike hand had done so.
The last letter was from Ann Taylor: inside, a postcard and photographs.
We found these. We thought you might like copies. I’ve sent the negatives to Mrs. Kelly. I understand what you say in your letter, we must all feel to blame in different ways. The one thing I don’t think Allie would want is that we take it hard, now that it won’t do any good. I’m going home next week. I still can’t believe it. I had to pack all her things and you can imagine. It seemed so unnecessary then, it made me cry again. Well, I suppose we must all get over it. I am going home next week, shall see Mrs. K. at the earliest possible time.
Eight bad snaps. Five of them were of me or of views; only three showed Alison. One of her kneeling over the little girl with the boil, one of her standing at the Oedipus crossroads, one of her with the muleteer on Parnassus. She was closest to the camera in the one at the crossroads, and she had that direct, half-boyish grin that somehow always best revealed her honesty… what had she called herself? Coarse salt; the candor of salt. I remembered how we had got in the car, how I had talked about my father, had even then only been able to talk to her like that because of her honesty; because I knew she was a mirror that did not lie; whose interest in me was real; whose love was real. That had been her supreme virtue: a constant reality.
I sat at my desk and stared at that face, at the strand of hair that blew across the side of the forehead, that one moment, the hair so, the wind so, still present and forever gone.
Sadness swept back through me. I could not sleep. I put the letters and photographs in a drawer and went out again, along the coast. Far to the north, across the water, there was a scrub fire. A broken ruby-red line ate its way across a mountain; as a line of fire ate its way through me.
What was I? Exactly what Conchis had had me told: nothing but the net sum of countless wrong turnings. Why? I dismissed most of the Freudian jargon of the trial; but all my life I had tried to turn life into fiction, to hold reality away; always I had acted as if a third person was watching and listening and giving me marks for good or bad behavior—a god like a novelist, to whom I turned, like a character with the power to please, the sensitivity to feel slighted, the ability to adapt himself to whatever he believed the novelist-god wanted. This leechlike variation of the superego I had created myself, fostered myself, and because of it I had always been incapable of acting freely. It was not my defense; but my despot. And now I saw it, I saw it a death too late.
I sat by the shore and waited for the dawn to rise on the gray sea.
Intolerably alone.
64
Whether it was in the nature of my nature, or in that of whatever Cone-method optimism Conchis had pumped into me during my last long sleep, I got progressively moroser as the day dawned. I was well aware that I had no evidence and no witnesses to present in support of the truth; and such a firm believer in logistics as Conchis would not have left his line of retreat unorganized. He must know that his immediate risk was that I should go to the police; in which case his move was obvious. I guessed that by now he and all the “cast” had left Greece. There would be no one to question, except people like Hermes, who was probably even more innocent than I suspected; the hotel clerk, who would be bribed; and Patarescu, who would admit nothing.
The only real witness was Demetriades; I could never force a confession out of him. But I remembered his sweet innocence, his indifference at the beginning; Hermes’s appearing so opportunely. And I wanted some sort of physical revenge on someone; I also wanted the whole school to know I was angry.
I didn’t go to the first lesson, reserving my spectacular re-entry into school life till breakfast. When I appeared there was the sudden silence you get when you throw a stone into a pool of croaking frogs; an abrupt hush, then the gradual resumption of noise. Some of the boys were grinning. The other masters stared at me as if I had committed the final crime. I could see Demetriades on the far side of the room. I walked straight towards him, too quickly for him to act. He half rose, then evidently saw what was coming and, like a frightened Peter Lorre, promptly sat down again. I stood over him.
“Get up, damn you.”
He made a feeble attempt at a smile; shrugged at the boy next to him. I repeated my request, loudly, in Greek, and added a Greek gibe.
“Get up—brothel louse.”
There was a total hush again. Demetriades went red and stared down at the table.
He had in front of him a plate of pappy bread and milk sprinkled with honey, a dish he always treated himself to at breakfast. I reached forward and flipped it back in his face. It ran down his shirt and his expensive suit. He jumped up, flicking down with his hands. As he looked up in a red rage, like a child, I hit him where I wanted, plug in his right eye. It was not Lonsdale, but it landed hard.
Everyone got to their feet. The prefects shouted for order. The gym master rushed behind me and seized my arm, but I snapped at him that it was all right, it was all over. Demetriades stood like a parody of Oedipus with his hands over his eyes. Then without warning he whirled forwards at me, kicking and clawing like an old woman. The gym master, who despised him, stepped past me and easily and roughly pinned his arms.
I turned and walked out. Demetriades started to shout petulant curses I didn’t understand. A steward was standing in the door and I told him to bring coffee to my room. Then I sat there and waited.
Sure enough, as soon as second school began, I was summoned to the headmaster’s office. Besides the old man there was the deputy headmaster, the senior housemaster, and the gym master; the latter, I presumed, in case I should cut up rough again. The senior housemaster, Androutsos, spoke French fluently and he was evidently there to be the translator at this court-martial.