A Darker God Read online

  When they’d settled with their coffee at a table in the shade of a parasol, Merriman leaned to Montacute and asked: “Now, before we start chewing the fat, tell me straight: Were you following me?”

  Caught off balance, Percy hesitated for a second. Had he been so obvious? They’d warned him that Merriman was nobody’s fool. He was pleased with his reply. It had just the right degree of offended incredulity. “Certainly not! But, professionally, sir, your question troubles me. Do you suspect you’re being followed? If so, as a copper, I may be just your man—unless it’s a more serious matter and a psychoanalyst might be what’s called for?”

  Merriman grinned. “Still got all my marbles, I’m glad to say. And sincerely glad to hear you’re not on my trail! Slight case of the jitters these last few days, though, I have to confess. Survival instinct. You know … you look up and out of the corner of your eye you see a face, a figure you’re sure you saw a minute or two ago hovering some yards away … With me, the phantom usually takes the form of a taxi driver!”

  Percy laughed. “Lucky man! It takes the rest of us half an hour with a megaphone to attract one in this city! No, if I’d been following you for any clandestine motive, you wouldn’t have noticed me. I’m rather good at that. But I prefer to announce myself to my friends. I’ve been meaning to drop my card in at … Kolonaki Square, isn’t it? I’ve been somewhat engaged since I stepped off the boat …”

  “Ah, yes! I’ve been following your exploits on the front page of the Athens News! Exterminating bandits in a spectacular way. More heads for your mantelpiece, I understand? You’ve lost none of your Celtic dash, Captain!”

  “I’m Detective Chief Inspector now, sir. With the C.I.D., Scotland Yard. Seconded to Athens. My recent history, in a nutshell. And you, Colonel?”

  “Now Professor—Sir Andrew, if you can believe it! Digger, classicist, and writer. Writer …” The professor looked thoughtfully at the smiling younger man and walked straight into a trap Montacute had been planning to set before him at their next meeting. “I’m working on something that might interest you. An enthusiasm we have in common … Still travelling with your Iliad under your pillow?… Agamemnon! I’m hacking out a translation of Aeschylus’s play with a view to staging it. No shortage of willing actors in this city. It’s stuffed with classicists of all nationalities. A lively young chap like you needs to extend his social life … take an interest in something other than his work. Shall we have another of these? Delicious stuff, Greek coffee … a thimbleful’s never enough.”

  Merriman ordered more coffee and settled in for a deeper conversation. “You must come and meet my wife, Maud. She’ll propel you into Athenian society! Maud knows everyone! Look, are you free to come to dinner on Saturday? Maud’s cousin is arriving from England to spend the summer with us, so you won’t be the only new bug there. And we’ll see if we can’t rustle up some pretty girls to sit opposite. There are some particularly fetching American nurses in town. Am I tempting you?”

  “Delighted!” said Percy. And he was. It had been so easy. But he was remembering also, and with pleasure, the all-too-rare boozy evenings in the Mess when Colonel Merriman had breezed through, raising the spirits of men like him. In the doldrums militarily, enfeebled by dysentery and malaria, sweltering in heat or shivering in cold, the young officers felt the better for the colonel’s optimism, the connections he made for them with the world outside the fortifications, and, not least, his risqué stories. They’d laughed themselves sick at a play he’d sketched out on the back of an ordnance list and produced within sight of the enemy who, they could be reasonably certain, were watching. Soccer and theatre always caught their attention and no hostile shots were ever fired for the duration of the performance. Percy remembered, the morning after the rowdy musical performance, unhooking a sheet of paper from the barbed wire of the compound fence. In Bulgarian and English it had complimented the British on their performance. Much enjoyed. And would they please supply them with the words for the song “Boris the Bulgar”?

  Percy was glad that Merriman was back in his life again. He just hoped it wouldn’t fall to him to push the charming firebrand under a bus.

  Andrew Merriman bade a cheery good-bye to his refound friend, exchanging addresses and promises of further contact. With narrowed eyes, he watched the tall figure of the inspector shouldering his way along the avenue through the crowds. Merriman resented surveillance, even from someone as congenial as young Montacute. A bit of a thug, the professor remembered, and a bonnie fighter. A man you’d want at your shoulder, not at your back. Well, the best place for an undeclared foe was within range of your sword arm. Andrew would keep him close.

  He made his way back to his grand double-fronted house overlooking Kolonaki Square. “Finished my research, my dear,” he said to his wife, putting his head round the door of the morning room, where Maud was taking a late breakfast on a tray. She’d clearly had another of her bad nights. “I’ll just pop up to the library and put a few last touches to the translation while it’s fresh. The second act I thought was a little stilted, didn’t you? Could do with a bit of polish before we go public with it. Oh … by the way … I met an old friend while I was communing with Agamemnon. I’m quite certain the meeting was predestined! I asked him to dinner on Saturday. Scholar. You’ll like him. I haven’t mentioned it to him yet—and perhaps I’ll leave this to you—but I’ve marked him down for a part in the play. Wonderful voice! See if you aren’t enchanted when you meet him.”

  Neatly sidestepping any of Maud’s attempts to engage his attention further, he bustled off.

  The professor had been telling nothing less than the truth when he complained to Montacute of a suspicion of scrutiny. Any malignant interest directed at him, whether from inside the house or external to it, raised the fair hairs on the back of his sunburnt English neck. And his hairs were telling him that he was at this moment being overlooked.

  His reaction to the unseen stimulus was a purely physical one, the mind somehow being left out of the circuit: the chill between the shoulder blades, the tension in fingers that crept, undirected by him, towards his waist, where he’d grown used to feeling the reassuring weight of a gun belt. He was experiencing the same feeling that, more than once in the war years, had drilled into him like a phantom bullet and sent him diving for cover. It had earned him a reputation for luck with the men—the most valued attribute in battle—along with a ready following and a rude nickname. His years of soldiering had honed this natural protective mechanism to a fine edge but it had always been there from his childhood, a gift, not to be called on, but calling him.

  He was eager to get started. His desk stood ready: research texts; dog-eared books in German, French, and Italian; maps and photographs in orderly piles; a ream of fresh paper laid out, awaiting his pen. The feeling of foreboding struck him again as he closed the door, and he held tightly to the handle until the shudder passed. The order had been delivered to his household along with his regular daily instructions: “no interruptions until two o’clock.” The servants would respect it but his wife never paid attention to requests or commands.

  He’d told her a cheerful lie when he’d announced he was busy with the Agamemnon. He’d brushed aside her offer of help. Maud was reasonably happy for him to slip off to work on the play; you could say she was heart and soul behind the project. She saw it involving her with the cream of the expatriate society of Athens and planned to while away her summer co-directing the amateur dramatics. She would be deferred to, admired, consulted, busy: a personage on the Athenian scene. His wife wasn’t so happy to see Andrew whiling away his time on his other task: his true magnum opus.

  He calculated he’d be allowed a half an hour to settle, then she’d sidle in with a discreet cough, a placatory smile, and a bunch of flowers for his desk. She’d make a fuss over the placement of the wretched vase, taking care to cast her slanting glances over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of what he was writing. As a variation, she might flutter in with a
cascade of apologies, hunting for her spectacles. And, sure enough, she’d find them in whatever improbable place she’d planted them the previous evening. But not today.

  With a grimace, he turned the key in the lock. He’d be made to pay for that defiant gesture later.

  He rebelled less frequently these days against the constant marital surveillance. But he’d played a trick on her last week. Maud knew he’d been in consultation with his man of law here in Athens. Such things always agitated her. On a sheet of his best writing paper, he’d written the address of his lawyer and followed it with a fanciful change to his will:

  Benedict—We spoke of this earlier. I’d like you now to recast my will as agreed, viz: All resources of which I die possessed to be divided between the Home for Lost Dogs, Battersea, London, and the British Museum.

  Maud hated dogs and had had a row with the Director of the B.M. He’d left the paper for her to find.

  He’d regretted it. Schoolboy humour. Was this to be his last defence against the increasingly suspicious woman he’d married? Was this the pathetic depth to which she’d reduced him? Maud hadn’t been deceived or amused. She’d silently turned up the basilisk stare a notch and doubled her vigilance.

  At least the prospect of the forthcoming visit from her English cousin had raised her spirits. Maud was beginning to grow weary of Greece and talked more and more frequently of her longed-for return to London. The new arrival would provide someone fresh for her to show off to. Someone to hold handcuffed by her skeins of wretched knitting wool, a captive audience for her endless tittle-tattle. Andrew checked his watch. Oh, Lord! Had he left orders for someone to call him in good time to get out the Dodge and motor down to the port to meet the boat? He relaxed as he remembered leaving a note for the housekeeper the previous evening. For a moment he wondered about this London cousin he’d never met. Some mystery there. He’d been introduced to all Maud’s other sane and living relations: appalling chaps, every single one—fellows who had no interests other than golf and making money to spend on building villas next to golf courses in Surrey. If this unknown cousin (at least never spoken of by Maud until very recently) was considered less palatable even than those, then Andrew was in for a miserable summer. But Maud had hinted at some scandal … a court case narrowly avoided … change of scene an absolute requirement until the clouds blew away …Andrew grinned. A scallywag might at least enliven the scene. Ah, well—in the half-hour drive back from Piraeus they’d have time to get acquainted. For better or worse.

  A fly buzzed languorously and irritatingly in the quiet room. Merriman swatted it and walked over to the tall window to dispose of it. Always such a battle to get to the fresh air on the Continent! Impatiently, he dragged back the fine net curtains and opened the two glass panes, then threw back the shutters and stepped out onto the balcony. The temperature was still bearable but in an hour’s time it would be oppressive. For a moment, he longed for the cool silence of the London Library Reading Room. June. He wondered what the temperature was like over there and decided that the English were probably only just thinking about discarding their winter vests.

  Better get started before his brain began to simmer.

  Delaying one last moment before turning to his task, he leaned over the wrought-iron rail to enjoy the lunchtime bustle in the square below. Customers were beginning to drift in to the café tables, calling out orders for their thick black Greek coffee, lighting up their Turkish cigarettes, and opening their newspapers. They were men, all of them, clutching and fidgeting with their strings of worry beads. For a moment, Andrew thought of joining them, escaping into an inconsequential but involving discussion of the latest scandal or a lively argument about the coming elections. He was well known and always welcome down there. It had become his refuge.

  He was unable to duck back inside fast enough to avoid being seen and greeted by a man he knew—a visiting and very distinguished Italian professor on his way up the hill to the British School of Archaeology, where he was giving a series of lectures to students and staff. Andrew should have been up there waiting eagerly in the front row of the audience, not lounging about on his balcony. Ouch! This breath of air was going to cost him dear. There’d be fences to mend. The two men acknowledged each other, exclaiming in Greek and Italian—“Kathigitis! Professore!”—with a show of joyful astonishment, and the Italian went on towards Lykkabettos swinging his walking cane.

  Andrew’s eye was caught by another middle-aged man who, like him, was observing the flamboyant Italian greeting the ladies with exquisite politeness as he passed. The stranger was loitering in the shade of a plane tree, and as Andrew watched, he finished his cigarette, stamped the stub into the grille under his feet, and looked about him. Becoming conscious that he was under scrutiny, he raised his eyes and saw the professor. The men held each other’s gaze for a moment, then the one below tipped his boater and walked off. Andrew, who had tensed with foreboding at the encounter, breathed out, calming himself.

  For a moment he’d thought he knew the man. He cursed himself for all kinds of idiot when he realised that, of course, he almost certainly did. The gaily beribboned straw boater worn at a rakish angle proclaimed the fellow below to be one of the increasing flock of taxi drivers who haunted the square. They seemed to have adopted the raffish headgear as their uniform this year. Professor and Lady Merriman had no doubt used the man’s services frequently. Perhaps he’d hurried forward on spotting Andrew in the anticipation of a summoning whistle from the balcony. Entrepreneurs, the Greeks, Andrew thought, approving. Greeks didn’t sit about scowling and truculent like Londoners. They came after their customers with a polite phrase or two. But Andrew disapproved of the excessive use of these motor vehicles by his rich and lazy neighbours. The spluttering cabs polluted the air with fumes and noise. He himself took pride in walking everywhere in this accessible city, when not encumbered by Maud. A lithe and energetic man, he spent the digging season working in the trenches and his physique was still, in early middle age, more like that of a Greek hoplite than a deskbound academic. Perhaps he wouldn’t be picked for the front line of the Three Hundred at Thermopylae any longer, but he could certainly skirmish to good effect on the back row if called on, he thought.

  But now, his desk was calling him. He could delay no longer.

  With the ritual gestures of a priest tending an altar, he approached the resplendent gramophone he’d had shipped out at great expense and lifted the lid. He changed the needle, then selected an electric recording from his collection and slipped it from its cover. He waited to hear the first bewitching notes of Alexander Borodin’s piece of lush romanticism, In the Steppes of Central Asia. Written to celebrate the accession of Tsar Alexander III of Russia. Alexanders! How they haunted him! In came the flutes and the horns, and Merriman was instantly transported, travelling the endless desert sands. He listened as the caravan conjured up by the composer drew near, entranced him with its exotic lyricism, passed by, and then disappeared into the heat haze. With a sigh of satisfaction, he put the recording on again and went to his desk.

  He sat down and took a new packet of pencils from his drawer. He sharpened one. He rolled back his sleeves and wiped his already damp palms on his handkerchief.

  On the first page he wrote with a defiant tilt of the head:

  DEDICATION:

  Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,

  And every conqueror creates a Muse.

  The author dedicates this Life and Death of Alexander of Macedon to the Conqueror who is its subject and also to the Muse who is its inspiration.

  In the centre of the following line he added, with a grin: “Alexander. Laetitia.”

  She wouldn’t like that. In fact, she’d hate it. It would alarm her. The colour would rise in her cheeks, her eyes would spark like flint. She’d flourish the word “hubris” about. And she’d be right. Professionally at least, the girl had always shown taste and a sense of proportion. There would be no persuading her to accept a dedication tha
t bracketed her with a man she considered the world’s greatest megalomaniac. “Alexander! But he killed more men than the Kaiser! More than Napoleon! A power-crazed, egocentric, drunken butcher whose only redeeming features were a love of literature and horses” had been her diagnosis of the young god’s condition.

  Alexander. He’d been the occasion of Merriman’s first quarrel with Laetitia. The least deferential of any of the students Andrew mentored, she’d seized with delighted vindication on the information that Alexander considered himself descended from the mysterious sloe-eyed young man-god from the East: Dionysus. “Well, that explains a lot! Remind me, Professor, of his attributes … God of Wine, Drama, and Revelry, was it? Your hero certainly emulated the god! Nightly debauches for weeks, culminating in his death. According to his secretary, the Lord of the World was actually in mid-gulp when he was struck down with whatever was to kill him days later. Ruptured liver is what I’m betting! And the uncontrolled outbreaks of orgiastic frenzy? It’s not recorded that he actually tore men and animals to shreds with his teeth like the followers of Dionysus, but he did stab his friend Black Cleitus in a drunken fit of rage. And I prefer not to think about the thousands of innocents he had crucified and tortured.” She had constantly advised: “Look elsewhere for a subject, Andrew. Alexander is irredeemable!”

  And her opinion was unalterable. Ah, well, plenty of time to change the dedication later. After he’d drawn out the pleasurable teasing.

  He touched a letter pushed deep into his trouser pocket. Her latest news. She was doing some worthwhile work in Crete and managing to have a happy time with that ecclesiastical sheepdog of hers. William Gunning. Renegade priest. Extraordinary pair! A highly unsuitable relationship and Andrew wondered if he’d done the right thing in encouraging it. It was he who’d brought about their separation initially, for selfish reasons he’d disguised as concern for Laetitia and then, regretting his action, he’d engineered their reunion in Crete. He’d pushed them onstage together like cardboard characters in a child’s toy theatre. Playing God—he knew he enjoyed the role more than was good for him. But perhaps one action had cancelled out the other? And perhaps it was all up to Fate anyway. And it did seem to have turned out well in the end. Andrew liked to know his friends were happy. He particularly liked to know Letty was happy.