The Dark Labyrinth (17 page)

“You're young enough,” he said, still busy, his mind working on ways and means. It was like watching a dentist sterilize his equipment. “A Hecuba,” he said, and at last stood up. He was looking at her now as if she were a lump of inanimate matter; it was a glance in which was mixed some of his mind's delight in the smooth lines of the chin and mouth.

“So you want a likeness?” he said grimly, in a faraway voice. “I wonder if you've ever seen yourself?”

Mrs. Truman was startled out of her self-possession. She blushed. “The face of a great courtesan,” said Campion, more to himself than to anyone else. He had put a brush between his teeth now and was drawing in soft pencil on the canvas.

“I suppose you know all about them,” said Mrs. Truman, uncomfortably aware that under the badinage there might lie observations of some interest. Campion seemed to be breaking up her face into small fragments. It was no longer a synthesis—an entity called Mrs. Truman—which faced him, but a series of plastic forms and planes. It was a disturbing scrutiny. She became aware that her nose was unpowdered (“Stop squinting,” said Campion peremptorily), and that the spot on her lip looked awful.

“A courtesan,” repeated Campion. “Now if you'd lived in the south there might have been scope for your talents.”

Mrs. Truman moistened her lips and said nothing. Campion mixed smears of paint on to his palette, lit a cigarette, leaving it balanced upon a stanchion and said: “I had a girl who looked like you when I was an undergraduate. She was jolly and rough—like a blast of hot air from a tube-station. But she couldn't make love.”

“Must have come from Scotland,” she said.

“She came from Leeds.”

“It's a libel,” said Mrs. Truman, scratching one ankle with the sole of her shoe.

“It wasn't till I met a Rumanian girl in Paris that I discovered the fact,” admitted Campion. He was talking in order to see the fugitive expressions of interest and amusement flit across his sitter's face. “Her name was Lola.”

“Exotic,” suggested Mrs. Truman.

“She was an awful slut really. She lay in bed all day eating chocolates with soft centres and reading novels; but she hummed like a top in the evening.”

“So Leeds girls don't hum, eh?” said Mrs. Truman, with good-natured amusement. “Better ask my husband. He knows Leeds.”

“You're moving,” said Campion with a sigh, waking up from his trance and staring at her bad-temperedly. She apologized and made an attempt to freeze back into her original pose. Campion moved her head back, holding it by the nose. “There,” he said.

“I hope”, said Mrs. Truman, “that you don't make me look like Lola. My husband is old-fashioned, you know.”

“Don't you want a likeness?” said Campion ironically. But now he had sunk back into his concentration. He had begun to build up the portrait in a series of blocks of colour. His small ringers gripped the tall brushes tightly, with a nervous energy, as if he were afraid of dropping them. They reminded Mrs. Truman of the claws of a bird. From time to time he whistled to himself softly, or paused to drag at his cigarette.

After half an hour he allowed her a rest, and they sat together smoking and looking at the vague series of blobs on the canvas. “It looks like a street scene in Barcelona,” she said. “Here's the fire brigade, and there's the main street.”

“That, my good woman, is your nose emerging.”

“Bright brown?”

“A scorbutic tendency which is due to being unable to sit still without fidgeting for a second.”

“Well, I never,” said Mrs. Truman. She retired for a minute to powder it.

When she emerged on deck again Campion had started in on the painting without her. She threw away her cigarette and sat down again in the required pose. “Tell me,” she said, “how do artists happen?” It was a question that had occurred to her as she examined her face in the smoky little mirror of the cabin.

Campion was as far away as ever now. “Do you really want to know? Or are you wasting my time?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. Campion painted on in silence for a moment. “It's easy,” he said at last. “When they're babies you drop them on their heads or neglect them, so they are driven to try and recapture something; so they learn a skill; then those as are bad artists are content to go on copying Nature, while those as are good—something funny happens to them.”

“What?” she said. Under his lightness she felt as if there were something else, something profound perhaps.

“They begin to make love to the object.”

“How?”

“In paint. This face of yours is so lovely. I am in a sort of inner sense making love to it with every brush-stroke. You can't have a purer love than that can you? Which probably explains why I am so unprincipled in my private life. But this is far deeper than just sleeping with you.”

Mrs. Truman blushed crimson. Campion went on painting, apparently unaware that he had said anything to disturb her. His hands moved quickly, mixing the paint, and applying light dabs of it to the rough hollow canvas. Indeed, she suddenly had a suffocating feeling of self-consciousness, as if indeed each brush-stroke were a soft kiss, an endearment. After the session was over she went down to her cabin once more and stared at her own features in the glass. She could dimly locate its familiar qualities—good-humour, honesty, ingenuity. Was beauty among those qualities, and, if so, in what did it lie?

Her husband, who was lying in his bunk with a newspaper, turned a quizzical eye upon her. “I see,” he said, “getting vain, eh? You'll be heading for Hollywood next.”

Mrs. Truman sat down beside him and asked in her most serious tone: “Would you say I was beautiful? I mean
beautiful
—the word.”

Her husband went on with his reading, absently patting her shoulder. “Yes,” he said vaguely. “Of course.” Mrs. Truman got up with dignity. “You don't have to tell me lies, you don't,” she said, and went on deck. Campion and Graecen were smoking over the painting. “Of course,” Campion was saying, “if you get the massive butt of the nose, the sort of way the root thickens into the frontal bone, the whole face falls into shape.”

She turned away disappointedly and strolled forward to her favourite place on A deck. They spoke as if her face were something quite separate from herself, something that was completely detached; not as if it were a personal instrument on which she registered her moods and graces. Elsie Truman looked out over the calm sea, to where the snow-capped mountains of the Peloponnesus glowed in the azure sky. Flying fish exploded in flashing beads of light at the passage of the
Europa
through the still sea; farther away a dolphin jumped into the air and disappeared again, leaving a black blot like an ink-stain. Tonight they would make the Piraeus. Tomorrow Crete.

They had yet to hear of the labyrinth.

The Labyrinth

T
he visit to Athens, so proudly announced on the agenda of the company, was a hollow boast. There really was not time to include Greece proper in the tour; and yet the advertising department thought that the existence of the name, both on the charts and in the text, was a well-justified inclusion. Thus it was that the
Europa
sailed round the Peloponnesus to the Piraeus, arriving there at dusk, and setting sail once more in the small hours for Crete. By straining both logic and every nerve the passengers might visit the Acropolis, but few bothered.

The halt at Piraeus, however, served one useful purpose. It enabled one of the Jannadis brothers to board the
Europa
with a notice for the green baize board in the dining saloon.

“The Labyrinth of Crete,” read Graecen with curiosity that night as he came down to dinner. “Famous from ancient times, the discoveries of a famous archaeologist have once more been made available to the general public, thanks to the enterprise of Jannadis Brothers of Athens. From the quay passengers will please to proceed in cars arranged by Jannadis Cretan office to the labyrinth in charge of a qualified guide. Whole journey costing 780 drachmas. Please place your name underneath if you wish.”

The Jannadis Brothers had received a large part of their business education in America. Farther down in a heavy display type were the words “TERRIFIC. LEGENDARY. HEART-THROBBING. ASTOUNDING. WHOOPEEE”.

“That rather sums it up,” said Baird, who was looking over his shoulder. “Shall we go?”

Graecen thought for a moment. It would certainly carry them as far as Cefalû, their destination. It would also give him a chance to see the city of the rock before he called on its discoverer. The idea was perhaps a good one. “Perhaps”, said Baird,.“Axelos would like to show us his discovery himself. It might be
a gaffe
to see it without him.”

Graecen pursed his lips and shook his head. He did not think so at all. Taking out his fountain-pen he wrote his name neatly at the head of the list. “Shall I put yours?” he asked. Baird thanked him. “And mine, please,” said Campion, who was craning over Baird's shoulder. “Golly,” he added, catching sight of the display type.

Few of the other passengers showed much interest, except the Trumans, who spent an earnest five minutes calculating the cost at the rate of exchange and wondering whether the expenditure would be justified. Finally, they added their names to the list. Fearmax pondered the question gravely over dinner, and only added his name after the purser had made a short announcement to the effect that he would like the list closed by ten o'clock that night as the Captain would have to send a signal on to Crete stating the number of prospective excursionists and asking that cars be engaged.

Miss Dale and Miss Dombey brought up the rear; the one because she had a vague feeling that the visit might help her with her examination, the latter because she was an inveterate sightseer, and because humanitarian motives demanded that Spot, her dog, should have a run on dry land after so many days at sea. Several other names were also added to the list, but were afterwards erased as further inquiry showed that the trip was to take nearly the whole day. The name of Colonel Sinclair was actually on the list, but its owner was too prostrated by sea-sickness to avail himself of the opportunity offered by the Jannadis Brothers. He lay in his bunk groaning for Cheltenham. Later, of course, he claimed that a premonition had prevented him from going rather than sea-sickness. Indeed, his local paper on his return published this myth under the heading of
Colonel's Premonition
.

It had blown up rough again in the Cretan channel and several people, including Miss Dombey, suffered from seasickness—not because the
Europa
rolled. Rather it was because the ship moved so steadily, without a tremor, through a raging sea, with whitecaps piled up round her like the froth on a
café viennois
. By dawn, however, the squall had blown itself out and the great ship nosed cautiously into the magnificent bay of Suda (Canea harbour was too small) and anchored opposite the twisted wreck of the old warship
York
, which lay, a rusting relic of the Cretan campaign, belly-down in the shallows.

Baird had been up at dawn to watch the sunrise breaking over the familiar Grecian landscape. He was troubled by an obscure excitement whose source he was not able to trace. The sun rose slowly from among the snow-capped peaks of the White Mountains. It was bitterly cold, and he had found himself a vantage point on the boat-deck which kept off the light but piercing wind. From here, looking down into the harbour, he could see the great ship's reflection rustling under her, motionless save for the thick black plume of smoke from the white stacks. He stared out eagerly across the island, taking in every detail, surprised to find how intimately he remembered it all.

A foreground of olive trees and turned red earth: a few box-like houses: an oil refinery: a dusty road winding into the middle distance—in his imagination peopled by dusty columns of New Zealanders and British, plodding away towards Sphakia. He could have walked inland with his eyes shut.

As he was standing thus a car came over the brow of the hill and took the curling road, fringed with pines, which led to the jetty. It stopped at the water's edge and a man got out. Was it perhaps Axelos who had come to meet Graecen? He saw almost immediately that it was someone much smaller than Axelos. A fisherman in a blue jersey, standing at his oars, conveyed the newcomer slowly across the intervening distance, until his boat rested in the shadow of the
Europa
. The man seemed to be English, from the cut of his clothes. It was probably the Consul, though why he should come aboard at this hour was more than Baird could fathom. “Prosechete, kirie,” he heard the boatman say. It was the first Greek he had heard spoken for some time; it filled him with a kind of nostalgic pain. He scanned the face of the boatman eagerly to see if it was anyone he knew. (One always does this in Greece.) Octopus, pinnae and red mullet lay in a basket at the bottom of the boat. He had obviously been out all night fishing.

The British Consul (for it was he) came aboard in his time. He was tired and peevish, and walked like a person of some consequence to the bridge, where he asked smartly for the officer of the watch. “I understand that you have passengers wishing to visit the labyrinth. I have come to inform you that the trip is simply not safe.”

He was conducted below to see the Captain, to whom he explained his business more clearly, slightly mollified by the excellent coffee and biscuit of the ship.

“There's a travel agency run by two young Greeks,” he said. “They advertise tours of the labyrinth. Now, my advice is to dissuade passengers from running the risk. The labyrinth simply isn't safe. I don't want to have British subjects lost in the island, it upsets the Embassy; I've no doubt your company would also not like to risk the lives of its passengers.”

The Captain listened to him carefully and decided that his manner was too peremptory for a mere vice-Consul. The company, he pointed out, was exempt from any responsibility in the matter. The Jannadis Agency had merely canvassed visitors to the labyrinth. It was not up to him to stop people enjoying themselves. At any rate, he would post a notice on the board, explaining that the place was considered dangerous by the Consul, and advising passengers not to risk it. “Let me see,” he said, “I think we've only a few this time.”