Greek Fire by Winston Graham Read Free Book Online Page A

gone some way that Gene spoke again.
    â€œYou must be very rich.”
    â€œWhy don’t you talk Greek?”
    â€œYou must be very rich,” he said in Greek.
    â€œScarcely any accent. It is as if——”
    â€œAs if I came from one of the neighbouring voμoı. Never from the one I’m in.”
    â€œHow do you speak so well? You have relatives still here?”
    â€œNobody here.”
    â€œYou are staying with friends in Athens?”
    â€œNo, I have rooms.”
    She waited but he said no more. They left the suburbs of Athens and skirted the barren eminences of Hymettus, travelling fast through olive groves and vineyards. Once they were out of the town there was practically no traffic except for the occasional farm cart piled high and drawn by donkey or mule moving ponderously on businesses known only to the black-dressed, black-scarved peasant woman between the shafts. An occasional village street saw them by, inevitable café, inevitable yellow mongrels, tiny Byzantine church, eucalyptus trees, tattered buildings, black-clad idlers staring.
    He said: “Tell me about these excavations.”
    â€œYou will see them for yourself.”
    â€œThe paper said you were closely superintending the work.”
    â€œThat’s because it was a paper which favours the people I am friendly with. I act in this for my friend, who is too busy to come down.”
    â€œTell me what you have found.”
    She said: “Tell me why you went to the Little Jockey on Monday.”
    He stared out at the road with his grave, craggy, withdrawn face. “Why not?”
    â€œWhy did you say at the play that Juan Tolosa had been killed in an accident the following day?—putting on an emphasis as if you didn’t believe it was any such thing.”
    â€œDid I? No.… But it’s a little strange, isn’t it, that the car which killed him was badly damaged but hasn’t yet been found.”
    â€œWho told you that?”
    â€œI went along to the police inquiry this morning.”
    â€œIt was interesting?”
    â€œHis widow said the car mounted the side-walk and deliberately crushed him against a house.”
    â€œShe must have been hysterical.”
    â€œQuite hysterical.”
    She glanced at him. “ You don’t think so?”
    â€œThe police did. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
    As they came near Lavrion the green fields and vineyards gave place to old mine machinery, grey heaps of slag and rusty iron derricks. Then they were through the area of the silver mines and the brilliant sun lit up the low cliffs and ultramarine sea of Cape Sounion, with the white temple of Poseidon like a tall nun brooding on a hill. The girl drove up to the Acropolis and stopped the engine. They got out.
    He said: “ When I was a student we used to come here at the week-ends to bathe.”
    â€œYou said last night you had not been before.”
    â€œI’ve not been before with you.”
    He stood by the car for a while looking about him, and she glanced once or twice at his face.
    He said: “ Fruitful study of aesthetics as well as of ancient history.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWhere does the impact come from? Thirteen pillars. Half a dozen rectangles of fluted marble with the sea as a drop curtain. If you analyse it, it’s nothing.”
    She said: “A rag and a bone and a hank of hair.”
    He turned. “ Exactly .” Then his eyes focused on her. “ Except that there’s a physical as well as an aesthetic element in a woman’s beauty.”
    She didn’t seem put out by his stare. “What is physical?” she said. “Where does it become only emotional? And what is emotional? Where does it become only aesthetic? I don’t think you can separate them.”
    â€œWell,” he said, “ let’s say the difference with marble pillars is that there’s no wish for personal