All the way down I had been seeing traces of that same aqueduct whose ventilation shafts marked the erosion in the red dunes. Now at last I was catching glimpses of the great city it had served, the ruins overgrown with creepers, half-buried in vegetation, but still gigantic in size. The outer wall ran like a stone rampart into green grass country where sheep and goats gazed. Beyond Nikopolis, the grass gave way to agriculture, and where there was irrigation, the land was intensively cultivated. And then at last we were in Preveza itself, swinging through an area of new building centred around a petrol storage depot and out on to the waterfront, a broad promenade built on the scale of a major seaside resort with the town behind it a low huddle of nondescript buildings.
The water was absolutely still, a sheet of glass mirroring the blue of the sky. I pressed my face to the dirty window. But there were no boats. The whole length of that waterfront was absolutely empty. The emptiness of it came as a shock to me. I had been so certain the Barretts would be waiting for me there, the boat anchored stern-on. The weather had been perfect. There had been no gales. The bus came to a stop and I got out with the rest of the passengers, standing there, irresolute in the sunshine, my suitcase in my hand. A group of gypsies passed with a mule-drawn cart, two dogs slinking in the shade below the axle, the women following, free-striding and upright, their skirts and shawls bright with colour. The little band was a gay contrast to the drab black of the Greeks
sitting over their coffee at the kafeneion, which was also the bus terminal, and out beyond the smooth strip of water that was the entrance to the Gulf of Amvrakikos, the further shore showed as a fringe of low-lying land. It was all flat country, the hills a long way away, and seaward I could see the buoys that marked the dredged channel. No vessels were coming in and the only thing that moved on the flfat molten surface of the water was a small open fishing boat powered by an outboard.
For a moment I was at a complete loss. Coromandel should have arrived two days ago. Standing there, conspicuous and somewhat forlorn, I realized how urgent had been my desire to get to Levkas, how committed I was to the idea of searching for a cave-shelter there similar to the one at Despotiko.
"Say, fellow-you American?"
I turned. A broad, grizzled man was staring at me with bright dark eyes from one of the tables. "No, English," I said.
"Englezos, Americanos-same thing, eh? I sail many ports." He reeled off the English ports he had been in, most of them barely recognizable the way he pronounced them. "I was stoker, see. In the old Mauritania one time. Jeez! That was work. You like a kaffee, sump'n to drink? What you like?"
He was a battered, garrulous old man who had knocked around the world in all sorts of ships. "Ain't many coal burners left now. They want greasers, not stokers. Anyways, I'm too old. An' I got dollars. Anybody got dollars in Greece, they can sit in the kafeneion an' do nothin'-jus' talk. That's a good life, eh?" He gave a toothless chuckle. "Not bad for an old man who's bin a stoker all his life. You in the war? No, too young, I guess. Torpedoed twice. Second time was on one of those P.Qs. Jeez, that was cold. We was in the goddam ice three days …"
I sat and drank my coffee and listened to that Ancient Mariner going on and on about the disaster that had hit a convoy to Murmansk. It was an incredible story, but difficult to follow. Finally he ran out of steam and I asked him if he had seen an English boat in Preveza during the last two days.
"An old fishing boat with a bowsprit? Yeah. She come in
Thursday evening, but she don't stay. She was lyin' right there." He indicated a position almost opposite us with a hand that had two fingers missing. "Woman spoke Greek. Very bad Greek. Said they gonna wait here for a friend. Guess that was you, eh? Well, they was gone next morning. Yesterday morning."
"Where did they go to?" I asked.
He shook his head. "They jus' vamoose." He smiled. I think he was pleased at remembering that word. And then he thrust his mutilated hand in front of my face. "See that? That was the first time I get the torpedo. Lucky I don't lose my fuckin arm." He was in mid-Atlantic then and it was ten minutes before I could extricate myself and visit the Port Captain's office. It was about a hundred yards further along the waterfront and there I was able to confirm Coromandel's movements. The Port Captain himself showed me the entry in his book. She had arrived at 18.30 hours on Thursday evening direct from Pylos and she had left the following morning at 08.30 bound for Port Vathy on the island of Meganisi. He did not speak English so that I was unable to question him, but just as I was leaving he indicated a poste restante box on the wall. There was a note in it addressed to me, just a line from Bert to say they would be back by Saturday evening, or at the latest Sunday morning.
There was a local chart pinned to the wall beside the Port Captain's desk. "Meganisi?" I asked him and he pointed to an island shaped like some extraordinary crayfish with a thick, pronged body and a whiplash tail. It was about ten miles south of the Levkas Canal and separated from the island of Levkas by the narrow Meganisi Channel.
There was a restaurant nearby and I left my suitcase there and walked out to a wooded promontory that looked across to the ruined fortress of Actium. By then a small breeze had come in and the sea glinted between the red boles of the pines. I sat at a table near a logwood kiosk that served coffee and soft drinks, watching the dredged channel. But though I stayed there until the last of the boys who had been running in and out of the water had gone home and the sun was slanting towards the sea, I saw only two ships come in, and both of them were caiques.
It was almost dark by the time I got back to the restaurant and there I had the best meal I had had in weeks-huge meaty prawns, fresh-caught that morning from the sands off Preveza. I was sitting over my coffee, wondering whether I would have to find myself a room for the night, when I saw the green and red of navigation lights close off the quay, heard the rattle of an anchor chain running out. By the time I was out of the restaurant the boat had turned stern-on and was coming in fast. It was Coromandel, and I reached the edge of the quay just as Bert heaved the first warp for the waiting harbour boy to slip over a bollard. He saw me, gave a cheerful wave, and the next moment the bight of chain that carried the second warp crashed at my feet. As soon as he had made fast and the gangplank had been rigged, I went on board. Bert's hand gripped mine. "Are you alone?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Where's Kotiadis?"
I began to explain, but then the glimpse of a white sweater showed for'ard and Florrie was spotlighted green as she came quickly down the starboard side. "Paul!" I suddenly found myself embraced, enveloped almost in the warmth of her emotional personality. "You're alone?"
"Yes, of course I'm alone." But when I started to explain what had happened so that they would understand why I wanted to visit Levkas, Bert stopped me. "Something we've got to tell you, something important. When we arrived here- the morning after, that is-"
"Not now." Florrie indicated the shadowy figures crowding the quay to look at the boat. "Wait till we're down below."
We made the warps fast, hauled in on the chain for'ard and then went down to the saloon. "It's your father, y'see," Bert said as he opened up the drink locker. "There's a village called Vatahori out there on Meganisi-"
"For heaven's sake," Florrie cut in. "Begin at the beginning."
"That's what I was trying to do." He shrugged. "Oh, well, you tell him yourself then."