He lit another cigarette. "That was in 1953," he said. 'Torty-one years after-too long a gap for the man who perpetrated the hoax to be identified." The thin parchment skin of his face was crinkled in a smile. "Extraordinary, isn't it? Picture him yourself, stealing off to Sussex one week-end with a pocketful of bones filched from some travelled family's private collection, then creeping out in the moonlight to bury them in a gravel pit where he knew workmen would discover them. And all those years, watching and saying nothing-just laughing to himself at such utter nonsense being taken seriously by the leading anthropologists and palaeontologists of the day."
The picture was so vivid, so detailed I couldn't help it: "You would have been a student yourself when the bones were originally discovered."
He looked at me with his head on one side like a bird. "Yes, that's so." He chuckled quietly to himself, then reached for his drink as though to drown his amusement. "But what Pieter did wasn't done for a joke. He'd no sense of humour. None whatever." He was frowning, his face suddenly serious. "He was in deadly earnest. But unfortunately for him he was in Africa, out in the bush, not in a gravel pit in Sussex. There were no quarry men digging around in the cave-shelter where he buried his bones, so he had to dig them up himself. A youngster like that, rushing his fences. ." He shook his head, no ghost of a smile. "However well disposed you were, you couldn't help smelling a rat. And then, when he wouldn't let the evidence out of his hands, only photographs-well, they tore him to pieces, those that bothered. And now, of course, those books published in the Communist countries." He sighed and gave a little shrug. "A carbon-fourteen dating of thirty-five thousand b.p. -that's something no anthropologist will readily accept for Cro-Magnon man. And from him of all people. . they're not going to like it, not at all."
"But they're scientists," I said. "Surely, if the evidence is overwhelming. ."
"Where did those bones come from-did he tell you?"
"No. But he seemed pleased when I told him you felt he'd no right to keep the location to himself. He said they'd talk, they'd pass it on and soon everybody would know. Isn't that how things become established-the gradual accumulation of evidence?" And I began telling him again about the red dunes, how this had established in the old man's mind the low level of the Mediterranean during the Ice Age.
But he refused to accept that the dunes formed a vital link in the chain of evidence. "I think you are confusing two things here. In my view, the essence of Pieter's genius is that he is willing to carry on an ethological-to use an American term-an ethological study, whilst at the same time developing in the field a new theory covering what to us has always
been an evolutionary gap. If you had read his Journal. . but then you probably wouldn't have understood it." He sipped at his drink and turned to Sonia. "I have spent most of today reading and thinking about a report of some very interesting psychological experiments carried out on rhesus monkeys-controlled experiments in captivity set against careful and protracted studies of these nearest-to-human primates in the wild. And I have been comparing the conclusions this Harvard scientist arrives at with those reached by Pieter Van der Voort, not as a result of experimenting with monkeys, but achieved by taking a hard, detached look at himself. It's a fascinating study, starting with his childhood. His conclusion, basically, is that 'normality' is only achieved within a social framework, that the loner represents the extremes, producing at one end of the spectrum the most debased of creatures, at the other end the most brilliant-the genius, the prophet, the great leader." He chuckled quietly. "The trouble is that Pieter cannot make up his mind into which category he falls."
Sonia shook her head. "I don't understand," she said.
Nor did I. "He went there to escape. It was the only place he knew where he could hide up and at the same time still be in contact with the evidence that supported his theory."
But Gilmore shook his head. "An experiment I would call it. These days we are so dazzled by our material progress-supersonic flight, nuclear physics, the moon landings, quasars, lasers, etc., etc.-we are apt to forget that our ancestors were quite remarkably advanced in other ways. You say that he was escaping into solitude. But remember, he had given way to his natural aggressive instincts-to the devil that is in all of us. And what if Christ were right-what if forty days and forty nights of lonely fasting and praying is the medically exact formula for inducing a state of self-hypnosis where environmental, even perhaps hereditary, instincts can be overcome? This I think was what he was trying to prove. Not an experiment with poor little captive monkeys, but an experiment with his own flesh, himself under the microscope, and then to have it interrupted. ." He hesitated, frowning. "Lying in my bunk today I tried to put myself in his place, imagine how I would react when faced with a man like Holroyd seeking to take advantage of something I had discovered." He shook his head. "Not easy." He turned to Sonia again. "You know he half killed a man in Russia-at a dig of his near Tashkent?"
She nodded. "Yes. He told me. It was when he was ill, his mind rambling, and I wasn't sure."
"Oh, it was real all right. He goes into it in great detail in his Journal. A Bulgarian. He tried to throttle him with his bare hands, a blind fury of rage after the fellow had stolen some artefacts from his tent. Fortunately his assistant was near at hand, otherwise he'd have killed the poor devil. A fit of uncontrollable violence like that. ." He looked across at me. "Now perhaps you understand why he was so disturbed, so mortified at his blind, instinctive attack on Cartwright."
That night I dreamed I faced my father, both of us hellbent on murder. Maybe it was the prawns we'd had for dinner. I was berthed in a pipe cot up for'ard amongst the sails and I woke in a muck sweat thinking I'd killed him. After that I dozed fitfully, feeling we were both of us doomed. Then suddenly it was four o'clock and Bert woke me with a cup of tea.
We were away at first light, motoring south in the wake of a big trading caique, the old canal banks straight lines of stone in a vast area of shallows. The flat marsh country, the grey dawn, depressed me and my mood was sombre. Ahead, on its hill, rose the massive bulk of Fort St. George, and beyond it, the bare bleak island hills stood like early prints, rimming the open roadstead of Port Drepano.
The sun rose as we left the canal, keeping between the three pairs of buoys that marked the dredged channel, and the towering heights of Levkas were touched with gold. The sea was glass, not a breath of wind. By seven-thirty we were abreast of Skropio, a steep little wooded island owned by a Greek millionaire, and half an hour later we entered Port Vathy, the houses sleeping in the morning sun and donkeys browsing at the water's edge. There was a small fishing boat selling the night's catch and near it a caique loaded with bright-coloured Turkish rugs. The Customs Officer greeted us in his own home, dressed in vest and trousers, not yet shaved, and when Bert had obtained permission to visit the inlets of Meganisi provided he finally cleared from Vathy, Florrie began to make enquiries about Holroyd.