Knowing it could only be William Straw, I slowed down. Wanting to continue enjoying my own company, I admit to thinking that I would drift by with the cheeriest wave I could muster, but knew it would leave me with a memory impossible to put up with. Not that anybody would need to worry about Bill surviving an unhappy situation, but wanting to know how he had got into it finally sent my expectations of a peaceful solo journey into the dustbin.
I put the blinkers on, to stop, but even so got such a horn blast from a bone idle lorry driver, who now had the trouble of overtaking, that my brain spun a full circle and back again, and I nearly shot by my oldest friend.
“This is a rare and unexpected pleasure,” I said. “You’d better get in.” He did, but didn’t speak until we were well on our way. “So what happened?”
He made himself as comfortable as an injured leg allowed. “Michael, I have to say, you came at an opportune moment.”
“One of us always does.”
“I know it, but it proves, in my philosophy, that a good turn sooner or later brings one on for yourself, and I’m overjoyed that it was sooner. I wish I could find that monster of spite who made me swerve. He drove a black lorry with a purple stripe along the back, which I’ll keep in my mind to my dying day. I’m not a vindictive man, but if ever I find him I’ll knock his head about something wicked. He banged that Corsa up so effectively I’d have needed a tractor to get it out of the ditch, so I thought it best to abandon ship. If you go a bit faster we might be able to catch him up.”
I refused to take part in such a pursuit. “You’re supposed to be in Thebes. Or was it Delphi?”
“This leg’s giving me torment. It got twisted under, and turned me into one of the walking wounded. I got to Delphi and the girls weren’t there, so I belted back to Thebes, and they weren’t there, either. Anyway, how could I spot them among all those ruins? I found a little monastery in the mountains and stayed overnight to write my report to Major Blaskin. Next day I went a route march over the hills. I stopped to eat and drink in a village, and got on so well with the innkeeper he wanted me to stay a month or two as his guest. He couldn’t do enough for me when I said I was Gilbert Blaskin the great writer. But I shook his hand goodbye, wanting to see a few more horizons before nightfall.
“In the afternoon I went into another village grogshop, and told the proprietor I was Major Blaskin who had been in Greece during the German occupation helping the partisans to fight. This time though it didn’t go down at all well. He’d been a communist, and thought it was blokes like me who’d foiled their plans to take over the country. He all but kicked me out. Sometimes I think I ought to keep my trap shut.
“This morning I intended looking at a bit more scenery on the road to Patras, meaning to nightstop in Athens and hand the car in tomorrow, but that lorry driver had his bit of fun, and here I am.”
“Shouldn’t you have got the car back on the road and informed the agency?”
“Michael, there are times when your suggestions are particularly unhelpful. With only two hands and a game leg it would have been no fun. I was in no state to do anything. And in any case can the car rental company sue me for damage and dereliction of duty? Let them try.” The laugh proved him a nihilist to his dying day, till the pain from his leg kicked in and stopped it dead. “All I want is a lift to England, a country I may not like but which I love very much, especially at times like this. So let me worry, which I’m constitutionally incapable of doing anyway. I paid insurance, didn’t I? Or Major Blaskin did. So it’s up to the agency to worry, and get it back before shite-hawks build their nests in it.”
At half past two I drove onto a tank landing craft plying across the Gulf of Corinth. I stayed in the car, but Bill went out for a recce, and came back to say that the lorry which had driven him off the road was on the same boat and not far away. “When I’ve done a bit of tinkering it’ll only get off this landing craft with some very hard duty block and tackle.”
My advice not to be a bloody fool went unheeded, and I listened out for the splash of his corpse after the lorry crew caught him, but a minute before landing he limped into the rear seats, and covered himself with Moggerhanger’s best tartan blanket.
Like Lord Knob I drove the regal car down the ramp, both windows open to hear shouts and screams from the stalled lorry, horns blowing from cars that couldn’t get free. Scared at the prospect of being stashed in a Greek lock-up, I nevertheless stayed calm and drove at my most stately till we reached the mountains, where I stopped to let Bill come up front, sorry I hadn’t left him behind. “So what did you do?”
“Michael, even their spare tyre’s no good. As for the electrics, it don’t bear thinking about.”
“What if they’re going to Italy, and catch up with us? I don’t want to get goulashed.”
“You mean moussackered. It didn’t have the letter on the back to suggest they’d be going our way, so don’t get worried.”
I decided we’d stop the night at Missolonghi, recalling how Frances had told me that Byron had died there. The town looked something Spanish, but the surroundings were lush and grand, except for fishermen’s huts on stilts in the shallow water of the feverish lagoons. “No wonder Byron snuffed it here,” Bill said.
We went into a club-like cafeteria in the main square and had tubs of bitterish coffee, Bill scoffing half a dozen fancy pastries, to get over the shock of his accident with the Corsa, he said, not to mention the disablement of the lorry.
People inside the hotel were speaking so loud that the walls shook, the kids joining in as if in line to imbibe the democracy of their parents. We shared a room, to cut down expenses. Bill threw aside his tourist garb and got back into a suit. “No lorry driver will recognise me now.”
We were invited into the kitchen to see what was for supper: a vat of vermicelli, a cauldron of meat sauce which the cook swirled with an iron spoon, and a dead chicken picked up by a leg and thumped on the table.
We sat on the terrace, half a dozen mosquitoes playing King of the Castle on my hand. I killed some, and so did Bill, but they called on their mates for reinforcements before expiring. Some dived into my sauce, till our cigar smoke drove them off.
Disdaining the inane soap opera on television, we went up to our room, each of us with a Sidney Blood, but Bill soon threw his down and went into the sleep of the innocent. I splattered more mosquitoes, which blooded the Blood, because even the little machine plugged into the light socket didn’t keep them away. At seven a terrible clanging of bells must have been celebrating the pint of rain that fell in the night. A mosquito turned into blood on the wall, and left a fleck on my palm which was my own. I licked it clean, till thinking I might get malaria, so washed my mouth with whisky from the flask. Those killed by Bill gave the beige wall an attractive stippled effect. “If they bite me,” he guffawed, “they’ll fly away coughing, to a very miserable death.”
I suggested a walk before breakfast, but he sat forlornly on the bed. “Michael, where’s your imagination? My leg aches from yesterday. I’m going to be crippled till the end of my life.”
I felt sympathy, having seen his swollen knee, but we had to get moving. “Pretend you’re on the retreat to Dunkirk.”
“I was too young for that show, and in Normandy we were motorised, except for the odd mile or two. But don’t get so sarky.”
He was too proud not to keep level along the dusty streets. In a dark shop he insisted on the best quality and most expensive walking stick. “As befits my status.”
He spun it about, to show what a help it was, then followed me into a stationer’s to select a postcard for Frances: “I’m on holiday in Greece with my pal Bill Straw, seeing the classical sites. Food fine. People wonderful (unless driving a lorry) and weather perfect. Looking forward to telling all about it. Love you, Michael.”