This was the idea, but the actual words to express it he hadn’t yet found. It was difficult to concentrate in this place when for so much of the time there was nothing going on. And then suddenly, just as you were getting used to that, there was. A bird flying past the window. Another dump truck emerging from behind the screens around the construction site. The sun sinking ostentatiously towards the horizon. Right now, for example, here on the path below him Nikki was hurrying by, in her crisp white shirt, clipboard in hand, on her way from one mysterious importance to another. The sight of her reminded him of something. What it reminded him of most strongly and distractingly, of course, was herself. Or of Athena, perhaps, in her crisp white chiton, shield in hand. But also of something else. Something she had said.
A lecture? Someone giving a lecture? Someone asking a question?
* * *
In the Temple of Athena the two waiters by the buffet finished filling the hundred flutes with champagne. The string quartet picked up their bows. The headwaiter ushered Mrs. Toppler and Mr. Papadopoulou to their positions facing the entrance. Mrs. Toppler looked in her bag one last time to check that she had the texts of her introduction and her speech of thanks.
She closed her bag and nodded at the headwaiter. The headwaiter nodded at two of the underwaiters, who picked up heavy trays of charged glasses and took up their positions on either side of the entrance. First violin nodded at his colleagues.
Stream upon stream of tiny rising bubbles. Bar upon bar of serene singing notes. The endless pause before something happens.
Nikki, waiting in the shadows, settled a calm but concerned look on her face, and seized her chance. She stepped bravely forward.
“Mrs. Toppler,” she said. “Listen…”
But just at that moment the first guests walked into the temple. “Dickerson! Davina!” said Mrs. Toppler. “I might have known you’d be the first!”
37
One by one and two by two the tall flutes of champagne vanished from the waiters’ trays. One by one and two by two they wandered among the ruins in the gathering dusk, trying to find other glasses of champagne to talk to, keeping themselves pleasantly occupied by refracting in their pale sparkling depths the torches already flaring around the masonry, the riding lights on the yachts along the waterfront below, and the silently laboring right arms of the string quartet.
“So romantic!” said Rosamund Chailey to Darling Erlunder.
“You feel any moment you might see Agamemnon’s fleet sail over the horizon!” said Russell Pond to Mrs. Comax.
“Or Athena come round with the canapés!” said Mrs. Comax.
“And here’s Nikki, our very own goddess, instead!” said Chuck Friendly.
“Nikki, this is all so divine! But where is our Apollo? Our heavenly Dr. Wilfred?”
“I’m just looking for him myself,” said Nikki.
“We all have so many questions we want to ask him!” said Morton Rinkleman.
“So have I,” said Nikki. She moved on.
“Poor Nikki,” said Mrs. Comax. “She looks just desperate!”
“Such a load she’s carrying on those lovely young shoulders of hers!” said Mrs. Friendly.
* * *
A flute of champagne and a plate of canapés sailed head high through the guests still getting out of taxis and limousines in front of the lodge. “Oh, Nikki!” said Elli. “That’s so sweet of you! I think everyone has forgot me, sitting here in my box like a doll in a shop and nobody wants her.”
“You haven’t seen Dr. Wilfred, have you, Elli?” said Nikki. “Our lecturer? He hasn’t phoned, by any chance?”
“Oh my God!” said Elli. “He’s not here?”
“I can’t find him.”
“But it’s nearly time!”
“I know.”
“He’s got lost again! This great brain, and he can’t find his way from the guest room to breakfast! He phones me. ‘All I can see is goats,’ he says.”
“Anyway, if he phones now, or if you see him…”
“I call you at once, Nikki. Oh my God!”
Yes, oh my God, thought Elli, as Nikki hurried away again. She loses the great man just before his lecture — she never gets to be director! And what happens to me? I never get to be Mrs. Fred Toppler’s PA, and I’m stuck here in this glass box forever!
* * *
“Sixty-three euros,” said Stavros. “I take a credit card. Not a problem.”
There were no overworked glass doors here, only a striped barrier pole and uniformed security staff. No obesity, no sunburn, only slim and distinguished-looking people presenting gilt-edged invitation cards with raised italic print. Dr. Wilfred had finally arrived at his destination.
“Invitation,” said the security man.
“I’m your lecturer,” said Dr. Wilfred. “Your guest of honor.”
“No invitation?” said the security man. “No admission.”
* * *
“Sixty-nine euros,” said Spiros. “I accept Visa and MasterCard. No problem.”
“Wait here,” said Oliver. “I’m coming back. I’m just fetching my passport.”
“Invitation,” said the security man.
“You’re Giorgios, right?” said Oliver. “You saw me before. Nikki’s guest, remember?”
“No guest come in,” said Giorgios, “only he have invitation.”
* * *
The first security man looked dubiously through Dr. Wilfred’s passport, and then through the text of his lecture.
“I haven’t got an invitation to the lecture,” said Dr. Wilfred, “because I am the lecturer. It’s me who is giving the lecture for which the invitations have been issued. This is the lecture I am giving.”
He was surprising himself once again by the patience and politeness he was managing to display. The security man turned back to the beginning of the lecture and began slowly to turn all the pages over again.
“I know it says I am in Kuala Lumpur,” said Dr. Wilfred. “Or Western Australia. But they are deleted. I am here, in Skios. I shall put that in before I start.”
He couldn’t help noticing that there was someone else who was also being refused admission by one of the other security people. Also no invitation, and in his case no passport or lecture to offer in lieu.
“Come,” said the security man. Still holding Dr. Wilfred’s passport and lecture he led the way towards some kind of lodge or gatehouse. Dr. Wilfred kept very close to him, never taking his eyes off the lecture.
* * *
“I’m so sorry, Dr. Wilfred!” a familiar voice called out to Oliver from the darkness. “We’re going to miss your lecture!”
Mr. and Mrs. Chuck Friendly, the second-richest couple in the state of Rhode Island, were emerging from the pedestrian gate beside the barrier, on their way out with a couple of companions.
“We were really looking forward to it!” said Mrs. Friendly.
“I have to fly back to the States,” said Chuck.
“A sudden summons!” said Mrs. Friendly. “Right out of the wide blue yonder!”
“So, Dr. Wilfred, why aren’t you in there drinking champagne with all the rest of them?”
“No invitation,” said Oliver. “They won’t let me in!”
Mr. and Mrs. Friendly both laughed. “I love it!” said Mr. Friendly. He fetched out his wallet. “Here’s his invitation,” he said to Giorgios and slipped something into Giorgios’s shirt pocket.