Seven Days in New Crete (Penguin Modern Classics) by Robert Graves Page A

so I called it to myself, I was surprised to find that it had been re-built on the original foundations. It stood in the same position, though of stone this time, not brick, with queerly curved gable windows and a very old vine trained up the south wall. There was even a descendant of the Doctor’s walnut-tree at the back of the house, shading the stable-yard. Just here, for the first time and quite unexpectedly, as I was going to the Doctor with a poisoned finger, and rounding the corner, I had run full tilt into –
    ‘Erica, good God! It can’t be true!’
    ‘Oh, hello, Teddy!’ she said casually. ‘I heard you were about. I meant to come along yesterday.’
    ‘But… but…’
    ‘But what?’
    I stood gasping.
    ‘But what?’ she repeated with her habitual Sphinx smile. She looked much younger now, not older, and dangerously well and beautiful.
    ‘I thought I was the only person from our age whom they’d evoked. Are you real?’
    ‘Pinch me and see. Or pinch yourself. What’s on your mind, Teddy? You were looking as cross as hell when you came across the field.’
    I automatically fumbled in my pocket for a cigarette.
    ‘Oh, it’s only that, is it? Have one of mine!’ She produced a case full of very normal-looking French cigarettes. ‘Contraband,’ she explained. ‘If you don’t mind breaking the rules, you’re perfectly safe. A light?’
    She had a Ronson, too, in her handbag. ‘You do the talking, Erica,’ I said, ‘while I get the most out of my
Gauloise Bleue.
This situation is beyond me.’
    ‘Tell me first why you were feeling so cross, if it wasn’t just the cigarette shortage. It can’t have been that. You’re still scowling.’
    ‘I was thinking of you, of course.’
    ‘I see. So you want me to talk about old times? You know, Teddy, if it wasn’t so ridiculously long ago I don’t believe I’d have forgiven you for the way you let me down. I didn’t think you were that sort. The vulgar fuss you made about poor Emile, as though he meant anything to me.’
    ‘He meant enough for you to sneak off to Cannes with him one weekend, when you were supposed to be visiting your mother in Geneva.’
    ‘Your punishment for being so jealous.’
    ‘I knew nothing about Emile at the time.’
    ‘No, that’s correct. You were jealous of that tall black Irishman with the yacht. Captain Thing – I forget his name. Dumb, but a heavenly dancer.’
    ‘Henty was the name. And he wasn’t a captain, only a dude yachtsman. And he wasn’t in the least bit dumb; but a crook and personally disgusting and I told him so in a few well-chosen words.’
    ‘Yes, that was where you slipped up! If you’d only told
me
, it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad, but to make a scene in Harry’s Bar as if you were my husband…’
    ‘I was drunk. So was he. So were you!’
    ‘So what?’
    ‘O Lord, Erica, let’s forget it! Don’t let’s talk about Emile or Henty or the Cannes visit…’
    ‘I couldn’t agree with you more. Or about my Benevolence.’
    ‘I don’t quite get you. What benevolence did you show me?’
    ‘I thought you read History at Oxford? A Benevolence was how King Thing – how King Thing the What-th – used to describe a forced loan. Have you forgotten those hundred thousand francs I relieved you of? But I must say you never were mean about money. So don’t let’s talk about my Benevolence. And don’t let’s talk about Antonia either – you always were rather a bore about her – or about anything else except ourselves. All that happened ages ago: literally. You’re staying with the Nymph Sapphire now, I hear?’
    ‘I am.’
    ‘And you’ve fallen for her already, haven’t you? Cradle-snatching, I call it. She’s got a good figure, of course, as most of these girls have, but I can’t say I like her any better than I liked Antonia.’
    ‘Now who’s being a bore?’
    ‘Oh, all right, have another cigarette.’
    ‘I don’t in the least mind if I do. But look here,