Cassels, examining his watch and craning his neck forward, yelled back:
“Just 8.40.”
“Oh—damn! Can’t you hear?”
“What do you say?”
“Damn!—that’s all.”
This sort of thing could not go on indefinitely, and Bruton, shrugging his shoulders, began to laugh. Nevertheless, he was terribly anxious for Cassels to come on shore. Every minute mattered. God alone knew what might be happening at this very second in that big house on the outskirts of Athens—that house whose garden even now, in April, was one huge, thick cluster of flowers, crimson, blue and yellow.
Bruton had been in Greece a couple of years. Leaving Oxford at the age of twenty-three, he had gone to Athens to study and write. Cassels was coming to him for a few days on his way to Constantinople. Friends of many years standing, both had for some weeks been looking forward eagerly to this meeting, and now, though they were within a stone’s throw of each other, they could not clasp hands. At last the gangways were pushed from the boat to the quay, and Cassels was one of the first to step on shore.
“Let’s hurry through the Customs as quickly as possible,” said Bruton, “I’ve got a car waiting on the road.”
Five minutes later they were in the car rushing at top speed in the direction of Athens, four miles away.
“And now that those rotten Levantine Jews have ceased pawing my baggage and me,” said Cassels, “how are you?”