Lady Lucy could see a great obelisk way over to her left. In front of her was a Palladian bridge across the lower part of a lake. Everywhere you looked, often appearing without warning round a bend in the road, hiding behind a clump of trees, were temples of Venus, temples of Artemis, classical pavilions and Chinese pagodas. There was a rotunda with a perfect reflection in the water and a tiny pantheon by the side of a river.
‘Bloody temples, bloody statues, bloody useless, all of them.’ The cabbie driving her to the Hellenic College looked as though he might have been about the same age as the buildings he criticized.
‘Why couldn’t they build something useful, like homes for people to live in?’ the driver demanded, negotiating a great pothole in the road and opening up a view of another patch of higher ground with a scale copy of the Parthenon sitting happily on top of its Home Counties Acropolis.
‘Perhaps they built some of those too,’ said Lady Lucy, reluctant to enter into argument with the cabbie.
The driver snorted. ‘They say,’ he observed, spitting vigorously into the side of the road, ‘that some of the people in this college you’re going to come out late in the evenings in the summer and dance round these bloody temple things. Do it in winter too, when the moon is full. All dressed in white, the girls, like bridesmaids at some bloody wedding. Bloody pagans if you ask me. Who would have thought Amersham could be a centre for devil worship?’
They had now drawn up at the front of the College, another neo-classical building with fine columns at the front.
‘Thank you kindly, madam,’ said the cabbie. ‘I’ll come back for you in an hour.’
The Headmaster was a tall man in his late forties with that air of authority men acquire through years of telling children what to do. Through the window behind his desk Lady Lucy could see the workmen finishing off the construction of their very own Erechtheion, a companion structure for the Parthenon round the corner. She could see the beginning of the porch, but there didn’t seem to be anybody at home.
‘Welcome to the College, Mrs Stamatis, welcome indeed. Some Greek coffee after your journey perhaps?’
Richard Doganis rang a bell and placed his order. ‘You said in your letter that you were looking for places for your two boys, thirteen and fifteen, is that right?’
‘It is indeed,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘my boys Robert and Thomas are currently at the day school attached to the Cathedral in London, but my husband is going to have to move abroad quite soon.’
The coffee arrived, sweet and sickly.
‘Forgive me, Mrs Stamatis, your husband is a Greek gentleman?’
‘My Panos?’ Mrs Stamatis smiled at the Headmaster. ‘He most certainly is. We have an agreement, you see, Headmaster. I got to give my boys English Christian names, but he has the dominant say in their education. He’s very proud of being Greek, my husband, and he wants his boys to be brought up in the Greek tradition. The only concession he is prepared to make to English ways is that he wants them to play cricket. He’s quite determined about that.’
Lady Lucy Stamatis thought Francis would have approved of the comments about cricket.
‘And is the good Mr Stamatis in business, might I ask?’
‘How silly of me, Mr Doganis, I should have said. My husband is one of the leading Greek import–export merchants in Europe. His firm want him to travel all over the Continent in the next couple of years, searching out new business opportunities. He wants me to go with him.’
‘I’m sure he will be as successful in future as he has been in the past. Now then, Mrs Stamatis, I believe in letting our potential parents see round the school before I give my little talk about our traditions and our policies. So, the Bursar will take you round the living quarters and the dormitories where your boys would sleep. She’ll show you the kitchens where—’ the Headmaster checked his watch carefully ‘—lunch should be in preparation and then she’ll show you one or two classrooms. I look forward to welcoming you back on your return.’
The Headmaster rose from his desk and bowed to his visitor. The Bursar, a formidable woman in her early forties who looked, Lady Lucy thought, like the matron of a hospital or maybe a Mother Superior, took her round the practical side of the school, the dormitories, the washrooms, the common rooms. Then they peeped into a mathematics class where younger children seemed to be reciting their mathematical tables in Greek to a sing-song beat conducted vigorously by the young teacher. The room next door was filled with older pupils. They were reading from their English books. The first reader was a boy of about sixteen with bright red hair.
‘“But most the modern Pict’s ignoble boast, To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared: Cold as the crags upon his native coast, His mind as barren and his heart as hard, Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared, Aught to displace Athena’s poor remains: Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard, Yet felt some portion of their mother’s pains, And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot’s chains.”’
‘We’re reading Byron’s Childe Harold,’ the teacher informed his visitors. ‘The modern Pict is a reference to Lord Elgin, the man who brought the Parthenon Marbles to London. It would be fair to say that Byron was not a devotee of the former Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, also known as the Ottoman Empire.’
He nodded to a blond lad at the back who carried on.
‘“Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee, Nor feels as lovers o’er the dust they loved; Dull is the eye that will not weep to see Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed By British hands, which it had best behoved To guard those relics ne’er to be restored. Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved, And once again thy hapless bosom gored, And snatched thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorr’d!”’
‘Very good, Konstantin,’ said the teacher, a middle-aged man beginning to go bald. The Bursar took her visitor back to the Headmaster. He told her about the academic curriculum, the religious devotions supervised by the Greek Orthodox Church, the various festivals and ceremonies conducted throughout the year. He pressed more information onto Mrs Stamatis, about fees, about sport, which included cricket, Mrs Stamatis was pleased to hear, and the history of the school and its links with other academies in Greece itself and on the Continent.
‘This is all very impressive, Mr Doganis. I must speak to my husband. Could I just ask you one question? Panos and I went to hear a lecture in London recently given by the Head of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, Dr Tristram Stanhope. I believe he has some links with the College here?’
The Headmaster nodded vigorously. ‘Indeed he does,’ he said. ‘He is one of our most valuable consultants. You heard the pupils reading from Byron this morning, I believe? The teacher, Mr Blakeway, is a protégé of Dr Stanhope’s. It was the good doctor who brought him to us.’