Poseidon_s Gold

XLIII

I saw my father grip his hands.

Rejecting the humble role that had been imposed on me, I hardened my attitude. 'I came to this tale rather late. Do you mind if we just run over the facts? Am I right in my understanding? My elder brother Didius Festus is said to have acquired from Greece a modest statue, alleged to be a Poseidon and thought to be by Phidias?'

'Known to be bought by us,' responded Carus, obviously thinking he had put me down wittily.

'Pardon me if I'm churlish, but do you have a receipt?'

'Naturally,' said Servia. She must have dealt with my family before.

'I have been shown it, Marcus,' murmured Pa. I ignored him.

'It was made out to you by Festus?' Carus nodded. 'Festus is dead. So what has this to do with us?'

'My point exactly!' stated Pa. He drew himself up. 'I made my son Festus independent of parental authority when he joined the armed forces.' This was probably a lie, but no outsider could refute it. It sounded straight, though I could not imagine why Pa and Festus would have gone through such a formality. Acquiring emancipation from the power of his father is something that only troubles a son who feels bound by his father's power in the first place. In the Didius family this had never applied. Any pleb on the Aventine would probably grin widely and say the same.

Carus refused to accept any disclaimer. 'I expect a parent to take responsibility for his son's debts.'

I felt a strong need for irony. 'Nice to see that some people still believe in the family as an indissoluble unit, Father!'

'Bull's testicles!' Maybe Carus and Servia took this as a reference to the mystical rites of an Eastern religious cult.

Maybe not.

'My papa's upset,' I excused him to the couple. 'When somebody says he owes them half a million, he loses his grip.'

Carus and Servia gazed at me as if what I said was incomprehensible. Their indifference to our problem astonished me. It also made me shiver.

I had been in many places where the atmosphere was more sinister. Toughs armed with knives or staves have a vivid effect; there were none of those here. Yet the mood was sour and in its way just as intimidating. The message reaching us was uncompromising. We would pay up, or we would suffer; suffer until we gave in.

'Please be reasonable,' I pressed on. 'We are a poor family. We simply cannot lay hands on so much cash.'

'You must,' said Servia.

We could talk all we wanted. But however closely we argued, we would never actually communicate. Even so, I felt compelled to struggle on: 'Let's follow through what happened. You paid Festus for the statue. In good faith he attempted to import it, but the ship sank. By then you owned the statue. It is,' I declared, more boldly than I felt, 'your loss.'

Carus tossed a new nut into the mixing bowl: 'No mention was ever made to us that the statue was still in Greece.'

That was tricky. My heart lurched. I wondered what the date was on their receipt. Trying not to look at my father, I even wondered if my impossible brother had sold the Phidias to them after he already knew it was lost. Surely Pa would have noticed this detail when he saw the receipt; surely he would have warned me?

One thing was definite: I could not draw attention to our lad's fraud by asking to see the receipt for myself now. It did not matter; if Festus had deceived them, I did not want to know.

'You mean you bought the item sight unseen?' I floundered wildly.

'"Antique marble"' intoned Carus, evidently quoting from this bill of sale which I preferred not to examine. '"A Phidias Poseidon, heroic proportions, expression of noble placidity, wearing Greek dress, heavily coiffed and bearded, height two yards four inches, one arm raised to hurl a trident"… We have our own shippers,' he informed me in a biting tone. 'The Aristedon brothers. People we trust. We would have made our own arrangements. Then it would have been our loss. Not this way.'

Festus could have let them take the shipping risk. He would have known that. He was always well up on customers' backgrounds. So why not? I knew without even thinking about it. Festus was bringing the statue home himself because he had some extra wrinkle up his grubby tunic-sleeve.

This was not my fault. It was not even Pa's.

That would not stop Carus and Servia.

'Are you taking us to court?'

'Litigation is not our philosophy.'

I managed not to comment, No; only thuggery. 'Look, I only recently came upon this problem,' I began again. 'I am trying to investigate what happened. After five years it is not easy, so I ask you to be sympathetic. I give you my word I will endeavour to illuminate the issue. I ask you to cease harassing my elderly father-'

'I'll take care of myself!' scoffed the elderly Didius, ever to the fore with a pointless quip.

'And give me time.'

'Not after five years!' Carus said.

I wanted to fight. I wanted to storm out, telling him he could do his worst and we would resist everything he did.

There was no point. I had already discussed it with Father on the way here. We could provide muscle at the auctions. We could barricade the office and the store. We could guard both our homes and never step outside without a train of armed guards.

We could not do all those things, however, every day and every night, for years.

Carus and Servia had the grim insistence of people who would persist. We would never be free of the worry, for ourselves, our property-our women. We would be smothered by the cost of it all. We would never escape the inconvenience, or the public doubt that soon attaches to people who are trailing disputed debts.

And we could never forget Festus.

They were growing tired of us. We could see they were about to have us thrown out.

My father was the first to acknowledge the deadlock. 'I cannot replace the Phidias; no similar piece is known. As for finding half a million, it would wipe out my liquidity.'

'Realise your assets,' Carus instructed him.

'I'll have an empty storehouse, and a naked house.'

Carus just shrugged.

My father stood up. With more dignity than I expected, he simply said, 'Selling everything I have, Cassius Carus, will take time!' He was no longer requesting favours, but laying down terms. They would be accepted; Carus and Servia wanted to be paid. 'Come along, Marcus,' Pa ordered quietly. 'We seem to have plenty of work to do. Let's go home.'

For once I abandoned my insistence on stating in public that he and I honoured different versions of 'home'.

He strode out with a set face. I followed. I was equally in despair. Half a million was more than I had already failed to assemble for my own most cherished purposes. It was more money than I really hoped to see. If I ever did see it, I wanted the cash so I could marry Helena. Well I could kiss goodbye to that idea for ever, if I became embroiled in this.

Yet even if it broke me for ever, I realised I could not leave my father to shoulder the whole burden of my feckless brother's debt.