The Heat of the Sun

much wine at luncheon.’
    ‘And our bus was late. This is Colonel Pinkerton.’
    ‘My friends call me Trouble. I don’t think we’ve met, Mr...’
    ‘Grayson – Grover Grayson the Third. I say, you’re not related to that senator, are you? But, no, you don’t look a bit like him.’ Uncle Grover adjusted his
spotted bow tie in the rear-view mirror. ‘Tallulah would have met you both,’ he explained, ‘but she’s frightfully busy. Theatricals! Tonight we’ll see the premiere
production of the Tallulah Grayson Players.’
    I clambered into the convertible beside him. Trouble flung our knapsacks into the trunk and hoisted himself into the rumble seat.
    ‘Nice auto,’ he said to Uncle Grover. ‘What does she do?’
    ‘Do? What can’t she do!’ Hunching forward, Uncle Grover started the ignition. With his goggle-like spectacles, he had about him the air of a racing ace on the starting block.
If, at first sight, Grover Grayson III seemed an unlikely mate for Aunt Toolie, it was only at first sight. Many times she had told me how lucky she had been to find him. I believed her.
    We tore along the coast, a red streak, the Pacific glittering below us in the afternoon sun.
    Wobblewood West lay a mile or so out of Carmel. The house was a modernist castle of plate glass and concrete rising from lush, windblown gardens. Built in the twenties by an eccentric
millionaire who had later been ruined in the Crash, the place made me uneasy, as if its very fabric embodied my anxieties. It was too close to the cliff; one day, I feared, the rocky edge would
shake, shrugging the house into the sea in a powdery cascade.
    ‘Usual room, Woodley. Your friend can have the one next door.’ Uncle Grover pulled up with a jerk in the wide, gravelled drive. Four or five other cars, some rather shabby, had
parked there already. ‘Tallulah’s down at the amphitheatre. I’d better check on her. Join us when you’re ready.’
    The house was silent. In my room I dropped my knapsack, loosened my tie. I went to the window. The sea glittered sharply, and I screwed up my eyes. Trouble moved in the next room. Bedsprings
squealed. Had he flung himself down? All through our drive with Uncle Grover he had been animated, but I knew something was wrong. I should speak to him. But I could not think where to begin.
    The afternoon’s heat was at its height as I stumped out across the terrace. Carefully, I negotiated steps cut in rock. Voices drifted up from below, rising over swishing waves.
    The millionaire who built Wobblewood West had been nothing if not determined. Developing a passion for Greek drama, he ordered the construction of an amphitheatre in the cliffs below; modelled
in miniature on the ancient theatre at Epidaurus, it had kept several dozen explosives experts and sculptors in work for years, according to the locals.
    Today, the amphitheatre provided a fitting stage for Aunt Toolie. She was not acting, but directing. Swishing back and forth, red hair stuck up at angles, beads and scarves dishevelled,
half-moon spectacles halfway down her nose, she barked imperious orders to two masked actresses robed in white. Further masked figures, evidently a chorus, stood up on the proskenion , and
several others sat off to one side. One old fellow, who had removed his mask, smoked a cigarette. I recognized him from somewhere, but was not sure where.
    ‘Darling, it’s like this ,’ cried Aunt Toolie, and read from a ring binder in a passionate voice:
    O sister mine! Beloved of my blood,
    Must trouble still descend on its dark flood?
    Dead Oedipus, our father, left us cursed.
    By now, I had supposed, we’d seen the worst:
    Yet still dishonour, infamy, and shame
    Must fall on thee and me. Who is to blame?
    High in the semicircle of tiered seats, I slipped in beside Uncle Grover, who explained to me that the old fellow with the cigarette was Mr Foster from the filling station up the road.
‘Quite a good Creon, actually. Eurydice, that plump matron next to him, is the local Sunday-school teacher – dubious about the Greeks on moral grounds, but Tallulah talked her around.
Did you know we did the translation ourselves? Well, with a few cribs. Antigone? Oh, she’s the daughter of the local real estate agent – Miss Hoity-Toity, but brave, I’ll grant
her that. In three hours’ time, these tiers will be filled with all the local worthies for miles around. And a few unworthies—’
    Aunt Toolie saw me. ‘Woodley, is that