His hair is brown, darker than the moustache, and smooth, parted down the middle. He holds himself stiffly, but there is something less than assured in his movements, a quality of diffidence or slight uncertainty, rather graceful in its effect. At that moment, as he stood there, alone and bareheaded, at that moment, I felt the importance of his arrival for me. (Even before old Dranas set the seal on it.) And again he imposed his experience on me – the voices of those around him, the reek of the fiacre horses, the squabbling drivers in their black skull caps and dirty calico. (The drivers are all Greeks, Excellency, noted for their powers of invective.)

I was moving forward, with the intention of offering help, when he looked towards me and our eyes met for a brief moment. Then he looked away, made his own compact with one of those besieging him – Dranas, it was – and they moved off together to where his cab was waiting, under the eucalyptus adjoining the quay.

I followed them into the town. On foot, of course – my pay does not permit much indulgence in fiacres. On the outskirts of town flocks of sheep penned, marked with red, reminding me again that this is the twelfth month of the Moslem year, and Sacrifice Bayram falls next week. The hillsides near the town are loud with the cries of these sheep. I could still faintly hear them as I approached the main plateia.

Dranas was still there, sitting up on his cab, on the corner near the Metropole. He looked down at me without expression.

I need not have spoken to him at all, Excellency. I was sure in any case that the Englishman had been taken to the Metropole. Perhaps it was the blankness of his face that made me speak. I asked after his health and that of his family – he has two grandchildren now, both boys. To these enquiries he replied curtly scratching his grey stubble, watching my face without a smile. And this in itself was strange. I am a well-known figure on the island, children call out after me, everyone has a word and a smile for me. They know me, Excellency: Basil Pascali, plump and good-humoured; shabby, but with a certain dash -the ruby ring my step-father gave me, my monogrammed handkerchiefs. I am derided, but not disliked. Or so I thought, until today.