I wondered if I should have come: I would probably arrive too late to find my mother alive. The rain splashed against the plane's windows, a reminder of days at sea on the bridge. I made a derisive comparison between that Cape of Storms sea -a cold, grey, wicked mass, throwing a punch of three thousand miles of open water behind it-and the Aegean. The meltemi was a woman's wind compared with a Cape buster, and the tideless waves breaking on the picture-postcard islands had no more guts than a junkie.

Maybe my contempt for the classic sea had showed itself by the way I had hurled my old calque into the meltemi after I'd left Santorin; I used a dozen seaman's dodges to avoid the deadly tack and tack-about into the teeth of the same wind which once had blown the Greek heroes from Troy. I had finally reached Athens only a few hours before a Cape flight was due to leave. In the rush I hadn't managed to have my one thin tropical suit smartened up, and it sat crumpled and untidy on me. I hadn't a tie but had bought a black string bootlace thing off a plane steward. The other passengers' eyes told me I looked like a kinky beach-boy. After the landing, I was checking through the usual formalities. The sluicing rain on the way across the tarmac from the plane to the terminal building hadn't acted as the best of valet services to my suit and hair. They were soaked. I stood by while an immigration official examined my pass. port. He gave me a considering look, reverted to my photograph, regarded me again, then went off to an inner office. 20

Mother official appeared and also considered me. Both disappeared for some time and returned with a third man wearing a cap and plastic raincoat over his uniform.

'War is die Moeilikheid -what's the trouble?' I asked.

`No problem,' answered the desk official. The raincoated man eyed me.

'You are Mr Struan Weddell?'