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“I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria. I was sent to a public school, I wasted two years doing my national service, I went to Oxford; and there I began to discover I was not the person I wanted to be.”
The narrator, Nicholas Urfe, an Oxford graduate and aspiring poet, accepts a post as an English teacher at the Lord Bryon School on the Greek island of Phraxos. Before starting his new job, Urfe tentatively breaks up with Alison Kelly, a young Australian woman he had been living with in London. After a few weeks of teaching on Phraxos, Urfe begins to feel lonely and depressed and starts to question his decision to leave Alison. One day while wandering the island, Urfe encounters the noted recluse Maurice Conchis and was invited to his villa on Bourani.
Urfe replies to Conchis saying “'I don't believe in God. And I certainly don't feel chosen.'
'I think you may be.'
I smiled dubiously. ‘Thank you.'
'It is not a compliment. Hazard makes you elect. You cannot elect yourself.'”
During his visits to Bourani, Urfe learns about Conchis’s past, or the parts of it he choses to share. Urfe hears about Conchis’ beloved fiancé Lily, his decision to abandon his compatriots during WW1 and how he endured the German occupation of Phraxos during WW2.
Conchis states “‘I know now it was our believing that we were fulfilling some end, serving some plan- that all would come out well in the end, because there was some great plan over all. Instead of the reality. There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves.’”
One day while visiting Conchis, Urfe meets Lily Montgomery, a young woman dressed in the formal wear of 1915.. Conchis tells Urfe that the young woman was his goddaughter and a schizophrenic who pretends to be his dead fiancé Lily. Urfe later discovers that Lily was really an actress by the name of Julie Holmes with a twin sister, June. The two young women ask him for help escaping their employer Conchis. As he begins to fall in love with Julie, Urfe gets a letter from Alison asking to meet in Athens. They meet and Urfe ends their relationship only to find out days later that Alison had killed herself.
Back at the villa, Urfe begins to feel that he was trapped in a theatrical performance, acting alongside the other visitors to Bourani, and that Conchis was directing all their actions. Urfe witnesses scenes from Greek myths and the military maneuvers of German soldiers. He understands that Conchis’ stories and the reenactments he viewed and participated in echos events from his own life. He feels that there may be lessons to be learned from these experiences but what they might be simply alludes him.
“The fear I felt was the same old fear; not of the appearance, but of the reason behind the appearance. It was not the mask I was afraid of, because in our century we are too inured by science fiction and too sure of science reality ever to be terrified of the supernatural again; but of what lay behind the mask. The eternal source of all fear, all horror, all real evil, man himself.”