Greek Fire (14 page)

She said: “To find that cross on the top of a mountain dedicated to the Old Gods … One would say it would have been better to have left at least
this
little part of the earth to them.”

“It could be that the old and the new gods are not so different.”

She shook back her head as if there was a wisp of hair in her eyes. “Could that be Mount Athos—that Menelaus said was ‘ still Greece'? It is surely too far.”

“Anyway, it's going. It's not as clear as five minutes ago. The miracle's nearly over.”

She said: “ Miracle? Yes, it is almost that. A pity, when the eyes can see so far …” She didn't finish.

He said: “Were those your real reasons why you felt we should not meet again?”

“Would they be yours?”

“Not altogether.”

“… But you agree that this should be the end?”

“Yes.” After a minute he added: “We're running on rocks—at least, I am—so quickly that to miss total shipwreck …”

She said: “You want me?”

“It goes without saying, doesn't it?”

“But it is much more than that?”

“Much more.”

“If it was only that.”

“It can never be only that.”

The sun was gaining warmth, but the day and the moment seemed very cold for them both.

She said: “Then go, Gene, go. Leave me as soon as we get down. Leave Greece and never come back. Promise you will go—at once—so that I shall never have the fear of meeting you again.”

“I'll go,” he said. “ Write it out of your life. I'll go.”

She got back to her flat about six on the Monday. When she put her key in the door she found it unlocked. It was late for Edda. Then she could smell his cigar smoke.

He was sitting turning the pages of a French novel, a glass with brandy in it by his side. His pince-nez glinted as he turned and nodded and half smiled. “ You're late, Anya.”

She went over and after a barely noticeable hesitation kissed him. “Late for what, darling?”

“I said I'd drop in for a drink about five today.”

“Did you?” she said flatly. “Of course it's Monday! Have you been waiting long?”

“An hour. I'm usually punctual.”

She went across and unstoppered the sherry decanter and took up a glass. “What a day! I need a drink.”

He added: “But it appears I shall be unpunctual now. My next meeting is just due to start.”

“I'm so sorry. I was quite mixed in the days of the week.”

“Have you been out of town?”

“Yes. I'm dirty and lame. Can I fill your glass?”

“Have you been with Gene Vanbrugh?”

She sipped her drink before replying. “Yes.”

“Where did you spend last night?”

“Why do you suppose I wasn't here?”

“I rang. But there are other reasons. Go on.”

“I spent it in a hut in the mountains near Delphi.”

“With Gene Vanbrugh?”

“Yes.”

With his tidy fingers he put a book-mark in the pages of the novel and closed it.

“Did he make love to you?”

“He was not invited to.”

“I shouldn't have thought a man of his type necessarily needed the invitation.”

She said slowly: “For once it is not your place to think. Six years ago I made a bargain with you, George. When I break it I'll no longer take your money or your fiat.”

Lascou's ductile sensitive mind seemed to accept the statement and close around it and absorb it undigested, moving on all the time into prepared country. “ Darling, it's strange, this sudden feeling for this man. I think you have even tried to disguise it from yourself. Perhaps it is the unfamiliarity of such a person as Vanbrugh. Please, I am not trying to blame you, I am interested, inquiring. I am on your side—though frankly I don't think he is worth it.”

“Worth what?” she said, still with a queer tense politeness. “ Three days of my time? I have given longer to the Earthquake Relief Fund.”

He watched her attentively while she finished her drink. Then she sat down and began undoing one of her stockings through her skirt.

He said: “ Where is he now?”

“I don't know.”

“Did you go by car?”

“Yes. He hired one, but asked me to return it to the garage for him.”

“Where did he leave you?”

“At Daphni.”

“What are his plans?”

She slipped down her stocking and took off her shoe. “ D'you suppose he discussed them with me, his enemy?”

“I imagine you had some conversation in thirty-six hours.”

She flexed her ankle. “I borrowed shoes up there; but I see there's no blister after all. I shall not be lame for life. Talk? Oh, yes, we talked: God, what a bore it all was! What a silly little man he is! I shall take a bath and then go out to dinner somewhere and on to a night-club. The Little Jockey, probably.”

He watched her foot for a moment, then his eyes travelled up her leg to her thigh and to the peculiar twisted angry grace of the way she was sitting.

“Anya.”

“Yes?”

“Look at me.”

She raised her head and gave him a smile as taut as a wire.

“In the last ten years I have lavished a great deal of money and attention on you.”

“Yes, George. One of your less profitable investments.”

“Far from it. Working admittedly on the finest material, I have turned you from a long-legged underfed waif into one of the most beautiful and sought-after women in Greece.”

She slipped on her shoe and got up. “Dear me.”

“And it's been worth it. Don't think you owe me anything. If it ended tomorrow I should regret nothing. But there may be one drawback from your point of view: I am not willing that it should end tomorrow.”

“Don't forget your other audience is waiting.”

“Anya!”

She turned on him like a flash. “Well,
what
do you want me to say? What do you want me to do? D'you want me to tell you that I've separated from this man and will never see him again? Well, I have! Today. This afternoon. Before coming here. When I left him that was good-bye! And d'you think I
care
!”

His eyes flickered. In the last year he had become much less tolerant of opposition from any quarter. “ Yes, I think you care—in some rather perverse, unformulated way. Men like that appeal to something in women. If——”

“At this moment, George, you do not appeal to me! In my perverse unformulated way I find you very offensive.”

They stared at each other. Like brother and sister quarrelling, they showed their tensions in the same way. Suddenly supple and pliant he said: “Don't let's fight over this, darling. I say that not because it's not important enough; but because it is too important. I'll go now.”

“Whatever you say.”

“But I put this to you to think over—if it ever came to the point, I should not be willing to lose you—to anyone. I put it to you both as an entreaty and as a threat.”

“A threat? Oh, come. Isn't that a little heavy in the hand?”

“Life frequently is. It's only we would-be sophisticated ones who try to take the sting out of it with a laugh and a shrug and a few cigarette stubs and a cocktail shaker. Scratch the sophisticate and you will find the polish goes barely skin deep.”

“You terrify me.”

“No, my dear Anya, I don't terrify you. You lived too long in terror to be able to feel it any more. But you are a very honest person, within your limitations, as, within my limitations, I try to be. I was not trying to offend you when I said what I did—only honest. But I do hope if I threaten you—or him—or anyone else—you'll not think I'm merely bluffing.”

She said: “I could never accuse you of that.”

He picked up his white pigskin gloves. “ Remember, preferably, that I have loved you since I first saw you. Nothing has happened since then to make me change my mind.”

“Does your mind direct your love?” she asked desolately. “ That must be very convenient. Or better still perhaps, can one direct oneself not to feel at all?”

The letter came at one o'clock on the Tuesday. Maria had been on the look-out all day. Several times she had been in to Philip, who lay on his back on his bed in a litter of cigarette ends, but he wouldn't speak to her. For two days he had spoken to nobody. Once each day he had been out of the house to buy more cigarettes, but each time when he came back he seemed worse. He was getting through nearly a hundred and fifty a day.

Often there was no one in the shabby office-reception-desk when the post came and it was slapped down on the shelf which topped the half door into the office. Anyone was then free to paw over the letters and maybe take what didn't belong to them. She was down before eight and hung about until the morning delivery came, but there was nothing for her. Then just after twelve she went down again and stolidly read the cinema advertisements for an hour. Mme Nicolou, who ran the boarding house, was frying some fish, and the smell and crackle of it came through to the lobby, but Maria had no sensations of hunger or thirst. All normal feeling had gone on the day of Juan's death, leaving nothing but the one desire. She carried it with her like an ikon, in her breast. For a week she had fasted like a saint before some time of trial.

It was a strong envelope when it came but not very big, being about seven inches by five, and not even registered. But she knew her cousin's handwriting. She crept with it up to her bedroom. Philip was useless. One person only she could be sure of, and that was herself.

She slit the envelope up the side and took out a flat stained waterproof wallet about the size of a tobacco pouch. With it was a brief letter from her cousin which told her nothing fresh. She opened the wallet. Inside this, behind a mica screen, was a man's photograph and some details of his age, appearance, profession. In the pocket of the wallet were about ten letters. She opened the first letter.

Maria Tolosa's father had been a night club dancer too, and before something went wrong with his kidneys that killed him off prematurely they had travelled Europe together. So she had a smattering of all the western languages, Greek among them. But reading Greek was a different matter from speaking it, and to her anger she found she could not read these letters at all. Five of them were, badly stained, but they were all quite clear. The dates ranged from 1947 to 1950.

She bit her thumb nail. Sufficient to see the pieces of the jig-saw? But she wanted the pattern. She had a belief in her own memory. A thing in her own mind was more indelible than any paper.

And although she trusted Gene Vanbrugh she knew she had nothing as yet stronger than instinct to go on. Here was one way of putting him to the test. Get the letters read by somebody else and then ask Gene Vanbrugh to read them. If he didn't know she knew what the letters contained and the two accounts tallied.…

But who? … Mme Nicolou? Mme Nicolou had not always kept a B-category lodging house. Before the war she had been an actress of promise, until the starvation of the German occupation had jogged her mind one groove out of true. She would be able to read the letters and, what was better, would soon forget them.

Maria slid the letters into their wallet. Afterwards, after they had been read, they would go next to her body in the top of her girdle, where temporarily they would be safe.…

She unlocked the door and found herself facing her brother-in-law.

In thirty-nine Spanish summers Philip Tolosa had never sweated so much as he had done in this one week of cool Athenian spring. He was sweating now.

“So it has come.”

Caught with the thing in her hand she could not deny it.

“The letter? Yes. There are some papers. I am taking them to get them read.”

“I shouldn't do that.” He made a move to take the wallet but she held it away.

“Why not?”

“Let me see what it is.”

“You wouldn't understand. You know less Greek than I do.”

“Where are you taking them?”

“To Mme Nicolou.”

“Don't do that. Give it to me. Let me see.”

“No. See it later.”

“Maria!”

She said: “I was his wife. What was his is now legally mine.”

“You don't know what you're talking about! You don't know the danger we're in.”

“Do you think I care for danger!”

“Well,
I
do. If this——”

“
You
,” she said with contempt. “It is nothing to do with you if you don't want it to be. I can handle this quite alone.”

“You young fool!” He grasped her arm, but feverishly, almost without strength. “Don't you know this house has been watched every minute since Juan died! What chance have you of doing anything on your own? What chance has
either
of us——”

“Then why did you press me to send for this, if you thought——”

“Because it was the only
hope
! Maria, I tell you I'd no choice! If Juan had taken heed of my warnings! I tried to persuade him. I threatened not to come to Greece. I wish to God I had broken up the act before we came.”

“Get out of my way!”

“If you do anything with those letters except hand them over they'll kill us both!”

“They? They? Who are they?”

“Do you think I would choose this? Do you think I wanted it that way——”

“You—
betrayed
him,” she said suddenly.

He stood with his back to the door, his face the colour of wet linen. He showed his teeth slightly each time he drew in his breath.

“You call it that. Of course you call it that. But d'you think I wanted to do it? D'you think I cared nothing for him? He was my brother as well as your husband. I tell you I tried to stop him—I quarrelled with him! I knew what he was up against. Besides, it was a betrayal on
his
part. When one ceases to be a Communist one does not cease to have some honour, some loyalty.… I do not know how they knew it was Juan, that he was responsible for the attempt to get money; for that was due to no move of mine. All I heard, all I got, was notice to report to the Party. I am still a member, you know. What was I to do? It was right to go from all points of view, to divert suspicion. But when I got to the meeting place, it was no party meeting at all—only thugs waiting for me.…”