Jack Higgins (12 page)

Sara Hamilton moved in to join him. She stood there full of the arrogant assurance of her kind as if totally unaware that everyone in the place was looking at her. Her eyes found me, moved on with never a sign and Aleko took her by the elbow and led her to a table at the edge of the dance floor. Papas himself hurried to serve them.

“In the name of heaven, who is she?” Ciasim demanded.

“I would have thought that was obvious,” I said. “The most beautiful woman in the world.”

The drink talking? No—no, the truth for once. The great admission. She was into every part of me, every fibre of my being and the final irony was that I had lost her.

 

Ciasim, as if realising the situation, or at least the essence of it, handled me like a master.

“My luck is turning, Jack,” he said. “Now we eat. Good food, good wine, all on me.”

And eat we did.
Bourtheto
, a speciality from Corfu, his favorite Greek dish, which was fish cooked with lots of onions and all the red pepper in the world. To wash it down, a couple of bottles of
Demestica
and Ciasim finished it off with
baclavas
, a sweet made from sheets of pastry stuffed with nuts and soaked with honey.

I had never seen him drunk although he was half-way there that night. “Now I feel like a man again,” he told
me at one point. “All I need is a woman. That one for preference.”

He pointed across the floor to a buxom German lady of forty or so with short blonde hair and good breasts. She was sitting with two other women and didn't seem particularly put out by Ciasim's obvious interest.

“Now that's my kind of woman, Jack. What a body and the backside—magnificent. Something for a man to get hold of there.”

“You'll need to be good,” I said. “From the look of her she's just getting her second wind.”

He laughed uproariously so that people turned to look and slapped the table. “Jack, I love you. Like a brother I love you. Now I go and dance with her. I rub her belly a little and see what happens.”

He got to his feet, the most magnificent rogue I've ever known and looking it, every inch of him, swayed there for a moment, then plunged across the floor. The German woman was fast in his arms before she knew what was happening.

By now I was in no pain. The Jameson had nearly all gone which was quite extraordinary, even when you took Ciasim's bottomless thirst into account. I emptied the bottle deliberately into my glass and glanced across the room. Sara was watching me, a serious expression on her face. No, it was more than that. She looked genuinely concerned. But then the mother in most women floats to the top at the drop of a hat.

I toasted her gravely, then emptied my glass, spilling no more than half of its contents down my shirt front. She looked away, Aleko frowned and said something to her. She nodded, they got up and started to dance.

By then I was feeling good and sorry for myself.
Aleko danced surprisingly well for such a big man and she moved like an angel, gazing through people like glass, the mouth hooked up at one side into that expression of perpetual scorn. I closed my eyes, inhaling that perfume of hers, or the memory of it. When I opened them again, there was trouble.

The man who had pushed his way through the crowd was not Aleko's size, but he was big enough. He was also good and drunk as were the group of half a dozen or so that he had left at the bar. His name was Andrew something-or-other. Big Andrew, they called him. He was captain of a
congoa
and had served a term of imprisonment on the mainland for stabbing a man in a fight.

It seemed he fancied his chances with Sara, but Aleko simply shrugged him off and continued dancing. Andrew tried again, grabbed him by the shoulder this time so violently that Aleko's shirt ripped. I waited along with everyone else in the silence which followed, for Aleko to break his jaw. Instead, he and the girl walked back to their table.

Andrew gave him a kick up the backside and Aleko went staggering forward to sprawl across the table. Everything was grinding to a halt now, the music dying in anticipation of the slaughter to come. What happened
then was one of the most surprising things I have ever seen in my life.

Andrew went in on the run as Aleko started to turn, deciding, I suppose, that his only hope was to get in first, or perhaps he had some inkling of what was to follow. In any event, as he got close, Aleko put his hands up defensively and cried out in fear.

A lot of things made sense to me then as the big man cowered back in his chair. The outfit he was wearing that made him look like a hard-line bosun or some bucko mate off a sailing ship, were all a front, a defensive mechanism to hide the true state of affairs which was quite simply that in spite of his enormous size and strength, physical violence or its prospect, frightened him to death.

Andrew stood there looking at him, hands on hips. Then he started to laugh, turned and made an obscene remark to his friends. He followed this with what, in the circumstances, was the supreme insult. He patted Aleko on the cheek as if he were a child and told him not to worry. That he wasn't going to hurt him. Sara Hamilton tossed the contents of her glass right into his face.

Island Greeks are very like Sicilians in one major respect. Humiliation in public by a woman is unthinkable. The most deadly insult imaginable. So he did what was to him, the obvious thing. He slapped her in the face, so hard that she lost her balance and fell back against the table.

All the frustration, the pent-up rage at the whole lousy world, burst through to the surface. I crossed the dance floor in two quick strides and delivered a thoroughly dirty punch to his kidneys with everything I had.

He gave a cry of pain they must have heard on the
other side of the island, his body jerking and turning in time to get my right fist in the mouth. I followed it with my knee delivered well below the belt and he went down like a tree falling.

A woman screamed in the silence that followed. I was aware of Aleko's face frozen like marble and then Sara was very close, brushing the hair from her brow, so fierce.

“What are you trying to do?” she demanded. “Commit suicide?”

“I love you,” I said. “I just wanted you to know that. Anyway the package comes, you're the girl for me. Now, this minute, tonight. Tomorrow can go to hell its own way.”

She turned pale as if in shock and then she smiled, all the way down to her toes. And as quickly, that smile faded as she glanced beyond her shoulder.

When I turned, there were five of them moving in a semicircle. All good friends of Big Andrew and distressed to see him on the floor like that. Hard, rough men as sailors of any kind tend to be and with drink taken. It didn't look too good, particularly when one of them picked up a bottle and smashed it across the edge of the bar.

There was a stampede to the door by a proportion of the customers and if I'd had any sense I'd have been there with them, but I was too drunk for that kind of logic. Whatever happened, I couldn't run. Not in front of her.

I grabbed Aleko by the shoulder and pulled him up. “Go on, get her out of here.”

He seemed confused and dazed, unable to think
straight. She pushed him out of the way and said fiercely, “Not without you, Savage.”

But by then I had no choice for the entrance was jammed with people. “Too late to run, angel,” I told her and turned to meet the enemy. “Come on, you bastards, let's be having you.”

The whiskey coursed through my bloodstream, inflating my head like a balloon. I was ten feet tall, I could take on the whole damned world. The man with the bottle came in first. When he was close enough, I kicked a chair at him and gave him the other foot in the face as he fell.

A moment later and the other four swarmed over me. A fist grazed my cheek, another landed hard under my ribs. I started to go down in a flurry of punches, then quite suddenly the man immediately in front of me was plucked out of the way and catapulted into the crowd.

Ciasim Divalni was roaring with laughter. He poleaxed another of the fishermen with a hammer blow delivered with his clenched fist and lashed out with his foot, sending a third staggering across the bar.

Which was when it turned nasty for Ciasim was a Turk and this was Greece and no Greek worth his salt was going to stand by and see a Turk walk all over his fellow countrymen. There were angry cries and at least half a dozen men moved out of the crowd shouting threats.

“This doesn't look too good,” I said to Ciasim as we backed towards the kitchen area.

He didn't seem to be able to stop laughing. “What a night, Jack, I haven't enjoyed myself so much in years. As for my
hausfrau
.” He kissed his fingers. “Her belly scalded me through her dress. I shall make love to her
all night. All night, I tell you. Who needs sleep?”

He picked up a chair, smashed it across a table and wielded one leg like a club. “Come on, Greek pigs,” he cried.

Which was not the wisest thing he could have said. There was a roar like an angry sea and half the crowd decided to join in, but so did Yanni Kytros. I'd been wondering what had happened to him.

There was one hell of a bang and lead shot spattered the ceiling. Everybody froze and Yanni came round the end of the bar clutching a Winchester automatic shotgun. He looked as genial as usual except around the eyes. The crowd didn't need telling twice. People started to fade rapidly, some returning to their tables, others leaving altogether.

Yanni tucked the shotgun under his arm and turned to me with a sigh. “The art of enjoying oneself, my dear Jack, lies partly in knowing when to stop. Please remember that in future.”

Trust him to have the last word.

 

There was no sign of Sara Hamilton or Aleko by the time I'd finished with Yanni Kytros, but Ciasim's
hausfrau
, as he rather unkindly called her, was hovering near the door. He went off with her, an arm about that ample waist. Suddenly, I was alone.

The waiters and kitchen staff had already cleared the debris, the
bouzoukis
were playing and strangely enough, no one seemed to be even looking at me. I was the one on the outside looking in again.

I left and walked along the waterfront to the jetty and as the effects of the whiskey started to wear off, I began
to ache all over and there was blood on my face from a cut beneath my right eye. Still, a fine time was had by all. A fine, lovely time.
But you might have waited, Sara Hamilton. You might have waited.

I dropped to the deck of the
Gentle Jane
and went below. No sign of Morgan. Probably sleeping it off in one corner of some
taverna
or other. Would I ever end up like that? A distinct possibility on tonight's showing.

I sat there on the edge of my bunk, head in hands and after a while, there was a foot on the companionway. I should have known, I suppose, but the emptiness moved in me again and my mouth went dry.

“Savage?” she whispered. “Are you down there?”

She fumbled for the switch. I glanced up, eyes half-shut against the sudden brightness and there was dismay on her face. She dropped to her knees beside me and touched my cheek.

“Oh, the pigs, look what they did to you. What happened to your friend?”

“Ciasim?” I grinned wryly. “Hard at it on the beach somewhere with a German lady.”

“I thought he looked a man of parts.”

“Very definitely.” I held her wrists lightly. “I'm glad you came.”

“I know. About what happened on the beach…”

“To hell with that. This is all that counts. Where's Aleko?”

“He's all right now. He's gone back to the
Firebird
.” She hesitated and said slowly, “He has a thing about physical violence. Some psychological disturbance or other. I believe he's had psychiatric treatment, but it didn't do any good. He can't help it. It isn't that he's a
coward in the normal sense. You understand what I'm trying to say?”

“I think so. In a way, I have the same kind of fear down there at depth. But tell me about you and him. Anything you think I should know.”

“He'd do anything for me,” she said. “Since my sister was killed he seems to have turned all the love he had for her on to me. Not in any sexual way. I can honestly say he's never put a foot wrong that way. He needs me. I suppose that's about the size of it.”

“And you? Do you need him?”

“I don't need anybody,” she said and then added, “or thought I didn't.”

She got to her feet, then sat down beside me. “I'm a wealthy woman, Savage. Just about all the money in the world. Left to me by my favourite uncle who had the good sense to marry a rich American lady who fancied being a countess. The thing is, I don't get to touch it till I'm twenty-one. Just over a year to go and Dimitri is my trustee. The uncle in question never did like my father.”

Which explained a great deal. I stood up and groaned as pain hit me in half a dozen different places. She was immediately all concern.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm getting old, that's all. What I need is a swim. Are you interested?”

“If you think you're up to it.”

She stood there, a hand on my hip, her mouth lifted in that strange, scornful way of hers and it wasn't swimming she was talking about. I knew it and so did she.

“You'll just have to take your chances, won't you?” I
said. “Now if you'll come on deck and cast off when I tell you, we'll go and find a little peace and quiet.”

 

I took her out to Hios where I had eaten earlier that day on the beach with Ciasim, mainly because it was uninhabited and I wanted to get away from people. As far away as possible.

It was a wonderful run at any time, but especially so on a night like that and visibility was excellent because of the bright moonlight. I gave the
Gentle Jane
her head and Sara leaned in the doorway of the wheelhouse and watched me.

“You love this boat,” she commented after a while. “You're a different person in here.”

“I suppose I do in my own twisted way,” I said. “It's the sea as much as anything.”

‘Gentle Jane,'
she said. “Was she an old girl-friend?”

I laughed. “That's what she was called when I bought her. The original owner was from North Cornwall. Believe it or not, but there's a hamlet in those parts that's actually called Gentle Jane.”

I allowed her to take the wheel for a while after that, but not for long because at the speed we were going, we were approaching Hios within half an hour. I stopped the engines and dropped anchor in the same tiny bay I had already visited earlier that day.

I got some blankets together, coffee, a pot to go with it and some tinned milk and we went ashore in the dinghy. There was plenty of driftwood still on the beach, all dry as a bone after the heat of the day and flames roared up into the darkness when I put a match to the brushwood.

“Our own private island,” she said. “Now that, I like.”

“Do you want to swim now?”

“No, later, if it's all the same to you. Let's talk.”

“What about?”

“Anything. Cabbages and kings, love, war, death. You name it.”

And now she was getting too close for comfort and for a little while I staved off the big question, the one I really wanted to put to her. Instead, I said, “You told me you weren't interested in your brother-in-law's involvement with present Greek politics. Did you really mean that?”

She seemed surprised. “I thought I made it clear enough when you asked me earlier. I'm not interested in politics. In all the hopeless stupidity of men's affairs. I'm interested in the now. In me. I'm living for as long as I can hang on.”

At last, the big question and there was no avoiding it. “And how long would that be?”

“I've got chronic leukaemia and there are worse varieties. At least five years in my case. Ten, if I'm very lucky, but that would be exceptional.” There was one of those silences again, and finally she said, “Well, what have you got to say to that?”