Queen of the Mersey (40 page)

She looked reluctantly at the bed, but there’d be plenty of time to make love over the next two weeks. ‘I’d love coffee. Could we have it on the terrace? I noticed tables and chairs out there, but I’ll get dressed first. It’s a bit cold outside.’

Evadne was eighty if a day, a tall, grey-haired woman with a severe, unsmiling face, dressed all in black, including thick black stockings. She looked as if she had been outstandingly beautiful in her day. She had lived in a room at the back of the villa since it had been built, cooking for the frequent guests –

Theo let his cousins and their families use the villa whenever they wanted. Last night’s meal had been out of this world; yoghurt with cucumber, stuffed vine leaves, and lamb kebabs, a strange combination to Queenie, used to a more conventional menu, but absolutely delicious. Evadne brought the coffee on to the terrace and wished Queenie a surly, ‘Good morning.’

‘Doesn’t she ever smile?’ Queenie asked when she’d gone.

‘Only rarely. She’s led a very unhappy life.’

‘Why? What happened? Do you know?’

Theo shrugged. ‘She was engaged to my father. He left Kythira to make his fortune and married my mother instead.’

‘How awful!’ Queenie gasped. ‘Did Evadne marry someone else?’

‘No. She became my father’s mistress. Every time he came back to Kythira they slept together.’

‘Did your mother know?’

‘Yes. Often she was here, with him, as well as me and some of my aunts and uncles and cousins.’

‘Didn’t she mind?’

‘She minded awfully. They had loads of rows. But my father didn’t care what anyone thought. He also had a mistress in Liverpool. Remember Patricia James –

Miss James – who interviewed you?’

‘Miss James was your father’s mistress!’ Queenie’s jaw dropped so far she heard it crack. ‘It was strange,’ she said, frowning, ‘she was so nice at the interview, but horrible afterwards. Vera said she was jealous, because you were giving me special treatment by putting me on the book counter with Steven.’ She laughed. ‘She said it was so you could ask Steven questions about me. “Pump him”

is how she put it.’

‘Vera was right,’ Theo said surprisingly. ‘Steven is an inveterate gossip. He told me all about the young man you were about to get engaged to. That’s why I suggested you become a buyer in the hope of putting you off marriage, at least for a while. You see, from the moment I saw you in Miss James’s office, I wanted you for myself, though I had no idea how to go about it. I’m not like my father, who would have invited you into his bed immediately. As for Miss James, in her way, I expect she was only trying to protect you. Like Evadne, she wasted her life on a married man and she didn’t want you to do the same.’

Queenie watched a yacht, far away and hardly moving, the white sails resting like a butterfly on the sparkling, sapphire water. ‘But I love you,’ she said.

‘I love you with all my heart.’

‘Evadne and Miss James both loved my father,’ Theo said drily, ‘but that didn’t stop them from ending up bitter, lonely old women.’ He reached across the table and laid his hand on her cheek. ‘That’s why I’d like you to have a child, my darling, so you can love each other when I’m gone.’

She took his hand and kissed the fingers, one by one. ‘When you’re gone, I won’t feel the least bitter, just glad that I met you and we had such a wonderful time.’ But she had come to the conclusion that, yes, she would very much like a child. She hadn’t used her cap since the day of Daniel Monaghan’s christening.

Nothing had happened so far, but it was early days yet.

Peter was coming to collect them at midday. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Theo asked anxiously. ‘Helena is the only taxi on the island and buses are few and far between.’

‘I don’t mind a bit. I liked Peter very much.’ She wished she knew more about politics so she could argue with him. ‘Won’t he lose money, taking us around? Or will you pay him?’

‘Peter would never take money off me. I bring him presents instead – presents for Helena. There’s a set of tyres on the boat, a magneto, and one or two other things. Spare parts aren’t available on the island. I’ll give them to him the day we leave.’

‘Please don’t talk about leaving when we’ve only just got here.’

‘I shall never mention leaving again, not until the time comes.’

They lunched in Chora in a long, narrow restaurant, so dark at the back there were lighted candles on the tables. The meal consisted of Kotosoupa avgolemono, which turned out to be chicken soup with egg and lemon, followed by Piperies sto fourno – baked sweet peppers – then Papoutsakia, which translated as ‘little shoes’ and was in fact aubergines stuffed with something utterly delicious and covered with an equally delicious sauce – Peter said the dish had about seventeen ingredients and took ages to make. Queenie felt slightly ashamed when her plate was empty in less than five minutes. Delicious it might be, but it seemed an awful waste of somebody’s time. She remarked as much to the men.

‘There speaks someone who can’t cook,’ Peter said with a huge, booming laugh.

‘For some people, men as well as women, cooking is an art, comparable to writing a poem or painting a picture.’

Queenie confessed she could just about boil an egg. ‘Someone’s always done the cooking for me and Theo has meals sent up from the restaurant. Sundays, when Freddy’s is closed, we eat out.’

‘You make a lovely sandwich, darling,’ Theo remarked.

‘And I can toast them, too,’ she said proudly. She felt a little bit drunk, though it couldn’t be the wine as she’d only had a single glass. Perhaps it was Kythira itself that was making her feel so strangely lightheaded, so pleasantly inebriated when in fact she was perfectly sober. The small island had an air of mystery about it, an otherworldliness, as if it were set in a different time, a different century. Peter said Kythira was known as the Island of Love and that it was here that Aphrodite had been born.

Later, as they chugged up and down the hills in Helena, she thought it incongruous that they should be sitting in a taxi, even one so ancient, as it seemed entirely at odds with the primitive landscape and the empty villages that hadn’t been lived in for a hundred years.

Helena climbed a hill, painfully slowly, and they came to the ruins of another deserted town, Palio Chora, so old that the roofs had long gone, the windows just gaping holes. The town had been built on the edge of a deep abyss she refused to go near. She had no wish to look down, see how deep it was.

‘It was here that frantic mothers flung their children, and then themselves, to avoid being captured by the Byzantine pirate, Barbarossa,’ Theo said soberly.

Above the stillness, the complete and utter stillness, the smell of dust and decay, the eerie, moaning sound of the wind whistling through the empty windows, Queenie could hear the faint, desperate screams of mothers and the wailing of their babies as they dropped to their death down the abyss only yards away.

‘Can we go somewhere else?’ she asked in a shaky voice. Kythira was getting to her. She could feel its history, the bad as well as the good, sense the magic that held the island in its thrall. She wasn’t herself any more.

Theo was still asleep next morning when she woke. At first, she found it hard to remember where she was because the room looked quite different from the one in which she’d fallen asleep. It took several seconds for her to realise that it was full of dense, white mist that had seeped through a partially open window.

She got up, forgetting she and Theo had made love during the night and she was naked, opened the door, entered the mist, and was aware of a tingling dampness all over her body. Through the door she went, on to the terrace, where all she could see was more mist.

Once again she was reminded of Caerdovey, when the town had been buried in a similar mist. It was the day Carl Merton had died, thrown to his death by two little girls, just as the babies had been thrown into the abyss. She shivered and wondered if she would ever forget that day, the memory of which returned frequently, haunting her with its horror, giving her nightmares. She shivered again, realised she had nothing on, and felt her way back into the bedroom where she cuddled against Theo’s warm body, and didn’t open her eyes for a long time.

When she did, the sun was shining, and the mist had gone, along with her dark thoughts.

‘I have to concede, my dear Theo,’ Peter said with his huge grin, ‘that you are a rather nice capitalist. A Father Christmassy sort of capitalist.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense, Peter,’ Theo said mildly.

‘I’m not talking nonsense, old fellow. It’s true. You come down the chimney with a sack full of bonuses for your grateful staff.’

‘Less of the old fellow, if you don’t mind. I’m two months younger than you.’

That was hard to believe, Queenie thought, lazing in an armchair, a glass of after-dinner wine in her hand. She wore a black, crępe, sleeveless frock, and a white silk stole with a silver fringe. The room was in semi-darkness, only the light of half a dozen candles casting a flickering, dancing pattern on the low ceiling. Outside, the waters of the Mediterranean rippled, a gentle, melodic sound.

In another armchair, Theo looked equally content. On this holiday, for the first time she’d known him, he hadn’t worn a tie, though his linen suits were perfectly pressed, the trousers with sharp, knife-edge creases, his immaculate shirts showing too much cuff, as usual. His thick black hair, always a mite too long, was neatly combed and parted.

Peter was lying on a Turkish rug in front of the fireplace where the grate was full of golden leaves. His hair was just as black and thick as Theo’s, but even longer, almost reaching his massive shoulders. His face, his brown eyes, were hugely expressive; bright and alive, always laughing, sometimes angry, rarely in repose. He never went to bed before midnight and was always up by five, even when it was dark, when he would read one of his large collection of books, tidy his house, play chess with the devil – the black squares were for the devil, the white for himself. ‘I’m always far more cunning and devious on the black squares,’ he said.

Since she’d met Peter, she sometimes wished, rather traitorously, that Theo were more like his cousin, that he too had a touch of the devil in him, wasn’t quite so set in his ways, so predictable. She watched Peter now through lowered lids.

He wore a navy-blue jumper, clumsily darned here and there, with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, exposing his heavily muscled forearms. His trousers were dark blue made from heavy cotton he said was denim. In America, they were called ‘jeans’ or ‘Levis’. A tourist had sent them to him after he had admired the man’s own jeans. ‘He’s going to bring me another pair next time he comes.’

People loved him, men and women alike. No matter where they went on the island, everyone knew him, called him by his first name, seemed extraordinarily pleased to see him.

She sighed for no reason that she could think of and Peter looked up. Their eyes met and something indefinable passed between them. She quickly looked away, and thanked God that Theo’s eyes were closed and he hadn’t noticed.

‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ she said, stretching her arms, and wishing she hadn’t when she saw Peter was still watching. ‘It’s about time you both turned in too,’

she said lightly. ‘Aren’t you getting up at some unearthly hour to go fishing?’

Theo agreed lazily that they were. ‘And Queen of the Mersey’s due back tomorrow.

Trefor phoned to say they’d probably arrive early afternoon.’ It was the only phone call he’d received so far and he was rather put out that Freddy’s seemed to be managing all right without him.

Next morning, Evadne brought Queenie coffee in bed. ‘Good morning,’ she said gruffly. That, ‘goodnight’, ‘goodbye’ and ‘thank you’ were the only English words she knew.

‘Good morning to you,’ Queenie replied. She would have liked to make friends with Evadne, but conversation was impossible when neither spoke the other’s language. She gave the woman her biggest smile. Evadne smiled back, said, ‘Goodbye,’ and left.

Later, when she could bring herself to get out of bed, she decided to sunbathe.

There was a bikini in her suitcase, terribly daring, that she’d been too embarrassed to wear on the boat with the crew around. It was white, with a little matching frock to go over, a bit like the wraparound aprons Vera wore, but much shorter. She still felt embarrassed, now, when she looked at herself in the mirror with the bikini on. It showed far too much of her small breasts and the bottom half was hardly bigger than two hankies joined together.

She lay on a rug on the terrace, the frock within reach, so she could put it on the minute she heard the men come back. She preferred Peter not to see her in such a brief garment. What on earth had got into her last night? She hadn’t considered it possible to be happier than she already was with Theo, yet she’d actually wished he were more like his cousin. With these rather disturbing thoughts in her mind, Queenie fell asleep.

A voice woke her. The voice had said, ‘Well, you certainly fell on your feet.’

She looked up, so quickly, that her head swam and the bikini straps fell off, exposing her breasts. She was too busy struggling to pull the straps on to her shoulders to look and see where the voice had come from.

When she did, she was astonished to see Trefor Jones had come on to the terrace.

Evadne must have let him in. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said stiffly, feeling her face turn red, hoping it wasn’t noticeable beneath her tan.

‘I said, you certainly fell on your feet.’ He wore khaki shorts, a cotton shirt without a collar, and plaited sandals. Out of the smart, white uniform that invested him with an air of authority, he looked very different; just as handsome, but a bit of a rogue, rather rakish. He sat on the balustrade. ‘You don’t remember me from Caerdovey, do you?’

Queenie shook her head. She got up, still feeling dizzy, conscious of his eyes on her almost naked body. She put on the frock and sat on a chair, so they were more or less on the same level.

‘My mother ran the Post Office. You often came in to buy stamps.’