The Beads of Nemesis (14 page)

“You must have been very young to have minded so much,” Dora commented. “He sounds a very dull young man, with not much understanding of life if he thought this Delia would suit him better. I hope you told him so?” “Well, no,” Morag confessed.

“But you decided he should have what he wanted?”

“If it was Delia he wanted.”

“I must say you were quite as stupid as Pericles says you were! It was she who killed him, I suppose?”

Morag bowed her head. “Did Pericles tell you that too?” “Pericles tells me nothing! And Kimon, who would tell me, did not know that! But now you are not so young and silly, ne? You gave this young man away, but that was an extravagance of youth! You would not give your present happiness away so easily to your sister, or to anyone else. Have you told Pericles that?”

Morag avoided the question. “She’s my stepsister.”

Dora made an exasperated gesture. “It is only an excuse to say you are shy!” she muttered. “I hope he beats you if you don’t tell him very soon! It was bad enough that Susan should only tolerate what she should have seized with gratitude, but with you it is quite different, and I am glad it should be so! I want my son to be loved above all else! Whether he in turn loves you is a matter of indifference to me. It matters to me only that you should love him and that he should know it!”

“I love Pericles very much,” Morag said simply.

“Tell that to him!” Dora retorted.

“How do you know I haven’t?” Morag burst out.

“Have you?”

“No.” Morag wished she had cultivated the art of telling lies better and were not quite so naturally truthful. It was true enough that she had not told Pericles anything, but surely, sometimes, actions spoke louder than words? She sighed, knowing that it was the words that Pericles wanted, and words never came easily to her, and were now harder than ever to find when they mattered so much. She lifted her head. “Not that it’s any business of yours!” she added to her mother-in-law.

Dora gave her a quick look of appreciation. “Quite right!” she applauded. “It would have been much easier for you if you had a proper honeymoon away from us all. I have tried to keep out of it, my dear, but it’s a bit difficult when we are all in the same house and on top of one another the whole time. I apologise.”

It was the last reaction that Morag had expected. “It doesn’t matter,” she said awkwardly. “I don’t mind - much. Only don’t hope for too much. Pericles only married me to look after the children. I can’t - can’t expect that he should want me to hang round his neck all the time!”

Dora frowned. “Don’t be too unselfish!” she warned. There was a short silence while Morag digested this, and then the older woman went on casually, “By the way, I thought I might take the children out tonight. They want to see the Son et Lumiere of the Acropolis, and I want them to see the Dora Stratou Theatre of Greek Dance. It’s right that they should take a proper interest in their heritage. Would you care to come too?” Morag looked as confused as she felt. “I don’t know,” she said. “Won’t Pericles think it odd if we all go out without him?”

“Pericles is going out himself,” his mother let fall. “He won’t be back till very late, if at all.”

It was typical, Morag thought, that she should be the last to know! “Where is he going?” she asked.

Dora smiled faintly. “In Greece a man often goes out alone and it’s seldom that he tells his womenfolk where he’s going. Pericles is no exception to that!”

“But he’s only half Greek!”

“He is living here,” Dora pointed out. “So I take it you will come with us?”

Morag nodded. “Thank you,” she said. But she didn’t feel like thanking anyone. Her pleasure in the morning was quite destroyed. She sighed and poured herself some more coffee, just as Kimon and Peggy came in from the beach.

“Did you find it? Morag, did you find my coin? Please say you did! I would have come back and helped you look, but I heard Daddy talking to

you.” His eyes grew round at the memory. “He sounded awfully angry!” Morag’s features took on a calmness she was far from feeling. What else had Kimon heard? Pericles’ angry accusation that he wouldn’t allow her to entertain her lovers at his front door? Really, it was quite impossible to hold a private conversation in this house!

“He found your coin,” she said aloud.

“Daddy did? But he didn’t spend any time looking for it at all-”

“He - he came upon it immediately!” Morag cut him off. “Oh,” said Kimon. “Well, I’m glad it’s found. It’s my most precious possession in all the world. Do you think I should thank him?”

“Of course you should!” Peggy chimed in. “Wasn’t it a super party last night? I thought I’d die when Grandma showed all my drawings with hers, but they didn’t look too bad, did they? There was one man there who wanted to take one of them home with him, but Daddy said no. It was the drawing I did of you, Morag. Did you look at it properly?”'

“It depends what you mean by properly,” Morag teased her.

“I mean, did you think it looked like you?”

Morag had thought so. She had her head flung back and she was laughing. She had been surprised to find herself thinking that the girl in the picture was more than a little bit pretty. She was striking to look at, and quite different from the way she thought of herself.

“I suppose it does. I don’t see myself very often - except in the looking glass.”

“No, one doesn’t,” Peggy agreed, “I thought,” she went on happily, “that Grandma was going to show the painting she did of you too. Why didn’t you, Grandma? I think it’s terribly good!”

A sudden bark of laughter escaped from Dora’s throat. She put up a hand to her mouth as if to prevent it from happening again. “Daddy said no,” she said dryly.

“Daddy did?” both children said together. “Why?” “You’ll have to ask him,” Dora suggested, but her eyes were on Morag’s flushed face and, underneath, she was still laughing. “Meanwhile, will you hurry up and finish your breakfast or we shall never get anything done today. Parties are all very well, but they do disorganise one so!” Morag didn’t see Pericles all day. Not that she would have known what to say to him if she had. She would have liked to have known, quite as much as the children, why he had refused to allow the man to take away Peggy’s drawing of herself.

Whichever way she looked at it, it seemed an odd thing to do. She wished with all her heart that she could think it was because he wanted it for himself, but she knew that to be an idle hope before she had even voiced it to herself. Why should he? All he had to do was ask Peggy to do another drawing of herself any time she chose.

It was not until they were all in Dora’s car on their way to Athens that evening that she thought to ask Peggy who the man had been who had wanted the drawing.

“Adoni? He’s a cousin of ours.” Peggy stretched lazily. “He pretends to be Takis’ twin, because they’re almost the same age, but he isn’t, of course. They aren’t even brothers, though they’ve always done practically everything together, Kimon and I are the only real twins in the family!”

“I don’t see why he should want a drawing of me,” Morag went on worrying at the point. “I’ve never seen him before!”

Kimon looked kindly at her. “He would have given it to Takis,” he explained as if her were speaking to a simpleton. “Takis said he wanted it to put it up in his room.”

Morag gave him a quick glance. “Are you sure?”

Kimon nodded. “I don’t suppose Takis really wanted it,” he consoled her. “He probably thought it would annoy Daddy.”

Morag suppressed a strong wish to strangle Takis and his cousin. If it had been anyone else but Kimon to say such a thing, she would have discounted it as his imagination, but Kimon was not given to fantasies and his lack of interest in the whole subject was made clear when he changed the subject back to his beloved coin, eagerly telling his grandmother that he was sure it was one of the best examples of Spartan coinage still extant in Greece.

But Morag could not forget what he had said as easily. For the first time she began to wonder in earnest about Susan, what she had been like, and whether she had really been in love with Takis. There had to be some reason why Takis should want to hurt Pericles any way he could? Was it because he hadn’t been as sure as he pretended to be that Susan had preferred him to her own husband? Oh well, no one could tell her that now. Just as she would never be able to ask David if Delia had only run after him because she had been unable to bear the fact that David preferred her stepsister. What unhappiness such conceit in one’s own attraction could cause! Was that the sin that the ancient Greeks had

called hubris, the crime of thinking that one could be master of one’s own destiny, of presuming to think that one could take anything merely because one wanted it? Morag fingered the shells round her neck with a faint shiver. It was Nemesis whose duty it was to punish all such presumption. On whom would her vengeance fall ' next?

“I’m tired, Grandma!” Peggy complained, breaking into Morag’s train of thought. “Why did we have to come tonight? I’m tired!”

“You slept late enough this morning,” her grandmother told her.

“But I’m tired!”

“Hush,” said Morag. “You can sleep afterwards.”

“But not for ages! The Son et Lumiere doesn’t begin until nine o’clock!”

“Doesn’t it?” Morag exclaimed. “But it gets dark much earlier than that!”

Dora compressed her lips together signifying her displeasure. “I thought you’d like to hear it in English. The children understand English better than any other language too. Also it fits in better with the Dora Stratou. Theatre.”

“You see,” said Peggy, “we shan’t get to bed before tomorrow! And I’m tired now!”

So was Morag! She wondered what time Pericles would be coming home and wished she had never agreed to come. “Don’t whine!”

Kimon rebuked his sister, “You know Daddy doesn’t like it! He says it makes things worse if you whine - they take longer to live through!”

Morag began to feel sorry for her mother-in-law. Really it was too had to have three reluctant guests on her hands! To make up for the children’s lack of enthusiasm, she began to ask about the Greek dances they were going to see. “I seem to have heard of Dora Stratou.” “Of course you have!” Dora snapped. “She’s won all sorts of international prizes for her work.” She turned her head so that the children also could hear what she was saying. “The Greek dance is one of the oldest in the world,” she told them. “Much of it was lost at one time and all that there was to go on was the odd mention of it here and there in Homer. But Kyria Stratou has studied the representations of the old dances on ancient vases, on friezes, wherever they could be seen, and has faithfully revived them. The most interesting thing to my mind is that the Greek musical rhythms are based

on the old poetic rhythms: 5/4, or 5/8, 7/8, 9/8, the very same metres that are to be found in the plays of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. You can hear the same beat in the Byzantine music of the Orthodox Church if you listen for it.”

Morag smiled at the children’s blank feces, realising that they had not understood one word of their grandmother’s introduction to the evening’s entertainment. “I expect you’ll like the costumes,” she suggested, sounding more optimistic than she actually was.

Dora snorted her contempt at the very idea. “They must learn to use their eyes! Especially Peggy, if she is determined to paint anything worthwhile. She will do better if she considers where she may have seen the costumes and the musical instruments before. It may have been in a Byzantine fresco, or in a statue depicting one of the ancient gods, on a vase in the National Museum, maybe even on a Christmas card! One has to learn to relate the things one sees to other things. This is the secret of a good painting, or a good design. Sometimes I think it’s the best basis for the whole of life!”

“But Grandpa didn’t think so,” Peggy said in bored tones.

“No,” Dora was forced to agree in unnaturally subdued tones. “It’s sometimes difficult to see any use in any of the arts. Your grandfather was an essentially practical man and he thought anything that didn’t have an immediate practical use was a waste of time. I think he forgot that the soul can get hungry too!”

“Was he - was he like Pericles?” Morag heard herself asking.

Dora considered the question. “In some ways,” she said. “He was a hard man, but he tried always to be gentle with me. I doted on him.” She sighed. “I’d rather have him than my painting any day!”

Just as Morag would rather have Pericles than all the other gifts all the ancient gods put together could lavish on her. She rubbed her shells between her fingers in a quick, nervous movement. If Nemesis were real, would she think that Morag deserved Pericles? Somehow, Morag couldn’t think so. She had so very little to offer him and someone like Pericles deserved only the best. She tilted her chin into an obstinate angle. Then she would have to become the best for him, because nobody else was going to have him!

The people who had just seen the Son et Lumiere performance in German were still coming out from the natural theatre that looked out and up at the rock of the Acropolis, surmounted by the Parthenon. Dora allowed the children to buy themselves some Coca-Cola, taking it for granted that Morag, like herself, would prefer to do without.

“The mosquitoes are bad at this time of year!” the older woman complained, slapping her arms. “Something ought to be done about them!”

Morag, who had suffered from various bites ever since she had arrived

in Greece, wondered if the season really made much difference. “They’re

at their worst at night. I wonder why?”

Dora shrugged. “One notices them more. Can you see the children

anywhere? It looks as though we are at last moving.”

Morag found the children with some difficulty and firmly anchored

them to her by holding them both by the hand. She knew that they

resented being treated as younger than they were, but she had no

intention of losing them in the crowd that pressed all round them. “It

won’t be for long, just till we get inside,” she told them.

Kimon blinked up at her. “We’re not going inside,” he corrected her.