Strangers in Company (9 page)

Stella had been totally silent on the drive down from Mycenae, hunched in her corner seat, biting her nails. Now she was standing on the other side of the lobby gazing out of a huge plate-glass window. At last, to Marian's relief, she came slowly across to join her. “What gives?” she asked.

“Business as usual, the professor thinks.”

“You mean pleasure.” Unconsciously, Stella echoed his word. “I supose it makes sense, in a horrible kind of way. After all, it was just a ghastly accident, wasn't it?” She sounded oddly like the young Viola, wanting to be reassured in some child's disaster.

“Well, of course.” And, oddly Marian found herself remembering her own macabre thoughts up there on the cooling hillside, about the police and the ordeal by blood. It was a relief to hear Cairnthorpe call her name. “Shall I wait for you?” she asked Stella. Something about her apparent composure nagged at her.

“Don't bother. If you're like me, you're dying to get upstairs. All rooms with bath here, by the look of the place. See you in the bar?”

“Right.” Marian turned to follow her pageboy. Upstairs, he accepted her apologetic handful of unknown coins with a beaming smile and said something rapid and incomprehensible in Greek.

“
Oriste
?” She had learned this useful all-purpose word from the professor.

The boy smiled, closed the room door and went to open the other door on to the small balcony. Wind rushed into the room, and somewhere down the corridor, another door, banging violently, made his point He closed the balcony door carefully, then opened the one into the hall, beamed again and left. Investigating quickly, Marian found that Stella had been right. She had her own tiny, typically Greek bathroom, with square tub, shower, and slightly defective plumbing. She made sure the hall door was firmly shut, then opened the one onto the terrace again, wincing at the force of the wind. But it was cleansing, somehow, purifying after the grim ordeal of the afternoon, and so was the wide view of the sea, ruffled to whitecaps by the wind. She shivered, not altogether with cold. Poor, silly Mrs. Hilton and her high heels.… What an ill-omened start for the tour. And then, how monstrously selfish to think that. Selfish, too, to realise, now, that in the horrible excitement of the day's events, she had quite forgotten her own horrors.

Disliking herself, she remembered that Cairnthorpe had warned that their dinner would be early. With one last, clean breath of sea-tasting wind, she went inside to pull her most respectable dress out of her case and get herself into it as fast as possible. It was a dark, becoming shade of blue, and quickly combing her hair, she found herself wondering whether the gesture was in respect of poor Mrs. Hilton or for this obviously elegant hotel.

As she let herself out of her room, doors were banging up and down the long corridor. Not everybody's pageboy had taken the trouble hers had. “God, what a gale.” Mrs.
Duncan emerged from the room opposite. “What kind of view have you got?”

“Marvellous. The sea. What's it like your side?”

“Marvellous, too. Come and see. Only for God's sake shut the door.”

“Thanks.” Marian obeyed, then moved over to the balcony door, which Mrs. Duncan had waited to open. “Oh, I say!” This side of the hotel looked down over tumbling red-tiled roofs to more sea, with an island, set, she thought, as carefully in the centre of the scene as an eighteenth century landscaper might have set his “folly.”

“We're on a peninsula,” explained Mrs. Duncan. “No wonder if it's a shade draughty.”

“What's the island? Do you know?”

“Yes. I read this place up in the guidebook last night. It's called the Bourdzi, or something of the kind. It's a bit gruesome, as a matter of fact. It used to be where hangmen lived. Safe from the vengeance of their customers' relations.”

“Ouch.”

“Yes. Well, never mind. It's a luxury hotel now.”

“Hey!” Stella's voice summoned them from the next balcony. “How about that drink, Mrs. F.? I'm dying of thirst.”

“Not a bad idea,” said Mrs. Duncan. “I've been admiring you two. What is that curious stuff you drink?”

“Ouzo,” Marian told her. “Come and try one?” Stella had already disappeared into her room, but surely she, too, would be relieved to have a new member for the inevitable foursome over dinner. With luck, Marian thought, they might get Professor Edvardson and be spared poor Cairnthorpe.

But when they joined Stella in the hotel's modernist, anywhere-in-the-world bar, her welcome was grudging in the extreme. “Oh, there you are.' She spoke to Marian, hardly acknowledging Mrs. Duncan's greeting. “I should warn you that we're in civilisation here. Ouzo costs half again what it did in Athens.”

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Duncan cheerfully. “I bet it's
still dirt cheap by English pub standards. Let me buy you one, to celebrate my first?”

Stella refused so ungraciously that Marian blushed for her as she accepted for herself. The drink arrived at once, but already cloudy, on ice. “Not half so good,” said Stella.

“But a drink.” Mrs. Duncan drank as if she needed it. “What a day.” And then, “Poor Mrs. Hilton.” She drank again. “If her husband hadn't suggested she stay behind, she'd never have insisted on coming. Crazy of Cairnthorpe to let her, in those heels.”

“Yes,” said Marian reasonably. “But what could he do?”

“Too young for the job.” Mrs. Duncan summed it up.

“I don't know….”

“I do.” She overrode Marian's attempted protest. “Imagine letting that young Greek—too handsome by a half, if you ask me—send him for help. Crazy, the whole business.”

“And frightening.” The words slipped out almost unawares and surprised Marian as much as the others.

“Oh, for God's sake let's stop talking about it.” Stella's voice held a dangerous note of hysteria.

“There you are.” Marian turned with relief to Mike, who spoke from the door.

“Ladies, I beg of you; the manager is in despair; the Furies are after us. This hotel is—how do you say?—crash full, and we are late. Ouzo is good, but punctuality is better.”

“I suppose that's another of your Greek proverbs.” Stella's voice held such animosity that Marian wondered whether the one, badly needed drink was making her imagine things.

“No, just a fact of living. This way, ladies, if you please. They are saving a table for you. Just.”

It was indeed pleasure as usual next morning. The telephone, shrilling by her bed, woke Marian at seven, with the news, in passable English, that breakfast was at eight and the coach would leave at nine. She replaced the receiver and turned over crossly. A whole hour of good
sleep wasted. There was no need to pack today, as they were merely doing a morning tour to Tiryns and Epidaurus and returning to Nauplia for what was called a “Free afternoon's sight-seeing.” But in the end, she gave up the idea of sleep, got up and threw back her shutters on to a crystal blue morning. Her sleep had been drug-induced and plagued by half-remembered nightmares. The Furies had been after her, their faces horrible travesties of members of the tour. Mrs. Duncan had been one, and Stella another, her hair, frightfully, a writhing of snakes. And someone had been trying to tell her something desperately important. Cairnthorpe? The professor? She could not remember, and what in the world did it matter? Dreams … just dreams. A walk before breakfast would do her good. She dressed quickly, went downstairs and encountered Mrs. Duncan in the main lobby.

“Morning!” Mrs. Duncan was brisk in pleated navy skirt and matching cardigan. “Barbarous hour to call us, wasn't it? You going for a stroll? Good. There are two fortresses here, the guidebook says, one on each side of the hotel. We can't lose.”

“No.” They emerged into the still-cool morning together and moved unanimously across the road to gaze down at white waves breaking in a little cove below.

“I thought the Mediterranean was always calm,” said Marian.

“Not a bit of it. Frightful storms here in the Aegean. That's why I opted for a bus tour this time. Sick as a dog the time I went on an island cruise. No stabilisers. Which way shall we go? Palamede or Itchkali?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The two forts. If I've got it right, Itchkali's the smaller one on the promontory. They shelled each other in the Greek war of Independence.”

“That must have been fun. Which one were the Turks holding?”

“Oh, neither. Greek meeting Greek. It's a habit of theirs.” She looked at her watch. “I suppose as we've only twenty minutes it had better be the Itchkali. There are eight
hundred and something steps up to the Palamede. I'm rather thinking of doing it this afternoon. Good for the digestion after all this sitting in the bus.”

“Yes.” Glad to have her mind made up for her, Marian fell in obediently at the other woman's side, but when they turned the corner of the road, it was to discover that their way was blocked. A large notice, white lettering on red, seemed to discourage further advance.

“Do you read Greek?” asked Mrs. Duncan.

“Not a word.”

“Nor do I, but I've got a dictionary.” Her tone suggested that Marian had come on this holiday very ill equipped, and Marian was inclined to agree with her. She pulled a small fat book out of her bag and consulted it, spelling out the Greek capitals slowly. “Alpha, pi, omega, gamma—got it!” Triumphantly. “I knew I'd seen it in the phrase book. Might have known it, I suppose. It means forbidden.”

“No entrance, I take it. I wonder why not.”

“Someone's entered just the same,” said Mrs. Duncan, as the honeymoon couple rounded a bend in the road. “At least she seems to have got over her hysterics. I thought she looked like death last night.”

“Well, it's not my idea of a honeymoon,” said Marian. “Honeymoon with Furies, you might say.”

“Imagination.” Mrs. Duncan was disapproving. “I thought you looked as if you had too much. Good morning.” She raised her voice in cheerful greeting. “What goes on up there?”

“It's a bit hard to tell.” Mr. Adams looked infinitely older than his platinum blonde wife this morning, and Marian, looking from one to the other, decided it must have been the attraction of opposites. “Building work of some kind. They seem to be dismantling an old fort by the look of things.”

“Shocking,” said Mrs. Duncan. “No respect for antiquity.”

“They'll probably build it up again better than ever,” he told her. “
And
more convincing. Have you been to Lindos?”

“Yes.” Enthusiastically. “Wonderful place. I'll never forget those columns against the sky.”

“No?” His tone mocked her. “Did anyone think to tell you that they were put up by Mussolini when the Italians held the island?” He turned to his wife. “Come on, pet. If you want to do that face of yours in time for breakfast, we'd better get going.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Folly!” Mrs. Duncan was rather ostentatiously consulting her dictionary as the couple turned away. “That other word there means danger. Let's just go as far as the notice and see what we can make out from there. I'm not going on, I don't know about you. Couple of young idiots.” She had turned to make sure that the Adamses were safely out of earshot.

“Not all that young,” said Marian. “Not him at any rate.”

“No, they're an odd pair, aren't they? I can't think what they see in each other.”

“But one so seldom can,” said Marian. What in the world had she seen in Mark? Glamour? The young idol coming down from his pedestal? Charm, of course. All that charm that she had seen, after their marriage, lavished so generously on everyone but herself. But then, was there, had there ever been anything under that charm? Was it not, really, when she started searching for what should have been there, for the real Mark (who, she now saw, had never existed save in her own mind)—was it not then that he had begun to turn away from her? Had the twins not really been a pretext for an escape he had already been longing to make? The twins, themselves a kind of miracle, when you thought of Mark's insomnia, his crowded days, the pills he must take … all the excuses he used to make for avoiding her.

She would never forget them, those nights when she lay awake, waiting for Mark to come up, to come to her, and then, at last, heard him—and heard him quietly opening the door of the little spare room across the hall. She could remember—it was horrible now—lying, rigid, biting
the sheet to stop herself from calling out to him.

All over now. Far away and long ago. And Mrs. Duncan saying something. “I beg your pardon?” said Marian.

“I said”—patiently—“that I must check up on that story of his about Rhodes.”

“Rhodes?”

“Lindos is on Rhodes.”

“Oh. You must think me absurdly ignorant, but you see I only came on this tour at the last moment.”

“And anyway we don't go to Rhodes, not having wings.” Stella's voice made them turn with a pair of starts. “You're up early, Mrs. F., but you're going to be late for breakfast just the same. If it's anything like last night, there'll probably be a maître d' waiting for us with a whip.”

“Loathesome phrase,” said Mrs. Duncan.

“Sorry I'm sure,” said Stella. “It isn't given to everyone to go to Roedean.”

Mrs. Duncan's enraged expression made it all too obvious that the shot had gone home, and Marian was relieved to hear Cairnthorpe's cheerful voice hailing them from the corner of the road. “Hi! Ladies, breakfast is served. Sorry about the early call,” he went on, as they hurried downhill towards him, “but it was the only time the desk could manage. We're a bit on sufferance here, as you have probably gathered.”

“I'll say,” said Stella.

“What's the news this morning?” As so often, Marian found herself hurrying into the gap left by Stella's rudeness.