The Moonspinners (30 page)

Tony, it appeared, did not count the birds. He got up. ‘Well, are you rested? Shall we go down?'

‘Good heavens, did you come right up here just to meet me?'

‘I wanted a walk. The lemons smell good, don't they?' We left the lemon grove, and skirted the field where the cornmill stood. A swift glance showed me that the door was tightly shut, and that no key jutted from the lock. I looked away quickly, my mind racing. Had Tony really come up here to meet me, perhaps to find out where I had been and what I had seen; or had he come up to the mill? Did he know that Colin was no longer there? If so, did he suspect Sofia, or would he assume that Josef had taken the boy up into the hills to silence him? It was even possible that Sofia herself had confided in him; he, like her, had been opposed to the idea of further murder. I stole a glance at him. Nothing in his face or bearing betrayed that he was thinking of anything more serious than how to avoid the mule droppings in the track. Certainly there was no hint that he was engaged in a kind of verbal chess with me.

Well, so far we had each made the move we wanted. And if I could, I would avoid letting him make another. Quickly, I tried a diversion. I pointed up into an ilex-tree. ‘Look, there's a jay! Aren't they pretty things? They're so shy at home that you hardly ever see them properly.'

‘Is that what it was?' He had hardly glanced at it. He made his next move; pawn advancing to queen's square: ‘Don't you think these windmills are just ducky?'

‘They're lovely.' I hoped the queen's hesitation wasn't showing. But whatever he knew, or didn't know, I must say and do the natural thing. I said it, with a rough-and-ready compromise. ‘We took some ciné film up here this morning – there were people working in the fields, and Frances got some lovely shots of that mill.'

‘Was Sofia up here?'

‘Mr Alexiakis' sister? Yes, she was. She's very nice, isn't she? I'd never have taken her for his sister; she looks so much older.'

‘That's the difference between the fleshpots of Soho and the empty fishnets of Agios Georgios, dear. Especially if your husband's a fisherman who won't fish. Josef's idea of bringing home the bacon is to slope off into the hills armed to the teeth like a Cretan brigand. Not that there's anything to shoot in these parts. If he brings home a rock partridge once a month he thinks he's done his bit towards the happy home.'

I laughed. ‘Have I seen him yet? Does he spend his time playing backgammon at the hotel?'

‘Not he. No, he's off somewhere just now on a ploy of his own. I thought you might have seen him up yonder. That's why I asked. Did Sofia let you into the mill?'

Check to the queen. This diversion hadn't worked, either. Then I saw that my trapped feeling came only from myself, from the guilty knowledge of my own involvement. Tony could have no possible reason for suspecting I knew anything at all. The only reason he would be asking me these questions was if he really wanted to know.

Sofia, then, had told him nothing. For one frantic moment I wondered what to say. Then I saw, sharply, that Sofia would have to protect herself. It was my job to look after my own side, and that included me. It would be no help to Tony and Stratos, now, to know that Colin had gone. They couldn't get him. And Sofia would have to face them some day. Meanwhile I must look after myself, and Frances. The truth was the only armour for innocence.

I had stooped to pick an iris, and this had given me the moment I wanted. I straightened up, tucking the flower into the bunch I carried. ‘Into the mill? Yes, she did. She was awfully kind, because I think she was in a hurry, but she showed us round, and Frances got some lovely shots of the interior. We were awfully lucky to run across her; I'd never have known whose mill it was, and it's usually kept locked, I suppose?'

‘Yes,' said Tony. The light eyes showed nothing but mild interest. ‘You saw the whole works, then? How nice. The millstones and all that?'

‘Oh, yes. She showed Frances how they worked.'

‘Ah,' said Tony. He dropped his cigarette on the dusty path, and ground it out with his heel. He smiled at me: Tony, to whom it didn't matter whether or not Colin had been murdered in the small hours of the morning; Tony, the passerby on the other side; the chess expert who was enjoying a game that made my palms sweat with the effort of being natural. ‘Well, dear,' he said lightly, ‘I'm glad you had a good day. Ah, there's the bridge, not far to go now. You'll just about have time to change before dinner,
and
it's octopus, which you'll adore, if you've a taste for flavoured india rubber.'

So the game was over. Relief made me as gay as he was. ‘I don't mind it, but it's not the main dish, surely? Oh, Tony, and I'm ravenous!'

‘I gave you each enough lunch for two.'

‘You certainly did. I ate nearly all of it, what's more, and left the rest for the birds. If you'd given me less, I'd have been down a couple of hours ago. I hope you didn't want the bottle back?'

‘No. I hope you buried it out of sight? It offends the gods of the place,' said Tony, blandly, ‘if undesirable objects are left unburied hereabouts.'

‘Don't worry, I buried it under some stones – after pouring the correct libations with the last of the wine.'

‘Correct libations?'

‘One for Zeus – he was born up there, after all. And then my own private one for the moonspinners.'

‘The what?'

‘The moonspinners. Three ladies who spin the moon away every month, to bring a good dark night at the end of it. The opposite of the hunter's moon – a night that's on the side of the hunted things . . . like Josef's rock partridges.'

‘A night of no moon,' said Tony. ‘Well, isn't that interesting? What my dear old father used to call a night for the Earl of Hell.'

I raised my eyebrows. ‘That seems an odd expression for a Vicar.'

‘A what?' For one glorious moment I saw Tony disconcerted. Then the pale eyes danced. ‘Oh, yes. But then my father was such an
odd
Vicar, dear. Ah, well, I dare say your libation will work. There'll be no moon tonight. Black enough,' he added cheerfully, ‘to hide anything. Or anybody.'

Frances was sitting in the garden, but the door to the hall was open, and as soon as Tony and I entered the hotel, she saw us, and came hurrying in.

‘My dear! Practically a search party! Tony was sure you'd be lying with a broken leg, surrounded by vultures, but I assured him you'd be all right! Had a good day?'

‘Wonderful! I'm sorry if I worried you, but I decided while I was up there that I'd make for that old Byzantine ruin I told you about, and it's positively miles! But I had a marvellous day!'

Tony had lingered to watch our meeting, but now disappeared through the door behind the reception table. He left it ajar. I heard Stratos' voice say something in soft Greek which I couldn't catch.

Frances' eyes were on my face, worried and questioning. I must have looked very different from the depressed messenger she had seen off that morning.

‘Are those for me?' She was conscious, as I was, of the open door.

‘Yes . . . If only you'd come a little bit farther up, I found the very thing we were looking for! Brought it back, too, alive and undamaged. Here, hawkweed
Langleyensis hirsuta
, as good as new.'

I detached the common little hawkweed from the bunch, and handed it to her. I saw a spasm pass across her face, to be followed swiftly by something like understanding. Her eyes came up to mine. I nodded, every muscle of my face wanting to grin with triumph; but I fought them into stillness. I saw her eyes light up. ‘It should be all right, shouldn't it?' I said, touching the yellow petals. ‘It's quite fresh and undamaged.'

‘Darling,' said Frances, ‘it's a treasure. I'll put it straight away. I'll come up with you.'

I shook my head at her quickly. It might be better not to look as if we wanted to hurry off together into privacy. ‘Don't bother, I'll bring the things down for you when I've changed. Here are the rest. I don't suppose there's much that matters, but there wasn't much time. Order a
tsikóuthia
for me, will you, like a lamb? I'll join you out there till dinner, and let's pray it's soon, I'm starving.'

I ran upstairs to my room, where the last of the sunlight still lingered as a rosy warmth on the walls. The shadows of the vine were blurred now, ready to fade and spread into the general darkness.

I took off my linen jacket, and dropped it on the bed, then kicked off my dusty shoes. Only now did I begin to realize how tired I was. My feet were aching, and grimed with dust that had seeped through my canvas shoes. The thin straw matting felt gratefully smooth and cool to my bare feet. I pulled off my frock and threw it after the jacket, then went over to the window, pushed it wide, and leaned on the cool stone sill, looking out.

In the distance, above their gold-rimmed bases, the cliffs towered, charcoal-black. Below them, the sea lay in indigo shadow, warmed, where the sun still touched it, to a deep shimmering violet. The flat rocks near the hotel, lying full in the lingering light, were the colour of anemones. The ice daisies had shut, and the mats of leaves that covered the rocks looked dark, like seaweed. The wind had changed with evening, and a light breeze blew offshore, ruffling the water. Two gulls sailed across the bay, shadows identifiable only by their long, grieving cry.

I looked out towards the open sea. A caique was setting out for the night's fishing, with its
gri-gri
, the unpronounceable little Indian file of small boats following behind it, like ducklings behind the mother duck; light-fishers being towed out to the good fishing-grounds. Presently, away out, the lights would scatter and bob on the water like points of phosphorus. I watched them, wondering if the mother-boat were the
Eros
, and looked beyond her, straining my eyes over the dimming sea for a glimpse of another caique, a stranger, slipping lightless along, far out.

Then I pulled myself up. This wouldn't do. If I was to play the innocent, I must clear my mind of any thoughts of the others. In any case, they were out of my picture. Lambis' caique would slip past in the darkness towards the Bay of Dolphins, with three people on board who had probably forgotten all about me, and had their faces and thoughts thankfully set for Athens, and the end of their adventure. And meanwhile I was tired, hungry, and dusty, and I was wasting time. If Stratos' hotel would run to a hot bath . . .

It would. I bathed fast, then, back in my room, hurried into a fresh frock, and quickly did my face and hair. The bell sounded just as I was slipping on my sandals. I seized my handbag, and ran out, almost colliding with Sofia on the landing.

I had apologized, smiled, and asked how she did, before it struck me, like a fresh shock, that this very day I had seen her husband's grave. The thought caught at my speech, and made me trail off into some stammered ineptitude, but she seemed to notice nothing wrong. She spoke with her former grave courtesy, though, now that I was looking for them, I could see the strain lines, and the smudges of sleepless terror under her eyes.

She looked past me through the open door of my room.

‘I'm sorry, I should have tidied it,' I said hurriedly, ‘but I've only just got in, and the bell went . . . I did clean the bathroom.'

‘But you should not trouble. That is for me.' She walked into my room and stooped to pick up my shoes. ‘I will take these down and brush them. They are very dirty. You went far today, after I saw you at the mill?'

‘Yes, quite a long way, right across to the old church your brother told me of. Look, don't bother about those old things—'

‘Yes. They must be cleaned. It is no trouble. Did you meet anybody . . . up there?'

I wondered if it was Josef she was worrying about, or Colin. I shook my head. ‘Nobody at all.'

She was turning the shoes this way and that in her hands, as if studying them. They were navy canvas, much the same colour as the ones Colin had been wearing. Suddenly, I remembered the way his foot had prodded at that dreadful grave. I said, almost sharply: ‘Don't bother about those, really.'

‘I will do them. It is no trouble.'

She smiled at me as she said it, a gesture of the facial muscles that accentuated, rather than hid, the strain below. Her face looked like yellowed wax smeared thinly over a skull, all teeth and eye-sockets. I remembered Colin's brilliant blaze of happiness, the vivid change in Mark, and the light-hearted way the two of them had fooled with Lambis. This, we owed to Sofia. If only, if only it were true that Josef had been a brute, and could die unmourned. If only it were true that she had hated him . . . But could one ever really, honestly, hate a man with whom one had shared a bed, and to whom one had borne a child? I thought not, but then, one thinks like that at twenty-two . . .

I lingered for a moment longer, fretted by that feeling of guilt which was surely not mine, then, on an awkward ‘Thank you,' I turned and hurried down the outer stair and round the side of the hotel to where Frances awaited me with a vermouth for herself and a
tsikóuthia
for me.

‘How you can drink that stuff. It's quite revolting.'

‘All true Philhellenes cultivate the taste. Oh, that's
good
.' I stretched back in my chair, and let the drink trickle back over my palate and into my throat. I lifted the glass to Frances, and at last allowed the triumph of the day to reach my mouth and eyes. ‘It's been a lovely day,' I said, ‘a wonderful day. Here's to . . . us, and our absent friends.'

We drank. Frances regarded me smilingly. ‘I'll tell you something else, you ignorant little blighter. Among that first-class bunch of weeds you brought me, you have put, by – I am sure – the merest chance, a thing that is really quite interesting.'