by M. M. Kaye
Ah, these seafaring men! said Euridice, throwing up her hands. On the ships they would work like oxen at the plough, but on shore they pursued pleasure and conducted themselves in a truculent manner. The poor Almena!—Euridice mopped her eyes—what sadness to lose a husband thus! This had been her home village before her marriage, and her family, together with Euridice and Andreas, were to leave shortly by bus for Nicosia to attend the funeral, and would not be back that night.
Amanda offered her condolences and promised to inform Miss Moon. Euridice thanked her tearfully and departed.
‘Who was your lady friend?’ demanded Persis, returning. Amanda explained the circumstances as Alastair Blaine restarted the car and they continued on their way.
The ruined Abbey of Bellapais lay on the knees of the hills, its pale stone walls, arches and tall campanile rising up out of a silvery sea of olives so graciously, so softly opalescent, that it seemed more like a mirage than something built by men, and as though a breath could blow it away.
Beyond and above and below the pale gold walls and empty archways lay a wash of blue; the intense cobalt blue of the distant sea, the cloudless blue of the sky and the soft blue barrier of the Kyrenia range.
Major Blaine braked the car in a patch of shade and Amanda said suddenly: ‘I don’t think I’m coming in. I’d rather look at it from the hillside. If I go inside there’s sure to be a guide and instructive notices, and I couldn’t bear to turn it from a dream into a string of dates. I shall sit under one of those olive trees and just stare at it.’
Persis laughed. ‘You know what, honey? You are too romantic for your own good—or else you must be in love. Well I guess I won’t dissuade you. We’re only young once. But speaking for myself I do not intend to miss a trick. I’ve come to Cyprus to see the sights, and I’ll see ’em if it kills me. Where’s that dam’ guide book? Alastair honey, if you think you’re going to lie on your back under any olive tree and go to sleep, you have assessed the situation incorrectly. You were taking me on a conducted tour—remember? You start conducting right here. Lead on!’
They passed under the shadow of a stone archway and Amanda, left alone, turned away and climbed the slope above the road, and presently settled herself in the shade of an ilex with her back against the rough bark and gave herself up to a fascinated contemplation of the view.
I should like to live here, thought Amanda dreamily; and remembered what Miss Moon had said about Time … that in the Villa Oleander, Time was their servant, and not they the servants of Time. Perhaps that was true of all Cyprus. Certainly this shimmering blue day held a timeless and dream-like quality. But it was a deceptive quality, for Time must move on here as relentlessly as it did in colder and harsher countries, and it was only a pleasant illusion that here it drifted slowly and lazily. One day the world would catch up with Cyprus. One day politicians and greedy, frightened, quarrelling factions would engulf the sleepy, enchanted island—as they had engulfed so many other lazy, beautiful places—in a wave of Progress, reinforced concrete and Town Planning.
The sun moved slowly across the sky and the shadow of the ilex moved with it. The bark of the tree trunk began to feel unpleasantly hard through the thin green cotton of Amanda’s frock and there was an ant crawling down her back and several more investigating her ankles.
She rose reluctantly and made her way back to the car. There was still no sign of Persis and Alastair, and abandoning her decision not to enter the Abbey, she paid over the small entrance fee to the drowsy custodian at the entrance and walked into the Abbey grounds.
Only the shell of the gracious building remained. But the old stone cloisters were cool and quiet and the ruined arches gave on to soft blue distances and the grey-green of olives on the hillside below. Bellapais—The Abbey of Peace. It had been well named.
Amanda wandered across a square of emerald green turf surrounded by shadowed cloisters. There was a rose bush growing at one side of it and a single tall cypress tree. The close-cut turf looked more comfortable than the stony hillside, and she lay face down on it, stretched out at full length on the warm grass in the small patch of shade thrown by the scented sprays of the roses that curved above her. Amanda pulled a grass stem and chewed it reflectively, and presently, feeling pleasantly drowsy, closed her eyes …
She was aroused by a sound of voices from under the arch of the cloisters on the far side of the rose bush. It was Alastair Blaine who was speaking, though it did not seem like his voice, for its slow, pleasant drawl was entirely missing and the words had a sharp, ragged sound:
‘My dear, don’t! Not now. You don’t understand____’
Persis Halliday answered him, and her voice too was almost the voice of a stranger: hurt and uneven and somehow vulnerable.
‘I think I do. Cyprus isn’t London, this isn’t last year, and Time Marches On. That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve changed—and I haven’t. Once I thought that you might almost walk out on everything—Julia, your career, everything, anything—for me. Almost—not quite.’
‘Persis, you knew it wasn’t possible.’
‘Because you hadn’t a penny beyond your pay and the money was all Julia’s? But it’s different now, Alastair. She’s dead, and it’s all yours.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Alastair tiredly.
‘What don’t I understand? I came out to Egypt because I had to see you. And her. To see what she was like. I knew the minute I saw you together that you didn’t even care for her. But you didn’t care any more for me either. Who is she, Alastair?’
‘She? I don’t know who you are talking about.’
‘Neither do I. But I feel that there is someone. Is it Claire? You stopped off here, after that fortnight in London, to stay with the Normans. Oh yes, I know that Julia was here too, and that when you were flown home to London for that conference I had a fair field because she couldn’t come with you. But a little thing like having your wife around wouldn’t stop Claire!’
‘Oh God,’ said Alastair Blaine. ‘You too!’
Persis said: ‘Don’t fool yourself, darling—it isn’t you she wants. She likes men around, but it’s George she really relies on. George, who puts up with all her whims and whimsies and provides her with a nice safe respectable background and fetches and carries for her. Things no one else would do. Is it Claire?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Alastair wearily. ‘I have no interest in Claire Norman, and George is my first cousin. In fact now that Julia’s dead he’s my next of kin, so is it likely that I’d even think of—Oh, leave it!’
‘Now you’re angry. But if it isn’t Claire, who is it? Is it Amanda? Have you fallen for those big grey eyes and that wonderful hair, like Toby Gates? You and Toby! And just over a year ago he was tagging round after me like Mary’s little lamb. Oh well, who can blame him. She’s a sweet kid, and worth anyone’s while for half an hour in the moonlight.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Alastair’s voice was both angry and exasperated.
‘Then who?’
‘There isn’t anyone, I tell you. Can’t you see that after Julia____’
Persis cut across the sentence sharply and cruelly: ‘You didn’t give a dam’ for Julia! I know. I’ve seen you look at her. The best turn she ever did you was to kill herself! That’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Alastair Blaine heavily. ‘It’s true. But–but you can’t shrug off death, Persis. She was my wife, and—oh I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. Can’t you see that all I want is a little peace and quiet? I’ve had nothing but scenes for years. Scenes and tears and hysteria, and nagging, senseless, silly accusations. God! I’m sick of it!’
‘Alastair, darling____’
‘Don’t darling me!’ Alastair’s voice was suddenly ragged with exhaustion and rage. ‘All right, you asked for it and you shall have it! I did make love to you in London last year. Would you like to know why? Because you wanted me to. You shouted for it like a s
poilt kid banging the table with a spoon. And you were attractive and amusing and you treated the whole thing as a joke. And because I knew—I knew so damnably well!—that when I got back to Julia she would accuse me of having had an affair with some woman, even if I’d spent the entire bloody fortnight locked in the cell of a monastery!’
‘But Alastair____’
‘Shut up! I’m talking now. I’ve never had affairs with women. Do you realize that? Julia was the first woman I ever fell in love with, and I married her. In all the years of our marriage I had never been unfaithful to her—never once! Do you know why? Because I’m not built that way. I cannot be rude or curt to women who put themselves out to be pleasant to me, but I don’t want to make love to them. And believe me, they don’t want it either! But Julia would never believe that. She preferred to imagine that I was some frightful Lothario, instead of a perfectly ordinary, dull sort of chap without an ounce of sex appeal. And now you!—it’s too much! I’d put up with Julia’s senseless, endless, futile suspicions for years, and I suppose there was bound to be a breaking point one day, and____’
‘And I was it,’ finished Persis quietly.
‘Yes! Oh it wasn’t you____No, I don’t mean it like that. But it was knowing so well that as soon as I saw her again I should have to listen to the same old sordid accusations. I suddenly felt that I couldn’t take it any more.’
‘So you said to yourself “What the hell? If I’m going to be accused of playing around anyway, okay, I’ll play around!”’
‘Yes!’
‘And that’s really all there was to it? Just–just a ten-day flirtation with someone who was attractive and amusing and who treated it all as a joke?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t imagine for a moment that you____’
Persis’ voice interrupted him before he could finish the sentence:
‘Don’t, dear! You don’t have to say any more. And so there isn’t even anyone else!’
She laughed; a little bitter laugh. Alastair did not answer and there was silence for a moment or two. Presently their footsteps moved slowly away together, echoing hollowly under the curved stone arches of the age-old cloisters.
A shadow moved on the grass beside Amanda and a quiet voice quoted Puck’s words: ‘“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”’
Amanda started up. ‘You!’ she said on a gasp. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘The same as you,’ said Steve Howard amiably. ‘Eavesdropping.’
Amanda’s face flamed. ‘I was not eavesdropping!’
‘Perhaps not intentionally, but the result was the same. Very instructive, wasn’t it?’
‘Why are you spying on us all?’ demanded Amanda hotly.
‘You sound very cross, my sweet. Why shouldn’t I come here if I wish? A good many people do. In fact all self-respecting tourists are urged not to miss it. I have been pursuing my Art.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it!’ said Amanda. ‘And I’m not cross and I’m not your sweet!’
‘I withdraw the adjective. There is, alas, a distinct trace of acidity in your manner this morning; and you are not only cross but getting crosser every minute.’
Amanda opened her mouth and shut it again without speaking. She had remembered an admirable piece of advice frequently given to her by Miss Binns, her Uncle Oswin’s elderly and placid housekeeper. She drew a deep breath and counted twenty.
‘Why are you here?’ she inquired in a more reasonable voice.
‘To keep an eye on you.’
‘On me?’ said Amanda, startled. ‘Why?’
‘I find you so attractive that I cannot keep away.’
There was a mocking gleam in Mr Howard’s eye and once again Amanda felt her cheeks burn, counted fifteen and said coldly: ‘Don’t talk nonsense.’
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘No I don’t!’ snapped Amanda.
‘All right then. I have a brilliant theory that sooner or later someone is going to murder you, and I wish to see who does it. Will that do?’
‘Don’t you ever speak the truth?’ demanded Amanda frostily.
‘Not if I can help it,’ admitted Steve with disarming candour. ‘Truth, Amarantha, as your classical studies will no doubt have informed you, is a naked lady who lives at the bottom of a well. It therefore behoves any gentleman who inadvertently dredges her up in his bucket to look the other way or hurriedly shroud her in a mackintosh.’
Amanda looked at him doubtfully. His brown hair was ruffled into disorder and there was a smudge of blue paint on one side of his chin. He was wearing a blue sports shirt and a pair of grey flannels that had seen better days, and there were paint marks on both.
She said abruptly: ‘What have you been painting?’
Mr Howard made an airy gesture of the hand towards the surrounding walls. ‘This. From a couple of hundred yards down the road.’
Amanda said: ‘I’d like to see it.’
‘Suspicious little thing, aren’t you? All right—come on.’
They walked back through the Abbey and down the road, and he led the way up a goat track to a point on the opposite hillside some fifty yards to the left of the ilex tree under which Amanda had been sitting.
‘Where’s your car?’ asked Amanda.
‘On the upper road; it’s not much more than a track.’
There was a clutter of painting gear in the shade of some trees, and Steve picked up a canvas that he had left propped against a tree trunk, and held it up for her inspection.
It was a rough sketch in oils, showing the Abbey of Bellapais lifting above a haze of wind-ruffled olives. The thing had apparently been done entirely with a palette knife, for the paint was laid on with a lavish hand; but it in no way resembled the efforts of Mr Lumley Potter. Despite the strength of the technique the unfinished sketch had captured all the dreamlike, ethereal quality of the ruined Abbey that had so forcibly struck Amanda at her first sight of it, and she said again, and unconsciously, almost the same words that she had used on the harbour wall on the previous morning.
‘But you can paint!’
She lifted her eyes from the picture and looked at Steve Howard, puzzled and uncertain.
‘Poor Amarantha,’ said Steve softly. ‘You don’t know whether you’re coming or going, do you? Well if it’s any consolation to you, I’m not so sure myself. Why did you come to Cyprus?’
The question was abrupt and unexpected, and Amanda looked startled. ‘I wanted to come.’
‘Why? Any special reason?’
‘Yes,’ said Amanda slowly, her mouth curving in a reminiscent smile: ‘A poem I read at school. Have you ever read something that made you want to see a special place? That–that sort of haunted you?’
Steve’s eyes were no longer mocking. ‘Flecker,’ he said, smiling, and quoted the lines that had captured the schoolgirl Amanda’s childish imagination: ‘“I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep beyond the village which men still call Tyre, with leaden age o’ercargoed, dipping deep for Famagusta and the hidden sun that rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire.”’
‘Yes,’ said Amanda. She turned to look out across the grey-green mist of olives to the far blue sea beyond them, and spoke in the soft abstracted voice of one who speaks a thought aloud:
‘“Famagusta and the hidden sun…” The names are so beautiful. Famagusta—Kyrenia—Hilarion—Paphos.’ Her voice changed to every name, lingering on the syllables. ‘Do you know what the castle on that peak over there is called? Miss Moon told me. It’s called Buffavento. That means “the wind blows”. The wind blows…’ Her voice sank to a whisper.
Steve forbore to correct her translation, and just then a car horn sounded from the road below.
‘That’ll be Blaine,’ said Steve. ‘You’d better get back. See you at the picnic this afternoon.’
Amanda turned to look at the square of canvas again. She said a little hesitantly: ‘Could I buy it? I’d like to have it for my own. You do sell them, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ said Steve. ‘But not, generally speaking, off the peg. However, I’d like to give you this one. You can consider it as an un-birthday present. It’s only a rough sketch.’
Amanda smiled at him with a sudden glow in her eyes and reached out a hand for it. ‘It’s wonderful!’ she said.
‘It’s wet,’ said Steve, removing it. ‘I’ll keep it for the moment. You shall have it later.’
Amanda nodded absently, and went slowly back down the hillside between the olive trees. And all the way back to Kyrenia, while Persis laughed and chattered as though that brief, emotional scene in the Abbey cloisters had never taken place, Amanda was silent and thoughtful.
She was remembering something that Steven Howard had said in the cabin of the Orantares: ‘I paint indifferent pictures and have a passion for meddling in other people’s affairs.’ She had put her own interpretation on that and had come to the conclusion that he was some sort of private inquiry agent, and that it was even possible that Julia had employed him to watch her husband so that she might have something besides hysterical suspicions with which to confront Alastair, and acquire thereby an additional hold over him.
But Steve did not seem to fit into that role. And he could paint: there was no doubt at all about that. The conté drawings she had seen on the previous morning had betrayed a considerable talent, but the rough sketch in oils of the Abbey of Bellapais was in an entirely different category and Amanda began to wonder if her imagination had not run away with her.
Had Steve Howard after all come to Fayid and to Cyprus by chance, and with the sole object of painting, and had his subsequent proceedings stemmed, as he himself had suggested, from an amused and analytical interest in the behaviour of his fellow men?
Then there was Persis: Persis and Alastair Blaine, who had apparently met and had a brief affair in London during two short weeks the previous summer, when Alastair had been flown to London on the General’s staff to attend some conference. Amanda remembered having heard Julia refer to it once. The conference had been delayed and instead of staying in London for a few days, Alastair had stayed two weeks and—probably as a result of some foolish letter from Julia—reached at last that breaking point to which he had referred. And Persis had fallen in love with him.
