Strangers in Company

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Marian managed a laugh. “You’re quite right. It’s a terrible word. I used it in an essay once, and my tutor made me read Northanger Abbey before I wrote another one.”

  “Oh, God, Jane Austen,” said Stella.

  People were moving down the aisle again. Stella stubbed out her cigarette as ruthlessly as she had lit it, and Marian wondered whether, in fact, she disliked them as much as she herself did. “Let’s get out of here,” said Stella. “I’m getting claustrophobia.”

  And that, Marian thought, meekly rising to get their coats and hand baggage from the rack, was all they needed. She turned without a word and found herself blocking the way of a tall middle-aged man, whose bushy black eyebrows contrasted strangely with short-cut silver hair, under the kind of Panama hat favoured by American tourists. “I’m so sorry.” She moved back a little, but he waved her on.

  “Ladies first.” His was the American voice of the airport. “Frankly”— his smile eased the deep lines of a tanned face—“I don’t think hurrying’s going to get us anywhere. We’ve lost that splendid girl, did you notice? She went off like a bat out of hell when the bus stopped. Well, we’re late, of course. But poor Mr. Cairnthorpe.…”

  “Useless,” said Stella.

  The scene in the lobby of the Alexander confirmed her words. It might be late for the Greek girl, but it was very early for the hotel, and an aged night porter was on duty at the desk. He spoke no English, and Cairnthorpe, it appeared, no Greek. A total impasse had developed, with Cairnthorpe trying various pronunciations of the magic words “Mercury Tours,” none of them successfully. Around him, the other members of the party sagged in anxious exhaustion. The few seats had been appropriated by the first comers; the others were rapidly filling the small lobby to overflowing.

  “Hell and damnation,” said the American. What on earth was someone like him doing on a tour like this? Now Marian watched with awed amusement as he contrived to make his way, courteous but firm, forward through the depressed crowd. Arrived at the desk, he spoke, loud and surprisingly bullying, in German. “The manager. Send for him at once.”

  The night porter looked at him with intense dislike but lifted the telephone on the desk and spoke rapidly in Greek. “She comes.” He ignored Cairnthorpe and spoke, now in German, to the American, still with dislike, then detached himself from the whole affair by producing a pair of dark-rimmed glasses and poring over the hotel ledger.

  “Thanks,” said Cairnthorpe, a little breathlessly. “Stupid of me; I never thought of German.”

  “They don’t like it,” said the American. “But it works.”

  It did. A door at the back of the lobby had opened to reveal an enormous black-clad lady of some age, who came through the crowd like a frigate to confront Cairnthorpe by the desk. “But you are a day early.” She reached over the desk, produced a file, opened it and handed him a piece of paper. “See. Here it says April fifth. And today it is the fourth.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Cairnthorpe.

  “We were given the wrong date.” She shrugged, her motherly smile for Cairnthorpe alone. “But what matter? Since it is our first booking, all is ready. I, Anastasia, am always ready. So: welcome, ladies and gentlemen.” She moved with heavy grace round to the back of the desk, said something in quick Greek to the night porter and turned a page of the huge ledger. “Names and passports, please. We will pretend that it is already tomorrow.”

  What followed was, inevitably, a muddle. She could not pronounce the English names: Cairnthorpe, quite naturally, could not connect names with faces; it took a very long time to get the rooms allocated. Marian waiting passively in a corner, where at least she had found a pillar to lean against, found herself wondering if, by any chance, the blonde Greek girl had known what was going to happen and had made good her escape before it began.

  “If they’d only keep quiet.” Beside her, Stella was still, perceptibly, simmering with rage. And, of course, she was quite right. The tired chorus of grumbles made it difficult for people to hear their names when they were called. Now, at the third try, the name “Eeltong” was heard and recognised.

  “And about time, too.” Mrs. Hilton bustled forward to accept the key. “And what about our baggage, eh?”

  “It comes.” If Mrs. Hilton was buxom, Anastasia was statuesque. “You will go to your room, please, and await it.” It was an order, not a request, and Mrs. Hilton went, her husband meekly, sadly following.

  “She’ll eat him alive when they’re alone.” Stella abandoned her pose of weary detachment. “Poor man.” She looked round at the emptying lobby. “Will our turn never come?”

  “I have a nasty feeling,” said Marian, “that singles come last”

  She was right The proprietress dealt first with all the doubles, then turned to the singles, starting with the woman whose voice had suggested the Civil Service. She was a Mrs. Duncan, and Marian found herself wondering, absurdly, if some dreadful fate had befallen her husband.

  “‘Wake Duncan with your knocking,’” quoted Stella, sotto voce, as she disappeared.

  “You took the thought out of my mouth!” Marian felt oddly reassured by this evidence of common ground.

  “It’s unlucky to quote Macbeth,” said Stella, gloomily again, and, damn, thought Marian, she doesn’t want to share her thoughts with me. And why should she?

  Anastasia was having trouble with the next name, and as Cairnthorpe bent forward to try and read it, upside down across the desk, the tall American came forward. “Me, I expect. Thor Edvardson.” He took his key, smiled apologetically at Marian, said something about the luck of the alphabet and disappeared with long strides towards the stairs.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Esmond,” said Cairnthorpe, and the large woman in the floppy hat moved forward, her son dutifully following.

  “Adjoining rooms, I asked for.” Mrs. Esmond had one of those English voices that would be heard though the Tower of Babel fell.

  “Did you?” said Anastasia blandly, handing one key to her and the other, despite her still outstretched hand, to her son.

  “Oh, come on, Mother.” His pleasant voice held what sounded like an old despair, and Marian thought he was more surprised than anyone when she shrugged large, angry shoulders and turned, defeated, towards the lift.

  “You’d better bring the bags, Charles.” She would have the last word. “No use waiting for those boys.”

  “Mrs. Frenche.” Marian was distracted by the sound, at last, of her own name. Moving obediently forward to collect her key, she realised what the American–Mr. Edvardson–had meant about the alphabet. “Shall I wait for you?” She turned back to Stella.

  “No, thanks.” It was politely final. “Are you breakfasting? Nor am I. See you at lunch then.”

  Marian turned away with an uncomfortable sense of being dismissed, as Anastasia called the names of Miss Gear and Miss Grange, two oddly similar, horse-faced, middle-aged ladies, who appeared to be travelling together but with single rooms. They followed her up the stairs, talking loudly and cheerfully about their plans for the morning. Sleep, it appeared, had no part in them; they were discussing whether it was to be the museum or the flea market.

  Marian found her own door, had a moment of despair when the key refused to turn, tried it the other way and discovered that the door had been unlocked all the time. She found herself at last in a cool, twilit room. Sanctuary. What an odd thing to think. She put down coat and bag and moved like a somnambulist to throw back the shutters, then stood there breathing deeply, entranced with what she saw. Her room was at the back of the hotel and looked straight over tiled roofs to the tree-covered side of the hill called Lykabetos. Washing flapped on a line, brilliant white in the morning sunshine that flooded everything. Plants burgeoned out of petrol tins on roofs; a thin tabby cat washed itself busily on a wall. Somewhere nearby, a cock crowed, in odd counterpoint to the muted roar of traffic from Alexander Avenue. She stood for a moment, drinking it in, then moved back, filled with a strange, unfamiliar sensa
tion of peace and safety, to strip off her clothes, rinse face and hands in cold water, pull the seer-sucker nightgown out of her small bag, and plunge, oceans-down, into sleep.

  She woke as suddenly as she had slept and lay for a moment wondering where on earth she was. Midday sunshine, flooding the room, brought it all back, and she looked quickly at her watch. Twenty to one. She was out of bed on the instant, pulling the shutters to with a last delighted glance at the view, somnolent now for the Mediterranean siesta, even the cat—or its twin—fast asleep not far from where she had seen it before. But mad dogs and English tourists—she pulled a cotton dress out of her large case—go out to Sounion.

  Fatigue still dragged at her. The face she dealt with briefly looked aeons more than thirty-five. Even her hair, which could usually be relied on to curl crisply round her face, hung limp and sad from the synthetic air of the plane. Combing it irritably, she reminded herself of Stella and stopped for a moment to smile, with an effort, at the reflection in the glass. “Your smile makes you beautiful.” Who had said that to her? One of those half-remembered young men who had taken her out after Mark left. The one, she rather thought, who used to call her the Snow Queen. Well, it was true, something in her had frozen when Mark left her. Or—before he left her? But that was the past; forget it. She made herself smile again and almost thought, this time, that the young man might have had something. Ridiculous. She turned away from the glass and picked up her bag. High time to stop this maundering and go down to meet Stella for lunch.

  Ten to one. The hotel lobby was crowded all over again with the members of their party, becoming almost distinguishable now that fatigue was merely a blurring at the edges of thought, not a tide submerging it. Not all of them, of course, but enough to make the room seem comfortably crowded. What were they doing? Marian saw Mrs. Hilton moving in her direction and took instant, instinctive counteraction. It took her across the lobby to a cool loom of darkness and then, blessedly, to a little bar that opened on to a terrace at the back of the hotel. The American—Edvardson—was peacefully reading the International Herald Tribune in one corner, and Stella was sitting limply in the other, gazing out at the view. Both of them had milky white drinks and little saucers of olives and white cheese beside them, and Stella raised her drink in salutation when she saw Marian.

  “Come and have your first ouzo,” she said.

  “Shall I like it?” Marian sat down beside her.

  “If you don’t, you’ll die of thirst. I’ll get you one—They’re short-staffed of course.” Stella threw it back over her shoulder as she disappeared through a door beyond the little bar.

  Returning a few minutes later with another glass and saucer, Stella threw a caustic glance in the direction of the lobby. “Did you see them queueing?”

  “Queueing?”

  “Of course. For lunch. The British abroad. There’ll be a stampede when the doors open. We all have to eat together,” she explained. “I have the most dismal feeling we are going to have to share tables.”

  “Oh, dear.” Marian glanced quickly across at Mr. Edvardson, but he seemed to be absorbed in his paper. She sniffed her glass dubiously. “Aniseed?”

  “More or less. Come on, Mrs. F. It’s the national drink, after all.”

  “Ouch!” Marian drank, coughed, laughed and felt a fine, rosy warmth flood through her. “Much better than whisky,” she said. “I should have been a Greek.” She picked up an olive and found herself nibbling it ravenously. “I’m famished,” she discovered.

  “Yes, so’m I, but let’s for goodness sake let the rest of them get settled before we go in. I won’t queue for anyone or anything.”

  “It’s only just one”—Marian sipped again at the reviving drink—“and I’m certainly not going to hurry with my first ouzo. Who’s that over the bar?” The photograph hung obviously in the place of honour.

  “Colonel Papadopoulos, of course.”

  “Oh, dear, the colonels,” said Marian.

  “Does your conscience prick you for coming?” Stella’s tone was sardonic. “Would you go to Franco’s Spain?” she asked. “Or Caetano’s Portugal? Or South Africa, for the matter of that.”

  “I know.” But Marian was surprised that Stella did.

  Mr. Edvardson folded his paper and got up. “At least one can get the newspapers here.” He paused beside them. “And—excuse me for butting in, Mrs. Frenche—but I don’t know that I’d talk about it too much in public, if I were you.”

  “Oh—thanks.” Marian could not decide whether to be irritated or grateful, but Stella’s reaction was predictable.

  “Interfering old so-and-so.” She had at least waited until he had disappeared in the direction of the now-empty lobby.

  “Hardly old,” said Marian. “And kindly meant.”

  “Hell’s paved with them. Shall we eat?”

  The dining room was crowded with their party. “It looks as if we fill the hotel.” Marian looked round for an empty table.

  “Just as well, or we’d never have got in. Honestly, talk about inefficiency.…”

  “But not poor Mr. Cairnthorpe’s fault.” Marian’s heart sank as she spotted the only empty places. They were at a table over by a wide-open window and already occupied by Cairnthorpe. Edvardson was just joining him. All too obviously, Cairnthorpe had got in early and been avoided, doubtless from a variety of reasons, by his tour members. Now she and Stella were for it.

  “There.” She pointed.

  “Oh, God,” said Stella.

  “Can’t be helped.”

  “No.”

  “My lucky day.” Cairnthorpe rose with an attempt at gallantry, to greet them and pull out Marian’s chair for her. And then, to Stella, “Did you get your letter, Miss Marten?”

  “No!”

  “I’m sorry. I went over to the Hotel Hermes to ask about mail, but the place is overrun with interior decorators. Nobody knew a thing.”

  “Characteristic.” Mercifully, Stella did not specify whether she meant Greece in general or the tour in particular. “Don’t we get a menu?” She made one of her abrupt transitions and confirmed Marian in an instinctive decision to say nothing about the missing letter. Presumably from the hero (or villain) of the telephone call and the unlucky affair. If she had expected a letter at the Hermes, it was no wonder Stella had been so enraged by the change of plan.

  “No.” Cairnthorpe explained patiently, and not for the first time. “We’re lucky to get food at all. Madame’s been on the go all morning, God bless her.”

  “A real foul-up,” said Edvardson. “Not your fault,” kindly, to Cairnthorpe, “but let’s hope the dates are right for the rest of the trip.”

  It was the most delicate of hints, and Cairnthorpe took it without umbrage. “Yes, I thought of that. I got on to the office and had them confirm the other bookings. They’re all right, I’m glad to say.”

  “Thank God for that,” said Stella.

  “You mean you’ve had no sleep?” asked Marian.

  “I’ll catch up tonight.” He smiled at her gratefully, and she was aware, for the first time, of a pleasant young man lurking behind the innocuous-seeming English public school exterior. “Ah, food.” He turned with another smile to Madame Anastasia, who had appeared behind him, juggling plates. “I’ve been telling them what miracles you’ve worked for us, madame.”

  “You should say kyria.” She dealt out the plates expertly.

  “Stuffed vine leaves,” said Edvardson. “God bless you, kyria, and may we have a large bottle of white Demestica.”

  “At once.” She smiled at him with approval. “I’m glad you like my vine leaves. They don’t all.”

  “Crazy.” Edvardson was tucking in with a will. “Try them, Mrs. Frenche. If you know anything about food, you’ll like them.”

  “Is that a threat or a promise?” But she took a bite and smiled her pleasure. “Delicious. But what’s the rice flavoured with?” She thought about it. “Lemon, of course, and a herb I don’t know. Sorrel perhaps
?”

  “Search me,” said Edvardson cheerfully. “I’m the idiot in the art gallery. I just know what I like.”

  “What is this Demestica?” Facing each other, Stella and Cairnthorpe were eating with silent preoccupation, as if food were everything. If there was to be conversation, Marian thought, wryly, she and this odd, interesting American would have to provide it.

  “The local wine. Wherever you are. It’s like carafe, really; only they bottle it. The labels are always the same, but you can count on the wine to be different. And that”—he finished the last mouthful of his stuffed vine leaves—“is a profound philosophical remark about Greece.”

  “Do you know, I believe you’re right.” Stella looked at him with reluctant approval.

  “You know Greece, Miss Marten?” Cairnthorpe plunged into the conversation with unlucky eagerness.

  “Hardly at all.” She was indifferent to the point of rudeness. “One cruise. But I read the papers—sometimes.” Cairnthorpe blushed painfully and crumbled bread on his plate.

  “I hope you don’t mind my ordering for us all.” Edvardson filled the uncomfortable silence by addressing Marian. “I thought we could use a glass of wine after that night. And here it comes.” He smiled round at Madame Anastasia, who had appeared with a bottle and a flowering handful of glasses. “We are making you work too hard, kyria.”

  “It is nothing.” She deposited the glasses, one-handed, on the table, produced a corkscrew from a pocket on her enormous bosom and went expertly to work on the bottle. A sweeping glance surveyed the room as she did so. “It is discouraging to have your tourists on their first day.” She spoke now to Cairnthorpe “They have not yet learned that our wine is good—and cheap.” She poured a drop into Edvardson’s glass.

  “Yes.” His smile made it the fullest compliment.

  “Inedible,” said a loud voice in the middle of the room.

  It caused a small, uncomfortable silence, through which broke another voice from the far side of the room. “The museum,” it was saying. “Did you know that Mercury is Hermes, and Hermes means death?”