Strangers in Company

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  The professor had opted out this morning, announcing at breakfast that he was going to look for water birds along the sacred rivers. Remembering that happy afternoon by the Eurotas, Marian had found herself ridiculously disappointed when he did not ask her to come too, though, of course, she could not have gone. His absence freed the tongues of the rest of the party, and Marian, catching snatches of conversation as they made their way by fits and starts from the workshop of Pheidias to the temples of Hera and Zeus, was surprised how angry they made her. The general view was that Edvardson was touched in the head. “He was in the army,” she heard Mrs. Spencer say. “A head injury, I expect. That white hair and black eyebrows must mean something.”

  And Mrs. Adams, comfortably blood-curdled: “Ooh, do you think he’s dangerous?”

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Spencer, and then, “Hush, Mike’s talking.”

  They were in the stadium now, and Mike had begun a long story about a woman who broke the ban on her sex at the nude racing held there and nearly lost her life for it.

  “Who’d be a woman?” said Stella crossly at the back of the crowd. “I don’t know about you, Mrs. F., but I’ve had about enough. My feet are soaking, water’s dripping down the back of my neck, and I don’t care how many statues by Praxiteles they’ve got in the museum. Let’s get the hell back to the hotel.”

  Marian was glad enough to agree, and in fact, about half the party decided against the museum and trudged back to the hotel together. The rain was coming faster than ever, and Marian’s headscarf was soaked through. Entering the hotel, she pulled it off with a sigh of relief and was amazed to see Professor Edvardson looking at her with a curious mixture of open-mouthed astonishment, and, surely, dislike? “What’s the matter?” The question slid out.

  “Nothing.” His smile was an effort. “At least, the strangest thing. With your hair like that, you reminded me of someone I knew a long time ago. Forgive me. It was like a ghost walking, just for a minute.”

  “A pleasant one, I hope.” There was too much talk of ghosts on this trip.

  “Oh, come on, Mrs. F.,” said Stella. “You’re drenched, and so am I. We’ll both be ghosts if we don’t get into dry clothes.” And then, upstairs, pausing for a moment outside Marian’s door. “What do you bet you reminded him of his dead wife?”

  “Oh.” It was oddly disconcerting, and she was glad to be alone with it. In fact, it was a kind of relief that the rain went relentlessly on all day, and the most sensible thing seemed to be to spend the afternoon on one’s bed with a paper-back and a two-day-old International Herald Tribune picked up at the shop on the corner in one brief sortie before lunch. Stella had announced that she intended to write her entire quota of postcards for the trip, and had, indeed, bought a vast supply of postcards and stamps while Marian was getting her paper. It was odd, somehow, to think of Stella with so many friends. But then, Stella herself was odd today, and Marian was glad of the excuse to leave her alone. The friendship that had been quietly developing between them seemed to have stopped growing, like a plant without water. It was with an effort that Marian finally put down her book, changed her dress, brushed out hair now fluffy from its wetting and went down to find Stella drinking ouzo with Mike.

  “Not our most successful day, alas.” Mike jumped up gallantly to fetch Marian a drink. “But tomorrow will be better, and the next day fine.”

  “Guide, philosopher and weather prophet.” There was a disconcerting note of bitterness in Stella’s voice as Mike left them. “I hope you slept, Mrs. F.?”

  “No, actually I’ve been reading. I got started on My Brother Michael and couldn’t put it down.”

  “Restful,” said Stella. “I hope you don’t mind, Mike’s joining us for dinner; this seems to be the one place where he hasn’t got a friend.”

  “Of course,” said Marian vaguely. “How very nice.” But it was disappointing to find that the fourth at their table was Mrs. Spencer, and impossible not to worry, just a little, when the professor never appeared. Altogether, dinner was a dull meal. Marian felt tireder and tireder, and when Mike, who had ordered Nescafé all round, suggested that they go out for another coffee and a liquer, she refused almost without thinking, and then had a quick qualm of conscience when Stella accepted—rudely, brusquely, but still accepted.

  But it was no use; she could not bring herself to go out again. Resisting the temptation to sit downstairs until the professor returned, she went to her room, undressed quickly and climbed with relief into her cold bed. She was too tired for anything but sleep and plunged down into it with a speed that surprised her when she woke, later, to moonlight, flooding through the window whose curtains she had forgotten to draw. Extraordinary. She could not remember ever doing such a thing. Darkness was essential to her sleep. She got out of bed and moved muzzily over to the window, which looked out onto the street. Down there, people were still moving about. It could not be as late as it felt. Strange to have slept so soon and so deeply, but no doubt it was the retsina, and Dr. Brown would be pleased with her. “Wine is better than pills” was one of his sayings.

  Dizzy a little with the depth of her sleep, she pulled one of the curtains across, then paused with her hand on the other to look down into the moonlit street. Something, down there, had caught her rather fuzzy attention. A couple, of course, locked in a deep embrace just outside the hotel.

  “Damn you!” The girl broke away, her voice unmistakably Stella’s. “I want to talk to you! I don’t want—”

  “You don’t know what you want, my star, but I do.” Mike pushed her away, semiresistant, to look down at her, his face, like hers, shadowed and blank in the otherwise revealing moonlight. But there was a smile in his voice as he broke into Greek.

  “And what does that mean, pray?” Her voice was strained as she pulled a little away once more.

  “You don’t understand? It might have been written specially for you:

  Gazing on stars, oh star,

  Star of my soul, oh, me,

  Would I were in heaven that I might gaze

  With all those eyes on thee.

  “In short you want to keep an eye on me.” Stella’s voice held a strange note.

  “I want to be near you always.” He pulled her to him, fiercely, and Marian seized the moment of their total absorption to pull the second curtain gently across and tiptoe back to bed, more disturbed than she liked to admit to herself. Nothing in Stella’s daytime behaviour to Mike had given the slightest clue to what was going on. In fact, a good deal of the time, Marian had thought, she rather disliked him.

  And what now? Should she tell Stella what she had seen? Every instinct said no to this. For one thing, it is never pleasant to have to admit to eavesdropping, however accidentally; for another, bringing the situation out into the open might so easily make things worse. It had always been one of her firmest beliefs, as a mother, that interference in affairs of the heart, however well meant, usually had the opposite effect to that intended. With a bit of luck, Stella was simply allowing herself a two-week flirtation with Mike as a salve for the hurt dealt her by that unknown young man back in England. Looked at this way, things could be worse. Mike would be careful; it was as much as his job was worth to be anything else, and Mike, Marian was sure, was a careful, ambitious young man. No, he might kiss Stella and quote poetry to her, but he would go no further.

  Soothed, Marian slept deep and dreamlessly, haunted, for once, by none of those tantalising visions of the old life with Sebastian and Viola. She woke, reluctantly, to the sound of knocking on the door and the thought that dreamless sleep might easily be the best gift Aesculapius could give.

  “Mrs. Frenche!” Stella’s voice, high-pitched from outside. “Are you all right?”

  Marian rolled over and saw her alarm clock’s hands accusingly at eight o’clock. And today’s was to be an early start for the long journey to Delphi. Incredibly, she must have forgotten to set the alarm.

  “Mrs. Frenche!” There was almost a note of hy
steria in Stella’s voice as she vainly rattled the self-locking door.

  “Coming!” Marian’s voice sounded irritable even to herself as she rolled out of bed and hurried to open the door. “I’ve overslept in the most awful way.” She was still heavy with sleep. “I suppose breakfast’s over? Bless you for waking me. Tell David I’ll be down in five minutes. Well.” She looked at the chaos of her room. And she had intended to get a start on her packing the night before. What could have got into her? “Say ten minutes.”

  “Fifteen,” said Stella. “I’ll bring you a roll and some coffee. After all, we’ve waited for the others often enough. But how do you feel? You look exhausted still.”

  “I feel it. But I slept like a log. I’ll be fine in a minute, but I would be glad of that coffee, if you can raise some.”

  She was dressed by the time Stella returned with the coffee and, still only half-awake, grateful to sit and drink it while Stella swiftly and competently finished packing for her. Now, if ever, would be the moment to speak of the scene she had witnessed the night before. And “never” was the answer. It was curiously touching to sit and watch Stella competently folding her nylon nightgown, carefully tucking the alarm clock among its folds and laying the good blue dress neatly on top of everything.

  “You’re an angel.” She finished the coffee and looked at her watch. “Not so late as all that, after all.”

  “No.” Stella lifted the larger case. “If you can bring the little one? The rest of the bags were down half an hour ago.”

  “Oh, dear!” Downstairs, Marian apologised profusely to David Cairnthorpe, who was standing in the hotel lobby, watch in hand.

  “Never mind.” He was taking it beautifully. “It must have been my fault for not knocking loud enough. That’s the worst of these hotels that don’t have telephones in their rooms.”

  “Goodness, did you knock?” She had always thought she could as easily sleep through a crying child as a knock on her door. But then, how long ago it was that one or other of the twins would come knocking to report some midnight crisis of earache or nightmare?

  “Never mind.” David Cairnthorpe was shepherding them out to the bus. “Oh”—he handed two white boxes to Stella—“here are your packed lunches. It’s a long day, I’m afraid.”

  “And I’ve made it worse.” Marian climbed into the bus, glancing apologetically to right and left as she made her way to the left hand side of the back seat. The professor and Mrs. Spencer, she saw, had sensibly moved one forward, avoiding the seat over the wheel to take the one that had been occupied by Miss Gear and Miss Grange. Absurd to have been worried about Edvardson last night.

  “It’s not like you to oversleep.” His smile did the strangest things to her.

  “No, I’m properly ashamed of myself. Too much retsina last night, I suppose. I don’t know when I’ve slept so sound.”

  “Do you good,” he said as she passed him to settle in the corner of the back seat. “Though I must say you don’t look exactly wide awake yet.”

  “I don’t feel it.” She smiled at Pam and Meg, who were to share the back seat with them, and settled down for the long day. It was a cool, grey morning, with puddles in the streets as a reminder of yesterday’s rain. “Surprising,” said Marian, looking out of the window as the bus moved heavily off, “I thought it would be fine today after the moonlight night.” And then, getting a sharp glance from Stella, wished she had kept quiet.

  They caught the ferry at Aighion with ten minutes to spare. “And very satisfactory, too,” said Edvardson. “I’ve spent hours sitting in the draughty little café on that quay being sold pistachio nuts by indigent Greeks.”

  “There aren’t very many of them,” said Marian thoughtfully as they filed on board the ferry. “I mean, not actual beggars.”

  “I expect the colonels have put them all in goal,” said Stella. “Beggars are so untidy.” Either she had gone overboard with her eye makeup today, or that scene with Mike had given her a sleepless night. Judging by her obviously frayed state of nerves, Marian suspected the latter. She, too, still felt curiously exhausted, considering how long and hard she had slept, and was delighted when Stella suggested that they eat their packed lunches on the open, breezy upper deck of the ferry. It was crowded, of course, but mainly with Greeks, and they were able to eat their highly flavoured cold chicken and hard-boiled eggs in what felt like a companionable silence.

  The professor joined them as the ferry drew in towards the quay at Itea. “I’m going to try and get off one of the first,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to look at this place—it’s a bit of a naval headquarters, you know, and looks like genuine living to me. One gets so little of that on these tours. Would you like to come?”

  “Yes, do let’s.” Marian was aware of Mike farther along the deck, apparently beginning to marshal his party ashore. “I’m sick of walking in crocodile like a good girl. Coming?” she asked Stella, with one of her usual qualms of conscience.

  “I suppose so.” Stella, too, had a quick glance for Mike. Perhaps she needed to demonstrate independence today. At all events the three of them worked their way down to the narrow catwalk that ran along above the deep central space where cars and lorries were stowed. Their bus, as a last arrival on this rather primitive ferry, would be off among the first.

  “But that proves nothing.” Edvardson looked down to where Andreas sat relaxed in his cab, a Greek newspaper spread over the steering wheel. “We’re bound to lose some of the old dears. There’ll be time for a quick walk down the front and back. There’s a shop I’ve heard of—There! We’re in.” The ferry had touched, bounced a little and steadied, as men up and down the wharf worked fast and skilfully with huge ropes. Now the great ramps were letting down onto the quay with an accompaniment of the revving of car engines. Little groups of people stood at the front of the catwalks, waiting for their chance to climb down the few metal steps and edge ashore among the cars.

  It was a rather disconcerting free-for-all, Marian thought, watching group after group jockey their way through the slowly advancing stream of vehicles. Now their chance had come; they waited for a moment at the bottom of the catwalk steps. “Now,” said Edvardson, and then, “Christ!”

  It all happened so fast. Afterwards Marian could be sure of nothing. There had been, unmistakably, a pause in the movement of cars; she had noticed that their bus was next in line as she stepped out on to the ramp, with the professor on one side of her and Stella on the other. People were surging down from the opposite flight of steps, and others pushing rather harder than she liked from behind. Her last steps from the metal stairway on to the ramp were taken, helplessly, too fast, and it was then that the screams began. Looking up, she saw their own bus bearing down on them. A hand pulled violently backwards; she saw the professor falling forward, blacked out for a moment and came to herself, still, incredibly, alive, the centre of an hysterical crowd. The front of the bus was over the professor’s prostrate body. He lay there, horribly still, and Marian’s world spun black about her. Nothing in her life had ever felt like this.… Nothing.… Silent tears streamed down her face. Stella had her arm, was crying and swearing and trying to comfort her all at once. Mike, miraculously appeared from nowhere, was kneeling beside that too-still body. Andreas, white-faced and shaking, was climbing down from the cab of the bus.

  “God blast all wheeled vehicles.” It was a miracle: the professor’s voice. His legs moved, turned over; he wriggled out from under the huge front of the bus, black with dirt, his jacket torn, his sunglasses hanging over one ear, his face white with shock—or was it rage?

  “You’re not hurt?” Mike was helping him up.

  “No, by the grace of God. And no one else?” He looked round, gave Marian a quick nod and turned back to Mike. “Ask that damn fool what he thought he was doing. He might have killed us all.”

  This view was obviously shared by a good many Greeks, who had surrounded Andreas in a threatening, noisy crowd. Mike spoke through them, loud and ang
ry, and Andreas pushed forward, answering, as rapidly, in Greek.

  Mike dismissed whatever excuse he had made with one explosive Greek monosyllable and turned to the professor. “Reading the newspaper!” The scorn in his voice was nuclear. “Bad news of his home village. So—foot on the accelerator instead of the brake. And the last job he does for Mercury Tours. But for the moment, we’re blocking traffic.”

  It was true. Angry hootings from farther back in the queue of vehicles spoke of everyone’s impatience to get ashore.

  “Yes.” Edvardson pulled his torn jacket together. “No use crying over this lot of spilt milk. Come help me buy a jacket, Mrs. Frenche?”

  Incredibly, it was all over. The angry Greeks had seen friends waiting on the dock. It was just one more episode in the long, sanguinary battle between man and the motor vehicle, and this time, in fact, no blood had been drawn. The curious stop-go, pedestrian-vehicular movement ashore began again, with Andreas, back in his cab, driving as if over eggs.

  Safely on shore, the professor looked Marian and Stella up and down. “You look like the wrath of God,” he said. “You need ouzo, not exercise. And this looks like the place. Stay here”—he settled them at the metal table of a waterfront café—“and for God’s sake, don’t let that maniac leave without me. This was my only jacket.” He gave it a rueful glance.

  “It’s your only life, too,” said Stella.

  “Yes,” he said, “that had occurred to me, Miss Marten.”

  He had just left them when David Cairnthorpe came hurrying across the quay. “You’re not hurt?” The question was for them both, but his anxious look for Stella.

  “Just shaken up a bit,” Marian reassured him. “Someone grabbed us from behind.”

  “Mike,” said Stella, with what sounded oddly like hatred. “But the professor nearly bought it. He’s had to go and get himself a new jacket.”

  “He asked us to see that the bus waited for him,” put in Marian.

  “Of course. Thank God it was no worse. But”—he paused—“Mrs. Frenche, Stella, I know it’s a lot to ask, but for everyone’s sake, can we say as little as possible about this?”