Strangers in Company

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  “You have?” A quick, measuring look. “Somewhere safe.” Stella led the way along the lower side of the stadium to a point where the trees fell away below, so that, sitting on what must once have been the lowest tier of the auditorium, they could see round them in every direction. In the centre of the stadium, the boys, busy with their football, took no notice. At the other end, presumably where the path came up from the theatre, a family of Americans were egging each other on to run the length. “It’s as private as we’ll ever get.” Stella sat down on a piece of rock close beside Marian. “I don’t know how to tell you, Mrs. F.”

  “It’s trouble? I’m sorry.” How strange, how sweetly familiar to be listening once more to the disasters of the young.

  “Trouble! Mrs. F., you don’t know the half of it. I … I’m ashamed.”

  Marian’s heart sank. Worse than she had imagined? But, “Tell me.” She kept it level.

  “I must. I’ve been such a fool. I had no idea … Mrs. F., you must realise that I had no idea.”

  “No idea of what?”

  “Of what they were planning. I can’t go on with it. Only how can I stop? They’ll kill us both.”

  “I beg your pardon?” The phrase sounded absurd, but then, so was this conversation.

  “You didn’t understand? I thought you didn’t. Worrying about my sex life, were you? Oh, dear Mrs. F., I do love you. That’s why I can’t let it go on. But they told me you’d be all right. Of course, I shouldn’t have believed them, but back there in England it all seemed different. Glamorous; romantic; the Scarlet Pimpernel. Only now, when I’ve seen what they’ll kill for.…” She was silent for a moment, looking down, through a fringe of pine trees, to the far view of the olive-rich valley. “Now I know what they’ll do to you.”

  “Stella, what in the world are you talking about?”

  “My job. Your job.” She pulled the head off a golden daisy and began systematically tearing out its petals. “Our job.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Dear Mrs. F. Did you never wonder how you happened to get that card from Jobs Unlimited?”

  “What do you mean?” Suddenly, horribly, Marian was frightened not just in general, but for herself. She was no longer the middle-aged councillor, waiting to listen to the problems of youth. She was Marian Frenche, alone, on a Greek hillside, and understanding the basic meaning of the word “terror.”

  “Had you ever heard of Mercury Tours?” Stella went on remorselessly, flaying herself as well as Marian. “No?” Nor had I. But I was a sympathiser, naturally, so they were more frank with me.”

  “A sympathiser? What do you mean?”

  Stella threw away the savaged daisy. “Did you ever hear of the Greek children who were carried off by the Communists, when they retreated north in forty-nine and fifty?”

  “Yes, vaguely.” Stella’s look made her ashamed of the admission. “I was at school.” It was said in extenuation.

  “I was one of them.”

  “What?” And yet it explained so much. “Your parents?”

  “God knows. Maybe they died at Mistra. And you thought I was carrying on about ghosts, didn’t you? Well”—Stella was making a painful effort to be rational—“I suppose I was, in a way. You see, I know so little. I had an aunt. She took me out with her, over the mountains into Albania. And then—I don’t know—maybe she got bored. Maybe there was a man.… Maybe anything.… The Martens don’t know, so they can’t tell me. They thought I was Albanian… Lots of starving children everywhere.… He was there on business—it was easier then, of course. She’d gone, too—she acted as his secretary: expenses, I suppose. Childless, they’d always wanted one; they found me. Bought me, I suspect. God knows how they managed to get me out. I hope they think it’s worth it now.” She picked up another daisy. “Mind you, I think they’d be sorry—Mrs. F., what are we going to do?”

  “Well.” It felt colder, up there above the pine trees. “You’ll have to explain a bit more, won’t you?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m a fool. Sorry.” It was a painful effort to get it out. “Someone knew who I was—what I was. They approached me a long time ago, soon after the colonels took over. They were forming a secret society, to work for the restoration of democracy in Greece. They wanted—what’s the word?—sleepers. People who had no obvious connection with Greece. I was only eighteen. We were all about that. It was such fun, Mrs. F. We used to meet in coffee bars … discothèques.… Anywhere with a good deal of background noise. Then someone joined who had a flat—John was older; working. We used to meet there and drink coffee and talk. We were always wanting to do something, protest at the embassy, you know?”

  “Yes indeed. But you didn’t?”

  “No. There was another branch doing that. We were more important. We were secret. We were really going to do something. Only, it began to seem like a long time.… Some of them stopped coming, joined other groups where there was more happening. I hadn’t been myself for quite a while.… Well, the Martens sent me off to a ghastly finishing school in Switzerland, so I couldn’t. When I got back, John’s flat was empty. I thought it was all over. In a way, I think I was relieved.” She stopped, looking sightless at the far view.

  “And then?”

  “They got in touch with me. After Christmas. John and another man I hadn’t met before. Older. John seemed older, too. They’d had trouble at the flat: a police raid, and of course someone had a pocketful of hash. Don’t look so shocked, Mrs. F. I don’t.” But the twitch in her cheek was more pronounced than ever. “I sometimes wonder if I’d feel better if I did. Anyway, they said they’d had to close down for the time being. And then something big had come up. I was the answer to prayer, they said. Nobody knew a thing about me, you see. I was clean.” She used the word with a kind of nervous distaste.

  “You don’t feel clean now?”

  “I don’t know what to think. You see, it’s such a good plan. So—well—valuable. There’s a woman in prison on Aegina—did you know they have one of their top security prisons there?—she was one of the leading democrats before the take-over.… A lawyer and a teacher.… A friend of Mrs. Vlachou, they said—you know, the newspaper owner who had to get out. I think it was soon after she escaped that this other woman—they won’t tell me her name; they say it’s too dangerous—anyway, she was arrested about then. For a while it wasn’t too bad; she was kept on one of the islands, just detained, but pretty well incommunicado. Imagine what it would be like for someone like her. In the end, she tried to escape and was caught. John thinks maybe the whole escape was rigged by the secret police to trap her.”

  “He didn’t have anything to do with it?”

  “No. They can’t find out anything about it. Except that she was caught and taken to Aegina to await trial. She never has been tried, you see, not in all this time. And now, it’s prison, and it’s making her ill. John’s not sure whether she’s actually been tortured, or whether it’s just the threat of it and the solitary confinement that’s getting her down, but he says the reports are bad. You see, if they could make her implicate her friends, then they’d try her. Just think of being in prison, all by yourself: no lawyer; no friends; only the prison doctor. Not a bad man, John says, but not a good one. Absolutely alone.”

  “How old is she?”

  “A bit older than you. That’s the thing, you see.” Stella’s hands worked spasmodically. This was the heart of the matter, and she hated it. “She’s extraordinarily like you. John said he couldn’t believe their luck when he happened to see you one day, on a bus. Of course he followed you home. He’d only seen photographs of her, but the other man had known her well. The hair’s different, he says, and probably by now she looks a good deal older, but that can be coped with by a wig and makeup. Anyway, the whole point is that there should be no one who knows either of you well. That’s why you were told to keep me away from people.”

  “You mean”—Marian was grasping it slowly—“this whole trip is part of a plan?
”

  “An escape. Yes. I don’t know how they are going to get her out of the prison itself—we work in watertight groups, you see; that’s not my affair. But obviously the hardest part is getting her off Aegina.”

  “And that’s where I come in?”

  “Exactly.” Stella was grateful for her quick comprehension. “With your passport and among the tour, she’d be safe as houses. That’s why the tour’s so oddly planned, with a choice of Aegina or Athens on the last day. Obviously, with only that one day in Athens, most people will opt for the sight-seeing there, but you and I are going to Aegina. I’m to say that I saw Athens on that dreary cruise I did with the Martens. It’s true, too.”

  “Yes.” Marian was shivering now. “So we’ll be a small party on Aegina. I see that. And there’s to be a substitution. How?”

  “Mrs. F., I don’t know. They only tell me one thing at a time. Safer that way, they say. Well, it’s true. But they swore you’d be all right. Just kept for twenty-four hours, till she was safe away, and then released. Of course, it would be a nuisance for you—no passport or anything, but the embassy would soon get you out. That’s what they said.”

  “And do you believe it now?”

  For the first time, Stella looked at her squarely. “No, I think they’ll kill you. I think they’ve meant to all along. I think they’ve made a complete fool of me.”

  “Which,” said Marian, “is not the greatest possible comfort to me.” It was surprising how much, all of a sudden, she valued her life. “When did you start to wonder?”

  “Well, of course, when the ‘accidents’ began to happen. Poor Mrs. Hilton. Did you know she told Mike she never forgot a face? But he swore it was only meant to be an accident. It was obvious, he said, that she intended to make friends with you; she had to be got out of the way or she’d be bound to notice the substitution. She was that kind of person, wasn’t she?” Stella was asking, incredibly, for comfort.

  “Yes. She wouldn’t have let it go. I can see that. But—an—accident—you mean Mike?”

  “No, no. He had nothing to do with it. That’s why he was so angry. He was ahead with the torch. It was bungled, he said, or—he frightened me rather—he said, ‘Some people like violence.’ I think he meant to frighten me. That was at Nauplia, the night it happened to her. I had to talk to him. We had a drink. Miss Gear and Miss Grange saw us. I saw him seeing them see us. Does that sound ridiculous, Mrs. F.?”

  “No,” said Marian soberly. “I’m afraid it doesn’t. Specially not when they made a point of telling me they’d seen you. So that wasn’t an accident either?”

  “Mike’s got friends everywhere.” It was not a non sequitur. “When they insisted on coming to Sparta, he got a friend in the hotel kitchen to put something in their food. But at least they’re alive.”

  “Not like Mrs. Duncan.” Marian had not believed she could feel so cold in so hot a sun.

  “Another ‘accident.’” Stella’s voice shook. “Mike told me, the night before, that I was falling down on the job; I wasn’t to let you go off by yourself for a moment—that way you’d be safe and no one else would get hurt. Of course, after it happened, I realised he wanted to be sure you and I had alibis. I really fooled you with those hysterics, didn’t I?” She was not proud of herself.

  “They were faked? Yes, I see.” Marian did not like anything she saw. “But you didn’t know?”

  “About Mrs. Duncan? What do you think I am? Of course I didn’t. And of course Mike said that it was just meant to be an ‘accident,’ too. A broken leg or something. She was too bright by a half, he said. Mrs. F., did something happen to you, that afternoon on the Palamede, that you didn’t tell me about?”

  “Yes, actually.” How long ago it seemed. “I nearly got killed by a falling stone. One of your ‘friends’ after poor Mrs. Duncan, I suppose. She said she thought she’d been followed. And we were wearing the same kind of jacket.”

  “I thought so. Mike said something, then must have seen I knew nothing about it, and shut up. Mrs. F., you can’t hate me worse than I hate myself.”

  “I don’t hate you, Stella.” Marian reached out a cold hand and felt Stella’s still colder. “But you have to tell me everything now. You must see that.”

  “Yes. That’s why I wanted to come up here. God, it’s a relief to talk about it, to tell you. It’s been such hell. Ever since the courier wasn’t there.”

  “He was to be one of them?”

  “Yes. He was to recognise me by this patchwork bag. David didn’t. Well, anyone can see he’s no secret agent.”

  “Thank goodness,” said Marian.

  “Yes. If only I knew who the others were.…”

  “You don’t?” Marian had been wondering about this.

  “No. Just Mike and Andreas. That’s the way they work. In separate cells. Safer, Mike says. In case one of them gets caught. He came to see me that afternoon in Athens. They’d telephoned him from London. Apparently the real courier was just hit by a bus—a genuine accident.”

  “Serve them right,” said Marian.

  Stella actually laughed. “Oh, Mrs. F., you do do me good.” Her face changed, froze again. “I could have killed Mike, back in Olympia, when he told me he’d drugged you, “So we could talk.” Her parody of Mike’s accent was brilliant. “That’s when I knew I’d got to tell you. Of course, I knew he wouldn’t really hurt you.”

  “No,” said Marian dryly, “they need me alive, don’t they? For the time being.”

  “Yes.” Stella was facing it with her. “That night at Olympia, I knew. I was terrified Mike would see.” Her face was grey. “I had to let him make love to me, think me a little fool. Mrs. F., I hate myself.”

  “Never mind. We all do sometimes. The question is, what are we going to do. You say you don’t know who’s arranging the ‘accidents’?”

  “No. I wish to God I did. Those two Greeks have to be in it, of course, but I don’t think they’re actually the killers. Mike said something, once, when he wasn’t thinking, about ‘he.’”

  “Not ‘they’?”

  “No. And, besides, they certainly wouldn’t have killed Mrs. Hilton because it was only our lot who went down that stair, and I don’t really see how they could have attacked the professor and killed poor Mrs. Duncan and got down to the village in time. I wonder a bit about the professor.” She said it reluctantly.

  “Nonsense,” said Marian. But her mind had been moving on excruciatingly similar lines. “Look what happened yesterday.”

  “At Itea? Yes, I know, but it was all such a muddle. I don’t see how it proves anything.” She took Marian’s hands in her own icy ones. “Mrs. F., what do you think has happened to Andreas?”

  “Andreas? But I thought you said he was one of them.”

  “Yes, but don’t you see, he made a terrible mistake yesterday. Trying to kill the professor, he nearly killed you. And then where would they have been?”

  “And where would I have been?” said Marian dryly. “But, Stella, you admit it? You take it for granted? That they were trying to kill the professor?”

  “I don’t take it for granted.” Angrily. “But I don’t know what else to think. I’ve not had a chance to talk to Mike about it, and I don’t mean to. Not now. The less he thinks I suspect, the better.”

  “I do so agree. That’s why you told him—the professor—to be careful today.” Which surely—Marian clung to it—meant that Stella, too, refused to believe that the professor was one of the enemy.

  “Yes. I do hope he is. And safe. I did the best I could to freeze him off, but how could I? Not when he’d taken such a fancy to you. Unless—Mrs. F., you don’t think he’s just pretending?”

  “God knows.” Marian faced her with it bleakly. “I certainly don’t.” Having been fooled so horribly once, how could she ever trust her judgement again?

  “That’s what I was afraid of. You can read it so clearly either way. If he’s not one of them, he’s in horrible danger. If he is, he’s keeping
an eye on us. He easily could be. Which would have made Andreas’ mistake yesterday worse still. You can see it’s the risk of their cell system. Andreas might actually not have known, not if they were in different cells. But what should we do, Mrs. F.? Ought we to warn him?”

  “I don’t know.” Marian was looking back over the disastrous history of the tour. “Poor Mrs. Hilton, just because she wanted to be friendly. And Miss Gear … and Mrs. Duncan.”

  “I’m afraid so.” Stella was white now, and twitching uncontrollably. “Mrs. F., is it any use saying how sorry I am?”

  “Well, not much. What we need to do now is use our brains. You’ve done nothing to make them think you’re going to tell me?”

  “No, thank God. That’s when I did start to use my head. I wanted to tell you yesterday morning at Olympia, but there was no chance—not after he’d drugged you. And last night there was Charles— But when Mike came back without Andreas, I knew I had to do something. They’re dangerous, Mrs. F.”

  “Yes, I was rather getting that impression.” Marian looked anxiously up at the soaring mountain above them, tipped now with the colours of the setting sun. “You shouldn’t have let the professor go up there.” She would not believe him implicated in the plot; but, if not, there was no doubt he was in appalling danger.

  “How could I stop him?”

  “We must go back.” Anxiety crawled through her veins. “If we stay here too long, they’ll begin to wonder.” There was something particularly horrible about this featureless “they.” “And what about the Esmonds?” Another grim thought had struck her.

  “Oh, they’re all right. They were Mike’s idea. He says Charles will notice nothing but me, and his mother’s blind as a bat. But what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Marian said. “Think, I suppose. At least we know nothing can happen to the two of us until we get to Aegina. It’s the professor I’m worried about. I hope.”

  “Yes,” said Stella. She was crying helplessly now. “Mrs. F., can you forgive me?”