by Iris Danbury
“Then may I have the afternoon off, as you promised?” she asked, hoping that her voice was not as shaky as it sounded in her own ears.
“By all means,” he agreed. “I don’t want a martyr sitting here for the rest of the day.” He chuckled. “I was only teasing you.”
She turned away, unable to face him any longer. He had incited her to a pitch of anger where she had almost lost her temper. Then, with blandness itself, he admitted that he was only making fun of her.
It was fortunate that after a moment or two, he went out of the room, taking a bundle of documents and files with him.
When Caterina served lunch, Jacynth mentioned that she would not be home for dinner.
The housekeeper clucked with annoyance. From the quickly spoken words, Jacynth gathered that Caterina was furious because there would be no one left to cook for, except herself and her husband. Evidently Mallory was not intending to dine at home, and Jacynth could not ignore her own curiosity about where and with whom he might be spending the evening. The lovely Hermione? Or merely a boring business engagement?
An hour or so later Jacynth was glad to be free from the Villa Kalakos. It would not be true to say it was a prison, but she had not been used to a residential post and apart from that, Mallory’s constant nearness, his dominant maleness had a claustrophobic effect on her.
She walked along the elegant boulevards and shopping streets, relying on the street map for direction that would bring her to one of the gates of the old town.
She found the Palace of the Grand Masters easily enough and spent a long time exploring the expertly restored old building with its grand staircase and the statues in each archway.
At one time she attached herself to a group of people and listened to their courier explaining the history of the hostelries of the Crusaders. Later, she wandered along the Street of the Knights, sensing the mystery and charm of the old buildings.
With a smile, she wondered what it would have been like if Mallory had been her escort and guide today. She was sure he would have been totally different from Ray, whose interest lay more in the direction of pottery, leather and souvenirs in the shops.
If Mallory were half Greek, as she had been told—and she could have guessed that from his features—he would, at least, have some regard for the heritage of the old Greek civilisation.
She was intrigued by the Suleiman Mosque, its dome and minaret dominating one of the main streets, Sokratous, and was fortunate in finding it open. She took off her shoes, leaving them outside in the porch, and entered this ancient building, conscious that it was only in comparatively recent years that women had been allowed to set foot on the carpeted ground floor in the form of a cross. Her glance rose to the latticed balcony where women had sat, segregated from the male congregation below.
Perhaps Greek men, too, such as Mallory Brendon, still retained this Oriental doctrine of the complete superiority of his sex.
But she fended off these intruding thoughts. She had come out today to escape from routine work and routine suppositions about Mallory.
She sat outside a cafe facing the old Byzantine church and watched several cats stalking birds and each other among the tangled shrubberies of the church grounds. When she had finished her coffee, she wandered around the narrow streets, noticing one or two old houses that had retained their latticed windows. The soaring fronds of a palm tree rose behind the roof of a grocer’s shop, and when she came across old fountains in small squares she tried to imagine the gatherings of the town’s inhabitants during the Turkish occupation which had lasted for nearly four hundred years.
When she walked through an arched gateway towards the harbour she found that she was not far from the mole where three windmills stood, almost identical with the one in the garden of Kalakos. Only the spokes remained on the axis of each, and Jacynth noticed that when the mills had operated, they all faced the same way and the sails had been fixed in one position. She was puzzled by this oddity, for surely the right wind couldn’t always blow from one direction.
In due course she appeared at the Cafe Actaeon a few minutes before seven o’clock, but almost immediately Ray was standing by her chair.
“Kalispera,” they greeted each other, and Ray took both her hands in his as he sat down.
“At last!” he exclaimed. “So the old brute let you out after all! Why couldn’t he have given you the evening off last night? Where did you go, by the way? Have you started living it up with your boss?”
Jacynth laughed. “Too many questions! I don’t know which to answer first. Well, last night I had to go with Mr. Brendon to a conference at one of the hotels farther along the coast.”
She thought that was reasonably near the truth. In order to divert Ray’s attention from her own occupations, she asked with a show of eagerness, “What was the exciting news you wanted to tell me?”
Ray adopted a haughty attitude, folding his arms and trying to look stern. “You must wait, my girl. You made me wait since last night, so now it’s my turn to keep you guessing.” He signalled to a waiter and ordered drinks for Jacynth and himself. “We’ll go and eat later, if that suits you?” he suggested.
When she nodded agreement, he leaned forward towards her, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. “You remember I had to go back to Athens a few days ago? Well, I think I’ve managed to grab quite a nice little job for myself. You see, I made various friends on my previous trip and this time I’ve looked them up. To cut a long story short, I’m going to launch out on my own as an exporter of Greek goods, instead of being not much more than an errand boy working for a pittance for an English firm.”
Jacynth wrinkled her brow. “I don’t quite get the idea. You’re going into business for yourself? Doesn’t that need a large amount of capital?”
Ray shook his head confidently. “Not the way I can work it. Oh, I have a little money of my own and I think I could borrow a bit more from my parents, but as an agent, I don’t really have to pay out for the goods at the time. I fulfil the orders from England and other countries, Germany, France, Sweden and so on, and the firms who buy pay through the banks the suppliers here in Greece. I take my substantial commission. No risk at all.”
Ray leaned back, making a tent of his fingertips, as though he were already a chairman of an important board.
“And what about the firm you work for now? The one in Bristol, I think you said.”
“Oh, I shall have to go back and just tell them that I’ve better prospects. Too bad I have to ditch them, because probably they may not be inclined to give me any orders at first, but afterwards, they’ll find that I’m a first-class agent they can’t afford to ignore and they’ll come running to eat out of my hand.”
When the waiter brought the glasses of wine that Ray had ordered, Jacynth raised hers towards her companion.
“I wish you very good luck,” she said. “I suppose you’ll be based in Athens.”
“Well, I have to arrange with someone I know there to share his office for a time, so that I have an address. Then as soon as I can find somewhere suitable and can afford the rent, I’ll launch out with my own establishment. I’d like to get hold of a place with living accommodation above, a small flat—something like that.”
“Well, it all sounds very promising,” was Jacynth’s comment.
“Promising?” he echoed. “Your enthusiasm is overwhelming. I thought you’d be really delighted. Don’t you see, my dear Jacynth, that I’ll be here permanently in Greece—either Athens or Crete or here in Rhodes? We’ll be able to see each other far more often than if I were only on a three-week tour at a time.”
“Of course I see that,” she returned, but she still could not infuse total delight into her voice. “And it will all be very pleasant.”
“For both of us, I hope,” he added. “There’s another side of it, too. When I get properly fixed up and make the contacts I expect, I might even be able to offer you a job. You’d find me a better boss than that old slave-driver you’re
working for now.”
Jacynth laughed gently. “I’ll bear that in mind, but I’m not inclined to throw myself out of one post before I’m sure of another. I can’t go on the dole here. I’m a foreigner.”
She had not told Ray that at present she was still on trial where Mallory Brendon was concerned and now that Ray had disclosed his own future plans, she saw that it would be foolish to hand him that advantage. He would probably try to persuade her that a secure job with him was infinitely better than uncertainty with Mallory.
“But you wouldn’t really prefer to work for him if I could offer you a job?” Ray pursued.
“Perhaps it’s rather soon to be discussing such vague prospects,” she said with a smile. She had no wish to wound Ray’s feelings or undermine his self-confidence, but he seemed inclined to take too much for granted.
After a pause during which he shuffled his feet and his face wore an extremely sulky expression, she suggested, “No doubt you’d be able to extend your territory and do business in Turkey?”
“Oh, I’ve thought of that.” He was all smiles again. “There are tremendous possibilities on the Greek mainland and all the islands and all along the Turkish coast. It’s best to start with the coastal towns until you can organise transport from the inland places.”
He continued discussing his plans for expansion and Jacynth listened attentively, knowing that he needed an audience. Privately she considered that unless he could raise considerable capital, some of his ideas were quite beyond possibility in the near future. Ray was blowing up vast bubbles to form his dream empire.
He took her to dinner at a small restaurant facing a square and insisted on buying champagne to celebrate his future success.
“I’m sorry that on this tour I really haven’t had as much time to spare as I thought I might. We could have gone on several trips here and there and I’d have taken you to one of the pottery places. Even when I’ve been free, that old slave-driver of yours has put his foot down and prevented you from joining me. But never mind, darling, when I come back in a few weeks’ time, we’ll remedy that.”
Jacynth smiled and nodded tacit acceptance of these future delights.
“When do you return to England?” she asked.
“In four or five days’ time. I have to go to Crete again, but I shall come back here before I go on to Athens.” He flashed her a quick smile across the table. “I can’t forgo the chance of seeing you again.”
After the long, leisurely meal Ray suggested that a visit to a night club would be a suitable finish to the evening.
“I doubt if you’ve had a chance to see anything of Rhodes’ night-life. Your boss is hardly likely to take you out and about.”
“We shan’t be home too late, I hope?” queried Jacynth, remembering that Caterina or Nikon would have to let her in, unless, of course, Mallory happened to be standing in the doorway watching her homecoming, as on that previous occasion.
“Not to worry,” replied Ray airily. “You’re not a child to be ordered home by ten o’clock.”
The cafe to which he conducted her was in a dark side street, although a flashing sign proclaimed its name, I Froaola, which she translated as The Strawberry.
“Odd name for a night-club, isn’t it?” she commented with a smile, as she and Ray were ushered through doors, a passage and a flight of stairs down to a smoke-laden room crowded almost to suffocation.
In one corner a bouzoukia orchestra tried to make itself heard above the din, and half a dozen couples were trying to dance in a space the size of an average dining table.
Ray managed to find places in a corner and Jacynth squeezed beside him. The fleeting thought brushed her consciousness that if her escort had been Mallory and the crush forced her to sit close beside him, her reaction would have been quite different. As it was, the close contact with Ray made no more impression on her than the nearness of a fellow-traveller in a bus.
Ray ordered ouzo when he could attract the attention of a waiter, although Jacynth would have preferred a soft drink or a glass of light wine.
“I’ve really drunk enough already with all that champagne,” she murmured, but apparently Ray did not hear.
When the drinks came, she splashed a large amount of water into her glass and watched the spirit turn cloudy.
A quartet of Greek dancers in regional costumes began their performance, and Jacynth forgot the lack of comfort and the thick, heavy atmosphere of the room. She noticed that the two men energetically leaped and twisted and stamped, while the women remained gracefully static.
When the performance ended, several young men took the floor and clumsily copied the movements of the men dancers, making a grotesque parody accompanied by laughter and shouting.
Jacynth was not particularly amused by these capers and was about to suggest to Ray that it was time to leave, when he suddenly spotted someone he knew on the far side of the room.
“Won’t be a second. Someone I’ve been wanting to talk to,” he muttered, and threaded his way through the crowds.
Jacynth idly watched as he approached a stout man in shirt sleeves. A few moments later her arm was roughly grasped and she was pulled to her feet.
“You dance?” invited the young man, a dark, hawk-nosed individual, as he thrust his face close to her own.
She tried to pull away, but his friends cleared a pathway and cheered him on. Then she twisted her arm out of his grasp. “Pardon me, but I am English and I don’t want to dance,” she said in English, not trusting her shaky Greek, in case she made some ludicrous mistake. The young man, her would-be partner, first looked astonished, then accepted the situation and bowed gravely to her with profuse apologies.
Fortunately Ray returned and queried genially, “Anyone annoying you?”
“Not really,” she answered, “but if you don’t mind, I’d like to leave now.”
“Already?” His eyebrows went up. “But we’ve only just come.”
“We’ve been here some time and—and I’ve a headache.”
“Oh, all right,” he grunted.
Out in the street he said, “I thought you’d enjoy the place, unless, of course, you’re so sophisticated that such humbler places don’t appeal to you.”
“It wasn’t that, Ray. It was so hot and crowded and stuffy—and I didn’t really want to dance with strangers.”
“No, I can understand that,” he conceded.
Jacynth’s private opinion was that Ray should not have deserted her in such circumstances. Would Mallory have done so? But then he would probably never have taken her to a night club at all, let alone a noisy one in a back street.
The night air was fresh and Jacynth was quite prepared to walk back to the Villa Kalakos, but Ray hailed a passing taxi.
In the next few minutes she wished that she had insisted on walking, for Ray took her in his arms and kissed her with more vigour than skill or tenderness.
“You mustn’t be cold to me, darling Jacynth,” he murmured. “I’m terribly glad I met you that day at the airport, and when I come back and start on my new career, we can have lots of fun together.”
“You’ll need all your time for your business.”’
“I can always spare time for a bewitching girl like you.” He released her, but kept his arm around her waist and held her close to him. “Besides, you may need a friend like me on the island. I can do you quite a lot of good, one way and another—tell you where to buy anything you want, introduce you to friends who’ll give you a discount—that sort of thing. And of course, you won’t forget what I said about working for me, will you?”
“No, I won’t forget,” she assured him, “but I’d hate to leave my present job after so short a time.”
The taxi had arrived at the villa and Jacynth alighted quickly. “Don’t come up to the door with me. In any case, you’ll need the taxi to take you home.”
She avoided his would-be lingering good-night kisses, thanked him for a pleasant evening and hurried through the iron gate and
up the path to the villa, hoping that the door would not be bolted. It was shut, but Caterina came promptly in answer to the clanging bell that reverberated through the hall when Jacynth pulled the large black knob at the side of the door.
The girl apologised for her late homecoming, but Caterina smiled and murmured that it did not matter. Jacynth noticed as she climbed the stairs that Caterina did not lock and bolt the door, so evidently Mallory was still out somewhere.
Jacynth had only just reached the landing when she heard the sound of the car. She waited, peering over the rail, and very shortly she heard Mallory’s voice talking to Caterina, no doubt telling her to lock up. But Jacynth caught a few words that sounded like “Is the English miss in?” and Caterina’s affirmative answer.
Jacynth waited no longer, but scuttled off to her bedroom, thanking her lucky stars that she had arrived home even a few minutes before Mallory.
As she undressed and showered she realised how glad she was that Ray was not yet permanently working in Rhodes. Oh, it was pleasant and, indeed, useful to have an English friend here, if only to relieve the nervous edginess that Mallory so often caused in her, but Ray Gurney was not exactly the type of young man she would have chosen.
As she slipped into bed, she allowed her mind to dwell idly on what type she would have selected. There was only one other man with whom she was acquainted and it was plainly ridiculous to imagine Mallory Brendon acting as a companionable escort.
“Well, did you enjoy your jaunt?” he enquired next morning when she was already at work in her office.
“Yes, thank you, very much. I was able to do some sightseeing by myself first before I met Ray. I wandered about in the old town and then by the harbour where the three windmills still stand. But why did they always face the same way? The spokes of the sails seem fixed.”
