by Iris Danbury
“Yes, and that’s exactly why it is farther along the bay, although it’s not high and, we hope, blends with the background. Even then, we had plenty of difficulties.”
“Did Mr. Perandopoulos have his villa built or buy it from someone else?”
“No, he chose the site and had it built two or three years ago, but even he had to submit to the local planning people. Not that he’d worry about one particular house in a small town in Rhodes. He has at least eight or ten establishments of one sort or another in different parts of Europe. One in the West Indies, I think and, of course, an apartment in New York.”
Jacynth became interested in some of the small shops that sold souvenirs, pottery or rugs and scarves and at one house she found she could peer into the dark interior and watch two women actually at work on looms.
“I’d advise that we stop here on the way down,” came Mallory’s voice in her ear, as she stood there absorbed in the weaving process. “Otherwise, I may never get you up to the summit.”
She turned quickly towards him with a smile and was again disturbed by the intent look in his dark eyes. She wrenched her gaze away from his face and stepped smartly along the path.
“You’re quite right,” she said. “One must reach the objective first and dawdle afterwards.”
“A cryptic remark,” he muttered, “but I’m not going to ask what you meant.”
The ascending paths had been made easy for tourist climbers, with many shallow steps and on the grass at the sides, women and children displayed lace mats and embroidered traycloths. Eventually the path became rougher and Jacynth was glad when at one point there was a large plateau shaded with ficus trees. Here, an enterprising cafe-owner had hauled up a stock of fruit juice in cans and was selling them as fast as he could puncture the tops and insert a straw.
“Would you like a drink?” Mallory asked Jacynth.
“Thank you, I’d love it.”
As she gratefully sucked at her straw, Mallory moved towards the rock face where a ship had been carved in stone relief, a galley with billowing sails and many oarsmen.
Jacynth stood looking at it for some time, absorbed in its beauty, until Mallory whispered, “Are you ready for these hundreds of steps?”
She nodded and climbed by his side until the ruins of the Acropolis came into view.
“A lot of work has been done here,” Mallory explained, “excavating and restoring, although there’s a great deal more to be done.”
Jacynth gazed with awe on the partly restored Temple of Athena, winging herself back in imagination to the fourth century B.C. when this temple had been in use. She put her hand on the warm stone of the pillars.
“Isn’t it a marvellous feeling to be able to touch the stone that other hands shaped and put into position more than two thousand years ago?” she murmured to Mallory.
“Do you get any kind of reaction or vibration?”
“I don’t know. I just feel it’s a communication by touch, something more than just looking at antiquities. Oh, I know that if we all touched everything, we should ruin the very treasures we’ve come to see, but perhaps these pillars can endure a few more hands for a few more centuries.”
An almost tender smile moved his lips, but was soon replaced by his more usual firm expression.
When they had explored all the ruins, he said, “There’s one place here where you can see the most vivid colours in the cliffs that go sheer down.”
She accompanied him to the spot he pointed out and saw the bright reds and greens, purple and terra-cotta of the cliff, cut and fissured into a hundred surfaces to expose a different shade.
“I’ve never seen such wonderful colours,” she said, then moved slightly nearer the edge. Immediately Mallory’s arm had whipped itself around her waist and pulled her against him with some force.
He released her quickly and as she regained her balance she heard in his voice a note that she had not known before, as he said, “Don’t do that again! It’s dangerous!”
He spoke truly, for she had certainly rushed into danger; she might have lost her balance or the ground might have crumbled. But the situation had been even more dangerous than the physical one. In that brief moment while his arm held her in a vice-like grip, she had experienced an exultant thrill, and fire had coursed in her veins. In another second or so she would have turned towards him and melted into his arms, hardly caring that the place was public or that bright sunlight revealed the scene.
She was far from calm as she returned with Mallory down the long wide flight of steps to the level below where walls had been reconstructed and Doric columns pieced together. She trod firmly in an effort to quell her racing pulses. Not for worlds would she trip or stumble so that Mallory would be forced to assist her. He would immediately guess that she was stumbling deliberately to invite his help.
On the way down in the village, Mallory stopped at one medieval house. “I think we may be able to look at the courtyard here.”
He pushed open an iron gate and guided Jacynth to a square paved with exquisite mosaics, the colours fresh and glowing, the designs intricate and sometimes amusing. Two heroes dressed for war had their glances fixed on the girls they left behind them, a child stooped to scoop a fish from a pond, and someone who was over-ambitious was left dangling on a thin shaky branch of a tree that he had tried to climb.
Afterwards she walked into the house where the two women operated their looms and Jacynth viewed with great pleasure the magnificent rugs and shawls they offered for sale.
“I have a friend who is being married soon,” she said to Mallory. “I’d like to send her a present from here. Do, you think a rug?”
“Depends on your friend’s taste, of course. Actually, you will probably do better here as far as price is concerned than you might in the town.”
The prices were clearly marked and when she had made her choice, a fine specimen in black, white and various shades of mauve and purple interwoven, she spoke to Mallory. “I’m afraid my Greek isn’t adequate enough to ask about delivery. Would they send it to the villa?”
“The Perandopoulos place? That’s hardly worth the trouble. I’ll carry it for you.”
Jacynth was both astonished and embarrassed by his offer and nervously bit her lip as the woman rolled up the rug, tied it with cord and handed it to Mallory with a string of many good wishes, to which he replied with gracious smiles.
“If the burden becomes too heavy for me,” he said to Jacynth when they left the house, “I shall hire a donkey.”
This remark relieved her tension and she laughed. “I wasn’t so concerned about the sheer weight of the parcel, but—”
“Yes?” he prompted, when she stopped.
“Well, I don’t expect my employer to carry my parcels when I go shopping.”
“I suppose on previous occasions you carried his?”
She laughed afresh. “I’ve never accompanied any of my bosses on shopping expeditions.”
“Then one must always welcome new experiences.”
Today Jacynth found it almost impossible to reconcile Mr. Brendon who at the Villa Kalakos treated her as a typing machine with the man Mallory who was behaving like a lighthearted schoolboy.
Later in the day, however, she discovered that the carefree mood of the morning disappeared on return to the Perandopoulos villa and Hermione. Lunch was a subdued meal with fragmentary conversation and long pauses, during which Hermione sat with her face turned away from Mallory.
Jacynth discreetly retired to her bedroom on pretext of a siesta, undismayed by Hermione’s cutting remark, “So Mallory managed to tire you out!”
Evidently the Greek girl had been annoyed because Mallory and Jacynth had gone off to explore Lindos and the ruins without her, but Jacynth could not believe that Mallory as a guest would be so lacking in courtesy as not to have told Hermione last night of his plans.
Or had this morning’s outing been decided on the spur of the moment, just when Jacynth appeared?
> Well, they would have to fight it out between them, for after an hour Jacynth put on the bikini she had worn yesterday, slipped a cotton dress over it and walked down to the beach of the lagoon. She sat for a while in the shade of the tamarisk trees and gazed at the blue water, the narrow inlet between the rocks through which it was traditionally claimed that the Apostle Paul had sailed to land at Lindos to preach Christianity.
After a while it occurred to her that perhaps she ought not to have absented herself from the villa as though she were on holiday. Suppose Mallory wanted her for some business purpose?
She decided to swim first in the crystal-clear water and return later to the villa. She was not too sure of the depth of water, so she prudently swam parallel with the shore and when she considered she had been in long enough, she saw Mallory standing on the edge of the water, scanning the beach this way and that. Her first impulse was to turn away and pretend she was not there, but this would no doubt lead eventually to awkward explanations. Besides, he might have some message to give her. She swam into shallow water and waded ashore close to where he was standing, aware that he was watching her, but there was no smile on his face and she wondered exactly what crime she had committed.
“Was it all right for me to come down here?” she asked tentatively.
“Why not?”
She walked the few steps to where she had left her towel and began to mop the droplets of waiter on her shoulders and arms, her thighs and the slender circle of her waist. He had followed her and stood only inches away from her, and the fact that he did not speak again added to her nervous turbulences She did not look at him but concentrated on drying herself, rubbing her hair vigorously. Without warning he took the towel from her and began to mop her back. The touch of his fingers through the thick towel made her want to dance up and down for sheer joyousness, and for the second time today she had only to twist her body to fall straight into his embrace. She closed her eyes, giving herself up to the exquisite delight that enveloped her from top to toe, although knowing that his gesture was only on the ordinary level of seaside companionship, where the inhibitions of business life were temporarily waived.
“Dry now, I think,” he murmured, unaware that she longed to damp herself all over again for such prolonged pleasure.
To hide her confusion, she sat down abruptly, leaning against a small upturned boat.
“Too much sun after swimming isn’t good for you,” he said. “You should sit in the shade.”
He pulled her to her feet and, again, his touch on her wrists made her senses reel, but she controlled herself and walked soberly with him to the shelter of one of the straw umbrellas a few yards along the beach.
He sat with his hands clasped around his knees and stared across the sapphire water. “Why did you prefer to come down here to the bay for swimming? Wasn’t the pool at the villa large enough?”
She could scarcely confess, “I wanted to leave you and Hermione alone together,” so she answered, “Yes, there’s more space here.”
“You prefer to be a small frog in a large pond rather than the other way round?”
Jacynth smiled. “I hadn’t thought of it, but perhaps it’s true. I’ll leave the big frogs to please themselves.”
He turned towards her and she noticed again the straight nose, the high cheekbones and the strong jawline, but most of all his dark eyes, glittering now with amusement, or was it a more challenging expression?
“You count me a big frog?” he demanded.
“How could I answer that question when I’ve no idea of the size of your pond? I’d assume your area would be the Mediterranean. From a business point of view, I mean,” she added hastily.
“You flatter me. Although, as I’ve already told you, flattery is of no interest to me.”
When she remained silent for a moment or two, he said suddenly, “That girl Diana—the one whose place you took. Did she decide suddenly to get married?”
Jacynth shook her head. “I’ve no idea about that. All I knew was when someone came round collecting for the usual wedding present.”
“And her husband? What’s his profession?”
“An accountant, I think.” Jacynth had only heard the vaguest details of the man, but perhaps Mallory would be satisfied with such scraps of information as she could give him.
“Canadian? I think you said they’d gone to Canada.”
“No. He just had some very good position offered him in Toronto.”
Mallory said nothing for a few seconds, then he gave a one-sided smile. “Next time I go to Toronto I must look her up and see if she’s done well for herself.”
“Is that all that matters?” asked Jacynth impulsively. “That a girl should ‘do well for herself’ when she marries?”
He turned towards her, his eyes narrowed to slits. “Isn’t that what matters to the majority of girls?”
“Surely love must come into it.” But Jacynth mumbled the words, having lost her flash of courage and remembering that not only was Mallory her employer and a hard taskmaster at that, but she had completely lost her heart to him. So she was now treading dangerous ground, for never by any slight implication or gesture must he ever suspect the truth.
“Oh, love!” Mallory’s hand swept such emotions into the sea. “A certain amount of physical rapture and then the real nub of two people living together with the harmony wearing thinner all the time. In most cases, only a comfortable standard of living can make the whole affair worthwhile. Love in a cottage rarely answers, unless both parties are prepared to make great sacrifices, and surely it’s usually the woman who loses most.”
Jacynth sighed, hardly knowing whether he was jesting in this cynical manner to disguise his real feelings about Hermione or if his views were sincere.
When she did not speak, he continued, “This young man of yours here in Rhodes—what has he to offer you?”
Perhaps it was safer to veer the conversation towards Ray. “Nothing much at present. He’ll need all his capital to start in business on his own.”
“Indeed? Launching out as a pottery buyer?”
“Not only pottery,” she corrected. “He hopes to act as agent for many kinds of Greek articles, jewellery, embroideries as well as woven rugs.”
“Very ambitious,” was Mallory’s dry rejoinder. “I must wish him luck.”
“He’ll probably need it,” Jacynth added. She ran a comb through her hair and it flowed in a shining mass around her shoulders. Then she picked up the mini-dress she had worn to come down to the beach, slipped it over her head and stood up. Her fingers were none too steady as she zipped up the front, but she hoped Mallory had not noticed her agitation.
“Yes, we’d better go back,” he murmured. “We mustn’t completely neglect our hostess.”
The Perandopoulos villa was built on several levels to accord with the sloping hillside and a flight of stone steps led from one part of the garden to an upper floor. Mallory conducted Jacynth this way, through an arch to a wide verandah, Jacynth assumed that only bedrooms were on this floor, but Mallory indicated double doors that led to a large drawing room from which came the sound of animated conversation. Half a dozen people stood or sat in various parts of the room while Hermione reclined on a settee and a handsome young man sat on the floor at her feet.
So Hermione was not at this moment being actually neglected, thought Jacynth. Vague introductions were made by Hermione or Mallory, but Jacynth was eager to slip away at the earliest opportunity, for she was acutely aware of her casual appearance, wearing only a cotton dress over a bikini. In fact, she was not too pleased that Mallory had landed her in here among all these people.
Dressing for dinner, she reflected that a dinner party among strangers would be preferable to the uncomfortable meals at which she had been the embarrassed third, spoiling what should have been a tête-à-tête occasion for Hermione and Mallory.
She put on the best outfit she had, a filmy white blouse embroidered in gold thread and a long skirt patt
erned with beech brown leaves on a white ground.
She went down to the terrace where she guessed pre-dinner cocktails were being served and met the hostility in Hermione’s dark eyes. Jacynth longed for this week-end visit to be over, but there was no escape yet.
CHAPTER SIX
If Hermione had deliberately set out to prove to Jacynth the desperately wide gap that could possibly separate two women, then she could not have accomplished the task more successfully.
Hermione, accustomed to entertaining on the grand scale, moved through the evening, the perfect hostess, wearing a shimmering dress of amber brocade which provided a superb background for her spectacular jewellery. When she turned her head to talk to Mallory on her right at the table, the emerald and diamond necklace scintillated; when she gestured gracefully to the man on her left, bracelets flashed.
There were more than a dozen guests at dinner tonight and Jacynth was seated between two elderly men who spoke very little English. Her attempts to carry on a polite conversation in Greek met with little success, and halfway through the long meal with its many courses they abandoned her and concentrated on their other partners. During a lull, she heard one speaking in French to the lady on his left and was about to tell him that French was her best foreign language and reasonably adequate. Then she heard him say distinctly that he had been landed with a stupid English girl, evidently some poor little waif whom Hermione had befriended.
Jacynth nearly choked on the morsel of fish she was just swallowing. So she was “une epave,” was she? A poor little waif brought in and given a square meal! Jacynth naturally remained silent about her ability to talk French, for that disclosure would only embarrass the man and probably amuse the woman beside him.
After dinner she spent the rest of the evening sitting in a dim corner of the terrace. Occasionally a manservant filled her wineglass or asked if she needed anything, but in a way she was glad to be left alone. Here, in the scented darkness with the cypress trees silhouetted vaguely against the star-spattered sky, she was spared the torture of watching Hermione in all her splendour displaying herself as the ideal partner for Mallory. The effect would not be lost on him, and who could blame him if he eventually acknowledged the message?
