by Anne Hampson
"You have sugar?" Mrs. Lucian's voice broke into Julie's musings and she glanced up. "Just one, please."
"Take yourself." Doneus's mother held out the sugar basin and Julie dipped her spoon into it.
"Thank you." The woman went away, but returned with a tiny cup of Turkish coffee, which she sipped several times before sitting down on a chair at the other side of the room - as far away as possible from Julie, it would seem. "Are those your sons?" Julie inquired, indicating the two photographs. Mrs.
Lucian nodded, her face clouding.
"My boys - they killed by the sea."
"Killed...." Julie put her cup on the saucer, staring fascinated at each photograph in turn before bringing her gaze to the old woman. As before she was all in black, but without the coif on her head. Her grey hair was so fine and sparse that her scalp shone through it. Two stringy plaits hung down her back.
Doneus's mother ... such a frail little thing, and so pathetic. Her lined face, seen now in the light instead of the darkness of that tent, had a quality of saintly beauty, enhanced in a way that only deep sorrow can bring. She was gentle and simple - a Greek peasant whose lot no woman from the West would envy.
"All your boys have been spongedivers, then?" she said unnecessarily, and the woman nodded.
"My Doneus - he the only one who - who -" She shook her head and Julie supplied,
"Escaped?"
"That is right." The woman fell into a brooding silence, sipping her coffee. "My man, he also die - but bad first - bad. You know what I mean? I show you!" Rising, she went to the drawer in the sideboard and opened it. The next moment Julie was staring at a middle-aged man, sitting on a bench in what looked like the garden of this house. His legs were twisted and hanging ... useless.
Great tears welled up in Julie's eyes. The pressures of the dark still places of the ocean had certainly taken toll of this woman.
And now? Each year she would see her son go in one of those fifty or sixty boats that set out at Easter-time for the fishing grounds of Crete or Benghazi and Tripoli. And for five months that must stretch to the very edge of eternity she would wait ... wait ... wait, like so many other women. And she would pray.
"You cry!" The woman's eyes lit and glowed. It seemed that a great happiness surged within her. "You weep for my son - because you not want him to get bad - or die?"
Perplexed, Julie searched the woman's face. Undoubtedly the
tears had worked a miracle. They fell on to Julie's cheeks and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.
"I cried for you, and for your sons and your husband."
The woman's face fell. She was old suddenly - very old, and sad.
"You not cry for my Doneus ?"
"Doneus hasn't been hurt, Mrs. Lucian."
"Not yet - but he be bad some time. You cry now - it is better that you cry now!"
Bewilderedly Julie shook her head. If only they had an interpreter!
"I don't understand what you mean?"
Doneus's mother shrugged and spread her hands.
"I not understand too. If you cry for Doneus - now -then I understand."
It was better that she cry now. Julie grappled with this obscure statement for a long while, without result. It was better that she cry now than wait until Doneus was hurt - or killed....
"Is there anyone nearby who speaks English?" she asked again, with the same result.
"We not have anyone who speak English. My son, he angry if people know - know - secrets."
"I see...." murmured Julie, and she did.
Julie had a tasty meal ready for six o'clock, but Doneus did not put in an appearance. She kept it in the earth oven outside, but the wood had burned away, and as a wind had arisen the oven went cool and so did the dinner. She thought of having hers, but she felt so sick inside with what she had learned and with the waiting for Doneus, fearing he would not come, that she knew food would choke her.
She had been crying when at last he did appear, at half-past ten. She was in the dark, having just sat and sat, seeing no reason why she should light the lamp, wasting fuel, and Doneus called, a little sharply and anxiously, she thought, immediately on entering the house.
"I'm here." Jason was up pawing her knee and she touched his head, deriving strange comfort from the warmth of him and the friendliness.
"What are you doing in the dark?" Doneus struck a match and set it to a candle. Then he lit the lamp and brought it to the table. "Are you ill?" No mistaking his anxiety now, and for some stupid reason it brought on the tears again.
"No, Doneus, I'm not ill, b-but I thought you weren't coming home."
He looked at her with an odd expression.
"Would it have mattered so much to you had I not come home?"
She lifted her tearstained face, suppressing the little sob that had risen in her throat. He looked very tired and dispirited, his black seaman's jersey adding to the darkness of his skin and accentuating the prominent lines running down the sides of his face from nose to mouth. The scar was livid; she had never seen it look so angry and pronounced.
"It would have mattered, Doneus, yes, very much."
A long silence, intense, profound, before Doneus reached for her hand and gently drew her to her feet.
"Julie, what is the matter with you? Why are you like this one moment and so arrogant the next."
"I'm not. I didn't mean to be arrogant." Her eyes filled up again.
She whispered tremblingly, "Hold me, Doneus.."
Gently he embraced her, and she rested her head against his breast and no sound was heard until Jason, unwilling to be left so neglected, gave a small bark and pawed his master's leg.
Julie and Doneus drew apart. Her tears were left on his jersey and automatically she brushed a hand over the damp patch.
"I've made a meal, but it's cold," she told him in muffled tones.
"I think I can heat it on the oil stove, though." His arms went round her again she looked into his face and saw only mystification there. But presently he smiled at her and kissed her quivering lips.
"Where is this meal?" the prosaic question broke the tension, and. Julie gave a little sigh of relief.
"In the oven outside. I'll go and fetch it -"
"No, I will." He glanced at the table. "You haven't had yours?"
"I waited for you."
Another profound moment of silence. Doneus shook his head with a sort of helpless gesture and went out to the garden for the dish of meat and vegetables Julie had left there.
"Cold, you're quite right. I'll heat it up."
"I can do it." She was beside him and he turned his head to glance down at her.
"You feed Jason while I do it," he said gently, and they went into the lean-to together, Jason following on their heels on hearing his name fall from his master's lips.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THEY had finished their meal before Julie gathered the courage to tell Doneus of her visit to his mother. She had known that she would have to tell him even before she went, but the risk of his anger had not deterred her. Now, she had no fear of him, as he was in a gentle mood, even though she was deeply sensible of his hurt being very much in evidence.
"You went to see my mother?" he repeated, amazed. "I took it that she was not good enough for you?", Julie swallowed, shaking her head faintly.
"I was still angry with her on the occasion of your asking me to visit her, but now I've met her I like her very much."
Doneus ignored that.
"Why did you suddenly decide to visit her?" he asked.
Julie met his questioning eyes squarely."I wanted to know why you married me."
A faint smile touched his lips, a smile tinged with bitterness.
"And did she tell you?"
"You know she didn't. For one thing, she doesn't speak English very well."
"She scarcely speaks it at all." He fell silent, his brow lined in thought. "Scarcely any English, and yet she.... She's a brave woman, my mother," he murmured almo
st inaudibly.
Why the hesitation? wondered Julie. "... and yet she...." What?
He seemed completely lost inn thought and at last Julie said, "She was certainly very brave to go to England all by herself."
A small hesitation and then she added, her eyes on her husband's face, "I wonder you would send her."
Doneus seemed unable to answer that immediately; there was a strange silence before at length he spoke, saying in a voice practically devoid of expression,
"She did not mind at all going to England." And before Julie could pursue that particular line of conversation he inquired curiously, "Did you ask her outright why I married you?"
"Of course. There was nothing to be gained by approaching the matter in a roundabout manner. Not that I gained anything by forthrightness," she just had to add, a tart edge to her voice which brought a return of her husband's smile, and this time the bitterness was replaced by a hint of amusement.
"What did she say?"
"She maintained that you married me for revenge."
"She used a word like that?" He cocked an eyebrow sceptically and Julie explained that she had put the word into his mother's mouth.
"She told me you visit her every day." Julie reached for the coffee pot and topped up both their cups. They were still seated at the dinner table and the soft amber glow from the lamp played over her features, accentuating their beauty and bringing to her eyes a lustre which seemed to reflect the inner beauty, the beauty of Julie's sweet nature and tender heart. As on several previous occasions Doneus seemed fascinated with what he saw, and so fixed was his interest that Julie felt he had forgotten everything and that he was daydreaming. "I wondered how you got there?" she ventured, hoping to awaken him His eves moved almost imperceptibly to the coffee cup she had filled up for him. He picked it up and drank deeply of the black contents before replacing the cup on its saucer.
"I use the car," he replied after what seemed an eternity of deliberation.
"You - have money for all that petrol?" Faint apology in her tone, but her eyes pleaded, quite unconsciously, for him to understand, and not speak sharply to her.
"I manage to fill the car up, yes, Julie. You see, it's imperative that I see my mother daily. She has no one left but me - distant relatives and many good neighbours, of course, but I'm the only child she has, and my father is dead."
"She told me, and I saw photographs of your brothers as well.
Doneus, I felt very sad indeed as I sat there with your mother."
"You were pitying her, I suppose." Harsh words and cruel, Julie thought, flinching and lowering her eyes in order to avoid his contemptuous gaze. "Mother does not require pity. She would never invite you into her house again were she to suspect you of pitying her."
Glancing up after a long moment of silence Julie murmured convulsively, "Am I allowed to feel compassion for her, Doneus ?"
"There is a difference?" he queried coldly, and Julie said at once that there certainly was a difference, and she added, "I admire her too, deeply. She has the most wonderful spirit and courage."
Doneus softened slightly and on noticing this from his
expression Julie ventured to ask him to tell her more about his mother, which he did, explaining that she was married at fifteen and had her first child less than a year later.
"By the time she was eighteen she had three boys, but although these were blessings indeed in a country where every girl has to be provided with a dowry, they were to cause Mother extreme hardship. You see, Father was fifteen years her senior, and so she was very young when he died, leaving her with three children to bring up. Also, he had been an invalid for several years. She washed and mended and cleaned for the one or two retired English and American families who had settled here; she grew produce in her garden, and she made all our clothes." He went on, lost in the past, and Julie listened without interruption, watching his dark face and seeing a strange and savage beauty in the finely-etched lines - like those of a Greek god, noble and courageous. His voice, deep-toned and rich, contained a gentleness when he spoke of his mother, and his eyes were tender.
In this intensely human mood there was so strong a magnetic quality about him that Julie felt her pulse quicken, and her heartbeats throb in unison. Her husband held her by some spell and she wondered how, having once experienced his lovemaking, she could have decided there was to be no repetition.
"How was it that your father was so much older than your mother?" she asked when at last Doneus stopped speaking.
Julie spoke in breathless accents, for she was still deeply affected by the force of her husband's personality.
"My father had four sisters, and as he couldn't marry until husbands had been found for all of them he was over thirty before he was free to marry-"
"I don't understand, Doneus?" Julie's brow was creased in a frown of perplexity. "Why couldn't your father marry until husbands were found for his sisters?"
"The custom is that the brothers assist in providing the dowries.
A boy with several sisters has little chance of marrying young."
"But how extraordinary!" she exclaimed, her thoughts completely diverted by this information which Doneus was imparting to her. "I always believed that in Greece the male was all-powerful - superior in all things."
Doneus regarded her in some amusement, although Julie sensed the presence of the deep hurt which she herself had inflicted by her unthinking words about pity, words which she now bitterly regretted.
"Strangely, this is quite true, in that the man is complete master of the house. I say 'the' house because, paradoxically, it always belongs to the wife."
"But if this is so then how comes the man to be the - well, the boss, as it were?"
"Custom, my dear. In the East the woman has always been regarded as inferior."
"Do you regard the woman as inferior?" she asked, recalling how he had stated emphatically that he regarded her as his wife, and not as his woman.
"Most definitely not! Could I regard my mother as inferior?
Could I ever regard my wife as inferior?" He shook his head.
"No, Julie, I am not of the school that regards a woman as a possession over whom I must exert undue authority. I would like my wife to look up to me, I must admit," he added, staring straight at her. "I would like her to respect my wishes and even to accede to them if, in the event of a difference of opinion, I was convinced that I was in the right."
Julie sat quiet for a long moment, staring at the shadows thrown on to the ikons by the long tongue of flame from the kerosene lamp in the centre of the table.
This husband of hers ... he was a man with lofty principles, a man of superior intellect and perception, who was obviously possessed of high ideals and whose values were concerned only with the intrinsic and aesthetic, never the material and manifest. How came a peasant to possess all these fine qualities? How came he to speak such cultured English - and to be so knowledgeable? She had tried on several occasions to ask about his education, but diplomacy and good manners forbade it.
Moreover, Julie was sure that any such question would be answered in a way which would cause her extreme discomfiture. Her husband was in the main kind to her, and gentle in speech - but that he could be caustic and, sarcastic she had soon discovered, and already Julie had learned how far to go.
"Tell me some more about the customs," she urged, a smile hovering on her lips. "They are so strange - at least, to me."
He smiled faintly and went on to explain the laws regarding property. The girl brought the house as part of her dowry, and
it always remained hers.
"Property here always descends through the female line," he went on, "from mother to the eldest daughter. It's rather ironical really, because it is the men who have to work for this property, and even those who have left the island continue to send home money for their daughters' or sisters' prika, as the dowry is called in Greece."
"So the husband is not quite the exalted lord and master
we are given to believe?"
"As I said, he's always the master, but he never becomes a property owner - at least," Doneus added swiftly, "not by inheritance, because families here are so large that there's invariably a daughter to whom the property is handed down."
"Your brothers," she murmured. "Did they marry?"
A faintly bitter curve of his lips, and a brooding pause before Doneus spoke.
"They were both killed at the age of eighteen - one a year after the other -"
"Oh, Doneus ... how very dreadful for your mother, and for you as well."
"It was grim," he agreed, and a nerve throbbed in the scar. "It almost broke my mother."
"I can imagine." Julie's eyes misted over as she spoke her thoughts aloud, "Two Septembers, when the sponge boats came back ... one son gone, and then the other..." She looked at Doneus across the table. "Were they - brought back?"
"Both were buried on the north coast of Africa."
"Your mother, she must - she must have been dreadfully worried about you." Julie hadn't meant to say anything like that, but again she voiced her thoughts instead of keeping them to herself. Doneus was looking oddly at her, and suddenly he gave a small sigh, just as if he were considering her to be quite unfathomable.
"She was, naturally, worried about me. The sea had taken three of her men and I'm sure she became convinced that it would take me also." He smiled and added, "However, I returned, safe and sound."
That time, yes, and those times following, but.... Julie felt stifled all at once as if she needed air, and her throat was blocked with fear. He could not survive indefinitely, she thought. One September he must come home maimed ... or not at all, but stay in some strange land, buried there. He was still watching
her closely and Julie inclined her head, unwilling that he should see the fear in her eyes, fear for his safety, because of the pity that filled her heart.
