Beneath the Cypress Tree

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Of course it will!’ Christos’s eyebrows had risen so high they’d nearly disappeared into his thick, untidy hair. ‘It means Nikoleta will then be able to introduce you to her tour group, and Palace of Minos tour groups love meeting archaeologists.’

  Later Kate had said to Ella, ‘I’d been told Sir Arthur has always taken a keen interest in the Kourakis family’s welfare, but I hadn’t realized he’d ensured Nikoleta could speak English well enough for her to take tour groups around the palace.’

  ‘Goodness.’ Ella had been entranced. ‘How wonderful for her to be taking people around a site that her father spent decades of his life helping to excavate.’ Amusement had entered her voice and she’d said, ‘What do you bet that, when talking of the excavation work, Nikoleta mentions her father’s name just as often as she mentions Sir Arthur’s!’

  Now, watching Nikoleta lead her little group across the Central Court in the direction of the Grand Staircase, Kate wondered why, when Nikoleta could have no idea of the effect Lewis had on her, her attitude towards Kate was so stiff and guarded. She certainly wasn’t stiff and guarded with Ella, or with anyone else Kate had seen her interacting with, but from the first moment they had met, Nikoleta had clearly regarded Kate as being some kind of a threat to her romance with Lewis. As she never spoke an unnecessary word to Lewis and he never spoke an unnecessary word to her, Kate found it all very odd.

  ‘Perhaps she’s hyper-intuitive,’ Ella had said. ‘And you have to feel for Nikoleta. Even her brother suspects she’s hopelessly in love with Lewis, but when do you ever see the two of them openly together as a couple?’

  ‘You don’t,’ Kate had said, ‘but if he made a habit of being as indiscreet as he was the night he met her in the garden, it would be shotguns at dawn. Cretan men don’t take kindly to having a daughter or sister indulging in romantic relationships outside marriage. In even suspecting his sister is in love with Lewis, Christos is behaving bizarrely – unless, of course, he knows what Lewis’s long-term intentions are and is sure that a wedding is in the offing.’

  With Nikoleta and her group now out of sight, and with the snow not quite as soft but crunching beneath her feet, Kate walked towards the exit on the outer edge of the West Court. Though she had agreed with Ella that Lewis and Nikoleta never spent time together openly as a couple, she knew they most definitely were a couple, for the week before Lewis had left for Scotland she had seen them strolling together down a street in Réthymnon.

  Réthymnon was fifty miles west along the coast from Heraklion and not somewhere they would have expected to have been seen by anyone who knew them. Kate had only been there because she had use of one of the dig’s trucks and because, as Réthymnon retained lots of traces of Crete’s four-hundred-year occupation by the Venetians and its subsequent two-hundred-year occupation by the Turks, it was a town that interested her.

  She had just stepped out of Réthymnon’s Archaeological Museum when she had seen them. The street, narrow and lined with small, dark shops selling everything from medicinal herbs to handmade lace, was crowded, but it had seemed to Kate that Lewis and Nikoleta could just as well have been on a desert island, so involved were they with each other.

  His head had been bent down to hers, his handsome face – usually so forbiddingly inexpressive – alight with emotions that Kate hadn’t wanted to name; and Nikoleta had been laughing up at him, her joy so sizzling it was palpable. The street led down to the Fortezza, the citadel that dominated Réthymnon, and because Lewis was so much taller and broader than the average Cretan, and because the jacket Nikoleta was wearing was a vivid orange, they remained in sight until, at the end of the street, they headed towards the citadel’s main gate.

  Now, standing in the West Court in front of Sir Arthur Evans’s bust – a bust made droll by the snow covering the bronze hair and clinging to the eyebrows – she pondered the oddness of her never having told Ella of how she had seen Lewis and Nikoleta together in Réthymnon and of how, in Nikoleta’s company, Lewis had been a changed person. Had she not done so because she hadn’t wanted to put into words how Lewis’s happiness in Nikoleta’s company had made her feel?

  She took a photograph of the snow-decorated bust and bit her lip. It hadn’t been jealousy she’d felt. She passionately loathed the very idea of jealousy and utterly refused to allow herself to feel it. What she’d felt – and still felt – was a kind of miserable desolation. She was twenty-three and no man she had met had yet had the physical effect on her that Lewis Sinclair had. What if, in the future, she never met anyone who did? Countless times she told herself that no intelligent person fell in love on looks alone and that, as she was intelligent, she hadn’t fallen for him. It didn’t feel that way, though. It felt as though all she needed in her life to make it utterly glorious and complete was for Lewis Sinclair to look at her in the way she had seen him look at Nikoleta.

  She slipped her camera back into its case. The long and the short of it was that Lewis Sinclair did not feel about her as she felt about him; and, after so many months of living together in the close proximity of Kalamata and working together almost every day, he was clearly never going to. That being the case, she had only one option, and that was to get over him – which was exactly what she was determined to do.

  Nearly two thousand miles away in Yorkshire, Sam Jowett was facing, if not the same situation and conclusion, then one very close to it.

  His disappointment that Ella had not come home for Christmas was enormous. What had made the disappointment even deeper was that she hadn’t even said in any of her letters how much she would have liked to have come home. All her last letter had been full of was, as usual, the doings of her friends in Knossos and Kalamata.

  When she had finished telling him about the Kourakis family, and of how the jewellery that Christos Kourakis had excavated had been elevated to a display case of its own in Heraklion’s museum, and of how Christos had gone with her when she’d travelled to Kalamata to visit Apollonia, the Mamalakis families, and Andre and Agata, Ella had written:

  They are all such lovely people (though maybe Rhea is not quite as lovely as everyone else!) and I am really enjoying my first Christmas here, though it is very different from Christmas in Yorkshire. For one thing, it starts much earlier, on the sixth of December, the Feast of St Nicholas. It’s on St Nicholas’s Day that Greeks exchange presents. No one had warned me, or Kate, and so you can imagine how surprised we were last Sunday when we were suddenly laden with gifts! Christos’s mother, Eleni, is going to show me how to make Christopsomo (Christ Bread). It’s the tradition to serve it on Christmas Day at the big family meal everyone sits down to, after they’ve come home from church. So now you know what I will be doing on Christmas Eve. I’ll be baking bread!

  She had also told him where she would be spending Christmas Day, and it wasn’t going to be at the Villa Ariadne with Kate and the Villa’s other guests, nor was it going to be in Heraklion. Ella was going to be spending it with the Kourakis family in Knossos:

  Kate is being polite about my doing so, but I know she doesn’t much like it, she had written. Nikoleta is almost as cool towards her as she (Kate) is towards Lewis, but as I like Nikoleta and enjoy being in the Kourakis’s home, I’m spending Christmas Day with them and that’s that.

  It was now New Year’s Eve, and Sam wondered if, as well as spending Christmas Day with the Kourakis family, Ella would be spending New Year’s Eve with them as well. He was honest enough with himself to realize that if it wasn’t for Kalamata’s dig foreman being the son of the house, he probably wouldn’t mind the thought of Ella doing so; but Christos Kourakis was the son of the house, and Sam didn’t like the number of times his name cropped up in Ella’s letters. It was always Christos has done this or Christos has done that.

  In one of her letters she had enclosed a group photograph of the team, taken on a day when Kit had visited Kalamata. Judging their height in relation to Kit’s tall lankiness, Sam had estimated none of the Greeks to be over fi
ve foot seven. Some of them had a spade in their hands, others a pickaxe. Some of them were bare-chested, others were shirtless, but wearing waistcoats. All of them were wearing disreputable-looking baggy pants, and all of them were heavily moustached.

  The photograph had been something of a shock. Although he hadn’t expected a group of Cretan workmen to look respectable, neither had he expected them to look like murderous ruffians.

  Ella had written their names in pencil above their heads.

  Dimitri. Angelos. Pericles. Nico. Yanni. Adonis. Christos.

  Until that moment he’d had a mental image of Christos Kourakis, and his mental image bore no relation at all to the reality. Like his companions in the photograph, Christos was, by Sam’s standards, small; probably no taller than Ella herself.

  Sam had doubted if anyone could think Christos good-looking, although as his face was dominated by a dark, luxuriant moustache, it had been difficult for him to make an accurate assessment. Having seen the photograph he had, however, felt less anxious where Christos Kourakis’s relationship with Ella was concerned, for whatever the nature of it, it was impossible to believe it was romantic; which hadn’t meant that he’d been happy about it. And he certainly wasn’t happy about the possibility of Ella seeing in the New Year with the Kourakis family and – if he could get away with it – of the ruffian in the photograph giving her a New Year kiss.

  He dug his nails deep into the palms of his hands. He was too straightforward a bloke to want to begin playing games, but it wouldn’t do Ella any harm to be made aware that she couldn’t continue taking him so much for granted. His own plans for the evening had been made some time ago. There was always a riotous, booze-fuelled New Year’s Eve party at his rugby club and, come ten or eleven o’clock, that was where he would be. It was a party for wives and girlfriends as well, and suddenly he knew what it was that he was going to do.

  He was going to invite Jenny to go with him.

  That she would already have made plans for the evening went without saying, but what also went without saying was that once he spoke to her, Jenny would shed her previous plans as fast as light.

  The New Year Eve’s party at the Villa Ariadne was a very jolly, informal affair, the guests being all those presently staying at the Villa, plus the Villa’s staff and their families, local people, and people from Heraklion that the Squire and his mother were on friendly terms with. Inside, the Villa was decorated with gaily coloured paper-chains and boughs of sweet-smelling winter greenery; and outside, on the terrace, there were candles on tables, and in the garden lighted lanterns bobbed amongst trees still sprinkled with snow.

  Nikoleta was there, as Kate had known she would be. Kate had smiled across at her and Nikoleta had given her a faint smile in response and had then rather pointedly turned her back. Afterwards Nikoleta was either at the very far side of whichever room Kate happened to be in or was nowhere to be seen at all.

  In the drawing room there was dancing. Kate danced a happy quickstep with one of Professor Cottingley’s students, and a tortured foxtrot with the professor. When, a little later, the professor again headed in her direction, she was saved by the Squire.

  ‘It’s a waltz, Kate,’ he said genially. ‘I can just about manage a waltz. Are you game?’

  He was still waltzing her around the room when she heard someone shout above the noise of the music and the general hubbub, ‘Is it true Sinclair is going to first-foot?’

  Kate stumbled.

  ‘Oh dear!’ The Squire’s concern was deep. ‘Am I putting you off your stroke?’

  ‘No.’ She shot him a reassuring smile. ‘I just lost concentration for a moment.’

  Ambitiously the Squire attempted a reverse turn.

  She said, ‘I just heard someone say Lewis was going to be our first-footer. When did he get back?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Kate. It could have been this morning or it could have been yesterday. Being a Scot, he didn’t want to put in an appearance at the party until he first-footed. It’s something Scots take very seriously. Did you know it’s unacceptable for a first-footer to be a resident of the house he first-foots in? And that someone leaving the house after midnight and then coming back in it is not considered to be truly first-footing? Or not by Scotsmen, at any rate.’

  Kate hadn’t known. What she did know was that a first-footer had to be tall and dark-haired, and that Lewis Sinclair ticked those boxes.

  ‘The music has come to an end,’ she said, as the Squire seemed unaware of it.

  ‘Goodness! Has it?’ From his gangling height he beamed down at her. ‘We did pretty well, didn’t we? Next stop Blackpool Tower Ballroom!’

  Once mercifully released, Kate leaned against a door jamb and rubbed her bruised toes.

  Ella came up to her, a glass of wine in each hand. ‘Here.’ She handed one of the glasses to Kate. ‘Having seen the Squire’s idea of a waltz, you need something restorative. Why is it academics are useless on a dance floor?’

  ‘Heaven only knows. Something to do with the job description, I think.’

  Ella laughed. ‘From the sound of it, it’s going to be all reels and jigs after midnight – with a hefty input of Cretan dancing. According to Christos, inebriated Cretans dancing a maleviziotis leave in the shade drunken Scots dancing reels.’

  ‘Well, that’s certainly going to be something to see. I take it the sedate interlude of ballroom music was a sop in the direction of the Squire and Mrs H.?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Ella tucked her free hand companionably into the crook of Kate’s arm. ‘Don’t you think the Cretans look splendid in festive attire?’

  ‘So splendid I’ve hardly been able to recognize some of them.’

  Where the women were concerned, it was true. Eleni Kourakis, who like all Cretan women her age was usually covered from head to foot in shapeless black, was tonight wearing an apron so richly embroidered it dazzled.

  It was the men, though, in their traditional baggy vraka trousers, wide-sleeved shirts, embroidered waistcoats, purple sashes, knee-high boots and black-fringed head-kerchiefs, who looked truly spectacular. As every man had an obligatory knife at his waist and as they all sported a moustache, they looked more like brigands than archaeological workmen, Villa Ariadne household staff or, in the case of one of them, a much-respected leader of Heraklion’s town council.

  Midnight was approaching and the noise level grew rowdier.

  Kate saw Nikoleta squeeze into the crowded room.

  ‘She should wear traditional costume all the time, don’t you think?’ Ella said.

  Kate nodded. In ornately embroidered traditional costume and a necklace of heavy gold coins, Nikoleta looked ravishing. She also looked radiantly happy, her eyes on the door through which, very shortly, Lewis was expected to first-foot.

  As the last chimes of midnight died away, mayhem broke out. Champagne corks popped, streamers flew and whistles blew. In the garden Christos and his father let off volley after volley of feu de joie celebratory shots with hunting rifles. In the drawing room the English crossed their arms over their chests, joined hands and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ lustily. When as many verses as could be remembered had been sung, the hugs and kisses began.

  Kate was laughingly disentangling herself from an overeager embrace by one of the German students when there came a great hammering on Villa Ariadne’s front door.

  ‘It’s Lewis!’ the Squire shouted, and there was immediately a general stampede into the hall to see Mrs Hutchinson open the door to him.

  Kate didn’t join in the stampede and riotous welcome. She was too busy stiffening her resolve never again to allow Lewis to affect her as he had in the past. She was over him, she told herself fiercely; absolutely and utterly over him. The sight of him was no longer going to make her feel weak at the knees. His nearness was no longer going to cause her heart to race. She was a level-headed, intelligent woman, not a schoolgirl experiencing a first passion. She drew in a deep breath, confidence flooding through her.
It was a good feeling and she was still savouring it when Lewis, surrounded by the welcoming crush, strode into the drawing room.

  In one hand he was carrying a lump of coal for good luck, and in the other he was holding a bottle of whisky by its neck.

  And he was wearing a kilt.

  It was to have been expected of course, and yet Kate hadn’t expected it. The sight of him in kilt and sporran, with a lace jabot at his throat, flounces of lace showing below the cuffs of his jacket and with a dirk tucked into his knee-high right-hand stocking, robbed her of breath. Although the Cretans looked splendid in their national dress, Lewis looked far more than splendid in his. He looked jaw-droppingly magnificent.

  The promises she had made to herself were as if they had never been.

  With her knees once again weak, and her heart once again racing, she turned away from the sight of him and, threading her way through fellow guests rowdily singing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’, made for the nearest door.

  It opened into the corridor that led to the Villa’s library.

  Someone had been in it before her, for the lamps were on and the room was suffused in soft light. She let the door click shut behind her and, leaning against it, her eyes closed, began giving herself a good talking-to. If Lewis hadn’t come into the room wearing a kilt, she would not have reacted as she had, and the promises she had made herself wouldn’t have been so instantly broken. She would still have her self-respect. She would still be in the good place she’d been in, before he had entered the room. And she could still be in that good place again.

  She opened her eyes, fresh determination flooding through her. She could start again. She could make new resolutions this very moment. What had undone her a few minutes ago had been the unexpectedness of seeing Lewis in a kilt. Everyone knew that a handsome Scot in a kilt was damn-near irresistible. And she’d been caught off-guard. Well, she wouldn’t be caught off-guard again. She hiccoughed and frowned. She was also slightly tipsy. Where self-control was concerned, it hadn’t helped.