Beneath the Cypress Tree

by Margaret Pemberton

  The noise of revelry coming from the Villa’s gardens was almost as loud as that coming from the drawing room and she began to walk across to the window, intending to look out. The sound of the door opening behind her stopped her in her tracks.

  As she whirled around, Lewis closed the door, as she had a little while earlier and, as she had, leaned against it.

  ‘I thought I might find you in here.’ He crossed one ghillie-brogued foot over the other and folded his arms across his chest. The lamplight threw a slant of shadow across the hard line of his cheek. There was no smile on his face, but then she could never remember Lewis smiling towards her. She could only ever remember him smiling towards Nikoleta.

  ‘I didn’t come in here to be found.’ Her voice was so taut she scarcely recognized it. ‘And I would now like to return to the party. So if you don’t mind . . .’ She made a gesture with her hand indicating that she would like him to step aside, so that she could leave the room.

  He made no attempt to move. It was as if he had settled there for the night.

  ‘It’s the first few minutes of the New Year.’ His speech was slightly slurred and she realized that he was on his way to being drunk.

  As it was New Year and he was a Scot, it was no very great surprise. With the exception of Mrs Hutchinson, she doubted if anyone in the Villa was still completely sober, and that included herself. The turbulent emotion Lewis was arousing in her was joined by a new one: a flickering of apprehension. He had always been an unknown quantity, and that had been when he was sober. Now that he was sober no longer – and in a very odd mood – she didn’t know the best way of responding to him, without triggering something she sensed it would be best not to trigger.

  But what was that? His temper? Although she had never seen Lewis lose his temper, she had always sensed that it was often held on a very short leash. But why should he be on the verge of losing his temper with her, when he hadn’t seen her in over a month? Or was his mood occasioned by something that had happened while he had been in Scotland, in discussions with the patron who was financing the dig? Was that why he had sought her out alone? In order to break the news that there wasn’t going to be another season’s dig at Kalamata?

  Fighting down the sense of menace that the closed door – and the way he was preventing her from opening it – was giving her, she said, struggling to bring a sense of normality to their unexpected tête-à-tête, ‘Is there bad news about next season’s dig?’

  ‘Next season’s dig?’ He quirked an eyebrow. ‘No. What bad news could there possibly be?’ He shifted his stance so that his weight was now on both feet. The lamplight fell on the dirk, making the steel gleam like silver

  Kate averted her eyes from it. ‘Then if you haven’t sought me out to talk about the dig, I would like to return to the party.’

  ‘If you hadn’t left the party, I wouldn’t have had to come in here to wish you a happy New Year.’

  There was a hot flush at the back of his eyes and his voice was even thicker than it had been a minute or so earlier, but she no longer had any sense of foreboding. If all Lewis wanted was to wish her a happy New Year, then the sooner she wished him one, the sooner the present bizarre little scene would be over.

  She put an unconcerned smile on her face. ‘A happy New Year,’ she said, closing the distance between them, expecting to be wished a happy New Year back, and for him to either open the door for her or at least step aside so that she could open it herself.

  He said, ‘I think traditional New Year’s greetings are the best’ and, instead of opening the door or moving aside, he caught hold of her, pulling her hard against him.

  She cried out in shocked protest, struggling to prise herself free. She might as well have been trying to free herself from a vice. Her cry of protest was even less effectual, silenced instantly as he brought his mouth down on hers in swift, unfumbled contact.

  To her horror, she knew that although she was struggling against him, she was doing so without any real conviction. Even worse, her lips parted willingly as his tongue slipped past hers.

  It was a long, deep, passionate kiss, and only as he finally raised his head did Kate summon the willpower to push herself violently away from him. It was easy to do, for his arms were no longer holding her. Instead, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, he merely held the door open for her.

  Kate forced her legs to take her out of the room. The drawing room was the obvious place to head for, but then it would also be the obvious place for Lewis to head for, and she couldn’t face the thought of having to meet his eyes – and wasn’t certain when she would be able to.

  With her mouth still scorched by his kiss, and her legs still trembling, she made for the garden, which was where the Cretan contingent were singing and dancing their hearts out and was where, if the Kourakis family were in the garden, she expected also to find Ella.

  Beneath the light of lanterns in the trees and to the accompaniment of a violin and lyre, a long line of dancers were holding each other by the shoulders and enthusiastically beating out a rhythm with their feet, eight steps forward, eight steps back. Ella was at the end of the line, next to Christos. She was the only woman in the line who was not Cretan, but if it hadn’t been for her red-gold hair, it would have been hard to distinguish her as a foreigner.

  Kate stood still, watching and realizing for the first time that Ella had assimilated herself into life on Crete in a way she hadn’t yet done. She’d come to find Ella, in order to tell her of the scene in the library – and to try and make some sense of it. Had Lewis been merely drunk? Was it something he wouldn’t even remember when he sobered up? Or had he kissed her as he had done because he had wanted to? Had perhaps wanted to for some time? The thought sent tingles all the way down to her fingertips.

  The music changed and, moving even faster, the dancers drew into a circle. Ella was laughing, her head thrown back as the steps of the dance became yet more fast and furious. It occurred to Kate that Ella’s friends and family in Yorkshire would scarcely recognize her, if they could see her now. It also occurred to her that this was no time to be trying to have the kind of talk with Ella that she wanted to have. It was a conversation that was going to have to wait.

  She turned and began making her way back into the Villa. Lewis wasn’t an easy person to read, but after what had just happened between them, surely – for her – that would now change? She wondered if she’d been a fool to push him away as violently as she had? But how else, when he’d previously given no indication of feeling an iota of desire for her, should she have reacted? If he’d kissed her in a moment of drunken aberration, then when he remembered it – if he remembered it – he would also remember that she hadn’t been a totally willing party; that way, she might at least be saved the humiliation of Lewis realizing what her true response to him had been.

  And if he had kissed her for other reasons? At the thought of things that once seemed impossible now being possible, the pulse in her throat pounded and the blood surged through her veins in a hot tide.

  Although the party in the garden was still as raucous as ever, inside the house it had calmed down, and as Kate approached the double doors of the drawing room she could hear Irving Berlin’s ‘What’ll I Do?’ being played on the gramophone. If Lewis was in the drawing room – and surely he had to be, for he hadn’t followed her out to the garden – then his body language was bound to indicate whether or not his kiss had been given in the way she so fervently hoped it had been given.

  In the drawing room, people were still dancing.

  Mrs Hutchinson was dancing with Professor Cottingley. One of the German students was dancing with Nikoleta. The leader of Heraklion’s town council was waltzing with Christos’s mother.

  Lewis was standing at the far side of the room, talking to one of the students, a glass of whisky in his hand. Sensing her presence in the doorway, he looked across at her.

  Their eyes met.

  Then, as her heart began slamming
in short, quick strokes, he put down his glass of whisky and began walking across the room in her direction. Professor Cottingley and Mrs Hutchinson skilfully avoided him. The leader of the town council was a little more clumsy in getting out of his way.

  Kate was on a knife edge, certain that the next few moments were ones she would remember lifelong.

  The disillusionment, when it came, was shattering.

  Lewis came to a halt, tapping on the arm the student who was dancing with Nikoleta, cutting in on him.

  With a radiant smile, Nikoleta slid into his arms.

  Nothing he could possibly have done could have signalled more clearly that what had happened between them in the library had no meaning for him whatsoever.

  For a second, Kate thought she wasn’t going to be able to breathe; then, drawing in a shuddering gasp of air, she swung on her heel, breaking into a run, with the strains of Judy Garland singing, ‘When I’m alone, With only dreams of you, That won’t come true, What’ll I do?’ following her all the way to her lonely bedroom.

  Chapter Ten

  MARCH 1937

  Kit rested his arms on top of the Boringia’s deck rails, watching Southampton harbour fade from view in the early-evening twilight. The Boringia was a cargo ship en route to Piraeus and points further east and was Kit’s preferred way of travelling, when returning to Crete. As Kate and Ella had when travelling by train, once in Piraeus he would board a night-ferry to Heraklion.

  He had enjoyed his few months in Oxford. Though he’d been born in Canterbury, and that was where his parents still lived, ever since his university days he’d thought of Oxford as home turf. He had, however, spent a weekend once a month with his parents. Both he and Kate had always had a good relationship with them and, with Kate still in Crete, he’d felt it was the least he could do. He’d spent Christmas with them as well, taking great pleasure in attending the singing of carols in the Cathedral on Christmas Eve and, as was tradition in the Shelton family, attending morning service there on Christmas morning.

  Unlike his parents, Kit wasn’t a regular churchgoer, but the knowledge that people had been worshipping in Canterbury Cathedral for more than a thousand years, combined with the stunning beauty of the building and its ancient stained glass, always moved him deeply.

  The Boringia had now reached open water and sea spray had misted his glasses. He took them off, wiping them with a handkerchief. The sea journey, with its stops at Oporto, Gibraltar and Naples, was lengthier than the train and sea route that had been Kate and Ella’s choice, but he loved being at sea and, given the opportunity, would quite happily have remained aboard the Boringia all the way to its final port of call in India.

  In his many journeys on cargo boats he had never been the only passenger, and he wasn’t the only passenger this time. A middle-aged married couple were travelling as far as Oporto, where their daughter and Portuguese son-in-law lived. An elderly, white-bearded gentleman had announced that he would be disembarking at Gibraltar.

  ‘From where I will then,’ he had said ponderously, ‘cross to Morocco and travel to the Rif Valley, in order to study the Berber tribe who live there.’

  Kit’s fourth and last fellow passenger was a slim blonde-haired woman probably in her late twenties or early thirties. He had been close behind her as she had boarded and he’d noticed, as she’d shaken hands with the ship’s captain, that she hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring. The absence of a wedding ring didn’t arouse his interest. The fit-looking purser standing to one side of the captain was of far greater interest to Kit, although long practice had ensured that he hadn’t let his interest show.

  He turned away from the sight of the English Channel and leaned his back against the rail. Ever since puberty he’d found his sexual interest in his own sex a burden, and it had been his constant hope that one day he would find a woman he could desire enough to be able to live life relieved of that burden. On the few times he had embarked on an heterosexual relationship the women in question had always, before too very long, sensed his true nature and, although they had then seemed to view it as something of a challenge, Kit hadn’t wanted to be seen as a challenge. What he had wanted was to be perceived as uncomplicatedly heterosexual and, once the charade was over, he’d found the relationship pointless.

  In Nikoleta Kourakis, because of her youth combined with her sexual inexperience – Cretan village girls nearly always went to their marriage beds virgins – he had rather thought that, if he could engage her interest, the outcome might be exactly what he was looking for, for who would suspect Kit of being a celibate homosexual, if he had a wife as startlingly beautiful as Nikoleta? And unlike the women he’d previously had brief affairs with, he doubted if Nikoleta would be worldly enough to recognize in him what they had.

  That was the fear he lived with: being recognized for what he was. Whenever he’d read of some poor devil standing in the dock, accused of what was termed ‘an act of gross indecency’, he’d been determined never to risk being in the same situation. To be an active homosexual was to risk a ruined life; a destroyed reputation; blackmail. A criminal act, homosexuality led to two-year prison sentences. Given a choice, it wasn’t something any sane, responsible person would opt for.

  But what if you weren’t given a choice? What if you simply were? Then the only answer, as far as he could see, was to find the right sort of wife, have children and shut the door on your natural inclinations once and for all.

  There was a huge snag, however, where Nikoleta was concerned: for all the interest he held for her, he could have been a plank of wood. The only person Nikoleta had eyes for was Lewis. And why wouldn’t it be? He’d seen Lewis walk down a street in Heraklion turning female heads all the way. In his favour was that he’d seemed totally oblivious of the admiration he was attracting.

  Still leaning against the deck rail, Kit reached into his jacket pocket for cigarettes and a lighter. As he lit up and blew a plume of blue smoke into the air, he wondered if the way Lewis never gave anything away about himself was also a challenge to women; the kind of challenge they perhaps found hard to resist. When it came to personal information, Lewis was extremely close-mouthed.

  Even after nearly two years, Kit knew little more about him than he had at their first introduction – which was that Lewis was a Scot who hailed from Sutherland. A direct question had elicited that he was neither an Oxford nor a Cambridge man, but that Lewis had gained his first-class honours in archaeology at the University of the Highlands and Islands. Kit, whose college had been Christ Church, Oxford, and who had left with first-class degrees in both Mods and Greats, had had to fight hard to hide his surprise – and had immediately been ashamed of his rare attack of snobbishness. If Lewis had ever been aware of it, he’d shown no sign.

  Fairly regular social meet-ups over dinner with Lewis at the Villa Ariadne hadn’t added to his spare bank of knowledge about him. If Lewis had hobbies and interests other than Minoan Crete, he never mentioned them and certainly didn’t devote time to them. His one overriding passion was his work, but even there, there was a large element of mystery. The days of privately funded Victorian and Edwardian digs were long over, yet the Kalamata dig was as near to being one of them as made no difference. When the subject of funding came up, Lewis was always nonchalantly evasive, and if the Squire knew the identity of Lewis’s wealthy patron, he wasn’t admitting to it.

  Kit took a last draw on his cigarette and, turning once more to face the English Channel, tossed the butt into the heaving grey waves and then, pushing his hands deep into his trouser pockets, made his way towards the companionway and his cabin, reflecting that Lewis never even gave any information about his family. If he had parents who were still alive, and if he had siblings, he never mentioned them. He could, for all anyone knew, even be married.

  Kit bit the corner of his lip. If Lewis was married, it would explain why the nature of his relationship with Nikoleta was such a mystery. Was it a mutual passion, and were they enjoying a very discreetly
conducted love affair? Or were Nikoleta’s blatantly romantic feelings for Lewis one-sided, as Mrs Hutchinson so staunchly believed? Whatever the truth of the matter, the bottom line was that Nikoleta was infatuated with Lewis and that even if her feelings were unreturned, she was never, in a hundred years, going to feel anything similar where he, Kit, was concerned.

  Lewis slung his rucksack to the ground and, with his legs apart and his hands on his hips, surveyed the view. It had been a hard climb, but it had been worth it. He was high enough now to see, to the north, a glittering glimpse of sea. To the west was the great mountain range of Ida, its many peaks still covered in snow. To the east, but unseen because of the rugged landscape, was Mount Juktas.

  He sat down on a boulder and took a bottle of water out of his rucksack. After a long drink he reached for the letter he’d come so far to read for a second time. It was from Tom Wilkinson’s father.

  Dear Lewis,

  It is with a breaking heart that I write to tell you I have received news of Tom’s death in Spain. He died in a bombing raid carried out by Germany’s Condor Legion. What will happen to the world, now that Hitler and Franco are in league together, is a horror too great for me to imagine. The attack took place on the outskirts of Gerona two months ago, but the situation with the International Brigades is such that I have only just received the news from the Foreign Office. You were his closest friend for so long – at school, at university and later in Crete – that hard and painful as this letter is to write, I knew I couldn’t let you continue believing Tom was still alive when he lies buried far from home, in Spanish soil. Thank you for being such a good friend to my boy. Take care of yourself, lad.

  Harry Wilkinson

  As well as the bottle of water, Lewis had also brought a bottle of King Minos red wine with him and, his face white and set, he uncorked it and raised it high.