She glanced down at her watch. It was nearly five o’clock and if she didn’t go up to the nursery, she would miss out on Caspian’s bath time. Not only that, but she and Sholto had been invited to the French Embassy for early-evening cocktails, and no matter what kind of a scene took place between them beforehand, she had every intention of still putting in an appearance at it. That they did so was important to her: a statement that no matter what might or might not change within their marriage, it was a marriage that was going to continue.
At six-thirty, when Sholto walked into the house, Daphne was wearing a black Balenciaga cocktail dress, artfully designed to disguise the fact that she hadn’t quite lost all of the weight she had put on when pregnant. She looked gorgeous, and knew it.
Sholto popped his head around the drawing-room door. ‘Goodness, sweetheart,’ he said appreciatively, ‘you’re going to knock the French for six tonight. I’ll be with you in thirty minutes.’
Seconds later Daphne could hear him running up the stairs and calling for Barak, his valet. She crossed to the cocktail cabinet and made herself a pink gin. By the time she was seated, drinking it, she could hear Sholto’s bath water being run.
She remained where she was, her stomach cramping with nerves. Only when she had judged that Sholto was out of the bathroom, back in the bedroom and had nearly finished with Barak’s services did she rise to her feet and, her heart slamming against her breastbone, her palms slippery with sweat, make her way upstairs.
Sholto looked up in surprise as she entered the bedroom. ‘Nearly there, Daphs,’ he said, putting in a cufflink and then saying, as Barak finished brushing the shoulders of his evening jacket, ‘Thank you, Barak. That’s all.’
Barak left the room. Sholto gave a last look in the cheval glass and saw how unnaturally pale Daphne was looking. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, turning towards her in concern. ‘Are you under the weather?’
‘No. Yes.’ She steadied her voice. ‘I ordered a christening present for the Carringtons’ baby this afternoon.’
Sholto slid a slim cigarette case into his inner breast-pocket. ‘Surely that wasn’t enough to make you feel out of sorts?’ There was mild amusement in his voice.
‘I ordered it – a set of apostle spoons – from Asprey’s.’
‘On the account?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what’s the problem? Why are you looking as if the world has come to an end?’
‘Because it might have.’
Their eyes held. She could see him rapidly making the connections: Asprey’s – his account – the bracelet.
‘That’s a rather extreme statement, Daphne,’ he said cautiously. ‘D’you mind explaining?’
‘I was trying to make up my mind about the style of font for the engraving. The sales assistant asked if I would like the same style you had asked for on your last purchases, and I asked him to remind me what those purchases had been.’
The room was suddenly so charged with tension it was if all the air had been sucked out of it.
‘He had to refer back to your account and he said you had bought a christening mug, a brooch – my gold-and-emerald tiger brooch – and a silver bracelet.’
‘Ah!’ The smile he gave her was perfectly steady. ‘And you were wondering why I hadn’t yet given you the bracelet?’
She knew if she said ‘yes’ she would, by lunchtime tomorrow, be receiving a bracelet purporting to be the original, although this time with her name engraved on it.
The sense of betrayal, and the bitter disappointment she felt in him, flooded through her with such intensity that she didn’t know how she was remaining upright.
‘No, Sholto. I wasn’t wondering that. I know why you didn’t give me the bracelet. It was because it hadn’t been bought for me.’
‘Absolute rubbish.’ The skin had tightened over his cheekbones and a muscle had begun ticking at the corner of his jaw.
‘No, it isn’t. You had it engraved. And the name you had engraved wasn’t mine.’
Sholto was temporarily robbed of speech. At last he said, his voice full of disbelief, ‘An Asprey employee told you what I’d had engraved on it?’
‘Only because I tricked him into doing so and because, as my Christian name begins with the letter D, he obviously thought the bracelet had been meant for me and there was no harm in divulging the information. Only it wasn’t meant for me, was it?’
The game was up and Sholto knew it. ‘No, it wasn’t.’ Stalling for time, he ran a hand over his hair and then, determining to have the sales assistant instantly fired, said, ‘I can understand you being angry and a little hurt Daphne, but there’s no real reason for either emotion.’
It was a reaction so unlike the one she had been expecting that she gasped.
‘A little hurt?’ The self-control she’d been hanging on to with such difficulty finally deserted her. ‘A little hurt?’ her voice broke on a sob. ‘While I’m pregnant with our baby, you begin an affair with the wife of a colleague – with a woman who professes to be a friend of mine – a woman at least ten years older than I am – and you say you understand if, on my finding out about it, I’m a little hurt! Well, I’m a damn sight more than a little hurt!’
‘Let’s get one thing straight.’ There was no remorse or contrition in his voice. Instead, to her utter incredulity, he sounded exasperated. ‘It wasn’t an affair. It was barely a fling. If it wasn’t for the fact that you were so close to having Caspian, it wouldn’t even have been that. What’s more, it’s a fling that is over. So can we now please draw a line under it? We’re due at the French Embassy in twenty minutes.’
She felt as if the floor was moving beneath her feet. Nothing had been as she had imagined it would be. Sholto hadn’t been horrified at being found out. He hadn’t been overcome with remorse. He hadn’t begged her forgiveness. Instead, he was behaving as if his adultery was of no consequence whatsoever.
As if reading her thoughts, he said placatingly, ‘Come on, darling. No matter what you might think, it isn’t the end of the world. All married men have flings, and most of the time they are meaningless. Mine certainly was. Jackson will have brought the car round to the door by now. Collect your stole and let’s go.’
She didn’t move. She couldn’t move. She said slowly, ‘And is that what you anticipate doing throughout our marriage, Sholto? Having little “flings” whenever the mood takes you?’
This time she had truly expected a vehement denial. Instead he said, clearly out of patience with the fuss she was making, ‘Be reasonable, Daphne. Why not? Our marriage is a marriage I was dragooned into, because you were pregnant. Amazingly, it’s working out quite well, but under the circumstances I think I deserve to be cut a little slack now and again, don’t you?’
She slapped him hard across the face. For a moment she thought he was going to retaliate, then she saw him master his reaction. Breathing hard, he said tersely, ‘At least the ground rules are out in the open now. This evening the two of us are going to the French Embassy cocktail party – and we’re going to leave for it right now.’
Daphne didn’t argue. After all, attending the party, no matter what the outcome of her confrontation with Sholto, had been what she had intended all along. What she had never envisioned, though, was their confrontation ending the way it had. How could Sholto not love her, the way she loved him? On unsteady legs, with tears of anguish scalding her cheeks, she turned away from him, blind, deaf and dumb with the pain of all that had been lost between them in a few mere moments.
As she picked up her white fox stole, one thing only was obvious to her. She needed her friends. She needed Kate and Ella. She was going to overcome her scruples about leaving Caspian and would go to Crete, and while there she would think very hard about the ground rules for their marriage, as Sholto saw them; for if they applied to him, she saw no reason why they shouldn’t apply to her.
But they weren’t the ground rules she had wanted.
Not even in the small
est way were they what she had sought.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘That’s the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever heard!’ Ella’s delicately featured face was white with outrage.
It was eleven o’clock on an October morning, and she and Kate were sitting around one of the cafeneion’s zinc-topped tables with Daphne, who had arrived by plane from Athens a few hours earlier. The temperature was in the mid-sixties, warm enough for Daphne to be wearing a sleeveless cotton dress, and they were outside, beneath the awning.
Neither Kate nor Daphne disagreed with her, and Ella said vehemently: ‘From what you say, it isn’t even as if he was in love with this Deirdre person and, when it comes to the two of them, I’m not sure which of them has behaved the worst. How could she pretend to be a friend to you, when all the time she was . . . she was . . .’ Words failed her.
‘When all the time she knew how my husband kissed? How he made love?’ Sunglasses hid Daphne’s eyes, but her voice was thick with the hurt and anger she still felt. ‘I don’t know. Deirdre Holbeck-Pratchett is a bitch. What makes a hideous situation even more hideous is that she moves in the same social circles that Sholto and I move in. Forgetting she exists is impossible.’
Kate said, ‘But you are still together? You haven’t left Sholto? He hasn’t left you?’
‘Oh no,’ Daphne’s voice was bitter. ‘We’re still together. Aristocracy doesn’t divorce. Socially, a divorce would be the end of us. It would certainly be the end of Sholto’s high-flying career at the Foreign Office.’
‘And the Royal Enclosure at Ascot would be barred to you,’ Ella said, concerned.
Coming from Ella, the remark was so comical that for the first time since her phone call to Asprey’s, Daphne came very close to laughing. ‘Too true, Ella. I mustn’t forget the truly serious aspects of divorce. Changing the subject to something far happier: tell me all about your wedding. I hated not being here for it, but in June I was the size of a house, and Caspian could have been born at any moment.’
Ella pushed her coffee cup to one side. ‘My wedding was wonderful, Daphne. Andre stood in for my father and gave me away and, before I put in an appearance, Christos led a parade to the church, accompanied by musicians singing wedding songs and playing lyres. In the parade were his family and all the local villagers. There must have been three hundred people in total, and when you add in all the villagers who came from Kalamata, the full number of guests must have been close to six hundred.’
‘Great Scott! Where on earth was the reception held?’
‘Where nearly all Cretan wedding receptions are held – in the village square.’
Remembering the Kourakis family’s extremely modest income, and knowing how unlikely it was that Ella’s parents had contributed to a wedding she knew had disappointed them deeply, Daphne was dumbfounded. ‘But who paid for all the food and drink?’
‘The guests.’ Kate raised her face to the warmth of the sun. ‘It’s the tradition for Greek wedding presents to be gifts of money, and a relative of the bride or groom stands at the exit of the church holding a special tray, on which guests place money-filled envelopes called fakelaki.’
‘And in the evening,’ Ella said, ‘when Christos and I opened the dancing, guests pinned even more money on my dress. All of which meant there was no problem at all, when it came to paying for the food and drink.’
‘How practical. And what about the wedding service? What did your koumbara have to do?’
Kate pushed her chair away from the table. ‘While Ella tells you, I’ll bring fresh coffee out.’
As Kate headed into the cafeneion, Ella said, ‘When the priest had blessed our wedding rings and placed them on the fourth finger of our right hands, Nikoleta exchanged the rings three times to symbolize how, in marriage, the weakness and imperfections of one of us will be compensated by the strength of the other. And then she performed the crowning.’
‘The crowning?’ Daphne’s eyes widened.
‘Crowning symbolizes the establishment of a new family under God. Our crowns were made of plaited flowers, and represented the new kingdom of our marriage and of our being the king and queen of our home and of our family to come; and, just as she had with the rings, Nikoleta exchanged our crowns three times.’
‘It all sounds very beautiful – and not at all like a Methodist ceremony.’
‘Oh, there were some aspects that wouldn’t have been out of place at a Methodist ceremony. There was a reading from St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, and another New Testament reading from John. Plus the service and the symbolism and the words used were so beautiful I didn’t mind it not being a Methodist service. As each day goes by, I’m beginning to feel more and more Greek. I haven’t converted to the Greek Orthodox Church yet, but I’m happy for the children we’ll have to be Greek Orthodox and – who knows? – perhaps before too long I will be Greek Orthodox as well.’
Happiness and contentment radiated from her.
Daphne wondered if, before the Asprey’s phone call, she too had radiated the same happiness and contentment. Certainly she had felt it and, just as certainly, she didn’t feel it any longer. As Kate came out of the cafeneion with another pot of coffee, she wondered if she would ever again feel that level of heedless, glorious happiness that she had felt in the first nine months of her marriage to Sholto.
Kate set the jug down on the table, saying, ‘I can hear a truck coming up the mountain and I think we’re about to be joined by Lewis and Helmut. They’ve been in Heraklion and it can’t be anyone else, as everyone is either at the palace or the cave.’
Now that they were no longer talking, both Daphne and Ella could also hear the faint sound of an approaching vehicle.
Daphne said, ‘Is it the usual end-of-season scramble to get things done, before you abandon the sites for the winter?’
‘Something like that.’ The sound of the engine changed as, still out of sight, the truck crested the lip of the plateau. ‘The team that was new to us in May has already left and won’t be back until next March or April. Only the hard core are still here: Angelos and Dimitri Mamalakis, Pericles, Nico, Yanni and Adonis. Yanni wants to do exactly as he did last year, which is keeping an eye on the palace site by camping out in a cave overlooking it. Pericles will be leaving for his home on the mainland in a couple of weeks’ time. Nico and Adonis will be leaving for their homes in western Crete. Dimitri and Angelos live in Kalamata, and they’ll be on hand if Yannis should need them.’
‘And what will you and Ella do, from November to next spring?’
‘I shall be at Knossos, using the facilities in the workrooms to study and date the huge number of vases we’ve found. One black-figure vase depicting Theseus fighting the Minotaur is almost exactly the same as one found at the Palace of Minos by Sir Arthur Evans, but other scenes aren’t so easy to decipher, and the pieces of pottery waiting to be pieced together are in the thousands and could keep me busy for years.’ Kate pushed a heavy fall of glossy hair back behind her ear. ‘And I’ll go home for Christmas, spend time with my parents and come back at the end of January, or early February.’
‘And my plans aren’t much different.’ Ella refilled their coffee cups. ‘I’ll be going to Wilsden, although for New Year, not Christmas, and I’ll be staying there for as long as it takes to bring Mum, Dad and Granddad round to accepting Christos as a son-in-law and being happy for us.’
Privately, Daphne thought Ella unlikely to achieve her aim. Secretly sympathizing with the feelings of Ella’s parents and granddad, she said, ‘Perhaps when they meet Christos and see how happy the two of you are . . .’
Her voice tailed away and Ella said carelessly, ‘Oh, they won’t be meeting him. Not this coming New Year, at any rate. When I suggested that he come with me to Yorkshire, he was appalled. You would have thought I’d suggested that he take a trip to Outer Mongolia.’
Daphne carefully kept her eyes from meeting Kate’s, fairly sure she would read the same expression in Kate’s ey
es that she was suppressing in hers. ‘Oh, well,’ she said laconically, making a joke of it, ‘there are lots of people in southern England who have exactly the same thoughts as Christos, where Yorkshire is concerned.’
The sound of the truck speeding towards them through the village brought the subject to a halt. It burst into the square, a couple of barking dogs racing in its wake.
Nikoleta was leaning out of the passenger side window, her riotous mass of dark hair windblown. It was rare to see a Cretan woman with her head uncovered, and Daphne knew immediately that Nikoleta was still determinedly dressing city-style.
‘Daphne!’ Nikoleta jumped from the truck wearing high-heeled sandals and a turquoise linen dress that wouldn’t have been out of place in London. ‘Lewis told me you had sent a telegram saying you were on your way here.’ She dragged a chair up to the table, positioning it next to Daphne’s chair.
Lewis shot Daphne one of his rare smiles. ‘Welcome back to Crete, Daphne. Kate may already have told you we’re in the last week or so of closing down the site, and unfortunately I need her and Ella to be up there for the next few hours. If you want to come with us, you’re very welcome.’
His thumbs were hooked in the pockets of narrow denim trousers and he looked so slim-hipped and virile that Daphne could well understand why, even after all this time, Kate was still so dazzled by him.
‘Not for the first time I’m wearing the wrong kind of shoes for a hike to the upper plateau.’ There was wry laughter in Daphne’s voice. ‘Perhaps tomorrow – and perhaps I could help with the work?’
‘Christos could certainly find you something to do.’ He looked across at Kate. ‘Sorry to do this to you, Kate, when Daphne has only just arrived, but I really do need your help for a couple of hours.’
Beneath the Cypress Tree Page 23
