Beneath the Cypress Tree

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘That’s okay.’ Ella had already risen to her feet, and now Kate rose to hers.

  ‘And I don’t mind,’ Daphne said, ‘although I might, if you rob me of Nikoleta’s company as well.’

  ‘I won’t be doing that. Her shoes are just as unsuitable for mountain-climbing as yours are.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Nikoleta was deeply gratified by the similarity. ‘And so the two of us will stay here and drink coffee and talk.’

  Helmut said, ‘I would also like to drink coffee with you, Daphne, but perhaps I can do so later?’

  His eyes held Daphne’s, the expression in them telling her that he was still as smitten with her as he had been on her previous visit. Then, although she had flirted with him, she had been too much in love with Sholto to give him any serious encouragement. Now she didn’t see any reason why things shouldn’t be a little different.

  ‘Coffee would be lovely.’ Her voice, like his, was carelessly light, but as her eyes met his, they held a look of encouragement he couldn’t possible mistake.

  ‘Gut.’ His mouth crooked into a smile, ‘Ich freue mich darauf.’

  He walked away, falling into step beside Ella, and Nikoleta said, ‘Why does he sometimes speak in German? What did he just say?’

  Daphne’s German wasn’t very good, but what Helmut had said hadn’t been too hard to interpret.

  ‘He said he was looking forward to having coffee with me.’

  Nikoleta was no longer listening. With long strides, Ella and Helmut had disappeared into the steep street that led out of the village and to the track leading to the upper plateau. Kate and Lewis were still crossing the square, walking at a much slower pace, their heads close together in deep discussion.

  Watching them, Nikoleta said bleakly, ‘For months now it has been the same. Always it is Kate he discusses things with. He never used to discuss things with her, and so why does he do so now? Why are Englishmen so strange? Why is it you can never know what is going on inside of them?’

  Considering the events of the last few days, it wasn’t a question Daphne felt qualified to answer. Sympathizing with Nikoleta’s bewilderment, she said truthfully, ‘I don’t know. I wish I did. But Lewis isn’t an Englishman, Nikoleta. He’s a Scotsman.’

  ‘But Scotland is part of England.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. England is England, and Scotland is Scotland. And both countries are a part of Great Britain.’

  ‘Then it is all the same thing, and I do not understand him. Why does he not ask me to marry him? The whole of central Crete believes I am betrothed to him, and I am not. What will my reputation be, if Lewis never asks me to marry him? I will be laughed about from here to Réthymnon. And Kit, who is very, very all-English – he is just as bad. I have been spending time with him to make Lewis jealous, but Lewis is not jealous. And Kit, who I know wants to marry me, never does more than kiss me like a friend and put his arms around me. He is attentive and kind, but he has no . . .’ She struggled for a suitable word. At last she said despairingly, ‘He has no sizzle.’

  That Lewis had plenty of sizzle was something too obvious to need to be stated.

  ‘A Greek man would not treat a woman he loved as Lewis and Kit treat me,’ Nikoleta continued glumly. ‘With a Greek man, a woman knows where she is.’

  Daphne didn’t think this was necessarily true, but didn’t think it the right time to say so. She glanced down at her watch. ‘The sun is over the yardarm. What’s your preference, Nikoleta? Wine or raki?’

  ‘Wine, please. And when you come back with it, we will talk of English things – of Harrods, and King George and Queen Elizabeth and the little princesses. If I was married to Lewis or Kit and lived in England, would I see the King and Queen and the little princesses often?’

  It occurred to Daphne that Nikoleta had rather a distorted view of what life in England would be like, if she should ever find herself living there; and that she would be doing Nikoleta a big favour if she replaced fantasy with a little reality.

  For the next two hours she did her best, but Nikoleta wouldn’t be budged from believing that marriage to Lewis or Kit would automatically mean her seeing a lot of the royal family.

  ‘Sir Arthur did,’ she said stubbornly. ‘He once told me how, when he was with the King’s father, the King’s father said to him how very interested he was in all things Cretan and how, one day, he would like to visit Knossos.’

  Daphne was quite willing to believe that Sir Arthur had had a conversation with George V, but as the King had been known to have no interests other than stamp-collecting and shooting, she didn’t for a moment believe that his expressed interest in all things Cretan had been genuine, or that he had spent a moment pining to visit the Palace of Minos.

  She was just about to say so when they heard someone approaching the square from the street leading to the track.

  Nikoleta immediately lost interest in their conversation, hoping it would prove to be Lewis.

  Daphne was rather hoping it would prove to be Helmut.

  Moments later Helmut stepped from the shadow of the street into the sunlight and Nikoleta’s shoulders sagged in disappointment.

  ‘Helmut on his own means Ella and Kate are going to be longer than Lewis had thought they would be,’ she said desultorily. ‘He will have come to offer us lifts back to Knossos and Heraklion.’

  Daphne took off her sunglasses. ‘Well, if he has, it’s an offer I’m going to accept. I haven’t had much sleep since I left London, and I’m ready for a nice hotel room and a comfortable bed.’

  Any doubts Daphne had, where her intentions with Helmut were concerned, vanished as she watched him cross the square towards them. Tall and toughly built, he moved with an athlete’s muscular strength and coordination. She wondered if he played rugby. He looked like a rugby player, although one without a broken nose or cauliflower ears.

  ‘Lewis apologizes,’ he said as he walked up to them, ‘but he’d miscalculated the length of time things were going to take, and Kate and Ella are going to be at least another two hours. That being the case, would the two of you like lifts back to Knossos and Heraklion?’

  Without a second’s hesitation Daphne rose to her feet. ‘Lovely,’ she said, swinging her bag over her shoulder.

  Nikoleta, who would have far preferred it to have been Lewis who was offering the lift, rose to her feet with much less enthusiasm.

  The bench seat in the truck’s cab seated three people, but only at a pinch. As Helmut opened the truck’s passenger door, Daphne climbed in first, determined to be seated in the middle, in order that she would be thigh-to-thigh with Helmut.

  As she had known it would be, it was a very arousing experience.

  He slammed the truck into gear and, as they sped out of the village and bucketed across the plateau towards the dirt road leading away from it, she knew he was as taut with sexual tension as she was.

  She closed her eyes. There had been a time when it would never have occurred to her to be unfaithful to Sholto; but a month ago he hadn’t been unfaithful to her with Deirdre Holbeck-Pratchett. She needed to do what she was about to do, in order to inflict on Sholto the same pain he had inflicted on her. As far as she was concerned, that way the continuation of their marriage would at least be starting from a level playing field.

  ‘I do not like the winter,’ Nikoleta said half an hour later, as they reached the road leading north-east towards Archanes. ‘I do not see why Lewis always returns to Scotland for weeks in the winter.’

  ‘Presumably he returns for the same reason I go back to Germany. He returns because it is his home.’ There was nothing in Helmut’s voice to indicate the effect that the pressure of Daphne’s body against his was having on him. Ever since they had left Kalamata he had refused to allow his eyes to meet hers in his driving mirror. To have done so would have been to risk driving the truck off the road.

  From Archanes to Knossos, Helmut continued making small talk with Nikoleta about local things. Of how Rhea and Angelos Mama
lakis were finally about to become parents; of how, when the palace dig finally came to an end, a new wing would have to be added to the Heraklion Museum, in order to cope with all the precious artefacts that had been found.

  They sped past the entrance to the Palace of Minos and, a few hundred yards further on, drew up outside the Kourakises’ cottage.

  ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’ Nikoleta asked Daphne, before jumping down from the cab.

  ‘Maybe tomorrow evening, but during the day I’m going to be working on the site with Kate and Ella.’ Although Daphne now had room enough to put a little space between her and Helmut, she didn’t do so.

  ‘Oh, the site – always it is the site.’ Nikoleta had long ago lost enthusiasm for the site at Kalamata. Before its discovery, her relationship with Lewis had been exciting and full of the hope of an engagement. Now, because he was always at Kalamata and only rarely at Knossos, she did not see him as often and, when she did, her hopes of an engagement only grew fainter, not stronger.

  Helmut waited until a disconsolate Nikoleta had bypassed a tethered goat and had closed the door of the house behind her and then he said abruptly, his voice thick with tension, ‘Which hotel?’

  ‘The Astoria.’

  She laid her hand on his thigh. ‘Drive fast.’

  He covered the three miles of narrow road in under four minutes.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  MARCH 1939

  The temperature in Cairo was seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit: hot, but not yet unbearably so. Daphne was seated in a wicker chair on the shaded terrace of Shepheard’s Hotel in the centre of the city, waiting for Sholto to join her for lunch. That it was Sholto who had been posted to the British Embassy in Cairo, and not Toby Holbeck-Pratchett, had pleased her enormously. It had been one in the eye for Deirdre, who, Daphne knew, had been much looking forward to Cairo; and Egypt had the wonderful advantage of being only a sea crossing from Crete.

  Pulsating and exciting, Cairo was a city she had immediately felt at home in. There was a crazy energy about it that suited her personality. Although Egypt was no longer a British Protectorate, Britain still had the right to intervene in Egyptian affairs if her interests were threatened, and large swathes of the city were as much British as they were Arab.

  The diplomatic community either lived in Garden City, close to the British Embassy, or at Zamalek, which was situated on an island in the Nile and had the advantage of being within a stone’s throw of Cairo’s exclusive Gezira Sporting Club. The large, airy house she and Sholto had moved into was at the far end of one of Zamalek’s broad boulevards. From her bedroom windows, Daphne could see the white sails of feluccas navigating the Nile and, when the breeze was in the right direction, hear the cheers from the Sporting Club’s stands when a six was scored at cricket.

  The terrace at Shepheard’s looked out onto a busy street and, for most people seated on it, that only added to its attraction. It was fun to wave to friends trundling past in horse-drawn gharries; to notice who was being accompanied by whom in a smart diplomatic motor-car; to watch the antics of the monkey seated on the shoe-shiner’s shoulder at the foot of the steps leading on to the terrace.

  It was also quite acceptable for a woman to be seated at a table unaccompanied, as she waited to be joined by a woman friend or, as this was Cairo and not much shocked anyone, a man friend.

  A taxi swerved to a halt in front of the hotel and a friend of Daphne’s stepped from it, accompanied by a spruce-looking gentleman wearing the uniform of a British brigadier. Lady Vanessa Dane was married to a high-ranking government official and held a senior position in the St John Ambulance Brigade. Mindful of fast-thickening war clouds, Daphne had joined the St John Ambulance Brigade in London and, when she had arrived in Cairo, Vanessa had been one of the first friends she had made.

  As Vanessa crossed the terrace with her escort, she dropped Daphne a wink. Daphne knew exactly what the wink signified. It meant that Vanessa was embarking on a new love affair.

  Daphne lit a cigarette and blew a plume of blue smoke into the air, well aware that to have been in Cairo for three months and still have no lover labelled her as being something of a slouch.

  She didn’t care. Her experience with Helmut had taught her a lesson. Extramarital sex was explosively dangerous. She hadn’t thought it would be, because it had never occurred to her that she wouldn’t be in total control of the situation. How could she not be, when it was to be a one-off with a man she need never meet again, if she didn’t want to? When the dig was over, Helmut would disappear to another dig: one in Iraq, or Syria, or Persia. He wasn’t a friend of Sholto. He wasn’t in their social circle, or even on the fringes of it. What repercussions to a one-night stand or, as it had turned out to be, a one-day stand could there possibly be? In retrospect, the sexual electricity between the two of them should have told her exactly what kind of repercussions there could be, but Daphne had been so determined to pay Sholto back in his own coin that she had been blind to them.

  She chewed the corner of her lip, thinking back to the moment when, with a screech of tyres, Helmut had brought the truck to a halt outside Heraklion’s Astoria Hotel. They had run across the pavement into the foyer and she had asked for her room key, without even attempting to explain Helmut’s presence. In the slow, creaky lift he had pulled her into his arms and kissed her deeply. Then it had been another sprint along a corridor to her room. When they reached it, he had kicked the door shut behind them and then, without even pausing to remove all her clothes or his, or to make it to the bed, he had made love to her on the hard floor.

  It had been lovemaking that was as violent as a battle.

  The second time, naked and in bed, had been different. Like Sholto, Helmut was an accomplished lover and this time he made love to her with careful expertise, as well as raw need. Her response had been total – so utterly without restraints of any kind, mental and emotional as well as physical, that she’d forgotten all about her reason for being in bed with him. Sholto might just as well have not existed. All that mattered was Helmut and the all-engulfing pleasure he was giving her.

  It was only later that, still in each other’s arms, exhausted and sheened with sweat, he’d said with great depth of feeling, ‘I knew making love to you would be like this, mein Liebling. I knew it would not be for once, or for just a few days. I knew it would begin something serious for me.’ Then finally, and at long last, warning sirens had exploded in Daphne’s head.

  Even now, thinking about that moment, her stomach tightened. Her cheek had been pressed against his strongly muscled chest and she had made a sudden, decisive movement, breaking free of his arms and pushing herself up against the pillows.

  ‘It can’t be something serious,’ she’d said, panic-stricken at how very easily it could be. ‘I’m in love with Sholto. We have a much better marriage than most people I know. And there is Caspian. I would never risk Sholto having grounds to divorce me and suing for custody of Caspian.’

  Helmut had sat up with even more suddenness than she had. ‘Then why this?’ he’d demanded. ‘I thought it was because you knew, from your last visit, the effect you had on me and that you now felt the same about me. If this was just a one-off holiday adventure, then I need to know, because it wasn’t a one-off holiday adventure for me!’

  She’d swung her legs from the bed and reached for the kimono she used as a dressing gown. Rising to her feet, knowing that he deserved an explanation, she’d wrapped it around herself and turned to face him. ‘I love Sholto,’ she’d said, ‘but when I was in the final months of my pregnancy with Caspian, he did something I’ve found very hard to forgive.’

  ‘He had an affair?’

  She’d nodded and said, ‘It’s over now. The woman in question wasn’t important to him. But I just wanted to . . . needed to . . .’

  ‘Even up the score?’ His face had drained white beneath his suntan. ‘Well, you’ve certainly achieved that.’ He’d vaulted to his feet and had begun dressing with sharp, ang
ry movements. ‘I’m glad I was so useful to you. I’d like to say I was lying, when I said I’d thought making love to you would be the beginning of something serious for me, but I wasn’t.’ He’d zipped up his trousers and pulled his shirt on over his head. Tucking it into his trousers, he’d said savagely, ‘Now I know how women feel when they say a man used them. I feel used! And, Gott im Himmel, it is not a good feeling.’

  She’d said unsteadily, ‘Although at first I had an ulterior motive for wanting you to make love to me, once it started – and even before, when we were still at Kalamata – that motive no longer even entered my head. From the moment I stepped into the truck, everything that has taken place between us has, for me, been genuine and true.’ A sob had risen in her throat and she’d choked it down. ‘And because it’s been genuine and true, and for all the reasons I’ve already given, it can’t continue, no matter how much I may want it to.’

  The depth of her sincerity and distress was palpable.

  Helmut had said, sensing she wasn’t going to change her mind, ‘Then if all we have is today, meine Liebe, let us at least have the full day together.’

  She had known what her answer should be, but she hadn’t had the willpower to say it. Instead, when he’d stepped towards her, she had entered his arms like an arrow entering the gold, overcome by the vast, unspeakable relief that there were still hours and hours before the day was over.

  ‘More coffee, Madame?’ asked a waiter wearing a tasselled fez.

  Daphne glanced down at her watch. Sholto was now ten minutes late, but she knew from experience that he wouldn’t be much longer.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said, and as the waiter turned away to attend to another table, Sholto emerged from the crowd of pedestrians on Ibrahim Pasha Street and took the steps leading to the terrace two at a time.

  Her heart flipped. Vanessa was welcome to her brigadier. Her marriage to Sholto had its tensions and wasn’t quite as she had envisioned, but then all marriages had their difficulties. She knew, from reading between the lines in Ella and Kate’s letters to her, that Ella’s marriage wasn’t entirely problem-free. She was also certain that, like her, Ella wasn’t going to allow the problems to destabilize her marriage.