Deception and Desire

by Janet Tanner

Maggie had tried not to be hurt that he no longer rushed home to her as he had done when they were first married, tried to tell herself that as long as she didn’t nag, as long as she let him have his freedom, he’d get over this restlessness. But it was cold comfort. She might have her own friends in the English community, and she certainly had Ari’s family – close-knit and almost claustrophobic in the way the unit was constructed, with Ari’s mother, the matriarch, ruling them all with a rod of iron – but it was Ari she wanted. It was for him, after all, that she had moved to a foreign land, a different culture. It was him she loved, him she wanted to be with.

  And then she had found out it wasn’t just ‘the boys’ that Ari was seeing when he stayed late in Kerkira. There was a woman too. Her name was Melina. And Maggie did not know what she was going to do about her.

  She stood for a moment with her head bowed. The knowledge that Ari had a lover was a constant weight on her heart; even when she was not actually thinking about it it was still there, an ache that refused to go away.

  Perhaps, she thought sometimes, she should confront him with it – tell him straight out that she knew. If this had been England, if Ari had been English, she felt quite certain she would have done just that. But it wasn’t England, it was Corfu, and Ari wasn’t English; in spite of having been educated and trained in England he was Corfiote through and through. It was four years now since she had first met him, almost three since he had married her and brought her home to Corfu, yet sometimes his foreignness made her feel she scarcely knew him at all.

  In spite of the temperature in the room, still pleasantly warm from the heat of the day, Maggie shivered. They had warned her, of course, everyone who knew anything about mixed marriages and a great many who knew nothing besides. They had pointed out the difficulties of the culture divide, drawn attention to the pitifully high failure-rate of marriages that tried to bridge it. She would be terribly homesick, they said. She would hate being part of a family unit so tight that they lived, if not all in the same house, then next door and next door and next door again, brothers and uncles and cousins, and all ruled over by the matriarch who would expect to have the last word on every aspect of family life, from the upbringing of the children to the menus for the traditional shared Sunday meals. And leaving all that aside, looking just at the man, he would be different to any man she had ever known, the way he thought and spoke and acted determined by a heritage that was totally, absolutely foreign to her. Oh yes, they had tried their hardest to dissuade her, those prophets of doom. And her mother had been the most gloomy of all.

  ‘I’m sure it all seems very romantic, darling. Ari is incredibly handsome and Corfu is a beautiful island – so long as you keep away from the dreadful touristy places. But what will happen when the gilt comes off the gingerbread? And it will … it will!’

  She had said it all in that infuriatingly high-handed way of hers, her light and musical tone concealing her strong desire to domineer. It was as if she was so certain she was right that she simply could not believe that anyone, least of all one of her daughters, would go against her wishes. Maggie sometimes thought that if it had not been for her mother’s opposition she might not have rushed into marriage with Ari quite so speedily.

  The fact that she had gone against all advice, however, was one of the reasons she was so reluctant to admit defeat now, or, indeed, do or say anything that might bring matters to crisis point. She had married Ari and come to Corfu determined to make it work; her fierce pride refused to allow her even to consider the possibility of admitting that the prophets of doom had been right and she had been wrong.

  Maggie shivered again. She went through into the bedroom, dominated by the bed, with its headboard of dark wood and coverlet of woven cotton, which she shared with Ari, and fetched a light silk wrap, slipping it on over the swimsuit she practically lived in at this time of year. From the mirror in the heavy old wardrobe her reflection looked back at her – a tall, slender girl, her skin tanned to a warm golden-brown by the almost constant sunshine, her hair falling in soft and unstyled waves on to the peacock-blue and scarlet of the wrap.

  Ari had given it to her for her birthday last year. She had seen it in one of the dozens of fashionable shops in Kerkira that catered mainly for the tourists and had fallen in love with it.

  ‘Go and buy it for yourself,’ Ari had said when she told him.

  ‘But it’s horribly expensive …’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s no problem. I have some nice fat fees coming in. And besides, it’s been a good year for the olives.’

  Ari’s family owned a number of extensive olive groves and the harvest this year had been exceptional. Not only had the weather been right but also the trees had been in their ‘full crop’ mode – although they bore fruit annually the rhythm of the trees meant that they produced good and poor returns in alternate years.

  Though these days many landowners found it difficult to get pickers to harvest their crops and had to resort to spreading acres of nylon net beneath the trees to catch the olives as they fell or simply let them rot on the ground, Ari’s family had no such problem. The old women still came to the Veritos groves, loosing their donkeys to graze under the trees and singing in tuneless unison as they picked. But they were not well paid and thinking of the hours of backbreaking work they put in for such a pittance whilst the Veritos family sat back and took the profits made Maggie feel vaguely guilty.

  ‘I don’t think I should spend so much on one little wrap,’ she had protested.

  Ari’s good-looking face had darkened.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? I said have it, didn’t I? It’s your birthday soon anyway.’ He pulled a handful of notes from his wallet and put them down on the table in front of her. ‘ That should be enough. And get yourself some perfume or something with the change.’

  Oh Ari, Maggie thought sadly, fingering the soft silk. Whatever else he might be there was no doubt he was generous. But she couldn’t help wishing that he had gone out and bought her a birthday present himself rather than just giving her the money. And there was also the sneaking suspicion that such generosity might be the result of a guilty-conscience …

  Maggie helped herself to a cigarette from the pack on the dressing table, lit it and went back out outside. Dusk was beginning to fall now, soft and warm. She drank what was left of her iced coffee and walked to the edge of the patio to sit on the low wall that separated it from the beach where the water, dark, mysterious purple now, lapped against the shingle. On the horizon sea merged with sky in a faint blue haze which was, she knew, the coast of Albania, and the peace was broken only by the barking of a dog somewhere along the shoreline and the first mournful cry of a skops owl in an olive grove above the house.

  This, she thought, was what she loved best about Corfu, the sense of timelessness and peace, the feeling that civilisation had gone so far and no further, achieving that perfect balance before deteriorating into modern chaos. Here the old values still had meaning; crime, in the country areas at least, was almost non-existent, and children could be allowed out to wander and play in perfect safety.

  Children.

  As she thought of them a small, sharp pain spiralled deep within Maggie, a little thread of primal longing that tugged at the very core of her being. Sometimes she wanted a child so much that it was like a fever, sometimes, as now, it was a sweet sadness mixed with all those other longings for the fulfilment that somehow seemed to have eluded her.

  Perhaps if there was a child things would be different. Perhaps if he had a son Ari would have a reason to come home. Maggie drew impatiently on her cigarette, realising that the supposition that a child of their own might keep Ari true when she herself had been unable to was an admission of defeat, yet at the same time accepting how much store Corfiotes set by their children and knowing how much Ari longed for a son.

  In the early days they had often talked about it, lying in that big bed with its wooden headboard during the long, lazy afternoons when Ari
returned from his office for lunch and the traditional siesta.

  It had been something that had amused her, the way he split his working day into two, mornings and evenings, with the afternoons, after the midday meal, reserved for rest. In winter, when the rains came and the roads were sometimes impassable, he insisted they move into their town flat, but throughout the long summer months he made the half-hour journey between Kassiopi and Kerkira four times a day instead of twice as a commuting Englishman would, and thought nothing of it. Siesta in Mediterranean countries was, after all, a way of life.

  Maggie had come to enjoy those hours that had seemed, somehow, stolen out of time, when they lay in each other’s arms with only a soft sheen of perspiration to cover their bodies, he drowsy after an enormous meal of fish or moussaka or octopus casserole, she not sleepy because afternoon naps had not yet become a habit with her. They would make love – in those early days hadn’t it seemed they made love constantly? – Ari would sleep a little and they would talk, hopes and plans and dreams whispered in the softly cloying heat of the afternoon when the whole world outside their shuttered room seemed to have fallen still and silent but for the gentle tug of the waves on the shingle and the occasional whisper of warm breeze.

  ‘When we have our first son he will be called Iannou after his grandfather. You know that, don’t you?’ Ari had said. He was lying a little apart from her but with his hand resting on her belly as if already a little life was beginning to grow there.

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s the custom, isn’t it?’

  ‘It has always been. We believe, you see – the old people believe – that the soul lives on through a name.’

  She said nothing. She knew better than to mock. Corfiotes were very religious – mostly Greek Orthodox. In any case she thought it was a beautiful idea.

  ‘So our first son will be named Iannou but you can call him Yanny for short. He will be very sturdy and very bright and we shall put his name down to go to a good school in England. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  Her heart had lurched a little with a tug of homesickness, both for herself and also for her unborn, unconceived son who would have to leave Corfu and everything familiar to him to get a good English education.

  ‘Yes,’ she had said, ‘yes, I think so. But not until he’s much older. I should miss him too much.’

  ‘Of course, darling. First he will go to the little nursery school here, and then the junior school. After that … we will see.’

  ‘Ari!’ she had said, laughing suddenly. ‘ We are talking as if he were here! I’m not even pregnant yet!’

  ‘Then we must see what we can do to rectify that. Starting perhaps … now!’ He reached for her, pulling her close, and she felt the warmth of his body suffuse her own.

  Making love had, in those days, been perfect pleasure, soft English sensuousness crossed with Mediterranean passion. But although they had done it so often – she had teased him that they would wear out in six months flat the bed that had so far survived a century – she had not become pregnant. And what, in the beginning, had seemed like something to be treated lightly, because it would be the inevitable next stepping-stone in their lives together, began to assume greater and greater importance.

  Maggie learned to live with the sidelong questioning glances of her mother-in-law. She learned to live with the twin senses of inadequacy and longing which overtook her when she watched Ari’s sister’s children playing in the shingle or running about in the lane behind the four houses that made up the family commune. Ari’s sister, Christina, had been married at eighteen taking with her a fine prika – a dowry – of olive trees. Maggie knew she was already slightly inferior in her mother-in-law’s eyes because she had had no dowry. But the fact that she had so far produced no offspring, no child to carry on the Veritos family name was, she knew, an even more heinous offence in their eyes.

  ‘Perhaps we should seek medical advice,’ she had ventured tentatively after more than a year and a half had gone by with no sign of the much longed for baby. But Ari had scowled, his dark brows lowering and almost meeting, his black eyes gone suddenly small and hard beneath them.

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘Well, to find out why I haven’t got pregnant.’

  ‘Are you suggesting there is something wrong with me?’

  ‘Ari – of course not! But surely it would be sensible to make sure everything is …’

  ‘I don’t want to see some interfering doctor and don’t want you to either!’ he interrupted her. ‘Our private life is our own.’

  ‘But if they could help us to get a-baby …’

  ‘No! Veritos men don’t need any help in fathering strong sons. Be quiet about it, can’t you? I don’t want to hear any more.’

  He had turned away angrily and Maggie was left fighting a sudden desire to burst into tears. She was both upset and surprised by his outburst but she also felt hopeless and defeated. The fierce pride of the Greek male was at stake here – Ari felt she had insulted his manhood, though that was the last thing she had intended to do. She had not for one moment thought he might be infertile; if anything it was her own ability to conceive that was worrying her. She had always suffered from painful and irregular periods, and she was beginning to think she might need medical help of some kind. But Ari had been so adamant, so totally unwilling even to discuss the matter, she did not know how she could persuade him to see things in a different light.

  It was the first time Maggie had been brought face to face with the yawning void between the Greek and the English way of thinking, and the clash disturbed her. In how many other vital areas would they be totally unable to see each other’s point of view? But for the moment she knew there was nothing to be done. Perhaps eventually Ari would come to see the sense of her suggestion that she, at least, should seek medical help. She hoped and prayed it would not be necessary, but the months went by and still nothing happened. And although the subject was not raised between them again Maggie knew that Ari minded dreadfully that she had not yet been able to present his mother with another grandchild or his father with a boy to carry on the Veritos name.

  Now, sitting on the low wall in the fading light, Maggie felt the desperation creep over her like a bank of the low cloud that sometimes swept in from the sea. She had come to Corfu with such high hopes, a girl very much in love and determined to make this enchanted island, as it was sometimes called, her home. She had tried, she really had tried, but somehow it all seemed to be falling apart. And sometimes she began to doubt her ability to put it back together again.

  She sighed, getting up from the wall and starting back towards the house. There was an ache inside her that might have been the ache of unshed tears, for Maggie seldom cried. What was the point? Crying was such a self-indulgent thing to do and it did not solve anything.

  Halfway across the patio she heard the telephone shrilling again. Obviously down by the beach she had been out of earshot. She ran into the house, willing it not to stop before she reached it, and snatched up the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’

  The crackles of static were distorting the line again, but this time, above them, she could hear a man’s voice. Not Ari – an English voice.

  ‘Am I speaking to Maggie Veritos?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘This is Maggie Veritos. Who is that?’

  ‘Mike Thompson.’

  ‘Mike …’ For a moment her mind was a blank. Then she said uncertainly: ‘Ros’s Mike?’

  ‘Yes. I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.’

  She remembered very well. ‘Lucky old you – he’s an absolute dish,’ she had said after her sister had introduced them last time she had been in England, and Ros had smiled, a little ruefully. ‘Perhaps it’s time I had some luck. To make up for Brendan, my ever-loving ex.’ Maggie had not replied to that. Neither of them seemed to have had much luck in the husband department, she had been thinking, for already she had known things were going dreadfully wrong between her and Ari.
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  ‘Of course I remember you,’ she said now. ‘I was just really surprised, that’s all. Where are you ringing from? Are you in Corfu?’

  ‘No – I’m in England.’

  Maggie experienced the first twinge of foreboding. Why the hell should Mike Thompson be ringing her from England?

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Is it Mum? She’s not ill, is she?’

  ‘No, it’s nothing to do with your mother. It’s Ros.’

  ‘Ros!’ Maggie’s fingers tightened on the receiver and little prickles of tension ran up her arm. ‘What’s wrong with Ros?’

  ‘She’s not with you by any chance, is she?’

  ‘With me? No. Why?’

  There was a little pause, then Mike said: ‘I was just hoping she might be. I’m … well, I’m rather concerned about her. She seems to have disappeared.’

  Maggie brushed her hair away from her face with her free hand.

  ‘What on earth do you mean – disappeared?’

  ‘I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘You mean she’s walked out on you?’

  ‘No – I don’t think so, anyway. I’ve been away on school camp with the kids I teach and when I got back she wasn’t here. Her cottage is locked up, her colleagues at Vandina don’t know where she is, and neither does your mother. I just hoped you might know.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Maggie said. ‘I haven’t heard from her for several weeks now. She does ring me from time to time but the phone lines are so difficult here it’s a pretty hit-and-miss affair, and neither of us have ever been letter-writers. Could she be visiting friends, perhaps? She has lots of friends in London.’

  ‘Possible, I suppose. But it’s not like her to go off without telling someone where she’s going. I was away, it’s true, but I would have thought she’d have left an address with Vandina where she could be contacted if she was needed. You know what she’s like where her work is concerned.’

  ‘Yes, she is pretty obsessed with it, isn’t she?’

  It had always been a joke between the two of them. ‘ I don’t know how you can bear to stay home all day and do nothing,’ Ros had said when she had last come to Corfu to visit Maggie. ‘I’d go crazy! Sun, sea and sand is all very well, but after a week I’d be pining for my portable telephone, if not my desk!’