‘Come, agápi mou. It’s late and you must be tired. The night is warm so we’ll be able to sleep under the stars without a tent. We can bring the boat round to the Sacred Port. You can have a shower, if you fancy, then I’ll light us a fire, and I’ll dive for our dinner. Later, you can choose if you want to sleep on the boat in a proper bed.’
‘No, no,’ she said quickly in case Damian decided to leave her alone on the boat. ‘I love camping.’ Tonight, Oriel wanted to be next to him … She had discovered so much about this man who, only two weeks ago, had been nothing more than a nostalgic memory.
* * *
Later that evening, on the lower slopes of Mount Cynthus next to the shores of the Sacred Harbour, Damian decided that they would use a tent after all. ‘You might prefer to have some privacy,’ he told her when Oriel lifted enquiring eyebrows.
After they’d retrieved the camping bag from the Alcyone, she had watched him work, his movements swift and efficient. His back muscles rippled as he shifted the equipment around, fixing her a bed for the night in case she preferred to sleep in the privacy of the tent. He wouldn’t let her help him so, sitting on a slab of marble, she had followed him with her eyes, every nerve inside her quivering.
The tent was pitched next to a clump of sea pines, where the ground was covered in tufty yellowed grass and bushes. Damian gathered some dry twigs and pine cones for kindling and had soon lit a fire. Oriel made them a salad with the tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, olives and feta that had arrived on the boat from Mykonos that morning while Damian went off to catch a fish for their dinner.
He soon returned with a beautiful gilt-head bream and tended silently to their supper, his profile – the well defined cheekbones, the high-bridged nose and his lean, sharply defined jaw – outlined against the flames. It was the face of a strong and subtle man and, together with the confidence that endowed his every movement, Oriel was unable to take her eyes off him.
There was an unreal quality about the moment – in the brilliant masses of stars showering the navy-blue velvet sky above and the twinkling lights of Mykonos, seen across the calm expanse of water. Everything was still under the majestic calm of this warm May night, with the moon peering through the branches of the pines like an inquisitive golden eye.
‘It’s almost ready,’ Damian called out and his gaze was upon her before she could pretend to be looking elsewhere. Now their supper was cooked, he built up the fire and the smoke rose up in a tangy column, causing the hovering insects and moths to fly off for the moment. She and Damian took their places opposite each other, leaning their backs against the dried-up trunks of a couple of gnarled trees.
Oriel had imagined she would be too strung out to swallow a morsel but, to her surprise, she was enjoying her meal. Damian had opened a bottle of wine that had been chilled in the yacht’s fridge all day. ‘This fish is delicious,’ she murmured between mouthfuls. ‘The flesh has absorbed the taste of the smoke and the fragrance of the pine cones.’
‘Pure air, good water, sunshine, the beautiful surroundings of nature … these are God’s means for a great life.’
Never had Oriel felt so strongly that a love of these islands was in Damian’s blood, at the very core of his heart. ‘You love the wildness and the mystery of it all, don’t you?’ she noted.
‘I belong here,’ he said simply. ‘For generations my family has lived here on the islands … I am Greek, and proud to be so. The pulse of the place beats in me.’ And Oriel saw in his dark, handsome face that strain of disdainful arrogance inherited from generations of haughty forebears.
It was peaceful by the fire. The flames leapt and danced. Now and then Damian threw on extra kindling or a pine cone, and there would be a sputtering hiss as the fire soared then settled.
Oriel watched the orange glow and the dark figure of the man outlined dimly by the firelight. The wine had loosened her up and the tension that had pulled on her nerves all afternoon – especially after their encounter with the Oracle – had been replaced by a feeling of wellbeing and languor.
‘You seem to have done a lot to your island.’
‘We say in Greece that a society grows great when old men plant trees they know they will never sit under.’
‘Come on, you’re not an old man. How old are you, Damian?’
‘Age is not counted in years, agápi mou, but in the lessons life has taught you.’
His face was in shadow but Oriel didn’t need to see it to know that the burden he was carrying in his heart was heavy. She knew all too well the pain that caused the bitterness she had perceived in his voice just now. Life hadn’t spared Damian – from an early age, tragedy had followed him like a shadow. And if the witch on Mount Cynthus was to be believed, it seemed that calamity was not about to abandon him any time soon. Although his ill fortune appeared to have strengthened him, Oriel guessed that behind the stoic mask this man was vulnerable. Since their conversation on the boat, he had kept his word, raising a wall between them. Yet she felt that tonight, if she probed just a little, Damian would open up to her.
‘Has life taught you so many lessons?’ Oriel ventured quietly.
‘Let’s just say I’ve had my fair share of knocks.’
‘Would you consider it insensitive of me if I asked you about those knocks?’
Damian did not answer immediately. Instead, he lifted a piece of wood and threw it on to the flames with a violence that, to someone who was ignorant of the circumstances surrounding his life, might have seemed unjustified. Oriel waited patiently.
‘I was nine when I saw my father shoot my mother and his brother, who was her lover,’ he declared bluntly.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘A horrible experience. It must have left its mark.’
‘You never forget. But I was the lucky one, I managed to bury it.’ Damian sighed heavily. ‘Helena was five and she’s never walked since. Her mind became unbalanced and when she was younger, my family put her away in an institution in Athens for a while, until I got her out. She needed protecting, not locking up.’ He shook his head slowly.
‘Pericles, too, didn’t escape unscathed. He started to shoot up heroin from the age of fifteen … You probably know the rest, I can’t imagine island gossip hasn’t filled you in. He was murdered by an unknown hand …’ Damian raked frustrated fingers through his hair. ‘He wasn’t alone …’ Again there was a pause, and then: ‘He was with my wife … they were lovers.’ His voice was barely audible and he ran a hand over his eyes, as though to blot out the gruesome scene.
This terrible truth was indeed no revelation to Oriel. ‘Your wife and your brother, that must have hurt,’ she said softly.
Damian shrugged, his gaze shifting to the flames. ‘Cassandra was like a luscious over-ripened fruit, beautiful on the outside but rotten to the core. It hurt because it was my brother and, in some way, it brought up all the pain of the past. But Cassandra and I never loved each other. Our marriage was largely one of convenience, I suppose, so I wasn’t surprised when, after my accident, she rejected me.’
Oriel couldn’t imagine how any woman married to this man could possibly reject him – her whole body cried out to be touched and held by Damian. She cleared her throat. ‘Mattias told me about your accident and how brave you’d been. Were you not afraid?’
‘It wasn’t an act of bravery, I think I’ve never been so afraid in my life. But you see, Mattias and I go a long way back. I couldn’t have just left him there and saved myself. It was an instinctive act, I didn’t stop to think. How could I have lived with that on my conscience? At the end of the day, saving my friend was more important than the fear I felt. A man has to do what he has to do.’
‘I still think it’s brave. There must have been warriors among your ancestors.’
‘Yes, many men in my family fought for the independence of this country in 1921 and took part in the revolution and various other skirmishes.’
She smiled. ‘So it goes without saying that you would turn out to be stro
ng and courageous.’
Damian gave a bitter laugh. ‘Not necessarily. From a thorn a rose emerges and from a rose a thorn, we say in Greece.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that an honest, respected man’s son may turn out to be a criminal and vice versa. I think it was more the knocks I’ve had in my life that formed my character. In this instance I had no choice but to do what I did. As I’ve told you, Mattias and I go back a long way. He’s always been a loyal friend when others who were supposed to be much closer stabbed me in the back. There was a time when I thought life wasn’t worth living, and Mattias was there to give me hope and help me back up the slope …’ Damian’s face seemed to darken in the flickering firelight and his phrase remained suspended in the silence of the night.
‘There’s a chill in the air,’ he said, abruptly changing the subject. ‘I’ll make us some coffee, then I’ll move the boat.’ Suddenly he seemed tense, with an unusual nervousness. Although it was dark, the moon and the glow of the flames projected enough light for Oriel to see that there was a shift in Damian’s mien. He pulled himself up with an effort. His shoulders had slumped a little and his silhouette in the penumbra was almost that of an older man as he went towards the tent to fetch the supplies.
Although he had spoken candidly about the various incidents that had marked him, Oriel had detected only the barest hint of bitterness edging Damian’s voice … until now. She had no doubt that this sudden change in him was prompted by whatever it was that Yolanda had done, and that Mattias had half alluded to. Maybe the hurt of Yolanda’s leaving him in pursuit of her career went too deep for him to express. Maybe, too, he didn’t want to raise the subject of her because he was still torn …
Minutes passed and Oriel was just about to go looking for Damian when he reappeared. He was smiling now, and she might have put his sudden tension down to the flickering light and a trick of her imagination had she not been so sensitized to his every changing mood and expression.
‘I was looking for the briki,’ he explained, brandishing the longhandled coffee pot, shaped like an hourglass. ‘Will you have Turkish coffee with me, or would you prefer the less-strong instant?’
‘I’d love some Turkish coffee, please.’
‘How do you like it? Glikós, métrios or sketos?’
‘I’ll have it métrios, medium, thanks.’
‘Purists will tell you that there are thirty-six different degrees of sweetness.’
‘I can’t see how that can be when Greek coffee cups only hold about two inches of liquid.’
‘When we were studying for our finals, my friends and I used to make big mugs of Turkish coffee to keep us awake all night and less sleepy when we got up in the morning.’ Damian grinned. ‘Those carefree days are some of my best memories.’
Oriel watched him mix the coffee with sugar and water in the briki, which he placed on the smouldering ashes. He boiled the brew until it almost foamed out of the pot then poured it in a glass.
‘I don’t have the right cup for this here, sorry. I have some on the boat but the kaimak on your coffee is nice and thick, and the more foam, the better the coffee will taste. Hopefully, it’ll still be good.’
Oriel laughed. ‘This has been a luxurious dinner, thank you. Much better than anything I’ve ever experienced camping. I don’t think I’d dare to complain.’
Damian now proceeded to make his own cup. ‘We’ve been talking about me all evening. What about you, Calypso?’ he asked. A lighter inflection had appeared in his voice.
Oriel shrugged. ‘Oh, I’ve had a very straightforward life, no ups and downs really.’
‘You must be missing London, the glitter and the lights. It hasn’t been much fun for you on Helios.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. You’ve wined and dined me almost every night.’ Her voice was deliberately breezy. ‘I love my job, as you know, and I can’t say I’ve been short of excitement these past few days …’
He grimaced. ‘No, you’re right, we haven’t made it easy for you. I blame myself for that.’
‘On the contrary, it makes a change.’
‘You seem to have such an adventurous nature, how come you’ve been able to keep yourself out of harm’s way?’
‘I don’t go looking for trouble.’
‘And trouble has never found you?’
‘No.’
‘Until I came along, eh?’
‘You said it, Damian.’ Her smile flickered to him and away, like a moth uncertain of where it should settle.
Damian laughed deep in his throat. His eyes held that diamond brilliance, the irises so enlarged they were like mirrors reflecting the leaping flames – but to Oriel, they were unreadable. ‘Are you cold? I can always take you back to the boat if you’d rather sleep there,’ he wanted to know.
‘I’m fine with camping. I’ve told you, Vicky and I used to do it regularly.’
He chuckled. ‘You might change your mind after this.’ But he didn’t stay to catch her expression, instead busying himself with building up the fire and putting away their supper things.
What was he implying? Excitement raced through her veins, making her pulses flutter. Surely he wouldn’t? For that, Damian would have to break their pact. Either that, or she would have to admit to him that she was falling in love. For that was what was happening to her, Oriel knew that now.
She’d known it all along, even before the night they’d spent in the Room of Secrets, a truth that in her stubbornness she had refused to acknowledge. Certainly Damian was a handsome devil, unpredictable and exciting – but her feelings ran much deeper than infatuation or chemistry. She loved his strength, his bravery, his knowledgeable brain, his integrity; she loved his loyalty and kindness but, most of all, she loved his vulnerability, which he went to such pains to conceal.
Oh God! How blind I’ve been not to see what he means to me.
The eerie encounter with Delia also filled her mind. What had she meant with her reference to Antigone? Sophocles’s play had seen Antigone yield to the fate of the gods, not the laws of man. Although decisive and courageous, she had still come to a tragic end. So what did it mean? It made no sense at all to her. Or was it about Antigone herself? Some scholars believed her name meant ‘opposed to motherhood’ or ‘against men’. But Oriel had no antagonistic ideas towards either. On the contrary, she had always thought she would marry and have children, she just hadn’t met the right man … until now.
She was surprised but happy that Damian had opened up to her. Was it their strange surroundings that induced this mood of amity? Despite the flickering flames of the fire, the darkness had masked them from each other and perhaps it was easier to speak honestly that way. Still, he had not spoken about Yolanda and, until he did so, Oriel couldn’t completely relax. It was as if her trust in Damian would never be entirely wholehearted until he came clean about his childhood sweetheart, with whom he still seemed to share some sort of bond.
As Oriel watched Damian nurse the campfire – he was so close to her now that she felt the impact of him, the masculine attraction pulling at her like a lasso. She realized that every inch of her body felt alive, her senses acutely aware of him. How she longed to kiss that sculpted mouth, to run her tongue over those sensual lips; she ached to hold him and feel the hard strength of him, taste the satiny skin of his broad shoulders, run her fingers through the mass of his black hair. It was all she could do to restrain herself from reaching out and touching him.
Damian paused in prodding the fire and his eyes ran over her. He made as if to move towards her, then checked himself immediately. There was a tortured silence and where there should have been a reaching out, a clasping of hands, a mingling of bodies, there was inert hollowness, an echoing cavern … and it was all her fault, Oriel thought dismally.
Damian quickly broke the moment, sensing their mutual discomfort, and perhaps misreading her reactions. ‘Shall I heat you some hot milk?’
Why did that suggestion bring tears to Or
iel’s eyes? Maybe it was because if she had only let him into her bed the night before, when he had so thoughtfully brought her milk, she could have snuggled into his arms tonight. Being next to him like this, knowing that he wanted her as much as she did him, and not being able to do anything about it was torture. He had rebuffed her earlier that evening and her pride would not allow her a new attempt.
‘Anything the matter, agápi mou?’
Oriel shook her head mutely.
Damian didn’t push her further. ‘I’ll make you that nightcap, it’ll help you sleep on the hard ground.’
He went into the tent and came back with a small pan and a bottle of milk.
‘I’ll do that,’ Oriel offered, taking them from him. She knelt next to the fire and poured some milk into the pan. ‘Would you like one too?’
‘I think I need something stronger,’ he said in a hoarse voice, ‘but wine will have to do for tonight.’ After emptying the bottle into his glass he pulled a packet of Gitanes from his shorts’ pocket. He lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it.
Although she wasn’t looking at him, Oriel could feel that he was watching her, and an unanswered question hovered on her lips. She needed to get to the bottom of it before she could give full rein to her love. She lifted her head. Damian was leaning against the tree, facing her, but his face was in the dark. She took the milk off the fire and poured it slowly into her mug. She hesitated then took a sip of the warm brew as if to give herself courage. ‘Damian,’ she said suddenly, deciding to take the bull by the horns. ‘Last night, and this evening on Mount Cynthus, you said you loved me.’
His voice came low out of the dark. ‘Né, agápi mou, and I will keep repeating it until my last breath.’
‘What about Yolanda, your childhood friend?’
Aphrodite's Tears Page 55
