“… But you agree that this should be the end?”
“Yes.” After a minute he added: “We’re running on rocks—at least, I am—so quickly that to miss total shipwreck …”
She said: “You want me?”
“It goes without saying, doesn’t it?”
“But it is much more than that?”
“Much more.”
“If it was only that.”
“It can never be only that.”
The sun was gaining warmth, but the day and the moment seemed very cold for them both.
She said: “Then go, Gene, go. Leave me as soon as we get down. Leave Greece and never come back. Promise you will go—at once—so that I shall never have the fear of meeting you again.”
“I’ll go,” he said. “ Write it out of your life. I’ll go.”
Chapter Eighteen
She got back to her flat about six on the Monday. When she put her key in the door she found it unlocked. It was late for Edda. Then she could smell his cigar smoke.
He was sitting turning the pages of a French novel, a glass with brandy in it by his side. His pince-nez glinted as he turned and nodded and half smiled. “ You’re late, Anya.”
She went over and after a barely noticeable hesitation kissed him. “Late for what, darling?”
“I said I’d drop in for a drink about five today.”
“Did you?” she said flatly. “Of course it’s Monday! Have you been waiting long?”
“An hour. I’m usually punctual.”
She went across and unstoppered the sherry decanter and took up a glass. “What a day! I need a drink.”
He added: “But it appears I shall be unpunctual now. My next meeting is just due to start.”
“I’m so sorry. I was quite mixed in the days of the week.”
“Have you been out of town?”
“Yes. I’m dirty and lame. Can I fill your glass?”
“Have you been with Gene Vanbrugh?”
She sipped her drink before replying. “Yes.”
“Where did you spend last night?”
“Why do you suppose I wasn’t here?”
“I rang. But there are other reasons. Go on.”
“I spent it in a hut in the mountains near Delphi.”
“With Gene Vanbrugh?”
“Yes.”
With his tidy fingers he put a book-mark in the pages of the novel and closed it.
“Did he make love to you?”
“He was not invited to.”
“I shouldn’t have thought a man of his type necessarily needed the invitation.”
She said slowly: “For once it is not your place to think. Six years ago I made a bargain with you, George. When I break it I’ll no longer take your money or your fiat.”
Lascou’s ductile sensitive mind seemed to accept the statement and close around it and absorb it undigested, moving on all the time into prepared country. “ Darling, it’s strange, this sudden feeling for this man. I think you have even tried to disguise it from yourself. Perhaps it is the unfamiliarity of such a person as Vanbrugh. Please, I am not trying to blame you, I am interested, inquiring. I am on your side—though frankly I don’t think he is worth it.”
“Worth what?” she said, still with a queer tense politeness. “ Three days of my time? I have given longer to the Earthquake Relief Fund.”
He watched her attentively while she finished her drink. Then she sat down and began undoing one of her stockings through her skirt.
He said: “ Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you go by car?”
“Yes. He hired one, but asked me to return it to the garage for him.”
“Where did he leave you?”
“At Daphni.”
“What are his plans?”
She slipped down her stocking and took off her shoe. “ D’you suppose he discussed them with me, his enemy?”
“I imagine you had some conversation in thirty-six hours.”
She flexed her ankle. “I borrowed shoes up there; but I see there’s no blister after all. I shall not be lame for life. Talk? Oh, yes, we talked: God, what a bore it all was! What a silly little man he is! I shall take a bath and then go out to dinner somewhere and on to a night-club. The Little Jockey, probably.”
He watched her foot for a moment, then his eyes travelled up her leg to her thigh and to the peculiar twisted angry grace of the way she was sitting.
“Anya.”
“Yes?”
“Look at me.”
She raised her head and gave him a smile as taut as a wire.
“In the last ten years I have lavished a great deal of money and attention on you.”
“Yes, George. One of your less profitable investments.”
“Far from it. Working admittedly on the finest material, I have turned you from a long-legged underfed waif into one of the most beautiful and sought-after women in Greece.”
She slipped on her shoe and got up. “Dear me.”
“And it’s been worth it. Don’t think you owe me anything. If it ended tomorrow I should regret nothing. But there may be one drawback from your point of view: I am not willing that it should end tomorrow.”
“Don’t forget your other audience is waiting.”
“Anya!”
She turned on him like a flash. “Well, what do you want me to say? What do you want me to do? D’you want me to tell you that I’ve separated from this man and will never see him again? Well, I have! Today. This afternoon. Before coming here. When I left him that was good-bye! And d’you think I care!”
His eyes flickered. In the last year he had become much less tolerant of opposition from any quarter. “ Yes, I think you care—in some rather perverse, unformulated way. Men like that appeal to something in women. If——”
“At this moment, George, you do not appeal to me! In my perverse unformulated way I find you very offensive.”
They stared at each other. Like brother and sister quarrelling, they showed their tensions in the same way. Suddenly supple and pliant he said: “Don’t let’s fight over this, darling. I say that not because it’s not important enough; but because it is too important. I’ll go now.”
“Whatever you say.”
“But I put this to you to think over—if it ever came to the point, I should not be willing to lose you—to anyone. I put it to you both as an entreaty and as a threat.”
“A threat? Oh, come. Isn’t that a little heavy in the hand?”
“Life frequently is. It’s only we would-be sophisticated ones who try to take the sting out of it with a laugh and a shrug and a few cigarette stubs and a cocktail shaker. Scratch the sophisticate and you will find the polish goes barely skin deep.”
“You terrify me.”
“No, my dear Anya, I don’t terrify you. You lived too long in terror to be able to feel it any more. But you are a very honest person, within your limitations, as, within my limitations, I try to be. I was not trying to offend you when I said what I did—only honest. But I do hope if I threaten you—or him—or anyone else—you’ll not think I’m merely bluffing.”
She said: “I could never accuse you of that.”
He picked up his white pigskin gloves. “ Remember, preferably, that I have loved you since I first saw you. Nothing has happened since then to make me change my mind.”
“Does your mind direct your love?” she asked desolately. “ That must be very convenient. Or better still perhaps, can one direct oneself not to feel at all?”
Chapter Nineteen
The letter came at one o’clock on the Tuesday. Maria had been on the look-out all day. Several times she had been in to Philip, who lay on his back on his bed in a litter of cigarette ends, but he wouldn’t speak to her. For two days he had spoken to nobody. Once each day he had been out of the house to buy more cigarettes, but each time when he came back he seemed worse. He was getting through nearly a hundred and fifty a day.
; Often there was no one in the shabby office-reception-desk when the post came and it was slapped down on the shelf which topped the half door into the office. Anyone was then free to paw over the letters and maybe take what didn’t belong to them. She was down before eight and hung about until the morning delivery came, but there was nothing for her. Then just after twelve she went down again and stolidly read the cinema advertisements for an hour. Mme Nicolou, who ran the boarding house, was frying some fish, and the smell and crackle of it came through to the lobby, but Maria had no sensations of hunger or thirst. All normal feeling had gone on the day of Juan’s death, leaving nothing but the one desire. She carried it with her like an ikon, in her breast. For a week she had fasted like a saint before some time of trial.
It was a strong envelope when it came but not very big, being about seven inches by five, and not even registered. But she knew her cousin’s handwriting. She crept with it up to her bedroom. Philip was useless. One person only she could be sure of, and that was herself.
She slit the envelope up the side and took out a flat stained waterproof wallet about the size of a tobacco pouch. With it was a brief letter from her cousin which told her nothing fresh. She opened the wallet. Inside this, behind a mica screen, was a man’s photograph and some details of his age, appearance, profession. In the pocket of the wallet were about ten letters. She opened the first letter.
Maria Tolosa’s father had been a night club dancer too, and before something went wrong with his kidneys that killed him off prematurely they had travelled Europe together. So she had a smattering of all the western languages, Greek among them. But reading Greek was a different matter from speaking it, and to her anger she found she could not read these letters at all. Five of them were, badly stained, but they were all quite clear. The dates ranged from 1947 to 1950.
She bit her thumb nail. Sufficient to see the pieces of the jig-saw? But she wanted the pattern. She had a belief in her own memory. A thing in her own mind was more indelible than any paper.
And although she trusted Gene Vanbrugh she knew she had nothing as yet stronger than instinct to go on. Here was one way of putting him to the test. Get the letters read by somebody else and then ask Gene Vanbrugh to read them. If he didn’t know she knew what the letters contained and the two accounts tallied.…
But who? … Mme Nicolou? Mme Nicolou had not always kept a B-category lodging house. Before the war she had been an actress of promise, until the starvation of the German occupation had jogged her mind one groove out of true. She would be able to read the letters and, what was better, would soon forget them.
Maria slid the letters into their wallet. Afterwards, after they had been read, they would go next to her body in the top of her girdle, where temporarily they would be safe.…
She unlocked the door and found herself facing her brother-in-law.
In thirty-nine Spanish summers Philip Tolosa had never sweated so much as he had done in this one week of cool Athenian spring. He was sweating now.
“So it has come.”
Caught with the thing in her hand she could not deny it.
“The letter? Yes. There are some papers. I am taking them to get them read.”
“I shouldn’t do that.” He made a move to take the wallet but she held it away.
“Why not?”
“Let me see what it is.”
“You wouldn’t understand. You know less Greek than I do.”
“Where are you taking them?”
“To Mme Nicolou.”
“Don’t do that. Give it to me. Let me see.”
“No. See it later.”
“Maria!”
She said: “I was his wife. What was his is now legally mine.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t know the danger we’re in.”
“Do you think I care for danger!”
“Well, I do. If this——”
“You,” she said with contempt. “It is nothing to do with you if you don’t want it to be. I can handle this quite alone.”
“You young fool!” He grasped her arm, but feverishly, almost without strength. “Don’t you know this house has been watched every minute since Juan died! What chance have you of doing anything on your own? What chance has either of us——”
“Then why did you press me to send for this, if you thought——”
“Because it was the only hope! Maria, I tell you I’d no choice! If Juan had taken heed of my warnings! I tried to persuade him. I threatened not to come to Greece. I wish to God I had broken up the act before we came.”
“Get out of my way!”
“If you do anything with those letters except hand them over they’ll kill us both!”
“They? They? Who are they?”
“Do you think I would choose this? Do you think I wanted it that way——”
“You—betrayed him,” she said suddenly.
He stood with his back to the door, his face the colour of wet linen. He showed his teeth slightly each time he drew in his breath.
“You call it that. Of course you call it that. But d’you think I wanted to do it? D’you think I cared nothing for him? He was my brother as well as your husband. I tell you I tried to stop him—I quarrelled with him! I knew what he was up against. Besides, it was a betrayal on his part. When one ceases to be a Communist one does not cease to have some honour, some loyalty.… I do not know how they knew it was Juan, that he was responsible for the attempt to get money; for that was due to no move of mine. All I heard, all I got, was notice to report to the Party. I am still a member, you know. What was I to do? It was right to go from all points of view, to divert suspicion. But when I got to the meeting place, it was no party meeting at all—only thugs waiting for me.…”
She stared at him, but she said nothing at all.
“They beat me up—d’you remember I said I’d fallen in the street.… It was Juan’s life or ours; they put it to me, one life or three.… When he was dead they came again—get the papers, they said, or it will be the end next for you.… Well, I’ve got the papers. Now they’re going to have them!”
She moved carefully an inch or two forward and spat in his face.
Brushing the insult away as an irrelevance, he wiped his hand across his cheek. “What chance have you got? You couldn’t even get out of the house. I tell you you’re fighting the world.”
She said: “You are an Andalusian. I am from Castile. When a man from Castile does what you have done there is only one thing left. He destroys himself.”
“Maria——”
She thrust at him with both hands, thrust him aside and took the handle of the door, got it half open. He clutched her arm, tried to snatch the letter, and she swung round with her clenched fist and all the weight of her body behind it. It took him off balance and he fell down. She pulled the door and was out.
Half down the stairs she stopped to gulp for breath and listened, but he wasn’t yet following. She slid into the office, which as usual was empty, but the door beyond was open and she heard the clatter of plate and fork. Mme Nicolou was just finishing lunching alone, in a pink artificial-silk kimono and scarlet mules. She had dyed blonde hair, heavy and straight and drawn back in streaks so that the white tips of her ears showed through it. The two sides of her face didn’t quite match; one side was wide-awake and confident, the other eye drooped as if it had just seen a sly joke.
“The laundry’s been back an hour, dear. I specially asked them to be quick; it’s two sisters who work for me; and they haven’t charged extra for the bloodstains on the shirt; help yourself to it if you want it; over there; my, how I hate cooking for myself; one stinks of the food before one can put a knive to it.” She picked up a piece of dark-coloured bread in her long pointed finger-nails and began to rub it round and round on her plate mopping up the grease.
Maria shut the door behind her and stood breathing thickly. “Can you read these letters for me, Mme Nicolou? They belonged to my husband and I
can’t read this Greek. You know.”
Mme Nicolou twisted the crumbling bread into a ball and pushed it into her mouth. The grease smeared her lip-stick and ran down her chin. She wiped it off on the arm of her kimono, which was already black just there. “Men are always writing. Why I don’t know. Why were they ever taught to write? It only leads to trouble, and don’t we have enough trouble without that. I knew a man who——”
“Mme Nicolou, it is urgent.”
The other woman stared. With her tongue she carefully explored her teeth. “That was what the man said. It’s urgent, he said.” Her drooping lid closed, showing more of the blue eye-shadow. “But you can’t fool me. Urgency, I said, is for Germans and the other vandals, not for Greeks who know how to live.… Well, where are my glasses? Let me see.”
She fumbled a pair of black evening spectacles out of her pocket and put them on. Maria thrust the first letter into the woman’s long, thin hand. She stared at it.
“These are old letters? Was your husband in Greece in 1947?” she asked after a minute, fixing Maria with her wide-awake eye.
“Can you read it?”
“Of course. But it is not the official, it is the literary script. Demotiki, they call it. Mm-mm, people pretend to prefer one or the other. As if it mattered!”
As she was speaking Maria saw someone crossing the street towards the house. A stout man in a black alpaca coat who walked with a slightly anthropoid roll. He had a beard growing like a bonnet string under his chin. She heard his footsteps come into the hall but they did not go up the stairs.
“Not to yourself,” said Maria sharply. “Aloud for me to hear!”
Mme Nicolou had been mouthing what she read. “But, dear, this doesn’t sound like a love letter. Mm-mm.… Was your husband called Anton or George? I can’t recollect.”
“Read.”
“It says,” began Mme Nicolou. “Mm-mm, it says, ‘ Dear Anton, the usual stuff is here. A purser from the Italian ship brought it. Five thousand. Via Paris. I can add to this one for one, but not in gold. With prices soaring that’s too precious to me and I regret I can make what I consider better use of it. Well, it all comes to the same thing in the end. Don’t tell your masters.’ ” Mme Nicolou raised her head. “Was that someone ringing the bell?”
Greek Fire Page 11
