The Peter & Charlie Trilogy

by Gordon Merrick

  “Oh, dear,” she replied with a troubled frown. The lights were a signal. She rose. “All right, babies. Time for your supper.” She waited while the children made their prolonged good nights and then herded them out.

  “That means our dinner will be along soon,” Charlie said. “I better go slip into something less comfortable.” He drained his glass and touched Peter on the arm as he followed Martha into the house.

  Peter wandered over to Judy. “You’re very good with children,” he said.

  “I’m glad you invited me. It feels like such a happy house.”

  “We get along. It’s especially happy with you in it.”

  She was looking up at him. He saw a muscle beside her mouth give a little twitch as she turned away. It was the first hint that she had nerves, that there might be tensions beneath the serenity of her beauty. It excited him. He thought again of their being naked together, of stirring her to abandon her cool self-containment. His heart began to beat rapidly.

  “I’m not sure I understand it all,” she said, breaking a brief silence.

  “You will. I want you to.”

  She turned back to him quickly, looking up with questioning eyes. “You do?”

  He looked at her mouth and his lips parted. He lifted his eyes and met hers. “I think it’s definitely a necessity,” he said.

  George woke up slowly, stiff and uncomfortable, wondering where he was. He wanted to stretch out, but some memory printed on his mind cautioned him to restrict his movements. He straightened his head; it felt as if it were resting against rock. He opened his eyes and saw star-filled sky above him. He lowered them and found himself staring into black emptiness a foot away. It all came back to him with a rush—the scene at Lambraiki’s, his suicidal flight over these rocks. How had he managed to perch himself here without going over?

  His head swayed, there was a hollowness in the pit of his stomach, and the cramp of fear in his feet. He couldn’t stand up. The slightest slip would be fatal. With infinite caution, he inched himself around, still seated, so that his body was parallel to the wall. Using his hands and feet, he moved himself along, a foot at a time.

  After a few minutes, during which all his attention was concentrated on resisting the pull of the sheer drop at his side, not feeling the sharp stones cutting into his hands, the ledge began to widen, and he was able to move faster and with less care.

  As soon as he felt safe, he pulled himself upright against the wall and stopped to catch his breath. His heart was racing. He was trembling from head to foot. He became disagreeably aware of other organs. The pain in his back was kidneys. The burning sensation in his chest was his outraged liver.

  Having accepted and escaped death, he now presumably wanted to live. He ought to feel lighter, stripped down somehow, stripped to the bare bones of his essential values, equipped for decisions. There were plenty of them looming. He was still here to make amends to Costa; he could do what he had said he was going to do and see that he was given a fair deal. There was a decision to be made about Mike. If he was going to keep Mike’s money—he was very vague about it but he knew Mike had given him a check that more or less covered his loss—he should be able to do so with gratitude and an acknowledgment of its importance to him.

  He felt for the check in his pockets and pulled it out and ran his fingers over its crisp surface. Security. He tore it in two. He thought of Sarah and his fingers tensed and he continued to tear at the check until it was in shreds. So much for their life together. He couldn’t remember all that he had said to her, but he knew he had ripped everything apart as effectively as he had the check. He had said it all at last. Why hadn’t a merciful providence nudged him off his perch? Why had he taken such pains to work himself back to safety? He needed a drink. Drink gave him the illusion that there was something to live for without her. He would never see her again.

  He pushed himself away from the wall and continued over the rocky uneven terrain. He had no idea what time it was. He could have been asleep for fifteen minutes or four hours. By the time he had climbed back up onto the road, he was sweating profusely. A few feet back from the sea, the heat offered an almost palpable resistance. He had to push against it.

  When he rounded the last bend in the road, he was startled by the dazzle of lights on the port. As he approached, he saw that the taverns were crowded and the clock in the belltower pointed to just after ten. He slowed his pace. Still dinner time. He didn’t want to eat. He couldn’t go home. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. Drink was the only answer.

  He was approaching the Meltemi. Jeff’s hangout. He had to help Jeff get straightened out. Was this reason enough to live? Jeff and Kate? Kate was an easygoing, good-tempered, quite ordinary girl but Jeff was special. His outburst this evening indicated that he was perhaps more special than he had realized. George had promised himself not to let the boy get swept away in the general wreckage. He could make a start by taking a closer look at Dimitri.

  He had never set foot in Dimitri’s bar, though it was reputed to serve more sophisticated drinks than anywhere else in town. Music blared from it into the leaden night. It was too early for the after-dinner crowd. A few people were at the tables outside. George went inside; it was almost deserted. Two youths were sprawled out on a banquette, inert, only their feet moving to the beat of the loud music. Dimitri rose from somewhere behind the bar. George stood in front of him.

  “But it’s Mr. Leighton. Good heavens. This is an honor.” A shadow of nervousness passed across the young man’s face and was quickly gone. He had a classic head that somehow lacked character, but was lightened by gaiety. He flashed white teeth at George. “You must have a drink on the house. A whiskey?”

  “It needn’t be anything so fancy.” George’s voice sounded odd to him, as if he hadn’t used it for a long time. He cleared his throat. “An ouzo would be fine. You can make it a strong one if you want.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of using the measure for you.” He gave George a sidelong look and lifted his finely arched brows flirtatiously. His light-brown hair waved prettily. His lips were very red in his deeply tanned face. He wore a white shirt of some sheer stuff unbuttoned to the waist, revealing a beautiful bronzed torso, lightly muscled, graceful and willowy. His black trousers were skintight. Although he didn’t appear to be so grossly endowed as the repulsive Pavlo, he had arranged his genitalia in some way that made a conspicuous, smoothly rounded bulge at his crotch. When he had put George’s drink in front of him, he stood with it thrust forward, his hands low on his hips, fingers pointing at it.

  “This is the first time you’ve been here, isn’t it? Did you come to see Jeff?”

  “Oh? Is he here?” Hadn’t he forbidden Jeff to come here again?

  “Yes. I thought——”

  “Where?”

  Dimitri tilted his decorative head toward the rear. The room was deep, formerly a boat builder’s workshop, tunneled into rock. A loft had been inserted into the front end; at the rear it rose a full two storys to the rough-hewn arched-rock ceiling. A wooden staircase led up to the loft.

  “You mean upstairs? Do you have living quarters here?”

  Dimitri smiled and looked at George through partly lowered lids. He gave his hips a suggestive little forward lift. “It’s an office, but I sometimes spend the night here. I live with my mother up behind your house but you know how it is with mothers. One sometimes wants privacy.”

  “I’m sure you do.” George finished his drink in a gulp. Dimitri took the glass in a long, well-manicured hand and turned with a flip of his narrow hips and displayed the voluptuous curves of his buttocks while he refilled it. He returned the replenished glass to the bar. George arranged his face in a friendly expression. “I’m glad to have a chance to talk to you,” he said lightly.

  Dimitri’s red lips parted and he ran his tongue over them. “I’m very flattered, Mr. Leighton.”

  “Jeff thinks the world of you. You must be the best friend he has here.”

&nb
sp; Dimitri smiled with another flash of white teeth. “We’ve become big friends this year. He’s a very good boy.”

  “Are you having an affair with him?”

  Dimitri drew back with a display of consternation. “Please, Mr. Leighton——”

  “Come now. We’re both grown men. Everybody knows your tastes. You make no effort to hide them. Why should you? I admire you for being so open about it.”

  Dimitri’s flustered air lingered only a moment and then he uttered merry laughter. He moved closer and leaned against the bar and looked at George with new interest. “Good heavens. Who would have guessed you’d be so nice?”

  “Did you expect me to be an ogre? Jeff is a bit young for me to talk freely to him. Are you having an affair with him?”

  “I have not, to this moment, put a finger on him.” The note of incredulity in his voice made it almost comic but convincing.

  “Can you swear to that? No, don’t bother. I’m sure you can lie as well as I can. Perhaps you think I haven’t the right to ask the question and you might have a point. The only thing is, I want to be helpful to Jeff and I don’t know much about this sort of thing. He’s reached the age when sex must be very much on his mind. An affair with another boy at his age doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to be queer, but if he is I’d like him to be happy. Has he passed on my message to you?”

  Dimitri was drawing designs on the bar with his index finger. He lifted his eyes and gave George a long calculating look. He drew his head back and smiled fetchingly. “Yes. Thank you. You’ve been very considerate. I have done what is necessary. I’m not worried about the police.”

  “Good. The fact remains, you’re mixed up in this dope business. It’s against the law. I can’t allow Jeff to be associated with it. I’ve told him I don’t want him to see you any more, but if there’s something serious between you I’d take that back. It’s his hanging around here that I don’t like.”

  “Good heavens. You’re very surprising. Jeff is lucky to have such a father.”

  “I wish I were sure of that. I’d appreciate your not telling Jeff I mentioned any of this. Do you mind asking him to come down here?” George took the last swallow of his drink.

  Dimitri immediately seized it and refilled it. “One second,” he said, his eyes briefly on George’s with provocative speculation. He laughed again, cheerful, empty-minded, somehow callous laughter, and ducked down under a shelf at the end of the bar and went back to the foot of the staircase, his hips swaying. He stood, dwarfed by the cavernous ceiling, and called up. His voice was drowned by the music. He returned to the bar as Jeff appeared on the stairs, too quickly for him to have been undressed. George had wondered. Jeff slouched across the stone floor and ducked down behind the bar after Dimitri.

  “Hello, youngster,” George said easily.

  “Hi.” Jeff kept at a slight distance from his friend.

  “I came in for a drink and Dimitri told me you were here. Did you have dinner with your mother?”

  “After a fashion. She seemed upset. I don’t think she was drunk.”

  “Please, Jeff. That’s not a very nice way to talk about your mother.” He took a long swallow of his drink. He was aware of Dimitri watching him closely as if he were expecting trouble. Jeff was a little taller than the Greek and struck a definitely masculine note beside him. “I thought I made it clear that I didn’t want you to spend another evening here.”

  “I wasn’t with him. You saw for yourself. I was upstairs checking some accounts.”

  “He’s very good at arithmetic,” Dimitri interjected.

  George kept his eyes on his son. “I’ve just told Dimitri about not wanting you two to see each other.” He lifted his hand as he saw that Jeff was about to speak. “I’ve decided that that was going too far. I absolutely forbid you to come here again, but you’ve got a home. You can receive anybody you like there. I’ve told Dimitri that as far as I’m concerned he’s welcome to come to the house.”

  “Why should I want him to come to the house?” Jeff’s great eyes burned with the intensity of desperation. “How could we—I don’t want him there. I don’t want to be there myself. This is the only place I can come to get away from the house.”

  George closed his eyes while he made sure he had himself under control. When he opened them he saw that the two friends had moved closer together, almost touching. Dimitri was slightly behind Jeff, as if counting on him for protection. “I’m sorry you feel that way about home, but if that’s the way it is there’s not much I can say. I wish I could promise you that things will be better. I don’t know. You’ll be going away soon. Your mother and I——” His voice caught. He drained his glass hastily and held it out. Dimitri reached for it and their fingers touched. Was there an insinuating caress in Dimitri’s? He pulled his hand quickly away at the risk of dropping the glass. One more drink would make it all right; he would find it quite reasonable for his son’s presumed lover to make a pass at him. All that really mattered was for him to make his point with Jeff successfully.

  A fresh drink was on the bar in front of him. He picked it up and swallowed some of it. “Look. The house is quite big. You have a comfortable room of your own. You have a door with a lock. You have only to turn the key and forget the rest of us exist. Good God, Jeff. I recognize your right to a private life. It’s not too much to insist that a minor stay out of a bar. You seem to forget that all this talk isn’t necessary. I have only to tell the police you’re not supposed to be in here and they’ll keep you out.”

  “The police! All your talk about understanding and you always end up calling the police.”

  “I mention the police because you won’t listen to reason. Can’t you realize I’m not trying to break up a friendship but talking about this particular bar?”

  “Your son is very stubborn. I’ve found that out.” Dimitri laughed gaily and grabbed the back of Jeff’s hair and gave his head a shake. It was a natural affectionate gesture and George liked him better for it. It lightened the atmosphere.

  Jeff pulled away with a normal boy’s impatience. “I don’t understand it. I’ve been coming here for weeks and now all of a sudden it’s forbidden.”

  It was the first hint of his yielding. George warned himself to let the boy come around in his own way. “That’s the point you keep missing,” he said mildly. “I’ve learned things today. You’re in danger. You’re a foreigner, for God’s sake. Do you want to get us all deported?”

  “I don’t care what happens to me. What difference does it make?”

  George prayed for patience. Jeff was suddenly so like the child he had recently been, a child having a tantrum. He wanted to grab him by the scruff of the neck and lead him out from behind the bar. “Please, Jeff. Nothing has changed except not coming here for the time being.” To his dismay, he saw Jeff’s eyes fill with tears.

  “I just hope you don’t expect me to leave now.” The boy’s voice was choked. He ran his fingers through his hair. “We’ve—I can’t—If I’m not coming here any more, I have things to do. I’ve got to explain certain things to him. We have to talk. I’ll be home later.”

  George took a deep breath of relief. He had somehow managed it. “Very well. Let’s make a bargain. I’ll let you stay this last time if you promise not to hang around down here. Go back upstairs and stay out of sight. Get whatever business you’ve had together settled and done with.” He drained his glass once more and put it on the bar. He nodded and smiled in their general direction and turned and left.

  He found that he was having trouble walking straight. His sleep hadn’t sobered him as much as he had thought. A few ouzos shouldn’t affect him like this. Still, he hadn’t disgraced himself with Jeff. The boy was going to be all right. He would damn well see to it that he was all right. A challenge for the next few weeks. He had been through enough for tonight. He could get as drunk as he liked.

  Outside, to his increasingly muddled senses, there seemed something sinister about the heat. Something
was definitely wrong. Maybe it was the ouzo. Dimitri must have really socked him with it.

  His effort to keep a steady course caused him to walk with great purpose, but he had no idea what he was going to do. He headed automatically for Lambraiki’s. He was hailed from a table and veered aside and fell into a chair opposite Sid Coleman and his girl.

  “Great, Yorgo,” Sid greeted him. “That was a great landing. For a minute there, I thought you were going to overshoot the field.”

  “What’re you guys drinking?” George demanded, peering at the glasses on the table.

  “Apple juice. Great stuff. Tell him, Dorothy. Tell the man about apple juice.”

  “It’s made of the juice of the finest selected apples, scientifically ripened and untouched by human hands.” The line emerged appropriately from Dorothy’s scrubbed, fresh doll’s face. She had dimples in her cheeks that made her smile bewitching.

  “How about that, Yorgo? It says so right on the bottle. Selected. Chosen, like the Jews. Want some apple juice?”

  “You two are nuts. Get me some brandy.” Hands were clapped and orders were called.

  Sid leaned forward earnestly. “You drink too much, you know that, Yorgo? Why don’t you let me fix you up with some pot? You really ought to try it.”

  “Very friendly of you and all that, but I tell you I don’t like the stuff. You kids think you’ve discovered it, but I tried all that years ago.” He filled a glass with brandy as soon as the small tankard was put before him and drank it down.

  Coleman shook his head sadly. “That stuff’s bad for you, man. Pot’s the thing for you. Sarah would love it, I bet. Jeff could get you all you needed. A family that smokes together flies together. Look at Dorothy here. All I have to do is give her a few puffs and she thinks I’m Marlon Brando. It’s great. Isn’t it great, darling?” They leaned toward each other and exchanged a look of naked and tender desire.

  “You better watch out,” George warned, finding that the minatory note made him feel more sober. “They’re about to crack down on dope here.”