by Anne Weale
However, as the Agia Triada monastery was on the Akrotiri peninsula, where the airport was situated, they were on the road they had travelled on the day they arrived.
At the monastery, there was a notice in English—‘An Entreaty. Dress with modesty to come in the church. The monastery is closed 2 - 5 after noon’.
Only a few monks were still in residence and Kate paid the one on duty at the arched entrance for tickets for the whole group. As they passed into the sunlit courtyard surrounding the church, Xan called them together.
‘I suggest you have a look round before choosing where to settle down. This morning I want you to use your preferred medium. I’ll come round at least twice to see how you’re getting on and if you need help. We’ll be here until the place closes, and then we’re going to a beach taverna for lunch and a swim.’
As they dispersed, he and Kate remained by the entrance.
‘Congratulations!’ she said. ‘I’m sure you accomplished that in half the time it would have taken me.’
‘Kelly is the type who responds to the masterful male act.’ There was a gleam of mockery in his smile as he added, ‘You’d have resisted, wouldn’t you? But then you would never have worn that get-up.’
‘I’ve nothing against the masterful male in situations where he’s needed,’ Kate answered mildly. ‘In a crisis such as a fire, I’ll be only too pleased for you to take command. I’d only resist if I felt I was being bullied by a man with more muscle than brain. You’re certainly not in that category.’
He bowed. ‘Thank you kindly, ma’am’
It seemed to her then, for a moment, that there was real warmth in his smile, not merely the charm she had felt on several occasions.
Juliet reappeared. ‘Xan, I need some advice before I get started. Can you spare a few minutes?’
‘Of course.’
Kate moved away, taking her camera out of her totebag to snap the imposing façade of the church. Erected in the seventeenth century by a family of rich Venetian merchants and supported by vineyards and olive groves on the land surrounding it, the monastery had been laid waste by the conquering Turks. Later it had been rebuilt and now housed a valuable library and several important icons.
She wandered about, inhaling the scent of jasmine. Lemon trees with green lemons on them cast pools of shade, and flights of stone stairs led to archways and walkways at higher levels. On one staircase she found a stone head framed by feathers as exquisitely carved as the neatly brushed and curled hair. Was it an angel? She wondered if someone would paint it.
She had taken a close-up photo and was wondering how old it was and who the carver had been when, from below, Xan said, ‘Do you want to relax with a book? Or will you have another go at drawing?’ He brandished the pad he was holding.
‘I’d like to draw this angel. But I know it’s beyond me.’
He came up to where she was standing. ‘Not if you simplify it. I’ll show you.’ He opened the pad at a clean page and uncapped a drawing pen. ‘When you start, try to look at the main outlines, not the details. This breaks down into three shapes; the face, the hair and the feathers. They look a bit like an Elizabethan ruff, don’t they?’ As he spoke, his shapely brown hand moved over the paper in swift assured sweeps. ‘There—that’s how to begin. Now you have a go.’
He gave her the pad and pen and went down the stairs and, in long-legged leaps, up a wider flight on his way to speak to the people who had set up their easels on an arched loggia at a higher level.
For an hour or more after their arrival, the Palette group had the monastery to themselves. Kate worked hard at her drawing, making many mistakes which she was unable to rub out.
Earlier, while the others were breakfasting, she had sent another long fax to Miss Walcott and shortly afterwards there had been an incoming report on her employer’s condition from the superintendent of the nursing home. It had been addressed to her, rather than to Xan, and indeed he had yet to ask how his grandmother was progressing.
Kate found it hard to relate his indifference to his closest relation with the approval he was generating within the group. It wasn’t merely that the female members of it responded to his looks and his sexual magnetism which they must feel, even if they didn’t recognise it for what it was. The men in the party liked him too. During the morning most of them took several breaks from their own work to stretch their legs and have a look at other people’s efforts. All those who paused to have a brief chat with her remarked on how helpful he was.
‘I was worried when I heard he was coming with us,’ said Heather, one of two retired teachers who had come together. ‘Being a complete beginner, not nearly as good as Joyce, I felt quite embarrassed showing him my poor little daub. But he was so nice... so sympathetic, I feel really encouraged.’
‘Good. That’s splendid,’ said Kate.
She wondered what Xan would say when he saw her attempt at the angel and when he would come back to her.
The carving had been in shadow when she started. By the time she had done the best she could, it was in full sun. She retreated to a shady corner of the cloisters where she blew up her inflatable cushion and started to try to draw Oliver while he worked on an oil painting of a corner of the church and a lemon tree.
She was having a drink of iced water from her flask when the first coachload of ordinary tourists arrived. They were of mixed nationalities, some as unsuitably dressed as Kelly had been, and all but a few visibly wishing they had stayed by the hotel pool. Not content to look at Oliver’s painting from a distance, they crowded round behind him, making fatuous comments.
‘A friend of mine used to deal with rubberneckers by passing round a hat. It dispersed them faster than a bucket of water,’ said Xan, dropping down beside her. ‘How have you been getting on?’
‘Not well, I’m afraid. In spite of your helpful outlines, my angel doesn’t look much like the original.’ She handed over the sketch-pad.
Xan studied it for a moment. ‘It tells me a lot about you.’
‘Such as?’
‘That you generally finish what you start, not getting discouraged or losing interest mid-way.’
‘Also that my talent for drawing is practically non-existent,’ she said, with a rueful smile.
‘Not at all ... merely undeveloped. What this needs is some shading... like so...’ He took the pen she was waiting to give back to him and began to hatch in shadows behind the feathers and the hair, which immediately made them more three-dimensional.
Turning the page, he discovered the start she had made on a drawing of Oliver. As she watched, alongside it, in less than a minute and with great economy of line he completed a sketch which was immediately recognisable as the straight-backed older man.
‘That’s an exercise in what are called negative spaces,’ he said. ‘Look at the way Oliver’s standing with all his weight on his left leg and his other leg slightly bent at the knee. The inverted V between his legs is a negative space... d’you see?’
‘Yes, I do.’ She hadn’t before, but she did now.
‘Try it.’
He gave back the pad and watched while she started again. This second attempt was much better than the first, although not to be compared with his practised sketch.
But she knew it wasn’t the almost magical improvement in her drawing which had quickened her pulse. It was the result of Xan leaning towards her so that the negative space between their shoulders must be less than the width of his pen. If it hadn’t been for the voices of the tourists, she felt sure he would be able to hear the sudden rapid thumping of her heart.
‘Well done...that’s much better,’ said Xan.
She glanced up at him, sharply aware that merely by bending his head he would be able to kiss her. If they had been alone. If he wanted to kiss her.
‘Xan...could you come and advise?’ Juliet’s voice came from somewhere above them. When they looked up, she was leaning over a balustrade.
‘Coming.’ In one easy movement h
e rose to his feet and went to join her.
The beach taverna where they had a late lunch was a simple place with a cement floor and corrugated roof supported by metal pipes painted bright yellow to match the plastic chairs.
In charge was an energetic South African girl wearing short shorts, a black bra top, a cap worn peak-backwards and a profusion of necklaces and rings. Another girl, similarly dressed, was sitting on a high stool at the bar, drinking a can of Coke.
‘I wonder what caused that nasty burn on her leg?’ Kate murmured to Oliver, after he had asked if he might sit with her.
She had waited till everyone else was settled before seating herself at an unoccupied table. Then he had emerged from the loos at the back of the taverna and had had no choice but to join her or sit by himself.
‘An exhaust-pipe,’ he told her. ‘You see a lot of legburns in mainland Greece and the islands where the young hare about on rented motorbikes, the girls riding pillion. They burn themselves as they get off, not realising that the exhaust becomes like the hot-plate on a stove.’
This led her to ask him about his travels in Greece where he had accompanied his wife on a number of art courses. Kate was interested to learn how they compared with Palette holidays and questioned him closely while eating her avocado salad with sesame-seeded bread cubes. Oliver had a pizza, and they each had a litre of water and a glass of white wine.
She found Oliver’s company relaxing. He told her about his two sons, one in Africa, the other in Canada. Although he didn’t admit to being lonely, she felt he must be and would have warmed to him on that account even if he hadn’t been an interesting man... the kind of man she would have liked for her father.
Xan was having his lunch with Juliet and a middle-aged couple who looked staid and conventional but whose union had been the scandal of a Palette trip ten years earlier. At that time, according to Miss Walcott, both parties had appeared to be content with their previous partners. It had been a shock to everyone when they had been seen to be attracted to each other, the more so because neither seemed capable of inspiring an irresistible passion.
‘Juliet is very striking, isn’t she?’
It wasn’t until Oliver said, ‘Yes,’ that Kate realised she had spoken her thought aloud.
‘I find a lot of younger women rather daunting,’ he went on. ‘My wife was like you, a gentle person. Far from spineless, but not aggressive.’
Kate had never thought of herself as gentle and wasn’t sure how to take this reading of her character. Nor was it clear whether he had been referring to younger women in general or had meant he found Juliet daunting.
After lunch, half the group swam and the rest stayed in the shade of the taverna, sketching each other or the view of the beach.
Kate was among those who swam, but she took the precaution of wearing an old T-shirt over her two-piece. The sun was so hot that the arid landscape behind the beach shimmered and the light off the water was dazzling.
Having sun-blocked her face and eyelids before going into the sea, she was lying on her back with her hands clasped under her head and her eyes closed, enjoying the sensation of weightlessness, when there was a disturbance in the water. She lifted her head to find Xan surfacing nearby.
As he raked back his hair, he said, ‘How was your lunch?’
‘Delicious. I love avocado. What did you have?’
‘A toasted ham and cheese sandwich. But it wasn’t the food I meant.’ When her eyebrows contracted in puzzlement, he said, ‘Oliver’s not in his dotage. You may think he’s past making a pass, but I wouldn’t count on it.’
‘Oliver!’ she exclaimed. Then, remembering how loudly voices could carry across water, she lowered her voice. ‘You must be crazy. He’s not the pass-making type.’
‘Any man is...given enough provocation,’ Xan said drily. ‘Your signals weren’t as blatant as Kelly’s, but you were laying on the charm and you could be reminding him of girls he liked when he was young. Don’t underestimate yourself—or him. He’s fit and virile and lonely... a combustible combination.’
‘He’s old enough to be my father.’
‘A naive statement if ever I heard one. If older men were immune to the charms of younger women, the gold-digging sorority would go out of business. Men with girls young enough to be their granddaughters are a commonplace sight in every expensive restaurant from here to Hong Kong and back.’
‘I wouldn’t know. The fleshpots are outside my orbit,’ said Kate. ‘But I’ve met a few lechers in my time, and Oliver’s not one. He’s a thoroughly nice man.’
Whether by design or chance, the slight movements necessary to keep Xan upright in the water had brought him closer to her. There was barely a yard between them as he said, ‘Nice men feel the same lusts as lechers. They just control them better. He’s been on his own for four years. That’s a long time to be celibate. Bear it in mind.’
‘I don’t believe this,’ she said hotly. ‘What qualities you to lecture me, for heaven’s sake? My life’s been as chaste as a nun’s compared with your much-publicised rake’s progress. If anyone needs a warning, it’s Juliet, not me. Perhaps I should have a word with her.’
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS his turn to frown. ‘You exaggerate.. Journalists exaggerate. If they write for the popular Press they give people labels. Housewife...feminist...playboy. In my twenties, I had several good-looking girlfriends, hence the playboy label. It hasn’t applied for a long time. Why does it bother you?’
‘You’re mistaken. Your personal life is nothing to do with me. I wouldn’t have brought it up if you hadn’t started lecturing me.’ She began to swim back to the beach.
It was, as she knew, a futile attempt to end the conversation if he intended to continue it. He could easily outswim her. She might as well attempt to elude a playful sea otter.
Expecting him to shoot past and reach the shallows before her, she was surprised and relieved when he didn’t. When she stood up and looked around, he was nowhere to be seen. Then she saw him hoisting himself on to a distant rock looking, for an instant, like an Old Master drawing of the anatomy of a powerfully built man, every muscle in play under the burnished brown skin which a few moments earlier she could have reached out and touched.
She had wanted to touch it, she realised. All through that verbal fencing match, deep down inside her different, less defensive impulses had been urging her to stop talking, to stretch out her hands towards those broad sun-tanned shoulders, to feel his sleek sea-cooled skin under her palms.
As she waded ashore, not for the first time she wondered what it would be like to go through life saying what you really meant, doing what you really wanted to do instead of what convention or cowardice dictated.
She was in her shower room, using a lip-liner, half an hour before the evening critique, when someone tapped on her door.
It was Juliet. ‘Sorry to disturb you but I’ve lost a button and forgotten to bring a needle and thread. I’m sure you’ve brought everything. Could I borrow the necessary?’
‘Of course. Come in. What colour thread do you need?’
‘White, please.’
While Kate opened the drawer where she kept her repair kit, Juliet crossed the room to look at the pictures of women in national dress.
‘I enjoyed today,’ she remarked, without glancing round. ‘The monastery was divine and even the beach taverna, though very basic and serving mostly junk food, had a certain rustic charm. Is there anywhere first class to eat in this town, do you know?’
‘That’s something I’d have to look up,’ said Kate. ‘With the hotel food as good as it is, most people won’t want to spend extra on eating out at night.’
‘Xan and I might,’ said Juliet. ‘He’s entitled to some evenings off. He’s being incredibly patient with all the group’s worst daubers. But he must find it enormously trying to have to spend time with them when he could be painting professionally.’
Kate found herself irritated by the other woman’s
habit of speaking in superlatives. Or was it Juliet’s reference to Xan and herself as if they were set apart from the rest of the party which had a scratchy effect on her normally quiescent nerves?
‘He did know what it would be like,’ she pointed out. ‘He went on Miss Walcott’s group painting trips when he was a small boy. It was she who encouraged him to become an artist. He owes her a great deal.’
‘I doubt if it would have made the slightest difference if she had actively discouraged him,’ said Juliet. ‘He would have gone his own way. He’s a very powerful personality... as the best artists are.’
‘Not always. One of my favourite painters is Edward Seago. In his lifetime his gifts were never acknowledged by the art world in London, partly because he was so popular with the public. At his exhibitions, people used to stand in line to buy everything in sight. But he wasn’t a self-confident man. He was deeply insecure.’
‘I know about Seago,’ said Juliet. ‘My father used to collect him. I’ve been mixing with artists all my life.’
Kate handed over the zip-bag containing all the repair aids she had thought might be needed. It was on the tip of her tongue to express surprise that, in that case, it was strange Juliet hadn’t known Xan was unmarried. Instead, she said, ‘How nice for you. Help yourself.’
Juliet sat down on the unused twin bed and turned the bag upside down to shake everything on to the white counterpane. ‘You do believe in preparing for all eventualities,’ she said, as a trouser clip fell out. ‘I suppose you have to. Were you ever a nurse?’
Kate shook her head. ‘Why d’you ask?’
‘You look frightfully capable...as if you’d know what to do if one of the old dears collapsed or choked or whatever. I thought you might have been a nurse or a policewoman before you took on this job.’
‘No, I worked in the property business in London.’
‘Really?’ Juliet raised her eyebrows. But she didn’t ask who Kate had worked for or why she wasn’t there now.
