Seascape

by Anne Weale

Kate gave a gasp of mingled relief and consternation.

  Xan who, when he entered, would have been momentarily hidden by the wall of the shower room where it formed a short passage between the door and the bedroom proper, looked at them both with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Sorry to butt in...I didn’t expect you to have someone with you.’

  The smoothness of his apology was belied by the look in his eyes. They were like chips of granite.

  ‘What the hell are you doing, bursting into Kate’s room?’ Robert demanded.

  ‘I did knock. If you want to be private, you should make sure the door is properly closed... preferably locked.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer the question,’ Robert said belligerently.

  By this time he had released Kate and moved back a pace. He had been flushed before. Now, either from arousal or anger, his colour had risen.

  In contrast, Xan’s expression was as cold as Kate had ever seen it.

  He said, ‘I was sitting up talking to Kyria Drakakis when there was a call from the UK. I’m afraid I have bad news, Kate. Nerina’s taken a turn for the worse. She’s asking for you.’

  Immediately she forgot her chagrin at being caught in misleading circumstances. Her only concern was for the stricken woman far away in England.

  ‘Is it another heart attack?’

  ‘Apparently not, but she’s unwell and asking for you. They feel it’s advisable for you to get there as soon as possible.’

  ‘I’ll run you to Iráklion,’ said Robert. ‘If I tell them I’m a doctor and it’s an emergency, they’ll give us seats on the first flight out in the morning.’ In a matter of moments he had changed from importunate lover to Nerina’s physician and Kate’s friend.

  ‘There’s a better expedient,’ said Xan. ‘Kyria Drakakis is arranging for Kate to fly out tonight on a private plane owned by a friend of hers. He’s a shipping millionaire from mainland Greece who has a holiday house here. Luckily he’s in residence at the moment. They were once very close, I gather, and if it’s within his power he’ll do anything she asks.’

  At this point there was another tap on the door and Kyria Drakakis herself appeared, carrying a tray of tea-things.

  ‘I thought you might feel the need for a cup of tea, Kate. This is very worrying news, but thanks to a dear friend of mine we can get you to England quite quickly.’ She looked faintly surprised to see Robert in the room. ‘I’ll fetch another cup for you, Dr Murrett.’

  ‘No, no, please don’t trouble. A cup of tea will do Kate good, but not for me, thank you.’

  Xan took the tray from her while she moved the dressing-stool close to one of the chairs. As she sat down, he placed the tray on the stool.

  ‘Thank you.’ She gave him a warm smile before turning to Kate and saying, ‘While you’re drinking your tea, there’s something I should like to read to you. Then I’ll help you to pack. Phaedon is sending his own car to pick you up and take you to his private airstrip.’

  She poured out three cups of tea before putting her hand in the pocket of the loose silk jacket she was wearing over her dress. After putting on her glasses, she unfolded some paper with handwriting on it.

  ‘I had this letter from Nerina in the summer. The first part deals with business matters, but then she write, “I’ve had the good luck to engage a young woman to help me who has every quality I could wish for. She works hard, gets on well with the students, is cheerful, tactful and resourceful. I like her very much and thank my stars she answered my advertisement. She doesn’t appear to have any admirers, but I fear it can’t be long before that changes. As you’ll see when you meet her, she has a subtle beauty which, although unlikely to strike those whose taste has been formed by the cinema and television, must appeal to anyone with a more discriminating eye. Her name is Kate Poole. She makes me feel as if I had been blessed with a long-lost and delightful granddaughter.”’

  As the hotelier took off her spectacles and refolded the letter, it took all Kate’s self-control not to break down in tears. Her eyelids prickled and her lower lip quivered. But she managed to master her voice sufficiently to say, ‘Thank you, kyria. It’s nice to know Miss Walcott feels that way. But the good luck is mostly on my side. Working for her has been more rewarding than anything I’ve ever done.’

  Robert said, ‘I’ll go and get packed. I have something to help you sleep during the flight, Kate. Otherwise you’ll be worn out. How long have we got before the car arrives, kyria?’

  ‘I’m afraid it won’t be possible for you to go with her, Dr Murrett. But you can be sure Kate will be in excellent hands. My friend flies all over the world. He can afford to employ the best pilots and mechanics. He owns two aircraft, one for the longer journeys, and this smaller one for flying around Europe. It has room for only two passengers and naturally, being Nerina’s next of kin, Xan is the one who must go with Kate.’

  By the time Kate was ready to leave, the car was outside the hotel. Robert bade her an anxious goodbye.

  ‘I wish I were coming with you. I’ll drive to Iráklion first thing in the morning and hope to be back in the UK by tomorrow afternoon or evening. Here’s the stuff to help you sleep.’ He handed her a small plastic bottle containing a few pills.

  Xan was taking his leave of Kyria Drakakis and somehow the two men contrived not to shake hands with each other.

  Kate was beginning to suspect that even as boys they hadn’t liked each other. If they had, being sent to different schools wouldn’t have ruled out a friendship during the holidays. There must always have been some innate antipathy between them. Now, on both sides, this had been exacerbated by their relationships with her.

  In the car, Xan exchanged a few words with the driver but said nothing to her. He might have been on his own for all the attention he paid to her. She wondered if, now that his grandmother’s life was at risk again, he was regretting his obdurate attitude to her.

  When they boarded the aircraft it was immediately apparent that Robert could have come with them.

  ‘Was it your idea to prevent Robert from coming with us?’ she asked Xan.

  ‘Why should I want to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. But clearly he could have come.’

  ‘I agree. I’m as puzzled as you are. But I don’t think we should send the car back to fetch him. By now he’ll have gone to bed. Waiting for him could delay us by over an hour, and we also have quite a long drive at the other end, don’t forget.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting we should wait for him. I’m just baffled by why Kyria Drakakis. thought there wouldn’t be room for him.’

  ‘A misunderstanding, I suppose,’ Xan said indifferently, fastening his seat belt.

  Not many minutes later they were airborne, with the peaks of the White Mountains pale in the moonlight as the small aircraft soared off the end of the airstrip and, gradually gaining height, turned westwards.

  It was the strangest and longest night of Kate’s life. She offered Xan some of the sleeping pills Robert had given her, but he shook his head.

  ‘No thanks. I never take that stuff.’ He leaned back and closed his eyes.

  Kate didn’t like the idea of taking pills either. But after a couple of hours of wondering how ill Miss Walcott was, and if they would get there only to find she had died, she decided to swallow a couple. They put her to sleep for several hours and then she woke up with a bad headache which was still throbbing when the co-pilot came back to tell her they would soon be landing and to wake Xan who seemed to have slept as soundly as if he had been in bed.

  Before they set out on the final lap of the journey, in the kind of luxurious car only very rich people rented—this too had been laid on for them by Kyria Drakakis’s friend Phaedon—Xan telephoned the nursing home and returned with the news that Miss Walcott was ‘no worse, but still very poorly’.

  They had been on the road for half an hour, and Kate’s headache had abated slightly, when he suddenly said, ‘What exactly goes on between you and Robert?’
<
br />   ‘Nothing goes on. We’re still friends, but that’s all.’

  ‘Come off it, Kate. What I interrupted last night wasn’t a friendly chat. He was all fired up to make love to you. If looks were lasers, I’d have a hole between the eyes.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. You exaggerate. It was just a kiss... an unexpected goodnight kiss. A few minutes earlier, he wouldn’t have been there. A few minutes later, he’d have gone.’

  ‘Not willingly,’ he said sardonically. ‘And if you didn’t intend or want him to stay, how come he was there in the first place?’

  ‘He knocked on my door. He asked to come in. I—I thought he must have a reason for wanting to speak to me.’

  ‘Would you have let me in? At that time of night? With you in your nightie?’

  ‘With a dressing-gown over it.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer the question,’ he said, echoing Robert. ‘Would you have let me in, given that I had no valid reason for coming to your room at that hour?’

  ‘I’d have assumed that you had, as I did with Robert.’

  ‘Never assume,’ he said drily. ‘It can lead to embarrassing complications. As it would have done last night, but for my intervention. Judging by your expression when I walked in, you weren’t as carried away as our worthy doctor.’

  The implied scorn for Robert’s prowess as a lover made her say bitterly, ‘He wasn’t forcing himself on me as sadistically as you did the day before yesterday.’

  There were road works ahead. Xan’s gaze flicked to the mirror before he changed down and then braked. He handled the luxurious car as smoothly as if it were his own.

  ‘Sadistically, Kate?’ he said, turning to look at her while the warning stop light glowed red. ‘I don’t think I inflicted any physical pain on you, did I? Some mental discomfort perhaps. But it’s hardly my fault if you can’t come to terms with the fires smouldering under that cool, collected surface you present to the world.’

  Deliberately, he put his hand on her thigh. It couldn’t be described as a lecherous gesture. His fingers were closer to her knee than the top of her thigh and they didn’t move in that direction. But there was a possessive intimacy about his touch which made her tremble inwardly.

  She said nothing, turning her face away and staring blindly out of the window until the temporary traffic light changed to green and he took his hand away to put the car back in gear.

  The rest of the journey passed in silence until, as he swung the car through the gateway of what once had been a private mansion, she said, ‘Are you coming with me to see her?’

  He took so long to answer that she thought he might be ignoring the question. But eventually, when they were halfway along the long drive, he said, ‘Yes...since you wish it, I will.’

  ‘You may find her rather confused. Her mind has been wandering,’ said the sister on duty that morning, as she led them to Miss Walcott’s room.

  ‘You have some visitors, dear,’ she announced, making Kate flinch at the thought of her proudly independent employer being forced to endure kindly meant but unacceptable familiarities.

  Nerina Walcott opened her eyes. She seemed to have shrunk since Kate had said goodbye to her. She looked very old and frail, as if she were letting go her once strong grasp on life.

  Her gaze rested vaguely on Kate, as if she didn’t recognise her, and then drifted up to the face of the tall man with her.

  ‘Neal...’ she said. ‘Neal... is it you?’

  Xan moved to the side of the bed, taking her outstretched hand. ‘No, it’s not Neal. It’s Neal’s grandson ... Alexander. But you always called me Xan. I’ve been away a long time. But now I’ve come back to see how you’re getting on. They tell me you’ve been overdoing it, Nerina. That’s nothing new, is it? You always did and I dare say you always will. Are you comfortable here?’

  His tone was matter-of-fact, more like an old friend’s greeting than an emotional reunion after a long separation.

  Miss Walcott’s reaction was astonishing. As his long fingers gripped her veined and age-spotted hand, it seemed to have the effect of jump-leads recharging the battery of a broken-down car.

  In a matter of seconds she was struggling to sit up, her eyes brightening, her life-force reviving.

  ‘Xan! I didn’t expect you to come. I knew Kate would. I never thought you would. I suppose you think I’m about to fall off my perch, that you’d better get back in my good books in case there are any rich pickings. But I’m not on my way out yet, my boy. You’re looking well... very fit. How did it go, the Crete trip ... ?’

  About half an hour later they got back in the car and drove to the nearby village and the small hotel where visitors to the clinic often put up for the night. There Xan arranged for the use of a bedroom, explaining that he wasn’t yet sure if they would be staying overnight, in which case they would need two rooms.

  ‘After breakfast, I’ll have a shave and a shower and you’ll go to bed for a couple of hours. You look bushed,’ he told Kate, while they were waiting for the full English breakfast he had ordered.

  ‘Did you really sleep as soundly on the plane as you seemed to?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve slept on park benches before now. When I was in my late teens, I dossed down in all kinds of weird places.’

  Kate was too exhausted to do justice to the orange juice, muesli, mixed grill, croissants and wholewheat toast which was Xan’s idea of a restorative breakfast. She was half asleep when he went up to shave and fast asleep in a chair in the lounge when he came down.

  As if she were ten years old, he marched her upstairs, turned back the eiderdown on the double bed, told her to sit down on the edge, took off her shoes, said, ‘Lie down,’ and covered her up.

  ‘I’ll be back before lunch. Sleep tight.’

  In fact it was mid-afternoon when she was woken by the manageress coming in with a tray of tea and a message from Xan. She had been so deeply asleep when he looked in at lunchtime that he had decided to leave her undisturbed. At six o’clock he would fetch her for an early dinner with his grandmother.

  Kate drank the tea, had a leisurely bath and took her time doing her make-up. She was downstairs, looking at a magazine, when Xan came for her.

  ‘Feeling better?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, thank you. A new woman.’

  ‘Good. Let’s have a drink. What would you like? A glass of wine?’

  She nodded. ‘Red, please.’

  He rang the bell for service and said, ‘I’ve decided that, having deprived the group of their last-night party and prize-giving—although I expect they’ll have some kind of rave-up tonight—we should make it up to them by laying on a late lunch party at one of the airport hotels. In fact it’s already arranged. There’s nothing for you to bother about.’

  ‘Are you staying here tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘I am, but don’t worry. We shall be in separate rooms. And you will be chaperoned,’ he said, with a mocking gleam.

  ‘Chaperoned? By whom?’

  ‘Robert. Who else? He hopes to be here by eight and will join us at the clinic.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to him?’

  ‘No, to Kyria Drakakis. She also wants to speak to you. She’ll give you a call early tomorrow morning, before we leave for the airport. I think we should both fax letters of thanks to Phaedon and I’m also going to give him one of my paintings of Chaniá.’

  When their drinks had been served, Kate asked the question which had been preoccupying her ever since she woke up.

  ‘What made you change your mind?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About a rapprochement with your grandmother.’ He tilted his gin and tonic, making the ice cubes clink softly against the glass. ‘You did,’ he said, looking at her. ‘But we won’t go into that now. I’ve been talking to the clinic’s consultant physician and he thinks Nerina’s recent deterioration was largely psychological. She decided she didn’t want to go on and was willing herself to fade out.’

  Kate s
ipped her wine and kept silent.

  ‘The estrangement between us may have had something to do with it,’ he continued. ‘But the principal reason was, as she’s admitted to me, that even with you doing the donkey-work, running Palette is now beyond her. She doesn’t want to let down her regulars by shutting up shop, but that’s what she’d like to do. She has a plan for the future she wants to discuss with you. I don’t know what it is. She hasn’t told me yet.’

  When they returned to the clinic, they ran into the consultant to whom Xan had talked earlier. He introduced him to Kate.

  The physician said, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Miss Poole. You’re Miss Walcott’s right hand, I gather. Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that in my opinion she’s going to be around for some time yet. She’s a very strong-willed old lady. For a while she gave up the struggle, with alarming effects. But now she’s decided to press on, although taking life a lot more easily, it wouldn’t surprise me if she made eighty or ninety. The human will is a very powerful force.’

  Miss Walcott was out of bed and sitting in a chair when they joined her. She was wearing a long blue silk garment, bought in Morocco, and dabs of blue shadow on her eyelids.

  ‘Kate, my dear, have you recovered from the shock and fatigue of being fetched back in such a rush? Yes, I can see you have. What it is to be young. A few hours’ sleep and you look as fresh as a daisy.’

  It was not until after they had eaten a meal which seemed very bland compared with the Cretan dishes of the past two weeks that Nerina leaned back in her chair and announced, ‘I have something important to discuss with you both.’

  Before she could go any further, an auxiliary came in to clear away. Tapping her finger on the arm of the chair, Miss Walcott cast an exasperated glance at her grandson, who responded with his characteristic half-smile.

  ‘Oh, you are so like your grandfather...my darling Neal,’ she told him. ‘He had just the same trick of curling up the corner of his mouth when he thought I was being too impatient.’ Her smile held a hint of coquetry, giving a glimpse of the charming, flirtatious girl she must have been fifty years ago.