The Honey Is Bitter

by Violet Winspear

  "Ah, but his girl loves him," Paul said dryly, "He knows she will wait for him, and that her heart will store up love as sealed wine stores up sweetness."

  Domini gave a little shiver at the primitive beauty the words . . . but did a waiting love always grow sweeter? Surely such an idea held the essence of romance, yet Paul had said he had no belief in romance.

  The lagoon was guarded by a reef of dark rocks, and the day being calm the blue waters merely creamed then bows as they entered through a narrow channel that in rough weather, Domini thought, would be hazardous to navigate. In a storm the waters would boil between the rocks and throw a small boat to those jagged teeth.

  From the beach a bastion of cliffs towered into the sky; birds nested and fluttered in then crevices, and flowering seaweeds trailed from rock crannies.

  They tied up at a stone jetty, and Domini saw that the beach was scalloped into coves concealed from each other by water-silked boulders. Ribbon-weed curled on the pale sand like snakes and there were clumps of sea-holly and bush pine to provide shade from the glare of the sun and the sea.

  Domini stood looking about her, wondering how on earth they reached the house from the beach. She soon found out! Their galley-boy came running towards them holding a large electric torch, which he handed to Paul with a flashing smile. Paul spoke to him in Greek, gesturing towards the boat and evidently giving an order concerning their baggage, then imperturbably he led Domini through the opening of a large cave.

  Long ago this was a hideout of smugglers," he told her. "It leads directly to the house and is perfectly safe. The tides are low here, rising only in exceptionally bad weather, when it is wiser to steer clear of the beach together."

  Well," Domini laughed, "what a novel way for a man to bring home his bride ... but I must say in keeping with the pirate in you."

  Her words echoed in the cave, as did his answering laughter. Domini glanced at him as they traversed the rocky tunnel, following the bright, guiding finger of the torch. Strange, unpredictable man, grinning like a boy – well, almost, his eyes no longer obscured by those enigmatic dark glasses but glimmering smoky-gold as he met her side glance.

  “The ground is elevating, can you feel it?" he said. Soon we will reach a door that opens on to steps that lead up to the garden. This secret passage has an appeal for you, no?"

  "Yes," she agreed with a smile. "You know I'm an incurable romantic."

  "It is in the British to be that way." He shrugged in his foreign way, and in a few more minutes the torch lit up an oval-shaped wooden door which swung οpen on a twisting flight of rough stone steps. "Please to go carefully," Paul warned. "They are crumbling away with age—now mind!" He caught hold of her as she stumbled, and for an instant in the half-light she was locked against his hard warmth—her breath caught her throat, she thought he was going to kiss her, but he let her go and she preceded him up the steps, trying to look as though she wasn't hurrying.

  He followed silently, out under an arbour of wild grape on to a pathway that led through a garden laid out in a series of rising terraces. Cypresses, both jade-green and golden, rose above clumps of wistaria and morning-glory. Oleanders hung their rose-bells in the sun, and there were cool green pepper-trees in which tiny bright birds flitted and flirted.

  "At the other side of the house we overlook a pine forest," Paul said, bending to pluck a scented cluster jasmine and tucking it casually into Domini's hair. The starry petals clung like confetti to her honey hair, their scent stealing rich to her nostrils. It was a pagan gesture, crowning her with a love-flower in this garden that seemed suspended above the sea. It was as though he said without words that tonight she would be alone with him in his house for the first time.

  The house on the eagle's crag, isolated from the world, had a brooding air of mystery about it to the girl who had come there as a bride.

  Its walls were a mellow-gold, and it had the clean lines of a Greek temple, with more steps that led up to a wide piazza that was like an outdoor lounge. This was set round with tub chairs and loungers, elbow-level tables, and enormous stone pots in which gushed and bloomed a variety of trailing plants. From here, as Domini took a look over the parapet, there was a drop as bottomless as human folly, sheer to the sea and the rocks.

  She drew back with a little gasp, then turned to face Paul as he spoke. "Come," he held out a brown hand to her, "let me show you the inside of the house."

  She went to him, still unnerved by that dizzying drop, put her hand into his and was led into the house through a sliding glass door. "This is the salotto," he gestured round the big living-room, at the great curving settee and its matching armchairs, scrolled Venetian mirrors, carved cabinets, and the huge brass chandelier that was let down by a pulley so that the range of elaborate oil-lamps could be lit. Then it was raised again, old-fashioned but bound to appeal to someone of Domini's romantic disposition.

  “You like the tzaki, no?" Paul indicated the vast stone fireplace, and the waiting pine logs in a wrought-iron basket. "Here in the evenings it grows cool and the British like the cosiness of a fire blazing up the chimney, is this not so?"

  She shot a wide-eyed look at him. Suddenly he seemed more overwhelmingly foreign than ever. She nodded quickly in answer to his remark, and glanced away from him to the end of the room, where a semi-circle of darkwood steps led to a platform on which stood a piano. It gleamed and shone darkly, and looked a beauty! Domini’s eyes glistened. One of her favourite pastimes was the piano, and though professionally untaught she had a good musical ear. Her uncle had loved her to play to him on their much-hammered piano at Fairdane.

  "You like it, Domini?" Paul murmured.

  She nodded, and longed to sit down on that padded bench, to put back the shining lid that hid a world in which she could always lose herself.

  "It is yours," Paul said.

  "Mine?" She turned to look at him with uncertain eyes.

  "The instrument was despatched from Athens three weeks ago,” he smiled. "That platform was originally used by my grandfather for his very imposing desk—this room, in fact, was then a study, but in my time it becomes the salotto. That chandelier I had removed from the hall, those cabinets were rescued from odd corners of the house and polished until their fine graining was revealed, those bearskin rugs reposed in the lumber-room in my stepmother's time—ah, but you not interested in all that!"

  "On the contrary, Paul." She touched his wrist half-shyly, feeling the crisp dark hairs in which his watch strap was meshed. "The room is—perfect. Tell me, what are those words carved across the stone frieze of the tzaki?"

  "You begin to say Greek words with a good, biting accent," he approved. "Those words?" He walked to fireplace and she followed and watched him trace with a finger the cryptic Greek motto. "Defy the powers of darkness like Apollo," he translated, in a low, almost expressionless voice.

  "Apollo was the god of light, of course," she murmured, and she thought of Paul's inability to face strong light, or the raw gold of the Greek sun which he loved on his body. They had sunbathed a lot on a beach some miles out of Athens, where he had stretched out face down on the sand like a great tawny cat, stripped but for brief swim-trunks. A pagan worshipper of the sun that thrust knives into his eyes unless he protected them behind smoked glass.

  Domini knew this was connected with the injury he had once sustained — she knew not how — which had inflicted that fearful jag at his temple.

  “When shall I meet your stepsister?" she asked, knowing from what he had let drop on this subject that he was extremely fond of the girl, though he had been unable to get along with her mother. His own mother died when he was four years old and his brother a baby; his father had remarried some years later and Kara had been the result of that marriage. It had not been a happy one. When Paul's father had died suddenly of cardiac failure, he had been at the helm of his racing yacht in the Ionian Sea. His wife had been on board with him, and she had been drowned when the yacht had careened to destruction under the
blind guidance of a dead hand.

  Kara lived with Paul's aunt because business took him away from Andelos such a lot. Domini was already making plans in her mind to have the girl here for weekends. She felt instinctively that they were going to be friends.

  “We will go and see Kara and Aunt Sophula tomorrow." Paul said. "And now let us continue our tour of your new home, Madame Stephanos."

  Her new home! Full of passages, unexpected doors, dark carved furniture, handwoven Greek rugs, and at last the room where she was to sleep.

  The room directly adjoining was Paul's and their baggage having been brought up from the shore and installed in their rooms, he went in to collect his briefcase and reappeared briefly to say that he was going downstairs to work for an hour or two while Domini got acquainted with everything on her own.

  "Thank you for the piano, Paul." She stood fingering the charming Venetian lamps on her dressing-table.

  The rugs drowned his footfalls, but suddenly he was reflected tall and dark behind her in the mirror. Her fair head came to his heart, and he drew her against him with an arm encircling her waist. "Now our life together really begins, Domini," he murmured into her soft hair, where his cluster of jasmine still clung and breathed out its scent.

  Their eyes met in the mirror, and the old confusion swept through Domini as she saw possession glint his tawny eyes. His lips crushed the jasmine in her hair, moved down the side of her neck to the hollow of her shoulder under the thin silk of her blouse. His lips burned through the silk, and she felt the hunger in him...

  "Kiss me, Domini," he ordered as her heart pounded. "Come, turn round and kiss me."

  She obeyed like a mechanical doll and reached up to press her lips against his dark cheek.

  ".That will do—for now." He smiled as he let her go, and gestured round her room. "You like your sleeping bower?" he asked.

  "It's very pretty," she said shakily.

  "Cool flower-blue and gardenia-cream to match my Sabine." He grinned wickedly. "And now I leave you peace—adio!"

  The door closed behind him, and she slowly relaxed out of the tenseness he always induced in her when he touched her. She removed the jasmine from her hair and popped it out of sight in one of the nest-like drawers of the antique dressing-table. She then took up her hairbrush—someone had unpacked for her—and was brushing the jasmine petals from her hair when there was a tap on her door.

  She swung round nervously and unable to think of the Greek words for, "Come in," she said it in English. Lita entered. She was smiling in her grave way and wished to know if there was any small service she could do for Domini.

  “No, I can manage perfectly." Domini smiled in return, for it was a warm relief to see a face she knew in house that was so strange as yet. "Thank you for asking, Lita."

  Until you acquire a maid, madame, I am available." Lita straightened the lace coverlet of the double bed and placed Domini's nightdress-case in a more exact position.

  “Oh, I don't think I shall bother with a maid, Lita." Domini swept her hair into a pony-tail and secured it. “I’m used to managing on my own, and it seems so— decadent, somehow, being waited on hand and foot.

  Lita looked rather taken aback by this outburst from her young mistress. "A reliable girl from the village would appreciate the employment, madame," she said. Our girls are brought up to be handy and obedient, and to have a personal maid is the accepted thing for a lady in your position."

  “Malista, malista." Domini broke into a laugh. "Very good, very well, but if you're so determined to foist a maid on to me, then you can see to the matter. Really, you Greek people are the most determined, obstinate race—aren't you?"

  “We are, madame." Lita was smiling again as she bent to pick up one by one the starry petals that lay like confetti on the soft rug in front of the dressing-table, Domini glanced down at the woman's smooth dark head and she wondered if she would ever get used to the managing ways of the Greeks. Life at Fairdane had been so easy-going and uncomplicated. There had been no servant problem, for Domini had done most of the work of the rooms they used with the help of a daily woman.

  "Did you enjoy your holiday with Yannis?" Domini asked after Lita had swept her eagle eye round the room to ensure that all was now perfect to match the freshness of the gardenia-cream paint and the flower-blue curtains, padded bedhead, cushioned recliner, and little silk sewing chair.

  "We helped with the work of his father's small farm at Sparta," Lita replied gently. "It was a labour of love and therefore a holiday in itself."

  Domini stood thinking over Lita's words after she had gone. It was true; you did not begrudge a duty or a sacrifice if you gave out of love.

  Then with a briskness that had the look of courage, she did as Paul had suggested and got acquainted with her new home. The interior of the house was rich with cypress and cedarwood. Age and hands had worn the carved stair-rails to a dark glossiness, while many feet had grooved the stairs. From a lyre-window at the bend of the massive, black-cedar staircase she saw a sea of pine trees. The afternoon was waning and a violet haze seemed to drift above the forest; the spicy scent of the pines had a sharpness to it, and she could hear the cicadas like a pulse-beat.

  Domini went on down the stairs to the hall, feeling a lonely stranger in this big house that was cut off from the world, surrounded by the whispers of the ocean and the pines. She opened several doors and glanced into the rooms beyond them, but she was careful to avoid the one in which Paul was working. He had shown her his office on their way upstairs earlier on, and it was a relief to Domini to know that Paul would be spending part of each day at his desk.

  While he was working she would be free . . . free explore the island, to bathe in the Ionian Sea, and make friends with Kara. Pursuits that would surely help her face up to the evenings and nights that would belong to Paul.

  Yannis brought tea and cakes to her in the salotto, and after chatting to him for several minutes she wandered out on to the piazza to drink her tea by the parapet. From here the horizon arched like the silver bow of Apollo, shafting arrows of flame as the sun burned out. It was a pagan, breathtaking scene at which Domini caught her breath, then as dusk crept into the sky, she went indoors and made her way upstairs to bathe and dress for-dinner.

  Dinner was always a late affair in Greek households, so she had plenty of time for a lazy soak and a splash in a tub large enough to swim in. There was a hand-shower on a flexible tube and Domini stood up to direct a cool spray of water all over her.

  She was tingling with the sybaritic pleasure of this pastime when to her utter consternation Paul strolled into the bathroom. Cool as a cat, he smiled at her as he unhooked a large towelling robe off the wall. Domini stood gaping at him like a startled naiad, with her honey hair swirled into a knot at the top of her head and only her blush to cover her. "Don't be all night, my dear," Paul said, and as he strolled out again his broad grin was reflected in the wall mirror beside the door.

  "Well," Domini muttered to herself, "he might have knocked!"

  Later, when she joined him for an aperitif in the salotto, she saw from the twinkle in his eye that he was still enjoying the joke. She caught his eyes as he handed her a fluted glass with sherry in it, and she knew what he was thinking—that she should not be shy with him when he already knew her every line and curve.

  She took a quick, confused sip at her aperitif, and glanced away from him round the room. Topaz velvet curtains were drawn across the wide sweep of windows; fat pine logs purred in the fireplace, and there were pale gold flowers arranged in amber-glazed vases on the cabinets.

  "I love the tangy smell of the resin in those logs," Domini murmured. "This entire room, in fact, is rather beautiful."

  "A weakness of mine, Domini." He was smiling quiz­zically as he looked at her. "I have a Greek eye for beauty."

  "Is that your only excuse, Paul?" she asked in a low voice, and her ringed hand had stolen to the chiffon swathing the throat of her sleeveless sheath.

 
; "Not quite," he replied, catching her meaning at once.

  "I had another reason, but I don't intend to tell you at this stage what it was."

  Her heart seemed to pound beneath her fingers when he said that. What was he implying — that he had wanted her for his wife because he loved her?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “CHILD, will you be still?" implored the rather sad-eyed woman who sat making lace in a basket chair. She wore unrelieved black, from the snood covering her hair to the tips of her narrow shoes. The small radio standing on the table beside her chair showed that she had passed the first three years of deep mourning for her husband and could now enjoy some light entertainment.

  “But, Aunt Sophula, they will be here any minute!" Kara Stephanos danced from one foot to the other, then hung precariously over the iron balustrade of the terrace. It directly overlooked the road that wound up from the harbour of Andelos, and she would see their car the moment it came into view. Her sunburned face was tense with excitement, and her aunt shook her head as she glanced up from her lacework. There were scratch marks on Kara's arms again where she had been at them with her fingernails. So unsightly! Paul would really have to agree to the child seeing a nerve specialist . . .

  “Here they are—they are coming!" Kara flashed past her aunt's chair and leapt like a Pegasus down the steps that led to a side patio, across which she sped to a small door that opened on to the road. She couldn't get it open fast enough, her eyes shining as she raced to the cream car that was pulling to a standstill in front of the house.

  “Welcome home, Paul!" she cried out in Greek, and he slid quickly out from behind the wheel, and Domini watched as he swept the slight figure of his sister up into his arms and they kissed with joyous, foreign abandonment. "Paul!" The girl cradled his face in her brown hands and her tears fell on to his cheek. "I have missed you so," she said huskily. "How have you been, my brother?"

  "I have been fine, little one." Again he kissed her warmly. "Now, my squirrel, come and meet my wife Domini." He lowered Kara to her feet and led her to the car. He opened the passenger door and Domini stepped out on to the sun-hot flags fronting the house. She wore a sleeveless shantung dress in pale blue and she looked so cool and lovely that Paul’s sister just stood gaping her.