The Honey Is Bitter

by Violet Winspear

  "Don't forget our party for Domini and Paul tomor­row evening," Kara called out after him. "You will be coming, kyrie?"

  "Nothing could keep me away." He smiled round at her from the steps. "Adio, everyone, until tomorrow night."

  There was a dull sort of silence after he had gone, then Kara slipped out of her brother's lap and asked Domini if she would like to see the frock she would be wearing for the party. Domini welcomed the chance to get away, but as she passed her husband's chair he caught her hand and detained her for a moment. She felt her heart beating in her throat as he scrutinised her face from behind the smoked lenses that made him look sο enigmatic—and unnerving.

  "You seemed to find Barry Sothern an interesting person," he said quietly.

  "I suppose that's because he's British," she replied, and she was conscious of the tightening of Paul's fingers.

  "One of your own kind, eh, Domini?" A smile came and went on Paul's chiselled mouth. "Do you still feel such a stranger with me?"

  She bit her lip and felt Kara and his aunt looking at them, then Paul deliberately turned her hand palm upwards and kissed it. Domini bore the kiss without any warmth at her heart, knowing it to be a seal on his possession—his caprice.

  The touch of his lips lingered ... lingered as she went down the terrace steps with Kara.

  CHAΡΤER EIGHT

  DOMINI gave a gasp of mingled amusement and shock, for Kara's apartment resembled a junk shop dealing in odd musical instruments and illustrated sheet, music. Kara grinned at Domini's expression and picked up the ribboned mandolin which her brother had given her. She ran a thin hand over its grained and gleaming pear-shape, and watched with gipsy-dark eyes as Domini paused before the bureau on which stood several framed photographs.

  Domini picked up a photograph of a lovely brunette wearing a foreign-looking wedding-gown and headdress. Kara came and peered over her shoulder. "That was Paul's mother," she said. "Paul resembles her, do you not think? That is our father in the companion frame. Poor Papa, he was not so happy with my mother. I don't remember her too well. Aunt Sophula always says of her that she was the foolish whim of a man of middle years."

  Kara plucked a little tune out of her bouzouki. "I am the odd result of their union," she laughed.

  "Who says you're odd?" Domini was nettled on the girl's behalf, for there was a piquancy about her that Domini liked; an elfin quality that was innocent and touching.

  "Oh—Alexis," Kara shrugged. "Sometimes my aunt. They don't understand me, and think it odd that I should like folk music so much."

  "Alexis was married to your younger brother, wasn’t she, Kara?" Domini was beginning not to like the sound of Paul's sister-in-law.

  "Yes, she was wife to Loukas." A cloud passed over Kara's face. "He died eighteen months ago—at sea like Papa. The sea is cruel to us, though we take our living from it."

  "I'm sorry about your brother, Kara." Domini spoke gently, and glimpsing tears in the girl's eyes she turned her attention to another photograph in order not to embarrass her. The dark, framed face stared back at her —Paul when he had been about Kara's age, but a Paul who bewildered her, for he was clad so oddly in a sheep-skin tunic and a wool cap worn at a rakish angle above thin young face.

  "Paul was only sixteen when he fought in the rebellion," Kara said proudly. "He was an andarte, a guerilla fighter. He was badly hurt by a grenade during the fighting in Athens and he—he almost died. That is how he got the scar." Kara touched a finger to his unscarred face in the photograph. "The scar does not matter. Paul is still the handsomest man on the island, and you and he will have such lovely children—"

  There she broke off as Domini replaced the photograph on the bureau in such a hurry that it fell over and had to be set right. "Really, Kara," Domini gave a brittle little laugh, "your brother and I have been married only a few weeks. W-we aren't thinking of starting a family just yet."

  "But babies are such fun," Kara said warmly. "They are the nicest part of being married—or so it seems to me”

  “Ί-Ι don't want to talk about it, if you don't mind, Kara." Domini was trembling slightly as she turned the pages of a book of sea-shanties, but Kara, looking rather bewildered, pursued the subject with half-childish persistence.

  "Don't you wish to give Paul a child?" she asked. "The pride of all Greek women is to give their man a son. Are English women so different? Are they cold— like their beauty?"

  "We—just aren't in the habit of discussing so private a matter," Domini replied, in a low, shaken voice. She was far from indifferent to children; they were cute and affectionate and absorbing at all stages of their growth —but a child should be born out of love, and it wasn't love that Paul felt when he took her in his arms.

  "Do we, and the island, seem strange to you?" Kara plonked a mandolin string, and quizzed the cameo cool­ness of Domini's face in profile, its fine-drawn tension as she pretended to study the book in her hands.

  "Andelos is another world to me," Domini admitted. "I feel the pull of its fable-like atmosphere, and yet at the same time I am aware of—of not belonging."

  "But of course you belong," Kara protested. "You are Paul's wife, and that makes you one of us. No doubt our ways will seem strange to you at first, but in no time at all you will be feeling and acting as the wife of a Greek —and loving it," Kara added with a laugh. "Paul is very masterful, of course, and you are very British, and it is only natural that you fight a little. But as we say in Greece, what is a marriage without the relish of fighting and making up?"

  "Is that how it looks, Kara, that we fight?" Domini asked quietly.

  "I would say there is some conflict between you,"' Kara agreed. "But the beginning of marriage is a time of adjustment, and happiness has to be earned, not handed to us on a plate."

  "Are all Greek people so philosophical?" Domini smiled.

  "Of course." In her play-clothes, cradling her bouzouki with its gay ribbons, Kara looked like a winsome gnome as she gazed back at Domini. "The Greeks were civilised when others were barbarians, you know."

  The girl bent her dark head and strange Greek music rippled out of the stringed instrument that had been born out of those played in the Ionic temples of long ago. Domini listened and thought of Paul, and the tiger that roamed under that well-groomed veneer of his.

  Tiger, tiger . . . purring in the dark, smoky-gold eyes drowsy from the passion she aroused in him, and hated. She stood very still, her eyes on that youthful photograph of him.

  "You play well, Kara," she said as the music died away.

  "This is an instrument to make any music sound good." Kara stroked the mandolin with loving fingers, “Paul always gives me presents I love. Once when he returned from a trip he brought me a real rose-bush with toy singing birds attached to the branches. But that was when I was younger."

  Domini smiled, and when she left Kara to go to her room—and Paul's—the strange Greek music followed her.

  She opened the door of the big double room, and stiffened when she walked in and saw Paul out on the balcony. He turned upon hearing her, and strolled in to join her, a cheroot held in long fingers. "Do you like this mansion above the harbour?" he asked with a smile.

  She walked into the centre of the room, and he saw the hard shine of her eyes, as though iced tears lay in them. "'What do you want me to reply, Paul, that the place is charming and I shall love visiting here?" With a tired, rather lost gesture, she pushed the burnished hair back from her eyes. "The house is charming, but it's full of your relations and they're bound to guess how matters stand between us. Do you know what Kara has just been talking about?"

  "I cannot begin to guess," he drawled, lifting his cheroot and drawing on it, the smoke rising blue about his smoky-gold eyes.

  "She was talking about children," Domini flung at him, "ours."

  "I am sorry Kara upset you." His eyes hardened as they scanned her scornful face. "But she is little more than a child herself and so she says what is in her heart. You must not tak
e her remarks so seriously."

  "Would you suggest that I apply your advice to the rest of this—situation?" Domini demanded. "This pre­tence that we're happy newlyweds with not a cloud on our horizon?"

  "Greek people are not demonstrative in public and my relations would be offended rather than otherwise if you hung over me," he smiled thinly, "and showed your affection—that is if you had any for me—openly."

  "It's one relief to know that I needn't act the starry-eyed bride." Domini gave a hard little laugh. "I was never any good at pretending, not even as a child. If someone told me there were elves in the woods, then I believed them."

  "What of unicorns, Domini?" He lifted his cheroot with lazy composure and smiled through the smoke. "Do you recall the one you bought for me with all the money you had, clutching it in your hand like a child as you ran to give it to me?"

  "Oh, I was a child all right," Domini said coldly. "A little fool who sang for a few hours like—like a blinded bird."

  "Ah—" the smile was flicked off his face as though by acid. "You are learning how to be cruel, Domini."

  "I have the best of teachers," she threw the words over her shoulder as she took lingerie out of a drawer and swung a long dress out of the wardrobe. "You, Paul."

  She went into the small adjoining bathroom and as she closed the door behind her, she felt elation at having hurt him. That unicorn! It stood on his desk in that sombre office at the house on the eagle's crag, incon­gruous with its little twisted horn beside a big ebony ink­stand. Paul seemed to reap a perverse satisfaction out of that symbol of her surrender—her total surrender—to him, but never again would that happen. She meant what she had said to him at the villa; he was welcome to what he had bought, but her heart was her own.

  As she stepped from under the shower, she caught sight of her reflection in a mirror on the wall. Her eyes were those of a stranger, and with a towel draped around her she gazed in a quiet panic at herself. Where was Domini Dane, who as a child had searched for elves in the folded petals of windflowers, and who at seven­teen had dreamed of a tall young man with gay eyes and a mane of lion-gold hair. Domini closed her eyes to shut out the girl in the mirror; the girl who belonged to a man she didn't love.

  Domini had soon discovered that Greeks prefer to dine out of doors, under sunlight or starlight, and their vradi, or evening meal, begins late. They linger over it and talk of many things, and often it is midnight before they go to bed.

  The stars were out when Domini walked with Paul across the dining courtyard to the table that caught a slanting light from wall lanterns. She wore apricot lace, and her fair hair framed her face in a casual style. Paul in dark evening wear seemed extra tall at her side. The dark suit and his distant manner intensified the im­pression, making of Domini a fragile focus for the eyes of a young woman who stood holding a cocktail beside an illuminated fountain. She wore a deep-necked dress in nectarine, and the subtle lights of the fountain showed off her dramatic cheekbones, her secret bayou eyes and the rich coil of dark-hair at the nape of her neck. With the poised walk of a woman who knows she is extremely attractive, she came towards Paul and Domini, who had guessed already that this was Alexis, the widow of Loukas who had been drowned eighteen months ago.

  Paul introduced them, and Alexis studied Domini with cool deliberation as she asked how she was liking Andelos. Her English was very good, and her throat seemed full of cream as she spoke; deep, smooth, sensuous.

  "I hope you will not find yourself too cut off from civilisation in that house of Paul's?" she drawled, while he turned to the table to pour a couple of aperitifs. His aunt and Kara had not yet appeared.

  "I'm used to living in a country house," Domini replied, thanking Paul in an aside as she took her aperitif from him. She had not expected to like Alexis very much, and was confirmed in her feeling that she would find her the type who lived for herself alone. It hung about her like the ambergris perfume she wore; was as manifest as it is in a sleek and luxury-loving Persian cat.

  "That house!" Her laugh matched her seductive body. "Paul, have I not said before it is like a fastness— a retreat?"

  "You have," he agreed, taking a sip at his drink and meeting her eyes. "But it was built so that a man might find escape from the inanities of so-called civilisation."

  "But Domini is a woman," those faintly wicked eyes scanned the slender figure at his side, "and someone so pretty is certain to grow bored with being tucked away in that lonely retreat of yours. I know I should."

  "You are a restless city creature, Alexis," he half smiled. “Domini is a country girl who, I am hopeful, will appreciate the sea and the pine trees whispering together at night, our hidden beach, and walking in the woods."

  "Really?" Alexis gazed over the rim of her cocktail glass at Domini, who had never felt such a flare of antagonism towards another girl. Alexis wasn't in the least concerned that the house on the eagle's crag might prove lonely for Paul's wife; she was, Domini knew, a beautiful cat who had to rip into everything just for the fun of feeling her claws.

  "I know I shall love the woods," Domini said. "They will remind me of—home."

  "Do not let the wood-witch lure you too far into them, kyria," Alexis smiled narrowly. "You might get lost."

  "I have known those woods from a boy," Paul said dryly. "If Domini goes astray, then I shall soon find her and bring her home."

  "How masterful of you, Paul." Alexis gave him a slumbrous smile through her lashes. Then she looked at Domini. "Is it thrilling, or otherwise, for an Anglitha to be married to one of our possessive Greeks?"

  Domini tensed beside Paul, and it was with relief that she saw Alexis turn her attention to the arrival of their hostess and a couple of menservants carrying trays of food. Kara appeared breathlessly, more elfin than ever in green, bringing her mandolin which she placed care­fully on a lounger under some trees. "Are we going to be entertained when we have eaten?" Alexis drawled.

  Kara shot a gipsy-dark glance at her sister-in-law. "Domini wishes to hear some Greek music," she said. "Do you mind?"

  "Who am I in this house to mind anything?" Alexis flicked her eyes over the younger girl. "Lipstick, Kara? Have you put it on for Nikos—ah, here he comes! Nikki, your little cousin has gone all sophisticated and is wearing lipstick in your honour."

  Nikos, a slender, good-looking young Greek, ungallantly pulled Kara's hair as he passed her by and went straight to Paul to be introduced to the bride, as he put it. Shyness was obviously a stranger to him; he had all the charm of the young Adonis he looked, and Domini could tell that his widowed mother was extremely proud of him. Little Kara, she suspected, was smitten with him without fully knowing it, for she had blushed deeply at Alexis' mocking remarks and scrubbed the lipstick from her mouth with her handkerchief.

  Nikos was placed beside Domini at the table, and his friendly conversation helped her to relax and enjoy the various Greek dishes; the soup with its tang of eggs and lemon, quails simmered in wine and served with a piquant dressing, and salad served from a huge cedar-wood bowl. Nikos, son of the house, did the mixing honours at the table, quoting with his gay smile: "A spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a counsellor for salt, and a lunatic to mix it."

  Everyone laughed, and Domini, catching Paul's eye, realised that Nikos was like him as he looked in that photograph of him as a youthful guerrilla fighter. Since then a devil had entered in and the idealistic boy had changed into a man capable of utter ruthlessness. Did no one at the table suspect it? Or did they know and accepted it as natural in an adult Greek?

  "Andelos must seem strange to you after England," Nikos remarked, a small glass of iced and cloudy ouzo held in his hand. "You must feel very far from the scents and sounds of your homeland?"

  "Yes, England does feel a long way away," Domini agreed, and as though to endorse her words, a mocking­bird tinkled into song from its hiding place among the trees.

  "Then Kara and I must do our best to help you feel at home, eh, little cousin?" Nikos win
ked across the table at Kara, who responded by pulling a face at him and smiling at Domini. He went on: "We will come to your house and take you swimming with us at night. It is like bathing in purple wine, and the stars are like bubbles in the" wine."

  "Sounds very exciting," Domini smiled, for this young man was quite irresistible. "What do we do after our swim, lie on the sand and get a moon-tan?"

  He laughed aloud. "Paul, you must guard well this ice-daisy of yours, or I shall steal her," he said. "Are there many more like her in England?"

  "You may go there on business for me some time," Paul smiled, "then you will see for yourself. I don't think, however, that you will find another quite like Domini."

  "You always were the lucky one when it came to finding something unique," Nikos said admiringly. "I recall that carving of Andromeda on her rock." He glanced mischievously at Domini. "Paul, always swore that he would not marry until he found a real-life Andromeda. I asked him what he would do if she belonged to someone else, or if she would not marry him, and do you know what he said?"

  "I think I can guess." Her head was half bent, so that the lantern light played over a bright wing of her hair. He said he would take her and pay the price . . . whatever it was."

  "Ah, you know him well, Domini!" Nikos thumped the table in his delight—thinking this a game—and his mother reproved him for rattling the dishes and crockery.

  "If you behave like a boy," she said, "Paul will think you are not yet ready for a position of importance in the business."

  "Nikos is in high spirits, Aunt Sophula," Paul said lazily. "And I enjoy listening to the fancies which the young are full of."

  "Come, Paul," the long lashes of Alexis stirred out of the cream of her cheeks and the look she slanted him was full of secret laughter, "you are not yet in your dotage. You have your fancies, too."