Roses and Champange

by Neels, Betty

  ‘Not warm enough to wear the things I brought,’ she told Lucius as they sat over their tea.

  ‘I’ve just been told that it’s a good deal warmer than usual for the time of year, and they’re expecting it to be even warmer. It’s fifteen degrees today, but it will probably warm up to eighteen.’

  ‘But isn’t that rather unusual? It’s only January.’

  ‘Yes, it is, but it’s very much to our advantage. Are you too tired to go out this evening? I thought we might go to the Acropolis tomorrow, fairly early in the morning, and then potter gently for the rest of the day. I’ll hire a car and we’ll go along the coast in a day or so. If you can be sufficiently spartan we might swim once in a while.’

  Katrina put down her tea-cup. ‘In January?’ she demanded. ‘You must be mad! I’ve brought my swimsuit, though.’

  ‘It’s not too cold in the water even in January— worth a try anyway.’

  She got up. ‘Well, I’m going to unpack and change. Will you be here?’

  He gave her a faintly mocking glance. ‘Of course. We’ll have a drink downstairs and have dinner later. Then our walk later too, perhaps?’

  She nodded and went back to her room to bath and change into one of the knitted dresses and jackets she had packed. It was fine and silky and a pretty mushroom pink. Just for once she was satisfied with her appearance as she went back to the sitting room.

  Lucius was on the balcony, but he turned to study her as she went in. ‘Nice,’ he observed. ‘You deserve a champagne cocktail.’

  The bar was elegant, busy and almost full, although there didn’t appear to be many tourists there. They had their drinks and then went in to dinner, and although the restaurant was almost full, they were shown to a table by the window, so placed that they could scan the room as well as look out on to Syntagma Square, its pavements covered by cafe tables and chairs and kiosks selling newspapers and dozens of other useful odds and ends. Katrina turned away from the bustle outside to study the menu, ready to take Lucius’s advice.

  ‘Hors d’oeuvres, I think,’ he counselled her, ‘then moussaka and I should have an ice if I were you, but have cheese if you’d rather. Would you like to try the local wine?’

  ‘Well, of course,’ said Katrina, quite astonished. ‘I mean, when in Rome...’

  He smiled gently at her and she looked away, because when he smiled like that she found it hard to play the part of an old familiar friend.

  She didn’t like the wine very much, but the food was good, served by a cheerful waiter, who stopped to talk each time he came to their table. It surprised her when Lucius spoke to him in Greek, and the man, delighted, answered at length.

  ‘Aren’t you clever?’ said Katrina when the waiter had gone. ‘Were you saying much, or was it just passing the time of day?’

  ‘That and finding out which is the best place from which to hire a car and what the roads are like inland.’

  ‘And are they good?’

  ‘Surprisingly, yes. There’s not been nearly as much rain as usual, in fact, the weather’s been exceptional; much warmer than it should be. He says the old people in the country don’t like it at all, they think that it might mean storms later.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad it’s fine for us.’ Katrina finished her coffee and went to fetch the light angora coat she had brought with her and went out into the square with him. It was crowded now and almost all the cafe chairs were filled under the lights. They strolled across to the war memorial beyond the orange trees and above the square, skirted the Royal Palace and went into the Royal Gardens, still open. It was too early in the year for flowers, but there were shrubs and juniper trees and tall cypresses.

  ‘How long shall we be here?’ asked Katrina.

  ‘Two days, perhaps three. We’ll stop another day as we return, if you like.’

  She sensed that he wasn’t very enthusiastic. ‘If you don’t want to, then I don’t either,’ she declared. ‘There must be heaps to see in the country around.’

  He smiled a little. ‘There is. It would take months. But we’ll skim the cream off this corner of the country in the time we have.’

  She looked at him curiously. ‘You’ve been here before, I know—how many times?’

  ‘Four—no, five, and each time I return home I give thanks for the peace and quiet.’

  ‘Well, it’s noisy, but I think I like it—orange trees, you know, and being quite warm in January, and those mountains in the distance.’

  She tucked a hand under his arm, because she had always done so and if she didn’t he might notice. ‘You can improve my mind with a few Greek gods,’ she suggested.

  They filled the next two days to overflowing. The Acropolis, naturally enough, took up their entire first morning. Katrina went happily up the sloping, slippery cobbles of the Sacred Way and stood gazing up at the Parthenon while Lucius pointed out the distant sea and the smoke of Piraeus, then turned her to view the whole of the Attic plain before showing her the Temple of the Wingless Victory, a charming miniature temple facing the Parthenon and very much to her taste.

  There were few people about; it was still fairly early in the morning, but already the sun was unseasonably warm. They wandered from temple to temple and then looked round the Acropolis Museum, a sketchy visit, for it was by then more than time for lunch.

  They went back to their hired car and Lucius drove to the Dionysos Restaurant, opposite the restored theatre of that name, and they ate pilaff, and vegetables stuffed with rice and herbs. Lucius ordered retsina for Katrina to try, but after one cautious sip, she wrinkled her ordinary little nose and declared that it tasted of turpentine, so he chose a sweet Samian wine for her, drinking the retsina with apparent enjoyment himself.

  They spent the afternoon visiting the various monuments in the city, and if Lucius was bored he showed no sign of it, but explained patiently about the Tower of the Winds, the Gateway of Athena Archegetos and Hadrian’s library before taking her into a confectioners to give her tea and the richest cream cakes she had ever set eyes on, and then, finally, the Byzantine cathedral, small and beautiful, putting to shame the great pile of the nineteenth-century official cathedral beside it. And after that, they drove back to the hotel to bath and change and share drinks in the sitting room before dinner.

  ‘A lovely day,’ declared Katrina. ‘What are we doing tomorrow?’

  ‘The Plaka, the old town, and we shall walk, dear girl. There won’t be many tourists and we can roam at will.’

  They went down to dinner presently and afterwards Lucius took her into the square, where they sat at a cafe table on the pavement and drank cups of thick strong coffee. It wasn’t cold—chilly, perhaps, but not unpleasant.

  Lucius took her through the Plaka the next day, through the narrow alleys, past tiny houses, to give her lunch at a taverna—vegetables and rice cooked in oil, Greek beer and a sweet sticky pudding for Katrina, and after they had eaten he took her to a small paved garden of cypress trees and shrubs where they sat in the afternoon sunshine, not saying much. As they got up to go Lucius asked: ‘Enjoying it, Katie?’ And when she said yes with all the fervour of a small girl, he kissed her gently.

  It took all her will power not to kiss him in return.

  They went shopping in the afternoon, to buy cards for Lovelace and Mrs Beecham and Mrs Lovell and Mrs Moffat, and Katrina bought bright embroidery to take home as gifts, and when they reached Syntagma Square

  again with its boutiques, Lucius bought her a small ikon. ‘A little something to remind you of our holiday together,’ he told her, and she thanked him with just the right note of pleasure in her quiet voice, thinking to herself that she wouldn’t need an ikon or anything else to remind her, but she couldn’t tell him that.

  They had tea in another cafe and wandered back to the hotel, to follow the pattern of the previous evening. Katrina, packing her case once more ready for their leaving in the morning, wasted a good deal of time on her balcony watching the lively square below.

/>   ‘Let’s go out for a drink,’ said Lucius from his balcony. ‘I know we’ve had one already, but I’m not sleepy, are you?’

  She denied tiredness and ten minutes later they were seated at a cafe table, coffee and brandy before them. Katrina hadn’t really wanted the brandy, but Lucius had laughed at her. ‘Live dangerously,’ he advised her.

  She was lifting the glass to her lips when a voice said: ‘How nice to see you again, my dear!’

  The cosy little lady from the airport was standing by their table, smiling. Her sister was beside her, scowling. Lucius got to his feet, and wished them good evening and the cosy lady burst into speech. ‘It’s all wonderful, isn’t it?’ she wanted to know. ‘We’re in a pension, but we thought we’d see how the other half live.’ She laughed cheerfully, but she looked wistful.

  ‘Will you have coffee or a drink?’ asked Lucius, and Katrina could have hugged him for the nice way he smiled.

  ‘Thank you, no.’ The cosy lady’s sister spoke before she could answer. ‘We aren’t used to being out so late, we must get back to our rooms.’ She looked disapprovingly at their glasses on the table. ‘We don’t touch strong drink. Good evening.’

  She caught her sister by the arm and marched her away, and Katrina said: ‘Poor old thing, I’m sure she’d have loved a drink.’

  Lucius sat down again: ‘I agree, but I’d have offered that sister of hers vinegar!’

  They settled down again and were soon discussing where they should go first the next day.

  They left after breakfast, taking the busy road to Piraeus and then making their way through the town and on to the coast road to Sounion. Piraeus was uninteresting, full of factories and foundries, and they made short work of it, glad to be on the corniche with the sea on one side and low-lying ground on the other, with tavernas here and there. The racecourse came next, then the airport, and after that the beaches with their fashionable bungalows and tavernas and presently, further along the coast, hotels, and then finally Sounion, the Temple of Poseidon high above the sea on the cliff edge.

  They had coffee in the cafe at the foot of the temple and then climbed up the rough path to examine it better and stand and admire the magnificent view from the cliff top. It was a clear day. Lucius pointed out Milos, far away on the horizon, and since the sun was warm, they sat for a while idly in its rays, talking about nothing much, content with each other’s company.

  They went back to the hotel presently and had lunch, then drove on up the coast towards Lavrion with its mines and then up and over the steep pass and on to the Mesogeia plain. Here the country was different, with olive groves and a background of distant snow-capped mountains and villages whose ancient history Lucius patiently told her, stopping often to admire the view and then turning away to see Marathon Bay and drink tea and eat small sweet cakes at a roadside taverna. It was early evening when they reached Kophisia, and Katrina was surprised to find that they weren’t so very far from Athens, but they had gone slowly, turning down side roads and making a wide sweep to the north of Kophisia, coming down to it through terraced vineyards and olive groves. Katrina, her head over-full with Greek mythology, was secretly glad to see modern villas amongst the trees and to discover that their hotel was modern too, with large rooms and showers and an excellent restaurant. All the same, even though she was tired, she had loved every moment of her day. ‘One should really walk,’ she told Lucius, ‘to see everything in slow motion.’

  He agreed and laughed at her. ‘I’ve stuffed you too full, haven’t I?’ He passed his cup for their after-dinner coffee. ‘Shall we stay here for another night?’

  She was quick to say no; she knew his plans by heart and didn’t mean to be the cause of him altering them. ‘We’re going to Thebes tomorrow,’ she reminded him, ‘and spending the night at...’ she paused to get it right, ‘Levadia.’

  She slept dreamlessly and got up to another bright day. ‘Too warm,’ the old waiter told them over their breakfast, shaking his head worriedly.

  ‘Well, I hope it lasts,’ Katrina observed happily. ‘I do want to swim just once.’ She drank the last of her coffee. ‘I’m ready when you are, Lucius.’

  ‘Proper little slavedriver, aren’t you?’ he smiled. ‘Are you going to nag me like this when we get back home?’

  She smiled and shook her head and didn’t trust herself to answer him.

  Thebes disappointed her; it was ordinary, and as Lucius drove up the hilly main street, she wondered why they had come. As usual he read her thoughts. ‘Not what you expected, is it? But its history is quite out of the ordinary and very bloodthirsty. I shan’t tell you all of it, just the bare bones...’

  Which he did over coffee at one of the tavernas in the main street. ‘Levadia is our goal for the night, but we’ll go off the road to see the more interesting sights and we’ll take the longer route through Ptoion and Gla.’

  Katrina murmured agreement. She had no idea where she was or quite where they were heading for; she had looked up their day’s journey the day before and thought she had learned the route pretty well. Obviously she hadn’t, but she was content to sit beside Lucius and listen to his quiet voice pronouncing Greek names without difficulty and know that however stupid her question, she would get an answer. Like a teacher with a dim pupil.

  She asked: ‘Don’t you find it a bit of a bore, having me here? I don’t know anything...’

  He turned the car on to an ill-surfaced road and began an uphill climb. ‘No, you’re never a bore, Katie, and I enjoy telling you things.’ He glanced sideways at her and smiled. ‘I seem to remember telling you things from the moment I realised that you’d listen to me. How old would you have been, I wonder?

  Four—five?’

  ‘About four,’ she agreed gruffly, and remembered how she had worshipped him as a small child. The worship had altered into an unshakable friendship as she grew older, not even Virginia’s nonsense had shaken it deep down, and now her love for him mustn’t shake it either.

  They reached Levadia in the late afternoon, after a stop to visit a Byzantine church on the way, not only very old, but there was an interesting story about it during the second world war which somehow stuck in Katrina’s head more than its ancient history. There was a taverna close by and they had tea there, and the sweet cakes she was beginning to like.

  She liked Levadia at once, spread out over the hills with spruce-covered mountains shielding its back and Mount Parnassus, snow-capped, towering in the distance. There was a lot of colour too, for the local industry was blanket-making and they hung, in every possible colour, from the house balconies.

  Their hotel was simple, with sparsely furnished rooms and a shared shower, but it was clean, and away from the bustle of the main street. The food was excellent, and they followed their now usual practice of strolling in the evening and having coffee at one of the tavernas, watching the hustle going on around them.

  ‘Delphi tomorrow and then we’ll work our way round Mount Parnassus and find some small village.’ He studied her with thoughtful eyes. ‘We might talk there, Katie?’

  She just stopped herself in time from asking what about. Instead she said lightly: ‘That sounds fun. I take it there’s a lot to see in Delphi? Everyone I’ve met who’s been there has said they simply must go there again.’

  ‘There’s a great deal to see. You can decide at the end of tomorrow if you want to spend more time there. Do you feel like a walk? There’s a castle and a stream with some rather pretty scenery.’

  She reflected, as she got ready for bed later, how well they suited each other, but perhaps that wasn’t what Lucius wanted. Someone pretty, beautiful even, who wore couture clothes and had masses of small talk, whereas she had to be urged to buy the right clothes, and was more inclined to long comfortable silences when they were together than chatter. Besides, there was no getting away from the fact that she was quite lacking in looks. Lucius had said that he wanted to talk; he would want to tell her what he intended doing when he got back
, she supposed. He might even be going to tell her about this girl he intended to marry—that was what old friends were for, to be confided in.

  They left for Delphi directly after an early breakfast the next morning, Lucius regaling her with a few bloodthirsty legends as they went. They travelled westward through a strangely still morning, unseasonably warm and hazy and windless. They went through lonely country with mountains all around them, which Katrina assured herself firmly was why she felt strangely uneasy.

  They stopped briefly to look at the monastery of Hosias Loukas and drink coffee in the small hotel close by, then they went on again through almond orchards already in bloom and small fields, but these gave way to olive groves as they climbed steadily until they reached Arachova, where they stopped for an early lunch before driving on to Delphi, downhill now through a narrowing gorge. There were several hotels and a surprising number of shops. Katrina, agog to have a look round, was pleased when Lucius stopped outside one of the larger hotels, booked them in, parked the car and professed himself ready to take a walk. He stayed patiently beside her while she peered at embroidery, fleecy hearthrugs and woollen bags and then took her back to the hotel for tea.

  ‘It’s five minutes’ walk to the Sanctuary of Apollo,’ he observed when they had finished. ‘Shall we take a stroll before dinner?’

  The Sanctuary was almost encircled by cliffs and the Sacred Way

  was steep and narrow and hairpin bent, and the whole place was scattered over a number of ledges. Katrina was disappointed, adding practically: ‘Though I expect that’s because I know almost nothing about it—I daresay a student of Greek mythology would find it very interesting.’

  Lucius agreed, at his most placid, and suggested that she might prefer the theatre. They climbed the stone stairs, and here she wasn’t disappointed. The mountains around reflected the setting sun and it was very quiet. ‘This is nice,’ she said quietly, ‘and it looks peaceful.’