Holiday Fling

by Christina Jones

  Hugo had decided there was no point trying to keep their engagement secret, so he persuaded Elinor to spend the afternoon openly at Boxcombe House, where she bathed and changed into fresh clothes that he had had sent over from her home. After she had been hugged and cried over by Lady Eugenia and eaten a hearty dinner – she was, in fact, quite ravenous after her unwonted exercise at the cottage – it was time to face the music. Sir James Durrant had sent a very polite but somewhat terse note to Lady Eugenia with Elinor’s clothes, and it hinted at serious consequences should he discover that she had been harmed in any way by his neighbours.

  Aramintha, of course, was beside herself with curiosity and excitement, and she was the first person Elinor saw as she entered the drawing-room.

  ‘Oh, Elinor, we have been so worried about you! Are you well? You did not take a chill in the storm?’

  Elinor smiled, and pressed Aramintha’s outstretched hands reassuringly. ‘I am perfectly well, my love. Lord Avon ensured I took no harm.’ She glanced across at Sir James, who had risen to his feet and was staring impassively at Hugo. ‘Sir James, Aramintha, may I present Lady Eugenia Sotheby and her grandson, the Earl of Avon – my betrothed.’

  ‘Oh, Elinor, I’m so very happy for you!’ Aramintha flung her arms around Elinor’s neck.

  ‘Avon, what the devil is the meaning of this?’ Sir James moved swiftly across the room. ‘Have you no shame, man?’

  Hugo simply put his arm around Elinor’s waist and drew her close to his side. ‘I am not at all ashamed of my love for Miss Camden. She has done me the great honour of agreeing to become my wife. We shall be married by special licence as soon as her bridal clothes are made and a wedding breakfast arranged. I know how important you and your family are to her, Sir James, and it would give us the greatest pleasure if you would consent to give her away. Wouldn’t it, darling?’

  And he smiled into her eyes so tenderly that Sir James was momentarily robbed of speech. Not so Aramintha, who grabbed Elinor’s free arm and dragged her over to a sofa, where she exclaimed and giggled and bombarded her with questions and was soon making suggestions about wedding guests, dresses, flowers, and all the paraphernalia without which, it would appear, the nuptials could never take place.

  Hugo whispered something in Elinor’s ear and left the drawing-room with Sir James, trusting his grandmother to steer Aramintha away from some of her more fanciful suggestions. He wanted to be married speedily and without fanfare. Elinor would not be snatched from his arms a second time. It took twenty minutes’ private conversation with Sir James in his library to set the baronet’s mind at ease.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ was Sir James’s comment as the whole story of the events at Boxcombe eight years before was told. ‘I wish you both joy, Avon. And I trust I have your word that you will never give Elinor cause to regret giving you a second chance. She is very dear to me, almost like my own daughter. I could not bear to see her hurt again.’

  ‘No one is more conscious of all that I owe her than I am. She’ll never regret it, I promise.’

  ‘I’d better send for my wife,’ Sir James said, ‘to help organise the wedding before Aramintha sends you off on your honeymoon in a hot-air balloon.’

  It was too much to hope that a wedding involving one of Society’s most notorious rakes and the lady who had so publicly jilted him eight years before would be a quiet affair. While a bridal gown was being made and a small, informal wedding breakfast arranged, word naturally got out. Various friends and acquaintances of the bridegroom’s family and cronies of the Durrants all seemed to find an excuse to be in or around Bath as the wedding day drew nearer. Letters of congratulations and good wishes began to arrive. It was only right and proper, Lady Eugenia told Hugo, that the guest list be extended to include people who had shunned him eight years before but had since seen the error of their ways. There would be no rushed wedding by licence with barely a handful of guests, but a large ceremony to show the world that Elinor was glad to become his wife.

  And so one glorious day in early June, Miss Elinor Camden walked up the aisle of a packed Stokenbridge church on the arm of a beaming Sir James Durrant to be united in holy matrimony with the Earl of Avon by the Reverend Thomas Lansley. Despite his satanic reputation, the earl looked remarkably handsome, pleasant, and very gentlemanly, as not a few in the congregation were disappointed to discover. He smiled so brightly at his bride when she reached the altar that the worrying suspicion began to form that they were actually in love, and this was not, after all, a forced match like the one in Miss Camden’s recently published A Matter of Sentiment, where the heroine was sold in marriage by her tyrannical guardian to the deplorable Duke Grimaldo. Miss Aramintha Durrant and Miss Becky Lansley looked charming in their matching bridesmaids’ dresses in pale blue silk; young Dennis Lansley managed to sit still for five minutes and not interrupt the vows with an ill-timed tantrum or fire off his catapult; Lady Eugenia sobbed tears of joy with Lady Durrant in the front pew, and a contingent of officers from Lord Avon’s regiment formed a guard of honour as the happy couple left the church to the applause of the village children and the peal of bells.

  It was a glorious early summer day and the festivities were long and merry, leading everyone to the horrifying conclusion that they had been cheated of a thoroughly good scandal and that perhaps it was indeed a marriage made in heaven.

  Tucked away in the cottage for their wedding night without servants to trouble them, the Earl and Countess of Avon had no doubts at all that theirs would be a blessed and fruitful union. They had just finished demonstrating this fact to themselves by an intense and vigorous session of love-making, which had left them both in the state of languorous rapture so common to besotted newlyweds.

  ‘Oh, Hugo,’ Elinor sighed against her husband’s chest, ‘that was wonderful. I had no idea one could do it like that.’

  ‘One can do it in a multitude of ways, Ellie – all of them equally delightful. It will be my great pleasure to show you them all.’ He cuddled her closer. ‘Happy, my darling?’

  ‘Blissfully.’ She leaned up to kiss him. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Ecstatically. I am a little worried about our children’s names, though. I had no idea you were so inventive until I read A Matter of Sentiment.’

  ‘Really?’ She grinned. ‘But I have them all picked out already. They shall have four names each, all wildly inappropriate and unpronounceable. Our eldest son shall be Lysander Ilyrium Algernon Marmaduke de Gray. I do hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘It won’t matter to me – I shall always call him Henry. But you might think what he’ll have to endure when he goes to school.’

  ‘If anyone gives him trouble, I’ll lampoon them in a novel.’

  ‘Mmm … subtle revenge. I like it. So, how does our story end, lady wife?’

  ‘Oh, not for at least another four volumes … we shall expire in a surfeit of passion, of course, surrounded by our hordes of great-grandchildren, who will weep copiously over our graves and spend all the royalties from my books in riotous living.’

  ‘Now that,’ said Hugo, rolling her over and pinning her beneath him, ‘sounds just like my kind of book.’

  Greek Gifts

  Jan Jones

  Only the Greeks could have built a road like this, thought Ellen affectionately. She rested her hand on the curving harbour wall and gazed at the road’s raw functionality slicing through the most lyrical landscape in the world – and laughed aloud for the sheer joy of being in Greece, on holiday, in an empty morning full of promise.

  The truth was that Ellen at this moment loved everything. Even this brazen concrete road that obliterated the centuries-old path from the hilltop down to the Dryads’ Pool before sweeping on in an important modern rush towards the quay. She rotated slowly, drinking in the whole glorious panorama: the hills behind the town, the higgledy-piggledy roofs descending to the harbour, the lush turquoise expanse of sea. The sun was already warm and strange on her uncovered shoulders, the air was s
picily Mediterranean, the early-morning haze dissipating before her eyes. She’d been here less than a day and she never wanted to leave. Greece had captured her from the first glimpse through the aeroplane windows, the first kiss of landing wheels on runway. She loved the bright colours of the shops, the vitality of the people, how the Greeks lived noisily and busily in the present, even though the past was a mere sliding breath away wherever you looked.

  Talking of which … Ellen jumped off the concrete road, scrambled across a dusty, scrubby, insect-rich ribbon of tansy and thyme, and in half-a-dozen more strides was at the Dryads’ Pool.

  She paused for a moment, feeling she had stepped into an Alma-Tadema painting. The pool was a shallow circular basin, wide enough for three or four people to lie full-length, tiled in ancient marble, and fed by a bubbling spring. It was set amongst irregular stone tiers worn smooth with time, and had a liquid sense of being at one with its surroundings.

  In the UK, thought Ellen, it would no doubt come with an attached car-park, an information board, an ice-cream seller, and a cordon so you couldn’t wear the site away or slip and fall and sue the council. Here at the edge of this small harbour town, there was a metal plate in Greek and a translation in English – and that was all. The local youth congregated around it at night. Mothers sat on the steps in the afternoons to gossip, watching their children play on the shingle beach below. Children darted in and out of the sea, rushing up to rinse the salt off their skin. For all its great age, the Dryads’ Pool was simply part of the community.

  Ellen sat on the slabs, splashed her face with the rock-cold water, and trailed her fingers along a rounded ledge. Gladness filled her at the thought of being on holiday for a whole week in a land where the last couple of thousand years were no more than a blink of the eye.

  She still couldn’t believe that this time yesterday she’d been staring desperately around a packed airport terminal, heart hammering, terrified that she’d lost her group and would never find the right aeroplane. The difference was too complete, the transition too quick. The plane had been a strange, time-out experience, like a bus journey in the air. Ellen had assumed everything would slow down once they arrived, but no. After collecting their luggage from the belt, there had been barely ten minutes gasping at the airless Athens heat before they were hustled onto a battle-scarred, chalk-filmed coach. They’d then been driven at breakneck speed through such a blindingly beautiful succession of dissolving views that Ellen had had to clench her fists to her mouth with the agony of not being able to wonder at it all properly.

  Even after they’d arrived at the villa, she hadn’t been able to unpack in her tiny room and explore quietly as she would have liked. Her companions had broken open the duty-free, topped up their holiday expectations with liberal quantities of gin, then they had all piled out down to the harbour to buy mixers and crisps and nuts from the mini-market before rushing out again – along this very road – determined to start the week in style by eating at the renowned taverna on the hill and trying their level best to drink it dry.

  Her colleagues weren’t, Ellen reflected a little guiltily, quite what her dour, respectable aunt probably envisioned when Ellen had diffidently mentioned having the chance to visit Greece with an organised group from work.

  Not that Aunt Martha begrudged Ellen a holiday. Goodness, no. She admitted that her niece had worked conscientiously at her job all year and hadn’t shirked any of her household tasks either. She hadn’t taken time off with mere head-colds, nor had she been to the cinema more than once a week or squandered money on heating her room when wearing an extra pullover did a perfectly adequate job. Just so long as Ellen understood that the price of this holiday would eat into her savings and take the deposit on a small flat of her own that bit longer to accumulate. Aunt Martha had looked around at her narrow, spotless, terraced house with satisfaction as she said this, silently making the point that she hadn’t got her house by recklessly going on holiday to Greece the first moment it was offered.

  Ellen had been politely grateful for the words of advice and contritely regretful that she’d already paid the money across so as not to lose her place. And then she’d gone out and had immediately splurged more cash on a Greek phrasebook before visiting the library to borrow all the books on Greece that she could find. She told Aunt Martha the phrasebook had been in the library sale.

  And after all that, after all her reading and map-studying and preparations for this holiday, the first thing she’d done yesterday on leaving the mini-market ahead of the others was to step into the road, forgetting the traffic was on the wrong side!

  Fortunately, she’d been whisked back to the safety of the pavement by a passing knight errant. To the accompaniment of squealing tyres and a cacophony of the most raucous horns she’d ever heard in her life, a perfectly gorgeous young man had held her in warm, tanned arms for a head-swimming moment before setting her solicitously back on her feet. ‘English?’ he had asked, dark eyes laughing down at her.

  ‘Yes,’ she’d gasped out. ‘Thank you so much. I only arrived today and I –’

  He’d laid his fingers, light as gossamer, on her lips. ‘It is my pleasure,’ he’d replied, and then he’d disappeared into the throng of shoppers.

  Back to the present. Ellen stroked the edge of the step one last time, told the Dryads’ Pool she would see it later and returned to the road.

  Yesterday, her holiday companions had paused here on their way to the taverna, attracted by the home-going parents and children. They had flitted merrily around the stone steps, exclaimed at the natural spring, and dropped down to the beach below to skim inexpert pebbles into the bay. Like the others, Ellen had knelt to dip her hand in the water, snatching it back at the ice-cold temperature. One would have to be a dryad, she’d said, to bask for long in that. The others had exchanged spluttering glances, then patted her arm kindly – as they might a puppy – before assaulting the cliff road with cheerful insults, loudly anticipating the flowing wine and plentiful food to be found at the top.

  As a result of which excess, they were all now sleeping soundly and likely to remain so until noon. Ellen couldn’t have done the same if she’d tried. As soon as the dawn light had caressed her eyelids, she’d been awake and up, not wanting to waste a minute of this precious week. After tiptoeing around the villa cleaning rings off the table and tidying up – Aunt Martha’s training ran very deep – she’d washed in water nearly as cold as the Dryads’ Pool before venturing out to buy milk for her breakfast mug of tea. Early as it was, the locals were abroad. She’d smiled and said hello to at least ten people. She’d remembered the direction of the traffic flow. She’d bought bread and orange juice, and had thrilled herself half to death by asking in Greek what the cost was. And all the time there was the pool to see properly and the road calling her and up at the top of the hill there was … there might be …

  No. Ignore the tingle in every nerve. Drink the tea. Cut a hunk from the still-warm loaf. Tuck water, sunblock, and phrasebook into shoulder bag. Don’t expect and you won’t be disappointed.

  Ellen made a face. That was something Aunt Martha had said throughout her childhood. It was a phrase that belonged thousands of miles away in her neat, regulated, everyday life with its daily chores, its rows of terraced houses, its sensible shoes and careful budgets. It didn’t belong here in glorious, sun-soaked, unexpected Greece. This holiday was a gift of good fortune from the gods and Ellen was going to embrace it for as long as she possibly could. So she had scribbled a note for her house mates telling them not to worry about her – and she’d slipped out into adventure.

  And here she was, on her own in a primeval olive and gold landscape. Under her feet the concrete road was simply a veil over the old beaten earth path. Now she could take it as it was supposed to be taken. Minutely. Unhurriedly. Conscious of all those who had travelled it in the thousand years before history began. Finding joy in each new prospect and – if she tried really, really hard – not allowing her mind to roa
m any further ahead than the next bend.

  Takis sat on his favourite bench with his back to the taverna wall. Warmed by the early morning sun, he sat and enjoyed the stillness, only the clicking of his komboloy providing any movement. His eyes ranged over the dew-wet terrace tables and out across the turquoise bay four hundred feet below. Presently he fetched a tray of tiropita from the oven, setting them to cool where the taverna cats couldn’t reach them. Soon his wife or daughters would bring him coffee. He could hear them chattering now, a perpetual background exchange that went on throughout their waking hours, whether working together at the table or calling to each other between kitchen, yard and laundry room. He had long since ceased to wonder what they found to talk about.

  His son, on the other hand … No, there was no noise there. It would be midday before Alexi emerged from his room, shaking himself like a young dog, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and calling loudly for food. He worked hard enough at night, he would say with the careless confidence of youth in response to the women’s scolding. Talking to the customers. Keeping them supplied and good-humoured and never needing to wait for long before being served. Making sure they spread the word about the taverna’s excellence. Ensuring their return time after time. Doing his share to keep the family business profitable. And then, once the women were soothed, he would give that ingenuous grin as he added that a man couldn’t work all day through without a break – and it wasn’t a crime to enjoy himself a little along the way, now was it? He had all the time in the world.

  Would he like to be Alexi’s age again, wondered Takis? Secure in himself with the world at his feet? Hustling around Athens during the winter? Coming here, to work at his own father’s taverna for the summer season?