by Anne Mather
‘Mummy, Mummy!’ Josy was wrapping her arms excitedly about her mother’s hips now. ‘Mummy, do you know who’s here?’
Martha’s mouth was so dry that her tongue clove to its roof, and all she could do was to look down at the child and shake her head in silent denial.
However, Josy didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, and gesturing behind her, she exclaimed: ‘It’s a friend of Daddy’s. My daddy’s,’ she added, her eyes shining. ‘An old friend. You remember him, don’t you, Mummy? Uncle Dion?’
Martha forced herself to lift her head as Dion joined them. Josy’s words had reassured her a little, but she was still scarcely competent to meet the challenging glint in her husband’s dark eyes.
‘Hello, Martha,’ he said, with studied politeness. ‘I hope you did not object to my taking—Josy for a walk? It was such a beautiful evening, and your—er—sister seemed somewhat—overcome by my appearance.’
Overcome! Martha could imagine Sarah’s feelings.
Allowing her tongue to circle her lips, she replied equally politely: ‘I don’t suppose she ever expected to see you again. You—you should have let us know you were coming.’
Dion’s expression hardened. ‘But I did,’ he declared, his meaning unmistakable. ‘Did you not get my message?’ Martha stiffened, but before she could make any response, he went on: ‘Then pirazi, I am here now. And I am delighted to make—your daughter’s acquaintance.’
‘Is Uncle Dion going to stay with us?’ demanded Josy, tugging at her mother’s skirt, and Martha dragged her eyes away from her husband to concentrate on what the child was saying.
‘What? Oh, no—no,’ she replied quickly, avoiding Dion’s piercing’ appraisal. ‘That is—er—Mr Myconos wouldn’t want to stay with us, darling, even if we could accommodate him. He—he has his own apartment.’
‘But he said he doesn’t live in London!’ objected Josy, and Martha expelled her breath impatiently.
‘He doesn’t. But the—er—the company he works for, they provide somewhere for him to stay, you see.’
Josy’s lips pursed. ‘Why can’t he stay with us?’
‘Because we don’t have the room!’ retorted her mother firmly. ‘Now, you run along and play, Josy, while I have a few words with—with Mr Myconos.’
Josy hesitated, looking up at her father. ‘You won’t go away, will you?’ she exclaimed. ‘You said you would give me a ride in your car.’
‘And I will, I promise,’ Dion assured her gently, and Martha wondered how long it had been since he had used that tone to her.
Josy danced off to the play area, and Martha glanced briefly at her husband before starting to walk along the path towards the tennis courts. Dion fell into step beside her, adjusting his long stride to her shorter one, and she thought how innocent their companionship must seem to other people, how uncomplicated the relationship that was presently causing her such turmoil. It was years since she and Dion had walked together, years since she had sensed the envy of other women, and felt herself so fortunate to be part of his life.
The silence between them lengthened, but eventually he spoke. ‘She is very like you, is she not?’ he remarked without emotion. ‘I like her. You have done well.’
Martha said nothing, trying to marshall her defences, and he went on: ‘Why are you so afraid of me, Martha? What have I ever done to make you fear me?’
Martha expelled her breath in a gasp, turning to face him with trembling dignity. ‘What do you intend to do, Dion?’ she demanded, taking the initiative. ‘Why have you really come here? What manner of action is your vengeance going to take, because I don’t believe you just came here to—to meet Josy.’
A trace of ironic humour deepened the lines beside his eyes, as he surveyed her uneasy defiance, and with a mocking finger he reached out and touched the compressed outline of her mouth. She flinched away from him, pressing the back of one hand to her lips, and his shoulders moved in mild impatience as he said:
‘Why did you lie to me, Martha? Why did you let me go on believing the child was not mine, when it is obvious, even to the least discerning of intelligences, that she is?’ Martha held up her head. ‘I never lied to you, Dion. I never once said the child was not yours.’
‘No,’ he agreed swiftly, unable to control the sudden burst of anger that gripped him. ‘But you did not deny that it was not anyone else’s either!’
Martha gulped. ‘And you think I should have done that?’ she demanded unsteadily. ‘You really think I ought to have attempted to convince you of my innocence?’
‘It would not seem unreasonable—’
‘Would it not?’ Martha found strength in her own anger. ‘My God, Dion! What do you think I am? What manner of husband expects his wife to assure him that the child she’s just given birth to is his?’
‘Hristo, it was not like that, and you know it!’ Dion’s dark features contorted violently. ‘Any other wife—’
‘Any other Greek wife, you mean!’
‘No.’ Dion gripped the back of his neck with convulsive fingers. ‘You know how things were between us before the child was born!’
‘Do I not?’
‘Then you must realise how I was feeling—’
‘How you were feeling?’ Martha snorted, and Dion released his neck to grasp her forearm.
‘Yes. How I was feeling,’ he agreed grimly. ‘I do have feelings, you know, despite what you think of me!’
Martha looked down at his fingers on her arm. ‘Oh, I know you have feelings,’ she got out chokingly. ‘Feelings of suspicion and jealousy—’
‘And love!’ he grated forcefully. ‘Or I had, before you did your level best to destroy it!’
‘Love!’ Martha’s lips curled. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word.’
Dion looked as if he would have liked to have done her some physical injury. But the park was too public a place to indulge in histrionics of that sort, and with a stifled oath he released her, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his pants and turning aside from her.
Martha rubbed her arm, and followed his gaze to where Josy was climbing the steps to the top of the slide. Was it only a mother’s pride, or did she really stand out from the other children? Certainly, she was an attractive little giri, with her fair skin and exotically dark hair. Nature had blended her colouring with Dion’s to produce an unusual mixture, and in a few years Josy would be an outstandingly beautiful young woman. Was it fair to expect Dion to sacrifice his share in that awakening, whatever their personal differences might be? Other families came to an amicable arrangement. Why shouldn’t they? There was no point to these senseless recriminations. They were all in the past, and no matter how he had learned of his daughter’s existence, he knew now, and there was no way of altering it.
‘I—I suppose you intend to tell her,’ Martha said now, trying to speak calmly. ‘Josy, I mean. You do intend to tell her you’re her father, don’t you?’
For a moment, Dion did not answer her, but then he turned towards her again, and now there was cold decision where only moments before, looking on his daughter, there had been tender admiration.
‘I want her, Martha,’ he said, his words striking her straight to the heart. ‘And I intend to get her, one way or the other.’
Martha had to grasp the metal fencing of the tennis courts for support as she echoed faintly: ‘You want her? What do you mean—you want her? I’m prepared to come to some reasonable arrangement with you concerning rights of access, but—’
‘Not rights of access, Martha.’ He was inflexible. ‘I mean I intend to take her back to Greece. To live with me, as my daughter should.’
Martha trembled. ‘You can’t do that!’
‘Why can I not?’ His lips curled. ‘Do you think any court in either my country or yours would deny that I can do far more for her than you ever could?’
‘Money’s not everything—’
‘As you persist in telling me. But I suggest that it does buy me a certain
amount of advantage, not least in the legal field. And in the circumstances, it would seem you have—too many responsibilities as it is.’
Martha’s face drained of colour. ‘You—you wouldn’t,’ she protested weakly. ‘You wouldn’t use Sarah’s incapacitation as a lever!’
‘Why not?’ Dion regarded her without sympathy. ‘Do I not have the right to use any methods to gain my own ends? You created this situation, Martha. You took my daughter away from me. Why should I care if you find you have taken more upon yourself than you can successfully cope with?’
Martha pressed her quivering lips together. ‘But—but that’s inhuman!’
‘And was it humane to treat me as you did?’ he snapped. ‘How do you think I felt? Deprived of my wife and my child in one crushing blow! I could have killed you then, Martha. I wanted to, believe me! But I allowed myself to be—persuaded. Instead of pursuing my instincts and following you to London, I used the company as a palliative until I had myself in control again. You can thank my family for that.’ He moved his shoulders in a dismissing gesture. ‘Of course, by the time I did come to find you, my solicitors told me you had moved, to this house in Wimbledon owned by your family friend, Roger Scott!’
Martha passed a hand over her eyes. ‘We had to move. Sarah was the victim of a hit-and-run driver. The apartment—her apartment—the one she rented after we got married and the house was sold, was no use to her in a wheelchair. Besides, with the baby…’
‘But you did not choose to inform me of that, did you?’ Dion demanded cuttingly. ‘In fact, you did not even answer my letters.’
‘There was nothing to say.’ Martha sighed, moving her shoulders in a helpless gesture. ‘I wanted nothing from you.’
‘And now?’ he countered, forcing her to look up at him, and the felt the impotence of her position in the face of his authority.
‘Why can’t you leave us alone?’ she exclaimed, appealing to him unwillingly. ‘You said I’d done a good job of bringing Josy up. Why can’t I go on doing so? We could come to some arrangement…’
Dion regarded her without expression. ‘What arrangement?’ he asked flatly. ‘That she lives with you and spends holidays with me?’
Martha’s hopes rekindled. ‘That’s a possibility.’
‘No.’ Dion shook his head.
‘No?’
‘No.’ He looked down at his booted feet. ‘That would not suit me at all. I want my daughter with me!’
Martha gulped. ‘She’s a person in her own right, you know,’ she protested. ‘You can’t just take her from me!’
‘Do not imagine I could not persuade her,’ retorted Dion coldly. ‘I am her father, and there is something of me in her, despite her likeness to you. A child can be won in so many ways—with toys, with the promise of luxuries, with the exciting prospect of changed surroundings. And with love!’ he added, before she could interrupt. ‘I have grandparents to offer her, aunts and uncles, cousins, she does not even know exist! Quite confusing for so small a girl, no?’
One word in all he had said stuck in Martha’s consciousness. ‘Could?’ she whispered faintly. ‘You said—you could persuade her. What does that mean? Don’t you intend to?’
Dion studied her troubled face for several seconds, his eyes intent and probing, then he looked again towards the playing area, where Josy was sampling the delights of the sand-pit. While Martha strove to contain her anxiety, he watched the antics of his daughter as she shovelled sand into her bucket, his mouth softening with indulgence when she produced a crumbling sand-castle.
However, when he turned back to Martha again the indulgence had disappeared, and she waited apprehensively for his answer. ‘No,’ he said at last, when her nerves were stretched to breaking point. ‘No, I do not intend to take her from you. In spite of your selfishness, I could not do that.’ He paused. ‘What I do intend to do is take you back again—’
‘No—’
‘—and as Sarah obviously depends on you so heavily, I am prepared to offer her a home as well!’
CHAPTER FIVE
MARTHA’S head swam. She had had little enough to eat that day, just a slice of toast and some coffee for breakfast, a cup of soup at her desk at lunchtime, and it was already after the time they normally ate their evening meal. Even 80, the nauseating giddiness that gripped her was far from just lightheadedness, and noticing her ashen features, Dion took sympathy on her at last.
‘Come,’ he said, almost gently. ‘I will get Josy, and we will go back to the house and collect the car. Then we will have dinner together. We need to talk. There are plans to be made, arrangements—’
‘No!’ Martha managed to voice the word with difficulty. ‘Dion, no! I can’t—I won’t go back to Greece!’
His expression hardened instantly. ‘I think you do not have much choice in the matter,’ he asserted coldly. ‘Unless you intend to run away from me again, and I assure you, if you should do so, you would not get away so easily this time.’
‘Oh, Dion…’
She closed her eyes against the implacability of his expression, and heard him call their daughter. Josy came at once, eager to take his hand and skip along beside him, completely trusting his averred connection with her father, unaware of her mother’s emotional trauma.
The walk back to Meredith Road seemed endless to Martha. She had never felt so lost or so alone, and Josy’s excited chatter only served to underline the gulf Dion was capable of opening between them. She felt dazed and bewildered, unable to comprehend his plans for her—or his motives—and she could only assume his reasons for taking her back encompassed a desire to make her suffer for the humiliation he must have experienced when she left him. Of a certainty, he did not care for her. His attitude towards her made that patently clear, and as he must know how she felt about him what possible satisfaction could he get out of it? His indifference towards her feelings—her work, and the life she had made for herself—was denigrating, his arrogance overwhelming. He didn’t trouble himself with insignificant details. In his world, the Myconos word was law.
She contemplated the alternatives. If she refused to go back to him he would find some way to take Josy from her. One read in the papers every day of tug-of-love children, tom between their parents, snatched from their homes and never seen again. Dion would not even have to do that. As he said, what could she offer the child? Would the circumstances in which they lived be considered suitable by any court of law? Might the fact that she had to go out to work every day influence their decision against her? Could she take the risk that it might not?
She knew she couldn’t, although the prospect of relating Dion’s ultimatum to Sarah filled her with despair. Sarah had taken an almost pathological dislike towards her husband, and she would not take kindly to the idea of leaving London. Where would they live? Dion had not discussed that with her. Mycos or Athens, did it really matter? She was caught in a trap of her own making.
When they reached the house in Meredith Road, Dion paused beside his car, propping himself against the hood before saying: ‘Collect your coats, or whatever else you need. I will wait here, while you tell your sister the good news.’
‘No.’ Martha determined not to be coerced into obeying him completely. He couldn’t make her have dinner with him. And ignoring Josy’s disappointed face, she said: ‘I can’t go with you. Sarah is waiting for her evening meal. Whether you like it or not, I won’t neglect my responsibilities.’
Dion straightened, the shrewd eyes narrowed between silky dark lashes. ‘Poli kala,’ he averred, giving his daughter’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘I will have dinner here. Does that please you, little one?’
Josy pursed her lips. ‘You said you would take me for a ride!’ she protested, and Dion inclined his head.
‘So I will. Right this moment.’ He looked at Martha, his eyes cool and inscrutable. ‘Five minutes only?’ he suggested, and she moved her shoulders helplessly.
‘Can I stop you?’ she muttered, in an undertone, and withou
t waiting for his response she brushed past them, up the path and into the house.
Roger was with Sarah when she came into the living room, and he gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘I hear you’ve got a visitor,’ he commented, getting up from the armchair by the fireplace. ‘I guess I’m to blame for that.’
Martha shook her head. ‘No. I am,’ she declared, running a bemused hand over her hair, reassured to find that the chignon she wore for work was still in place. ‘We’ve got a visitor for supper, too, as it happens, so will you excuse me while I see what I can offer him?’
‘Dion!’ Sarah burst out angrily. ‘Dionysus Myconos is eating with us?’
‘Who else?’ said Martha wearily, pausing in the kitchen doorway. ‘Sarah, please, don’t cause problems. I’ve got enough of them as it is.’
Roger, moved awkwardly towards the door. ‘I guess I’d better be going,’ he remarked, but Martha came back into the room as he spoke and put out a detaining hand.
‘No, don’t go, Roger,’ she exclaimed appealingly. ‘I mean, won’t you stay and eat with us, too? I—er—I’d be glad of your support.’
‘His support?’ echoed Sarah, wheeling her chair towards them. ‘Martha, what’s going on? Why do you need Roger’s support? What has that man been saying to you?’
‘Roger, please—’ Martha appealed to him again, and he moved his shoulders in an offhand gesture.
