by Anne Mather
Martha bent her head, embarrassment bringing a faint colour to her cheeks. ‘We—I—that is, it—it hasn’t been easy for us—Mama. We needed—time.’
‘Needed?’
‘Yes.’ Martha lifted her head then. ‘I don’t think Dion will be sleeping in his dressing room any longer.’
‘I see.’ Ariadne surveyed her closely, and Martha had great difficulty in sustaining that regard. ‘So—I am relieved. But that still leaves one matter to be resolved: that of your sister. I understand she has accompanied you to Mycos.’
‘That’s right.’ Martha wondered how Sarah came into this. ‘You sound as if you don’t—approve.’
Ariadne snorted. ‘Approve! Martha, do not pretend you do not understand my feelings. That woman has been the bane of Dionysus’s life, of all our lives. When my sons suffer, I suffer, too.’
Martha linked her trembling fingers together. ‘Sarah was not to blame for our break-up, Mama,’ she insisted. ‘Have you never asked yourself how you would have acted, faced with a husband who believed the child you had borne him was some other man’s?’
‘And why did he believe it?’ retorted her mother-in-law sharply. ‘Have you never asked yourself that?’
Martha’s brows were drawing together in growing disbelief, when the door behind her opened and someone came in. She half turned reluctantly, afraid if it was her husband of what she might see in his face, then felt her knees buckling when she met Dion’s dark anxious eyes. She had no need to ask what he was thinking: it was there in his face for her to see. And uncaring of Ariadne’s disapproval, Martha covered the space between them in eager anticipation.
Dion’s hands at her waist prevented a more ardent embrace, but the kiss that he bestowed in the hollow behind her ear was made all the more intimate by the probing caress of his tongue. He did it deliberately, she knew, looking up into his smouldering eyes, and his muffled: ‘Do not look at me like that!’ was for her ears alone.
Ariadne, who had watched this exchange with surprising sympathy, now continued her conversation. Addressing her remarks to Dion, instead of Martha, she enlarged upon her theme, bringing a look of intense irritation to his lean dark features.
‘I gather you have not spoken to Martha about her sister,’ she exclaimed incredulously, getting up from the sofa. ‘You are a fool, Dionysus. After all these wasted years—’
‘We will not discuss this again, Mama!’ he interrupted her brusquely, and Martha was chilled by the way he put her aside. ‘The past is dead and gone. We will not resurrect it.’
‘But, Dion—’
‘No, Mama.’ His eyes were glacial now. ‘I do not wish you to mention it ever again. And now, if you will excuse us, there are matters to attend to before our departure this afternoon.’
His mother had no choice but to dismiss them, and Martha preceded him up the stairs in a state of some anxiety. What did it all mean? What was Sarah supposed to have done? Was it just an extension of Dion’s dislike of her sister, or had there been some other reason for the things Ariadne had said?
In their room, she waited until the door was closed, and then she said: ‘I think you ought to tell me what all that was about. I know what you said to your mother, but don’t I have a right to know?’
Dion sighed, ‘There is nothing to know, Martha,’ he declared quietly. ‘My—er—my family is very loyal. They only want us to be happy.’
Martha still looked troubled. ‘And are we?’ she ventured, tentatively. ‘Are we happy, Dion?’
His eyes darkened. ‘You regret what happened last night?’
‘Regret it?’ Martha sought an answer in the ceiling. ‘No, of course I don’t regret it.’
‘You think I do?’ he exclaimed incredulously.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you think.’
Dion’s oath of protest died in the curtain of her hair as he jerked her urgently towards him, pressing her close against the muscular hardness of his body. ‘If you do not know how I feel about you now, you never will,’ he muttered incoherently. ‘Theos, Martha, you are my soul, my love, my life…’
She trembled as his mouth sought hers, but his passion demanded a response, and her arms wound themselves about his neck, without thought of denial. It was only when he lifted his lips that the doubting words escaped her, and his anguish was evident in the deeply etched lines beside his mouth.
‘And—and Josy?’ she whispered, needing his reassurance, and he expelled his breath on a heavy sigh as he pushed her away from him.
‘So,’ he said. ‘She still comes between us.’
‘Between us?’ Martha did not understand. ‘Dion, I only want to know—’
‘—how I could deny her?’ he finished wearily, but she shook her head.
‘No. No, not that.’ And at his frowning uncertainty: ‘Dion, is it only Josy that’s bringing us back together? Is it for her sake you’re willing to forget the past?’
‘For her sake?’ He stared at her.
‘Yes, for her sake. And your own. Because she’s your daughter. Because…’ She found it almost impossible to go on. ‘Because if it is, I would have to let—to let her go.’
‘To let her go?’ His incredulity was riveting. ‘Forgive me if I seem a little dense, but what are you saying?’
Martha shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. ‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ she protested. ‘Dion, do you really love me? I know you want me, you can’t deny that, but is this desire to take me back not just because you want to claim your daughter?’
He swore in Greek, but she understood him, and with a gesture of impatience he hauled her round to face him. ‘Is that what you think?’ he groaned. ‘Is that really what you think? After everything we have been to one another?’
‘It’s not what I want to think,’ she confessed huskily, gazing up at him. ‘But I have to know. I—I couldn’t bear it if we—if we separated again.’
‘You could not bear it,’ he muttered, half in irony. ‘Oh, my love, I think it would kill me!’
‘Dion—’
His mouth silenced whatever else she had planned to say, and the minutes stretched as he continued to hold her. But at last he dragged his mouth from hers, straightening her smock and saying rather thickly: ‘Do you know that was what I had to ask you? Have you forgiven me? Are you really prepared to take me as I am, flawed and selfish?’ Martha cupped his face in her hands. ‘I have to,’ she said simply and honestly. ‘I love you—I always have. I only persuaded myself I didn’t to protect my own sanity.’
Dion’s thumbs explored the hollows of her ears. ‘You know I did not intend this to happen. Not yet, at any rate,’ he conceded, at the widening indignation in her eyes. ‘You have not really had the time to get to know me again—my faults, my possessiveness. You used to say I treated you like a possession. Can you honestly believe you can live with that again?’
‘I can’t live without it,’ Martha whispered huskily. ‘But I won’t promise that we won’t argue sometimes.’
‘I would not have it any other way,’ he told her gently, bending his lips to her shoulder.
‘Are you really going to take me to New York?’ Martha asked, remembering what he had said the night before with real enthusiasm now, and he nodded rather humorously.
‘That is one thing that has to change,’ he affirmed, his hands probing beneath her smock once more, and spreading against the curve of her spine. ‘It has been the way of my family to leave their women behind, but I intend to alter all that. I want you with me. And Josy, too, sometimes. That is why I have employed Miss Powell. But mostly, I do not intend that you should have to seek entertainment with anyone other than your husband, no?’
Martha smiled. ‘I trust you, you know.’
Dion shook his head. ‘I know. And I did not trust you.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘No, but I did,’ he averred huskily. ‘Can you ever forget what I said?’
Martha pressed
her lips together for a moment. Then she said quietly: ‘Can you forgive me for taking her away? For letting you go on thinking what you did—’
‘I should never have suspected you!’ he broke in impatiently, but she only shook her head.
‘We’re all human,’ she pointed out gently. ‘We all have our faults. We are all selfish sometimes, and we all need reassurance.’
Dion touched her mouth with his tongue. ‘Reassure me now,’ he murmured, his hands arching her body sensuously, and Martha could think of nothing she would like more.
* * *
It was late afternoon when the helicopter set them down near the harbour on Mycos. Alex himself had come to meet them, and another small body came hurtling at them as they detached themselves from the cabin.
‘Mummy! Mummy! Uncle Dion!’ Josy squealed excitedly, and Martha exchanged a look of understanding with her husband as she bent to hug their daughter.
‘Have you been good, darling?’ Martha asked her, after Josy had hugged Dion, too, and was walking happily between them, back to where Alex was waiting with the station wagon. ‘You’re getting really brown. I expect you’ve spent all your time in the pool, haven’t you?’
‘She would like to,’ put in Alex dryly, hesitating only a moment before kissing Martha on both cheeks. ‘Welcome home, sister. I gather it has been a good trip.’
Martha coloured appealingly, but Dion relieved her embarrassment ‘Very good,’ he agreed, his mouth humorous as he watched the younger man. ‘And do you not just envy me that knowledge, little brother?’
On the journey up to the house, Alex asked less personal questions—how were their parents, had the Stavros deal gone through, when was Dion leaving for the United States—and Josy took the opportunity to tell her mother all that had happened since she went away.
‘Auntie Sarah doesn’t like Jill,’ she confided, shattering Martha’s newly-found contentment at a stroke. ‘She called her a—a fortune-hunter, and Jill said she was an—an old hag? Isn’t that right, Uncle Alex?’
Now it was Alex’s turn to look embarrassed. ‘You ought not to repeat such things, Josy,’ he reproved, concentrating on his driving, but after a quick glance at his wife’s face Dion took up the theme.
‘I gather you are involved,’ he remarked shrewdly, as his brother’s neck turned red. ‘What have you been doing? Turning the girl’s head?’
‘No!’ Alex hunched his shoulders over the wheel. ‘I may have shown her some attention. Why not? She is a pretty girl. But nothing to get so—so choked up about. Sarah is jealous, that is all. You know that. You should do—you of all people!’
Dion ignored this, although once again Martha was obliged to accept that so far as the Myconos family was concerned, Sarah was persona non grata. ‘So,’ he said. ‘There was a row, was there? And what happened after this confrontation?’
‘Well…’ Alex hesitated, ‘Scott was there, too, as it happened, and he managed to smooth things over.’ He glanced round at Martha, sitting with Josy in the back. ‘He managed to—make light of the situation, and since then he has taken Sarah out with him on his—explorations.’
‘Taken Sarah?’ Martha echoed disbelievingly. ‘But—how can he?’
‘They go in the buggy,’ declared Josy, not to be outdone.
‘The jeep,’ declared Alex flatly. ‘It is a four-wheel-drive vehicle, and can cover most terrain.’
‘I see.’ Dion moved his shoulders dismissively. ‘And—Miss Powell? Jill? How did she react to this—argument?’
‘Oh, Jill laughed about it afterwards,’ Josy volunteered, forestalling him again. ‘It was funny really. Everyone with red faces!’
‘Since when do you call Miss Powell Jill?’ enquired Martha, more sharply than she might have done, still on edge after these revelations, and Josy pulled a face.
‘Since always,’ she retorted, rather impudently. ‘Miss Powell is old-fashioned—she said so.’
Martha sighed, and Dion turned to stretch out his hand towards her. ‘Do not worry,’ he adjured, when she put her hand into his, and felt its reassuring strength. ‘I will sort everything out, I promise.’
Josy looked surprised at this unexpected display of affection, and her brows descended mutinously. ‘Hold my hand, Mummy,’ she said, pulling Martha’s away from her father’s. ‘I can look after you, can’t I?’
Dion’s expression did not change as he looked at his daughter. ‘You and I are both going to look after Mummy from now on,’ he told her, gently but insistently. ‘I married your mother a long time ago, Josy, and now I am going to take care of her.’
Martha had never expected he would tell her like that. If she had thought about it at all, it was in terms of him mentioning it at some distant date, when Josy was older and wiser, and more capable of assimilating it.
But now she realised he was right. The younger Josy was, the less she had to understand, and like all adults, she had judged the situation from an adult’s point of view, seeing only the difficulties involved and not the simplicity of it. To Josy, being married was something entirely different from what it meant to her, and the closeness of their relationship, the fact that they would sleep together from now on, meant simply that in a child’s mind.
Even so, Josy was old enough to appreciate a little of what this might mean to her in terms of her exclusive rights to her mother’s attention, and turning to Martha now, she said, half tearfully, half crossly: ‘I didn’t want you to get married! I don’t want to share you with Uncle Dion! I want you all to myself!’
Martha sighed, tempted to comfort her, but aware of the importance of the occasion. ‘Darling, I didn’t just get married, I’ve been married all along. We—we just didn’t live together for a while, that’s all. But that’s over now. We’re all together again. And you have a daddy and a mummy now.’
Josy’s lips quivered. ‘Uncle Dion’s not my daddy! He said he was a friend of my daddy’s.’
‘I’m sorry, I could not tell you before,’ Dion confessed gently. ‘You would not have believed me.’
Josy sniffed, not quite knowing how to take this. ‘Does that mean we’re always going to live here?’
‘Here—or in Athens,’ agreed Dion, nodding. ‘And soon you will meet all your other aunts and uncles and cousins, and even your grandmama and grandpapa in time.’
Josy perked up. ‘I have cousins?’ she questioned disbelievingly. ‘Real cousins?’
‘Lots of them,’ agreed Martha dryly.
‘But no brothers or sisters,’ Josy mused thoughtfully, and Dion said dryly: ‘Not yet.’
Josy gasped. ‘Might I have?’ she exclaimed, staring at her mother now, wide-eyed. ‘Might you have a baby? A real baby?’
‘Soon, I hope,’ agreed Martha, meeting Dion’s eyes above their daughter’s head, knowing that that particular obstacle would never trouble them again, and Josy absorbed this new information with obviously more enthusiasm.
As he helped her out of the car, however, Dion held Martha to him for a moment. ‘You did not mind, did you?’ he probed, his eyes dark and liquid soft as they held hers. ‘My telling Josy, I mean.’
‘Why should I?’ she countered, reaching up to kiss him, and he had to steel himself not to return her salute more thoroughly.
‘I did not want to give Sarah that weapon over us,’ he confessed huskily. ‘Now Josy knows, no one can hurt her.’
The other members of the household were on the patio, waiting to greet them, although Martha suspected it was Roger’s doing that Sarah was there at all. He was sitting between her and Jill Powell, and it was obvious from his expression that he was glad of their arrival to provide a diversion.
‘Hey!’ he exclaimed, after Martha had bent to kiss her sister’s rigid cheek. ‘You look—different. More relaxed, somehow. Now who would have thought that you’d relax in a city like Athens, when you haven’t relaxed at all while you’ve been here!’
‘Perhaps it was the freedom from responsibilities that did it,’ suggested Ji
ll, smiling her welcome. ‘You do look well, Madame Myconos. Did you have a good trip?’
‘Marvellous!’ Martha assured her warmly, trying to ignore Sarah’s inimical stare, and was glad that Jill excused herself to order some tea, when Josy danced on to the patio chanting: ‘I’ve got a daddy and a mummy!’ with apparent disregard for her earlier reservations.
‘I gather you’ve told her,’ Sarah remarked, making her first comment since their return. ‘Don’t you think that was rather presumptuous in the circumstances?’
‘What circumstances?’ Martha glanced awkwardly towards Dion, and he came to rest his arm possessively across her shoulders.
‘Yes. What circumstances, Sarah?’ he asked bleakly, showing her none of the consideration he had shown when he spoke to Jill Powell. ‘Exactly what would you have had Martha do? Remain virtually a widow, for the rest of her life? Continually paying for the mistake of loving me?’
‘Oh, Dion, please…’ Martha didn’t think she could bear to witness any more unpleasantness, but Sarah was determined to have her way.
‘You admit it was a mistake, then, Dion,’ she countered, maliciously. ‘Is that why you were so eager to get rid of her that you even denied your own child?’
‘Sarah, I warn you—’
Dion’s mouth was hard and angry, and Alex moved rather uncomfortably in the background. But it was Roger who intervened at this point, taking the onus upon himself as he said quietly:
‘I think I ought to tell you that I’ve persuaded Sarah to marry me, Martha, Or at least, I’ve persuaded her to consider the idea. You three don’t need anyone else to complete your happiness, I can see that, while I—I do need Sarah’s caustic tongue to keep me in order.’
‘Such a romantic proposal,’ sneered Sarah coldly. ‘I told Roger I had no intention of marrying anyone so long as you needed me, Martha. But obviously you felt no such commitment.’
‘Sarah, I love Dion—’ Martha felt Josy beside her, and put her hand on the little girl’s shoulder in reassurance. ‘Isn’t it better that we’re a family again, than living a life apart?’
