When Dorcas opened the penthouse door she could hear the kitchen sounds that meant Hilda was at work. A trail of flowered hat and navy shoes, handbag and fur stole led across the living room. Large blue-and-white earrings had been dropped into an ash tray. The door of Dorcas’s bedroom stood open. From inside came a rustling of sounds.
“Run to the kitchen and help Hilda,” Dorcas said, and gave Beth a little shove. Then she went to the door and looked into the bedroom.
A good deal of the disorder had been cleared away. Hat-boxes and traveling bag had gone back to the closet. The desk had been righted. Fernanda knelt upon the floor before an open bureau drawer working swiftly, neatly, efficiently.
“What on earth are you doing?” Dorcas asked.
Fernanda’s blue-tinged hair, usually so smartly coifed, had slipped a little with her efforts and a lock of it trembled over guileless blue eyes as she looked at Dorcas.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I thought I might have everything put back before you came. You’ve caught me red-handed, haven’t you?”
Dorcas went to the foot of the bed where the markings had been. The circles of chalk were gone. Not so much as a white smudge remained. For a moment she was shaken, almost doubting the evidence of her own eyes, as she had so often come to doubt in that place where they had put her. But she would not accept that now.
“I was here earlier,” she told Fernanda. “I saw what had happened. I thought you’d better find it for yourself this time. Why didn’t you leave everything as it was and call the police?”
Fernanda was not a small woman, and it took a considerable heave and the help of a corner of the bureau to get her to her feet. She tucked in her blouse, brushed wrinkles from her navy wool skirt, and avoided Dorcas’s eyes.
“I didn’t want you to know,” she said. “I didn’t want you to be upset all over again.”
In exasperation Dorcas went to the desk and sat down before it. “I’m not made of glass, but I think it’s probably normal to be upset with two housebreakings in less than two months.”
“I know,” Fernanda said, unusually meek. “I’m upset, too. But I had to think of you first, and then of our trip. We’re off to Greece in a week, dear. If we call the police now there will be all sorts of questions and delays. Is it really worth it?”
“I don’t know,” Dorcas said. “I suppose I’d better start going through things right away and see whether anything has been taken.” Somehow she could not bring herself to mention those circles of chalk.
Fernanda smiled as though she’d made a brilliant suggestion. “Of course, darling. You do that and then we’ll decide what move to make, if any. In the meantime, I’ll go get into something comfortable for dinner. I’ve had a tough afternoon. Eighty-six autographs. Which means a pretty good book sale, and I think they really loved my talk.”
Fernanda stood in the doorway in her stocking feet, looking wistful. Fernanda always meant well, even at her outrageous worst, and there was no use scolding her. Reproaches and criticism rolled off her like raindrops from a plastic slicker. The weird twists of logic that governed her bore little resemblance to the reasoning that ruled the lives of other people.
Dorcas waited until she had left the room and then closed the door quickly after her. She knew perfectly well that Fernanda suspected what she suspected—that the searcher was one of Gino’s friends, that he meant them to know it was a friend of Gino’s who had done this. Fernanda was still too loyal to want anything unearthed that concerned the uncertain past. Gino had wound Miss Fern Farrar around his fingers in his own compelling way. With all the sophistication of her years and her world, Fernanda was an innocent in a good many ways and far more sentimental than she admitted. One of the things she closed her eyes to completely was the fiasco of Gino’s marriage. She had given Dorcas her unstinting friendship, but she would not see or acknowledge the rift that had grown between Gino and his wife. Gino had been amused by Fernanda’s refusal to look facts in the face, but her attitude had put an unwilling burden of pretense upon Dorcas.
With Fernanda no longer there to observe her, Dorcas picked up a box of gold-and-black lacquer from the bed table. In the old apartment its place had been in a corner of the bookcase and it had held cigarettes and playing cards. It was into this box she had put the odd letter that had come after Gino’s death. The cards were still there, and she lifted out the packets and searched beneath them. There were some canceled checks in the box, a few bill stubs—nothing else. The letter was gone.
Had he found it this time, their intruder? She could not imagine what it might contain that would seem so important, with Gino dead. If only she could recall what the note had said. The words had carried a lugubrious tone. Something about a grave and mourning. Something about a castle. Strange, meaningless words, with no salutation, no signature. It had come from Greece and it had been addressed to Gino Nikkaris—this she knew.
She began a methodical search of her possessions, now neatly restored to order. Later, when Fernanda came to call her to dinner, Dorcas had to admit that she had found nothing missing.
Fernanda regarded her thoughtfully from beneath expressively arched and darkened brows. “Then what do you say we save further confusion and drop the whole thing? In the circumstances, it seems the simplest way.”
“In spite of the fact that this must have been the same searcher?” Dorcas demanded. “What do you know about this? Why do you want to drop it?”
Fernanda was not in the least taken aback. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said with apparent sincerity. “But I’d rather not stir things up.”
“Because this has something to do with what Gino was last involved in? Because you’re afraid to dig too deeply?”
Fernanda went off on a tangent. “I never approved of all Gino’s friends. But in his business he had to meet a lot of odd people. Goodness knows what some of them were up to. May still be up to. As soon as we’re out of the country this will stop. No need to upset ourselves and worry needlessly. There’s been no real harm done.”
Gino’s business—Gino’s nebulous and at times quite profitable business! Dorcas could almost laugh aloud at the proper term. Could you call it a business to be a sort of unethical middleman between wealthy buyers of the world’s art treasures and the objects they longed to possess? A purchaser for those collectors who seemed to have few scruples about how they acquired an art treasure they might covet. About his “business” she had come to know a little and had suspected more. Early in her marriage she had discovered the inadvisability of asking questions. Gino’s displeasure could readily take a course she did not want to remember.
She gave in suddenly. Once she was out of reach in Greece this persecution would stop. Fernanda was right about that, at least.
“All right,” she said. “Let it go.”
Fernanda had been watching her anxiously and she gave her approval in hearty relief.
“That’s the best way I’m sure, dear. We don’t want anything to interfere with our trip.” She paused significantly. “And, Dorcas, let’s soft pedal this with Beth, shall we? She asked me a few questions just now and I told her things were out in your room because I was helping you to pack.”
“I don’t like to tell her what isn’t true,” Dorcas said.
Fernanda dismissed such an objection firmly. “Perhaps you’d better trust my judgment on this, dear. Beth and I got along beautifully while you were ill. No tantrums at all. Do cheer up and come along to dinner. We’re keeping Hilda waiting.”
Dorcas followed her soberly, troubled by the course Fernanda had taken. It was true that Beth must be protected from concerns beyond her years, but lately it had seemed that Fernanda grew more and more highhanded and possessive in her relationship with the child. Of course that was typical of Fernanda, to start with. For all her basic kindliness and good nature, she had the instincts of a steam roller. It was sometimes better to get out of her way than to offer opposition and find oneself flattened in the proce
ss. But getting out of her way would not be easy on this trip. Besides, the voice of self-doubt whispered in her mind, Fernanda might be right in her handling of Beth.
By the time Dorcas reached the dinner table Beth had been set in her chair, her napkin pinned on. There was the sort of picnic gaiety in the air that Fernanda could create with children. Was it true, as Fernanda sometimes implied, and Gino had claimed outright, that Beta’s mother was not good for the child?
At once she rejected this treachery to her own confidence. This was a pit Gino had dug for her deliberately. She was well now and she could refuse to harbor such thoughts. All mothers made mistakes in the handling of their children. She was no different and no worse than the others. In her devotion to Beth she was undoubtedly better than some.
She smiled at Beth as she picked up her soup spoon.
2
During dinner Fernanda talked a little about her afternoon at the club. Then, overriding interruptions from Beth, she went into a reminiscent account of the way she had come to help Gino and his family get from Italy to Rhodes at the start of the war. It was a story Dorcas had heard many times, yet she found herself tensing as she listened.
Gino’s Italian mother had worked in the small house Fernanda had taken for a few months in Milano. Her loyalty lay with her Greek husband who had long wanted to return to Rhodes. True, the island was in Italian hands, but he felt matters would be better there. Fernanda had used her own money to make that return possible, and the little family had left the country of Gino’s mother. In Rhodes they had found themselves caught by the Italian military occupation of the island and Fernanda had lost touch with them for a while. But she did not forget the boy Gino.
Even as a child Gino had known what he wanted and been able to turn others to his purpose with those winning ways that were in evidence as long as one gave in to him. And he had possessed a drive, a determination that matched Fernanda’s own.
“I’ll never forget,” she recalled wistfully, “that last talk we had in my sunny Milano garden before I left for home. Gino was tall for his age even then, and as quick and graceful on his feet as a dancer. I sat on a bench near a marble fountain and told him about America. While he listened he was up on the fountain, balancing on the rim, or down on the grass turning handsprings as likely as not. He was never one to be quiet. Do you remember, Dorcas?”
She remembered. In the man the sense of restlessness, of disquiet, both inner and outer, had sometimes been difficult to live with. There had been no repose in Gino, but always movement. His eyes turning, seeking, his hands nervous and never still. She did not want to remember, but Fernanda went on.
“It was he who announced that he would come to America. He told me that he would come because I would be there and because I would undoubtedly need him. Who else would there be to bring my morning coffee and run my errands and advise me on the problems of my life? Who could do these things better for me than my devoted Gino?”
She smiled, and there was a mistiness in her eyes. Beth started to talk, but Fernanda touched her hand and she was silent.
“I knew he had to have the chance I could give him. I promised him that day that I would send for him when it was possible. As I’d never married, and had no children of my own, Gino was like a son to me.”
She had kept her promise when the war was over. Gino had never again lived in Greece, although until his parents died he returned to Rhodes now and then to visit them. His brothers and sisters were older and already scattered when the war began. Fernanda had met none of them. It was upon Gino alone that her attention focused.
As Dorcas had reason to know, Greece had fascinated Gino and drawn him strongly. With his devotion to art, his love for the very feel of marble, he should have been a sculptor, Fernanda said. But somehow a willingness to perform the drudgery of learning a craft until it could become an art was not in him. He wanted too much too easily, too quickly. Or perhaps his real talent was for appreciation rather than creation. Had he been wealthy he would have been a collector himself. As it was, he had turned to a line of work that enabled him to handle the treasures he could not possess.
Perhaps it eased Fernanda’s heart to speak of Gino now, to bring him back as if to their midst. Perhaps, too, she wanted to remind his wife of her loss. It had been difficult to pretend with Fernanda.
When there was a pause in the narrative, Dorcas asked a question that had puzzled her more than once.
“Why did you never marry? You should have had a big family to mother, Fernanda, a husband to take up all your attention.”
“As if any one person or thing could do that!” Fernanda laughed. But she went on without resentment. “I suppose I’ve always attracted the wrong kind of man—the man who wants someone to lean on and thinks I’d make a good prop, when what I really wanted was a man strong enough to manage me. There aren’t many of those.”
So, not finding a husband, she had settled for a son, Dorcas thought—a son who could govern her with the imperative will of Gino Nikkaris. Strangely enough, Gino had loved her in return. He had used her, yes, but he had given her devotion and tenderness in return. Fortunately for her, the years between them saved her from the physical attraction that roused in Gino something the older woman did not suspect was there.
Fernanda ate her ice cream in dreamy sadness, yearning over her lost son. Dorcas ached for her a little. The Gino in whom Fernanda believed was only a small part of the whole. Real for Fernanda, but for no one else. Yet even after Gino’s death, she was still taking imaginary orders from him and that might prove difficult where Beth was concerned.
When dinner was over, Fernanda went to work on the galley proofs that must be returned to her publisher before she left on the trip. Dorcas read Beth a story and put her to bed, then she slipped into a coat and went out upon the penthouse roof. From behind a row of bleak and empty flower boxes she looked down into the one-way cross street where traffic flowed endlessly from east to west.
In a week, she reminded herself, she would be in Greece. There was still an unreality about the fact, even though she knew all the plans by heart. A man named Johnny Orion was to meet them in Athens and go with them to Rhodes. He was a young American high-school teacher who liked to spend his summers abroad whenever it was possible. Fernanda had met him at a lecture some years ago in Chicago and he had offered his services as a guide and driver for a previous trip to Greece. The arrangement had been successful and Fernanda had sent Johnny ahead to make plans for this trip also. Thus there would be no concern about those details of travel that Fernanda hated to bother with. Johnny Orion, to all accounts, also served another use for Fernanda, allowing her to get into just enough trouble to make for lively reading in her books, but not into anything disastrously serious.
What sort of man would be willing to take on such a job and put up with Fernanda’s autocratic ways, Dorcas was not sure. Perhaps he was one of the useful ones who made good errand boys, dancing willing attendance to whatever tune Fernanda whistled. It didn’t matter to Dorcas, providing he got things done.
She thrust her hands into her coat pockets and stared unseeingly at the flow of traffic below. The muted roar of the city after dark hemmed her in. The sky glowed orange with the reflection of light. City skies were never truly dark, and she could see no stars. Only one more week until Rhodes. She shivered in a gust of wind that cut through the corridor of the street, yet her shiver was not because of any physical chill. Its origin lay in the past.
With a quiet lift of her shoulders she steadied herself. In Rhodes she would not be the wife of Gino Nikkaris, not even by name. In spite of Fernanda’s shocked opposition, she had taken steps immediately after Gino’s death to regain the use of her father’s name. There had been something of a cleansing for her in the gesture. She had not wanted Beth to grow up with Nikkaris for her last name, even though it belonged to the beloved Greece of Dorcas’s own father. Brandt was a good name, a sound, sturdy name—they would be called by it from now on. All had
been done that was possible to build toward a new future. Or would be, once she had found the wife of Markos Dimitriou.
The remembrance she had been fighting all day surged back like the rolling of a dark tide. She put her hands upon the rough edge of a flower box and braced herself. Let it come then. She was well now, and being well meant being able to face the past without running from it in that weakness and terror that had come to be part of her illness. But her legs continued to tremble as she stood there. She could not always follow her doctor’s instructions to face her own fears and then dismiss them. With Gino gone there was surely no real reason to fear. Yet in a certain sense he would not die. Fernanda kept him alive. Her own memories brought him back and would not be quiet. Sometimes he lived in Beth, frighteningly.
There were many reasons why life with Gino had become intolerable soon after her marriage. Her suspicion that some of the art objects he handled had not come legitimately into his hands had been accidentally confirmed. She could remember vividly the scene when she had confronted him with her innocent indignation. He had come home late in the evening while she was getting ready for bed. When he entered the room she had flung her discovery at him recklessly and he had stood behind her at her dressing table and laughed his enjoyment of her shock and indignation.
Now her fingers gripped the flower box in pain, but she let the memories come.
In the mirrored reflection Gino’s eyes had been aware of a beauty come to life in the heat of anger—an awareness all too easily whetted by opposition. She had come to know that he loved her best when she was angry with him and ready to fight him, when there was something in her for him to conquer and subdue.
In the mirror she had seen his hand flash out in a gesture she’d come to dread—a gesture that was both a mockery of affection and a prelude to an excitement in him that made her skin crawl in memory. His hand came swiftly from behind to touch her chin, the fingers following the line of her jaw, her throat—lightly, delicately, almost as she had seen him touch the smooth surface of marble. But with a difference. When he touched flesh with that particular gesture, he made a promise that he always kept.
Seven Tears for Apollo Page 2
