'I am?' Could it mean that he saw her as someone in her own right, and not just as Faith's sister? 'What if Colin doesn't come?' she added.
'It doesn't bear thinking about,' he said gravely. He gave her a push towards the car. 'Would you be more comfortable in the front, with the child?'
She shook her head. 'It doesn't matter. I can give him all my attention if I have him in the back, and Ariadne can talk Greek to you!'
'But then it's all Greek to you, isn't it, my dear?' he said.
This was so very nearly the truth that Charity refused to answer but got into the car with her head held high, ignoring as far as she could Ariadne's interested gaze.
'Didn't you like him after all?' the Greek girl questioned her. 'I thought you'd come out swooning with ecstasy, but you look angry instead. 'I told you he would be a disappointment to you. I find him dull'
'Who?' Charity asked, and then in complete disbelief:
'Loukos?'
'The Charioteer.' Ariadne gave her a peculiar look. 'Didn't you see him?'
Charity's face cleared as if by magic. 'Oh, him!'I liked him better than anything! Better than anything I've ever seen. Better than Michelangelo's David - and that's pretty wonderful!'
Ariadne dismissed this with a slight shrug, turning to smile at Loukos as he got into the car beside her. She said something sharply in Greek and he answered her, looking amused. Charity sat further back in her seat, feeling suddenly tired and defeated. Loukos was right - it was all Greek to her. She would never have believed that Faith would have lived in such a house, but then she hadn't known Nikos. Perhaps he had been worth it all, the cold and the apparent poverty and living in Arachova. And if Faith had loved Nikos enough to put up with all that, what could have happened to make her rum away from him?
She gave up the puzzle and gave her attention to the passing countryside. Blue painted, square beehives nestled in groups of a dozen or so in the sheltered dips of the hills. Large stones held them down in the wind that was still blowing across the scrub-covered slopes. Charity wondered what it was like there in summer, when the sky was a piercing blue, and one could stand up above the eagles as they swooped down into the valley in search of their hapless prey. Perhaps one day she would see it like that, a long time from now, when she would know all the answers and would know, without a single doubt, exactly who Charity Archer really was.
Iphigenia came out of one of the colourful shops in Arachova, carrying Alexander. Her face was heavy with grief as she settled the baby on Charity's knee. She put her broad, practical hand on the crown of his head and stroked the bright red down that would one day be hair. Then, with a murmured blessing, she turned and left them, her back sag-
ging with the weight of her sorrow at their parting. She never looked round again, but went back inside the shop, leaning over the brazier and warming her hands, while the other women of the village clustered about her.
Charity eased the baby into a more comfortable position in the crook of her arm, her own eyes filling with tears. How she wished she could speak Greek! She could have talked to the Greek woman, someone who had actually known Faith while she had been living in Arachova, and someone whom she was convinced had been fond of her, just as she had been fond of her son.
'Oh, Alexander!' she whispered against the baby's head. Her eyes met Loukos' in the driving mirror and she moved hastily, trying to get outside his vision. Her thoughts at that moment were private thoughts and she resented his ability to read her mind.
'Alexandros will be all right with my parents,' he said. 'While he is so young he won't notice how old they are.'
'Babies need love. Will they love him? Will they?'
Ariadne gave a long, low laugh. 'Electra will supply the love! Electra will suffocate him with love!'
Loukos nodded. 'It is only a temporary arrangement. If my parents find it too much, 'I shall move Alexandros to my apartment and find someone else to look after him. Electra can manage in the meantime, but she is not very young now herself.'
Charity said nothing. She closed her eyes and tried to think about Colin with some enthusiasm. She had a mental picture of him as she had last seen him and thought gratefully how lucky she was to know him. His gold hair would curl no matter how hard he tried to flatten it with various lotions, but otherwise his appearance was remarkable only for its extreme neatness. He preferred his clothes to be on the conservative side, dark and uncrushed, worn always with a white shirt and a sober tie. His life was similar to his clothing. He worked in a bank and he had a small rented flat that
he kept clean and tidy himself, and which Charity had only seen on two brief occasions when he had invited her up for a quick drink. Nobody could possibly disapprove of him, not even Loukos! If she married him, and he too wanted Alexander-She was surprised to find that they had already gone through Levadia and that they would soon be close to Thebes and back on the motorway for Athens. She wondered if she could have slept and glanced anxiously down at Alexander. He was fast asleep, his cheeks pink with warmth and well-being, and her heart melted within her.
'When does Alexander have his next feed?' she asked Loukos, leaning forward a little to do so.
'When he wakes up. With a little luck, he will sleep the whole way to my parents' house. My mother hates receiving people she hasn't met in the evenings. She has become very stuck in her own ways.'
Charity thought guiltily of the time he had allowed her at Delphi. He turned his head and smiled at her. 'Stop worrying, Charity!'
She felt winded and terribly conscious of the warm texture of his skin and the way his well-formed hands held the wheel. She couldn't take her eyes off him. How dearly she would have liked to touch him; to know if his lips were as firm as they looked, and if the line of his jaw would be hard and strong against her fingertips. With an effort, she tore her eyes away, and tried to control her breathing. Thank goodness it would soon be dark! What was the matter with her? The sooner Colin came the better! She remembered she had not yet asked him to come and decided then and there not to rely on the vagaries of the postal system, but to telephone him that very evening, the moment she got back to her hotel!
The motorway passed quickly. They stopped for a few seconds just outside Athens to pay their dues at the barrier and, a few minutes later, turned off the main road, following
the signposts to Athens. Kifisia, now a well-heeled suburb of the city, was full of charming villas and tree-lined avenues. Here and there, the lights of a cafe spilled out across the road, but most of the light came from the villas themselves, for all the ones that were being lived in in the winter as well as in the summer had their porch lights lit, shining a welcome to the visitor and a warning to the prowler alike.
Loukos drew up outside a small, square villa, set fairly far back from the road and surrounded by its own walled garden. There was no doubt that money had been spent on this dwelling, in complete contrast to the house at Arachova. The garden was beautifully kept, with two fine palm trees that bowed their trunks towards the house as if they were pointing the way to it.
Ariadne peered out of the car window and shivered. 'They will not wish to see me!' she said to Loukos.
He put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her close against him. 'They don't know, and I'm not going to tell them. What would be the point? They have been hurt enough already. Come in, Ariadne, and see them. They will think there is something wrong if you stay out here by yourself.'
Charity looked inquiringly from one to the other of them, but they both ignored her. She wished that they had not spoken to each other in English if they hadn't wanted her to know what it was all about. What on earth was there about Ariadne to upset Loukos' parents? She gave him an impatient look and, holding Alexander closer to her, she darted out of the car, grazing her arm on the side of the door.
'You can put that injury down to your red hair,' Loukos observed. 'Working yourself up into a temper about nothing!'
'It isn't nothing! It's very bad manners to talk a
t each other like that in front of me! You can keep your secrets!'
'I shall!' he said, unperturbed. 'Shall I take the baby?'
'No!He's just waking up and you may frighten him.' She set off for the house without waiting for him, her heels pounding the paved path in her indignation. But she did not get very far before his hands descended on her shoulders and he turned her right round to face him, his eyes black and unreadable despite the light from the porch.
" Iwill take Alexandros, ' he said quietly but inexorably. 'It is time he grew used to me and, Miss Archer, if I do frighten him, it is still nothing to do with you!'
'It is!' she protested. 'A frightened child is everybody's business, and Alexander is my nephew!'
'I have not forgotten, but I think you forget that he is also mynephew!'
Reluctandy, she relinquished the baby into his arms, noticing even as she did so the gentle way he supported the infant's head. More annoying was the way that Alexander gurgled up at him, the tears he had been about to spill while he had been in her arms quite forgotten. Charity stretched her cramped arm surreptitiously.
'You don't allow me to forget - anything,Kyrie Papandreous!'
To her indignation he laughed. He pulled her hair with his free hand hard enough to hurt and laughed again at her expression of angry discomfiture. 'Shall we call a truce until your fiance arrives?' he offered, smiling.
Her temper died away at the mention of Colin and she felt peculiarly depressed. 'I want to see as much as I can of Alexander,' she pleaded. 'I can't keep coming to Greece. It's too expensive!'
'We'll talk about that when he comes too.'
'But I prefer to make my own arrangements'
'As you keep telling me. Colin has my sympathy!'
The unkindness of that made her wince, but she had no time to make a suitable retort, for the front door was opened wide and an elderly woman took one look at the group on the doorstep and uttered a piercing shriek of welcome, swooping
down on to the unsuspecting Alexander with great cries of glee.
'Electra,' Ariadne said sotto voce.
'My aunt. My mother's sister,' said Loukos.
Charity prepared herself to greet the Greek woman, but Electra had eyes for nobody but the baby. In a few seconds she had torn him away from Loukos and had gone rushing through the house, announcing his arrival to anyone who would listen. Charity looked after her, astonished. She heard Ariadne giggle behind her and remembered how she had said that Electra would supply all the love that Alexander was likely to get in his grandparents' house. Her eyebrows rose and she gave Loukos a look that she hoped was as dignified as it was defiant. If he thought Electra was a suitable person to look after hernephew, she did not! The gleam in his eyes made the colour rise in her cheeks and it was she who looked away.
'As I said, a temporaryarrangement,' Loukos said thoughtfully.
''I should hope so!' said Charity.
It was less of an ordeal than she had expected to meet Loukos' parents. His mother was small and dumpy. She sat on a heavily upholstered chair, her hands constantly busy with the elaborate embroidery that was her hobby and her joy. When Charity was introduced to her, she inclined her head a fraction of an inch and bade her welcome in Greek. She didn't address her directly again, but at intervals Charity could feel her watching her every movement and hoped that she was not comparing her too unfavourably with Faith.
Her husband had a look of his son, but was smaller and had put on a great deal of weight in recent years. His beard was quite white and flowed down over the knot of his tie, which reminded Charity of the statues she had seen of Socrates. She wondered if Kyrie Papandreous was also of a philosophical turn of mind, but she doubted it. He had too
much of an eye for beauty, as his obvious delight in Ariadne's company bore witness. He was a long time flirting with her, complimenting her on her appearance and squeezing her hands with his. Then, quite suddenly, he turned to Charity.
'So you are Faith's sister?' he said in Greek. Ariadne translated the assertion for him, giving Charity a quick grin of sympathy. Charity only nodded. 'Why do you come now to Athens? We began to wonder if your sister really had a family in England! It is too late for you to come now. She and Nikos are dead.'
'I didn't know that when I came,' Charity said steadily.
The old man stood up and went over to the mantelpiece, searching among the clutter of small statues and ikons propped up against the wall. He came back with a photograph in his hand which he threw down on to Charity's knee. 'Myson, Nikos.'
Charity looked at the likeness, her fingers trembling. Had this really been Faith's husband? This strange, untidy young man, with his brooding eyes and his look of having seen everything there was to see. She noticed that he held a glass in his hand and wondered if the photograph had been taken when he had perhaps been overdrinking.
'I'm sorry,' she said aloud, not knowing what else to say. Ariadne snatched the photograph away from her and returned it to the mantelpiece.
'Nikos was - how do you say it? - something else! He was more alive than anyone else I know! This photograph says nothing about him, nothing!How could it? How can a camera know what a man thinks and feels. Not even Spiro and Xenia, his own parents, understood how it was with Nikos!'
Loukos stopped talking to his mother and looked across the room at Ariadne. 'Nikos was not difficult to understand. He had a wife and a child and was interested in the theatre. It hardly adds up to very much to make such a mystery
about, does it?'
Ariadne gaped at him, but she finally shook her head in agreement and sat down quickly near to Xenia Papandreous, who smiled at her and began to show her her embroidery.
Only Spiro Papandreous remained unsatisfied. 'There was more to Nikos' he began in heavily accented Greek.
Loukos put his arm about his father, embracing him unselfconsciously. 'Charity thinks I look like Apollo. I have already told her that Nikos looked far more like Dionysius! Don't you agree?'
The old man thought about it, his eyes snapping with amusement. 'Yes, that is the truth,' he said. ''I must be Zeus himself to have produced such sons!' And he laughed. 'Apollo and Dionysius! It is good. It is very good!'
CHAPTER FIVE
Loukos was right about the hotel restaurant, just as he was right about so many other things. The food was a failed compromise between Greek and English menus in an attempt to please everybody. It did not please Charity, but she ate there more often than not because she didn't like to go into the tavernasby herself, to be stared at and discussed by every male in the place. It made her feel like a race-horse in the ring, and she longed for Colin to come if only to protect her from their admiring comments and the personal remarks that flew about her head whenever she went out.
He had said he would come. He had even agreed that it was well worth the expense of her telephoning him if they could be together over Christmas.
'I didn't like to think of you going so far by yourself,' he had told her over the crackling wire that was the best the operator could manage so near to Christmas, 'even when you were going to your sister. Why don't you come home?'
'Because of Alexander!'
'Oh yes, the baby.' There had been a long pause. 'Then I'd better see if I can get a flight out tomorrow.'
'Oh, darling, that would be marvellous! It may - it may be a bit expensive. Can I help?'
'It will have to be my Christmas present to you,' Colin had said.
Charity had known a peculiar prickling sensation at the back of her neck. She couldn't ever remember exchanging presents with Colin before.
'Oh yes?'
'Well, I'm not coming out to see a stranger, Charity! We'll do the thing properly. I'm gladyou telephoned, though it must be costing you a pretty penny?'
The Tower of the Winds Page 7
