The Beads of Nemesis

by Elizabeth Hunter

His eyes glinted. “What will you give me if I do?” “Nothing” She was very sure of that. She gave a mutinous lift to her chin. “I wonder you should ask since you’ve probably already had everything you can want from Delia!” His hand caught her round the arm and hauled her relentlessly back into the room she now shared with him. With his other hand, he slammed the door shut behind them.

  “Now,” he said, “you can tell me exactly what you mean by that!”

  She licked her lips nervously. “I only meant - ”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “That won’t do, Morag. For once you’re going to tell me just what’s going on inside that head of yours. What should I want from Delia?”

  She struggled vainly against his restricting hands. “She’s - very attractive!” she said feebly.

  “Yes, she is,” he agreed readily.

  The colour came and went in her cheeks. Her eyes fell before his. “I know you find her attractive.”

  “And you’re jealous of her? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “No, of course not! I think she’s attractive too!”

  “Is that so?” he drawled. “It seems to me that you don’t like her at all. Why don’t you ask outright what I was doing in her room?”

  “Oh!” she gasped. “You can do as you like!”

  “I shall,” he retorted.

  She wept inwardly. As if she didn’t know that! The first time he had seen Delia, he had wanted to kiss her - he had even asked Morag if she thought he could as her future stepbrother-in-law. And it hadn’t stopped there! He had insisted that she came to Greece for as long as she wanted, regardless of anything that Morag had said to him. And now he was visiting her in her room!

  “You promised that you would pretend to my family that you -that you liked me!” she reminded him on a note of desperation.

  “I promised I’d protect your pride while we were in England. But, if you remember, I told you the price you’d have to pay for my pride would ask a great deal more than a few kisses of you!”

  “I - I didn’t agree to pay any price for your pride!” she stammered. “You haven’t any choice - as my wife,” he pointed out. She wrenched herself away from him. “I’ve done everything you asked! I don’t see what more I can do!”

  He looked at her thoughtfully. “I can’t remember that you’ve actually offered anything,” he said. “If it had been left to you, you’d still be addressing me as Mr. Holmes!” “Oh,” her stifled gasp betrayed her consternation. “But I told you that - that I liked - ” her voice dropped to a whisper, “you to kiss me.”

  “I might like being kissed by you!”

  She was silent for so long that she thought he’d lose all patience with her, but he went on standing there, waiting, “Delia would like to kiss you,” she said.

  His mouth kicked up at the corners. “You don’t say!” Her eyes flew to his face. “You mean you knew why she came here?”

  “I’d be a fool not to, my dear, I have a certain amount of experience of your sex, I am not in the least bit sorry to say. If she succeeds, though, you will have only yourself to blame.”

  She gave him a look of mute enquiry. If he could read Delia with such ease, could he also read the secrets of her heart? she wondered.

  “You could compete with her,” he told her dryly. “I find you attractive too, as you very well know!”

  Her heart jerked within her. “But I’m your wife!” she exclaimed.

  He nodded soberly at her. “Yes, you are. Don’t let me have to remind you of it again!”

  He stood back and opened the door for her, a glint of amusement in his eyes. She couldn’t bring herself to look up at him, but took to her heels and fled down the corridor, anywhere, just so that she could be out of sight of his mocking challenge.

  Delia’s triumphant air was very hard to bear. Morag watched her covertly across the table and was astonished at the depth

  of feeling that consumed her whenever her stepsister’s tinkling laughter rang out in response to some sally from Pericles. Delia knew exactly what she was doing. It was the old, old story, unfolding like a tired, seen-too-often-film, of finding someone else’s grass much greener than one’s own. Morag had watched it all before, only then it had been David whom Delia had wanted and Morag had been able to find all sorts of excuses for her, and for David too, who had fallen flat at Delia’s feet and had taken it for granted that Morag would understand.

  She had understood, that was the trouble. Naturally, David had found Delia more interesting and more fun than herself, everybody always did. It had been just the same at school where Morag had once heard one of Delia’s friends commiserating her for having to live with such a dull person.

  “Morag never says anything,” the girl had complained.

  “How do you live with her silent criticism of you all the time?”

  Delia had laughed. At the time she had still been practising the tinkling bell laugh and it hadn’t always worked. That time it had slipped into an eff-key bray. “Nobody likes Morag,” she had said.

  It wasn’t true, of course. There had been many people who had liked Morag very much, many who had preferred her vastly to her stepsister, but they had never been made welcome at the Grant house and Morag had practically given up asking them to her home. But such remarks don’t have to be true to be hurtful, and it had been one of a whole series of pinpricks that had robbed her of much of her confidence, more especially when she came into contact with anyone new who had not known her since her babyhood, when her mother had been alive and had surrounded her with all the love she needed.

  David had liked her at first. He had broken into her thirst for friendship like a glass of cool, clear water. He had particularly liked to dance with her. “You should always be seen when you’re doing something,” he had told her. “Never sitting still!” She hadn’t paid him much attention, but she had been pleased that he had thought about her at all.

  After a while, she had even taken him home. It had been a curious, platonic relationship, with David making use of her notes and very often asking her to write his essays as well as her own for the tutor they shared at the college they both attended. “When we’ve done with all these exams,” he’d said to her one day, “I’ll put you out to work and let you keep me forever!”

  It had seemed to Morag the most glorious moment of her life. “Do you mean you’ll marry me?” she had asked him.

  He had shrugged his shoulders, as shy as she. “Why not?” he had said.

  It was only then that Delia had started taking an interest in him. In a moment of weakness when Delia had been feeling particularly charming, Morag had confided in her that she and David were getting married. “Not yet!” she had said, “but one day when David has a proper job.” She had forgotten all about his threat to send her out to work for him!

  Delia had smiled at David and then she laughed. “A man,” she had said, with a flutter of her eyelashes, “would want more than the cool embrace of someone as innocent as Morag Grant. It takes an old man to want liking instead of love - a young man should be looking for fire and enthusiasm, something that Morag could never rise to!”

  David had promptly thought so too. He had tried to explain to Morag the excitement he found in being with her stepsister, when Morag had found the two of them entwined on the sofa in her father’s study one Sunday afternoon. “One has to have a bit of fun!” he had ended, looking considerably ill at ease.

  Well, they’d had their fun and Morag tried not to mind. Once or twice she had tried to clear up her own position as far as David was concerned, but he had put her off with the occasional date, telling her that she didn’t understand. Delia didn’t mean anything to him! But that, she had thought, was a lie, for he had gone on seeing far more of Delia than he ever had of herself, right up until that last, terrible night when she had crashed the car and killed him.

  “David always said you’d do anything he asked you to!” Delia had sobbed.
She had looked remarkably unattractive at that moment, her face grey with shock, and her clothes and hair

  mussed as much from David’s attentions as from the crash.

  “You’d better get into bed,” Morag had said. “I’ll go down to the car and wait for the police.”

  It had been better that way. It had been the way David would have wanted it. But Delia could not have Pericles too! Morag sat back in her chair and looked at her stepsister with a cold, objective eye. She was attractive, of course, but it was a shopworn, Christmas decoration kind of attraction that looked tawdry in the full light of day. Little hard lines were beginning to crease her face from nose to mouth and, though she laughed frequently, her eyes were hard and never laughed at all. Morag had always known her to be selfish, but it had not previously occurred to her that Delia never gave anything away. She would take from any man, but she would give nothing that was worthwhile in return.

  Morag stared at her as though she had never seen her before, and, in a way, she hadn’t. She had always thought of Delia as being beautiful and easy to love, but she wasn’t. She was merely brittle and grasping and - and rather tedious! How odd, Morag thought, to find out now that Delia was scarcely worth the trouble of disliking, for she wasn’t anything very much.

  She most certainly wasn’t good enough for Pericles!

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Morag turned to her mother-in-law as though she were emerging from a dream. “I - I wasn’t listening!”

  “That, my dear, was quite obvious!” Dora rasped her. “You ought to have something better to do than day-dreaming at the dinner table! As Pericles’ wife you have a duty to help entertain your guests! Takis is still waiting to be introduced to your sister!”

  Morag gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  Dora shook herself irritably. “In Greece we prize hospitality very highly. You must learn to be a better hostess than that! My husband would have had something to say to me if I hadn’t waited on his guests with my own hands! Pericles is too soft with

  I”

  you!”

  Morag was not as afraid of her mother-in-law as she had been at one time. She smiled, tongue in cheek, “But you are still the

  hostess here!”

  Dora picked up her knife and rapped her smartly over the knuckles. In this mood, it was easy to see why Peggy sometimes disliked her. “This house belongs to Pericles, not to me -”

  Pericles leaned across the table and took the knife from his mother. “Leave Morag alone, Mama,” he said. He smiled straight at Morag, with such a look that her breath was taken away. “If anyone beats her, I shall!” he added. The glint in his eyes grew more pronounced. “I see you found your pendant,” he added.

  “Morag never took care of anything,” Delia put in. “She would have turned my whole room upside down if I hadn’t found it for her. My mother would never allow her to have anything of value in case she lost it. If she didn’t lose it, she’d give it away! David said she’d have given away her engagement ring if he’d given her one!”

  “Would you give away my ring?” Pericles asked Morag.

  She fingered her wedding ring and shook her head. “Of course not!”

  “She’ll probably lose it!” Delia sighed.

  “If she does I’ll definitely beat her,” Pericles drawled. His eyes lingered on Morag’s hot face with a faint smile, then he turned away from her and gave all his attention to Delia, drawing her out with a charm that made her seem suddenly nicer and added a sparkle to her replies.

  “I hope you haven’t forgotten that I’m taking you to Eleusis tomorrow,” he reminded her. “You’ll have to ask Morag to tell you about the place, if you don’t already know about it. She has all the old legends at her fingertips - an interest she shares with my mother.”

  “Are you taking the children?” Dora asked, obviously still

  annoyed at the way Pericles had taken her knife from her.

  “I don’t think so,” Pericles answered.

  “It’s good for them to see these places!” their grandmother declared. “You needn’t think I’m going to look after them all day tomorrow, because I’m painting in the morning and playing bridge in the afternoon.”

  “Morag will look after them,” Pericles said smoothly. Morag looked up quickly. “But I’d like to come,” she protested. “They

  say it isn’t much to look at now, but it must have had terrific atmosphere at one time. The rites of Demeter and Persephone meant everything to such a lot of people. Persephone was the first one to come back from the dead, even in legend, as an ordinary person!”

  “You can see it some other time,” Pericles told her. “It will be too long a day for the children, and anyway, I want some time with Delia by herself.”

  Morag blinked. “The children will be disappointed - ” Pericles threw back his head in an arrogant gesture. “But neither they nor you have been invited to come with us tomorrow. They won’t be

  disappointed if you don’t tell them about it.”

  But she did know, Morag thought resentfully. He might have married her to look after the children, but he didn’t have to fling it in her face in front of Delia. And she was more than ever determined that Delia would have to go, and go quickly. The only thing she didn’t know was how she was going to get rid of her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN MORAG went to bed before her husband. She heard him come in almost an hour later and pretended to be asleep. When he turned on the light she almost gave herself away, flinching away from the sudden glare in her eyes. Her heart pounded, for she was almost sure that he wouldn’t spare her feelings if he were to guess she was awake. When he came over to the bed she held her breath. He stood for a long time, looking down at her, but he said nothing. He bent down and pushed a lock of her hair away from her mouth with gentle fingers. Almost then she gave way to the urgent desire within her to open her arms to him and to whisper her love for him, but the thought of how he had snubbed her when she had asked him if she, too, could go to Eleusis restrained her. Yet she might have changed her mind if he had touched her again, but he did not. He turned out the light and lay down on the bed beside her, pulling her into the hard circle of his arm. He must have known then that she was awake, but he still said nothing, and he was asleep long before she could still the loud beating of her heart and relax

  against him sufficiently to fall into slumber herself.

  Her dreams when they came were muddled and confused. Dora had made her tell her stepsister the story of Demeter’s long search for her daughter, and how she had served the royal family at Eleusis as nursemaid to their child and, becoming fond of the child, had decided to make him immortal by toughening him in the flames. Not surprisingly, the queen had thought she had intended to burn the child to death, and Demeter had been forced to reveal herself as a goddess. In return for the royal family’s kindness, she has made Eleusis the centre of her worship. It was there too that Persephone came back from the kingdom of the dead, no longer a goddess because she had eaten the seeds of the pomegranate during her time under the earth and she was now fated to spend four months of the year with her husband, Hades, and the remaining eight in the service of her mother. Hence her new name of Kore, or Maiden, in token of her new position in the first sacred family of Greece. Morag had once seen a statue of Demeter, her arms outstretched, her face grieving for her loss, and she saw the heavy stone figure again in her dream and she knew exactly who she was, but the other figure, also a woman, came right up to her, a look of vengeance in her eyes, but when she saw the necklace of shells around Morag’s neck she faded away again, changing her shape into that of a man, a man Morag recognised as Pericles, though it didn’t really look much like him.

  “Who are you?” she cried out.

  “Hush, who do you think I am? I’m Pericles!”

  It was Pericles all right, but she didn’t know if she were waking or sleeping. “It was Nemesis,” she said firmly.

  “How do
you know that?”

  “She recognised my shell necklace.”

  “I think, my dear, that you have been dreaming.”

  “I suppose so, because she turned into you!”

  “Into me?” He pulled her close and kissed her. “I hope that gave you joy!”

  She hid her face against him. “Yes, it did,” she said. “I’m sorry I woke you, Perry.”

  He pulled her closer still. “I’m not,” he said.

  In the morning her dream seemed very far away. Delia, on the other hand, was a very present reality. Morag saw her coming down the path to the beach, a little unsure in her fashionable platform shoes.

  “I hope you aren’t allowing that silly child out of her depth today?” Delia panted. She looked very pleased with herself and Morag thought she knew why.

  “Have you come down to swim?” she returned.

  “Dressed like this? Really, I don’t know how you can be so stupid! I’m waiting for Pericles!”

  “Oh yes?”

  Delia almost laughed out loud. “Poor Morag, but you didn’t think he was in love with you, did you? You weren’t as stupid as that? That was quite a snub he gave you yesterday, but you never learn! You ought to know by now why he wants to be alone with

  I”

  me!”

  Morag kept her temper with difficulty. “Should I?” “What have you to offer a man like Pericles? I can’t think how you persuaded him to marry you.”

  Morag wasn’t sure either, but she had no intention of sharing her doubts with her stepsister. “I don’t suppose you can,” she said quietly.

  “I thought you might have flattered him into it, but, knowing you, you probably haven’t told him that you’ve fallen in love with him. He’s very Greek, isn’t he? Having a name like that would be ridiculous for most men, but it suits him in an extraordinary way. I suppose that’s why he took you on. He can’t have found it very lively living with his mother in semi-exile here. Anything would be better than nothing under the circumstances!”

  Morag gave her a mocking look. “It’s hard to tell!”

  Delia frowned, for once uncertain how to deal with her stepsister. “Any man will take what’s offered to him.”