Pieces of Justice

by Margaret Yorke

  Holidays were spent in various places, often France, and even other parts of Greece, but until this year they had never visited the island. Tommy had not wanted to, and Dolly had decided that this was because his memories of hardships endured there and his final capture were too painful.

  Tommy had been anxious in case he was considered too old to hire a car: this had happened to him in Dublin recently; but such strictures did not apply here and Mandy was able to arrange a small Fiat for his use. They’d both laughed over the unsuitability of a Mini Moke, though he’d thought it looked Jeep-like and rather fun. Mandy found it difficult to imagine him as a dashing soldier; the whole pilgrimage seemed to her to be romantic.

  He made several expeditions into the hills, always alone, leaving Dolly beneath a canopy beside the pool, or under a straw shade on the beach. When Mandy came to the hotel for her evening visit she seldom met the two couples, but one night she saw Dolly sitting alone on the terrace, drinking ouzo. The old woman’s painted face looked blotchy in spite of her make-up, and she wore dark glasses. Mandy had the distinct impression that she had been crying. But why? What had she to cry about, for heaven’s sake? Except that you could say her life was almost over.

  Mandy did not realise until later just how accurate that judgement was.

  ‘Well, Mrs Featherstone, everything all right?’ she asked brightly, pausing by Dolly’s chair. Apart from the Barkers and Featherstones, Mandy called all her clients by their Christian names, but she sensed that they would think such intimacy presumptuous.

  Dolly, with an effort, turned her gaze from the dark sea beyond the hotel grounds towards the girl, who was small, with pointed features and neat elfin ears. Dolly had once been rather like her.

  ‘Ah, my dear, come and have a drink,’ she invited, and called out to a passing waiter.

  Mandy was anxious to hurry back to the flat she shared with Spiros, a jealous man who worked on one of the island ferries, but her time of being available at the hotel was not yet up.

  ‘Just an orange juice, then,’ she accepted. ‘Thanks.’

  The waiter fetched it, and Mrs Featherstone signed the chit. She had ordered another large ouzo for herself.

  ‘Yia sou,’ said Dolly, falsely cheery, and then asked Mandy why she had taken the island job.

  ‘Was it a love affair with Greece? Or with a Greek?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re too clever,’ Mandy answered, almost blushing beneath her tan. ‘A bit of both, really. I got bored with being a typist in the city. I came for a holiday and didn’t fancy going back.’

  She’d met Dimitri, in fact. After a winter in her office she’d come out again, rented a room and learned a little of the language. That was four years ago. Dimitri had married his Greek fiancée and acquired her dowry, a practice that still obtained in parts of Greece, and she’d found a job with Gladways. Eventually she’d been sent to this island and had met Spiros. Some of this she now told Dolly, who listened intently.

  ‘Will it work out? You and Spiros?’ Dolly asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Mandy.

  ‘They’re strong on duty, aren’t they? Family first—all that,’ said Dolly. ‘Tommy’s told me. A family hid him here during the war.’

  ‘So he said,’ Mandy answered. ‘Did he ever find them? That’s why he wanted the car, wasn’t it? To go and look for them?’

  ‘Yes, he found them,’ Dolly said.

  He’d been to the mountain village so often that Denis Barker had become intrigued. In the end, he too had hired a car, packed Dolly into it with Hazel and himself, and followed.

  They’d found Tommy’s car parked outside a small white-washed cottage, where purple bougainvillea tumbled over a low wall and two thin cats lay in the sun. The trio approached, and as they drew level with the cottage they saw that on the rough track in front of it, a boy was playing with a ball, while beneath a eucalyptus in the cottage garden, a woman sat talking to Tommy.

  The boy looked up at the new arrivals and smiled shyly. He had fair hair and large blue eyes, not unknown in Greece but rare on this island.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Hullo.’

  ‘Good morning and hullo to you,’ said Denis heartily. ‘I see you speak English. What’s your name?’

  ‘Thomas,’ said the child, pronouncing it the Greek way, the 'th' sound thick.

  Tommy, Dolly’s husband, had risen to his feet and was staring at her fearfully across the space, filled with bright geraniums, that separated them. His features seemed to crumple, but then he stood up and spoke firmly.

  ‘This is Ilena, the boy’s mother,’ he said, indicating the short, dark woman, dressed in black, who now stood, hands clasped before her, stout, smiling uncomprehendingly, a handkerchief tied around her head, her face lined and weatherbeaten. ‘She’s the daughter of an English soldier,’ Tommy said, his voice harsh, rasping in the clear, still air.

  ‘A wartime romance, eh?’ said Denis, nodding.

  ‘They weren’t married,’ Tommy said. ‘She was only seventeen, but he was frightened and she comforted him. The man she was to marry betrayed him and his companions to the Germans. Eight villagers were shot for hiding the British soldiers, but she was spared. Later, she had a daughter – Ilena.’ He looked at the bent woman beside him, prematurely aged by the strong sun and a life of hard peasant work: his daughter.

  And Dolly knew. With ice-cold certainty, she understood.

  ‘What happened to the mother?’ she whispered.

  ‘She died when Ilena was born,’ Tommy answered. He laid his hand on Ilena’s arm and she smiled up at him, bewildered by the conversation. ‘The family took care of Ilena. She’s a widow now, but she has two older sons. One of them is a waiter in a hotel in Athens. The other works at the airport here. Her daughter is a maid at one of the hotels – not ours,’ he added. ‘They work the land, too. They own a lot of olive trees.’

  ‘Quite a story,’ said Denis, eyeing Tommy Featherstone speculatively.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tommy flatly. Misery showed on his face as he looked across at Dolly, but it was mixed with another emotion, and Hazel identified it as the old man’s eyes began to shine and he glanced at the boy: it was a sort of pride.

  ‘We’ll go,’ she decided. ‘Come on, Dolly. See you later, Tommy,’ and she took Dolly’s arm to lead her back to their car.

  ‘Sorry to intrude, old man,’ said Denis, still uncertain if his conclusions were the right ones.

  Dolly did not tell Mandy any of this.

  ‘Greek family solidarity is very strong, my dear. It’s difficult for outsiders to understand it—to accept it,’ she said.

  ‘Mixed marriages can be a great success,’ said Mandy stubbornly, but she thought about Spiros’s jealousy, his questions about male guests she met, the way he sometimes turned up unexpectedly during folk dance sessions and other evening activities arranged by Gladways for their clients.

  ‘I wish you luck,’ said Dolly, sighing.

  Before it was light next morning, Dolly slipped out of bed without disturbing Tommy, who was snoring gently, as he always did. She put on her white swimsuit with the sprawling emerald flowers and arranged its matching wrap around her shoulders, but she did not paint her face. Carrying her espadrilles, she opened the door carefully while Tommy slept on. She stepped into the passage where lights burned all night, and the door made a tiny click as she closed it, not pushing the button that would lock it as then it would not shut without a bang. She tiptoed along the corridor and down the winding stairs into the hall. The duty clerk was in the office, dozing. No one saw Dolly open the glass door to the terrace where she had talked to Mandy the previous evening, and no one watched her walk past the swimming-pool over the garden to the beach.

  The sea was glassy still, and the moon shone down, painting a swathe of silver on the blackness of the water.

  Dolly dropped her espadrilles and wrap on the sand. She had not brought a towel: she would not need one. She walked into the water, shivering as
she felt its chill clutch on her thin old limbs. As she began her unsteady breast-stroke, heading out along the moonlight’s track towards the horizon, she remembered the letters Tommy had written her from the prison camp, his mention of her flaming hair and tender, ivory skin. She had always tried to stay beautiful for Tommy and all the time there had been this secret. Of course, he hadn’t known about the daughter.

  She was a feeble swimmer, but she should be able to keep going long enough to leave the beach far behind her. Perhaps the cold, or cramp, would get her first. Her legs and arms sent her slowly but inexorably onward. What would Tommy do? Would he know what she had intended? She had left no note. Perhaps he would always wonder what was in her mind. She was not altogether sure that she knew herself, except that it seemed as if her whole life had been a pretence.

  Without her, Tommy might sell up and come out here to live. He’d been able to talk in Greek to that woman who turned out to be his daughter. He’d picked up quite a lot, all those years ago, and had enjoyed using it to the hotel staff and people in the town. She’d be about fifty, that woman: Ilena. Living here was cheap, and Tommy might be able to help the youngest boy – see that he had an education – and perhaps set the daughter up in a tourist shop, or at least provide a dowry.

  They hadn’t talked about it. She’d pleaded a headache and gone straight to bed after dinner. Tommy had stayed for a nightcap with the Barkers and when he came up, she had pretended to be asleep. It was the first time in the long years of their marriage that she had resorted to deceit.

  Poor Tommy, was her last thought as the water closed over her head and she surrendered her body to the wine-dark sea.

  No one mentioned to the police that Dolly had been rather quiet that night and had missed the usual session on the Barkers’ balcony, and Mandy decided to keep to herself her theory about the dead woman’s blotched complexion. It was probably caused by sunburn, after all. No one spoke of Tommy’s visits to the hillside village. It was best to keep things simple so that the formalities could be swiftly dealt with; it wasn’t as though foul play were suspected.

  The absence of a towel left on the beach was never queried.

  It was all a dreadful accident. Wasn’t it?

  Gifts From The Bridegroom

  Only ten more days to go!

  ‘Are you nervous?’ Wendy asked, meeting him by chance in the lunch hour. He had gone into town to buy toothpaste; there never seemed to be time at weekends for such mundane shopping, for every moment had to be spent buying the things Hazel decreed essential to their future married life.

  ‘Why should I be?’ Alan answered. He’d known Hazel for over two years; they’d been to Torremolinos together, and had often made love in his bedsitter. Once, when her parents were away, he’d even stayed overnight at The Elms, giggling with Hazel as they clung together in her narrow bed in the room where a row of stuffed teddy bears gazed down at their transports.

  ‘It’s going to be quite a do, isn’t it?’ Wendy said. ‘How many bridesmaids are you having?’

  ‘Three. Hazel’s niece, and her friends Linda and Maeve.’ He sighed. All three had to be given presents. He’d thought of gold bracelets, but it seemed Maeve wanted a pearl on a chain, and Linda favoured dangly earrings. This problem had yet to be resolved and the gifts purchased.

  ‘Well, I’m sure it will be a great production,’ said Wendy. ‘Best of luck,’ she added. ‘I’ll be thinking of you on the big day,’ and she hurried off to her office.

  Her words echoed in his head as he returned to his own, where a pile of papers waited for his attention. If he worked hard and was never made redundant, in forty-two years’ time – nearly twice as long as he had lived already – he might be head of a department and retiring with his graduated pension.

  Retiring to what?

  Why, to Hazel of course.

  Through Alan’s mind ran images of Hazel as she was now: small, pert and pretty, a bank clerk with the Midland. He saw also a mental picture of her mother, hair rinsed brassy gold, figure trimly girdled, neat ankles twinkly as, high-heeled on short legs, she stepped about her day, ordaining the lives of her family. Her husband was a civil servant employed by the local authority and they moved in ever rising circles. Hazel’s mother had planned the wedding to the last detail; she had vetted the guest list, not permitting him to include Wendy, with whom he had been at school, because her father ran a betting shop.

  A production, Wendy had called the wedding, and it was: like some sort of pageant, Alan thought.

  Would Hazel choose his future friends? Alan’s mind ranged over the years ahead, past the freedom to make love at will and the honeymoon in Corfu. At first, due to a hold-up in arrangements over the small first-time buyer’s home for which they were negotiating, they would be living in his bedsitter, to Hazel’s mother’s great chagrin; but later there would be the house, then a bigger one when their finances improved. One day there would be children. He foresaw their regimented lives, their freshly laundered, spotless white socks and shirts, their well-scrubbed faces, their diligently completed homework, all firmly supervised by Hazel. He thought of the comforts he would enjoy: the well-cooked food, the tastefully furnished home for which even now he was committed to paying by instalments. The previous weekend they had chosen an expensive three-piece suite. The salesman at Fisher’s Furnishings had said it had been made by one of the foremost firms in the world. Testing its suedette comfort, Alan had wondered; he had wondered, too, about the cooker Hazel had selected, split-level hob and all, which would take up so much space in their tiny kitchen. He thought of the money in his building society account, all pledged in advance for coping with the down payment on the house, and with an effort he turned his mind’s eye to Hazel in her bikini, spread out on a Corfiote beach. As he stood, eyes closed, on the marble flooring of the town’s new shopping arcade, he felt her soft, responsive body in his arms. All that would be wonderful, he knew; it already was when they had the chance.

  But first there was the wedding, that performance which must be enacted to please Hazel and her mother. There would be Hazel’s progress on her father’s arm up the aisle of the local church, which Hazel herself had visited only once to hear the banns read, and her mother on the other two occasions to show willing to the vicar. There had been half an hour’s talk in his study with the vicar himself, when Alan and Hazel were advised to show tolerance to one another throughout their lives, expect from each other not perfection, but simply kindness, and adjured not to give up at the first sign of trouble but to work through storms into harbour.

  Standing there while the shoppers eddied about him, Alan knew panic. What had he done in his twenty-three years? Where had he been? What could he look forward to, except routine?

  He’d gone straight from school into his first job with the firm which still employed him. He had been to Spain and Ibiza. He had spent a day in Boulogne.

  There was a whole world beyond this town – a world beyond Spain and Corfu. There were Australia, Siam and India. There was China, too, and he’d see none of them, for Hazel and their children would have to be fed and the rates must be paid.

  As he went back to his office, Alan knew that Wendy’s words had changed his life forever.

  Five days later – it took him that long to work out a plan – Mrs Doreen Groves, whose husband managed the bank where Hazel worked, was just washing up the breakfast things when the telephone rang.

  ‘Mrs Groves?’ asked a voice, male, and carefully articulating.

  Mrs Groves owned to her identity.

  ‘I’m afraid I have bad news for you,’ said the caller, and went on to tell her that Mr Groves, driving to the bank earlier that morning, had had a serious accident and was on his way to hospital by ambulance. Because of the grave nature of his injuries he was being taken, not to the local hospital, but to the regional one twenty miles away where all facilities were to hand. There was no answer when she asked for more details.

  For some seconds Mrs Groves was
made immobile by shock. Then she attempted to dial the bank to find out if the assistant manager could give her more information, but the telephone was dead.

  Alan had not cut the line. In the nearby call-box, from which he had rung Mrs Groves, he had inserted enough coins to keep the connection for several minutes, and he left the receiver off the hook while he hurried round to the Groves’ house. He slipped into the garden through the fence, and under cover of the shrubbery went up to the side of the building where, on an earlier reconnaissance, he had observed that the telephone line was attached, and snipped the cable neatly. He waited, hidden behind some laurels, while Mrs Groves reversed her Mini out of the garage and sped off. Then he returned to the telephone-box, replaced the receiver, and made a call to the bank.

  He asked to speak to the manager. It was an urgent matter, he said, concerning Mrs Groves. To the girl answering the telephone he said he was a police officer, and gave his name as Sergeant Thomas from the local headquarters.

  When Mr Groves came on the line, sounding worried as he asked what was wrong, Alan held a scarf to his mouth and spoke in a false voice. His heart beat fast with excitement as he told the manager, ‘We’ve got your wife. Bring fifty thousand pounds in used notes, fives and tens, to Heathrow Airport by twelve noon. More instructions will wait for you at the information desk in Terminal Two.’ Alan had intended to ask for twenty thousand; he was quite surprised to hear himself name the larger sum. ‘And don’t get in touch with the police or it will be the worse for your wife,’ he remembered to add, in menacing tones.