Strangers in Company

by Jane Aiken Hodge

“If he’s safe,” said Marian.

  “And if he’s on our side,” said Stella.

  Chapter Twelve

  Tht light was failing. The boys had stopped playing serious football and were idly kicking the ball towards the upper exit. The guard from there appeared at the top of the stadium and shouted something in Greek.

  “It can’t be closing time yet,” said Marian.

  “Perhaps they close earlier up here. Anyway, we ought to be going. I wish someone else had come up so we could all go down together. We don’t want Mike getting ideas.”

  “No indeed.” Marian looked towards the end of the stadium where the Americans had been, saw a familiar figure there and felt her heart give a great leap of relief. “There’s the professor.”

  “Thank God,” said Stella. “And with luck we’ll pick up someone else on the way down.” They both waved and moved one way to meet Edvardson as the boys went the other to join the guard and, presumably, leave by the upper gate.

  “Well,” called Marian as they came within earshot, “did you find your bearded vulture?” Incredible to manage so nearly normal a tone.

  “No.” The professor looked shamefaced. “As a matter of deplorable fact, I fell asleep. I’ve only just come out, and I reckon it’s too late for sighting anything. I’ve left the Esmonds down in the theatre.” He gave them his pleasantly conspiratorial grin. “She wouldn’t let him leave her there all alone, or he’d be up here practising racing starts on the line.” It was there at their feet, surprisingly clear, the stone marker, worn by the feet of athletes long forgotten. And curiously moving, Marian thought; real in a sense that much they had seen was not.

  “It’s a wonderful place.” Her eyes had misted with tears.

  “Even without bearded vultures.” He turned to lead the way down the steep little path, and Stella, beside Marian, hesitated a moment to put a finger on her lips in warning. She was right, Marian thought. They dared not risk saying anything to him. Besides, they were to spend the next day travelling. He should be safe enough. If he needed safety. It was all horrible and she turned, almost with relief, to wonder what she and Stella were going to do. But at least they had a whole day to think and plan, and, tonight, the privacy of their rooms in the annexe in which to confer. And, curiously, even through her terror, she was beginning to recognise that Stella’s story had given her a most extraordinary psychological boost. She had realised, suddenly, as they walked across the close grass of the stadium to meet the professor, that she had never suffered from delusions at all. When she had thought she was being watched, back there in London, she had been quite right. Stella’s friends had doubtless been studying her for the likeness to the unknown woman, whose place of danger she was to take.

  Could that be it? She stumbled and caught a pine branch to steady herself. Suppose, as well as getting the unknown woman out of prison, they meant to get her in? What chance would she have then of proving that she was, in fact, Mrs. Marian Frenche? In solitary confinement, visited by guards and interrogators, and a doctor, whom Stella had described as not a bad man, but not a good one. Suppose they simply decided she had gone mad? Which would suit them very well. Or what if they tortured her for information she could not reveal?

  “Are you all right?” She had stopped in her tracks, and the professor turned to hold out a helping hand. It was warm, firm and, somehow, enormously reassuring. The temptation to tell him, to ask his help, his advice, was almost too strong to be resisted. But they were down to the level of the theatre, and Charles Esmond was coming eagerly forward to greet them.

  “Was it worth the climb?” he asked the professor.

  “Well worth it.” Edvardson belatedly let go of Marian’s hand.

  By agreement, quickly arrived at in Marian’s bedroom, Stella and she made sure of sharing a table with the Esmonds that night, though Marian felt, with a pang, that the manoeuvre earned her a quick glance of enquiry from the professor, who was sitting with Cairnthorpe and two hopeful empty places. It was, for Marian, an extraordinary meal. She looked at the other members of the party with painful new eyes. She had realised, more and more, as they came down through the Temple of Apollo, through all those grey bones of history, that there must, inevitably, be other members of the conspiracy in the party besides Mike and Andreas. Not, please God, the professor. But who? But which?

  Who, of their very ordinary party had seemed, in any way, unusual? She looked about the room. The Esmonds, with whom they were dining, were most painfully normal, but Mike had urged their company on Stella. Were they perhaps involved? Was Charles’ devotion to Stella a careful pretence? Had she merely imagined a family likeness between mother and son?

  And then there were that curious honeymoon couple, the Adamses. They had always struck her as an ill-assorted pair. Could they be merely professionally linked? She peeled her orange with deft, cold fingers. Perhaps safer not to let her mind wander like this. Besides, it kept nagging at her with the worst suggestion of all. Impossible to get away from the professor. Suppose Stella had not told all she knew? Suppose she had had more reason than leapt to the eye for that gesture of silence this afternoon? Because, face it, the professor had had some miraculous escapes. If they were miraculous, and escapes.

  She was, suddenly, glad not to be sharing a table with him but, just the same, could not help pausing by him and David as she and Stella left the dining room. “Any news of Andreas?” It was, after all, a reasonable question to ask.

  “No.” Cairnthorpe looked both anxious and angry. “Mike and I have been on the telephone all afternoon. There’s no sign of him in Itea. We’ve got a relief driver to take us to Athens tomorrow. A local man, but Mike says he’s reliable.” He gave Marian an engaging boyish grin. “I vow to Apollo, I’m going to learn Greek before I take on another job like this.”

  “I think you’ve done splendidly,” said Marian. She and Stella had agreed that they must make not the slightest change in their usual routine, so they sat for a while, over thimblefuls of medium coffee that was almost too sweet to drink, before Marian rose and pleaded fatigue.

  “I’m tired, too,” said Stella. “I’ll come down with you, Mrs. F.” And, safe in Marian’s room, “So far, so good.”

  “Yes.” Marian looked about her doubtfully. “I suppose they can’t have—what’s the word—bugged this room?”

  It was reassuring to hear Stella laugh. “Come now,” she said. “Remember”—but she kept her voice down—“we’re not dealing with the secret police, but with their enemies.”

  “Yes.” It was, to an extent, consoling. And it led, inevitably, to another thought. “You don’t think.” She put it almost apologetically. “You don’t think, Stella, that we ought to go to the police?”

  “No!” Explosively. And then, more quietly, “You must see, Mrs. F., that I can’t? Can’t do that to them. There’s still that poor woman on Aegina. You see, don’t you?”

  “I suppose so. Well then?”

  “I’ve been thinking. Suppose, at the last moment, we say we don’t want to go to Aegina? And then keep close to the rest of the party for the last day? After all, we fly out late that night. I don’t see what could go wrong.”

  “Of course. How clever of you. It’s the answer. But they’ll be terribly angry with you, Stella. Are you sure we oughtn’t to go to the police?”

  “Only if they try anything,” said Stella, and stuck to it. through all Marian’s attempts at persuasion.

  Left alone at last, Marian lay sleepless for a long time. Should she have given in to Stella on this? Was it not her duty to take some positive action? But then, the thought of that unknown woman, alone in a desolate cell on Aegina, stopped her. They must save themselves, but without risking her. Perhaps, somehow, she could be got away without recourse to the dangerous substitution. Perhaps even now, if the conspirators were to come to her, Marian, openly, and explain the situation, she might agree to help. It was intolerable to think of someone her age—and like her; this made it oddly worse—he
lpless in the hands of the colonels’ men. But on the other side, there was that frightening tale of violence. Would ordinary fighters for freedom, for democracy—would they resort so freely to murder? If the unknown woman on Aegina was to be pitied, what about Mrs. Hilton and Mrs. Duncan, who were beyond pity?

  She did not sleep much that night and woke heavyeyed and wretched with indecision. Stella, calling to go up the hill to breakfast with her, noticed at once. “You look terrible, Mrs. F. As if the Furies were after you.” She kept her voice low. “It won’t do, not without an explanation. We don’t dare let Mike think you’ve anything on your mind. He frightens me, Mike.”

  “I thought you were a little in love with him.”

  “Me?” Stella threw back her head and laughed naturally, an extraordinarily reassuring sound. “In love with Mike. Lord, darling Mrs. F., what an innocent you are. Do you really not know that Mike’s one of them?”

  “Them?”

  “The queers. The homosexuals. Oh, yes, he’s tried to keep me happy with his advances, but poor Mike!” She lowered her voice again on the word. “You really haven’t seen that it’s the professor he’s after? Well.” Once again that surprisingly full-bodied laugh. “I suppose you wouldn’t, would you? But it’s true, just the same. I still haven’t decided whether he was trying to save you for the cause, at Itea, or the professor for love.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, can’t I? Haven’t you seen how he watches the professor while he’s saying his piece. He minds horribly when Edvardson gives one of those dismissive grunts of his. Well, even I can see that your professor’s quite something. Mr. Rochester to the life.” She laughed. “Poor Mike. And not a hope in hell for him. It’s lucky for you that they need you alive. Honestly, if looks could kill.…” Her voice changed. She had frightened herself as well as Marian. “A pity, really”—she went off quickly at a tangent—“that he got no change out of David.”

  “Cairnthorpe?”

  “Of course. Haven’t you noticed how they bristle at each other? I’m sure Mike made a hopeful pass early on—maybe a double-purpose one.”

  “Double-purpose?”

  “Business and pleasure. David adoring him and noticing nothing. Don’t you see?”

  “Goodness,” said Marian inadequately. “But it didn’t work?”

  “Of course it didn’t work!” Angrily. “With David! Mike should have had more sense, but then how would he understand an Englishman? David looks such a boy. That blush of his! But I tell you, Mrs. F., if it comes to real trouble, I’ll be glad to have him on our side.”

  “And he will be?”

  “Yes. And now it’s high time we got over to breakfast before anyone starts thinking things. And you’re looking better, thank goodness. Well enough, at least, to admit a bad night. What kept you awake, I wonder? Do you think they have nightingales here, like at Olympia?”

  “I doubt it,” said Marian. “But I could have been worrying because I haven’t heard from the children. This was one of the addresses I gave them.” And, how extraordinary, she thought, to have worried so little.

  “Right,” said Stella. “You worry about it at breakfast.” And then, “You aren’t really worried are you, Mrs. F.? You know what wretches we are about writing.”

  “I’m learning,” said Marian.

  She made a point of stopping on the way into the dining room to ask Mike, who was sitting with three of the schoolmistresses, whether there was any chance that mail for their party might have gone astray. “I was expecting to hear from my children here. I’m a bit worried.”

  “Children?” They seemed to be news to Mike, and Marian had a frightening vision of how capably the organization he belonged to kept its cells separate. No one knew more than they must. “Young children?” Mike was asking. Was he, perhaps, imagining them as orphaned?

  “Oh, no, grown up, or so they’d say. Eighteen. Twins. They’re in America right now, with their father, but I did hope to have a note from them here. It’s stupid to worry, I know.…” She let it trail off anxiously, and thought how strange it was to be using her children as they had so often used her.

  Mike’s handsome jaw had dropped. “Twins?” He looked at her as if for the first time. “Mrs. Frenche, they’re not—they can’t be. Sebastian and Viola? Mark Frenche’s children?”

  “And why not?” she asked tartly. “But, if you don’t mind, I prefer not to talk about it.”

  “And who the hell,” asked Stella, safe once more in Marian’s room, “is Mark Frenche?”

  “My ex-husband,” said Marian. “Among other things.”

  “Well, yes, I’d gathered that, but why does his name have such an effect on our Mike?”

  “Well, do you know—” An extraordinary light was dawning on Marian. “I was rather wondering that myself.” Had Mark, too, been “one of them”? Did that explain everything? That terrible sense of failure, of frustration.… Those nights alone, biting the sheets, while he stayed downstairs, in “planning sessions” with his manager. Odd to look back and see Mark’s manager, for the first time, as what he must have been. What fright, she wondered coldly now, what risk to his career had make Mark court and marry her? And those two—her mind jibbed at the word—those two had tried to make her destroy the twins. But she was smiling to herself. What a miracle, face it, the twins had been and, now she could see it, what a surprise to everyone.

  But this, though it cast so extraordinary a light over her own past, could hardly explain Mike’s horrified amazement at the discovery of who, in fact she was. It was more than unlikely that he and Mark had ever met, though Mark had visited Greece a few times. But of course there could be a simpler, more frightening explanation of Mike’s reaction. The Greek woman, travelling to London as Mrs. Frenche would, presumably, then disappear. But it would not be easy for the ex-wife of a still-famous man just to vanish. The London cell of the conspirators had fallen down on its work, and Mike must have been seeing trouble ahead.

  She had got this far when they were interrupted by one of the ubiquitous little bright-eyed Greek boys, who knocked on the door and made gestures to indicate packing and departure.

  “Oh, Lord,” said Stella. “I’m only half-packed. See you on the bus, Mrs. F.”

  She hurried away to her own room, and Marian smiled at the boy as she locked her big case, then felt in her purse for a few of the light little coins among which she had so far failed to discriminate. What, after all, was a lepta or so? “What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?”

  The tip seemed to be satisfactory; the boy grinned widely, picked up her case, then put it down again, picked up the pillow from her bed and made passing gestures with it. Of course, that was why his face had seemed so familiar. He had been one of the players up at the stadium the day before.

  Impossible to convey her recognition of this, but Marian returned his beaming smile, as he picked up the case once more, and started on her day feeling oddly reassured. It did not last long. Andreas had not appeared, and despite what she now knew, she found she missed his friendly smile and firm hand up into the bus. The fact that Mike seemed overeager to replace him was less than comforting. The new driver, a heavy, blackavised man, sat hunched over the wheel, taking notice of no one.

  But he was a reassuringly good driver. The bus took the mountain road to Arachova like a master skater doing figures of eight, and Marian forgot the weight of her anxiety in looking back and downwards at the last views of that olive-green valley where, she felt, she had last known peace of mind.

  But then, what use is peace of mind if it is based on ignorance? And, all too appositely, there was Mike, up at the front of the bus, launching into the disastrous story of Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother. They would reach his fatal meeting of the ways in the course of the morning. “He met his father, ladies and gentlemen, but how should he know him? He thought the other one his father, the man who brought him up and against whom, as he thought, the oracle had warned him. Thi
s was merely an arrogant stranger, and in his rage and misery, he killed him, there, where the three roads meet, and loosed a doom on himself and his that was to endure for generations. The fate of the doomed Atrides, ladies and gentlemen, was nothing compared with that of the House of Oedipus. There was death in the blood, and what is there must out. It was his sons, ladies and gentlemen, feuding against each other, who started the disastrous war of the Seven Against Thebes. The Furies may have been after Orestes, but his fate was much easier than that of Eteocles and Polyneices, who slew each other, brothers though they were.”

  “You’d have thought the Furies would have got after them,” said Stella.

  “They were dead, remember?” Marian chilled at the thought.

  “Why don’t we stop at Thebes?” This was Mrs. Spencer, reproachfully, on the seat in front of them.

  “There’s not much left,” explained the professor. “They’re excavating there now, and I must say I’d kind of like to drop off and take a look, but it’s not ready for the general public, by any means. It was destroyed, you know, very thoroughly, by Alexander the Great.”

  “What a destructive lot they were,” said Stella.

  “Aren’t we?” asked Edvardson. “And at least Alexander spared the house of the poet Pindar.”

  “Like Milton,” said Stella surprisingly.

  “What do you mean?” Mrs. Spencer turned round with a sharp question.

  “He thought he should be spared by the royalist troops, on account of being a poet,” said Stella. “He wrote a sonnet about it, which I’ll spare you. But it all seems rather pleasantly old-fashioned these days, doesn’t it? I wonder how many poets there were at Hiroshima.” And then, “I’m sorry, Professor, I quite forgot.”

  “That’s all right,” said Edvardson. “You couldn’t feel worse about it than I do.”

  For some reason Marian had assumed that it would take all day to reach Athens, and it was disconcerting to find that they would get there for a late lunch, with free time in the afternoon for their own exploration. There was no doubt about it, she felt safe now only in the bus. The more she thought about the organisation she and Stella were up against, the more it frightened her. Suppose, for instance, they had told Stella the substitution was to be made on Aegina and in fact planned to kidnap her in Athens? It would, she thought, be the kind of thing they did. But how on earth to guard against it? She considered saying she was ill and locking herself in her hotel bedroom, but one look at the huge modern Hotel Hermes decided her against this. In that great, long-corridored, impersonal building with its connecting balconies outside each window, anything could happen. To shut herself in her room would be at once to awaken suspicion and to stake herself out, the goat awaiting sacrifice.