Pagan Lover

by Anne Hampson

  The eyes, dark and intense, lingered on her face a he replied,

  ‘One day the truth will out, I suppose, but for the present—’ He flicked his hands, palms upwards. ‘There doesn’t seem anything to be gained by any more investing. I’m puzzled, naturally, because I am sure it wasn’t one of the servants, and I don’t know who you are acquainted with outside this house—’ He stopped abruptly, his mouth going tight. He looked at her, looked directly into her eyes. ‘Have you had a visitor while I’ve been away?’ he demanded raspingly.

  ‘A visitor?’ she repeated, playing for time. She suspected at once whom he had in mind, because she had chatted with Nico for practically the whole time at the dinner party. ‘Er—did you s-say a v-visitor—?’

  ‘Nico!’ he blazed. ‘Nico was here, wasn’t he!’

  She shook her head, and at that moment she saw Elene sitting on the couch, pulling at a cigarette.

  ‘Elene was here,’ she told him, still playing for time and hoping this diversion would make him forget Nico.

  ‘Elene?’ he frowned. ‘It was she who helped— No, she couldn’t have got that ladder up there!’

  ‘What makes you suppose that Elene would help me to get away?’ asked Tara with a sort of acid sweetness. ‘Perhaps she would, though,’ musingly and with a sidelong glance at his chiselled face, which at present was like a thunder-cloud. ‘It would serve her purpose to get me out of the way, wouldn’t it, Leon? What was the quarrel about that made you throw her over and marry me on the rebound?’

  He looked at her sharply.

  ‘Did she tell you we had quarrelled?’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘What else did she tell you?’ He was curious, and suddenly Tara was reluctant to have a discussion about the girl she had destested on sight.

  ‘I’d rather not say. We’ll let it drop, if you don’t mind?’

  ‘What reason did she give for coming?’ he asked interestedly.

  ‘She wanted to see you about something to do with the coming fashion show in Athens. She was sorry she missed you. I expect she’ll be getting in touch with you as soon as she knows you’re back. Then you can question her as to what she told me.’

  Leon’s brows came together in a dark frown, but although he paused a moment as if he would question her further, he turned away eventually, and after saying it would be lunch time before he was with her, he went out, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Another week went by, with life going on in the same dull manner. Tara wished she could see Nico, if only to tell him that, Leon suspected him of helping her. She did not know that she could not have seen him anyway, because, after almost being caught red-handed placing that ladder, he had decided his presence could do no good now, so he had gone off, taking the boat out as usual, but sailing to the Greek island of Chios, where he had a friend who would not mind if he stayed for a week or two.

  Leon had been very different during this time, and life had begun to settle into a rather pleasant routine for Tara. True, she still craved for escape, but she had to own that the imprisonment was becoming less and less irksome with every day that passed.

  ‘Have you settled down?’ her husband asked one day when they had—for the very first time—spent a pleasant hour together in the swimming-pool and were on the side, drying themselves. ‘You seem more content.’

  She looked at him keenly, responding to his smile and recalling the impression she had had that he might be coming to care for her... or perhaps falling in love with her.

  ‘I must admit I’m more content,’ she answered, the desire strong within her to say what he wanted to hear, yet at the same time fully aware that if escape were to present itself at this moment she would not hesitate to grasp it.

  ‘I’m glad, Tara.’ His eyes were roving; she knew he was admiring her figure, her face and hair, and the lovely honey-peach tan she had acquired. ‘Life could be good for us if you’d become resigned to being my wife—for ever.’

  ‘And resigned to having you as my master?’ she could not resist shooting at him. Leon frowned and drew a breath.

  ‘I don’t want to domineer over you,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘You goad me, Tara, and the worst of me comes out.

  She began drying her dainty toes with the towel, her mind confused, her heart throbbing wildly—for no apparent reason.

  ‘It seems strange to hear that you’ve no wish to domineer over me, Leon.’ Her beautiful blue eyes questioned him from their bewildered depths. ‘Your actions and repeated threats don’t tally at all with the statement you’ve just made.’

  He nodded automatically, his forehead creased in a frown of deep concentration.

  ‘You’ve driven me to those actions,’ he began, but she could not help interrupting him before he went any further.

  ‘I just resisted, when you were forcing your attentions on me! What else would you expect any woman to do?’

  ‘You were my wife,’ he reminded her with a hint of the imperiousness she knew so well. ‘I had certain rights!’

  Somehow, his words deflated her spirits and she felt a sense of loss which she could never have explained.

  ‘I’m your wife by coercion,’ she returned seriously. ‘I don’t know how you can say you have rights over me.’

  ‘All men have rights over their wives,’

  ‘Not all—no——’ She shook her head vigorously. .‘Only men who haven’t advanced believe that.’

  The dark pitchblende eyes smouldered, but only for a second.

  ‘You’re saying that I haven’t advanced?’ He seemed to give a sigh, she thought, and knew that it was his original intention to say something far stronger than that. She looked at him, seeing the brooding expression in his gaze, and feeling that he was by no means his usual assertive self. In fact, she had the firm impression that he was actually afraid of offending her.

  ‘In many ways you’re very Westernised,’ she answered at length, ‘but your attitude towards women and marriage is so outdated that the only chance of happiness for you is marriage to a Greek girl from one of the backward villages where the old customs and beliefs are still strong.’ Her voice was low and serious, her eyes dark and faintly sad. She knew as she stared into his harsh pagan face that she loved him, that life with him could have been sheer bliss if only he knew what she desired, and gave it to her. Like many men he had separated love from sex, and like most men he could not understand why women could not do the same. Here was one of the greatest mysteries of nature—that men and women could think and feel so differently about something so vitally important to their happiness. A woman needed love to be the spur which sent her eagerly into a man’s arms, and she wanted to know for sure that her love was returned.

  Leon was speaking into her thoughts and this time there was a very noticeable harsh edge to his voice.

  ‘As I’m already married there is no possibility of my marrying any Greek girl from one of these backward villages you mention.’

  ‘You and I will never end our days together, Leon,’ she told him sadly. A pause, but he did not speak. She said after a moment of considering, ‘In ancient Japan it was recognised that a woman needed reassurance of love when she gave herself to a man, so it became the rule that the man would send the girl a token of love which she received the next morning, when she woke. If she did not receive this token, then there would never be a next time.’

  Leon’s eyes widened to their greatest extent.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he declared.

  Tara shrugged.

  ‘I didn’t think you would,’ she returned, and there was such bitterness in her voice that it could not possibly escape him. He looked frowningly at her, appearing to be irritated by what she had said, and after a moment he got up, taking his towel, and walked away from her without uttering another word.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TWO days later Leon went down to the village to get his hair cut and to collect some clothes from Margarita. As she watched him go Tara
recalled the story he had told to his servants as to why she must be watched all the time, and she concluded that he had given the same explanation to Margarita. Weeks were, going by and very few people had seen Leon’s new wife. Of course, it was not unusual for a Greek wife to stay at home the whole time, but for all that there must be a good deal of curiosity in the village. Leon’ had of course fully expected his wife to give him the promise, and the fact that she had not done so must by now be as embarrassing to him here, on the island, as it was in the capital, where his friends and business associates must be very puzzled indeed. Leon had obviously thought of something to put them off, but the present situation could hardly continue for ever. He was banking on her having a baby, and then she would be bound to him for a long, long while.

  She wondered what his reaction would be when he learned that his hopes were to be dashed.

  He had been gone less than half an hour when to her surprise she saw three men on donkeys coming up the path that led to the house. So few people came— Her eyes suddenly dilated and she stood rooted to the spot, unable to believe what she saw; and she still could not believe it even when the name fell from her lips.

  ‘David ...!’ No, it could not be! She was dreaming—seeing things.

  She managed to move, every nerve in her body quivering.

  David here, and with two other men! Yes, they were real enough, and in other circumstances she could have laughed heartily at the way they were sitting astride the donkeys, looking as if they expected to fall off any second now. A long way behind them trailed the owner of the donkeys, the old man who made a living by hiring them out to tourists from the cruise ships. He had just tottered into view, a stick in his hand, his vraga dusty, and faded from black to a dull, patchy green.

  ‘David,’ ‘she whispered again, the awareness that here was freedom scarcely registering in her bemused mind.

  ‘Tara!’ He had seen her and lifted a hand, then put it back on the donkey’s neck with some considerable haste. She walked a few faltering steps, her legs like jelly, her mind chaotic. Leon would not return yet. . . or would he? Obviously he had not see the men, down there on the harbour. He must have gone into the barber’s shop only minutes before the men got off the ferry.

  ‘David!’ She found she could walk faster now, and then actually run. Davos was hurrying to the gate, but she was before him, opening it as the men dismounted. Within seconds David had her in his arms and she was crying against his chest. ‘David,’ she sobbed, ‘oh, how did you know—? I mean, how can you be here!’ Near hysteria spread over her, causing her body to shake. Freedom! Here without any doubts at all was, freedom. ‘Nothing could prevent her escape now, nothing or no one…

  One of the men was a Greek, a plain-clothes policemen, the other was a plain-clothes English policeman who managed to convey this to her while she clung to David, his soothing words mingling with the businesslike ones of the policemen.

  Davos was standing by looking exceedingly troubled. Tara asked the English policemen to make him go away. However, Davos merely moved some small distance, then stopped, lingering a small branch of a hibiscus bush as if he were considering doing something to it, but all the while his dark Greek eyes were shifting back and forth and it was plain that he was anxious for Leon to come back.

  ‘Can we go inside?’ suggested the English policemen. ‘Then we can begin to talk, and to sort this whole thing out.’

  The Greek moved over to speak to Davos in his own language and Tara said again, looking up into David’s face,

  ‘How do you come to be here? It’s a miracle! I couldn’t believe it was you!’

  ‘The police managed to get hold of a clue—after weeks of drawing blank,’ he told her, going on to explain that it was the porter who—having been off work for several weeks—provided the clue when, after making many other enquiries as to the people Tara had mixed with, the police returned to the hospital to ask more questions of the staff there. ‘Tara darling, why didn’t you tell me that that damned fellow had sent you flowers?’

  ‘I couldn’t—don’t ask me why I should be so reluctant to tell you, David. I thought it would be less upsetting all round if I just kept silent.’

  ‘You also kept silent about the phone calls,’ the policeman inserted in tones of censure. ‘If you’d told someone we’d have had you back long ago.’

  ‘The police followed up the clue provided by the porter,’ David explained. ‘With that bit of information they really got busy and the next thing was that the telephone operator, reminded of the Greek, then recalled that a man with a slight foreign accent had been trying to get you on the phone but you’d told her not to put the calls through.’ He paused and looked down at her with the same expression of censure as the policeman had just a moment ago. ‘You told the operator that this man was making a nuisance of himself.’

  She nodded and coloured guiltily.

  ‘I should have confided in you, David, and I don’t know why I didn’t....’ Her voice drifted away, her cheeks hot as she recalled the passionate interludes spent with the man who at that time was a stranger to her. It would have seemed odd indeed if she had complained to her fiancé that she was being pestered by a man, while at the same time participating willingly— eagerly—in the most ardent and intimate love-making with the man in question.

  ‘If only you had, then he’d never have kidnapped you—you do realise that?’

  She was silent, not at all sure of his confident assertion, because, knowing her husband so well, she certainly would never take bets on his failing to do what he set out to do.

  The Greek policeman—who had been introduced to her by David as Phivos Meriakis—returned with the information that Davos was as uncommunicative as a deaf mute.

  ‘Scared of his employer,’ he added in a disgusted and strongly accented voice. ‘I’ve scared him, though!’

  They all went into the house and once in the cool and restful atmosphere of the sitting-room, Tara felt more calm, more able to appreciate what had happened. She was able to consider her situation, to savour the knowledge that her husband’s tryanny was finished, that he could no longer hold her prisoner. She was able also to answer coherently the questions put to her both by the Greek policeman and by Oscar Stewart, the English policeman. David sat forward on his chair, listening, and Tara heard a little groan issue from his lips when he learned of the ultimatum put to her by Leon, and of the choice she had made.

  ‘So you’re married? Oh, God, the swine!’

  ‘It was marriage or the other, as I’ve just said.’ She could have wept for the misery she saw in David’s honest, English face. ‘You must surely have known that I’d be in a horrible position?’

  ‘I didn’t dare think about it,’ he shuddered. ‘I’ve been through hell with my imagination! Another shiver passed through him and for a space he obviously found it impossible to form words. ‘I tried not to think that anything abominable could happen to the girl I loved.’ His voice seemed to draw away slowly, and as she watched his face with a strange indefinable fascination she saw the change in his expression as a look of distaste replaced the unhappiness.

  It would seem that he could hardly bear the thought that another man had owned her. It was an understandable emotion, Tara admitted, and yet…

  ‘Married,’ he was murmuring to himself, ‘married to another man, and a foreigner. . . Another man doing that to her—’ Abruptly he snapped off his words, and colour fused his cheeks.

  ‘You could never forget that I’ve been married to someone else?’ she asked him curiously. An odd unfathomable sensation had come to her, bringing doubts that were as inexplicable as they were hazy. She had loved her fiancé dearly at the time of the abduction, and for a few highly emotional and grateful seconds out there just now, in the garden, she had believed she loved him still. But what of her husband? She had admitted that she loved him ... and it was not possible to love two men.

  ‘I—I——— Oh, hell, Tara,’ be exploded, wiping the sw
eat from his brow, ‘don’t ask me questions like that at present! I can’t think straight—’

  ‘But you must have been prepared for something like this?’ interrupted Tara gently. ‘I’d been abducted— and no girl’s abducted for nothing. The man who abducted me had designs on me—’

  ‘Be quiet, Tara!’

  ‘Can we get on to something more important?’ suggested Oscar Stewart impatiently. ‘Where is your husband now?’

  ‘He’s out, in the village.’

  ‘We want him for questioning.’

  ‘How did you find him?’ asked Tara curiously.

  ‘Easy. Through Interpol.’

  ‘Interpol....’ The very word was hateful to her, bringing her husband into the category of a criminal.

  ‘I’d like to ask you more questions while we wait for your husband to come back.’ It was the English policeman, Oscar Stewart, who spoke, and she gave him her whole attention. ‘You obviously married Mr Petrides willingly. What I can’t understand is why you didn’t enlist help from the man who married you?’

  ‘Yes,’ interposed David, ‘why didn’t you? You could have done, surely?’

  She explained everything from beginning to end and even before she had finished the Greek policeman was shaking his head.

  ‘There’s no case against him,’ he began, when Oscar Stewart interrupted him.

  ‘There was an abduction, and it took place in England—’

  ‘An abduction with intent to marry,’ interrupted the Greek. ‘In any case, this young woman cannot give evidence against her husband.’

  Oscar Stewart’s mouth went tight; that he was angry was evident. As for Tara’s reaction ... well, she hadn’t for one moment relished the idea of her husband being taken to England under arrest. Of course, he must always have known that even if the matter did happen to be carried that far, she would not be able to give evidence against him, for that was the law. Something in her expression must have caught David’s attention— perhaps her relief that there would be no case against her husband—for he said, staring at her in some perplexity,