Haldane, his eyes on Hasapis and weighing him up further, hesitated. Nikos moved to his side. 'Leandros,' he murmured as a quiet warning. Haldane ignored him. Still he hesitated.
Manolis and Costas, just as anxious as their father that Haldane should not wriggle off the hook now, decided the moment had come for them to step in and administer the coup de grace.
'Such a stake, father,' said Manolis with mock concern. 'Such a risk.' He paused and then added. 'For the Kyrie.' He looked at Haldane sympathetically. 'Remember,' he said. 'It was a long time ago he was with the Andarte.'
Costas nodded. 'True,' he agreed quietly and with a faint and insolent smile. 'And it is well known that with some men the years rust the iron of their nerve.'
Hasapis snapped a look at his son. 'Costas!' he exclaimed in a gentle rebuke. Haldane smiled quietly, greatly enjoying the charade. Xenophon turned to his sons, seemingly on the defensive. 'It was only a thought,' he said. 'It seemed to me a fair wager. One worth the winning.' He sighed and nodded. 'But you are right. Between Cretans perhaps. And with the odds so much against Leandros.' He shrugged. 'And who will think any the less of him.' He turned back to the Englishman and his smile was warm but provocative. He clapped his hands. 'So, my friend. Some other prize then. What shall it be?' He looked into his eyes. 'Something you can afford to lose, eh? Choose.'
Haldane smiled back at him. 'No,' he said. 'I am content, Xenophon.'
There were renewed murmurs of excitement among the villagers. Nikos frowned and shook his head in despair. He looked across at Annika. She shrugged helplessly. Hasapis could hardly believe his good fortune and it showed in his expression. But then it suddenly occurred to him that the Englishman really did believe that he had a chance of winning. He frowned briefly but then quickly dismissed the thought as nonsense. 'You agree,' he said. 'The winner takes the other's boat.'
Haldane nodded. 'Yes. I agree.' Then he added casually 'I only hesitated because I don't need two caiques.' He grinned. 'But that's no problem,' he went on. 'I see that now. I shall sell yours.'
Greatly taken by Haldane's audacity and relishing the joke, Hasapis roared with laughter. Then he put out his hand to Haldane. The Englishman took it. The race was on and the prize agreed.
'Till Sunday then,' said Haldane. He turned and, together with Annika and Nikos, walked slowly away from the moorings in the direction of the taverna.
Smiling, Xenophon looked at his sons and winked.
It was Nikos who told Elena about Hasapis's challenge and about the wager.
'Leandros!' she exclaimed aghast. 'Tell me that this is not so, that you have not done such a foolish thing, that Niko is joking.'
Nikos added ice to the two glasses of ouzo he had just poured and placed them on the counter in front of Haldane and Annika, together with a flask of water. 'But I am not joking,' he said. 'It's the truth.'
Elena frowned angrily. 'Then what you have done is an act of madness,' she told him. She gave Nikos a look of rebuke. 'You were there. Why did you not stop him?' she asked.
'I tried to warn him,' sighed Nikos. 'But he would not listen. '
'That's right,' Haldane confirmed. 'He did try, Elena.' '
And you, Aunt,' challenged Elena. 'Did you not say anything?'
Annika poured some water into her glass. 'I know better than to interfere when men gamble,' she said disapprovingly. 'Particularly when it is a question of honour, of pride, with them.' She shot a look at Haldane. 'Besides, I do not have the right to say anything.'
Haldane took out his tobacco pouch and his pipe and began to fill it. 'I take it that you are against the idea?' he said.
Annika nodded. 'Yes. I think it is a great pity and foolish of you to put at risk something on which you have worked so hard. Something which means so much to you.'
'Just so,' agreed Elena. 'Annika is right.'
Haldane laughed. 'It's only a boat,' he argued.
Annika picked up her glass. 'Is it'?' she asked quietly.
'Xenophon Hasapis has raced before,' Elena went on.
'Against others.' she sighed. 'And always he has won.'
Nikos nodded. 'He is a fine sailor.'
'I'm sure he is,' said Haldane calmly.
'But as some comfort, I will tell you this,' added Nikos. 'He has not got a caique which is as good as yours.'
Elena shook her head. 'Maybe,' she said ruefully. 'But after the race I think that perhaps he will have.'
'We'll see,' said Haldane. He gave Nikos an enquiring look. ‘I can't handle the boat alone. Will you crew for me?'
Nikos nodded. 'Of course.' He smiled. 'And if nothing else, we will make Hasapis sweat a little,' he assured him. Then, picking up two crates of empty beer bottles, he moved away behind the counter with them and disappeared through the archway. Haldane struck a match and lit his pipe.
A noisy group of tourists entered the taverna and drifted through to the patio. Elena sighed. 'We are short of staff,' she muttered. 'Georgios and Pelopidas are both away today. They sent word that they are sick.' She snorted. 'But I think the truth is they wish to spend Easter with their families.' She left the bar and went out onto the patio to take the party's order.
Haldane glanced at Annika. She was staring at her glass. 'This race,' he said gently. 'I didn't have much choice, did I?'
'Anyone can walk away from a challenge,' she said.
Haldane frowned. 'Would you?' he asked. 'Do you?' Annika shrugged. Haldane shook his head. 'No, you don't. I'm sure you never have. And as for the risk involved, well there's risk in almost everything we do. It's just a question of weighing it.' .
Annika slowly turned her head to look at him. She studied him intently. 'You are a strange man, Leandros,' she said. 'You say that. And it is true. And yet even when the scales are in your favour and you know it, it seems that there is still one risk that you will not take. And I wonder why.'
Haldane was well aware of the question in her mind but it was one to which he could not give an answer. He reached for his drink. 'There doesn't have to be a race. I could always back out.'
Annika shook her head. 'No, you cannot do that. Not now.
'Of course I can. I'll just send word to Hasapis that I've changed my mind.'
'He would spread the word across the island. The story would be told as a joke in every taverna. A joke against Leandros, hero of the Andarte.'
Haldane nodded. 'Yes.'
Annika looked at him again. 'And while you remain on Crete you would have to live with that.'
He shrugged. 'I'd survive.' Annika frowned. 'And you would do that for no other reason than because you know that what you have done distresses me?'
'Yes,' said Haldane, turning his face to her once more. 'If that's what you really want.'
She searched his face thoughtfully and then shook her head. 'There are many things that I want from you, Leandros,' she said. 'And in some perhaps I ask too much of you. But in this I want only one thing.' She smiled. 'That you win.' She glanced at her watch. 'And now I am sorry to say that I must go. There is much I have to do at the factory before we close for Easter.'
Haldane nodded understandingly. 'Yes, I'm sure there is,' he said. 'And I've been away too long from my drawing board. The design is coming on well but I've still got some way to go and I must get it finished.'
Annika smiled. 'Well just as long as you do not work too hard over the holiday. I am looking forward to our spending at least some time together.'
Haldane gave her a surprised look. 'Us? Are you going to be in Elounda for Easter then?' he asked.
Annika nodded. 'Here. I am staying in the taverna. I shall be back later tonight. Are you surprised?'
'Yes. I'd thought you'd probably spend it with your family. With your mother.'
Annika frowned at the memory of the last time she saw her mother at the cemetery in Dhafnai. 'Elena is part of my family, isn't she? And I want to be here.'
'Good,' he said. 'I'm glad.'
She smiled wryly. 'Glad! That is a word
like nice. Polite but without heart.'
Haldane smiled, reached out and took her hand. 'Yes, you're right,' he agreed. 'Happy then. Very happy.'
Annika needed to know this, to believe it; this and much more. 'Are you, Leandros? Are you?'
'More than I can say,' he replied.
Haldane opened the front door of his house and pulled up abruptly in the doorway with a look or horror on his face. The room was a shambles and in chaos. His records, his books, all his personal possessions had been swept from the shelves and the furniture flung in all directions. Many of the books had been savagely torn and some of the LPs were twisted or bent double. His radio and his camera lay trampled and wrecked on the floor. His worktable had been overturned, its drawer pulled out and its contents strewn wildly. The designs for the new dinghy on which he had been working for the past two and a half weeks had first been daubed with Indian ink then wrenched from the drawing board and ripped apart. More ink had been poured over the letters and papers spilled from the drawer.
Stunned and with an expression of disbelief, Haldane moved further into the room. His foot touched something lying on the floor. He looked down, stooped and picked it up. It was the framed photograph of his wife, the glass smashed, the frame buckled and the photograph, lying alongside the wreckage, torn in half. Haldane stared at the ruined picture and then looked up from it and gazed around the room, sickened and deeply wounded.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
'How long were you away from the house?' asked Krasakis, surveying the havoc around them. A policeman stood just inside the open front door.
'Four hours.' muttered Haldane. 'A bit longer perhaps.'
'And the front door was unlocked?'
'As always. Who locks doors in Elounda?' Haldane asked. 'In the daytime anyway.'
Krasakis nodded in understanding and agreement. 'Or in any village in Crete,' he said. 'What need is there for keys where there is trust and respect. But, sadly, times are changing, my friend. It is becoming the age of the locksmith. Even here.' He moved further into the room. 'And nothing has been stolen you say?'
'As far as I can tell. So why? Who'd do a thing like this?'
The Major sighed. 'Regrettably it is not only money the tourists bring with them.'
'You mean that this was just senseless, bloody vandalism!' exclaimed Haldane.
Krasakis turned to him. 'One of the sicknesses of Europe. And the carriers of that sickness arrive here every day by air or by sea. Even we Cretans are not immune to infection.'
'No. I don't believe it,' said Haldane adamantly. 'No Cretan would do this.'
'No. I agree,' concurred Krasakis. 'That would be out of character. Destruction merely for the joy of it. So it has to be the work of a foreigner. Or foreigners. We will, of course, need to make tests for fingerprints.'
Haldane nodded. 'If you really think that will help.'
'Probably not. But who knows. It might. And it is, in any case, a matter of routine.' Krasakis looked across at the policeman standing by the front door. 'Get on the radio,' he told him. 'And tell headquarters that I want a scientific and fingerprint team here as soon as possible.'
The policeman saluted. 'Yes, sir.' Then he turned and hurried away down the steps.
Haldane picked up the pieces of the ruined drawing and looked at them sadly. 'Why? Why?' he questioned savagely.
'That was important to you?' asked Krasakis.
'Very,' replied Haldane bitterly. 'A hell of a lot of work went into that.' The Major gave him a questioning look. 'They're the drawings of a new type of sailing dinghy I've designed,' he explained. He tossed them down onto the table. 'Now it's just waste paper.'
Annika heard the news of the outrage when she returned to Elounda at nine o'clock that night and she went straight to Haldane's house. By then he had disposed of those things which were clearly beyond repair and had restored some semblance of order to the room. His torn and ink-smeared drawings still lay in pieces on the table. Annika crossed to them and picked up one of the fragments.
'I am so sorry, Leandros,' she said, close to tears. 'So very sorry.'
'So am I,' sighed Haldane. 'It means I’ll have to start again from scratch. And just about when I was ready to show Nikos the drawings. He still hasn't given me an answer about the sailing centre and I wanted to keep him interested and keen, I'd hoped this would do it.'
'Who could have done such a terrible thing?'
Haldane gave a weary, dispirited shrug. 'God knows.'
'But it has to have been the act of a sick mind, the act of a savage,' she declared, And then suddenly practical she asked with an anxious frown. 'Have you eaten?'
Haldane shook his head. Somehow he had not felt like it. He protested when she said she would prepare something for him but she would not listen and hurried away into the kitchen.
They ate together and afterwards took their wine out on to the balcony. It was a warm night. The village was quiet and still. Earlier the church had been filled to capacity for the Maundy Thursday services symbolising the crucifixion and women had hung wreathes of fragrant lemon blossom on the cross in the centre of the church and then, while the other villagers had pushed forward to kiss the feet of the Saviour, they had tossed flower petals into the air to form a multi-coloured, candlelit, sweet-smelling cloud which had slowly drifted down again like snow to settle on the heads and shoulders of the congregation. And then the people had walked home in silence. Christ was in agony and dying and Elounda mourned. Tomorrow they would bury Him and He would be given a resplendent funeral.
Far out to sea were the lights of a ship and Haldane stared at them pensively. He and Annika stood side by side, Annika's left hand resting on the balcony rail. There had been little conversation during the meal. Haldane had huddled in his depression and Annika had only occasionally attempted to coax him out of it but with little success and they had both been grateful for the music from the record player in which they could each take refuge. Now, gazing out into the night, their thoughts were set to the melancholic strains of Faure's Elegie filtering softly from the room behind them.
'It's difficult to believe,' Haldane reflected, remembering the scene which had greeted him when he had returned to the house earlier that day. That such a thing should have happened. In a place so beautiful and peaceful as this.' He shrugged.
Annika nodded. 'And yet without ugliness and violence there would be no beauty or peace, would there?' she said quietly. 'As without evil there would be no goodness and without hate no love. The mountain and the valley - neither would exist without the other.'
Absently Haldane put his right hand onto the rail and it touched Annika's. She made no attempt to move her hand away and they looked at one another and there was a mutual longing, a mutual need in their eyes.
Without taking her eyes from him, Annika moved her hand from the rail and turned to Haldane, willing him to take her into his arms. And for a moment he considered doing just that. But it was not possible, not with the shadow that lay between them. And yet, he argued inwardly, perhaps it is better to lose something precious which one has held, however briefly, than never to have possessed it at all. But then the thought of her hurt if, after giving herself to him, she ever found out the truth, again scored his conscience. If that happened she would have lost nothing, it would have been stolen from her with forethought and by him. And what kind of a crime would that be? He turned from her, took a sip from his wine glass and then looked at his watch. 'It's very late,' he said. 'Nearly a quarter to one. I'll. walk you back to the taverna, shall I?’
Annika studied him. Why? Why? she questioned. For God's sake, why? Why does he still hold back from me, from the love I have for him, the comfort I am offering? Why does he still deny the love I see there in his eyes? She nodded. 'Very well, Leandros,' she said. 'If that is what you want.'
Haldane hesitated. He did not look at her 'Yes. I'd like to walk with you,' he said.
Still Annika studied him. Still not understanding. But she could onl
y go so far. Even for him her pride had set boundaries beyond which she would not, could not step. The next move must come from him. But he made no move.
Annika frowned and then, impulsively, she leant forward and kissed him on the cheek. 'Shall we go then,' she said. She moved away from him and back into the room.
Haldane, sad, troubled and silently cursing his resolve, watched her go, Then he drained his glass and followed her.
The following morning Haldane got up early. He made himself a mug of coffee and then, with the mug in his hand, stood in the kitchen doorway. and surveyed the living room thoughtfully. He crossed to the table and picked up the pieces of his design and stared at them. With a sigh he moved slowly over to his worktable and, putting the mug of coffee down on one side of it, pinned a fresh sheet of cartridge paper to the drawing board. He filled his pipe and lit it. When it was burning well he settled himself on his stool, picked up a T square and a pencil and, with a look of resolve, began again.
He was still working when, that afternoon, Annika quietly pushed open the front door. He had not drunk his breakfast coffee and his pipe, still in his mouth, was unlit and filled only with cold, wet tobacco ash. And so intent was he on what he was doing that he was completely unaware of her presence and that he was being watched.
Annika smiled to herself and stepped back through the doorway.
He was equally engrossed when she returned in the evening and he had achieved a great deal. But this time she interrupted him.
'That is enough for one day.'
As though coming out of a trance, Haldane focused his eyes on her, smiled and then stretched and examined the work he had done. He was pleased with it.
'Yes, you're right,' he agreed gratefully.
'Have you finished?'
He nodded. 'Almost.'
Who Pays the Ferryman Page 18