‘And it is absolutely necessary that your wife accompanies you,’ the Foreign Secretary had said when Sholto had met him. ‘Greece is sticking to its neutral stance and the slightest indication that we are compromising its position by filling the island with British intelligence personnel – and legitimate personnel who are also fulfilling that role – would be disastrous. There will be no such suspicion if you take up your new posting accompanied by Lady Hertford.’
Daphne’s euphoria at the thought of being reunited with Ella and Kate on a long-term basis lasted all the way on the train journey to Poole, and all the way on the flight back to Alexandria.
At Alexandria they were met by an official chauffeur-driven car and the first thing the chauffeur said, as he opened the limousine’s rear doors for them, was, ‘Bad news this morning, sir. Hitler’s invaded Denmark and Norway.’
Sholto blasphemed, and then said, tight-lipped, ‘Any news of what sort of resistance is being put up?’
The chauffeur waited till the car’s doors were closed and he was behind the wheel and then said, ‘They were blitzkrieg attacks, like the attack on Poland, sir. No warning. Denmark has been overrun, but the Norwegians are still resisting.’
Sholto swore beneath his breath and, as the car began speeding through the city streets in the direction of the road to Cairo, Daphne said apprehensively, ‘What does this mean for Britain, Sholto?’
‘It means we’ll go to Norway’s aid,’ he said, his handsome face grim. ‘It means that the Phoney War is finally over.’
Very little else was said between them on the car ride into Cairo. All Daphne’s joy at the thought of going to Crete had vanished. All she could think of was the horrors now taking place in Denmark, Norway and occupied Poland.
Once in Cairo, the driver dropped Sholto off at the embassy and then drove over the Bulaq Bridge to Gezira Island and Zamalek.
Adjo greeted her with his usual tranquil smile. ‘Welcome home, my lady. Barak has some good news for you.’
‘Has he? I could do with a little bit of good news. What is it?’
‘Your earring, my lady. It had dropped into the breast-pocket of his lordship’s dinner jacket. Barak has left it on your dressing-table tray. I told him that on no account was he to touch your jewellery boxes.’
‘Thank you, Adjo.’ Earrings were something Daphne regularly mislaid as she wore clip-ons and often, when a clip became uncomfortable, she would take the earring off and drop it into her purse or somewhere else equally convenient. In this case the convenient place had apparently been Sholto’s breast-pocket.
Once in the bedroom, she put her handbag down and slipped her feet out of her shoes. On the cut-glass dressing-table tray the earring lay in solitary splendour.
She crossed the room, intending to put it in one of her jewellery boxes with its partner.
It was a very pretty earring: a drop pearl surrounded by diamonds, and certainly not the kind of earring she would have wanted to lose.
She didn’t move to pick it up, though.
She couldn’t move, because there was something very, very wrong with the earring.
It wasn’t hers.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Although there was an autumn chill in the air, the pavements of Athens were as noisy and as crowded as ever that October. There was, though, one significant difference. Because of the war raging in Western Europe, the people in the crowds were nearly all Greek and the foreign tourists who would have been patronizing the smart dress shops in and around Monastiraki Square, which was where Nikoleta worked, were noticeably absent.
Nikoleta’s salary was modest, but that hadn’t mattered when she had first begun working at Athiná Módas, because she also earned commission – and the dresses she sold were all high-fashion, expensive dresses. Now, though, very few dresses were being sold and it mattered, especially as her hopes of a rich fiancé had never materialized.
It was her lunchtime and she was in a cafe sipping a coffee that had been served with a tumbler of water. Although she didn’t admit it in her letters to her parents and to Ella, she was lonely. The other assistants at Athiná Módas hated the way her sales figures so consistently outstripped theirs and, being jealous, were unfriendly. She missed the gregariousness that had come with always being made welcome at the Villa Ariadne, and the sense of importance given to her by being a Palace of Minos tourist guide. None of the Greek men who had flirted with her had interested her. Her upbringing, living cheek-by-jowl with the constantly changing occupants and visitors of the Villa Ariadne, had given her expectations that it now seemed were never going to be fulfilled.
The world-famous Sir Arthur Evans had for years behaved towards her with all the kindliness of a godfather, when she was a small child. It had made Nikoleta feel special and different, as had her growing ability to speak English. As a young woman, the archaeologists who came to the Villa Ariadne from the British School in Athens had, in her eyes, all possessed not only foreign glamour, but intellectual glamour. It was something Cretan young men at home – and now the young men she had met in Athens – had so far failed to deliver.
Life was not panning out as she had expected it to. Worse, the neutrality that Greece had clung to with such determination was crumbling fast. Italian forces had massed on the frontier with Albania. A Greek ship had been sunk in the harbour by an Italian submarine, and the announcement of an all-out attempted Italian invasion was expected at any moment.
She stubbed her cigarette out. Twice she’d been tempted to leave Athens for home. The first time had been when Ella had written to her with the news that Daphne’s husband had been posted to the British Vice-Consulate in Heraklion, and that Daphne was with him; the second had been when she had received a telegram telling her that Ella had given birth to a healthy baby boy. Now had come a temptation that she had no intention of fighting. Crete was the biggest and most strategic of all the Greek islands and, when the Italians invaded, Crete was where she had to be.
She rose abruptly to her feet.
Athiná Módas was going to have to manage without her.
She was going home.
‘So when did Nikoleta arrive home?’ Daphne asked Ella as, despite autumn temperatures and a cloud-covered sky, they sat companionably in the little courtyard that Ella had made pretty with pots of flowers and shrubs.
‘Yesterday morning.’
‘So she was still in Athens when the Italians invaded?’
Ella pulled her cardigan a little closer around her shoulders. ‘She was. And she was amongst the crowds outside the British Embassy when our ambassador made an appearance on its balcony. She said the cheering he received was deafening.’
‘Rightly so – especially as the RAF were straight off the mark, giving support with squadrons of both fighter planes and bombers.’
Ella looked across at her, impressed. ‘As Sholto’s wife, do you always get to know things like that before anyone else? And do you get to know what is happening in Britain as well?’
At the mention of Sholto’s name, Daphne’s face tightened, but her voice was steady as she said, ‘I don’t get to know anything that’s classified as being secret, and the despatch of RAF fighters and bombers to the Albanian frontier isn’t secret – rather the opposite, as it’s news that will bolster public confidence.’
No Greek Ella had ever met had been in need of having their confidence boosted, but she didn’t say so. Instead she said, ‘And the situation back home? Do you know more about it than we’re told in the newspapers and over the wireless?’
‘No. Sholto might, but I don’t, although I may get news a little earlier. Southampton suffered yet another God-awful bombing raid on Saturday night, as did a whole clutch of other industrial towns – though not Bradford,’ she added quickly, as Ella sucked in her breath. Bradford had been bombed in August, with some bombs falling on the side of the city closest to Wilsden. ‘As for London . . .’
She fell silent. Since the Blitz had started two months ago, the
re simply weren’t words enough to sum up the hell Londoners were enduring night after night.
When she finally spoke again, she changed the subject. ‘When is the baby to be baptized?’ she asked, as contented mewling sounds came from the crib positioned in the open doorway. ‘And who gets to be his godparents – and why, when he’s six weeks old, has he still not got a name?’
‘Taking things in order. The baptism will probably be next week. We couldn’t have had it earlier because it’s Greek tradition that they don’t take place until forty days after the baby has been born. Question number two: as Nikoleta was koumbara at our wedding, she will be baby’s godmother and Georgio, Christos’s brother, will be his godfather. Sorry, Daphne, but as with bridesmaids, godparents have to be Greek Orthodox. Thirdly: it’s tradition that the baby’s name isn’t spoken until after the priest has given him, or her, the name at baptism.’
‘But you have chosen a name?’
‘Yes, although I can’t honestly say we chose it.’
Daphne rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t tell me! Traditionally he has to be named after the priest who baptizes him, or a saint, or . . .’
‘. . . or his paternal grandfather,’ Ella said, vastly amused by the expression on Daphne’s face. ‘So his first name is to be Kostas and, as what is good for the goose is also good for the gander, I’ve insisted that his second name is Alfred, after my dad.’
‘So no imagination called for at all?’
‘Not even a tad.’
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
Later, when they were back in the house and she was breastfeeding Kostas Alfred, Ella said tentatively, ‘Is everything okay, Daphne? You look as if you have a lot on your mind.’
‘Well, who wouldn’t have, with Britain fighting for her life and so very little good news?’
‘Yes, I know. But is there something else as well? I don’t mean to pry, but between the three of us – you, me and Kate – we’ve always told each other everything and—’
She broke off as Daphne made an odd sound in her throat and then said with deep feeling, ‘Oh God, you’re right, Ella. I do have something on my mind.’
To her horror, Ella saw that Daphne was fighting back tears. She removed Kostas Alfred from her breast, saying as she burped him, ‘What is it, Daphne love? Whatever it is, it can’t be so bad, surely?’
‘It is. Sholto is having another affair. After his affair with Deirdre Holbeck-Pratchett, and a brief, intense affair that I had in retaliation, I truly thought we’d drawn a line when it came to being unfaithful – but although I have, he hasn’t.’ Her voice was thick with disillusionment and hurt. ‘I don’t understand it, Ella, because we’re good together, both in bed and out of it; and the worst of it is, when I confronted him about this latest affair, he admitted to a string of previous affairs, or “flings” as he prefers to call them, as if they didn’t matter at all. And perhaps, to him, they don’t. But they matter to me.’
Ella was at a loss to know what to say. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how she would feel if Christos was unfaithful to her, but then neither could she imagine him ever being so. She laid Kostas Alfred back in his crib and then, wishing she could box Sholto Hertford hard around his aristocratic ears, gave Daphne a long, loving, sympathetic hug.
After Daphne had left and when she was baking Christos’s favourite cheese pasties, Ella realized she had never asked Daphne just who it was that she’d had her brief and intense love affair with.
She pressed the edges of the pasties together with the flat of her thumb and then she stopped what she was doing. When Daphne had learned about Sholto’s affair with Deirdre Holbeck-Pratchett, she had immediately left for Crete. It was then that she had told her and Kate about it. And as her own affair had been in retaliation, had it happened while she had been on Crete?
In sudden shock she stopped what she was doing.
If Daphne’s affair had taken place on her visit to Crete, there was only one likely person for her to have had it with, and that was Helmut.
Helmut had never hidden how smitten he was with Daphne.
With a heavy heart she wondered where Helmut was now. Was he in a Panzer division? Or in the German navy, serving on a battleship or a U-boat? Or perhaps he was a pilot in the Luftwaffe?
She closed her eyes, trying to shut hideous possibilities from her mind, knowing only that she hoped he was still alive and that the day would come when, in a world that was at peace again, they would once more meet as friends.
Lewis and Christos were striding up a track that led from the small village of Kefalari to the slightly larger village of Aroania. Both villages were in a valley in western Crete in an area of the White Mountains that Lewis was unfamiliar with. Since the Italian invasion at the end of September, when British troops were welcomed into Greece as allies, he’d had no need to conceal why, or in what capacity, he had remained behind, when Kit and other archaeologists had left in order to enlist in the armed forces. One of his first tasks had been to familiarize himself with the entire island until he knew it, as Christos did, like the back of his hand. Because of its mountainous terrain, Crete was extremely difficult to travel around in – something in its favour if enemy troops were to try and occupy it, but not very convenient when Lewis needed to meet the leaders of remote scattered villages, sounding out which of them could be relied upon as future guerrilla leaders.
Daphne’s husband, Viscount Hertford, a man he had never met until Hertford had taken up his position in the viceconsulate, had sought him out immediately after his arrival on Crete.
Hertford had been disarmingly direct. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you from my wife and from Julian Kermode,’ he’d said, his manner as easy as if they were chatting in a rugby locker room and not the formal setting of the consulate. ‘That you can speak Greek like a true Cretan is going to be a great help to me. I have a little classical Greek, but it’s rusty and I understand there’s a dialect I’ll have to get to grips with.’
‘There is,’ he’d said, ‘but it’s not much different from standard Greek.’
Hertford had shot him a grin. ‘That’s a relief. I know from Kermode how helpful you’ve already been, and how much valuable information about the island you’ve already delivered. Under cover of my official position, I’m here to liaise with you. Your days of being a one-man band are over.’
He’d paused long enough to pour two generous-sized Laphroaig single malts.
‘The pace is hotting up,’ he’d continued when they were both nursing Lewis’s favourite whisky. ‘As the Greeks are so far holding the Italians at bay, there’s no likelihood at the moment of an Eyetie invasion of Crete, but Germany is another matter. Needing Suda’s deep natural harbour, so their navy can control the Med, means the Krauts could attempt a sea landing at any time. We need to be prepared for the worst.’ He’d grinned, and Lewis had realized that Heraklion’s new and relatively young vice-consul was a man of quite devastating charm. ‘Only fair to mention that organizing bands of partisans for armed resistance is against international law,’ he’d continued, ‘but what the hell – here’s to being ready to give any invading bastards a greeting they won’t forget in a hurry!’
As he and Christos continued now up the narrow valley so that he could meet a retired former governor of the island, Lewis knew that in Sholto Hertford he had met a kindred spirit. Sholto was a man he had immediately liked; a man far different from the usual run of pompous civil servants; a man he was certain would be equal to anything.
Christos broke into his thoughts. ‘Not much further now. And we are lucky that the way is clear of snow. Usually, by November, the snow on the path to Astrakos is deep.’
Lewis could well believe it. Every peak soaring around them was covered in snow so blindingly white it hurt the eyes to look at it.
His thoughts returned, as they did constantly when he was away from her, to Kate. At the moment she was doing the winter close-down of the palace and cave digs at Kalamata.
Reading his thoughts, Christos said, ‘Kate will be managing well. She has Dimitri and Angelos, and they are good, those brothers. Pericles and Yannis are good workers, too, despite Pericles being moody and Yannis being old.’
‘You’re forgetting about Adonis.’
Christos’s good-humoured face collapsed into a scowl. ‘No,’ he said vehemently, ‘never do I forget about Adonis! He thinks too much of himself. He thinks that because of his good looks, he is God’s gift to women. And because he thinks too much of himself, he is not a good worker. I think he should not come back next season. I think the team can very well do without him.’
Lewis’s mouth twitched at the corners. Adonis was an excellent worker and he knew the only reason Christos would like to see the back of him was because he didn’t like Adonis and Ella exchanging friendly banter. That Adonis had any serious designs on Ella and that, even if he had, Ella would be receptive to them was too ridiculous to be taken seriously, and as they neared the houses on the outskirts of Aroania his thoughts returned once again to Kate.
At the moment both she and Ella were safe remaining on Crete, but that situation would change the instant Germany declared war on Greece, and nothing was more certain than that Germany would do so and that it would do so sooner rather than later.
When that happened, Kate, Ella and baby Kostas Alfred would have to be evacuated to the safety of Cairo, along with all other British women and children on the island.
On paper, it was an arrangement that couldn’t be argued with. What kept him awake at nights was the knowledge that neither Kate nor Ella would be happy to go along with it. Ella because she regarded herself as much of a Greek national as a British one, and Kate because all her loyalties were to the palace site at Kalamata, and to the villagers she had lived amongst for so long. To leave for a place of safety, when they couldn’t, would be deeply abhorrent to her.
As he thought of how much he loved her, Lewis’s heart tightened within his chest. In retrospect, he knew that ever since the tragedy that had robbed him of his parents and his sister he had been emotionally frozen. Nikoleta had made a dent in the icy wall he had erected around himself, but it had taken Kate – as ravishingly beautiful and sexy as she was intelligent – to thaw it out completely.
Beneath the Cypress Tree Page 29