Georgia's ankle, if not as bad as it might have been, was certainly put back for a few days.
'That will larn you,' Grip Smith leered.
'I think you're enjoying all this,' she grumbled.
'I am. I have the three banes of my existence cooped together in a manageable bunch. What more can any disciplinarian ask?'
But the disciplinarian was only bark, and even then at times the bark was reduced to a woof. Times like when Grip Smith walked in with colouring books for the boys, flowers for Georgia, and an elaborate Pirates' Den, An Amusing Game for Up to Four Players for them all.
'It says four players,' Bish pointed out as Grip started to go out again.
'That means not five or such,' explained Grip, 'it means nothing over. Up to, it says.'
'We're not four,' Seg backed up his brother.
They both said together, 'So you'll have to play, too.'
If she had not been a little unsure of the disciplinarian, Georgia would have giggled outright. The thought of the world-known current affairs writer Agrippa Smith sitting down to a child's game sent bubbles of mirth tickling through her, longing for release. Only by pretending deep interest in something out at sea did she prevent his glowering gaze on her. As it was he looked furiously with her, and remarked, 'I can't see anything.'
'It's gone.'
'If it was ever there.'
'Grown-ups talk funny,' Bish said. 'A blue counter or a green, Georgie?'
'Give her pink,' said Grip.
'I've given you red.'
'Suitable,' inserted Georgia.
'And white and yellow for Seg and me. Yes, you do talk funny. Cry funny, too—no wet. The first one to throw six begins.'
It certainly was an amusing game, but the trouble, as far as 'funny adults' were concerned, it was also an endless game. For just when you thought you were Home, or only needed a nudge to Home, you threw something, and instead:
'Pirates' Den'
'Begin again!' yelled the jubilant boys.
The third time it was too much for Agrippa Smith. He got to his feet and made almost drunkenly for the door.
'As father material,' called Georgia acidly, 'you're not.'
'Then it's just as well I discovered that in time,' he called back, and shut the door on her, his sons and the game.
'What did he mean?' asked Bish.
She could not say that for the period when he took them to Australia it would be schools, guardians, trustees, house fathers… anything but the father he should have been, but wasn't.
'He was just talking, darlings.'
'Like I said, grown-ups talk funny. Only not you, Georgie.'
'Aren't you grown-up, then?' inquired Seg.
I don't know, she could have answered them. Sometimes I feel a wise woman, but sometimes I still feel eighteen, and standing on a hill… with Justin. This very hill on which we are situated now.
Seg was rearranging the counters, the game was commencing again. Georgia felt a stab of sympathy for Grip. Still, it was better than brooding over the Pink One, whose fate still hung in the balance. All the faithful Georgiou could report was that he was still resting quietly.
'Eating?' asked Georgia.
'Not yet. But that will come, my little hares.'
Georgia felt as each hour… for they demanded hourly bulletins… brought no negative report, that the Pink One would pull through, but to what extent? She shrank, as Grip had, to pronouncing a sentence of imprisonment for the basic sake of existence on that lovely pink thing. Born free, she grieved, but man decreeing differently.
There was no second participation on Grip's behalf in the dice game, and once convinced a fourth was unnecessary, the boys did not care. But Georgia cared; she felt that a father had lost an opportunity.
However, the typing began again, the quick bang of the current affairs copy. She had come to differentiate the two works now, the slower tempo that often resolved into thoughtful silence when the book was being composed compared to the extension of brains-to-fingers process when the political data was being snapped out.
Only when the boys slept did she take out her thoughts of the book she had half typed for Agrippa Smith. She remembered the laughter, the tears. The tenderness. Remembered with tenderness. She wished she could tell him how she had been moved by the manuscript, but how could you tell a stony-faced man who would not even find time to know his own sons? Anyway, by the hard snapping typing, that manuscript had been put aside.
Then the following afternoon the typist arrived and was introduced.
She was English; and spending her vacation on the island. She had heard a lot about it… she had paused a moment… so had decided to see it for herself. She had secured Limassol digs, but living was expensive, so this offer of a temporary job was most welcome. She could tour around, yet still not deplete her savings. She was delighted… thrilled, was what she said… to accept a post with the Mr. Smith. She said it. Her eyes said it. All of her said it. And it was a very pretty girl saying it.
'She's prettier than you, Georgie,' Bish said frankly.
'She's pretty like our mother,' Seg submitted.
They both looked Georgia over, then agreed that she was more like the Pink One.
'Pretty?' angled Georgia hopefully.
'No,' they said unanimously. 'But it doesn't matter, just like it doesn't matter with the Pink One now he's ill.'
Somehow, for all the brutal truth, Georgia felt a glow. Though the glow lessened somewhat when the typist carried in her morning coffee to drink it with Georgia.
The boys were quite wrong, Kate Elway was not just pretty, she was beautiful. She had dark gold hair, as contrasted to Georgia's tow… fair was a kinder word… and violet eyes. A girl with violet eyes, thought Georgia, has everything. She was a little older, she judged, several years perhaps, but then Agrippa Smith was young-old, or old-young, whichever you preferred. But why, angry with herself, had she thought of Grip Smith?
But it was soon obvious that the conversation was to be all Grip Smith… or nearly all.
'He has a wonderful brain.'—Only the brain? Georgia found herself asking—'Have you read Conquest in Our Time?… Portraits and Policies?'
'No.' Besides violet eyes, thought Georgia now, this girl has a superior intellect.
'Only what I'm on now is totally different, so different it's hard to believe the same man has written it. 'It's…' Kate searched for a moment… 'quite haunting.'
'I'm sure.' What an intelligent response, Georgia squirmed, angry with herself. 'I'm sure.' She waited a moment, then slipped in, 'Actually I believe Mr. Smith was after someone who would type and not absorb.'
'One could not not absorb this book, it seeps into one,' Kate said. 'Anyhow, I'm not the kind of typist who has to turn over the pages and read, I get every word as I work.'
Which I couldn't do, remembered Georgia, or anyway didn't do. I put it on my lap and read it, and he saw.
But for all Kate's superior brain, superior typing ability, superior lots of things, most of all her violet eyes, Georgia could not help herself liking the girl. She was friendly, unassuming, gave Georgia a fellow feeling in Georgia's sensing of something in her life, too, that she did not want to speak about, and she was easy-going with the boys.
The boys were up now, still wearing bandages here and there, and one wound on Seg's leg was receiving antibiotic treatment since it looked slightly septic, but hale as ever, and simply crowding the Pink One with their over-attention.
Georgia, hobbling round herself, followed them down to the coop once, and was worried at the unceasing talk with which they plied the flamingo. They didn't talk as though he was a bird, they talked as though he was a brother, and Georgia was concerned.
She told Kate over the coffee break… it would have surprised her had she realized how many times she did tell things to Kate, what confidantes they had become… and Kate had laughed: 'Not brothers, Georgia, brothers fight, and much more healthy, I'm sure.'
'Well, you know what I mean.'
'I do. And I see your point. Why aren't the children at school?'
'They're very intelligent, I don't think this break is doing them any harm intellectually.'
'That's not the point… though you do have a point there all the same. These kids with their private personal expensive tuition behind them—for it would have been that, I suppose—?'
'Undoubtedly,' Georgia said.
'—Would be several telling grades ahead of their age group, not a good thing for any kids. But'… a craft smile… 'not in a Greek school where they would have a language hurdle to hold them back.'
'A Greek school?' asked Georgia.
'Why not?'
'They can't speak Greek, except a few words picked up from Andreas and Georgiou.'
'Good, then, at last we find something the nice little horrors don't excel at. We send them to school, and besides finding their own level they learn the language as a language should be learned, from the natives themselves.'
It made sense. It made such good sense that Georgia could have cried with frustration that she had not thought of it herself.
To drive home her inadequacy even further, Grip Smith seized on the idea with deep admiration for Kate.
'Kate, Kate,' he cried, 'where would we be without you?'
'The boys haven't agreed yet,' Georgia smugly. She could not see that pair agreeing, indeed she could see them objecting strongly, and though she knew it was a good idea, and though she knew it would be beneficial all round, she could not help herself meanly anticipating a first-class rebellion.
Poor Georgia!
Called to their father's side, after he had explained their fate to them, instead of saying 'No, thank you'… 'We won't go, I'm afraid'… 'We're busy just now'… typical polite Bish and Seg replies… they said:
'Wow!'
Georgia would not meet Grip Smith's taunting eyes.
'You can find a school for them,' he told her meanly. She thought angrily that he mentally prefixed it with: 'Just for that, Miss Knowall, you can now make your contribution.'
She took the boys with her in the little car, resentful at them for their excited chatter, for their letting Kate know, if unwittingly, what they needed… but not her.
They found a small school in the foothills that took in infants, a Greek school but with an English-speaking Greek teacher who was delighted to accept two English children.
'Australian.' Georgia almost had said Strine.
'Poli kala. Very good. It will be good for all of us, I think, my little fellows. You think so? Yes?'
'Yes.'
'Yes is Ne.'
'Ne,' they called.
They started at once. They didn't even look back at Georgia as she went down the school path to the car again. She got in, released the brake, then went back up the hill.
Halfway there, she pulled the car into a small safety ramp, the same ramp she recognized as the one she and Justin had used when they had driven up to look over Amathus. The road to the house had been restricted to them then, not as it was to Georgia now, so they had terminated their journeys here.
She looked back at the larkspur, the veronica, the almost cardboard cut-out perfection of the Mediterranean seascape, the paler-than-light light of a Mediterranean day clipping everything out in sharp relief. That was something, she thought, the boys would find different; Australian distances swam dreamily in blue haze.
She turned to the hinterland, to the smaller pines of the foothills, that grew into tall ranges, rustling and swaying in a slight breeze that barely stirred their bigger, stronger brothers. She recalled Justin choosing one young tree and she choosing another and timing them to see which moved the most. They had done a lot of foolish time-wasting things like that. Yet had it been really time-wasting? Did you need always to be stuck at a typewriter to fill in life profitably, not just profitably as regarded comfortable returns, but other kinds of returns?
She turned back… and gasped.
A car had pulled into the ramp behind her. A man was getting-out. Three years were tumbling out with him. Three years ago… with Justin… on this hill.
'Justin!' She looked at him incredulously, the same Justin, not a day older, not a day different. Not a day less dear… less remembered.
'Georgia!'
He was racing across. He was spinning her up in his arms, something he had always done when they had met and there had been no one around to smile. She recalled significantly, though it had not struck her significantly then, how Justin had always chosen his times. It had been because—and she had been too inexperienced to see it—he wanted no involvement, nothing more than what was happening now.
'Still a featherweight, still a thistle in the wind,' he laughed. She had yearned once to be a tall, gracious lady, and he had said, 'Pixies just now are suiting me very well, thank you.'
She had not asked what he meant by 'just now', she had rejoiced in the fact that he liked her as she was. How terribly immature she had been!
Yet at this moment he was telling her she was still the same.
'Only—' he added.
'Only, Justin?'
'I'd like to say "Only attainable", Georgia, but I don't know, do I?'
'Know what?'
'I can't see any ring, either wedding or engagement variety, but there could be something.'
'There's nothing,' she said. 'But'… flushing, she always flushed… 'I was always that.'
'Attainable?'
'Yes.'
He looked at her gravely, mutely asking her forgiveness. 'I wasn't,' he said.
So that had been the story, that had been the reason, when she had said 'our house', that he had left the words poising there.
'Oh, Justin,' she cried, 'you could have told me.'
'I know. I know I should have. I know I should never have let it get that far. But you were so sweet, you were so vulnerable.'
'I doubt if it would have hurt as much as not telling me. Were you married then?'
'Good heavens, no. But I was engaged.—The date was set.'
'And now, Justin? Your wife is with you in Cyprus?'
'No.'
'She never came?'
'We never married, Georgia. When we met again, Katherine had changed her mind.' He gave a little hunch of his shoulders, a habit of his, she recalled.
'Tell me about you,' he urged… he seemed not to want to talk about what he had just told her.
'I stayed on with John till he was finished,' she related, 'then we went back to Australia, John got Munich—'
'Yes, I know all that—reps do get to know each other's moves.'
She nodded. 'You went to Athens… then—'
He recited a dozen places to her. One was Nairobi.
'Where the flamingoes go,' she murmured.
'Yes. You should see the Rift Valley when the pink contingent takes over. I'm to return there to finish off a detail I omitted after I conclude here. Perhaps you'll come too, Georgia.'
'With you?'
'With me.' He paused. 'Come properly. Come as my wife.'
'Oh, Justin,' she said half crying, half laughing, 'that was years ago.'
'It's as new, as fresh and as real as if it was just now.' He turned round to look out at the blue and veronica. 'It is then, isn't it?' he said after a pause. 'The calendar hasn't turned at all. We loved this hill. We'd try other places, but always we'd return to the hill—our hill. You must have felt, it, too, Georgia, for you've returned now.'
'I haven't really, I'm going up the hill. I live up the hill.'
'In the hill house?' They had often discussed the hill house and wondered what fortunate person lived there.
'Yes. I work there.'
'What kind of work? And why are you here in Cyprus… I mean apart from the reason I can hardly bear hope it is, Georgia… you did say you returned to Australia?'
'And became a career girl, until John and Leone asked me over, and I accepted the invitati
on.'
'To Munich, but that's not Cyprus.'
'Neither was Thessaloniki, where we had a holiday together, and where I decided John's wife was becoming just a little child-worn. Sol kidnapped her to Cyprus for a week, and at the end of that week I got this offer of a job.'
'You haven't said what kind of a job. Not housekeeping, are you? Who owns the house?'
'I don't know. Mr. Smith is hiring it—he is the Agrippa Smith of current affairs volumes.'
'I know of him, of course. Some man. And you're typing for him?'
'No, Kate is.'
'Oh,' said Justin, and Georgia thought she heard a relieved note, 'there is another girl.'
'Yes. And a very beautiful one.'
'Good. Very good. I've seen photographs of Smith, he's a good-looking man as well as a brains trust.'
Georgia shrugged.
'You still haven't told me about the job,' he reminded her.
'Two children. Boys,' she explained.
'Smith's?'
'Not that you'd notice,' Georgia said bitterly. She gave Justin a general idea of the situation.
'Well, I'm not a father myself,' he admitted, 'but it does seem a little raw. However, a man with a brain like his should be forgiven a lot of things.' Justin spoke with admiration.
'You mean be permitted facts before people?'
'You're really bitter, aren't you, Georgia? What is it? Does he mean more than a talking topic to you?'
'The boys do. And he puts his wretched current affairs in the boys' place.'
'Without his current affairs,' pointed out Justin fairly, 'I would say there wouldn't be much of a place. He must make a fortune on those books.'
'But to put facts before—' she started to say, then stopped. For one book had not been facts, it had been—a love story.
'Funny little Georgia,' Justin was intoning. 'If the man spent the time you consider he should on his sons, then the shekels wouldn't come in for the sons. Be reasonable, darling.'
Darling. The word came out instinctively… and it stopped there. It stopped between them as they stood on the hill, the ochre and cigar leaf slopes on one side, the blue and veronica on the other.
Flamingo Flying South Page 9