Flamingo Flying South

by Joyce Dingwell

  The sheik… was he Justin, Mr. Smith or one of the several sheiks present?… danced as well as anyone could in such a crowd. She looked up, trying to see the eyes through the mask, but it was only half light, streamers were being flung, and the disguise was a concealing one.

  She could feel cool fingers, though, cool fingers that still somehow gave a warm sensation to her flesh. Was it— Or was it—

  The lights went out for a moment. In the brief silence that the shock of complete darkness imposed on all the rev­ellers, a voice said softly from behind the mask, so softly no one else would hear… yet Georgia heard:

  'Dear, dear Kate.'

  They were back in the hill house again. Justin had come for a final nightcap. He and the girls sat on the patio while Grip went in for the drinks, since it was now early morning, and the staff long in bed.

  They laughed over the night's festivities, over the re­markable coincidence of both parties, male and female, choosing the same masked disguise.

  'I always fancied myself as a sheik,' Justin said. He had discarded his mask and headdress, loosened his voluminous robes. 'How do they stand it in that heat?' he marvelled. 'It's good to be a westerner again.'

  'Not so good to be out of Wonderland,' proffered Kate. 'I quite enjoyed my picture-book world tonight.'

  'Yes, I saw you were having a ball.' There was a dry note in Justin's voice. He gave Kate such a quick glance, it was barely even a flick.

  'Perhaps you were seeing Georgia,' Kate suggested blandly.

  Any rejoinder Justin might have made was prevented by Grip wheeling out sandwiches as well as drinks.

  'I had a feeling,' he explained of their cries of appreciation, 'that the night would be so hectic there would be little time for sustenance, so I had Yiannis cut up some in readi­ness.' He, too, had removed his mask and headdress, loosened the robe.

  'Help yourself, Alice One,' he said to Kate. 'You too, Alice Two,' to Georgia.

  'When the boys were nonplussed tonight I thought I'd chosen badly,' Georgia said, munching her sandwich.

  'They'd seen me previously,' Kate laughed. 'What an in­stance of great minds thinking alike!'

  'Yes,' Georgia agreed, putting aside a question that she had known ever since that last waltz and Justin mistaking her for Kate that she must ask herself. Ask herself how she had felt, how she felt now, about Justin, Justin whom she had remembered ever since that remembered summer, Justin who had comprised every summer ever since for her, Justin for whose memory she really had come back to Cyprus, Justin who was her first love… and still her only love?… whispering:

  'Dear, dear Kate.'

  She did not feel hurt, she found… not yet… Perhaps it would come, perhaps she was just numb now, not up to the stage of realizing that Justin, who had climbed a hill in her memory, run to her when he had found her on that hill, could turn to Kate… Katherine to him… and, forgetting One Summer, say: 'Dear, dear Kate.'

  She tried to feel something definite, something either to tell her that she was unhappy, something to tell her instead she was untouched. But it was no use, there seemed nothing indicative.

  Their voices drifted around her, the usual after-party voices, wanting to seek sleep but too sleepy and relaxed to move.

  Then sharply, imperatively, a consciousness was pushing, no, nudging at Georgia. Justin was taking up his Arab head­dress, playing with the braid, trailing it through his fingers. She glanced at the headdress that Grip had thrown down.

  Identical. Identical in every way… except colour. Justin's was blue, Grip's red.

  Though the Continental had been in semi-light, though cigarette smoke and streamers had made it even more ob­scure, one fact was definite in Georgia's mind; it was almost as though she had colour-photographed the scene. That scene in which one sheik wore a blue band, one sheik a red.

  It had been a red band when the voice had whispered mistakenly: 'Dear, dear Kate.'

  Red stood for Agrippa Smith.

  Georgia leaned back, closed her eyes. She wished that closing them could cut out that headband, but the darkness she imposed upon herself seemed to make the colour stand out more than ever.

  Grip Smith, not Justin. Grip saying quietly: 'Dear, dear Kate.'

  Grip saying it.

  'No!'

  She was not aware she had exclaimed aloud until she opened her eyes and saw the three of them looking at her.

  'I must have dozed off,' she excused herself.

  'And had a nightmare during the doze, by the sound of you. Who were you refusing, Miss Paul?'

  That 'Miss Paul', said her fuddled senses, made it Grip Smith speaking to her, of course.

  'What do you mean?' she asked.

  'You said very forcibly "No!" '

  'Did I?' She gave a careless shrug, never feeling less care­less in her life. Yet it was not Grip saying that to Kate that was gripping her, it was—her own reaction now. She could not believe it. A reaction to Justin saying it, yes, but not, and never, to Grip Smith.

  'I must be ready for bed if you tell me I was talking in my sleep,' she said, and rose.

  Grip rose, too.

  Kate seemed inclined to linger a while, then she got up. Justin murmured something to Grip, blew a kiss to both the girls, then went to his car.

  Georgia afterwards could not remember bidding the upstairers good night, she only remembered going to her room and sitting emptily down on the bed.

  Above her she heard their footsteps… Kate's, Grip's.

  But in her mind she was not hearing footsteps but a voice.

  'Dear, dear Kate,' the voice said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was the intensity of the protest in her that shook Georgia. That shocked her. Agrippa Smith not only is nothing to me, she told herself, but I actually dislike him. Why, oh why, am I reacting like this to words said to me while thinking I'm a different girl? It's Justin who matters to me, and always has, and even if the years have changed me from eighteen, changed my outlook, though I'm still not sure about that and I can't say truly, then I am sure and I can say truly one thing: I don't care for Agrippa Smith.

  He's everything I shrink from, hard, astringent, unbend­ing. So why am I unsettled like this?

  Anyway, assuming I did not dislike him, what future could there be? A man who never leaves his office for hours, hours with a girl like Kate? A man so carried away with that girl he even speaks her name to someone else without first ascertaining that he's indeed talking to Kate? As he was not.

  Where is my pride? she asked herself a dozen stupefied times, and received the same stock answer. There is no pride in love. She had read that in books many times. But good heavens, she felt like crying, I don't love, I could never love, that autocrat.

  She mulled it over, she began at the beginning again and mulled over it a second time. And got no further.

  Summer was waning. The last of the grape trucks were labouring over the slippery, juice-strewn roads with their purple loads. The hammering heat was a forgotten thing. The thyme and rosemary were withering to brown clumps. The scilla, that had looked as though it had been washed in sky, was a gaunt wreck. Winter pumice, drab and ochre, were taking over all the flamboyant colour; the pine trees had already spread carpets of needles; the Mediterranean was staging a backdrop change from celestial to iron-blue, often with white-capped waves that sifted the shingle on the beaches with an angry little hiss.

  Yet never, thought Georgia, looking at the bare branches of the fruit trees around the hill house, had Cyprus been more beautiful. She had thought that summer brought everything to this island, but now shape and contour emerged unblurred, unadorned by leaf and flower, and it was almost achingly lovely.

  The shops were getting ready for Christmas, the same Yuletide adornment as in the west except that here Santa Claus gave way to a benevolent picture of some revered, long departed old priest. The kindly holy man was imposed everywhere—on the silver wrappers of chocolates, on trin­kets to decorate a room. He smiled down from
shop awnings and even twinkled in electric light arches above the streets. His message, Georgia told the boys, was Peace, just as that was the message everywhere.

  Up in the Troodos Mountains, Mount Olympus was put­ting out the island's first tablecloth of snow. Later in the season the cloth would reach right down, hang pretend white flowers on all the trees, other mountains would copy loftier Olympus, but just now only the highest peak wore a snowy crown.

  Georgia took the boys up one day, passing through Platres with some of its trees still clinging to their autumnal red and gold, unwilling to lose their loveliness even for a few months, which was all their winter would last. On an island where seasons touched hands there were no sharp divisions, Georgia found.

  But once on Olympus, autumn was finished, the snow was on the ground, thin, a trifle bedraggled, but snow.

  The boys enthused over it. They had been to St. Moritz, Kitzbuhel, other expensive, exclusive slopes, but this was their snow. They made inadequate balls of it and laughed happily. They laughed because they were happy, Georgia knew.

  'Do you like Christmas?' she asked them.

  They could give her no decided opinion.

  'Have you ever had a Christmas tree?' she asked then.

  Oh, yes, they had had that, their mother always had fine trees installed, trees with lights and spotlights and flood­lights and—

  'Your own tree,' Georgia came in. 'Your own special tree you put in a tub yourself, that you decorated yourself with cones you gathered yourself, and painted yourself?'

  They were looking at her eagerly, wistfully.

  'Could we?'

  'Of course. We'll gather cones now.' There were plenty of cones dropped from the trees. 'Also,' went on Georgia, 'we'll make our own presents.'

  'Make them?' they echoed.

  'From all sorts of things. This piece of wood, for instance, I know Kate would love. You could paint and fix it in a frame for her. Like this.' She showed them.

  'Now, Mr. Smith. He does a lot of writing. A paper­weight would be grand. I saw some marvellous lucky stones down in the brook running from the tiny tarn. You could choose a good smooth stone and polish it with some stuff I know.

  'Then Olympia—' she went on.

  'And Yiannis and Georgiou and Andreas,' said Bish.

  'And Peaceful, Buttons, Purr and the Pink One,' said Seg.

  'You, Georgie,' they both said together.

  'And you,' nodded Georgia back.

  They started exploring, and collecting. Things for a tree. Things for gifts. There was no fear of them becoming lost, the scene was winter-bare, no secretive leaves or boughs to hide small busy figures, and the snow still had not attained any concealment properties.

  Not then…

  Georgia did not know at what period she realized it was snowing, really snowing. All the time there had been a small drift, more a mizzle than a fall, so she supposed that that was why she had not noticed till now. As for the boys, they had forgotten snow in the enthusiasm of outdoing each other in decorations and gifts. Their heads were down… one head by the rune, one under a tree fast becoming powdered in soft white. It was the tree that caught Georgia's attention first. She gasped in surprise, then looked around.

  She was amazed at how much snow had fallen, all the criss-cross marks on the thinner snow had been ironed out. The verges at the sides of the road were thick white banks. The road itself…

  Oh, no! she cried silently in dismay. Where before the mountain road had been a reassuring dark blue bitumen track, now it was no track at all. There was only white. More and more white.

  She did not call the boys at once, she went quietly through a thicket of trees… a white thicket… her feet sinking deeper with each step until she could see the car parked by the side of the bitumen, or what once was the bitumen. Now it was just a continuance of snow.

  She went to the car and examined it. She looked at where the road should be. Even if she could get the car on to it she could see that she could not travel along it any more, not without the aid of chains.

  She knew that the snow-plough only operated at week­ends, and that then its activities were restricted to periods when tourists were expected. It was too early in the season for tourists—besides, pre-Christmas was always a slack time for any resort.

  Georgia leaned against the car and tried to think. It was still bright, but the dark up here would come early, and with it an intense cold. They could not stay in the car. They could freeze. The only thing to do was to start down now on foot while they could still pick a way, find some car, or so Georgia hoped, in the lower regions that could give them a lift to town. Or anyway, somewhere safe. She thought with distaste of Grip Smith's raised brows, of the things he would find to say, but she made the thoughts brief. She had two children to get to safety and that must be her sole concern.

  The boys, when told as casually as she was able, were supremely unafraid and very reluctant to leave. They had collected a pile of goodies that they declared the snow would hide if they didn't hide them themselves in the car. Georgia squandered precious time helping them carry the cones, stones and branches across to the boot, a boot already well blanketed in snow, but in their collecting obsession the boys did not notice.

  At last they agreed to start down the mountain, making fun of the fact that the road was barely discernible, only two banks of piled snow with a flatter surface between them suggesting it was indeed there. Thankful for their cheerful co-operation, unintended though it was, Georgia pretended to join in the fun.

  But each step she took she felt less happy, and when the steps began to get quite deep, much deeper than steps on a road should get, she felt certain they had detoured from the bitumen, or what beneath the snow should be bitumen. But the children loved it. Seg went into gales of mirth when Bish trod into a drift up to his knees, whereupon Bish retaliated with a snowball, and it was on.

  To give herself time to think, for by now she was really alarmed, Georgia joined in the throwing. Then she sug­gested making a snowman, and while the boys were occu­pied she ran through the trees to look around. She could see nothing at all but snow.

  She came back again, slowly, fearfully. As an Australian she knew little of snow. What was the best to do? she won­dered. Return to the car?

  And where was the car?

  Keep cool… keep cool… She could have laughed at that had not nervous tears filled her eyes. If they rolled down, she thought ridiculously, they would freeze. Yet that was foolish, actually it was not cold yet, not with the snow falling. The cold would come later… and where would they be?

  She came back to the snowman. Because there was ample material he was quite a substantial man. Bish had put in a stick pipe, which was suitable, for this man's name, she read, was Grip.

  'You shouldn't write Grip,' she reproved mechanically.

  'We know, but we never bother with that other.'

  No, she had never heard them say Father… Dad… Pop… any of the paternal tags. But why was she wasting time like this? She didn't want to panic, or at least let them sense her panic, but she had to make a move, and soon. But where?

  Then she heard Seg saying casually: 'Look, the snow-plough is coming up and there's a car behind it, a car with chains. Why, it's his! It's Grip's! Best not to let him see what we did, Bish.' They began tumbling down the snow­man.

  But Georgia was tumbling down the slope to the ap­proaching car, not caring whether the tears on her cheeks froze or not.

  Grip had pulled the car up when he saw her, and had got out. He caught her as she slid down the last bank, caught and held her against the rough wind-breaker he wore.

  'Oh, Grip, Grip!' she called.

  'Steady, young 'un,' he came back.

  'Grip, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to do this, I was a fool, we could have frozen, the boys could have—'

  'Steady, I said. And what is all this? All I can see is a sudden snowfall and a stranded car.'

  'But—but stranded where?' she sobbed. 'We c
ould have been out all night. We would have died.'

  'With a hotel round the next bend?' he scoffed. 'With a string of houses? Oh, yes, there is a string of them. With some shops.'

  She looked at him incredulously. 'Is there?'

  'Yes,' he assured her.

  She tried to mumble apologies for her stupidity; she de­served, she said, everything he said to her.

  'Look,' he answered, 'you've done nothing, you little idiot. You didn't know the weather was going to play up, even the weather men didn't know, it was completely unpredicted. Especially for this initial period of the winter season. When I heard the news on the radio I guessed you'd be caught, so I got out the car, took the precaution of adding chains, took the precaution when I arrived at Platres of persuading the snow-plough to do a circuit, and here we are, all safe and sound.'

  'No thanks to me,' she sniffed.

  'My, we are wearing sackcloth and ashes today, aren't we?' He gave her a grin. 'Hi, kids!' he called as she could only raise a trembling smile in return. He tactfully turned his back.

  He reversed his car ready to descend again, put them in it, then went up on the snow-plough to check Georgia's car. In a few minutes he was back again… they must have taken a circular track from the little yellow model, for Georgia felt sure they had trudged much longer than that. Trudged hours.

  Driving carefully over the slippery road, they came down the mountain again. But not right down. Just below the snow-line, or at least where what snow did fall was confetti thin, merely a powdering of white, Grip pulled up at a small inn.

  'Hot chocolate called for,' he said.

  The boys whooped in, but Georgia, though just as anxious for hot chocolate, moved much more soberly.

  'I have to advise it once again,' Grip grinned. 'Don't trip over that bottom lip.'

  They sat by a blazing fire and drank the chocolate. Then the proprietor came in very excited to tell them that this was the first time, the first, sir and madam, that snow had fallen this low. A sprinkling, yes, but not snow as was falling now. He had been here, he said, for many years, but never seen it like this.