Only after she had gone, under the umbrella again, to the big waiting car, did Georgia realize that she had been given a banknote, too. She stood staring at it, at the size of it.
'Our mother,' explained Bish rather uninterestedly, 'is rich.'
He did not seem to mind her going. As for Seg, he did not even turn round. His eyes were on a poodle accompanying a girl seeing off a friend.
'Our plane is delayed,' Georgia told them. 'It won't be long, I think. What shall we do till then?'
'Pirates' Den,' they asked eagerly—Pirates' Den that they had scorned on their way up. They found a corner seat for the three of them beside a small coffee table, and there they sat for over an hour, Georgia getting nearly to Home on several occasions, each time throwing a number that took her to—
'Pirates' Den, Begin again,' they said in unison, and in glee. They didn't mind the delay because they were on their way back, even if they were only at the airport.
'Anyway,' said Bish, almost as though he had read Georgia's thoughts, 'we're not back there.' There, knew Georgia, was where they had been stopping. She threw an unfortunate number once more and was just being told:
'Pirates' Den Be—' when the summons came really to board this time. She put away the game, took the boys' hands and made for the boarding gate.
They had to run through rain to the air-bus, and going across the field they could see nothing but big grey drops.
They took off in rain, flew through rain, and then they were putting down in Nicosia, putting down from a sky as blue as cornflowers, on to a field already green-gold from a too generous winter sun.
When they came out of Customs, Grip Smith was waiting for them. He came forward and took so many bags from them that Georgia protested:
'You can't carry that much.'
'It's a pleasant chore, I've been so damned empty.'
'Empty?' she queried.
'The house or something.' He looked a little foolish. 'I never knew a man could feel so… well…'
'So Kate hasn't returned.' Georgia didn't mean anything particularly when she said that, but Grip Smith gave her a quick angry look.
'You would see it from that angle,' he said.
His old promptitude at picking her up brought her old colour flooding her cheeks.
'What other angle?' she inquired.
'It wouldn't occur to you that I was speaking as a man who had been lonely and was glad his household was returning again?'
'No, that wouldn't occur to me at all.'
Bish and Seg broke in anxiously for news of the Pink One, then, in lessening importance, news of Peaceful, Buttons, Purr, Olympia, Yiannis, Georgiou, Andreas.
'All well,' Grip reported. 'The Pink One particularly well. I'm not sure, but I feel when no one is about sometimes he has a trial run.'
The boys were overjoyed, so much so that Georgia felt she must give a note of warning.
'If once he flew, really flew, boys, he mightn't come back.'
'We know,' they said, 'but Zavallis at school said he couldn't ever do it, and we know he can.'
'But you wouldn't want to lose him just to show Zavallis.'
'You shouldn't call him Zavallis, Georgie, that's his second name, and it's only for boys. You should call him Mathos.'
'You wouldn't want the Pink One to fly just to spite Mathos?'
'We want it for himself, too,' they said solemnly, a little tremble there, but a lot of manliness. She felt proud of them.
There was not much traffic on the Limassol road, and the car ate up the miles.
'See the boys' mother?' Grip asked shortly.
'Briefly. There was a storm and we were delayed, so she didn't stop.'
'Then you surely saw the boys' mother,' said Grip.
He turned in at Amathus, and they climbed the hill Georgia did not realize until they had passed the safety ramp that she had not instinctively looked in. Grip pulled up the car, opened the door, helped them out, handed the bags to a waiting Yiannis.
Olympia was waiting, too, Georgiou, Andreas. They were all smiling and all expectant, and the moment the front door opened… for Olympia had had it drawn before… they found out why, and let out a shout of pleasure.
For there stood a tree—a belated tree, Grip explained.
'What's belated?' Seg asked him.
'An after tree. This is the tree you would have had, had you been here, your very own tree with your very own decorations. I've no doubt it's nothing like the tree you did have—'
'Hers had blinking lights and spotlights and—' Georgia noticed how Bish said 'hers' not 'ours'.
'There's all our presents under it,' called Seg. 'There's mine for Olympia, I remember packing it.'
'That's mine for Georgiou!'
Now they were leaping around the tree, calling attention to proud details of it, gloating over it, priding themselves for it, preferring every hand-tipped cone to the blinking lights, spotlights and floodlights of that other tree they had been given.
'And Miss Paul?' asked Grip Smith of Georgia. 'Does she find it enjoyable as well if humble?'
'It's a lovely tree,' said Georgia, not far from tears, 'and it's lovely of you. You're good father material after all.'
'Thank you,' said Grip, 'for I fully intend to be one, you know.'
He stood looking at Georgia, and, challenged, she looked back. But it was her own eyes that fanned down first.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Grip's gesture to the boys was a complete success. Bish and Seg capered round the juniper that he had had Georgiou cut down and Andreas erect in a red tub with great excitement, calling to each other as they recognized some of their own handiwork.
'I did that cone'… 'I made that reindeer'… 'We stringed those silver bells, remember.'
They stood, tongues in cheeks, eyes dancing, as the staff opened their gifts. Afterwards, Bish said to Georgia: 'You could see that Olympia liked that shell I found and wrapped up for her much more than that old present my mother bought for me to give her.'
'Yes,' said Georgia rather faintly. The present had been a handsome wool stole in rich colours, and unmistakably rich in price. But Bish was happy in his present, in their tree.
'That one up there had just a lot of old lights, I like elated trees much better.'
That, thought Georgia, was a good description, so good she did not correct Bish.
It was another week before Kate returned to work, but it went pleasantly. Agrippa set aside his writing for that week and took them around the island. They went to Paphos to see the pelicans, to Polis to see Love's Spring, up to Panhandle to look across to Turkey.
Then they came home, because this present school vacation covered little more than the accepted public holidays. School started very early in Cyprus, or so Georgia considered, and she was a little concerned at the boys leaving home in the cold a.m. hours. However, they finished early for recompense, so caught the sun then. It was an arrangement that Agrippa approved, and it was pleasant, she had to admit, to have a long afternoon with the children after she had collected them and brought them home again.
While the snows were on they had several excursions to Troodos. The boys skied well, probably expertly trained on some exclusive slope, and laughed hilariously at Grip's and Georgia's less successful attempts. Georgia felt she could be forgiven—after all, a real Strine… she did not count Grip as one, not with all those years abroad… had to look for snow.
When she said this to him, he shrugged of himself: 'I was looking for something else.'
If he was waiting for her to ask what, he was to be disappointed. She turned and tried herself out again down the beginners' slope.
Kate returned, and once more the office was shut, and the sound of the typewriter and voices, low voices, came drifting out to prove the busyness that was being enacted there.
Justin came back.
January brought some rain, according to the country people not enough, but then rain, for farmers, was never e
nough, but February came in dry and almost warm. Yiannis declared that winter was over and spring upon them.
'That didn't take long,' said Georgia.
'Sometimes longer, sometimes olihgo… little. But by Clean Monday we are looking summer almost in her face.'
Clean Monday was the beginning of Lent, and on that day everyone went to the fields for a picnic, but a picnic of only bread, olives and vegetables. The house on the Amathus hill decided to join in the custom, too, and Justin drove up to participate with them, and under the big carob tree all the staff, and those served by them, and Justin, sat happily together in a warm sun.
The Pink One had been let out and was roving around scratching at the rich brown earth.
'Do flamingoes have Lent?' asked Seg.
'I don't know,' said Grip carefully, and Georgia soon learned why he spoke like that. For it had been all very well for the boys to boast that they wanted the Pink One to fly, even fly away, but what if it came to actuality? 'We can find out,' he went on, still careful. 'The squadron has flown in. The Akrotiri lake is filled with this year's flight.'
There was a silence, and Georgia knew sharply the beginnings of pain the children were experiencing.
'Perhaps we'd better go out there,' gulped Bish, 'take the Pink One with us, let him see his relations.'
'No, not that yet, the flamingoes will be here quite a while, and I think we should look them over ourselves first, judge their size.'
'Yes,' agreed the boys eagerly, anxious to postpone that other.
After the meal they divided into two cars and drove down to the salt pan, quite a little lake now following the winter wet.
There they stood enchanted. In summer, from the salt, the pan shimmered silver, but now it shimmered rose pink. The vast flocks of wading birds rested together like a roseate island on it, but when one, either alarmed, or merely stretching his wings, reached up and flew, the others followed to weave a pink necklace against the blue sky.
'I think,' gulped Bish, 'the Pink One would like that.'
'I think so,' agreed Grip. He gave the boy his binoculars. 'I think he's as big and strong, too, as they are. What do you say?'
'I say,' said Bish bravely… but a tear rolled past his nose.
Because it would be some time before the exodus to the Rift Valley in Kenya began, Grip suggested they leave the Pink One where he was till then.
'Yes,' they agreed eagerly again.
Every day during February the snow tablecloths became smaller and more meagre. Winter was flying away. It was never long, Olympia told Georgia, but this year it had come, and then po, po, po… Cypriot for pouf!… it had gone again. There had not even been the usual rain, and the farmers were unhappy over that.
Georgia was happy over the spring, though, for never before had she seen so much spring. The valleys, the slopes, the fields, fairly burst over with flowers. You could not walk a meadow without trampling down wild anemones, iris, red poppies and asphodel. Cyclamen pushed up in mauve and violet clumps.
Only Mount Olympus wore a snow coronet now, and a small one, so the winter was surely over, and the forests soon should be full of pale green leaf.
'Something Strines don't get,' reminded Grip of the eucalyptus country, 'we only receive change of tree trunks. In which case I think another picnic is called for.'
'Shall we all go like we did before?' said Seg.
The staff declined, Clean Monday was enough picnic for them for the year, but Kate and Justin joined in, and, at the last moment, Zavallis.
'Did you ask Zavallis?' Georgia asked the boys.
'You should call him Mathos, only boys call boys by their surnames. I told you before.' They both looked severe.
'Did you invite Mathos?' she corrected herself.
'No, we didn't. He's come himself because of the lion. He doesn't believe the Pink One can fly, so we don't believe in the lion.'
'And?' asked Georgia.
'And it's to be proved,' said Seg.
'Each side proved?'
'Yes, but the lion proved first because we tossed up a mil and Zavallis lost.'
'So he's to show you the lion in the forest?'
The boys nodded.
'Perhaps it's a mouflon, a wild sheep.' Georgia hoped so, she wanted very much to see one of these ancient animals, still now in existence in the Cypriot forests.
'No, it's a lion, Zavallis said. Once he saw it with blood dripping down.'
'Yes, you told me before. Now tell Yiannis to pack lunch for one more.' Or, thought Georgia fastidiously, Zavallis can eat my share. She did not fancy blood dripping down.
They left early for the forest, and it was a beautiful drive, but dry for this time of year. Spring should be more moist, Georgia thought, more dewy: although there was an abundance of green there was quite a lot of dead or parched brown as well.
'Camelot,' drawled Grip from behind the wheel, 'didn't police its weather properly this year—some of that timber is almost tinder-dry.'
Mathos proved an alert little boy with sharp black eyes and a sense of adventure. Three times he had to be told not to explore past a certain prescribed distance.
He spoke back to Bish, not being fluent yet with his English, and Bish reported that Zavallis doubted if the lion would come out from where he was, and if they couldn't go, they wouldn't see him.
'Making Zavallis the winner,' said Grip, 'by us not allowing our kids to prove him wrong by not finding any lion.'
Our kids. No one took any notice of it… but Georgia did. They all laughed, and, replete from the fine meal that Yiannis had provided, lay back in the sun and drifted into casual talk, and eventually sleep.
The children played in the creek, from which the snow waste had drained now, leaving only a tiny musical trickle. Knowing how boys love brooks, love to launch bark boats, how they will play safely for hours, Georgia relaxed with the rest, talked occasionally, drifted off as well.
What happened then happened so fast, and so frighteningly, that afterwards it was hard to piece it all together.
The boys disobeyed by going farther than they had been told—that was not to be argued, as they both, Bish and Seg, painfully discovered—but it was not the disobedience that almost caused the tragedy, it was what they did. Perhaps it would have been fairer to say Zavallis did, but nonetheless Seg and Bish were soundly whacked.
The first Georgia knew was Grip jumping to this feet and crying 'Good grief!' Then she heard crackling. She saw smoke and flame.
Brushwood was burning, the same tindery brush that Grip had commented on. Even as she leapt up to watch by Grip's side the flaming brushwood caught a dried-out, half-dead tree and a tongue of red leapt eagerly up the lower boughs. Sparks showed.
Thirst-dry branches on other trees seemed fairly to reach out to gather a flame for themselves. Smoke began to cover everything in a thick blue pall.
In no time a dozen trees were ablaze, some of the crackling was thunder-sharp. Bits of burning bark drifted in the wind, igniting old thistle, thick beds of dried-pine needles, seared scilla. A red-hot heat was beginning to fan towards them.
Georgia started to run forward, calling the boys, but Grip caught her roughly and pushed her back.
'I'll get them,' he said grimly. 'You'll only make matters worse—stay where you are. You take over, Justin.'
He disappeared into the trees.
Justin said, 'He's right, we can't help in there… here, either, for that matter. We'll get out. At least we can raise an alarm, enlist help. Don't stop to carry anything. Just run.'
They all ran… at least they thought they all ran, that the three of them ran. But when they got to an untouched clearing, Kate was not with them. She had stumbled, they were to learn later, but in the eddies of smoke they did not see her, and in the loud noise now of falling branches they did not hear her cry out.
There was a stream in the clearing, and they jumped thankfully into it, then Justin said: 'Kate!'
That was all he did sa
y, he did not wait to wonder what had happened, where she was, he did not even stop to tell Georgia to remain where she was, he simply ran back into the smoke, into the ashy, crackle-loud, licking flames, and though it was only several minutes before he came out again, with Kate in his arms, to Georgia it seemed a lifetime, a lifetime of torment, a torment because of Grip and the boys, too, but she didn't know about them, and she did about Justin and Kate, she knew they were in that inferno.
But they were out now, and she was kneeling with Justin beside Kate, Kate with her hair and skin badly scorched, moaning a little, tears weeping from her closed violet eyes.
'My God, Gigi, she's bad,' he muttered.
'I don't think so. I mean it's bad enough, but—but I don't think so.' Georgia saw that Justin himself had no eyebrows.
Birds were flying above them, shrieking a warning, telling everyone there was something bad here. At least, that was what it seemed to Georgia.
And it must have seemed so, too, for the rest of the forest. In quite a short time, though not alerted, help was arriving, small village brigades, trucks with water, men with wet bags. The screeching birds and a finger of rising smoke had spread the news.
An ambulance arrived. It took Kate and Justin. Georgia refused to go.
The fire had not extended far—though, said Grip later, and very grimly, no thanks to those who had started it. Zavallis had started it, Grip knew that, but Bish and Seg had stood by, so they were as bad as Zavallis.
He said this slowly, deliberately, judiciously, he told them that starting a fire… it had been to smoke out a lion… was something that an Australian must never do, a Cypriot, either, but he would let Zavallis's father drive home that point. A look on Zavallis's face indicated that his father certainly would, when he arrived home. But Grip did not wait for home for their two, he chose a good stick, and thereupon whacked both boys long and hard.
It was a thorough punishment, and Georgia watched a little aghast. Not aghast because of the punishment, it was deserved, and it had to be given, but aghast at how this unwhacked, undoubtedly never spanked pair would react.
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