Aphrodite's Tears

by Hannah Fielding

  ‘Parakaló.’

  Oriel took out a handful of coins and offered them to the woman, who only chose a couple. In England, she reflected, that amount of figs would have cost a great deal more. The woman waved away Oriel’s protest and put the coins in the front pocket of her apron.

  ‘American?’

  ‘No, English.’

  The old woman gestured towards the acropolis. ‘You are with the men digging up the old temple?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Oriel.

  Her wrinkled face looked concerned. ‘The gods will be angry, mark my words.’

  Oriel smiled politely, familiar with the tendency of locals to be suspicious, as well as superstitious. She’d encountered it before on other Greek islands. ‘They are being very respectful, I assure you. Everything is being restored carefully to the way it was before it was destroyed.’

  The old woman swatted a fly away with a red handkerchief that had been lying in her lap. ‘You’re not an islander, you don’t know what Helios has suffered. It was the same when Poseidon’s anger swallowed them up, took everything beneath the sea.’

  Oriel frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oi aiónes antigráfoun allílous, the centuries copy each other.’ The old woman peered up at Oriel, not unkindly. ‘It is the same, you see, eh?’ she repeated. She lifted a crooked hand and gestured from side to side. ‘Poseidon here, the Drákon there. No good will come of it. The Drákon already knows about the vengeance of the gods.’

  Shaking her head, she sighed, raising herself creakily from her chair. She called to the boys that it was time to go in for their supper then turned back to Oriel, eyeing her almost sadly. ‘May you have good luck. A dove has no place among the crows.’ With that, she hobbled off towards one of the cottages, lurching from side to side and shooing the boys along in front of her.

  It left Oriel pensive. The old woman was clearly speaking about Damian. It seemed that the islanders’ leader was almost as caught up in the legends of Helios as the old gods themselves. This place was extraordinary. There was so much she still had to piece together about the Lekkas story, she mused. She split open one of the figs and took a bite from its lusciously sweet interior as she started to walk back.

  Oriel waved to Stavros as she reached the top of the hill and they both climbed into the Jeep, leaving the site as daylight was softening. She was tired and could feel a headache starting up across her eyes. Mild sunstroke, she thought, but that didn’t worry her. Her grandmother had a trick against it; all she needed was some salt and water. Some people drank it but, when she was a child, Granny Heather used to pop some in each of Oriel’s ears for half a minute and it always worked. Nevertheless, she was looking forward to a cool bath, a real soak in the sunken tub of her luxurious marble bathroom. Again, she was grateful to Damian for his thoughtfulness. He had been on her mind on and off all day and she wondered if he would be at the dive the next morning.

  ‘We often start work before dawn,’ Stavros told her as they finally turned into the driveway leading up to the great house, ‘but tomorrow, being your first day on the job, we’ll be leaving later, at nine-thirty. We can provide you with diving gear but I’m guessing you’ll want to use equipment that’s familiar to you. You do have your own?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I always use my own apparatus.’ Oriel smiled. ‘We are inseparable. When I’m on a job it goes where I go.’

  ‘Good. Have you checked that it is all in good order, especially your regulator and your buoyancy compensator?’ He hesitated, checking himself. ‘My apologies, Oriel, I forget, you’ve dived many times before, it’s just that …’

  ‘You’ve never had a woman on the dive team before?’ she said, raising her eyebrows.

  He smiled apologetically and nodded. ‘Né, that’s right. We’ll be diving quite deep and your safety is of the utmost importance.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, I understand. Don’t worry, Stavros, I’m used to it,’ she told him. ‘Rest assured, it’s all checked and ready to go.’

  ‘Exairetiki, excellent!’

  A little later, at the door to her apartment, Oriel asked Irini, who was hovering in the corridor, for some salt. In no time, Granny Heather’s remedy had worked miracles – as usual – and Oriel’s headache had almost vanished. She then soaked for twenty minutes in her bath, wondering what to do with her evening. On her return to Heliades, Stavros had given her the keys to a Volkswagen Beetle cabriolet, which he said had been appointed for her use. Should she drive down to the port or perhaps walk there? Oriel would see much more of the island if she walked but it was already starting to get dark and, from what she had gathered, the walk would take twenty-five minutes. On an unlit road it might not be the wisest thing to do.

  Once out of the bath and wrapped in a dressing gown she felt better and began drying her hair, seated at the vanity table. Her gaze settled on a stack of magazines, presumably left out by Irini. Selecting the one on top of the pile, she began flicking through the pages with one hand. A moment later, her fingers stilled; there was a picture of a well dressed woman with dark glasses, hair pinned up stylishly, getting out of a limousine. Yet it wasn’t this image that made Oriel pause, it was the name ‘Damian Lekkas’ that caught her eye in the column beneath.

  GREECE’S SWEETHEART YOLANDA HEADS BACK HOME

  Singer Yolanda is heading back to her childhood home of Helios after sell-out tours all over Greece and Italy. The stunning singer claimed exhaustion after her gruelling tour, but many are speculating about the real reason for Yolanda’s return to Helios, the island run by elusive tycoon, Damian Lekkas, her childhood sweetheart. Her long-time association with Lekkas has kept the gossip columns guessing for years. Perhaps one day she’ll be queen of Helios, as her fans on the island have always wanted. Will wedding bells finally ring for Yolanda?

  Oriel turned off the hairdryer, her face flaming. Hot jealousy spiked through her, unfamiliar and unwelcome. Of course, it was foolish of her not to expect that Damian would have a woman hovering in the background. He probably had many. After all, he was ferociously handsome, the wealthy owner of an island and apparently had women queuing up to be ‘conquered’ by him, as Yorgos had put it. That was not difficult to believe, she thought, brushing her hair with irritated, vigorous strokes.

  Before she could settle her thoughts, there was a brisk knock at the bedroom door.

  ‘Ella mesa.’

  The door opened and there, framed in the doorway, sat Helena Lekkas in her wheelchair.

  ‘Kalispera, Despinis Anderson. I have come to ask if you would have dinner with me tonight.’ Helena’s smooth poker face was enigmatic, her pale, glassy eyes fixed on Oriel, but there was a caressing softness in her voice quite different to the sarcastic tone she had adopted the night before.

  Oriel hesitated then nodded. In the face of Helena’s apparently genuine friendliness, words were not coming easily to her. The last thing she wanted was to spend the evening with Damian’s cousin. Desperately, she sought a tactful way to refuse without giving offence.

  The Greek woman’s perfectly drawn eyebrows went up in puzzled interrogation. ‘Well? Do you have anything better to do?’

  ‘No … Yes … I mean yes, of course, thank you very much,’ Oriel replied quickly.

  ‘Poli kaló, very good. Irini will come and fetch you, say … in one hour?’

  ‘Né, efharisto, thank you. That’ll be fine.’

  Helena backed out of the doorway and disappeared. Oriel went to the door and closed it behind her. How had Damian’s cousin entered her flat? Irini obviously had keys. Did that mean anyone could have access to the apartment, and at any time? She felt uneasy and promised to investigate the matter.

  Despite the seeming affability Helena Lekkas had shown, Oriel sensed a menacing hint in the woman’s mien: the way she sat stiffly in her chair, her long fingers holding on to its arms in an unnecessary death grip, as if Helena was trying to control some inner tension. Oriel wished suddenly that Damian
was there to parry any unpleasantness that might occur. She thought of what Stavros had said about Helios’s dormant volcano, and she had a hunch that under the smooth, impassive mask of Helena’s beautiful face lurked a temper that, like Typhoeus, could cause horrendous damage if unleashed.

  Oriel went to her wardrobe. She wasn’t sure what the dress code was here but, if she had to go by the way Helena had decked herself out the night before, she figured that the etiquette was to dress up for dinner. She concluded that a conservative approach would be wise and chose a long turquoise chiffon dress, which she had worn many times in London, with a wide antique Chinese spinach jade bangle and a pair of matching hoop earrings bought in a small shop in Hong Kong on one of her Asian holidays. She slipped on a pair of stiletto-heeled sandals and surveyed her reflection in the mirror, satisfying herself that she looked elegantly respectable.

  An hour later, accompanied by Irini, she made her way to Helena’s apartment. She was surprised to find it was next door to hers: she had presumed that it would be in a different wing entirely. Irini explained why, before she could ask.

  ‘Kyria Helena’s quarters are being redecorated so, for the time being, she has borrowed part of the apartment you are living in. That is why yours is so small.’

  ‘Small?’ Oriel smiled. ‘It seems perfectly spacious to me.’ Yet, now she thought about it, her own quarters did look as if they could have been part of a larger apartment. There was no kitchen or dining room and the salóni, while large enough, had a certain imbalance to it for such a vast mansion.

  Irini glanced at her and said in hushed tones: ‘The Kyrios decided to do up this wing, which had been closed since the death of Kyrios Pericles. The Kyria was very upset, you see, and insisted she had her wing totally refurbished too.’ The maid seemed unable to stop herself from elaborating further. ‘The Kyrios was not happy about this situation, I think, but when his cousin asks for anything, Kyrios Damian always bows to her wishes. There’s no one else he would do that for,’ she added, as they halted outside a doorway and the maid quietly pushed open the door.

  The room Irini took Oriel through had tall narrow windows that mirrored the ones in Oriel’s own sitting room and bedroom, and a vaulted, frescoed ceiling. She gave a little start when she realized that the frescoes were, every one of them, representations of the perverse and violent decadence of mythological gods. One part showed an image of Zeus, in the guise of a swan, violating Leda, and Oriel almost gave a shudder at the swan’s thick neck and great beating wings, depicted in vivid detail, while Leda swooned in terror. Elsewhere, the king of the gods appeared as a muscular black bull, carrying away a naked Europa to ravish her. Every portrayal on the ceiling had a lurid fascination with sexual conquest and, unbidden, Damian’s scarred face appeared in Oriel’s mind’s eye, his forbidding gaze heavy with desire, making her stomach tighten in reflex.

  As for the walls, Cerberus, the dog with three heads, Centaur, the half man, half horse, Chimera, the amalgamation of goat, lion and snake, Medusa the Gorgon and many of the darker creatures of Greek folklore were pictured in the brown wood panelling or on the furniture, carved in thick relief. It was a celebration of the hideous over the beautiful, the grotesque over the normal, and Oriel was suddenly filled with a sense of foreboding.

  As she walked through the drawing room, Oriel noticed almost all the shelves and tables bore black-and-white photos in gilded frames of a beautiful young man in various close-ups, smiling or pensive. A few of the images, displayed in prime position, showed him crouching beside Helena in her wheelchair. His face had such a familiar look – the bright, piercing eyes and shape of the jaw – that Oriel realized instantly that this must be Damian’s brother, Pericles. The frames were interspersed with flowers and on top of one cabinet she spied what looked like a shaving brush in a glass jar and, next to it, what appeared to be a rolled-up silk tie in a jewel-encrusted box surrounded by lit candles, as though part of some odd shrine.

  Dressed in a scarlet evening gown, Oriel’s hostess was waiting for her on an enclosed terrace, sitting in a damask-silk-covered chair at the dining table. The place was shady, the branches of lemon trees extending high over one side of the terrace. Oriel hardly took in her surroundings, though, and instead smothered a gasp. Everywhere … everywhere … there were cages of birds: they rested on tables, on pedestals and stands. Even the yellow fruit that hung like little lanterns from the branches of the trees had to make space for ornamental cages full of twittering coloured birds, which every now and again flew at the curving bars of their prisons, beating their delicate wings against them. A shiver ran down Oriel’s spine at this eerie spectacle and, despite her near-revulsion, she felt pity for the small captive creatures that longed, she was sure, to be free.

  ‘Good evening, Despinis Anderson. Do you like birds? You seem fascinated.’

  Damian’s cousin smiled. Oriel saw the hard stare of the Greek woman’s eyes and the curious expression beneath the smile, as Helena’s gaze took in the platinum-blonde hair that fell loose about her shoulders. For a split second she could feel a tension in the atmosphere so acute that she was convinced this glamorous woman, for some unknown reason, disliked her.

  ‘They’re striking, I must admit,’ said Oriel evasively, hoping her face didn’t betray her discomfort.

  Helena Lekkas’s gaze roamed distractedly over the cages then flicked back to Oriel, watching her intently. ‘I love them. They keep me company. In a way they remind me of myself, captive in their golden cages. You see, even though I am taken out in my wheelchair twice a day, I feel as though I am a prisoner of this magnificent temple, my home.’ She gestured to a chair. ‘Please, have a seat.’

  At a loss for words, and feeling more than a little awkward, Oriel murmured her thanks as she sat down.

  Helena’s incredible hair was gathered into a forties’ vintage snood hairnet that matched her dress. Her neck, earlobes and her silken tanned arms were adorned with expensive jewellery that, Oriel suspected, was likely the work of well known Greek goldsmiths – Lalaounis or Zolotas perhaps. She too loved gold and had bought some of these Greek creations at auction over the years. Helena was stunning – like one of the mythological daughters of the night – and suddenly Oriel pitied this beautiful crippled woman. Her moment’s misgiving she decided to put down to unreasonable fears and a fertile imagination. Anyway, she would try to have a pleasant evening and even found herself wondering if, perhaps, she and Damian’s cousin might actually become friends.

  ‘I thought it would be more enjoyable to dine in the fresh air,’ explained Helena. ‘The weather is pleasant at this time of the evening. It’s not so hot and there is an agreeable breeze blowing from the sea.’

  ‘Yes, I think so too. It’s a great treat for me, especially as we don’t often have the opportunity to sit outside in England, even during the summer.’

  ‘Will you join me in a glass of ouzo?’ Helena asked, pointing to a bottle in an ice bucket that stood on a tray beside her with two glasses. ‘It’s a stronger version of the French Pernod, distilled from the residue of the grapes left after the wine is made.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve had ouzo before, the last time I was in Greece.’

  ‘So this is not your first visit to our country?’ Helena murmured as she poured a little of the clear liquid into the glasses.

  ‘No, I’ve studied and worked in Greece before.’

  ‘Ice?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘You speak Greek with almost no accent. Foreigners usually have great difficulty pronouncing some of our words.’ She added a couple of cubes of ice and some water to the drinks, which immediately turned milky white.

  ‘I read ancient Greek at university before extending my studies to archaeology. I’ve always been fascinated by the Greek civilization.’

  A waiter, an ageless-looking black man of colossal frame and stature, bald and with African features, appeared with small plates of mezedes, which he placed in front of them with some bread before w
ithdrawing as silently as if shod in velvet. Oriel thought he looked rather like one of the eunuchs who guarded the harems in A Thousand and One Nights, a fairy-tale figure lost in time, just as this house seemed to be.

  Had Helena read the curiosity in Oriel’s face as she had stared at the servant? Anyway, she smiled at the young woman, seemingly amused, and said: ‘Beshir has been with us since the age of twelve. My father brought him back from Turkey, where he was being mistreated. He is a eunuch, an extinct treasure from a different era. Even the Turks and Persians wouldn’t have them in their households today.’

  Although Helena’s clarification had proved her analogy right, Oriel was shocked all the same. But was she so surprised? These people seemed to be living in an age almost as old as the antiquities they were excavating.

  Helena clinked her glass against Oriel’s. ‘Yassas!’ she said, with that enthusiasm so typical of Greeks. ‘Your health! Did you know that this clinking of glasses originates from an ancient Greek belief that wine should be savoured with all the senses? Its bouquet pleases the nose, its colour the eyes. It delights both touch and taste with its body and flavour, and when we clink our glasses the crystal sound charms our ears.’

  Oriel smiled. ‘I must say, I do like the idea that the habit propagated from Greece to the rest of the world. So much more appealing than the other, more grim, medieval theory.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘That the sloshing of the wine into each other’s cups was a symbolic gesture of trust between enemies, that one man trusted the other not to poison him.’

  Helena tilted her head to one side, regarding Oriel as though she was a curious exhibit behind glass. ‘How enlightening! I never knew that.’ She took a sip of ouzo and smiled sweetly. ‘You see, you’re quite safe with me, Despinis Anderson.’

  Oriel laughed, though to her own ears it sounded a little uneasy. There was something about Helena Lekkas that seemed wholly unpredictable. ‘Have you travelled much outside Helios?’ she asked, then wondered if she had been tactless, glancing at Helena’s slender brown wrist on the armrest of her wheelchair.