Aphrodite's Tears

by Hannah Fielding

  Yolanda hadn’t let him go easily, and had insisted on trying to apply some arnica, plus the last of the taverna’s ice, to minimize the damage. She had wanted to take him back to her house, ‘so I can nurse you, agápi mou.’ He’d let her know in no uncertain terms that he didn’t need her nursing and would be fine. Yolanda nursing anybody … O, Theé mou! Damian’s mouth twisted in a sceptical grimace. That would be the day!

  Stavros had always said that he was far too tolerant of Yolanda. ‘You need to be careful, my friend,’ he’d told him one day when they were drinking late into the night at Manoli’s. ‘She thinks she has you and will only ever be trouble.’

  Damian had shrugged. ‘Don’t you think I know that, Stavros? Besides, what do I care what she thinks as long as the islanders are happy with her and she brings money to Helios?’

  Yolanda wounded him once, more deeply than Stavros would ever know, but Damian was a cautious man now. The saying was true, he thought ruefully: Ópoios káike sti soúpa fysáei kai to giaoúrti, whoever gets burnt by the hot soup blows on the cool yoghurt. He was being watchful. Yolanda was quick to harbour jealous resentment and was spiteful as a monkey, and he was in no doubt that she had sniffed out the threat that Oriel posed to her now. The thought brought him some disquiet: what might she try to do to ruin his chances with Oriel?

  Still, hadn’t he done as much damage himself now?

  When he arrived at Limenarkhees, it had been just in time to see Vassilis taking Oriel down the path leading to the more intimate side of the beach. He had wanted to break Vassilis’s face right there and then but Yolanda chose that moment to appear and then hadn’t let go of him the whole evening.

  Damian was not normally violent, despite his reputation. On the contrary he thought of himself as an even-tempered man, fair but uncompromising. He was feared by people who didn’t know him well and by those who broke the rules. After all, he was head of this island and had to maintain law and order – but it was better to enforce law using firm persuasion first, before ever thinking to use force, that was his motto. His friends said he governed with an iron fist in a velvet glove, but it was his enemies who had named him Drákon Damian, an epithet he welcomed because it stopped people becoming too complacent.

  Seeing Oriel with Vassilis on the dancefloor later had exposed a raw nerve. Oriel in the arms of another man … The simmering rage that had gripped him at the sight of the two of them together had eaten away at his iron self-control; he had waited as long as he could for the opportunity to talk to her before he’d snapped. He couldn’t remember the exact words he had said to her, it was as if another person had been talking; all he knew was that he had behaved like a snarling animal and he deeply regretted it.

  Still, possessiveness boiled in Damian’s gut. He fought the selfish part of him that desperately needed Oriel’s light in his life, that wanted to hide her away from the eyes of others – wanting to grab her and roar: she’s mine. Something like panic had edged up his spine as he had watched Oriel and Vassilis on the dancefloor together. Panic born from anger, from jealousy, and from a sudden self-doubt as some of the malicious words Cassandra had said to him after his accident flooded his mind.

  He had never felt diminished by his scars: on the contrary, he was proud of them because they were the proof that he had saved a life. Sure, he had lost his looks, but that hadn’t bothered him, even when Cassandra had refused to share his bed, turning away from him in disgust. He had accepted it from his wife; there had never been any real love there, it had been a marriage of convenience on both sides. It was Pericles that she always wanted anyway. He shook his head. None of that mattered now.

  What tormented him was that suddenly he was afraid that he wasn’t good enough for Oriel, that given the choice between the Americanized Vassilis and the battered man he felt like tonight, she would choose the smooth-talking driver of fast cars, the knowledgeable archaeologist with more than one grand villa to his name.

  Damian’s emotions had never ruled him before, but he had let them do so tonight. This reaction at seeing Oriel with Vassilis was making him face up to his feelings about her. It gave him the realization, as perhaps nothing else could have done, of how deeply he … he couldn’t even bring himself to utter the word silently in his head. It had been deleted from his vocabulary such a long time ago.

  Damian’s knuckles went white on the steering wheel. He suddenly grasped that what he had been doing was not far removed from playing about with Oriel. It had never been a conscious decision; as far as he was concerned, up until now, he simply had to have her. He would go to any lengths to pursue her and wear down her resistance. The chemistry between them was so strong that it had coloured all his thoughts and actions, cloaking the truth of his real feelings.

  There had been that small glimmer of awareness, of course, when Stavros had brought him Oriel’s résumé and photograph and he had discovered that she was his one-night stand. That beautiful stranger who, through these years of ups and downs, had often visited his thoughts by day and his dreams at night. Always carnal dreams where love had no place. Yet the joy that had overwhelmed him when she had accepted the job, the warmth that inundated his heart, he now knew could have only meant that he loved her. At the time Damian hadn’t recognized the feeling as such and, when he had seen her again, his lust for her had bubbled to the surface with a power so strong that it had obliterated any other thought.

  Last night in the Room of Secrets they had made love – there could be no other word to describe what had passed between them, he knew it now … only now. What a blind fool! Finally, he understood what that need was that drove him to want to wrap Oriel inside and outside of him, body and soul; the need for her that was as elemental as drawing breath, which made his heart pound inside his chest.

  After Yolanda’s betrayal he had thought that he would never love again or, at least, that he would never find the person who would make him trust once more. But tonight, reality slammed into Damian. Now he saw that there were moments in life – ecstatic moments – which could banish sorrow and heal gaping wounds. Miraculously, the darkness of the soul could be illumined by a light that soothed a wounded heart and created the natural human desire to love. To live joyously – that was the secret of earthly happiness, he saw that now – and what better way to enjoy this earthly happiness than to share it with someone who was the extension of yourself?

  When he had seen Oriel sitting in the moonlight on Aegina, reminiscent of a moonbeam, she appeared to him so unearthly with her pale hair and wistful green eyes that looked up at him with such innocent candour, it seemed as though he were dreaming. That moment when she ran and he’d wrestled her to the sand … her luscious body lying warm and soft beneath him, her breasts full, taut and firm against his chest, her slim waist flaring gently out to perfectly proportioned hips and down to her slender legs … he’d thought he was in heaven right there and then. A protest had fallen from her lips but they had parted in a small smile as if she were stating something more out of bravado than anything else. And then she had given herself up to him totally, generously, without hesitation, and she became for him an angel of mercy. But his hopes had been dashed because of a misunderstanding. A simple scrap of paper with a picture on it had sent him away that same night.

  Fate, life, God, whatever, had given him a second chance … and now cold dread filled him. Had what he had seen tonight been another misunderstanding? Had he become too cautious a man … too quick to jump to conclusions, to judge?

  A dozen scenarios flooded his mind and none was good. He shouldn’t have reacted in that brutish way. True, it had been a shock to see Oriel with another man, but he should have handled the situation differently. Making a spectacle of himself in public diminished him and the love he felt for her. Still, questions that needed answers clamoured in his tired mind. Why had she agreed to go out with Vassilis? How could she dance in the arms of another man after yesterday? She sounded cool, aloof even, when Damian had approached her – not
like someone who had shared a night of passion with him only hours before. Maybe she had qualms about what had happened between them; the idea had sent a bleak fury coursing through him as he’d stood close to her, watching her lift her beautiful chin in defiance. At the time he had wanted to bait her, to get some sort of reaction out of her, but he had gone too far.

  He would go and see her now – she should still be awake and, even if he had to wake her up, he needed to talk to her, to explain. He wanted to apologize for his outrageous behaviour and put things right. If Damian could just try to curb his jealousy and have a quiet conversation, maybe that would be the opportunity to tell her how he felt about her, that last night he hadn’t just been passing the time or using her to gratify his needs. He loved her deeply – deeply enough to want to spend the rest of his life with her. Perhaps he was arrogant enough to think that what was between them could see them through any storm, and that he had plenty to offer her – and that even if she didn’t love him today, she could learn to love him in time. He had to try.

  Once at Heliades, Damian parked his car and took the stairs two at a time, suppressing the instinct that told him what he was about to do was not only foolish but downright rash. The house was silent. Good, he thought, everybody is asleep. He walked to Oriel’s apartment and, without giving himself time to have second thoughts, knocked firmly on the door, his heart racing as never before. He tried it once, twice … and the third time he knocked a little harder and the door pushed open easily. Damian crossed the apartment and rapped on her bedroom door. When there was still no answer, he turned the handle and switched on the light. The room was empty and the bed hadn’t been slept in, confirming his most painful fears. Oriel had not come home, she was obviously spending the night with Vassilis.

  In a bitterness of spirit such as he had never known, he flung himself out of the house and into the deep-blue darkness of night.

  * * *

  Oriel had no idea for how long she had been running on the deserted road. She had instinctively made for the harbour: it was a route she knew, and it wasn’t the first time she had headed blindly for the beach after a frightening episode at Heliades. It was still dark. A wan, moth-eaten-looking moon dangled over the black placid waters and the white lonely beach; it seemed to her a sickly thing, out of condition, as if it had been on duty for weeks on end.

  No one was about. A smell of woodsmoke lingered in the air, mixed with a slightly acrid scent of burnt grease and charred goat. The taverna was closed; gone were the chairs, tables, dancefloor … everything had been cleared away, even the lights from the trees. The only things that remained were the piles of rubbish littered here and there in tragic desolation on the shore. In the semi-darkness the slabs of broken rock, stacked one over the other in ruthless confusion, looked to her eerie, like a scaled-down scene of some prehistoric land, where monstrous beasts roamed. One particularly large slab – Mattias’s favourite fishing spot – appeared particularly menacing.

  A row of seagulls were resting in the softness of the night on the edge of a large empty caique moored close to the shore. And in the silence, broken only by the gentle sound of tiny waves frilling along the flat, an owl’s melancholy cry reached out to Oriel from the dark trees that skirted the bay, making her jump. Athena’s messenger, she thought to herself, as she stood on the cold sand, dazed and broken. If the bird was crying out a warning, it had come too late.

  Oriel felt physically sick, with an inward suffering that was like a burning pain. Conscious of an aching void in her heart, she kept replaying her last scene with Damian. How could he have behaved like that? How dare he assume that she and Vassilis were … Then a desperate longing for him would sweep over her like a wave, which felt as though it would drown her. Each time it threatened to engulf her, she caught herself up sharply. It was no use fretting over Damian, she told herself; he didn’t love her, he belonged to someone else.

  The lonely beach and the rocks, the sea whispering and sobbing, seemed an evocative reflection of her mood as she settled down on the damp sand under a tree. That’s when the first rush of pent-up emotion broke. Her throat ached; her eyes smarted with tears that streamed down her cheeks: tears of fatigue, hurt … and anger.

  Oriel fell asleep with hair tousled and eyes swollen. When she woke hours later, just before dawn, she was stiff and cold. Her limbs pained her so much she had almost forgotten her heartache. She sighed. Everything was in a terrible mess. She would have liked to talk to someone, to unburden herself – it would be so much easier if she could share her troubles with a real friend, a sympathetic ear, to help clarify things in her mind. Still, that wasn’t an option. There was no one on the island she could confide in; she had no family, no friends here. Yet there was always Mattias. He was such a kind and wise man. Another time …

  She needed to think but she was tired, feverish and weak, so much so that she felt as if she had been physically battered. The future rose like a black curtain in front of her. She felt sick inside and shaky, as though she had just suffered a major trauma. Part of her craved a hot bath and a steaming cup of coffee; the other was dogged by a desire to simply curl up and go to sleep, and let the rest of the world go on without her.

  CHAPTER 10

  Leaning against the trunk of the pine tree, under which she had spent the night, Oriel watched the whiteness of the daylight slowly leak into the sky. In the shadowy half light, between the paling of the brilliant stars in their dark-blue setting and the first hint of glorious colour heralding the sunrise, a flight of wild geese skimmed past, their long necks outstretched in perfect formation – like an enormous squadron of aeroplanes. For a few seconds, the pattern they made against the dusky mother-of-pearl sky turned her thoughts away from her troubles to the beauty of the dawn.

  A gull swooped down and then winged away again. A solitary fisherman was trudging along in the distance. A fishing caique had just pulled up on the shore, not far from where Oriel was sitting, and suddenly there was considerable excitement on the beach, with people appearing from nowhere and surrounding the boat.

  Welcoming the diversion, Oriel stood up and joined the group. A large octopus had been caught during the night. It had been placed in a huge tank of seawater, which six men were in the process of carrying on to the sand. The octopus swam slowly to and fro, its tentacles, like films of soft soap, weaving about the bulbous head. Eyes, which were fixed on its captors with a malevolent intensity, seemed to take up most of the pouch-like head, which moved from side to side with the acute lateral movement of an Indian dancer, as if wishing to get a better look at those peering at him. On the sandy floor of the tank lay the remains of very small crabs.

  The crew of the caique were in high spirits, fielding question after question as they stood, hands on hips, gazing at the octopus as it writhed in the tank. Oriel gathered, from what was being said, that it would fetch a tidy sum from the owner of a new aquarium on the mainland.

  ‘You are an early riser, Oriel, eh?’

  She turned abruptly and met Mattias’s laughing eyes. But his smile vanished as soon as he saw her pale face and tired features.

  He gave her a worried look. ‘Ti eínai láthos, what’s wrong?’

  Oriel’s eyes moistened slightly at the sight of Mattias, so relieved it was he who had appeared just then; but the world felt too much of a tumultuous hub, whirling her round and round, for her to answer. So she said nothing, only managing a wan smile.

  The pale, bold eyes of the fisherman looked searchingly into hers. ‘Po! Po! Po! Something is very wrong this morning! You look as though you haven’t had any sleep for a week.’

  ‘I haven’t, it’s true. I left Heliades yesterday and spent the night on the beach,’ she admitted in a small voice.

  Mattias’s brows rose fractionally and he stared at her in disbelief. ‘And Kyrios Damian let you leave just like that?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. I left before he came back,’ she explained quietly. ‘I simply couldn’t stay at that house a min
ute longer … the dead canary … and then those dreadful birds …’ She gave a shudder as she recalled the incident. Oriel was talking all at once, her words tumbling over each other, and it was as if it were someone else’s voice, incoherent and all in a muddle. ‘I really don’t know what to do now.’

  He looked calmly at her. ‘I don’t quite understand what you’re saying. Come, let’s sit down on the rocks and you can tell me slowly all about your troubles. Not that I want to pry into your affairs, it’s just that there might be something I could do to help.’

  Oriel nodded, her eyes bright with unshed tears. ‘Of course you aren’t prying, Mattias,’ she said shakily. ‘I really need to talk to someone. You’ve had your share of suffering in life, and you’re a kind, wise man.’

  Together they walked in silence to the rocks that had borne witness to their earlier conversations, and sat down on a boulder, facing the myriad colours of the dawn sky. Seabirds flew fearlessly over the water, uttering their peculiar, harsh cries that resounded loudly in the hush of the morning. It was that brief quiet time before the dogs started their barking and the goats were led by their herders, bells tinkling, to the greener pastures at the top of the cliffs.

  Oriel felt as though she had always known Mattias. She had swiftly grown to admire his strength and trust his judgement, and then … of course he knew Damian and the history of his friend’s disturbed family. Slowly, she told him all about what had happened with Damian six years ago, and everything that had taken place since her arrival on the island. She was almost unable to finish her story, she was crying so much. Oriel could not remember having cried like that for years and years. She tasted salt on her lips as the tears streamed down her cheeks, somehow or other bringing relief in their wake. It was as if something that had been frozen inside her for so long had suddenly thawed. And Mattias, understanding that, let her weep and made no attempt to check her.